Healing the Divide Between Opposing Cancer Treatment Methodologies

Introduction and Doctor Connors' Background 0:00

Hey, it's Nathan Crane, director of the Health and Healing Club and host of the Conquering Cancers Summit. And today, I am honored and excited to welcome you to a very special interview. So, doctor Kevin Connors is a clinical director at Connor's Clinic, an alternative cancer treatment center in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He graduated with his doctorate from Northwestern Health Sciences University in 1986, and has been studying alternative cancer care for over 18 years. He also holds an AMA fellowships and board certifications in anti-aging medicine, Regenerative and Functional medicine, botanical Medicine, and is board certified in Integrative Cancer Therapy.

I love this diverse range of background of training that Doctor Connors brings, because he can really speak on this subject quite clearly and proficiently, because he has this very wide range of training. He really knows what he's talking about. Doctor Connors is also certified in functional neurology, has had over 300 hours post-graduate study in the autism spectrum disorders, and is trained and certified in epigenetic, clinical methylation and neutral genomics. Doctor Connors is a practicing applied kinesiology with an emphasis on botanical medicine and homeopathy.

He has written numerous books, including his Amazon bestseller Stop Fighting Cancer and Start Treating the Cause. That says it all right there, doesn't it? All of which are available as a free download at Connors Clinic. Com forward slash books. You can go download them right after this interview. Connors clinic.com/books. Dot Connors, thanks so much for joining us. And tastic. So excited to be with you today. And, adding whatever little tidbits of insight I can give you. Well, you have quite a bit to share and quite a bit of background and experience to share from.

So, you know, you know what you're talking about and I'm excited that you're here with us to to bring all that wisdom experience to all of our viewers and listeners. So let's really start at the foundation, right? There's really two camps we see today when it comes to cancer treatment, right? We see more of the holistic natural camp, and then we see more of the conventional medical camp. Why? From your experience, why is there this huge divide in cancer treatment today? Why is this huge divide between, you know, these two kind of core treatment methodologies?

Well, there has been a huge divide really since the late 40s. So, and that division was created. And if we want to get back into the history of it, the division was created by the American Medical Association at that time when they put the kibosh on anybody that wasn't using standard chemotherapy drugs for the treatment of cancer. And it wasn't just the division with treated cancer. It was a division with treated anything. So if you were using pharmaceuticals, you were considered a quack. And, these people were shunned.

This is when the person clinics were shut down. This is where, you know, all the Mexico cancer clinics began because people were basically went to work and saw chains and padlocks on their door, and they were shut down. If it happened today, we'd have the FBI raid a clinic and shut the place down, steal all their files, steal all their, their, laptops and everything else. So there, that created the division.

Why Cancer Care Split Into Two Camps 3:43

The pharmaceutical industry stepped in and said, if you're not doing things our way, that you can't be a doctor treating people in the United States, and that created this separation. Prior to that, you know, the prior to the pharmaceutical that that taking place, I mean, homoeopathy was a standard of care. Herbology was a standard of care. You know, it was coffee edibles and things were the, the standard of care manual taught in medical schools back in the day to early teens and early 1920s. And all that went out when pharmaceuticals just took over the industry.

But you can't really patent those things, right? So obviously, you know, for the financial interest of the pharmaceutical companies back then was, look, they only wanted to to focus on the things they could patent, they could control, they could continue, they could consider safe and efficacious. Right. And so they wanted to remove anything and everything that, that they couldn't control in a lab. They couldn't make money and they couldn't make money on. Yeah. So there was no money in herbology.

There was no money in doing coffee edibles. There's no money to do it. Detoxification. The money was in giving people drugs or prescribing medications. Like it or not, that's that is what caused the division. And that is still what is continuing to create the division. Now, I don't I don't personally know a lot of medical doctors that are in their field that are trying to utilize herbs, that are trying to recommend other things, dietary approaches for their patients. But currently where I see the divide currently is that, you know, doctors are trained that way.

So anything that there are, they are going to learn, as far as diet and nutrition and, you know, herbs and homeopathy, they have to learn outside of school. And I did a lot of training in my integrative, functional medicine trade. It was actually a through a medical organization. My fellowships are through a medical organization. I am a pro medical organization. So even in my classes there, they were mainly all medical doctors and actually when I first started doing the fellowships, I don't know, ten, 15 years ago, I was a little, nervous because here I was a chiropractor going to taking classes with medical doctors.

And in 1986, when I graduated from chiropractic school, you had to kind of tell people you were a chiropractor under your breath, because that wasn't the cool thing to be in the natural health field back then. Now it's, you know, you could say that you're in the dance of health field. You're a dancer, but this too, you're a chiropractor or you're a biologist or you're, you know, you're doing some dental care. It it's it's it. At least people have interest in it. You're not shunned. You know, the biggest question I got is why did you become a real doctor?

So when I was in my classes with these quote unquote, real doctors, I was a little nervous in my first roundtable discussion with them. Everybody was going around, what do you do? I work at the E.R.. This, and I do this or whatever. I got to be at Iowa chiropractor. I didn't know what they were going to say. And I was shocked, actually, because all of the oh my gosh, you are so lucky. I'm like, okay, why am I lucky? And they go, you don't understand. We are wearing the golden handcuffs. Everything we're learned at this symposium, everything we're learning at this cancer fellowship, we can't even practice.

Or we'd be kicked out of our our clinic group. I can't wait it. I had three doctors just that day say, hey, what I what I done, you know, with I get my student loans paid off. Could I give you a call and come practice with. You know, I have yet to have it even call me. But the truth was, is that they, you know, are hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, mainly learned these things. If they are learning these things, learning these things for their own care or their own personal family's care, but not even, you know, sell or recommend fish oils in their practice.

Our the practice of medicine, the way I see it is, has changed so much. There's very few doctors that are out there in their own clinics that could make their own decisions. They're in a clinic group that is governed by a college graduate who graduated clinical. They're not medical personnel. They graduated management, you know, clinic management or business management. And it's all about the bottom dollar, and it's all about recommending the right, medication and if you're taking a step out of that and recommended diet or nutrition, these people could get in trouble with their employer.

And that's a very unfortunate thing. I have an interesting story that you don't take too much of our time and, and a patient few years ago tell me that, she, she was she was from, I think, Nebraska and were in Minnesota when she came back for her, checkup, and she said, oh, you're going to love this story. I was sitting in my living room with my wife, and we use the right machine for a lot of our patients with the right by the. We were having our kitchen remodeled, and, the carpenter goes, oh, my gosh, is that all right with you?

And I thought, wow, how did you know that? And I said, how did you know that was, well, I'm a medical doctor. It's you know what I like it to remodel by a medical doctor. And here he goes. Yeah, well, well, I'll tell you the story. I practiced for 12 years, and we have these weekly meetings, and, the pharmaceutical reps are at this weekly meeting, and we were being barraged by the pharmaceutical at another weekly meeting being yelled at because, we were prescribing correctly, and I just. I've just had it up to here with this.

And he said at this meeting, he said, you are not prescribing correctly because we know that 87% of the people that you prescribe Lipitor to will have this set of symptoms that you're supposed to prescribe this drug to. And we know that 47% of those people have these symptoms that you're supposed to prescribe this drug to, and you only have X amount of percentage and script prescriptions of this and X amount of prescriptions are this. It was we were getting yelled at by the pharmaceutical rep for not prescribing.

That is the practice of medicine. He goes, I had it. I can't do this. I, I practiced, carpentry with my dad, who was a carpenter before I went to medical school, and I went home. I said, dad needs that help because I practice this kind of insanity behind it. He quit. Wow. That's what the practice of medicine has evolved to. And it is, very unfortunate. It's very sad. I mean, I know so many well-intentioned medical doctors, right? I mean, their intention is to serve, to help to to save lives. I mean, you don't you rarely meet a medical doctor ever, that wants to harm you, right?

I mean, they go to school, they look at medical, the medical profession as an honorable profession. They want to contribute to something great in the world. And that's why they go, some want to go just for the money, but. But it's rare, right? Money certainly starts to take over and influence many of the decisions, unfortunately. But what what you find is, is it's the it's the schooling, right? I've talked to so many medical doctors over the years, many who have got fed up just like this, person who was remodeling your house used to be a medical doctor, and they.

But they continue with the profession. But they did as you did. They went and got certified in functional medicine, and they went and got certified and holistic medicine. They went and got certified. And so they started finding other solutions because the conventional medical approach wasn't working for many of their patients. And so now those are many of the, medical doctors who are part of this event, who they have practices, they treat thousands of patients, but they use an integrative approach.

Why Integrative Care Matters for Patients 12:28

Right. They're going to use some conventional Western medicine when it's necessary, but they're primarily going to apply, you know, diet, lifestyle, holistic medicine, because they know for chronic disease, especially cancer long term, you know, more often than not you're going to see better results. But where I think the problem is, is in medical school, I've talked to medical doctors and they told me, you know, just point blank, they are told in medical school to not believe anything anybody says about natural holistic medicine.

There's no science that supports it, so don't pay attention to it whatsoever. Literally, I had a medical doctor tell me this. This is what they were told. And I thought, you know, how unfortunate, because that's a boldface lie, as you know, as we know. Right? There are thousands of studies in pub med in every, you know, major medical journal out there that prove the efficacy of so many natural treatments. So to be told in a medical school that natural medicine has no merit, do not look into it whatsoever.

Clearly there's an ulterior motive there. Right? And at the same time, they're not the bad guys. You know, medical doctors, conventional medicine are not the bad guys. Right. And natural gas and natural medicine, they're not necessarily the good guys. But that's the problem we've created superficially is as good guy bad guy world. And now who suffers? The patient suffers. Right. And maybe you can talk a little bit about that. Why has this division between, you know, these these varying methodologies cause more harm to people, especially people dealing with cancer, really than ever before?

Well, and I think you're absolutely right. It causes harm because it we should be connected. Like like I told you the other day that, I've told my patients that, hey, our clinic should be in a wing at Mayo. And I've got to say that I'll tell you, our clinic is like bragging about us. I just say clinics like ours should be at a widget. Mayo and other big cancer centers. Because you could work synergistically. And, is it do would, with the exception of the other, you can't do both. You could always do both.

They could come a little bit worried out there. And, and we miss that when people think that they have to make that choice. I don't want my patients to be dogmatically positioned. So when a patient calls me in, they might be, the, you know, good guy, bad guy sided. They think that it is the good guy or the standard of care is always the bad guy. I try to even reposition those people because I don't I don't think that's a healthy way to look at it. It's like, yeah, okay, well, let's let's stop here a little bit.

Let's just say this differently. You don't want to do chemo, but are you willing to be open to it? Does it be that we have to do 15 rounds of it or something, even if that's what they recommend? You could just do one round or two round to knock this down. Or should we use, some radiation to knock this down, or should we debunk the cancer with surgery? And so often I get on the phone talking to people is, oh, you shouldn't do that. It is, it is, it is unfortunate that when a person goes to an ecologist and hears the diagnosis of cancer, and then the ecologist lays out the protocol that they don't say, here's the protocol that I recommended.

Now, we don't have to do all of it. We could do pieces of it. You could do other things as well. But we could go step by step and see how we're doing and change this. I've never heard anybody have somebody say that unless they were the ones that brought that up. But that is the truth. You're an adult, and you could make those choices, and they gradually do pieces of, you know, everything that you're gaining knowledge on. And I think those are the people that are going to have the best results. So even my patients that are way dogmatically positioned to the right, if you want to call it where they want to only do a natural, approach to their health care, sometimes it's important to to bring it back to the middle and say, well, let's be open to other sets of care and other, knowledge bases that are out there.

We want to treat you in the best way possible for you to receive the best outcome, not just from a dogmatic position. It's so important, right, to recognize that both sides have their faults, right? And and both sides have their challenges and their problems, and both sides have their goods, their benefits, their their higher qualities. And so once we recognize the full truth rather than just my truth, you know, my truth needs to be only natural, only holistic. You know, I don't want anything to do with this conventional crap.

I don't want any of these drugs. I don't want any of this. But as I've, you know, hopefully gained a little bit more wisdom over the years, 15 years now in natural health and eight years specifically dedicated to cancer. I've come to see a bigger picture. And the bigger picture is. Yeah, we both sides have problems, right? Even even the nature path approach or the holistic approach. Far too often we treat the disease just the same as conventional medicine does. It says, here's your disease. All right.

I'm going to prescribe you this, this, this and this. And, have a great day. Right. And and that doesn't necessarily fully help, the patient take full control and full responsibility for their health and get to the deeper underlying cause of that condition, either. Right. That's why education is so critical. And same thing over here. The conventional medical approach far too often than not, it's all about time. It's about speed. It's about get in, get out, prescribe you the medication. You know, you should eat better, drink more water.

Here's your medication, you know, see you in a few months. And then, you know, they wash their hands when it happens in both sides. Right. This side may have less side effects, but the same thing is happening far too often. More often than not. And so one addressing that and saying, okay, there's a problem. Let's fix it. Right. And two, as the patient, it's most important for us, like you said, to take that responsibility to say, look, let me get an opinion from a naturopath. Let me get an opinion from an integrative doctor.

Let me get an opinion from a conventional medical doctor. Let me watch this entire series and digest 60. You know, world class, opinions, based on research and evidence from experts from every field of medicine, which is what we have in this series, who have treated hundreds of thousands of patients. Right. And spend some time digesting this information before I make any real life changing or even life threatening decisions. So it comes back to you, the patient, the individual always to take that responsibility, to educate yourself and to be open to like, as you said, all standards of care.

Right? Because maybe over here with your type of cancer. Wow. You did four rounds of chemo and it's an 80% chance that you're going to reduce your tumor by 200%, for example. And in addition, over here, you're doing, nutraceuticals and you're doing exercise and you're doing herbal supplementation and you're doing infrared sauna, and you're doing, you know, oxygen based therapy, and you're doing all these other immune supportive, you know, enhancing functions that helps even counteract the negative side effects of that chemo, or like a low dose repeat chemotherapy, for example.

And boom, cancer goes away. Right. Because you took the best of everything that we know today works. Rather than just saying, oh, that's all bad or that's all bad, not doing it, you do what works. And I think that's the future of medicine, right? The future is it the, what are the problems that medicine as well as that are pathetic natural medicine. The traps that we fall into is that we treat a person in a protocol, is looking at each person individually and part of that. Part of the problem with that is that the, the the, the doctors are way too busy to treat people individually.

So that, you know, currently, you see that with the practice of medicine, more, medical doctors doing the treatment, they have, physicians assistants and such. They're just following a standard of care protocol. We do this, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this partly to cover their tail for legal reasons, partly so that they don't end up with lawsuits against them. They follow the standard of protocol. So even if the patient is doing poorly and getting worse and worse and worse, well, they can't sue us because we followed the protocol.

The person died. That's really unfortunate. Everybody's individual. And just because I have Hodgkin's lymphoma, and I have a really good chance that the, standard of care chemotherapy is going to work for me. Hey, good to say, personally, right now we have Hodgkin's

Patient Responsibility, Fear, and Better Decisions 22:08

lymphoma patients that did horribly on chemotherapy. Why? Because they're in the big jewels. Everybody is unique. And you can't take a person and go, here's the protocol for prostate cancer. Just do this. Here's the protocol for breast cancer. Just do this. Everybody's different. So even from a from a nutritional approach, everybody's different. As every breast cancer patient needed a baby that does every you know prostate cancer need patient need X approach. Well no they don't. You have to treat the different differently and uniquely and have ability to test for that unique difference.

And and in treatment that takes time. And that takes also what you just alluded to, the patient taking responsibility also for their care. And and that takes the patient wanted to educate themselves. So hopefully the people that are watching videos like this, the cancer symposium that you're putting together, there are those individuals. And I'll tell you right now, those are the people that are going to get the best results because they're integrated is very the right thing for them. A lot of different things that feel right for them.

They had some way to test or they just felt right there, but this was right for them. Or they they followed up with objective testing whether my chemo was actually working. What if I added some natural things like give bit of different things to it? Would it work better? And you used objective data, good subjective data to decide what's best for you instead of just following some standard protocol, let the responsibility fall. And so, doctor Beautiful. Very well said. So now the million dollar question right.

What would shift, what would shift in our planet today? What would shift for the individual, for the cancer patient, for ourselves, for medicine in general? If natural medicine and conventional medicine came together to provide truly effective integrative treatments for cancer patients? Well, what I if that happened with the results, much better results. But that can happen. But we don't have to wait for the doctors to do that. Whether it be a natural doctor saying, hey, you know, maybe we should use some chemo here too, or the standard doctor saying, hey, maybe we should use some nutrition.

A diet here too. Don't wait for that to happen. You don't have to wait for the professionals to make that decision. If you just as the patient, take responsibility and say, thank you, Mr. Oncologist, I am going to consider that chemotherapy. I'll get back to you when I'm ready to start, and I'm going to go back and dig into it, educate myself and see what other things I could do. Not necessarily besides it, but alongside it to help my outcome be better. That if that's the only thing I did and when when we as a society take control and responsibility back for health care, then we're going to have better outcomes.

And I think we are already seeing better outcomes in cancer. And the reason we need better outcomes in cancer is because of things like this. People are educating themselves. So, that's the key. That's, you know, there's a lot of bad things that, you know, the internet has brought us as a society. But the good thing that the internet has brought us with society is the ability to educate, ourselves, the things that, you know, we would have to go to, medical school, college library to dig up some things.

But now, if you want to know, is curriculum, you know, is that even effective in cancer? Well, let's do a Google Scholar shirt search. Takes you 30s to pull up. Wow. There's 600 pages of Google Scholar articles and key, percolated cancer, you know, and, you know, you boy, that tells you a lot. You don't have to wait till your next doctor appointment to get that information. So the more each of us as individuals, patients, us laypeople can educate themselves, the better equipped you're going to be to be able to make decisions whatever your doctor tells you to do.

And that's what I even tell our patients. It's like, okay, this is what I recommended. But by all means, if you feel like God is leading you in a different direction, or you think that from your gut, you should add this up a little bit, or you think you your heart, you should do chemo too. You have to trust that inner voice as well. And when the more you educate yourself, the better off you're going to be at being able to actually hear that inner voice and not be governed by fear, because that is, to me, is the greatest mistake.

You know, hearing that you have cancer is a very scary thing. But when you just instantly your brain just goes out the door and now you're making decisions completely based on fear, that's, that's the biggest mistake you could make. And that's really it. I mean, we're seeing that today, you know, with this viral pandemic that we're seeing that, you know, if you're watching the news, every day, it it's just pumping you full of fear. More people dying, more people dying, more people dying, like yourself in your house.

Wear a mask, get a shot. All these things just so full of fear. And from that state of fear, like you said, whether it's cancer or it's any, you know, potentially life threatening situation, if we make decisions out of fear, more often than not, it's a decision that can come back to bite us in the butt. Right? And so we have to learn how to manage that fear. We have to learn how to mitigate that fear. We have to learn how to be with that fear. You know, I don't want to say control that fear or get rid of it necessarily, but recognize it, be with it, accept it.

And then through that we can, dissolve it. Right. You know, for me, meditation is a key factor for me. Daily qigong practice, daily gratitude practice, you know, sit outside for a little while and just take a few big deep breaths and then and then ask the questions, what do I need to do about this? What should I do about that? Right? In your case, you know, if you're dealing with cancer and you've had multiple opinions, should I do chemotherapy? Well, if you're coming from a place of fear where they said you need to do chemotherapy, you're going to die, your answer is gonna be, of course I need to do it. Absolutely.

Or I'm going to die. That's what the doctor told me. But if you're sitting quietly and you're connecting to spirit to to, you know, that source within you, to that intuition, as you said, the voice, the clarity that can come from that can be so much more empowering. And I'm not only speaking from my own self, but so many people who have, interviewed and got to meet over the years who have done exactly that. They got themselves quiet and calm and reflective and then started asking these questions to to find guidance.

And they found the guidance. And now I'm interviewing them 15 years later, cancer free. Right. And so it's not just some kind of woo woo, hippie dippy thing. It's it's a very real thing. Now we can, you know, measure, the energy of the mind field and the heart and all these amazing things, you know, scientifically that our ancestors have known for thousands of years, you know, the the, the stomach, brain. We have three brains. We know that. We now know in the physical body, stomach, brain, the heart, brain, the brain in your head.

These are literally three different brains in your body. You know, we'll talk more about science and things like that in some of the other episodes during this series, because it's really fascinating stuff. But coming back to one, you know, reducing that fear so we can make better decisions, but then two, as you said, taking the responsibility to implement, to learn and then implement an integrative approach for yourself as an individual. Right. So you treat cancer patients, you get to work with cancer patients really every single day.

You, typically provide or approach through through an integrative approach. Yes. What are some of the, what are some incredible things, some incredible treatments? You've discovered some incredible breakthroughs or even some amazing case studies that you have where an integrative approach truly helps somebody, where maybe one or the other might, might not have, well, we have patients that come to us in all sorts of different, what I call kids. So some people will come to us far right where like, I'm not even going to do a biopsy.

I know this is cancer in my breast. It it's been growing. It's the size of a lemon right now.

Doctor Connors' Personal Cancer Journey 31:28

And I don't want to do a biopsy because I'm afraid it's going to spread all over my body. And we try to respect everybody's decision and everybody's place that they're in. But we we try to give them information. So you said about how do you dispel fear? Well, I come from a Christian perspective, but I think that you should be, you know, having a relationship with your heavenly father that you could talk to him. And Scripture is clear that if you ask for wisdom with the right heart, he'll freely give you that wisdom.

So you need to to wait to make a decision until you have that peace that passes all understanding that not act out of fear. So I don't want people to not do the right thing out of fear. Like should they get a biopsy or not? But I also want to respect if they feel like that. Hey, I don't even want to get a biopsy. So we have people that are that we're treated. We don't even have a legal definition of cancer. So I said we don't treat cancer. We treat people who have a diagnosis given to them by a medical professional.

We could see anybody wherever they're in, but we also have patients that are concurrently doing full art, chemotherapy, radiation and everything. They're in college. Just ask them to do as well. So, we it everybody falls into wherever they feel comfortable. And I think the, the, the best way to dispel fear is through information. So just like you said, how it compares to this pandemic, quote unquote, that we're in today, there's people making decisions to do something that can't be done. Well, you could take your mask off, but you're going to get a vaccine.

You can't do that vaccine. This is experimental. So, RNA drug that people are putting into their bodies that cannot be undone. And why are they doing it? It's totally based upon fear. It's not. It's certainly not based upon any viable information. And so that has got to get people to start asking questions. If you're getting this experimental drug invasive, the quote unquote disease that has a 99.9% survivability, what would happen if you actually got a diagnosis of cancer? These people would probably run off to their college to do everything that they're told to do, which might be a good thing.

It it might be a bad thing. So, to me, these are good examples of how we should look at, and how we face decisions in everyday life. And I think the more educated you are about a subject, the less are you're going to have about it. You know, I have a diagnosis of cancer, but it did. I have did I have years, dealing with this? Well, of course I had my fears dealing with this. Did I have, decisions to make? Yes, I had decisions to make. But dealing with cancer patients for the last 27 years, it was pretty easy for me to make my decisions.

And they certainly weren't based on fear. So I think the more a person is educated in a subject like, oh, I got to learn all I can about alternative cancer in case I get a diagnosis, because statistically, 1 in 3 people are going to get a diagnosis of cancer. So the chances I might get one someday. So the more I know about it. So if I do get it, I'm not going to fear it. Because it I can I have some things in my back pocket that I could pull out and study and learn and figure out which way to go.

And I have some knowledge base to make that decision of which direction I need to go. That's the best way to me to help really dispel this fear. So you really feel comfortable about the decision that you're making? Whether you said your question was, we had patients that have gone through this and walked through these steps. And we have. Yeah, we have at our website, a number of testimonies of people that have had fantastic results. And a number of them have had, have done some chemo radiation as well, that we do sometimes encourage people that, hey, this the breast tumors continue to grow with everything that we're doing.

Maybe if we did 1 or 2 rounds of chemo to knock this, they know that we'd be able to get a better hold on it, but that does work. So big seed the two camps together because they really shouldn't be two camps. Utilizing some of these drugs that I think God gave us too, that, that we just need to use the baby a little bit more wisely, that everybody has to do that. Could be the best protocol for somebody going back again to, everybody's unique, everybody's individual. Just because, you know, Aunt Mary did chemo and it works for her, it doesn't mean it's going to work for you.

But just because I've got Bob, did CRT and it worked for him doesn't mean it's going to work for you. We're all individuals, and we have to look at ourselves that way and have a practitioner that will look at us that way as well. Absolutely. And that's, you know, it really helps having a very well educated, mentor guide doctor, you know, integrative specialists in your corner. You know, I teach people in my master class becoming cancer free, you know, to build your integrative success team. And I recommend having at least three people, whether you just consult with some once in a while, you know, they don't you don't even have to be a full time patient with, one of them, you might be, but having three key people on your team.

Right. A holistic or an integrative medical doctor or even a conventional, oncologist as one of them is a great, you know, person to have in your team. You, you know, diagnosing they are the best at diagnosing. Let's be honest. Right. It really looking in and finding what's going on. The best technology and tests and resources. And so, you know, having that person but then also having a naturopath or a holistic doctor or a functional medicine practitioner, right. Because they're going to be able to help you understand certain things and choose certain protocols that, you know, your conventional doctor, your oncologist, and even often your integrative medical doctor may not have access to.

And then third is I always recommend having somebody who is a, really well equipped, emotional healing, mental, emotional healing, right? Whether it's, very, well respected and trust hypnotherapist hypnotherapy is so powerful and healing emotional trauma, or, you know, your spiritual teacher or whatever that might be. Having three is idea, you know, great. Because then you have specialists in each area, right. And or doctor or down of medicine might be here and in place of a functional medicine practitioner, for example.

But, you know, rarely you find one person that has 40 or 50 years experience in all three of those areas, but sometimes they do. I mean, you yourself have vast experience in a lot of these areas. But I do encourage people build your integrative success team because now you can bounce ideas off of each one. You can get their feedback, their input, and you can be so much more empowered to actually make better decisions for your health. But again, you know, we have all of those experts here as part of this series.

So make sure you listen to every single interview and episode as part of this series, because you're going to learn a thousand years of information in just a handful of interviews, right? That's the beauty of what we get to do here. And then, you know, choose who you want on your team. So I do, I do want, I would love for you to talk a little bit about your own story with cancer, Doctor Connors, if you would. I'd love to know a little bit. You said you had cancer and you went through it, and, you were talking about yourself personally.

That wasn't just a story you were relating to. Oh, know I have cancer, too. I am extra memory. Paget's disease with the bits to my colorectal area. But I just had a clean scan two weeks ago, so that's really good. So when were you diagnosed? For years ago this month. Okay. And what did you, what were the biggest things you started changing and working on and implementing? Well, I changed my diet. I mean, I did exactly what I would do for my patients. No. Again. Okay, so I said take an integrative approach.

If if came out, therapy is the right thing for you, that that should be something you should. And it was a really easy decision for me because chemotherapy, there isn't really a chemotherapy drug that works for, extra battery disease when it metastasizes to the colorectal area. So it's not colon cancer. So none of the colon cancer chemotherapies work. A couple of years before my diagnosis, Mayo had just finished a study of ten, 10 or 12 different, people. And they were all excited because one of the people in the study lived 16 months, days.

It to be that's like, okay, well, that's the then, you know, I'm like the quality of life usually. Yeah. Yeah. Well interested in that study this the one who lived 16 months. You know, they said it put a bit remission and then it, it came back and he refused the chemo to do it again, which told me it probably was, heck, go through that chemo. Yeah. So, it was easy for me to make that decision to not do anything. I mean, I went through some dark times trying to figure out the frequencies to use for my right, because my type of cancer is super rare and there are no known frequencies, and we use the rife at our office.

So frequency medicine is a big piece of our healing. Of course I use specific nutrition, tested, constantly tweaking it, dietary tweaks, what was done and what were some of the biggest nutritional pieces you implemented? Dietary, stayed away from dairy, and, meat was an issue for was a driver for me at the time? No, I eat some meat. Again. But, meat was a driver at the time. Dairy was a driver at the time. So you went off meat and dairy completely meat. Dairy completely. And different therapeutics.

Nutrition wise, supplement wise, I use black and bloodroot. I use, product, evolve a beard, which is a polysaccharide made from aloe. So polysaccharides work really well for me. Polysaccharides are, components of mushroom medicinal mushrooms and things. So they tested well for me. So I use those, some digestive enzymes, not full enzyme therapy, but some digestive enzymes and numerous other things on and off. And like the way we test people with good etiology is their protocol could change over time because the cancer is constantly tried to survive, try to grow, try to fight a fuel source.

And you're, as the practitioner, tried to cut that off at all costs. So, typically we see a person do better, do a little worse, do a better, do the works, do better, do a little worse. It's not a graph where they're just getting better, getting better, getting better. Usually. So you see this undulation that you have to tweak their protocol, tweak different things at different times. I did, a lot of fasting. Fasting, mimicking diet and, tree time restricted eating that was very beneficial for me.

Mindset, Purpose, and Hope in Healing 43:48

So I, you pulled out of it and have been doing well the last six months and still have paid, but my skin was clean. Just like any other skin. It has to be a certain size to be able to see the skin. So I know it still is there, but I just praise God every day that I'm still here. So he was able to use the information for me. You know, going through what I went through to better understand what my patients go through. Yeah. So I look at as you were blessed that God allowed that in my life for a reason.

And at least one of the reasons was so that I could have a greater degree of empathy for what my patients are going through. Right. What they're feeling, physically, I have patients in an a lot worse state that I was in, what I was at my worst. There was a time when I was didn't think I was going to make it to my first Christmas for sure. I was doing really poorly. But, God pulled me out of it. And so I'm very grateful. I don't try to use that for his glory, but, everybody's that individual. So what I did is not the right thing for somebody else, so I don't I don't like to share what I did specifically, per se, except that there is hope.

Because everybody, you know, every even if somebody else has, the exact same cancer I did, still, their approach needs to be unique as well. It's beautiful. And thank you for sharing that. I mean, I, I didn't even know that about, about you. And and I think what you just shared can really provide a lot of hope and support and inspiration for all of our community tuning in here. And I try to be real open about it. And I wrote, multiple blogs about it. I have, my personal journey, with the whole video series, and I need to do another update since I've been doing really well.

And it does get pretty dark because I was doing really poorly to begin with and was quite sure that I was, on my way to, my next destination. But, so far, so good. What what would you say you changed, if anything at all? With your mentality, with your mindset, with any emotional work or emotional healing? Did you focus on mind and emotion at all or big time? You know, I think that's a huge piece. You know, I was, you know, coming at it as a, Christian. I know where I'm going. I believe I'm going to heaven.

That's going to be a better place than this is. So I had no fear of death. I wasn't too crazy about dying. So, so it's, that process that did excite me, you know? But, I had to face the the reality of how am I going to face this? So would you talk about that, that mindset experience? We don't want to be so heavily minded that we're no earthly good. So I do realize, okay, what is what what is the purpose of this for me? And how can I make it be a blessing to every one of my patients? So, I share on my blog what's the the great, verse from the, movie The Shawshank Redemption, which is, we better, get busy livid or get busy dying.

Now, I remember that exact scene. What? You know, so many times God gives you a verse, but gives you, a little quip like that, which is kind of odd, but it's funnier than heck is one of my favorite movies. And, it's just God just basically made me what they said. This is you better get busy, live it, or get busy. And they said, okay, I better get busy living. And I just decided I needed to change my attitude. So what do you do it? I always say super fantastic. And sometimes my wife gets mad at me because I'm not sharing the truth with there is.

I'm not feeling good, but it's like here I have to take that position. It's like I am not going to even admit it. It feels good because it's like I'm not going to give it it. It's some light and sometimes I do. Don't get me wrong, I'm not this ultimate positive thinking person all the time, but more of a realist. But I have to fight the fight that urge to be too honest with myself. And I have to just go, no, I just going to let this thing win and I get to stay, you know, talking positive note to myself because I just don't get a I just don't think the other way is the right way to go. So, you know, I just want to, you know, commend you for such a empowering mindset.

I mean, just for anybody tuning in, no matter what your religious or spiritual beliefs are, I mean, just that perspective of a mindset shift to say, you know, how can this be a blessing for me and for others? How can I use this diagnosis, this challenge in my life to help me have more meaning and purpose and give back and be of service? And I have to tell you what, many of the people I've interviewed over the years who have lived decades, sometimes decades past, you know, their so-called expiration date, their prognosis, or live five or 7 or 10 years past, but their quality of life improved dramatically.

Maybe the cancer never went away, but their quality of life improved. Dramatic. They're happier, healthier, more vital, more energetic, more connected to the spirit, to a higher power than ever before. And that's exactly what it was. It was a mindset shift to say, what do I need to learn from this? How can it be a blessing in my life? And how can I use it to to be of service? Right. And so again, it's whatever anybody's religious or spiritual beliefs are, it's a mindset shift that can change everything for you in a second.

All it takes is to make that decision internally that this is a blessing and not a curse. And now how do I make it that a reality in my life? And I do want to share, you know, we have, a number of interviews that we've done as part of this series in some of the additional episodes where that's exactly what we go into depth into. So make sure to watch those, everyone tuning in that, you know, you really want to learn how you can approach cancer from more of a spiritual approach, how to utilize cancer as as something that can truly be a blessing and a gift and really connect with, many others who who have that same mindset that turned it all around for them for the better.

So yeah, I just want to commend you for that and for sharing that. I think it's so empowering. And I really appreciate that you opened up and and shared. I think, you know, for me, I think God really gave me that idea years ago. Right? Because even before I had was diagnosed with cancer and that I had to walk through it with the cancer. And that's why I titled my book Stop Fighting Cancer Is Really the Cause, back in 2010, when I initially wrote it, the initial version, it is because I saw patients that were like, agree about their cancer, and you see bumper stickers that say it's cancer.

You know, it's like, I get it. I do get it that we have to go through that increased things. Maybe all of us need to go through that angry phase, but I think you have to come out the other side and go, okay, what can I learn about this? This can be a blessing. You know, this is not just all about me. What do you what do you what what do you got for me here, God? To be able to help others and step outside of yourself a little bit instead of being angry about your situation, go take a step back and go, okay, how can I make this about other people at about, you know, serving other people and, and, and yes, take an objective look at yourself in your cancer and how I going to treat this, but, take a step out of that angry this and that bitterness.

And, I think that's the real you're not going to get to healing until you get to that point. Well, you're living example of that. So thank you for sharing that. Thank you for the great work you do and all the continued service and work you do for helping people with cancer. And thank you for taking the time to be here and share this with all of us here on the summit. Truly appreciate it and honor it and honor you. And, again, yeah, thanks for taking the time. Well, thank you for all you do. It's just such a blessing to to see people like you out there just serving people and that's it's all about.

Absolutely. It's my pleasure, my honor. And I want to thank everyone for tuning in to the conquering Cancer Summit. Please share this with friends and family. Together, we truly can make a difference for the future of humanity in ending the cancer pandemic. Thank you and I wish you ultimate health and happiness. Be well.