Your Body Is an Ecosystem

00:38Hi everyone, I'm Dr.

00:39Michele Burklund and welcome to

00:41the podcast Medicine Untold.

00:43Today we have Dr.

00:45Nasha Winters and I'll read a little bit about

00:49your bio right now before we get started. So, Dr.

00:53Winters is a global healthcare authority and best

00:56selling author in integrative cancer care and research

01:00consulting with physicians around the world.

01:02She has educated hundreds of professionals in the

01:06clinical use of mistletoe and has created robust

01:09educational programs for both healthcare institutions and the

01:13public on incorporating vetted integrative therapies in cancer

01:17care to enhance outcomes. Dr.

01:19Winters is currently focused on opening a comprehensive

01:23metabolic oncology hospital and research institute in the

01:26US where the best that standard of care

01:30has to offer and the most advanced integrative

01:32therapies will be offered.

01:34This facility will be a residential setting on a

01:37gorgeous campus against the backdrop of regenerative farming, EMF

01:41mitagation and a retreat, as well as a state

01:44of the art medical technology and data collection and

01:47evaluation to improve patient outcomes.

01:51Wow, that's amazing.

01:54It's a mouthful. You did.

01:56Thank you.

01:59Yeah.

02:00It sounds like an amazing vision and an

02:02amazing goal that you have right now.

02:05I'm excited to hear more about that too. Thank you.

02:10I'll get started, kind of with our first

02:12question, and that is, when you were just

02:1519 years old, you were diagnosed with stage

02:18four ovarian cancer and given months to live.

02:22So how did you feel about this?

02:24And really, what did you do differently than

02:26the doctors told you to survive this?

02:30Well, I think it's important for your listeners

02:33to know that I had a lot of

02:35health issues for many, many moons.

02:37And this sort of got, I guess,

02:39sort of lost in the shuffle.

02:42Oh, that's just more of your IBS,

02:44Oh, that's just more of your RA,

02:45Oh, that's just more of your endometriosis, your PCOS.

02:47So by the time I landed in the hospital,

02:50two weeks before my 20th birthday, near, in and

02:54out of consciousness, pulse oxygen levels extremely low, revealing

03:00that I had a complete bowel blockage, end stage

03:02organ failure, grapefruit sized tumor on my right ovary,

03:05belly filled with malignant fluid, so cancerous fluid in

03:09wrong places within my body.

03:12I know I'm missing other details of that.

03:14Excruciating pain, inability to eat, nothing coming out

03:17of either end or into either end.

03:20For weeks leading up to that hospitalization,

03:23it was that moment where there wasn't

03:25anything they could offer me.

03:27It was the end of the line.

03:29And so it was a pretty...

03:31When you talk about what did you think at the

03:33moment, I will tell your listeners that in the years

03:37leading up to that, I had actually tried to extinguish

03:39my own life on a couple of occasions.

03:41There wasn't a lot of hope on the horizon

03:43of how my life could be any different.

03:45I came from extreme trauma.

03:47If your listeners are familiar with this concept of childhood

03:50traumas and their impact on your health and well being

03:53and the way your immune system functions and your ability

03:56to ward off disease functions, you might have heard of

03:59a concept known as the ACE score.

04:01See the adverse childhood event score.

04:04Basically, if you have six or more, you are destined.

04:08Remember that these are destinies that

04:10we can rewrite our story.

04:11But from the literature, if you do nothing to

04:13rewrite your story, you will have cancer or some

04:16severe chronic illness at a very young age.

04:18So I think that was a major contributor to mine.

04:22I had a ten out of ten on that ace score.

04:25I had come from extreme poverty.

04:27I'd come from extreme malnourishment, really

04:30poor dietary lifestyle habits of just

04:32coming from that level of poverty.

04:34And no one in my family

04:36ever gone to college, nothing else.

04:37So I had a lot of things stacked against me.

04:40And so when you're in that place, as I appreciate

04:42so many people are on this planet today, I didn't

04:45see that there was a better life ahead of me.

04:48I didn't anticipate a better life ahead.

04:50So, for me, actually, cancer, there was a moment, the

04:53first moment when I was given that diagnosis that there

04:56was relief because there was sort of a way to

04:58exit strategy with a little bit of, I don't know,

05:01maybe martyrdom, maybe a little bit of, oh, that's a

05:04really good story to go out on.

05:06Oh, she died of cancer. That was like.

05:09There was a fleeting fantasy.

05:11But then this other thing happened in me, which

05:13I also recognize about myself, which I have.

05:16I actually have the OCD gene, which can be my

05:19superhero, it can be my kryptonite or my superpower.

05:22But it was that moment when

05:24someone says, it can't be done.

05:26It's like a double dog dare for me, and

05:28it's sort of like, well, then I'm going to

05:30do everything I can to prove you otherwise.

05:32So that was kind of my survival

05:35technique for all those years, too.

05:36And here we are, over 32 years later.

05:38I'm still learning about myself.

05:39I'm still applying new things to myself.

05:41I'm still learning from the tens of thousands of patients

05:43I've had direct access to support and the hundreds of

05:46thousands of patients I've had indirect ability to support and

05:50learn from and continue to basically kick this can down

05:54the road as I learn more, apply more, do more,

05:56learn more, apply more, do more.

05:58That has been my decades since mantra ever since. Wow.

06:04Yeah, I mean, it's a journey on really all levels, too.

06:08And to have that self awareness going into it, too.

06:12And knowing how your emotions played a role

06:15into this and making that choice, too.

06:17Making the choice to fight it, knowing that

06:20it was tempting for a second to go

06:22the other way and seeing all those things.

06:25I personally think that emotions play a huge

06:28role in illness and recovery is a very

06:32holistic thing that needs to be addressed.

06:34So, wow.

06:35Thank you for sharing your story.

06:37And clearly it's dictated a little bit of your path

06:40forward, too, whether you wanted it to or not, I

06:44guess, but that passion and that drive and your purpose.

06:47So how did that experience really change your life

06:51course and put you in this direction and give

06:55you the motivation to create what you have? Perfect.

06:58Well, I think there was this tendency in my

07:01own survival of being kind of the overachiever because

07:03no one on the outside world would ever know

07:05what was happening on the inside world of me.

07:06Leading up to my diagnosis, and even for the first

07:09few years beyond, I was highly accomplished in many ways.

07:12I was able to really put on a mask

07:13and present myself to the world that there was

07:16nothing wrong behind the Wizard of Oz curtain. Right.

07:19And so that was one of the things that it

07:22actually put me into hyper mode even more because I

07:25was premed, I was going to go to med.

07:27I knew what I wanted to do.

07:28So I had this very scientific, research centric brain.

07:32But I also felt very jaded and abandoned

07:38and even ridiculed by the community I so

07:41desperately wanted to be part of.

07:44And so that theme of wanting to belong was

07:49old in me and continues to this day.

07:51I mean, I'm definitely an outlier across the board,

07:53and I definitely don't fit in particular camps.

07:55I'm ridiculed in everything from the standard of care

07:58world to the naturopathic world and everything in between

08:00and beyond, because I don't fit into a box.

08:03I don't fit into something defined.

08:06So I had to define my own way, I had to define

08:08my own process, and I had to trust myself first before I

08:13allowed other people's sort of impressions of me or what can or

08:18can't be done be something I took note of.

08:22So that took me on a direction of realizing

08:24that, hey, I'm looking at stepping into an environment,

08:27a conventional medical school that absolutely no longer fits.

08:31It's what I thought I wanted, and it no longer did.

08:34So it took me on this trajectory.

08:35Suddenly I started to scramble about what? What else?

08:37Else, what else?

08:38Maybe I'll be a psychologist.

08:39Maybe I'll get into addictions counseling and

08:42trauma counseling, because that was very interesting

08:44to me because I had some understanding

08:46that was part of my illness.

08:48I also thought, well, maybe I'll just get

08:50into midwifery, because instead of facing death, maybe

08:53I can bring life into this world.

08:55That was something very interesting to me.

08:57And the other piece was there was some

09:00realization that there wasn't because there were no

09:02pharmaceutical or surgical or radiation offerings to me.

09:06There was nothing that standard care could offer.

09:09I had to get outside of that sandbox

09:11to look at things to help me along

09:12the way, which then led me to finding

09:14out about this crazy thing called naturopathic medicine.

09:18And so that was intriguing of that piece.

09:21But also in my undergrad, I was only a

09:23sophomore in college when I was diagnosed, so I

09:25still had a few more years out to get

09:27all my prereqs and all those things done.

09:30But I created a self constructed

09:32major, basically a psychoneuroimmunology major.

09:35So a biology psychology major instead of a

09:38biology chemistry major, where I brought in much

09:41more of the lion's share of the mind

09:42body component in my education and my understanding.

09:45So that was definitely a major shift from just

09:49the hardcore didactic, tangible sciences into something that expanded

09:54my worldview in a very different way.

09:57Yeah, I mean, it seems like you were forced to

10:01in so many ways if conventional medicine didn't have any

10:04answers for you and you had to seek everything yourself.

10:08I mean, it's great you had that research background a little

10:12bit at that time, and you were down that road.

10:15But I mean, still, that can be very scary to go

10:18through and to totally fend for yourself at that time.

10:23But I think that's a lot of the time.

10:25Where the answers come is through

10:27the hardship and through that journey.

10:30And so it's pretty powerful.

10:33You can relate to so many people and have

10:36that aspect of being the patient and the physician

10:40and now training physicians, too, along the way.

10:44Yeah, thank you for that. Yes.

10:49So I also know that you published a book

10:51called the Metabolic Approach, and I have seen this

10:54book almost everywhere since I started to take notice

10:58of it this year at different doctors offices, like

11:02in California and Washington here and there.

11:04And so it's been on my radar quite a bit.

11:07But for the people watching, can you tell

11:10us first, what does the metabolic approach mean

11:14in your book, if we're interested in it.

11:16We don't know anything about it, and

11:18we're new to the cancer world. Perfect.

11:21Well, a little context.

11:22So the way we understand cancer today in standard of

11:26care oncology, is that as a somatic mutation process, which

11:31is, in simple terms, a genetic disease, right.

11:35We are still pouring all of our resources

11:38into research, into resources into treatment, into resources

11:43into building new hospitals, et cetera, based around

11:47this particular idea that cancer is a genetic

11:51disease or only a genetic disease.

11:53And we've had this idea since

11:55Dr. Theodor Boveri's time in 1914, and it's picked up

11:59momentum, picked up even more momentum in the 1950s

12:03when Watson and Crick found the DNA helix, the

12:07helix that everyone's like, there's the answer.

12:10And then what?

12:10In the 80s, when we decided, well, if we can just

12:12map the genome, then we'll have all the answers there.

12:15And it's almost like every time we think this is going

12:18to be the answer, we end up with more questions, right?

12:20So that's one piece, and yet it's still

12:24the model and the philosophy and the paradigm

12:28that is leading the charge in how we

12:30think about study and approach cancer today.

12:34So keeping in mind that this is where

12:37we've been functioning from for over 100 years.

12:40Similarly, at that time, just a couple of years

12:42later, another researcher and clinician came forth saying, actually,

12:46no, cancer is not a genetic disease.

12:49Genetics might be a downstream effect, but the

12:53upstream effect is that it actually starts at

12:55the level of these little tiny organelles within

12:58our cells called the mitochondria.

13:00And your listeners might remember back to maybe

13:02their 6th grade biology classes about the mighty

13:05mitochondria and the fact that these little buggers

13:07are our little powerhouses of our cells that

13:11make energy, that make ATP.

13:13So that was where this. Dr.

13:16Otto Warburg, if your listeners want to really

13:18dive down a deep rabbit hole, go and

13:20read the book Ravenous by Sam Apple.

13:23Fascinating about this time and this research of that time in

13:26the 1920s, of which he won a Nobel Prize for this

13:28work in 1931 or 32, I always forget, but somewhere in

13:32the early 30s, he won a Nobel Prize for this finding.

13:35But what he noted is that, simply put,

13:39cancer cells, all of our cells of our

13:42body, except for red blood cells, have mitochondria.

13:45And what he noticed are cancer cells.

13:48The mitochondria within those cancer cells look very

13:51different than the mitochondria in our healthy cells.

13:53And push, come to shove, over the last

13:55hundred or so years, we've started to learn

13:58that the different shape, the different behavior, the

14:00different personality of that mitochondria, even the different

14:03number and activity of those mitochondria are what

14:06are creating of disease or preventing of disease.

14:10And so we started to realize that the

14:13way our mitochondria is expressed, how many we

14:16have, how well they're working or not working,

14:19is basically our fountain of youth.

14:22And so that is where we start to get

14:24a bigger vision than this myopic genetic approach.

14:29And so when we talk about this in

14:31the books, you have a little context.

14:32Now, this idea really was, it won all the awards.

14:36It was where everyone was putting

14:37their attention until Watson and Crick.

14:39And then it was sort of like that

14:40got buried until years later, when people started

14:43dusting off some of this information and asking

14:47different questions about it, one of which I

14:49stumbled across her research in the 1980s,

14:51Dr. Mina Bissell, who's actually presented at some of big Society

14:56of Integrative oncology conferences over the years, she started to

14:59understand that in her research in a lab, that the

15:03cancer cells were more responsive to the medium in which

15:07they were growing in that petri dish than in the

15:11cell itself, which started people to question whether cancer was

15:17really at that cellular genetic level, and that maybe we

15:20should broaden our thought process to basically look at the

15:22swimming pool in which those cells are swimming, might be

15:26of more interest.

15:26And so her work in the

15:28extracellular matrix became really paramount.

15:31And then in the mid 2010 era, people like Dr. Thomas Seyfried

15:36dusted off further and said, let's

15:39look at cancer as a metabolic derangement at

15:42that mitochondrial level where our body is using

15:46and choosing different resources to fuel the cancer

15:49versus to fuel the healthy cells.

15:51And so that is what led to this book.

15:54That even though I've been living it and practicing it

15:56in myself and patients for over 30 years, I suddenly

16:00had people that had created language for me to start

16:02to communicate and convey what it was that I was

16:05seeing and doing in the clinic.

16:07And what I started to understand after decades of my

16:09own clinical practice and my own applying it to myself.

16:12First approach was that everything we think about,

16:16put on in or around us, and even

16:19down to the people we surround ourselves by

16:22impact, the health of our mitochondria.

16:25So think about the mitochondria.

16:27We used to think it was just about power creation,

16:29but we've learned since that it's very much about a

16:32receiver of information from the environment around it, whether that's

16:36intracellularly from the tissues, from the blood flow from the

16:41organs, from the whole container of the body itself, from

16:44outside of the container of the body itself from things

16:46we're being exposed to day to day.

16:48Whatever inputs coming in, that mitochondria's job is to

16:52see it, recognize it, ingest it, translate it, and

16:56then put signals out into the body to tell

16:58the body what to do with that input.

17:01So what happens over time is that input

17:03gets congested, congealed, and mismanaged and miscommunicated, which

17:07leads to all types of weird signaling processes

17:09which can flip into a cancering process.

17:12So it's basically accumulations of life.

17:15And even to this day, standard of care

17:18has stated that cancer itself, less than 5%

17:21of all cancer, actually have genetic origin.

17:23And yet we are still treating

17:25cancer as a genetic disease.

17:27And they are completely in agreement to say that

17:2990% to 95% of our diet and our lifestyle

17:32and the world around us is actually what is

17:35impacting our cancering process or not.

17:37And yet we don't put our

17:39resources of research in there.

17:41So the book, the metabolic approach to cancer, is

17:43trying to bridge that, help people understand the why

17:47of cancer, which is to evaluate, I guess, for

17:50me, it could be for someone, maybe seven buckets.

17:53For others, it might be twelve buckets.

17:54But for me, I kind of landed on ten major

17:56buckets that seem to contribute to a mitochondria's health or

18:01disease, which then is the sort of precursor to whether

18:05this becomes cancer or other chronic illness.

18:08And so, simply put, I go into these terrain ten.

18:11Okay, so one of them is epigenetics, meaning

18:15what did you inherit from those before you?

18:17What is the blueprint that you were born with?

18:19Now, the cool thing about this blueprint is

18:21that it's not necessarily set in stone.

18:23It might be what your tendencies are, what your

18:26predispositions are, but it's how you play those tendencies,

18:30how you feed those tendencies, how you fortify yourself

18:34against those tendencies that help keep that genetic expression

18:39symbiotic in the rest of the body.

18:41All right, so that's one drop in the bucket.

18:43The other one is, what are you fueling yourself with?

18:45That's our metabolic health.

18:47So, we had, in the last 150 years, eat more

18:50sugar than ever from a variety of resources, going from

18:53about five pounds of sugar per person in the early

18:5618 hundreds to over 175 pounds per person today.

19:00Big difference.

19:00Our body couldn't adapt quick enough to that change.

19:04Right?

19:04So, wow is right.

19:06And so we now learn that sugar is

19:08the driver of a lot of metabolic diseases.

19:10Not that it's caused, but

19:11it certainly makes things worse.

19:13More inflammation, more immune suppression,

19:16more poor oxygenation, more immune

19:20dysfunction, more metabolic microbiome dysfunction.

19:24It just adds a lot of gunk to the workings internally.

19:29Then we look at environmental.

19:30At this point, we live on the planet.

19:32If you live here on this planet, you have toxicity.

19:34It's just how does it interplay with your particular blueprint

19:38and how much are you taking in and how much

19:40is your body able to take care of?

19:42And then we look at the microbiome, which is

19:44just now picking up momentum in the sciences.

19:46Despite the fact that, like ayurvedic doctors, chinese doctors,

19:50naturpaths, we've known for millennia that the gut

19:54is where it's at, where it starts.

19:55We just didn't quite have the languaging to

19:57understand that or convey that or research that.

19:59And then it gets down to our immune

20:01system, inflammation, circulation, and oxygenation of the body.

20:06Hormone like balance, not just excess

20:09or deficient, but balance of our

20:12hormones, circadian rhythm and stress response.

20:15And the mental emotional piece which we've already alluded to

20:18in the beginning of my story in all of this.

20:20And so what the metabolic approach to cancer book

20:23tries to do is help the reader get curious

20:28about what might be the big drops in their

20:30own bucket affecting their mitochondrial expression.

20:33And so even the beginning of the book has a

20:35very rudimentary quiz to see maybe what your priorities are.

20:40And then you can go in and focus on that and

20:42see, okay, maybe I'm getting too much sugar in my life.

20:44What can I do about it?

20:45Maybe I am getting too many toxins.

20:47What can I do about it?

20:48Maybe my hormones do need more modulation.

20:50What can I do about it?

20:51So it's a roadmap to help people understand where

20:54they came from, where they are in this moment,

20:56and how to get to their next desired destination.

21:00Right.

21:01And, I mean, I'm amazed at how

21:03comprehensive it is in that book, too.

21:06I was going through it the other day, and you have

21:08a lot of great questions at the beginning, I think, for

21:11people who might not think they were even exposed to toxins

21:15or certain things or grew up in a certain environment and

21:17might have never thought anything about it.

21:20And then they're reading this, and they're like, okay, I

21:22can see where it ties in, or I can. Interesting.

21:26This is an interesting question, and I

21:27can dig in it a little more.

21:29So I was very impressed with that and how you

21:31can kind of take people on a journey as well. Thank you.

21:35We've even, since then, thanks to technology, we've

21:39actually expanded on that questionnaire that's completely free

21:42to take deep dive like hundreds of questions

21:45instead of a few that really take it

21:47down, it's got a weighted score.

21:49So at the end of the questionnaire, you

21:51really know what your highest percentage is.

21:52And maybe you look at your top two or three, and

21:55that might be where you want to put your focus and

21:56work with someone who understands terrain, understands the body ecology, and

22:02how to best support it along the way.

22:04But it's still, I can't even tell

22:06you how many people at this point.

22:08The book has sold over 100,000 copies.

22:10It's in six languages, seven languages, two more coming

22:13out this year with more on the horizon.

22:15It's just accidentally seeping out there.

22:17But people tell me all the time, it's

22:20like, as you said, they didn't know what

22:21they didn't know until they knew.

22:23And I think that's what's catching us off guard today,

22:26is now that cancer statistics globally are expecting one in

22:29two of us to experience this in our lifetime.

22:32We need to be a bit more proactive to understand why.

22:36Because I can't even tell you, Dr.

22:37Michele, how many patients have said to me,

22:39but I was healthy until I got cancer.

22:42And what I have to explain to them is

22:43that was absolutely impossible, that it's not possible to

22:47be both healthy and cancer at the same time.

22:50You can be healthy with cancer

22:52where it's keeping the cancer dormant. Right.

22:56But you can't be healthy and have the cancering process,

22:59like a galloping goose going off the tracks there.

23:02That is not possible.

23:03So we always want to dig deeper, get curious as to

23:07what might make you vulnerable to your mitochondria being damaged enough

23:12to move into a realm of a cancer process.

23:16Right.

23:17And I think all of that information is so incredibly

23:20helpful, too, just to let people know and to guide

23:24them along the way of have them thinking that way.

23:27And a question for you is, so I know that

23:31you've been training physicians in this approach for a while.

23:35How would somebody who's in this, because you're not

23:38seeing patients anymore, but you're in the training phase

23:41to get that information out on a larger level

23:43now, which is amazing, which is super awesome.

23:46How would they find that?

23:47If somebody's looking for a practitioner, they

23:49want to know more about this and

23:51have somebody guide them along the way?

23:54Where would they find that information? Great question.

23:56I appreciate the opportunity to talk about something that's really

23:59fun for me, which is I really love Docere, Teacher.

24:05Doctor means Docere, which means teacher. Right.

24:07So I think we just come by

24:08this naturally by being just a doctor.

24:10But it's neat when you can actually get out

24:12there and help other doctors do reach more.

24:15So instead of me just being a one to one,

24:17one doctor to one patient, it's now me to.

24:20Currently we're at 200 clinicians, although we're

24:23expanding that next week to 40 more

24:25at jumping into our cohort of training.

24:27We're going into our 9th cohort now that's one to 240.

24:31And the reach that they each have, suddenly

24:34it's exponential, which is massive and necessary.

24:37So the metabolic Terrain Institute of Health is our 501

24:42nonprofit entity in which we house all of our education

24:46platforms, our patient grants, so patients that are seeking help

24:51in financing some of their integrative oncology treatments for clinicians

24:55in parts of the world, or even new graduates who

24:57don't have the financial resources but really want to be

25:00trained in this, we've even got grants for clinicians to

25:03take this course.

25:03We even have global pricing.

25:06So, for instance, I had a call this morning with a

25:08doctor, an oncologist in Romania, who very much wants to take

25:11this course, but the price, they can't pay it at the

25:14US dollar value because it's just not possible.

25:17So there's a particular formula you use

25:19for countries around the world that makes

25:21it applicable to their own financial system.

25:25So we want this accessible by everybody.

25:28But ultimately, at the end of the

25:29day, after this course is complete, clinicians

25:31have an opportunity to pass an exam.

25:33Some just come through for their own knowledge, some

25:36come through to just get this and say, hey,

25:38I completed it, here's my certificate, and move on.

25:41Most, however, say I'm now part of a

25:43mission and a vision much bigger than myself,

25:45and I want to continue down this.

25:46So they decide to be ongoing, they

25:48decide to stay in the network.

25:49They decide to also be

25:50teachers themselves into this community.

25:53And those folks are listed on

25:55our mtih.org website, which stands the

26:00metabolicraininstituteofealth.org website under directory, under practitioners.

26:06Those are our vetted, trusted colleagues around

26:08the globe that focus on this.

26:10We've also got another learning opportunity for people

26:13who, if they can't order labs, if they

26:16can't order imaging, if they can't prescribe, but

26:18they still have good medical background, maybe they're

26:20a nurse, maybe they're a nutritionist, a physical

26:23therapist, maybe they've got a health coaching background

26:27that want to be part of this.

26:28We have what's called our Tap program, which is

26:30our terrain advocate program, which is also a course

26:34which has our vetted graduates on there.

26:36We've got 300 of those folks in 36 countries,

26:40our fifth or 6th cohort, starting in April.

26:42So we've got that.

26:44They are the bridge between the clinician and the

26:47patient, and they're often the first line helping patients

26:50onboard into this, helping the educational process of this,

26:53helping make sure nothing falls into the cracks, helping

26:56people literally go through and audit their lives, not

26:58just their pantries about what they may be exposed

27:01to and what they can do about it.

27:03And so that's an opportunity.

27:04And then later, second quarter of 2024, we'll be

27:07dropping kind of a do it yourself course for

27:09people who just want to maybe expand upon what

27:12they learned in the book, but they're not a

27:13healthcare provider, and they really want this for themselves,

27:16to be more inspired, educated and empowered.

27:20That is, being ready to drop for everyone for

27:23kind of a do it yourself program in a

27:25couple of months, which we're also very excited about.

27:28All of this information about our educational

27:30platforms can be found on mtih.org. That's perfect.

27:35And I'll make sure to put all those

27:36links up when we publish this, too.

27:38So everyone has a place to

27:40go and to find everything as. Thank you.

27:43Huge, huge.

27:44What we've learned is that an empowered

27:46patient is a patient with better outcomes.

27:49And I know you, Dr.

27:50Michele, see that firsthand, that it's like, this

27:54is going to sound kind of crass, but

27:56an empowered patient is hard to kill.

27:58It's just the way.

28:01And I think back to Bernie Siegel, his book

28:03back from the 80s, medicine, what is it?

28:06Mind, Medicine, Miracles.

28:07I may be skewing that a little bit, but

28:09one of the earlier influencers in my own healing

28:11journey, he talked about the power of even like,

28:14support groups and these networks, and that patients that

28:17were involved in any form of supportive community with

28:21their own diagnosis had far better outcomes and overall

28:24survival rates than those who did not.

28:26So we're creating yet another communal approach for this people

28:31like James Maskell, who's a dear colleague out there in

28:35the world, he wrote a beautiful book called the Community

28:37Cure, which is talking about how medicine should go back

28:40to being a community based approach.

28:42So I feel really proud at MTIH,

28:44that's what we keep bringing to the

28:45table, that we're bringing everyone together.

28:47It shouldn't be a hierarchy of doctors over

28:49here, mid levels over here, patients over here.

28:52We all just need to be gathered around

28:53the table together to learn from one another,

28:56to inspire one another, to empower one another.

29:00Yeah, 100%.

29:02I mean, I created this whole podcast mainly to give

29:05patients back, to empower them, and to say, hey, this

29:09is a journey that you're on, and you put together

29:11your own team and you make your own choices.

29:14And I think the outcome dramatically changes once you

29:18take that responsibility instead of giving it to the

29:21team or giving it to a certain area.

29:23So huge fan of that.

29:26Cool.

29:27Well, thank you so much, Dr.

29:29Winters, for coming on today and

29:31sharing all of your amazing information.

29:33And we'll make sure that all of our listeners have

29:37access to everything you talked about today, and they can

29:40find you and find your book as well.

29:43Thank you so much.

29:44And I'm so, so happy that you're

29:46getting these types of conversations out there. So, Dr.

29:49Michele, thank you for what you do.

29:51Thank you very much.