20: Creating a Personalized Cancer Treatment Plan with Dr. Samm Pryce

Hello and welcome to the Kenya Breast 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 and 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 the beyond the Cancer Conference. I'm your host, Dr. Jenn Simmons, and I am delighted to introduce you all to Dr. Sam Price. Sam has a brilliant story to share with you, and she's going to talk to us today about the secrets to creating a personalized plan. And that is so very important for every single person because everyone's journey is unique and what works for one person does not work for another. And it is so important to kind of live your story and walk your walk and really be true to who you are and what you're going through and appreciate that your journey is unique and about you. So, Dr. Sam, thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you, Dr. Jin. I'm so excited. I am so happy that you're doing this. I think that this information is invaluable. All the different speakers that you have and actually bringing them together so that that is all in one summit is absolutely fantastic. And I can't wait to share it with all of my friends, family, the patients. Everybody needs this.

Awesome. Well, thank you. And I couldn't agree more. And this has been like a year in the making, and I'm just so excited for it to be coming to fruition because I agree with you. Like, these things that we're talking about here are so important and they're just not being talked about. Nope, they're just not. Can you share your story and how you got to be where you are now and doing what you're doing so briefly?

I always thought I was going to be a cardiac surgeon, actually. So from the time I was little. Wow. Yeah, absolutely. So studied really hard, knew I needed to go to medical school. When I was in college, though, it was my junior year. So right at that time, we were really preparing for medical school. I got deathly ill. I was working multiple jobs and I literally pulled over and I projectile vomited it. I was out of school and we. And work for an entire week. And I'm like the ta, the one that makes the study guides for everybody. So everybody was like, this is odd. This is not like Sam. Right. They convinced me to go to the hospital, got misdiagnosed, took the pills that they told me to take, didn't get better. Mom called in the calvary. So my aunt came over, took me back to the hospital, and I got diagnosed with hepatitis A, which is from fecal borne contamination. I was the second diagnosed case in the state that year. Took me a while.

Most people get that from eating contaminated food, right? So prepared by someone. And it's very contagious and very common.

Thank you for clarifying. It was from a batch of strawberries from Mexico, from smoothies that I was having every day. So gastroenterologist said, you know, this is going to take you three to maybe nine months to get better. Had chronic fatigue, all kinds of stuff. Somehow or another, my mom. And it was contagious. So I had to be quarantined. Mom sent in a book and it was about natural remedies and convinced my aunt to go get me some. It was a liver thing. So had some like milk thistle and some other things. But what I learned was I got better in two weeks. The gastroenterologist, pooh pooh, the fact that it was the natural stuff. Right. Found out that there was something called naturopathic medical school that was board certified and licensed. A real doctor. Right. Using herbs and minerals and those types of things. So it changed my trajectory because I healed myself naturally. In the process of doing that, I really got to understand in naturopathic medical school that it's all about root cause. Like, why is it that you actually got this disease? Which is going to bring me into how I got to cancer.

Right?

Because I've been doing this for 17 years now. So my residency was done with Peter D'. Adamo. He's the New York Times bestselling author of eat right for your type. That was not what my residency was in, though. It was in nutrigenomics and epigenetics, which is the study of how genes affect us. We can not change the genes. That's your genetics. But we can change the expression of the genes and we can use food as medicine. To change the expression of the genes. This is very interesting.

Can you clarify that a little more? Because we are so programmed to think that our story is written right, that our genes dictate and that you can't overcome genes. And in fact, I ran into someone yesterday who said to me, well, I had my breasts removed, and I had my ovaries removed, and I had everything removed when I was 38 years old because I'm a BRCA1 carrier, and that's the only way to prevent cancer, that if you have a BRCA1 or a BRCA2 mutation, that you are destined to get cancer. And I said to her, that mutation doesn't cause cancer. And she said, what are you talking about?

No, it does not. You are so right. Nail on the head. Absolutely. So we are not defined by our genes. They make us who we are. But our environment and what we do with it Determines the response to the genes. Let's talk about when I think about cancer. I think about the fact that any healthy person has the ability to have cancer. It doesn't matter what your genes say. It is all about that micro environment and the macro environment. The two collide and what you do with that and how you nurture it decides whether or not you have cancer. For example, the micro environment is the milieu, is the inside of the body. I think of it like I'm in Michigan, and so we've got the car plants and the manufacturers. And so a lot of times I use this reference, Think of it as a car plant, right? And so you have this assembly line, and your cells go through this assembly line, and they're supposed to do exactly what they're supposed to do. They have a lineman that says, yeah, you're going along, right? Oh, no, let me pull this one out, right? And then there's this overseeing person, the foreman or whatnot, that says, yeah, okay, he missed this. Okay, now I need to fix this. Right? So think of it as your immune surveillance system is the big dog, right. If something on the assembly line is not right, the cancer cell then says it gets missed by the person on the line. It's supposed to apoptose or apoptose, meaning kill itself, or it's supposed to fix itself. If that doesn't happen because somebody went to lunch or somebody's not doing their job right, Then that seller, that piece that's going down the line, gets to replicate. That's not cool. So if we're doing what we're supposed to be doing and checking labs multiple times per year, Not Once a year. And we're seeing the little micro things that are going wrong. Is the AST and alt, the liver enzymes, are the cancer tumor markers going up, the alkaline phosphatase. Are we looking at certain things nutritionally to say that things are not in balance anymore? And once you see little things start to be unfolding, then you need to bring them back to balance. The macro environment, though, is everything around you. It's your environment, it's your relationships. Those can be toxic too. Not just what you put in your mouth, but what's around you. Right? So toxic relationships can break down your immune system. They cause stress. Stress in the literature is not a cause of cancer, but it definitely causes you to decrease your immune system. And when that surveillance isn't there, then you're not getting that line to work correctly the way it's supposed to.

I mean, I think we can clearly demonstrate chemically that when you have a particular stressor, you do have a chemical response to that. I mean, we can measure C reactive protein, which is one of the things that we will raise acutely in times of stress. You can look at someone's C reactive protein after a stressor and know that stress does have a chemical effect on us.

Absolutely. And not just the reactive protein. High sensitivity C reactive protein.

Right.

Is definitely the one that I would suggest that we measure.

So what kinds of things? Because you mentioned that you're looking at things and saying like what is in balance and what is out of balance? What kinds of things are you following for people to determine if they are living harmoniously or not?

Okay, so one of the things that I do is I do a customized genetic based diet because 80% of our immune system is in our gut. So the gut matters. Right? So if the gut matters, then everything that we're putting in our mouth matters. So what I'm doing is based upon lectin science. And so the way that I explain that is like a lock and door mechanism. So your cells are the door and you've got a lock on it and your food is the key. So certain foods for certain people unlock the doors, but they don't work for other people. So that goes more on the blood type, if we're thinking about that. Just like you can't transfuse certain bloods into other bloods. What I have seen is here recently a lot of people interested in food sensitivity testing. However, that can change over time. Let's say you go in for food sensitivity testing and you've been eating almonds for three weeks. Almonds is going to show up high, as a high sensitivity and of course you're going to avoid those, get tested again, and then it's going to say you're not sensitive to it. It is not going to change. Your genetic, your, your blood type, OAB or AB is not going to change.

Right.

So that's kind of foundationally for me. It's more than just blood type. I'm looking at secretor status, fut 1 and 2. I'm looking at MN status, so other genetic markers.

So can you, can you talk a little bit about what. And specifically, like genetically, what are you looking at for people to help them to eat in a way and live in a way that promotes their health?

So as far as the laboratory tests, all your regular labs, your cbc, your chem panel, your lipid panel, all of those things are important, but I think.

It'S important to say that the way that the traditional medical doctors look at those is they give a very, very, very broad range, right?

Yes.

So by the time you're abnormal, you really have end organ damage. You really failed the test by the time you're abnormal.

Yes, indeed. So there is an optimal range and then there's the standard reference range. So when doing labs on a patient, I'm giving them both, but we're really working towards that optimal range. So. So, for example, I think that when I first started medical school, the cholesterol range was different, but as we become more of a sick population, they will change the range. But that's not. Why are we doing that?

They do it so that people don't feel badly about themselves. Right? Yeah. But it has nothing to do with health.

That doesn't help.

They also, sadly, do it to sell more pharmaceuticals.

There you go.

There you go.

I'm being PC, so I'm not good at PC. Part of the other thing that I do is I will send blood off to London and also to Greece to do certain tests. I am. I'm very open to a collaborative environment when I'm working with patients. I believe that patients need a health care team. It's not just about me, it's also about your medical oncologist. It's also about whoever else you need. Mental health is really important. Important. A chiropractor might be really important to you. Massage therapist. It just depends upon what's going on with that individual person. Right. So we're all different. Even though I have quite a few patients that have breast cancer, they're all different and what they're doing and where they are in their journey is different. And what they need is different. Right. So we all need support. And I think that the healthcare team is really, really important. So what I don't like is I don't necessarily like how in the conventional world it's, I don't feel that the precision or the personalized care is there. And so that's what I'm providing. So when I say that I'm sending it off to London and Greece and things like that, they tend to run the blood, they do the circulating tumor cells, for lack of a better way of putting it, making it really simple. Let's say they're putting the stuff in petri dishes and then they're testing the chemos, the immunotherapies and the natural substances to see what's going to work.

Right. So you're talking about the RGC test right now.

And they talk cancer genetics. So they tend to allow me to one, have a conversation with the oncologists about, okay, you want to use alkalizing agents, which is a class of drugs that they use in chemo. Okay, you want to use that, that's cool. But you chose one that's not. Are only partially sensitive to this patient, or why can't we use one that's highly sensitive? It's in the same class of drugs. Right. So we have some wiggle room with, let's make it the best outcome possible for this patient. And then when I'm getting the natural substances, it allows me to say, it allows me to test and not guess. Right. I've got 17 years of experience. I pretty much know. Yeah, there's a billion different things that we could sell you. Right. As natural cancer treatments. There's of plenty, plenty of Facebook groups, support groups and stuff. They're like, I, I did it with this and I did it with that. But everybody's different. And that doesn't mean that it's going to work for you.

Yeah.

So why not let's invest on the testing side of it and let's get it right.

Yeah. I love what you said. Test, not guess. And the, the truth is that, you know, there are, there are things that they test for on those tests that are good for people in general. They may not be effective against their cancer, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they shouldn't take those because they do have health benefits. Outside of that.

Mistletoe is one of my fighting pieces on that one. Mistletoe tends not to come up a lot on the testing. It's a class, they call it a Class 2. It doesn't come up a lot. However, I've had several patients where when I get the test back, I'm like, you know, mistletoe is kind of expensive. If it's not showing up, let's just not do it. But I already had them on it to start right before we did the testing. Well, mistletoe provides not only a cytotoxic, where it's actually going in and killing the cancer cell, it provides a benefit to your mood. It provides pain control. It also provides assistance with appetite. So often when we're going into cachexia, which is where you're having muscle wasting, not just fat loss, this is where you're actually wasting away. And oftentimes that happens in cancer. Mistletoe is absolutely fantastic for that, but it might not show up on the test.

So that's one of those that you find benefits a lot of people.

Correct.

Yeah. And so I know that you are very familiar with these tests. Do you find that the medical oncologists are familiar with these tests and how do they receive this information?

I'm pretty shocked. No, no, I'm not. No, I'm not shocked. And I'm going to tell you why. So I'm shocked that they're not using it. Because if you're really trying to have an awesome patient experience and get the bang for your buck, I think you should.

Right.

However, insurance doesn't cover that test. And they're also mentioning natural substances and things like that. I don't think that the pharmaceutical industry supports the testing. Okay, I've had pushback on the RGCC test. I have not actually had pushback on the data cancer genetics tests from the.

Why do you think that is?

So RGCC is in another country and they do not feel it necessary to have the licensing the same way that we do here in the US Data cancer genetics. While they're in London, they've gone through the necessary steps, the financial whatever it is to get the appropriate licensing. I think that that holds weight with the medical oncologist. They know it. I think that patients have brought in. I work with physicians at CTCA Cancer Treatment Centers of America often. And so I will bring up, okay, can we do this based upon the RGCC test? Well, they're like, okay, fine, but I don't put a lot of weight into that. But when I send them the data cancer genetics test, there is no pushback. There's no pushback.

So. But the data cancer genetics test is not being covered by insurance.

None of them are covered by insurance right now. They are working on it, though. They are working on it.

So. So for that reason are the medical oncologists not suggesting it or not using it?

So there is a physician, medical oncologist with CTCA in California, I believe, or no, he's just in California. I don't think that they're suggesting it based upon the fact that they're not familiar with it and that it's not covered by insurance for some reason. I think there's this thought process of if it's covered by insurance, it's safe and legit. I mean, why are they not doing Genova diagnostic tests? Why are they not doing. You know what I mean?

I mean, you can ask that question, I can ask the board.

Exactly.

But it also. So you know, the easy answer to why they're not doing any of the Genova diagnostic tests is because they have no idea how to interpret them. Right. And I, about 20 years into my career transitioned from surgery to functional medicine and it took a lot of unlearning. Inherently, these are difficult things to do. Leaving your tribe is very difficult. And from an evolutionary standpoint, we seek safety and comfort. We really do. We are not driven to go outside of the tribe. We are driven to stay within the tribe because it provides safety and comfort. And when you, when, you know, historically if you left the tribe, you got eaten by a saber toothed tiger. Like, it's just not safe out there. Right. And so we really, we have not evolved away from that. So anyone like you did, but you did it early in your career. Anyone like I did. I recently spoke to Dr. Betsy Greenleaf. She has a path very similar to mine. Like any of us that left that traditional role, it's very scary and frightening and you have to unlearn so much in order to learn how to really understand people from a systematic standpoint. To look at what people with breast cancer, they don't have a problem in their breast. But the traditional medical paradigm is that the tumor is the problem. All the focus is on the tumor and no one's looking at why is the tumor growing? Where's the imbalance? Where did you know? Because we're not genetically programmed to develop tumors. We are meant to. We're brilliant machines meant to function perfectly. And it's only our environment that leads to mishaps.

Correct? Correct.

And that's where you started in talking about like, your genetics are a guide, but they are by no means an un in alienable plan. I didn't get that word out. Well, but you know what I mean?

Like, it's.

It's not. This is not our destiny. It's a suggestion. And then, you know, we. We do the rest. So I know that you are really highly personalizing people's plans with things like RGCC and the day to our cancer genetics. What else are you looking at to ensure that you are looking at the person as a whole and helping them to restore their health in only the way that their health can be restored. Right.

So oftentimes I'm looking at the mental health of the patient. While I don't do mental health, I do have colleagues that do. And I'm recommending certain things because, believe it or not, you know, I think us as health prep care professionals, we're like, oh, you need to see this person. You need to see that person. I will suggest acupuncture or I will suggest chiropractic medicine, or I will suggest a mental health professional. And they have never heard of these people or they never thought of it. So it is taking a step back and looking at the full picture of what's going on. Did that woman just come out of a nasty divorce? The pandemic, a change in job where she might have lost her job?

Right.

Just had a baby, a whole slew of things. That's really emotional and a lot to take in mentally.

Right.

So it's not just her physical that I need to hone in on. It is also the mental part of it. So when I think of, when I think of health in general, right. I have this whole pyramid in my head of how health goes or how you should approach your health. Right. So the base or the foundation, when you're building a house, the foundation has to be good. Then you can paint walls and put furniture in there.

Yeah, but it's about establishing those pillars, right? Establishing those pillars that, you know that, that foundation. What's holding everything up?

What is holding everything up? So that is your sleep, your diet, your mental health, your hydration. Those four are the foundations that I think that really. And I don't want to get into a soapbox about sleep, but holy moly, right? If you're not sleeping, right. Or you don't have proper circadian, World Health Organization classifies that as a probable carcinogenic and sleep is free. Do you know how many people have sleep issues? Right.

Okay.

So that's my baseline.

Right?

So then if that's all good, right. We probably have great health. If it's not great, then, okay, you might want to see a functional medicine practitioner, a Naturopathic physician, somebody who understands root cause medicine.

Right.

And can really look at the functional aspect of you. Right. Then on top of that would be massage therapy, chiropractic medicine. On top of that would be supplements. So you see that supplements are pretty far up there, right? Because if we can get the foundation right, you don't even need supplements. Right. And then on top of supplements, then that would be prescription drugs. And then after that would be surgery. So that to me, surgery is alternative medicine. Prescription drugs are alternative medicine. What we do is primary medicine, right? Yeah, it's back. It's a different paradigm of thinking of your health.

And again, I couldn't agree with you more about the sleep. Right. Sleep is where the healing happens. Sleep is where all of our repair is going on. And listen, we all make cancer cells, right?

Yes, we do.

It happens in everyone, from the youngest of young to the oldest of olds and everyone in between. We're all making cancer cells all the time. But in an intact immune system, we recognize those, right. Those are the factory form in, as you referred to it, our immune system is on guard and it is noticing and finding those cancer cells and destroying them before they become clinically relevant. But if you're working the factory 24 hours a day over and over and over again, guess what? Everyone's getting pretty tired.

Absolutely right.

And that's our immune system. That's our immune system. And you just, you can't, you can't work your body over and over and over again without rest and repair and regeneration. You know, that's. That's why we all need a break at night. That's why we all need a weekend. Correct. We all need a reprieve from everything. And that also ties into that mental health part of it. Because if you are under a significant amount of stress and you're not getting away from it, that is a going to adversely affect your sleep because you're going to be in that stress state and you're not going to be able to sleep and you're actually, your, your entire system is going to be inflamed, which is going to have impacts on your mental health.

Inflammation causes a myriad of different illnesses and whatnot on its own.

Right.

But also inflammation. Can we can consider that also a root cause of cancer as well?

Yeah. So I'm. I'm very curious about the diet that you talk to people about because I know that you do this very individually in terms of. Because there is no one diet for everyone, right?

Nope. Nope.

Yeah. So when you talk about how you how you figure that out for people?

Yeah. So I use, actually, artificial intelligence, and I actually think that artificial intelligence is the wave of the future when it comes to health care. While I know certain things, I'm still human. Right. And computers can do it so much faster.

Right.

So Peter d', Adamo, I told you, he's my mentor. He actually. His little hobby is HTML coding, so he was working on this while I was a resident. He kind of explains it like in Harry Potter, do you remember? Like, there's this book that, like, it was kind of on the fly writing itself, and he was like, oh, my gosh, if we could do that, that would be great. Right?

So.

So. Because the way it used to go is you would take the book and you would, like, kind of highlight things for certain people and cross things out for other people. Nope, we don't have to do that anymore. So it's literally. It's called swami, and it is where in the back pages of the computer program, I can put in their family health history. I can put in their health history. I can put in all of their labs. I can put in SNPs, which are genetic markers that might be off for them versus somebody else. I can put in.

And they talk about, like, how people detox and how. How they tolerate inflammation and. And they also will dictate what kinds of foods people can eat.

Yeah.

Whether you can tolerate gluten or dairy or that kind of thing.

So not only can I put in those markers, but part of my residency was also learning dramatic lymph, which is reading, not palm reading. It's fingerprint patterns.

Right.

So fingerprint patterns are developed when you're in utero, and depending upon the stress of the mom during the. During the pregnancy, you will have the same fingerprint patterns or different fingerprint patterns. But more so than even that, the same. The same, like, genetic factor that makes up the ridge height of the fingerprint patterns is in the lining of the gut. So it's almost like I can kind.

Of never heard this.

I know, I know.

I needed by.

This is definitely a Peter thing, so. And it's definitely from my residency, so look at your fingerprints right now.

Right.

And so a lot of times you will see, like, they look like wrinkles. Right. But they're not wrinkles. They're actually an interruption of your fingerprint.

Pattern to get my readers.

Okay, so yours might be good. Do you see any wrinkles on your fingerprint? On your fingers?

No.

Okay, so, like, I don't have any wrinkles either. I Was trying to see if it shows. I don't have any on mine either.

Actually, I'm gonna say that I do have a wrinkle on my forefinger.

Okay. One little wrinkle. Okay, that's good though. If you look at a patient who has celiac disease, you cannot see, you cannot determine their fingerprint pattern because those lines are so de deep and they're all over their fingerprint pattern. That looks like. Dr. Jen. It looks like this. So if this is your gut wall, if you see those little lines, is this is that gap in the gut wall lining? And the reason for that is that gluten is doing this is stripping away the lining of the gut. So I can see that just from the fingerprint patterns. I don't have to do the anti gliadin.

Wow.

What you can also notice is in the whole point of this is to really teach patients, hey, what's going on with my body? What do I need to eat? What do I not need to eat? Am I doing okay? What you will see is versus deep seated lines. They're very deep. As they avoid the gluten, the lines become more shallow and then the lines go away. So oftentimes you'll see me looking at my fingerprints at dinner and saying, yep, I can have that pizza. Nope, can't have the pizza right now. Something like that. Because I can look at my fingerprints and say, yep, I'm good.

Wow, that is fascinating. And now I'm going to start looking at people's fingerprints.

Good.

Who knew? So is that an indication across the board, like, are you eating in a way that is good for your gut lining or are you eating in a way that's not supporting your gut lining?

All of it has to do with is this supporting health or is this not supporting health? So in your normal blood type diet, you have beneficials, neutrals and avoids. Right? Neutrals are what they are. They're neither good nor bad. Beneficials are the foods that are unlocking the door and they're nourishing your cells.

Right.

They're acting as food, as medicine. The ones that are avoid, they're poisonous, they cause the inflammation. That's what they're doing. They're agglutinating the cells in the salami. I can go so far as, and the reason why I really love it for oncology is I can go in and say, this person has cancer. And I want you to find all the foods specifically for them in the parameters that I've created that are going to help them fight the cancer. And I need for you to highlight the foods that are really deleterious for them. That's really specifically for the canc. Cancer causing the cancer to thrive and survive. And so in my list of beneficials, it's highlighted blue, the foods that I really want them to stress, to eat, to fight the cancer. And on the avoid side is highlighted in blue to let them know, you cannot eat this.

So how is that test performed?

So this is the AI. This is the AI. It's all metrics that are written in HTML code based upon data that he. And research that he's done.

Wow.

Yeah. So a lot of it has to do with measurements, gonial angle. It has a lot to do with your ancestors and the way your ancestors ate, the genetics of it.

Right, right. So. And that makes sense. I mean, you know, we, we think about, you know, the ancestral diets are really important because why would you, why would your body want a food that you could have never, ever consumed? You know, like, so if you're, if you're from somewhere that's landlocked, there's no way that your body would want seafood.

Correct.

You would have never had exposure to it.

Perfect example. Do you remember diet came out?

Which diet?

The Atkins diet.

Oh, yeah, of course.

So you remember those. Like there was like this whole cult following, like, yes, I lost all this weight. And then there's like this whole whole slew of other people, like, oh my God, I'm so messed up. The ones that were messed up were blood type A, the ones that weren't, or blood type O. Because O can have meat.

Right.

They have the alkaline phosphatase to be able to break down the cholesterol and the fat and to digest the protein. A's don't have a high amount of hydrochloric acid in their stomach. They can't break down the meat. That's awful for them. Awful. Yeah, that's how specific it is. I mean, that's a very general thing. But for example, I'll have a blood type A. Yeah, a blood type. A person who's supposed to be vegetarian, who has tried the blood type diet before. But yeah, it was okay, but it wasn't like all that. So then they come to me, we do genetic testing, we do the swami. I find out they're a non secretor. A non secretor is another genetic factor that I'm looking at. And some people secrete their blood type in their saliva, their tears, their solution. That's 85% of the population. The majority of us do it. It's a certain type of immune system. It's like having a wall around your immune system. Sharpshooters on the wall and then you cannot come in. Bacteria, pathogen, whatever. A non secretor is different. They have an open door policy. The sharpshooters are on the inside. So they get sick and whatnot. And it's like, oh yeah, I got a cough, a sneeze or this, that and the other. But they bounce back quickly. Whereas a secretor, they don't get sick very often. They've got protection, but when they get sick, they're down for the count because the wall is breached. So that blood type A that I'm telling you about, that's now a non secretor and we know this, they look more like a blood type O. They need more protein. They can have the lamb and the goat and they need more strenuous exercise as opposed to the normal blood type A, which has a higher amount of cortisol, which means that they need de stressing exercises like yoga and type chi. I've got blood type AS that come in on hiit five days a week. It can't lose weight. Well, you can't lose the weight because you've got a high amount of cortisol and you're not doing the de stressing exercises. Stop the hiit, do the yoga, then they lose weight. It's very personalized. It's genetic.

Yeah. This is just fascinating. And it's really a guide for how to nurture your nature. Right. Because when you're putting your nature, your genetics in the wrong environment, that's where all the inflammation is coming from. So, and, and these are healthy things that you're talking about that are not healthy for this person in particular.

For example, avocado is a new. Like when I grew up, nobody knew about avocados. Like avocados are all the thing right now.

Right?

Yeah, Avocados and cauliflower. Rice and cauliflower. This, that's awful for a blood type O. It causes inflammation, but it's healthy. I'm not saying that it's not, it's just not right for a blood type.

O. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that people really struggle with that. Like, I thought so and so was good, and I thought this was good. And, and because these trend things come around, we think that like, oh well, if it fits in that it must be good for you.

No, Right.

And so, and the trend things do make a lot of money, right? Like all these different trend diets, they do make a Lot of money and they work for a percentage of people, but that it's the people that they don't work for that are left feeling so frustrated. And we, we all need to understand that we are all bio individual.

Very, very much so.

Yeah.

All about precision personalized medicine.

So what's a person to do? Like you have a diagnosis of breast cancer, how do you go about making sure that you have a personalized plan?

I think that is 1. Getting your team together. So support for sure, right? Everybody needs support. I don't care if you have breast cancer or not, you need support. So a support care team, your healthcare team, I liken that to, you're the coach and you get to choose who's the quarterback, who's the running you get. You know, you might want your physician to help you with the plays, which I'm also helping with the plays. But you need a whole team, right. I think that's where you end up getting really personalized medicine because this physician is going to see this, this one's going to see this, and then you kind of put it all together to how it makes sense for you. Like I said before, the hydration, the sleep, the diet and the mental health is foundational, right? So all of that has to be on board. Then the supporting players, do you need massage therapy, do you need chiropractic care? That kind of stuff. But the diet, the hydration and the testing, of course, right? So in my practice, we're doing testing every three months, if not more, Right. When they're undergoing chemotherapy, just like they get lab work done every, every time they go in for chemo depends upon their regimen. If it's two on one week, you know, whatever. I'm getting those labs and I'm looking at them from a naturopathic perspective. So if the blood counts are going down on day four before you have chemo, then I'm going to start astragalus or ashwagandha five or six days before. Because that's your body, your body responds to chemo differently from somebody else. So in order to keep the blood counts up, in order for you not to have nausea, in order for us to mitigate the side effects, I have to know you and your body, not the cookie cutter, not what I did for the person before you that has the exact same breast cancer as you, you guys don't respond, you respond differently. So I have to do it individually for each person.

I think it's interesting that you said the person that has the same breast cancer as you, because no two people have the same thing. That is very much of that traditional medical mentality. Like, oh, well, you have similar symptoms, you must have the same thing. And for everyone the disease is very different and the factors that are influencing the disease and keeping you in that state are very different. Correct.

But I oftentimes have patients that will want to talk to. Have you had success with triple negative breast cancer? I'm like, well, I mean, how do I answer that? You know what I mean? I have several patients that have triple negative breast cancer. They've all done well. However, they're different. I don't treat cancer, I treat the person.

And you promote health.

So I'm just trying to get you back. This is the other thing that it bothers me and I do want to caveat this because I think when I first graduated naturopathic medical school, I was super pissed off with conventional medicine. How dare you not look at labs? How dare you not treat them like an individual? Why do you not know this? Blah, blah, blah, blah. But in my 17 years and now having really great friends that are conventional medical doctors and us having these conversations and my best friends are pharmacists, what I understand now is that they're not taught that it is not their fault. And I am oftentimes trying to explain this to patients because they will say, why did my other doctor do that? That's not the way they were taught. So I'm going to leave that there.

Yeah. And they are. And this comes up in almost every episode and segment. These doctors, they are all very, very well intentioned. There is no one that goes into medicine with any other intention other than to truly help people. That's why doctors go to medical school and it is inherent in the medical education system. They basically teach what they were taught. It's very, very, very slow to change. They are very slow to adopt anything else. And like I spoke about before, it's a lot of unlearning that needs to happen. Correct for, for people to approach in the new perspective. And unfortunately the critical thinking kind of stops once you get in.

I do have some oncologists that I work with that are open minded and they're like, oh, I never thought about this layer. Oh, thank you for explaining that to me. I would like to see more of that. I really would.

Yeah, I agree with you. Me too. Where can people find you?

I am on all social media at Dr. Sam and D. So that's D R S A M M N as a naturopathic, d as in doctor and then my website is the same thing. It's www.drsamnd.com-r s a m-n d dot com.

Well, I think that what you do is just fascinating. I loved the thing with the fingertips. I'm so excited to incorporate that into my thinking. And the care, the personalized care that you're providing for people. And I really thank you for your critical thought, for the fact that you are really helping to people to understand themselves and understand their journey, personalize their journey and really make the most of their diagnosis. Because we all know that our diagnoses are very intentional and meant to tell us something and that there are messages. And I'm not saying that diagnoses are blessings, although for many people they are. But they are opportunities to get to know ourselves and to make different choices. And oftentimes those new choices are life changing in a positive way.

Yes, absolutely.

So thank you, Dr. Sam, for being here today and for sharing your brilliance with us. I really appreciate it and I look forward to many, many, many more conversations with you. It's Dr. Jen Simmons. 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 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 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 N's, so until next time, remember to stay proactive, informed and confident in your breast health journey. The key to your health is you.

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