How To Transform – From Broken to Blooming

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Jenn, what a pleasure to be here, like a friend who is committed to the same thing I am, which is the resolution of disease and the prevention of cancer, particularly breast cancer. Then, as I always said to someone the other day, the absence of a problem does not mean you are good. It just means you do not have a problem. It is not just the absence of a problem. It is the feeling of freakingly amazing. That is the goal.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, you touched on a very key issue which is that we are trained to think that health is the absence of disease. I cannot tell you how many people come to me; literally, this is their opening statement. I am healthy, except I have breast cancer, and I am, but that is how we think of things. We think of health as the absence of disease or diagnosis, but in fact, help is the optimum function. You have quite a healthy story and a healthy journey to share with people. Can you just give a summary of how you arrived at this place? Because you were not born into functional medicine, you found your way into functional medicine out of personal necessity.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I married my way into it.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

There you go.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I am going to skip a lot because there is a lot that went into this. Think of me as a soup that has been blended. It is hard to say, Okay, this is the problem or this is the reason. But let us go back 52 and a half years. I was born, and I have the worst genetics. Awful. I have two MTHFR genes. I am sorry, I have C1T. I have two vitamin D deficiency genes. I have two genes for celiac. I did not know any of this because who did that stuff in the ’70s? Fast forward to my teens.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Incidentally, a lot of people are not doing it now either. 

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes, true. Valid. I did not know any of that. In my teens, I had what I did not know was irritable bowels and weird food things. I never eat oranges because, when I did, I would get sharp, stabbing stomach pain. I thought that I was allergic to oranges. I stopped eating them for years, and I had anemia that did not respond to iron. No matter how much I took, I stopped pooping because it took all that iron. After all, again, in the 80s, they did not have gentle iron. They just had iron. It did not do anything. 

Fast forward to my 20s. I now have multiple nutrient deficiencies, and my irritable bowel has gotten to the point where I have no idea what is setting me off, but everything sets me off. I had room clearing gas where you are, My God, did something die here? It was terrible. It is a deeply embarrassing thing. I just figured everyone else had a better cork and was better able to hold it in. Fast forward again to my 30s; I have had trouble getting pregnant. My first pregnancy was a severely growth-restricted 3-pound wonder who is fierce and still fierce. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Woah!

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I have a crappy OB outcome and difficulty getting pregnant. I am in my second pregnancy, and after the pregnancy, my husband says to me, That is why I said I married into it because he was into it before I was. My husband says to me, Hey, why do you not go see my mentor before our insurance changes? I did. He, at the time, did what I considered to be a massive workup. Now I am. That is just standard. But to me, it was a lot because all I have ever had was a CBC, an iron, and a B12 panel, and that was it. He diagnosed me with celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disease that is ultimately responsive to the elimination of gluten. I went gluten-free at 35, and that was my introduction to functional medicine. 

I was inspired and ultimately went into functional medicine because I thought, I wanted to make this difference for people, and we just do not have the tools to make the difference that I want to make in traditional, conventional OB-GYN. I transitioned out and spent 16 years working on my health. Fast forward again; I am 48. I feel pretty good. I go on the trip of a lifetime to France. I came home and I gained 9 pounds, lost half of my hair in my head, and have a rash that is on the creases of my eyelids and my nose under my chin. No matter how much scratching, it never scratches that itch. 

I am freaking out. What a woman is, Hey, sign me up for half my hair loss and weight gain. I checked my thyroid. It is normal. I checked my hormones; they were normal. Remember, I am 48, and so I am thinking, Okay, these effing perimenopausal hormones are killing me. But no, my hormones were amazing, and my thyroid was perfect. I checked my gut. My gut has never been better. No, I am stumped and my hair loss is continuing, and I am freaking out. I heard a report that when Notre Dame burned in France, it released 500 tons of lead dust into the air. The closer you were to Notre Dame after it burned, the more lead exposure you got, and the further away, the less this made. That makes sense. The closer you are to this.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Of course.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

To get gas when I was in France, a week after Notre Dame burned, I got a lead exposure, I looked at my husband, and I got a lead, but we all got a lead exposure. But I am the one who is sick from having gone to France. I tested, and my heavy metals were 25% higher than they had been. I was like, that caught my attention. Then, because I am a data hog, I tested the mycotoxins. 

Mycotoxins are what mold puts out when it is in your body. Just a little plug: 50% of buildings have been water damaged so you have probably been exposed to mycotoxins in your life or mold.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, for sure. Mold is everywhere. It is ubiquitous. The thing is, 25% of people lack the enzymes necessary to break down that mold. You are one of them, it goes with your genetic panel, and that is why like two people can be in the same moldy space. One of them has a crippling headache and is miserable. The other person is asking, What is wrong with you? 

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

You are a faker. You are such a faker. Yes. I did the test. I have five mycotoxins in me. That is where everyone goes. ew, we need an audience sound for you, creepy.

Then I figured, I go in for a penny, in for a pound, and I will test everything. I tested the environmental toxins, or what I will consider other, plastics, flame retardants, nail polish, beauty products, slate, all of it. Perchlorate, and gasoline fumes. I had a whole list of positives, and that was the inspiration for our book because I looked at Ed, my husband, and I went. I am such a dirty girl. We are writing that book because I am such a poster child for healthy living and yet I still wind up here. That is my story. My mass has become my passion, Jenn.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

That is such an interesting point because you are not someone who was living irresponsibly, throwing caution to the wind, and eating junk food; you were doing everything right.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I did not even replace the gluten-free products with gluten-free substitutes. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. You were just eating good, healthy food.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes. I exercised, and I figured that I was doing a good job. Righteous. I am doing a good job and bam, I am a dirty girl, and we are all dirty girls. Even if you are male, you are a dirty girl.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. That brings me to the first point that I want to talk about. That is, when people think about breast cancer, they weigh heavily on the fact that it is a genetic disease. There is a genetic component. I am not even talking about the broccoli population. I am talking about the population in general that truly believes that their family history is their destiny. What say you?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I say your genes are 10% of your future, and the other 90% is in your hands. You have control over what happens to you. You have agency control, and there is always a possibility to pivot 100%.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. Because breast cancer is an environmental disease.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes, I see all cancers and breast cancers in that bucket.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, for sure.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

The result of severe inflammation. What causes inflammation? Environmental toxins? What is the most common cause? Environmental toxins. In that, I am including food because it comes from your environment. Between food and all the other stuff you are exposed to, you layer on your thoughts, your stressful life, and the fact that you are not sleeping, all of which you have control over, by the way. You have a nasty probability of cancer, but your genes are only 10%. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, for sure. Even in families where they say, Well, my mother got breast cancer and I got breast cancer. We are generally growing up in similar environments to our mother. We oftentimes take on similar habits as our mother. Yes, your mother had breast cancer. Your mother was also overweight, probably eating a diet full of processed foods. If you lived a duplicate of her life, being overweight and living on a diet of processed foods, you are probably going to have a similar outcome. 

I am, believe me. I am not blaming the patient. Because you are a prime example of someone who does everything and still gets sick. It is because our environment has become increasingly more toxic. We are not living on our grandmother’s earth. We are not even living on our mother’s earth now. There are thousands of toxins that we can potentially come into contact with every single day, many of which are in our food supply or our cleaning supply. We are in our cosmetics supply or our personal care items, and these are not tested and they are certainly not tested synergistically. They are not tested together. Even if I think I heard a statistic that only 1,000 chemicals that are in all of those things that we talked about have been tested,

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Okay. The EPA is something I have looked at because I was preparing for a presentation and I was, Okay, we will talk about the EPA. The EPA is the same age as me. We are the same age. It is 52. They started in 1970, and their job is to evaluate toxins that are reported to them by companies that are concerned that their product might be toxic. It is based on the honor code, and I am not clear that this is a particularly effective way. Essentially.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Because of that the companies, may. They may be motivated to not have them tested.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Hypothetically. It is reliant on companies reporting voluntarily. Hey, we think there might be a problem. The philosophy is not to prove that it is safe, and then you can use it. The philosophy is to develop it and use it. If there is a problem, maybe then we will evaluate it. The EPA is essentially drowning. The last substance that they banned was in 1984. I think a lot of your listeners might not even have been born in 1984. I was talking to two people yesterday about the EPA. They had not been born in 1984. I said, your whole lifetime, nothing has been banned by the EPA.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. This is why Erin Brockovich has a job.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes. There is an incredible backlog, even with the things that are being reported. Do you think we are developing somewhere between 1,500 and 15,000 new chemicals every month to year? It is not even regulated. We have no clear sense of what is being developed. We know that there are 500 to 500,000 to 2 million or more chemicals out there. In the EU, it is more regulated. You do have to prove that it is safe before you can use it. They have a whole list of banned substances, but in the United States, there are nine substances in total that the EPA has banned. The last one was banned almost 40 years ago. 

I think the first thing to think about is that they do not have a lot of teeth to be able to enforce their mandates. We cannot necessarily rely on the government to keep us safe because that is not their mandate. Their mandate is not to keep us safe. Their mandate is to keep us from dying from exposure to one particular thing. It is a very different mandate than keeping us safe. We have to go to other sources to look for the Safe Forests, Environmental Working Group, and Think Dirty. I heard of another one yesterday. I will see if I can come up with it while we are talking. These are all apps that you can go to and check out. What are the ingredients? Is the product good for me? Test Don’t Guess; get data.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, for sure. Talk to us a little bit about Dirty Girl. I know the reason that you wrote it. You wrote it because it is the story of your life and how these environmental pathogens can affect you. Even a healthy person can be affected by them. Talk to us a little bit about the book, its focus, and what you hope to accomplish with it.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Sure. Well, when I got all these diagnoses and I was so sick, Jenn. It does not. I look normal. The thing about it is that everyone has got something, and you cannot always tell by looking at them. You could not tell by looking at me that I was not well, but I was not well. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. You for sure you knew you were not well.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Well, I knew I was. Yes, this is not normal.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. That is important for people to hear. Because so many people go to the doctor and they know they are not right.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Gas lit. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

They know they are not. There is no question in their minds that they are not. The doctor orders tests. What is the doctor saying? All your tests are normal. You are fine. The line of spying. It is because our medical system is built on failure, and you have to fail before you can engage. There is no health optimization built in. All of these people get dismissed as fine when they know they are anything but.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Jenn, I have to tell you that my mom has Addison’s disease, which is very rare. It has been a total failure of the adrenal glands for the last year. It is very rare. It is an autoimmune disease. She got sick when I was 16. I remember this because I would walk in and say, Good morning. She would be on her bathroom floor vomiting because she had no cortisone, no aldosterone, no ability to maintain her blood pressure, and no ability to stand up straight. She went to I do not even know how many doctors and a number of them remember this was the 80s. There was a lot of misogyny. But the doctors and the rotator cuff woman said I think you are depressed. My mom, being my mom, was not in their face. Do not be a jerk. I might be depressed because I cannot stand up straight, but that is not the cause of my depression. My depression is incidental to the fact that I do not feel well. 

She had to wind up in the hospital with a blood pressure of 60 over 40 before they took her seriously. One endocrinologist walked into her hospital room, and said, You have Addison’s because you get this very classic bronzed look. JFK had it. She had classically bronzed blood pressure in the pits. He said, You have Addison’s. He diagnosed her in 3 seconds flat after being sick, and she got progressively worse. The moral of the story is to not accept gaslighting. If you believe something’s wrong, find a doctor who will work with you. It is generally a functional medicine doctor because we have the tools, the time, and the interest. We are interested in sleeping it out. 

Back to Dirty Girl. It is about having a roadmap to take power back, take back your agency, control the narrative, and understand how to get your hands around the tools that you need to have a life in which you feel freaking amazing. You are vital, vibrant, healthy, able, and interested in intimacy until you are at least 100, and every decade you are better than the one before. This is a roadmap to get you there because even with good intentions, sometimes we do not do what we should do because we need to. Good intentions do not always have good outcomes. We sometimes need a roadmap. This is designed to be a roadmap.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

For the person that is out there and feeling they have that sense that something is wrong, but they cannot; they just cannot put a finger on it. They go to their doctor, and they get dismissed. That is a hard place to be when it is not so much that the doctor is stumped because most traditional physicians feel uncomfortable not knowing what to do for you. When they are stumped, they react and reflect it to you, making it about whether you are depressed or something else because they feel uncomfortable with that. That is why they tell you that you are fine and it is all in your head and that thing. When that person is in that place, what do you suggest they do? Where do you start?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I will say, that I did not have anxiety until I had kids. then I was wondering, Where did this come from? These what-if. These what-if trucks drove over me and then backed up a couple of times back and forth.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I will say, that there is always, and it is always worth seeing to yourself what component of this is a function of my fear of speaking. If you can genuinely say, Yes, I have a patient who lost all the hair on her body and ended up having Lyme disease, Babesia, heavy metals, and mycotoxins and we have been growing her hair back, her hair is coming back, by the way, but she will now come to me with all these random things.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I say, Look, we should mention that those things often travel together.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes, they do.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It is very common because having one makes you susceptible to the others.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

It is the same issue, It is the same crappy detox that allows you to hold on to one. When you get exposed to another, you are. Well, I will keep that, too. We are loyal to the toxins in our bodies. She comes to me still for follow-up. I said to her, Look, you genuinely have health-related anxiety. I do not want to make it seem like I am pooh-poohing it. For this, I do not think you need to worry about a bump, a bruise, or this or that. but we genuinely do look at it. Ask yourself if there is some component of anxiety that is driving it and if you can genuinely pull that off. Okay, I might be anxious, but I still have something going on. Trust yourself. 

The message here is: do not give away your power. Trust yourself because you know what is going on in your body. It is more about the fact that you have not found the right person to work with you than that there is nothing wrong with you. If you believe there is something wrong with you, go to a functional medicine provider. They will evaluate you, and you will get information.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, that is so important. Trusting yourself, Trusting that instinct, knowing that you are not okay, If you feel you are not okay, you are not okay. You need to continue that journey to find out why you are not okay and reestablish that balance.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I want to say something here, Jenn, before we go on to the next thing because some of the people listening might be fine. The other part is that it is sometimes hard to miss when you are not okay or easy to miss when you are not okay because if your brain’s not working optimally if you are not turning a switch on, and the lights go on, all of a sudden you see that you are not okay because degeneration occurs slowly. You think to yourself, Well, I am just getting older, so I am not as strong, as vibrant, as resilient, whatever you say. 

t is important to take a step back and say, Okay, if you have any complaint and I do not care what it is, you could say to me, I have a rash on my skin or fatigue or headaches or inflammation or seasonal allergies or irritable bowel or bad periods or anything you could say to me, my response is, something is going on. Let us figure out the root cause so you can feel freaking amazing. Even if you think to yourself, I do not think something’s wrong; go back. Are you taking Tylenol for a headache? Well, something is not there. Headache is not a normal state.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, and I think that is such an important point because we have normalized so many things in the traditional medical system. After all, traditional medical doctors do not know how to fix them. You and I both came from that system. We know that in medical school, residency, and fellowship, we did not learn how to get people well or how to make people happy. 

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes. It is a different focus. I loved being an obstetrician, delivering babies, and doing surgery. It is just that it has different tools, You would not ask your plumber to do your electrical work. That is what the focus is on—feeling freaking amazing. If you go to your traditional, conventional doctor, they have different tools. They do not have the tools you need to get them where you want to go. 

What you want to focus on is getting the right doctor to fix the problem. If you have a mechanical issue, you want to wind up in surgery, meaning if you have a physical lump, you need to take it out, but you do not need to go to them for wellness or for thriving. It is about using the provider for the tools. It is just the wrong tool. It is not the best thing. They do not.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I know. But I ultimately think that they should say that that system is so broken. That diagnosis and management of symptoms is broken. Our system, which is designed for acute care—is designed for, if you break a bone, are in some trauma, need your appendix out, or have to give birth to a baby—that system is great. For the management of chronic disease, it does not work. It does not work.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

The wrong system. Again, it is going to the plumber for an electrical issue. It is just the wrong system. That is, but again, I do not. I think that system deserves to be acknowledged for what it does, as you just mentioned, for acute emergencies, and obstetric surgery. That is the right place to be if you want to thrive; you are just looking in the wrong place. That’s it. Do you think you are going to meet Mr. Right at the bar? Definitely. That is not where Mr. Right is.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Exactly. I want to get back to that whole normalization because we have blamed getting older as an excuse for not feeling the way that you think you should feel and not having optimal health. You are getting older. You are getting forgetful. It is normal to be forgetful as you get older. You are getting older. Your joints hurt; it is normal to have achy joints when you are getting older. We use age to normalize all of these things. But it is not true. 

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

No. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It is not true. We should not accept these excuses. You are just getting older because people who are functioning optimally, and we see this in the blue zones, enjoy excellent health through old age. It is possible, but you have to take a different route.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes. You have to get out of that trap of my genes or my future. My parents did this. I am going to do it. There is nothing else possible. You have to start to think about, What I want to create for my health. Because the future is in your hands, but if you do not know it, you do not manage it. Even knowing that you have agency and the possibility to create is the first step. You cannot open a closed mind if you are listening to this, and you are. No, my mom has diabetes. I am sure I will get diabetes. This is not the place for you to be. You want to be thinking about, What can I create? We reject the conventional wisdom that you are supposed to fail and get worse every year. 

That is why I think you and I are on the same page. It comes back to toxins because that is why we wrote the book—to give you a roadmap to walk through. How do you start to clean up your life, your beauty products, your food, your stress, your sleep, and your movement? How do you create a life that represents the health you are working for? How do you get there, and what are the toxins you need to get rid of? Well, all of them. But you are never going to get there. How do you start to balance the scale so that you have fewer toxins and your body’s not drowning under the waterfall of toxins?

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. I think people are intimidated by the idea that there is a conception, and it may not be far from the truth, but everything causes cancer. I can never avoid everything. I said I am not going to do anything at all. I think that is what so many people perceive and attach themselves to. Then they are also stuck in their habits and what they love. I cannot change, I cannot stop wearing perfume, I cannot change my laundry detergent, that dishwashing, that natural dishwashing stuff, does not get the dishes clean. This and that. I like the way that my laundry smells that way. They ground themselves in these beliefs, and then they do not change. It is daunting to change everything at once.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

No, but you are not going to. You are not going to change everything at once. Yeah. Because that is not manageable. Let us start with this. If you have some non-negotiables in your life that you feel that your life would not be the same if you got rid of your perfume or whatever. Pick one thing that you are going to hold on to. Fine. Let us address that last. There are so many other things we can work on that you do not have. We do not have to pick a fight with your favored heirloom, whatever.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

There are lots of opportunities to level up and make improvements. Then what I will say is that when I was 22, I was a sales rep. This is why I went into medicine. I was a sales rep for a multimedia company, meaning I sold slides and videos for companies that wanted to do presentations at the time. I was 22, and every one of my clients would say, Wendie, I have a medical question for you. I am a 22-year-old audio-video sales rep. You are asking me? They are like, Yes, I feel you could answer my question. Well, I come from a family of doctors, and people think I am a physician in training. I will just go to medical school. I did. 

Anyway, one of my clients sat me down and said, Look, we like working with you, and you wear too much perfume. We do not want to smell you when you leave this office, so you need to wear less perfume. I was at first, but for a moment, I was a little offended. Then I was, and that is one of the most impactful things anyone has said to me because, when you think about it, perfume is to mask body odor. That was why it was developed. When you wear strong perfume, everybody else has to smell it. But I do not want to smell other people’s perfume. 

I have family members. I tell them, Please do not come to my house wearing that perfume because the smell lingers even after you are gone. I do not want to smell it, so please do not put it on if you are coming to my house because it does not smell good to me any longer. But if that is your thing, that is something you cannot get rid of. Let us address your food, your sleep, your stress, your beauty products, your cleaning products, and how you wash your clothing. Let us pick a fight with all the other stuff and level up and get you healthy so that you can tolerate that one excursion. It is all about balance. If you are being if you are being waterboarded with toxins. Yes. They all cause cancer because they all synergize, they all stress the system, and they all build up in your fat, your bones, and your organs. But if you can start to pull away the toxins, sleep through the night, manage your brain so that you have thoughts that empower you, and eat food that is good for your body. Move your body and sweat. Now you can tolerate some of the things because you are moving them and excreting them. 

It is all about the balance of toxins as opposed to, yes, the innate number. You do not have to be perfect. It is perfect to see you are a surgeon. Perfection is the enemy of goodness. You have to be good to be perfect. You have to be good. Jenn, I want to say something about food because, to me, that is the most impactful thing you can start with because you do it every day, multiple times a day. But when people always say to me, I screwed it up, I cheated. First of all, that language drives me nuts because you did not cheat on anything. You simply ate something that did not work for you. Start to use language that works so that you empower your body. But more than that, the goal is not to be perfect and never have an eating excursion. 

The goal is to be mindful of them and plan them into your life. You are going to a birthday party, and you are going to have a piece of cake. Fine. But then the next night, the next day, or the next night, get back on your program. The goal is to shorten the time that you are off the rails. If you go off the rails intentionally and then get back on the rails as soon as you can, as quickly as you can, that is the goal. Not to be perfect. Perfection only exists in Hollywood on the screen, where they have cut it, edited it, and airbrushed it. That is not real, though. The reality is that humans have excursions in how they eat, and they evolve. You do not have to be perfect. I know I have beaten that one to death, but that was important for me to just make sure people understood that you do not have to be perfect; you have to be on a plan and get back on it when you go off. That’s it.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

 I just want to summarize everything that we said today because there is just so much gold there. It is not your genes; it is your environment. The great thing about that, and I do want to say, even in BRCA mutation carriers, even in people who have a very high tendency to develop breast cancer, it is not 100%. 100% of people with a BRCA mutation do not get breast cancer, which means that there is something else in play; there is something else influencing our genes. That is the environment. We have so much control over the environment that we create. It is not your genes; it is your environment.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

It is not your genes, it is you.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

But without question, we have a significant amount of control over our environment, and it is not control. Your story is a great example of that. But even when you run into these environmental pathogens that disrupt your health, it is knowing, recognizing, and trusting your instincts, knowing that something’s wrong, and pursuing that. You are a prime example that even if you do have mold illness, it can be reversed. Even if you do have heavy metal toxicity, it can be reversed. But you have to know about it. You have to discover it, you have to test for it, and you have to intervene. But with the knowledge that you can do something, you can reverse this. It is important. The message is the same with breast cancer. The truth is that breast cancer can be reversible, but you have to determine what caused it, what is driving it, and what is creating the environment that is driving breast cancer. Because breast cancer is a normal response to an abnormal environment. 

It is all those things that we talked about that are contributing to an abnormal environment. You do need to trust your intuition and know that if you feel there’s something wrong, there is something wrong, and if you are not what you were before, it is not normal. We do not have to decrease in function with age. A decrease in function is due to either. It is one of those things that, if you do not move it, you lose it. We have to maintain our activity, our mind, and our body. If we are doing that, we should not have functional loss. If you have a functional loss, something is interfering with your function. Trust your intuition and pursue it. Our goal is not to be perfect, No one is ever going to be perfect, except maybe in Hollywood. Even then, I have seen those touched-up pictures. Hollywood is not perfect either.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

It is not real.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

A lot of editing is going on there. 

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

It is all fantasy. That is what I am saying that perfection is a fantasy. We put that on ourselves, and then it creates a source of stress because we are not perfect. But you are already as perfect as you are. Now we just have to uncover all your perfection as opposed to being buried under toxins. We just need to find you underneath all that.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. God does not make mistakes. God created all of us exactly as we were supposed to be created. Our body knows how to heal. We just have to make sure that we are giving it what it needs and taking away what is inhibiting it or interfering with it. The language with which you use yourself matters. Because that language in itself can be toxic.

The food that we eat should be nourishing. We should be moving in a way that is joyful and does not create more toxicity. If your exercise is stressing you out, you need to find a different mode of exercise. But also, exercise can be a source of sweating, and that can be detoxifying along with other modes of sweating. Working on your detoxification processes, make sure that you are prioritizing sleep because it is when we sleep that the majority of our detoxification happens.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Decreasing your toxic load in as much as you can. You are not going to do it all at once, but you have to start somewhere. Do you want to tell us some of your favorite things? Do you have a favorite cosmetics brand? Do you have a favorite cleaning brand? What is your favorite self-care brand?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I do. I have all of that stuff. Let me just say, Jenn. In the quest for health. I screw it up all the time. I do not want people to listen and be. Well, she got it. I have been at this for several years. The things that we do, we find the good because we have been working on them. My favorite house cleaning brand is Aspen Clean. I use them for, and they are Environmental Working Group certified, so I use them for.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Everyone should know about the EWG, the Environmental Working Group. It is something that you need to have in it as a reference, and you can use it for any purpose.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Not just have it and use I am always.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Because again, we cannot trust the EPA, as we spoke about in the beginning. The EPA has no power to protect you, and it is not protecting you, and you cannot trust that.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

You need to look beyond that. The Environmental Working Group has its hands around what it means to be healthy, and it uses their data-driven and I have been greenwashed a million times, I see something you are scrolling through. You are in a rush; you see it; you are. That looks great. You buy it, you get it home. If you are me, you have ordered maybe a four-month supply because you are busy and you do not want to run out any time soon. I have lots of children, and blah blah blah. Okay, so I have been greenwashed a whole bunch of times. Then you wake up one morning and you say, I never checked that, and you check it, and you are horrified by how unhealthy it is. 

Then you use it up because you have spent money on it. That is the lesson here. 

Anyway, my favorite cleaning product is Aspen Clean. I use it for dishwashing, washing machines, windows, floors, bathrooms, all of the cleaners, as well as dish soap. All of the things that we use come from Aspen Clean. My favorite makeup brand, I have two. It is a Beautycounter and Mineral Fusion. It is so funny because my mom and I switched about it within the last year. I switched everything to those two brands, and I am on camera a lot.

At the end of the day, I have been on camera, but I also work in a medical facility. I put my mask on and take my mask off, and I rarely ever do anything but touch up my lipstick during the day and maybe my under-eye cover-up because it just gets faded. I will go home. My mom said to me, You look like you just put your makeup on. I was. I put it on at 730 this morning, and now it is 630 at night. These are my two favorite brands because they last and they are clean. Again, EWG is highly rated and certified.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

My favorite skincare product is Purity Woods, which was developed by Brian Vaszily, who is one of my favorite people in the world and is all about being healthy and getting toxin-free. Then what else did we have? What else?

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I think that is a pretty good place for everyone to start. Remember, you do not have to do it all at once. You can pick one thing at a time, and you do not get rid of everything you have. Use it up and then replace it with something better. I think that that is the very best way for people to move forward because, first of all, it is expensive and intimidating. What do you cook with?

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Great question. I use cast iron; I use stainless steel. Then we have a few brands that are PFOA and PFOA-free, so we are using those SCANPANs from Scandinavia.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Great.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

We use that. But I want to just jump on to what you were just saying, Jenn. Is this what people say? Where do I start? My response is to start with what is running out. When you run out and level up every once in a while, you will have done a good job, and you can be like, Wow, look at me. I did a good job. I had picked Mineral Fusions just because I liked the brand and the colors long before I checked EWG and had even any inkling of it. I have been using them for years, and guess what? They are clean, so. You might nail it if you had a surprise win; celebrate that. I guess one less thing I have to level up.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Exactly.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

The thing you are running out of is the thing you want to level up on. I use EWG and Think Dirty. Those are my two resources to check before I buy.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, those are great websites. Tell people where they can find you and where they can get Dirty Girl.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Awesome. Do not search for Dirty Girl on Google. You are going to get things that you do not necessarily, or maybe you do, but they are not going to get you about them. The best place to get the book is Amazon. Again, if you type in Dirty Girl, you are not going to find me unless you are lucky. You are going to find other stuff. Type in The Dirty Girl Detox book it is bright yellow or Dirty Girl Trubow, and that will get you to the right place. That is the best place to get the book. 

Then we have our podcast, which is called Feel Freaking Amazing. You can find me on Apple and Spotify; all of the major sites have podcasts; and then we have our website for our clinic, which is fivejourneys.com. I am on all of the socials at Wendie Trubow, M.D., and then our national brand, which is all about detox. We have supplements that specifically support detox and hormone-balanced detox because hormones are a huge source of toxins for us @dirtygirldetox.com it is all in one wonder everywhere.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Wonderful. Real fast. I do want to talk about xenoestrogens because we touch on that, and there are so many environmental chemicals that act as estrogen, but in a very toxic way, in our bodies and are, I believe, responsible for the majority of breast cancers.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Certainly, the rise. Think about it.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Do you want to touch on that a little bit? 

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes. You phrase it beautifully: these are products and substances that our body thinks are hormones. They bind to the receptors, and we still have to excrete them. It goes down the same hormone excretion pathway. When you look at if you were exposed to one, again, this goes back to the waterfall and the deluge of toxins that we have because we are exposed to so much of it. It looks like a hormone, acts like a hormone, has to be detoxed like a hormone, confuses the body, makes the work harder, and makes it harder to even process our hormones in a healthy pathway.

What we are and what happens is that there are a lot of places this can go wrong. If phase one in your liver is too fast, you build up free radicals. Free radicals are toxic and inflammatory. To manage the free radicals, what do you do? You store them as fat bones and organs. Then you have women who cannot lose weight. 

Then phase two happens. Great. You put it in your gut to poop it out. But what if you are constipated, have dysbiosis, have an inappropriate bacteria balance, or have overactivity of the beta-gluconate enzyme, and now your hormone, a hormone-like xenoestrogen is about to be excreted? But instead, is it a murder mystery? Instead of leaving, it gets recycled into the body. 

Again, when it gets recycled, it goes from being water soluble, bound, and relatively inert into a fat-soluble, toxic intermediate that then has to be dealt with again. Increasing the body’s burden. Still, you have more, hormones coming. The xenoestrogens are pretty nasty for us. I would say the most impactful thing, hands down that each of us can do is to not store our food in plastic, not ever microwave our food in plastic, and not drink from plastic water bottles. If you do those three things, that is a powerful start.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yeah. De-plasticizing your life is so important and I agree. Do not store it in plastic. Do not cook in plastic, do not drink out of plastic bottles. But the one thing that people often do not think about that I think is a killer for people is if you are drinking coffee every morning and you are making those little pods, you are pouring hot water through a plastic pod and drinking plastic every single day with your coffee. 

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Yes.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

The other thing is, if you are if you are a tea drinker instead and you are using those beautiful shiny tea bags, those are made of plastic as well. cleaning up your morning beverage goes a very long way towards your health. 

What are the other xenoestrogens other than plastics that people should be looking for? My big thing is antibiotics. Not only the antibiotics that we take when we get sick although they count and they are xenoestrogens but there are antibiotics in toothpaste in every single self-care product body care product because they put in lotions and creams and all that thing and all of the things so that they do not develop bacteria and them. But in the meantime, your body sees these as, estrogens. Then, of course, all the things that you were talking about, the plastics and the nonstick that is all, those are all xenoestrogens. Fragrance, perfume, these are all, xenoestrogens. The more that we can pull them out of our environment, the less burden that they are going to have. I believe that they are a major contributor to breast cancer.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

They are all inflammatory and cancer is the result of nasty inflammation. Yes, it makes sense. It does matter.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Dr. Trubow. Thank you so much for sharing your brilliance and your wisdom with us and sharing your experience with us. Because I know sometimes it is hard to be vulnerable. It is hard to show all of that. I think that it will resonate with people that you were doing everything right and that you can seemingly do everything right and still get sick. 

It is the person who can acknowledge that without blame or shame because you did not come into contact with heavy metals on purpose. You did not come into contact with mold on purpose. These things happen even to people who are doing everything right. If it is the person who can acknowledge that and say, I am not going to see my diagnosis as a punishment, but instead, as an opportunity to improve my health. 

You are a brilliant, shining example of how health can be achieved despite less-than-optimal genetics. But despite multiple talks and exposures, health can be achieved. You just have to go out and get it. Health is not a passive process. It is an active process, and you have to go get it.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

I could not have said it better myself.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Thank you so much. Make sure that you follow Dr. Trubow on her podcast. Feel Freaking Amazing. Do go to Amazon to get her book. But do not say dirty girl. Say Dirty Girl, Doctor Trubow, and you can follow her on social and it was so wonderful having you.

Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCP

Jenn, it was amazing to be here. Thank you, Dr. Simmons. Amazing. Jenn is such a pioneer for health. Thank you.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Thank you. It is Dr. Jenn. Bye for now.