Beyond Mammograms: What Women Need to Know About Breast Cancer with Dr. Jenn Simmons SUMMER REBOOT - Episode 280 - Sandy K Nutrition - Health & Lifestyle Queen

Episode Transcript
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Sandy Kruse (00:02):
Hi everyone, it's me, Sandy K of Sandy K Nutrition
, health and Lifestyle Queen.
For years now, I've beenbringing to you conversations
about wellness from incredibleguests from all over the world.
Discover a fresh take onhealthy living for midlife and

(00:25):
beyond, one that embracesbalance and reason without
letting only science dictateevery aspect of our wellness,

(00:46):
and my guests as we explore waysthat we can age gracefully,
with in-depth conversationsabout the thyroid, about
hormones and other alternativewellness options for you and
your family.
True Wellness nurtures ahealthy body, mind, spirit and
soul, and we cover all of theseessential aspects to help you

(01:07):
live a balanced, joyful life.
Be sure to follow my show, rateit, review it and share it.
Always remember my friendsbalanced living works.
Friends, balanced living works.

(01:31):
Hi everyone, welcome to Sandy KNutrition, health and Lifestyle
Queen.
Today with me, I have a specialguest.
Her name is Dr Jenn Simmons,and Dr Jen spent the first 17
years of her career asPhiladelphia's premier breast
surgeon.
After attending JeffersonMedical College and completing a

(01:51):
general surgery residency atAlbany Med, she was selected for
Philadelphia's first breastdisease fellowship.
As a breast surgeon, she servedas chief of her department at
Einstein Medical Center.
She was also the medicaldirector of the cancer program.
Her experience as a patient in2017 led her to discover

(02:15):
functional medicine.
She received her functionalmedicine certification from the
Institute for FunctionalMedicine in 2019, and she was so
enthralled with promotinghealth rather than managing
symptoms that she left heresteemed position in 2019 and
started Real Health MD, afunctional medicine oasis for

(02:38):
anyone on a breast cancerjourney who is looking to take
charge and reclaim their health.
Dr Jenn is on a mission to helpmillions of women restore their
health following a breastcancer diagnosis, so that they
may live in their best healthfor as long as possible, and

(02:59):
today we are going to bediscussing this vast topic of
breast cancer prevention,screening, diagnosis, all the
things, and who better than totalk about this with Dr Jenn?
So, with that, welcome, Dr Jenn.

Dr. Jenn Simmons (03:16):
Thank you so much.
It was such a nice introduction.
I always get embarrassed and Ithink about like, get
embarrassed and I think aboutlike, oh my God, I did all that.
And I think the one thing thatfunctional medicine teaches you
the most is if you're notembarrassed about something that
you did six months ago, thenyou're not learning enough.
And so as you read that, I likelook back on all the things

(03:39):
that have happened over mycareer and like die a thousand
deaths over and over again,because when I was a surgeon,
you're so blinded.
You're just so blinded by thesystem and by the standard of
care, and this is how we do it,and it's still so paternalistic.

(04:02):
And I think about the peopleover the years that asked me for
more, that intuitively knewthat there was more, that
intuitively knew that they hadpower.
And I was so conditioned to sayno, there's nothing more and
there's nothing you can do toprevent breast cancer or to

(04:24):
reverse breast cancer other thanthis.
And breast cancer is just badluck and there are no modifiable
risk factors and nothing that'swithin your control.
And so as I look back on thattime, I'm kind of like cringing
inside, like I can't believe Idid that for so long.

(04:45):
But I've had this tremendousprivilege, this enlightenment,
and for that I'm super grateful.
And I know that this is what Iwas put on earth to do, and I
was just on the wrong pathbefore in how to help millions

(05:08):
of women, because I could havenever done it as a surgeon.
At the same time, thateducation was invaluable because
I have a perspective that noone else on earth has.

Yeah, I know, and that's the thing.
So, even though you believed ina very strict and specific
dogma that you were taught inmedical school, you also learned
from that and that took you onthis, let's say this voyage

(05:43):
where I don't think I knowanybody who does quite what you
do.

No, I mean, of course, there are other people
that are cancer doctors andthere are other people that are
integrative oncologists.
And there are even ones thatspecialize in breasts.
There's, you know, one or twothat specialize in breasts, but
none of them are coming at it.
From my perspective, havingbeen a cancer surgeon and

(06:10):
running a cancer program for 17,18, 19 years something along
those lines and, on top of it,being from a breast cancer
family and witnessing everysingle step of that journey
personally and professionallyfor as long as I did and

(06:32):
continue to, and you did so, youalso became a patient.

Was that your turning point, when you said you
know, I got to change the waythat I practice medicine?

Yeah, I very much come from a breast cancer
family.
I've never known a time in mylife where I didn't know about
breast cancer.
Growing up, I had a firstcousin.
Her name was Linda Creed.
She was a singer, songwriter inthe 1970s and 1980s.
She wrote all the music for theSpinners and the Stylistics.
She was beautiful, brilliant,larger than life, the queen of
Motown sound in Philadelphia.

(07:11):
She wrote 54 hits and her mostfamous song was the Greatest
Love of All.
So she wrote that song in 1977as the title track to the movie
the Greatest starring MuhammadAli.
But it really received itsacclaim in March of 1986 when
Whitney Houston released thatsong to the world and at that
time it would spend 14 weeks atthe top of the charts.

(07:33):
But my cousin Linda would neverknow because she died of
metastatic breast cancer onemonth after Whitney released
that song.
After Whitney released that songand I was 16 years old when my
hero died and she wasn't unlikeall the other women in my family
who got breast cancer, with theexception of I was a child

(07:58):
growing up witnessing herjourney, and so that no other
woman and no other family, noother community had to suffer
the way that mine suffered, Idecided that I was going to do
whatever I could to change theconversation around breast

(08:18):
cancer, all the while knowingthat this was going to be my
fate too, because at that timewe believed that this was a
story of pure genetics.
So I did the only thing I knewhow to do.
I went to medical school.

(08:38):
I became a doctor, I became asurgeon, I became the first
fellowship trained breastsurgeon and I did that for a
really long time, long enough todiagnose my aunt and my mother.
And it was in my probably 15thyear of practice where I went

(09:02):
from being probably one of themost high functioning humans
you've ever met in your life andpeople's heads would spin with
the amount of things that Icould accomplish in a day, in a
week, in a month.
And so I went from this reallyhigh functioning human to
literally I couldn't walk acrossthe room because I didn't have

(09:24):
the breath in my body and I hada three-day really intensive
workup.
And at the end of that time I'msitting in the office of my
friend and colleague andphysician and he tells me that I
need surgery and chemoradiation and that I'm going to
be on lifelong thyroidreplacement hormone because what

(09:46):
I have is Graves' disease,which is an autoimmune disease
of the thyroid.
But because it attacks thethyroid gland and floods your
system with thyroid hormone,what happens is that you become
so hypermetabolic hypermetabolicthat your heart literally

(10:11):
overworks to the point ofstopping.
So people die of sudden cardiacdeath with untreated Graves'
disease.
What I couldn't wrap my headaround at that time were two
things.
First, it was kind of during atime where I was becoming more
religious and really thinkingabout my relationship with God

(10:33):
all the time and I didn'tunderstand why God would give me
an organ that I needed to livethat I had to remove and then
replace with the synthetichormone for the rest of my life.
So I was really struggling withthat.
And the other thing that I wasstruggling with was my aunt who

(10:55):
had recently been diagnosed withbreast cancer, but 10 years
before that was diagnosed withGraves' disease and my entire
career I really saw the writingson the wall Like I knew that I
was going to be a breast cancerpatient at some point, because
that's just how my family rolled.
So this was quite a realitycheck for me when I'm kind of

(11:22):
facing that precursor diagnosisand in case people don't know,
the thyroid and the breast.
There are canaries in the coalmine.
They are the organs that are themost sensitive and the most
affected by environmentaldisturbances and they are the

(11:44):
indicator that something is notgoing right in our body.
They are the first signals thatthings are not going right in
our body and it's no accidentthat we have the amount of
thyroid disease that we have inour society.
I mean up to 25% of women havethyroid dysfunction.
This is a crazy amount, butwe're living in toxic times.

(12:09):
We are not living on ourgrandmother's earth, we're not
even living on our mother'searth.
We are living in a time andspace where things are
exponentially off, exponentiallymore toxic, and we are not
built to deal with all thistoxicity.
So for me, my diagnosis was awake-up call and even though it

(12:38):
was frightening and even thoughmy doctor told me that I would
die if I didn't go theconventional route Just like I
said to women countless times,what will happen if I don't
treat my breast cancer?
And I would say that you'll dieof your disease and my doctor
was saying the same thing to mebut something and thank God I

(13:02):
lived through this decision butsomething told me that there's
more and go find it.

And.

I did, I did.
I went on a journey to find itand like every healing journey,
it was not linear, it got wayworse before it got better, but
that I was so fortunate and thisis God's work more than
anything else that in the verybeginning I happened to listen

(13:35):
to Mark Hyman speak.
And at the time he walked onthe stage with those lanky legs
and that toothy grin andintroduced himself as a
functional medicine physician.
And I had been a doctor forlike 20 years at this point and
I thought there's no such thingas a functional medicine
physician.
What is this quack talkingabout?

(13:56):
And then I remember that I wassick and I was there for a
reason and I tuned in andlistened up and thank God I did,
because that was really theturning point for me, because
that was my very first exposureto how wrong we were getting it,
and that especially in theworld of cancer, where all your

(14:20):
focus is on the tumor.
But the tumor is not theproblem, the tumor is the
symptom of the problem.
And nowhere in my 20 years ofbeing a doctor had I ever said I
wonder why this is happening, Iwonder what's happening.
I've just focused on the tumorbecause that's what I was

(14:41):
trained to do, and you know thepeople that ask the why they're
the difficult people.
What?

are you?

asking why?
For there's no answers there.
And so this was my opportunityto take my blinders off and see
the world, see medicine, seehealth in a whole different
light.
Because really, as aconventional medical doctor,
we're trained that and peoplebelieve that health is the

(15:11):
absence of disease, so if youdon't have a diagnosis, you're
healthy.
That's not true, simply nottrue.
And so health is optimalfunction.
But our doctors don't know howto help people have optimal
function.
Our doctors know how todiagnose disease and treat

(15:33):
symptoms.

That's exactly yeah .
So I have to ask I'm fascinatedwith your history, your story,
fascinated with with your, yourhistory, your story.
So do you still have yourthyroid?
I do you, do I still?
Have my thyroid so you have todo the radiation, the ablation,

(15:55):
any of it, nothing.

No, that's amazing.
Yeah, there were some scarytimes and I think if I called my
doctor tomorrow and told himthat you know I wasn't feeling
well, he would say I told you soeven though it was like seven
years ago.

So seven years.
Because one thing I will saytoo is for five years they
suppressed my TSH, so it wasvirtually at, it was
undetectable, and so I wasliving in a hyper thyroid state
for a long time, and it's not afun place to live.
It's a little bit scary, youknow.

With heart, yeah, so I've been on spectrums
of zero to 32 TSH.

Yeah, so I've been on spectrums of zero to 32 TSH.
So with medication changes it'shard but talk to us a little
bit about the connection ofthyroid to breast.

Yeah, well, first of all, I mean, we know
that both of their functions iscentered around iodine.
Both of their functions iscentered around iodine, and so
you have to have healthy levelsof iodine.
And iodine is one of thoseminerals that I call a
Goldilocks mineral, because youhave to have it just right you

(17:20):
can't have too little and youcan't have too much, and our
bodies have become amazing atadapting to low levels of iodine
.
But there are areas in theworld where they have really

(17:41):
iodine rich diets, world wherethey have really iodine rich
diets, and, like in Asia, thosepeople have adapted to very high
levels of iodine so they absorbvery little, and we and people
who are not good people who livein areas where there's very

(18:03):
little iodine, they becomeexcellent absorbers.
So I'm very, very careful withiodine supplementation, because
you can get into trouble reallyfast one way or the other.
But that is one thing that thebreast and the thyroid have in
common.
The other thing that they havein common is that they're both

(18:29):
extremely environmentallysusceptible and sensitive.
And it's easy to understand whythe breast is so sensitive,
because even breast is made upof four primary tissues.
So there's the glandular tissue, that's the tissue that

(18:50):
produces breast milk.
There's fat, there's connectivetissue that holds everything
together and it's all inside ofa skin envelope.
And even if you are someonethat has dense breasts, meaning
that you have a high proportionof glandular tissue in your
breast, you're still going tohave a lot of fat.
There's always going to be alot of fat cells in the breast,

(19:15):
and fat is where we store ourtoxins.

Yes.

And so think about being the neighbor of a
hoarder.
So you know, eventually thathoarder is going to fill their
space and it's going to startcreeping over onto your lawn.
That's the same thing thatbreasts have Breast cells, the

(19:40):
glandular cells they're livingnext door to hoarders, the
glands of their cells they'reliving next door to hoarders.
And when you are in contactwith toxins, you are far more
likely to get damaged.
And that's essentially what'shappening Now in a vacuum.
That alone won't do it, becausewe do have repair mechanisms

(20:01):
that are supposed to recognizethese damaged cells and either
repair them or tell them toundergo what's called programmed
cell death, so to just kind ofinvolute and go away.
The problem is that our way oflife, our existence, is so toxic

(20:21):
that those immune systemsaren't working.
70% of our immune system ishoused in the gut, and if you
are on a steady diet of glutenand dairy and ultra processed
food, your immune system isexhausted.
It doesn't have the bandwidthto go around your body and do

(20:44):
its repairs because it's stuckin the gut working way too hard.
This is why diet is soimportant, this is why eating
organic is so important, and soit's the combination of.
We store toxins in the breast.
So the environment of thebreast is kind of toxic and our

(21:11):
immune system is so challengedby diet, by poor sleep, by
chronic infections, bypesticides, herbicides,
fungicides, phthalates,xenoestrogens, antibiotics I
mean we could go through thegamut of what is damaging our

(21:34):
immune system, and it's thecombination of those two that is
the perfect recipe for cancer.

So I have to ask you this because I can't.
I honestly can't remember whereI read this, but it was
something relating to, and I'mtotally paraphrasing that
alcohol has become like the newsmoking in terms of risk factors

(22:01):
for midlife women, and I can'tremember Without question.
So what are your thoughts onalcohol?
Because I mean, you mentionedokay, there's so many factors
here you mentioned the diet, andthen we didn't talk about
exercise, but of course, notmoving your body.

That's a risk factor in and of itself.
Sitting is also the new smoking.

Yes, yeah.
And what are we doing right now?
Right yeah, recording.

But but for what it's worth when we're done.
I'm getting right up on mytreadmill.

There you go.

I, I.
I work at a treadmill desk andI I walk anywhere from six to 12
miles every single day, becauseI walk and work at the same
time.
Yeah, but it's annoying whenyou're recording to watch the
person bounce up and down.

Well, my husband bought me a rebounder at
Christmas and so I try and go onmy rebounder.
Yeah, it's amazing, right, likea few times a day.
It's like my little miniexercise snack.

Yeah Right, amazing.
And if you can get 20 minutesin a day in different sound
bites, it that that is awesomefor lymphatic health, for some
for circulation, um, it'sawesome for your core.
I love a rebounder.
Yeah yeah, I saw one of yourposts.
Actually I'm like, oh, dr Jefflikes to rebound too.
I love a rebounder.

Yeah, Love a rebounder.
Yeah, I saw one of your posts.
Actually I'm like oh, Dr Jenlikes to rebound too.
I love it.

I do, I do.
I love a rebounder, so back toalcohol, alcohol?

Yeah, because you know, during COVID especially,
this became a big thing wherethere were all these memes on
TikTok and everywhere, of allthese women drinking at each
other's houses and sure it'slike I'm all for fun and I'm all
for balance, but do you thinkthis is?

coffee, by the way.
I just want everyone to know.

But yeah, like, what are your thoughts on
alcohol?
Because I personally don'tabstain.
I did do a show on sober livingand I respect everyone's
decision for whatever theirchoice is.
I drink only on occasion, onsocial occasions.
That's like that's when I drinkon social occasions.

(24:26):
That's like that's when I drink, so not commonly what are your
thoughts on alcohol and breasthealth?

So let's not.
First let me say that I respectanyone's decision that they're
going to make right, and thedecision is yours.
At the same time, as aphysician and if I am treating
someone for breast cancer andthey are actively cancering
there is no room for alcohol,any of it.
It is so toxic, so it's axenoestrogen it is.

(25:01):
Also.
It has to be metabolized by theliver.
That's a fixed amount of timethat it takes to metabolize
alcohol.
Women are not nearly asefficient at it as men.
It will take women eight hoursto metabolize an ounce of

(25:21):
alcohol and during that eighthours that's all it's
metabolizing.
So whatever other toxins thatyou're coming into contact with
at the same time, they're justgetting stored.
There's no room for dealingwith them.
Your body is always going toprioritize the thing that's

(25:42):
going to kill you first, so it'salways going to work on the
most toxic thing, and alcohol,for most people, is the most
toxic thing and there's nocatching up.
So think about a laundromat thatthe next day you just reset.

(26:04):
So whatever you don't getthrough.
So if you just have a littlebit of laundry and you can get
through it in 24 hours.
Awesome.
If you have a ton of laundry,you know that that washing
machine only works at one rate,right?
You can't make it faster, youcan't make it, you can't
overstuff it.
You put the right amount in andit works for a certain amount
of time.
So if you have a huge amount oflaundry and you can't make it,
you can't overstuff it you putthe right amount in and it works

(26:25):
for a certain amount of time.
So if you have a huge amount oflaundry and you don't get
through it, you don't have thenext day, because the next day
the same amount of laundry isshowing up.
So it just gets stored.
So toxins just get stored.
So this is why alcohol makespeople fat because they can't

(26:45):
get through the toxins.
That is our body's protectivemechanism.
That's how the body protectsyou from toxins.
It makes a fat cell and itstores the toxins in it.
It's a way to get it out of thebloodstream so that it can't
damage your vital organs.
And this is also why, whenpeople lose weight, they send

(27:11):
those toxins back into theirbody and sometimes they don't
feel great right away until theyclear those toxins.
But alcohol we know it's a knowncarcinogen.
We've known that for a longtime.
There is really no safe amountof alcohol for women, according

(27:32):
to the American Cancer Society,but my feelings about it are
that it's been in existencesince the beginning of time.
I mean, we know, in biblicaltimes we talk about wine and
bless wine, and it's a sacred,it's a sacred substance and I
think that there is a time and aplace, if you're healthy to to

(27:56):
include alcohol, if you choose,in.
I don't, I don't even want tosay moderation In.
I don't even want to saymoderation.
One glass once in a while isnot going to hurt you unless
you're actively cancering.
If you're actively cancering,absolutely not.
But you shouldn't be drinkingtwo days in a row.

(28:21):
And because you have to giveyour liver a break and its
ability to catch up, and itwon't yeah that laundry just
keeps building if you'reconstantly drinking.
That's right.
So if you're drinking every day, you're forcing your body to
make more fat cells, to storemore toxins.
And where are you going tostore your toxins?

(28:42):
In the breast.
And where are you going tostore your toxins In the breast?
No-transcript.

So let's begin with some stats on breast cancer.
Is breast cancer on the riseand we kind of covered the
toxins.
We kind of covered, you know,the way that we live now versus
you know, we're not living onour own homesteads, growing our
food, you know, taking care ofour own animals and getting our

(29:16):
eggs from our chickens, and mostpeople don't live that way.

So people don't live that way, that's true
.

Right, but is it on the rise or is it that there
are more of these diagnoses thatare not, as?
I don't even know if dangerousis the word.

Well, but over-diagnosis is a real problem
.
Okay, it's a real problem.
Now, I'm not going to say thatwe don't have more toxins in our
environment.
We do, yeah, but one of themajor toxins that we have in our
environment is radiation.
Toxins that we have in ourenvironment is radiation, and if
you think about it, we have awhole program designed to

(30:07):
develop breast cancer, becausewe're telling our women to start
at 40, go and have your breastsradiated once, or some women
twice, some women three times ayear.
We are basically setting thestage for breast cancer.
And that's not the only problem.
I mean, mammograms will causethousands of cancers a year.

(30:29):
Just mammograms alone willcause thousands of cancers a
year.

How is that, jen?
How, how?
Because I know people are goingto stop on that, you know, yeah
.

So when you talk about x-ray, x-ray is a
known carcinogen.
Radiation is a known carcinogen.
We know radiation causes canceryes, we do.
But we decided that we wantedto screen women and so we gave
it a different name so that itwould have a different

(31:08):
connotation.
So we called it a mammogram.
We called it a nice nameinstead of calling it what it is
.
Called it a nice name insteadof calling it what it is, which
is a breast x-ray.
And if you break a bone and needan x-ray, you need an x-ray,
right?
That is an entirely differentthing than screening for a
disease, screening a normal,healthy population.

(31:32):
When you break a bone, you'reno longer healthy, right?
You have something that'sbroken.
When we use a test that causescancer to screen for cancer, if
we're going to do that, therehas to be a significant benefit
to doing that, and they believedin the beginning that there was

(31:57):
.
That's the premise that thescreening mammogram program is
built on.
So we started to screen withmammogram in the 1970s and the
screening program was based onthis assumption.
Breast cancer growth is linearand predictable, meaning that

(32:18):
it's something that starts small, grows to some critical size,
at which time it's more likelyto metastasize.
So if we catch it before, thenwe can have women undergo less
treatment and we can save lives,and it's a lovely theory.
It just doesn't happen to betrue.
And we can save lives and it'sa lovely theory.

(32:40):
It just doesn't happen to betrue.
Breast cancer growth is neitherlinear nor predictable, so it
does not have to go along anobligatory path.
It doesn't start small and thenget to some critical size and
metastasize.
Breast cancer is what it isfrom the very beginning.
The biology is the only thingthat's important with breast

(33:00):
cancer and it's either going tobe biologically aggressive or
it's not.
And the biologically aggressivecancers we're not doing that
well with those.
And the ones that are notbiologically aggressive, it
almost doesn't matter what youdo to those, because those women
are all going to be fine.
We have.

(33:21):
No matter how many women wescreen every year with mammogram
, we see the same number ofwomen present with advanced
disease.
No matter how many women wescreen every year with mammogram
, the same exact number of womendie of breast cancer every year

(33:41):
.
We are not impacting the bottomline at all, but what we're
doing is causing more breastcancers, because you can see
when we started to go from 2Dmammogram to 3D mammogram in
2012, 2013, 2014,.
That's when the rates of breastcancer really start to rise.

(34:07):
Because we are over-diagnosing,we're causing some of these
cancers and we'reover-diagnosing.
We are finding cancers onmammogram that would probably
never have become clinicallyrelevant.
And then, once we do that,we're committing these women to

(34:29):
breast cancer treatment.
And if breast cancer treatmentwere a benign entity, that would
be one thing.
Breast cancer treatment, we'rea benign entity, that would be
one thing.
But breast cancer treatmentaccelerates heart disease,
accelerates dementia,accelerates depression, anxiety,
accelerates bone loss.
These are major, major issues.

(34:50):
And, lest we forget, women dieexponentially more of heart
disease in every generation oftheir life, past the age of 30,
than they do of breast cancer,exponentially more.
So we're taking a disease that,for the majority of women,
would not have cost them theirlife, and then we're making them

(35:13):
two to three times more likelyto die of heart disease, and
they're already exponentiallydying of heart disease.
So we're actually, by screeningwith mammogram, shortening
women's lives, not saving lives.
Shortening women's lives.
This is a problem, and it'sbecause of this that countries

(35:39):
like Switzerland have abandonedtheir mammographic screening
programs, because not only dothey not save lives, but that we
will materially diminish thequality and the quantity of
women's lives if we screen themover a lifetime.

So Switzerland has banned this screening.

I'm not going to use banned, because if you
want to go have a mammogramthere you can, right right, but
they have abolished theirscreening programs Program yes,
abolished their screeningprograms Program yes.
So, unlike our doctors in theUnited States, their doctors are
not recommending that women getscreened with mammogram because

(36:25):
they know it does not savelives.

So here we still got the quotes and I'm in
Toronto, so, similar to in theUnited States, you know you get
the quote mammograms save lives.
Yeah Well, the Canadian studyproved it didn't Well it's
interesting because I get aletter every year in the mail

(36:50):
from the government reminding meto have my mammogram.
Now that's, that's politics.

Oh, that's politics, because women believe
that mammograms save lives, sothey want it.
They want it and that's theirpoliticians making them happy.
And remember this is very goodfor the system.
The system wants mammogramsbecause right now we don't have

(37:23):
a system that rewards health.
We have a system that rewardssickness and disease.
Yes, doctors don't have a way ofgetting paid if you're healthy,
which is, please know that I amnot coming down on doctors.
This is how they were trained.
This is the only thing thatthey know.

(37:45):
I am not coming down on doctors.
They are doing exactly whatthey're trained to do, and most
of them are doing it very welland with good intentions.
But the problem is that we livein a time where health is not
rewarded, only sickness isrewarded, and the doctor has to

(38:08):
put food on his table too andhas to send his kids to school
too.
So until we redesign our systemto reward what is truly
important, this is going tocontinue to happen, and a

(38:30):
radiologist who is trained nowbelieves that mammograms save
lives, and so they're going topush really hard and they're
going to.
They've drawn their line in thesand and they're going down
with that ship.

Right, and along with the radiologists, every I'm
going to say almost every womanthat gets that letter goes.
Oh, I better go, I better goand get my mammogram.

That's right, Because they're misinformed and
they're under the falseimpression that mammograms save
lives.
But it's not true.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.

I have ignored and honestly and here's where the
whole shame comes in People lookat you like you're crazy.
People look at me like I'mcrazy Because I have ignored my
letter now for over two years.
Yeah, and it's not listen.

(39:31):
And they're like shouldn't yousee what's going on with that
tumor that you had in 2011?
Shouldn't you see what's goingon with that cyst that you had
in 2011?
I'm like, well, I actuallydon't feel any issues with it.
I take good care of my health.
This is a good segue to get intonot thermography as a diagnosis

(39:59):
, but maybe and this is youmight find this interesting as a
physician so the thermography.
I recorded a podcast on it.
She does not really believe inbreast thermography only.
She believes in just whole body, just to see how is your whole

(40:19):
body functioning as a whole.
So, uh, right, like you knowwhat's going on with your you
know lymphatic system or what doyou?
You know, do you see issuesthere?
Anyway, I know I've done a lotof research on thermography.
I know that it's not adiagnostic tool, but do you
think like a good practice?

(40:42):
Just to say, oh, you know, Idid feel a little bit of issues
with and I'll tell you, I dohave issues with this wrist, and
it was like glowing red very so.
It kind of almost justsolidified what I already knew
was going on.
But what are your thoughts onit?

So, let's call it what it is.
I mean, it is a screening toolfor inflammation.
It's not a screening tool forcancer, right?
So the reason that it got suchnegative connotation, in the
United States at least, isbecause people were using it as

(41:22):
a screening tool for cancer.
That's not what it is.
Let's use it for what it is,which is a marker of
inflammation.
But most of the doctors, in theUS at least, don't know what to
do with that information.
They don't know what to do withthat information.
They don't know what to do.
They think inflammation, takean anti-inflammatory.
They're not thinking oh, what'scausing the inflammation?

(41:50):
Let's look at that, let'sfigure that out, let's get rid
of whatever that nidus is, thatstimulation is, whatever the
etiology is, but they're notthinking that way.
If you are going to use it as ascreening tool for breast
cancer, then it needs to becoupled with some other imaging
modality, like an ultrasound.
So if you want to use it thatway, that would be a far more

(42:12):
sensitive screening tool and,quite frankly, none of this is
going to matter, because there'simaging that is FDA cleared,
that is going to forever changethe landscape of breast imaging
and then body imaging, but inthe meantime.
I love thermography, I love awhole body thermography.

(42:33):
I think we should all knowwhere.
If we have inflammation, and ifyou see inflammation around
your thyroid gland, if you seeinflammation in your joints, if
you see inflammation around yourbody, that's your opportunity,
that's your invitation, and Ithink we should all have that

(42:55):
kind of awareness.
And I think we should all havethat kind of awareness.
It's also why I believe in selfbreast examination, because I
think we should all know whatour body feels like.
No one is going to know usbetter than we know ourselves.
Yeah, no one.
And so I really believe in selfexam.
And people say to me all thetime yes, but mammogram is going

(43:16):
to find something that's threemillimeters or four millimeters
maybe.
Yes, that's true, do I careabout that three or four
millimeter thing?
No, because if that three orfour millimeter thing is going
to become a one or twocentimeter thing, then I'll deal
with it.

Yeah.

Yeah, but if I can see that on thermography
and it doesn't show up anywhereelse, I can say maybe we should
figure out what's going on withyou.
Maybe we should figure outbefore you get that diagnosis
that condemns you to all thosetreatments that actually ruin

(44:00):
your health rather than increaseit.
Let's figure out what's goingon in your environment, because
we know that cancer is a normalresponse to an abnormal
environment.
So what's happening in yourenvironment?
What do we need to do to makethat environmental shift?
Get out of stress chemistry,get back into the chemistry of

(44:23):
joy, and so that those cellsthat are on high alert because
they're under stress chemistrycan relax and say oh my God,
we're fine, everything is safe.
This is one of the reasons whymeditation works, because it
tricks your body into thinkingthat it's safe, even if it's not

(44:46):
.
If you can take over yourbreathing, if you can take over
your mindset and get into thatplace, that Zen place, where
that saber-to saber tooth tigeris no longer on your tail, that
shifts your chemistry.

Totally.
Have you read the biology ofbelief, dr Bruce Lipton?

I haven't.
It's all my list that I know.
I know I need to do that.

Yeah, maybe that's.
Yeah, it's.
It's meant to be right Ifyou've heard his name before but
yeah, I'm a big believer.

No, I definitely have.
I'm trying to get him to comeonto my podcast.

Oh yeah, now, that's so.
Fear in my mind.
Fear breeds more fear, so Iremembered literally one month
before I knew I was having atotal thyroidectomy, being told
they found a mass being calledback in, being told I have dense

(45:44):
breasts which I want todefinitely tackle.
That whole dense breast topic,I don't know.
I think I had two mammogramsand then the core biopsy and you
know the whole being calledback.
And then they said well, it'shorrible.
It's a horror.

(46:05):
And then the core biopsy.

It's a horrible system.

Sure, they numb you , but I had a scar there for
years and it was like almosttraumatizing, like that staple
gun, like the, where they'repulling out.
You know what it's like, you'reno joke, and I'm awake sitting
there going, holy shit, like isthis cancer?

(46:27):
Am I going to have two surgeries?
You know simultaneously, likewhat's going on here, but the
fear was so huge and thenafterwards being told we need to
monitor this, you might want totake it out.
I ended up leaving it, so thiswas in 2011.
You know, I I didn't doanything with it, but I was told

(46:50):
this term you have very densebreasts.
You have very dense breasts.
You must have a mammogram everyyear from now on.
Yeah, what does dense breastsmean and how.

(47:11):
You know why more mammogramsand why does that put me at more
risk, or?

does it even put me at more risk?
No, it doesn't, but they wouldlove for you to think that it
does.
I mean, you know that scaretactic is very real.
That's their marketing.
That's the way that they makesure that you come back, because
they use fear.

Yeah.

And let's talk about what dense breasts are.
Yeah, so we talked about whatmakes up the tissues of the
breast.
So when they say that you havedense breasts, they mean that
you have more glandular tissuethan fat in your breast.
And the reason that it'srelevant is because that
determines how sensitive theirtest is.

(47:48):
Because in a dense breastedwoman whose tissue is mostly
glandular tissue and just alittle bit of fat the minority
is fat.
That mammogram is going to miss40% of cancers in
dense-breasted women.
And because of the way that theimaging machine works, it gives

(48:16):
enough radiation to try topenetrate.
So women with dense breasts canget up to 10 times the amount
of radiation that someone whodoes not have dense breast has.
Wow, yeah, so the machine willautomatically dial up that
radiation.
There's an amazing documentarycalled Boobs the documentary.

(48:40):
You don't want to just searchfor boobs because you won't like
what you get.
But if you search for Boobs thedocumentary amazing documentary
about women's imaging, and ifyou just want the shortcut, I
interviewed Megan Smith, who wasthe producer of that

(49:00):
documentary, on my podcast,keeping Abressed with Dr Jen,
and you can just listen to thatpodcast.
But first of all, women are notbeing told how much radiation
that they're getting during thestudy and it does vary.
It does vary from person toperson, so the issue of informed

(49:21):
consent is simply not there.
When we talk about women whohave dense breasts, we have to
divide that into premenopausalwomen and postmenopausal women,
because premenopausal women,whose bodies are prepared to
feed an infant, they're supposedto have dense breasts.

Yes.

Right.
I mean, that is just biology,and a premenopausal woman with
dense breasts is not atincreased risk of breast cancer.
However, as you go throughmenopause, that changes and the
breast tissue involutes becauseyou no longer have to feed a

(50:04):
child and it becomes fattyreplaced.
And so, as the further you getaway from menstruating, the less
dense your breast should becomeyear after year.
And so doctors looked at thattrend.
Now, if your breast didn'tbecome less dense, that was for

(50:26):
two reasons.
One is you're on hormonereplacement, which you know.
That's fine.
I mean, that's the reason whyyour breasts aren't getting less
dense and there's noassociation with that and breast
cancer.
The other reason, if you're noton hormone replacement, is
inflammation, and anyone with alot of inflammation in their

(50:48):
body is going to be at increasedrisk of breast cancer.
And so that is the relationshipand that is the tie-in and
that's what no one's telling you.
So premenopausal, it's normaland we should not be alarming

(51:08):
these women who arepremenopausal, who have dense
breast tissue.
That's normal, and it's only inthe postmenopausal population
that is not on hormonereplacement, and I'm a full
advocate of hormone replacementas long as it's bioidentical.
If you are postmenopausal, noton hormone replacement and your

(51:33):
breast density is not decreasing, it's because you have
significant inflammation andthat is your risk factor for
breast cancer.
It's not your dense breasts,it's that you're inflamed and
you should use that asmotivation to figure out where
that inflammation is coming from.

So let me ask you this Is there an actual place
for a mammogram in your mind asan expert in this area?

So I'm an advocate of QT scanning.
So QT is a technique thatthey're an FDA clear device that
has the first FDA clearance in50 years to screen women with
dense breasts.
Everything else wasgrandfathered in it uses sound

(52:25):
waves to create athree-dimensional reconstruction
of the breast.
That without radiation, withoutcompression, without any pain,
and it has 40 times theresolution of MRI.
So in my opinion yes, that'smassive.
Yes, 200,000 times more datapoints than MRI Holy smokes.

(52:53):
Yes, yes, yes.
So I almost feel like it's noteven worth having the
conversation anymore aboutmammogram and MRI, because
inside of five years these aregoing to be everywhere, because
I'm going to make sure thatthey're everywhere and that it's
just, it's not going to matter.

(53:14):
But in the meantime, I want tosay this about mammogram there
is no reason ever to have ascreening mammogram ever.
There is no benefit to it, noone is helped by it, and you
know I get flooded with womenwho say mammogram saved my life,
and I know they think thatbecause that's exactly what the

(53:37):
system wants them to think.
But the truth is that mammogrameither caused your cancer
because you never would have hadit in the first place, or it
picked up a cancer and causedyou to be treated for cancer
when you didn't need to be, andthe only people that benefit

(53:59):
from treatment are the peoplethat would have presented anyway
.
They didn't need mammogram tobring them to treatment because
it would have become clinicallyobvious.
And we're not saving peoplefrom less treatment.
It's just not happening.
Treatment is based on biology.

(54:20):
So if you're going to get chemo, you're going to get chemo
because you have aggressivedisease.
And we don't take people who,well, they have really
aggressive disease but thelesion is small.
We don't say you don't needchemo.
That's not what happens.
We say you don't need chemo topeople who don't have aggressive
disease.
So we're not.
We're not saving anyone fromanything and in fact we're.

(54:43):
We're only causing problems onthe other side.
So no one needs a screeningmammogram ever.
But I am not saying that you'renever going to have a mammogram
again, because there are,because there are going to be
situations and circumstanceswhere we're going to need it for
diagnostic purposes.
Like if we need to localizesomething before surgery, right

(55:08):
now, mammogram is the way thatwe're going to do that.
Or if you have an abnormal QTscan or if you feel something in
your breast, you're going to goand have a diagnostic study.
So I'm not saying you're nevergoing to have a mammogram again,
but just like that x-ray forthe broken bone.

(55:30):
I'm not talking about thenormal population I'm talking
about.
In situations where there'salready an abnormality, then
it's okay to use a diagnosticstudy.
That's what it's for.
It just has no place inscreening.

(55:50):
We should not be taking healthypeople and subjecting them to
something that causes cancer.
It doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't save any lives andwe are hurting people.
We are hurting hundreds ofthousands, if not millions, of
people.

There's more and more physicians like yourself
and obstetricians who areactually speaking very similarly
about mammogram, like in thesense of, yes, you may want to
have a mammogram if somethingshows up in another test or if

(56:31):
you feel something.
Yes, yes, it does make sense tome.
Now I want to get into this QTscan because you're saying that
it's going to be availableeverywhere, even Canada.
Yes, yes.

(56:52):
Now what is it?
Is it like a photograph, likehow is it done?
How long is it?
Is it invasive?
Do they have to?

touch your breasts.
It's completely non-invasive,there's no compression.
You lie down on a table.
There's a hole cut out into thetable on a table.
There's a hole cut out into thetable and there's a water bath
that comes up and your breastgets submerged in the water bath
and, depending on the size ofthe breast, each breast takes

(57:26):
anywhere from four to 10 minutesto scan.
So at the most you would have a20 minute scan.
But you know you're just.
You're just lying on a tablelistening to either waterfall or
you know some kind ofmeditative music and by the time

(57:46):
20 minutes flies by, you gohome unharmed on.
You know it's just.
It's a beautiful experience, uh, and women are so deeply
relieved because it's so unlikeany other breast imaging
experience they've had before.

Yeah, because even with ultrasound anybody who's
had, because I've had so manydifferent ultrasounds they have
to press and it's not the same,as you know, squishing your boob
with a mammogram.

No, but they still give pretty good
compression on an ultrasound.
So for someone who has tenderbreasts or sensitive breasts,
it's not that comfortable andyou know the gel is disgusting
and not that comfortable.
And the gel is disgusting andnot for nothing and I know most
ultrasound techs do their very,very best to be as compassionate

(58:43):
as they can.
But I know for me had a lot ofultrasounds.
You watch their face and,depending on how good their
poker face is, you're terrifiedthe whole time.
You're watching for a littlebit of emotion and they're

(59:04):
typing away and you're freakingout like what are they writing?
And it's not.
It's not a pleasant experience,it's a terrifying experience.
It may not be painful but it'sscary.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's true.
This takes all of that out ofit.
All of that out of it.
It's more like going to a spathan anything else.
I love it else, and it willforever change our experience

(59:41):
around breast cancer screening.
And I'll tell you what Ibelieve the best part of it is.
This is the only functionaltesting on the market.
When it sees something, if itis an obvious cancer, that's one
thing and we tell people it'san obvious cancer and then they
go have a diagnostic workup.
But if it is something that isnonspecific or more ambiguous,

(01:00:06):
we tell people to come back in60 days and at 60 days we rescan
them and we count the cells, wemeasure a doubling time and we
know that cancers have adoubling time of 100 days or
less.
So those people that have thatfaster doubling time, we tell
them you need to go and havefurther evaluation.

(01:00:29):
But if you have a doubling timeof greater than 100 days, we
say see you in a year, at whichtime we'll measure another
doubling time.
Now what this is going to do isidentify those people that need
a workup, that need a biopsy,that may need treatment.

(01:00:50):
But what it's going to avoid isall of those biopsies that are
done for benign disease itcompletely eliminates those and
for these slow, growing,non-meaningful cancers, these
people are just going to getfollowed.
So it's saving them from thebiopsy.

(01:01:13):
It's saving them from the painand hardship of that diagnosis
when they don't need it, and itsaves them from treatment that
they don't need.
That will only shorten theirlives and diminish the quality
of their lives.
This is why it's so meaningfuland this is why it's so

(01:01:34):
important, because it gets ridof over-diagnosis and
over-treatment.
Now people may still choose togo have more evaluation, and
that's fine, but you're takingaway the power of this test,
which is to save people fromover-diagnosis, from over-biopsy

(01:01:54):
and from over-treatment.

Sandy Kruse (01:01:56):
That's my thing is that I want to do what I can to
ensure that I'm well, I'mprotecting my own nervous system
, because I get such severeanxiety system, because I get

(01:02:17):
such severe anxiety when I haveto go for a mammogram, because I
know what to expect and I knowthe pain that that it causes me.

Dr. Jenn Simmons (01:02:22):
Yeah, it's horrible.

It's, traumatic it is, and then on top of it, I'm
like do I even need this, youknow?

And do you even trust it?
Need this, you know, and do youeven trust it?
Do you even trust it?
I mean, how can you trust atest that's wrong 40% of the
time?
Right, is that the stat then?

40% of false positives or false alarms Like
is that what you would call itso?

40% are false negatives in dense-breasted
women, meaning that there'ssomething there that it doesn't
pick up, holy crap.
And that doesn't even speak tothe false positives, and the
false positive rate variesaround the country, but it's
anywhere from 25% to 50% of themare false positives.

(01:03:12):
It's a huge issue.
It's a huge issue.

And here's the other thing.
I didn't ask about this becauseI've read about this.
If you already have, let's say,a cancerous mass and you are
compressing that tumor, you arecompressing that tumor.
Okay, I happen to know probablytoo much about cancer.
My daughter had cancer at fiveas well, so I've learned from
her oncologist about how cancerhas blood supply, how it has

(01:03:46):
arms and legs and it's holdingonto other tissues and there is
blood supply.
So when you're compressing it,it's almost like you could be
spreading it as well.

Yeah, so I don't know how much I believe in
in that theory, um, whether ornot it actually disseminates it.
I don't think so, because whenwe think about all of the women
who get mammograms and all thewomen who get breast cancer

(01:04:22):
diagnoses and then all of thewomen who die of breast cancer,
that number stays so consistentthat it makes me think that the
biopsies are probably okay, thecompression is probably okay.
I don't think that that'swhat's changing the biology.

(01:04:42):
I think that there are just acertain percentage of cancers
that are going to haveaggressive biology and I don't
think that's influenced bybiopsy or compression.
I hear what people are sayingand that you know, will that
fracture the capsule that isaround a cancer?

(01:05:04):
I don't know.
Those cancers are pretty hard.
You know, having having had myhands on thousands and thousands
of cancers, I don't think, Idon't think that's happening.
I mean, I've never put 50pounds of pressure on it, um,

(01:05:26):
but I don't, I don't think thatthat's happening.

Okay, that's good to know.
And then, what about people whohave had or who have implants?

Yeah, Now that's real.
So mammogram will rupturepeople's implants, which is in
like what percent?

what percent of cases?

I don't know.
I don't know those numbers.
I should really.
I'm going to look up thosenumbers, but most women with
mammograms, or most women withimplants, are avoiding
mammograms for just that reasonbecause they don't want their
implants ruptured.
Old, you can screen and it'svalid because it's not harmful.

(01:06:19):
You can screen young women atany age, whereas it's really
unethical to do a mammogram onsomeone who's 25, but not so
much when you're not doingradiation.
And then the solution for manypeople was thought to be MRI.
But MRI is fraught with issues.

(01:06:41):
But MRI is recommended.
I forget what therecommendation is.
It's either every two or threeyears for women with implants,
and you know it doesn't confer arupture risk.
But MRIs are useless withoutgadolinium.
Gadolinium is a heavy metalthat's stored in the body and

(01:07:03):
anytime we store something inthe body, we store it at the
expense of what is supposed tobe there.
So gadolinium causes a host ofmedical problems and I know in
my practice.
I see people and I tested theirurine for toxins and I see
people spilling gadolinium atlevels 100, 1000 times normal

(01:07:29):
years after they've had an MRI.
So gadolinium is a real, realproblem and is not safe and
should not be used as ascreening examination, for the
same reasons that I talked aboutmammogram not being safe and
not being used as a screeningexamination.

Well, I need to clarify this.
Yeah, so gadolinium.

Gadolinium.
That's the contrast mediumthat's given along with MRI.

Okay, Okay.
So when you do a breast MRI youhave to have contrast.

Yeah, it's useless without it, unless
you're looking for nothing.
But if you're just looking tosee if the implants are intact,
then you don't need contrast.
But if you are looking to seethe state and the health of the
breast tissue, if you're lookingfor lesions in the breast

(01:08:29):
tissue, if you're looking for adiagnostic exam, then you need
gadolinium.

So you need the contrast.
So is contrast something that'seasy to detox out or no?
No, no.
Like, what are we talking?

Like, if you went and had an MRI, the best
thing that you can do before youhave the MRI is take zinc,
because gadolinium will competewith zinc for uptake, so if
there's plenty of zinc aroundyou won't uptake as much
gadolinium.
And then, so I tell people,after a gadolinium, before a

(01:09:07):
gadolinium study, and for a fewdays after, make sure that you
take zinc.
I usually recommend 60milligrams of zinc picolinate
for an hour before, day after orfor two or three days
afterwards until your body isable to clear that gadolinium

(01:09:27):
through your kidneys andhopefully not store it kidneys
and hopefully not store it.

You're brilliant.
I've never heard this beforeand I know a lot about MRIs and
I did not know how toxic thecontrast was.
Yeah.

Yeah, and you know we're starting to see the
data on on um MRI techniciansand them having early onset
dementia, because it's not greatto be around that magnet all
the time either.
But you being exposed to themagnet every now and again is

(01:10:05):
different than the person that'saround the magnet for eight
hours, five days a week, foreight hours, five days a week.
But none of these things areterribly safe and that's why we
need to think about screeningand diagnostic tools completely
separately.
Whereas screening, you have tobe very intolerant of risk

(01:10:28):
because you're taking apopulation that is presumably
normal and healthy.
So you can't put thatpopulation, that healthy
population, at risk, right?
So we should not be using atest that causes cancer to
screen for cancer.
We can't put a healthypopulation at risk.

(01:10:49):
That is very different than thenon-healthy population in which
we're using these tests fordiagnostic purposes, to figure
out what the something thatalready happened is.
Those are two very differentcategories and we really need to
distinguish between them andseparate the two.

I want to oh gosh, I could talk to you forever, I
really feel like I could, but Iwant to get into this really
quickly, because at the start ofour discussion, you mentioned
two different types of breastcancer.
Basically, I know there's manydifferent types of, and they're

(01:11:31):
categorized and but basicallyyou've got a non-aggressive or
an aggressive, and we talkedabout lifestyle interventions,
we talked about screening and,of course, you work with women
who have breast cancer now froman integrative physician

(01:11:52):
perspective cancer now from anintegrative physician
perspective but is thereanything that we as women can do
to prevent an aggressive cancerother than all of the lifestyle
and diet and all of those otherthings?
How do we?
Of course, then there'sgenetics right.

(01:12:15):
Then there's genetics, but howcan we influence this, or can we
?

We can definitely influence it, without
question.
Now I would love to talk aboutgenetics a little bit, because I
think that people put way toomuch into that basket, and I
know that you know that's why Ithought my entire career that
breast cancer was inevitable,because everyone in my family

(01:12:42):
got breast cancer and I thoughtit was absolutely for certain.
Now I know that genetics is atiny part of the picture.

Yes.

That it is merely the suggestion right, and
genetics may load the gun, butthe choices that you make pull
the trigger, and so it's theepigenetics, it's all the things
that we can do to control ourgenes and decide which genes get
turned on, which genes getactivated, which genes get

(01:13:14):
turned off.
That is under our control forthe most part.
So you know, of course, I talkto people about diet and I don't
think that there's one diet foreveryone.
I don't really believe inorthorexia or diet dogma or this
is the way that I'm going toeat for the rest of my life,

(01:13:35):
because I don't think it's truefor anyone.
I think that there are times inyour life where you're going to
be more plant-based.
I think that there are times inyour life where you're going to
be eating differently, and Ithink it's necessary.
For instance, whenever I firstdiagnose someone with an
aggressive cancer, I get them ona keto diet really quickly, a
plant-based keto diet, because Iknow that that's what they need

(01:13:58):
right then.
Are they going to be on thatplant-based keto diet for the
rest of their lives?
No, no, they're not, becausethere's going to be a time for
something else, and so I thinkwe need to get out of that
thinking that there's only oneway for you to eat for the rest
of your life.
It's not true.
It's not true.

(01:14:19):
This is season for everything,and eating seasonally is also
really important because we needto stay in connection with
nature.
So you know, if you're eating alot of fruit in the winter and
none in the summer, you're goingto get real fat, because that
is not what was meant to happen,right?
So diet is really importantOverall.

(01:14:44):
If I had to pick one way that Ithink most people do really well
with, I talk about a whole food, plant-based or plant-rich, low
glycemic, grain-free diet, andalmost everyone will be healthy
if they follow those guidelines.

(01:15:06):
And where you get your proteinfrom is where you get your
protein from, and I don't getinto those protein wars because
I feel like it alienates people,and you know, the only people
that don't agree with me are thepure carnivores who think that
vegetables are bad, and I thinkthose people are just lost, and
so you know, that's what theybelieve, and that's what they

(01:15:29):
believe, and I'm not going toconvince them and they're not
going to convince me.
Then movement is so important.
As we talked about, sitting isthe new smoking and what that
movement looks like changes,because you can get away with
doing all cardiovascular untilyou're about 40 and then things
start to shift, and then youhave to have to have to put that

(01:15:52):
weight training in.
And as you get to 50, you haveyou have to have to have to put
that weight training in and asyou get to 50, you have to do
that balance work.
You have to do that flexibilitywork or else you're going to
lose it, because if you don'tmove your body in the way that
it was meant to move, you'regoing to lose it.
Sleep Sleep is where thehealing happens.
If you're not sleeping, you'renot healing.
And we know from tons and tonsof data that people who are

(01:16:16):
short sleepers, who sleep lessthan six hours a night, are at
risk for a host of chronicdiseases.
People who sleep at the wrongtime, people who do shift work,
are more likely to be overweightor obese or have heart disease
or blood pressure problems orlipid problems or even cancer.
Right, so sleep is veryimportant and prioritizing sleep

(01:16:40):
is very important.
And sleep has to come asnatural sleep because taking
sleep inducing agents like youknow, sleeping meds they don't
allow you to cycle through thesleep cycles that you need in
order to repair your body Toxinavoidance, minimizing what

(01:17:02):
you're putting in on and aroundyou so that that liver doesn't
have to work as hard.
Remember, you know that laundry, that your liver has to get
through.
We want to give it less to getthrough.

Yeah.

And then, um, there are.
There are other things that Ithink about all the time that
are not necessarily at theforefront of everyone's brain.
For instance, you know, foryears the dental industry has
created a ton of disease forpeople, and that whole drill and

(01:17:38):
fill mentality has left peoplewith heavy metals inside of
their mouth that are justpoisoning them every single day.
And we know that mercury is axenoestrogen.
We know that it acts like atoxic estrogen in our body, and
so mercury is responsible for aconsiderable amount of breast

(01:17:59):
cancers.

So can I just say something I know because you're
going to find this interesting.
I had a thermography as youknow, full body, and guess what
showed up.
As you know, full body, andguess what showed up
Inflammatory, yeah yeah, an oldroot canal.
That's exactly right.
From 2005, after.

(01:18:22):
I gave birth to my second childand guess what came after that?
Thyroid cancer came after that.
Is this the causative factor?

after that, is this the causative factor?
100%.
We know that there are parts ofthe mouth that are on the
thyroid meridian.
We know that there are parts ofthe mouth that are on the
breast meridian, and when webiopsy these tumors, we see
these organisms.
We know that they're comingfrom a chronic infection in the
mouth.
And why the dentists aren'ttalking about this, I don't know

(01:18:58):
.

Oh, jen, I did a whole show with Dr.
Do you know who, dr Kelly?

Blodgett is no , but you're going to introduce
me to her.

To him.

It's a him.

Dr Kelly Blodgett.
You will love him.
He's a biological dentist.
I forget where he is he's inthe us, but he's wait a minute.

I think I do know who he is you must know him
, he's got, he's he's amazing.
He's the one with thetoothpaste that, um, that uh,
encourages the good micro oralmicrobiome growth.
I think, I don't know.
I'm almost positive.
I don't know, I'm almostpositive, I don't know.
I think I've seen him onInstagram.

He's amazing, yeah, but he's the one who I just
learned so much from him.
So in the end I had to get animplant and I didn't.
I chose not to do another rootcanal, but it was because of
dental work that was done thatshouldn't have been done and my

(01:19:55):
enamel was completely destroyed.
I had a condition calledcondensing osteitis, all the way
down to the bone as soon as youtake the tooth out.
It's fine.
I took the tooth out, I did animplant, but now I am going to
year two.
I'm like I can't do it all atonce right it's dental.
It's hard to do it all at once.

(01:20:15):
Not only is it it's it'spainful, but it's expensive yeah
.

All of it.

Yeah, I am going to pull this root.
Can old root canal?

this year, which is exactly what needs to
happen, and then treated withsome ozone and yes, and then let
um let it and let it heal yes,that's the advice that I was
given.
Yeah, let it heal put a spacerin its place yes, and then and
then, do an implant.

Implant, yeah, next year, yep that's what needs to
happen yeah so, but I wouldn'thave known because it hasn't
been giving me problems like I.
I don't, I don't feel it.

I know so many people that the only reason
they knew about issues in theirmouth is because every single
person that I see for breastcancer I say you have to go have
I have them get a cone CT ofthe mouth, which is a 3D like

(01:21:18):
the live on your camera.
It's like a 3D clip of yourmouth looking for cavitations,
because people can be totallyasymptomatic and have these low
grade infections in their mouth.
They're walking around withwhite counts in the threes or in
the twos because your body istrying like hell to contain this

(01:21:44):
infection so that you don'tfeel bad, so that you don't feel
symptomatic.
But that's what is totallydraining your immune system and
at the same time, if it's busyworking here, it's not going to
work on the breast and that'swhat's happening for so many
people.
This is a huge, huge, hugeissue that is completely being

(01:22:08):
ignored.
So everyone needs to know ifyou've ever had wisdom tooth
extraction, if you've ever had aroot canal, if you've had, if
you have metal amalgams in yourmouth, if you've had cavities in
your mouth, you need to go havea workup with a biologic
dentist that does a cone CT ofthe mouth and ensures that your

(01:22:29):
mouth is healthy.
You can also test your oralmicrobiome and I have to say, if
you have enamel issues, I lovethe products from Primal Life
Organics.
They have a dental detoxprogram.
They have an enamel buildingprogram.
The products are amazing.

(01:22:50):
If you have bad breath, if youhave any, any oral issues, this
will change your life, changeyour life.
I her products are unbelievable.
So dental issues is a huge is ahuge one.
The other one that is almostubiquitous, that no one talks

(01:23:13):
about is parasites.
I always go back to you knowpeople say oh, I don't eat sushi
, I don't eat raw meat, I don't.
There's no way I have parasites.
Nearly everyone has parasites.
I saw this disgusting video onInstagram where they were
slicing into a banana and theytook the banana slice and they
put it under the microscope andyou see the little things

(01:23:35):
crawling.
It doesn't matter, if you eatstrawberries, you can have
parasites.
If you eat blueberries, you canhave parasites.
It doesn't matter, it doesn'tmatter.
They're everywhere, they'reubiquitous and they can be
causing that same chronicinfection.
So I start off everyone in myprogram on a parasite cleanse

(01:23:56):
and I get calls like five orseven days later, people
horrified at the things that arecoming out of them, like you
know, 10 inch tapeworms in theirstool.
Yeah, yeah, but you know,totally asympt had no idea.

Okay, jen, I have to tell you this because I grew
up, so my parents are Croatian,very old country farmers, and my
mom tells me stories about howeveryone had worms.

Yeah and so You're so funny, you're
whispering it like it's a secretand we're on a podcast.

It's so gross right .
But she would tell me thesestories about how every once in
a while, you know like theywould throw up and there would
be worms in their vomit, and itwas a real thing.
But this is like farmers like,but their bodies would naturally

(01:24:59):
expel it.
But parasites are very real andthey're everywhere.

Yeah, very real, very real everywhere.
So my recommendation to mostpeople is that you do a parasite
cleanse once a year.
You always want to start aroundthe full moon.
That's when they're the mostactive love it.

Do you like cell core?

I do.
I love the cell core productsyeah um, I usually add in a
little berberine, yeah, um, butI love the cell core products,
um, and if you see lots ofcritters, I usually have people
do it for three or four weeks.
If you see lots of critters,you need to keep going for six
or seven weeks and then you needto do it twice a year until you

(01:25:46):
don't see lots of critters.
Yeah, yeah, and they're tough,they're.
They're really really happyinside of you.
They don't want to leave.

Right, and I guess the thing is is that even if you
do these cleanses, it's moreabout keeping them at bay, right
?
Because don't we live insymbiotic relationships?

We do, we do, for sure we do, but you don't
want overgrowth.

Right, right, just like bad bacteria in the gut,
you got to make sure that thegood outweighs the bad.

Yes, yes, and and on that note, you know, I I
think people should be checkingevery single year check your gut
microbiome, check where you are, make sure that and and and for
what it's worth, check whereyour nutrient levels and make
sure that you are gettingadequate levels of, uh, dietary

(01:26:42):
vitamins and minerals.
Um, I always want people to getas much as they can from food,
but when you live in places likewhere you and I live, you're
not going to get adequatevitamin D.
Doing that, right?
Uh?
So measuring, knowing knowingwhat your vitamin D level is of

(01:27:04):
utmost importance for everyone,because that is one of the ways
that we stay healthy.
Um, and I I think that everyoneshould have a CBC every year
and look at your white bloodcell count, and if your white
blood cell count isn't abovefive, you have something going

(01:27:25):
on that is suppressing it.

Some sort of inflammation or Inflammation
infection.

Metals you should start looking.

Now, what are your thoughts on, because most of the
people who listen to this arewomen over 40,.
What are your thoughts on theDutch test?

I think it's a useful tool in postmenopausal
women because their hormonelevel should be in a fairly
steady state.
Their hormone level should bein a fairly steady state.
It's a tough test for apremenopausal woman because one
day your hormones are going tobe one thing and one day they're
going to be another thing.
So I don't know that thehormone part of it is that

(01:28:13):
useful.
I think the cortisol part, theadrenal part, is useful.
But we have to remember thatthese are only a snapshot and
what we need to be doing morethan anything is listening to
our women.
They can tell you where theyare.
You know where they areaccording to what their symptoms

(01:28:34):
are and you know what they needaccording to what their
symptoms are.
So the first, second, third,fourth, fifth thing that we
should be doing is listening toour women.
Yes, is there a role fortesting?
Yeah, sure, there's a role fortesting, but we have to remember
where that person is, and insomeone who is 40 to 50 years

(01:28:59):
old, you can get differentresults on a different day that
are totally in conflict with oneanother.
So I think we have to be doingway way way more listening than
anything else.

Yeah.
I agree with that especially asit relates to hormones.
Like I can tell I am, I'm.
I mean I just had a period onMarch 1st, so like the last
couple of years, it's like I'llhave that one a year that just
kind of shows up.
And so I find it reallyinteresting when you say that.
But I knew I was gonna get aperiod.

(01:29:34):
I knew from my symptoms, Icould tell from my skin that my
estrogen levels were a littlehigher.
I could tell.
But this is what I mean.
So it's individuals likeyourself as a physician and
myself as a nutritionist and aneducator to just educate women

(01:29:55):
and say, hey, there's symptoms.
If you actually look at how youfeel, whether you hate your
husband, whether you love yourhusband right, no, it's totally
true, and not for nothing.

but my entire family could tell when my cycle
was coming on.
My husband would go to thecloset and bring out the
broomstick and say here you go.

Here's your ride to work.
Yeah.
But he's never allowed to sayyou must be getting your period.
Never do not say that to me,yeah.

Well, yeah, my , my, my days are gone from
there, yeah, but but he stillgoes to the broomstick a couple
of times a year and, and Ideserve it, yeah, okay.

That's okay.
Okay, we, we have that right.
Okay, I have to ask you.
Oh, my gosh, I have to ask youabout sulforaphane.
Okay, cruciferous, cruciferouscooked vegetables.
As you know, as a as a thyroidqueen yourself, you know we want
to have cooked cruciferousvegetables.

(01:31:04):
Do you believe sulforaphanehelps redirect estrogen to a
better place, or shuffle?

Well, we know that when we break down estrogen
, there are three differentestrogen pathways which we use,
um and when we break downestrogen it's a two step process
.
So the first what we need to dois we need to take something
that is lipophilic, meaning thatit is um, oil based, and we

(01:31:38):
need to make it into somethingthat is water-based or
hydrophilic to excrete eitherthrough our urine or through our
stool.
So the first step in theprocess are by what we call the
CYP enzymes.
These are enzymes in our liverand there is one pathway that we

(01:32:01):
know is let's call it the lesstoxic or safer pathway, and one
pathway that every step alongthe way is more toxic and we
always want to encourage in anyway we can to use the safer
pathway rather than the toxicpathway, can to use the safer

(01:32:27):
pathway rather than the toxicpathway.
So we know that cruciferousvegetables that contain
sulforaphane, endothreacarbonoland DIM.
We know that those chemicalsare involved in increasing the
speed of that safe pathway.
So if that enzyme is moreefficient, then it's like

(01:32:53):
looking at lines to go in,you're going to go into the
shorter line.
So basically, what thesulfurous vegetables do, what
the cruciferous vegetables do,is they make that line shorter
so that more hormone getsdetoxed down that pathway.
The thing is, if that secondpart of the pathway is not

(01:33:17):
working, it's not going toultimately help you.
Not working, it's not going toultimately help you.
Or some people have geneticsthat already quickly go through
that first step and they getstuck on the second step.
So I always I look at people'sgenetics to see what their

(01:33:38):
proclivity is, what theirgenetic makeup is more drawn to
doing, and then I try to supportthem.
So if someone already has afast CYP1A1 enzyme, that's that
first part of the estrogendetoxification pathway on the

(01:33:58):
safe route If someone alreadyhas that enzyme working quickly
not that I'm going to discouragethem from eating cruciferous
vegetables, I wouldn't but Iwould never supplement them
along that pathway because thenthey're just going to bottleneck
on the second part.
Does that make sense?

(01:34:18):
Did I explain that well enough?

It's a little complicated it is complicated,
because I know exactly what youmean, because I'm envisioning
the Dutch test right and thethree different yes, so it's the
line to the left.

Yes, yes, so there's, it's the green pathway.

Yeah, I was just going to say, because the Dutch
is great in that it does showgreen, and then there's red.
So that's we known.
We known, however you want topronounce it that's the danger
zone that you don't want to havetoo much of.

And then because those will cause direct
DNA damage, right, that's theproblem along that pathway.
And quinones, we know, arehighly inflammatory.
So we want to minimize thatpathway and the only way to do
it is to really open up theother two pathways.
So the first part of thatpathway we talked about, and you

(01:35:17):
can open that up if people arestuck with the cruciferous
vegetables, with DIM, withendothreacarbinol.
But then you have to make surethat methylation is working,
glucuronidation is working, yourCOMT enzyme is working, because

(01:35:38):
that's the major way that we'reconverting that
2-hydroxyestrogen to2-methoxyestrogen and making it
water-soluble so that we can getrid of it.
And then I think about thethings that make COMT, that
second part of the pathway, work.

(01:35:58):
So it means that you have tohave adequate levels of B6, of
B9, which is folate of B12.
And so it's all a symphony andwe need to be in balance,

(01:36:19):
because that's where healthcomes from.
Yes, and then I guess the thirdpart of that would be if you're
not pooping regularly, right Forsure this is why constipation
is such an issue and why we needto talk about pooping so much
more.
I mean you know, even you, youwere whispering about the, about
the worms, and people whisperabout the poop.

(01:36:42):
We need to scream about thepoop, we need to shout about the
poop, because that is what iskeeping people healthy.
I mean, I just I cringe so muchwhen I ask people you know how
often do you move your bowelsand they say, oh, I'm regular,
I'm like okay, what does thatmean to you?
Yes, oh well, I go at least oncea week and I'm like, what yeah,

(01:37:05):
what yeah, if I went once aweek I would be so toxic my
brain wouldn't even work, me too.
And we all need to be goingevery like two or three times a
day and we need to be talkingabout it Like we can't be
embarrassed about pooping.
Everyone poops, everyone needsto poop.
We need to poop.
It's how we get rid of ourtoxins.

(01:37:27):
And if you're not pooping,you're reabsorbing all those
toxins, including the estrogen.
Yes, including the estrogenthat needs to be treated.
Yeah, we're done with it whenthat comes back into circulation
.
When we talk about estrogendominant states, it's not
because your ovaries are makingtoo much estrogen.

(01:37:49):
That's not what's happening.
Estrogen dominant states comewhen you're not getting rid of
it and you're reabsorbing it andyou're reabsorbing the
metabolites of it.
The metabolites are the problem.
No one ever got sick fromhaving too much estradiol in
their system.
That is not what's happening.

Okay, well, as a breast cancer physician, former
and integrative medicine doctor,does estrogen cause cancer?
I think you just kind ofanswered it, but Absolutely not.

Thank you, absolutely not.
It's been a very convenientstatement belief and it's very
easy to blame things on estrogen, especially when you have drugs
to block that right, likepeople like to tie things up in
neat little packages whether ornot they're true.

(01:38:47):
So the whole estrogen causesbreast cancer is such a
convenient explanation when youlook at cancers and 70% of
breast cancers will haveestrogen receptors on them and
so like it helps to tidy up thatexplanation.
Well, let me tell you something100% of normal breast cells

(01:39:12):
have estrogen receptors on them.
They're supposed to.
Estrogen is part of oursignaling pathway.
We want estrogen receptors onourselves and if you have a
breast cancer with estrogenreceptors on it, even
upregulated estrogen receptorson it that is a variation of
normal.
That cell is telling you I'm nottoo far gone yet.

(01:39:34):
I'm not too far gone yet.
When you have a cancer cellthat doesn't have estrogen
receptors on it, that doesn'thave progesterone receptors on
it, that cell is rogue, thatcell is gone.
That cell is not listening tosignaling pathways.
That cell is on its own,practicing by its own rules.

(01:39:56):
These are the tumors that aremore dangerous, because these
are the tumors that are nolonger following the laws of
nature, they're not behaving inthe way that they're supposed to
behave.
So we need to get out of thatmindset.
Just because we have estrogenblocking drugs and there's
estrogen receptors on the cellsdoesn't mean this is an

(01:40:18):
association, maybe, but it doesnot imply causation at all.
And if you believe thatestrogen causes breast cancer,
then by that definition everywoman was put on earth to get
breast cancer Exactly Becausewe've had estrogen, that cannot
possibly be true?
Yeah Right, that cannot possiblybe true.
Beyond that, breast cancer isexponentially more common in the

(01:40:43):
postmenopausal population,where, if you've seen Dutch
tests, you know the amount ofestrogen in a postmenopausal
woman that is not on hormonereplacement is barely measurable
barely measurable.
You can barely find it.
How could estrogen be thecausative factor if it's barely

(01:41:06):
there?
It's actually exactly theopposite that estrogen is
protective, and I'm using thatword to describe the family of
estrogens.
But there are three estrogens,maybe four if you count the one
in pregnancy.
But there is premenopausalestrogen, which is estradiol.

(01:41:26):
There's postmenopausal estrogen, which is estrone.
There's a third, weakerestrogen, which is called
estriol, and they are all.
They're all produced betweenthe ovaries and the adrenal
glands, and the productionshifts postmenopausal, because

(01:41:47):
postmenopausal you're makingmuch less estradiol because your
ovaries are no longerfunctioning.
So there is no way thatestrogen is the cause of breast
cancer, that estrogen is thecause of breast cancer.
That said, we know that thebreakdown products of estrogen
are, and can be, toxic, and sowe need to make sure that those

(01:42:11):
pathways are open, that we areable to break down our estrogen
effectively and that we areeffectively secreting it, so
that we are getting rid of thatused estrogen, those estrogen
byproducts.
But probably more important isto make sure that we minimize

(01:42:32):
our exposure to those syntheticestrogens, to those
xenoestrogens, thoseenvironmental estrogens, to
those xenoestrogens, thoseenvironmental estrogens and I'm
talking about everything frombirth control pills to
antibiotics, to anything withfragrance, to anything
plasticized, to any protectivecoating, to pesticides,

(01:42:56):
herbicides, fungicides to heavymetals, fungicides to heavy
metals.
These are all fallingunderneath that umbrella of
xenoestrogens and these are themain problem.
This is what we really need toworry about, because those
xenoestrogens are almost allmetabolized by that dangerous

(01:43:18):
pathway, that 4 hydroxy pathway,and that is what's really
causing the problems for us.
But estrogen, estradiol,estriol, estrone, these are not.
This is not the problem, andblocking those hormones is not
the solution.

I actually recorded and I can't remember who it was
.
Do you know who Dr DavidRosenzweig is?
He does the menopause method.
Yes, yes, I recorded with him awhile back.
I think it was him that saidthat it is the lack of hormones

(01:44:03):
that put you at a greater riskfor cancer.

Absolutely One hundred percent, because
they're protective, they'reprotective, they're protective.
And then, and not for nothing,but when we look at what
happened in the world after theWomen's Health Initiative was
released so overnight threemillion women stopped taking
their hormone replacement andthe the number of prescriptions

(01:44:31):
written for hormone replacementdropped off by like 90% and look
at the breast cancer trendsThey've only gone up.

Yeah, yeah.

So the hormones were never the problem.
They continue to not be theproblem and the very best thing
that we can do for women is totalk about this and start
talking about this for women intheir 30s so that they know,
when they start to developsymptoms of heri-menopause, that

(01:45:06):
we start to replace them andthat will actually end up being
protective.
We know that it protectsagainst heart disease.
We know that it protectsagainst bone loss.
We know that it protectsagainst dementia and I believe

(01:45:27):
there's enough data there tosupport it protecting against
breast cancer.
Certainly, we saw that in themining not happened in the
women's health initiative.
I believe that we would havehad also proof that the

(01:45:51):
combination is protective aswell.
So the best thing that we can doas a medical society is start
to talk to women about thisearly and often about all the
lifestyle things that we talkedabout today to protect their
health, about avoiding toxinsprimarily alcohol, since that is

(01:46:16):
such a huge issue but then tomake sure that women start to
supplement with bioidenticalhormones as their ovaries stop
functioning and in premenopausalwomen.
When you're doing thatsupplementation, you need to

(01:46:37):
check up on them fairly often sothat you know that you're
adjusting appropriately becausethere are going to be huge
changes in their own endogenoushormone production, and then,
when appropriate, when they'vestopped menstruating, to have

(01:47:01):
them on full hormone replacementbecause this is what is going
to protect their health goingforward.
And my friend Anna Kabeca saysit best when she says menopause
is mandatory but suffering isoptional and the more we suffer,
the more we suffer.
Is optional, and the more wesuffer, the more we suffer.

And and, just like what you were saying, the
connection to from your bodyspeaking to you.
Your body has symptoms becausethere's something going on, like
the fact that you so I have a,a doctor who's amazing because
she knew that as soon as Istarted to have hot flashes it

(01:47:45):
was a good time to start a baby.
She called it a baby dose,which is a baby dose of
bioidentical estrogen.

You're so lucky.

Yes, I am lucky.
I am lucky, so lucky, becauseshe does the research and she
also knows that once you havethose symptoms, it typically
means there's something elsegoing on.
And it's interesting becauseduring that time I had a more
elevated HSCRP, which I neverhad in my life.
I had elevated triglycerides, Ihad a higher HbA1c, and all of

(01:48:23):
that has stabilized.

So that's estrogen.
That's what estrogen does.
Estrogen is the hormone of life.
Estrogen will never rob you ofyour life.
It's the hormone of life and weneed to unlearn that estrogen
causes breast cancer, becauseit's not true and it's very,

(01:48:46):
very dangerous messaging.
And you know, I spoke at A4Mthis year on hormone replacement
in the breast cancer population, because breast cancer patients
are people too and they don'tdeserve to suffer either.

I'm so glad you mentioned this, because another
physician was saying that thereare more and more oncologists
that, instead of putting formerbreast cancer patients on
complete hormone blockade, theyare watching them and giving

(01:49:21):
them a little bit of hormone.
Right, is that right?

Yes, and for years we used estrogen and we
used progesterone to treatbreast cancer, and that shift
has only happened towardsblocking hormones, because there
are pharmaceutical companiesthat made hormone blockers.
But it's not the right thing todo.

No, because then they suffer.
Not only did they just gothrough radiation, chemotherapy
surgery, now they're going to gothrough menopause.
Listen, I watched it.
My mom didn't have breastcancer, but she had
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma right at52.
So she was going throughmenopause, she was going through
chemotherapy, she was goingthrough radiation all at the

(01:50:08):
same time.
So there's a lot of sufferingthere, and then add on top of it
right the menopausal symptoms.

Yeah, and less anyone think otherwise.
You know, the thing that drivescancer and dysfunction of all
types is inflammation, and allof those things that they do to
treat cancer only increaseinflammation.
We are only lessening people'shealth with this approach and we

(01:50:40):
need to change.
We need to rethink this and weneed to spend as much time
protecting people's health andpromoting people's health as we
do thinking about the tumor,because at the end of the day,
like we started to talk about inthe beginning, the tumor is not
the problem.
It's the symptom of the problem, and we need to start to think

(01:51:03):
about what the problem is.
Where are the imbalances andhow can we identify and
eliminate the imbalances while,at the same time, giving people
what they need?

Yeah, okay, before we wrap things up, I have to ask
how you work with women at yourclinic.
You no longer do surgery.
No, I don't.
You do get patients of womenwho come to you with active
breast cancer or after, or allaround, all around.

So I would say 25% of my practice are people
who are just diagnosed, who aretrying to navigate the landscape
, 25% of my practice are peoplewho have metastatic disease and
are just living with theirdisease, and 50% are somewhere

(01:52:01):
along their way.
They're either already gettingtreated or they've completed
treatment.
They're wondering now what, orthey were treated years ago and
they don't want to have arecurrence.
And so I work with peopleone-on-one.
But we have my book is out.

(01:52:24):
It's called the Smart Woman'sGuide to Breast Cancer, and I do
have a course that goes alongwith that book.
And that book is basicallyeverything that you need to
reclaim your health after abreast cancer diagnosis, and it
can even be used to prevent abreast cancer diagnosis, and it
can even be used to prevent abreast cancer diagnosis.
So it's kind of the perfectMother's Day gift.

(01:52:47):
If you care about your mom, ifyou care about your daughter, if
you care about your sister,your best friend, this is the
gift that will literally keep ongiving.
And I really wanted to makesure that women, at every step
along the way, from screening torecovery from breast cancer,

(01:53:09):
were fully informed.
So I wanted them to know whatthat mammogram really means.
I wanted them to know what thatbiopsy really means.
I wanted them to understandwhat your pathology report means
and I wanted them to beinformed about all of the
treatments, because I don'tthink most people know that when

(01:53:31):
you get radiation, that doesnot improve your survival.
No, I know that it may decreaseyour risk of the cancer coming
back in the breast, but itdoesn't impact survival and it
puts you at risk for more cancer.
So I don't think most peoplewould sign on for a treatment

(01:53:53):
that's not going to increase thelikelihood that they're going
to live, but we're not talkingabout it enough.
So that's why I wrote that book.
I wrote that book to help themillions of women that are
struggling at any place alongthat breast cancer journey to
understand what's happening andto be able to make a truly

(01:54:15):
informed decision.
And then I help them all withdiet, with movement, with all
the lifestyle things, becauseobviously I can't meet with
everyone one-on-one.
I don't have the bandwidth.
I would love to be able to dothat, but there's only one of me
.
Hopefully by this year therewill be two or three or four of

(01:54:37):
me, because people need more ofproviders who are really helping
make a difference in the breastcancer space.
So I have a course that goesalong with that.
It runs for eight weeks andwe'll be doing it over and over
again.
So if you catch us in themiddle, just know that we'll,

(01:54:59):
we'll get you in the next one,um.
And then there's tons of freeinformation out there that I'm
putting out on social media, uh,on YouTube, um, and so I'm
everywhere, at Dr Jen Simmonsand my Jen has two ends and my

(01:55:28):
gen has two Ns.

This has been probably one of the most
important and amazing recordingsI've had for women's health,
and I've been doing this forover four years.
I just want to thank you somuch for your wisdom, your
authenticity, your sharing.
I thank you so much.

It's my pleasure.
Make sure you listen to mypodcast too.
It's called Keeping Abressedwith Dr Jen and you can get it
anywhere that you get yourpodcasts.

Yeah, and I will put everything in the show notes
.
Thank you so much, Dr Jen.
My pleasure.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Be sure to share it withsomeone you know might benefit
and always remember when yourate, review, subscribe, you

(01:56:16):
help to support my content andhelp me to keep going and
bringing these conversations toyou each and every week.
Join me next week for a newtopic, new guest, new exciting
conversations to help you liveyour best life.

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Beyond Mammograms: What Women Need to Know About Breast Cancer with Dr. Jenn Simmons SUMMER REBOOT - Episode 280

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Beyond Mammograms: What Women Need to Know About Breast Cancer with Dr. Jenn Simmons SUMMER REBOOT - Episode 280