50: Discover Six Steps to Ultimate Wellness That Will Transform Your Life with Dani Williamson

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Hi there and welcome back to this week's episode of the Keeping a Breast podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jen Simmons, and do I have a special treat for you because I have a great lady from Nashville with us today. So, Dan, Dani Williamson is a nurse practitioner. She was practicing family medicine and her words, not mine, she jumped off the boat. She, through her own life experience figured out that we're really on the wrong track, on the wrong path in conventional medicine. Not that we're not well intentioned, but that the way that the system operates, no pun intended, for all of you who know that I used to be a surgeon, the way that the system operates is not to drive health. It's not for the, the benefit of being healthy. It is symptom management. It's broken. And as a result of it being broken, we have less than 10% of Americans who have metabolic health. We have a Hashimoto's and thyroid epidemic where more 20% of women are suffering from thyroid dysfunction. We have, women, all, all Americans actually have so much dysfunction in their gut. And Danny decided that she was not going to continue to practice in that broken paradigm and she's going to practice common sense medicine and she's here today to tell us what that is. So, Dani, welcome.

Thank you so much. And yes, common sense, practical medicine, it really is my, my specialty as a family practice, but nurse practitioner and take.

Us back, Take us back. I. Because I want to hear about where this all started.

Well, it started in the shithole that I grew up in. Complete chaos. To be quite frank, I grew up in a complete of chaos and I did. It's just as crude as that my grandfather had died by suicide. My mom attempted multiple times. I had a child molester for a stepfather. And then the second one almost beat me to death one night my senior year in high school. So I started with chronic diarrhea in high school. I had the first of four colonoscopies at age 20. Every GI procedure known to man given, every medicine known to man diagnosed with IBS. Then I started itching uncontrollably in my 20s. Just uncontrollable itching. Multiple dermatologists.

Because you wanted to get out of your skin.

What?

Because you wanted to get out of your skin.

Amen. Yes. Then I was diagnosed with lupus and fibromyalgia while I was in an abusive, verbally and emotionally abusive marriage. And I, too, became suicidal. So it was. I spent 24 years. I left. My husband was on food stamps and a medical card with two little kids for five years. Applied to nursing school. I have a master's degree in fashion design. And I made a 180 turn because a friend of mine who was an OB GYN said, Danny, you'd be incredible. As a nurse, midwife. So I went to midwifery school and became a nurse, midwife, and then a family practice nurse practitioner. I was 44 years old when I got out of school working for Dr. Kalb, my first job out of school. And one day he looked at me and he said, danny, what are you eating? Don't you know your diet controls your disease? What? I had just spent $200,000 in education at Vanderbilt. Right. I had no idea that your diet could heal you or kill you. Kill. Heal you or kill you.

Yeah.

I literally reversed 24 years of chronic lifestyle diseases by changing my diet, addressing the inflammation, and addressing the childhood trauma. That happened to me the first 18 years of my life, and it changed the entire trajectory of my medical practice. I hope my children's lives. And it has since thousands of patients lives. So, Jen, you know, it's interesting. I. I tell people every day I am living proof that if you were born healthy, you don't have to live sick. And you can reverse anything that you've turned on or at least dial it back so greatly that it's under the radar. I still have lupus, but I don't have any symptoms of lupus. I'm not on medication for lupus. That, as my rheumatologist told me, she said, well, Danielle, lupus will kill you. It kills women every year. We have no cure for it. Here's your pain medicine. Here's your anti inflammatories, and we'll check your kidneys in six months. You know, that was bs Just bs. And so I have made a living out of addressing chronic lifestyle diseases. Right. That are turned on by your lifestyle and turned off by your lifestyle. And my focus is Hashimoto's thyroiditis. It has been for years. Well, now that I learned about trauma, I didn't know about childhood trauma. Well, no wonder so many of my patients are women. Patients for sure, are Hashimoto's patients. You know, this is your fifth chakra. This is your voice. And when I learned about trauma and your voice and these women losing their voice and, you know, it's a miracle that I don't have thyroid disease. I don't. My trauma manifested right down here in the gut, which. And that's what I see. So I have so many of these women that once we break down this childhood trauma and we talk about this, I mean, number one, they're in a puddle on the floor. Right. Because they never even connected the dots. And why would they?

Yeah.

And no one's ever addressed it with them. And so I work on common sense, practical medicine, basically. And I work on. I have six steps that I address. There's more than that, but eat well, sleep well, move well, poop well, de stress well, and commune well. And it's what I wrote the book about. It has my. It's my six steps. And. And on top of addressing the trauma, that's. That's how we get going on the very first visit. And I. I am telling you, it's not rocket science. It's very simple what I ask people to do. And we start with the gut first, because I'm a big believer and I know that a lot of people aren't. If you don't heal the gut first and address the inflammation in the gut first, we'll never get to the sleep and the pooping and the inflammation. And all that. So that's how I start. And we go from there.

Yeah. So I love what you said in the beginning, that if you were born healthy, you don't have to live sick.

But.

And we all start off perfect for the most part, right?

For the most part. Most people.

But the exposures start really early. And I firmly believe that a lot of the dysfunction that we see in childhood that then carries through to adulthood, especially with autoimmunity and allergies and things like that. I think this is triggered very early with early exposure to cow's milk. Because of formula.

Oh, absolutely. And I wrote, you know, cow's milk. Dairy is the number one food allergy for children in the United States. Eggs are number two. And eggs are hard to give up. Eggs are number one for me. But cow's milk, what I tell my patients is if. If they're believers, I say, you know, Daniel knew. Daniel in the Bible knew how inflammatory dairy was 2,000 years ago, before we ever had hormones and antibiotics and cows eating grass with glyphosate and all the things, you know, they gave up dairy. Red meat and red wine, which, you know, red meat and red wine. I don't. I'll give up dairy before that, but, you know, absolutely. And we feed them milk. And even to this day, April 2024, our pediatricians are still pushing dairy, dairy, dairy. They've got to have dairy. They have to have their calcium.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's what's so amazing, is that our physicians think that that is where we should be getting our calcium. Yes. Right. And you said, you know, these cows are being fed grass with glyphosate. Actually, you're lucky if that cow is being fed grass. Well, most cows are not being fed grass. They're being fed a completely unnatural diet of corn and soy and whatever commodity crops they put in front of them in a pen. In a pen where they're not. Where they're not able to move at all.

No.

So I. I really try to not get into that whole argument about where your protein should be coming from, because it's. That in and of itself is so inflammatory for people. I. I have deep beliefs about people who are actively cancering, and that person needs to avoid as many toxins as they can possibly avoid. But if you're not actively cancering, you know, where you get your. Your protein from is your own decision. As long as you're eating a cloth, clean source, a natural source, that if it's an animal, has lived a natural life. Because eating a penned animal that is not being fed its native diet is highly inflammatory. And as I've heard you say, inflammation is the key to all of this.

Inflammation is the devil. I have. I. I write all. I talk about it all the time. It's exactly correct. So, you know, as our buddy JJ Virgin says, you know, you're only as good as what your animal ate, and it's. It's a fact. And so it starts early, early on, and it's hard. It's very simple what I ask people to do, but it's not easy when you ask people to give up dairy. So I start with my patients. We do a full on elimination the first visit, cutting out the top seven inflammatory foods.

Okay, so what are they?

Well, gluten, dairy, soy, corn, sugar, eggs and peanuts. So those are the top seven. Dr. Kalb started me off on 2010, removing those foods from my diet. Well, patients look at you and they say, well, Danny, what am I going to eat? That's all I eat. Well, so those are the best patients to work with because you're like, oh my goodness, we have hundreds of foods to eat out there. And the research is clear. We only eat maybe 12 to 15, 20 foods if you're lucky. We feed our kids the same five to seven meals their entire life. There's no diversity in the spring and summer like it is here in Nashville. This is the perfect time to do an elimination and cut those foods out. And like I said, dairy and eggs are the top two for children in the United States. So I attempt to get the entire family involved in this. But that's difficult. If mom has a bunch of kids or a husband who's not on board, it's very difficult to get her to change her lifestyle. It's hard.

I have it a little easier because when people get a life threatening illness, that is a huge motivator. Right. That is a huge impetus for change. And I think that everyone pretty much gets healthier when you eliminate gluten and dairy. What are your thoughts about that?

Absolutely. You know, I remember and I wish I could find the research on this, but I was in New York City at the Integrative Healthcare Symposium. It's been over 10 years ago. Mark Hyman shared a slide that showed a woman's knee tissue. Anyway, he said, and I know I'm not making this up, and I've used it for over a decade now. Now one bite of gluten can set the inflammatory response back in your body for six months. He said it, I heard it, I've used it forever. I know there's got to be research out there on it, but absolutely. So you know, and I tell them, one ingredient food. It's real easy to turn around. Look at your, look at your. You know, if your food comes in a box, a bag, a can, a tube, a roll, that's fake food. So what we're designed to eat is one ingredient food. And again, it's chopping, cooking, meal prepping. You cheat when you're not prepared. It's as simple as that. So I start the patients off on a 10 day detox that I've used for 15 years. The MetaGenics one. I think it's fantastic. We private label. It's been around for 45 years. It's cutting out those seven foods for 10 days. And it's a Mediterranean liver detox, but it's literally like detoxing for dummies. One day at a time. They have broken it down day one through ten. So it. It's not easy, but there, it's. It's. It's simple the way I've done it. And then I transition them. Our buddy JJ wrote the best book. I am sorry. It's. I've used it since 2012 on food intolerances and weight loss resistance. So I transitioned them right to JJ's book. I told her, I said, dang, I think I've made you a New York Times bestseller for this book for 12 years because I've used it. I was doing the same thing before the book came out. Now I have a book that literally breaks it down. And for me, for my patients, It's a solid 31 days of decreasing inflammation, increasing energy, helping them sleep, helping them poop. And their joint pain goes away. Their migraine headaches start to go down. Right. They're bloating. Their gas, their constipation, their heartburn starts to resolve in 31 days of eating incredible food. And by the time they come back, we've done food sensitivity testing on them, most most likely for them, they roll right in to their food sensitivity test. And so they're not so overwhelmed because they've already cut out these foods and they already know they feel better. And if eggs comes back as number one for them, they're like, yeah, Danny, I know. I'm not surprised. Because you know what? I've had one migraine since I left here because you made me cut eggs out. Yeah. Yeah. So that's how I do it. It works for me. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it works. Even if they do 75% of what I need them to do. 50%.

Yeah.

They have won and they feel better. And then they start to realize what's at the end of my fork is going to heal me or kill me. I had no idea. And they'll think twice about driving through chick fil A with 51 ingredients in one sandwich again, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to talk about thyroid dysfunction because so many people have questions about that and where it's coming from. We have an epidemic right now. So where do you think all this thyroid dysfunction is coming from?

Well, I think a lot of it is coming from what we just talked about for 15 minutes. You know, the childhood trauma. I think the, the environment, all of the electromagnetic fields that we have. I think everything from parasites to heavy metals to food sensitivities to trauma, to, you know, radiation. I mean, we know that's, that's common sense stuff. Radiation of the. Around the thyroid and things. I think any piece of it is genetic for sure. And then I, I have a lot of patients who are put on thyroid medicine. They come in, they're really sort of subclinical, and they really weren't a hypothyroid patient now they were a Hashimoto's patient, most likely, and we start healing.

You want to talk about the difference there? Because I don't, I don't know that everyone understands the difference.

Hashimoto's thyroiditis is the number one undiagnosed autoimmune disease in the United States. It oftentimes, oftentimes precedes hypothyroidism, sluggish thyroidism by decades. So what would cause a Hashimoto's thyroiditis and not be a hypothyroid patient? Inflammation. Anything that ends in itis is an inflammatory response. Arthritis, gastritis, thyroiditis, sinusitis. So what's going to cause inflammation of the thyroid? Well, it could be, it could be anything. Women have autoimmune disease 7, 8, 10 times more than men. We're the most toxic as a rule. You know, I tell women every day, lotion, makeup, hair color, lipstick, nail polish, nail polish remover, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant. I mean, the list can go on and on. Cleaning supplies. Here's the nose, here's the thyroid. There's a proximity issue here. Right. Perfume on the thyroid. Anything that's going to create an inflammatory response.

So there's a. I never thought about that. People spray their necks with perfume.

You bet they do. And what, what's perfume? Nothing but chemicals. Yeah. Only chemicals. It's a dirty, dirty industry. The skin care, beauty industry. America, I think, has banned something like 11 chemicals since 2000. Or, I'm sorry, since 1938. Yeah. Europe has banned thousands. We're not in the banning chemical business because it's big business. It's money and, and it's, it's padding pockets. So, yeah, perfume, Absolutely not. You don't put anything near your thyroid if you want your thyroid to survive. So we, we protect this thyroid. It's the master gland. And there's a genetic component to it as well. Right. Childbirth, you May have a postpartum thyroiditis because it's hard to. It's hard on your body to have a baby, so, or, or a big virus, Epstein Barr. You could get Covid and have a postpartum thyroiditis where we create these antibodies. I had two patients this week. This does not happen to me very often. Yesterday was the last one. They came to me for other things. Had no idea they had thyroid issues. Both of them have beautifully perfect thyroid function. A TSH, a T3, T4, but their antibodies are in the hundreds. They had no idea they had Hashimoto's thyroiditis. That doesn't happen to me too often anymore because a lot of providers are checking antibodies. More. More so than not anymore. A lot of them.

I don't see that at all.

Well, maybe I just get paid.

Most of my people come in and have maybe never had their antibodies checked.

Maybe because I focus on thyroid. So I get the patients already that know, you know, a lot and they've had, they've had their antibodies checked. But this was a, a great day yesterday and, and Tuesday. Not good for them because they were horrified. And I said, it's fine, it's fine. Your thyroid itself is working. But this is an inflammatory response. And everything that we're doing to cool down the inflammation in the body is going to affect the thyroid. And then we started them on a little Ashwagandha and a little bit of thyroid glandular, you know, like over the counter stuff. But it is an epidemic. And, and again, I think not addressing the childhood trauma as well, Jen, you know, because when you lose your voice, not physically, but some people do, right? When you lose your voice, it affects everything in your body. I mean, it's overwhelming to me. It almost makes me cry because I think, man, I was a fighter growing up and I just never lost this. This was like I was gonna fight. And that's, you know, one of the reasons I, you know, would. My second stepfather was he hit me. Not because. Well, because I was a loud mouth, right? So not. Not my fault, but you know what I mean? I just never shut up. I was not going to back down. And so I never lost my voice. But those women and men that do, it's empowering for them to know that, you know, we can turn this around. Many of my patients, their endocrinologists tell them we're never checking antibodies again. There's no reason to. There's no cure for it. Just like my rheumatologist said to me, with lupus, there's no cure.

Yeah.

And there's no reason. And diet doesn't make a difference. Doesn't matter if you eat all the gluten in the world. There's no research that it cross reacts with your thyroid. What are you crazy? Yes, there is. We have decades of research.

Yeah, for sure. Well, there's no cure if you're going to take the attack that they take.

Right.

There's no cure if all you're going to do is give immunosuppressants to block the body from doing what? It's you, Your body is just trying to protect you. Your body thinks that you're being poisoned. Your body thinks you're being attacked. Right? So all of this, all of this response, this autoimmune response is your body trying to protect you. So if all you do is block your body's response and not take away what it's responding to, of course there's no cure. And if you're not.

I could not have said that any better. That is absolutely perfect. And that's why you and I will never go out of business, because no one is talking about that to our patients. And they never address any of this. My son's in medical school right now. He's starting his fourth year in August. And so he's in the thick of it with the just first year of rotations. He's internal. Well, no, he started psych Monday, but he was in internal medicine. And you know, for. They're not being taught any of this. And he's in D.O. school. He wanted to be a D.O. because he knew what his mom does. He wants to come back and take over the clinic. And I was so excited when he wanted to apply to do schools. Well, I mean, maybe some do schools are. I mean, he gets probably a little bit more integrative to touch to it, but not really. Not really.

I, I think probably about 20 or 30 years ago that it might have been different, but they, they made an effort to mimic, for lack of a better word, the MD schools. So my, my training going through the MD system from medical school to residency was almost identical to my friends who went to do school and then came. They have to do. I think they had to do like one extra year as a medical rotation or something like that before they came into surgical residency. But our educations now are almost identical.

Yes.

Different is the naturopathic. So an ND education is, is more open. I actually didn't even know that that was an option when I went to medical school. I thought that there was only one way to be a doctor, and that was to go to, you know, MD school. I am still amazed at how little penetrance there is of this concept that health happens at home into mainstream medicine. I think it has something to do with ego, with wanting to feel as if you have control over the process. Because you and I both know as practitioners, we can, we can share this information all day long, but unless that person in front of us is bought in and is going to go home and make their health happen, nothing else is going to matter. Because health has to happen at home. It has to happen in the kitchen where you talked about, and it has to happen with the way that they live their lives. Those, those pillars that you talked about, those six pillars that you talked about, that. That is up to the patient to do. I have a very dear friend whose son was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis. And he went to Mass General Hospital, and the head of rheumatology at MGH told him that there was no cure, that he needed biologics. And he said, well, my Aunt Jen said that diet can change things. And he said, well, you tell your Aunt Jen the diet has nothing to do with it. And this is coming from mgh. I mean, these are supposed to be our authorities. These are supposed to be the people that we are looking to, to have the definitive answer, to give the definitive word. And yet the word that they're giving is not serving people. I, I mean, it's. It's selling more biologics for sure. But you and I both know where that road ends, because you can only suppress the body's systems for so long. You can only suppress the immune system for so long, and you're either going to get an overwhelming response from the immune system because it won't be suppressed any longer, and they'll continue to have disease and continue to have dysfunction and continue to have destruction or they're going to get cancer. Because you can't take the immune system out of the picture for too long, because the immune system is there. It's what's protecting us. And so if you have immune dysfunction, this is the message that your body is trying to tell you. This is not working for me. It's not working.

Exactly. Yeah, it's. And it's not such a little red flag. It's the little red flags that I talk about all the time, you know, that we ignore, and that's a huge red flag, but yet we keep marching on ignoring it and still, still doing exactly the same thing we're doing. You know, we don't pay attention to that joint pain. You know, I was 18 years old working in my dad's restaurant, a hamburger restaurant in Paducah, Kentucky. Hamburger, ice cream, hot dogs, you know, hot fudge, Sundays, all the things, which is so ironic now, but anyway, I was hurting so badly, I would eat, I'd be in the bathroom and then my hands were hurting. You know, these are red flags. These are things that I tried to find help to, for, for decades before anybody, anybody ever paid attention. That's not normal. It's not normal to hurt. It's not normal to, you know, poop your pants, basically. You know, I lived in New York City. When I moved, graduated college, I moved to New York City. I knew where every restroom in New York City was when I was going. That's not normal. These are red flags that we ignore in traditional allopathic health care. We ignore just as humans, you know, in our life. And we're not curious, Jen. The thing is, we've lost all curiosity. I think doctors have, surgeons have, nurses have, we have, we're not curious about things. And I, and I hope I never lose my curiosity as to why. Why is that? Wonder why. Why would that three year old that the mom brought into me, who's on biologics, three years old, you know, why would she. I can't remember. This has been four or five years ago. I can't remember what her actual diagnosis was, but she was on multiple biologics, it was three years old. Why would that happen? You know, why? Nobody, nobody's questioning things. So that's what we do is we question and we get people eating well, and then we get people sleeping well. I'm a big believer that sleep, sleep is as important as eating because your body heals when you sleep. And I am blessed. I have always been a great sleeper, but the majority of my patients either can't go to sleep or can't stay asleep. And, and, and you know, their bedroom is filthy. I tell women every day, your bedroom is for sleep and sex only. If you're not doing one or the other, get out of it. I don't, I don't have anybody in my bed with me, so I can read a book in bed, but, you know, other than that, there's no, there should be no TVs, no phones, no wireless routers, no electric beds that you paid $10,000 for. And you're sleeping on an electrical minefield of electromagnetic fields, you know, no wireless routers. That bedroom needs to be a sanctuary. We can't get away from these electromagnetic fields in here and these computers and all that, but you can at night. And that is when your body heals, is when you sleep. So whatever it takes. If you snore, then if you have untreated sleep apnea, it can take up to 10 years off of your lifespan. What? Well, that's unbelievable. If your husband snores or your wife snores, you need to get them a sleep study. Or if they won't do that, you need to move to the other bedroom because you have to sleep. Your body heals when you sleep. So you may need magnesium, you may need, well, lots of things, you know, we don't have time to talk about. But sleeping well is a huge pillar and it is. If you don't sleep well, you know this, Jen, you will never eat well.

Yeah.

And you're definitely not going to move well.

Yeah.

And movement is. Well, movement as in pooping and exercising.

Yeah, yeah. I think, I think the, the study that I saw said that if you just after losing one night's sleep and it, it doesn't have to be the whole night, just one night of, of short sleeve, you will consume more than 400 calories than usual the following day. Because. Yes, that's how your body is trying to crave energy. And you know, you don't make good decisions the next day. I mean, all your decisions are bad the next day after losing sleep. Because as you said, sleep is where the healing happens. Sleep when you detox.

Yes.

And there are a number of reasons why people don't sleep. And it's often that you don't need more. Like, yes, do I, do I take magnesium at night? Absolutely. But I don't think that for most people it's. You're not, not sleeping because you have a sleeping pill deficiency.

Right.

Like, for most of us, we need less, we need less consumption, we need to consume less food, we need to consume less light, we need to consume less energy, we need to consume less oxygen. We, we need to do less in order to sleep. And because our society completely values the waking hours and we devalue sleep. Right. Sleep is for lazy. Sleep is for the Homer Simpsons of the world. Like, you know, we, and, and, and we are, as a result of not valuing sleep, completely saddled with chronic disease. Saddled. Yes.

Yes. And, you know, I learned from a good friend of mine who's an electrical engineer and her entire career was built around making homes safe, EMF wise, electromagnetic field wise. She, she came on my Facebook live. I do on Sundays. And she. It was fascinating to me. She was talking about babies. So we're talking about, you know, people say they don't sleep from day one. I never slept from day one. She told me that those baby monitors in the crib, she said, don't ever put a baby monitor in your crib or over the baby. She said, watch those babies spin around. They're trying to get away from the monitor. They're trying to get away from the electromagnetic field that is constantly boring down on that baby. I was like, what in the heck? Never even thought of that. And she told me, she said, dogs and cats will tell you where your electromagnetic fields are in your house. Cats love them. They will lay on top of your computer. They will lay on top of the TV. Back when we had TVs you could lay on. The cat would lay on it. And they all had feline leukemia from laying on TVs. These are things I didn't know. She said, a dog will get up and walk away when the H vac unit or the refrigerator comes on. If they're laying by it, they won't stay near it. And she said, children don't like it either, but yet we don't pay attention to it. And she said, do not put a monitor around that baby. In that baby. And wow.

And it's so amazing because my dog, when we walk, he will. He will literally go into the middle of the street to get away from the houses that have electric fences around them. He doesn't have an electric fence collar on. He perceives that. That energy and avoids it at all costs.

Yes.

So we have to pay attention to it. Yeah, it was fascinating. But her. Her career is fascinating. She's an engineer. And, you know, they. They have a different brain than we do. But she taught me a lot about testing your home. Testing with a gauss meter, which I have in the closet. I can't grab it right now. It's a $39 gauss meter off of Amazon. And you can. You can take it and all over your bedroom and find out where the electromagnetic fields are and if your H Vac unit and many people's are outside their bedroom, the big H vac unit. She said, your head of your bed has got to be more than six feet away from that because you can't stop that from coming through the house, from coming through the brick. And she. She takes her gas meter to hotel rooms and she checks, and she pulls up the sheets at the end of the bed and puts her head of the bed. Her head at the end of the bed. Because your hotel room is on the next room. Right there to the next. Yes.

Yeah.

Things I never thought about. She said, you'll sleep much better when you do these tiny little hacks.

Yeah, that's amazing. I never thought of that either. But I can almost perceive. Like, I can't be in a car that has WI fi. I get an instant headache. I can almost perceive when there is too much EMF around me. And amazingly, I took a vacation a couple of weeks ago with the Holistic Leadership Council, and we went to this amazing yoga retreat in Mexico. And there's, like, no WI fi there. There's no. There's no tv. There's no anything. I have never slept so well or felt such peace. I almost get a headache every day from just being in front of screens and lights and just, like, too much stimulation for my brain. And it was so amazing to be in that space where I had none of it. None of it. So we really need to dial into what we're putting in our bodies because we're not missing out on sleep for. Because we don't have enough. We're missing out on sleep because there's too much. There's too much stimulus.

Great way to say it. So. So we have to eat well, we have to sleep well, we have to move well. Right. And again, you won't move or eat well if you're not sleeping well. It's all interconnected, and I'm a big fan of movement. We got to move our bodies, you know, and honestly, that's the least. That's the one that I slack in the most. I move, I exercise, I'm in decent shape, but I've. It's. I'm not where I need to be at 58 years old, so I've got to ramp it up, you know, And I was listening to your podcast the week or two whenever it came out with jj, and, you know, she was going to get in the best shape at 60, and she is. And it's key and all those things.

By the way, she doesn't have far to go.

Oh, it's crazy, but I would love to be half what she is. You know, that's why I tell patients, if you'll just do 50% of what I need you to do, you're going to be. You're going to be good. But our bodies are so resilient, and they're designed to move and be tugged and pulled and lift things and. And I love her analogy of, you know, I want to lift my 60 pound suitcase and be able to put it up on the, you know, above the overhead in the airplane and at 60, you know, and my mom just died at 78 years old, full blown Alzheimer's, could not walk, could not feed herself, could not use the bathroom, was completely incontinent. 78 in an assisted living since she was 73. Diagnosed about 70, meaning she. That came on in her 40s, right. I mean, so fifth year. I'm not gonna, I'm not. You don't have to be your genetics. And I did my mom's genetics. She does not have any Alzheimer's genes at all. APOE complete. Three, three. Just completely normal. So you gotta move. Well, you got to move your body. And I went out and walked after dinner last night. I'm having some shoulder, chronic shoulder pain problems. Anyway, I got up and went out. I don't go out after night at dinner and walk every night. I just don't. I should because I know what the research shows, right. On insulin and metabolism and all that. But I slept better last night than I have slept in a long time. I slept really great. And you got to move and always think about Jack lalanne. Which young people have no clue who Jack lalanne is. He had the longest running health show in the history of the United States. Still he was. And he preached about white sugar, white flour, white alcohol, white everything. He said, you know, all the white processed foods were the devil. And you got to move your body. And he said, you know, and he did basic stuff. He didn't have full blown gyms, he did push ups, sit ups, jumping jacks, free weights. It doesn't take much if you want a hula hoop, I don't care. That is a fantastic cardiovascular workout. And so you got to move your body and when you do that, you've got more energy, you feel better, you do sleep better, you know, and you choose to eat better when you exercise. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not helps with.

Gut health because you don't move unless you move.

You bet. So that's my fourth step, right? Eat well, sleep well, move well, poop well, you got to poop. Nobody's pooping around here. I've got a standard poodle land in the floor over here beside me. I tell my patients, I'm like, look, you need to poop. Poop like your poodle. They eat, they go and poop and they are thrilled to death about it. And, and they run in, you know, oh, looky there.

Hi. This is Teddy.

Oh, Teddy. My dog is Edwin, and he's laying over here. Oh, Teddy. Yeah. He's a standard black standard poodle. But we have to poop. You know, I never had that problem. I had chronic diarrhea. Pooped like a goose my entire life until I realized what was happening. But, you know, a lot of my patients, you know, I tell them, dehydration. Maybe you're just dehydrated. You've got to drink your water. And when we call them and check up on them after their first visit and I've put in their plan, they need to drink whatever, I don't know, 75 ounces, whatever their weight and all that is how they. How much coffee. It's unbelievable how much better these people are just having a bowel movement.

Yeah. But maybe they need magnesium to drink water.

Just remembering one simple thing. Again, it's real simple.

Although magnesium, now that you bring it up, that is an important point because we do need magnesium. It's involved in. In hundreds of reactions in the body. It is so essential to the functioning of our health. And we should be getting magnesium from our diet because it's something that is found in the soil, except our soil is depleted, like everything else in this world of convenience. And with depleted soil, you don't get it.

No, you don't. Not at all. Magnesium changed my life. Man, I wish I'd known about magnesium 30 years ago. So just a little bit of magnesium glycinate, chelate malate is what I use with patients and, you know, sleeping, headaches, restless legs, high high blood pressure, heart palpitations, constipation. I mean, the list goes on and on, but, yeah. So when you move, you move. Maybe you just need a squatty potty, right? Maybe. I'm a huge fan of putting your feet up to. To go to the restroom. It makes a huge difference. Yeah, a squatty potty. Who knew? We're not designed to lay down to have babies, and we're not designed to just sit down and poop either. So I'm a big believer in that. It's magnesium and some water and some exercise and, you know, decreasing stress, which for me is my fifth step to healing, is de stress. Well, stress will kill you. Stress will kill you. Many people clamp down, they won't have a bowel movement because they're so stressed. But, you know, I'm a big believer. I tell women every day, you know, you may not be the head of the household. You know, it depends on your household. Right. But you may not be the head of the household, the head of the home. But you set the tone for the entire home. The woman does. The minute she walks through that door. The entire family feeds off of your tone. It just does. Most likely, it doesn't feed off of dads, you know, if you've got a nuclear family there. And I'm an only. I'm a single. Well, I am an only child, but I'm a. A single mom. So it was me. And. And I was a raging lunatic for years, raising these kids, too stressed, no money, didn't feel well. And I set the tone, all right? And it was not good in this house. I had no margin in my life. No margin at all. There was no room for error. And if there was any mistake at all, anything went off, I flew off the deep end, and my. My vessel was empty, and. And I never filled it up.

You were in survival mode.

I was in survival mode. And I didn't know if someone had looked at me and said, girl, you got to build your life. You got to build your life so that you don't have to escape from it, so that your self care is in your life. I would have punched him in the face because there was no room to build self care into my world. But I have since learned that I have to aed my life. Right. Automate, eliminate, and delegate everything I can in my life in order to give me some margin so that I can fill my vessel up and that there's overflow. Because the overflow is the is is where everyone else benefits. Right. And that's why you put your oxygen mask on first.

Yep.

But I'm a big believer. My friend Michael Hyatt, who's. Who's a big business coach, and he. He. He taught me about automating, eliminating and delegating everything you can out of your life. And automate everything. Everything. Whatever you can do, automate it, eliminate everything that's not serving you. And when I tell women you do know you can get out of that marriage that's abusive, you can. I did. I know. I left a job 10 years ago, stepped out of the boat, walked on water, left a job that was killing me, opened my own clinic, and I have never looked back. Yeah, it's scary. You can, you know, if you don't want to have Thanksgiving coming up in November, you've done it forever. And it is an absolute disaster for your health to have to host it. Guess what? I'd send a message out now. I can't do this. I've done it for 20 years. I think Thanksgiving is great, but someone else is going to have to do it this year, and that's it. You don't have to explain anything. I mean, it's like, whoa. I didn't know that I could say no. But it's not about saying no, Jen. It's about saying what's the best yes for you and your family.

Yeah. Yeah. Because when you say yes to everyone else, you're saying no to you.

Yes to something else or your family or whatever. You're saying no. Scheduling this podcast with you today. If I didn't want to do it, if I didn't have the bandwidth for it, I would have said, I can't do it. I think you're amazing. I'll listen to every podcast you got out there, sis, and I'm supporting you all the way, but I don't have the energy or the bandwidth to do it. I had the right to say that. Well, I. I've. I've built a world now that I don't have to escape from, but it wasn't easy.

How did you do that? Because there are so many women who are in situations. I mean, I. God bless the woman that I spoke to yesterday. My new patient is in a job that she. Her words, not mine, has to get out of in a marriage. Her words, not mine. That is unsupportive and miserable, and yet she stays. She's in that marriage for 40 years. She's in this job for 15 years, knows that she has to get out of them, and yet she stays. So where did you find the strength? And how would you advise other people? Because the problem is, when you don't get out of the job, when you don't get out of the marriage, when you don't get out of the toxic environment, when you don't get out of the relationship that's killing you, you end up in my office, you end up with breast cancer, you end up with a sign that you cannot ignore.

Yep. Well, that's a loaded question. I don't know. As we discussed earlier, you know, I've always just fought. I never had anybody fighting for me. I mean, that's not a pity story. It's just a crappy childhood and stuff. So. I don't know. I think some people have it in them. Some ducks, some are overwhelmed. Now, I'll tell you what, I did leave a bad marriage with little kids and lost it all and ended up in school. So. But I understand how women stay in a marriage with children and a bad job and a bad marriage and all that because they're over when, I mean, they're overwhelmed. And again, so she can't leave her husband and her job all at the same time. She's got to pick something. I don't, I don't know the best advice for that, because I think every single woman is different. The way I did it, when I left 10 years ago, my job and I still had 100, like $18,000 in student loans, and my kids were still in school, and I was like, what in the world am I going to do? I'm going to open my practice. I might go bankrupt. But that is the way I've always looked at everything. Is what's the worst case scenario that's going to happen? Is it going to kill me? If it's not going to kill me or Jackson or Ella, then I think I should try it. But I, I have done so much in fear my entire life, and that's how I do things. I think I probably kind of thrive in that many women. Don't you see those women? You and I see those women every day. They don't. And they're scared. And I don't, I don't know. I don't. I wish I could say it was God. I love God. I believe in God. I mean, that's a piece of it. That's my strength, right? I, I, I know that he gives me the strength to do this, but a lot of it is just chutzpah. I just, yeah. And, and, and women have, they are in this, on this hamst. Is it a hamster wheel? What is it? Yeah, they just can not even breathe. Literally. They wake up, it is balls to the wall from the second they get up until the second they go to bed at night. And there is no room, there's no margin for them to even come up with a plan.

But even that's a choice.

Well, it is. And I made a choice 10 years ago. I left for three days, had never done this in my life, went for three days to a vacation by myself. Well, this was more than 10 years ago, and made a business plan for my new practice. And that was a cat. That was a huge turning point for me because I had some clarity, I had a little bit of space. I was by myself. I came up with my plan, I made a decision to do it. And, and that was my choice. Right? I made a choice and I did it. And again, those women need to automate, eliminate, and delegate. I tell them that every day. Don't commit to anything else. Nothing else at Work. Nothing else at work. No room. Mother. Your child's still going to go to fifth grade whether you're the run mother or not. Stop it. If you don't like it, don't do it.

Yeah.

Start getting you some margin so that you can start building this life and maybe getting out of this marriage or this job or maybe the marriage even isn't so bad, but they've got all this other chaos going on in their life and, you know, they've grown apart from. I mean, they did. Nobody gets married thinking we're getting divorced.

Of course not. Of course not.

I don't know. I married the wrong man, so I made a bad mistake. But a lot of people didn't. They did marry gay people, you know, and their life got so chaotic that they grew so far apart. Yeah. And then the kids turn 18 and they don't even know each other.

Yeah, absolutely. Without question. But we have to consciously acknowledge two things. First, that we, we do have, we do have some control there. And if we don't opt for that control, it's going to control us.

Yes.

And these, these situations which don't feel physical will manifest as physical if you continue to allow them to hurt you. This is why your trauma story is so important. Because if you don't, if you don't deal with the trauma that happened 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, it's going to keep happening and keep hurting you in today.

You bet.

So, so we, we have to, we have to acknowledge these things and we have to do something with them. We have to give it some finality. You can't, you don't have to leave your husband. Commit back to making that marriage worth.

Worth having.

Right. Make it into something worth having so that it doesn't hurt you and helps you. And then the other, the other part of it is that we've completely lost our faith in God.

You bet.

We've lost that relationship. We've lost that connection because we have to trust that God will be there for us and God will help us. Now. Will God do everything? No. I mean, you know, God didn't take my medical school examinations for me. God didn't get me board certified as a surgeon.

No.

But, but when I left surgery at the age of 50, when everyone thought that I lost my mind or my skills or maybe both, to go out into the world and do this, be an integrative oncologist, help people to truly recover their health. The, the, the thing that was with me, the person that was with me was God. Because I, I trusted that if I was, if I felt compelled to do this, God would be there with me.

You bet. And so that leads me to what I talked about, what you said at the beginning. There was only one disciple who stepped out of the boat. That was Peter. And I say this over and over every week to women. I say, look, I stepped out of that boat 10 years ago not knowing if anyone was going to come through those doors of my clinic that I was opening. And I kept my eyes on God the entire time. And every time Peter took his eyes off God, right, or off Jesus, he stunk down, right? And then he would, he, he would get back, right? Walk on water. Only one disciple walked on water. Every single one of us can get out of that boat. You are dead. Right on. We've lost our faith in God. And if you're a believer in God, I'm telling you, and I'm a big believe. I believe that a huge piece of my business is because probably three years before I opened my own practice, I got really serious about tithing. I had always tithed. I was raised in church. I was raised. Even though I was raised in such a chaotic childhood, my mom always took me to church and she was a believer. And you know, she was just so broken herself.

But.

And we tithe. But then I went through such a hard time that I just didn't feel like I could tie the way I was taught to tithe. But I did. But anyway, I got serious about it. What I've Learned the last 14 years of tithing above and beyond is you can't out give God ever, ever. Which it makes me emotional. I was going to cry about it because I swear that this business has exposed, exploded the last 10 years because I put my faith in it and I taught no matter what. And I mean the more I tithe, the better my business gets. And so that comes back to community. My sixth step. As you were talking about, Jesus believed in community. Man, we are the loneliest society in history right now. I work with the American foundation for Suicide Prevention. I was on the board for them for five years in Tennessee. Suicide rates are on, are climbing. They climbed last year again. The fastest growing rate of suicide is age 10, 10 to 24. Inside that, inside that age bracket, 10 to 13 are dying faster than any other age bracket.

Oh my God.

It's unheard of. There's no community. You know, you heal when you have community. You do. We know that your cortisol levels go down right when you're laughing with your, your tribe, when you're Hee Haw. And when you're out there with your buddies. And Jesus had community. He had 12 people that he was tied his ticks with. But then inside that community, inside that 12, he had a tighter group and then even brought it down tighter. There are two of them that he was super close with. You don't have to have a hundred friends. I tell people this, you need, but you need a few people, one or two. If you've got two good people in your life, you're blessed and people heal. When you have community, your stress is lower. Right. You probably eat better, you probably sleep better. I mean, all the things I don't know about pooping better. If you have good community. I don't know what the research shows on that, but we need community. We need people. And the older I get at 58, man, that's what you want. You want your community, right. You want peace, you want good health, you want your children to be happy and healthy and whole. I mean, it's, it's real simple.

Yeah, well, we are social creatures. Without question. We are social creatures. Yes. And we know that animals in isolation die. Babies in isolation die. You can, you can feed them, but they won't survive. Right. We are social creatures. And, and when we look at the societies around the world that have the most health and longevity, these are societies that are multi generational dwellings, that they, that they live in a communal kind of way. They grow their food together, they eat their meals together. They, they, they basically live a very connected, interconnected life.

You bet.

And this is what promotes such a. I mean, of course they eat well and they don't have all of the technological distractions from life that we do. So they, they sleep better than we do. But for sure, one of the major aspects of their longevity is their sense of community.

You bet, you bet. Not even their exercise, you know, because they're, those people are doing, they're moving, they're doing, they're doing, you know, they're going to town, they're going to the market, they're going to the village. They're doing all the things they're saying. It's not, it's not even, it's funny. Yeah, it's, it's when I was in Italy and just watching the community. Yeah, we're, we're missing it. We have neighbors that we don't even speak to. You know, we just. Hi. And so it's a huge piece of healing and, and there's way more than that. Right. You got to have sexual health, you've got to have financial health. You need all that. But that's how I work it, Jen. I don't know if it's right or wrong. Eat well, sleep well, move well, poop well, de stress well, commune well. And it's what I work on. And I've been blessed. I've had patients for 15 years, the same ones. And it's so humbling to know that they still come around. And we're working on it all the time.

Right?

Because again, nobody. You don't have all those balls in the air. Perfect. I don't. I tell people that, look, there was only one perfect human, and it's not you and it's not me, and we're never going to get it 100%. But, man, every day you. You make good, better choices. You know, you look back and you're like, man, I'm not where I need to be, but I'm so much better than I was. As Joyce Meyers says often, and it's just your body thrives when you're thriving. I mean, it just wants to. To be 100%. And it doesn't take much to turn it around. I'm proof, because, good Lord, I'm just a redneck kid from Gilbertsville, Kentucky.

What?

I didn't grow up knowing any of this. And by gosh, I'm not going to go down the same path that my mom went down. I'm not.

Well, that's amazing. And your. Your story is so inspirational. Thank you. For the person who just doesn't feel well, has some fatigue, has some joint aches, just, you know, feels old, even though chronologically they're not. How does someone even. How would you tell someone to get started? What. What should they do?

My first thing for them would be I would say go look in your kitchen, look at your refrigerator, your freezer, your cupboards. Take stock and take inventory of how much processed packaged bag, fake man made Franken food you have in there, right?

If.

Is it a box, a bag, a can, if it's going to be there in six months, it's not real food. So just take inventory. Don't overwhelm yourself. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water, but start learning about gluten. Maybe read my chapter on gluten, right? Maybe read JJ's book, whomever. I don't care. Read a book, learn, listen to a podcast. One thing, I would say, cut out. I would start learning the seven things and I would cut one thing out. Now, I tend to have people rip the band Aid off and do it all at one time. But if you don't know anything, learn what gluten is. Cut one thing out, then cut dairy out. Baby steps. And as you run out of that food in the house, don't bring it back in. Or that Franken food, don't bring it back in. Make better decisions. And it's incredible how. How fast you start to feel better. Yeah, but don't. It's overwhelming. I mean, and women just. Or everybody just throws their hands up and says, I can't do this. Like, it's too hard.

Yeah. What's the name of your book?

Being sick is harder, though. I'm going to tell you that.

Yeah.

You know, for sure. Sick is harder.

So.

Wild and well. Wild and well. Danny, six common sense steps to radical healing.

Amazing.

It's a good. It's a good evergreen book. One that you would have forever. It's not dated because it's common sense. Common sense is not. It doesn't go out of style. Yeah. But the whole first part's on trauma, so I do have the adverse childhood experience questionnaire in there. The first part's on trauma. You know, you're not your past. That's the title of it. You're not your past. And then I get into inflammation, and then it. And then it breaks down my six steps. And I think it's a great book. It's available anywhere you buy books.

Amazing. Amazing. So make sure you pick up Danny's book. It's. It's an important read because we all need the. Those foundations of health. And unless you have those foundations in place, it's very, very hard to be healthy. And after all, that's all of our goals. I mean, no one has a goal of living to 96, but spending the last 15 years in a nursing home debilitated or losing your mind or being in pain. But that's what's happening with most people. And the majority of our healthcare dollars are being consumed at the end of people's lives so that they can live longer, but they're not living better.

You just triggered something. I shared this a couple weeks ago on Instagram. I literally pulled off the road in a buffalo herd in western Kentucky. Because I was lit, I had this thought. Every single one of you that are listening, that are part of Jen's tribe, you need to know this. If you have a healthcare provider, whether it's a nurse, a doc, or whatever, a health care provider who says, we're just going to wait, we're just going to watch, we're going to watch your blood sugar, we're going to watch your blood pressure, right? We're going to watch your cholesterol. You need a new health care provider and you need to find one now. And there are plenty of them out there who are not going to just watch and wait for you to die, for you to have a stroke, for you to be a full blown diabetic, for you to have whatever. Watch and wait for what? I mean, what is that? I don't get that. And that's what I lived with for 24 years. I mean, I guess they were watching for me to lose my colon, right? To turn into straight up ulcerative colitis. So if your health care provider is not walking this journey with you, is not digging, is not curious, then you deserve a new health care provider. Quite frankly, that may be the first place to start. Rather than quit your job or whatever, you know, have that talk with your husband, find the provider who's going to hold your hand and help walk you through this journey of healing your body from the inside out. They are out there. They are out there.

Yeah, for sure. And the world is changing and people like you and I are becoming more and more common, thankfully. And if you don't have a partner in your health, you need to find one. Yes, that's a very important point. Because waiting for the disease to happen, which is how the conventional medical world practices, waiting for the disease to happen doesn't benefit anyone but them, right?

Nope.

It for sure doesn't benefit you and it doesn't have to happen. If it does happen, you and I both know that it can be reversed, that, that things can change. But change requires change. Change requires the things like you talked about today, those six steps that are listed in Wild and well. So make sure you get your copy of Wild and well by Danny Williamson. Danny, it was so great to have you here today. Where can people find you?

Dannywilliamson.com is the website, but all of the social media is Danny Williamson Wellness. So that's Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, same thing. Danny Williamson Wellness and just like you people who do what we do for a living, we share a lot of free, free education every single day. So follow all your favorite health care providers. You know they're practicing functional medicine and you'll learn a lot. Even if you can't find an integrative provider in your town or your area. I mean, because we love what we do. Those of us who stepped out of the boat and practice integrative medicine, we Never get tired of practicing, do we?

I mean, it's absolutely.

There's a fire under you. And my colleagues who practice traditional, just allopathic medicine, they are burned out, they are exhausted. They're seeing 60 patients a day. And I love, I love what I do. And I hope I die seeing a patient. I hope I am 80 years old, still doing what I want to do. If I want to work, I want to be working well. But.

But it is exhausting doing the same thing and not getting results. And that's what, that's what is happening in conventional medicine is that they're not, they're not getting results because you know, you can't, you can't just suppress symptoms and expect good outcomes because they're not there. It doesn't exist. And, you know, you can't, you can't talk about cures when you're not looking for root causes. You can't talk about cures or reversing disease when you're not doing anything to address why the disease is there. And my hopes, in addition to us helping our people, is that we help practitioners to see in a different light. It took my own illness for me to take my blinders off because, you know, I thought what I was taught in medical school was true. I thought what I was taught in medical school was the correct thing to do. And, you know, it is not rewarded when you're in medical school to think outside of the box. It's certainly not rewarded in residency to think outside of the box. They want you to do what they want you to do, and they want you to do the thing that they did, the way that they did it. So it takes a lot of bravery to step off of the boat. So I commend you for having done that. I'm so grateful for you, for your message, for your book, for how, how you help people and the generosity with which you give. It's amazing. Thank God that you were brave enough to walk away and, and go on a different path. So thank you. I thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed this podcast, please like it. Please please share it. And I will be back next week with another episode. 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 health. So by staying in the 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 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.