26: The Metabolic Theory Behind Breast Cancer with Dr. Donese Worden

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.

Hi, it's Dr. Jen. Welcome back to the summit. This is the finale. And do I have an ending for you? Today I have Dr. Jonice Worden. She is a pioneer researcher physician. She is really taking personalized medicine to the nth degree and taking very special care of her cancer patients. So I would like to welcome you. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you. And thanks for the work that you're doing and the education and getting this message out there. People need to hear what you have to say.

They sure do. Because, you know, there's no reliable way of them finding the information that they need. I mean, it's really a shame, but we are a system that does not allow for free speech. We don't. And the people that are the truth seekers are made to think that they're, you know, outside of the system and they're quacks. I actually pride myself on the fact that I am now referred to as a quack because, you know, it took me five years to get here. And it means that I have tremendous authority in this space. Yeah, yeah. So I'm very, very proud of that. And the quacks that have, like, paved the path before me, like Mark Hyman, Terry Walls was telling me about her story of being called a quack. So, like, I'm in very, very, very good company. So with that can, you know, everyone has their pain to purpose story, so can you give us yours and, like, let us know what brought you into this space and how you came to be a provider, such a wonderful provider for the cancer community.

At the beginning, I was in pain management. That was a specialty that I had, doing injections Therapeutic injections. But then I kept seeing cancer. It kept coming and coming, and I'm like, I'm not going to do cancer. No, that's not my thing. Finally, whatever we want to call it, not just the patients, but the world.

The universe calls you.

The universe called me and said, no, you are digging into cancer. And that's been about 15, 20 years ago. So I said, okay, I'm listening. And I saw what the cancer patients were going through, what they struggled with. The minute they had a diagnosis, they were thrown into surgery. Chemo, radiation. They didn't even know the name of their disease, nor the name of their doctor, nor did the doctors know. Oncologists know their names. They felt helpless, unempowered, and just in a bad way, bad state. No matter what they were choosing, they just felt helpless and that they didn't have a piece in this. And I said, this has got to change. So I started digging and found the metabolic theory of cancer and those researchers. So Dominic D', Agostino, Dr. Tom Se. These are all pioneers and researchers that are in the metabolic cancer world. So I work with them, I listen to them. We have research people for people who.

Don'T really know what that means. Can you just clarify that a little bit?

So Otto Warburg, who won the Nobel Prize, he. He postulated many, many years ago in the 1920s with his cancer research. That cancer quack. Right, right. And now. But, yeah, but now, you know, he will. He's got a Nobel Prize. So. Yeah. And that research is being forwarded by Dr. Tom Seyfried, who's written another book on the metabolic cancer, Metabolic Disease. So what it is, in a nutshell is that very few cancers really are genetically driven. So what else? If it's not genetic, what is it? And we are still studying genes. We're still. All of our traditional oncology is still going down that pathway. And a book that people can read that will get you to this point in a better fashion than I'm going to do right now is Tripping over the Truth by Travis, Travis Christofferson. And it gives you the history of how we have been and probably are still going down the wrong path in our. In our research. But the metabolic world is saying, okay, there's damage to the mitochondria inside the cell. Remember, that's that. That piece inside the cell from biology that creates ATP for all the cell types.

Yeah, it's like our energy factories.

It is, but we also. What Warburg discovered was that when there is damage to that and it can't respirate correctly, that that is found in most types of cancer cells. So he said, there's something here. So the postulation was that, you know, and then what's damaging it. So we know there's two big pathways. There's glucose. That's why the ketogenic diet is big in our world. There is also the glutamine and glutamate pathway, and that stress feeds that. There's also other pathways, and we're working on natural inhibitors of that. So there's two ways that those cancer cells are being fed, and that's where all this work is going. And it's to the point that very few cancers are genetic. It's a mitochondrial disease in our, in our world, in our hypothesis. And we're seeing very, very good effect with our cancer patients when we use metabolic therapies to treat them.

So I think the reason why there's so much focus on the genetic part is because then we can blame, then we can shirk responsibility, Then there's nothing we could do. Right. Then we are powerless. And I think the system really wants us powerless because they, they profit off of us being powerless. But we're not right.

We're not powerless at all.

Many interventions that we can do.

That's right. And you know, I work with oncologists. Sometimes a patient is chosen to do standard of care. That's where their peace and their comfort and their belief system is. And we work within that. So we can do these therapies while they're doing standard of care therapies, whether it's radiation, chemo, surgery, you know, we have my, my goal and my guide of what I do is help them with these decisions where, what do we know and not know about both sides of medicine? You've got to look at both. You can't just blindside. One side's bad, one side's good. No, you've got to look at both and, and, and be truthful about what we really know and what we don't know about both sides. Yeah, and, and, and trust the intuition of the patient in their decisions, the intuition of the physician. So I put on my thinking cap, my research cap, and go over all the data, go over all the science that we know and we don't know, and then we say, okay, you've got that. Do you understand that piece? Okay, now how do we make those decisions? How do you make it? Because we don't have all the answers on either side. I think it should be by listening to what your gut or your intuition is telling you.

Yeah, it's so important. And I love what you said that, you know, we're not throwing the baby out with the bath water. We know that there are lots of things inside the confines of conventional medicine which are worthwhile. And I. I always say if you have a significant amount of tumor growing. Right. You have a significant amount of tumor burden.

Right.

Your proverbial sink is overflowing.

That's right.

You have to mop up the floor. Right? That's right. Chemo, surgery, radiation, this is mopping up the floor. However, for the long term, you have to figure out how to turn off that faucet, what is driving that whole process. And it's the marriage between those two that actually gives us those answers.

And the micro and macro environment of that tumor, what you're talking about. And that includes how much stress you have going on in your life. Because even if you're doing ketogenic and you're trying to not have sugar coming in in your diet, you're still dumping glucose when you're stressing. So you have to look at the ent piece of everything. The whole environment of the body, the person, and the cancer cell itself. Yeah, I'm not in favor of radiation. In many instances. I think we push that too fast, too much. In most cases, there is a time and a place for it. Surgery makes sense. Like, to your point, you've got a big tumor, it's too much, it's overwhelming the body. Take that out. Let's get that tumor burden out as much as we can. Chemo. And you're well aware we have liquid biopsies. That's a blood draw. That gives us a little more information. Is there a chemo that makes sense? How many cells will be destroyed by that particular chemo? And how toxic is it going to be for you? We also can tell by some of the newer labs. Are there alternative medicines that might be beneficial? People are doing vitamin C, IVs, but newer technology is showing that sometimes that's not helping. It's not working with that particular cancer for that particular person. So now where are we putting our money? Where should we be doing? And what are those therapies? And we're getting better at that, being able to see which one of those things are best. Because I'm not a fan of throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks. People that say, I want it all, I'm doing it all. We don't know how they play together. We don't know how they interact together. And if we don't know. We need to be careful and know for that particular person that that is a therapy that will kill a certain percentage of cells. Yeah.

I think that becomes particularly important with chemotherapeutics. Yes. In that, you know, the IV vitamin C. You want to know if that's going to help you or not. Because it's very expensive. Yes. It's expensive in finance, financially, it's expensive in terms of your time and your commitment and all of that. So you do want to know, but that's not going to hurt you. Whereas getting six courses of chemotherapy that's not helping you is very harmful. And when we look at these women who, because of an oncotype, which is such a non specific test, but because of an oncotype, went and got the standard of care chemotherapy and you know, 10 years later they're dealing with heart disease, they're dealing with early dementia, they're dealing with osteoporosis. Their skin is ruined, their nails are ruined, they're in pain, their joints ache. These are very serious consequences to accompany something that we don't even know if it works for you.

Right.

The one size fits all. In conventional medicine that time has come and gone. It shouldn't be that way anymore. So can you share with us how you personalize it for people when the patient comes in?

Sometimes they have a mindset, I'm going to do traditional care. I just want to do the best diet. Or others come in and say, there's no way I'm doing traditional care. I saw what happened to my mom. And I ask everybody to be open, let's look at in particular what you have. What are the best tests that we can do, what has already been done. I described to them that the genetic piece that's being looked at in conventional care is giving us about 10% of the information that's needed. 10% of the information. They go, what?

And I said, that tells us if you're, if you have a BRCA mutation.

Right.

If you have a Chak2 mutation of plaque Palb2 mutation like that, that is giving. And that applies to 5 to 10% of people.

That's right.

Even, even within that, there are very few of those mutations that are actionable. I mean, now we're seeing the PARP inhibitors and we know that they are effective in some of women with a BRCA mutation. Not all. Some. Right, right. But other than that, it's not leading us to personalized medicine.

That's right. That's right. And so personalized back to Your question, right, is that, look at the person. What do we have already? What are the genetic mutations? What are these things that we need to look at? Is there a particular chemo that will target that? But we've got to understand that that looking at the genetic piece is all about which chemo. That's what it's about, and that's 10%. So the other 90% is the. The environment that I'm talking about. Now we start using liquid biopsies, we start looking outside of the box to say, what else can we see that will be beneficial for this patient? Are they still eating foods that cause inflammation in them? If they are, and they're on this perfect, supposedly perfect diet for them, but those foods are causing inflammation, that's no longer perfect. So you've got to dig in on an individual basis to know what's going on with them and then get all the information in and then look at it from a global view of what's going to be best for this patient and listen to their belief systems. Because the minute you put on your research hat, your physician hat, and you're not listening to what they're telling you and what you're saying, what they're saying to you, and you try to push them into a different direction, that never goes. Well, I'm sure you did, too. We, you know, learned that early in our career, but many physicians still do it. Here's the box. Here's what you have. This is what you do. And you've got to fit within that. If you don't, maybe your doctor.

Yeah, I heard it yesterday. Oh, yesterday. If you don't have a mastectomy, you're going to have to go find someone else to treat.

Right? Right. So that's when you say, thank you for your opinion. I'm looking elsewhere.

Yeah.

Patients don't realize that. Fire your doctor and they go, I can do that. I said, listen, we as physicians, we work for you. You're paying us for our expertise. Fire anyone who is not listening to you or not listening to your wishes, we may not agree. It may not what we logically think or what we would have chosen for ourselves. But we've got to respect the opinion of the patient. As long as they are educated, as long as they really understand what we know and we don't know, then they can make their decisions.

Yeah. Yeah. So I hear you that you are digging deep into diet and movement and sleep and lifestyle and all those things that are going to affect both the macro environment and the microenvironment Right. And you're talking to them about toxins and making sure that, you know, they have healthy ways to deal with stress. Because again, if they are living in that cortisol dominant state, that sympathetic state, then they're just going to make glucose. So you can be eating a perfect diet, living a stressful life, and you're still going to be making predominantly glucose.

That's right. That's right. It's a big piece that's missed, I think, in medicine.

Yeah. So if they have those pieces in place.

Yeah.

How are you personalizing their treatment plan?

Right. So, you know, I'll look at everything. We spend the time, you know, I spend the time at the beginning, I may want to go down the hormone pathways. There's newer tests that we can see pathways. Are you going down a piece like a 4 hydroxy E1 that is causing DNA damage? I want to know that because we can block that naturally. So we need to block certain hormones. We need to upregulate good genes, downregulate bad genes. So personalizing is doing the right test for the right person. And not just everybody that comes in gets this THORA of a lot of tests. I see a lot of physicians doing that. It's expensive. And if you're really listening and looking what they already have, you don't have to do as many tests. But that being said, there are certain tests that give us a lot of good information to know what we should do personally for that patient. And I will tell you, in the metabolic world, no matter what, I recommend ketogenic diet, and sometimes it's a therapeutic one and sometimes we've got to adjust it. But ketogenic diet makes sense. They feel better, it helps them not have cachexia. That's the muscle wasting that can happen. It feeds the brain, it protects the organs that we need to protect. So big fan of ketogenic diet and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Those are two mainstays that are not really. We personalize the dosages of those things and how they're doing it. But pretty much everybody that comes in, to me, those are two things that I'm recommending. Then we personalize past that and that includes what is that person thinking? How can I help them choose? You know, the big piece is how to choose, not what to choose. I'm giving them all their options and I'm giving them the data they need. But how are they going to choose? And I've got to get them into that parasympathetic state where they realize that they're so connected to whatever their belief system is that it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter if they die, it doesn't matter if they have cancer. It doesn't matter because they feel that peaceful state when they get there. That's when the spontaneous remissions happen. That's when all the things that, you know, the traditional oncologists are going, I don't know what you're doing over there, Dr. Worden, but keep doing it. Because we don't see tumors shrink like this, this fast. We don't see this in the general population of cancer patients. So that's a big piece that, that I would like to stress today for, for your listeners here is that, and for the physicians is remembering that there's a lot of information in that intuition. Get the information into the head, into the neurology and so that we understand, we say, here's the decisions. Now I'm not quite sure. Neither is my physician. Now you've got to rely back on that gut and that intuition because when we're working that side of the fence and personalizing that way, those are the best results I see. And there's some amazing things. I'm doing apitherapy, which is bee venom injections. I've got leading edge things in the research world that we are utilizing plant medicines, not, not the psychedelics, but plant medicines that have great promise. And I've got a lot going on in research and product development on that side. So that's exciting. I love that. However, you got to use your intuition.

Yeah. So it's so interesting that I, I think the reason that people even get, of course getting a, a breast cancer diagnosis is terribly, terribly stressful. But then the whole paradigm in the conventional medical world is fight the different against cancer. Right. And for as long as you perpetuate this kind of vision of fighting, what state are you going to be in exactly? Cortisol dominant state.

Exactly.

I do think that we need a shift, we need to look at it differently so that we are not fighting ourselves, but instead changing from that chemistry of stress to the chemistry of joy.

That's right.

In that chemistry of joy that we see those regressions.

That's right.

So I, I really do think that we need a mindset shift around cancer in general and we should stop referring to it as a fight.

That's right. And you know, the, the, I'll say the thrivers, not just survivors, but thrivers, are the ones that say it was the best thing that ever happened to me because it woke me up to what Was important in my life, who I really am. Not just mom, daughter, whatever. They're identifying with, who they are, they shook them to their core. Woke them up in their ingratitude for however many days, hours, years that they're going to live. So when we start seeing it as a wake up call, it's something we don't want and we start seeing it that it changes the mindset. But I also let them know, they say, I don't want you to stress over stressing. So we have this conversation, they go, how am I not going to stress? So now I'm stressing because I'm stressing and it's making me worse.

Yeah.

I let them know that it's a protective mechanism at the beginning. At the beginning, when you find out and you're trying to decide that's actually protective, those stress hormones and helping you there and flee the bear, fight the bear for the moment. Yeah. But once that's done, once we know what we're dealing with, we've got to let go of that fight or flight and let the body heal. Make your decision from intuition and knowledge. Once you make that decision, turn it over. Always, still be active, watch, learn, do those things. But don't necessarily identify every moment of your life with I have this kind of cancer.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I want to go back to the hyperbaric oxygen treatment and ask you is the reason why it works and is because it is oxygenating the tissues and cancer is an anaerobic state.

Well, there's still some thought of exactly how it is doing it. We believe in the newest studies are showing it's anti tumorigenic now it's working at the, at the oxygen level that you're talking about. Right. But it used to be we'd say, oh goodness. Well, oxygen feeds cancer in this glycolytic pathway. So we worried is hyperbaric going to make it worse? It doesn't. It's because of the way the metabolism of the cell is working. So it's shrinking the tumors. We know that. Do we know all the mechanisms yet? No, but we do that people sleep better, they feel better, it helps the wound care and it is part of. And there's a big scientific deep dive that we could go into on this. But hyperbaric is a mainstay. When we're working at the mitochondrial level, when we're working at the cell level, that hyperbaric oxygen is needed. It helps oxygenate the healthy cells, but it's also toxic, so to speak, or damaging to the cancer cells themselves. Yeah.

Amazing. So I just want to review what we talked about today. So much good stuff. But, you know, the main thing is that we really need to personalize people's experiences. Look at the individual, give them the tools that they need to build a healthy environment, but empower them to trust their intuition. Because I hear this all the time. I'm sure you do too. Where people say to me, I'm not sure if I should have this surgery or that surgery. I'm not sure if I should get chemo or not get chemo. I'm not sure if I should take an aromatase inhibitor or not. And the biggest problem inside of conventional medicine is that people are really rushed.

That's right.

To make these decisions. And they're making these decisions with not enough information, with not enough deep understanding of what the long term consequences are. And you know, before they know it, they're signed up for something that is going to forever change them for the rest of their lives. And I think it's a really important message for people to know that they have time.

That's right.

This is what I talk about in the beginning of my book, I have Time.

That's right. And that's my book that's coming. It's a little game plan and it's about give yourself this much time and these are the things and the steps to do so you're ready to ask the right questions, what you need to do. So that's a book, and I'm glad that it's in yours as well. Right. Is that slow down, take a minute and make the right decisions. And that's important. And then my. I told you about when we first met, my television show, Health Hot Seat. And it's putting I'm in the middle and then there's a traditional medicine doc and then there's an alternative medicine doctor on either side. And it's about having it in a debate format. We've never heard both sides together before. We hear one side or the other. We've done it in politics. We hear both sides all the time.

All the time.

But we've never done it in medicine. And that's a passion of mine to get that show out there so people can hear both sides at once and in moderated way that we cannot have just people screaming at each other. But yeah, of course, get the information out of there.

Well, I look forward to being on your show.

You will definitely be on the show.

Um, Dr. Warden, where can people find you?

Dr. Worden. So-r w o r-e n.com is my website. They can find me there. I'm on Facebook and Twitter and all those things. Just type in doctor don't and they'll find.

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for enlightening this audience that is so thirsty for information but trusted information and information that is really going to make a difference. And I know that the medicine that you practice, that personalized medicine, is really making a difference. So I'm so grateful for the work that you do. I'm so grateful that we got to meet and that you are here with us today.

Likewise. Thank you.

It's Dr. Jen and that's a wrap.

Bye for now.

Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Keeping abreast podcast with Dr. Chen. 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. Jennsimmons and remember, my Jen has two ends, so until next time, remember to stay proactive in the informed and confident in your breast health journey. The key to your health is you.