Pursuing health without the dogma for a mind wide open
But first, “you must unlearn what you have learned” YODA
Traditional cancer treatment relies on chemotherapy, surgery and radiation and while these can be helpful, it’s also possible to support the fight against cancer at a cellular level according to Dr Winters.
In this episode, she talks about her Optimal Terrain Ten Protocol which addresses the physiological and emotional elements that require balance and optimization in order to halt and prevent the cancer process.
This necessitates optimizing cellular metabolic health using lower carb or ketogenic diets to help your body’s cells’ energy metabolism, as well as addressing the ten hallmarks of cancer which Dr Winters covers in this episode as well as her book.
Meet Nasha Winters, ND
Dr. Nasha Winters, ND, FABNO has been on a personal journey with cancer for the last 27 years. Her quest to save her own life has transformed into a mission to support others on a similar journey.
Dr. Nasha travels the world to explore integrative cancer clinics, vet cancer protocols for research projects, speak at conferences, and meet with colleagues to help them apply metabolic approaches with their patients.
At the age of 19, she was diagnosed with end-stage ovarian cancer and given 3-6 months to live. Crippled with pain, nausea, infections, malnourishment, and muscle wasting, she was uninsured and out of options. But she was also young, naïve, and stubborn. It was up to her to dig deep and find hope. The diagnosis of terminal cancer suddenly shook her awake.
The 27 years since that diagnosis have unfolded as a journey that she continues to this day. What began as a pursuit to heal her own body has evolved into a global mission to transform cancer care.
Connect with Dr. Winters
About her book
The Metabolic Approach to Cancer
The Optimal Terrain Ten Protocol to Reboot Cellular Health
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, cancer rates have increased exponentially—now affecting almost 50 percent of the American population. Conventional treatment continues to rely on chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation to attack cancer cells.
Yet research has repeatedly shown that 95 percent of cancer cases are directly linked to diet and lifestyle. The Metabolic Approach to Cancer is the book we have been waiting for—it offers an innovative, metabolic-focused nutrition protocol that actually works. Naturopathic, integrative oncologist and cancer survivor Dr. Nasha Winters and nutrition therapist Jess Higgins Kelley have identified the ten key elements of a person’s “terrain” (think of it as a topographical map of our body) that are crucial to preventing and managing cancer.
Each of the terrain ten elements—including epigenetics, the microbiome, the immune system, toxin exposures, and blood sugar balance—is illuminated as it relates to the cancer process, then given a heavily researched and tested, non-toxic and metabolic, focused nutrition prescription.
The metabolic theory of cancer—that cancer is fueled by high carbohydrate diets, not “bad” genetics—was introduced by Nobel Prize-laureate and scientist Otto Warburg in 1931. It has been largely disregarded by conventional oncology ever since. But this theory is resurging as a result of research showing incredible clinical outcomes when cancer cells are deprived of their primary fuel source (glucose).
The ketogenic diet—which relies on the body’s production of ketones as fuel—is the centerpiece of The Metabolic Approach to Cancer. Further, Winters and Kelley explain how to harness the anticancer potential of phytonutrients abundant in low-glycemic plant and animal foods to address the 10 hallmarks of cancer—an approach Western medicine does with drug based therapies.
Their optimized, genetically-tuned diet shuns grains, legumes, sugar, genetically modified foods, pesticides, and synthetic ingredients while emphasizing whole, wild, local, organic, fermented, heirloom, and low-glycemic foods and herbs.
Other components of their approach include harm-reductive herbal therapies like mistletoe (considered the original immunotherapy and common in European cancer care centers) and cannabinoids (which shrink tumors and increase quality of life, yet are illegal in more than half of the United States).
Through addressing the ten root causes of cancer and approaching the disease from a nutrition-focused standpoint, we can slow cancer’s endemic spread and live optimized lives.
Buy her book: The Metabolic Approach to Cancer from her website, on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, Chapters Indigo and Barnes and Noble.
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Doug Cook RDN is a Toronto based integrative and functional nutritionist and dietitian with a focus on brain and mental health and antiaging nutrition. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.