Full Transcript Introduction and Guest Introduction 0:00 Okay. Hey everybody, welcome to the Eat Pray Faith podcast with Dr. Tracy. 0:04 That's me. And today I have an incredible guest, Dr. Jen Simmons, who's 0:09 a former top breast cancer surgeon turned functional medical pioneer. And 0:13 she not only is the leading voice in re-imaging of cancer and chronic illness
Dr. Jen Simmons' Background and Journey 0:20 within women, but the author of the powerful and paradigmshifting book, The 0:24 Smart Women's Guide to Breast Cancer. This is a must-read. And I have to tell 0:28 you, every woman seeking answers, hope, and just agency in their health journey 0:33 needs this book. So today, we're going to be talking about the traditional 0:36 healthcare model, which is I feel failing women and how root cause 0:40 medicine is changing the game and what women need to know and if they want to 0:45 be truly well and not just symptom free. So Dr. Jen, I'm so glad to have you on 0:50 my podcast and it was such an honor to be with you at the Annie Apple Seed 0:54 Project and to meet you in person. So thank you for being here. 0:58 Thank you for having me and it was so much fun. You know, we don't get to do 1:02 that a lot. We don't get to hang out with our peers so much. And so that was 1:07 a really special time for me because you know I a lot of us we kind of live on an 1:13 island, right? Like we just we're so I I at least me I'm a soul practitioner 1:20 and I work virtually most of the time. So that was a really special time for me 1:27 because I got to be with my people. I know it was great. I thought the 1:31 convention was wonderful. You know, besides the fact that I may have said I 1:35 need some steak. Uh that was very funny. that line will like go down in history 1:43 hopefully because that that that's not as much as the of the plant-based mafia 1:51 as maybe Beljansky is. That's really the plant-based mafia, but it's pretty bad. 1:57 They're like very they're very kind and plant-based at at Annie Apple Seed at at 2:05 some of the others that I that I go to and I frequent. And you know, if I'm 2:09 being honest, I am plant-based, but I'm not part of the mafia. I'm not like my 2:15 way or the highway. Like, I I think that we need to meet people where they are. 2:19 Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think we should talk about some of that stuff, too, 2:23 because I think there's a lot of food noise out there now when it comes to, 2:27 you know, what is the real nutrition plan that you should be on if you're 2:30 experiencing cancer of any kind or even breast cancer. So, I'm curious to know 2:34 your thoughts. It's a legit question and and and one that needs to be answered 2:40 because people are struggling with that. Yeah. So, your book covers a bunch. I 2:46 mean, I love it and I thank you for signing the copy for me. I I will 2:49 treasure it forever. So, you made a really bold shift coming from
The Shift to Functional Medicine 2:55 conventional oncology to functional medicine. So, what was the catalyst 2:59 behind that transformation? Yeah, a great question. And um I'm really sorry 3:06 if you hear my dogs barking. They always pick this time to start to fight with 3:11 one another. Like the second I hit record, it's like they sense that. It's 3:15 okay. We're dog friendly here. Go ahead. So, 3:19 um, I should back up and talk about why I even got into the breast cancer space 3:25 because people ask me all the time, you why did you become a breast surgeon or 3:30 why breast cancer? And I I have to be honest, I didn't find breast cancer. 3:36 Breast cancer very much found me. I come from a breast cancer family. 3:41 I come from a big family. My grandfather was one of was one of 13. and all the 3:46 women got breast cancer and all of their children got breast cancer. And so 3:52 growing up, I I really don't not remember remember a time in my life 3:56 where I didn't know about breast cancer. It was really part of the tapestry of 4:01 our family. And so growing up, I had a first cousin. Her name was Linda Creed. 4:06 Linda was a singer songwriter in the 1970s and 1980s. She wrote all the music 4:11 for the spinners and the stylistics. She was beautiful, brilliant, larger than 4:16 life. Walked into a room and lit the place up. Really truly. 4:23 So you my hero. Yeah. You take after her a lot. She was my hero. Okay. So she 4:29 wrote 54 hits in all. 54. And her most famous song was The Greatest Love of 4:35 All. No kidding. Wow. That's love that song. So like here I am a teenager and 4:44 that that song is everywhere. I mean you can't not know that song, right? So my 4:51 cousin is literally a rock star. Literally. 4:55 So she actually wrote that song in 1977 as the title track to the movie The 5:01 Greatest, starring Muhammad Ali. But it really received its acclaim in March of 5:06 1986. Teddy's making his appearance. It received its acclaim in March of 1986 5:13 when Whitney Houston would release that song to the world. And at that time, it 5:17 would spend 14 weeks at the top of the charts. Only Linda would never know. 5:22 Because Linda died of metastatic breast cancer just one month after Whitney 5:28 released that song. Oh my goodness. I was 16 years old and my hero died. 5:35 Yeah. And despite the decades in between, like 5:40 I still can't tell this story without tears coming to my 5:44 eyes. And I did the only thing I knew how to 5:49 do because her life and ultimately her death gave birth to my life's purpose. 5:55 And I never wanted another woman or another family or another community to 6:00 have to suffer the way that Iris suffered. 6:04 And so I became a doctor, the first doctor in my family. And I became a 6:09 surgeon and I became the first fellowship trained breast surgeon in 6:14 Philadelphia. And I became the first plastic surgeon in Pennsylvania. Wow. 6:20 And I did that really well and for a really long time. Long enough for my 6:25 aunt to be diagnosed. Long enough for my mother to 6:29 be diagnosed. and with all the writing on the
Challenges in Conventional Medicine 6:33 walls when I was arguably at the top of my game and I'm running the cancer 6:40 program for my hospital and I'm running the breast surgery program and I'm a 6:44 wife and a mother and an athlete and an author and a philanthropist and you know 6:48 I have all these balls in the air and I go from being probably one of the most 6:54 high functioning people you'll ever meet to I can't walk across the room because 6:59 I don't have the breath in my body and I have this intense 3-day 7:05 workup where at the end I am sitting in the office of my friend and colleague 7:12 and physician and he tells me that I need 7:16 surgery and chemo and radiation and despite the fact that 7:22 these are words that I say all day every day without hesitation or 7:27 reservation when these words are coming at do. I assure you they have a 7:32 different meaning. And I was very much having an 7:37 outof body experience because I heard him and I knew what he was saying was 7:44 standard of care. I knew what he was saying he believed to be true and 7:51 believed to be what I should do and the only 7:56 way. And yet all I could hear in that time and space was, "There's something 8:03 more. Go find it." Now, I was a conventionally trained physician. I went 8:10 to a top medical school. I was a, you know, went through 8:16 a surgical residency fellowship. Like I I was I was running an NIH accredited 8:24 cancer program. I did not know that there was anything else. I had never 8:30 heard of anything else. And you and I are women of deep faith. So I'm certain 8:38 that this was God. But you can call it God. You can call it universe. You can 8:43 call it whatever you want to call this force that took over my body. But I can 8:50 tell you that all I could hear in that time and space was, "There's something 8:55 more. Go find it." And I walked out of the office and refused treatment. And my 9:01 friend told me the same exact thing that I had told thousands of women before 9:07 when asked, "What will happen if I don't treat?" And he told me, "Jen, you're 9:11 going to die." And yet I couldn't silence the 9:15 voice. There's something more. Go find it. And as you very well know, God is 9:22 good. And I in very short order found myself sitting in a lecture 9:29 hall. And this tall, lanky guy, big toothy grin, walks on the stage and he 9:35 introduces himself as a functional medicine 9:38 physician. Now, at this point, I'm a doctor for 20 9:42 years. And though I'm sick, I am still very 9:47 cynical. And all I could think about was there's no such thing as a 9:52 functional medicine physician. What is this quack talking 9:56 about? And then I remember that I'm sick and I'm there for a reason. And so I 10:01 check my ego at the door and I tune in. And thank God I did. Because within the 10:08 next two hours of my life, not only would I know exactly why I got sick, cuz 10:15 I got sick so that I could be in that room on that day. 10:20 Not only would I know how I was going to heal 10:24 myself, but this would actually telescope the trajectory of the rest of 10:30 my life and my life's purpose. Because in that time and space, 10:35 I realized that I was put here for so much more. So much more. And not that I 10:42 didn't help people as a surgeon. Certainly I did, but that I didn't 10:48 change the trajectory of the rest of their lives. I took them from one point 10:53 to another. I made them maybe a little less sick, but I didn't heal them. 10:59 Right? If surgery healed anyone, I would be out of business, 11:04 right? Surgery doesn't heal anyone. It just delays the inevitable. 11:13 So, as it turns out, the quack was Dr. Mark 11:17 Heyman and what he was talking about in 2016. So, you know, just to defend 11:24 myself because I think a lot of people know who he is now, but in 2016, he was 11:28 not so wellnown and many people still considered him a quack in 2016. 11:35 But what I would learn is how wrong we have it in conventional medicine. 11:41 Because in conventional medicine, all the focus is on the 11:49 symptom and especially in cancer, all the focus is on the tumor. First of all, 11:56 what you focus on grows. So if all you're focused on is the tumor, then 12:01 that's all you're going to get. But the thing is the tumor is not the 12:06 problem. The tumor is the symptom of the problem. And the only way that we are 12:12 going to solve this problem is if we back up 10 steps. If we ask ourselves 12:19 why is the tumor there? What is happening? What do we have that we don't 12:24 need? What do we need that we don't have? What is causing this imbalance in 12:30 our body? Because cancer is a normal response to an abnormal environment. And 12:38 never ever do we ask the question in the conventional medical space, what is 12:44 causing this environmental shift? In fact, we almost don't care because it 12:50 doesn't fit the narrative and it doesn't serve the 12:53 purpose. So the purpose of the conventional medical system, 12:57 unfortunately, is to use it. Right. Right? That's their goal. Their goal is 13:05 to get you to have surgery, to get you to have radiation, to get you to have 13:10 chemotherapy. And then as a result of said surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, 13:17 there's lots of work to do cuz there's lots of symptoms to manage. And so their 13:22 goal is to I mean, they don't want to kill you. Of course, they don't want to 13:26 kill you, but they don't want to heal you either. They don't want to cure you 13:29 because then you're not a customer, right? And just the way that our 13:34 conventional medical system is set up, there is no way for it to succeed if it 13:40 relies on your failure. And I didn't want to be a 13:45 failure. I wanted to be a success. Yeah. So, I'm an early adopter. I get very 13:51 excited about things and I'm a quick start. 13:54 So of course that day I enrolled in the Institute for Functional Medicine and I 14:00 spent the next three years just submerged in the study of functional 14:05 medicine and when I came out on the other side I knew that this was a bell 14:09 that I could not unring and so I left surgery started my 14:15 functional medicine practice and that's where I've been for the last six years 14:21 changing the conversation around breast cancer. 14:24 and forever changing how we diagnose breast cancer, how we treat breast 14:29 cancer, how we prevent breast cancer, and most recently, how we screen for 14:34 breast cancer, because all of it really matters. 14:39 And it's hard to say and hard to believe, but the truth is that 20 to 30% 14:47 of the breast cancers that are treated every year, women who are treated for 14:53 breast cancer, 20 to 30% of them in the United States, well actually that's a 14:58 worldwide number of anyone who uses mammogram to screen, 20% of them 15:04 are overdiagnosed and overtreated. Mhm. And we are creating we are creating that 15:12 subset of patients actually creating it and it's horrible. It's horrible. So 15:18 that's my mission. You know just a little small mission to forever change 15:24 how we diagnose, treat, and screen for breast cancer. You know, if woman could 15:31 do it, it's you. I feel that in my soul. Like I know it. Thank you for the 15:35 confidence. I don't know how justified it is, but I I'll take it. I got a sign. 15:40 I'm gonna go out and tell everybody. But it's why I wanted to have you on the 15:43 podcast. I can't tell you how many people I see on social media, you know, 15:49 getting my mammogram and then they're over here with their pink ribbon and 15:53 they get diagnosed and and what I think I've realized and I've had a couple of 15:58 hormone specialists on and I've listened to these women and I'm I'm thinking to 16:03 myself, there's two and so let's start with the medical community as a whole. 16:07 What you said, I I too agree and the medical community is for acute trauma. 16:12 you know, if your arm gets chopped off, you need a surgery, like that's what 16:15 it's there for. But or or you break a bone or even in acute appendicitis, 16:20 right? Like there are acute medicine, it's as good as it gets. It's great. 16:26 Acute medicine, it's as good as it gets. But we used that that acute model to try 16:33 to address chronic disease and that doesn't work. Right. and and it's it's a 16:39 surgical pharmaceutical push to treat the chronic issues when it's really a 16:45 lifestyle modification that you need. And so moving let me ask you something. 16:51 Do you think the problem is that they really don't know or do I think a lot of 16:58 them don't know. I think even just your story, right? What you knew is what you 17:01 knew. There's nothing outside of your scope. And when you try to go outside, 17:06 all these people are quacks. I think prior to COVID, which really shined a 17:11 light on the monster, right? So, I've always been alternative. I've always 17:15 been the weirdo, the tin hatw wearing, right? You know, tree hugging, 17:21 Bible thumping. Put all the labels on me. You know, my my children who are 15 17:28 and 11 are completely unvaccinated. like before it was cool because I read a blog 17:34 by Dr. Sher Tenpenney and I was like made me question. So I'm a seeker of 17:38 knowledge. So I went down that rabbit hole and I remember fighting with 17:42 friends and even my parents and not fighting but just having to justify why 17:47 I was choosing not to do those things. And it was because I researched and that 17:52 led me down other paths of like why why all these questions even so much so that 17:58 you just talked about breaking a bone right now. There were things that I 18:02 needed for my son who just broke his hand. I needed an X-ray. So I needed a 18:07 physician to write that script. I took him in. He got an X-ray, came back out 18:11 and in 2 and 1/2 weeks he was pitching from a mound on the baseball field. So 18:16 and that came from all the holistic approaches. Now, if I would have put a 18:19 cast on his arm and done the traditional alipathic, which I still had care from a 18:24 physician that was qualified to look at the bone structure, but if I would have 18:28 done the alopathic model, he would still be out for the season. Oh, yeah. Sure. 18:33 So, I think the realization of the medical community coming forth and 18:40 setting their egos over here and saying maybe there is something to integrate 18:44 of. And I really give credit to two branches that have allowed for 18:50 integration from the functional side. One is cancer, right? So we saw that 18:55 from the Annie Apple seed and the second one is cardiology. I think cardiology is 19:00 the easiest because people know that lifestyle will prevent it. We hear that 19:04 stress causes heart attacks etc. But still the two most abused arms of the 19:10 medical practitioners and the alipathic field is a I think psychiatry. They can 19:16 write you a prescription without one test. They're just going to throw 19:19 medications at you. Uh if that doesn't work, let's try another one. They don't 19:24 Well, none of them work, right? They don't do anything for underlying 19:29 infections which the German of the journal of American medical association 19:33 JAMAMA psychiatric edition did an entire article on molecular mimicry. They did 19:37 an entire article about underlying infections and psychiatric disorders. 19:41 Nobody talks about it. The second one is women's health. That's another branch 19:46 where I went in at 13, 14 years old. Nobody did any blood work on me. They 19:50 didn't ask me anything about my lifestyle. They didn't ask me what I 19:53 eat, how I slept, how I moved, nothing. I was overweight and they put me on 19:56 birth control because I was having cramps. And I was on birth control from 20:00 the time I was 13 until I was probably 32 years old until I finally realized 20:06 that that was the last thing that I needed to change in my life. Like I had 20:10 changed everything else. And then nobody thought of birth control as a 20:14 medication. So I guess at the root women are 20:20 mistreated and mismanaged I guess is a better word in the alipathic because
Critique of Mammograms and Screening 20:26 there is no blood work. They tell you to go to your OB/GYN and she doesn't run 20:29 any blood work or he doesn't run any blood work. I've never had blood work by 20:32 my gynecologist ever. Yeah. You're not just whistle and Dixie. 20:39 So we are we are actually and continue to be a social 20:47 experiment. We we we really truly are. Um and I I think about this almost every 20:55 day because you know I talk about the whole mamographic screening program and 21:02 it's really I mean it is beyond disgraceful. We have known for 50 years. 21:08 50 years that mammogs do not save lives. And yet because they earn I had that 21:15 number in my head. Uh I forget how many it is. Is it an $80 billion industry? I 21:22 don't I don't it might be more than that. I might be light on my numbers. 21:28 Um, but because it is this like enormous 21:35 beast, the the mafia, the the mammogram mafia just you you can't they they just 21:43 suppress all the loud voices until mine mine's gotten pretty loud. I actually I 21:50 got a text message from a radiologist that I used to work with when I was a 21:55 surgeon just going off on me telling me that I should stay in my lane and you 22:03 know Yes, I know people fear change. They're 22:08 so afraid of change and we we have to know we have first of 22:16 all we have to maintain our curiosity. We have to maintain our curiosity. 22:20 That's all of us across the board. And as the information changes, so too 22:28 must our minds. Our minds must change as the information changes. And what they 22:34 were taught in medical school and in residency and in fellowship is what I 22:40 was taught in medical school and residency and fellowship. It just 22:45 doesn't happen to be true. Right? So the mamographic screening and incidentally 22:50 like anyone with a logical brain knows this intuitively anyway. So the fact 22:56 that we cannot convince the radiologists that mamogs are dangerous, it just blows 23:02 my mind and just shows you how how completely tunnled and blinded 23:10 they are. Right. It's like almost like a cognitive dissonance like they hear it 23:15 but they're not going to do it. And if they thought they were so safe, then 23:18 they should stay in the room. That's why I was on I was on with Dr. 23:22 Loi last night. Do you know Load? Uhuh. Tom Loy. He is a trip beyond anything 23:30 that you could ever imagine, a trip. Um, but he's that's exactly that's exactly 23:36 his response. If mamograms are so safe, why don't you stay in the room? 23:42 Right. Loading. 23:46 So this is the part that's so amazing to me that first of all women go along with 23:52 it. Mhm. Women go along with it. This would have never this social 23:59 experiment would have never happened to men. men at the very suggestion that 24:06 they should have anything put in between two plates and 24:10 have 20 to 50 pounds of pressure applied to it. Where do you think that would 24:16 have stopped at its conception? They wouldn't have even gotten a volunteer to 24:22 try it, right? Would never have happened. That would have never ever 24:27 ever been a screening program for prostate cancer ever. End of story. And 24:33 yet women are like, "Okay." Right. All right. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. 24:39 Back to the statement you made that we've known for decades that mammograms 24:44 do not prevent breast cancer. I just They don't save lives. Well, they 24:49 certainly don't prevent breast cancer. They cause breast cancer, but they don't 24:52 save lives. And it's the same thing that I was taught. I'm sure it's the same 24:57 thing you were taught when you were when you were coming through your training, 25:01 right? Because that's what we were all taught. And we also all assumed that if 25:08 this is such common knowledge, someone must have done the due diligence, right? 25:13 Like the data must be somewhere. I don't need to ask for it because it has to be 25:18 true. Everyone's saying it, right? So when the mamographic screening 25:23 program started in the 1970s, it was based on a very 25:30 logical, very comprehensible paradigm, right? It was 25:36 built on this foundational understanding that breast cancer growth is both linear 25:41 and predictable, right? So that means that breast cancer starts off small, 25:47 grows to some critical size, at which point it is more likely to metastasize. 25:52 So if you found it before that critical time, you could save lives and save 25:59 breasts. This is a very logical narrative, right? A very reasonable 26:06 narrative. It just doesn't happen to be true. 26:10 breast cancer growth is neither linear nor predictable and breast cancer 26:17 because there are linear and predictable cancers. Colon cancer is one of them. It 26:22 starts off as atypia and then it's a polip and then it's a malignant polip 26:27 and then and then and then right so we can very much 26:31 predict colon cancer. Same thing with cervical cancer. It follows a very 26:37 orderly progression. So if you find it early, you can make a tremendous 26:44 difference. You can prevent the clinical ramifications of that disease. This is 26:50 not true in breast cancer. Not true at all. Breast cancer is what it is from 26:56 the very beginning. And if it's an aggressive process, it doesn't matter 27:01 that you only found a small tumor in the breast. The only thing that finding a 27:07 small tumor gets you is what we call lead time bias in that that woman is 27:15 going to die of her disease if she has aggressive disease no matter what. So if 27:21 you find her tumor when she's on a screening 27:27 examination, she might live for 8 years but then die of her disease. If you wait 27:33 for it to be palpable, she might f, you know, it 27:37 might be found five years later and then she'll only live for three years. It's 27:42 the same 8 years. I see. Right. Mhm. It's just lead time bias. Now, 27:49 unfortunately, what lead time bias did to the statistics is we used 5 years as 27:55 the cutoff. So the woman who who cancer was picked up on a screen and she lived 28:02 for f for 8 years, she 28:07 survived. But the woman who was clinically 28:12 presenting and lived for 3 years, she died of breast cancer. They both died of 28:18 breast cancer cuz we're not using the right thing. We're using this surrogate 28:23 endpoint. We are not using overall survival because when you use overall 28:29 survival as the end point, mammograms do not save lives. They do not save lives. 28:37 Now we have some very very very big studies that demonstrate this. 28:44 So we look at the Swedish studies, 600,000 28:49 women because they have universal health care, they all have the same access to 28:55 care and the care that they get is equal. 300,000 screening with mammogram,
The Canadian Breast Cancer Screening Study 29:02 300,000 just doing physical examination, and maybe they're seen by their doctor 29:07 and getting a professional clinical examination every year. The same exact 29:12 number of women die of breast cancer in each group. The only difference between 29:17 them is if you screen with mammogram, you will diagnose 20 to 30% more 29:27 cancers. Now maybe that might be true across the 29:33 board, but maybe we can make a difference in younger people, right? 29:37 Maybe it's better to screen younger people. we don't have to worry about the 29:41 older people. Maybe maybe mamogram isn't helping them, but maybe mammogram is 29:45 helping the younger people, right? So, let's look at the data. The Canadian 29:50 breast cancer screening study, 90,000 women aged 40 to 29:55 59, 45,000 get screened with mammogram, 45,000 just have routine physical 30:03 examination every year. the same exact data, the same exact 30:08 number of women die of breast cancer in each group. And the only difference 30:13 between the groups are that if you screen with mammogram, you diagnose 20
Overdiagnosis in Cancer Screening 30:18 to 30% more breast cancers. And legit breast cancers or no? 30:25 Well, they are all invasive cancers. We didn't 30:30 count DCIS in this category. But when you say legit, I will say to 30:38 you, we are diagnosing women with a disease that would have never presented 30:45 clinically. Because if you do 30:50 autopsy examinations of women in car accidents, right, who didn't die of 30:57 breast cancer and all comers, all ages, you know, you're going to find breast 31:03 cancer in a majority of those breasts. If you look hard enough, you're going to 31:08 find it. It's the same thing with prostate cancer. If you look hard 31:12 enough, you're going to find it. There's a brilliant book called Overdiagnosed by 31:18 Gilbert Welch. Do you know this? Do you know this book? I've heard of the book. 31:21 Yeah. Yeah. And he And we're not just overdiagnosing breast cancer or prostate 31:27 cancer. We're also overdiagnosing thyroid cancer, which incidentally is
The Consequences of Over-Treatment 31:31 exactly what happened to me. And of thyroids just in general. Yeah. 31:39 Way too soon. Way too much. All I mean all the time. It's ridiculous. You have 31:45 a TSH that's slightly elevated, you get put on Levo or Synthroidid or something 31:50 like they'll put you on something. And I'm just like, hold on a second. Why Why 31:54 are we just throwing meds at people? Because they can and because that's they 31:58 scare you. It's ridiculous. That's also a way to guarantee that they're a 32:02 long-term customer because as you start to do that, then you completely 32:07 interfere with the body's own natural mechanisms and natural response and you 32:13 actually shut down the normal functioning of the 32:18 gland. So they it's a way to make them a lifetime customer. 32:24 Yeah. So totally. So, so we have a huge problem because we are 32:31 diagnosing 20 to 30% of these women with a disease that would have never 32:38 threatened their life, would have never become clinical 32:42 disease. And if treatment for breast cancer were 32:47 some benign thing, that would be one thing. But when you tell a woman you 32:52 have breast cancer, when you say those four words to her, you forever change 32:57 her life and not for the better. Not for the better. And treatment for breast 33:03 cancer is actually harmful in and of itself. No one ever got healthier by 33:10 having surgery and chemo and radiation ever. No one ever got healthier by 33:15 having those things. And in fact, this is the title to my next book, The 33:19 Forgotten Woman. When you treat a woman for breast 33:23 cancer, you are increasing her risk of cardiovascular disease by two to three 33:28 times. This is cardiovascular disease is already 33:33 exponentially exponentially the number one threat to a woman's life. And then 33:38 we're going to take a woman and treat her for a disease that she didn't need 33:43 to be treated for, that her body would have taken care of on its own, and we're 33:48 going to give her cardiovascular disease, 33:53 accelerate her risk, accelerate her disease. I mean, what are we doing? We 33:59 We took an oath. First, do no harm. This does not fall under that category at 34:04 all. or we're going to radiate her and accelerate cardiovascular disease, give 34:11 her a risk for cardiomyopathy that she would have never had before, or lung 34:16 cancer or restrictive lung disease, or even a fracture. How many women die 34:24 every year as a complication of a fracture? When you radiate the chest 34:29 wall, people can fracture their ribs because they become so brittle from a 34:35 sneeze, from a cough. And rib fractures have a 34:40 mortality rate, right? That is not insignificant. 34:47 So, and then there's the whole hormone blockade and putting women into 34:54 premature menopause and taking post-menopausal 34:58 women and wiping all of their hormones out entirely. And this comes at a huge
The Need for a Health Plan 35:07 price. A huge price. And so many times I hear, well, you know, I wasn't even 35:14 symptomatic when I went through menopause. I didn't have hot flashes. I 35:18 didn't have mood swings. I didn't have I didn't have I didn't 35:21 have. Doesn't matter whether you had the symptoms or didn't have the symptoms. 35:27 What's happening in your body and the deterioration that's happening in your 35:32 body, that's happening and it's happening in everyone. And our heart our 35:38 heart dis our heart health is rapidly deteriorated. Our brain health our bone 35:46 health. Every single year the same number of women that die of breast 35:50 cancer also die of a complication of a fracture. So you know we can't solve one 35:58 problem and cause three more. Right? and it's not weighing in favor right now. 36:05 Right now, we are causing way more problems than we're solving. Now, I want 36:10 to be clear and I am not saying that no one's breast cancer should be treated. I 36:14 am not saying that there that there are not aggressive breast cancers that need 36:19 every single thing that modern medicine has to offer. There are, right? 36:27 However, what we need to do is do a much better job at figuring out who does and 36:34 who does not need to be treated. And in addition to that, what treatment should 36:40 look like is yes, you you may need some some things that kill 36:45 cells maybe, but you need a health plan. You need 36:52 what no one's getting, right? Because everyone who gets a breast cancer 36:55 diagnosis gets a treatment plan. But what everyone who gets a diagnosis 37:00 needs, they need a health plan. They need to figure out how to eat, how to 37:05 think, how to drink, how to move, how to sleep, how to create a healing 37:11 environment, how to pray, how to believe, how to be hopeful, how to have 37:19 joy. This is what everyone needs. This is what makes the difference in the end 37:26 because the way that we're doing it now, we are consigning these people to a 37:32 horrible, horrible life. Because we tell these women who have been treated for 37:36 breast cancer that they should be grateful to be alive and they are 37:41 grateful, don't get me wrong. But it is very hard to feel grateful when you 37:46 can't think. When you can't remember your words, you can't sleep. You're 37:51 anxious. You're depressed. You have palpitations. You don't feel well. You 37:56 don't have energy. You're dizzy. You have vertigo. You've gained weight. Your 38:02 breasts are mutilated or absent. You have no libido. Sex is 38:09 unwanted and painful. You have dry skin, dry hair, dry everything. Your 38:15 relationship is suffering. It's very hard to feel grateful when all of this 38:20 is going on. And yet, this is how we leave women after breast cancer 38:24 treatment. Almost universally, this is how we leave women after breast cancer 38:29 treatment and tell them that they should be grateful to be alive. And it doesn't 38:32 feel like life. We're doing the wrong thing. And we're doing it unnecessarily 38:37 20 to 30% of the time. So, you know, if you use an 38:44 unsophisticated tool, a barbaric tool like mammogram to screen, this is what 38:51 happens. And for every 2,000 women we screen with mammogram over 10 years, you 38:58 may may save one life. You will cause a hundred women to be
Innovative Screening Methods 39:04 brought back for additional studies and biopsies that they didn't need and you 39:11 will cause anywhere from 10 to 50 women to be unnecessarily treated for breast 39:16 cancer. These numbers don't work. We are hurting people and it is unethical to 39:22 continue to do this. I just I just want to like drop the mic 39:27 right there and be like, "Thanks for but 39:30 but I mean that I I'm I'm lost for words, which doesn't happen to me a 39:36 lot." Um, wow. But I'll just say and I wish and I hope that people listen to 39:43 this over and over again and also your podcast which we're going to make 39:46 available in the show notes. But I want to get in to the last, you know, 20 39:51 minutes of this podcast or whenever you have to get off 10 minutes, whatever you 39:54 have. I need to know what you do in the industry as a physician now on the 40:00 functional side. How do and what are your plans because you got big plans 40:06 with your hear about that. So yeah, let's let's go
The Importance of Self-Examination 40:11 into here's what we should be doing by Dr. Yeah, absolutely. So, 40:18 first I I do have a screening paradigm, my trilogy that is 100% safe because if 40:28 you're using mamogram to screen for breast cancer, besides all the false 40:33 positives, besides the over diagnosis, it's actually causing some 40:39 cancers. Some of the breast cancers are actually a result of getting a mammogram 40:44 year after year after year because it's radiation and I don't want to hear 40:49 mammogram saved my life because it's great that your life is saved but 40:54 statistically speaking it's not true and no matter how many mammogs we do every 40:59 year the same exact number of women die of breast cancer. So mamogram is not
The Auria Tear Test 41:03 changing that bottom line. So to screen for breast cancer and when 41:11 we're talking about the screening population, we're talking about healthy 41:16 women, right? We're talking about women who we have no reason to believe that 41:21 they have disease, right? They don't have a lump in their breast. They don't 41:24 have any symptom. They're healthy women. So for a healthy woman, first of all, 41:29 everyone needs to be doing self-examination. No one is ever going 41:32 to know you better than you know yourself. Spoiler alert, every single 41:37 woman thinks her breasts are lumpy. Own your 41:41 lumps. Own your lumps. Know what your breasts feel like when they're normal so 41:45 that you can know what they feel like when something has changed. If you are 41:49 premenopausal, you're going to examine yourself day seven. So, if your period 41:55 is day zero, day seven. And then if you're post-menopausal, just do it on 42:01 the first of the month or any time that you're going to remember. So that's 42:05 that's the first thing. Everyone should be doing self-examination. If you don't 42:10 know how to do a self-examination, there is a self-examination pinned to the top 42:15 of my Instagram page. So just head on over there. Okay, that's the first 42:20 thing. The second thing that I am using for screening is a test called the Arya 42:25 TER test. A U R I A. Have you heard of this test? Yeah. So, what this test 42:32 does, it's not it's not a yes, you have breast cancer. No, you don't have breast 42:37 cancer test. This is a test looking for the inflammatory proteins that are 42:42 associated with the very early stages of breast cancer. So, this test is done, 42:49 it's an atome test. It's very inexpensive. You put a little litmus 42:53 paper in your eye, close your eye for 5 minutes, take it out, put it in some 42:57 fluid, and send it off. Send it back to the company. You get an answer a week 43:01 and a half later as to it's either normal or you have a clinically 43:06 significant result. Now, what this test is looking for are two proteins that are 43:13 that are upregulated. There's more of them made in women who have breast 43:18 cancer and they for whatever the reason become abundant in your tears. Don't ask 43:23 me why. I don't know the answer. If you this test has a 43:30 sensitivity of 93% which is way better than any 43:36 mammogram ever ever while being 100% safe. Okay. 43:43 93% sensitivity. So, it's only going to miss 7% of breast cancers. And the 43:50 breast cancers that it's missing according to the data are the more 43:56 advanced ones. So, something about this protein must go away as cancer 44:02 progresses. So, but if you have a large mass in your breast and lymph nodes, 44:07 this is not screening, right? So, it's not a test to use if you have a good 44:13 reason to believe that you have breast cancer. If you have a good reason to 44:16 believe you have breast cancer, please, please, please go get help. Go get 44:21 treated. Go see a breast specialist, right? Don't try to figure this out. 44:26 Don't get the ARA test and feel good if it comes back normal. Like, do not pass 44:32 go. Do not collect $200. Just, you know, straight straight to the to the 44:37 specialist for help. Okay. The specificity of this test meaning that 44:44 the person that doesn't have the test but and and is identified as negative, 44:52 right? That doesn't have breast cancer but is identified as negative. That's 44:57 58%. That means that 42% of the time if you don't have breast cancer, this test 45:03 is going to be clinically significant. Now, this is where what this test is and 45:09 what this test does comes in. I will tell you that there are no false 45:14 positives on this test. If this test is clinically significant, you do have the 45:20 inflammatory precursors to breast cancer. So, everyone who has a 45:25 clinically significant result needs imaging to find out if you have breast 45:29 cancer right now. However, a lot of women are not going to 45:35 have anything seen on imaging. But what you have is 45:40 opportunity because you know that you're on the trajectory to develop breast 45:45 cancer. And if we follow those women, every 6 months another if you do nothing 45:51 but follow them, every 6 months another 11% will develop breast cancer. 45:59 So what do we do? Well, again, this is opportunity. You know what trajectory
Revolutionary Imaging Techniques 46:06 you're on. You also know that you have the opportunity to change it. So I have 46:13 developed the breast cancer uh prevention program and if you get a 46:19 clinically significant result, come join my group. Come join my group so that we 46:25 can help you to turn that pathology around. Turn that physiology around. 46:31 Turn that process around so that you don't have to develop clinical disease 46:35 and so that you don't have to get treated. Instead, you can just foster 46:41 your health. Because when we foster our health, when our health grows, disease 46:46 goes away. And that's what I want. What I want for everyone is prevention. 46:53 I don't want you to have to develop the disease and have to and have to work 46:59 that hard to reverse it. Let's just halt it in its tracks. Let's prevent it 47:05 before it even becomes a thing, right? So we can get it before we can get at 47:12 the roots before anything really comes out over out comes out over the ground. 47:20 So that's part two. I have everyone do the Arya test. 47:25 Now even with that, women want imaging. They just want imaging. I don't know if 47:32 it's we've been so trained. I don't know what it is, but women want imaging. So I 47:39 have two suggestions. The first is I opened the first Perfection Imaging on 47:44 the East Coast in August of 2024. I have 50 planned in the next 5 years 47:52 and I want to make sure that every single woman who wants access to this 47:56 imaging gets access to this imaging. This is revolutionary soundwave imaging 48:03 that's transmitted through a warm water bath. You've had the scan yourself. You 48:09 can attest to it is a lovely experience unlike anything you've had thus far. 48:18 Yes. Very very different. An extreme different. And I personally didn't have 48:23 the scan. I went with Amber, my assistant. Had the scan because we went 48:27 through that gamut where she was DCIS and they wanted to do a double mistctomy 48:32 and etc. And I was like, "Hold on, we're we're going to Dr. Jen." Okay. It was so 48:38 lovely. Your facility is beautiful. First, your staff is amazing. And we 48:43 went in there and it was quiet and peaceful and serene and it was just it 48:49 was almost like being in a spa. That's I said to Amber, I was like, "Are are we 48:53 in the right place?" Like I was like, "Is this really an image?" And so, yeah, 48:57 she was lowered in. That's very intentional. Yeah, it's it's extremely 49:02 relaxing. And even afterwards, there was no rushing you out the door. They were 49:06 like, "Have a seat." You know, so and it was it was non-invasive. It was quick. 49:11 It was quiet. Nothing like there was no smell of hospital chemicals and cold and 49:18 I would never allow that in my space. Oh, I know that. I knowestrogens are 49:23 allowed in there. So, it was absolutely wonderful. And I think the piece that
Empowering Women in Healthcare Decisions 49:28 you provide women walking in with just the uh atmosphere and the way that your 49:33 staff is trained and the whole experience itself is intentional for the 49:38 central nervous system to reset itself. I think it's a huge part of what you do. 49:42 So it is. It was wonderful. It is. So I'm on a mission to open 50. So just 49:48 know that there will be a perfection imaging near you soon. If you cannot 49:55 come to us, we have one in uh the suburbs of Philadelphia. We have one in 50:01 um Nevada, California, so right outside of San Francisco. And but if you can't 50:07 come to one of ours, then ultrasound is a very viable 50:13 option. Is it as good as QT? No, it's not. Will it pick up everything that QT 50:20 can pick up? No, it won't. But it's okay. It's okay because if you're having 50:26 the Arya test and you're doing self breast examination and you're staying on 50:30 top of it and you're being proactive because that is the main most important 50:35 thing if you are being proactive then we can prevent diagnosis. 50:42 We can prevent that and this is the way to do it. So this is my big mission. 50:47 This is what I'm going to spend the next 5 or 10 years of my life 50:52 building. Um, so I'm going to do 50 and five, 50:57 110. And you know, I I'm I'm 100% certain 51:03 that I'm going to change the world. At the same time, I still do care for women 51:09 with breast cancer. and my my medical practice which is called Real Health MD, 51:15 we are um helping women at every single stage. 51:21 So if you're just diagnosed, if you are in treatment, if you have completed 51:28 treatment and you're wondering now what because there are a lot of women, 4 51:32 million women in the US in that position. 51:37 um or if you are a brocha mutation carrier or at high risk, you're trying 51:43 to to be preventative or you're living with 51:47 metastatic disease. If you're in any of those buckets, we have programming for 51:53 you and we have programming that is really tailored to you because we're 51:59 looking at your genetics and we're really trying to give you what you need. 52:05 and it's very personalized and um very individualized and at the same time I 52:12 have an enormous support community. So we're I I'm 52:18 really I want to obviously prevent this disease. I I don't want women to have to 52:24 suffer with this, but if you do develop this disease, I'm here for you. And 52:30 that's why I wrote The Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer because right now 52:35 what's happening to women as they get this diagnosis is horrible. They are 52:40 being filled with fear. They are being placed on this runaway train of 52:45 treatment without being given the opportunity to think, the space to 52:52 think, the information that they need to make an informed decision. I mean, it's 52:57 just not happening right now. And if you think about 53:02 it, probably you have breast cancer are the four worst words a woman can hear, 53:09 right? And we go right into our danger response. I mean, our body really only 53:16 understands two states. It understands safety and it understands danger. And 53:21 the second we're in danger, the cognitive part of our brain, it's 53:26 done. And it's very intentional. I mean that's a survival mechanism, right? 53:31 Because we don't understand these sophisticated dangers that we're dealing 53:36 with these days. We understand sabertooth tiger on your tail. That's 53:41 all we understand. So our only response that we can come up with is run. So if 53:49 all you need to do is run, all the blood is shunted away from your from your 53:55 forebrain towards your monkey brain because it doesn't want you to think 54:00 about h should I take a right or a left or maybe I should go the way that I went 54:05 last Tuesday like no run just run. Right? So, how are you 54:13 going to make a decision that's going to affect you for the rest of your life? 54:18 How are you going to carefully consider the details when all your brain is 54:24 saying is run? You can't. You can't. And yet, these 54:31 women are like forced like, "Oh, I I got to get you on the schedule. Got to get 54:35 on the schedule. We have an opening next. You got to get on the schedule." 54:38 Very rushed. Very rushed. Yeah. And it's scary and it's terrifying. And that's 54:44 intentional. I think that's intentional. It is intentional. Of course, it's 54:49 intentional because if they get if they're given the time and space to 54:53 think and educate and consider and 54:57 learn, then they'll make a different decision. They will. Women will choose 55:03 something that's bad for them when they're in that when they're in that 55:08 stressed state. And they won't make that same choice when given the opportunity 55:15 to relax and think and you know and these decisions affect these women for 55:22 the rest of their lives. Mhm. And sometimes they impact the rest of their 55:27 lives terribly. So you something from the stage when we were at Annie Apple 55:32 Seed. who said, "A woman that has a breast removed because of cancer is 55:39 always going to think she has cancer and always remember that she'll never she'll 55:43 never come another day, right? Forget that was really profound. I was like, 55:47 "Wow." Um, you know, and we talked about this at the convention. You know, any 55:53 decision made out of emotion is a bad decision. Whether you're in love and 55:57 gonna get married in Vegas or you know you are sitting in front of somebody 56:02 who's saying we got to get you immediately into chemo and radiation 56:06 there's always space to think and that's what happened to Amber and I she called 56:09 me and I said you're not dying today like and we're not making a decision 56:12 today so we're going to go home. Well and statistically speaking with DCIS 56:17 you're never dying of that disease. I mean everyone's going to die right but 56:22 you're never dying of DCIS. No one ever dies of DCIS and yet women are 56:27 pressured. And you know that that is another thing that I want to talk about 56:32 just briefly about mammogram is that you know even if it wasn't saving lives but 56:38 it was saving breasts that would be a worthwhile endeavor but the data around 56:43 mammograms is that when you use mammogram to screen the mastctomy rate 56:49 has increased by 20%. increased. We are not saving lives. We are not saving 56:56 breaths. Yeah. So, it's really really important that 57:02 we respect the change, right? That we know 57:09 that the data is not there in support of that 57:15 program. And we have to now change our minds, change our ways, change our 57:21 practices. And the truth is that at the end of the 57:25 day, the doc the the patient is the doctor of the future. And that is not to 57:31 say that you have to be your own doctor and make your own decisions. But the 57:34 truth is that no one is going to care about you as much as you care about 57:40 yourself. And the decisions that you make are affecting you. And that doctor 57:46 that is dictating something from across the table, that doctor goes home to 57:51 their life and their family at the end of the day. And they don't have to live 57:54 with the consequences of that decision. Only you do. And what we all need to 58:00 remember is, you know, no one ever got healthier inside of a doctor's office or
Final Thoughts 58:05 a chemotherapy suite or a radiation suite or a hospital. Like that's not 58:11 where health happens. Health happens at home with the things that you do every 58:16 single day. And you have so much more power than you 58:22 think. And your power lies in the fact that if you build health, disease goes 58:29 away. And you have the power to build your health. 58:35 Love it. Well, I could listen to you all day. All day. I could just sit here and 58:40 just let you talk forever. And I'm sure everybody's probably thinking the same. 58:44 So, I'm sure a lot of people are, you know, listening to this for the first 58:48 time having that epiphany and it's probably pretty scary. So, I am going to 58:53 make all the links that Dr. Jen talked about from her group to the tear test 58:58 from her um anything that she talked about her Instagram, her book, I'll put 59:04 it all in the show notes. That way, if you need to connect with Dr. Jen 59:07 Simmons, you certainly can. or her staff will also give you a list of where you 59:12 can find her her QT scans. Um, wonderful. So, Dr. Jen, thank you so 59:18 much for your courage, your compassion, your deeprooted commitment on changing 59:23 how women experience health care. I mean, your story is such a beacon of 59:28 hope for women everywhere who are searching for more than prescriptions 59:32 and more than just the alipathic model of this is what you have to do today. 59:37 right now the second uh they're looking for that partnership, that truth, that 59:41 healing, and I think they'll absolutely find it where you are any place on the 59:46 earth. So, for those listening, if this was something that you feel you need or 59:51 somebody else needs, please share this. Make sure you grab a copy of Dr. Jen 59:55 Simmons book, The Smart Women's Guide to Breast Cancer. You can find that on her 59:59 website and on Amazon and other places. And please learn how to protect your 1:00:04 health, and you will learn how to own it. That's for sure. So, would you like 1:00:09 to leave us with any parting words, Dr. Jen Simmons? Oh my god. I think we've 1:00:13 said most almost all of it, but I I will leave you with my mantra, which is that 1:00:19 breast health is health and the same exact things that you're going to do to 1:00:23 have healthy breasts are going to give you a healthy brain and a healthy heart 1:00:27 and healthy bones and healthy joints and healthy skin and healthy mood and 1:00:32 healthy parts. So just remember that we are all one system and we are charged by 1:00:42 God to take care of this vessel that you are in on this earth. This is your 1:00:48 responsibility to do. And when you assume that responsibility and take 1:00:54 charge of your health, it is really a beautiful, beautiful thing. 1:01:01 Amen. Well, thank you again for being here. Thanks everybody for listening. 1:01:05 Make sure you subscribe. Make sure you share this podcast and we will see you 1:01:10 next time. God bless.
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