Integrate Diabetes & Cancer Care Strategies

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Thank you, Dr. Yates. I appreciate having me. Anything that we could share that could help somebody would be great.

Beverly Yates, ND

If you would just give us a brief overview of your background because you’ve got lots of experience here, What are a few pieces that you’d love to share with the audience so they know that they should be listening to this?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

I’ve been doing this for a long time. I graduated as a chiropractor back in 1986, doing functional medicine back then, I was big into the Kinesiologist of nutrition, so we didn’t call it functional medicine. I don’t know what we called it back then, but it was integrative care. Mainly a lot of people with diabetes saw a lot of people with hormonal issues. That was probably the biggest focus of my practice for many years. But I was always interested in this machine called a Rife machine, which was started by Royal Raymond Rife, back in the thirties. He used it on cancer patients. I studied a lot of his work while I was going through school, so I was very interested in that. But of course, I don’t have that cancer clinic. That was always in the back of my head, to the point where the Holy Spirit was just putting that on my heart for so many years that I did an investigation, picked out the type of machine I wanted, and had the brochure up on the wall in my office. It wasn’t until the late nineties that a patient came in. She was a retired gal when she came in. She was. I have to talk to you. I just found out I have breast cancer in both breasts—bilateral breast cancer. They said if I don’t do chemo and radiation, I have three months to live. I’m just like, I didn’t even, but honestly, I didn’t even know how to answer her.

She said You don’t get it. I’m not doing it. I nursed my good friend through the chemo, and she died five months ago. I think that’s what it was. Her experience was that there was just no way she was going to do the chemo. That was just one of those Holy Spirit moments where it’s like it’s time to get a Rife machine because that’s what I do—how to treat it. I was very skilled at that point, helping people nutritionally. I think about how to help them nutritionally with cancer. I went and bought a rice machine. She started using the Rife. I just dug into, studied, studied, studied, and tried to help this woman. She lived another 13 years and never did the chemoradiation, used the Rife machine, or used the nutritional protocol that we put together with her that I constantly refined as I was growing and learning. then God sent me another cancer patient. Another cancer patient. This was before we even had websites. 

Beverly Yates, ND

We didn’t have that, did we? 

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

I saw the writing on the wall that this was the pathway I was supposed to take. I went back and expanded my education. I got a degree in Fellowship Integrative Cancer Therapy and a Fellowship in Functional Medicine, and I said I had just continued to learn. It’s always been my passion to constantly learn. I always felt like my patients were my biggest teachers in the sense that if God sent me somebody, it was my responsibility to do everything I possibly could to figure out what was going on with them. I can’t always do that. But you can’t always heal them. But I’m not their healer. God is. But I have the responsibility, as a teacher and as a doctor, to try to learn how to help them the best way I can. That’s just been the passion that God put in my heart from day one. That said, I’ve been mainly practicing integrative cancer therapy fairly exclusively for the last couple of dozen years. But we still see that I do have a passion for autoimmune disease. I wrote a book on autoimmune disease. I’ve done a course for patients with that autoimmune disease. I’m constantly studying that. I have a passion for Lyme disease because I had Lyme disease three times with a family member with Lyme disease. I teach a lot about that as well.

Beverly Yates, ND

That’s so good to know. What a wonderful background perspective! I always think it’s so interesting when people are faced with potentially life-threatening illnesses or illnesses that can compromise the quality of life, if not the quantity of life. It’s like there’s so many different paths that go down. One of the things I wish was more obvious upfront is: what would be helpful to someone, and what should they avoid? Like, what are their real options, and what is viable? What is it that the integrative approach to cancer therapy can offer someone? When people listen to an episode like this, some people will find this information familiar, while for others it will be new. What is Integrative Cancer Therapy?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Integrative cancer therapy is helping a patient with a diagnosis of cancer who wants more help than what standard of care gives them. If you’re going to go down the standard of care route through your oncologist, you’re going to get chemotherapy. Surgery or radiation should be a beautiful therapy if it fits with your type of cancer, but that’s your only option. They don’t talk about diets. They don’t talk about other supportive things that you could do, even if you’re going to choose to uphold standards of care. There are a lot of things that you could do that could enhance it and improve your odds. A lot of people think that you have to choose one or the other, and that’s a huge mistake. But I think the biggest mistake that people make when they get a diagnosis of cancer is that they let fear control their decision-making process, and they move faster. I don’t think very many people regret this. I wish I had done chemo sooner. They regret it. I wish I had thought about this a little bit and made some other decisions. Maybe I wouldn’t have done chemo, or maybe I would have learned some other things to couple with chemo to make it work better, to heal my body, and to keep my body healthier while I’m doing that. The biggest piece of advice, the first piece of advice I could give somebody who just got diagnosed with cancer, is to slow down. In the end, this is what happens in the cancer industry. That doesn’t happen in most medical scenarios because cancer doctors tend to use very high-pressure sales. I don’t know if there’s a better way to say it and be kinder. But the truth is, they’re like used car salesmen of the past.

It’s just high-pressure sales. I hear this every day from people. I had a gal last week that said I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and they said they wanted to schedule me for chemotherapy. I didn’t even have my husband in the office with the oncologist, I said I needed to go home to talk to my husband. Don’t schedule me, I was walking out to the car, and there at the office that I just left, called and said, I’m here to schedule you for your chemotherapy. I just left. I needed to talk to my husband about this. It is so high pressure, and people will ask why, and the oncology office will say that we care about the patient. Really? I had one patient who called me from the hospital and said, Dr. Carter, I just don’t know what to do. She was just in tears. This is a very strong woman. She was there with her husband on the hospital bed calling me from her cell phone saying that the radiologist and the oncologist were just at the office and saying, 

If I don’t do radiation immediately, I only have a couple of weeks to live. I just talked her through it. I said, Well, I am not against doing radiation to bold what you have metastases to both. I told her that we could support her through this, and so she said I’d agree to it. She called it back in the office. so I’m not privy to this until she calls me back a half hour later. She was livid. She was, and you will not believe what just happened. She said what she got. The doctor told me that I only had a couple of weeks to live if I didn’t do radiation immediately. Then I finally agreed to it. The nurse came in, the doctor came back in, and she went. we’ll get you scheduled. They can’t get me scheduled for three weeks.

Beverly Yates, ND

That doesn’t sound credible. I got it. 

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Just the credibility of that, and she said he was okay with that. Now we’re going to agree. It was like, I thought I was supposed to be dead in two weeks, and you can’t get me in for three weeks. She was rather upset. Long story short, she did do the radiation we supported, through which she lived another five years, but she did pass away from her cancer. But it was just a story of how salesy they can be. The biggest piece of advice I could give you is that maybe you have an oncologist who just truly, in their heart, wants to help you. That’s fantastic. If you don’t find one that does, they’re out there. But just slow down. Take some time to go home and digest this diagnosis a little bit. Talk to your spouse about it. Talk to God about it, and pray about what you should do. You have more time that they’re leading on for you to do. Just slow down and pray about this. Start educating yourself. The best time to start is to educate yourself before you get a diagnosis. But hopefully, some people who are going to be listening to this aren’t diagnosed with cancer. They’re going to start learning about making some decisions.

Beverly Yates, ND

That’s good to know. That’s a great point that you bring up. I’m thinking about my mother’s journey with small cell lung cancer and the information she got, the timing of it, the cadence, the push, what to do with all the things that we were trying to support her with, and what she was trying to make the decisions for herself. and we were able to extend the length of time she was on this planet. Eventually, she did die from that diagnosis, but she lived four times five, almost five times longer than their original prognosis, the amount of time they said she had left. I always feel like it’s not up to us as human beings of whatever medical or health professional designation to say how long someone has to live. It’s not in our hands, but we can sure help influence the outcome positively. If that person is looking to prolong their life and hopefully get some quality of life too sometimes the kinds of treatments that are offered are just so rough. Sometimes people suffer in addition to the mortal threat of necessarily leaving this earth because of cancer. The exit is going to be awful because the treatments can be awful, too. It’s tough. It’s a tough one.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

It is. That’s where integrative cancer could help. I didn’t answer your initial question about defining what integrative cancer is. We have people who come to us who don’t want to receive any standard of care. like my first patient ever. She didn’t want to do chemotherapy, and she did do surgery, but she didn’t want to do chemo and radiation. We get a lot of people who are in that category because of a friend’s experience or their parent’s experience who died of chemo, which is not uncommon. They don’t want to do those things. I get that. But I understand that. We have some patients who want to do alternative care exclusively, and we try to just be there for people’s needs. But integrative, by definition, means in conjunction with. I am virtually an alternative practitioner, not against chemo, radiation, or surgery. I’m not against it. I’m just against thinking that’s your only option, and I’m against doing that alone. Doing an alternative care should be a given. You should be doing natural things to build up your immune system.

If you’re going to be using chemotherapy, it’s going to just attack your immune system, majorly. That’s why they have to check your white blood cells before each chemotherapy infusion because it damages your production of white blood cells. If you could do things to build that up between sessions, you’re just going to do better with chemotherapy. If you could use things like Rife Technology Frequency, it’s going to help that chemotherapy target, the cancer. You’re going to have a better result from the chemotherapy. If you could do things to protect your healthy cells between sessions of chemotherapy, you’re going to do so much better. If you could support your liver detoxification pathways, you’re going to do so much better. It only makes sense that you’re trying to change the value of your body that developed cancer while you’re trying to kill the cancer. You’ve got kids for a reason. There is a cause. Let’s address that. Also, maybe you need to use the big dogs of surgery and keyboard radiation. But if you do need to do those things, you need to support your body as best you possibly can.

Beverly Yates, ND

It’s important. I don’t think people are given enough information or support around that because you’re asking the body to do a very specific thing and put a lot of healing energy into it. The thing about many kinds of cancer is that there are only a few that I can think of that aren’t so aggressive. Some of them will move quickly, are aggressive, and, as such, command a lot of resources, including the fact that they happen to love blood sugar and glucose, as these cells reproduce in a very wanton way and take away more capacity. So the irony is that the rest of the body is quite healthy. Meanwhile, though, what do you do with these cancer lesions, depending on the cancer? Some of them just consume every possible resource and move quickly. Some don’t. Some aren’t necessarily that drastic. But I don’t think the general public understands the importance of supporting the body, particularly healthy tissue. The person, if they decide they want to do conventional treatments, can withstand the treatments and come through them.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

It might seem odd to people that we’re talking about cancer at a diabetes summit, but it’s so important because historically, you could do your research on this and realize that people with Type 2 or Type 1 diabetes have a much higher incidence of cancer of all different types. The reason is, why don’t you just touch down? Glucose is the preferred food of all of our cells. Our cells take in glucose through mitochondria and, through glycolysis, break it down. Ultimately, the acetyl coenzyme goes into the Krebs cycle, where you kick out all this energy, this ATP energy. That’s how we make energy. Glucose is the preferred food for most cancers, too. Some feed off of glutamine and methionine, amino acids. But most cancers will feed off of glucose, and they will gobble up your glucose. If there is a readily available supply of energy for a mass that’s rapidly replicated, you’re just fueling cancer. It’s even more important to look at a person’s diet when they have a serious disease like cancer.

Beverly Yates, ND

Get their blood sugar under control as fast as you can, and you’re taking away a key fuel that allows that cancer to spread. You start to tip the odds so much more in your favor and away from the continued success, if you will, of the growth of the cancer. It makes a difference. Those metabolic diseases, what they have in common, right, are these runaway processes, whether it’s inflammation, whether it’s cells that feed on glucose at the expense of healthy cells, the cancer cells in this case, or whether it’s the issues that go on with cardiovascular disease. Those are the big three for the metabolic concerns. As we look around the world, all of these problems are increasing. I just wonder about the continued sustenance of humans because it just seems like we are under any number of threats and we have to get in front of them. You look at the spread of, say, and in my opinion, the wild rise of the incidence of Type 2 diabetes is that right now 500 million people, internationally. That’s half a billion people. This is not sustainable. We know that with that we have an increase in cancer. That’s not a surprise, and there has been an increase in heart disease. That’s also not a surprise.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

You got the increase in all-cause mortality in it. Even if you’re just looking at the United States, it’s like we rate so poorly among all countries. Do we have the best medicine? Do we have the best medical care? Medical teams and highly trained doctors. They’ll come from every place in the world and come here to train to go back to their countries. Then you go, what do you think these three diseases have in common? What they do have in common is covered causes. What else could cause diabetes? It can damage receptors in the cells; and bad brain damage to the pancreas. What causes cancer? Something that gets inside the cell damages the nucleus, causing the cell to go into rapid replication. What causes heart disease? Something that damages the end of the endothelial lining and causes the inflammatory process of the endothelial lining. What are what is that common cause? Toxins, heavy metals, and pathogens are the three biggest things that you have to deal with. None of those things are going away anytime soon. We have glyphosate that is sprayed everywhere in the United States. Why are cancer rates in the United States going up and diabetes rates and cardiovascular rates going up? But is it rising at an escalation rate much higher than that of the European countries? They don’t spray with glyphosate in European countries. That’s at least a piece of it. They use a lot of other toxins. It’s not like they’re not doing great, but that is bad. With the pesticides and herbicides that we’ve been exposed to now, there are a lot of people who are learning that this stuff is bad and that we need to start trying to eat organic, grow our food, and take better care of ourselves. But those are the people who are watching conferences like this and learning how to best take care of themselves, and the majority of people are still blind. Give me an example. After the whole COVID thing, I got off Facebook completely, but I got back on Facebook because I realized there were these groups, and I like to do home care. There’s this caring group that I belong to and that I like. I like to cook.

My wife and I are big into gardening. There’s this garden group, and there’s this soup group. My daughters laugh at me because I belong to a soup group on Facebook, but it’s just fun to learn different recipes. You start thinking that people are becoming a little bit more enlightened about health and health care. You and I both hope that things like this will be popular with big people. But just as you think people are waking up in my soup group the other day, somebody shared this picture of this white powder, and it said, Does anybody use this in their soup? I had to use it for years, and it’s fantastic. All the comments were like, That’s MSG, we use that on our soup. Yes, I couldn’t believe it. Like 50 comments. Some people say, My husband’s a chef, and he brings it home with him because he uses it all the time at the restaurant. I’m like, I didn’t even dare comment that a comment that, by the way, is like my tagline for my day, this is our clinic, and it’s like, I am not going to put up this discussion with these people. It’s like how many people don’t know that MSG is bad for you all by word as just blown away. But this made me realize that there are a lot of people who are not getting good information yet. Part of me felt that it makes me sad, I guess, that we’re not doing our job well enough, don’t we?

We’ve got to eat more because this is what’s killing us. This is what causes diabetes. This is what’s causing heart disease. This is what’s causing cancer—these chemicals to which we’re freely exposed. You’re putting this in your soup, for goodness’ sake, because it tastes better. Why? Because it fires glutamate receptors. Because it stimulates neurotransmitters. That’s going to burn out your brain. That is a major cause of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease right there. But these people are just, like, clueless. 

Beverly Yates, ND

There’s the whole industry, all the food scientists, an array of folks, the regulators or lack thereof, and the misinformation around this industry is one of, sadly, thousands of examples. When people are making homemade soup. You assume that they’re trying to make something that’s healthy, that’s nutrient-dense. I get why you’re upset about people being happy to add something like MSG, but they don’t understand that it is undermining their health.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

It’s like, the same reason why people are sprayed round-up on the driveway to get rid of the weeds in the cracks of the driveway. They don’t realize that they are, increasing their chance of lymphoma and other cancers by about a hundredfold by doing foolish things like that. Ignorance is not bliss when ignorance causes you to do things that lead you down a pathway that ends up with an outcome that you don’t want. You’re somewhere because of your old decisions. The Bible is very clear. I think Paul says in the Epistles 19 times, Brother, I don’t want you to be ignorant. Though he’s talking about spiritual things, we could equate that to everything in our lives. We’re not supposed to be foolish about the decisions that we make. We need to become educated so that we don’t need to live in fear; we need to live in wisdom. You can’t use wisdom if you haven’t learned these things in the first place. I just pray that your diabetes summits get it right. People’s health could be shared and information could be out so that people have the ammunition to give to their friends and family that maybe don’t believe them.

Beverly Yates, ND

It makes a difference. Sometimes. We do need to hear it from other people. Then our closest circle, our most loved and beloved people, because sometimes we discount the voice that’s telling us, that there’s another way, there’s another option. Or did that mean this is toxic, it could be causing your problem, or maybe it’s something that’s boosting cravings? A lot of times, people have diabetes or pre-diabetes. They have cravings for things, whether it’s savory, umami foods, or sweet-tasting foods. Maybe they’re stressed, or maybe they have poor sleep. All of those can get that craving complex going. Then when you add things to your food or you’re eating food that has been added, if you didn’t make it yourself MSG things like that. As you said, the tongue is so excited and your brain and the tongue, they’re talking about each other. They just get so excited. You can make a similar argument about the use of artificial sweeteners and fake sugars. A similar thing right now. It’s just that it’s up to halfway. It’s a disaster. Then people wonder why they struggle. 

You have to give yourself time to detox and recover. The good news is that the taste buds can indeed be retrained. Research has shown that they turn over every 10 to 14 days. I always tell people to give themselves at least three weeks to get back to their actual normal tongue because it’s going to take some time for the new taste buds to come out.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

That’s right. 

Beverly Yates, ND

Interesting. Have you noticed this? I wanted to bring this up because what you were saying, Dr. Kahn has brought this to mind. I’ve observed over the last, I’d say, decade or so that some of the smaller natural foods and natural health kinds of products have been acquired by larger entities. Some of them are larger natural entities, some not so much, and some of them are big names in terms of food production here, at least in the U.S. The thing I’ve observed is that if the packaging looks glossy and pretty, it just looks amazing. I always tell people that if you see a big shift in a product that you’ve used for years and you feel is healthy for you, or if you notice that you aren’t feeling the same or feeling well, read the label because chances are they’ve changed the formulation. Make no assumptions that that formulation that was true three years ago is today’s formulation, and they might have added in something that is a negative thing for your health, whether it’s your toothpaste, maybe it’s a soup that you enjoy, perhaps it’s already prepared, or some other preparation outside of your home product. Then, if you’re in your home, don’t add the toxic stuff. You’ve got to know what’s not good for human health and be aware.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

It’s not that everybody needs to be this health guru or anything. There’s just something about getting back to the way your great-great-grandparents were because they didn’t have fluoride in their water. They didn’t chlorinate their water. They didn’t eat foods that were prepared to have chemicals in them that you couldn’t even pronounce. If you can’t pronounce what’s in your food, you shouldn’t be eating your food. We are being poisoned the way it is. Not to get too conspiratorial, but it’s true. If you don’t take that step to be responsible for your health, you’re going to be the victim of exactly what they want you to be the victim of. You’re going to be dependent on medication for the rest of your life, and your life is going to be shortened. It’s quality of life like you mentioned. Is it not going to be that great? Everybody has to make their own decisions. I don’t want to judge anybody, but you could just start making some little bit different decisions about the food that you’re buying, and you can make giant leaps and bounds changes in your life.

I have a lot of grandkids. My daughter was over today, and she’s talking about a friend whose child was damaged by vaccines. Now she’s anti-vax, but she goes; I just can’t understand. She doesn’t vaccinate her child, which praises God, but she gives her all this red dye, and she can’t figure out why she’s hyperactive and feeds on all this junk food that has all these toxins. It does it and adds flavorings and coloring to it. The child’s brain just can’t handle that. Your child’s brain doesn’t have a blood-brain barrier until they’re about three years old, and you’re feeding them all this stuff that’s crossing the blood-brain barrier that isn’t there, and it’s causing stimulation and damage to the brain and inflammation of the brain. That’s just horrific. Those things, even if they’re beyond that age, can damage the blood-brain barrier. It’s just making some different decisions. There are good, healthy decisions as you said, but you do have to look at and keep an eye on reading the ingredients because these companies are getting bought out, not just that these supplement companies are getting bought out. Supplements that I used to push in my office 20 years ago. Now I don’t want to. I don’t want to sell at all. I don’t regret getting any recommendations for this company. It got bought out by Bayer, and I don’t know what they’re doing with that supplement anymore. I don’t trust that company.

Beverly Yates, ND

The good point that you make is that we just have to be vigilant. I always tell people, You don’t have to be paranoid. Just look over your shoulder and assume someone’s out to get you because frankly, they don’t have the time to be that specific. But you do need to be your advocate, pay attention, and notice how you feel. If you’ve used something for quite a while and then you notice, I get a headache after I have this. I have an aunt who is very sensitive to NutraSweet, artificial sweeteners, especially that one. So if you went out to a restaurant and somebody had put that in, she knew because, within about five minutes, she would start to get a migraine. It is very sensitive to its neurotoxic potential. If you look at the research, it shows it very clearly. All of that to say, please listen to how you’re feeling and whether or not your brain and your mind are still clear. Are your spirits still clear? Do you feel like something completely hijacked the system? In which case, look at what you ate and drank because the answer might be there.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Especially when you go out to eat, that’s for sure. You don’t know what they’re putting in your food.

Beverly Yates, ND

Or maybe you do. You should be wary.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

That’s right.

Beverly Yates, ND

Dr. Conners, if people would like to connect with you after our episode ends here, where can they find information?

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

You could just go to our Website, connersclinic. CONNERS clinic. You can make an appointment with me online. You can self-schedule. Your initial appointment is called the case review, which we get you to fill out. It could take a week to go over your whole case, and I have multiple courses that people could join if they just want to self-study and self-awarely take care of themselves. They can order labs for those courses, and they can make appointments with me through those courses as well. They’re very inexpensive to participate in because I made those because, for instance, my cancer stopped by the cancer book, my last edition, and I want to do another edition. My last edition was almost 600 pages. I don’t even like to read that much; I like to read, but I like to listen to audiobooks. A 600-page book on kids can be a little overwhelming when you just get a diagnosis of cancer. I created a course with a bunch of videos so people could listen, watch, and see pictorial images of physiology so they could understand it a little bit better. I like to educate. I just created these courses to teach people. I feel like too much is given; too much is expected and demanded. We need to give back and try to help people learn so that we’re not all ignorant. We need to keep learning; we need to keep growing. We need to take responsibility for our lives and our children’s lives. We can’t pass that responsibility on to a doctor, and that’s what they want you to do. Then you could be dependent on their medication for the rest of their life. That’s not good for anybody except them. So by going to our website, you can get all this data. We give a ton of information. I think I have probably 1500 blog posts that you can read too. All of that is free. Connect with us that way. That would be the easiest way.

Beverly Yates, ND

Thank you so much for being part of Summit. I appreciate your time, energy, and insights. There will be plenty of people who will have food for thought here, but just review the things they’re doing to determine if they are on a path that they feel is healing and helpful, and maybe it’s time to reevaluate that and consider that they have some other options. Thank you so much.

Kevin Conners, DPSc, FICT, FAARFM

Bye bye.