Breaking Down Barriers In Breast Cancer Care

Antonio Jimenez, MD, ND

Thank you, Dr. V. Always good to see you and to be part of such an important summit, because we know that cancer is going to be increasing and we’ll talk about that now. And 40% of our patients at Hope4Cancer are breast cancer patients. And we’ve had right now in our Cancun facility and we have patients from over 12 countries. So this is not only as we all know, not a U.S. thing only, right? It’s across the world from small island countries like the Cayman Islands and Barbados and Bahamas to big countries, you know, where there’s a greater population. But the incidence is increasing throughout the world. So please share this information with others. And it’s also vitally, vitally important, especially now in 2023.

Véronique Desaulniers, DC

It is and you can see in the video that Dr. Tony has prepared a beautiful presentation and just a few highlights. He’s going to talk about the changing face of breast cancer, breaking barriers to outsmart cancer, and laboratory predictions of breast cancer risk, which you’ve observed at your center. So, Dr. Tony, take it away.

Antonio Jimenez, MD, ND

Thank you. Thank you for that. Dr. V, and everyone watching. It’s, we know that there are changing trends in the incidence of breast cancer. The statistic that I show today is from the U.S. This is very important data because it’s a long-term data collection that’s over 22 registries. This was put forth by the National Cancer Institute, Breastcancer.org, and ASCO Foundation where they saw from 2000 that the incidence of cancer in the U.S. dropped in rates early in the 2000, and that was most likely caused by the reduced use of hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women and more so indiscriminately in synthetic hormone replacement therapy. We have to qualify that very carefully. But then in the mid-2000s, breast cancer incidence raised rates increased in women, and at a steady rate of half a percent per year. So, you see this red line going from left to right. You see the increase. However, there was a drop in 2020. And of course, there was a spread to a reduction in screening because of COVID but the trend continues to go up and this is the incident but then look at the next slide and this shows that more invasive cancers are also increasing. Since mid-2000, the rate of diagnosis of breast cancer of invasive stages has been growing at a rate of greater than 2%. So, if you look at this, this is quite significant when you take into consideration the population, the number of people, and of course, also there was a drop in 2020 again due to COVID and a reduction in screaming and attacks. And so not only is the incidence increasing, but also the increasing number of more invasive, aggressive types of cancer. And so this is why it’s important to start now not mañana, as they say in Mexico. 

We’re being proactive and following the seven essentials, following the seven key principles that I’ll describe briefly and in a little bit. And so this was evidence. It’s been published out of JAMA the Journal of American Medical Association Network, where the incidence of breast cancer with distance involvement among women in the U.S. from 1976 to 2009. So what this showed, as we see in this next slide, is what’s called APC, the annual percentage change in the incidence of metastatic breast cancer per woman in the age bracket of 25 to 39 years of age has also increased sharply in the U.S. over the past few decades. And I see that this increase has yes, it’s over the past decade that this study was done, but I have seen it over the past three or four or five years. More recently, for example, we have a patient now in our Cancun center from Poland 25 years old with metastatic breast cancer. I mean, I didn’t see this 30 years ago when I started in oncology. Our average age, Dr. V, Everyone for a breast cancer patient was 60 to 65. That was a main and now I would say is 35, maybe 32 to 39, 40, and as young as 24, 25 years of age. I must say that this is not only for breast cancer, it is also true for other types of cancers and specifically colorectal cancer. We’re seeing much younger patients. But as you see here, yes, Dr. V? Your microphone is off I think. 

Véronique Desaulniers, DC

So why the increase?

Antonio Jimenez, MD, ND

Yeah, it’s it’s interesting because look what it says in this study. It says the potential risk factors discussed that could be triggering this change are processed foods, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, alcohol, and microplastics. I think the list goes on and on, including stress. I think that social media and what’s happening in society now are contributing a lot. As our good friend, Dr. Lenhart from Germany says, there are three main toxicity of these aluminum, glyphosate, and EMFs. And when we do testing at our centers, we’re seeing that 90%, if not more, of our breast cancer patients have high levels of aluminum, and this is very toxic, of course. So we’re getting that from the air, from the environment, and hopefully not from, you know, cosmetics, because we know better than using those types of toxic substances. But, you know, that’s the end of the breast cancer diagnosis per 100,000 women aged 25 to 29 in the U.S.. Look at that from 1.5 per 100000 to 2.9 per 100,000. Statistics are getting even scarier, right? They say that one in every six women will have breast cancer sometime in their life. 

So, enough with the statistics and the things that we don’t want anyone to be scared or afraid but be empowered. That’s why we show statistics and data is that we have evidence, objective evidence that this is not just Dr. V or Doctors in the breakthroughs summit saying this or myself. It’s reputable. Not that we’re not, but, you know, groups that are kind of in the standard of care, right? The JAMA and the National Cancer Institute saying what we are seeing clinically in our centers every day. So then the question is, what do we do? And Dr. V,  mentioned about smart cancers, we know that 90% of cancers are smart cancers, very few cancers are stupid cancers that Dr. Sledge said out of Stanford. He’s the head of clinical oncology at Stanford and the former head of the Emerging Cancer Society, said there are two types of cancers, smart cancers and stupid cancers. Smart cancers are 90% of course, breast cancers are in that category. That means that these cancers that are smart have many driver mutations, like my hand is a tumor and my fingers are driver mutations on that cancer, smart cancer has many driver mutations. And so if we suppress one with immunotherapy or a gene-targeted therapy it might slow down cancer for a while, but then the other mutations kick in and cancer cells mark is going to bypass that mutation. So if any of you out there are having immunotherapy or gene-targeted therapy, remember that that’s not a means to an end that can be used for a short amount of period to subdue a bit of cancer growth. But you have to engage in a holistic treatment plan or multi-centric treatment plan. 

And so as we look at treatments, what about quality of life? Dr. V, It’s so important that if we’re going to live another year or another 50 years, we want to live the best quality of life. And then this work that was done at the University Cancer Center in Hamburg, Germany, they found that the effect of conventional therapies on health-related quality of life in breast cancer patients really took a toll. So if you see here the arrows, the red arrows pointing down during radiotherapy, during chemotherapy, and one-year post-surgery, there was a drop in health-related quality of life with these conventional therapies. And we might say, yes, we know this, but now this is a group, a university group showing us that what we’ve seen is based on long-term studies. And this was 1123 breast cancer patients, and they matched them with over 3400 controls. So we see very clearly and they followed these patients for five years upon diagnosis and ten years post-diagnosis, and they saw that the survivors mostly improved their health-related quality of life from the 5th to 10-year follow-up, but remained negatively affected for most functioning and symptom scales compared to control. So that means if you look up the bar on the left, that’s before diagnosis, you see that almost 80% and never even at five and ten years it never got back to that level. So not only was the health-related quality of life being affected during the therapies of radiation and chemotherapy or one-year post-surgery, but even five to 10 years later, when these patients survived, they never regained that quality of life that they had before the diagnosis. Very important data there. 

So what have we done for cancer? We also take very seriously into account the quality of life. So we’ve invested some time and looking at our quality of life. This was 54 patients with breast cancer that we tracked during their initial three-week stay at the clinic. Remember, 75% of our breast cancer patients are stage four. That means they fail conventional therapy and they come in dire states. They come with significant quality of life issues, whether it’s like a property where there’s loss of weight or there’s fatigue, tiredness, sleep, and pain. We found that 92.6% improvement in their functional and physical quality of life for patients that were maybe in a wheelchair or very difficult to walk across the road, Dr. V in Cancun on going to the center, to the hotel where they sleep. 90.6% improvement in the physical and emotional state. Emotional how important is that we know that just having the focus, feeling empowered, feeling love, getting love, that in itself improves your prognosis and improves your quality of life. So if you’re going to a physician or a clinic that doesn’t know strains of love and generosity, that there is no love and hope and positiveness you need, I don’t know if that’s a word but being positive, go change. Go to somewhere where there’s it’s vibrating love, there’s good energy, there’s drugs, there’s love. And Dr. V is one of our masters in showing that, of anyone I know.

So emotional improvement in quality of life and then cognitive, 83.3% improvement in cognitive health, you know, because of chemotherapy, chemobrain. So, chemobrain and then the overall perceived quality of life. So this is where you ask the patient, you know, how do you see your overall quality of life taking into account all factors sleeping, socializing, appetite, all of that? It was 81.5% and this is only in the three weeks of them there. And so we then went a little further and we looked at what happens in three months time. Because they’re with us for three weeks and then they go home. Unfortunately, this is a short group of patients. This is only 10. This is hard work and it’s a work in progress. But out of these ten patients that filled out all their surveys and collaborated rated a contributor to the data collection. Look at that, 100% of them at three months, well, not 100% of them. They had a 100% functional and physical improvement. 90% emotional, 90% cognitive. 80% perceived overall quality of life. So what this means is that if you stick on a healing program, if you follow the seven essentials, the seven key principles, and are disciplined and committed, you’re going to get this resolved. The problem and the challenges, you know Dr. V very well for having done this so long, is that once they leave, once, you know, they start doing other things or they slack. And so we even see it sometimes in Tijuana center that’s an inpatient facility. Once the patients leave and they’re cleaning the room for the next room they find, the cleaning staff finds hidden in the drawers or in the closet they find, you know, things that they shouldn’t be consuming, like Doritos and M&Ms, things like that. So, you know, we could only do what we could do, right? But the point here is to stress that you can sustain that quality of life over a long period of time if you do what is best for you as recommended. I don’t have the slides here on five-year survival data, but it’s a question that of often asked. So we did five years of survival data for 8 types of parents. One of them was breast cancer and this was a total of just under 2000 patients from 2015 to 2019. And as I said, this was eight different types of cancers. But for breast cancer, the five-year survivor, remember, 75% are stage four cancer patients. The five-year survival for breast cancer was just the middle, 50%. And I asked my research and education team when I saw those numbers. Can you verify those? They did, they came back two weeks later and so that’s correct. For example, from pancreatic cancer was 35%, with five-year survival in stage four. And that’s quite spectacular because we know that the NCI data is 2.5%, five-year survival for pancreatic cancer and we were at 35%. So for breast cancer, we’re at 50%.

And then what we did also, Dr. V, our research and development team, education team. We did what’s called a longitudinal study. I was told by a colleague at Harvard. Hey, Dr. Tony, you in Hope4Cancer should do a three-month longitudinal study. Because if you show that your patient survived three months, you’re golden. And I’m like three months, you know, just but through stage four, what does it matter? So we went further and we did a one-year survival longitudinal study. And for breast cancer, we have 60%, and remember we’re talking about around patients in stage four. So we are 60%. And I must say that for the SEER data for the NCI National Cancer Institute, it’s 69%. But they have their patients from the beginning, right? That the referral when they’re not after they’ve failed or were. So that was that significant. So I wanted to point out also those two additional studies that we did for cancer.

Véronique Desaulniers, DC

Beautiful.

Antonio Jimenez, MD, ND

And so now to get a little bit more on the practical situation is looking at, as Dr. V noted the seven key principles of cancer therapy. And I’ll just highlight them very quickly because, of course, we don’t have time to go into all of them and these are non-toxic cancer therapies too. Three of the most popular, most effective cancer therapies that we have in Hope4cancer are sono, using sound and light. As a matter of fact, Dr. V, it was just announced that the FDA approved sono therapy for liver cancer and that was work that was done at the University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin. And just like three, two weeks ago, the FDA approved using sound therapy for liver cancer. And I expect that in the near future that will be extended possibly to other cancers. So with breast cancer is so useful because it’s obviously not a deep cancer like a colon cancer or lung cancer for using sound and light is one of the mark key therapy for diagnosing cancer. Hyperthermia is unique in the sense cancer cells are sensitive to it and normal human cells are resistant to heat. So combining in whatever therapy you’re doing, even if you’re doing conventional therapy, hypothermia is going to improve your results and decrease toxicity. 

And then a lot of Vitamin B botanical from boswellia, frankincense intravenously. It’s of course a more common one, so vitamin C, B 17 regulator, we’re using also green tea extract ABCD intravenously that has been shown to kill circulating tumor cells or cancer stem cells. So many botanicals resveratrol or antioxidants that we know and we’re in the process of developing a few other things or health accounts. It’s one of the new sensitized activities that we’re using for sonophotograph therapy is using methylene blue intravenously. We had a patient, not breast cancer but anyway stage four and she’s doing fantastic now with the resolution of 10 brain tumors completely dissolved, the interesting thing is that her face turned blue because of the methylene blue and it’s absorbed systemically very well but it’s temporary. It did not itch and did not cause anything. She’s just looking like an E.T. but it was fine. So methylene blue intravenously is very effective. We’re seeing in addition to nebulizing it and putting it topically on the breast and then doing the photodynamic therapy to the breast is very important. Immuno modulation is the second principle. The third one is full-spectrum nutrition. Next is detoxification four or the next one is oxygenation, six restoring the microbiome and that’s the oral dental microbiome, the skin, the gut, the brain, all the microbiomes that we can think about, including the external microbiome as we said, what are we exposed to at our home world. And then the seventh key principle is the emotional and spiritual aspect of it, which I consider to be the most important one. So this is the focus of the first point that our goal in terms of the seven principles is to remove fear and empower your feelings.

What I want to say here is I don’t have a slide, but I want to mention this to your group. So those attendees of the breakthroughs summit, Dr. V, is that we’re in the process of putting together the final process, the 11 integrative hallmarks of cancer. So we know that in 2000, Dr. Hanahan and Weinberg brilliant scientist out of Boston College in Stanford, developed six biological hallmarks of cancer. These are characteristics of oral breast cancer, whether it’s invasive, whether it’s estrogen receptor positive or negative, or tumor negative or positive, all cancers have these hallmarks. And then over the next two decades, they came up with eight more biological hallmarks, and now there are 14 biological hallmarks, like one, like all breast cancer need blood supply, angiogenesis. All cancers evade the immune system. So there are 14 of these biological hormones. So, what we did with the 11 integrative hallmarks of cancer is that we look then at the root causes associated with the incidence, and the progression of cancer. And this is where we developed the 11 integrative hallmarks and I mentioned them briefly. The first category is systemic dysregulation. That means everything from energetic dysregulation, metabolic dysregulation, the microbiome, and the immune system. The second one is environmental and biological influences. This is, as it says, a toxins, and epigenomics type of thing. The third big category is habits and behavior, how sleep deprivation, nutritional imbalances, and lack of physical activity. How do they contribute as a root cause of breast cancer? So look at yourself. Are you sleeping adequately? How is your nutrition and your physical activity? And then the fourth big category of the 11 integrative hallmarks is, again, the emotional and lifestyle imbalances. Right? So we got more out of the root cause and tied that in with the seven key principles because the principles are therapeutic but the 11 integrative hallmarks are root causes. So I know it’s a lot, but just to know that it’s important to not only know how to treat it but also know the characteristics of cancer and then the root causes of it. Okay. Well, the book is now in English, Japanese, and Romanian and is being shown in Spanish and German. 

So let’s look at some laboratory parameters of biomarkers that we must follow even if we’re not diagnosed with cancer because we want to decrease the risk of breast cancer and also how to monitor progress. So we know that fasting blood sugar is very important. Cancer cells are likely to use up the excess glucose in the bloodstream to generate energy for their growth. So here, the important factor is excess, because I’m one that has always said that you can’t just cut all sugar out, sugar from foods, it’s okay. But excess healthy cells need glucose for their energy as we know. And so maintaining good, adequate, optimal blood glucose levels within a healthy window of 60 to 80 milligrams per deciliter. Fasting is very important and many of the risk factors of breast cancer are related to what we call insulin resistance, so those cells are not responding to insulin or insulin is produced that are small amounts and sustaining normal insulin levels in the blood is also imperative to ensuring the proper metabolism of glucose, of the breakdown of glucose, and storing of glucose which is important, and so that we can live in an optimal state of balance between circulating glucose and stored glucose. In that way, breast cancer cells don’t have an extra source of glucose to thrive and to progress and metastasize. 

So what we looked at was excess that feeds cancerous cells, which is why maintaining optimal concentrations of blood glucose is essential to prevent or control the progression of the disease. But this is important because oftentimes we hear that sugar feeds cancer, but we have to quantify that very carefully. Then we look at the fasting glucose levels in our patients. And what we consider to be low is below 60 ideal is 60 to 80 milligrams per deciliter at risk is 80 to 100. And of course beyond a hundred. It’s very high risk. And we’re talking about fasting blood glucose here. So how do breast cancer patients fare with this at our center? So, we saw that on the average. We found that most levels were in the high-risk range. This is interesting because if you look at the intake, this is 97 patients and we saw that their intake when they were admitted, their fasting, it was 88.5. So during the three weeks, it went down a little bit, 85.6, which is good because, you know, these patients tend to be metabolically compromised and surrogate and so forth. But what I didn’t like with this is that we followed we were able to follow 39% of these 97 for three months and it went up to 90.5. So that tells me that they’re going back to a stressful situation, to a situation that’s not conducive to maintaining an optimal glucose level.

Véronique Desaulniers, DC

So going back to their old habits that put them in that situation in the first place. Yeah.

Antonio Jimenez, MD, ND

Exactly. And that’s why you and Hope4cancer spend so much time in our aftercare, right? What happens after the initial engagement with the patient? The aftercare is so very important. So that was very interesting. And so the tip there is to work towards keeping your blood sugar at ideal when you’re far beyond when someone is holding your hand right and guiding your therapies and treating you and all that. But what’s happening at home. And so this is the insulin. Insulin, no insulin is less than 8.9 and normal. We want it to be a point 9 to 28.4. Beyond that is high. So we saw that at the intake. It was very low for on average this is ten patients, are this is something that we’re starting to track more now. But after three months this was nice of these 10 patients are insulin levels went up significantly however still quite low beyond the 8.9 reference. So the average intake insulin levels of 20 patients that we tracked separately was 5.5 well below normal also. So the need to here with the glucose and insulin of these breast cancer patients that we have to take seriously and maybe in our next get-together, Dr. V. we will have a greater patient population so we can look at this even further. But preliminary information tells us that we have a lot of work to do to guide patients and make sure that they are responsible for keeping these figures getting better and better. Eight out of 10 patients showed improvement in three months of treatment. However, as we’ve said, it was still quite low, but that’s a good sign at least that they’re adding some. And so low insulin and high blood glucose levels are connected. So that’s when we not only look at your glucose level but your insulin level as well. 

And then as we know for all characteristics of all other inflammatory, we’re acidic, they’re low temperature and very low oxygen. So you take anything away from what I said today in this brief summary interview, remember this lower inflammation, reduce acidity, heat up, do your Sonos, exercise, drink warm fluids, not cold fluids, hot foods. And then increase your oxygen stores. Because of improving these four characteristics here, you’re well on your way to knowing much better results. So we also looked at inflammatory markers and we looked at high sensitivity or ultrasensitive CRP and we did this in 126 patients of all cancers in all phases. And we saw that 69% that’s 87 patients out of 126, sorry, are mild to excessive inflammatory conditions, as measured by C-reactive protein. But then we looked at breast cancer patients and the average C-reactive protein for breast cancer patients of all stages was 11.5 very, very high, because we want this number to be depending on the range of your lab. But we wanted to be between one and two, less than one depending on the lab. Some lab say normal is up to three, depending on the C-reactive agents that they used, but very high at 11.5 so we must reduce inflammation. And then looking at tumor markers, we looked at CA 15-3 and normal is zero to 35 and we looked at CEA. The reason we look at CEA even though it’s not appropriately a breast marker, is our breast cancer patients or a later stage, stage three and four and the CEA gives us a more general marker as opposed to only breast location or say, or more systemic marker. And we saw that CA 15-3, interestingly enough, in 97 patients we had 715.9 was the average. Three weeks later, it increased, but the quality of life improved. So this is where we have to think, is this because of tumors so by off? Or is this because of the progression of the disease? So if objectively you are seeing that you’re feeling better, your weight is stable, you have better appetite. All your quality of life parameters are improving and the markers going higher. Don’t panic. Wait till later and look at the markers over time to see what happens. Because I’m sure you see, have seen this as well, Dr. V.

Véronique Desaulniers, DC

Yeah.

Antonio Jimenez, MD, ND

So then our follow-up or reporting to patients of the 97 around drug slightly so trending down three months of very complex disease. Remember these are about the quality of life and with improving on the other side. What’s interesting is look at the CEA, the same 97 patients who entered the CEA was 69.4. We wanted to be in the 0 to 10 range, but then at discharge, it jumped because we’re doing a lot of therapies that are killing cancer cells in a jump. But then look what happened at three months follow up. Most follow-up patients showed a steep drop in CEA. The initial one so this is telling us that the systemic load of the trauma of the cancer has decreased even though the breast cancer marker itself was fluctuating up and then slightly down. So this was some significant inflammation. But again, we’re pursuing further with our research and education team.

Véronique Desaulniers, DC

So we’ve got we’ve got a few more minutes left, Dr. Tony, to wrap it up.

Antonio Jimenez, MD, ND

So Vitamin D is so important, as we all know. What I want to say here is that for most patients, 62% of patients overall, all cancer patients out of 139, that 62% are below optimal vitamin D levels. Breast cancer patients for that for some reason, they were not down 70.3 when they came in. So I think maybe Dr. V, a breast cancer patient was a little smarter and then taking supplementation and so forth before they come to us. Maybe they’ve seen you somewhere in your podcast and know about it.

Véronique Desaulniers, DC

Right reading my blogs, I guess that’s good to know.

Antonio Jimenez, MD, ND

Yeah. So this is this is nice. This is nice. And so 75% of patients improve vitamin D levels up at the follow-up. So they’re vitamin D levels of when they came back three months before level. So I believe that’s my last slide. And I’m happy to answer any other questions you might have, Dr. V.

Véronique Desaulniers, DC

You know, Dr. Tony, you’ve pointed out so many different factors. What I appreciate about, you know, your work and your philosophy is that you don’t want to just cover up the symptoms. You want to get to the root cause and most importantly, you know, with your seven principles, you, you know, the emotional, spiritual aspect is really, really key. And I know I’ve seen that in our clients. You’ve seen that in our patients. So you can do all that stuff, right? All the therapies, the pills, you know, if your heart is not right, if you’re carrying a lot of emotional burdens, you know, your body just won’t respond. So if you want to add a little bit on that.

Antonio Jimenez, MD, ND

Yes. And I have so many experiences with that. I remember one example because we remember stories, right? So Quickstart, we had a patient with the right breast cancer, male side, she’s right-handed and we’re treating her. She’s doing well. But that’s not we’re still there. And that was this years ago. As I was learning, the biological connection to breast cancer and the conflicts and trauma behind it, I started to ask the right questions. We need to ask the right questions in a loving, gentle way. It turned out that she was having an affair with a priest from the Catholic Church. She knew that this was not right and he knew that it was not right and was eating up her emotionally. She was distraught and she was shame and she was being affected. So the story might sound like it was scripted, but it was. And as soon as I, you know, help her, let go of this and break that relationship, the tumor was not there anymore. It disappeared. If I didn’t see it, not everyone, I wouldn’t have believed that. But I have many stories of breast cancer patients have healed. The tumor progression has decreased significantly when these biological conflicts were sudden acute traumas that they didn’t let go of and we’re still there. Right. Knowing that once they are let go and are liberated and freed from with cancer have no reason to be there because of breast cancer. I truly believe it’s an opportunistic disease that settles in that’s affected mostly by emotional and spiritual trauma. And then all the other physical stuff on top of that compounds it.

Véronique Desaulniers, DC

Absolutely. I know, Dr. Jenn Simmons, who’s co-hosting with me, she says cancer is rarely a medical emergency. The breast cancer is rarely a medical emergency. It’s an emotional emergency. You know, you really have to deal with that root cause. So thank you so much, Dr. Tony, I know you’re a busy man and I don’t know how you do what you do, but God bless you for that. And I look forward to meeting up with you again soon.

Antonio Jimenez, MD, ND

Thank you, Dr. V. We thank you all and God bless you. And remember there is always hope for breast cancer.

Véronique Desaulniers, DC

It’s very true. Bye, everybody.