Doctor Jen, you spent years within the system as a breast
cancer surgeon. What did you believe about
breast cancer back then that you no longer believe now?
It was so funny. It's a great question.
There are so many things that I believed to be true for 20 years
of my practice through training up until the time that I left
surgery. Probably the biggest 1 is that
we were taught that breast cancer is just some random
happenstance, right? It's bad luck, or it's genetics,
or it's something that the patient has no control over.
And although I hate conspiracy theories, I understand why that
that belief existed. It is because the doctors want
to feel as if what they're doing is the meaningful thing and they
have to believe in what they're doing.
So if health is created by the patient, if disease is reversed
by the patient and what they're doing, where does that leave the
doctor, Right. So it's so contradictory to that
belief system. So instead you take all the
power away from the individual and you tell them that it's your
genetics and you can't do anything about it or that it's
just bad luck and something that happened.
And so you have no control, right?
I'm going to take over control and I'm going to give you a
surgery or radiation or a drug and I'm going to change that for
you, right? And it's so it's this whole
transfer of power and it was the wrong thing.
And I did it for a really long time.
And within that system, all the focus is on the tumor, right?
Because if that is how our conventional medical system is
designed, it's all about symptom management.
So we have all of this focus on the tumor, but the tumor is not
the problem. The tumor is the symptom of the
problem. And until we back up 10 steps
and realize why that tumor is there, we're not helping people.
We're not getting them to another place, a better place.
We're just taking them across a bridge from sick to slightly
less sick because you no longer have a tumor in your body.
But all the inflammation, all the toxins, everything that led
them to that point is still there.
Sometimes it's worse. So I believed that I was truly
helping when I was a breast surgeon.
I really did. I couldn't have done it if I
didn't believe in what I was doing.
But it wasn't until I got my own diagnosis and spent my own time
as a patient that I realized that what we are doing is so
wrong and we're focused on completely the wrong thing.
And once I had that revelation, once I had that experience, it
was a bell that I couldn't not ring.
And I knew that not only was I not helping as a surgeon, but I
also wasn't living my mission, my mission, because I always
knew that I was put here to change the conversation around
breast cancer, to change how we diagnose breast cancer, how we
treat breast cancer, how we reverse breast cancer.
I knew that I was always meant to help millions of women.
And so I think that that's why I got my own diagnosis, so that my
eyes could be opened. Because when you're in that
conventional medical space, it is so hard to see the landscape.
It's so hard to understand that. And you really do believe that
everything that you taught that you were taught is true.
Yeah. Was there a single moment within
that journey for you where your faith and conventional cancer
care was kind of shattered? Or was it more of a slow
unravelingly? Absolutely.
So I went into surgery because I had a first cousin.
Her name was Linda Creed. She was a singer-songwriter in
the 1970s and 1980s, way before your time.
And she was beautiful, brilliant, larger than life.
She was my hero. She wrote 54 hits in all, and
her most famous song that she ever wrote was The Greatest Love
of All. So she wrote that song.
And Whitney Houston released that song to the world in March
of 1986. And at that time, it spent 14
weeks of the top of the charts. And there literally wasn't a
person on earth who didn't know that song.
And I was 16 years old at the time.
And here is my cousin, the literal rock star, right?
And my cousin never knew what became of that song because she
died one month after Whitney Houston released it.
Wow. And I was 16 years old and my
hero died and her life and ultimately her death gave birth
to my life's purpose. So I become a doctor, the 1st
doctor in my family. I become a surgeon.
I become the first fellowship trained breast surgeon in
Philadelphia. And I became the first clinical
plastic surgeon in Pennsylvania and I did that really well and
for a really long time. And about 15 years into my
career, when I am arguably at the top of my career, I go from
probably being one of the most high performing people you've
ever met in your life to I can't walk across the room because I
don't have the breath in my body.
So I have this really intense 3 day work up and at the end of
those three days find myself sitting in the office of my
friend and colleague and physician.
And he tells me that I need surgery and chemo and radiation
and all these things that I say all day every day without
hesitation or reservation. But when those words are coming
at you, believe me, they have different meaning.
And so all I could hear in that time and space, despite the fact
that I am a fellowship trained surgeon, I'm running a cancer
program, despite the fact that I don't know anything outside of
conventional medicine. And you can call it God and you
can call it universe and you can call it whatever higher power
you ascribe to. But all I could hear in that
time and space was there's something more.
Go find it. And my doctor warned me that I
would die. And I understand why he said
that, right? He was telling me what he really
believed to be true. And I still couldn't unhear that
voice telling me there's something more, Go find it.
So God is good. And I go on a journey to heal
myself. And in very short order, I find
myself sitting in a lecture hall and this tall lanky guy walks on
the stage. Big to the grin and he
introduces himself as a functional medicine physician.
Now at this point, I'm a doctor for about 20 years.
I'm still cynical. I'm still my Snooty booty self.
And all I can think of like, there's no such thing as a
functional medicine physician. What is this quack talking
about? And then I remember that I'm
sick and I'm there for a reason. So I checked that big fat ego at
the door. Am I TuneIn?
And thank God I did well, because what this man would have
to say over the next two hours would completely change how I
feel about medicine, how I feel about my role, how I feel about
my illness, how I felt about my intentions for the rest of my
life. Because as it turns out, the
quack is Doctor Mark Hyman. Well, and what he would teach me
on that day is that what we were talking about before, what we're
focused on in conventional medicine are the symptoms in the
area of cancer. We're focused on the tumor, but
the tumor is not the problem, it's the symptom of the problem.
And unless we back up 10 steps and figure out why that cancer
is there, why that tumor is there, why that symptom is
there, what's driving it, then how are we ever going to get
better? So in our conventional medical
system, really the only way to get into is to fail, right?
Our conventional medical system is built on failure.
Unless you fail, unless you get sick, doctors don't get paid,
Hospitals don't get paid, pharmaceutical companies don't
make any money. No one makes any money unless
you fail. So what is going to happen?
They're going to drive us towards failure.
Yeah, it's all set up for the worst case scenario.
Set up for that. Every step along the way, it's
set up for that. Our food system is set up for
that. Everything is set up for that.
And we don't reward health. Yeah.
And I did not know that. I did not recognize that.
And now in in retrospect, it's very obvious, but when you're in
that system, you can't see it. Well, good for you for having an
open mind. A lot of people, I think, would
have just shut down and decided to not pay attention in that
seminar like you were mentioning.
But you were open enough to hear a different perspective that was
the opposite from everything that you had learned and
practiced. And that takes a lot of courage.
It does. Well, I got a lot braver because
I did spend the next three years just immersed in the study of
functional medicine because even though the the principles that
we learn about in functional medicine are taught to us in
medical school, in our first year of medical school.
And then we're told forget all of that, right?
Like we learn all of the biochemistry, we learn all of
the Physiology and then we say, forget all that.
Here are the symptoms. Put them together, give people a
diagnosis, and then prescribe, Prescribe a medicine, prescribe
a surgery, prescribe a procedure.
And that is what embodies the rest of your medical career.
And unless you have some kind of profound experience like mine,
you never look outside. And the people that are in my
space now, the people that are doing what I do now, they're
almost always hanging to purpose.
They either got their own diagnosis or they watched their
parents suffer or their siblings suffer or God forbid their child
suffer. And they looked for answers and
couldn't find them inside of the conventional medical world
because they don't exist inside of the conventional medical
world. And it's intentional,
unfortunately. It's intentional.
The pharmaceutical companies absolutely create the medical
school curriculum and they don't want you to know.
Yeah. I think a lot of people forget
that this is a business, yes. And there's a lot more driving
it than. Business very big.
Yeah, and it's not about helping people become the most healthy
and optimized version of themselves.
It's about making money. At the end of the day, yeah, I
mean, if you think about it in the most basic of ways, we know
that food is meth, right? And what you put in your body is
your biggest exposure to the outside world. 80% of our
exposure to the outside world is through what we put in our
mouth, right. And what we drink,
environmental, what we breathe, what we put on our skin.
Yeah. But 80% of our exposure to the
outside world is through what we eat and what we drink.
And as physicians. And I went to one of the top
medical schools in the country. As physicians, we are given 15
hours worth of training, 15 hours in our first year of
medical school, and then never again.
And nutrition. That's it. 15 hours worth of
nutrition. Wow.
Training in our first year of medical school and then never
again. Never.
Then Speaking of money making industries, October is Breast
Cancer Awareness Month and we have seen decades of pink
ribbons and marches and Save the Tatas.
But what have we actually accomplished with any of that?
Nothing. We've raised a fortune.
We've raised a lot of money to feed the already greedy, harmful
system, Right? Because we don't need another
drug there. Another drug is not saving us,
and that's another drug people never saving us.
Yeah. I don't think a lot of people
understand that, that really these organizations, they're
raising money purely to fund new drugs.
Is that correct? Yes, that's correct.
Yeah. Yeah, New drugs, new devices.
Yeah. And just think about it
logically, what we talked about before, there's no way to get
into the system without getting sick without failing, right?
And the system does not want you healthy because it doesn't help
them. So why would they invent a cure
for cancer? They're never inventing a cure
for cancer. They want you as a customer.
And so they may invent things that prolong your existence.
Although most of those, most of those things are very, very
toxic and the life that people live on these very, very toxic
drugs is very compromised. But they're not, they're not
creating cures. They're.
Creating. Customers, they're a business.
They are a business. And the other, the other problem
is that, you know, then we know what builds health.
What builds health is good food and good clean water and being
outside and, and having meaningful connections and
relationships and living with purpose and prioritizing sleep
and living in circadian rhythm, right?
That's what builds health. But you can't, you can't
trademark any of that. Like, there's no company that
can make money off of you being in the sunshine.
Yeah. Or off of new eating Whole Foods
or even, you know, when we think about the supplement companies
and how the FDA is now getting involved in trying to control
all of it, this is coming from the Pharmaceutical industry
because you can't trademark a molecule of nature.
So the things like reishi mushroom or Turkey tail
mushroom, which are included in cancer protocols all around the
world in the world, are not included in the United States
because you can't trademark a molecule of nature.
Or. Even, you know, we talk about
hormones being bad and hormones causing cancer.
That whole narrative is built out of the fact that
bioidentical hormones, you can't, you can't trademark them.
So the the companies can't make any money off of them so they
call them bad and then create these synthetic hormones, stuff
like tamoxifen call that good and prescribe it to people with
cancer. But those all those synthetic
hormone like substances cause cancer.
Tamoxifen, the drug given very, very commonly to women who have
premenopausal rumor positive breast cancer that that drug
causes cancer. What does it do, actually?
So it blocks something called the ER alpha receptor, but
there's lots of things that block the ER alpha receptor like
melatonin. But you can't trademark
melatonin because it's a molecule of nature like Moody
Olin, like green tea, like genistein, which we find in soy.
So there are a whole bunch of natural substances that block
that same receptor. So instead of taking tamoxifen,
which actually causes cancer, you instead can eat all of these
foods that actually block that same ER alpha receptor and build
your health and prevent cancer or prevent recurrence.
That's fascinating. Yes, Yeah.
And we were talk. Why aren't we talking about
that, right? Right.
I mean, it just makes sense when you say it like these things
can't be patented, trademarked. And so we're going to demonize
these natural, I don't know what you would call them, natural
cures natural, you know, health boosting compounds and instead
create a synthetic version, right, That isn't the same, but
it can be profited from. And that's what they prescribe.
Yes. Yeah.
I mean, another thing that I think about as we're out here in
beautiful wine country is resveratrol.
Resveratrol is one of those things that blocks the ER alpha
receptor and prevents breast cancer, prevents metastasis,
prevents recurrence, but you can't trademark a molecule of
nature. Do you recommend people get
resveratrol from drinking red wine or taking it in an isolated
form? I do recommend taking an
isolated form only because the alcohol's a problem.
Yeah, yeah. It's a toxin.
It's hard to get around that. So we now have more awareness
about breast cancer than ever before, but breast cancer rates
are continuing to steadily rise. So what's missing from the
conversation? Yeah.
So first of all, we are not living on our mother's earth,
We're not living on our grandmother's earth.
We're not living on anything that even resembles that.
And the number of toxins that we have in our environment is
exponentially more than ever before.
And that's definitely contributing to breast cancer
incidence and breast cancer diagnosis.
But I think I'm really curious part about it is if we look at
the number of women that die every year from breast cancer,
that number is steady. That number has not materially
changed. And this is the biggest problem.
We are looking too hard for breast cancer.
And that may seem a little harsh, but let me let me explain
it. Breast cancer, prostate cancer,
Other chronic conditions like high blood pressure.
Diabetes, well, I think we should look harder for diabetes,
but maybe that's not a great, great example.
But these other examples that I'm talking about, we are
lowering the threshold again and again and again for who meets
criteria for treatment. And it's only for the purpose of
treating more people. We are not helping more people
when we lower that cholesterol number to put more people on
statins. We're not saving lives.
We're not saving people from heart attacks.
And in fact, if you go on a statin, we're 63% more likely to
get diabetes. While we are not helping people
with statins, if you lower the threshold for high blood
pressure and put more people on high hypertensive medication,
you're going to have more people with hypotension and falls and
complications as a result of doing that.
We're like helping anyone with that.
That's. Really interesting because early
detection is really celebrated within the conventional cancer
world. But you're saying and, and, and
I'm going to kind of try to give my best knowledge on this, but
everyone has cancer cells, correct?
That's correct. And so we're detecting things
that have not yet developed into a form of cancer that actually
needs to be treated. That's exactly and administering
these drugs that are actually harming people when you're not
necessary. Yes, that's exactly right.
So we are over diagnosing and over treating and we're doing
that with great frequency. 20 to 30% of the breast cancer
diagnosis every single year don't need to be made.
Wow. And just to put that in
perspective, we diagnosed 300,000 women last year with
breast cancer. If 20 to 30% of them would have
never developed the disease, we are talking about 60 to 90,000
women last year that were unnecessarily diagnosed with and
treated for breast cancer. That's a lot of money for
pharmaceutical. Company a lot of money for
pharmaceutical companies, for hospitals, for cancer programs,
which are the most profitable part of any Medical Center is
their cancer program. And what do you do to these
women? You materially change the rest
of their life. That is a bell.
You cannot unring for them and they are suffering because you
take a woman and you treat her for breast cancer using the
standard treatments because people are so afraid to not use
the standard treatments. So they have surgery and they
have radiation and they go on these drugs for five years.
And what happens to them because the medical oncologist don't
think about them after five years.
For five years they're very focused on them, but after five
years they don't think about them.
And where do we leave these women as we robbed them of their
estrogen after five years? We tell them you should be
grateful to be alive, and they are grateful.
But it is very hard to feel grateful when you can't sleep,
you can't think, you're depressed, you're anxious,
you've gained weight, your breasts are deformed or absent,
your joints ache, your bones ache, your skin is dry, your
hair is dry, everything is dry, sex is unwanted, painful, you
have no libido, your relationship is suffering or
absent. It is not easy to feel grateful
when all of this is happening. And yet this is how we are
leaving most women after we treat them for breast cancer.
Now, listen, if they have aggressive disease and they need
this treatment, absolutely, absolutely.
I am not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I am not saying that breast cancer isn't a serious disease.
It is, but for a small population.
Most of the women that we treat for breast cancer are either
completely or partially overtreated, and we are giving
them treatments that materially change the rest of their lives
when the primary disease would have never changed rest of their
lives. We are doing the wrong thing and
we are doing it with great frequency.
There are 4 million breast cancer survivors alive in the
United States right now, and a million of them never needed to
be diagnosed. A million women.
And there's offering for it. Yes, we are doing the wrong
thing. Let's talk about mammograms
because so many women view this as a non negotiable life saving
tool. But what are we missing when we
think about mammograms? Yeah, So remember that this has
been one of the greatest ad campaigns that ever existed,
that ever existed, right? Everyone believes that
mammograms save lives. I'm not just talking about lay
people. I'm talking about professionals.
I'm talking about breast imagers, radiologists, all
doctors of all kinds, practitioners of all kinds.
They believe that mammograms save lives.
And the reason that they believe that is because it has been so
drilled into us from the time that I was a medical student
through all through my training. Mammograms save lives.
They say it again and again and again, so much so that no one
looks your data. And this has literally become an
issue of morality rather than an issue of science because the
facts are that mammograms do not save lives.
And in fact, if you look at the ramifications of mammograms,
they actually cost lives. What are some of the
ramifications? So if you look at the real data,
if you screen 2000 women over 10 years, you will potentially save
one life. Maybe you will cause 10 to 20
women to be diagnosed with and treated for a disease that would
have never affected them in their lifetime.
You will cause 100 to 200 women to have studies that they don't
need, biopsies that they don't need.
And if you look at the population over over time,
women, if you screen them every year for 10 years, 50% of them
will be called back for additional studies, 50%.
So every mammogram that you get is more radiation.
Now lots of times people say, well, there's radiation
everywhere. There's background radiation.
And you don't tell people not to go to the airport.
You don't tell people to not go on a plane.
And that's true. I don't tell people not to go on
an air to on an airplane or to the airport or I think we should
try to avoid as much radiation as we can.
But there is a vast difference between the background radiation
that you get from sunlight or going to the airport or going on
an airplane, and the focused cone down radiation that you get
to the traumatized tissues of the breast.
Horse, I don't care. If your mammogram hurt you or
not, I mean, like, I get these these messages from these tough
women. Oh, mammograms don't hurt.
Well, the bottom line is that they are applying anywhere from
20 to 50 lbs of pressure to your breast.
So if you're tough and that doesn't hurt you, God bless you.
I don't like it. Sounds very uncomfortable,
right? I've never had one.
Very uncomfortable. So there's no doubt that we are
radiating the traumatized tissues of the breast.
And there is no argument radiation causes cancer.
People all the time to say, where's your proof that
mammograms cause cancer? And I'm like, I'm sorry, where's
my proof that radiation causes cancer?
Really. You want me to prove that?
I Because that's been done. Yeah, like I don't need to prove
that radiation causes cancer. It's that is a fact, right?
And yet we ignore it because we've created this issue of
morality around mammogram. Yeah, like you're doing people a
disservice and and you don't want them to live basically.
And yes, you're not willing to do this for them, or if you're
not willing to do this for yourself.
So this is where the mammogram save lives and early detection
saves lives. But in reality, the only thing
that early detection has done is create more customers because
the women who are going to have aggressive disease are not
they're not being picked up on mammogram.
These women have what we call interval cancers where they,
they are the ones that had a normal mammogram 3 months ago
and all the sudden they feel a lump in their breast, right?
Or what seems like all of a sudden these aggressive cancers,
we're not changing anything for them by screening with
mammogram. And the only thing that we are
doing by screening with mammogram is creating more
disease or creating some of it with the radiation.
And we are picking up these lesions that would have never
developed into clinical disease. And we have the studies to prove
that mammograms don't save lives.
Each big study that is done proves this time and time again.
The Swedish study 600,000 women 300,000 spring with mammogram
300,000 just get self at breast examination.
Because it's universal healthcare.
Everyone has the same access to care.
Everyone has the same kind of care, the same exact number of
women die of breast cancer in each group, and the only
difference is that if you use mammogram to screen, you will
diagnose 20 to 30% more breast cancers.
Same exact thing in the Canadian breast cancer screening study,
except now we're looking at young women, looking at women 40
to 59, because maybe we're not helping older women, but maybe
we're helping younger women. So look at the data.
And when you look at the data, 90,000 women participated in the
study. Again, universal healthcare.
So everyone has the same access to care.
Everyone gets the same kind of care.
The 45,000 get screened with mammogram, 45,000 just get self
breast examination or examination with their doctor.
Every year the same exact findings, the same exact number
of women die of breast cancer in each group, and the only
difference is if you use mammogram to screen, you're
gotten going to diagnose 20 to 30% more cancers.
Wow. And despite this information,
despite this data, this is something that you get a ton of
pushback for talking about a. Ton why are people so resistant?
To hearing this information. Because it becomes an issue of
morality, right? And people genuinely believe I,
I get messages every single day. Mammogram saved my life.
They've been so conditioned to believe that if it was found on
the mammogram, that mammogram saved their life.
But the truth is that unless you present with clinical disease,
that mammogram did not save your life.
And in fact, that mammogram might have been the reason why
you got diagnosed with breast cancer at all.
Because for for 20 to 30% of these women that get diagnosed
with mammogram, they would have never developed clinical disease
ever. That's wild.
And you mentioned biopsies earlier.
I've heard this idea that tumors are actually the body's way of
kind of containing cancer to 1 area.
And if we disturb the tumor with a biopsy or maybe even with
surgery, that we are letting these cancer cells spread
unnecessarily. I don't even remember where I
heard that, but is there any truth to that?
So there is some truth to that for some cancers and I do not
believe that with rare exception, if you have, if you
have a, a different kind of cancer called an angiosarcoma of
the breast, you you cannot biopsy that, you cannot violate
that. And there are different kind of
cancers like renal cell carcinoma, carcinoma that you
would get in your kidney, different sarcomas.
These are cancers that you get in the bone or the muscle,
things like that. Those you really should not
violate because they spread very easily in the bloodstream for
most breast cancers, for most one of the mill breast cancers,
I do not believe that biopsy creates metastasis and I don't
think that there is any, any information that supports
biopsying breast cancer causing metastasis.
And that's because if we look at the survival numbers for breast
cancer, most of these bread, all of them have undergone biopsy,
right. There would have been no other
way for us to know that they had breast cancer and most breast
cancer is completely survivable. So if biopsies really caused
metastasis, we we wouldn't have the survival numbers that we
have. Yeah.
And the reason that our survival numbers look so good and we
spend so much time, like patting ourselves on the back about it
is because we're diagnosing all of these women, 60 to 90,000
women every year that didn't even need that diagnosis.
They hadn't developed the full blown disease.
And they wouldn't develop the full blown disease.
So it's like, and they don't really have a problem, but we'll
treat you for it and then take credit.
We like, we changed your life and we did change your life, but
not for the better rights. And even Otis Brawley, who is
the former head of the American Cancer Society, said that
mammogram does not do what it had set out and intended to do.
And women who believe that they were helped by mammogram were
actually hurt by mammogram. There is absolutely no benefit
to using mammogram for screening 00.
Now, when they set out on the mammographic screening program,
the intention was that it would save lives and save grass.
And so, you know, I have always said even if it doesn't save
lives, but it does save wrap. That's a pretty noble 'cause,
right? Like if we're saving brass,
that's worthwhile. Well, when you look at the data,
when you use mammogram to screen, the mastectomy rate only
goes up by 20%. So we're not saving lives.
We're not saving breasts. What are we doing?
We're torturing women for nothing.
Well, not for nothing. We're feeding system.
We're being cut something. Yeah.
Tell. Tell us about QT imaging.
Yeah. What sets QT imaging apart in
terms of accuracy and safety? Yeah.
So I think the keyword that you said there was safety.
And this is my main message, this is the soapbox that I will
not get off of. We are talking about screening.
We are talking about a healthy population.
We are talking about women who we have no reason to believe
that they have disease. How can we ethically, how can we
morally expose these women to harms?
How can we expose them to radiation?
How? How can we expose them to
gadolinium I mean? That what is gadolinium?
That. It's a heavy metal that's used
in the process of screening for breast cancer with MRI.
OK. And.
And that's another form of screening that's recommended
within the it's. Currently, the gold standard for
women with dense breasts for women who have high risk for
women with breast implants do women with.
Dense breasts have a more like, are they more likely to develop
breast cancer? So it depends where they are in
their life. If you are premenopausal.
If you are of childbearing age, you are supposed to have dense
breasts. Your breasts are prepared to
feed a child. That's what they're supposed to
have. So when you look at the breast,
it is made-up of four tissues. It's made-up of glandular
tissue, the milk producing tissue that that that generates
milk and that you use to feed your child.
It's made-up of fat. It's made-up of connective
tissue that kind of holds everything together.
And that's all in a skin envelope.
And when you are premenopausal, you are supposed to have an
abundance of glandular tissue. You're supposed to have dense
breasts. That is normal.
So it makes me insane when they tell a 40 year old that she has
dense breasts like it's a bad thing.
No Duff, of course she has dense breasts.
She's supposed to have dense breasts.
That's a good thing. The problem happens when women
go through menopause and they have less estrogen and they get
less estrogen stimulation. Their breast tissue should
undergo progression and we should start to see year after
year less breast density. When we don't, it's because
there's a lot of inflammation there that is a risk factor for
breast cancer. And it's these women that have
that have increasing breast density after childbirth or
even, you know, as years go on, they have increasing breast
density. These are women that are at
higher risk for breast cancer, that's for sure true, but it's
not the density of their breasts, it's the inflammation
that's driving that. Yeah, that makes sense.
OK. I got us off track a little bit,
but I want to hear more about the the QTA imaging story.
So. My thing is, we cannot expose
healthy tissue to toxins, right? Can expose them to radiation,
can't expose them to gadolinium. It's the wrong thing to do.
So how do we safely screen for breast cancer?
I'm so glad you asked. First of all, I think that
everyone should be doing breast, self self breast examination.
No one is ever going to know you better than you knew yourself.
And news flash, every single woman thinks her breasts are
lumpy. We just need to own our lumps.
Everyone needs to own their lumps, right?
It needs to know what your breasts feel like when they're
normal so that you can know when there's been a change and you
can recognize a change. And if there's been a change,
that is when you go to your doctor and say, hey, doc, be it,
this doesn't feel like my breast.
I know what my breast feels like.
This is not normal. I have pain or I have dimpling
or I have nipple discharge or I have whatever I have.
I have a lump, right? And then you can have it
investigated. And incidentally, that is not
screening, right? Then you're talking about
diagnostic, but everyone should be doing self breast examination
once a month. You don't need to examine your
breasts every day. We don't need to be obsessed
about it once a month. If you are pre menopausal,
you're going to do it on day seven of your cycle because
that's when your breasts are the least stimulated.
And if you're post menopausal, feel them on the 1st or whenever
you're going to remember to do it.
Set an alarm, just do it right. Put it on your calendar once a
month. OK then.
Everyone should be doing the Aria test.
This is the tears test. This is a simple, inexpensive at
home test that I truly believe will be the determination in the
future of who does and who does not get imaging.
It takes. It's a small piece of paper they
put in the corner of your eye. close your eye for 5 minutes.
Send that paper off to the company.
A week and a half later you get the result.
It's either negative or you have a clinically positive result.
Now what it's looking for are two inflammatory proteins, the
S100A8 and S100A9 proteins that when they are found at high
levels together, it is highly predictive of breast cancer.
In fact, when if you have a clinically positive result if
you have breast cancer, this test will pick it up 93% of the
time. I've never heard of.
This way better than any imaging.
So the company recommends that women over 30 do this test every
year and it is a real time biologic assessment of your risk
for breast cancer. Now the sensitivity of that test
is a little lower. The sensitivity is around 58%,
which means that 42% of the time, women without breast
cancer will have a positive result on this test.
And does it just screen for breast cancer?
OK. Yes, it only screens for breast
cancer because these proteins are specific for breast cancer.
So 42% of the time, if you don't have breast cancer, you will
have a positive result here. I want to be clear, there are no
false positives of this test because if you have a clinically
significant result, even if you have imaging right now and you
have no radiologic evidence of breast cancer, you have the
inflammatory precursors to breast cancer.
And if we did nothing, 11% of these women in six months will
present with clinical disease. Wow.
So. 42% don't actually have cancer at the time of the test,
but they have the markers, the precursors for it, and 11% of
that 42% will go on to develop it.
Yes, in the next 6 months. Wow.
So what you have here is opportunity.
So you have the opportunity here to actually prevent the disease.
And I think that that is amazing.
I mean, when have we ever had this opportunity?
Before. To like, have a telescope and
look, this is what's in your future, but you have the
opportunity now to change that. Yeah.
I mean, it really puts the responsibility back on the
human, on the patient to know their body and which I think is
really empowering. Yeah, I think that's how it
should be. So much more power than we
think. Right.
It's like, yeah, it's just an opportunity to change this
before or it develops into something catastrophic.
Yes, yeah. But it's so unlike that
conventional medical system, which is let's wait till you get
sick. Yeah, right.
So the self breast examinations along with the eye test.
Which is what was it called the Aria test AURIA dot care.
OK. And that's something.
Those are things everyone should just be doing.
Everyone should be non invasive inexpensive.
If you use my code, Doctor Jen 20DR JENN 20, you'll get 20% off
the test. Very, very affordable.
So that is like everyone is doing that.
Then if you have a clinically positive Aria test or we've just
been so conditioned to get imaging right, it's what we're
taught. Early detection is big, right?
So for women who choose to get imaging, I just want you to be
safe. I just don't want any harm to
come to you. And so the imaging that I
recommend, it's called QT and I have imaging centers which use
this imaging along with the exam and Aria.
And so at my centers, Perfection Imaging, we are using this
technology that uses sound waves transmitted to a water bath to
create a true 3D reconstruction of the rest without pain,
without compression, without radiation.
So we are taking the fear, the pain, the trauma out of breast
cancer screening and replacing it with facts, with loving
kindness and with caring. Because I don't think that you
should be hurt or punished or endangered because you're trying
to do the right thing. I mean, if you're screening,
you're trying to do the right thing.
So let's help these women do the right thing.
So I only have two centers open in the United States right now,
but I'm opening 50 over the next five years because I want to
make sure that every woman who wants access to this technology
gets access to this technology. So is this something that is
that only you are offering currently or why aren't more
people offering this? Is it hard to get fined?
I mean, I know soon it will be more accessible with these 50
centers that. Will be more and there are some
hospital systems that are adopting it, but it's been very
slow to adopt for several reasons.
First of all, I'm sure you've noticed that medicine doesn't
change so fast Yeah right. It it, it generally takes 20
years to change practice guidelines. 20 years, right?
That's how behind we are. Yeah, if you think about the
rate. Of 20 years.
Technology information like increases so quickly 20 years is
like we're so. Behind, but I mean, look, we are
still practicing under the guidelines of the Women's Health
Initiative, who in 2003 said that hormones cause breast
cancer, right? And we're still practicing under
those guidelines, even though the papers has been retracted.
There's overwhelming data that not only are hormones, not only
do they not 'cause breast cancer, but they're actually
protective. The bioidentical hormone.
Yes, but even the conjugated equine estrogen that was used in
that study was found to be protective against breast
cancer. So we medicine is way behind.
It does not move fast. Part of that is probably a good
thing because we just had a whole disaster where we put
something on the market without researching in and we hurt
millions and millions and millions and millions and
millions of people. So under normal circumstances,
it's probably good that it doesn't move that fast.
But QT is FDA cleared and the difference between FDA cleared
and FDA approved is devices get cleared and drugs get approved.
OK, So people are people say Oh well it's cleared, but it's not
approved. Yes, that's true.
And it will never be approved because it's not a drug.
Yeah, right. Different terminology and it's
not a treatment, right. It's a screening tool that that
I believe should be used in conjunction with other screening
tools. I don't believe in doing
standalone anything. So part of the reason for the
lack of adoption is medicine is slow.
Part of the reason is that think about all of these breast cancer
screening programs and how invested they are in their
mammogram program in because you know those mammogram machines
cost nearly $1,000,000 in their MRI and those Mr. is cost
between 1 1/2 and $3,000,000 each, right?
So they have a lot of money to recover to pay for these
machines. And beyond that the radiologists
are very happy with what they're doing and getting paid to read
123 and four tests. They don't really want to trade
that in for for one test, right. And lastly, they have to train.
They have it's it's not it's not intuitive.
So in order to read QT, you have to go back and train.
And I've heard radiologist say I've looked at those images,
they're blurry. They're this, they're that, yes.
If you're trying to look at them on your standard reader, there
are specific, there's specific equipment, there's specific
readers for GT. So they have to go train.
They have new, they they need new equipment.
It's not AO we'll we're just going to start to read this.
It's a totally different system, which I believe is part of the
downfall. I think it should have been
built on the conventional platform.
I think that that would have led to earlier adoption, but it is
what it is. There are very, very, very major
hospital systems which have adopted it.
The world is going to be a far different place this time next
year because of these very major hospital systems that have
adopted it. But in the meantime, I'm not
letting it stop me. People will start to adopt it.
Change is coming, Change is happening.
And in the meantime, I'm doing what I know is right.
And I very much feel called to this.
And even if I didn't have to tea, I would feel the way that I
feel about mammogram and about mammographic screening, because
I don't believe that anyone should ever use mammogram for
screening. But now I have the Aria test, I
have QT, and I feel so justified in standing on this soapbox
saying what I say. Yeah.
There's other options that aren't harmful.
That are 100% safe, 100% painless.
We can completely change what breast cancer screening looks
like, what it feels like. We can completely change the
experience and I am. That's amazing.
I am forever changing how we screen for breast cancer.
Now, I want to be clear, I am not saying that no one will
never ever have a mammogram again.
I'm not saying that because if you have a lump in your breast,
if you have a symptom like nipple discharge or nipple
retraction or some other symptom that is suspicious for breast
cancer, you're going to get a mammogram and an ultrasound and
maybe an MRI, right? Because that's the language that
the surgeon speak. That's the language that the
that conventional medicine speaks.
And you won't be able to get help without doing those
standard tests. So I have a bundle that will
help protect you against radiation that has all of these
beautiful antioxidants in it. And so you're, you'll take that
or I have a bundle that will protect you against absorbing
the gadolinium if you need an MRI and all of them can be found
on my website, Real Health MD. But in the meantime, if that
diagnostic study is going to allow you to get help, get help,
right? I am not saying you're never
going to have another one of those studies.
I am saying that we have to have to have to protect the screening
population. We have to stop over imaging, we
have to stop over diagnosing and we have to stop over treating.
What about thermography? I've heard this talked about a
lot as an alternative to mammograms to mammograms.
What are your thoughts on thermography?
I love thermography. I use thermography.
Thermography is looking for a heat signal and it's indicative
of inflammation. But it is known as screening
tool for breast cancer. It's not reliable enough.
And because it's not reliable enough, that's why it has been
so shunned by that conventional medical community.
So I use it when I'm looking for a source of inflammation if I'm
like, if I'm a little dumbfounded and can't figure out
where someone's inflammation is coming from, like it's measuring
on their labs but I can't find it in their body, it's not
obvious. I do use thermography for that,
but I don't use it as a breast cancer screening school.
Study. What about Pernuvo?
That's another one that a lot of people are, yeah.
So that that's a non contrast MRI.
So I really like it for because of that, because it's not
dangerous if you're not putting anyone in harm's way.
It is a screening tool. It's not a great screening tool
for the breast because I think it has a threshold of about a
centimeter. But I think that it is a way of
screening your body and maybe finding something early.
It's not preventative. Let's be clear, it's not.
It has nothing to do with prevention, but it is a safe
tool for early detection. What are some early metabolic
red flags that can develop before breast cancer ever
occurs? I'd love this question because
this is something that we're not talking about enough.
And this was the focus of my talk at a four M the American,
the American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine.
If we would screen for metabolic dysfunction with the same vigor
that we screen for breast cancer, we would be a hell of a
lot healthier as a society. Metabolic dysfunction is the
precursor to the development of breast cancer because it's
having this profoundly negative effect on our internal chemistry
and the precursor to so many other diseases.
Those are the other diseases. It's the precursor to chronic
disease for many chronic diseases, diabetes,
hypertension, heart disease. And our providers, again,
because of the way that our system is set up, they're only
trained to recognize failure, right.
So all they're doing when they're looking at people's
basic labs every year is they're looking at a fasting glucose and
they're looking at a hemoglobin A1C, which is your average
glucose over a three month period of time.
And so they're letting these glucoses go that are, you know,
a hundred 110 as a fasting glucose.
And they're saying, oh, just watch what you eat and maybe
exercise a little more and maybe lose a little weight.
And I'll see you back in a year when you're actually diabetic,
right? And when you're actually
diabetic, then we'll give you diabetes medicine, which will
only, you know, put a Band-Aid over the problem and not fix
anything and not solve anything. But as far as they're concerned,
diabetes is irreversible. Because if all you're going to
do is give these horrible diabetes medications, it is
irreversible. But instead, if we were to
screen people properly and look at fasting glucose and, and make
sure that people's fasting glucose was below 90 and look at
fasting insulin and make sure that fasting insulin is between
2:00 and 5:00 and look at A1C and, and make sure that that A1C
is less than 5, we wouldn't develop all of this chronic
disease. And what would you?
Say to someone who didn't have optimal fasting glucose or A1C
numbers. Yeah.
So the question is why are you eating a standard American diet?
Are you on a whole food diet? Are you are you moving your body
or are you living a sedentary lifestyle?
Are you prioritizing sleep or are you up at night on your
phone or binging on Netflix or whatever?
Yeah, so much more to the picture than just like not
eating too much sugar. Absolutely.
I mean, I have people that have beautiful, beautiful diets, but
they're stress cases. So listen, if you are stressed
out all the time, then the dominant hormone in your body is
going to be cortisol. Cortisol is our run away from a
tiger hormone. And if you need to run away from
a tiger, you need high blood sugar in order to run away from
said tiger. Only there aren't any tigers.
There's jobs and deadlines and busyness and sedentary lifestyle
where you're not burning off any of that tortis all and difficult
relationships and trauma and all of that.
So if you're suffering under the weight of that, you're going to
have metabolic dysfunction and you can eat the most beautiful
diet in the world, you're still going to have metabolic
dysfunction. So there's so many layers to it,
which is not to say that it's impossible, but you have to work
with someone who is educated. You have to work with someone
who's aware, who can help you to recognize where this dysfunction
is coming from. How does muscle mass impact?
Breast health so the more muscle mass you have, the better your
metabolic health. And as we start to lose muscle
mass, that is when we start to see dysfunction.
And the reason we lose muscle mass is you're not getting
enough protein in your diet, you are sedentary, you're not
lifting heavy things and these the OR you're under too much
stress. And all of these things are
contributing to the same metabolic dysfunction that we
spoke about before. And this becomes an increasing
problem for everyone as they age.
But not that I don't care about men, but my focus is on Women's
Health and women as they start to go through menopause.
So as they become perimenopausal and beyond, when you lose
estrogen, you start to lose your metabolic flexibility.
As you get older, you make less acid in your stomach so you
don't breakdown protein as well. You don't utilize your protein
as well, so you can't incorporate it into your
muscles. And most women do great when
they're young with heavy duty cardio workouts and hit hit
workouts and things like that. And if you don't shift to muscle
bearing to, to muscle building workouts as you go through
menopause, you're going to lose your muscle mass and you're
going to lose that flexibility and you're going to lose your
metabolic health. So at different stages in your
life, you have to make adjustments.
And as you go through from your 30s to your 40s to your 50s, you
have to start to prioritize more protein.
You've just start prioritizing weightlifting and and.
And muscle building, and you have to start to come way more
into circadian rhythms. And you have to start
prioritizing sleep and changing what and when you eat.
You have to start putting fasting into your routine.
All of these things make a difference because as you get
older, you lose flexibility, you lose ability to synthesize
protein, to synthesize muscle, and you need to work harder at
it. Are you a fan of rocking or
weighted best walking? I am to an extent.
I think you can overdo that. So I, I recently said to my
husband, because he lost a lot of weight a few years ago, he's,
he's one of these up and down down.
But he's, he's decisively been down for the last two years and
he's been walking with a 20 LB weighted vest and at the same
time complaining of back pain. And I'm like, honey, there's a
reason why we tell people to lose 20 lbs.
It's because it's not particularly good for you to
walk 5 miles every day with that old 20 lbs on you.
So I think that adding it to certain things can be helpful,
but I also think that we shouldn't be doing distance
things with with the weighted vest on.
Yeah. That's fair.
I'm I've been doing this a lot lately and I used to do 20 lbs.
I started with like 5 and I was like this isn't doing anything.
So then I went to 10 and 15 and then 20, and now I'm back to 10.
And I think I'm going to stay there because I did notice like
a little bit of back pain when I was doing it often.
But do you think women are more genetically equipped to do that
than men? Just because I'm thinking like,
baby wearing. Like you see pictures of women
in Africa carrying huge water jugs.
Like is there any difference there between men and women?
Oh, that's an excellent question.
I never really thought about it that way because we are.
Well, also, you know, when they, when they're pregnant, they
don't gain 50 lbs. Many women in America, right,
they, they don't get to take a vacation from their life, they
gain like 10 lbs. So yeah, maybe we are
conditioned to, to do that a little more than men.
However, we're also meant to have a much a different muscle
to fat ratio than men. Men are actually more designed
to have much more muscle mass than we are because they
typically had to go out and kill the animals and carry them back
through to the to the village. And that was pretty heavy,
right. I don't know.
I would have to think about that.
But they also lived a far more nourishing life than most of us
do. Yeah.
And, you know, you're very lucky to be here on this beautiful
farm and growing this beautiful food.
There are many, many Americans, myself included, that we don't
have the access to this. I mean, even what's at our our
markets is it's not this. Yeah, if it's not this.
So I think it's a nourishment thing, too.
And you really have to be conscious about it.
It's something that. And it's not to say that it
can't be done. It can absolutely be done.
But it's also not something that you can take for granted.
Like, it has to be a very conscious part of your being.
And you have to listen to yourself.
You know, your body told you, no, this isn't working.
I think women are much more dialed in their body and are.
Yeah. And it's often times when you're
not dialed into your body, when you're not listening to your
body, that's when you can get in trouble.
Yeah. It's.
Like tuning in. Thank you Ash and and.
Changing based on what you're feeling, I think that's
tremendously important. Yeah.
And if you are truly tuned into your body, if you're truly
dialed into your health, it's not going to get away from you
so much. And the people that are
surprised by their diagnosis, I think they're not so tuned into
their health. Yeah, absolutely.
And you still see and treat breast cancer patients today.
But very differently. Than before.
Can you walk us through what that looks like?
Yeah. Absolutely.
So, you know, before I was someone who focused on the
tumor, but what we focus on grows, right?
And that's not what you want to grow.
We want our health to grow. We want our Wellness to grow.
We want our beauty to grow. We want our function to grow.
That's what we want. And so that's where my focus is.
And I try to not focus so much on the tumor.
And it's so funny because as new people join my group, they all
want to tell me like, Oh well, I had an ER PR positive this and I
and A hormone negative VAT and I her 2 positive this.
And we get so tuned into identifying with that cancer.
We don't want to identify with cancer.
No SO. What I want to know about you is
what are you eating? How are you sleeping?
How are you moving your body? What is your hole look like?
What is your environment look like?
What are you putting in, on and around you?
What are your detoxification practices?
What what are your connections like?
What are your relationships like?
What is fulfilling you right? What is filling your cup?
What makes you happy? What brings you joy?
And if you don't know any answers to those questions,
right, then we, that's where we, that's where the work is, right?
Because when you build health, disease goes away.
Now, the thing that I think is my special sauce, my unique
approach is that I'm looking at everyone from a genetic
perspective. Not that breast cancer is a
genetic disease. It's not.
But we are all born with a finite capability to deal with
environmental toxins, right? We all are born with a bucket.
Some people have a really small bucket, some people have a
really big bucket. But when you've developed breast
cancer, you have exceeded your toxin bucket, right?
It is overflowing. You're out of balance.
So I want to know, how do we empty your bucket?
How do we help your body to, and how do we help you to create an
environment inside and out that is going to build your health?
So we do the genetic testing and we give people a plan and then
we help work on it together as a group.
So you work on full body health based on genetics, because
you've just said that breast cancer is not a genetic disease,
which I'm sure a lot of people argue with you on that point.
What would you say to anyone who's adamant that no, this was
a genetic thing? There's nothing I could have
done about it. OK.
Well, even when you look at the Bracha population, right, these
are people that are born with a mutation in one of the tumor
suppressor genes, the Bracha one or Bracha 2 gene.
And these people now have very high incidences of breast cancer
somewhere in the 80s, right. But when you looked at them 30
years ago, 40 years ago, because this mutation is not new.
Yeah. But their breast cancer
incidence was in the 50s. And if you look at them way
before that, their breast cancer incidence was in the 30s.
Wow. So the genes haven't changed.
What's changed? Our environment has changed and
what we're doing with these people, with genetic, with these
genetic mutations is we're screening them early and we're
screening them often. And removing their breasts,
right? In a lot of cases, yes, we're
removing their breasts before they even have their ovaries,
yes, But before they even get to that point, we're screening
them. So we're just adding toxins to
them, we're adding radiation, we're adding gadolinium and if
we put them on tamoxifen, we're adding a cancer causing agent to
that. So we're it is not your genes.
And even even in those bracha mutation carriers that have an
80 some percent chance of developing breast cancer,
there's still 15% of them, 17% of them that don't develop
breast cancer. It's not your genes, it's the
environment, and it's the way that your environment acts on
your genes. And that's where our control
lies. We can, we can't control
everything. Obviously we can't control
everything, but we can control a lot.
And I assure you, we can control enough.
You mentioned fasting earlier. What role does fasting play in
cancer prevention and treatment? Yeah.
So as a society, for the most part, we are overfed.
We're overfed on everything. Good light, electricity,
everything. We're we're overfed on
everything. 100%. Every single religion has
fasting built into it. Every single one, because our
ancestors knew that your body needs time to rest, your body
needs time to cleanse, your body needs time to repair, and
fasting is the fastest way to human.
Yeah, I think it was Paracelsus who called fasting the
physician, the physician within the body because it it, it just
cleans things up when you give your body a break from the
constant inputs and digestion and all these things you
mentioned. And also, you know, digestion
takes a lot of energy, and it detracts from our detoxification
processes. So for instance, if you go to
bed on a full stomach, your liver, which is supposed to be
detoxifying all the things that it encountered during the day,
can't do what it has to do because it's busy processing
that meal. So at the very least, eating
should stop hours before you go to sleep so that you can
detoxify overnight. But even more importantly is
that remember from we, we are modern beings living on a very
old gene code. And there were times of food
abundance and there were times of great scarcity.
And the only reason that any of us are alive today is because we
were able to survive those times of great scarcity.
And you know, it wasn't as if we couldn't perform during those
times because if you think about it, if you came out of The Cave
in the morning and you saw a Saber toothed tiger because you
you're coming out of The Cave to go hunting or whatever, it's not
like you could say to that tiger, Hey, can you just hold on
a second because I haven't had my breakfast.
Right, right. Like we were meant to perform as
well, if not better in a fasted state.
Totally. Agree.
I mean, I I do some fasting on and off and I feel like all of
my instincts are heightened and sharpened when I'm in a fasted
state. It's actually my ring.
OK, we just had a first we had a power outage at the farm, but
we're back at Maria now. Hot blue.
Yeah, Guts Dew End. We're back up.
So as you're talking about this, I'm just thinking about how many
critics there are about women who fast and people who say that
women shouldn't fast. What would you say to?
Them. And how can women incorporate
fasting in a way that works with their biology and not against
it? Yeah.
So we have to remember again modern beings living on a very
old gene code. We all fasted.
We didn't have a choice. It's not like we could open the
refrigerator in The Cave like it didn't exist.
So there were times of food plenty and times of food
scarcity. And when there was no food, we
did not eat. So we can all fast.
Fasting actually, incidentally, is also the fastest way to
healing because that's when our cells are able to clean up and
regenerate and decide which cells should be destroyed and
which cells can be repaired. So it is a very important
process. I think for women, we need to
think about both stage like are you of childbearing age?
Because if you are, there are times in the month where you
will tolerate fasting and times of the month where you will not.
What are those times? So and Mindy Pels wrote an
amazing book. Yeah, right.
So I, I often refer to her book all the time.
And women as they, as they get to the end of their cycle, in
the luteal phase of their cycle, they need more carbohydrate,
they need more rest. They, they just won't tolerate
as much in the luteal phase of their cycle as they will in the
follicular phase of their cycle. So we're in the proliferative
phase of their cycle. So for women, I don't think that
you should do a tremendous amount of fasting as you
approach your cycle. I think that that that is a time
that it's very hard for women and you need more carbohydrate,
you need more TLC, you need more rest.
Agreed. So in the first part of your
cycle, that's probably a better time for prolonged fasting.
But I believe that everyone should be doing these overnight
fast. I believe everyone should have
time restricted eating. As the day goes on, our
metabolism drops. We have that we we have a
decreased ability to process food as the day goes on.
And certainly at night we are supposed to be doing all these
detoxification processes. So as the sun goes down, we're
not supposed must be eating after dark.
If you were out after dark in cave times, you or someone
else's food, right? So I think everyone should be
doing these overnight fast. How often would you recommend?
Oh this is all the time. Like even babies.
Ones you're saying just like from sundown to sun up.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we should not be eating
when the sun is down. We're not built for that.
So like circadian fasting, Yes, circadian fasting, very gentle,
which also means that that is going to change according to the
time of the year. And when our days are long, our
fast are shorter, right. We we can have longer periods of
eating as the days are longer. And when the days are short, so
are our eating windows, and those fasts get longer.
So it depends on the time of the year.
And then as you get older, you will tolerate longer periods of
fasting when your body is not in that same menstrual cycle and
that same menstrual rhythm. So I think that fasting changes
at different stages of your life and at different times of the
year. And I think that that's really
important for a lot of things because there's not going to be
1 diet that's right for you for the entirety of your life.
That's going to change, and the amount of fasting that you're
going to do throughout your life, that's going to change.
But most people in this country are so overfed.
They need to be doing way more fasting than they're doing.
So instead of talking, instead of criticizing people for
fasting, we should encourage them to be doing fasting.
Yeah, I was always someone who I would have like a snack in the
morning, then breakfast, maybe a snack between breakfast and
lunch and then lunch, dinner, maybe a bedtime snack.
And so when I first started fasting, it was difficult to
shorten eating when. You had no metabolic
flexibility. Yeah, it was hard and grazer and
it didn't feel good in the beginning, but then I did
develop more metabolic flexibility and I noticed that
my brain was sharper when I was fasted and it didn't feel super
difficult or draining. I would actually get more energy
out of it. And I did quite a bit of
fasting, like in between my second and third child, probably
more than most people would recommend.
Maybe it was too much, I don't do as much now, but I still was
able to get pregnant without trying like very easily, even
doing way more fasting than most people would say is good for
women. So I just think there's a lot
more story there. Fasting leads to metabolic
flexibility and if you can't fast, it's because you're
metabolically inflexible. So your take away from not being
able to fast should be, we need to work on this because we
should be able to without an issue, go for prolonged periods
without food and be sharp as a tack and be strong and be
resilient. We should be able to do all of
that. And if you can't do that, that's
where your work is, that's where you need to focus.
That's what you need to do. Because we must all be
metabolically flexible. This that is a sign of health.
What role do the synthetic chemicals in the personal care
and beauty products that women are using play in our risk for
breast cancer? So unfortunately it goes so
unrecognized because it's presenting at different stages
in different ways and people don't realize it.
So all of these chemicals, these are xenoestrogens, XENO
xenoestrogens, and they are acting on our estrogen receptor
and blocking our estrogen receptor from receiving the
estrogen that our body is making.
And so in young girls, it's presenting as menstrual
irregularities and painful periods and things that we call
estrogen dominance, which is actually progesterone
deficiency. And then as you get into your
20s and 30s, it's presenting as infertility.
And if it's not acknowledged, if it's not stopped, then you get
to your 40s and 50s and now you're in my office with breast
cancer. And this is what's happening
because it is disrupting our normal hormonal rhythm.
It is preventing our hormones from doing what they are
supposed to do because our hormones are protecting us.
They're not hurting us, but if if our receptor sites that are,
that are the way that our hormones message ourselves, if
they're occupied by plastics, by fragrance, by nonstick, by, by
all of these things that are surrounding us these days and
totally unregulated and totally accepted.
Even something like antibiotics, people don't realize that
antibiotics are a xenoestrogen. And so that, yeah, so they think
it's so harmless, but the antibiotics are put everywhere
in places that you don't even think about it.
In your toothpaste, in your shampoo, in your conditioner.
Trico. Fan.
Yes, yes. So this is contributing to this
dysfunction that just goes unrecognized for what it is and
we need to be paying far more attention.
But instead, because the conventional medical world
doesn't think about it systemically, because the
conventional medical world isn't trained to think this way.
What happens a young girl comes with menstrual irregularity and
what happens? She gets put on birth control
pills. Or you present with infertility
in your 30s and what happens? You get put on some regimen
which forces a pregnancy or you present with acne.
What happens? They put you on birth control
pills. Yeah, antibiotics and
antibiotics, right. And that's what they do.
And instead, and what should be happening is we should recognize
that this is hormone dysfunction and fix it.
But instead what's happening is we're just mansplaining it
right? We're just going to overrule it
with with more things that are cancer causing until what
happens is you end up with a breast cancer diagnosis.
How does the birth control pill specifically impact cancer risk?
Well. We know from the the Danish
study of 1.8 million women that breast cancer incidence is
directly related to the amount of time that you're on birth
control pills and birth control pills because again, it's a
product of the Pharmaceutical industry.
These are, well, they're all synthetic, so I don't want to
say synthetic, but these are non bioidentical estrogens.
These are estrogens that come from pregnant horses, and
pregnant horses have forms of estrogen that we don't know in
our body, over 30 forms of estrogen that our bodies don't
know and don't know what to do with.
I didn't realize that it came from pregnant.
Horses. Oh yes, wow.
Fragment Premarin is pregnant Mare urine.
Wow. Wow.
Yep. And there's like, so going back
to the xenoestrogens real quick, there was a study I have here in
my notes in 2023 that found that reducing exposure to
xenoestrogens, which can appear as parabens or phalates and
personal care products can actually reverse cancer
associated changes in breast tissue.
So just by eliminating. Them, yeah, so, but also a lot
of hope like the changes. That we make actually make a
difference, Absolutely. And that is what this whole
story is about. That is what my whole platform
is about. We have so much more power than
we think, so much more power than we've led to believe.
And my story is one of hope because you can replace whatever
dysfunction you have encountered up until this day with hope,
with health. And I think at any age, at any
stage, you can have health. And sometimes once when you get
to the lowest of the low, when you present with a diagnosis
that you never saw coming, that you never expected, it's not in
your family. And you, you didn't feel unwell,
right? And you're hit with this
diagnosis. This can be opportunity.
It's not a blessing. I understand your diagnosis are
not blessings, but they are blessed opportunities and their
opportunity to have health like you never had before.
But it comes with awareness and with the fact that there is no
doctor, no nurse, no provider, no hospital, no doctor's office,
no treatment suite that can make you healthy.
The only thing that can make you healthy is you, and health
happens at home with the things that you do every single day.
Doctor Jen, thank you so much. This has been such an
enlightening conversation. Where can people find you and
continue to learn from you and learn more about your clinics
that you're opening? Where should people go?
Yeah, so if you're looking for breast imaging, my centers are
called Perfection imaging and perfection is spelled with QT in
the middle. And if you sign up for our
newsletter, you can find out where perfection imaging is
opening near you. Of course, I want everyone to be
doing their self breast examinations.
I'm doing the Aria AURIA dot care test code Doctor Jen 20 and
you can find me on all the social channels I'm at Doctor
Jen Simmons and my Jen has 2 ends.
Can I take my book from yours and show everyone that this is
the smart woman's guide to breast cancer and literally this
book is the breast owners guide the breast.
I do not have to have breast cancer to get tremendous value
for this book. And I spent a year and a half of
my life away from my life away from my my family to put this
out there. So please, if you want to have
better health, you can find out the recipe for better health
right here. And I have my own podcast.
It's called Keeping a Breast with Doctor Jen.
And we put out a new episode every week.
And then my medical practice is real healthmd.com.
And there you can learn all about our programs of how to
reclaim your health after a breast cancer diagnosis.
And we just launched A prevention program for anyone
who has a clinically positive Aria test or you're a mutation
carrier or you just want to know how to avoid breast cancer, this
prevention program is for you. So good, so encouraging.
Thank you. I know you're up against a lot
with the things that you're saying and the information that
you're putting out there, so I just really appreciate.
You. And everything that you're
putting out into the world. Thank you, thank you.
And I so appreciate being able to be here in this beautiful,
beautiful setting and having these amazing conversations that
are so important to have. And the more conversations that
we have, the more educated people will be and hopefully
will just help to open people's eyes to the truth and allow
people to make informed decisions because that is not
what's happening now. And people don't make the right
choices because they don't even know what the right choices are.
So I'm so grateful for people like you, for your platform, and
for people like you that are footing things out into the
world so that people can make the choices.
Thank you so much.