15: Rewiring Anxiety During Breast Cancer with Dr. Traci Potterf

Hello and welcome to the Kenya breasts podcast with Dr. Jen. The show dedicated to empowering women through knowledge, tools, and resources to take control of your breast health journey. I'm your host, Dr. Jen Simmons, and I'm thrilled to have you join me on this insightful and inspiring journey. As a breast cancer surgeon turned functional medicine physician, I'm on a mission to empower women to live their breast I need best lives. This podcast dives deep into all topics related to breast health, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and holistic approaches to support overall well being. You know what I say? Breast health is health. So no matter who you are, a breast cancer survivor, newly diagnosed in treatment, living with metastatic disease, or you're simply seeking to improve your breast health, this podcast is for you. Join us on this transformative path towards better breast health and a thriving life. And now, let's get to today's episode. Welcome back to another episode of keeping abreast with Dr. Jen. I am your host, Dr. Jen Simmons, and today I have my friend and colleague with me, Dr. Tracy Potter. Dr. Tracy's signature talk is what is your anxiety and alarm trying to tell you? And she's going to talk to us today about linking your emotional health with the intelligence of nature. Her PhD is from Berkeley and she is a medical anthropologist, which I can't wait to dive deeply into that and what that means. So, Dr. Tracy, welcome.

Hey, Jen.

Yeah, so great to see you.

It's good to know.

I know that you have been, like, what's been happening in Hawaii, which is where you live, is weighing heavily on you. So I just want to first, like, give you my thoughts and prayers and tell you how sorry I am for what's going on. I mean, I know the whole world is grieving over that, but I know it's weighing especially heavily on you.

Well, people who live here. Yeah, yeah. It's intense.

Yeah. Yeah, I. I can imagine. Why don't you start off by telling us what is a medical anthropologist? Yeah.

One thing I just wanted to clarify is that I'm actually not one anymore, but I can't turn it off in my brain. So I'm actually a functional health anxiety detective, and I help people find the hidden causes of their anxiety. But I did start out as a medical anthropologist. And so anthropology is the study of humans. It's very broad. So there are all different kinds of anthropology, like archeology, where you study the remnants of culture. There's paleontology, where you study bones and fossils, and then there's cultural and social anthropology, where you Study living people and their histories and how it shapes them. Medical anthropology has a physical anthropology, like forensics, but it also has the social and cultural. And that's what I did. So I was interested in how different cultures deal with the fact that we live in bodies that get sick, are born, get sick, world and die. And how do we deal with that? Especially how do we navigate illness. So I did my fieldwork in Cuba when Castro was still dictator, I mean, president, I mean, and one of the things that really hit me was the impact on mental health of a Stalinist dictatorship. People talked about nervous, like nerves, like they were just like the impact of what was happening. There was the embargo, there was poverty, and there was dictatorship and oppression. And that's. It was really when I started really realizing how much mental health is a cultural, environmental issue, not just some kind of individual genetic problem, which is what I had been told growing up with a psychiatrist as a father.

Yeah. And it's interesting because really, for all of my training, we were taught because of the pharmaceutical industry and because it was a pharmaceutical solution, like we were taught that anxiety and depression, they were chemical imbalances. Right. And so you needed more serotonin, and so comes the serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which are like vastly, widely and readily prescribed. I mean, all you have to do is mention that you're anxious or feeling sad and that prescription pad comes right out. I mean, no one has prescription pads anymore. But you know what I mean.

I know what you mean.

So, you know, we get told things over and over and over again and just the repetitive language, it doesn't matter if they're true or not, they become truisms. Right. And so anxiety as a chemical imbalance became a truism corrected by the pharmaceutical industry. So where did that go wrong?

Right. So one of the things that was very useful about studying medical anthropology is I was in a joint program, I already say this, with UC Berkeley and UCSF Medical School. And we looked at the politics of knowledge. We looked at where does the, we follow the funding, like, like who designed this study? What were their biases? What industry employed them? What was there to gain from certain findings? How are, how are studies contorted and shaped to get the outcomes that the funding industry wants to disseminate to the public for their economic interest?

So there's, that's happening everywhere and that's all the timely, powerful. I mean, you know that, that study that came out, maybe, I don't know if it was 2019 or 2015, where sugar is Good for you. Right. Or sugar isn't harmful. And, you know, all you have to do is look and see that it was paid for by the Coca Cola industry.

Right.

So, you know, what else are they going to say?

They're whistleblowers coming out now saying that they've worked in the processed food industry. Coca Cola and others saying that their job was to basically confuse the research. They just put all this money. I'm like, you could put money into creating a better product, but instead they put money into confusing people. That's like. It's so manipulative and despicable. It's pretty despicable. Yeah. Yeah. So. So, yeah, like, so one of the things. Yeah. Growing up with a father as a psychiatrist, and my father was actually severely abused as a child, had major trauma, but he was too ashamed to deal with it. He wouldn't say that, but he just. I know this. And I would work in his office as a kid, and he would. Because he grew up on a farm where everybody pitched in, so he thought everyone should pitch in at his psychiatry practice. So I'd be like a little kid, right. At the copy machine on a stool, you know, making copies. Back when everything paper. He did have prescription pads. Yeah.

For what it's worth, my. My son used to come into the room and do biopsies with me when I was a surgeon. So I totally get that.

Yeah. And he wanted to share his world with me. Right. And so once I got older, I had more responsibilities, you know, talking to pharmacies, all kinds of stuff. And then he would take me from a young age all the way through until he passed. Like, he would take me with him to go see his patients. I was like an emotional support human. So I went to psych wards. I went to, you know, mental hospital, so that's a psych ward. And then I went to just regular hospitals and nursing homes. And I got to see these people, and they would be cheered up. I was, you know, like an emotional support kid. It would cheer them up. But I really. It was later in life I was able to reflect back and see how much being immersed in the field of psychiatry, just by virtue of being his daughter, that I had an insight into that world that maybe a lot of other people don't have who are trying to help people that have chronic illness, especially in functional medicine. I know a lot of psychiatrists have turned functional medicine. So later, when I was 19, I had my first panic attack. And what I didn't realize is how much I had learned to kind of stigmatize mental health issues myself, I saw it as those people with the genetic defect that needed the meds for the rest of their life. That's what I thought it was. And so when I started having panic attacks, like, I just thought, oh my God, my cheese is going to slide off my cracker for all of eternity and never come back. I'm never going to have a normal life. I'm going to be. If I'm this mentally ill the rest of my life, I don't even want to live it was that bad. And. And I felt shame.

Panic attacks can be terrifying.

Oh my God, they're horrible. It's the worst pain I've ever had, Jen. I've been in car wrecks, I've had lead poisoning, toxic. Like I've had, like, I've had so many different, like, things that cause all kinds of pain, but anxiety, panic attacks. That is the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life.

Yeah, because control is so far out of your grasp and fear is crippling.

And you're looking through a lens that is so dark and it distorts your perception of reality into such a dark, like it's like a hall of mirrors distortion. And it's. And it's hard to make decisions. It's hard to know what's real. And you know, and it was horrible. And it went on for years. It ebbed and flowed. Something in me, I don't know if it was pride because I didn't want to be diagnosed officially and put on meds because it felt like a life sentence and I wasn't willing, I didn't want a life sentence. So I just refused to even, you know, I talked to my dad, but I didn't go get other professional help. I didn't get on meds. I started trying to figure out like, if there were other ways around it. And it took a long time, a really long time to figure it out. And that's the pain. I want to save people. And when I got to grad school, it came back with a vengeance because getting a PhD is stressful, especially at Berkeley where it's published or perished. So there wasn't as much support of grad students because there was so much pressure on professors, even well meaning brilliant ones. And so. But what I was fascinated by is I had this strong sense. I had started traveling when I was 14 and you know, to Mexico and, you know, I gotten really interested in like other cultures in the world. I had taken anthropology and I eventually moved into grad school Study of anthropology. And I was really curious about how the industrialization of culture impacts indigenous people. Like these people who are living this reality that feels like it's more in alignment with our evolutionary biology, like, the way we evolve to live. And then they start doing what we do. They get. Start getting exposed to the same chemicals, eating the same food, thinking the same thoughts, having, you know, all these things take over. And then they start developing the same diseases. Not just physical diseases like obesity, heart disease, dental decay, things like that, but mental health issues that they didn't have before. And that's when I realized this is a cultural problem. This is like, this is not an individual defect. And if you look at anxiety statistics, like, maybe 20% of people, like, go get diagnosed officially. I didn't go get diagnosed officially. This is like, just the people who are reported statistically who have an official diagnosis, who've been prescribed meds. Then there's probably about, like, depends on which study you look at. Around 40% of people experience some degree of debilitating anxiety. And then 70% of people are so, like, overwhelmed by stress that they may or may not identify it as anxiety, but they feel like their life is being impacted adversely by stress and overwhelm. So that's why I came up with that talk. What are anxiety and overwhelm trying to tell you? Because to me, it's nature's way of saying something's wrong. Anxiety, along with depression, brain fog, fatigue. This is how your brain says ouch.

Yeah, ouch.

And then saying, oh, your brain is saying ouch. There's something wrong with your brain? No.

Would you say it's not common that we're having these conversations? Right. I'm curious. Is your father still alive?

No, he's deceased about 10 years ago.

And were you doing what you do when he was alive?

I was more of a generalist. And what I was noticing is people would come to me for gut issues, weight loss, autoimmunity, toxic mold, whatever, you name it. Or just mysterious conditions. They couldn't figure out what was causing it. And I would notice when we would address the underlying causes of whatever they came to me for, they would say, hey, my anxiety's gone. My depression's gone. Like, their mental health symptoms were resolved. Right. And I feel sad that I didn't get to have this conversation with my dad. I think it would have been really interesting. He was never open to what I did. He thought I was crazy.

That was my next question. Like, how did your father respond to your approach? Because it's so very different. And you kind of have to be open to the possibility that it's not a deficiency replace with a drug situation.

Right. Number one, I think it would have killed him to feel like he wasn't providing the best options to his patients. And I think a lot of doctors, it's hard to say, maybe I wasn't doing the right thing. Maybe this isn't the best option, or maybe there were other options. My dad never would have, like, intentionally used medications to cause harm, you know, like, you know, he. He really got so much validation from the appreciation of his patients. And so I think he felt rejected. And he also liked to go and buy food and bring it home, like, be a provider. And if I didn't want to eat, you know, what he brought, like, he would get angry. Like, he would be hurt, and he had a lot of trauma and rage and stuff. So, like, that was a whole other thing that I. That was probably set me up to be more prone to anxiety was like his. He was in and out of being very sweet and then being psychologically abusive because he had. I. I don't even want to put the images in your brain of what his dad did to him when he was little. So, yeah, he was also.

That generational trauma is very real, though.

Absolutely.

And we do pass that on generation to generation to generation. And we know that, like the microbiomes of people who are children of survivors of major tragedies and travesties like the Holocaust, for example, like, they have a different microbiome than someone who did not have that historical exposure.

Right.

So there's no doubt that in some ways there is a genetic component to it, but still the approach is very different because you're. What you're talking about is healing the wound rather than masking the wound. Right.

Because I like to use and abuse this metaphor, but if your house is on fire and the smoke alarm goes off and all you do is take the battery out, your house will still be on fire. Yeah, yeah. And so you're, you know, if your brain's on fire, you got to put out the fire. And of course, the brain and the gut are connected there. There are so many different things that make the brain say, ouch. You know, there's trauma, there's lifestyle habits, and there are a vast array of hidden medical causes that are infections, that are microbiome imbalances, which are infections. And also toxic exposures are a big deal. Heavy metals, all kinds of chemicals in our environment, just mercury fillings. I've had so many people get rid of their panic attacks by just getting their fillings out and then going through a process of, you know, healing the aftermath of it. And you have to be careful with that. You know, make sure you do it in the right order in the right way. Get help with that. But, yeah, so there's so much to it. And trauma, just trauma. Stress, chronic stress. The stories we tell ourselves. And big T and little T. Trauma.

Yeah. So, I mean, anxiety is so prevalent and so ever present. Right. And nearly everyone can describe some degree of anxiety either associated with a particular event or just generalized anxiety. So how do you approach that person and create an opening that the anxiety is not the thing, but it's the result of something.

Right. It's a symptom, not a disorder. Yeah. Right.

Because how do you. How do you approach that person and, you know, how do you get them started?

Yeah. So I have. I call it three pillars. There. There are three areas that you have to address, all three of these. If you just do two out of three, it won't work. If you just do one out of three, it won't work. There are these three areas. The first one is you've got to look at any kind of underlying medical cause or health issue. A lot of times, anxiety is the first symptom of Lyme that was passed in some way other than a tick bite. That's not obvious. It can be an early symptom of toxic mold. It can be an early symptom like a parasite. Sometimes people have parasites without the obvious GI symptoms or maybe more mild GI symptoms. Anything causing inflammation in the gut causes inflammation in the brain. Your audience probably knows this by now, listening to you a lot, but it's, you know, so I try to figure out. There's hormonal issues, huge hormonal issues. I think your audience, like this whole demonizing estrogen business is. Drives me insane, you know, overlooking progesterone needs, like low progesterone causes anxiety. You know, when your estrogen progesterone are off, this can trigger anxiety, depression, mental health issues.

And. And low progesterone is a very, very big, pervasive issue. Absolutely. I would love it if you would expound on that a little bit because, you know, so many people have that language of estrogen dominance, but what they don't understand is that your estrogen levels can be perfectly normal. But if you don't have progesterone to balance the estrogen, you're going to have difficulty sleeping, anxiety, you're going to be overstimulated, because Progesterone is our off button, right?

And it's so protective. I call it like a superhero. It's like a Wonder Woman hormone because it protects you from so many different cancers and cardiovascular disease. And estrogen is protective too, which I think it gets the bad rap. And that makes me. We need it. And so, yeah, absolutely. Progesterone. If you don't have progesterone, you're going to be anxious and have insomnia and feel overwhelmed. That's just all there is to it. And you're also going to retain fluid and it just goes on and on and on. You're going to have a higher risk of all kinds of, you know, degenerative diseases. It's a big deal. Also, testosterone, it's not just for men, ladies. We need it for all kinds of things, not just libido and muscle, but that's important, too. And low testosterone can trigger social anxiety. So. And then high, high thyroid can cause anxiety. Hyperthyroid, but also hypothyroid, caused by Hashimoto's. We can trigger auto antibodies or antibodies against your own brain. And you can have anxiety because of autoimmunity that you may not know you have.

And are there ways that people on their own can work to, like, why is progesterone deficiency such an issue? Why. Why is that so common?

I think it's the way we're living, the way we're thinking, the level of stress we're putting on our brain and our body, like so many precursors to hormones are made in our brain, are made in our adrenals. And when we don't nurture ourselves, when we don't nurture ourselves and nourish ourselves properly, we're not eating the right food. We're malnourished. You can be obese and malnourished. Right. And so when we're malnourished, we're not getting.

Actually, I think most people who are obese are malnourished. Right. Because they're overfed, but undernourished.

Undernourished. Right now there are people with weight loss resistance who are eating a perfect diet and they still can't get the weight off because they haven't found the cause. But yeah, I think in general, most people who are overweight are malnourished and there are a lot of very thin people who are malnourished. It's like you can't look at a person until you know by just their bmi. You know what's happening on a cellular level. Right, right. Absolutely, yeah. So, yeah, it's just like the way we're living our lives is really unhealthy and we're putting ourselves last. You know, women are there, men do it too. But, you know, we're taught as women to put ourselves last. And, you know, and then, you know, I feel like there's this huge tie between anxiety and cancer because so many of the same things that cause anxiety also cause cancer. And then so many cancer treatments, chemo, radiation, and even the meds like tamoxifen also keep people in a perpetual state of anxiety once they, as they've gone through the cancer process. And so one of the things I'm very passionate about is helping people who've been through cancer, especially women who've been through cancer who are struggling with anxiety and insomnia and just completely wiped out hormones to get their life back, to get their health back. Because a lot of people are like, yeah, you be cancer now. You just. Aren't you glad you're alive? You just get to live this crappy life. But hey, you're alive. You know, I'm like, that's not necessary.

Yeah. And it's a major issue, right? Especially because we've like chosen this convenient explanation which we alluded to before, which is like, estrogen is bad, right? Estrogen causes cancer. And the reason that we have that narrative is because there are anti estrogen medicines, right? And so while that makes the pharmaceutical companies really happy, it makes people really unhappy. Because when you take away estrogen, there are major, major consequences. There are consequences to your heart, there are consequences to your bones, but the consequences to your brain are significant, right? We need estrogen for a properly working brain. And so when we're saving people from breast cancer, but at the same time creating these major disease states, I'm not sure that we're doing anyone any favors. We're not serving them well.

I can't tell you how many, and I know you can tell me even more, like how many of my clients, friends, loved ones who've been through breast cancer are like, no one told me what chemo would do to me. No one told me what radiation would do to me. No, they knew they would lose their hair. They knew they would. A lot of times people are losing their breasts, you know, they're opting for a mastectomy over a lumpectomy. That's a whole other conversation. But they weren't properly informed. I've heard you say on many occasions you have time, like, to not rush into a decision, but people are rushed into a decision, and people aren't fully informed. They're just kind of like, this is what you do, period. And they're so scared. Of course you're scared. And you're just gonna be like, do whatever it takes. You know, and so. And then, like, what really can be infuriating is, especially in the U.S. like, they'll tell people going through chemo and radiation, they'll take all their supplements away and scare them into not using supplements just because we don't have enough studies to prove whatever thing. And. And it's. It's like supplements can make or break. Like, you're like, how you come out on the other end of treatment. So for sure.

And, you know, even so much as there are supplements that actually make chemotherapy more effective, there are supplements that decrease the side effects of chemotherapy while not. While not taking away from their efficacy. And I wish that the medical oncologist would learn to say, I don't know far more than they say no, because when they don't know, they just say no, say no. And it's not helping anyone.

It's not. And, you know, humility is a strength. Like being able to say, I don't know. Like, yes. And, you know, I saw from my dad, like, he didn't feel like he could say he didn't know. He felt like he had to know everything because he was Dr. Potter, you know, like, you had to know. You know, I'm like, no. Like, I. Like, I'm like, yeah, when I don't know something, I'm just like, I don't know. I'm not sure, you know? And that's a perfectly acceptable answer from an expert.

I agree. I agree. And I love what you said. Humility is a strength, and it certainly is. And it's what drives, like, you and I to be better. Right, Right. Drives people like you and I to be better, to learn and to grow. And I think, you know, to be ever aware of the fact that there's always more. There's always more to do, there's always more to learn, and there are always other ways to help.

I was just going to say you just inspired me. I. I mean, I know you've heard this so many times. People say, I've tried everything and it didn't work, but I've tried everything and it didn't work. And I see some people who really want to do things the natural way, but they end up. They're in so much mental and emotional pain that they go on meds, and then they feel guilty and they feel like they have to talk when they come to someone like me or you. Like, they have to justify why they chose medications. And then I noticed people who are on medications who feel defensive, like, you know, anything natural is a threat because I have a genetic chemical imbalance. I'm on meds. Go away. Like, don't go giving me these other solutions because I feel like the latter group is more like, I don't. Like, I just want to blame it on my genes, take a pill and move on. I don't want to really take responsibility for my life and my health. I don't want to face my demons. And I get that. But that limits you there. You get the result of that is very limited. Right. And then the people who want a natural approach and they feel like, I've tried everything, but it didn't work. I tried everything, but it didn't work. And we live in an infinite universe of infinite consciousness, of infinite possibility. So really, no one's ever tried everything. So when we say that, what we really mean is I've tried everything that I know of. I've tried everything that the experts I've consulted with know about, and it hasn't worked for me yet. And that leaves an opening of possibility, which is way more empowering. And I've never had a client come to me, work with me, you know, be all in, because I only take people if they're all in anyway, if they're coachable and. And not get the results. No, one has not. And people come in and want to. You know, people worry about, like, having time or energy or money or, you know, will it work? But I thought those would be the biggest objections from people. And they can be. But I find that people's biggest fear of committing to doing this work is that they're not capable, that there's something wrong with them. And if you've already been told you have bad genes or you're mentally ill or you're defective or, you know, you have these, this BRCA gene and that's why you got. Or whatever the thing is, yeah, we're telling people they're defective. And you're right. There are genetic. Genetic mutations and SNPs and genes that set us up for an increased risk of maybe anxiety or cancer or whatever. But it's not like it's a cancer gene or an anxiety gene. Like, maybe you have a vitamin D receptor issue and then that cascades along with, you might have some mthf, or you might have some, like, mold, some genes that make you More susceptible to tox, indoor mold. And then you might have like, and, and then the kind of. And then when that meets with a lifestyle of not eating well, not sleeping, taking a bunch of medications, early antibiotic exposure, maybe C section birth, not being bottle formula fed, whatever, all these things like come together. There's this whole, you know, we talk about allostatic load. Like there's this bucket of tolerance of how many challenges your body can handle at a time before it just starts falling apart. You know, we have a culture designed to fill our bucket and spill it over and, and it's just like, you know, and then saying, well, that's just your genetics. Well, no, we're, we're hammering our poor sweet bodies. Our bodies are genius because nature's genius. We are nature. We're not outside of nature. We are nature.

Yeah.

And nature's genius. If you look at how, you know, soil microbes communicate with plants and how trees talk to each other, and you, you look at like the miracle of our sweet precious bodies, they're genius. And so, and we're taught we're defective. And that's not fair. And that's wrong and that's so damaging to people. And that's why I branded as energy is health. Because you have this genius of nature in every cell, every human cell, every microbial cell in your DNA. And so yeah, you might have some genes that are going to struggle with certain environmental factors and certain stressors when your body's overwhelmed, but it's not because you have a bad body. And in fact, these symptoms are your body saying, ouch. Their body. It's your body begging for nurture. It's your body saying, please help me. And we're taught to just overpower all those symptoms, the fatigue, the brain fog, the bloating, the digestive irregularities, the headaches, it just goes on and on and on, the hair falling out. And we're just taught to just push it aside and soldier on.

Yeah, well, a lot of it is normalized and a lot of it is normalized because within the confines of conventional medicine, they don't know how to course. Correct. Right, right. We're taught to tolerate until we fail and then when we fail, they will offer us some suppression of our symptom. Right. Like you don't get thyroid replacement hormone until your thyroid is completely failed. And that, that is true in a number of areas. So the number of people that go to their doctor and have a panel of labs run, which you know is always inadequate, and then, you know, told that their labs are normal and they're what? They're fine. Right. And so many people get stuck at the line of fine and continue to do what they've been doing. And it's the definition of insanity. Right? It's doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. Not that they necessarily expect a different outcome, but their doctor, who they trust, who they've entrusted with their health, tells them they're fine.

Yeah. And, you know, I want it. Can I share a personal experience of this, please? Like, so I lived in a house, mind you, it had one of the most gorgeous views you could ever imagine. I don't know if anyone who's been to Oahu to been to Hawaii. There's this neighborhood called Lanikai, and I was up on the hill overlooking the ocean with these two gorgeous little islands popping out. It was epic. It was. I was wrapped around by the mountains were, like, snuggling me. The house was old and run down, but the view was epic. And it was really the thing that felt the most like my home since I'd moved so far away from my family to Hawaii. And, like, it felt like my home. And so when I moved in, the paint was peeling, and they gave us, like, a good deal on the rent if we would just, like, you know, repaint it. And the owner said. And I was so ignorant because I was still into functional health. I didn't know as much about environmental. I knew about mold, and I knew about, like, metal fillings, and, you know, I knew about certain things, but I wasn't very versed in lead paint. So I sanded it without any, like, protection, and then repainted it. Then within two years, it was peeling again. And I ended up living there nine years total. And by the end, the paint was peeling so bad, I'd ask them for years, please repaint or can we repaint? And they were just dodging it or saying, we'll do it next time. I'll ask the owner out. They just kind of like, carrot on a stick, you know, Just kept postponing it.

Dangle, dangle, dangle, dangle.

At the end of nine years, guess who was literally felt like she was dying? Like, I was so sick. And I had been focused so much on worrying about mold that I wasn't even thinking about the lead, which was kind of embarrassing, given my profession. And I didn't. Real people were like, well, just don't pick at it, or, the problem is babies or whatever, because all the research is on children and development and lead poisoning. But what was my first Symptom, mind you. I would get up every morning, meditate for an hour. I used to meditate two hours a day for like a decade. I did all the trauma healing work. I was eating a perfect diet, I was exercising. I was so fit. Like, I mean, I was doing all the right things, but my house was trying to kill me. And I go and I'm.

And it was winning.

It was winning. And I was going to doctor, you know, over and over again and being like, you know, testing. I was having symptoms of kidney issues. And so my EGFR, it was like in the 60s and they told me it was fine. And my globulin album ratio was like, way off. And like, I had all these, like, signs that were like pointing to when you look up, like, why is this too high or too low? It would say one of the causes was lead poisoning.

So.

So actually, before I figured out the kidney lead thing or whatever, I was literally meditating one day, and just after meditation, the still small voice said, look up the symptoms of adult lead poisoning. And so I did. And I sure enough, which is no.

Easy feat because the brain fog that comes with, along with lead poisoning is no joke.

It's serious what it does to your brain and your internal organs. So what had happened? I had gone from having stellar health, which I'd had health issues before. I'd overcome the anxiety and overcome my GI issues. I was the after. There's the before and then there's me. This here's me after. I've recovered my health. I'm an expert. I'm Dr. Tracy. And here I am dying, like, I'm getting so sick, developing fibroids, developing ovarian cysts, you know, like having muscle pain all over my body, abdominal pain, weird GI things, weird hormonal things, vaginal pain, which people don't talk enough about, that mast cell, all kinds of stuff, you know. And of course, one of the problems is that when you're. You have heavy metal burden, it screws up your immune system. So now any mold in your environment is now going to be a big problem. And then say you've shared saliva with anyone, like my former partner who had had Lyme. You, you know, it's. You don't have Lyme disease until it overtakes, those little critters, reproduce, and then suddenly, boom, I have Lyme.

So your immune system gets taken out of the picture because it's just, what, working over overtime, Right? And so, you know, once an intact immune system can keep a lot of things at bay, right? Once you pull the immune system out of the picture, there's nothing left to keep you safe.

Right. And I think people think the immune system just looks out for like flus and virus, you know, viruses and bacteria and parasite, you know, like infectious things.

Which it does, but it also took a lot of things.

Yeah, it patrols for all kinds of toxins, all kinds of molecules. It's just looking for molecules that are hurting you. That's a big job.

It's looking for things that are not self, that are foreign for whatever the reason and that aren't a chemical. It can be an infectious agent. Like it is looking to keep you safe. So anything that is going to pose a safety threat to you, that's what the immune system is charged with. Right.

And mold toxins are used as immunos to create immunosuppressant drugs. Like a mold is an immune mycophenol phenolic acid. Yes.

Right. And so we give to kidney transplant patients.

Exactly. So mold toxins were also used in the Vietnam war to gas people and kill people. But anyway, so here I am. I'm just, I feel like my health a little. The image that came to me is my health was like pouring through my hands like water. And I was trying to hold on to it and I couldn't because it was like water pouring through my hands. And I was going to naturopath, I was going to colleagues, colleagues who were like too freaked out, like to like even help me, you know, like I was going to doctor, I was going to everybody I could think of trying to get help. And here in Hawaii there aren't environmental toxin, you know, experts. I, you know, I did go to the mainland and work with some people and did a lot of my own research. And I had a retired mentor who unfortunately was very sick at the time and couldn't help me. And, and so I just did my best to kind of go through it. But I want to say like the first symptom was anxiety. And then, you know, and then it got worse and worse. But the muscle pain, like I probably, if I'd gone, you know, I could have gotten a fibromyalgia diagnosis just fine. A chronic fatigue syndrome, you know, all these catch all syndromes and irritable bowel disease, like all these like generic like diagnostic codes that mean we don't know what's wrong with this area of your body that's impacted or the symptom you're having. I was having all of that stuff. I was having, I had a tremor, I had Deafening tinnitus. I had like brain fog. Like I could barely work. I couldn't really see clients. It ruined me financially.

But it like tolerated it for a really long time.

I did because I was taking good care of myself and meditating and I was taking like NAC and some binders and things for mold. Like, I think if I had not, I think if I had not been doing what I was doing, I think I would have had organ failure. I think it would have been way worse. And so, but yeah, and when it, when it, when I finally got the whisper in my ear, I don't know why it took so long to tell me to look up lead poisoning. And I did. And I went and got a lead test kit and I went everywhere. It was in my kitchen cabinets was lead. Like, it was like. And I realized I'd been eating and drinking out of dishes with lead dust. It was everywhere. And I just was like, wow. I also tested for mold, which is very elevated in Hawaii like always. And it was awful. And yet my doctor literally, I got, I remember getting a voicemail for my primary care saying, yeah, we got your labs and everything's fine. You know, you're fine, so no need to come in. And I was just like, yeah.

Because when you don't know what you're looking for, you don't see it. Right, Right. And that is, that is so often the problem and why people suffer for as long as they do and as much as they do and are told.

It'S just in your home only.

And we're only learned, we're only taught to recognize failure and that failure is way, way, way down the line. And there are so many points at which you could have intervened and turned it around waiting for them.

And that was the helpless feeling. Jen. I was looking at my EGFR go down. I was looking at my kidneys were tanking. And because I had not yet gotten to full on kidney failure, no one would help me.

Yeah.

Because my kidneys had not failed yet. Meanwhile, I was in so much pain. I was so miserable. And when it got at the worst gen, I literally wanted to die. I didn't even want to try.

And my compassion, that's what happens when we're in so much pain. We just want the pain to end. Right? Right. We don't care how it happens, we just want the pain to end.

Yeah. And the only reason it felt like a good idea to stick around was because I didn't want to hurt my mom and I didn't want to hurt my family. But that was it. That was really the only reason I could think to like stick it out. And plus, I will say I had an intellectual awareness that, you know, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem and that my. I knew that my brain was poisoned by then. I knew I was poisoned and I knew I was seeing the world through a very distorted lens. And I just want everyone, anyone listening or who knows, anyone who struggles with suicidal ideations like to please know there are so many solutions besides talk therapy and antidepressants. They don't fix the problem. I'm not, I never ever want to judge anyone for being on meds. And if you tolerate them, if they're not causing like Xanax can cause paradoxical side effects like panic attacks and insomnia. But if you're tolerating or you know, there's an interesting study you might want to read. Pretty easy to find on PubMed. But they were looking at, I think I was trying to figure out why antidepressants cause weight gain. They were studying 90% of our serotonin is made by intestinal cells. But these intestinal cells will only produce serotonin if they're chemically signaled by very specific species of bacteria which by the way can be killed by antibiotics. And these very specific species of bacteria also regulate metabolism and body weight. Same because everything in your body is multifunction. Everything in your body is like an instant pot or like a printer, scanner, copier. It's all multifunction. Right?

Yeah.

And so they were looking at. Was it. Oh, it was at Prozac, it Fluoxetine. And what they found, and this was a rodent study, not a human study, but what they found was that fluoxetine or Prozac interferes with the chemical signaling between intestinal cells and this, these bacteria and actually not only triggering weight gain, but also decreasing your body's ability to make its own serotonin. So here we are trying to recycle the serotonin through the synapses and make best use of what little serotonin you have. Supposedly that's the root cause of the problem. Right. Which all these meta analysis have come out showing that that's actually not true. Right. But isn't that ironic to take a medication to improve your serotonin even if serotonin is not really the problem, but meanwhile interfere with nature's genius way of making serotonin and in the meantime you gain weight and you can exercise. I feel so bad for so many people who try to eat healthy and Exercise and do all the right things. And they cannot lose weight because of something in their microbiome or because of a medication or because of, you know, I don't know, leptin resistance. That no one will test leptin resistance because there isn't a medication to treat it.

Right.

But there's lifestyle intervention. You can take people who've been stuck for years and you can do things with their diet and their circadian rhythms and get their bodies to lose weight. There's so many ways to fix things people suffer with every day. But if you wait for the medical industry to find your solutions, you're screwed.

And also, the medical industry isn't really seeking solutions. Of course, they're, they're creating customers. And I know that that sounds terribly, terribly cynical, but unfortunately it's true. And it doesn't mean that doctors aren't well intentioned, because they are. But if you're trained to swing a hammer, you swing a hammer.

Right? The problem isn't, yeah, a lot of people get angry at doctors. They just want money and blah, blah. I'm just like, if you know how hard doctors work, they deserve their money. Like, they work really hard. They're burdened, you know, your burden. At this point, insurance companies are practicing telling doctors how to practice medicine, and doctors are burdened like drowning in paperwork and bureaucracy. Absolutely. It's a normal. The doctors aren't the problem. Now there are doctors who are smug and arrogant and have terrible bedside manners. They're just not nice people. Because you don't have to have a good personality or be a loving, caring person to go to medical school. But the problem isn't really happening on the level of the practitioners. It's happening on a systemic level. And just like you look at the root cause of a disease, you dive deeper and deeper underneath. Like a lot of people say, well, the root cause of illness is inflammation. I'm like, no, it's the things that cause inflammation, not the inflammation.

Right. The inflammation is just a response. Right, right. It's just our body's response.

So we have to do that with, with cultures and institutions. When you're looking at the root cause of a social, political, economic problem, have to go to the root. And it's what you just said, it's follow the money. I learned this in grad school, got a PhD in this. Like, it is absolutely true.

And it's exactly right.

And it's easy for an individual person sitting in an office somewhere to just kind of make a decision. So distance from the reality of the Lives, it's going to impact, it's easy to do a horrible thing to people when it's an abstract concept in a business decision and you're not looking at the trickle down into real people's lives. You're hurting. And that's why even so called good people who work for pharmaceutical companies participate in something that's hurting people. I've known, I have friends who are pharmaceutical reps and they, they know how bad some of this stuff is, but they're, they're, they're building an investment property for their family, they're putting their kids through private school. They're, you know what I'm saying?

It's so funny because I ran into one of my old drug reps yesterday at the supermarket and she asked me, you know, how I was doing and what I'm up to and I said, oh actually my book just came out this week. And she was like, oh my God, should we have a meeting to talk about distributing it? That and like, oh, I don't know if you're gonna love my book. And she's like, oh yeah, it's probably anti pharmaceutical. I'm like, well, you know, I do want people to know the truth about chemotherapeutic drugs. And that is not to say that we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater because there is a time and a place, right? And again, you don't have to have toxic guilt about utilizing things that are part of this conventional medical system because sometimes they're necessary. Like think about antibiotics in a, in the situation of a life threatening infection. Absolutely, you need them and you should have them and you should have access to them. However, where you don't need them, which is in your food, and where 70% of the antibiotic supply in the United States is going, it's going to livestock and to food, like, right. That we should have the option of not having and we don't. And that's the problem is that there's no transparency and you have to work really hard to follow the money.

Right?

And the way that this wound gets healed is going to start with the people and it's going to start with the people asking the question that we started off this talk about and asking what is your anxiety and alarm trying to tell you and working with someone that can help you answer that question. Because as you said, it's not happening because of your genes. Our genes may be a script, but we don't have to follow it. It's our environment that dictates what actually Happens, Right.

Possibilities. It's like a choose your own adventure book. And you get to decide which page to turn to through you vote with your lifestyle. So your, your genes aren't, aren't saying, you know, this is a gene for cancer. No, it's just a gene to do a certain thing in your body, but if you do something else that messes something up, then that gene can't do its job. Right. And then the gene does a bad thing. It's not that the gene was evolved to do a bad thing. And so, you know, and then you.

Say the question of is your environment turning on or turning off that gene? And that's the part we do have control over. It's not always obvious, right? You lived in a house that had lead paint. So it's not always obvious. But I think it is a matter of being awake, being aware, being in tune, and asking yourself, what message am I supposed to be hearing here? What message am I supposed to be getting here? And not ignoring all of these signals that are coming your way.

Right. And then having a toolbox for what to do when you learning to listen and then knowing what to do, because I like to use the metaphor of a toolbox. And the pharmaceutical industry is like, all you need are screwdrivers. We've got so many kinds and sizes of screwdrivers. Anyone who's not using screwdrivers is a little screwy. You know, that's something wrong with you. Like, and, you know, and, and it's funny because it's like there's a whole, you know, conversation right now about narcissism. And it's good to know about, like, I mean, it really is my dad qualified for that diagnosis. But the thing is, the whole medical industry and a lot of industries operate like giant narcissists because they gaslight they, they, you know, they do crazy and.

They'Re richly rewarded for it.

I mean, and then they, and then anyone.

Guerrilla warfare tactics that are very effective.

Yeah. And so, and then doctors are afraid to rock the boat because they, you know, you could lose your license or you could be ridiculed, never get referrals. You're name could be tarnished. You could go to prison. Like, they're so terrified to rock the boat. People are like, why didn't you go to medical school, Trace? I'm like, oh no. Like, I'm so, like, you know, I respect so much what you've done, Jen, with your career. It's huge and brave and wonderful and, and, but you, you don't just need screw There's a place for screwdrivers when you build a house. You cannot build a whole house with screwdrivers. You cannot fix every problem with screwdrivers. And so I'm, we have to open up the toolbox to include, you know, so many different options. And one of the problems is a lot of people like to say part of the gaslighting is like well there isn't enough scientific evidence or there is. And I'm like well you have to get human subjects review committee to approve things. You have to get funding and to do get funding for a large scale study on the herb Cryptolepis, which is an amazing herbal antibiotic and anti parasitic and whatever or alcorne or whatever to get like you have to have money from somewhere. And a lot of these studies are coming out of like Africa and India and some of these regions where these herbs are endemic, they're native to these places and these governments where there's really a lot of poverty are looking for non pharmaceutical alternatives to help people because they can't.

And inexpensive alternatives. Right? Yeah, that's what I mean. Once a pharmaceutical comes to market, we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars to bring it to market and it has a price tag to match.

Right. And the US pays the highest price tag. What I know from friends I've had that work in the pharmaceutical industry is that the US and to some degree, well you mainly the US foots the bill for most, most of the profit for any drug is going to come out of the US because a lot because of single payer health care in other countries they can't charge as much. And then in really poor countries people just don't have the money. So, so, so really we're footing the bill for this giant industry that you know there are good people in it. There are good scientists, good researchers, good executives, good people, good administrative. They're good people in the pharmaceutical industry. But there is, it's like a machine, like a, like a culture that isn't even being questioned. Just like we have a culture of eating business that we don't question. Yeah. It is a business and then it's putting profit ahead of humanity. Yes.

It's confusing and it's hard to do the right thing when profits are at stake.

Right.

And so you know that that is very, very muddy water that is swam in.

Yeah.

Swam whatever that they're swimming in.

Yeah.

And, and so you know it's confusing because what ultimately is the goal? The goal for a business is profitable. And they put it above all Else. And the only people that pay the price are the consumers and we are the consumers. So I'm so glad that we had this discussion today and that people know that anxiety is not a thing in and of itself. It is resulting from something. And you have the opportunity and ability to ask that question. What is your anxiety trying to tell you? Because that's where the work is.

Yeah.

And that's where the relief is.

Right. Because I was able. Yeah. Like I might get nervous before I give a talk or you know, like there or something bad happens to my mom or what happened with the Maui fires. Like that's normal anxiety. But having this chronic debilitating anxiety that, that affects your whole life, that is reversible. But you have to look at the hidden medical causes, you have to look at the lifestyle causes. And thanks to the beauty of, of mind body research meets neuroplasticity, there are so many tools to rewire your nervous system. If you don't rewire your nervous system, upgrade your lifestyle. And it feels so good, people don't know what they're missing out. And they're like, oh, I don't want to give up this, that and the other. I'm like, no, you don't understand. When you have like a really optimal lifestyle, it is so sexy and sensual and delicious. I call it healthy hedonism because it's like you can use things.

Love that term.

Yeah, yeah. So healthy hedonism is when you use things that give pleasure to increase your well being. So we're, we have a culture that is fetishized, things that destroy us. And that's our source of pleasure. We can get pleasure from so many other things. We don't need those things. Those are like cheap thrills. Like, you want the good stuff, so I want you like, I help people find the good stuff and have a life you're in love with. And when you're in love with your life, you don't need willpower because you're in love. Yeah. You're passionate, you're engaged. So, so when you fall in love with your life, you get a health detective help you find and fix the hidden causes of your anxiety, and you learn to reprogram your nervous system. And it only takes five to 15 minutes a day to do that. Then you can say bye bye to chronic anxiety. This is real. And even if you've had, even if you've had severe trauma, even if it, quote, runs in your family, even if there's mental illness in your family, even if you don't ever Remember a time not being anxious. I get clients who remember as babies, toddlers, whatever, their earliest memories, they remember having anxiety and they really struggled to believe it could ever go away. And within just a few weeks of working together, they're from like running at an 8 to 10 all the time and at like a 2 to 4, you know.

Yeah.

And so, so you have to do all the things. Remember I had, I was meditating, doing all the work, had a perfect lifestyle, and I was being poisoned by my house. I still had anxiety. Right. You have to do three out of three. You can't even do two out of three. So it takes, it's a process. But you will love. Not only you can fall in love with the process, you can make it fun, you can fall in love with the results. So don't let anyone tell you even that, that you're just. This is your life. You have to settle for. You don't have to settle. And if you've been through cancer treatment or you're going through cancer treatment or you don't want to have cancer, whatever the thing is, but especially those of you who've been through chemo, radiation, and it's blasted your brain and, you know, or like you're really struggling with side effects from like, you know, estrogen blockers, tamoxifen, whatever. Like, like there are solutions. You don't have to live like this. You can have better GI health, you can have better sleep, you can have better mental health. You can, like, you can change this whole, like, your libido is gone and you feel like you can't even use that part of your body anymore. Like, it's shut down for business girl, you can open that back up. So like, like, please don't let medical hexes, don't let what other people are, like, assuming is a limited possibility. Be your limited possibility. And you don't go preach to other people, but you do the work, you experience what's possible, and then you can just lovingly share it with other people and they can see what's possible and they can decide if they want to give that supplement that to themselves. But please don't limit yourself. Don't let what other people think hold you back.

Dr. Tracy, thank you so much for that message of hope. Your enthusiasm is exhilarating and I love that perspective that you share. Where can people find you?

I'm at inner genius health.com I n n e r genius health.com I'm on Instagram @ Dr. Tracy Potter, PhD, which you'll probably have to look in the show notes because my name's spelled a little weird. Yeah, you can find me either of those places. I'm also on Facebook and YouTube, so yeah, pretty easy to find because my name is very stalkable. Like no one has my name in the whole Internet, so it's just me. We will make sure that people can.

Find you and this was such an amazing talk. I hope everyone tuning in enjoyed it. Listen, share like it, give us your comments and oh, and really quick, I.

Know we're wrapping up on my website, there's a guided meditation that will take your anxiety from a really high level down to just like either really low level or like straight up bliss. And it's a brain science trick. It's like, it's really. It was designed by Peter Levine and Maggie Phelps. I put my own twist on it. It takes 15 minutes and it helps with insomnia. If you can't sleep, you wake up, you can't go back to sleep, you have anxiety, you have strong emotions, you're in physical pain. It helps with all of those things. I think every human on the planet needs to know how to do this so you can get that on my website.

Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. We'll make sure to put all that in the show notes. It's Dr. Jen. Bye for now. Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Keeping abreast podcast with Dr. Jen. I hope you found the discussion informative and empowering. Remember rest. Health is health. So by staying informed and taking proactive steps, you have the power to optimize your well being. My team and I encourage you to apply the knowledge gained from today's episode to make positive changes in your life and share what you've learned with others. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe. Subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review. Your feedback and support mean the world to us and help us to reach more people who can benefit from these conversations. Stay connected with me on social media where I share additional resources, advice, updates and announcements related to breast health. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Dr. Jensimmons. And remember, my Jen has two NS. So until next time.

Time.

Remember to stay proactive, informed and confident in your breast health journey. The key to your health is you.