Breast Cancer: Innovative Screening Methods for Early Detection and Prevention

Hi, and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and in this episode, I'm looking forward to introducing you to Dr. Jen Simmons. She is a breast surgeon who turned into an integrative oncologist. So now she specializes in helping women to identify breast cancer early and prevent breast cancer from happening in the first place. And she has opened new, innovative breast cancer imaging centers and is preparing to open more of them to help women in this effort to reduce breast cancer nationwide and even worldwide. Thank you so much for joining us today here at Dan.

I'm absolutely delighted to be here.

We've been looking forward to having this conversation. I'm so excited. And congratulations. Your new book, you have the smart women's guide to breast cancer and your new imaging centers, the perfection imaging center. So we want to talk about all of that today. Tell us a little bit first. Just, you know, what that felt to you when you had that moment of clarity, and you're like, hey, I'm been doing surgery for women for all these years. I want to actually help them prevent this need for surgery and find another path for dealing with breast cancer. Tell us more about that journey for you.

Yeah. So I. I wouldn't say that it was kind of a single moment of clarity. It was more like an evolution of clarity. So I really never know a time in my life where I didn't know about breast cancer. I absolutely cannot remember a time in my life where I didn't know about breast cancer. It's part of the fabric, the tapestry of my family. So I come from a breast cancer family. And when I was growing up, I had a first cousin. Her name was Linda Creed. She was a singer songwriter in the 1970s and 1980s. I'm really going to date myself right now. She was beautiful, brilliant, larger than life, the queen of Motown sound in Philadelphia. She walked into a room and lit the place up. She wrote 54 hits in all, and her most famous song was the Greatest Love of All.

Really?

Yes.

That gives me goosebumps.

I know. So anyone who was alive during that time knows that song, knows every word to that song, and knows the power of that song. So she actually wrote that song in 1977 as the title track to the movie the Greatest, starring Muhammad Ali. But it really received its acclaim in March of 1986 when Whitney Houston would release that song to the world. And at that time, it would spend 14 weeks at the top of the chart. Only my cousin Linda would never know, because Linda died of metastatic breast cancer just one month after Whitney released that song. She was 37 years old. I was 16 and my hero died.

I can be transported back to that moment in a second.

Her life and ultimately her death gave birth to my life's purpose. And I never wanted another woman, another family, another community to have to suffer the way that mine suffered. And so I did the only thing I knew how to do. I became a doctor, the first doctor in my family. I became a surgeon. I became a breast surgeon, the first fellowship trained breast surgeon in Philadelphia. I became an oncoplastic surgeon, the first oncoplastic surgeon in Pennsylvania. And I did that really well and for a really long time. And I did it long enough for my aunt to be diagnosed, and I did it long enough for my mother to be diagnosed. And when I was about 15 years into my career, where my aunt had been diagnosed with Graves disease, about.

About five or seven years before her breast cancer diagnosis, and I was running my breast surgery practice, the cancer program for my hospital. And I'm a wife and a mother and an athlete and a philanthropist. And I think that I'm invincible. And I went from being probably one of the most high functioning people you ever knew to I couldn't walk across the room because I didn't have the breath in my body to do it. And I had a three day, very intensive workup that ended in the office of my friend and colleague and physician. And he told me that I needed surgery and chemo, radiation and that I was going to be on lifelong medication. And despite the fact that these are words that I said all day, every day to women without hesitation or reservation, when these words are coming at you, I assure you they have a different meaning and they have different impact. And all I could think of in that time and space, all I could hear was this inner voice telling me that there was something more. Go find it. Now. I knew that this was the gold standard. I knew that this was what I had advised women to do all day, every day for 15, 16, 17 years.

But I couldn't quiet this voice. And I was running an NIH accredited cancer program. It's not. I was as traditional in medicine as you can be. I had no inkling or idea that there was a something else, but that I continued to hear this voice telling me that there was another answer, another solution. Go find it.

So very early on in this quest.

I decided that I needed to learn more about nutrition, because as a conventionally trained physician and I went to one of the finest medical schools the United States, but as a conventionally trained Physician. There is almost no education around nutrition. And basically all the education that we get is in our first year of medical school, and that is 15 hours. It's the, it's the minimum amount of time that you, that medical schools have to train you. Right? So 15 hours of, of education around nutrition in my first year of medical school, and then never again. And just to give you a little perspective, medical school is four years. My surgical residency was five years. My fellowship was one year. So we're talking about 10 years of.

Higher level training and only 15 hours of nutrition.

Yeah, 15 hours in nutrition. Nothing. Nothing. Virtually nothing. So I decided that I needed to learn more about nutrition. So I entered a certificate program called the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. After driving them essentially crazy for six weeks, saying, are you sure I'm going to learn something? I'm already a physician. What is there to learn? What, you know, like, this is a certificate program. What, what is happening here? And they assured me that, yes, yes, yes, we've had plenty of physicians come through our program. Yes, yes, yes, you will learn something. Okay, so I'm sitting in one of the very first lectures. Tall, lanky guy with this big toothy grin comes on stage, and he introduces himself as a functional medicine physician. Now, as I've stated, I am a conventionally trained doctor. I am really, really suffering. I am still my snooty booty self that, like, doesn't exactly see what I could possibly be learning here. But I knew that I needed something, right?

So he introduces himself as a functional medicine physician. And all I can think in my head is, there's no such thing as a functional medicine physician. Like, what is this quack talking about? And then I remember I'm sick, right? And I'm there for a reason. So I check my ego at the door and I tune in and thank God I did. Because what this man would talk about over the next two hours would, would not only telescope my path to healing, but he was also going to telescope the remainder of my career, the next chapter of my career, and ultimately how I was going to make this contribution to the world of breast cancer. Since my commitment has always been, I want to end suffering from breast cancer, right? And I was not doing it as a surgeon. I was helping an individual in front of me. Maybe I could argue how much I was actually helping them, but I was helping them in that I was taking them from point A to point B, but I was keeping them on the same path. I wasn't ultimately affecting the trajectory of their lives.

So as it turns out, this man was Mark Hyman.

And he would literally change everything for me forever. Because since the day I met him and since the day I heard him speak, I have thought about medicine in a completely different way, in a completely different light. Now I am an early adopter, admittedly. I get very excited about things and I jump in and this was no different. So I enrolled in the Institute for Functional Medicine that day. And so at one time I was a full time surgeon, a full time mother, a full time everything. And I was enrolled in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and I was enrolled in ifm. But you know, anyone who knows me and knows anything about me knows that A, I don't know what to do with free time and, and B, I am an over, I am the definition of overachiever. So I completely immersed myself in the study of functional medicine over the next three years. And when I finished, it was a bell I couldn't unring. I couldn't go back to being a surgeon and allowing people to not course correct because there is nothing about surgery, about chemotherapy, about radiation, about anti hormonal treatment. There's nothing about that that helps anyone to get healthier. And my goal didn't make my goal shifted. I got away from talking about curing breast cancer and there's really no such thing, right? My goal became let's build your health, let's make you healthy, let's make you resilient, let's create an environment that promotes health and wellness rather than one that fosters disease. And in order to do that, you have to examine every aspect of someone's life. You have to think about what is causing the disease, right? The root cause, inflammation, whatever it is. But at the same time, you have to give people the foundations of health. You have to help them to create a diet that, that is nourishing for them. You have to help them to drink water properly, to avoid toxins, to prioritize sleep, to prioritize the right kind of movement for them to have detoxification practices, to take the social trash out of your life and to live with purpose. Because really the main predictor of why we're here and how long we're here is for what purpose are we here? And for as long as you're serving your purpose and living your purpose, you generally will live. And when your purpose is complete.

That'S when you move on to the next world.

So oh my gosh, that's such amazing clarity and I think it's huge, really. I want to reiterate the point that when someone identifies a tumor and they're going in for surgery and even they have the tumor removed and then maybe they're on a medication or whatever other treatment, it's all on that one pass. And it's never looking at these things that you're just mentioning that's, that's going to shift the past. So what you're really saying is, you know, it's okay, yes, a person might need surgery, but we need to have that as part of a completely shift, a comprehensive look at their. And is that what you found with your healing process, Jen, like you.

Absolutely, absolutely. But you know, the main thing that I want to say is that, and the thing that I my aha moment on that day with Mark Hyman was that we are completely focused on the wrong thing in conventional medicine. We're completely focused on the wrong thing. We're focused on the symptom, but the symptom is not the problem. And especially in the world of cancer, all the focus is on the tumor. Right? But the tumor is not the problem. The tumor is the symptom of the problem. And unless we figure out what is driving that symptom.

What is to change the trajectory of that course. So yeah, you can take the tumor out, but unless you deal with why the tumor was there, what is to stop it from coming back or what is to, you know, if that's just a function of time, what is to stop the next manifestation of that inflammation? Because that's really what we're dealing with, right? So most women, interestingly enough, who get breast cancer don't die of breast cancer. Most women who get breast cancer die of heart disease. And that's because, well, it's twofold. It's the same thing at the core, right? If you never deal with the inflammation, then you're just going to get the next manifestation of disease, which is heart disease. And also almost all of the treatments for breast cancer cause heart disease.

And so we're basically trading in one diagnosis for another, which is the paradigm of conventional medicine is just kick the can down the road and play this never ending game of whack a mole. So you treat one symptom and either the treatment or the inflammation causes you to have another symptom. So you treat that and that leads to another symptom, treat that and that leads to another symptom. And, and you know, without going to the conspiracy theory place, that is very much by design in that that is the intention of that system, in that they want you to use another Drug that needs another drug that needs another drug that needs another drug that eventually needs a hospitalization. I mean, this is very, very, very much by design.

And I think unfortunately, the physicians and the practitioners inside of this system are the.

Un. Agreeing victims, right? Like they are the unintentional victims of this horrible system. Because the only way that doctors and nurse practitioners and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, the only way that providers get paid is if you're sick because there's no reward for you being healthy. So I don't think it's that they don't want you to be healthy. I don't think that it's that they want you to be sick. But in this current design, there is no way for them to be remunerated unless you're sick. So there's no incentive to a doctor to. They. They're not taught how to make you healthy. Right. Like all of this, all of my practice now was.

Achieved through going outside of the system and getting educated. And it's, you know, tens and tens of thousands of dollars to do that. And P.S. i started over at 50. How many people are willing to walk away from being the department head and having an extremely lucrative job where you just collect a paycheck every week and you never have to worry about where the money's coming from to walk away, to go into this alternative space.

So it takes a huge, huge commitment and a leap of faith, which most doctors, they're not gamblers. They're not. They signed on to be a physician because it was a steady eddy job. And to go into this like, big blue ocean of a space, it's scary. It takes a lot. It takes a lot. And I do know that this is the medicine of the future, without question. And this generation coming up, I always forget, like Gen X surgeons, I never know. I don't know what they are. But this generation coming up, they will not tolerate the, the system that we came up in. They won't. Yeah, do as I say, not as I do. No way. No way are they going to take health advice from someone who is not walking their talk. Right. I see it all the time now. I, I had a patient yesterday who said, you know, I was going to a weight loss doctor who was overweight, and I said, the hell am I going to you for? You haven't figured it out? Why would you figure it out for me? Right? So that whole do as I say, not as I do, I always said for years, even before I had this age of enlightenment, my father's cardiologist was like a 350 pound man. And I would say to my father, dad, how can you take advice from him? He looks like he's about to drop over.

So yeah, this, this generation will not take advice from you. Will not take the do as I say, not as I do advice. And they also really want to know the why. Right? Like if you're going to tell me to do something, I want to know why.

And there's no, there's no answers in that antiquated system which is on it.

I think people are starting, you know, really, like you're saying, really starting to see that. Like I'm starting to say, hey, wait a minute, yeah, is this practitioner walking the talk and do. Are they willing to talk to me and be a partner in my health care? And for people to thank you so much for kind of pulling back the veil and saying, here's what's really going on in that system. Because I think people are picking up on a dissonance, right? Like being confused, why is my practitioner not talking about nutrition or why is my doctor not helping answering my questions? And you're saying to us, here's why they're not answering questions or providing this, because it's not part of that system. And for people to stand back and realize, wow, if I want to change my health and my future, I'm going to have to take it into my own hands just the way you did as a physician. Say, I'm taking my health into my own hands and figuring out a different way. And it is going to be an investment. It's going to be an investment in a different path, but it's going to be worth it.

Right?

Because then you have your health in your life.

Yeah, Yep, absolutely. And I think the other thing to remember is that there is really no future in this current system. There just isn't. And the.

There is no education around how to make people healthy. And when people are going to their doctors and asking these questions and instead of saying I don't know, because they don't know and they're uncomfortable with that, they're saying no. And the people are, are being enlightened, they're like, wait a minute, why are you saying no to something that seems so logical, right? Like how is it possible that eating processed food and eating real food are the same? Right? Like they, they, they haven't even brought logic into it and people are logical. I don't know.

Oh my gosh, I love this. And I, you're making me think back to my decision back when I Decided to go to naturopathic medical school because I was, I got a pre med degree. I was on the, got on the path to become a medical physician. And one day I had the thought, it's so interesting based on what you're saying. I thought, I want to study a type of medicine that includes nutrition. And that's what got me to go toward naturopathic medicine at that time. Talk about this, who knows where I was headed? But I just felt like I want to practice medicine that includes nutrition. And I can see that there was no nutrition going to happen in that, in that other conventional plan. And also to just relate to all of the women who I work with with abnormal Pap smears and cervical cancer risk, because I want to just mention that what you're describing is completely relevant to not just breast cancer, but also cervical cancer risk, let alone any cancer and any health issue, autoimmunity for that matter.

Right.

Because it's, it's, we need to be able, no matter what's happening with our health, to say, hey, it's not just about the abnormal pap or the HPV or, or the tumor. It's not just about the symptom that's showing up on the test. It's about, and I want to get into this now. How do we look at the root causes? How do we, and I know this is what you cover in your book is guiding people like, how do you really think the smart woman is going to think through. How do I think this through and solve this for myself? That's not going to happen in that standard system. But I also want to make sure we take time to, to talk about this imaging. Do you want to talk about the imaging first?

Like, well, we can talk about all of it. I mean, we're going to be fine. But okay, you know, let's, let's start off with the fact that 80% of chronic disease is preventable. 80%, right. So the kind of chronic disease that you deal with, the kind of chronic disease that I deal with, the kind of chronic disease that the cardiologists deal with, that the neurologists deal with, that the gynecologists deal with. Preventable, preventable. And the, the reason why it's preventable is because at least in the case of breast cancer, dementia, cardiovascular disease, these are both environmental diseases and metabolic diseases, of which for the most part, we can control our environment and we can control our metabolic health through what we eat, drink, breathe and put around us, put in, on and around us. We have that control can we control age? No, of course we can't. Can we control viral exposures? No, of course we can't. But those things are small in comparison to the things that we can control. And I think it's important to mention that if you have an intact, healthy immune system, those viruses are not going to matter.

Those viruses only matter when your immune system is challenged. And why are our immune system challenged? Because of fake food, because of dirty air, because of dirty water, because of lack of sleep, because of lack of movement. All things that we can control.

Absolutely right. Absolutely.

So you asked about the causes of breast cancer and these are the things that I tell people about to think about. And this is all that I talk about in my book. Here I'll just for the people that are looking and in addition to listening. It's the smart woman's guide to Breast cancer. It's available on Amazon and quite frankly is a bible for every woman. And every single woman that reads my book says this is not just for women with breast cancer. This is something that is necessary for every single woman to read. I may put out the same book with like take out the pathology report explanation and just say like the breast Owner's guide or something like that because it's really necessary reading for everyone.

I love it. I love it.

Yeah. So the thing. But I am already like started my second book so yeah, I think that will have to be like third down the line. So the causes of breast cancer, things that I think about and again we spoke about. Breast cancer is an environmental disease and it's a metabolic disease. So now I'm thinking about what has adverse effects on your environment and on your metabolic health. So chronic inflammation from the diet, whether that be a diet that is processed, a diet that is chemically laden, a diet that is just the wrong diet for you, whatever it is, chronic inflammation from your diet. Processed foods in particular are a whole other thing because processed foods are foods that have been transformed into a state in which the body does not recognize them as food. We are modern beings living on a very old gene code. So our bodies know to recognize real food. And when we start to feed it these franken foods and food like substances, our bodies are like, how is it Cheeto? This is not, this is not speaking my language. What, what is a Twizzler? So like I'm not, I'm not talking about should you be Paleo or should you be carnivore or no, the answer to carnivores now. Or should you be vegan or I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about eating things that are sold in stores as food that are not food. They are not food. So and your body, when it, when it encounters these things that are laden with yellow dye and red dye, because that's how you make Cheetos, right? These are very dangerous substances that will a little bit kill you. No. But will constant exposure over time kill you? Yes, yes it will.

Sedentary lifestyle is another thing that is hard for people to understand why it's a problem and I'm going to try to break it down a little bit.

But we are again modern beings living on a very old gene code. We understand two states, we understand safety and we understand danger. We only understand danger to be very primitive danger. We don't understand a fight with our sister, we don't understand traffic, we don't understand that. We understand saber toothed tiger getting ready to eat you or safe in the cave and nothing in between. So if you have a saber toothed tiger on your tail, you are built to kind of shunt all your blood flow to your muscles so that you can run away, right? And raise your blood sugar to feed those muscles so that you can run away and take the blood flow away from non essential things like your brain. Because you don't want someone thinking like, should I go left or should I go right? You just want your brain thinking run, run, run, run, run. So the only thing that's being perfu perfused is your monkey brain. Your, your basic instinct, right? That's why when you're totally stressed out, you can't make decisions because your brain's not being perfused correctly. So you're either meant to be in this state for like 15 seconds, maybe 30 seconds, or get eaten by said tiger. We are not meant to be running away from a saber toothed tiger for three hours or three days or three weeks or three months or three years. Unfortunately, in modern times we are running away from saber toothed tigers all the time. Everything around us is saber toothed tigers and there's a lot of crap around us, right? Like a lot. And so we are meant to be in sympathetic drive that fight or flight drive less than 5% of the time. But in reality we are in that fight or Flight State 30, 40, 50% of the time, right? So if we are in a sedentary lifestyle and yet in that sympathetic state, our cells are being bathed in cortisol, our stress hormone and we're not burning it off, and in the meantime we're shunting our blood flow away from vital organs, brain it.

And one of the things that's not a vital organ is the breast.

So we're shunting the blood flow away from the breast and what happens, the toxins that are in there are not getting pumped away because we shut off the circulation to the breast essentially. So our breast cells are being bathed and toxins. Breast cancer.

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Another part of that stress response that will, that we'll also talk about is that when you need more glucose for your muscles to run away, you, you raise your glucose, so you raise your insulin, so you raise your insulin like growth factor. This is essentially growth factor for cancer cells. So it's multifactorial for sure. I don't want to oversimplify it for the purposes of this explanation, but I can tell you that under exercise is a huge issue. Over exercise is also a huge issue for the reason that we talked about before. You are not designed to run away from a saber toothed tiger for three days, three, three weeks, three years. You're just not so over exercise. You're telling your body that there's a tiger on your tail and this is very stressful. So over exercise is an issue, radiation exposure is an issue and the radiation is coming from repeated mammograms. And I am very famous for stating that I don't think that everyone needs another screening mammogram ever again. Screening, screening. I'm not talking about diagnostic. If you have a lump in your breast, you should go have whatever test is needed to get a diagnosis. But, and I am not saying that one mammogram will Hurt you, it will not. Right? One mammogram is not hurting anyone. And no one has one mammogram.

Most people who are in the mammographic screening program are getting screened every year, starting maybe at the age of 35, maybe at the age of 40. And they're being screened year after year after year after year after year until they're 70, 80. I've seen 90 year olds still going in to get their yearly mammograms. And just know that with every mammogram you get, you increase your risk of getting breast cancer. And the more mammograms you have in your lifetime, the higher your risk is of getting a breast cancer.

The other radiation exposures, you know, X rays, radiation in childhood, this has a significant impact on you. If you had a cancer like a lymphoma in childhood and you had what we call mantle radiation, those women are a significant increase of the development of breast cancer almost to the day, 20 years after they've had their radiation for lymphoma. So radiation is very damaging. And we say, and we know in every other scenario that radiation causes cancer. And yet when we talk about mammograms, we pretend, because that has a nice name, mammogram, we pretend that it doesn't cause cancer. It does. Of course it does. Right. Then chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes and thyroid disease and celiac and inflammatory bowel disease and Ms. These are all chronic inflammatory states that will eventually end up leading to a breast cancer diagnosis. If not, if we don't intervene in them. Right. If all we do is suppress the symptom, take diabetes. If all we do is try to manage the the blood sugar with medications rather than getting rid of the reason why you have elevated blood sugar, then we don't change. The ultimate manifestation, Those people will go on to develop breast cancer, chronic infections, viruses, fungus, mold, Lyme parasites, bacteria, all of that with the caveat that they are only a problem if your immune system is not intact. An intact immune system should be able to deal with these. But again, because we are so immune challenged because of the way we live our lives now, they end up being an issue. Heavy metals in your drinking water, in dental amalgams in food and cosmetics. So we need to be mindful about. Are there metal amalgams in your mouth? If there are, have them safely removed. What is in your drinking water? Check it out on the Environmental Working Group EWG.org.

Are you eating food that is laden with heavy metals? I think there was a report not too long ago about dark chocolate and the heavy metal load in dark chocolate. Not all dark chocolate, some dark chocolate. And then.

And then we think about cosmetics. There are a lot of commercially available.

Cosmetic lines that still use heavy metals in their. In their product development. So we have to be mindful of that and use safe brands.

Chemical exposures, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, preservatives. They are all highly inflammatory and have the xenoestrogen properties, toxic estrogen properties, chronic antibiotic use, antibiotics or xenoestrogens, chronic dental infections. People who are walking around unknowingly with these chronic dental infections. And if you've ever had a root canal that is a dead tooth, you're walking around with a dead tooth, and more than likely there is an infection there. Even if you don't feel it, even if it's subclinical, there's almost certainly an infection there. Frequent toxin exposure. Alcohol has been in the news again, again, and this time correctly, because for many years at least, when, when I came up, we were talking about how a glass of red wine is good for the heart. And now we know, and we have known for many, many years, but the alcohol industry did a really, really good job of.

Convincing people otherwise. And because it was so normalized and so socially acceptable, people did not heed the warnings. But here they are. The bottom line is that alcohol is a known carcinogen. It knowingly causes cancer and knowingly causes like eight kinds of cancer, breast cancer being one of them. Okay, Smoking. People generally associate smoking with, with lung cancer, but it's a risk for breast.

Cancer as well and for cervical cancer.

And for cervical cancer and for both cancers. Right. Because it is a chronic inflammatory state. Right. You are introducing a toxin into your body. I don't know how many cigarettes people smoke a day. 20. I don't know. I don't know. Whatever it is, that's how many times a day you are introducing a toxin into your body and your. It overwhelms your body's ability to clear it. We all have an allopathic load that we are able to deal with. And when we exceed that is when we have dysfunction. And so, you know, some people exceeded at 30, 40, 50, 60. We're all different. We're all different in our ability to detoxify, and we're all different in our. The amount of exposures that we have on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. But you're always better off putting less in, right? Like, everyone benefits from less toxins.

Why push the limit? Right? And we do, we think, oh, I Don't feel. Or we kind of ignore. You know, even people feel like they have a hangover or whatever from alcohol, and they just kind of like, keep on doing it. And so we. We kind of like ignore the signals from our bodies if it's giving us signals. And we assume, we look at someone else and we say, oh, but that person doesn't have health issues. But they likely do. They're just not noticing it or telling you about it.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And we have a normalized feeling. Awful. Right. Like, we've normalized being tired. We've normalized gaining weight. We've normalized not being able to do what we used to do. We've normalized not sleeping. We've normalized.

This is aging.

Yes, yes. We have normalized all these things because conventional doctors don't know what to do about them. They don't know how to help you. They're not trained, and they don't know how to say, I don't know. So they say it's normal. Right.

It's just common. It's just common. That's the problem.

That's right. It's just common. It's not normal. Just not normal. But most America is not healthy. Right. Less than 10% of Americans have ideal metabolic health. Less than 10%. That's. These are terrible, terrible statistics. And yet we've normalized it. Right. And we tell people that you can be overweight and healthy. Not true.

Not true. Sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. Not sorry. Right. Don't shoot the messenger. Yeah. Chronic constipation is another one of those toxic load issues. Because one of the major ways that we clear toxins from our body is releasing them in our stool. And especially when we talk about the detoxification of estrogen, we break estrogen down into byproducts, and then we get rid of those byproducts in our stool. And if we're not doing that, they come back into circulation. And this is a problem because we can't afford to reabsorb the toxins. Our livers are busy enough trying to get rid of them in the first place. They don't want to get rid of them twice. Right. So chronic constipation is an issue, and that means that you are moving your bowels less than once a day. I would even argue that once a day is probably not enough.

Yeah, I agree.

Insomnia. Insomnia is a huge problem. And this is where the healing happens. So if you're not sleepy, you're not healing. And if you're not healing, you're not detoxifying, you're not getting rid of the toxins you're not repairing. And this is where cancer happens. Chronic sleep deprivation, short sleepers, night shift workers. It all falls under the same guise. Being overweight, as we talked about, there's no such thing as being healthy and overweight. They are mutually exclusive. The electromagnetic field, because it is directly damaging to our cells. Unresolved trauma, because if you don't deal with the trauma, it will manifest as physical illness. Chronic stress, difficult relationship, bad marriage, horrible boss, whatever it is, we are not meant to be in that chronic stress state. We are not meant to be in sympathetic drive for more than 5% of the day. And if you are under chronic stress, your percentages are way off, and you have the dysfunction to show it. And that includes being a caregiver to a sick parent or a spouse or a partner or, God forbid, a child, Right? Like, these are all things that are happening, and it's not as if the person is volunteering for this or creating this situation. This stress is very real. But it turns out it's not the stress that matters. It's your perception of the stress and how you're dealing with the stress. And this, the. Your.

What, what you're allowing the effect that you're allowing that stress to have on you, right? So it's about stress management more than it is about the stress itself. And, you know, the stressors are, are there divorce, job loss, unwanted move, job change. Like all of these things are major, major, major stressors. And we have to have really good tools to safely, effectively healthfully deal with the stress. Because alcohol and pills and that's unhealthy.

Those are just working against you in other ways. I know. That's the thing. We. We end up feeling stressed, and then we go toward, oh, I'm just gonna drink alcohol, or I'm gonna take a pill that sedates me, or anti anxiety. But it's not. Actually. That's not the same thing as helping your body to recover from the stress.

You.

You know, I'm so glad you're bringing this up, because this is one of my favorite topics, is how stressful affects us. And really thinking this through and saying, hey, wait a minute, because it can feel you can in what you're describing. A lot of times, women feel like, I'm stuck, I'm trying to take care of everything, do everything, and I can't even imagine how do I even start to change it. And this is what I want listeners to know is that, that's why Dr. Jen and I are here, is we, we specialize in helping you to create that kind of change, to look at, identify these things, and you start to look around you and you go, oh, my gosh, I'm surrounded with maybe toxins and food choices that are not ideal and maybe lack of sleep and also stress in that big mix. And it can be overwhelming to realize it and say, what am I going to do now? And that's exactly why we have your book. We have my book. We have us to say, let's help guide you through the steps. It's not an overnight change, Right. It's not about a single pill, a single surgery, a single day. It's. It's a process.

Yes, absolutely. And so, you know, I, I said that these are the causes of breast cancer, but you could take away that breast cancer part and say that these are the causes of chronic illness. Right? Like this. This pretty much applies to everyone. I don't know that this is necessarily specific to breast cancer, but these are the things that we think about when we try to help people get to their why and to reduce it down. And so at the same time, when we think about this in the context of someone who has already had breast cancer, if you're looking to prevent breast cancer, where shall we. Here are the landmines. Here are the landmines to avoid. This is how you prevent breast cancer. And there is no one thing that you can do to prevent breast cancer. Right. Like, there's no magic formula. I wish there were. Then I could retire, like, done now. And I, I do look forward to that day. Right. But in the meantime, if you are trying to put together a prevention plan, and again, I talk about it in my book the Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer. But if you're trying to put together that prevention plan, then you're thinking about eating a way that's nourish, eating in a way that's nourishing. You're thinking about optimizing your metabolic health. You're thinking about prioritizing sleep, getting daily movement, and oftentimes, depending on how old you are, you need to think about what that movement looks like. So you can be heavier in the cardiovascular area when you are premenopausal. But as you move to the postmenopausal side of things, your goal needs to be muscle building or muscle preservation, because that is the center of your metabolic health, and you need to preserve that. And then you, you're thinking about what Toxins you are putting in on and around you and minimizing those toxins. You're thinking about detoxification practices, you're thinking about how you are going to effectively manage the stress. Because again, it's not the stress that matters, it's the effect that you allow the stress to have on you that matters. And then living with purpose, living joyfully, right? So these are the things that I think about in terms of creating a prevention plan. Because if you are checking all those boxes, the likelihood is that you're going to live a pretty uninflamed life. And that's the key. We want to lower and minimize inflammation. And you can monitor those things. You can monitor certain levels in your blood and just make sure that these areas are being looked at. Your metabolic health is being looked at, your immune health is being looked at, your inflammatory health is being looked at. And you want to optimize these things, right? You don't want, you don't want to just fall into normal because normal is 95% of Americans and 95% of Americans are not normal, Right? Those normals that you see when you go to lab, court request or whatever it is, that includes two and a half standard deviations from the mean that is not normal. You don't want to be that kind of normal. You want to be optimal. Optimal. And you get, you get the optimal message from people like you and I, because this is what we talk about. We, we talk about.

What is optimal and how to get there, right? And then of course, I think it's important to do screening because even when you think you have that managed, you want to make sure for sure you have that managed. So for me, when I think about breast cancer screening, I think about three things. The first thing I think about is self breast examination. Because no one is ever going to know you better than you know yourself. No one.

I want you to know something. Every single woman thinks her breasts are lumpy. There is no exception. I have not met the woman yet. I've. I don't know how many thousands of people I've examined. I've never heard a woman say, my breasts aren't lumpy. My breasts are smooth as.

Like never ever doesn't happen. Everyone thinks their breasts are lumpy. Fine. On your lumps. Know what your lumps feel like. Know what your breasts feel like when they're quote, unquote normal. So that you can know what they feel like when there's been a change, right? And when there's been a change, that's the Time to bring it to the intention of your provider, either your obgyn, or maybe you are your internist, or maybe you already have a relationship with a breast surgeon. That is, that is the time to bring it to their attention. The second thing that I recommend for people to do, and I recommend this twice a year, is something called the ARIA test, the tears. And what this does is it takes a little piece of litmus paper and you put it in your eye and it collects a fluid sample. It's a tiny, tiny amount. And what it's looking for are two proteins that are inflammatory proteins that are associated with the earliest stages of breast cancer. And These are the S100A8 and S100A9 proteins. We have a video up on YouTube if you want to learn more about this test and what it means. But I use this test as a screening tool for breast cancer. It is 93% sensitive, which means that if you have breast cancer 93% of the time, this will detect it.

That's amazing.

Way better than mammogram. Way better than mammogram. And if you have a clinically significant result, there is a 58% specificity, meaning that 58% of the time, if you have a clinically significant result, you do actually have breast cancer. And 42% of the time, you may not have breast cancer yet, but you do have the inflammatory proteins that are associated with breast cancer. And that, my friends, is opportunity. This is your opportunity to take control of your health. You know that you have inflammation, you know that you have the precursors to breast cancer. This is your opportunity to change that path, change that trajectory, and reclaim your health. Now, if you have a clinically significant result on aria, and this is the third part of my screening, I do recommend that you get imaging. And the imaging that I'm using is a QT scan. So a QT scan uses circumferential sound waves transmitted through a warm water bath to collect data points and create a true 3D reconstruction of your breast without pain, without compression, without radiation. So I opened the first independent imaging center on the East Coast. It's called perfection imaging, and perfection is spelled with a QT in the middle. I also have an imaging center in Nevada, California, and there we are screening for breast cancer using the ARIA test and also using qt. So very much belt and suspenders. And this is the way that I am screening for breast cancer without putting women at risk, without suffering, without pain, without discomfort. So in. In what is like a spa experience, where you're in A room with dimmed down lights on a comfortable table with your breast in a warm water bath. You get screened for breast cancer and this will forever change how we screen for breast cancer forever. And I feel very strongly that we should not be using a test to screen for breast cancer that causes breast cancer. And I also feel very strongly that we need to create an experience for women that they're not going to avoid because breast cancer is scary enough and we have to take the trauma out of breast cancer screening. And this is how to do it.

I love it.

I am going to open up 50 of these centers in the next five years. And in 2025, there will be many, many announcements about said centers. But for now, I have two. And I want to make sure ultimately that everyone who wants access to this technology gets access to this technology.

I, I love that because of the screening Power grant. Oh, thank you so much for sharing that with us. Because, you know, that's very likely. That's way different than what you would have said 10 years ago. And now you're, you're like, you're not going to do the same thing you used to say. You're like, this is the new recommendation from Dr. Jen Simmons in terms of here's how to screen without increasing your risk. I love how you're saying that. And, and also increasing your confidence because now women can feel empowered about having information they need to then say, okay, whatever my results are now, like you said, it's an opportunity to take action to decrease inflammation and decrease the risk of cancer. And if you've had cancer, prevent it from coming back again.

Absolutely. All of that.

It'S really like out of this world, just like I only want to root for you and, and let everyone know that this exists to say, you're not going to find this from your standard doctor's office. You're not going to find this in the conventional system. They're not going to be talking about.

Right.

They're not going to be talking about QT imaging at this point in time?

No, no, they're probably not. But in five years, it's going to be part of all of the conversations, without question. So it's in its infancy now. And you know, until I got involved, no one had heard of it, but I am, I'm so proud to be rolling this out to the women in the United States. Eventually it will, without question, be global, but right now, what the company is focused on is the development of brand awareness in the continental United States.

What would you say women should think about hey, I'm going to travel to the imaging centers that exist until there's more of them available. And don't wait until five years. Might as well start now and start shifting the path you're on and invest in traveling to get this imaging instead of continuing on the path of the mammograms. Unless you need a diagnostic mammogram.

Yes. I would say that with the exception of everyone can do. Everyone in the United States can do the.

You can do this from home.

Yes. So this is Aria Auria care. And if you use my code, D, R, j, e, n, n. 20. Dr. Jen, 20. If you use my code, you'll get 20% off of this test. It makes it very, very affordable. And you can do this from the comfort of your own home. If you have a clinically significant result, even if you don't have access to a QT center, please go get imaging. Please go get imaging. If they can't find anything on that imaging, it's okay. It means that this process is so small that you have the opportunity now to know that you have inflammation in your breast, know that you have the precursors to breast cancer, and use this opportunity to optimize your health. Because when we grow our health, disease goes away. When we promote health, disease goes away. And as we talked about today, you know, health doesn't happen in a doctor's office, doesn't happen in hospital, in a surgical suite, in a chemotherapy suite and a radiation suite. Health happens at home. Health happens at home with the things that we do every day. And we have so much more control than we think. And this test is informing you as to informing you to take control of your health, do what you need to do to take back control of your health. We do not have to be victims of our environment. We can be in control of our environment.

I love it. Thank you so much for everything you've shared today, Dr. Jen. I so appreciate it. I'm so glad that we're having this conversation and sharing it with everyone and everyone who's listening you. I'll make sure to put the notes and links that we've talked about today in the notes below and also contact information for Dr. Jen as well as the Perfection Imaging center so you can take the next steps. Like we're saying, we want you to be able to take this information and make this your moment to pivot and, and take charge of your health. Is there anything else you wanted to share, Dr. Jen?

Just, you know, if you want to follow me, I actually have my own podcast it's called. It's called keeping abreast with Dr. Jen. And you just can get that anywhere that you get your podcasts. My medical practice is called Real Health md. So anyone with a breast cancer diagnosis who's looking for some help along that path, please reach out. Reach out to us at Real Health Maryland. My centers are called Perfection Imaging, so perfectionimaging.com and perfection is spelled with a Q T in the center. And my book, of course, is called Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer. Anyone who wants to follow me on social media, I am talking about all of these things all of the time. So I met Dr. Jen Simmons and my Jen has two N. Thank you.

So much and I am so glad we got to do this today. Thank you again and I look forward to staying in touch and talking to you again soon.

Me too. Thank you so much for having me. This was wonderful.

You're welcome. Thank you for everything you're doing and thanks everyone for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe and follow for more videos from me and at How Humans Heal. I'll talk to you soon.

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