Dr. Nasha Winters on Gut Health, Fiber, Fasting & Ketosis | Rock Your Goddess Life

Foreign. Welcome to Rocky Goddess Life. Today we have Dr. Naysha Winters. Naysha was diagnosed with stage four terminal ovarian cancer at age 19, a journey that ultimately led her from survivor to physician. She is an integrative oncology specialist, bestselling author, author, podcast host, and co founder, chief medical officer of Terrain Health. She is pioneering a first of its kind residential integrative oncology hospital and has launched a nonprofit metabolic research lab in Phoenix focused on personalized cancer treatment and early detection. She is one of my favorite people, and she has a wealth of knowledge, and I am so excited to have her. Hello, Naysha.

Hello, everybody. Great to be back.

Yeah. I think this is our third. I know. This is our third interview together. Wow. So it is so awesome. I will link to those because we go through your cancer journey and a lot of your goddess journey on that because it's a pretty heroically amazing story.

Yes, indeed. Thank you.

But I do. I have so many questions for you. I was thinking it's just like rapid fire. Maybe not ready, but I'm like, I love Naysha, you guys. Like, Naysha is the queen goddess of health and cancer. And she's just such, you know, and I say this on every interview, but we recently got to meet within the last year. And she's just an angel. Like, she just has such the best goddess vibe. And she's obviously very intelligent and very knowledgeable, and if anybody has cancer that we know, they go to Naysha.

Naysha, let's knock on woods. We don't need that.

But yes, thank you. But she is it. Okay, so I want to just jump in with. I'm so curious on your thoughts about gut. So let's talk about gut health. What are your thoughts on fiber? How important is fiber for gut? And what would you recommend for, like, overall optimizing your gut? I know this could be a whole.

Day, but it could be. Well, let's just start by very simply saying it's an n of 1. There is no. Because I was from the training of. Especially in naturopathy, naturopathic medicine through the early 90s and mid-90s. It was very much like, everybody needs 25 to 50 grams of fiber a day without fail. And, you know, that seemed that made sense because we all love textbook, you know, we all love it to be very black and white. And then got out in life and got out in practice and realized, well, in my patients with ibd, ulcerative colitis, severe autoimmune issues, trashed, you know, lipo, polysaccharide, Gut lining stuff that backfires really fast and furious. And so these poor patients that are being told by their doctors, oh, just power through. It's just a detox reaction. It was like putting sandpaper into an already vulnerable environment. So not for everybody across the board. And yet there are compelling studies that show 25 grams in some bodies or more a day can actually be very preventative to certain cancer types because it can be a binder, per se. That's one of the strategies. But what I think there's kind of this ongoing debate. I love that this came up now. There's been a really ongoing debate about to fiber or not to fiber and how much and what kind and what form. And I think what the question is finally moving into not certain, but I feel like this is what the evidence is suggesting is it really depends on our. On our microbiome. And that for. Depending on what's in your microbiome is going to depend on how you utilize various forms of fiber and whether you need various forms of fiber to optimize. Right. So I think that's a really interesting piece. And now we've got some pretty sort of innovative testing to get a better look at the. The leakiness of our gut. We also have testing that can show us how fast foods are moving through our gut. We can look at even like, well, are you digesting your fiber? Are you digesting your fats? Are you digesting your proteins? We can see that on testing. And then we can even test for people's little blueprints, their, Their microbial blueprints or microbiome blueprints to know, you know, certain nutrient or certain microbes need more of a certain type of fiber than others. And so this is that place of truly n. Of one personalized medicine. And I just get excited when we move in that direction. That's always been what I resonated with and I. That one size fits all will backfire for most, will serve others beautifully, but backfire for more than, than, than not. So I know that's kind of vague, but.

No, it's great. No, I love it. And I, I'm in alignment with you and I love that. And I always try to find the common ground. Right. Because it's like, you know, there's. There's a lot of wars about this and I'm like, maybe, maybe, but I have talked to so many people that, that worked, that didn't. I've seen enough that it's like, you can't say that unequivocally. So I love that what are the tests? So I've done tests, the tiny health guts. I did Genova gut tests. But what are these tests like to do the motility? Like, are these tests that people can do or does the doctor have to order them?

Well, let's start with the. The cheapest test, which is free.

Okay.

Which people could take. This is called the beat transit test.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. You're gonna get yourself a serving of beets, whether they're roasted, pickled, you know what, however you want to ingest them. Because somebody like me, I love them, but other people despise them. So some way to take them in in a form of beep, beet juice, whatever. And knowing this is just a one and done. So don't get all caught up in its carbohydrate content, et cetera. Just know that this is a free test, right? So look at the clock and then count. So basically, when you see the beats on the other side of the building, if you know what I'm saying, you look at the clock again. So simply put, if you see beats, if you see some redness or streaks or some discoloration of the water, before 12 hours, you have a rapid transit time. Things are moving through like a salad shooter. Right? That might point to one condition, One microbiome dysfunction, one gut dysfunction, one fiber need, you know, certain fiber need. The other side is if you don't see it until after, say, 16 or 18 hours, that's too slow. And that can show. That's a problem with things like glucuronidation. So how you detoxify the chemicals, everything putting in on and around you, how you detoxify your endogenous hormones and that, that can cause problems. Those might be the people who experience more constipation or maybe they're going every day, but they're dumping like two days before load, if you know what I'm saying. So that controls. And then I get the patient, myself included, early on when I did this, where you never see the beats again, we do not know where they went.

They were in there so long that they discolored.

Seriously, they're like, they went to where all the single socks of the dryer have gone, I'm pretty sure is the plan. So, so, but that is. That's very telling. So it can tell us if you're a rapid or a slow transit. That gives us some clues. Then the next test would come off of that, like, then where do you want to invest your pennies? Like, okay, if it was too slow or too Fast, that's going to tell you. And then the symptom picture. So if someone is more diarrhea or more irritable bowel, then I might be looking at more of an organic acid test. In fact, my next test, probably across the board for both types would be an organic acids profile.

Yeah.

It's going to show me hints of dysbiosis, it's going to show me hints of toxicity. It's going to show me hints of mitochondrial and metabolic function. And now the test. So I don't know if I'm allowed to say brands but I've used a bunch of them over the years.

Yeah, I don't care. Great. Planes is the one that I've used.

Well, that's the one we all use for a long time. But the one I've been. I was actually the first, my husband and I were the first to be tested through this new end. So we were kind of. My husband's the OAT genius. Oh I know we've got to be good at something like this. Right? So it's all biochemistry. That's why he's so good at it. But we were basically the first two people to get this test done and I was very impressed. First of all, the price point, far better than the others on the market. And they're, they're, they're, they're. One has been actually fully validated. All the others on the market have not been third party validated. So I've looked at tests where I'm like was this accurate? Was it not? It's a guess. So I like KBMO is the test B and it's, I think it's called the MIP test. Mip, but if you just get Google, KBMO and Otesh will come up, that one's going to tell us a place to me to invest 250 bucks or whatever. I think it's 250 or 299. That test will tell us is this likely more dysbiosis from an infection, dysbiosis from a food allergen or maybe a certain fiber, you know, wrongful fiber. Is this a toxicant that you're exposed to? Is this something else altogether? So then you can narrow it down a bit further and then it goes off from there. Like you can look at various testing for microbiome testing. Like you mentioned, Tiny Health, there's Vitrak, there's one from our friends at Mito Swab that has a GI test looking at these things, you know, or if there's A toxicant. There might be. Maybe we do vibrant testing to look at what kind of toxins are being exposed to. You know, are comprehensive, you know, mosaic, comprehensive detox, you know, environmental panel. Like, those are the things that. Those little things. The free test, then the oat test. You're maybe investing 300 bucks up front. Yeah. And you might have all the answers you need from that. And then if you need to go beyond, it might be a few hundred bucks. Whichever pathway you need to go down from that information.

Yeah. Super awesome. Okay, Amazing. I love that. I don't know about this one. I've always done organic.

Brand new. Just came out in October.

Oh, okay. Awesome. I literally just collected urine today for me, not for organic acids, but I do do that with my kids often. But I haven't found somebody who reads it as well, so I'm. My limited knowledge. So anyways, we'll talk about that. But I got it. It was a mycotoxin test for me and my daughter. Right. Because I had mold toxicity, and she had it because she was getting it through my milk and the house. She was like, double whammy. So anyways, I was like, this morning, I'm like, let me get your urine.

Chasing her around, like, you're so weird, Mom. I'm always like, it.

Let's get hair, urine, poop.

Your kids, I love. We were just saying before you recorded, like, can you imagine being we've been raised in this household, how amazing we'd.

Be like, you guys are going to be able to coach people. You're going to be able to coach when you're like 15 or 20. You're going to know all these things, like, what does your poop look like?

Exactly. So cool.

Not that everybody wants to talk about poop, but I love that we actually did start talking about poop. I'm like, let's talk about.

I love it. Yes. Yes.

Okay. Super helpful. And do you have a place on your website that recommends all these tests?

Like, such a good question. No, but it's like.

So I can just go to you for all the people, like, that I trust and, like, what can I test and all that. Because I've had to figure this out by myself for the last decade, and I would just rather go to you because you're much smarter and you, you know.

Well, I'm like, you. Like, I've tried everything. Like, I always apply a million different things to myself before I even start to think about suggesting it for a client or a colleague. And so that is one of my goals in 2026 is to revamp my Dr. Naysha Inc. Website to have like a Q and A section. There's already a nature bot on there that people can go and ask some of these questions to. But I want to have more of a resource and I'm wanting to be careful because I don't want anyone to ever think that I'm trying to like sell something. But I'm like you. I get asked every single day what I test for, what I eat, what I put on my body, what I put in my, you know, clothing materials, like all the different things. I get asked these. So you might as well have a source.

Yeah.

Just like here it is, instead of answering a million times over, have one place where it lives. So yeah.

And then it's. And people always kind of push back on. Not that you would do. You could do affiliate, but people are like, why are you doing an affiliate? And it's like, well, I'm always fine if people do an affiliate. But you do an affiliate because it's. You should get paid for the research that you've done for decades.

Right. Well, affiliate for us. Our affiliate goes into our patient grants, into our non profit. So I donate the affiliate fees into that. So it helps patients get access to this type of care.

Win, win, win, win, win. Okay, awesome. Okay, so now I want to talk to you because I have been so curious. I know that you recommend. And so, so most of our conversations are, I would say, on prevention and health. Naysha has a whole bunch of interviews search for her on specifically cancer. So. But I just want, I'm curious on this movement that has been happening for a lot of low carb people moving to high carb. You know, they're moving into Ray Pete or we have Paul Salvadino, we have even Mercola, who's written a whole bunch of books and now he's eating 300 grams of carbs. Talk to me about what do you think is going on here? And are you changing anything on that? Are you still like. Nope. Ketosis is the way.

Well, here's the thing is I don't guess. I test. And so until I get to look at their data, which, funny, they're not letting me look at it anymore. And I used to. That's a little telling. Body doesn't lie. Right. We're living in a time where we don't utilize. I mean, there are maybe a few. Maybe the Paul Saladino or the Mercola's of the world utilize their energy source storage in a way that their body will utilize that kind of carbohydrate. But they spent decades in a carb restricted, insulin restricted state. They are not average. So. So I need the average public to hear that loud and clear. And they are very physical beings. That is their job is to be very physical beings and to promote their workouts and all the things they're doing out there.

Three hours exactly, right?

You have to be burning that minimally. Like I think about the farming, you know, like the farmers, the neolithic farmers were moving their bodies eight to 12 hours a day, you know, so whatever little bits of carbohydrate they had ought to, it was burned before it even got down the pooper shoot, you know, so this is where what I get knocking butts about is how influencers who should know better get out there and say one thing that everyone then takes for like absolute gold, right? And, and like even the rape stuff, like, I know I've had multiple conversations with Mercola on this and we've kind of agreed to disagree at this point, but I really love, I can't remember if it was Dr. Bickman, possibly, or maybe Chris Masterdam. One of them basically dismantles the repeat phenomenon. So is my husband, who is a biochemist by training, who said that a bench side biochemistry experiment was misunderstood, misinterpreted and misapplied to human physiology. That it is not accurate. And given that we know it's easy, it is very easy to test somebody's C peptide, insulin, insulin growth factor, to look at someone's continuous continuous glucose monitor, to look at, you know, ketones on fasted, you know, urine or later in the day blood. Those are things that I can know how efficient you are. I can look at your lactase dehydrogenase and LDH level and know how efficient you are. I can look at an O test and know how efficient you are in your metabolic health. And so if and only if, and I've been at this for over three decades, I have yet to see someone who can handle that much carbohydrate. And so even the standard American registered dietitians tell you, tell all of us that we should not be having more than 100 grams of carbohydrate a day and that women should be having no more than 20 grams of that as sugar and men no more than 25 grams of that as sugar. So suddenly you start to go, what? Who's right or wrong? And yet for me, the ketosis is not about eating a high fat, low carb diet. That's one method to get to ketone bodies, but just generally fasting, time restricted eating, just, you know, sort of intermittent fasting seasonally. In fact, I was running a few minutes late coming onto this call because we just launched our, our fourth and final three day water fast supported community water fast with over, you know, thousands of people doing this with us of the year. And so we are collecting that data to see all of the different signaling pathways that these ketone bodies can change. And no one's eating high fat during this. They're all fasted. And so ketone bodies show up. We're born in ketosis. We evolved with ketosis so we could find our next meal. And so the biggest disservice I was taught in med school was no matter what, don't go hungry, eat every two hours. This is in essence, the pendulum has swung all the way back to the BS that I was taught in the 90s. And so I'm really struck by people with such a reach and such a high caliber of, of respect and knowledge that they're not showing the data in the patients or in themselves, nor are they being completely transparent of how long it took them to get to the point where they could perhaps carb load in a way that does not initially destroy them. I mean, even Dr. Saladino was hardcore carnivore and then realized that my body didn't respond to that very well out over time. Well, now he's like on the other side, dude. It's not going to respond to that either. This is about moderate. This is about knowing your body. This is about using your own data. This is about knowing your own genetics. Single nucleotide polymorphismorphism, specifically, it's about where you live, like Paul living down there in, you know, Costa Rica and me down here near Puerto Vallarta. Very different, Very different. What I can get away with here than what I can get away with saying Colorado this time of year. And so this is the conversations we need to be having is the N of 1 discussions and the data driven discussions, not dogma driven discussions and the proper evaluation and understanding of, of, of philosophy and of a concept that was misunderstood and they completely tried to make it translational from the bench to the bedside. And it doesn't quite work that way.

Oh, I love that. So many amazing things. Okay, so I completely agree. And you know, in the, in the, over the years, I would say in the last four years, I've experimented. You know, I was like ketosis hardcore. And then I was like, what is this, Ray Pete? Right? Like what Is the high carb. I was a high carb vegan, you know, and my insulin was great. And my A1C was right on, girl. But I was 20, 30. I mean, it's 20. You know what I mean? Like, okay. It was, yeah, different. And I did a lot of juice cleansing and I, you know, I just did more of a fasting autophagy so I could get away with it maybe, but so I tried it and I was like, okay, cool, let me try. I. And I was working with some practitioner. I was like, hey, kind of guide me on this. I did not feel good. Blood sugar was crazy. You saw my blood? I think I sent you it. It was like, how are you like this? Yeah, like, okay. And then I was talking to the person and they said, well, you're just not doing it right. You need to do something with your gut. You should be able to eat that much sugar and that many carbs. It was amazing. And I was like, really? Now you're shaming me because my. I'm not good enough. And I went back to low carb, lower carb. And I'm like, I just feel that. I feel better.

Right, right. Well, and women, especially of a certain age though, when you start to move into the perimenopause window in the post, you become more insulin resistant. And so the worst freaking thing you can do is to go repeat on us when you get into that window. Like you said we could get away with it. In our teens and twenties. I was like you. Except for my labs didn't look as good as yours. I was severely. I was basically diabetic in my early 20s.

Oh, wow.

Right. And so didn't know I was a. Because I was an uber athlete. You know, I was a volleyball player. Like all these things. So I was out. What do they be like? Out running a crappy diet, you know, like those were the types of things that doesn't work as well as you get into, like your. Your conceiving. So now we have all these issues with fertility. Most of our issues fertility are around autoimmune, Hashimoto's thyroiditis or polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is another form of autoimmunity, both of which are very insulin resistant patterns. And so we are more insulin resistant at a younger age than ever before in human history. So I just goth when I hear these men pushing these agendas that don't fit our physiology. You know, if we were out there like, you know, chopping wood, carrying water eight hours a day, you know, half naked in the sun, in tropical environment, we probably could get by with a lot more. I can actually get by pretty good down here with some papaya and mango on a pretty regular basis. And it doesn't affect me. But I'm also. Look at me, you know, like I'm dressed in, like there is 90% of my skin is seeing the sun every second of the day. You know, it's a very different climate. 86% humidity and 86 degrees today, it's like a very different environment. But when we get to listening to influencers and like you said, we maybe get shamed of. Well, maybe you're just not doing it right.

I can still remember on everything I've ever tried, vegan, carnivore, everything, like, absolutely. Harder. Do it harder.

Yeah. What you weren't doing is you didn't know what you needed. And that's what you've spent these years learn. Like, what do I need in this moment? Because what my body needs today is different than what my body needed two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. It evolves. And then I'm in a different season of my life and I'm in a different season and climate and geography compared to where I was for 17 years. Like, we need to adjust with our environment. In fact, I just did a talk right this last week in Wisconsin at the Regenerative Ag Conference Acres. My, my Super Bowl. I love these, this community. And just on the fasting call I did right before this one, talking about the concept of evolutionary mismatch. And you can like, your listeners can go and just Google that term. You can put it through a PubMed search. It's a real thing. It's us trying to live of what we have evolved from. What. What is the root our ancestry for generations in an environment that is the antithesis of it, that is the absolute polar opposite of it. And then we blame ourselves versus the environment in which we're trying to normalize that. That to me is where we should be enraged is stop normalizing abnormal behavior.

Yes. I love it. I, I love when I interview people and then. And they agree with me.

We didn't even talk ahead of time to know. So I'm so glad we're all the same.

I just use this for fuel for my kids because they're amazing. But, you know, we just had this conversation a week ago where, you know, they, we have. Most people would say it's a restricted diet, okay? But I'm like, they're like, well, look at what everybody else eats and let's go there and do this. And I'm like, let's do some research. What did people in Austin eat 150 years ago? What did they eat 10,000 years ago? This is what they ate. Nobody was complaining.

Yeah, that's what they ate.

There wasn't a grocery store to go and get like the package they didn't have.

Rice cake Hamburger joint was in the early 50s.

Yeah.

Right. And it was a treat when you'd go to a fat a fast food restaurant then. And even the quality food that was in those fast food joints at the time, there was no Cisco. You know, it was not everywhere. And so you think about that ultra processed food is a post World War II phenomenon. You know, and even really picked up momentum in the 80s. Like this is. These are new things. And we have a race to our recent history. And now people like you and I are called orthorexics when we question what's in our food system. And your kids are surrounded by peers, media, you know, institutional establishments, if they're like at sports events or schools or churches or whatever, where everything is normalized. Like at this big beautiful regenerative ag conference, for instance, it's all about how to get away from GMOs and glyphosate and the toxic input under our soils. And yet the food they serve there was utter things is not exactly. And so. And I'm calling him out, I'm like, I love you guys, but this is ridiculous. Why aren't you demanding like we did at our conference in Tucson in October. We met with a chef to say our food that we're serving, our participants needs to be local, regional, seasonal, grass fed and finished animal protein, wild caught animal protein, no seed oils, gluten free and carb restricted. And anyone else would probably flip over. And our chefs there. Hello. Arose to the. To the occasion. And everyone was mind boggled. 400 people they fed like that. And the chef told us at Lowe's Ventana, I'm going to give him a nice shout out that he made new friends in the farming and the ranching community around him that he'd either never known or had forgotten about. And now it's like part of their offering at this hotel because we the consumer demanded it.

So good. Amazing. Naysha, that's so awesome. That is so awesome. I know. My, my latest that I've been talking about is like what would it look like if we had a stint of time where we only ate local? Right?

Like, did you read Barbara Kingsolver's book?

Is she she have her farm with her family?

She did.

She made dinner farm. Didn't she, like, grow her own food?

She had that, but she had to stay within a year. And it's a. It's a beautiful. I can't remember the name of it, but it was like, for one year they ate within a hundred kilometer radius, so something to that effect. And it was so cool what it did for their community, for their health, for their family, everything. Oh, I got. Yes. Do your own. Be a barber, King solver. Yeah.

I'm like, I'm. I feel like she was growing her own food. I'm pretty sure I have her book, but I. I can't. I'm not. I'm not. I've tried. I'm not that person.

But Austin area. Oh, gosh. There's. There's everywhere.

It's everywhere. And I'm like, why am I going. I mean, yeah, Mackie, Whole Foods, I love you. Grateful for you, but also like, why am I going there?

Why?

So anyways, I'm. I'm with you. I love that you're making that change. And I think these conversations are important for us to start thinking, you know, like, Whole Foods isn't going to go out of business. Our grocery stores aren't.

No, no, we're not hurting.

Farmers might. Our farmers might.

And so how about we even get those big box places to buy from our farmers directly? Get the middleman out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So good. We have a place in Austin that they're called Local Pastures, and they're like a grocery store, but they bring in all the local farmers.

So they're kind of like curating it for you. That hundred radius.

Exactly. They are. They might. They might even have that as their goal.

Maybe.

I don't know what their goal is, but it's all local. And they have a little. They have a store and little, like, food truck, you know, where you can go and get it. But it's like, you go there and you get the local food.

I love it. That's. That. This is where we take back the. We take back the power. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And it takes more work, people. I was like, oh, I have more work. And I was like. But my thought is, like you said, there's the community aspect of it. You learn where your food comes from. You connect with the farmers, you're supporting your local. I think there's a win. Win in so many facets, not just your health.

You nailed it. You nailed it. And it's. It's a joy. So we've had family in town this week, you know, for Thanksgiving down here in Mexico. And we go. So the restaurants we go to, when we go out to eat here, they are places that I know curate their food very locally. Plus, we're in Mexico. Everything is very localized. Unless you go to the big. Like if you go to a resort, which we live in a small fishing village, but our farmer's market that we have here on Sundays, So last night we cooked for eight people, and every single thing came from the farmer's market that all came in. And this is where the people that were having her live here year round and didn't even know these people existed at our local farmers market. And we got through that dinner, they were just like, how in the world they were so blown away. And it's just that because people don't know, they don't go and look for it. And the relationships, like when our friends were, you know, my friends and family going to me to these restaurants or to the farmer's market, they're like, you know these people and they know you. And it's clear that there's a deep simpatico, a deep, deep relationship, because we are nourished by that relationship as we are as much as by that food. And these are the things that we're trying to get back to, to restore that rhythm, to restore that connection, to restore that sort of dietary harmony, getting us back to that original, you know, genetic match that we have, you know, strayed so, so far from.

Oh, my gosh, I love you. I appreciate it. So good. So good. Changing the world. Okay, so I mean, we could talk about that for days. I am curious on, you know, I feel like there's getting the nutrient dense food, which is super important for health, right? Like getting the nutrients in. But then there's also the detox. Talk to us about, like, how do we know we're detoxing properly? You know, and, you know, Naysha and I kind of joked that I'm in a canary in the coal mine, and I sent nature my genes, and she was like, I could see why you would be a canary in the coal mine. Like, I just have some detox pathways.

Yeah, yeah.

People know if their detox pathways are working and what are some ways that we can just ensure sure that they're working in the world.

I love it. Well, a few things really important is that the folks on this planet who are very, very ill, very, very ill, we can test their nutrient status, and we can see that they're classically deficient. In magnesium?

Yep.

Vitamin D, vitamin a, vitamin K, B12, zinc and selenium. Now what's interesting is if you go and pull up a few biochemical pathways like you know, the, the, the, the, the TCI cycle or any of these, you will see that the CO factors required to make your internal cellular and organs of your cells function properly are those co, those nutrients. Right. So you start to realize, wow, our nutritional status does matter to get our mitochondria to make the right amount, like to process and make the right amount of energy to sustain this meat suit that we're all carrying around. So that's the one place. So if people have things like bumps on the back of their arms, that's vitamin A deficiency or night blindness or floaters in their eyes, that's vitamin A deficiency. If you've got easy bruising, you likely have a vitamin K2 deficiency. If you have any form of autoimmunity or leaky gut or cancer history, you have a vitamin D deficiency. If you don't poop well, if you get leg cramps, if you get headaches, if you don't sleep well or you're anxious or have arrhythmias, you have magnesium deficiency. If you have white spots on your fingernails, you have a poor sense of smell and taste, you easily get sick, you have a zinc deficiency. If you have ever been told you have a high penetrance gene cancer risk like lynch syndrome, ATM BRCA mutation, you have a selenium potential deficiency which helps repair your DNA. So the examples are written all over our nutritional physical exam. Right. We can tell a lot with somebody what's going on there. We can then of course test for these things. Now what standard of care says is normal and my normal are very different things. They're just looking to prevent scurvy. I'm looking at preventing cancer. Right. Like a little different approach. So that's number one. Number two, when you talk about the nutrients that those that I just outlined, guess who is most deficient in those nutrients in addition to the chronically ill patient?

Women.

What women? But specifically vegans and vegetarians. Okay, okay. Not by that the, it's just that those nutrients are. Most of those nutrients I outlined are coming from animal protein. Yes, you can get these vitamin D from mushrooms, but that's not the same type of vitamin D your body needs to actually fight off cancer. Yes, you can get vitamin K1 from leafy greens, but that's not the kind of vitamin K you need to fight off cancer. Yes, you can get vitamin A from beta Carotene, but actually taking beta carotene can actually cause cancer. So you need to be getting these sources like your grandma's cod liver oil had all three of those things in there, right? Adkin. And then our food, our. Our soil is severely depleted in the magnesium, the sink, and the selenium today. And so even if you're eating all organic, your soil is nutrient deficient, which means your food is nutrient deficient, which means you are nutrient deficient. And if you are a vegan or vegetarian, you're leaning heavily on pulses, you're heavily on legumes and grains, which means you're also bringing in the nutrients that block the uptake of a lot of those other severely important nutrients. And you're also taking with it what they sequester in the soil are the various metals, and specifically glyphosate, which sequesters in our grains and legumes, whether they're organic or not. And so you, as a vegan and vegetarian, you must do better testing for yourself and see if you are dealing with things unbeknownst to you because you're eating what you perceive was the right thing to do, like I did, like Alexandra did. And our bodies had a very different story to tell. And so once you know, you know, you can't ignore it anymore. And then you need to change things up. Maybe you need to take a fish oil supplement or a cotton, you know, like a cod liver. Maybe you need to take a B12 supplement. Because, yeah, you can get B12 from, from algae and spirulina, but that's cyanocobalamin, folks. That's a form of cyanide. We don't want that. You need a methylated form, which only comes from animal products. So the point is, is that these nutrients matter. So coming around to, I've kind of shown you what nutrients are typically depleted. I've now shown you what symptoms to kind of look for, for. To give a clue to that. You can spend the money on like a Nutri eval or a, you know, some of these other tests. But a good old CBC and a good old CMP test, blood count and metabolic candle can tell me a lot about your nutrient status. Like, if you have elevated MCV, you are B12 deficient. If you have, like, just. Just one of the examples, if your electrolytes are off, like, your sodium is low, your potassium's low, you actually have magnesium imbalances as well. Like, these are the. The ways to see patterns in ourselves while they're whispering at us versus waiting until they're screaming at us. So I know I missed one other component of your, of your question. Tell me.

No, I do have questions on that. I was, we were doing the nutrition and then also the detox pathways.

Oh, there it goes. Okay, that's right. Now I'm remembering.

Before you do detox, I gotta ask this because I went down this rabbit hole for a period of time and I'm so curious on your thoughts now that you brought it up, the vitamin A. So there's the idea that vitamin A, I mean, it can be toxic, but there is also a whole community of a low vitamin A that's saying like, no vitamin A. And people have been on no vitamin A for 10 years and are doing amazing well and they've healed all sorts of things. Yeah, yeah. Have you heard about this?

I have heard about it. I've never seen that to be the case. But it's also. You've got to look at their SNPs, BCMO1, for instance, means they do not convert any vitamin A in from beta carotene. So those patients are having severe problems. Some of those symptoms I just talked to you about, vitamin A deficiency means you do not differentiate your stem cells. Well, they decide to grow up to be cancer cells. Right. Vitamin A is critical for your immune system to function properly and specifically antiviral. Right. So those are things. But when we came back to. So it's not something I've ever seen actually play out. I've never had. First of all, patients can go toxic on vitamin A, but it's beta carotene. And if they're using a form of vitamin A that's in a powder like caplet or capsule, that can be toxic. You have to find a emulsified form of a retinol palmitate form of vitamin A for it to be more readily absorbed. That goes right into those biochemical pathways we were just describing. And so coming back full circle into detox piece, all those pathways I just described and all those nutrients and nutrient deficiency potentials I just described, those are also your critical nutrients to properly detoxify and methylate.

All those that you shared.

All of those I just shared. So if you don't have the right amount of B12, you don't methylate, which means you accumulate your poisons if you don't have enough mag too in there.

Or is it B12?

Yeah, well, B12 fully, that whole cocktail. Okay, so the B6, B2, Foley B, all the bees and the methyl forms of bees, which only come from animals. Right. So These are the things that, those are what help you take the garbage out. Okay. And the, the zinc and what I. So the zinc is helping with your dopamine levels, it's helping with your hormone stability, it's helping with your immune system function. You know, like all these different patterns of people are dealing with chronic depression. The main nutrients of depression are zinc deficiency, vitamin D deficiency, B12 deficiency. Like all these things, we slap someone onto a pharmaceutical or a bioidentical hormone, they're usually just a, an ongoing nutrient deficiency. Insulin excess, cortisol excess and oxytocin deficiency. You correct the nutrient imbalance, you lower the insulin, you normalize the cortisol and you bring up that oxytocin level. Patients don't need a damn thing. Wow. Yeah.

So like that would be like a basic. I mean, yeah, the basic. And are you pretty simple on. I mean, obviously cancer is its own thing, so. Yeah, prevention. Prevention, yeah. It sounds like you're a pretty simple stack.

Potentially very simple stack. Yeah, that's a very simple. So in fact, a company that I've consulted with, Myovita, we actually created a multivitamin, my form of a multivitamins. I don't like multivitamins in general, called Nutra Master, which contains all of those nutrients I just described and in a particular ratio that they help, they help create a bioavailability to each other. Because I didn't want to have to go like, I gotta buy those. And then it's like a simple, like there's that piece. And then we work with people getting them on a carb restriction or intermittent fasting or time restricted eating or whatever their body is needing. And then we work on their stress patterns or stress chemistry, their HPA axis, circadian rhythm status, which is that cortisol piece. And then of course group, which is what you're creating here with this goddess network of bringing that in. Because when people come together, they heal together. And that, my friend, is the magic of oxytocin. And so in the world where we're more connected than ever via social media, we are also more isolated and alone than ever. Because people believe that everyone's life around them is shiny and happy when it's not. And so they start to put themselves into a deeper and deeper hole, believing that something again is inherently wrong with them. And yet when we bring communities like this together and we start to share in our own humanity, you bring up these oxytocin levels that just awash the body in restorative and soothing chemicals that allow you to Receive. To receive healing, to receive clarity, to receive inspiration. Yeah.

Oh, tears. So good. Yes. That is. That happens in our goddess community with a rocket. Goddess life women, the amount of vulnerability that they share and the safety that they feel like. I guess I hadn't really thought about it that much that they were all releasing oxytocin, but we are. That's so good. Amazing. Okay, so the other question on the supplement stack. Vitamin D. What's your stance on that? Because there is the other side of. There's like supplement with vitamin D, like hormone. You're not even. It's not the same as like, you totally killing you.

Yeah. And you're talking about. You're talking about Morley who I love Morley Robbins and his whole, like, I know. And this is great. And yes. Ideally, in the perfect world. In the perfect world, when we were all living on Little House on the Prairie.

Yeah.

Chopping wood and carrying water, being outdoors an average of four hours a day and eating more though.

Right.

Easily. That was. And that's just. That's conservative.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. And we were eating the back strap of animals totally. That were never grain fed outside of maybe the spent grains of anything. We had to hand mill, you know, harvest and hand mill ourselves. A very different thing. Those types of processes. We weren't vitamin D deficient. Right. We are just a battery, these human bodies of ours. And so ideally you want it from the sun, ideally you want it from animal products, butter, backstrap stuff.

But what backstrap? What's back strap?

It's like the back. The back fat. So like what's facing up to the sunshine on animals?

Okay. Okay, cool. That's where they're stored in their vitamins. Yeah.

And so salmon, like. Well, Sam. Because it's like, it's beautiful. That red.

Yeah.

That is a cytochrome that interfaces with our mitochondria directly. And it's like a giant reflector in the water. And the blue is a reflector. Like it is an absorbent. When you look at the color of the ocean, that it's that color because it absorbs light at a particular frequency, which means the organisms that live in that water are taking in that frequency. And then when we eat those things, we take in that frequency. That is the ultimate vitamin D hack. And because most of us, likely all of us are washing away our vitamin D stores because we didn't bathe but like once a week, if that back in the day. And what we used was lard, lye, tallow products, if you were the youngest of your Kids, you were the one soaking in the last of the scrags. So you were taking all that up, but you were not using the detergents today that we wipe away. It takes three days to synthesize vitamin D in your skin. So if you're someone who's like, I went out for a run today, got my good sunshine, but then I came home and I soaked up, you just wiped away all your vitamin D. No.

Shower thing is real.

It is, I tell people, only pits and parts.

Pits and parts. Okay. I mean, we are like rocking it over in this house. My kids are like, so like, you know, you guys are working on your microbiome. You're seriously fine.

Seriously. We've, because we've also caused serious harm of being overly hygienic. I mean, in fact, we've been able to correlate studies of higher risks of leukemia, whatnot, in our pediatric population because we've too, we've cleansed them too much. So I like this conversation. Right? The soilier the better. And so that piece, but, but there's that piece and then so next. What happens though is in my population, so if you're obese, if you have severe autoimmunity, severe leaky gut, taking any meds that block your fat soluble nutrients, which are most of them that we take in this culture today, if you're on birth control pills, any of those things, you wiped out your vitamin D status. Then to add insult to injury, if you have SNPs, CYP2, R1 or VDR SNPs, you have a harder time synthesizing from your food and from the sunlight. So I believe, much against some of the group and the Morley followers, that there is a time and a place to supplement this in my folks. Not as a forever, but as a Runway, and then get them. So for myself, when I first had my diagnosis, it would still be another 10 years where I was able to get my D3 levels. They were in single digits. Oh, no wonder. And so it took me three years, three years of 50,000 units a day to get my levels above 80. Above 80. And I tested monthly during that time just to see. Now I take vitamin D only when I fly, only when I travel, and, and not even that, because I was traveling so much, I was taking basically once a month. Now I live in the sunshine, my levels stay in the 90s without even trying. I don't take a supplement because I've retrained my body. Plus the way I eat now supports that. I was a vegan at the time I was still in that really low level. Like those are the things that were contributing my leaky gut, my veganism, the medications I've been on, all of the different things wipe that out. And I have BDR and SIP to our one polymorphism. So it takes more for me. So having animal protein and sunshine, that is how I keep my vitamin D going. That is what I prefer. But not everybody can live in Mexico year round and eat seafood and grass fed and finished animal protein several times a week year round like not everybody can. So in those populations, some supplementation is going to be warranted to get those levels up there. Now I check other, I check 25, oh and 125. I also check serum calcium levels and I adjust their dosing and always give it with vitamin M, K and magnesium so that it's better absorbed and bioavailable. So yeah, K4, K7, I like a combo.

Okay.

Combination. Yeah, but, but those are the things that people, you know, we get wrapped around the axle of thinking that there's one way and one way only. Totally.

That's what, that's what the challenge is. And I, you know, I've created my own approach. I call foot the metabolic switch, which is literally just seasonal. And I pick and choose all the people I've studied from because I everybody, you get into it, you're like, this is the way you either are going to kill yourself eating vitamin D or you know, you need to have 50,000. You know, I'm like.

Yeah, well, and in my world, because I'm testing monthly on all these and we're looking at, we're looking at imaging.

Yeah.

I've literally had patients with colorectal cancer getting, getting their vitamin D levels at 250 under medical supervision, watching their serum calcium levels go into remission. Right. So I have experience that shows there is a time and a place that when I use it that way, I'm using it like a drug.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Using it like a supplement. When I'm using it, nothing. Just like when I use super high doses of melatonin in these particular environments, I'm using it as a pharmaceutical, as a get in, get out, like a surgery, like a scalpel, a surgeon's scalpel. Right. But then I'm teaching them how to reset their own rhythm and I'm teaching them how to maintain those melatonin levels endogenously, those vitamin D levels endogenously. And when we do that, everything else comes into alignment. So you're right, there is a seasonality to it. There's an individuality to it and there's a time and a place. Of when do we need to be super aggressive? Because my stage four end of life cancer patients do not have the time to just go lay out in the sun.

Yeah.

Right. I wish they could. A stage two maybe. Right. But that isn't the reality. And so until people are working, if. Until people are walking in the shoes of myself and the clinicians I've trained, I would love for them to just maybe stay in their own lane or do some of their own testing or test their patients appropriately to know, because we're never guessing. My mantra is test, assess, address, don't guess not. What I'm saying to you is based on, like, here's just an idea I had, and let's just run with it and become an influencer about it. Nope. It's very deeply detailed, data driven, and yet also comes to the other flip of that switch, which is the intuitive, feminine, rhythmic driven, you know, common sense driven as well.

Yeah. Okay, I. I know we got to wrap up, but I. Do you put vitamin C and iodine in there as, like, something you go in and do as well, or do you not supplement because there's a high dose? There's.

Right.

You should take vitamin. I don't do a whole bunch of vitamin C right now because of oxalates, but.

Right, right, right. Yeah.

And iodine also. Because iodine. There's also different thoughts of, hey, you need eight drops of lugols or you should not, like Dr. Brownstein or Alan Christensen, who's like, you should not use iodine ever.

Right.

Well.

And I was a Brownstein Fletches devotee. I was 25. I had 2500 patients on massive doses. 25. 25 milligrams and higher of iodine. I made a lot of people very, very sick. I had to send out a. I had to send out a letter to my entire practice. I had to basically say, I will pay for your labs if they come back. Something wrong with this. Because what I did is I caused Parkinson's and my grandmother. That'll change. That'll change your tune. I caused Hashimoto's in hundreds of patients. Yeah. Including myself. I exacerbated my own. And so I pulled off of that because it seemed like a good idea at the time because they're very compelling. And what I learned is that it's a simple transport issue, because unless you live like we don't have. There was a time and a place where there was the goiter belt and we were all iodine deficient. But we don't have that anymore because of transport of food items. We are now getting what we need into. So Dr. Karazi and Dr. Isabella Wentz, Dr. Alan Christensen, all my teachers, all my friends, we all went, wait a minute. We all got excited and we screwed up a lot of people. And because of that we backtracked. And guess what? I don't see iodine deficiency in my patients. Yeah, I just don't. And then the vitamin C thing, you're right. A lot of people have oxalate issues especially. But I check uric acid, I know their snips, I know what I'm looking for for there. For me, I don't typically give vitamin C low dose orally. I tend to say save high dose IV vitamin C of 25 grams and higher if they have a normal G6PD enzyme to use it as a pro oxidant cancer treatment. Yeah. Not as a supplement. Because guess what, if you're, if you are actually a carnivore, you're actually getting plenty of vitamin C from the animal protein. If you are eating a diverse, you know, diet, you are getting vitamin C from your foods of what you need. And I'm still like I love the, you know, Dr. Linus Pauling's work and whatnot and Dr. Abram Hoffer was my teacher as well. So for some patients who are classy under high, high stress, under cancer treatment and cancer itself, they tend to be vitamin D deficient very easily. So sometimes we will supplement 2 to 4 grams a day in addition to the high dose IBC. But we can actually test that. There's a strip from Reardon center that you can test for urine levels of this and of course we watch their oxalate levels. But again I sound like a broken record. It's always an N of one.

Okay, awesome. And then we're going to wrap up three by four. Is that the gene test that you recommend?

I love. Both 3x4 and Nutrition Genome are my two favorites because they are coming through. They look at the data a little bit differently. They have most a lot of crossover of the same snips. Either one will suffice. Get to know both of them because they both tell the story through a little different lens. If you are someone who's really interested in snips, do both. But if you want to go either or you're going to get great information from either company.

Who would be, who would you choose if it was your first time doing it?

Gosh, if you're a very visual learner. Go with nutrition with a three times four. Okay. If you're just good at, like, just reading through, go with nutrition genome.

Okay. Awesome. Okay. Amazing. Oh, my gosh. I can talk to you for days. I love you. I appreciate you for changing the world. Seriously, like, so good. So good.

It's so good to be with you and your community. What an honor. Thank you so much for inviting me back.

Yeah. Awesome. Love you.

Take care, guys.

Thanks, Monica. Thank you. Nature talk soon. Love you. Bye.