Health Bite

150. Empowering Health Beyond Conventional Medicine: Dr. Katie Deming’s Transition to Holistic Health

• Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Share episode

Leave Health Bite a Feedback.Click This Link.

Are you tired of constantly falling ill? Want to discover the secret to maintaining a healthy body?

Learn from an experienced oncologist who successfully transitioned from cancer treatment to teaching holistic health.


Many people are unaware of it, but each one of us possesses an inherent capacity for healing. From physical to emotional and even spiritual healing, the power to heal ourselves from within is within our grasp. 


Join Dr. Katie Deming, a board-certified radiation oncologist and the founder of MAKEMERRY, as she shares her wealth of experience on the subject of healing. Drawing from 16 years of dedicated service to thousands of cancer patients, Dr. Katie Deming imparts her most valuable life lessons and teaches the art of self-healing,cancer treatment and holistic health. .


Join us in celebrating 'Women's Health Awareness Month' this October. 


Take the first step towards a healthier you.



What you’ll learn from this episode:


  • Discover Dr. Katie's transition from cancer treatment to the promotion of holistic health through integrative medicine
  • Dr. Katie’s tips on how to beat cancer early on with holistic wellness care in finding your path to better health
  • Find out more about Dr. Katie’s efforts to raise awareness and promote overall health and well-being


"Identify the emotion that you are feeling in your body and allow yourself to feel that emotion and work through that. That alone just creates awareness of what's happening in your body."

-Dr. Katie Deming

Connect with Dr. Katie Demings

Recommended Resource

If you enjoy what you hear on this podcast, head over, write a review and help me create the impact with a message that I want to share. 

Don’t forget to head over to our show notes for more actionable insights and practical advice that you can apply to your health journey.

Ways that Dr. Adrienne Youdim Can Support You

  1. Join the Monthly Free Mind-Body Workshops: Participate in engaging mind-body practices designed to help manage your stress response. Register here.
  2. Sign Up for the Newsletter: Stay updated with valuable insights and resources by subscribing to the newsletter. Sign up here.
  3. Freebie alert. Register for our monthly free MindBody Workshop and receive a downloadable guide on emotional labeling to help you manage your emotions effectively.


Connect with Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Welcome back to Health Bite. I am so pleased to bring to you a really lovely interview with Dr. Katie Deming. Dr. Katie is a former radiation oncologist, turned somewhat spiritual healer. She works with patients with and without cancer to teach them how to heal from within. 


She uses physical, emotional, spiritual and mental practices to help people heal from cancer in conjunction with conventional medical therapy. The very therapies that she herself used to prescribe back when she was in the conventional space.


This beautiful conversation with Dr. Deming is going to give you a different approach

to health, healing and well-being. And I just can't wait to dig in.


I'm your host, Dr. Adrienne Youdim. I am a triple board certified internist, obesity medicine and  physician nutrition specialist. And I help people redefine nutrition to not only eat well, but to live well, nourishing themselves physically, mentally and emotionally. I just love this stuff.

So let's get into it and dig into this week's bite.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Well, Dr. Katie, I'm so excited to have you here. As I mentioned, or as we discussed before we started recording, I have been following you and your journey for a long while. And it's just such a pleasure to have you on Health Bite.

Dr. Katie Deming: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Dr. Katie, your background is so fascinating. So you have a long career as a radiation oncologist, a very practical area in medicine, treating cancer, and now have kind of pivoted into a more integrative wellness, health and wellness approach. I'm curious about your journey of how you got to this place.

Dr. Katie Deming: Sure. So as you said, I am a radiation oncologist by training and practiced for 20 years in radiation oncology and also was a healthcare leader within cancer care and design and led large-scale cancer programs. So end-to-end cancer care from screening, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and end of life or survivorship. And in 2022, I transitioned out of radiation oncology. And actually the transition out was, at first it was slow where I had, you know, kind of some inklings that it just didn't feel right. 

I was feeling like we do a good job of killing cancer cells, but we don't really do a good job of helping people understand “why did I get sick in the first place?” “Why did I get cancer?” or once they're done with their treatment, teaching them how to live a lifestyle that is truly going to create health and well-being in their body. And so it took me a couple of years because I had some challenges that my husband was not supportive of me leaving medicine. So it took me a couple of years to actually pull the trigger and make that happen.

But ultimately in 2022, I left. And now have started a practice that I'm mostly helping people with cancer, but I'm also helping people who want to prevent illness and cancer and really create well-being in their body. And so that's where I am and that's where I've landed now.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Yeah, I love the fact that you are treating or have treated a population that is very specific and vulnerable. but what you recommend is really applicable to all of us.

Dr. Katie Deming: Absolutely. No, absolutely. The work that I'm doing is not cancer specific. It is really focused around creating well being in the body and true health. And I think in Western medicine, we're all specialized into these categories that are tied to an illness. But when we're teaching people how to heal, none of that matters, you know, it matters for the specific treatment of the illness, but in terms of the healing to get to wellbeing, that is something different that I feel like is, is not tied to a disease. And I, and I'm finding that the principles that I teach really can work for a lot of different illnesses for people are healing. And then the wellness stuff is the same. Basically, if we want to prevent cancer, if we want to keep our bodies healthy and vital, the things that we need to do are the same. It's not specialized into these different categories.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Yeah, and before we get to kind of your principles and what you teach in terms of overall health and wellbeing, you did see a link between cancer and these other principles. So why does it matter specifically to cancer? Because I do think that it is one of those things that we all worry about, right? And we are recording and releasing this podcast in October, it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And even though we know that more women will die from heart disease in this country than breast cancer, if you ask any woman what they're most afraid of, chances are nine out of 10 times they're going to say breast cancer. So how do these principles impact prevention? And why does it matter when we're talking about, you know, breast cancer or cancer in general?

Dr. Katie Deming: Well, absolutely. Yeah, I think a lot of people's biggest fear is developing cancer. And You know, one of the pillars of my practice is emotional healing. And really, when we talk about emotional healing, it's not about just about healing emotional trauma or things that we've been through. It's about actually managing our emotions and learning how to process them to become well. And actually, a lot of the work that I do in the cancer space is just calming people's nervous system, helping them get out of fear. 

Because when someone is diagnosed with cancer, they immediately think they're going to die. You know, even if it's like a pre-invasive cancer, like there's a condition called DCIS for breast cancer, and it's basically stage zero, it's non-invasive, but it's tied to the name breast cancer. And as soon as people hear cancer, they're like, I'm dying. And I'm like, okay, you're not dying. 

This is a very early stage and it's very treatable and you're going to be fine. But fear is like number one, the biggest enemy that I deal with my clients. And I think that the fear of getting cancer also contributes to people getting sick. And so the principles of teaching people how to get out of fear around their body, whether it's because they're already sick with a condition like cancer, or it could be something else, or it's about being afraid of getting some illness. 

All of that is the same. It ties back to the same principles, you know? And so I think that we're not talking about this enough in medicine. And I love that you're talking about this on your podcast. It really, you know, the emotional and mental components of healing and of really creating wellbeing and health in the body. But we're not talking about that enough in medicine. And this is one of the things that has become really the forefront of what I talk about is helping people understand that our emotions are tied to illness and their studies. So I don't know if your listeners are familiar with the ACE study, but the ACE study is, ACE stands for “Adverse Childhood Events”. And basically what the study showed was that children who have a higher number of ACEs, which are basically any kind of trauma in childhood, have emotional trauma. So it could be neglect, it could be sexual abuse, it could be physical abuse, it could be a parent who's incarcerated, could be drug or alcohol abuse. 

There are multiple different categories of ACEs, but what they did was they looked at children and they calculated their ACE score, and then they followed them into adulthood and what they found was the incidence of disease, including cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, diabetes, cancer, and then of course the things like depression, substance abuse that you kind of expect in children who experience trauma but all of those are much higher.

The higher the ACE score, the higher the incidence of illness in the body. And so I think just talking about that, it's like, and how common is it to have any, like all of those things, I feel like most of us have multiple ACE scores in our history. And so just understanding that there is this connection between emotional trauma and then our emotional wellbeing and our physical health. I think it's really important that we're talking about these things. So I just, I love that you are also like-minded in this space of teaching people that it's really a holistic view of our whole lives that impacts our physical health.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Yes, I couldn't agree with you more. I talk a lot on this podcast and I bring in individuals who, physicians who frequently comment on the mind-body divide in Western medicine and how we are so afraid, we're trained this way to mix these two when in fact the mind and the body, the emotional state and physical state are so intimately intertwined and interconnected, and yet we keep them separate. 

I love that you brought up ACE as an example of that, because you probably know that the person who put ACE on the radar was Dr. Folletti, an obesity medicine specialist, essentially. And even being the type of physician working in the space and having been trained, I never learned about this data or the ACEs studies until long after I was already practicing medicine and a therapist told me about it.

So even as a physician in this space, you know, again, speaking to the fact that we don't talk about it enough, I was unaware about the interconnection between emotional trauma and adverse events and physical outcomes. You mentioned, you know, depression and substance abuse, but I want to just clarify also that these outcomes are not dependent on that. So one would think, for example, that trauma leads to depression or trauma leads to substance abuse, and then substance abuse leads to disease. 

But they found that independent of any kind of habit or substance abuse, people develop disease. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, we don't have to get into the nitty gritty science of it, but I think it does really solidify this point that there is science behind this. Can you talk about like, is it the link inflammation, is the link, you know, what is that link in terms of how it impacts us, how emotions or trauma impacts our physical health?

Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. Well, I think it's complicated and I'm not sure we fully understand exactly what's going on at a physiological level, but chronic stress on our body basically keeps people in a chronic state of fight or flight. And so you have increased levels of cortisol and norepinephrine, which are good for acute events. Like, say you need to run away from someone who's chasing you and you're in danger. It makes sense to have those things, flooding your system so that you can be running and getting away. But if someone is in a chronic state of fight or flight, all of these hormones basically shut off the repair mechanisms in the body. 

And our body, basically cancer, is a normal part of living. Everyone has little cells that, you know, have mutations that our body takes care of, our immune system fights them. And that's just a normal part of living. But what happens when someone develops cancer is that this grows out of control and when our immune systems aren't functioning because we are basically in activation of our sympathetic nervous system all the time, our immune system's not doing its job. And so I think that's one function that's happening there, that the immune system is not functioning the way that it should. And so it puts us at a higher risk for medical conditions like cancer in the future. 

And then the other thing that I have learned over time and this is through studying the work of David Hawkins who is a medical doctor and also a PhD, so MD, PhD, and a lot of his career was spent on talking about consciousness and also frequency. And in his book, “Power Versus Force”, he talks about the frequency scale and how emotions are tied to frequency. And as physics has shown us, I think that we're now talking about this more, but physics has shown us that we are vibrating energy. 

And that the actual mass, even though I look like a physical person and it looks like I'm solid, if you took all the protons in my body and condensed them, it's like teeny, teeny, tiny. Even the whole world, the actual mass of all the population of the world would fit in a sugar cube. So we are actually vibrating energy and we hold a frequency. 

And what David Hawkins showed was that in the higher frequency emotions, that's where wellbeing is created in the body. And in the lower frequency emotions like fear, jealousy, guilt, shame, basically that is where illness is created. And so that to me has really caught my attention because I think we don't, when people talk about frequency and vibration, they're like, Oh, that's really woo. And I don't know what that means, but the truth is there's science. Like this is science that we are holding frequencies in our body. And that the emotions that we hold in our body affect our frequency. 

And if we're in a constant state of fear, so if you think of a child who's been abused and they maybe have post-traumatic stress disorder, they're in constant fear. And when you're holding that vibration, it makes sense that the body and all of its functions are not operating in a way that is in its highest good. And so basically, I think this is another piece that the emotions that we hold long-term affect the frequency of our body and either support health and wellbeing or contribute to illness. And David Hawkins divides it into the higher vibration frequency emotions are considered powerful. That's where the power versus force. So that's where the power is. And then when you get into these lower vibration frequencies, it's considered force and that's where contraction and illness occurs. I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg of learning what's actually happening in the body. And like you said, we're so complex. It is not this physical body. And then the mind in all this other stuff is completely separate. It is all completely intertwined. and our health depends upon us being in balance with all of these aspects of us.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Yeah, it's interesting, this whole idea of frequencies and even visualization practices and things of that sort, I have just started kind of learning about. And I'm actually seeing in my own patients that just doing short visualization meditations with them, at the very minimum, even gets them better positioned for habit change, but, you know, at a very practical level, but it is an area that I'm kind of curious, a little bit uncertain, but also very open to learning more about.

Dr. Katie Deming: Well, there's a lot of data actually in visualization within the cancer space about using visualization for directing outcomes. So helping people get better outcomes with using their mind to direct the mind to what the goal is. So whether, you know, it could be weight loss if you were working with a client or patient, it could be for me healing, but there is data to support that our mind is very powerful and using techniques like visualization or intention helps people get better results. I mean, think about the placebo effect, right?

 I mean, that is like the basis of all research in medicine is we use the placebo, you know, so for your listeners, most people know this, but if you don't, the idea is that whenever we do a trial of a medicine to see if it works, we give people something that is like a sugar pill that really has no benefit that we know of in the body. It's basically just a sham pill so that they think they're getting something, and then you give the actual medication to other patients. But what we know is when people just get a sugar pill, they actually get some benefit and the benefit can be as high as 30%. I mean, honestly, we give people chemotherapy that costs hundreds of thousand dollars for like a 5% benefit.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: And even in cancer research, the placebo effect is that high?

Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, well, it depends. So it ranges from like five, but even 5% is significant, but 30% in some studies. It is shown that the placebo, the person who gets a sugar pill, can be as high as 30%, which tells us something is happening physiologically when someone takes this sugar pill. 

And so if taking a sugar pill and thinking that you're taking the pill has an effect on your body, it makes sense that visualizing and using our brain to direct us to thinking something works is going to give us additional benefit and this is actually part of my practice is what I call treatment performance, and this is people who are getting conventional treatment because I do believe in conventional medicine.

I think that, you know, when people have cancer, there are times where it is appropriate to have aggressive treatments, but the treatment performance aspect that I'm focused on is helping them use their mind, to direct them to the results that they want. And also the other thing is there's no harm to this. The beautiful thing is like, if I help someone direct themselves to believing that they can be cured of their cancer, there's no real downside to that, right? And so it's teaching people how to direct their mind using visualization, using calming techniques. 

So on the mental practices for my, program it's really two things that I'm trying to accomplish: 

  1. To quiet the mind

So there are techniques with meditation or breathing to quiet the mind

      2. Direct the mind where you want it to go

Because most of us have like a monkey mind where we've got like monkeys jumping in the trees in our brain and it's, you know, hard to direct because there's just so much going on and especially when someone gets sick with something like cancer. So teaching them how to quiet it and then teaching them how to direct their mind to the results that they want. And so we do that work and then we also do emotional work about teaching them, “How do you process your emotions? How do you not stay stuck in the fear, and then How do you cultivate the peace?” You know? peace is the highest frequency emotion on that scale from David Hawkins' work. 

And so this is actually part of my practice is helping people who are getting conventional treatment use these techniques to just get better results, right? It's not either or, like you said, it's and, you know? And if someone chooses not to do conventional treatment, that's okay too. And we make that wrong in medicine. 

But I think part of it is like what I want my clients to know is that they're empowered and that I want them to feel powerful in their decisions. So helping them get calm enough to make good decisions for their body and making decisions from evidence and like, okay, what is really the benefit of this treatment and what are the risks and how does that fit with my goals and my values? And then making that decision and then moving through it from a place of real calm empowerment. 

And I think in medicine, we do the opposite and not intentionally. You know, I love my colleagues and I think that all of us went into medicine. Most of us, I mean, of course, there's probably people who go in for the wrong reasons, but I mean, I know so many doctors and they're just good people who really want to help, but we're trained to actually kind of scare people and, and take away their power by saying, you need this and you're sick.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: We're trained to treat people right so it's not a preventive model it's a treatment model and so then our intention becomes about treatment. I do want to, but I do appreciate this conversation and I want to point out that, you know, of course, on this podcast, we're never offering medical advice, that this is always informational, and people should have conversations with their own physicians. But in essence, what you're saying is that a lot of times, again, not only do physicians divide, you know, mind and body, but people out there, spiritual people do it as well. And what you're saying is that, no, we don't need to divide, we can harness the power of placebo, which is belief, and couple that with conventional medicine in order to enhance the treatment, which is essentially what your performance method is doing. So I love that.

Dr. Katie Deming: Exactly. Yeah. And I think, you know, this is, I see myself as a bridge between conventional medicine and these other ideas that are considered more alternative. But the truth is, is that they all work together. And, and I've always said this to my patients, even when I was practicing radiation oncology, you're going to do best when we use all of the resources available to us. And I'm really, I never want to alienate and be like, I'm over here, or I only do conventional medicine. It's like, no, no, no, we're all working together. And I think that people who want to heal benefit when we have doctors who are willing to work in both spaces and optimize the plan that allows people to use everything that's available.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Yeah, I love that. I mean, we really are in a time where we have so much access to so many things in terms of both conventional medicine as well as spiritual practices. And if we could just have more of an open-minded approach to incorporating the two, that's really where we are all better off as providers and physicians, but also for ourselves as humans, for all of us. So I really love that approach. 

You mentioned this already a bit, but maybe we can slow it down a little bit and you can give us a little bit more detail on the process. How do you get somebody from these lower states, you know, these emotions that you talk about, the shame, the jealousy, the anger, whatever the case may be, they're normal human emotions and we all have them. So we're, this is not about having shame about having those emotions or pushing them off aside because we all have them. That's the human condition. So how do you take people from a place of experiencing what's very normal, but then being able to essentially loosen their grip around that so that they can elevate to these places of more clear-mindedness and ease? 

Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. So, the important thing in here is that we're not bypassing these, what we would call negative emotions. So we're not teaching people like, okay, don't be in fear. Like just roll past that and be positive all the time. That doesn't work because like you said, we are emotional beings and it is normal to have emotions as part of the human experience. And so what I really work with my clients is teaching them tools when you get into fear, how do you slow things down? How do you become aware of what emotion you're feeling and then process through that emotion and move into the ideal state for healing is really peace. That's the highest vibration frequency or emotion on that scale of David Hawkins. And really what I'm helping people get to is peace. 

And I would say a few things, tools that we use are, one is breathing. So, you know, just slowing down and calming your nervous system by doing breathing, like there's a technique of breathing in for four or five, whichever is most comfortable for you and then out for eight. But the idea is that you're breathing out more slowly than you're breathing in. And this is basically activating our vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve helps turn off the sympathetic nervous system or the fight or flight and gets people into a state of rest. And that alone, that's what I teach my patients. The first thing is like, do three breaths of the vagus nerve breathing. And that alone often takes the fear down. But then they can identify, oh, okay, once they slow themselves down by doing the breathing, then they can become aware, oh, I'm in fear. And my goal is to not stay in fear. So let me process that emotion. And then I have tools that I teach them. 

And, there are a lot of different techniques for processing emotions. One of the most effective ones that I have comes from psych K, which I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. But PSYCH-K, so it's P-S-Y-C-H, and then the letter K, and basically it's short for psychological kinesis. And the idea is that, most people, when they get into emotions, they go in two directions. Either they're right brain dominant and they go into becoming overly emotional and they kind of feel like they don't want to feel the emotion because they're out of control and they kind of lose control of things. 

And stereotypically we assign this to like women, women become more emotional and get kind of into the right brain about it. And then the other thing that could happen is people could go to their left brain and then instead of really feeling the emotion they become overly analytical and they feel no emotion and they're, you know, basically creating illogical thoughts that bypass them out of the emotion. 

And what Psych-K does is it teaches people how to turn on both sides of their brain at the same time to actually feel the emotion and let it process and run its course. And what's beautiful about this technique is that I can get someone to be able to process their greatest fear, like say dying of cancer in like five minutes using this technique. And what it does is that it teaches patients how to move through it to feel the emotion and let it, because if you actually activate both sides of the brain and allow yourself to process the emotion, the normal course of emotion is it kind of peaks it'll crest, and then it'll come back down. 

And so you're just teaching them how to ride that wave. And when they get to neutral, then they can stop. And then when someone's gotten to neutral, and then they think about the same event that was causing whatever it is fear, let's just use an example, they then feel kind of neutral about it. And that is so powerful. If you can take someone who has cancer and take their biggest fear, which is maybe dying and leaving their family or something, and bring that to neutral within five minutes, that is really, really powerful. 

So this is a lot of the work that I'm doing with people who are going through treatment, in addition to using their mind, calming their emotions is by doing techniques like this, like doing the breathing to calm themselves, slow them down, and then learn how to process the emotions in a healthy way that can get them to a state of peace. And also gratitude is another big one because gratitude love is right below peace on that scale. And so gratitude practices are another thing that can help people shift out of those more negative emotions and into more of like love and peace.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Gosh, there's so many places I want to go with that. I mean, that's fascinating, the PSYCH K, I am not familiar with that technique and how applicable it is to everything. I mean, I think everyone could use that tool to get out of a state of angst, essentially, you know, it's not even just fear, but how many of us are- Anything, anger, shame, guilt, everything. Right, so much applicability there. And something else that I just want to reiterate that you said, because I like to be actionable on this podcast is the breathing practice that I've discussed before. 

But I think it's great to have repetition because when people hear the same thing over and over again, I think finally it dawns on us, okay, there must be something here. And something as simple as a four-count inhale and an eight-count exhale or whatever variation of that feels comfortable people can apply to their day multiple times a day. I even sometimes will be in the office, one patient will go out and I have that, what's wrong, what's wrong, what's wrong feeling in my body, like something is not sitting well. And I will close the door to swivel my chair around and just do one minute or 40 seconds of breathing and it really does regulate the heart rate and your blood pressure and your nervous system as you said and then also allows me to be like ah like that thing that's what's you know

Dr. Katie Deming: Well, it creates awareness. It slows you down enough that you can have awareness as to what was causing that feeling in your body. So absolutely breathing is, you know, we breathe all day long, but using our breath, we can use it. I use it all day. Like if something has me kind of, like you said, feeling a little bit agitated and I'm not sure why just doing that breathing slows me down enough to be like, Oh, okay, now I see what's going on. And then it's just easier to manage through anything. These are really life skills. This has nothing to do with just healing. It's literally how we can cope better with life.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Right. And I would love for you to talk a little bit more about the gratitude practice because you did bring up aptly that this is not about emotional bypassing this is not about shoving our true feelings and putting a cute little bow on top of it. 

But I feel like a lot of the gratitude gurus out there the way they describe the practice I think can be misconstrued like all hell is breaking loose in my life but I'm not a starving child in Africa, so I have no right to have this feeling. Can you talk a little bit about that and how we can hold both of those things in mind? How can you engage in a gratitude practice, but still honor the reality that something is happening in your life that really sucks?

Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah. Well, I think you're absolutely right. Because funny, when I started this practice, I was like, I don't know, gratitude just feels like so, it almost feels cliche. Yeah. But the way that I use it in my life, and some of this has to do with I had something similar to a near death experience. And it really, it changed me, it fundamentally changed me. And this was part of my, you know, journey out of medicine, this happened in 2020. 

But one of the things that I really believe after that experience is that we are here for evolution of our soul, and growth and learning. And so for me, gratitude is not about just finding the positive and almost bypassing the negative of it. It's like the way that I think about this and the way that I talk about it with my clients, and it's funny, I use clients and patients now interchangeably because as I've moved into this different space, it's different, but basically the same, is that I ask them to look for what is this growing inside of you? 

Yes, you're going through cancer right now, but what are some of the things that you're learning in this about yourself? What are the opportunities that are emerging that you could be grateful for? And I think it's a slight shift on that where it’s more we're going to use this as an opportunity. So one of the things I always think about cancer is like a crisis in people's lives. And I talk about cancer because that's just like my world that I live in. 

But the crisis in Chinese is two symbols, and the first symbol is danger. And the second symbol is opportunity. And so, cancer is really or any crisis is an opportunity. And I think that's where I help my patients find the gratitude is in the opportunity, like what here is teaching you about yourself? What is the opportunity for growth that has presented itself as painful as it is? And we are not dismissing the pain or the suffering or the struggle that you are facing, but we're looking for the growth. Like how do we use this to have that Phoenix rise from the ashes and come out of something that is so destructive, but that's new life comes from death, you know? And so there's just really this aspect of where, when I'm talking about gratitude for my patients, is like, is looking for those little spots that give them, Oh, there's something coming out of here that I can be grateful for. Or, you know, and there's the other piece of, you know, I had a patient who's going through chemo and she realized that, if she didn't live where she lived and have insurance, she wouldn't be able to have this type of chemotherapy. And for her, she found tremendous gratitude in knowing that she was able to get a treatment that she wouldn't have had access to if she had been in another country where it wasn't available and I think they're just, when you're looking for those little things, they can turn something around for you and give you a different perspective. I think that the gratitude practices can shift people's perspective from a “lack perspective" to more abundance of seeing what is available for them in the moment, even when things feel very dark.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Yeah, I love that. I had a light bulb go off right now as you were talking. It's a shifting of perspective. That's a great way to think about it. I think if we can hold it in mind in that way, then it doesn't feel like a bypassing. It's not a bypassing. It's a shifting of perspective so that there can be the crisis and there can be this other perspective alongside it.

Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, and holding both of those. And this is what I think we don't do as a society. We make things either like, it's supposed to be really pretty, or it's super messy. And it's like, no, life is messy, and it's beautiful all at the same time, and embracing that. And also, that's the other thing that I find beautiful about this practice is having a physician acknowledge and be there for all the messiness and the beauty. And you know what I'm saying, just all of that. I don't think that we have time, you know, in most practices to really create a container like that, but really holding space for all of it to be present at the same time is powerful for people. 

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Yeah, absolutely it is. Well, I was going to ask you this initially, and then now it's come up again. Would you mind sharing with us what your life-changing event was? What was that seminal moment that shifted your perspective?

Dr. Katie Deming: Sure. I didn't know that this phenomenon existed until it happened to me, but like a near-death experience where someone who actually dies and then comes back, there is something called a shared death experience that most commonly happens to healthcare professionals who are at the scene when someone dies, and they experience what the person who transitions or dies experiences without having, you know, gone anywhere, they just like experience it. It wouldn't be accurate for me to say exactly like that, I know exactly what happens. But like it, the sense is that the soul of the provider experiences what the soul of the person who is transitioning experiences. And what happened for me was there was a young woman who transitioned and I crossed over with her and basically felt the love and the light that people describe when they have a near death experience. And after that happened, I literally saw life differently. 

And what was beautiful about David Hawkins book is that he talks about this in power versus force, that people who have near death experiences and cross over and go into whatever this realm is, that is next after this life, come back changed. What happens is that they are bathed with very high frequencies, and that bathing of those frequencies changes them. And so that's what happened to me. And so when I came back, I could tap into higher frequencies, and then also it almost opens up your consciousness to experience life a little bit differently. And so that's what happened for me. And it took me a long time to like, come to grips with like, what happened? I was like, I have no context for this experience. 

And yet it was so real. It was more real than anything that I've ever experienced. And I always over my career had been like, when I see people who are so convicted and they're like, I believe in this so strongly, I would die for it. And I was like, who does that? I'm like, I don't have anything that I believe so strongly that I'd be like, I would fall on a sword for this. And after that experience, I have that conviction about why we're here. You know that I really know that when we leave this body, our soul goes on, that we are eternal, that there is no death. Like yes this body will expire but our soul goes on, and what is after this is, is more beautiful than you could ever imagine. There is nothing to fear about death in what I experienced. 

And then also the conviction that being true to ourselves, so living a life that is in alignment with who I am on a soul level is like the most important thing that I can do in this lifetime. And so those were some of the things, and that's what ultimately like, it just ate away at me being in medicine and knowing I had this inner knowing that I wasn't supposed to be doing that anymore. And that experience, that shared death experience made me make the decision to leave medicine, even though it was very challenging to do it, because I knew that when I transition, it matters if I lived my life according to my value, like who I really am at my core. So. It's hard to describe an experience like that, but it was really life-changing for me.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: You know, I think regardless of how people feel about that experience or believe it or don't believe it or feel like it's wooey or not, what in essence you're sharing is this conviction and desire to help people live their lives to the fullest, live their lives in an unencumbered way, in a way that's not encumbered by so much thought and emotion and distress. And that is a message that I think everyone can benefit from because we would be hard pressed any of us to not admit that there isn't an area or areas or ways in which we conduct ourselves that we're causing ourselves more distress than is necessary. 

And with these tools and strategies, you're essentially helping people get out of the grips of that or whatever that may be. In your case, it's for people who have cancer, but again, it's applicable to all people. So on that note, and as we're kind of coming up on time. I wonder if you can share with us, is there like one last strategy, one last tip, one last thing that you could share with our audience in terms of how you feel like something actionable that they can take away and how they can embody some of these principles that we've been talking about?

Dr. Katie Deming: Well, I think one thing that people can do is the breathing that we talked about just slowing down when they feel stressed. Take three breaths, you know, using this technique of breathing out more slowly than you breathe in. Identifying, okay, what emotion am I feeling in my body and allowing themselves to feel that emotion and work through that. 

I think that alone just creates awareness of what's happening in your body and slows things down. That is like an easy tool that people can use anytime. And it really is applicable for everything, you know, real life stress, it makes a difference and it can make you make better decisions, it can make you feel more peaceful, it can help your relationships, it can help with weight loss, if you're working on that. It's just, I think it helps in every area.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Yeah, that's great. So for people who want to learn more about what you're doing, perhaps even work with you, how can they find you?

Dr. Katie Deming: Yeah, so my website is katiedeming.com. K A T I E D E M I N G. And like I said, my website is mostly focused on cancer, but I do have clients who are finding me that they just want to get well and make sure that they don't get sick. And so I'm working with, you know, kind of a varied, uh, clientele at the moment because it's, it's universal. These principles are universal.

Dr. Adrienne Youdim: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. We'll definitely link that information in the show notes. And thanks again, Katie, for joining me. This was a lovely conversation.

Dr. Katie Deming: Absolutely. It's been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.


People on this episode

Head Shot

Adrienne Youdim MD

Host