114: DCIS, Overdiagnosis, and Reclaiming Women’s Health with Donna Pinto

All right, so we're going to talk about something controversial today. And, you know, I really don't know why it is so controversial, but people really want to identify with a diagnosis and with cancer. And when I say things that take away or threaten that identity, people get very offended. So today we're talking about DCIS and ductal carcinoma in situ. And I am known for saying that it is not breast cancer. And in fact, I went down a rabbit hole recently and with ChatGPT, and I plugged in, is cervical carcinoma in situ cervical cancer? And it said resoundingly, no, it is not cervical count cancer. And I said, is lobular carcinoma in situ breast cancer? And it said, no, lobular carcinoma in situ is not breast cancer. And I said, is ductal carcinoma in situ breast cancer? And it said, it is not invasive breast cancer. And we have just, you know, ChatGPT is, is programmed like anything else with a narrative. And we have just been so programmed to believe that that is cancer. But the truth is the only person that serves is the system, is the man. Right? So I brought someone who has dedicated her life after her own DCIS diagnosis to helping people to clarify, helping people to understand, to be educated, and to be able to know what their options are and make an educated decision. You have really faced a lot of criticism and overcome some major, major, major roadblocks in order to do what you do and get the information out there. And I know from a conversation that we had recently that there are still people out there trying desperately to sabotage you in, in your really, really good and important work. So I know how hard it is. But, Donna Pinto, I am so delighted to have you back on the podcast. It's been a little while since you've been here, so welcome back and I'm delighted to see you today.

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Jen. It is so great to be back and to talk with you. And I have to thank you for all the work you're doing and you're putting yourself out there in a big way. Coming from your perspective as a breast surgeon for nearly 20 years and having been on that side, on the inside, and knowing what you told to patients for so many years and then being sort of re educated on how. How the body works and heals and what is cancer and what is considered pre cancerous and how to define it and how to talk about it and really the harm that we are doing, I'm saying we, but really the medical community is doing that. I've been trying to sort of tackle that from trying to educate the physicians. I work within the medical research, within some of the research studies. And so I hear how they're speaking, calling it cancer or a disease and really frightening women. So my whole goal has been to lower the fear with education that this is, it's controversial because they don't really know. And the newer research shows that 80% of DCIS will never become cancer. So that means 80% are being over treated because all people diagnosed with DCIS get the same standard of care. Treatment, it's cut, burn, poison, it's surgery, weeks of radiation and then years of drugs. And this is what was told to me. And I was a very trusting person. I didn't have any reason to research or question the medical community until I was told you have a pre cancer called dcis. And the treatment options are a mastectomy or a partial mastectomy and 6, 7 weeks of radiation. And I completely went numb. Like I think my.

How old were you when.

44 years old. My kids were just 7 and 9 and I was as healthy as can be. I was fit. I thought I was healthier than most. You know, I really, it was a shock because I wasn't ever in the medical system other than having babies. Like there was nothing wrong with me. And, and I just thought like everyone, you know, you get your mammogram starting at age 40 because you're drilled into you. Early detection saves lives. I have, you know, I had a grandmother that had breast cancer. So I kind of thought I'm doing the responsible thing. I am a responsible health person. And what I realized when I started.

Doing that, that is part of the problem is that mammograms have become a religion. Something that's, you know, one more evident, one more avenue of self righteousness.

Right.

And we've seen a lot of this in the medical system in the past five or six years. A lot of self righteousness. And you know, if, if you're not doing these things, then you're putting yourself and others in danger. Right. Like somehow your decision affects more than just you. And this applies across the board. Like obviously I'm talking about mammogram, but obviously I'm also talking about some other stuff.

Yep.

Right.

And this is just another thing that has become religion rather than science or factual.

That's right. And, and we are emotional beings, especially women, so we are affected by fear. And marketing. I, I really realized, and I studied advertising and marketing and psychology in college. So once I realized what was going on that. A lot of this is just marketing and it's, you know, big budgets are behind it and then it becomes like a cult. And the great, the people that are harmed, the, the greatest become the cheerleaders, the celebrities that are diagnosed with DCIS there. It's just, it's called the, I don't know if you've heard of this, the popularity paradox. Dr. H. Gilbert Welch does a whole video on it and it's like the more we screen and then the more people that think they benefit, then they become the cheerleaders, but they've actually been harmed. So people don't associate harm with a medical test like a mammogram, because what's been drilled into us, that it saves lives, that it's only good. There's no talk about harms or, you know, what's over diagnosis. I remember telling my father about this and he's like, that's not even a word, you know, And I. And then it finally became a word in 2019 and I wrote about this how right after my father passed away that like, it finally became a word. It's like in the medical library of terms. But it's such a struggle that it.

Became a word in 2019.

Yeah. And I learned about it in 2012. And when I learned about this, I.

Thought, well, I think Gilbert Welch wrote his book in 2014, right?

Well, he wrote a few books, but the over diagnosed book I think was even before that. And that really talks about across the board, the medical conditions that are whether the threshold is lowered, like in cholesterol, it used to be to feel hypertension, all these things. So for me, the DCIS diagnosis and research has made me aware of all the health conditions that why are we testing? I know you just did a great podcast with Dr. Wolfson talking about if you're, if you're going to test for something, why don't you act as if what would you do? And for me, what I would do because I'm more holistic minded. This is my value, my preference where I've come to be in life. I've seen both my parents got harmed by over medicalization and thinking a pill for every ill. You know, I've learned I've seen the damage, I've seen the harm and I really want to avoid that. And so like in my case, they said I needed to take this drug for five years to reduce my chance of getting cancer. And I looked into, you know, what are the side effects of that. They are only selling. They're selling you on the benefits, but they, they kind of minimize the side effects. Like you know, poo poo. It same with radiation. I mean these, all of these things are cancer causing or harmful in different ways. Yet women are not being educated. So that's what I've tried to do with my, my website. Just making sure that women are making informed choices. That's what informed consent is. And that we have to hold the medical professionals to account. They, you know, first do no harm. What happened to that? I think is this like a willful ignorance thing? What do you think?

Well, what you, what you need to realize is that many of the side effects that we see from those drugs and you're of course referring to all of the anti hormonal drugs, so tamoxifen. But more than tamoxifen is the aromatase inhibitors. And what we are essentially doing with all of these hormone positive tumors is putting women in these prolonged hormone deprivation states.

Right.

And the truth is that although it is changing a little bit now, the system does not care about the menopausal woman. I'm sorry, they don't. And they don't think that her values are important. Like, you're done. You don't, you can't have babies anymore. So you, you don't need to have sex anymore. You only need to have pleasure. And you can tolerate some pain. Like you know, your joints are allowed to hurt and you should be a little tired because you're getting older and hot flashes, whatever, deal with them. And you know, you don't have to worry about depression because we have antidepressants. And you don't have to worry about anxiety because we have anxiolytics. You don't have to worry about blood pressure because we have antihypertensives. Your cholesterol is going to go up, but we have statins for that. You are going to lose bone. Okay, so we'll put you on a bisphosphonate. And they literally don't care that you're suffering. They don't acknowledge it. And they just think, well, we have all the pharmaceuticals to, to mask the symptoms, so let's just bring it on. And they just don't care. All they care about is is that breast cancer going to come back or not? And if it doesn't, they're okay because they have you on nine pharmaceuticals to treat all of the symptoms that came up from your treatment. And if your cancer does come back, well, that's okay too because they get to treat you again.

Right.

So they are setting you up and Please know that I am not criticizing the physicians. They, unfortunately, are pawns in the game. They are trained to recognize a constellation of symptoms, give it a diagnosis, and prescribe. That's what they're trained to do. That's what a really good doctor does. Right. And maybe listens to their patient. But they are. They are not trained to deal with the side effects of the medications that they prescribe. They're only trained to give more prescriptions to manage side effects. And they are not thinking about the whole picture, the holistic woman sitting in front of them. They are thinking about, I live in my silo. I. I live in the world of breast cancer. So as long as you don't get a breast cancer recurrence, I'm good. I did my job, and I'm a good doctor. And they are good doctors with very, very, very bad training. Like, I heard a great, great talk from Erica Schwartz, who has a new book that. I'm forgetting what the title is, but I'll look it up and find it. But it's something to the effect that we all have really good doctors with really bad training, and. And that's what it comes down to. So, you know, they're doing exactly what they were trained to do, but what they weren't trained to do is make you healthy. And every single thing that they do detracts from your health on purpose, by design, from the pharmaceutical companies. This is all very intentional. So I do want to back up, though, and talk about how all of this started for you, because the truth is that most women who get a diagnosis don't turn it into their life's mission.

Right.

So.

Right.

What was different for you? Take us through. First of all, I think people want to know, what did you do? I mean, did you treat or did you refuse from the beginning? Like, let's. Let's hear your story and how it became your mission.

Yeah. It started with a mammogram at age 40. I started and, you know, good patient. And then by 44, I was called back. You know, it's pretty much this. My story is every woman's story. How it starts. Okay.

Then calcification.

Yeah, calcifications on mammogram. No big deal. 80%, probably nothing. Do a biopsy. Never questioned. I did the stereotactic needle biopsy. I thought that was quite barbaric. And, you know, just observing. I'm a little bit more of an observant person and just, you know, witnessing how the wall was just beige and they could have painted something nice. Things like that come back to mind. But they were all, you know, wonderful and nurses were kind. And a week later, I think I got a call on the phone saying over the phone, a nurse said, you have dcis. You need to schedule a wide excision with a surgeon. And I was like, I was just about to leave to go do a speech and it just was like, what the hell is that? I remember being completely shaken. Came home and I looked up DCIS for the first time, but didn't understand it. Went in to see the doctor, the surgeon, and she said to me, you don't have dcis. You have adh. Atypical ductal hyperplasia. Which is the step before. She's like, but I'd like to get a bigger sample to rule out DCIS or cancer. Invasive cancer. And so we need to do a wide excision for that. I'm like, okay, that's a biopsy, a surgical biopsy. I am totally naive. I've never done any research or question anything. I just said, can we wait till after the holidays? Scheduled it for January. This all happened in 2009. Now we're in 2010. January, I do the surge, the wide excision. The worst part was the wire localization. I mean, talk about barbaric. I just could not believe that here we are in 2010, even this is 15 years ago. This is what they're doing. For people that have a spec on.

A mammogram, it's not much better now.

It's frickin unbelievable until you go through it. And then when I took the bandage off, it was like black and blue and red. I mean, I put the picture on my website because I want women to be aware. No one's telling you in advance. Like I didn't have anything wrong with my breasts other than like a speck on a mammogram. Now I've got some major damage and injury. I'm. I'm pretty upset. And I go into the doctor and she's a week later and she says, well, you've been. It was the nurse, breast specialist nurse. I call her Nurse Ratched. You know, from One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest? Yeah. She says, you have dcis. It's a pre cancer. It's ductal carcinoma in situ. So you hear the word carcinoma, it's pre cancer, but we treat it as same as invasive cancer. Here's your treatment options. A partial mastectomy plus seven weeks of daily radiation or a mastectomy. This is when everything shut down. I was like, what just what was telling me very incongruent with. It's nothing. It's a pre cancer, it's a risk factor. She starts drawing it out and then I'm just there in shock. And I remember asking about diet. She's like, no, I didn't. You don't need to do anything different, but would you like a prescription for Xanax? So now she's giving me a dangerous benzodiazepine, which I'm aware of because my mother went down that path. And I'm thinking every single person, 60,000.

Women, she really just outright asked you without you saying, like, I have horrible anxiety or whatever.

I didn't show any anxiety. I showed like, I was like dumbfounded, like numb. But I was questioning about diet. So this, this is what caused me to want to do more research because it was so bad the way that it was presented to me as so matter of fact, like, like you're just in the conveyor belt. And. And then when I looked into it, I'm like 60,000 women. This is, I'm not just like a rare, this isn't a rare thing. This is every year, 60,000 women that do not have cancer, breast cancer, but a risk factor. Then I learned there's a controversy about the name carcinoma. Two days after this diagnosis, this was what caused me to become an advocate. I find an article in Medscape, it's called take carcinoma out of DCIS and ease off treatment. And it was talking about active surveillance as an option, needing biomarkers. We're over treating. And Dr. Laura Esterman was quoted, Dr. Ann Partridge. And I'm like, who are these doctors? And then I started going down the rabbit hole, trying to find everything. What are they saying? And then I found. There was a conference at the National Institutes of Health that convened to discuss this. And it was a huge thing. This is now 16 years ago. We're still having the same debates.

Isn't it astounding? But.

And it's worse now, I think.

But you understand where it's coming from and why it's worse because now I think the numbers are closer to 90,000 a year. And you know about that autopsy, autopsy study, right, where they took 100 women who died of totally unrest related causes, right? Car accidents and overdoses and stuff like that. And one in five of them, so 20 of them had evidence of DCIS in their breast. So if we just randomly sampled everyone, we're gonna find it. This is what Dr. Gilbert Welch talked about. Like if you look Hard enough for disease, you're gonna find it.

Yep, exactly Right.

So if instead of mammogram we just like eeny, meeny, miny, mode it to decide who got a biopsy, you would be right. One in five times. You would be right.

And if you keep doing mammograms, it's, it's going to, you're gonna, you know, you're either going to get a unnecessary biopsy which is damaging and dangerous. 80% are nothing. But then you're all, you know, you now are, are at risk of having an, another incident because you had a biopsy. That's a risk factor actually when you do that nomogram, I mean my, you know, I put my numbers into the nomogram. Yeah, I'm at high risk, supposedly. And then I, you know, it's, it's all frightening because if you have a family history, okay, I had a grandmother and then I had Ashkenazi Jewish, okay, you're now, oh my God, you've got, you're young and you've got DCIS or adh. You know, it's just like all these young women are having double mastectomies because they are frightened more than anything. And when you're young, I thought, okay, is it because I'm young and I've got more estrogen? What's the reasoning behind that? The reasoning is I have more years to live. That's what I was told. I'm 44. If I live to 84, I've got 40 years. You know, if someone's 74, they're probably going to die of heart disease before the breast cancer is going to kill them.

So once you understand the diagnosis is ADH or dcis.

Yeah. If you understand this, the reasoning. So I'm trying to explain this like plain language to the patient, not even patient population, to the general public. The women out there who are, who believe in the cult of mammograms. Like I did. I was a believer. But I, I quickly learned when I realized this, I was like, holy. Oh my God, this is, this is huge. And, and now I'm saying things and, and I'm in some groups and I'm trying to talk about over diagnosis and over treatment and I'm being kicked out or I'm being told, you can't promote that. You can't put your website like all this, like negative. Nobody wants to talk about this and nobody wants the information. And it's all science, deep research based. Everything that I put out there was based on studies that's why I've done that, because I'm. Who am I? You know, I'm just one woman with a story. But I got a lot of the data and the research. I tried to share that, and I've just gotten a lot of resistance. And where's the resistance emanating from? The radiology community is really not wanting. They're saying 40, not 50. When the, when the guidelines changed to 50, there was an outrage. And it's just, it's been insane to try to talk about this in a way that's not conflict, you know, having a conflict.

I think, I think we talked about this. Did we talk about the Upton Sinclair quote?

Oh, yes, I love that quote.

That it is. Wait, I might not be getting it exactly right, but it is nearly impossible to teach a man something when his livelihood depends on him not knowing it. So if, if I didn't get it exactly right, it's pretty close, right?

Everyone should look at that.

So radiologists, first of all, they have been trained to believe that mammograms save lives. Now, how many of them looked at the data? I don't know. But if you drill down into the data, and I know I'm telling you something that you already very well know, but if you drill down into the data, there has never ever been any study that shows that mammogram improves overall survival. Never. It doesn't exist. And the reason it doesn't exist is because mammogram does not improve overall survival. And no matter how many mammograms we do every year, the same exact number of women die of metastatic disease. No matter how many mammograms we do every year, the same exact number of women present with aggressive disease, the only thing that mammogram changes is the number of women diagnosed every year with breast cancer. So their statistics look good because they increase the denominator and the numerator. The number of women that die of breast cancer stays the same. But all we're doing is over diagnosing. And I know I don't have to tell you this, but in a system that only rewards sickness and the way that radiology departments make money, because they're not making money on screens, they're probably either breaking even or losing money on screens, but they, they make money on diagnostic studies. So when they call you back, and if you screen a thousand women over 10 years, you may potentially save one woman from dying from breast cancer, but you will cause somewhere between five and 10 women to be over diagnosed, you will cause 100 women to be called back for additional views. And when we biopsy these women, like when you look at the, the totality of the population of women who undergo breast biopsy, only 20% of them have breast disease. So that means 80% of the time we are biopsying women for something that they did not need a biopsy for. Right. If I were only right 20% of the time, believe you me, I would be out of work. Right. And yet we somehow allow that or call that acceptable. It's not acceptable. It's not acceptable. But the radiologist salaries rely on it and they create a lot of work, business, income, whatever you want to call it for the system. Because if we're over diagnosing 20 to 30% of breast disease, which that's what all of the studies show, that it falls somewhere between 20 to 30% is over diagnosis. That is, we're talking about, you know, 60 to 90,000 women every single year are over diagnosed. That's a lot.

It's a lot.

And it's a lot considering that we have 4 million women living with a breast cancer diagnosis in this country. It means a million of them never needed that diagnosis and were treated unnecessarily. A million women.

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It's, and it's not only the treatment, it's the emotional toll. You are now a cancer patient, a cancer survivor. You're in cancer land and it's, it doesn't end. And you feel there's a lot of women that feel guilty because, you know, there's, there's people that really do need cancer services and treatments and looking into, you know, root causes like what you're providing. But the shift is so much on early detection and they're saving, you know, lives, but their, their life was not in danger. This is what Gilbert Welch and some of the like Peter Gaultier, Dr. Vinay Prasad, Dr. Michael Baum. And these are the people that are so knowledgeable on the research about over diagnosis that I have tried to amplify and the data is there, the charts like what you just described, that the invasive cancer rate or the late stage cancer rate hasn't changed. People will say, but the mammogram saved my life. Okay, you have these stories and anecdotes. What they're not understanding is though there's actually science and research behind this and no one's saying that nobody's life may or may not have been saved by their mammogram. If they want to believe that, that's fine. But more likely a mammogram is going to, like you said, 5 to 10 will be over diagnosed and then you fall into the system. I just wanted to read this one thing from this book called busting breast cancer. Five simple steps to keep breast cancer out of your body by Susan Wadia Ellis. Else she said today's epidemic of over diagnosis and over treatment, almost always triggered by regular mammogram screenings, is quite profitable to mammogram clinics and cancer treatment centers. The 9,000 mammogram clinics throughout the US today are generating about 7.8 billion a year in revenue. Next the first year of over treatments given to the estimated 84,000 or more women over diagnosed each year with stage zero breast cancer costs an average of 60,637 per woman for a total of about 5 billion. So talking about the money that's generated where people say, oh, mammograms don't generate income for the radiology places or the, you know, this is the downstream effect is all the biopsies and the surgeries. I had so many things before I got off that over treatment train is what I call it. So I had one needle biopsy and one Surgical biopsy. Then I said, I got educated. I said, no, I'm not doing all these treatments. I want to, you know, do the holistic way. And I did that on my own. Paying a lot out of pocket for naturopathic or integrative doctors. But a year and a half later, I continue with mammogram because I didn't, I didn't get the, the full message until this happened to me where they said, now it looks invasive and you know, you were the bad patient, you didn't do what we told you, and now it's invasive. And they scared me again. And of course I said, well, I got to following year, year and a half later. Yeah, so I spaced out. Mammograms, they wanted me to come back like three to six months. I said, I'll do it at eight and 10 months. So at that 18 month mark, June of 2011, they said, we, you know, suspicious, highly suspicious for malignancy was written on the report. And I went away for the summer, went to Denmark and I had, you know, had a lot of time to research and think about it. I came back and asked for an MRI because I wanted clear. You know, that was what was the best imaging at the time. Still inconclusive. Suspicious for malignancy. I finally caved in. I said, okay, I'll do the surgery, just remove the area, skip the needle biopsy, do the surgery. And guess what? We couldn't get the margin. Okay, so then I have to go down and do the research into that because after I go, okay, fine, two weeks later, take it out, get the margin. I did two back to back surgeries. Same thing happened the second time. They said we couldn't get a good margin. You need a mastectomy. Listen to what this doctor said to me. She goes, your breast is like spoiled soup. It's not worth saving. Imagine that imagery. Breast is like spoiled soup. And this is when I said, I said, goodbye forever. I'm never doing another mammogram. Because then I did all the research about the re excision rate up to 70% with lumpectomies, with DCIS. And this is why there's so many mastectomies. I should have, if I followed the doctors at this point, had a mastectomy, then the doctor said, when I said, no mastectomy, she goes, at least do three weeks of double dose radiation. Did a ton of research on radiation. There's no survival benefit to any of this.

None.

So that's how. Because my, my timeline, I stretched it out for two years I had a lot of time to research and investigate along the way. And I was also infiltrating my mind with the holistic, you know, risk reduction methodology and mindset of people like you who are out there talking about root causes. And my case is different than any other woman's case. I have root canals. Like, that could be. I could eat everything perfect and exercise, but maybe I have, you know, infection that's not taken care of. So this is what people don't understand. When I changed my diet, all my skin issues cleared up. I thought I had this genetic chicken skin. I had a toe infection that wouldn't heal, but everything healed. So I had the. I had the reinforcement of how the body actually heals through, you know, what doctors weren't telling me. So that's kind of how I started my website right after that second surgery. And they said, your doctor said your breast is, like, spoiled.

I can't even believe those words. I just can't even believe. I know that I've spoken to you, but you never told me that before.

I think I might have left that one out.

Oh, my God. That's horrible.

Horrible. But because it was so horrible, it made me become more passionate, because if it was not horrible, you know, nobody becomes an advocate because things go good. It's sort of like, this is wrong. Women need to be informed.

And aren't you amazed by, like, we were talking about before, the. The celebrities who then, after their breast cancer experience, say, go have a mammogram. There's someone. I don't remember who it was. Like, maybe it was Olivia Munn, but someone's. Someone's mammogram missed their breast cancer. And then they're still out there afterwards saying, everyone should go get a mammogram. And I'm like, happens all the time. Like, it didn't even work for you. And that's.

That's how strong the cult is.

I know the cult is unbelievable. And for all of those people that come back with mammograms save my life. Like, I had someone write to me the other day about how horrible I am and how dangerous I am and how. How ignorant I am. And she said, mammogram saved my life. I had breast cancer at 36, and mammograms saved my life. And I rarely, rarely, rarely respond to these people because it's very hard to teach the blind to see. But I said out of curiosity, how did mammograms save your life? Because you had breast cancer at 36, you were not screening you found your mass and went and had a mammogram. That mammogram didn't do anything that you didn't do.

Right.

You saved your life, and thank God your life is saved. But let's give credit where credit is due, because it's not due to the mammogram. And the problem is people get so tied up in the emotion of it and they just want to cling to something that gives them hope. And so they feel as if they, you know, that that was somehow tied into their survival. And they don't realize that it has nothing at all to do with their survival. And it's been demonstrated time, time and time again. My favorite quote is the one from Dr. Otis Brawley, who is the former head of the American Cancer Society, who said that he recognizes the need for accepting the limitations of mammographic screening. Acknowledging the existence of breast cancer over diagnosis challenges the value of screening. It means that the benefits of breast screening have been overstated and that some women who have been quote, unquote cured were actually harmed because they received unnecessary treatment. So all of these people out there thanking mammogram for saving their life when their life was not in danger. And in fact, it's the mammogram that put their life in danger. And this is, you know, I receive a lot of criticism for saying that mammograms don't save lives, and in fact, they cost lives. Because if you get to the end of the tally and you take someone who didn't need to be treated for breast cancer, and you did surgery and radiation and possibly chemotherapy, but anti hormonal therapy and rendered her menopausal, and she had prolonged estrogen deprivation. That woman is more likely to die of cardiovascular disease, which is already the number one threat to a woman's life. She is more likely to develop a cardiomyopathy, neurodegenerative disease, osteoporosis. She can die from an osteoporotic fracture. And these threats to life are very real. And lest we forget, the number of women that die every year from breast cancer is equal to the number of women that die every year as a result of a complication from a fracture. So let's be really careful about what we're thanking because, you know, we're thanking for someone from saving us from the train when they threw us in front of the train to begin with.

Exactly. I mean, thank you for being out there and explaining this over and over and over again. And please don't stop, because I won't Stop. Because it's too important. What we know is that people don't know that what they need to know. And this is the problem. So, yeah, so I just collected. I made an ebook collecting all this information, different sources that you know. And I have a link to the original study or statement or source or video because it comes from a variety of sources. But there's no, there's no like organization. There's a preventing over diagnosis conference every year and they talk about this, but there's no cohesive group or organization that's really trying to educate the public. There's no other advocates, like patient advocates. I was the only one amongst researchers and doctors that's on this committee to plan the conference. This is a few years ago I was invited to be part of this conference committee. But I'm like the only person out there. Even in the DCIS world, there's people that are creating websites now or advocates or writing books, but they're like, from the standard of care. And this is, you know, I'm here for you going through your treatments and I'm the only one. I've got like groups talking about, it's not cancer, it's over diagnosis, diet and lifestyle and safe imaging. It's like the alternative perspective. But there's not like we need like an organized group that can kind of counterbalance the marketing of the societies of radiology and surgery and all their big budgets. Hologic. I just saw a great ad that they made a video, but it's coming from the mammography machine maker. Yes. They have a lot of money.

Yes.

And so that's why we're creating a lot of influence.

We have to get more creative. That's why we're doing this. Yeah.

Every single time we go to, in front of our government, in front of Congress and say we, we should not be doing these screening programs anymore because they don't save lives. It becomes like a more an issue of morality.

Right, Right.

And they totally ignore the science. Totally ignore the science.

We.

What's really interesting is a lot of the response to when I say that dcis, ductal carcinoma in situ isn't cancer, a lot of the response is, well, why is the word carcinoma in there? If it weren't cancer, it wouldn't have the word carcinoma in there. Now we have had. There have been many, many experts that say that it should have never been named that because it's almost impossible to unring a bell, but people are totally willing to unring it with lobular Carcinoma in situ. So no one will call lobular carcinoma in situ cancer. They don't even really call it a precancerous lesion. They call it a risk factor. But the funny thing is. Not funny, ironic. The irony is that if you have a biopsy that shows LCIS and you do nothing, right, you continue to live your life the same way and get your mammogram every year, you have a 25% chance of developing an invasive breast cancer in your lifetime. Right? If you get a biopsy of DCIS and you did nothing but continue to live your life the way that you live your life and get your mammogram every year, you have a 20% chance of developing invasive breast cancer. Like, in what universe does this make any sense where people are perfectly willing to say, you don't need to do anything about the lcis? I'm totally unwilling to say, you don't need to. You don't need to do anything about the dcis. Like, the DCIS gets automatic cancer treatment, and the LC is. Is like, yeah, you're good.

It's amazing to me, there's a lot of nonsensical things, but even atypical ductile hyperplasia, they are telling everyone to have a wide excision biopsy. That's the same as a lumpectomy. That's over treatment right there. Which happened to me that I didn't know it. So it's. It is crazy the way that people think about these things and how doctors are communic, them and nurses, and it's still happening today because I, you know, I'm in these support groups, I'm leading them, and I hear how women are being talked to now. It's gotten a little bit better because we have some studies showing low risk DCIs can be safely monitored because the study results showed that there was no difference at two years. Now, two years isn't enough. So by the time, you know, they get the data, we're all going to be dead. This is an urgent thing because people, you know, we can't continue. The harms that I hear every day. I deal with all the anxiety and emotions of people that just need someone to talk to, give out my phone number, and it breaks my heart. And I just try to get women to really understand they have time. This is, you know, all the things that we're talking about now. There's. There's no evidence to show that, that even. Even deciding whether it's low risk or high risk, they can't agree on. That pathologists disagree 25% of the time they're looking at the same slide of tissue and they disagree whether it's lower, high risk. So now, okay, now we have these biomarker tests and they can't, a lot of doctors don't want it or they, they can't get it covered by insurance. And it's problematic all across the board. It's like $4,000 to get this test and women can't access it. I mean, I read about the need for biomarkers to really differentiate which ones are the low risk, which ones are the high risk. Well, the test came out and guess what, when they say low risk, 50% are really high risk. They're flip flopping what is being told to doctors and patients and they're basing all these aggressive treatments on this low risk or high risk. So we have so many problems. And so that's why I say don't open the Pandora's Box. Dr. Peter Gautier, I think you know who he is from, oh, I love Cochrane Collaboration. Yeah, I watched him for many years. I have all the videos having him on the podcast. He says your best way to prevent breast cancer diagnosis is to avoid mammograms. I mean, he's like a notch above you even like really out there.

That is the number one thing that we can do tomorrow to decrease breast cancer incidence is we can stop doing mammograms. If we stop doing mammograms, we would decrease the incidence of breast cancer by 20 to 30% tomorrow.

Exactly. And he's not the only one saying it. You're not the only one. Then we've got Dr. Michael Baum who brought the screening program to England.

He's out there saying his explanation of what the mammographic screening program is and does is outstanding. I don't, I'm gonna try to find the YouTube link and put it, attach it to this podcast. But have you've had the privilege of speaking with him?

I have, I've only interacted with him online. Yeah, yeah. And you know, he's on X and he puts things out there and he, you know, I'm a champion for him. I amplify his messages, his videos, I have them on my website. He's done a couple of fantastic videos at the Preventing Over Diagnosis conference. But what I found, when I do this, I get, you know, concerns from some of the community. Like I'm saying something that I shouldn't say, but I'm like, this is what the reality and the data is. Why Are people afraid to tell the truth? This is what concerns me and why I feel our message has to go even bigger and in a more radical, creative way. Because I've been saying it gently for a number of years and writing blog posts and sharing information, but it's not stick. It's not like I think you've had the most impact so far out of, you know, I've been in this world for 15, 16 years and when I found you talking about this about a year and a half ago or two years ago, I was, I remember saying, holy hallelujah. Like, we need someone who has your level of expertise in the system as a surgeon that can say I did these things and I believed in these things and I was wrong and I, I'm shifting and I want to get, make it better. And I really applaud you for that because it's not easy to do that and you take a lot of heat.

I'm sure I take a lot of heat. I think, I think just admitting that what, what we were doing, what we still are doing is wrong is near impossible for most people. Because, I mean, if you think about it and you've spent, spent your career in radiology as a breast imager, that is a tough pill to swallow. That what you've been doing for 20, 30, 40 years is not the right thing, that you didn't help people, that you didn't make a positive overall impact. Now you can certainly understand why industry is fighting so hard about around this. And industry includes the hospitals, you know, like the radiologists, for their part in it, they work for hospitals.

Yeah.

And if they don't work for hospitals and they have independent groups, they're business people.

Right.

They're, they're, they want to make money. And I think everyone deserves to be paid for the work that they do. Right. Like, I'm not, I don't.

I don't.

Disparage them making a living, but I, I think that we have an obligation to first of all tell the truth. And they are speaking their truth. But when the science changes, our minds need to change. They just have to. And when we know better, we have to do better. And the problem is, you know, you're talking about a 13 billion dollar delta. If we, if we get rid of mammogram as the, as the screening tool.

Yeah, that's, that's like, yeah, it's not going to go away. Yeah. And that's why I feel it's going.

To be very hard to slay this dragon. I'm committed to Doing it.

Yeah. But like Dr. Esterman said long ago, women need to demand change. It has to come grassroots from the women. And the positive is like, my group, that is DCIS is not breast cancer. They're all into this mindset now. It's 3,500 women. I started out alone. There might have been one or two 15 years ago. And I was like, where are all the women that think like me? Well, now we are growing. We have a movement. We're. We're stronger because you can't do anything alone. And then we've got, you know, you and other functional medical doctors that are understanding this, are out there speaking about this, that are, you know, so all of that together is. It's creating the momentum that's needed. I think the shift is happening. And yeah, I, I just feel blessed that we have the wisdom all around, you know, because we're reducing our risk of any other illness or being over treated or over medicalized.

Yeah. I worry about, because we did speak about the fact that we do need a test to be able to delineate who does and who doesn't need to be treated.

Right.

And I suspect it wouldn't be that hard to develop that test because, like the oncotype score and like all of the predictive indexes, and especially in the time of AI, there's got to be factors that the more aggressive versions or varieties of DCIs have in common, and we should easily be able to test for those. The problem is, where's the incentive? That test, I suspect, is not going to see the light of day for a very long time, because who wants that? I mean, the women want it. Certainly the women want it, and the women should demand it, but the system doesn't want it. Why would the system want it? Why would they want to get rid of 80% of the work that they do in the DCIS space? So if we diagnosed 90,000 women this year or in 2024, we diagnosed 90,000 women with GCIS. Okay. If we got rid of 80% of them.

Right.

That doesn't leave a lot for the system.

That's right.

Right. So I, I know that I tend to be a little cynical, but I, I don't think that that that test is going to see the light of day for a very long time, unfortunately. And, you know, I know in, in my world that I'm in, where I advocate for safe breast cancer screening and I am shot down day in and day out, where I'm trying to bring qt, you know, and make it available around the country and eventually around the world. But you know, the system doesn't want it because if you get rid of mammogram, then you eliminate that whole cascade that comes out of it, that whole cascade. And even though it's a terrible test, that's painful, that uses ionizing radiation and anyone who says like, it's just a little bit of radiation, do you want to take a little bit of poison? I mean, honest to God, do you want to take a little bit of poison? Does that sound appealing to you or smart?

Right.

And all of these people and then the argument that, well, it's the same as the radiation that you would get flying cross country and you don't tell people not to travel. It's not the same. It's not the same at all. And when you think about the, the radiation that you get on a cross country flight, which is scattered radiation, which I'm not saying that it's not damaging, but it does not have the ability to do the same kind of damage that the, that a focused cone down dose of radiation can do to the vulnerable cells of the breast. Right. And someone said a really smart analogy to me before, they said, you know, nothing has more energy than the sun. Right. And yet, you know, you don't walk outside and get blown up. You don't walk outside and in an instant get burnt. Right. It takes a long time to be outside to get burnt. But go have a laser shot at you and you can't take it for more than a second.

Right? Right.

In a second it will burn you because when you focus the energy, it has a very different impact. And that's exactly what's happening with mammogram.

Right.

And radiologists even use that, that justification of it's the same amount that you get on a cross country flight. And it's baffling to me how much they're like willing to go down with the ship. Hello, my beautiful listeners.

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Yep. And they have it across the board. That's one of their like marketing messages. So yeah, you know, it's, it's really sad to me that they use these ways of kind of recruiting women to believe that there's no danger, there's no harm. They just minimize anything that you might be concerned about because they don't want to give it up. So, yeah, that's what my book, my little ebook I made called Opting out is an informed choice. Like it has to come from women getting educated through us talking about it and showing the data and making an informed choice and being strong and confident and asking for if they want an order for an ultrasound or QT imaging and paying out of pocket. I mean, I've started a little nonprofit to try to help women with financial need that I want everyone to have access to these things and that's the complicated thing. And maybe, you know, I'll get somebody to support my non profit where we get millions of dollars and then everybody can have access. That's my dream world.

Yeah.

I hope you, I hope you get a huge, huge.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm planting the seeds for that and, and you just never know because if imagine like a celebrity with millions of dollars like just got this and they wanted to support this, this, we could be, we could be helping so many people. You know, it does take money. You know, I am working with a nonprofit. I'm not like looking to make a business, but I am looking to help people access healthcare, true healthcare. And I believe that there are better, safer screening tests. This is what my mission is now to, you know, just continue with educating. And we got this new campaign called Smash a Melon. And you know, I finally have somebody with great marketing and social media talents that develop this and it's just, it's nice to see people coming on board that get the message and that want to share it out there and then that's really the goal, is to get this out to more women and have people access true health care, like real health care, like what you're doing and make it accessible to everyone. I mean, there's some people with a lot of money that can afford it and some people that can't. So maybe we, you know, donate for the people that can't. You know, like, buy one, give one. So that's kind of my vision is.

Which would be amazing. Right. Bring it, bring it forth and then get love that.

I also have a petition for insurance, because why isn't insurance covering safer, better imaging? If QT is 40 times better than MRI, but it doesn't have the contrast dye, it's like, duh. Yeah.

I mean, I think from, from my perspective, I think the issue right now is access. Right. Like, I have one center in Philadelphia. Insurance doesn't have to talk to me now when I have 50 centers, they're going to have to deal with me. Right. But what I'm, what I'm angrier about because I get it that I'm the, I, I'm not the 800 pound gorilla in the room yet. I will be, but I'm not. But what I'm angry about is what about for all of those women who are going to their doctors and saying, listen, I don't want mammogram. Like, I'm opting out. Which incidentally is 35% of the screening population. 35% of the screening population is opting out. Okay.

Yep.

I'm willing to have an ultrasound. Will you write a prescription for me? Now, I hear it all the time. All the time. I am not willing to write a prescription for you. You have to have a mammogram. Even if they do, it's always with the caveat like, well, it probably won't work, but here you go. And then they get to the imaging center and they are bullied.

Yeah.

And these people are belligerent.

Yep.

And they say things like, you're gonna die.

Right.

Life in danger, we won't do it. And also, insurers won't pay for it.

Exactly.

Unless you have an abnormal mammogram, they're not going to pay for an ultrasound. Whatever happened to my body, my choice?

I know.

Where did we lose our medical sovereignty? I mean, I, on my website, at my Real Health MD website, and also on the Perfection website, I do have a waiver that you can print off and bring to your doctor and say, here I am holding you harmless. I will not hold you accountable for missing the things that are seen on mammogram, which are not seen on ultrasound, which we're talking about calcifications, micro calcifications, and also maybe sometimes some architectural distortion can be seen on mammogram. Not so well seen on ultrasound. But ultimately, what we have to remember is mammogram will miss 40% of cancers in 40% of the population, in the dense breast population. So it's like an awful test that is not even good or accurate. One of the huge downsides to screening with mammogram is that women are filled with a false sense of security. So they go and have their mammogram and their mammogram is normal. And then three months later they feel a lump in their breast.

Happens all the time.

It's not worth the paper that the report is printed on.

Hallelujah. I agree. That's so great that you have a waiver. I'm going to add that on my website. I wrote an opt out letter so people can copy and paste to their doctor. So that's great. I'm going to add that. That they can have this waiver. Yeah, because that's what it takes to, you know, for women to have their values, preferences and choices honored. I mean, they're being, they're being bullied and like fear mongering.

Yes. Yes, it is. It's not Okay. I guess to some extent, like the doctors are covering themselves or I shouldn't just say doctors because there's providers across the board that are guilty of this. So I know that they're just covering themselves. But what happened to, like, listening to the person in front of you and that person in front of you who is saying, I don't want to have a mammogram, I understand the risks and I accept them. Is not going to sue you for missing their cancer.

Like, wake up. I've said it every year to my doctor, but you know what? In my portal, I get three reminders every year. I, I just laugh. And then there's some in the mail too. Like, too, like they're not listening to the patient.

You know, it's like I get reminders and I'm like, do they really know who they're sending this to?

It's comical. I know. It's like I, I just. And my doctor supports me. She's great. She, she does order, you know, if I want. You know, for a few years I did MRI and then I switched to automated ultrasound and she's asking me questions. I'm educating her. And she's open and she's supportive and, you know, she still has to say, you're due for your mammogram. I think it's just part of, like the checklist. I don't hold anything against part of the checklist.

And, and for a lot of primary care physicians, it's also part of their reimbursement from the insurance companies. Like how many, what is the percentage of your patients that, that opted in and got mammograms? Because they're expected to meet quotas, because they know that that drives business.

That's a conflict of interest because they're being incentivized to encourage. And this is the kind of thing that I'm educating women about. Like, you are too. Like, there's a, there's a confirmation bias with the medical professionals that tell you these things because they have an incentive. They, it's part of their job. It's like if I worked for someone, they said you have to, you know, say these five things and make sure you do it, you know, in order to keep your job. Okay. That, that's, this, that's what they need to know, that they have to say these things. And women have to know they don't have to do anything anybody tells them ever. You have the right to say no to any medical test or any treatment or anything you have. That's part of informed consent. And that's one of the things I'm emphasizing also in my little ebook is what is informed consent? And I'm holding doctors accountable. And I will, you know, I will go at it with doctors even on Instagram. I know we, we've talked about this, but, you know, I just feel like there, when people are posting outdated information, you know, that could be harmful, I'm going to challenge them and put the correct information.

Yeah, but that's, that's a lot of ignorance. That is very, very pervasive. And to some extent I understand what they're going through in that. You know, these radiologists are asked to read an insane number of studies every single day. So, you know, if you're reading 150 studies a day, where is your incentive to go home at the end of the day and keep up with the data?

Yeah.

Where is your incentive to even ask, am I doing this right? Am I, you know, is there something else we should be doing? Is there something better? Are we doing the right thing? Like, there's no incentive there. There's, go home, make dinner, kiss your children, and collect your paycheck at the end of the week. Like that, that's all there's room for in this system. I was recently talking to a radiology group to come on and read for me. And the truth is that they are so overburdened. And I said, come to my world. Like, I won't overburden you. You can read from home. And if there are any radiologists, breast imagers, specifically, because that is a very, it's a very clinical job. You have to know guidelines and recognize lesions and that kind of thing. But if, if there are any radiologists out there, breast imagers that are interested in learning about QT and actually having a better life for themselves and want to be part of this tremendous movement towards patient centered care, towards respecting the patient and the patient's wishes and towards doing what we were told to do from day one when we put on our white coats is first do no harm. And we have gotten so far away from that. And I'm bringing it back.

That's awesome.

So I just have a couple more questions for you. What would happen if tomorrow we stopped calling it DCIS or what would you like to see happen? How would that change? The choices, the approach, what happened? How would that change?

Well, if you take the word carcinoma out it, the studies have been done. Dr. Shelley Huang, who I work with, did a study calling it abnormal cells or like intracellular something, you know, something other than. Yeah, something other than carcinoma or cancer.

Yeah.

Women choose to do nothing far more than immediate surgery. They just are not panicked. So we're going to save the emotional toll, the physical toll, the financial toll, just by that alone. Now, you know, doctors could still do the scare tactic that it's really a true precursor to cancer and you should like adh, they're doing that and they're getting people to do surgeries for that. So. But I do think that shifting like worldwide, if the name was changed, there would, there would just be more relaxed and with the studies going on, the research going on, like I was part of the research in the Netherlands, the Precision project, which they're really trying to shift towards, you know, they're talking more about reducing over treatment. That's great, but really we need to reduce even over diagnosis. That's my thing. But the, but once someone gets a diagnosis, okay, you're talking about you have something, if you are told you have abnormal cells and we can just take, you know, keep an eye on it. The problem is in the system. They're keeping an eye on it by doing mammograms every six months. Or and coming back every three months. This is what they wanted me to do when I refused everything. So that's a problem too. Now the monitoring of something. If you're monitoring with a cancer causing test or reducing it like with tamoxifen, this is what the system is trying to do. They're not interested in looking at diet and lifestyle and root causes because there's no money in it. So I would say it's not enough to change the name. It's something. But we have to change the whole mindset about this, what we're talking about now. Women need to know that they are not in danger of breast cancer. And if, if they want to reduce risk, then they need to read your book. That's what I send people all the time. Start with Dr. Jen's book. It's like. Or you know, my website, I have, you know, the information under holistic health tab resources galore. If someone just spent three hours on my website, they'd be like educated. But most won't do it. I have, you know, best friends. You know, my sister told me years ago, my doctor said you should have had a double mastectomy. Well, guess what? I have my breasts. Sixteen years later, I never got cancer. I'm healthy as can be. I just turned 60. I'm still running, I'm still exercising every day. I still eat the exact same diet.

Incidentally, you learned about the root cause of inflammation and made some significant changes.

Huge. That. I know, I know that side, that.

Whole perception that I'm healthy but I have breast cancer is. There's such a discordance there. And it's because we really don't know what healthy is.

Right.

We think if we don't aren't on any prescriptive medicines, we're healthy. But we only go on prescriptive medicines if A, we doctor and B, we fail the test. Right. And I loved what we were talking about before Dr. Jack Wolfson, who is America's natural heart doctor, where he said, you know, if we would just live our lives the way that we would live if we failed the test, we wouldn't fail the test.

I love that.

Live your life like you failed the test and you won't fail the test.

That's exactly, that's it in a nutshell. That's exactly what I did. I was like, okay, I'm going to act as a. If I have cancer, what would I do? I mean if I actually, if I had cancer, I would do a lot more than I did. I realized I didn't have cancer. I don't need to do, you know, water fasting or Gerson Therapy or, like, you know, all the alternative things that are out there.

Really extreme things.

Extreme, yeah. I would do all of that. I would, you know, if I had cancer.

Although I think water fasting is really, really good for people. And I encourage people to do for a year, whether you have kids.

Okay. Okay. That's something. Yeah, that's good. I mean, it's, it's, you know, there's always, there's always things to learn and improve upon and, you know, when we want to stay healthy, longevity till, you know, we're 100. And it's quality of life, too. It's just, you don't want to live your life in fear. So a lot of the system brings us into fear, and that's just the way it's set up. And I think medical science is a glorious, beautiful thing, and I love that. Emergency medicine and even having babies, if I had to do it over again, I'd probably do things differently. But, you know, like you've always said, you know, we do the best we can with the knowledge we have, and then we, when we learn, we do better. That was the Maya Angelou quote that I love. So, you know, I, I support anyone who does anything. If somebody wanted to get a double mastectomy and they're set on that, I would, I would support them in being, you know, a friend and knowing that's a tough thing to do. And when they say treatment has gotten better over the years, you know, my mom told me my grandmother had a radical mastectomy and Covid cobalt, and she had, like, fluid draining and infections. I mean, so maybe it's advanced from that, but that was the imagery that I. I never knew my grandmother. She died when I was three years old and I was 50. I mean, she was 50, and.

With what you're describing, she may have died of the treatment and she had a.

Severe depression, probably from all of that. She was already emotionally not well, which I think, you know, women have emotional tendencies to. You know, you could fall into this. And I see it every day where women are just, you know, not doing well mentally. So I think that the mental problem with this is probably the greatest thing. I mean, I had, you know, biopsies and surgeries. You can recover and heal from that. But the emotional toll, the fear of cancer and that something's going to take you out, you know, and you're going to leave your kids or something, and it's. It's tremendous. It is a travesty. And I've, I've called it that, and I've been criticized for calling it a travesty over diagnosis and over treatment. But when you really understand it, you know, it's, you know, so many women that are going through all of this for no benefit, only harm.

Yeah, absolutely. And I do want to say that breast cancer is a very real disease. That there are women who have horrible, aggressive disease. There are some women who need treatment, There are some women who need all the treatment that this system has to offer and then some. Although I don't think that treatment alone is ever enough for anyone. Because breast cancer is not a surgery deficiency, it's not a chemotherapy deficiency, it's not a radiation deficiency deficiency, it's not a tamoxifen deficiency, it's not an aromatase inhibitor deficiency. It's just not right. So, yes, you might need treatment, but you also need to look at what you're eating and what you're drinking and what you're thinking and how you're moving and how you're sleeping and how you're tox, how you're toxifying and how you're detoxifying and how you're connecting and how you're spiritualizing and all of that.

Right.

It's an and for me. So I don't want to downplay the horrors of breast cancer because they're very real. But 20 to 30% of the time, we are creating those horrors. And I'm brought back to the rotten soup conversation and the horrible way that your situation was verbalized to you. So I want to know if you could rewrite the first minutes of a DCIS diagnosis, what would you say? What would you say and what wouldn't you say?

That's a great question. Yeah, I've thought about that. I've written about that. I think the first thing is to say that for someone to say, this is not an emergency, it's not life threatening, these are just. These are just calcifications and some abnormal cells that it's a risk factor. You may want to look at some things in your life that can reduce risk, reduce toxins, maybe look at your diet, your ideal weight, your lifestyle, habits, your sleep, your. Are you a smoker? Are you drinking? Is there anything you can do to reduce that risk? You now have a risk factor. That's what is considered that 80% will never be anything. Many, many women just will die of something else. And it's really nothing to worry about. It's just that once it's found you need to know that the same that like anything. Like if you went and said you have high cholesterol, well, there's things you could do with diet and lifestyle or you could take a pill. So you have a choice in how you look at it and what you want to do about it. You, you can empower yourself. Get educated. Yeah, that would be the first thing is get educated and go to dcis411.com because yes, a lot of. If you're just googling DCIS, you're going to get a lot of. This is early stage breast cancer, earliest form of breast cancer, stage zero breast cancer. So there's the constant C word. So be careful what you read and really flood your mindset with. There's a great book called Cancer is not a disease, It's a healing mechanism. I can't remember the author's name, but I listened to it on audio and it's like changing the terrain in your body and like the mindset of all the functional doctors. And even if you didn't do all the testing or say you couldn't afford to go to a functional doctor, I have enough, enough information on my website that would get someone started. There's movies, you can watch documentaries, there's. You have a million podcasts, YouTubes, I mean, you could spend days watching your YouTubes for free. Dr. Gilbert Welch, Dr. Peter Gautier, all these people.

Read my book for 20.

Read your book. The first thing I say to people and when people say, well, I have a micro invasion or it did turn to invasive cancer, the first thing I tell people, read Dr. Jen's book, you know, and go join a support group that's more integrative or, you know, functional medicine oriented. You have to understand, you know, learn about what cancer is and not be afraid of it. That it's a symptom of maybe something going on in your body. I'm not afraid of cancer because I understand what I didn't understand before, that it's, it's connected to inflammation. It could come from various places, you know, like infections, viruses, teeth. You gotta, you gotta, it's a symptom.

It's not, it's not the thing. Yeah, the symptom of the thing.

Right, exactly. So if you look at the fish tank, you know, you gotta like clean the water. It's like keep, you know, really keep it simple. But the industry of cancer is so prevalent in this mindset and it's the, you know, even Dr. Susan Love said it's cut, burn, poison and we need to get better at imaging. I know that was her dream, was QT imaging. Like, let's do it without harming women. No smashing and irradiating and no toxic dye that could stay in your brain or your liver. I mean, you're looking to stay healthy. You're not. It's just all this looking for disease. And I remember in the beginning Dr. Esterman said we shouldn't be looking so hard for DCIS, but nobody listened to her. People are, like, criticizing her because she's too strong or too this. I'm like, but she's smart, you know, and we need to listen to the people that have intelligence and wisdom. And so I would say to anyone with a new diagnosis, put the brakes on. Go to my website, get educated, make an informed choice. And then whatever you do, it's great. Whatever somebody decides to do, they want to go full force conventional. That's their choice then. But don't do it out of fear and out of lack of knowledge.

Love it. Dial into your intuition. I think the only thing that I would add to that is the first thing that I would tell them is that they don't have cancer. And I don't think that that message is conveyed enough. I know it's not supportive enough. And from the system's perspective, it's a very inconvenient truth. And they. They're okay with the fact that they. They escape it with lcis because what they get with DCIS is that in spades.

Yeah. And then they think they need an oncologist and medical oncologist. I'm like, you don't.

You don't need. Not only do they think they get. They get an oncologist.

Right.

You don't need an oncologist. I said, it's not worth the $4 parking ticket, parking fee to go every three months. The medical oncologist wanted to see me. I'm like, why?

Right. For what? For that same non palpable thing that's still non palpable, right?

Yeah.

I always say it's like the Larry the Cable Guy skit. Here's your sign. Right. Like, they give you a sign and you just get in line on that conveyor belt.

Yep.

This is what we do, and this is when we do it, and this is how we do it. And don't ask questions. Right. Don't be. Don't be a bad girl.

Yeah.

Don't. Don't be a troublemaker. Just go online. Listen to me. And I know that women are getting smarter, and I know that people like you are making a huge difference. So I'm so, so grateful. I just want to wrap up by saying a couple of things that you see said that I just want to drive home again. 80% of DCIs will never be anything. Only 20% of DCIs will progress to an invasive breast cancer. Mammograms do not save lives. And if you get a diagnosis of dcis, do not panic. Get educated. You have time.

You have space.

Space. And so go to, go to your website, learn, dial into your intuition and know that you have so much more power than you think because you can tap into all of these healing modalities that have nothing to do with treatment and everything to do with how you do over time. And finally, we should not be looking so hard for dcis. Donna, your book and your website.

My book is called Opting out is an Informed Choice. Experts explain the harms of mammograms. And that's on my website. It's an ebook. It's free. You can download it. And then My website is dcis411.com and my nonprofit is GiveWellness Life. And we're just launching Smash a Melon, which is another website called smashamelon.com and we're encouraging women to get educated, learn the risks about mammograms and alternatives that are safer and smarter. And we're having some fun with it this month. So hope to get more women joining this movement.

We didn't even talk about the Pink Washington.

Right. Well, that's all part of, yeah, the, you know, Breast Cancer awareness Month. That's the marketing. Yeah. Pink washing is something that's.

So go get your nail polish and your sugar filled yogurt and your body wash and all these talks and your candles and all these toxic things that we know probably contribute to a breast cancer diagnosis.

But.

But by all means, go buy these things. And then they donate to organizations that pay for more mammograms so that they can diagnose more disease and have more people in the system.

Part of that popularity paradox. And it's a circular thing. And it comes back to, you know, keep doing the mammograms. You're going to. If I had kept doing mammograms the last 14 years, I certainly would have lost my breasts or both. And I, I'm just grateful that I got this information and I had the power to say no. And I want that for all women. So thank you for having me on, Don.

It was so wonderful to be with you today. Make sure that you check out all of her platforms. And I hope that you enjoyed this conversation today and that you are able to share it with someone who is open to hearing it. The more people that we reach, the more people that realize that we are really out there trying to perform a service, educate people, give them options.

Give.

Them autonomy, let them know that they have choices. So the more people we reach, the better. So please share this and thank you so much for joining me and Donna Pinto and know that I will be back next week, same time, same place. It's Dr. Jen Bye for now. If you or someone you know is dealing with a DCIS diagnosis, a breast cancer diagnosis, they're in treatment. You've completed treatment and are wondering now what you're living with metastatic disease or you've had treatment years ago and you just want to know how to live your life in a way that you are not going to have a recurrence no matter where you are along that journey. I want you to know that at Real Health md, me and my team, we're here for you. And I have designed programming called the Breast Health Blueprint. I also work with people one on one. We are committed to helping you with that health plan, to giving you the tools that you need to create health. Because when you create health, disease goes away. And I know that this is a really confusing time and every step along the way is confusing because in the beginning it's confusing because you don't know what to do when you haven't dialed into your intuition and you don't know who to trust and who not to trust and you're told to get second opinions and people are saying different things or people are telling you the same thing and you think that that's right, but it's not resonating with you or you've gone through treatment and you're suffering from the side effects and you actually feel a lot worse after treatment than you felt before. And you want to know how recover your health or your situation is not progressing the way that you had hoped it would progress, then I want you to know that I am here for you. I am here for you and I have programming developed for you. We talk about it all the time. The Breast Health Blueprint, which is basically your roadmap to your breast health. And it is a combination of a group program along with a lot of personalized one on one elements. If I can help you solve this problem, get to a better place, recapture and restore your health, which should be your goal, and I want that to be your goal and I want that for you. Then just reach out@realhealthmd.com and know that I will be back next week. Same time, same place. It's Dr. Jen.

Bye then.