Transcript Disclaimer – Please note that the following transcript has been machine generated by an AI software and therefore may include errors or omissions.

Robin Daly
Hello and welcome to the Yes to Life show . I’m Robert Daly and it’s been my privilege to have been host of the show for more than eight years, speaking to a vast array of experts from every walk of integrative cancer care – scientists, clinicians, practitioners, activists and more. Remember that the back catalogue of around 450 shows is available through the Yes to Life website . There, you’ll be able to browse through them or use the search facility to look for particular guests or topics that you’re interested in. Back to today’s show and my guest is Katrina Foe, an experienced practitioner of pilates and functional medicine, who trained in response to her own diagnosis are the resources that she discovered to help herself. She now offers services targeted specifically towards cancer and speaking to Katrina in the USA.

Katrina Foe
Oh, it’s my pleasure, Robin. I’m always excited to talk about some of these help subjects that are near and dear to everyone’s heart.

Robin Daly
Okay, so you’re located in Idaho, which for Brits like me, whose American geography is weak, shall we say, I think it’s sort of inland from Washington State on the West Coast, is that right?

Katrina Foe
Exactly. Yeah. Up on the northern side towards Canada is where I’m at. Exactly.

Robin Daly
Right, okay, old mountaneous there, is it?

Katrina Foe
It is! The mountains are absolutely gorgeous. We have rivers running through it and today’s got some fog. It’s really nice.

Robin Daly
Right, is this your home state, you always lived there or is it somewhere you chose to live?

Katrina Foe
No, I’m actually from Scottsdale, Arizona in the desert. So this is a different issue you can get.

Robin Daly
Very good. So what’s made you choose to live there then?

Katrina Foe
Well, we just got to a point in our life where we wanted to have more land. It’s got still, you know, the land’s very expensive and we wanted to be out, you know, more rural in the mountains and be able to raise their own animals. So we have our own meat, cows and chickens and stuff, which again, that doesn’t work very well in the desert.

Robin Daly
No, but anyway, great, so being a little bit self-sufficient there.

Katrina Foe
we’re going that direction.

Robin Daly
you work on the two banners one of them is a curious one nutritional pilates maybe you’re gonna start out by explaining that one what what’s your offering

Katrina Foe
nutritional Pilates is the name of my book. That’s the artwork that my daughter did that’s on the cover of my book. And basically I’m melding my two different fields. And so my first career as a Pilates instructor, I have a Pilates studio in Scottsdale. my second career as a functional nutritional therapist, working specifically with cancer, they come together where we’re looking at the body as a whole. So not just muscles and bones and ligaments and movement and not just hormones and neurotransmitters and the insides, but how does the body work together? I really was hoping in this book to give people a framework for disease prevention, looking at your symptoms and getting ahead of the curves that you don’t end up like I did with some big bad disease like cancer.

Robin Daly
did you actually say you have a studio in scottsdale is that you’re running one down there still

Katrina Foe
I do do personalized pilates, I loved it when I was 24, so we’ve had it for a very long time now.

Robin Daly
How far away is that? It sounds like a long way.

Katrina Foe
Yes, that’s about a two days drive.

Robin Daly
the other banner you work under is designed for health. So maybe you want to tell us what this covers. how do the two relate?

Katrina Foe
I have the Pilates business, personalized Pilates. I have designed for health, which is my functional nutrition business, where I work with cancer clients and we use all the functional testing. I have a VIP program and then I have more of a group program. That’s going to be launching in February timeframe ish, which I’m very excited about because a lot of times people, you know, they get this cancer diagnosis and they don’t really, you know, they maybe shuttle through the treatment, but they don’t really know why they got this so that they can then work on preventing it from happening again. Because to me like that living in the, under the black cloud of is it going to happen again is, is the worst part.

Robin Daly
bad news, isn’t it? mainly I want to focus in on the work you do and the particular skills and insights you’re able to bring to the table, but of course we wouldn’t even be here speaking about all this today were it not for your own experience that you’re really referred to with cancer. from what I can gather it’s quite a story and probably enough to keep us talking for the whole show in fact, but maybe you can run us through the most important moments, particularly those that influenced the work you’re doing today.

Katrina Foe
absolutely The story is quite long and there were a lot of little side bends and hiccups and stuff along the way, but I’ll give you the short version of any area you want to dive into more.

Katrina Foe
I found a lump. I was nursing my fifth baby and I had a mastitis. for those men that might not know, it’s like a breast infection where the ducts are plugged up. , yit wasn’t crazy that there was this huge lump there at that time. But when the mastitis resolved, the lump was still there. it was a golf ball size, which was a little weird. I didn’t think too much of it. I’m like, my nursing breasts are shifting. But my mom really was pushing me to get something looked into. when I did, I found out that it was cancerous. So, like I said, we had already moved to the country. I was making our own toiletries. I was making our cleaning products. we were eating from scratch, totally organic. I did not quite understand. I was angry. if I’m doing all this stuff, with all the things you should do, what the heck? Why is this happening? all my friends were saying the same thing. of all the people I know, I can’t imagine you got cancer. I’m naturally a questioner and I started okay, something I’m doing is not right. I put everything on the table. Let’s reevaluate the diet. Let’s reevaluate, the cleaning products, everything, because something’s messed up here for me to be able to get cancer. through that journey, I ended up finding functional medicine, which I had never done any testing on myself ever. I didn’t even know what functional medicine was. it just was this amazing process where you can test anything you want. It’s amazing how much you can test. we’re looking at my gut and my hormones and toxin levels and genetics and all these things. it became very apparent to me that there were a lot of things that were really jacked up, things that were off, that I just wasn’t connected with my body. I wasn’t noticing. I wasn’t paying attention to the symptoms. a lot of it I was writing off to , I’m postpartum, brain fog. stubborn pounds, no problem, that makes sense. But I didn’t think that those would contribute to cancer. I mean, I was 37 at the time, and that just seems so far off the beaten path. o addressing those not only got me better, I put it into remission 100% naturally, but it also helped me understand what I can do for the future, so that I’m not having to live in that fear or that black cloud, you know, of when’s it gonna come back? the best part is that, you know, I got so excited because like I said, I’m a questioner. I went back to school and I’ve spent many years now diving into this even more because I wanna help other people because this is such a needed topic. I think people a lot of times leave the cancer process and they’re like, why did that happen? they don’t feel like to get that answer.

Robin Daly
They never understood it, so they’re always afraid of the same thing happening. Makes sense. So look, a few questions about your treatment and everything. You made the decision to go 100% natural, as you just said. You didn’t take any orthodox approaches at all. Why?

Katrina Foe
That’s a great question. just to state for the record, I am not against standard of care. I think there’s a time and a place for different things. with my clients, if they come in and they want to do, like a lot of them will do like surgery, but they don’t want chemo and radiation or something like that. they want to address things functionally. I’m totally supportive because at the root issue, it’s a personal preference and it’s your body. You should get to decide in my opinion. For me, I previous to the cancer, we had had some health struggles in our family where we had seen ridiculous shifts and changes with food. And I’m talking food alone. I wasn’t doing any nutritional testing or functional testing. We weren’t doing much supplements. We weren’t doing other additional treatments. It was just food. having seen the profound impact of food as medicine already, it was just a, that’s me. I like to, that was my band already.

Robin Daly
But you obviously had a lot of confidence in taking that approach as well. Because for somebody in your situation, surgery would be quite an accessible option, which is non-toxic, essentially, but also quite effective.

Katrina Foe
Well, yes, the surgery is not toxic, but what do they do with breast cancer? They put implants in and then they tattoo a nipple on and those are both highly toxic. The tattoos have been shown, this is any tattoo, but we’re talking about nipples, to possibly be connected with inducing autoimmune conditions recently. There was some cool research coming out, but those breast implants, those are so, so toxic. I’m talking whether it’s silicone through and through or silicone with saline in it. The silicone outside has been shown to harbor mold and there’s actually something called breast implant syndrome, I believe it’s called, where it’s a sickness, it’s a problem. For me specifically, I had huge issues with mold, that was one of my main drivers. If I had gotten surgery, I’m a little vain, I would have wanted the implants, I wouldn’t have wanted to have one boot missing, that would be totally, defeminizing, but that would have probably made the whole situation worse in terms of the mold for me, which I didn’t know at the time.

Robin Daly
They would have wanted to do a mastectomy, not a lumpectomy.

Katrina Foe
No, I think they probably would have done a lumpectomy, but I’m just saying in theory, if you’re going to put an implant in, I mean, I have a lot of my clients that I’ve encouraged and that have gone and gotten their implants out, both cancerous and people that didn’t even have cancer, but we’re having a lot of problems that we were seeing were connected with the implants and such.

Robin Daly
I remember I did a whole show about implants many years ago where already they’re all being highlighted these problems, that’s definitely not the kind of thing that I’d be encouraging anybody to do. But anyway, makes complete sense. just out of interest, I noticed that it looks like all your work is for the women. Why did you decide to do that?

Katrina Foe
It isn’t actually all with women. I do work with men as well. Isn’t it? I just, because of my own personal story, and I just tend to have a lot more women, you know, clients, so I tend to focus on talking to women. And I honestly, I tend to draw people that are pregnant or have had a baby and stuff because that was part of my journey. I get a lot of women, and I’m not sure if it’s because of that, but I get a lot of 30 and 40 year old women, not necessarily as much as with the older women, which I love the older women, but that’s just who I tend to draw. It’s kind of interesting.

Robin Daly
Well, it kind of makes sense. You can see if you were if you could go and consult somebody that actually had a very similar experience to you. Well, it makes sense. OK, so there you are. You’re delivering expertise in Pilates as well as in functional medicine, metabolic health. We start off with Pilates as well. You know, there it is. It’s well known as a fitness and resilience method. But I don’t think I’ve ever spoken on this show about its relevance to people with cancer, funnily enough. Yoga. Yeah, quite often, but not Pilates. So this is something that you’re recommending to all your cancer clients. And do you want to say a bit about that and why?

Katrina Foe
that’s a really good question. let me clarify because not necessarily. with Pilates, what I’m recommending is that for a preventative, people are looking at their muscle imbalances to prevent injuries and have a full healthy body. When someone’s actually cancering, meaning they’re actively working on it, that’s probably not where I’m going to focus because there’s so many other things to deal with in terms of dialing in the diet, getting all the lifestyles, getting all the supplements, the protocols and figuring out where is that arsenic coming from and that’s not what they need. Now, gentle movement, keep the circulation going, yes, and if they’re up to it, Pilates is a great form of that because it gets that mind-body connection and such, but a lot of my clients aren’t necessarily. However, I will say if they have had surgery, especially reconstructive surgery, that is probably the best place to go and get post-rehab work done just to make sure that all the tissue is not just locking down in scar tissue and such and you want to have a practitioner that is trained in that, not a big group class of 10 people. That would not be appropriate at all, so it kind of depends on the situation. If you can’t tell yet, I’m very, very big into what is right for the individual, not one size fits all stuff.

Robin Daly
Fair enough. So you’ve already explained how you chose to go down a treatment route that didn’t include any conventional approaches at all, not even surgery. And so, you know, in that you’re unusual, I’ve got to say, you know, there are not many people I’ve been helping be with cancer for 20 years. And yeah, we get people coming through who don’t take any conventional treatment, but they’re fairly few and far between. So you’ve actually been trained, though, in integrative methods. And that implies working with conventional approaches. do you want to say a bit more, you already said a little bit, do you want to say a bit more about the way that you work with your class, who are going to have a whole range of situations from maybe somebody who wants to follow in your footsteps to somebody who’s taking a whole range of conventional approaches, how you work with that.

Katrina Foe
there’s so much there. for me, like you said, my clients will come to me along the spectrum and I like to support them where they’re at with what they choose, not pushing them into yes or no. And the oncology often is a part of it. A lot of clients come after they’ve done the whole traditional trio and such, but that’s fine because they didn’t get to the root issue and they still need to dig into that. I have a year-long program and it includes all the functional testing. we’re looking at stool in the gut. We’re looking at the hormones, adrenal sex hormones, thyroid hormones. We’re looking at all sorts of different markers in the blood, a lot more than traditional medicine is going to be looking at. We’re looking at all the different toxins, so metals, non-metal chemicals. We’re looking at the mycotoxins, which are the molds, the neurotransmitters, and we’re looking at the genetics to specifically see what kind of epigenetic choices we can make in terms of diet and lifestyle that will really turn the gene variants on and off that are not helpful. we’re dialing in the diet while we’re waiting for the lab test and they’ll get custom protocols and I’ll be there during the implementation stuff to make sure everything goes as smooth as it can because there’s always the fun little hiccups. I have this can work integratively, whether people are already done with their standard care and doing this after, or if they’re working with someone concurrently. I will tell you honestly, most of the time, the oncologists don’t want them to take any supplements. They just blink it, don’t take anything. Or they’ll say no, that’s nonsense, stop doing that. it gets a little sticky and I’m not a doctor, so I’m not trumping the oncologist. So sometimes that can be hard and a lot of times people will wait till afterwards to circle back around, or they tend to, I think I tend to draw the people that want to go completely outside the box. And with that, what I would say, this is very different than regular alternative therapy. there’s a lot of people out there that do alternative work, but usually what you’ll find is that they’re just throwing wet spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. Meaning everybody gets the same therapies, everybody gets IV vitamin C, everybody gets hyperbaric oxygen chambers, everybody gets the same generic 500 supplements, and there’s not testing to see what’s going on, which a lot of times there are people that are not doing well in certain areas that these therapies aren’t good for and they can actually fuel the cancer. if they’re not testing and they’re just guessing, then it’s not very effective.

Robin Daly
you talked a lot about getting to the root cause, finding out what went wrong, and so obviously you see that as a sort of primary mission of yours, if you like, to help people to find that information so that they can do something about it. Another sort of aspect, if you like, of integrated medicine would be supporting somebody through conventional treatment and mitigating the side effects, the damage, all the stuff that can happen. Is that something you engage in, particularly?

Katrina Foe
I can, that’s not usually what my clients are coming to me for. Interesting. There’s a lot of really key components that are very helpful. Meaning if you’re going through chemotherapy, you really need to be in a ketogenic state or a fasted state so that your body, those cancer cells will uptake the actual chemotherapy and it’s going to be more effective. Why the oncologists aren’t telling people this, it’s in the research. I don’t know. You know, so I’ll give people help with that. But again, it gets sticky if I’m recommending, hey, you’re low in this, let’s take these supplements or let’s do this for your inflammation. Because a lot of times the oncologists are saying, no. then it gets tricky because I can’t override that.

Robin Daly
No, I understand.

Katrina Foe
It depends on the situation.

Robin Daly
coming back to you and your lack of any conventional approaches, you’re obviously very successful in your endeavors, which is a clear demonstration of what’s possible. What would you say were the key factors of your approach that delivered such success?

Katrina Foe
I think the most important things were just to get all the smoking guns on the table. a lot of times practitioners, and this is great if we’re not talking about something with a ticking time clock like cancer, we’ll do like one test. Let’s address that, see how it goes, let’s do a different test that didn’t address it all. But I do all the testing up front so that we don’t miss anything. sometimes if there’s stuff like mold, as in my case, I had crazy high levels, that needs to be addressed fairly early on so that the other shifts can happen. Things like hormones and such are not going to shift when there’s toxic levels of mold in the body. if you’re not looking for the mold, then you don’t know that and you’re, why are these hormones doing this? it gets kind of funky. the blood sugar as well, I have a lot of clients that have issues getting into ketosis, they’re, they’re doing the diet, oh, my goodness, Katrina, I’m, I’m eating this exact, my blood sugar still at 115 all the time. Awe probably have some mold. Let’s look at that, let’s deal with that. I had a lot of areas out. there’s 10 areas that I look at, and I can go over those if you want. usually people are looking for one thing with cancer.

Robin Daly
Of course, yeah.

Katrina Foe
that’s so ridiculous because it’s such a multi-factorial disease. As are most of our chronic diseases, it’s not one thing. It’s usually with cancer, it’s six or eight of those 10 things. It’s just a matter of what inside each bucket was exactly going on so that we can address it the most effectively. For me, I was insulin resistant. I was very hypothyroid, so just sluggish, not autoimmune. I had crazy low levels of vitamin D, which I found out I have issues creating vitamin D genetically. I had, let’s see, the toxic mold I mentioned. I had a lot of emotional trauma going on personally in my life that no one really talks about and addresses. That is a huge driver of cancer, a lot of stress. We had just moved, different state, just had a baby, there’s a lot going on. Most of them weren’t having real symptoms and I blew off the ones that I did have.

Robin Daly
you mentioned stress in there as being one of the most important things. That’s not something that you’re qualified into. Do you help people in that area? Do you refer or what?

Katrina Foe
that’s a good one. the stress bucket can be things like what is stressing you in your body. if you have an infection in your body, that will stress your body in the background. But it’s also the stress like I feel very driven, I feel very perfectionistic, high expectations demanded on me. I have relationship issues. It could be that stuff too. For me, and then there’s the emotional bucket, which is kind of similar. Is there trauma in your history? Which so there’s a little overlap. I am not a counselor. I will help the client identify those areas. A lot of times people already know what they are. My dad died three months ago. That’s really stressed me out and threw me off. But usually there’s something in the last year that has been a huge thing for that cancer client right before their diagnosis. So what I will do personally, my favorite work is some energetic healing that I have some dear, dear friends that do amazing work with this. And they have a course that they can do as well as some in person work. I find that to be the most effective. Sometimes people prefer like talk therapy, journaling, you know, whatever it is. But my heart is that they don’t ignore it. I ignored mine. I did a little ostrich sands and you know, it was it was not good. And I see clients do this repeatedly. I think it’s just our culture just tends to say, Oh, suck it up.

Robin Daly
Yeah, if it’s not your thing, some people look into that stuff quite readily, but they’re not so many. Most people would rather not know, wouldn’t they? we just carry on.

Katrina Foe
Yeah, that’s not my standpoint, but I have good referral systems because I think it’s incredibly important.

Robin Daly
Right. Well, you know, I rate the energetic healing as well myself as I think it’s great for a kind of left field approach to things like that, which works very well. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. Okay, well, look, you’ve said the word mould many times already. of course, it’s a kind of hot topic at the moment, mould, it’s very much come to the foreground, isn’t it?

Katrina Foe
Yes, and I’m sure, Robin, that you are well aware of how controversial and confusing this area is because everybody has different opinions and different thoughts and, you know, and standard of care doesn’t exist. It’s mentioned a whole chapter on dealing with mold, and yet there’s different standards of what is acceptable, what is not. At the end of the day, it really has to do with the individual person’s detox capacity. Because for example, when I got cancer, we had moved into a house that had high levels of black mold. It was in the bathroom, we found it, we took it out ourselves, had no idea how bad of an idea that was. You know, my husband, no problem. Not a single symptom, no issues. Me? I ended up with cancer. Now, think about it. I had, in the last 10 years, had five babies. Like, my body is clearly under a little bit of stress just because I’m making people. We had just moved, like I said. And if you look at my genes, I can see now that I have really bad detox systems. This is an area that, for me, I now know, having seen my genetics, that I need to keep my eye on all the time. Whether I’m in the mold environment or not, you know, there’s always going to be things in the air and things that, you know, in the water and stuff, especially if you go out and live in the real world, that you’re going to get exposed to. I need to do my best to mitigate and minimize it, and then I’m going to be constantly doing things like my infrared saunas, my coffee enemas, and different ways to encourage the detox pathways. And if I don’t poop every day, it’s an issue. I want to make sure that that is always moving constantly.

Robin Daly
Interesting, it seems we’re in a kind of interesting dance with mold over the last hundred years or so because, you know, looking back, obviously, everybody used to live with much more mold. In the past, life was moldy. And we had a lot of infectious disease, a lot of people died of infections. But then we’ve cleaned life up and there’s no doubt about it, we’ve affected our immune system by over-cleaning it up. And our bodies don’t actually recognize these things now and know how to detend us from them either. So, you know, like a pendulum moonlight has gone too far in the cleanup direction. it’s shown how children who grow up on farms and things have much better immunity than people who grow up in a sterilized flat somewhere. it’s an interesting area and it obviously is a very important one because it has such a radical effect on our health, or it can do. And of course, if we have a healthy immune system that recognize these things, we can live with them. But if there are holes in our immune system for whatever reason, and there are plenty of reasons these days to have one, then of course, we’re prey to them.

Katrina Foe
I love that you said that and you’ll be happy to know my kids run around barefoot 90% of the time I have to work to get shoes on them. But I will get a little differently. I agree with you about things being cleaned up too much. So the way I explain it to my clients is that, it’s your ability to detox is like a maybe a jar or something. Think of like a mason jar. each of us are born with a different capacity. I have a very small capacity. maybe like a pint jar, and maybe my husband has like a gallon jar, toxins would be poured in there. how long how much toxins can you pour into the individual person’s jar before it overflows, because that’s when you’d be getting symptoms and diseases and such is different for each person. what I see as the the biggest issue is that in the last 100 years, exactly what you were saying, there’s been a huge shift. if you look 100 years ago, we did not have this insane amount of chemicals being poured on us without our consent. Now you guys have a better deal going on in the UK, because you’ve eliminated a lot of this, but we have insane amounts of glyphosate and everything just running amok, no control, no labeling even. maybe we’re not seeing all the other things and identifying because our tests, even though they’re great, they’re not even testing all the chemicals that we could be getting exposed to. I see weird things show up in terms of heavy metals in terms of the non chemical, non metal chemicals, like BPA, benzene and things like that that, you know, people are not thinking about just in cancer clients, it’s not one thing, there’s like multiple toxins and mold is one of them. So if you think about it, we’ve always had mold, I mean, it’s biblical, it’s been from the beginning of the world. Why are we more sensitive to it now? Well, maybe we’re just over burden with other things. that’s kind of the straw that breaks the camel’s back. So my approach is let’s address all of it. then especially with the cancer history, let’s just work on all of it continually so that we can have the smallest chance possible for recurrence and such. Because they’re just giving the brain more and more. I have to tell you, like, I live out in the country, I am not exposed to as many. But I had a lot of exposure. if you look at my history, I had a lot of things that were putting burdens on me, the mold is the straw that broke the camel’s back

Robin Daly
Interesting. That’s a subject that we’ll hear a lot more about, I think, in the coming years.

Katrina Foe
The part that really bothers me, I think, is that, say mold, and this goes with anything, whether it’s the heavy metals or the chemicals or whatever, we know from research that certain mold strains and certain chemicals and such are known carcinogens. This is not up for debate. yet when you go to an oncologist, do they ask, do they look for what’s in the person’s life? Like I have never had a client or with my own experience, had anyone even insinuate that there was even a question alluding to this. Sothe person goes, they get their oncology treatment, maybe radiation, chemo, whatever their combo is. No one’s asking. They go back to the same diet, the same lifestyle, the same toxins, the same symptoms that were telling them there was something wrong before they had got cancer and probably some new ones with all the different treatments. Why would it not come back? if you don’t address the oil that allowed the cancer to grow, why would it not grow back?

Robin Daly
Well, it’s, in a way, it’s almost miraculous that sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s very unsurprising when it does. Recurrences like, you know, six or nine months later, which have taken you from a stage one easy to treat cancer and suddenly, stage three, recurrent stage four. It’s so common. It’s just ridiculous really. and of course you’re in a desperately difficult situation then.

Katrina Foe
Yeah, and it’s heartbreaking then because people had hope and then they usually areashed at that point and they they they’re their morale and their will to fight is so different with the recurrence and it just breaks my heart because that window between having addressed it the first time and getting a recurrence that is the ideal window to deal with this. the urgency you have, you know, you’re feeling better and this is where you want to optimize and really make sure you don’t end up in that that recurrence again.

Robin Daly
Yeah, I think that sort of very normal human desire for everything to be okay, leads people to miss opportunities when they could be acting in ways that would be very constructive for their own health and just want to get on with something normal or something, you know, get away from cancer treatment or thinking about cancer, which let’s say I think it’s kind of it’s fairly normal kind of behavior to do that. But nonetheless, it’s a tragic mission on very many cases.

Katrina Foe
That’s very well put because the desire to live the normal life, if you step back and objectively look at a normal day, I’m thinking from America, but I don’t think it’s that different in the UK. What people eat, what people do, the stress level, the toxin intake, there is nothing normal about it. For anyone, whether they have cancer or not, it’s an upstream process now to just be healthy, to be like baseline. I’m not talking about optimized vibrant, but not eating all the toxins just alone. That’s hard. You have to work hard to be very intentional.

Robin Daly
You do, you do. It’s not an easy thing to avoid all that stuff. You have to actually wise up, quite considerably, and be very careful. we’re getting towards the end. you haven’t said so much about, you’ve got a retreat you offer, which sounds pretty mega. One week to change your life forever, it says on your website. That’s a big thing. do you want to tell us a little bit about all of that?I can see the reasons it would be a benefit to do a weeks intensive, to kick off a real change in direction. So, do you want to say a bit about exactly what it includes? Yeah. Why you’re doing it.

Katrina Foe
Yes, exactly. You hit on it earlier when you asked about the stress. Traditional oncology is very stressful, very high pressure. My question is, why does it have to be stressful? We know stress is a driver, so why are we adding more on it? Could we learn about our root cause drivers and maybe sip some keto mocktails by the side of a pool while we’re getting a non-toxic pedicure, learning how to integrate and have this more of a lifestyle and while we’re learning about our own individual epigenetics and such. Why can’t we do that? That’s what we do. We have a week of fun. Every single meal is a cooking class. You get to try the recipes and understand how to cook, not just these recipes, as well as going over all your functional labs and understanding specifically for you what’s different and for each person and such in a fun environment. We do fun things every night because when you have a cancer diagnosis, you really need to be intentional with having fun because probably that was not part of your life. We’ll do some silly things and fun things to really demonstrate and get people engaged in what does life look like. The biggest they’re drinking from a fire hose and the actual implementation was so hard. I had clients saying, oh Katrina, if you could just come live with me and be here for a week and teach me how to cook and all this stuff, I’m like, why couldn’t I? Clearly, I can’t go to each person’s house, but doing a retreat, we get the same effect of everybody getting to have that learning curve flattened. Plus bonus, they get a community of new friends that are going through the same thing and choosing to address it the same way.

Robin Daly
I want to talk about that bit of it in particular. I mean, I had James Maske, a healthcare activist and author on the show a few weeks back, and he opened my eyes a lot further to the power of the group to restore wellbeing. So, he’s absolutely right. You can see there’s a massive amount in it, and you’ve just referred to it. It’s a lot different to working one-to-one really, isn’t it? do you want to say a bit about that with your experience on your retreat?

Katrina Foe
absolutely. working one-on-one with clients, that was the component that was always kind of missing. with the group program and with the retreat, we’re integrating that and we’re going to infuse that into the one-on-one as well, because I’ve just found over the years that there is nothing like having that community. With, with cancer work in general, with any work, people need community. I think we learned that with COVID very, you know, in our face, but specifically if you’re stepping outside like traditional oncology and doing something weird, you know, just a little silly, that people need support and they may or may not be getting it from their family. even if they’re getting it from their family, they’re still going to get people that attack them on this and having their, their community, friends, cohorts, it doesn’t have to be the same age. It doesn’t have to be the same gender, just that connection in the soul of like, I’m not crazy. Someone else is doing this. I’m not alone. That is so invaluable. and it’s really helps people lean in and then they make more progress. Which ultimately is important, but the, having the heart connection is key.

Robin Daly
Yeah, I think it’s very true and I mean, Jane’s pointed out, I mean, he’s got evidence to show that people in general working in a group is more powerful than a one-to-one relationship with a functional medicine practitioner, which was what he was originally aiming for. He thought that was good healthcare, but he decided since that, well, A, not everybody could afford that, and that’s just life, and therefore that’s something more accessible as needed. But it’s actually more effective to work in a group. And this is an extraordinary thing. And he’s come down to seeing this. It’s actually so many of the root causes that are driving the chronic healthcare wave that’s overtaking us are the things to do with the social aspect, you know, isolation and that, which of course is legendary in the field of cancer. You know, people really feel nice, ladies and gentlemen, have a diagnosis, cancer. Very much. you immediately, you’re countering all this stuff, you’re actually in there with people who are gunning for your success, yours doing the same for them, and it becomes a team effort to actually get you all well.

Katrina Foe
Exactly. Yeah. I didn’t have that when I was cancering and I kind of modeled what I did after what I had. And I have found very quickly that there’s a better way to do it. And for economics and such, get the price down, but also to get the accountability up, to get the camaraderie, people need encouragement, they need that. And it just works so much better. So I 100% agree. That’s exactly what I found as well.

Robin Daly
Okay, you’ve got a minute to tell me what it means to be a member of Design4Health, because I see you have memberships. What does that mean?

Katrina Foe
we’re actually phasing that out because we’re, we’re phasing more to just the cancer freedom, but I love that you are seeing that. we have the online course. the cancer freedom one is going to be launching in February that will replace that membership and such. we are, are super excited to be launching the new course with all the community and all those aspects and stuff with the labs rolled in together, specifically just for cancer.

Robin Daly
Okay, so watch after that on your side. Do you want to give the site address?

Katrina Foe
Yeah, the new site is cancerfreedom.com and you can apply to work with us, but I’m going to drop in. I’ll give you the link, Robin, backslash their roadmap dash opt-in. You can get my free ebook that goes into a lot of a, we’re talking about all the different 10 areas of the root cause drivers, which tests we’re looking at and more about like what you should look for on your cancer journey and how to really address the body as a whole, more in depth. That’s great. Yeah. Lovely. I want to get this out there. This information needs to be out there. Whether you work with us or somebody else, like these are the tools that you need that I wish I had had.

Robin Daly
absolutely. Well, so many people working in the field of integrated medicine for cancer, they’re only there because they wish this type of being around for them. And they decide to go out and fill the gap. So it’s really great because you get very passionate people who are very committed to improving people’s health.

Katrina Foe
Exactly.

Robin Daly
All right well thanks so much for joining me today Katrina it’s been a real pleasure to hear about your story and all your inspiring work with cancer incidence going away is we’re in need of a lot of inspiration a lot of resources so your work’s much needed.

Katrina Foe
Thank you so much. It was a lovely experience.

Robin Daly
Some interesting territory we covered there, particularly the issues around mould and the power of group work, both topics that I expect to continue to arise in my coming interviews. Remember, I’m always keen to hear from you as to what you’ve enjoyed about the show, who you’d like to hear more from, topics you’d like to hear explored. Send your thoughts in to radio at yesterlife.org.uk. Time’s running out to get your chance at winning some fabulous prizes in our yest to life Christmas prize draw. And I do mean fabulous. The star attraction is a week’s holiday on the southwest tip of Wales, overlooking the Atlantic, in a beautiful cottage that sleeps up four people. How appealing is that? I’ve been to the location myself and it’s stunning. Got to be worth investing a fiver for a chance to win that. And there are plenty of other lovely prizes too, many of them very health focused. All the money raised from the draw will go to support the work of the charity, making this a doubly great investment. Find out more by going to yesterlife.org.uk, scrolling down the home page until you see the news item about the prize draw and then follow the links. Lastly, a reminder that if you want to be kept up to date regarding all the activities at Yes to life, then the best way is to go to our website, again that’s yesterlife.org.uk, and in the footer of every page is a sign up button to join our mailing list. Many thanks for listening today, it’s always a pleasure to have you join me to share in the ongoing exploration of the world of integrated medicine for cancer. I sincerely hope you can listen again next week and will make a point of joining me for another Yes To Life show.