2: The Difference In Addressing Breast Cancer; Functional Medicine versus Conventional Medicine

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 mean, 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.

As a breast cancer surgeon, my role was so clear in people's breast cancer journeys where they would come to me because they had an abnormal mammogram or because they felt a lump in their breast, and I would do a biopsy and give them a diagnosis. And it really was. The expectations were perfectly clear and everyone knew what they were coming to me for, what I was potentially going to discover, and then what I was going to potentially do, right? So they were coming to me to figure out if they had breast cancer and then I would operate on them. And when I was asked why people got breast cancer, and that was a frequent question, I mean, that. That is the question that everyone asks, but as a surgeon, my answer to that was, you know, it was just a multitude of things that happened over your life. It's multifactorial. And essentially what I was telling people was that there was nothing that they could do and that it was bad luck. And I believed that for a very long time. And it really wasn't until my own experience as a patient that led me to believe otherwise. Because it wasn't until I had my own diagnosis and asked my own why that that answer, that it's just something that happens, became unacceptable. I didn't believe for myself that God would give me an organ, only to remove it and to obliterate the tissues in the area and then go on to need to replace that organ, it just didn't make any sense for me. And that's really why I went on my personal journey. I went on it to get answers and I went on it to heal. And I realized that the treating modalities that we used are really not about healing. My treatment recommendations weren't to make my organ better, they weren't to heal my organ. The answer was obliterating it. That was the same exact thing that I was doing as a breast cancer surgeon is I wasn't doing anything to help anyone heal. I was obliterating it. And though I didn't realize it at the time that I went on my own journey, I was as much a part of the problem as anyone and anything else. So I start my healing journey and I learn about Mark Hyman, and he's a functional medicine physician, and I had never heard of functional medicine. And so I start asking questions because the things that he's talking about make so much sense that when you're asking why you got sick, you have to then ask the question of what causes illness and bad luck is not the answer. It's the answer we've been taught as traditionally trained physicians, but it's not the truth. It's not the answer. And as traditionally trained physicians, we accept that. Because though people think of physicians as critical thinkers, our critical thinking really ends at the time that we start our training. People who are asking the whys and thinking outside of the box, those are the people that are considered the quacks, right? They're crazy, they're. They're difficult. And we take that same thinking after training and we apply that to our patients. So the patients that are asking why, they were the difficult patients, and that's who I had become. I had become one of the difficult patients, right? I wasn't asking. I was asking why. I wasn't accepting the, the vague answer. I wasn't accepting the bad luck explanation, and I was seeking another opinion, a second opinion, a third opinion, like whatever you want to call it. But I wasn't just following along. And this is really discouraged in our traditional medical system, unfortunately. Like, the people that don't just follow along, that don't just listen to the recommendation, that don't just do this thing, were thought of as difficult people. And so at the time that I discovered functional medicine, I was in a program where I was really feeling like a little suspect of the whole thing. Like, it felt a little woo woo. Until that day with Mark Hyman and the day that that light switch flipped for me and I learned that why is the most important question. And, and that you must find the answer was the day that the rest of my life changed. And I went from discovering functional medicine to enrolling in the Institute for Functional Medicine, to becoming a functional medicine physician, to leaving surgery to exclusively practice functional medicine. Now, I know that it's a little bit of a bastardized term that not everyone knows or understands what that means. And so I do want to talk about at least what it means to me and what it means for me and what it means to my patients, Because I think that there is a lot of misunderstanding around it, and it is completely reasonable because it is so very different from the focus of our traditional medical system. In the instance of breast cancer, though, you could apply this to most anything. But in the instance of breast cancer, all the focus is on the tumor. So it's on killing the tumor, obliterating the tumor, annihilating the tumor. It's this mentality that the tumor is the bad guy. But we know, and anyone who knows and understands cancer, we know that the tumor is every bit a part of us as anything else. And when people get breast cancer, those cells are not bad. You don't have a bad breast. It's not being naughty. It's not gone astray or gone awry. It's not deceiving you. What's happening is cancer is a normal response to an abnormal environment. It is that environmental shift that leads to cancer formation. I was just on a call with Dr. Naysha Winters, and if you have not read her book, the metabolic approach to cancer, you must pass go, do not collect $200. You have to do that right now, because these are concepts that everyone needs to understand. Where she talks about cancer being a metabolic disease and even on a more granular level. And her story is just amazing. Make sure that somehow you get to listen to her story, because her story is one of triumph over stage four, late stage four ovarian cancer. Everybody should really figure out how to hear it, Because I can't do that story justice. But what she talks about is that cancer is a metabolic disease. And when the mitochondria, or the energy producing units of the cell fail, cancer happens. Breast cancer is no exception to that. Despite genetics, despite all the other things that we are somewhat convinced cause cancer, Cancer is an environmental disease. It is a metabolic disease, and it is a mitochondrial disease. Once you understand that, you are able to heal from cancer, to recover from cancer. The way out of that situation, the way off of that path, the way on a path to health, is to correct your environment. And that is where the asking of the why comes in. Because what we perceive as healthy and what is actually healthy are often two different things. And you can do some things right and still be in an environment that does not foster Health. What functional medicine does that is so different than the traditional medical system, which is entirely focused on the cancer. And the cancer again is not the problem. The cancer is the symptom of the problem. Functional medicine, instead of focusing on the symptoms, is focused on the root cause. And so it's asking the why. It's asking, why did the mitochondria fail? Why is your metabolism, why do you have metabolic derangement? What is causing all of this? And it looks at all the areas that we know drive disease. And so it's really looking to get to the root cause. And instead of intervening downstream, where traditional medicine is intervening downstream, at the tumor, at the symptom, it is asking, why is the symptom even there in the first place? Because that's where we need to focus our attention. That's where we need to shine the light. It's when you do that that you can actually remake that environment, reestablish health, reestablish equilibrium and reverse disease, prevent new disease, really establish health. Unless you do that, it's really not going to happen. We all need to look at ourselves from a functional standpoint. What does that mean? We have this misconception in our society that health is the absence of disease. If you're not going to the doctor, you're not taking medicine. Whether or not you feel your best is irrelevant because you're healthy. If you don't have disease. Disease in this society means failure because we don't recognize people before that point. If you were to go to your doctor and have routine labs done, and I have a dear friend who year after year after year after year, she was told, oh, your hemoglobin A1C, which is a reflection of your average glucose over a three month period of time. Oh, that's creeping up. Just eat less and exercise more. Oh, you're pre diabetic. Just eat less and exercise more. And repeatedly she would say, well, what do I do about this? What do I do about this? And they would say, eat less and exercise more. And when you become diabetic, we will give you medicine. And this is just one example of how this happens all the time. We don't do anything to help people to reverse disease. Even when we see warning signs that they are failing, we wait for failure. Come back when, come back when you failed. This is mostly due to the fact that most traditionally trained doctors have no idea how to course correct. They don't know where to look, they don't know what to do, and they only know how to manage the symptoms. Once people have failed. And so that is one of the main differences between traditional medicine and functional medicine. Because functional medicine seeks to provide optimal function. Like, that's. That's where we want people. We want people to be functioning optimally, and we're going to give them the tools that they need in order to do that. Because the bottom line is the body is a brilliant machine, right? We know how to heal, but we need to give the body what it needs to heal, and we need to remove what it doesn't need. A lot of the times we just need to get out of our own way. We need to make sure that we are giving our body what it needs, but we also need to make sure that we are not further complicating our situation, that we are not contributing to a sick environment. That happens in so many ways. Sometimes it's intentional, like my child just asking me for a cookie that is filled with food dye and a bunch of ingredients that I absolutely do not allow in my house. I won't name the name of the company, but suffice to say that it rhymes with bumble. And so, you know, sometimes we knowingly pollute our environment, and other times there are things that have significant negative effects on our environment that we are unaware of. What functional medicine does is it shines the light. It allows you to know what's working and what's not. When you know better, you do better. And functional medicine is really about knowing better. It's about testing. It's about looking for optimal. So much of what we test for in traditional medicine, because normal is called anywhere from two and a half standard deviations from the norm, from the mean. There are so many things that are called normal that are so far from optimal, and we just normalize. In traditional medicine, we normalize what we don't understand. As a result, look at us. Only 16% of Americans are metabolically healthy. That is an alarming number, especially because we know that metabolic derangement is the trigger and sets the stage for being overweight, being obese, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, neurologic diseases like Alzheimer's, bone diseases, osteoarthritis, autoimmune disease, and also at the end of that line, cancer. And so while we allow for these normal blood sugars, these normal insulins, which are far in excess of what is normal, we are setting the stage for disease. And we could talk about any number of things that we have normalized because we either don't know what to do with them, or we don't have the Time to deal with them. And I think the main thing that drew me to functional medicine, because I always did want to spend the time. That was always something that was really important to me, which is why my waiting room was a nightmare as a surgeon. But I did always want to spend the time. And that is one of the things that we value the most in functional medicine, is that we are taking time and we are listening. And oftentimes, it's not the talking that you do, but the listening that you do that really shines the light and lead to the discovery. Health is like a layer cake. I mean, there are a number of things that occur over the years that contribute to whether or not you have health. But it's unpacking those layers. It's peeling the onion. It's looking at all the different contributors. It is looking at where your metabolic health is and how your metabolic health can improve by utilizing functional medicine, by using that mindset, by taking the time, by doing a thorough history, by revisiting and revisiting and revisiting, and by checking functional labs. These are labs that look much deeper and look at how people are actually functioning, Rather than the static labs that most traditional doctors use. We are looking at actual functional labs to see how your different body systems are functioning. But also bearing in mind that we are just one system, that everything is working in concert. If there is something that is off, something that is out of place, that it throws the whole system off. And we see that. We see that by utilizing these functional medicine labs, and we are looking at the person as a whole. It's not disjointed. It's not like the heart is over here and the gut is over here, and we're not breaking out those things. We are looking at everything, at its relationship to one another. So we know that hormonal health and gut health are tied together and that you can have one without the other. We are looking at the person as a whole, treating them as a whole and considering them as a whole so that we can create whole health, holistic health, functional health. And for me, once that bell was rung, I couldn't unring it. And I knew that I couldn't spend the rest of my career locked into that surgery spot that was just a coat that didn't fit anymore. I knew I wasn't solving any problems. I knew that I was not really affecting the trajectory of the rest of someone's life. Because unless you help someone to get to their root cause, unless you help them to understand their why, unless you Help them to reestablish their health. And there is so much healing that needs to happen, not only from the diagnosis itself, but the healing that needs to happen is also from the treatment and beyond. It's through that functional medicine lens. It's through asking why, it's through helping people to establish those pillars of health in their life. It's through correcting the things that are adversely affecting them. In addition to talking to people about being on a whole food, nutrient dense, plant based diet, I'm also talking to them about movement. Because as we know, sitting is the new smoking. But not just under movement, over movement as well, because over exercisers are subject to as much inflammation as under exercisers. And functional medicine. Doctors understand this. So we're talking about diet and we're talking about movement. We're talking about nourishment because we get nourishment from more things than just food. We're also talking about prioritizing sleep. We're talking about how to get into that parasympathetic state, that state where healing can happen. Because when we spend too much time in sympathetic fight or flight, which most of us quite frankly are, then we're not in a state of healing. And that's when disease happens, that's when metabolic disease happens, that's when mitochondria fail. And so all of that ultimately leads to disease. So we're talking about prioritizing sleep, we're talking about getting out of sympathetic tone, we're talking about stress management techniques because the stressors will always be there. But that's not the important part. The important part is the meaning that you allow the stressors to have. So really having a lot of tools in your toolbox in order to deal with all of those stressors. In addition, we are talking about this ever increasingly more toxic world that we live in. We are helping to identify with testing the toxins that are impacting you. And we're helping you to navigate your toxic world, helping you to detoxify in as much as you can and helping you to create maybe not an ideal environment because I don't know that that is an option for everyone, but certainly helping to materially improve the environment in, on and around you. And then we're talking about the social component, the mental component, the spiritual component, the psychosocial component. We're talking about all of that because all of that really matters. And health is not, is not happening in a vacuum. And we are affected by so very many things. It's that layer cake again. There are so many things that impact our health. And a functional medicine physician is thinking about all of those things. They're thinking about, they're asking about, they're asking you about trauma, about the impact that trauma has had on you. And we know from multiple studies that trauma and adverse childhood events, those things have significant material impact on your health. Not only your health for the rest of your life, but generational health, because you do pass those things on to your children. And so the importance of acknowledging those adverse childhood events and giving them different significance. And there are so many ways to intervene there. And there's no one way, just like there's no one diet that's right for everyone, just like there's no one exercise plan that's right for everyone, just like there's no one supplement plan that's right for everyone. Because we are all bio individual, we all are different. We've all had different experiences, different exposures. And the point at the end of the day is to consider all of this individuality and create a plan and a program that's right for you. So I hope that that explanation helped you to not only understand functional medicine and what it does understand the difference between functional medicine and the traditional medical approach, but also it inspired you to to ask your own questions, ask your own why, and to pursue your best health. If you are looking for a functional medicine provider, go to ifm.org and there is a listing by state. So I hope that you have a clearer picture about what functional medicine is, what functional medicine does, what functional medicine can do, so that you can get on the road to your best health. Because you, you deserve it. It's Dr. Jen, bye for now.

Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Keeping a breast podcast with Dr. Jen. I hope you found the discussion informative and empowering. Remember, breast health is healthy, 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 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 questions, 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. Jenn Simmons and remember, my Jen has two ends. So until next time, remember to stay proactive, informed and confident. In your breast health journey. The key to your health is new Sam.