Episode 202: She Healed Breast Cancer Naturally and Now Helps Others Thrive ft. Katrina Foe

TRANSCRIPT

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Alopecia Angel Podcast. I’m Johanna Dahlman your host, and today I have a very special guest with me. Her name is Katrina Foe, she became a functional practitioner after getting her own breast cancer into remission 100% naturally. She is a board certified holistic nutrition and has been in the health field since she opened her Pilates studio at the age of 24. She also homeschooled her 7 children while writing her international bestseller Nutritional Pilates. Katrina currently focuses on helping women with cancer discover why they have cancer so they can learn how to live without fear.

Please welcome Katrina foe to the show. I’m very excited to talk about women’s health, and breast cancer is something that we are well aware of, but maybe don’t know the latest and greatest research on it, about the conflicting information about diets and so much more. We talk about at great length so many things that we can do and how we can be on preventative and how we can be proactive in our quest to be disease free, alopecia free, and cancer free. I am very excited to speak with her and to show case her discussion with me.

And also I wanted to go ahead and remind you that if you haven’t already, go ahead and apply for the scholarship for the Hair N’ Heal program because the scholarship will end on November 30th, so you have until November 30th to submit your application for the free scholarship to enter and gain access to the Hair N’ Heal program for free. This is over a $5,000 value so that you can have one-on-one support with me and so much more. I look forward to reviewing the applications and announcing the winner. Here’s our conversation with Katrina Foe. Thank you so much.

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Johanna: Welcome. How’s it going, Katrina?

Katrina: Oh, it’s going wonderful, Johanna.

Johanna: I’m so excited to have you here on the podcast, so thank you. Breast cancer has been something that I’ve been, coming across more and more. So let’s begin with your own story. I would love to hear the day you were diagnosed, what this looked like. Paint us a picture of who you are, what happened, and how you got to who you are today.

Katrina: For me, I was nursing my 5th child. I had a mastitis plugged duct, did my little routine and when it cleared up. I realized like there’s still a golf ball size lump and I’m not a super well endowed woman. That’s still there. I was a little, confused, concerned, but not terribly, cause I was young. I was 37 at the time, I was super healthy, so I thought, I exercised, I ate well. We had already cut out all the chemicals and done all the stuff. And then my mom was concerned. She mentioned my grandma had a double mastectomy, which I had never known, which is a whole another separate weird issue. She really pressured me to look into it. When I did it, it turned out it was cancer.

I just put everything back that I thought I knew on the table because clearly something I was doing. Was not working for me. And this is the first thing that I would say for people that have a diagnosis or whatever, use it as an impetus to reexamine what you’re doing because you may be missing something. I clearly was. And so I just started looking at everything without a bias, like both sides of the diet issue. What can I do? I had already had some food as medicine experiences that were rather profound. I really wanted to go natural, that’s not to say that’s the only way to cut this pie. And now as a practitioner, I very much validate there’s a time and a place for standard of care.

So what I did first, I went down to Mexico. I went to a cancer clinic there, and I had a lot of questions. I’d read the books on their material and a lot of the stuff I was reading, it wasn’t fully explained. And so I was asking some follow-up questions and by the third day, the director sat me down and he said, my staff’s been telling me that you’ve been asking a lot of questions, and I really think you just need to talk trust in the process. And I was just floored because, I was going to alternative stuff because I wanted extra support, I wanted to get my questions answered, and I thought that I would get that. I told him something along the lines of, this is a big deal. I have cancer and I really wanna understand this. I just do better when I understand something I’m more compliant.

He looked at me and just said: I think this isn’t the place for you then. So yeah, I know he sent me home. And it’s a funny story now, but it wasn’t funny then I was just like, the floor had dropped out. I had no idea where I was gonna go. It was a good turning point to really reexamine things. And one thing led to another, and I was introduced to functional medicine by a friend. And it just made sense to me let’s look at what things can cause cancer in the research and then let’s test you for them. I had never tested anything, beyond the tests they do for like life insurance and such like that. So this was really interesting. And sure enough, when I got all my tests back and went over them with my practitioner, like there were some major things off that I had no symptoms for, I had no idea were issues. I never would’ve thought to test them.

For example, I was taking vitamin D had been. I have genetic issues making vitamin D from sunlight and activating it from supplements. My vitamin D was in the toilet, even though I’d been taking it. I had never tested. So through this process, it really opened my eyes and I got a lot of questions answered. I really learned how to own my stuff and take care of myself because I’m a unique person, all of us are. And it led me to wanting to dig in further to even become a practitioner. That’s where I just get so excited helping

other people, understand why this happened, because what I find more and more is that there’s a large portion of, young women getting cancer, which is horrifying. And they’re not okay with just saying: It’s by chance kind of thing.

Johanna: Yeah. So it was today or yesterday where I saw something where. It was saying that mammograms create more radiation and mammograms are not the way to prevent or to even, diagnose or it’s not the way that we should be using this tool at all. And what alternative would you give to the mammogram? Are you in agreement with this statement or do you, have more to share?

Katrina: So this is a big can of worms. Mammograms use radiation, radiation causes cancer. It’s known in the research that the more mammograms women have, the more likely they are to get cancer. These are direct correlations and yet this is the first line of what our standard of care requires and encourages women to be getting regularly. It doesn’t make any sense to me. It may surprise you I’ve never had a mammogram because there are frankly better ways to detect cancer and to look for things.

Yes, there’s functional medicine, there’s functional testing to see what’s driving the cancer, but is this even an issue getting a diagnosis? There are scans that are non- toxic. No radiation, no contrast eye that are out there. Our oncologists aren’t using them They’re very high def and very good FDA approved things. There’s thermograms are great, they can’t actually give you a diagnosis, but they can see if there’s something wrong. Now for me that wasn’t really a great option because like I said, I was nursing at the time, so everything would’ve shown up hot anyways. And, there’s also CTC scan or CTC, tests.

So those are circulating tumor cells, otherwise known as blood biopsies, non-invasive, no negative effects. It is just taking a blood draw and they can see what type of cancer, and if it is cancer. To me, this is like a total mic drop. Like why aren’t we using this? The big difference is that, and I tell clients this all the time, if you wanna use this technology, you have to not want to play the standard of care game. Because if you want any part of standard care, and a lot of women do, there’s nothing wrong with that. You have to go through mammogram, ultrasound, biopsy, period. You have no choice. They will not play with you if you don’t.

But if you know you want to play outside the system like I did. You have other options, or if you are post standard of care and you are learning about some of this stuff and you want to maybe not keep doing mammograms ongoing, you can choose other things and there’s a lot of great stuff. And again, this was over 10 years ago that this technology was out there. This is not new.

Johanna: So what would you recommend for somebody who is young and wants to get tested and how often should we get tested even if there’s, let’s say no gene makeup for it, or it’s not in the family, but just out of preventative measures? I sit here with a bunch of kits on my desk because I’m very much proactive and preventative. So at what point should we do this and who do we get this from?

Katrina: This is a fantastic question because you’re looking at it proactively preventatively, and that’s the ideal way to do it. Now, most people need the pain of having a diagnosis, unfortunately, to do this. It just depends on what question you wanna answer. I can’t say that enough to my clients because it’s not a do this every 6 months it’s: why are you doing it? What are you wanting to learn from the test? And that’s gonna dictate what test is best. So for somebody that’s looking proactively. Genetics, yeah, there’s BRCA and stuff, but not everyone that has BRCA gets cancer, not everyone that has cancer by a long shot has BRCA. That’s not telling you any actionable information.

I actually didn’t get BRCA tested because I didn’t wanna know, it’s not gonna affect anything that I do. It’s a false sense of that’s why it happened. When that’s not the whole picture, it’s never one thing. There’s usually 7 or 8 things.

Johanna: That’s what I always say too with alopecia, it’s never one thing. Everyone thinks it’s one thing and I’m like, no, there’s so many pieces to this puzzle.

Katrina: Yeah, we want it to be one thing. It’d be super cool if we could just have a super cheap pill, take it and magic, poof, it’s all gone, right? Oh, and hey, let’s make it covered by insurance. It does not exist. And the quicker people can get, like that mind shift of it doesn’t exist, the quicker they can get to the work of doing the real work. A lot of the tests that I use are probably tests that you use because the clients that have issues, whether it’s alopecia, infertility just thinning hair, any of those things, those are signs that your body is telling you there’s something wrong. I actually feel like people that have those kind of issues are blessed because their body is saying: do something, do it now, before they get to where I was, where I had cancer, my body wasn’t yelling at me with those things.

So things like looking at stool tests, autoimmune panels and the blood work, thyroid markers, liver markers, viral markers like Epstein-Barr, vitamin D levels. Also looking at things like hormones. So looking at a Dutch test where you can see how the estrogens are getting out and your cortisol levels, looking at your toxins. This is a big one, this is probably the area with cancer that I think is most overlooked. Mold, chemicals, heavy metals, and then genetics.

So like with the toxins, I’m gonna go back to that one. There’s like a million detoxes. They’re all over the place. Most of my clients have come doing some kind of detox already, whether they’re doing ivermectin, which like parasites or they’re doing some kind of juice cleanses, or they’re doing some like bottle like 30 days something basically. I think they’re all pretty garbage, but it’s easy. It’s a magic pill. People think they’re gonna fix it with that and it’s not because if you don’t stop the inflow of the toxins, figure out where it came from, what are you dealing with, and stop that. It doesn’t matter if you get it out because as coming right back in as fast as you can get it out.

When I talk about genetics, I’m not talking about BRCA I’m talking about things that we can do something about. So the low penetrance genes, and I’m sure you talk about this on your show with your clients and everything. With things like MTHFR and methylation, like I mentioned, the fat soluble vitamin creation pathways, insulin and glucose regulation pathways, things that you can do stuff about. And there’s many of these detox pathways are a huge thing with cancer. And these are known to drive, like I suck at detox. So that tells me, am I doomed to have cancer again? No. It means that I am empowered to understand I need to keep my eye on my detox. Not only what comes in, but how well I get it out. And that’s just something I need to work on because that’s my weak leap. And it’s nice to know that

Johanna: It is, and it’s a huge investment too. All this information doesn’t come just out of nowhere. No regular doctor’s gonna give you this big file. Like this is everything that we’ve garnered over your whole life. Because they’re not doing that. This is something that takes time, energy, resources to get to the bottom of, and then to be proactive about and to continue with. In many ways it’s the same situation if you had any diagnosis, whether it’s diabetes, cancer, hair loss, or anything else, it’s just, it’s a matter of being proactive and being consistent with the approach in order to see life term results.

Katrina: Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of it’s taking responsibility and ownership, not in a shame and blame and guilt kind of way. There’s no, no need for any of that. I wanna be empowered and understand why this happened, what I need to do, what I need to understand about creating a path for my life. You’re not gonna be perfect. It’s not possible. And our environment is so messed up that we need to pick our battles and know ourselves. And frankly, like there’s no practitioner, no matter how wonderful they are, that is gonna love and know you better than you.

And so when we can get empowered and really understand what do our tests say? What does that mean? How do I implement this stuff? Then we can all be our best advocates for ourself. Whether we’re going to a medical practitioner or a functional practitioner or anything. That’s where the real power comes in.

Johanna: I hear you on that. You had mentioned earlier that there was a connection between autoimmunity and cancer. Can you expand on that?

Katrina: Absolutely, yeah. When I get clients that usually already have a diagnosis, coming to me, one of the things I’m looking for in their huge blood panel, amongst other testing like I mentioned, is they’re an autoimmunity presence. Hashimoto’s, because with cancer, you’ve got the immune system. Everyone has an immune system, it’s already designed and programmed to deal with cancer cells. It goes out there as natural killer cells. It should see cancer cells, which most of us have running around our bloodstream all the time. That sounds weird to think of, but we have cancer cells and that’s not the problem. The problem is why didn’t our immune system take care of it?

What was like blocking or distracting or messing up our immune system so that it couldn’t deal with it. And the cool thing is our bodies are so well made that there’s backup systems for a backup system. So it’s not just: Oh, I have autoimmune now I’m gonna get cancer. It’s: I have autoimmune and maybe a hypothyroid and insulin resistance and estrogen dominance and toxic mold and an emotional trauma. And there’s 7 or 8 things. But looking at the immune system like I mentioned, looking at the viral load, looking at the pathogens, looking at the autoimmune, looking at the vitamin D status, looking at, the overall inflammation load. All of those are gonna be so critical with looking at and addressing somebody with cancer. If you really wanna get in at the root level of why this happened.

Johanna: Exactly, I hear you on that. Because the standard of care it’s below subpar, generic in my eyes and how they deal with situations, with diseases, and even trying to get you towards the healing. I never understood. I’ve had many family members go through cancer and I’ve never understood why with cancer the only option was more radiation or the only option was more chemo and more chemo. And you saw this person, wither away into nothing. And clearly it’s not working, it’s not helping. And it’s just like, why are we doing this if, the definition of insanity is trying to do the same thing over and not get any different results. It’s only making it worse.

Katrina: A really good question around it. ’cause this gets to the root. There’s, a lot of indoctrination as we grew up, of what you should do when you have cancer. If you watch TV and listen to things that are out there, it’s very clear. That is the only choice, which is not true. And then when you go to the oncologist, there are not all of them but there’s a lot of urgency and bullying. And I’ve had so many horror stories I’ve heard from clients, so they’ll say things that are just flat lies. If you do something natural, you’ll die in 3 months. They’re making that up, there’s no research on that. There couldn’t be, but they’re looking at this very differently.

Because the standard of care, the way they’re trained mindset wise in medical school is make the symptoms go away. That is what the insurance will pay for. They are not looking for the cause. If I could just get, I have had so many clients that are like, I took this to my doctor, my oncologist, and he said, that’s not possible to find the cause. And I’m like, it is, they’re not looking and they’re not trained. They don’t know the test to run, they don’t know how to interpret the test, they don’t know what to do about the test. And they’re not trained in herbs or nutrition or any of this stuff that you need in order to deal with the root causes. And that’s fine, it’s not that they’re bad people. Their road, their lane is surgery, drugs, that’s it. Diagnostics.

You need a nutritionist that’s trained in nutrition. You need an herbalist that’s trained in herbs. You need a functional medicine practitioner that is trained in functional medicine and the testing. The doctor doesn’t know all of it. And it’s weird that we have these, and it’s not you or me, but I know I tend to still default this way even though I know this so well because that’s what we’re like, that’s our framework as we grow up of doctors know everything.

Johanna: It’s true, it’s so true. So what are the most overlooked causes of cancer?

Katrina: I think the biggest one is the mold. The mold. People are not talking about practitioners, even if they know this, they don’t test it. I have the blessing in my practice, the way I have it set up. Everyone gets the testing and I’m only working with cancer clients, so I see this really clearly. I’ve only had two clients that don’t have like toxic levels of mold, like the kinds that when I call the lab, they’re like: Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen this high levels of mold, but they have no symptoms. They have cancer, cancer is their symptom.

This is interesting ’cause when we talk about real estate. Most states, you can’t legally sell a house if you know that there is mold because we know it’s bad, for the health. But if somebody has cancer, we don’t test them to see if that’s an issue and they do their standard care. No evidence of disease, they’re still in the house, the mold is still coming in. Why wouldn’t they get cancer again? It seems like this myth or confusion of my aunt had cancer and then it came back and it was 5 years later, but this other lady friend of mine had cancer and it didn’t come back for 20 years, but mine came back one year later. What’s the difference? This stuff is the difference.

If you dig in, it always makes sense. Oh, they moved out of the mold, they did this, you just have to do the detective work. And it’s like you said, it’s not necessarily easy, you have to find the right practitioners, ask the right questions, get the right tests. The other big one, there’s 10 areas, but the other big one is probably not talked about the most is emotional trauma. This was a huge one for me. There’s a lot of really great evidence and research coming on there, but we don’t talk about in the medical space as much, which I think will filter over, but it’s going to take a while.

What I see, and this is not just me, about a year prior to a cancer diagnosis, there’s usually something, and this looks wildly different, so I’ll give you some examples. I’ve had clients that have lost a loved one, even a dog. There, there was one lady who it was almost like a child to her, and the way the dog passed it was her fault. So there was a lot of, crescendo to an abusive relationship, a physical, like trauma accident. It can be anything that really is traumatizing emotionally to the person. Along with other areas like hypothyroidism, or, some autoimmune or some blood sugar dysregulation. That’s where we get this perfect storm where the immune system’s overwhelmed and it can’t do what it’s supposed to.

Johanna: So if you were to say to somebody how to prevent cancer, what would be your top 5 tips?

Katrina: First off, do the testing because you’ll see this stuff come out ahead of time. And it’s just a matter of the things, the test I’m looking at, and probably the test you’re looking at as well, are general health and it’ll go off into cancer for one person, heart disease for another, infertility for another. They’re all seeable ahead of time, you can see it coming. And that’s where we have a lot of power. But low hanging fruit wise, I would say stay away from the seed oils. They’re so toxic and inflammatory and most people

are not looking at the salad dressings. I know when women come into me: They’re like: Oh, it’s okay. I always go out to eat and I have a salad with some meat on it, and it’s super healthy. I’m like: And you’re pouring canola oil all over it.

I don’t know why there’s a disconnect, but there’s no restaurants I’ve found that are using things like avocado or olive oil, unless it’s just plain olive oil and balsamic vinegar, which is disgusting to me. But we really want high quality oils in our bodies. That’s gonna a huge inflammatory thing. I would also say the carb load. Most Americans are eating obscene amounts of carbs, whether it’s healthy carbs or not. It’s just a lot. And the healthy refined sugars, refined flours, AP flour, the white flour, those are the worst offenders. And then third I would say is all the chemicals. So whether it’s, red dye, whatever, or the glyphosate or, I mean there’s so many, the preservatives and things, fragrances, all that stuff that are in our food that we’re consuming and putting in our body are gonna have an effect.

So those would be the 3 things I would say are probably the easy low hanging fruit that you don’t even need any tests that should get out.

Johanna: So let’s go back to your story. So you were breastfeeding your baby, your 5th baby when you had, the cancer diagnosis. So take us along because you have two more kids. What happened from baby 5 to baby 7 and how long was the mission?

Katrina: That was a great question, you got your math there. My journey, I would love to say it was linear. It was not a straightforward: Oh, I found this pill and I did this and boom. The whole way I was struggling and trying to figure out what was going on. I got a little from here, a little from here and figured it out. And when I found the functional me medical practitioner that I worked with I was like, I got this, I got the diet, I got all the stuff, I got it. And I think God was laughing. I got pregnant and I feel like I, I say that I cheated with the pregnancy because I’ve heard from several alternative health practitioners that specialize in cancer, that pregnancy can put cancer in remission.

Although generally that would not be the case. So for me, I feel like it was a combination of the functional work and the pregnancy. I don’t know that I can say exactly, although I have some really good thoughts on the pregnancy, how it did it. But a month before I gave birth to…

Johanna: The baby 6?

Katrina: Yes, the lump was gone, so I nursed him for a year. I like. I went back to my practitioner give me everything I can read on this. I need to understand. And I dug in and started taking trainings, I became a nutritionist. I went through functional medicine training and really dug in and during that time I had baby number 7 and goodnight. It was so funny ’cause I was eating so different with each of my pregnancies and it just got better and better. So she was actually, when I was 43, I had her, and I think she’s like the healthiest, don’t tell my other kids. I was eating very nutrient dense, very clean food. I was eating liver pate, like all the time, and you can tell.

At this point I’m 49 and I should be going towards perimenopause. Menopause, that kind of thing. And nothing’s really changed. It’s been exciting because that shift into menopause where the ovaries give the baton to the adrenals of making the hormones, is coming. And I started to get about six months ago, some breast tenderness we’re just gonna get super personal, like we aren’t already.

And I’m, I was like: Huh, is this the estrogen dominance that I had when I had cancer, that was one of my drivers? . Is this the baton passing and the shift into menopause? There’s sometimes some little, little symptoms, right? We all know about those. And so because of the work I had done and the understanding, like I was talking about, I know what tests to take, I know how to understand what the results are. I know what to do about the results. And they came back, my hormones were lovely, they were perfect. This has not been an ongoing thing and I think it definitely was not any estrogen dominance at all. It’s just that moving towards menopause shift. If that’s the worst symptom I have going to menopause, I am so not gonna complain.

I think anyone that’s had cancer can resonate of the: What is this, going on? Oh no, is this cancer coming back? That fear, I wanna dispel that for women because when you know what your root cause drivers are, you understand what to do and how to test them. You can find things like we’re talking about with preventative testing way prior. This would be one thing off, not 7 or 8 not has, that’s happened and a tumor is formed and then the tumor gets big enough to see on a scan way back there. And that’s where I want women to be able to take control of their health way before it’s an issue so they don’t have to have that fear.

Johanna: Can you share with us some statistics about breast cancer in women? Maybe, the amount it costs for, or standard of care versus, functional medicine route or how long it would take from soup to nuts from diagnosis to, let’s say, remission and what that looks like or any other stats that you can share with us in terms of the numbers.

Katrina: Yeah, full disclaimer, the standard of care nuts and bolts are not my wheelhouse, but I believe it’s like, over $150,000 per person at least. But every single person is different in terms of what they’re recommended, even when it’s breast cancer, whether there’s a lumpectomy, mastectomy, reconstruction, chemo, radiation, all the different testing, tamoxifen, all that stuff. So it’s a big chunk and depending on your insurance, it may or may not all be covered, but there’s usually a lot that’s not covered and there’s a lot of assumptions. It’s assumed you’re going to get reconstruction. It’s not discussed. You don’t really get a lot of choices and a lot of the women come into me, they’ve done standard care and they have like breast implants and no one told them that those are really toxic and are tend to harbor mold and all these things.

It was just like, boom, this is what you get. So there’s a lot of costs with that versus something like functional medicine, which can get really expensive when you’re talking about the testing, but nowhere near, we’re talking 10-20,000 with the whole kit and caboodle. And that variance has to do with what shows up on your lab test. If you get

something fun like mold, you may have bigger protocols to deal with than some of the other things. But again, that’s out of pocket. So when people are viewing and comparing, it’s one is super expensive, but it’s subsidized. The other one you’re paying out of pocket, so it’s all upfront, which looks very different to clients and makes it kinda like you’re comparing apples to bacon or something. They’re hard to compare.

Johanna: Yeah, they are hard to compare. But at the same time, for example, when I healed my alopecia naturally, I paid more than just what the pharmaceutical cortisone shots would be or anything else. But it’s worth it because my fertility was upgraded, everything was upgraded. I had my first child at 40 on the first try, it’s priceless. When everything else is upgraded for you, it’s so priceless because, you’re already on the right path. And I tell my clients, and, you can’t see now because I just colored my hair, but I grew an inch of hair a month. And to me at 45, that’s priceless. Whereas I have better hair now than when I was in my twenties. And I’m sure you feel better now, especially talking about that last pregnancy than with your first pregnancy.

Katrina: I think with my journey, again, it was very circuitous, it was not linear. It, I calculated up and it was like $75-80,000 with all the stuff I spent and going, $30,000, go to Mexico, get kicked out, all this kind of stuff. I did things that I wouldn’t have done if I had known what I know now. There’s a lot of things I would change that I do different with my clients. It’s so huge and I feel empowered, I am not scared at all of it coming back. I get people asking me all the time, when was your last scan? I’m like, eh, I know, because I’m looking at the functional stuff. I just did some another blood work and okay, this was a little off.

Let’s tweak one little thing, oh yeah, I need more vitamin D thought I was getting more sun this summer than I was, slipped down to 55, let’s get that back up. No big thing. But that’s where I prefer to be, because to me, like you said, not having that fear and feeling better going into my 50s than I was in my 30s, hands down, I would pay for that. I took a loan out for that. I borrowed from my parents, I paid them back. But it’s that’s worth it to me. It’s just a matter of where your priorities are, of what you value. Is it your health? Is it, things Because I’ve had clients that get GoFundMe and stuff that they get it, they don’t want to have to do this or that. They wanna have control and they wanna understand.

Johanna: Yeah, a hundred percent. So should we talk about diet ever so slightly? Because this is a big one for hair loss, for health, for, what the pyramid says for when you’re pregnant, for when you’re not pregnant, for, there’s so much misinformation. I think that’s the hardest part for your clients, my clients and really anyone wanting to improve their health. I think in that same framework of standard of care, we’re all thinking it’s a one size fits all when it’s not. There is a lot of misinformation when it comes to what diet is best for cancer. Which by the way, I didn’t mention this to you, but I do have a lot of clients who have had cancer in the past, whether it was thyroid, or breast or other type of cancer. And they come to me and they’re like: Hey, this is what I’m eating and I’m not navigating from it.

Or I get some who are like, I’ve had cancer. This is what I’m eating, and I’m open to change. And so I get both sides of the story, but either way, they get hair with me. But I’d love to hear your aspect and your take on it.

Katrina: Oh yeah, so interesting and there’s so much confusion. This is probably the area that when clients come to me, they’re the most confused about. In the cancer world, the two main camps are vegan, vegetarian kind of stuff and then keto. Now keto, I’ll just tell you my bias, that’s what I focus on because that’s what the research is really showing to therapeutically work. When you get those ketones up, the ketones actually can stop tumor growth and shrink tumors. Plus we know unequivocally that, cancer’s a metabolic disease. Back in the 1930s, Otto Warburg proved that, and that was the defining factor of a cancer cell, that the metabolism in the cell, in the mitochondria has shifted.

If we look at something like like a PET scan, PET scans work, by giving the client radioactive sugar, radioactive, we got that again. And then what they do is they watch on the scan where the cancer cells are, by seeing what lights up because the cancer cells are like ravenous for that glucose, the sugar. And they will absorb and grab onto the radioactive sugar and you can see them like, let’s just use our brain and think if we are having high blood sugar, I’m not talking diabetic, I’m talking like maybe, you eat something, it goes up to 150 or 170, that’s not diabetic.

It might be insulin resistance or something, but maybe it’s just a high carb meal. That’s giving the cancer ex like more than double the blood sugar it should be so that you’re just saying here, have your fuel, enjoy it. Grow, enjoy. I don’t want any part of that. So there’s a couple separate problems with the sugar. And when you do have vegan diet, I flat out tell people if you won’t eat any animal products, I can’t work with you. Because you vegans will be eating their protein sources as grains, legumes, beans, lentils, those kinds of things. And those are very poor quality protein sources, but also they’re very high carb. Soy has its own problem because it’s very estrogenic, most forms I don’t have my clients touch it with a 10 foot pole for the most part. But they’re just not gonna be able to get enough protein in doing a ketogenic diet unless they’re eating really processed protein powders exclusively, which is not healthy.

So the nutrient density of the diet is really important. There’s a whole big process, and I work with clients systematically to get them into ketosis. My clients don’t get keto flu because I tell them ahead of time here’s how to problem solve so you won’t get it. And we could dive into that whole nother episode probably, and working through, making it individually tailored to them, because each one’s different. It’s not like it’s, here’s your macros, we go into everybody gets a keto mojo or, you might need a CGM later. And you’re looking at, how do I react to this? Because, just because it, it’s like keto on paper does not mean your body’s going to deal with it that way. There might be some underlying food sensitivities that shoot up the cortisol, that shoot up the blood sugar, and it’s not even just food.

The blood sugar has a lot to do with stress. So I have one client, she figured out with our detective work that anytime she got an email from her boss, she would get a blood sugar spike from the cortisol, from the stress, and it would throw her outta ketosis, it was that strong on her. So then we gotta problem solve and go back what’s the real issue? How can we mitigate so you’re not having this response, not necessarily quit your job, but let’s discuss this because let’s so much more to diet than diet as the whole thing.

Johanna: So true, so true. Any other things that you would love to leave our listeners with? You’ve given us so much information. What are a few easy things people can do today to start lowering their cancer risk?

Katrina: Oh, the diet’s a big one. That’s the foundation you get to vote with every single spoonful that goes in your mouth if you want health or if you don’t, it, there’s not neutral ground really. You choose to eat or not eat and you make these choices. So being intentional, I think is the key to health because none of this happens by chance, especially in our world with all the toxins out there that we can do some things about, but not all of it. All the food choices, the majority of you go with the flow, they’re gonna be terrible. And so the intentionality and planning ahead, what am I gonna do and eat when I go out of the house? What am I going to choose to engage in stress-wise? Those are all the choices.

So I would say, avoid and be intentional about the fats. Make sure things are clean, getting the carbs down, and getting hydrated. That’s a big one. Most people are not drinking enough water. And when I talk to clients, especially if they’re like doing vegan juicing, the juicing, not only are you losing all the fiber, you’re getting this huge sugar balm, but a fresh crushed juice. Like a lot of the juices are actually gonna be dehydrating. Which most people don’t realize that juices and herbal teas are dehydrating and they’re coming to me and they’re like, oh yeah, I’m drinking peppermint tea all day long. because I like the taste of it. And I’m like, and that gets me a drink more water. No, that actually will be a diuretic, it goes the other way. Yeah, you brought it in, but it’s gonna go out.

And so getting the cells hydrated to help flush things out can be really huge. The philosophy and understanding I’m really passionate about letting people know, and I encourage everyone listening to please share this with people and love that you can figure out why you got cancer. And I’m not talking about BRCA, you can do something about it. And you don’t have to live in that fear because this paradigm of you only have one choice is not, it’s not honest and it’s not the truth. There’s a lot of other things that have been shown to work and be efficacious and, you don’t have to do it.

Johanna: Amen to that. Thank you so much, Katrina, for your wisdom, for your insight and your perspective, because this is huge. Cancer’s been everywhere and it’s a big deal, especially for women’s health, and if there’s many things we can do, then this is definitely the right start to that. Where can people find you?

Katrina: My company is cancerfreedom.com. I’m on Instagram, it’s just my name @katrinafoe and my YouTube channel is going to launch very shortly. So again, Cancer Freedom.

Johanna: Excellent. Thank you so much, Katrina.