A Metabolic Approach to HPV-Related Cancer Prevention and Treatment

Hi and welcome to How Humans Heal. I'm really excited to introduce you to Dr. Naysha Winters. She is author of the Metabolic Approach to Cancer. She's also the founder of Metabolic Regen University. She has a metabolic approach to helping people to prevent and address cancer. And I'm so, so glad for you to be here with me today. Naysha.

I.

So good to see you.

It's so good to see you. As we were saying before the recording, it's like we've been trying to do this for a while and I'm glad that the opportunity arose. So I'm glad we're, we're doing this with you and your amazing community.

Thank you. Yeah, like, as, as naturopathic doctors, like, our paths have crossed so many times over the years and it's like, and to be like knowing, hey, we're out there, you know, with sharing this message that, that health can be getting into the root cause, figuring out what's going on under the surface, and helping people to understand what that means in terms of what they can implement to actually make a difference, especially related to cancer. Right. So thank you so much for everything you do and everybody that you teach because you've been teaching around the world in lay audiences, professional audiences, and what a brilliant teacher they have. So thank you for all of that.

Oh, thanks so much. So fun.

So maybe share a little bit about, like, if there's something that inspired you to go this direction with, with helping with cancer and, and what that looks like. What is that? Just so people get a better sense of what does that mean to be a metabolic approach to cancer.

Cool. Well, I feel like it's always, you know, context is everything for me. I like, I'm a story collector. I feel like when we're working with our patients and though I haven't been in private practice for several years now, I still support other doctors in private practice. So I feel like I get to be like the secondary, like second string team of clinicians to support that process. But for me, it started with my own journey. You know, it's interesting, Donnie. I was just to give a little background so people understand the terrain, my environment. At nine years old, I started menstruating. This is in 1980, right? Not normal or common. I, by the time I was 11, they put me on birth control pills to deal with my endometriosis. By the time I was, by the time I was 14, I had my first bout of cervical dysplasia and had cryotherapy. By the time I was 16, I had another bout and more cryotherapy. So my, I kept getting CIN2 and threes. By the time I was 19, I had a collection of diagnoses of rheumatoid arthritis, IBS.

Knew I had thyroid stuff. But we didn't know for still a few more years that it was Hashimoto's. Uh, didn't know for a few more years beyond that that I actually have celiac disease. So it was like all these health things along with these hormonal imbalances, what I wasn't putting together and what my medical community wasn't putting together was, why would a 9 year old start off with all these hot messes? And so it's, it's a little vulnerable to talk about this, but I come from a lot, a lot of trauma and abuse. And those questions weren't being asked. And I think that's part of what I love about what you and I get to do. We want to know the biography of our patients to understand their biology even better. And had someone, I can very much remember, Mrs. Richardson in my third grade class was the only person who seemingly said, honey, is there anything going on at home? You know, like when I was not, you know, I was at school when this happened. I traumatized, I was traumatized. All my third grade class was traumatized. It was like a thing that still today. I mean, I just ran into one of my classmates that I hadn't seen since then who talked about how traumatized everybody was from that experience. And so it got quickly buried. And then no one was asking, we didn't know back in, you know, the mid-80s, late-80s, about HPV and its impact to cervical cancer and cervical dysplasias. So no one was testing for that. It would still be another, probably decade before I was swabbed to see that I did carry some HPV variant. And so it was those kind of things that made me just go, yeah, there was a problem in the building and no one was addressing it. We just had a script pad for that and we moved on. So now you have context that perhaps it won't surprise you and your listeners that at 19, I was a sophomore in college, summer before my sophomore year. Kept getting in and out of the emergency room saying, something's different, something's wrong. And they just kept saying, it's your IBS flaring, it's your PCOS or your endometriosis flare, it's your rheumatoid arthritis flares, your celiac. Well, then we know celiac. But they're like just the IBS stuff. So it just kept getting sort of deferred until my roommate found me unconscious and rushed me to the hospital or to the emergency room. And lo and behold, I had a different doc on. On that night who took one look at me and knew this was not more of the same. This was definitely something problematic. And so just to rush the story forward a Little bit, on October 21, 1991, I was just. The two weeks before I landed in the ER was two weeks before my 20th birthday. My actual diagnosis would take three weeks after my 30th. My 20th birthday. So my birthday was September 30, 1991. 20.

Relationship with. With our body, with the process. But when we can kind of get into this other pathway where we're not so attached to the exact outcome we're attached to. To more like the experience that we're looking for. Right. That I can be thriving. Like you're saying, I can be living my life and doing my passion and my purpose, you know, then that's a. That's a different goal and mindset.

Totally. I think that. I think you nailed it. That attachment to the outcome. I've worked. I've done this for long enough now in my own life and for, at this point, tens of thousands directly and hundreds of thousands indirectly to know that there are so many people out there that are so afraid of dying that they're absolutely not living.

And without a diagnosis of cancer. Right.

Absolutely. Like this. This conversation could be any. Anything, Bill. You know, like, that's what's really wild, is that we're so, like, missing the opportunity to truly, truly live.

And when you had to face death at such a young age.

Yeah.

And. And plus. Yeah, like, I love that. It's amazing, really, Nisha, when you think bad, like, how did that. Like, you. You called them accidents. But these combination of things that, you know, fasting, of course, because your bowels were completely shut down. But okay, fasting. And then, you know, so you. Like. I love this. You're having a fast physically, a fast emotionally, and then you bring in psilocybin. And I'm so glad you're bringing this up, because as listeners know, this is something that I also love to talk about because there's so much research on it now, this becoming so clear that not, like you said, not only does it help with end of life, but it helps with trauma recovery.

Extreme. Extreme. I'm pretty certain. I mean, you know, I know if you just from your work and even what you're I mean, behind you, the stress reset for health. One of the biggest stressors is what you're exposed to in your early childhood. So the adverse childhood events. And so when we take those quizzes, you know, they always explain. And I'm sure you've had this conversation a million times over, but you are literally rewired differently in how you meet stress. Your microbiome is wired differently. Your neuroendocrine system is wired differently. And when you have been exposed to a certain amount of stress at a very young age, it sets the sort of the foundation for how you meet the world in your older years. And so for me, my ACE score was a 10 out of 10. And so it's like, of course now medically and clinically and intellectually, I could look back and be like, duh, of course you had cancer. You know, but it's like, oh, that accidental overdose of the, the psilocybin and the accidental fasting and the accidental. I'm just gonna fast from the family. It completely rewired everything in me. And that gave me an opportunity that I would otherwise not have had.

Now, I want to be clear that we don't recommend that you go listening. Don't go do this.

Don't, please, God, no. Because I would not recommend it ever. I've never done it since and I would never recommend it. It was not for the faint of heart. And I was so, so sick at that time as well. It's actually a miracle I did survive that. And so yes, please, no, no. There are so many good facilitators out there who know how to work with microdosing, appropriate dosing, even macro or these heroic dosing in very safe supported environments. And there are some brilliant like researchers out there doing it and clinicians and there's training for clinicians. Find those people. If this is speaking to you.

Yeah, I just, I'm just completing the IPI program, the Integrative Psychiatry Institute.

Psychedelic Assisted Therapy training and including, you know, being able to be certified where it's available in psilocybin. Because I see like, I, I, once I started seeing the potential ability to help with stress and trauma recovery, I'm like, I, I want to be an advocate. And how better to be an advocate than to get trained and certified and, and be able to move forward accessibility to things like psych, the psilocybin as a psychedelic therapy for helping with situations like that. Because what you're saying is like, I really want to highlight which is, I love this because this is what I always Love to talk about. This has been my passion in research as well for decades, which is to understand that it's the stress and trauma that we're exposed to from childhood, even. Even before we were born.

That'S related to the health issues we experience. That, yes, we can know our genetics and our genetic tendency, but our genetic tendency is turned on by the stress and trauma exposure.

Exactly, exactly. First of all, I did not know you're doing that. So when you come on my podcast, we are about that too. How amazing, because this is. I mean, I look at. In. So in. In the United States, we are the only country in the world that are not experiencing stable or improving longevity. In fact, we're the only country in the world where we are losing longevity. And we've been doing so for now, going on six years straight. We're dropping. And the scientists call it this phenomenon of why we are losing longevity compared to the rest of the world. They call it the era of despair.

And so when we look at the biggest crisis in this country, in the United States, specifically compared to others, it's everywhere. But here, it's super concentrated.

People die. Our longevity is from opiate overdose and suicide.

Which means we are a nation.

In pain, emotional pain and physical pain.

Exactly. And they really don't not. They coexist.

There is. They're completely related to each other. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, and, and I'm so glad you're saying this, because that's the, that's the thing that we tend to want to like, you know, oh, that's somebody else over there. We tend to kind of like try to put our blinders on and ignore it. And yet these. This is an epidemic of.

Physical pain. And then people thinking that the only solution is opiates and pain medications and emotional pain, which shows up as depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. And how are humans going to survive if that's the only option.

Right.

That doesn't lead to death, Then the cancer develops.

Exactly, exactly. These other chronic illnesses, including cancer, just are ripe to set roots in that environment, in that system. And so when I look at all the pharmaceuticals we divvy out to folks in the state of pain or in this, you know, physical pain or the state of emotional pain. And we have substance and substances that we have co. Evolved with since the beginning of time that are like a creation. Like, they're like our true north. You know, they like help us remember who we are and they help us reconnect with ourself and the universe around us. It's incredible. To me that we would classify them as cl, you know, type one, you know, class clarification of one saying there's no medical benefit, there's, you know, only, only addiction around it. And yet that's completely untrue. And that's what's been unraveling since the 1940s when we put a, a fake and a fake claim over these medicines we've co evolved with. And it's so interesting. I've got the original Merck manual, I think it's from 1915 and it's loaded with like, you know, here's where you're taking poppy for, you know, your pain management, but it wasn't in the synthetic form so you weren't having the overdose. And here's where you're taking cannabis, you know, for your pain management or your nausea or your anxiety. All of those were in the, the pharmacopeia, including.

Psilocybin. Well, not psilocybin then, but some of the derivatives within some of these, you know, medicines, DMTS and whatnot, that they were taking. We just buried that knowledge and like an entire generation or two created a whole new dialogue around it. That's absolutely false.

And I, I want to point out that what we're talking about here is what you often referred to as the terrain. Like maybe you can because explain that term and, and how you use it for both patients and professionals to understand this concept of we gotta look deeper, right, Than just what's the, what's that quick fix that's gonna be? Not really a long term fix.

Exactly, exactly. You know, there's, there's a couple metaphors out there that you, you and your listeners have probably come across like the one image of there's the fishbowl, there's a goldfish swimming inside and it's really murky and you know, and standard of care would look at that and just say, oh, we need to just add some bleach to the water. Right. And that'll take care of it? Well, it does, it clears it right up. But all that sediment falls to the bottom and then will eventually get all perturbated into the, into the water again. And that poor fish just got a big old hit of, of you know, bleach, that maybe it survived that. But then when they have to bleach it again, maybe it won't survive that on the next round. Another analogy is like if we all just took like had a window off our kitchen and we took all of our scraps and we threw them out the window Onto the ground. That's great. Perfect, you know, great. It's out of sight, out of mind, no problem. Nothing. A problem. But then a couple days later, you start to notice a little smell. Maybe a couple days later, a couple flies swarming around, and you get out the fly swatter and, you know, that did. That seems to do it. But it gets worse and worse. More and more flies. And then you start to spray that, the whole bit. This is standard of care, guys. This is disease management.

Whereas naturopathic doctors, integrative, functional medicine doctors, we learn to go to say, well, wouldn't it made more sense just to move the trash pile? You know, get rid of the trash pile, or actually take everything out of that bowl, clean it, and put in fresh resources and have that. That fish in a safe haven while you're cleaning things up and plop it back into a cleaner environment. What happens then? That's what we get to do. You know, that's what I get to. I get to go through and explore what is causing the. The muck, what's causing the. The flies to be attracted, what's causing the cells to go rogue, what's causing the expression of disease to go rampant.

Yeah. And it's to say, like, a lot of times we're focused on the tumor. With cancer, for example, we're so focused on the tumor as if that's the real problem. When that's the messenger, that's the messenger to say, hey, there's a reason why this tumor's here.

Exactly. You know, and, you know, we're discussing a case right before this. It was such a perfect example. This young woman, you know, she has the tumor removed and like, great, it should be the type of cancer she had. Very, very. Should be perfect. Right? Like standard of care says you just remove that and you're done, you're good to go. Ring the bell, Go back to living your life. You're fine. And that wasn't the case for her. And actually it's not the case for most cancer patients. It will find another place to express as it did with this young woman in a short period of time, completely away from the original site of where the tumor originated. And that is such a perfect example. It's like, you cut that out, but you didn't change the environment in which it originally grew. Now there's an opportunity with this person to come back. And luckily, they're into it, they're interested. Now we need to come back and help her understand her biography that led to this biology as well as the Environment both in, on and around her, including people, places and things that might have impacted her terrain to allow something like cancer to take root.

And, and what comes to mind as you're describing that is that it might not be right local to where the tumor is. Right. It could be because our bodies are all interconnected. But that doesn't get picked up on in standard medical approaches now and the.

Type of questions that you and I would ask, I mean people are going to probably frequently hear this. I have a 54 page intake form for my patients with cancer. Or you know, that when I train the clinicians to use these in their practices, part of that is it's a journey to self, right? It's a deep, deep dive evaluation. But we also want a lot of information. We want to look at of course your symptoms, we want to look of course your diagnoses, your, your medications, your supplements. We want to look at your family of origin history. We want to look at all the zip codes you've lived in in the formative years and the transitional years of your life to know what exposures you had. We want to know about your belief systems, we want to know about your A score. We want to know about your environmental intake. We want to know about even your doshas, your ayurvedic doshas of like your, the patterns that you were born with versus the patterns that you express from changes in your diet and lifestyle. And we want to learn about like even your Chinese medicine constitution and even. We have some questions in there that really chose show us a little bit of sort of the homeopathic constitutions as well. So we have a really clear story of what pattern is expressing and is that your true essence? Likely not if it's expressing as disease. So how do we get under that to find your true essence and help you return there as quickly as possible?

Amazing. Amazing. And I find this too that in the process patients, or I'm thinking of women with HPV that I'm helping to prevent cervical cancer, they end up learning so much about their health along and themselves along the way. And not only are they then preventing cervical cancer in the case of high risk hpv, but they're ending up preventing all other health issues.

Because it's related to the same situation. It's the same thing.

Remember when we, I mean you and I have been. When did you graduate medical school?

In 2000.

So we. So I should have graduated in 2000, but I went and finished my doctorate in oriental medicine first and then finished in 2003. But similar window. And the HPV vaccine was just rolling out shortly after that. And what we'd all been taught in school was HPV is very much a terrain issue. Yeah, right. We were taught that it's about certain risky behaviors, certain lacks of micro and macronutrients, certain.

You know, like, like lifestyle choices that, that's what if you dress those, you could do something about it. And then we had teachers like the Tori Hudson's of the world and whatnot that were teaching us that if you literally, you know, place these little badge packs, these little like comp, you know, compresses to the cervix, you could heal locally. But then there were a lot of things we were doing to heal things from orally as well. For my practice in the beginning in tiny little Durango, Colorado, in the Four Corners, I probably myself, if I had a guess, I probably administered over 250 different patients for escarotic treatments.

I love knowing that you've been doing that too over in Colorado. And I was doing the same thing in Manhattan and this area, the Manhattan, Connecticut area, because it's like, it's like we learned how to do escharonics in our training.

Totally. So while you, to your point, like we were helping those high risk HPV patients, we were resolving entirely getting clear paps. We were getting clear paps within a month from these types of treatments. And then we would maintain them because we've changed the environment, we've educated them, we've got them the oral support, we've taught them how to deal with the local support ongoing, that they don't end up turning into cervical dysplasias or cancers in the future. And then along comes a vaccine that took all of that away from us, that basically all of these folks were taught to believe that just a shot would prevent it. And it took away that opportunity to educate and empower at this time women of how to really tend to their terrain to prevent that from happening. Because even you and I know it's like that vaccine is still only addressing a few of the variants.

When that's the messenger, that's the messenger to say, hey, there's a reason why this tumor's here.

Exactly. You know, and you know, we're discussing a case right before this. It was such a perfect example. This young woman, you know, she has the tumor removed and like, great, it should be. And the type of cancer she had very, very should be perfect. Right. Like standard of care says you just remove that and you're done, you're good to go. Ring the bell, go back to living your life. You're fine. And that wasn't the case for her. And actually it's not the case for most cancer patients. It will find another place to express as it did with this young woman, in a short period of time, completely away from the original site of where the tumor originated. Um, and that is such a perfect example. It's like you cut that out, but you didn't change the environment in which it originally grew. Now there's an opportunity with this person to come back and luckily they're into it, they're interested now we to come back and help her understand her biography that led to this biology as well as the environment both in, on and around her, including people, places and things that might have impacted her terrain to allow something like cancer to take root.

And, and what comes to mind as you're describing that is that it might not be right, local to where the tumor is. Right. It could be because our bodies are all interconnected. But that doesn't get picked up on in standard medical approaches.

No. And the type of questions that you and I would ask, I mean, people are going to probably freak when you hear this. I have a 54 page intake form for my patients with cancer. Or you know, that when I train the clinicians to use these in their practices, part of that is it's a journey to self. Right. It's a deep, deep dive evaluation. But we also want a lot of information. We want to look at of course, your symptoms. We want to look, of course, your diagnoses, your, your medications, your supplements. We want to look at your family of origin history. We want to look at all the zip codes you've lived in in the formative years and the transitional years of your life to know what exposures you had. We want to know about your systems. We want to know about your ACE score. We want to know about your environmental intake. We want to know about even your doshas, your ayurvedic doshas of like your. The patterns that you were born with versus the patterns that you express from changes in your diet and lifestyle. And we want to learn about like even your Chinese medicine constitution. And even we have some questions in there that really chose show us a little bit of sort of the homeopathic constitutions as well. So, so we have a really clear story of what pattern is expressing. And is that your true essence? Likely not, if it's expressing as disease. So how do we get under that to find your true essence and help you return there as quickly as possible?

Amazing, Amazing. And I find this too, that in the process, patients, or I'm thinking of women with HPV that I'm helping to prevent cervical cancer, they end up learning so much about their health along and themselves along the way. And not only are they then preventing cervical cancer in the case of high risk hpv, but they're ending up preventing all other health issues.

Because it's related to the same situation. It's the same thing.

Remember when we, I mean you and I have been. When did you graduate medical school?

In 2000.

So we, so I should have graduated in 2000, but I went and finished my doctorate in oriental medicine first and then finished in 2003. But similar window. And the HPV vaccine was just rolling out shortly after that. And what we'd all been taught in school was HPV is very much a terrain issue. Yeah, right. We were taught that it's about certain risky behaviors, certain lacks of micro and macronutrients, certain.

You know, like, like lifestyle choices, that that's what if you dress those, you could do something about it. And then we had teachers like the Tori Hudson's of the world and whatnot that were teaching us that if you literally, you know, place these little badge packs, these little like comp, you know, compresses to the cervix, you could heal locally. But then there were a lot of things we were doing to heal things from orally as well. For my practice in the beginning in tiny little Durango, Colorado in the four Corners, I probably myself, if I had a guess, I probably administered over 250 different patients for escharotic treatments.

I love knowing that you've been doing that too over in Colorado. And I was doing the same thing in Manhattan and in this area, the Manhattan, Connecticut area, because it's like, it's like we learned how to do escharotics in our training.

Totally. So while to your point, like we were helping those high risk HPV patients, we were resolving entirely, getting clear paps. We were getting clear Paps within a month from these types of treatments. And then we would maintain them because we've changed the environment, we've educated them, we've got them the oral support, we've taught them how to deal with the local support ongoing that they don't end up turning into cervical dysplasias or cancers in the future. And then along comes a vaccine that took all of that away from us, that basically all of these folks were taught to believe that just a shot would prevent it. And it took away that opportunity to educate and empower at this time women of how to really tend to their terrain to prevent that from happening. Because even you and I know it's like that vaccine is still only addressing a few of the variants. Right? And there's dozens out there. And so I just think it was such an interesting time. We've been at it long enough. And yet those patients that I still come across in my practice today that guess what, have cervical cancer, even though they had the, the injections, no one taught them how to take care of their bodies.

I know how scary it is to test positive for HPV virus. And I know it's even more concerning when your gynecologist tells you that all you can do is wait and see if it continues and if it causes abnormal cells. That's exactly why, as a naturopathic doctor and midwife that I feel so passionate about helping women to be proactive about protecting themselves from HPV virus. I've been helping thousands of women for the past 23 years to do exactly that and to get HPV to negative and stay negative. And that's why I developed the say Goodbye to HPV online program where you can get access to my proven protocol from wherever you are in the world. So I hope you will come check out the say Goodbye to HPV program, review the success cases and see if this is going to be a good fit to help you get your life back from hpv.

And I think that's so sad.

I hear these stories because, you know, now I'm talking to thousands and thousands of women every year in these situations and that's one of the, there's, there's, there's trauma happening to women because of this point and others where it's, oh, just get this vaccine and you're going to be fine. And then, and then what happens then that once. Because you're right, it only covers some of the high risk types, so women can still, and it's only partially effective even to all the ones that it does cover. So then women end up positive for HPV anyway, cervical dysplasia. And they're like, well, the doctor told me this was supposed to not happen. Now what do I do? Yeah, and so now they're in a situation and a lot of people, because they, they're told, oh.

Some humans are even judgmental to other women. Oh, you were supposed to just get the vaccine or you, you know, oh, that, you know. And so we end up in this battle against each other about something that is completely missing the point which Is that that wasn't going to be solving it anyway. Or the cases where, I mean, I was talking to a woman this week and it's. And I've heard this story unfortunately so many times where women are go for their pap. Right. Luckily we have a way to go.

Yeah.

And be identified. Now we're testing for high risk hpv. Most practitioners are when women go in for their pap or annual exam. And so, but that means that more and more women are finding out that they are testing positive or high risk hpv. And then the doctor might say, oh, don't worry, just come back in a year. You know, don't know, you don't need to do anything, just come back in a year. And so the women go back in a year and now it's progressed. Now it might be CIN1 or CIN2. And again, if it's CIN1, they it's not, it's not advanced enough to require the surgeries that they offer. So they say, oh, just come back in another year.

Yeah.

And so then women are like, now they're in this. Later, once they find me and you and find out, oh my gosh, I could have been doing something, then they feel relieved, angry and betrayed. Like, oh my gosh, I wish I would have known two years ago when this first came up positive that I could have been changing my diet, changing my lifestyle, healing from trauma, doing all the things so that it didn't progress. But unfortunately women are, it's progressing. Then they might have a surgery, let's say, whether it's a leap or even a hysterectomy. And then to find out six months or a year later that now it's in the vaginal cells and it's recurring and it's, and, and that's when sometimes women go, wait a minute, this can't be the only way, that can't be the only option. And, and I'm, I'm so glad that then they start searching and find help, find me and we can start helping them because luckily it can still help at any point along that journey.

Exactly, exactly.

But you and I know like that that shouldn't have to be that experience.

Exactly. And that's where I feel in some ways we were more successful in preventing this before the vaccine because we didn't have a false sense of security.

And I'm just astonished of how many.

Like women don't know their bodies. So one of my favorite things when we would do those escarotics was I always had them take A mirror and like watch. Go with me on the process. And they were just like, what? You know, some people were like, really taken back by that. I'm like, no, you need to see. This is your opportunity to see inside so you can help visualize what's happening and see it and watching it change from day to day to day, as we would do the acetic acid and watch all the little white spots get less and less and less and less. And by the end of, you know, around of 5 to 15 depending on the stage.

It would be gone. They would just watch this like beautiful healing process. The amount of pride and the amount of excitement around it. I had so many women bring in their partners, you know, to, to like see us as well and just explain what was happening. It was incredible. What happens when, you know, I always say an empowered patient is a very difficult to kill patient. So, you know, I'm on the other end of the spectrum. You see all the folks early on or preventatively or maybe at that CI cin one, maybe two, but once they move into the cin three and beyond, that's where they land in usually my court. And you and I were talking before this, like, how do we help them remember that let's say it has moved into cervical cancer.

You said this so beautifully when we were talking before the recording. Like, if you do not deal with the virus or the reason why this cancer took root, no amount of chemo, no amount of surgery, no amount of hyperbaric oxygen and high dose IV vitamin C or vag packs are going to do it.

Absolutely. And that's in the standard medical world and oncology for cervical cancer, they are not addressing the virus at all, at all. Gynecology, they're not addressing the virus at all. And what I teach women is exactly what you started with at the beginning, which is asking the question why? And this is the thing of like, nobody's asking why. Everybody's just assuming, oh, I had sex, I got exposed to the virus and that's why it's there. And I'm saying, no, okay, yes, you, at some point you had to have been exposed to this virus. But that's not the whole story.

Right? Right. Because we're all like, how? I mean, you know, the stats. It's been a while since I've kept on the stats. But you know, we're all being exposed to a lot of things. A lot of viruses, a lot of bacterium, a lot of molds, a lot of things. When our bodies are working well, they are able to like, this immune system is able to do surveillance and respond to those things favorably and keep the peace, if you will. Right. And repair if something was damaged and take out the garbage where it should be. So this is what our bodies are constantly doing without us even knowing it, which is so, so beautiful. And the only time, you know there's a problem is when there was something wrong. Something went aloft in the. The. The management system. Yeah, right. It's not that the virus was the problem. It's that the surveillance wasn't on task or the removal of that debris wasn't working as well. That's what we keep coming back to of the why, the why, the why, the why. And if we don't get to that why, it will just keep coming back until we get it or don't.

And. And this is where I talk about it as susceptibilities. I find that that word resonates. And it. And it. It works for me, too, to explain, like, what is it? That's because it's. It's. We also have to be careful to not be. Because sometimes we can feel hard on ourselves, critical of ourselves, or like, what did I do wrong? And especially related to hpv, women have already a lot of shame and embarrassment. And so it's like, okay, how can we be gentle with ourselves? And probably you do this with all cases you work with to be able to ask those hard questions, what is it that I may have been eating or doing that actually was making me more susceptible to this situation that I can now forgive myself for and change?

Right, right. It's so amazing. And, you know, one of the things I used to do at the. When I taught up at the college, and I was working with, like, I think freshman sophomore women were who. I was teaching in Dr. Marcy Young's class, Sociology and Women's health class up there. So I always give Marcy a shout out. She's just an incredible human. But she. I would explain these women, like, let's all do this together. Let's everyone feel the back, your arms right now. You know, let's feel the heels of your feet. Let's look at your fingernails. Let's feel the cracks on the sides of your. See if you have any cracks inside your mouth and if you get cold sores, like we were asking, you know, like asking the question, just kind of going around the room. Those are all, like, people don't even think about them. Right. And then what? Whenever they would say yes to any of those, I would explain, okay, well, the bumps on the back of the arms that's significant for vitamin A deficiency. And then I said, do you happen to notice if you have weird night vision or ever notice floaters and a lot of like, oh, I do, I do. My vitamin A is like nature's antiviral. And it's like that's just telling you right now that you're deficient in one of your first defenses. So then they're like, oh my. So and then I'd go in through the rest, like the cracked heels, like essential fatty acid deficiency. So many young women especially go into that fear of fat phase and they go into their vegan diet phase and stuff, which is a huge population of that that goes in and then further depletes those fat soluble nutrients. A, D and K, the animal derived nutrients of vitamin D, vitamin B12, the soil depleted nutrients of magnesium. Then we highlight the fingernails, like if you see little white spots, there' some zinc deficiency. Also your first offense. So I would walk them through in their own bodies and ask them like, where are you getting your B12? Okay, you're a vegan, so where are you getting this? Nope, it's not enough to get it from the algae. You've got to get the bioavailable kind. So are you willing to take a B vitamin supplement, you know, and give praise to the donor of the life of that, you know, are you willing? Yes, you can get D2 from mushrooms, but that's not the bioavailable one that is required to actually turn on and off dozens of genes in your body and to instigate an immune reaction in your body, you know, in the zinc. Like, the zinc is all about your hormone health too. Like what's going on there. If you're under high stress, you're going to see that zinc drop and with it your progesterone, you know, and all these things that we could just like a simple nutritional physical in a class. And suddenly these ladies are out there like eating their fish, taking their cod liver oil, you know, getting their sunshine, not being afraid of it, you know, all the things, it's like those are really critical prevention. And then we'd start to talk about the partners, you know, like, okay, great, you are. Is this person someone you want to merge with? Right? Like, think about that. Like if it's not, you gotta listen to those signals because you're telling yourselves that you, that you don't love them when you're allowing somebody else to enter that space. No, you know, without. Now obviously trauma happens where that space is taken from us, that's a whole different story. Which definitely causes trauma to those cells and needs to be dealt with eventually. But just giving an example of how different it would be having a conversation like that with a teenager, you know, a young woman, a college student, versus here, just take this shot and move on with your life. You're going to be. It'll be fine. Like, what a different scenario, how that plays out. And a lot of those young women, there's several of those young women are now naturopaths, you know, or in the allied health professionals went on to be nurses in peace. And they're having these conversations.

Yes. Oh, my gosh, I love it. I love it. To be able to just bring it back down to earth, down to our bodies, so that we can understand our bodies, connect with them, be in alignment with our body, right? Like, oh, these are. This is what I teach women, is like your ma. Your body has messages for you, but we need to start listening and paying attention to be able to even pick up on the messages. And instead of being critical of the symptoms, be curious, right? Why. Why am I getting these cracks? Why am I. Oh, is that a nutrient deficiency? Is it something that I am. Instead of just making a dietary decision based on some external, arbitrary thing, how are you. What are you really giving your body the nutrients it needs? And. And I'm so. I cover. I love that you're mentioning this because I'm, like, thinking to myself, it gets me excited for what I cover in that I offer an online workshop that's free for women from around the world. And this is what I teach them in there is like, how do we start to think about this differently and how do we start to take care of ourselves differently? Because already in these little steps, sometimes it seems so simple and so small, but it makes such a difference. And I'm sure you see this too, in your work and all of the people that you work with, right? It's just like sometimes we as Nature Valley doctors, we come back to just the simplest. From what are we putting in our mouth or not putting in our mouth? Are we getting sleep? Are we getting some time in nature or other recovery activities, right? Like coming back to these simple, basic foundational activities that humans require to be healthy, right?

The fundamentals, we call it the determinants of health in our world. And, you know, I always. I'm up at. You know, it seems so obvious, and maybe that's why people don't listen. But it's amazing when you look at Americans less, you know, on Average Americans spend less than 15 minutes a day outside.

Wow. When did that happen? Right. Like, I always talk about the Little House in the Prairie days when we were. We were literally just a century or so ago, walking an average of four hours a day, chopping wood, carrying water, lots of exposure to the sun and the elements, and not having a 72 or 74 degree continuous climate. And then we were using things on our bodies like tallow soap and tallow on our skin. And we weren't using detergents to take away our most important precious, you know, absorptive surface. And changing that, we were not eating foods with chemicals. You know, I mean, today I have a sticker on my fridge that says, eat organic or eat organic food, or as your grandparents called it, food. You know, it's like when we have to think about where it's coming from, what it's being, you know, how is it got a weird peel thing on it? Is it like all these things like, this didn't exist a generation or two ago? You know, that's a lot of things we're exposed to today. And so going back to those fundamentals really are a return to remembering how we were actually divinely designed. And when you don't deal with those basic foundations, you don't receive healing. Like, you can't heal in a sympathetic nervous state. That's why I love that this is your jam with stress and reset. Like, I could have the best protocol, the best formulas, the best, you know, standard of care, the best integrative care, alternative care therapies, but if they're landing in a highly charged, sympathetic, dominant environment, they're not received.

Yeah. Because the body's just still stuck in a stress cycle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, I wanted to ask you, if you don't mind, as we're here, is because I know, like, a lot of times when people are dealing with a cancer diagnosis, they start thinking of all kinds of, like, what else can I do? Now I. You're training practitioners in your approach. You're training directly to people in your approach. And I'm thinking you start with these determinants of health we were just referring to. What do you say? You know, But I know you also have a lot of training and you teach practitioners around the world how to use other approaches, like mistletoe, for example. What is that? Like, when do you decide, okay, we're going to think about these other approaches? And, you know, like, when should a person be thinking, hey, maybe it's worth it for me to. And what does that look like to choose sort of these non conventional approaches to cancer.

I love this question. You know, to me, my, my why and my purpose on this planet now is to create.

A system where it's no longer perceived us or them, you know, standard of care or alternative that this elegant weaving of directly targeting the tumor while directly supporting the terrain go hand in hand without any division or siloing or judgment or polarity. And that becomes standard of care.

Like, I'm totally with you, let's do it right.

And that is part of what we're building into. So for instance, 70% of the clinicians that take my course are actually medical doctors. And the very first module, I basically give them a little course in naturopathic philosophy because I say we're. Our training was the same. You can't learn biochemistry or physiology or anatomy, you know, in any other way. Right? But what, where our paths divided was in our philosophical approach, our philosophical understanding of the what creates health and what creates disease. And so we get on the same page. But I use various.

Scientific terms. I use very like, I use the terminology we can all agree on. And it is just extraordinary to watch all these light bulbs click off. Even the nature paths and the DCs and the osteopaths and the, you know, DOMs who come into the program, the light bulbs go off for them as well. Because Donna, you and I have been in this profession long enough to watch that most of our colleagues don't even know the philosophy in which we practice from anymore, right? And so even then they're like, oh my gosh, I totally remember this now. It's like we all come back together saying, let's look at true health creation, not just disease management. So that kind of creates the foundational layering. Then we have a methodology that we teach, not a protocol. And the methodology is really simple. Test, assess, address, don't guess. Really simple. So for instance, let's say I have a patient with HPV driven cervical cancer. Wherever it landed in the body, whether that was or, you know, like. Or whether it's like showing up just in the cervix and beyond or what, you know, wherever. But hpv, anywhere in the body, in the head, neck, in the rectum, it's the same.

Those are happening too, lots of them, right?

And they're very similar personalities. It's viral driven. So let me just like put this into your audience. When you think about a virus, does it make sense that you would give treatments that would further damage and destroy the immune system to deal with that virus? So right there it drives me nucking butts that we even have to have this conversation because it's just common sense of this is a viral. In fact there are multidate before, before COVID I don't know what the stats are after, but before COVID there were 250,000 accounts of HB, HP, Epstein Barr virus driven cancers in the world. There were about four. So they say up to 40% of all cancers are actually driven by a virus. Really think about that. So like glioblastoma is a big one. Of course the HPV family, squamous cell carcinomas of, you know, various tissues, where it lands in the body is also a viral etiology. Of course, course cmb, Epstein Barr, all of those are out there. We now are understanding that SARS COV is also a driver of many, many cancers as well. It's very specific to impact on the complex one of the mitochondria and the turning on of a PIK3CA metabolic pathway which basically revs up growth factors in a really big way. So now we're starting to go, oh, but think about it. The way we approach oncology and standard of care is very, very immunosuppressive.

Now we're finally talking about immune activation with immune therapies today. But that can backfire too in about 80% of the patients. So we have to do better. So when I show patients the reality, it's like, how about we both go after the tumor and the terrain simultaneously. Then in testing, let's say that cervical cancer patient comes in. When we get that biopsy, we can find out is it squamous cell, is it an adenocarcinoma? We'll be thinking about approach differently depending on which one. Then we will look at the KI67 score which is a proliferation score. Like how fast is this puppy growing? If it's under 20 or 25%, we've got time to be more judicious, we've got time to be more, let's take maybe a more integrative alternative path before we get aggressive at least to do so in preparing the body. If it's a high score, we want to be more assertive, we want to be more aggressive, we want to use other tools, but we want to use tools in a different way so we can test. Now we have amazing testing on blood biopsies or tissue biopsies to tell us exactly. Then we will look at the KI67 score, which is a proliferation score. Like how fast is this puppy growing? If it's under 20 or 25%. We've got time to be more judicious, we've got time to be more, let's take maybe a more integrative alternative path before we get aggressive, at least do so in preparing the body. If it's a high score, we want to be more assertive, we want to be more aggressive, we want to use other tools, but we want to use tools in a different way. So the personality of the tumor and then we can know well what therapies from standard of care, from off label drugs, from alternative care address those particular patterns. And then we can even use them wisely where we use the concept of metronomic treatment, where we take say a tenth of the typical dose of the chemotherapy and we layer it with other pressure point therapies, other oxidative therapies, like let's say 10% of Oxalo Platinum along with maybe a 50 gram bag of IV vitamin C along on that same day with a hyperbaric oxygen therapy, a very highly oxidative therapy. We can test now we have amazing testing on blood biopsies or tissue biopsies to tell us exactly the personality of the tumor. And then we can know well what therapies from standard of care, from off label drugs, from alternative care address those particular patterns and therapy that both hits back the tumor but supports the terrain simultaneously. That's the example of where we're moving in the future of oncology. Luckily this is happening in many clinics, but there are a lot of integrative oncology clinics out there who just throw massive amounts of very expensive protocols at the patient. And they're not using that finesse of the test to deeply understand the patterns of that individual, to deeply understand the best therapy to deal with those patterns. That's what I train into these clinicians. So they know the right dose duration, combination, they know when to what I call push or pause depending on metrics of the how the patient feels. But also certain labs. It's easy for us to look at labs that show extreme oxidative stress. When you see that that is not a time to keep pushing. But that's exactly what we do in standard of care. And even the way we approach standard of care, it's called maximum tolerated dose. So the concept of literally napalm the field and hopes to something survives. But there's this emerging approach known as the adaptive theory, which is very much in alignment with naturopathic philosophy, which says push it back just enough so that the wisdom of the body, the vis can rush back in and do what it was divinely designed to do.

Love it.

That's the difference of how we might approach this, that we don't say, oh, boo on chemo or boo on ivc. There is a time and a place and they can play very, very well together and they can be very, very curated and personalized.

Yeah, that's amazing. And I'm starting to see that too. And I'm so glad to, to hear your explanation of it because it is, it's like, hey, we're taking the best of both worlds and, and finding a way where we can be outsmarting the situation. Instead of just being in a defensive mode, we can be like. Right. Like, that's part of the difference is like, hey, instead of just being in fear and acting out of fear and defense, how can we understand the situation and then be supporting the body to heal itself? Which is really the philosophy of naturopathic medicine.

Yeah, yeah. And, and medicines before us, right. The. Almost all of the vitalistic medicines from Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine. These are the grandmothers and great grandmothers of even modern medicine. I mean, we learned surgery from the Ayurvedic practitioners. We learned from most of our pharmacology from the Ayurvedic medicine. So we are applying those principles today. But we kind of threw away all the wisdom and the philosophy when we deeply adopted just the antibiotic, anti hypertensive, anti depressant. We forgot to say, well, what's the pro?

And so essentially like, so you're saying, hey, let's find out the behavior of this tumor and then let's match that up with that. You can have a whole endless list of possible treatments, but why do all of them if they're not all going to help with this tumor? We need to match the tumor to the treatment.

It's almost like today I feel like we have gotten to the point in standard of care oncology, by the way, we can test. It's almost like repertoire izing the tumor and then we get to choose the proper remedy, you know, from a very homeopathic sense. And that's where I think it. I think that's what my brain got this so early on is because I was always sort of coming from that vitalistic approach. And it's so cool to watch that this is a common language now that we can use. You know.

It'S exciting to me because I do feel hopeful for the first time in oncology that we might be getting somewhere.

And it makes, what it makes me think is like, even those Cases back of. Because in the case of cervical cancer, we are catching before it turns into cancer. We can see these cells when it's mild dysplasia. It makes me wonder like, can we even, could we even get some of that information in at that stage, potentially modify what we're doing?

Absolutely. This is what. In fact, I had a call today with a testing company that is doing just this. He does a metabolomics with this YC at the end. Dr. Nagorni out of California is able to actually see the pattern of the person at the time that you find maybe a precancerous biopsy or just this is even. Because he can use this even after you've been diagnosed with cancer. But he's ideally trying to head everything off at the pass. Right. And you can already start to see the what's in motion that might need to be addressed.

This is really cool. And I'm sure that's like part of what we're already doing because I agree with this. Why. Why guess when we can test. We can test for food sensitivities, for leaky gut, for microbiome imbalances. We can test for nutrient deficiencies. We can test for cortisol levels. We can, we can test. We can get this information. But women are not getting this information in standard medical care. And so they are like in the dark. Well, how do you're like, what food should I avoid? What you know, microbiome. Okay. But just taking a probiotic at that point is probably not going to do it. We need to get more specific to be able to say what exactly is out of balance so we can address it specifically. And that's when I, that's what I've, you know, from. From where we Learned about addressing HPV over 25 years ago. That's where. That's where I've taken it is to say we need to be able to test and see in this person that specifically what's going on in their environment that's allowing this virus to cause abnormal cells. And once we address those things, then of course the virus is going to give up. It's like the virus is like, I don't want to be here anymore. Place for me anymore.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's the beauty is you. It should not be an either or. We have come so far that we have these amazing tools that we should take more advantage of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And it is possible to get access to them and we don't have to be limited by location or time or space. We can we can tell. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much nation, for getting this is. It's so exciting to get to talk to you and hear everything you're up to. I'm so grateful for you for training all these practitioners and helping so many people in the world. And I'll definitely be sharing your book, the Metabolic Approach to Cancer and, and how to reach out to you so that anyone listening who wants to learn more, maybe if you're a practitioner and you want to learn, you can go to the Metabolic Regen University and you can. And if you're, if you're not a practitioner, if you're even a layperson who's dealing with cancer, you can go and start to learn how to heal yourself in this way.

I'm so grateful and I'm so excited that you get to come on and have a conversation on my side of the screen, but it's an absolute joy. What I mean, boy howdy, there were so many pieces, like so many elements we probably could have gone on and on about, but just a delight to be in conversation with you and just to be in your beautiful Presence. So thanks, Dr. Donnie.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And thanks everyone for listening in. Please don't hesitate to reach out to either of us if we've inspired a question for you or curiosity on how we can help you. And if you haven't already, then please subscribe to How Humans Heal so you don't miss the next episode. Thanks everyone.

Goodbye everybody.

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