Recover from Cancer Against All Odds

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Yes, it is beautiful. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I would be so honored if you would share that part of your journey with us because a lot of people think it’s easy for us to say, Do this, do that, and they don’t understand that we walked the walk and that we know that true healing is something you can potentially heal but it is possible. But we know that because we did it.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Yes. Oh, my gosh. Well, first of all, before you started recording, I was amazed at the fact that we’ve never met in person, because, as I was telling you, I’ve been stalking you for some time, and I didn’t even know this part of your journey. I mean, I knew about your journey, but I didn’t know that there was any role that I might have added to the process. when you said that the paying it forward through what you read for me is now going out to millions that just rippled through me with such truth and such potency that I do not doubt the being that you are. what I’ve witnessed you to be doing, that you’ve already made that difference. The ripple has already begun. So I’m super excited to be here with you. As you noted so beautifully, a little bit of education before the education you got your education then went back to school. I got my education and went to school. We’re just not at the same angle all these years later.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

But while I had to be reeducated, I’m being honest. My first education was pretty lacking. It’s what most people in traditional medicine would consider blasphemy and despicable. But the truth is that, and I still see it every single day, traditional medical doctors are so lacking in understanding about disease and disease development, and for sure, they don’t know how to kill anyone.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

That makes me sad. I hope that’s the ripple that I leave on this world: that we can truly create, take medicine, and, like, reclaim it for what it was supposed to be, where it was. But what drew people into the healing arts, to begin with, and yet a system outside of medicine has dictated the way we approach health or disease? That’s sad to me, and I’m excited about conferences like this, summits like this, and people like you who can use your background to help people understand that the M.D. Behind your name are just the initials. What you do with it is what’s powerful. You are taking that to another level. I’m grateful for that. You said, Where did this start for you in your journey? I was I did not know health. I didn’t even know that I didn’t know about health. I know I’ve heard you do podcasts about this as well, but you don’t know how sick you are until you’re well.  It was like, That’s a whole process by itself. Yes, my mom will tell the story that the doctors told her when I was an infant that my pooping once a month was normal because it was my normal; it was my pattern. Right away, we had problems. They started putting me on things like gas sacks and all those types of pills as a baby because I couldn’t digest anything. They tried every formula you can imagine and finally settled on the good old soy formula back in the seventies. That’s why I started bleeding when I was nine years old. That’s why I was diagnosed with endometriosis by the time I was 11. That’s why I had to have cervical dysplasia scraped by the time I was 14. again at 16 as it moved into an early stage. Cervical cancer. That’s why I was diagnosed with ovarian syndrome by the time I was 14. Early stages of rheumatoid arthritis in my late teens, which they thought was initially an injury from a volleyball game. But it turned out that it was much more than that. So for this layer cake effect, it was just the way it was. No one considered that even a disease. I wouldn’t have even known those as diseases in a patient intake form. when I finally landed in the ER after visiting the ER multiple times over many months and being sent home with another script or just patted on the head like you’re just a histrionic teenager. By the time I landed there, my roommate had taken me in because I had lost consciousness. When I got too hot, I had a pulse rate of almost nine; you’re like in the two hundred because my body was trying so hard, but my oxygen levels were in the seventies. I had a belly the size of a nine-month-old pregnant woman. They thought I was pregnant when I came in, but I learned that that was society’s, which was completely hectic. I had a bowel blockage; my organs had shut down. When they finally did the proper testing they should have done months ago, unfortunately, they found that I had end-stage ovarian cancer at 19. To be fair to them, back in 1991, no one was seeing a 19-year-old with stage 4 end-stage ovarian cancer. Sadly, fast forward 32 years, and we see this often, and that’s not something that should say something right there. But I wasn’t even offered a standard of care because they knew that one single treatment would kill me outright because my organs had failed—my kidney in my liver or failure. I also couldn’t have all the fluid pulled right away because it would have killed me from the electrolyte imbalance and the fluid imbalance. After all, I was so sick. Electrolytes are so wonky.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

That fluid that you’re talking about as a side is built up in your abdomen. Yes.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

It’s like fluid where it doesn’t belong. Like, just build the space. It also filled some of my lungs, and it filled the lining around my heart. It was a dangerous time, to put it mildly. They sipped a little bit out, sent me home, sent a little bit out, put me in more pain, and sent a little bit out. Over about two months, I had about eight taps during that time. So they still didn’t expect me to survive. They still didn’t think I was strong enough to even take on chemotherapy. I didn’t even, frankly, have a will to live. I saw cancer as a great murder. You have the opportunity to check out. What it did for me, though, is when they said there was no way it fired up my little tenacious little girl inside of me, that said, don’t tell me what to do. Instead of thinking I was going to cure it, I at least wanted to understand it. I wanted to be able to tell them, like, see, you screwed up. You should have caught this months ago. You should have figured this out. Instead, I’ve been on that journey for now. It’ll be 32 years since the official diagnosis in October 2023, and I am still learning and I’m still showing them. Let me show you how this is. It’s been a wild ride. I mean, I can look back now on you and me, especially where we are in our careers now and especially where we are with medicine and sciences, especially in the cancer world, the metabolic cancer world, and the integrative cancer world. More has happened in the last five years than happened in the previous 27 years collectively. So hindsight now is like, “Oh, it was amazing and a miracle that I had to fast because I had a bowel blockage.” That’s likely one of the first things that saved my life. We can retrospectively look at that. Then we look at the things I started learning because I switched my degree at that time from biology and chemistry as pre-med to psychology and biology as pre-med and created a self-constructed psycho-neuro-immunology. Because I did have the wherewithal to understand the trauma that I come from, I played some role in this. This is at a time in 1991 when the concept of psycho-neuro-immunology was new to the field. and there was still pooh-poohed it, despite Candace Pert,  Bruce Lipton, and Robert Ader’s work.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Like it’s all in your head.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

So that on the head intrigued me, though. I still didn’t give up. I still wanted to understand that. So in that part of my healing, I did a family fast for two years. Not only was I fasting from food for a few months because I couldn’t eat, but I also somehow knew that to survive, I needed to fast from my family of origin. It was a pretty toxic environment, and I needed to remove myself from the soil in which I got sick. So that began my journey, and I said, Well, “God, I’m still here. Now what?” like everything is still here. Now what? Still here, now what? Yes, I feel like I still say that sometimes. I still feel like I woke up, and I’m still here. Now what? Yes. so that. That’s what brings me in front of you and all of your amazing listeners today.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Of course, that is an awesome story. Your now is what took you through many metamorphosis. You landed at what you’re doing now. I didn’t realize at the time when I read your book, which is the year that I got sick, which is 2017, which is, by the grace of God, the year that your book was released. While I don’t believe in any accidents, and I know very well that the reason that I got sick was because I was not on the path that God meant for me and that, as a surgeon, I was able to intervene, But on such a minuscule level, whereas as a functional medicine physician, I can affect millions just like you affected millions. In 2017, when I read your book, I had no idea who wrote the foreword. Oh yes. Fast forward now, and Doctor Kelly Turner of Radical Remission and Radical Hope wrote your forward, and she talks about your radical remission and your recovery against all odds, and she has a quote in there from you that says it’s all about the underlying conditions. She remarks about how you talk about the body as a terrain as if it resembles a garden. It’s such a beautiful metaphor. I like to dig down into that. for you to talk to people about the metabolic approach to cancer, about what you mean by terrain, and how you look at those underlying conditions to help people restore their health, just like you did, because it is possible. It’s not over till it’s over, but it’s certainly not going to get better if you don’t acknowledge those underlying conditions and don’t improve that terrain.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Absolutely.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Can you take us through that?

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Yes. First, I love that, Dr. Kelly, I’ve had this beautiful laboratory. I mean, her book was very good. I loved radical remission. It was so transformational; even though I was well into my journey, it still landed so beautifully, and it became a recommended, even required, reading for so many of the patients I was caring for during that time and continues today. That was a huge honor for her to write on that, and she also picked up from multiple conversations we had. I even got to be part of the co-facilitation of an amazing retreat that she did in upstate New York, and it had to be in her presence to see that she so compassionately leans into this and is such a beacon of hope for so many. It meant the world for her to write about this. But the fact that she picked up on the way I see it and articulated it about it being a garden is just part of how I have processed this in my own life for the last three decades—three-plus decades—that I did not get seduced. This is my process, my journey. I want to acknowledge that everyone has their ways right now and that for me, I never could understand the analogy of this being a war that needed to be waged, that I had to somehow get asked, that I had to like the F cancer mantras and all those things. I never got that. I never got bitten by that bug. I never understood that because somehow, even at the young age of 19, even though I was pre-med and learning a lot of things in my biology, and chemistry, I still knew it was us; it was still our cells; it was still something within us that lost its way.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

So can you elaborate on that a little bit? Because I do think that that is a major issue and a major impediment to a lot of people is that they think they’re waging a war and they don’t realize that they’re fighting themselves and making a bad situation worse with that approach.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Yes. I don’t know if it was the filter that I started going down when I moved my major into the psycho-neuro-immunology world. When I started to understand that our cells are very receptive and responsive to, of course, what we’re putting in and around them, but also our thoughts, That’s when the Molecules of Emotion book, Candace Pert’s book was out, and I was being blown away by that and the Biology of Belief work and Deepak Chopra’s work of Quantum Healing, and my mind was getting all these new neuro pathways of understanding that this is just me and I need to do something about it. If I wage war on it, I only harm myself further. So I had already come from an environment where there was no pain, no gain, and everything was a war. It was all about survival; it was all about trauma. I knew the only way I could change that for myself was to get out of that mindset, to remove myself physically from a war zone, and to put myself emotionally in a safe zone. That was a huge understanding for me and it helped other patients see along the way. But it’s super clear that when we’re under stress, and I know that your previous lecture with Katrina Pho was all about that and the cancer process. When we’re in sympathetic nervous system mode, which is the fight or flight mode, folks very aptly named, we can’t heal, we can’t our physiologic processes cannot be as efficient and effective and cannot be carried out in that state, which means that you might be throwing all the best therapies, the best chemo, the best surgery, the best supplements, the best IV therapies, the best diet, the best lifestyle modifiers. But if you are still in a perpetual state of thinking, this is a battle that needs to be won, but it’s a fight for your life or something along those lines. You’re in fight or flight, which means you can’t even receive the healing being offered to you. Yes, that’s integral, and I see that a lot. People don’t even know where; they’re not even aware of how much that’s playing into their ability to utilize any of the therapies, whether they choose all standards of care, all alternatives, or some beautiful blend of the two. It’s an impossibility to get you where you need to go in that fight or flight stage.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I would agree with that and even go so far as to say that it’s pretty impossible to heal if you’re in that sympathetic mode. You’re just not in a chemical state that allows for it. Because of the processes that are being turned on when you’re in that sympathetic mode, you’re a modern being living on a very old gene code. We only understand a couple of scenarios. Like we understand the need to cross a desert. We understand being nomadic. That’s when our sympathetic modes are turned on because we have to cross a desert, an ocean, or something like that. We understand having to fight off or run away from a saber-tooth tiger, but what we were never meant to do was run away from that tiger for three weeks, three months, or three years. We’re just not built for that. So when we’re in that sympathetic state, know that our blood is all we’re increasing, which is one of the metabolic things that you discuss at length. We’re supplying the blood to the muscles so that we can run away. It’s a very physical state.

But what needs to happen for us to get into that physical state is that we have to cut off other things. So what’s cut off our immune system is cut off. Because if you’re running away from a tiger or don’t need to fight off a cold.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Right.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Your immune system says I’ll deal with that if you get a tiger like I’m going back to sleep; wake me up if we live. Yes, that’s what’s going on. So now we don’t have saber-tooth tigers, but we have cell phones, have difficult relationships, and have things that last way longer than the encounter with the tigers.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

We meet so many more dangerous experiences in our psyche today that are physiologies responding to in the same way as they did to that saber-tooth tiger that is just frankly relentless and it’s compatible with life, much less vitality. I appreciate you underscoring that because it is. It’s such that it’s foundational, along with food or nourishment. It’s very foundational to how someone can thrive or die in this process. So when it comes to terrain, I have to start by explaining what is a terrain. That’s where our entire medical system has been since 1914 when we decided that cancer was a somatic mutation theory of genetic disease, which we’ve disproved over and over by simply exchanging the nuclei of a cancer cell with the nuclei of a healthy cell and replacing them with each other. If this were genetic, you would turn that cancer cell into a healthy cell with the genetic data, and you would turn the healthy cell into a cancer cell with that genetic data. We’ve not heard anything about it. It’s like, What’s the swimming pool? Those cells are hanging out in that, like, what is the terrain of that cell at that level? Some call it the extracellular matrix, and some call it the tumor microenvironment. I call it the terrain, which is adapted from some old discussions or seed soil theories from the 15th and 1600s into Beauchamp theories, into the 1800s and beyond, where people start understanding our bodies as a garden and the practices of Ayurveda and Chinese medicine. They have compared us to our environment, the seasons, the temperatures, and the light, and the dark phases. We’ve had resonance and coherence with the environment around us. I appreciate that you talked about how living in modern times today does not match the genetics of what we all came from to be here. There’s this mismatch, this incoherence, that also creates a level of difficulty in achieving optimal health. So keeping that in mind, that’s been our medical system’s belief that somehow this is a genetic problem, and therefore we’re going to find the gene, and we’re going to attack that particular gene and turn it off or on, depending on what’s needed. That’s been an interesting experiment, but it hasn’t panned out. So a couple of years after that is when I’m going to start to realize that before the gene gets activated or deactivated, there’s something else going on. It’s happening at the mitochondrial metabolic level. So that is, simply put, I like to explain to patients that the cell, the respiratory biochemical process that’s happening within that mitochondria, the little organelle within the cell, basically stops breathing. Okay. You can’t survive if you’re not breathing. Simply put. So that starts to shift the body into a different state. It’s revving up all of those things—that hyperactivity of fight or flight that I need to do because I’m starving. I’m going to take all the resources for myself to the gate. I’m going to stop listening to other signals. I’ve lost my mind. One of my colleagues, a well-known fab new fellow American board of naturopathic oncologists,  calls cancer cells sociopaths. They have no regard for their host or themselves because eventually, they die too. It’s an interesting process. They’re like the ones who just lose all rational thinking. That’s where Dr. Warburg and others think God’s sense starts to come into play. If we go at that fundamental metabolic mitochondrial level and start to help that cell return to respiration, return to breathing, and return to life, then we can slow the process and even reverse the process, or better yet, prevent the process from the beginning. So that’s where our medical system is still geared towards looking at, understanding, and addressing the tumor, which will only get you so far if you are simultaneously asleep addressing the terrain in which that tumor sprouted. So the things that impact you’ve already touched on are some of the biggies of what impacts the terrain health. In my book, I talk about the ten major drivers. Okay, so epigenetics means above the gene. This means this could have been coming from 12 generations up from you that have propensities or potential for certain expressions, but it’s still up to you to express or suppress that information based on your dietary and lifestyle choices. Epigenetics says we’re far more powerful than we were led to believe, and so we can do something about that. That’s still, though, like you might have to work a little bit harder if every single person in your family of origin had this condition. What you’re working with, so you can also know what tools to just change to change those out. To me, it’s helpful. It’s like it’s like astrology reading; for my cells, it’s like, okay, now I understand where I came from, so now I know what to do about it. Now I’m empowered, and I have the personal will to do something about this. That’s pretty empowering to me, and then the second drop is metabolic. that’s that. What are we nourishing ourselves with? We all have evolved again from a very different diet than what we eat today. We were all hunter-gatherers until just a couple thousand, 10,000 years ago, and then we became neo-agriculturists, and we still work hard to grow and raise our food. Then we went into the mid-1800s when we moved into the industrial food revolution, and then things went weird right then. That’s when things we started influencing made an impact on the way we nourish ourselves today, and today we’re overfed and undernourished more than ever before. So that is directly dumping into the mitochondrial respiration chain, and that’s clogging up the work faster than ever. But so is the third one, which is the drop in the bucket of toxicity. I know you talk about this a lot. It’s very difficult to live healthy on an unhealthy planet. Now, it’s no longer if you have toxicity; it’s how bad it is and how it interfaces with your terrain, your blueprint. Then we talk about the microbiome, which, just a couple of years ago, people were still pretending didn’t exist or mean anything. We now understand that certain chemotherapies or checkpoint inhibitors won’t even work well if somebody’s microbiome is not intact or functioning. We spent the last hundred and fifty years monocropping our planet. We’ve also monocropped our GI tract, and that has made us less resilient and responsive. That’s a biggie. then it moves into the immune system, and if you live under a rock, in the last couple of years, we’ve all got to be shown a bright light on how ineffective our immune systems are. Either overzealous, underzealous, or just confused all around. Yes, cancer has multiple signaling pathways, but the immune system is one of the things that keeps it in check when it’s working well. That’s a big one. Inflammation. You mentioned that it’s like we are an inflammation nation living in modern times. Many things inflame the heck out of us, including food, toxicants,  emotions, and all those things. Then we get into oxygenation and blood flow. Like, where and how are you circulating? that’s another big one. If we’re deep-conditioned, we’re causing problems, and if we’re over-conditioned, we’re causing problems. Our extreme athletes are causing just as much damage as our couch potatoes.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, that’s such an important point. I can’t tell you how many people come to me and say, like, I don’t understand how I could have had breast cancer. I am so healthy. I’m a marathon runner. I’m like, you’re like me.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

You’re like, well, you nailed it earlier. You said, like, when you’re in that place, your body still thinks you’re running from a sabertooth tiger about five kilometers away. If you’re alive, all of the cortisol, the adrenaline, and the estrogen—it just picks up everything. Cortisol and insulin all go up. Estrogen is not the way you want them to be because they’re trying to grow more muscle mass. It’s like everything gets activated. You can run longer and faster from that saber-tooth tiger, and then you crash. It suppresses the immune system. It creates oxidative stress and inflammation. I mean, it is the worst possible scenario. I cringe. I mean this because I’m sure you bet. Listeners here when they’re like, “I just ran my marathon after ringing the bell, finishing my radiation,” and I’m thinking, “Oh, I don’t ever wish this on anyone, but I don’t I know I’m going to be seeing you again soon.” Like, it’s just the way. It’s just a natural progression.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, you’re spending your life running from a saber-tooth tiger, and you’re going to do that at the expense of something else. But I mean, even running for more than an hour has profound effects on the microbiome. We know that.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Yes, that’s those are some very compelling studies to see to see that. It’s just incredible to put yourself on a glucose monitor, get yourself on an HRV, and see what overtraining does to your body just as much as undertraining. You look like the same person. It’s like being cut from the same cloth of how dysregulated the whole process is, and sometimes the hardest like it seems like people think it’s going to be harder to get somebody up off the couch. It’s harder to get them back onto the couch. You have a literal, like a big, good one. Yes. I’m like, How celebratory is it to go out and run the marathon? There’s so much camaraderie and tribal culture and accomplishments and accolades around it. What if you told them it’s like you just went and smoked 12 packs of cigarettes and drank a fifth of vodka? They think you are crazy, but Emissary doesn’t know the difference.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I know. It defies logic, which is why people take so much exception to it.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Yes, that’s big. so that goes into that level of that. Then we talk about things like hormone modulation. I mean, if you’re already airborne, you’ve got some hiccups in your epigenetics of the hormones you’re already having problems with; you’re dealing with your endogenous hormones, but then let’s take us and dip us like a chocolate-dipped banana into the swimming pool of exogenous xenoestrogen toxicity.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It’s happening every day, all day. and the amount of greenwashing that’s happening—people who want to do the right thing are unknowingly doing the wrong thing over and over again.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Pain. You’re so right about that. It’s tough because we’re looking at, I mean, like I said, I went back in the late seventies and early eighties, when I was put on birth control pills at 11 years old. That was completely abnormal. But today, it’s not abnormal to see a nine-year-old on birth control pills. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It’s happening all the time.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

I’m one of our oncologists who joined my training program. He did so. He was trying to retire until we ended up sharing a few patients with stage four ovarian cancer, all under the age of ten. That’s when he’s like, I can’t stop yet. This is ridiculous. This is awful. That’s when it’s like, we aren’t asking the right questions. We aren’t exploring the right things. We’re not evaluating for these things. It’s like we have. You nailed it with a circadian rhythm and stress response; that one falls into one big drop in the bucket, which means we could do an entire episode on that. Then the final one is the mental-emotional piece. Those ten drops will make or break the health and wealth of your soil, the health and wealth of your mitochondria, and then make you resilient to disease process, and prevention of disease processes that also give you the fortification you need to help bring harmony, balance, and homeostasis back into your system, reconnect those communications that were lost and help those cells realize you’re part of a healthy tribe. You’re not part of an outlier tribe anymore. Bring them back into balance. then that’s also what’s required to help keep you there. After the journey of ringing the bell or whatever is over, that’s just the beginning. I tell people that when you ring that bell at the end of chemotherapy and radiation, that is not the end of your journey. That’s the beginning of your journey.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

So that’s where I come across as maybe provocative or scary sometimes to people. But we, I remember 20, 25 years ago—you remember this? At some point, they used to say all moderation, including moderation. We don’t have that anymore. It doesn’t exist. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I don’t even like that because when people say moderation is key, I say,  Are you going to be a moderate heroin user? I mean, like, where do you draw the line? Where does the moderation not apply? Because people don’t realize. But we have so many, like modern-day heroines, that we hide in there.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

You’ve nailed it. It’s like the dopamine impact. The dopamine impact of your social media, like the dopamine impact of each time you taste that sweetness of something that you ingest, the dopamine impact of your exercise routine that gives you that hit, the dopamine impact of that shopping, like all of those things, it’s impacting the same. It is the heroin mindset. We are impacting that over and over, and yet we’re also in a crisis of times where our longevity in the United States is dipping every year while the rest of the world is improving or stabilizing. We are in our fourth or fifth year in a row now. Longevity is going down thanks to suicide—an opiate overdose. We’re just passing one around. It’s like when the world gets overwhelming, your dopamine and serotonin are going to be off-kilter. You’re not going to have the rational thought to be self-preserving for your life. That also means in risky behaviors you take in all kinds of things, be it jumping out of airplanes,  going on a bender in Vegas, or whatever it is. If people think that it’s like just putting a gun against your head, But it’s so many of these places where we’re trying to up the dopamine stakes every single time that it’s, I mean, like porn addiction is a good example. People can’t even have a connection anymore because the dopamine is so high. changed because of just watching that for a moment that it changes the way your brain can even connect with another. It’s like, Oh my goodness, we’ve come far from what we were wired to be on this planet.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It’s so sad. I want to go back to two things that you said because they’re important for people to understand. First of all, you talked about us being overfed and undernourished, and so many people don’t understand what that means: that we have an obesity epidemic, and people don’t understand that connection because we are overeating. After all, our diet is so devoid of nutrients, and it’s just your body craving out more and more and more. We don’t recognize that we have an epidemic of undernourishment, but that’s happening, isn’t it?

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

It is. There are so many reasons as to why. I mean, the regenerative agriculture community could just riff on what’s happened to our soil. You have to eat like three times the amount of vegetables today just to get the same nourishment you got from those same vegetables 50 years ago. That’s one deficit. Our soil has lost all of its minerals. I mean, our nervous system is dependent on magnesium, and yet 80% of the population is magnesium deficient. That’s thanks to the loss of our topsoil and these other pieces. We also talked again about monocropping, and we’ve monoculture to the point where we’ve lived on some of these grains over time. But we’ve changed the nature of the grains. We’ve changed the nature of the legume, wheat.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

You talk about what that means because I’m not sure everyone understands what monocropping is.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

As we went before, like before the 1850s, we had thousands of varieties of vegetables, grains, legumes, and fruits that were planted all over this planet. Then, over time, we started to lessen and lessen that number as we started to simplify and try to get more, get more, get more out of the crop, and things like that. We started to push in that direction, but after World War II, it changed. That’s when we realized that food was a commodity, not nourishment. So it changed from being something you all had—a garden, a liberty garden, and everything. For all those years, everyone raised their food too suddenly. Now you depend on somebody to feed you the big farmers out there. What they did was that, because of the Cold War and some things coming out of World War II, we started to focus our attention because we were no longer getting our grain, our wheat, specifically from Russia. We had to grow something fast. Then we had to replace it quickly. We paid and subsidized farmers to stop growing all those other varieties to grow this fast turnover, higher gluten-content wheat that had never existed here. We started to subsidize farmers to grow more corn, soybeans, and oats. that we could start to feed ourselves with that and not depend on other countries to feed us. We paid them to stop growing the things they’ve been growing for generations. In doing so, part of how our planet thrives is the rotation of crops and the resting of crops. So the over-planting, the over-tilling, the destruction of the microbiome of the planet, and those little microbes rising out of the planet, which is like the Internet of the planet, caused all types of other problems to go awry. Because of that, the soil became sick and became more susceptible to disease. Does this sound familiar to me? So then we’re like, Oh, the cure for that is we’ll take all the leftover chemicals from World War Two and we’ll turn them into fertilizer to help grow those plants that are now sickly faster. We’ll start to make chemicals like pesticides, organophosphates, and things like chemotherapy that turned into what we are now, like war and chemical warfare, that we then turn into chemotherapy and products to put in our agriculture. That’s a good recycling program. 

Then that didn’t pan out; after a few decades, the land and the critters got wise to that, and then they had to start bringing in heavier-hitting artillery. That’s when you start to get the glyphosate that started coming out in the sixties and seventies and became so ubiquitous in our soil in the eighties. then the GMO crops, and then the GMO-ready crops. It’s like everything. It’s like we come up with another chemical to clean up the mess we made with the previous chemical. Yes, it sounds familiar. Yes. This is our agriculture system, and our, quote, unquote, health care system is in the same bed together, so there is no impetus to change that out. So there’s all this undercurrent. In the agricultural world, they’re organic, regenerative farmers, and in our world, they’re functional naturopathic doctors like we’re doing. We’re coming in quietly, literally grassroots movements, and literally for that, trying to restore the health of the soil outside of our body, to restore the health of the soil within our body. Therein lies the problem: all those chemicals jam up our communication systems within ourselves, within our terrain, within our hormone signaling pathways, and they make us hungrier because we’re malnourished. They also make us hungry because they’re pushing on dopamine. They also jam up signaling pathways because now we’re like, I’m up late because I’m working late in front of a computer screen, so I’m eating pizza at three a.m. because I can, and all the things we’re away from during our normal fasting and feasting times of the year are further away from seasons and rhythms. Most people don’t even know when the sun rises or sets or when a full moon or a new moon is like that. That’s the crazy part Americans spend less than 15 minutes outdoors on.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

We’ve become so detached from nature.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

This means we’re detached from our nature, which also means that when we finally get sick, because it’s inevitable, the illness is the messenger. It’s an opportunity to help restore you to what you were meant to be. Wow. That’s the piece here. There’s an opportunity in that diagnosis, but not everybody will heed that call.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, I love that. It’s an opportunity to restore you. I do want to go over it; I have a quote. When the mitochondria in a cell fail, cancer follows. So few people understand what mitochondria are and what they do. I know that you’ve sprinkled it throughout the talk today, but it’s still like that thing that evades people. But that quote says it all. Can you expand on that so that it’s tangible for people?

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Now, we all remember learning about it, like sixth-grade biology at the mighty mitochondria, the little ATP factories. That’s all any of us were ever taught. Even today, through undergrad and graduate school and medical school, that’s still all that’s being taught. Yet outside of that, in the laboratory environments, into the research environments, we understand the mitochondria are far more sophisticated than that. How much do we invest in longevity medicine, especially in the functional medicine community, which is all about longevity? The Biohacker committees are all about longevity. The funny thing is, I don’t even know if they recognized that at the crux of your longevity is the health and wealth of your mitochondria. Your mitochondria are your fountain of youth. So at that point, they are what signals the cells that are broken, destroyed, tired, or defunct. They sell them to die. It’s like your time. Next, move on. Let’s bring in something fresh. Their job. Your. You don’t have apoptosis. You don’t take out the garbage if you don’t have functioning mitochondria. That’s a pretty profound piece. The mitochondria are also understood to be these beautiful, like signaling, like they take in all the information they take in light, they’re taking in sound, and they’re taking in food, water, soil, and air organisms. But they’re also taking in toxins and pharmaceuticals. They’re taking it in rage. They’re taking in screen time; they’re taking that all in. They’re like putting it through their platform; they’re saying, “Okay, I put this information in, and because all of us have the particular blueprint of our mitochondrial expression,” some of us might be more efficient and effective at sorting out that material, separating the turbid from the clear. Others may not have as many skills in that area. Maybe they’re how to put it all in. It comes down to things like fibromyalgia. Those types of patterns are like garbage. That’s such a classic example. I just knew how to take out that garbage. then I people change it through so quickly that you would never even know, like my husband could huf diesel and be like, That was great, like, we just didn’t faze him. It gives me a wicked headache. We all have a little bit of a different threshold for how we deal with that. But they’re the ones taking in the information. Then they translate that information, and then they send the signals out to the body. They are the Wizards of Oz. They’re telling everybody they’re happening behind the curtain, and they’re making everything happen around you. It’s happening constantly, without your awareness. You can place your awareness on them, and they will heed that as well. They will take that information and utilize it to help them process it even more effectively and efficiently.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

The other thing that you talked about is that, as we talked about a little bit, why do mitochondria fail? Several things can end up adversely affecting your mitochondria. Though cancer is one manifestation, there are often other manifestations along the way. What I’m talking about is that the traditional medical system doesn’t acknowledge you until you’ve failed.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Because then we’re in trouble.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

What are the kinds of things that people can say to themselves to know, like, “Oh, I’m on the wrong path. I’m on the wrong road.” Like, how do you know that your mitochondria are failing?

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Love this. Well, if you have been diagnosed with cancer, that’s one. If you have Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, autism, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, or any autoimmune condition, you have some problems with your mitochondrial function. Those labels for chronic illnesses are typical of mitochondrial dysfunction. There are many mitochondrial diseases, but those are very rare, and those are known to be in newborns.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

All these things that people like to associate with bad blocks are mitochondrial. This is a mitochondrial failure that, by and large, can be reversed. You have to pay attention to those things that we talked about. I know I have limited time with you. I do want to summarize that what was true for you is usually true for other people. This is a layer cake effect. It’s not one thing. It’s a number of these things layering on top of each other that end up as some major diagnoses. These signs are there. You can notice them if you are awake and paying attention. If your doctor is not acknowledging these things, it’s time to look for another doctor, because you shouldn’t let it get to the point where you’ve failed. If you’ve had a cancer diagnosis before unless you deal with this layer cake that you discussed there, what is stopping it from coming back again? We do have to restore ourselves to health and the attitude that, when you were told that there’s nothing to do you talk on, let me show you attitude. That is the attitude that all of us need to adopt. We all need to be in that. Let me show you. Because health can happen no matter where you are. Health can happen. You said that fasting saved your lives. I love that. We all need to take a page out of our children’s books because they’re sick. What did they do? They don’t want to eat. We try to force feed them, and they’re like, No, I don’t want it. Left-gasping is such a huge part of healing. I know you go into more of that in your book. The role that trauma plays is because it played a significant role for you, as it does for so many women on this journey. Part of your fasting was a family fast, and maybe for someone else it’s not a family member, but it is some toxic relationship because these can have the same impact on you as these things that are not invisible. That is an invisible toxin. That is just as toxic. Your attitude is that I’m still here now. What? That is a lesson that we all need to adopt. Every single day, we have the opportunity to do more to heal and improve because we’re still here. Every day you’re still here is an opportunity to do more. We talked about the seed, the soil, and the terrain, and we talked about how when the mitochondria in the cell fail, cancer follows. So this is about mitochondrial health. We talked about your ten terrain factors and what not to do after you ring the bell.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Don’t get complacent.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, I’m a marathon runner because, overconditioning and underconditioning, are equally bad and will cause problems in the mitochondria and the microbiome. Cancer is a metabolic disease, which is why you wrote the metabolic approach to cancer. It is required reading for anyone with a chronic disease. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t have to specifically be about cancer because the things that you’re talking about apply to anyone with a chronic disease.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Thank you. I’m going to hire you as one person because you nailed it. What a beautiful synopsis! I am so grateful to you and all you do, and I am so grateful to see you thriving. Your mitochondria are doing your happy dance right now with everything that you’re doing, and you continue to inspire this as well as inspire hope and empowerment in those who follow you. grateful to you and grateful to all of your listeners. I look forward to hearing other people’s stories along this journey. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I have to say that the best thing about doing a summit is getting to hear everyone’s stories because they are so inspiring. Yours is among the best stuff, for sure. I am so excited and honored that you came to spend time with me today. It was such a pleasure to meet you, and I can’t wait for our next meeting when I get to meet you in person and give you a big hug.

Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO, LAc, DiplOM

Back at you sister. Thanks so much for everything. All the best to everyone. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

This is Dr. Jenn. Bye for now.