#234 QT Scan Revolutionizes BREAST IMAGING for Women with Dr. Yvonne Karney!

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Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself, and in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists, and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson. Today I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Yvonne Carney. She's a traditionally trained gynecologist who realized that she needed more tools to be able to serve her patients. And she transitioned into offering integrative care to her patients and has now gone into offering a new form of breast imaging for women as. And that's especially why I'm excited for you to be here today, Dr. Yvonne, to tell us more about what should women be thinking about when it comes to breast imaging? What are the options available? We know about mammograms, but what are the other options? And how can women be more taking charge of their breast health in being preventive but also monitoring for potential issues? Because tell me if this is true. But my understanding is that the earlier we can identify an issue with breast health, the better.

Right? Absolutely. And thank you for having me, Dr. Donney. It's such a pleasure to be here with you. And, you know, as a gynecologist for over 25 years, I have ordered, you know, thousands of imaging studies on women. And, you know, some of the women. In fact, the CDC estimates that 30 to 40% of women who are eligible for mammogram based on age don't get screened. And so as the gynecologist, women would share with me some of their concerns as to why they wouldn't get screened. You know, fear of radiation, pain from compression, anxiety from a callback that end up being nothing. But the woman is, you know, completely anxious for one to three weeks while she's waiting for that all clear. But in my training as a traditional gynecologist, I was not really able to answer those questions. You know, I was like, well, yeah, but it's better than undiagnosed breast cancer. So here's your prescription. Go get your screening done. But always, you know, in the back of my head was this little tiny voice going, is that the best we have? And doesn't radiation cause cancer? So here you are radiating a woman's breast, but you say that radiation causes Cancer. And so these, these, you know, these little questions that, that, that need and deserve to be answered. And so I, you know, I'd like to start with what is informed consent and how that's been missing for 50 years in women's breast imaging.

Wow, that's such a good point.

Because informed consent relies on an honest conversation about what do we know about what we're doing, what are the limitations? Which means we're not quite sure if it does this or not, or there, there might be some things we hope it does that it may not do. And limitations are different from risks because risks actually can cause harm, whereas limitations are just things that we don't know. Right. And then what are the benefits? So the reason breast imaging is important and why we've been doing it for 50 years is because if we catch, if we image the breast, we can catch a problem about 10 years before it would become apparent to the woman. That's what's estimated based on the doubling time of most tumors, is an imaging study can pick it up when at least a mammogram, when it's 1 to 2 millimeters in size, whereas you're not going to feel a lump that's 1 to 2 millimeters. It's about a centimeter before the woman feels it. And so by that time it's more advanced. So for sure, what the screening does is it makes it easier to treat because it's much easier to remove a little tiny area with some normal tissue around it than if it's 1-2 cm by the time you diagnose it, then you're removing a lot more breast tissue and it's disfiguring. Or perhaps the woman would need a mastectomy by that point to remove the entire breast. Now, they would think the ultimate goal would be decreasing death from cancer. And the death from breast cancer has declined. But we actually think that the decline in rate, not in numbers, in rate, meaning the percent of women with breast cancer that will die from the disease has gone down. But we don't think that's attributable to screening. We think it's attributable to the advances in treatment. But still to have those lumpectomy versus a mastectomy. Right. Or be a candidate for cryotherapy, which is freezing and no incisions. Those are big advantages and a reason to consider getting screening done. So that's the benefit.

And I think you're, you're right, though. Like in those statistics that are saying, you know, that 30 to 40% of women are eligible or in the age range that we would recommend screening. And yet they're not getting it done, likely because of fear, different fears. And, and like saying, hey, like, you know, probably thinking, are there other options? So let's talk about. Because, I mean, there are some other options out there. I mean, of course, it's. These are not yet considered to be, like, official recommendations, but there's thermography. There's. There's also ultrasound. And then I'm excited to talk to you about the newest one on the block, which is the cut imaging. What is your. Like, how can you break it down for women and say, okay, like, I think, I mean, ultrasound is more common, I think because often women with dense breasts, even their, their gynecologist or their breast surgeon, if they're working with a breast specialist, might suggest an ultrasound if they're, if the mammogram is not clear or, you know. Right. So those are more common.

And there's a MRI because about 40 to 50% of women actually have dense breasts.

That's.

And mammogram is not very good at finding small lesions in women with dense breasts because the way the mammogram works is it's picking up little white spots called micro calcifications. But when the whole breast is dense, it's covered, colored.

Everything looks white, so you can't see. Yeah.

So you're finding a polar bear in a snowstorm, basically. Right. So the. So that's why they're saying, well, mammogram is not that good for dense breasts. Let's add ultrasound because at least it'll. It's something besides just mammography. And so for women with dense breasts now they are offered an ultrasound. It's not, it's not often paid for by insurance. Insurance is only mandated to cover the screening mammogram. And most of them don't cover the additional imaging that's required for callbacks or, or if you have dense breasts.

And I've even seen now that there's ultrasound clinics that women can just self.

Oh, yeah, all over. You can do that with other things. There's that whole body MRI now pernuvo, that's out there for. So these companies are. There are companies popping up that are realizing that people, you know, savvy health individuals want to take control of their own health, and they don't want to meet certain criteria or be told, oh, you don't need that study. If they want it for their peace of mind and they're making an educated decision. It's It's a consideration. We, you know, you certainly have to look at risks and benefits and things like that. And if something could be harmful, then maybe have to need a doctor to recommend something that has risk to go with it. But if it's not risky, you kind of wonder why couldn't people get that done on themselves? So that these are.

So ultrasound has lower risk. It doesn't have the radiation.

There's no radiation and there's no compression. Like, you know, the mammogram squishes the breast down to 1 cm and it uses about 45 pounds of pressure in order to do that. And if you're large breasted or very small breasted, it can be pretty painful. And so that was, you know, that's why a lot of women have opted out of mammogram and then other ones. It's for the radiation question. Because even though it's not much radiation per scan, it can be cumulative over time. So, you know, your lifetime risk could be elevated. In fact, there's studies that say, there was a study that came out in the 2000 that said for every 100,000 mammograms performed, there will be 88 induced breast cancers, radiation induced breast cancers, and 11 breast cancer deaths.

Wow.

And that was extrapolated from atomic bomb survivors based on, but you know, the, the theory with the, you know, the freight train still rolling down the tracks, I, I, in my heart, I believe that the doctors think they're doing good and, and that they're saying, but the benefit of early detections outweigh that risk. Right. And so, or that, or they don't know about it. I didn't know about it. This study came out in the early 2000s and I was practicing gynecology then, but I didn't find it until recently. And so I would challenge your women listeners. Last time your doctor gave you a mammogram prescription, did they tell you that there's a radiation induced cancer risk? I'm going to bet the answer is no. So that's what's missing. That's why I'm saying it. You know, but the early detection is there, so shouldn't a person be able to make that decision for themselves though? You know, give them the facts and rely on them to make decisions rather than just handing them a prescription and shaming them if they decide against it. Right, because women are almost coerced.

Yes, they really are. It's really pushed. There's a lot of pressure to do the mammogram and they are not telling you about these other options.

So they may not know, but somebody knows because it's out there.

Ultrasound is. It could. How much would ultrasound, like how carefully can it identify or how much might it miss?

Great question. See ultrasound, handheld ultrasound. It has several things. It's operator dependent because, you know, there the operator is pushing over the woman's breast and pausing if she thinks or he thinks they see something and, and then taking a picture of it. But it's not necessarily filming the whole thing. And the radiologist isn't looking at the whole film. They're only looking at the still frame picture. So if the ultrasound technician goes too fast over an area and misses it, then it's missed on ultrasound. But the bigger issue is that it's reflection. So it's like sonar, so it's sound waves, but it reflects off the tissue and then spreads.

Right.

And so as it's spreading, you get all this artifact and it's like trying to say what was the size of the rock that hit the lake by looking at the ripples in the water afterwards. So it's not super accurate. But combined with mammography, the goal is that there's going to be less things missed. But the beauty is I'm going to just jump right into qt. If that's okay, let's do it.

Tell them that's, that's, I think now they're like, okay, so we understand those two options. Tell us the QT and how it outweighs them.

Yeah. So this is revolutionary and it's actually using the speed of sound through tissue as well as traditional ultrasound. So this is reflection ultrasound, but then there is a special device and beam that also measures the speed of sound through the tissue. And there's studies that validate what type of tissue, how fast sound travels through different types of tissue. So this is actually really good at distinguishing tissue type that would be found on biopsy because you can only tell for sure what type of tissue it is when a sample is taken. But it can find lesions less than a millimeter in size, like 0.1 millimeters down to. It can. And it, because of the way it's so thorough. There's 36 billion data points picked up by, by this machine as it's rotating and analyzing the images afterwards. And it, it does all this with no compression, no radiation, no IV contrast. The woman lays on a bed with, with a hole about this big and one breast is imaged at a time. The breast is submersed in warm water, body temperature water, and the probe and the the imaging device circles very slowly around the breast and there is no gaps, there's no missed information. So it's.

So it like, it like solves all the issues of these other two that we were talking.

Yes. And it's true 3D imaging. You hear about like, oh, but I had a 3D mammogram that's not 3D. It's approximated 3D by stacking 2D images on top of each other. So you know, they're approximating that it's 3D, but there's 2 millimeter gaps between each segment.

That's so they're still missing missing information.

It's like pixels. If you've ever photoshopped something and you're removing a spot on the face, how does it know what color to make the, you know, that spot? It takes what is above and what is below and blends those colors together. So this is. Those other things are computer generated 3D images. Whereas Qt is there because of the way the probes are angled and there's so many data points. It does volumetric imaging and so it can even be used to monitor response to therapy in as little as two weeks because they can measure something called doubling time. And if the doubling time is shrinking, it's negative. That means something's getting smaller. And they're starting to try to figure out how to use it to determine how fast something is growing. So like you're not growing much at all, then it's not likely serious. But if it's growing fast, then don't delay in getting your biopsy or your treatment done. So that this is like, even if.

Someone has a tumor and they're, they're having treatment for that tumor, then to be able to monitor the treatment or monitor the, the severity of how quickly it's shrinking.

Yeah, that's one of the ways it's, it's being yours.

And it can be repeated. It's not like, like some of these, it's not like you're going to have a mammogram every two weeks.

No, it can be repeated because there's no risk. Right. There's just water and, and sound waves.

That's amazing. I mean, and you use the word revolutionary, it definitely sounds revolutionary. And yet it's like, with most things that come become available in the medical world, it takes time to get integrated. Right. Like right now, practitioners are trained to talk about mammogr. It's probably going to take a while for them to even know about this and for clinics to start offering the QT imaging. But I'm so excited to tell everybody that you are one of the first clinics to have a QT scan or in your office.

Yes. When I heard about this.

Me and a few other kind of forward thinking trailblazers decided this needs to come out to women. And if we wait for imaging centers to have it, it's going to be 10 to 15 years, if at all. They're very entrenched in the current system and I think the doctors believe that it's the best. But sometimes it's not doctors that make decisions for healthcare systems. I was very surprised to learn that over 25% of hospitals are owned by hedge funds, investing companies. And why would they want to get rid of a cash cow of mammogram, additional views, biopsy, MRI? It's an $8 billion industry.

And so they're not financially motivated to make any changes now. I think the doctors are motivated to do what's best for their patients, but if they don't hear about it, then they don't know. And so that's why I was like, I got to get this out there. So I've been working for the last year and a half to try to figure out how to bring it to my clinic and I finally did. So it's here in Crystal Lake. I'm about just under an hour outside of o' Hare Airport. We're having people come in from out of state. You don't even need to. I mean, I'm a doctor. I have a functional medicine practice where we care for women with all sorts of hormone issues and we care for men too. But we're not even requiring people to become patients in the practice to have this imaging done. So we want to bring it to women at a grassroots level because that's the only way it's going to get out there someday. I think the radiology centers will offer it, but it's going to be based on demand from the grassroots level. And I don't want to wait 10 years. I wanted to bring it out. Now.

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And people need to recognize that, that it's like a choice they're going to be making for their health. And it may be that they need to invest in a flight to get there and the cost of the imaging and the flight back home. But if you think about it, that's so much worth it if it means you can identify any kind of abnormality early and take away all that fear and anxiety related to the other old way of doing this. I'm going to call it the old way because it's now the old way. This is the new way.

It hasn't changed in 50 years breast imaging. There was a small change in 2011 when they came up with the digital tumult tomosynthesis, but that's it. 50 years of doing the same old thing.

Can you imagine? This is such old technology and here we are, we've got to be able to use this new technology, but we have to understand that it's not going to get covered by insurance. What is the cost? Like, what are we talking about in terms of someone paying for their own QT imaging?

Right now our pricing structure is it's $550 for a screening scan, which means no symptoms and no previous history of cancer abnormalities. And it's 625 for a diagnostic scan because there's more study. You know, we have to, we have to have an interpreting radiologist and they're looking at, they charge us more because they have to look at prior films if they're available. And we're doing more, more legwork afterwards.

And is this something that you think women should start thinking about as an annual screening then, or how often do you repeat it?

Great question. It really depends. So what we're doing is we're offering the scans and the radiologist reading it is recommending when a repeat scan should be done. Typically if this is the first scan, he's been recommending one year and then if they're normal, risk, changing it to every other year at that point. But if they're high risk with a family history or genetic predisposition to breast cancer, than sticking with the once a year. And right now, for women that are doing the traditional recommendations, high risk women are offered, some of them a mammogram at six month intervals and others are offered alternating mammogram and breast MRI each at six month intervals so that there's two imaging sessions a year, but one's an MRI and one's a mammogram. But you know, breast MRI requires IV contrast with a heavy metal called gadolinium. So that has some downsides too. And I'm, I'm not, I'm not trying to go to war with mammogram there. You know, it's the established thing and it's what is, you know, FDA cleared for breast screening, breast cancer screening.

But I think it's really important for women to know risks, benefits and alternatives. And if, especially those women who've already made that decision, and a lot of my current patients have already made that decision, I'm never doing a mammogram again. Is there anything else? I'm like, yes, let's do this. But if someone is comfortable with their mammograms and they know the risk, benefits and alternatives and that's the screening method they choose I support that, but some sort of screening.

Yeah, but it's like, at least to know that there's. There's another option, especially if. Yeah, you're, like, weighing everything out. And I mentioned thermography earlier. I mean, what is your take on thermography? How do you think it fits into these options?

I had been asked that a lot as, you know, an integrative gynecologist, especially by the women who were like, I don't want a mammogram. Can I get a thermogram instead? And. And I do. You know, there are some benefits to thermography. The benefit is that it's looking at inflammation. And we know that cancer is an inflammatory illness.

And it can pick up small amounts of inflammation that could be precursors to cancer before you ever get cancer. But the issue is it's very sensitive, but not specific. If you have a mosquito bite, if you have a chest cold, if you have any kind of inflammation anywhere in your body from here to here, it lights up. It doesn't find masses. And so if you find areas of inflammation in the breast and then you say, oh, my goodness, what is this? What should I do with this? Nobody knows. You have to go get imaged, because.

Then you're going to go to the next step. And that's what I. I see with patients. And it can be like, at least something people, because there's not the risk of exposure radiation. It's no risk, but it's like, it's something you can do to be proactive. And yet if something comes up, like you're saying, if it lights up red, they're.

What do you do?

Then you're like, okay, now I need to go in. And I. Patients where they did thermography and they ended up. Then they went and they did the follow mammogram, and they did find a tumor. So it was like, okay, in some cases, it can kind of bring up your. Your decision to get further imaging. But I, I see, you know, I agree with you and I see what you mean. I'm like, we still might. It still might just be giving you all kinds of red signals, and it may not be a concern. And so then you don't want to just see. You're right back to the mammogram again. And in this case, we could say, well, you could instead follow up with cutie imaging. Yeah, mammogram. And you're like, I still want to be. To me, it sounds like cut imaging is even more specific than mammogram.

Definitely. Oh, it can pick up. Mammogram will pick up lesions, you know, a millimeter in size or more. QT could pick them up less than a millimeter.

So it's going to pick up. So it's going to pick up what the mammogram doesn't pick up?

Potentially, yes, for sure. Especially in dense breasts, which, you know, the women who have a history of cancer, breast cancer in their family or have the genetic predisposition, they're starting in their 30s. Yeah. And if they're, you know, recommended to get a mammogram every year starting in their 30s, that's a lot. That ends up being a lot by the time they're 60.

It does, it is a lot. And it's like, and I think it's such an important. Because this, this breast cancer is the number one cancer in women. Right. It's still like very, like, it's, it's something that like we bring, we have October awareness month for breast cancer. But I think it's important that we're aware of this all the time, that this is something that it's easy to, to dismiss and sort of set aside with our busy lives, but to be, to bring it back to our focus and say, wait a minute, this is, this is part of taking care of myself and my body is. I'd much rather catch it early because when we can catch it early sometimes then you don't even need to have surgery or chemo. Like, let's try to catch it way earlier. I'm so glad to know. And I want to make sure everybody knows how to find out about your clinic. So you're, if you're listening and you're like, okay, I want to come see Dr. Yvonne and get QT imaging scan, you can go to Chicago Breast Imaging.com I'm going to put the link down below as well. But Chicago breast imaging dot com. Just think of Chicago, because right now there's very few clinics that are offering this around the country. Right. Or even around the world.

Only six in the United States. I have the only one in the Midwest. Yeah.

So you're going to, if you want to do this, you're going to. Likely it's not going to be in your local area. Likely you're going to need to travel somewhere. And, and so, yeah, it sounds like this is a, would be a really good use of your time, you know, people's time to schedule it. And like you said, you're, you're offering this as like someone could literally schedule it, fly in to Chicago and You're in the middle of the country. You can fly in, do your scan with you, then fly back home, and then you have that information. And. And this is true. Would you say. It sounds like you're saying even someone who's had a breast cancer history, they could add this to their treatment regimen. Like, I'm really curious to know what some of the breast cancer specialists are thinking about this. Do you. Do you happen to know what they're thinking, the physicians?

Yeah.

Like the oncologist, the breast oncologist, and surgeons.

That is going to be coming. This is part of. When you're a pioneer and a trailblazer, you start doing things before other people. You know, they're like, oh, no, I don't want to learn about that. I'm doing things this way. Well, now that we're in the Chicagoland area, we're going to be referring people, if they have abnormal scans, to breast surgeons. So I'm really looking.

They're going to start learning.

Yes, they're going to have to. And initially, they may write, they may force the women. Not force, but they may say, I can't operate on you until you have your mammogram. Right. Because that's their comfort level and what they're dealing with. But I'm really hoping that over time, when they see, oh, yeah, look, it did show this on the QT scan, and that's exactly what they found on the mammogram. And the biopsy confirmed it. That once we have that data lined up, then there will be less resistance. But of course there's going to be resistance earlier. If I waited to have a breast surgeon agree with me, we wouldn't be doing this yet. And so we have to kind of force the issue by bringing it out there and then giving women all, you know, the care they need afterwards.

Oh, my gosh.

Of course the majority. Right. Are going to have normal scans, and that's the good news. But the callback rate is less with. Much less with qt, because it can. It's better at telling whether something is cystic or solid. Mammogram can't do that. It can't tell if it's fluid or solid very well. And so, you know, whether you need.

A biopsy or not.

Right. The only way. It's important that people understand, the only way you know for sure whether you have cancer is to put a needle in it or cut it out. They have to look at it under a microscope. You can have suspicious findings. And so suspicious findings make someone think, wow, that could be cancer. But the only way to know for sure if it is is to have the tissue sample.

So then. So QT is more likely to identify the right people who really need a biopsy versus people where maybe they didn't really need to go through a biopsy.

Right. One of my patients broke my heart, and she's fine now. Fine. But, you know, she had a mammogram, and she needed a call back. She went through the whole rigmarole. They did a biopsy. Thank goodness the biopsy came back benign. But guess what? She developed a hematoma, which is a big blood clot inside the breast at the site they biopsied. They had to go in and surgically drain it. So the good news is, ma', am, you don't have cancer. Yay. That's great. But what about the bad news that now you have this big, deformed, you know, breast with lumpy tissue now from the scarring, from the. From the hematoma. All that to prove she didn't have cancer.

And really, it really makes you think, right? You really have to say, like, wait a minute. What are we doing here? How can we be much more pinpointed at who really needs to do more invasive procedures? Right? It comes down to.

Saying, let's not do invasive procedures unless it's absolutely necessary. Then that's the goal.

Better imaging will lead to faster reassurance when someone has a benign finding and then more pinpointed as to what to do next if biopsy is recommended or needed.

So I'm so. I'm so glad everyone's getting to hear this and listen and. And thank you so much for sharing all of this. Is there anything else that you feel like women should know about their breast health or even preventing breast cancer? Like, what should we. How should we be thinking about this, that maybe we're not hearing from our regular gynecologist?

Well, you know, we do hear. You know, I think if you were to ask a woman what they would be most fearful of, it's breast cancer. No, but the tumor is not the problem. It's the inflammation and the suppressed immune system. So all this breast imaging is important, but it doesn't prevent cancer. The only way you prevent cancer is to eat right, get rid of toxins in your life, and learn how to manage your stress, even when you have a family history. 85% of breast cancers are not from a family history. They're from toxic lifestyle, toxic, you know, burden. We don't have control over the toxins that we were Exposed to for how many years of our lives? Because maybe when we were growing up, they didn't know certain things were toxic. But now that we're learning all of this about what are these toxins that go into fat, get stored preferentially in fat, which the breast is. So it's. And then it's no wonder that breast cancer shows up because it's a storage basin with all the fat for these toxins. And so breast imaging is important, but breast cancer prevention starts with you in your house.

It's such a good point and I love that. That's what we talk about a lot on how humans heal is like how do we. And not just breast cancer, but all kinds of cancer. You know, I specialize in cervical cancer and it's the same you like when we're talking about risk for HPV related cancer, it's not like in the case of breast cancer. Your point is? It's not. People think it's only if you have a genetic predisposition. But it's not just about genetics. Even when it comes to HPV related cancer. It's not just about the hpv. It's about what's going on in your.

Body, like your cell. Yeah.

If we're, if we've, if we have, we all have some toxin exposure, but if the toxins are sitting there and we haven't been starting to decrease our toxin exposure and help our bodies detox, or if we, we know we all have stress, but if we haven't helped our bodies recover from stress, then that's when it piles up. And, and our, our immune system is not as good at preventing those cancer cells from happening.

Right. Cancer is an ultimate failure of the immune system. And so what can we do to support the immune system? Sleep, eat right, de stress, get rid of toxins. That's what we have control over. We can't control our genes, but luckily that's not where it's all at. Right. It's family history is not your destiny. It just tells you if your body's going to break down, it's going to break down in this pathway. But we still can do lots of things. We have so much more power than we think we do to control our health if we're willing to take it. And it starts by asking questions and reading labels and figuring out what's healthy and what's not. How do we optimize our micronutrients, how do we get rid of stress, how do we sleep better? All of the things that have, you know, our grandparents knew and we've forgotten.

Well, and I don't. If you don't mind, I was going to ask you, just as someone who's been in the standard gynecology all these years and now you, I can hear in you this passion to talk about things that can be preventive and helping your patients prevent health issues. Because I'm sure some people would be wondering, like, how. How does that, you know, why is it that you made that choice? And how does that feel to you to be like, hey, now you can actually be offering your patients so many more options than you could before?

Well, it sounds like a big jump, and it was actually a bigger jump than it sounds because not only was I trained in the traditional environment, I was a military doctor. So I was in the Air Force for eight years. And I was used to following the algorithms, quoting the studies. I could do it all from the conventional standpoint. I was very well trained conventionally. And I also learned not to ask too many questions, right. Follow the algorithms and do what you're told. But, you know, it's. It started there was two things. One of them was my own health struggles because I was so exhausted all the time. And I realized I didn't like who I was and I just thought I was a bad person. But it was because I was just so tired. You know, I was so tired and so exhausted that you don't have any resiliency left and you don't recognize the words that come out of your mouth because it's like you're drowning. And so you lash out at people around you. And I didn't want to live that way anymore. And then as I started learning more about health, that's when I was realizing that these women had been crying out to me for a long time because there's an intimacy that you have with your obgyn. And numerous women would tell me, don't know what's wrong, but you have to help me. Because my regular doctor said all my labs are normal, but I don't feel good. And they would think it's gotta be my hormones because everything else is fine. And so I, as I started to deep dive into that, like, well, is it their hormones? Sometimes, but maybe, maybe their thyroid is normal but not optimum. And then I started learning about inflammation. And inflammation is the root of all illness. And I was like, oh, my God, how did I never learn this stuff in medical school? But that's not the modality that I was trained in. It was surgically cut it out or suppress it with hormone symptoms or, you know, whatever. And I wasn't given enough tools to really make a difference. And so once I really wanted to help people be their best and heal, that's when I realized I couldn't do it in that environment. And once I knew that I could not unlearn it and if I, if I didn't act on it, I was not acting in integrity. So I had to leave. I left and started my own practice.

And I think that's so important for everyone to really understand. I often find myself explaining, it's not that it's the, you know, it's not that the doc. It's doctor's fault that in medical school you're learning to be a surgeon and to prescribe certain medications and that's what you're training.

That's what the training is. Yeah.

So there's not a training in thinking about it a different way. So if you're, if you start thinking about your health differently and you go talk to a surgeon, they're likely to talk about surgery because that's what they're, they're, that's the service they are trained in, that they provide. And so just recognizing that, like, just so we can. It's not about judging it and it's not saying, don't choose that. It's like saying, hey, when, when you need a surgery, that's where, yeah, if.

You break your leg, don't come see me. Go to the emergency room and have them put a cast on it. You know, there are things that traditional medicine is very good at, but when it comes to chronic inflammatory conditions or health optimization, because they're disease based, you go to your regular doctor and say, I want to be the best I can be. They're going to take your blood pressure, check your weight, check a few labs and say you're fine. Like, I don't want to be fine. I want to be better than fine. Right. They can't help you because that's not what they're geared for. So they can help people that are sick to ease symptoms, but they're not going to help you be your best. And if you have chronic inflammatory conditions, they don't have the tools. They just don't have the tools.

So it's. So thank you so much for sharing that so openly and honestly, the path that you've taken to find this for your health and now being able to open a clinic where you can offer this to other patients and specifically for women as well, to help them with being able to identify and prevent breast cancer. Specifically by using this new QT scan imaging. And I'm just so glad you're able to join us here today. Thank you so much.

Dr. Yvonne my pleasure.

And thank you all for listening in. I welcome you to reach out to either of us. If you have any questions. We're happy to help you to navigate your path in this human experience and protecting your health and so you can do what you love as well. So thanks again for joining me. Please make sure you subscribe so you don't miss the next episode of How Humans Heal. I'll see you then.

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