6: Breast Cancer and Your Immune System with Dr. Patrick Flynn

Hello and welcome to the Kenya breasts podcast with Dr. Jen. The show dedicated to empowering women through knowledge, tools, and resources to take control of your breast health journey. I'm your host, Dr. Jen Simmons, and I'm thrilled to have you join me on this insightful and inspiring journey. As a breast cancer surgeon turned functional medicine physician, I'm on a mission to empower women to live their breast I need best lives. This podcast dives deep into all topics related to breast health, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and holistic approaches to support overall well being. You know what I say? Breast health is health. So no matter who you are, a breast cancer survivor, newly diagnosed in treatment, living with metastatic disease, or you're simply seeking to improve your breast health, this podcast is for you. Join us on this transformative path towards better breast health and a thriving life. And now, let's get to today's episode. Hi there, it's Dr. Jen back for another episode of Keeping Abreast, and I want to share a story with you. So Covid was, without question, a difficult time for everyone. And for me, it came during a time when I was leaving traditional medicine. So I was already on kind of the outs with my community and the people who absolutely believed deeply in everything that I believed and kind of hung on every word. And I was a trusted authority, for suddenly I had lost my mind or my skills or my something because I was leaving conventional medicine for this kind of unchartered path. And then Covid hits, and there's all this talk and theories about what the virus is and how it came to be. And then we get into all this talk about how natural immunity is not worthwhile and we all need vaccines, and vaccines are the only way to really be immune. And, you know, this is a time where kind of none of it made sense to me, and I was so deeply searching for truth and answers to my questions. And I happen upon a video of a man being questioned at his house by the FBI. And I'm watching this and I'm listening to what he has to say and his explanation, and it all makes so much sense to me, and I want to share this with others. And then I can't find the video again. Like, it's gone. It disappears, and I can't find the man again. It's gone and he's disappeared. And I'm horrible with names, so I can't even, like, remember who we were talking about. And I'm asking all these people, did you see a video with a guy with the FBI at his house? And everyone's like, are you out of your mind? Like, why don't you ever listen to someone where the FBI is at his house? I'm like, well, yeah, I kind of think the government is involved, and I have this whole conspiracy theory. So now people think I'm crazier. And then two years later, I see a video of a man talking about mammogram, and I'm like, oh, my God, it's him. So, Dr. Patrick Flynn, founder of the Wellness Way, all around, great guy. And you were the person that told me when everyone else told me I was crazy, you told me that I was right. So welcome to the podcast.

Well, thank you so much for having me, Doc. I really appreciate it and excited to go over a lot of good things, including that story today.

Yeah. Does that story resonate? Am I bringing flashbacks?

Yes. And I have to say, the FBI was very courteous and very professional. But you know, why they were. There was definitely something I think we got to get into in great detail and stuff. But once again, and we'll go through the whole story, but it was definitely. I would never wish it on anybody.

Yeah, for sure. Okay. So you were. You were what we would call a troubled kid. Right. You were a difficult learner. You didn't learn in the traditional way. You didn't fit in the box. And that carried through with you to adulthood. And it actually took you on the path that led you to where you are today. So can you. Can you talk about that a little bit and give us your background story, your. Your pain to purpose story?

Yeah. What happened is this is I was diagnosed as a young child, as a juvenile delinquent. Well, today they would probably. I can't say specifically, but they would probably diagnose me on autism or maybe even the Asperger's spectrum. And really, to sum up what it was like, it always felt like my skin was crawling. You know, I still have, believe it or not, see even a little bit of sensory issues still to this day. And that's why if I get too warm or too cold, it can, you know, it can be very disruptive for me. But. But mentally, I know how to control it now compared to, you know, 40 years ago. But what happened as a kid. And I said, I always felt like things were off. My brain was always going 100 miles an hour. And when I was in school, it was very difficult for me to focus. It was very difficult for me to stand still. Heck, even right now, my leg is bouncing like crazy. It's just the nature of who I am. And so therefore I was painted this picture as there was something mentally wrong with me. And I'm not saying there wasn't. See, that's the thing. I'm not saying that there wasn't behavioral issues and everything to the point where, you know, there's things that happen to me where, you know, I end up in situations where I was always in the principal's office, things like that. And then as later in life, as a teenager, I started to figure out that there was immune regulations, disregulations and things that were happening that led to neurological changes. And now today, it's so obvious that when you look at the physiology and biochemistry that I was having kind of a gut brain reaction, the foods that I was eating, eating, the things I was doing, were creating some neurological responses that led to some behavioral issues. And how do I know that is? Because I started to change them at a certain time in my life, which is my teenage years. And I started to see that there are significant psychological changes. Everything from a focus, attention to memory, to everything, even behavior, even the ability. Going from going from a straight F student to a very great student. Never straight A student, I was never straight A, even though I learned like crazy, I read like a crazy. But I just never was a straight A student in high school. But I was obviously a very great student in high school and. And I equated to just that good old health journey. So then that's what made me say, listen, I know I'm having an immune reaction. I know I'm having nutritional things. So that was what my adventure was when I started in college. So therefore I was obsessed with understanding immunology, I was obsessed with nutrition. I took every class on the planet, even my postgraduate work, and everything was all in that. But the idea is this. But then I was thinking, okay, listen, do I go in the direction of some form of medical field? But it was kind of neat. As I was searching, I actually legitimately had some science problems and ended up getting referred to a chiropractor. And I went there and I got started getting adjusted. And it was interesting because I started to see even more positive change. So what happened was I saw some positive change from understanding the immune system, positive change from nutrition, positive change from going to the chiropractor and everything. And I said, listen, medical field definitely failed me. You know, the doctors had no idea what's going on with me. And I think we, we have all been there. And I'm not saying that the doctors weren't trying, weren't they weren't good people, things like that. But today I think they would have just medicated me in the situation before because even, even our counselor at school said if he doesn't get therapy, he's going to be in jail sometime. And it was interesting. But I realized that a lot of those physical and psychological things change when I change some of the behaviors that I thought were normal things and the doctors weren't guiding us in that way. So I started my venture in college and started to go through there. And, and that was, that was kind of my whole start of how I got into the whole health care realm was because once again, being left, you know, behind with other answers than you need counseling or you'll be in prison to the point where nobody understood why my skin felt like it was crawling all the time. No one could tell me the fact that as I'd get so irritable because it felt so horrible that it would lead to some psychiatric thing that way, and they just diagnosed me as a behavioral issue instead that there's truly physical and physiological and biochemical things that were happening inside.

Yeah. So this is a big leap of faith for people. And the medical establishment is so much more comfortable labeling kids as disruptive or bad or giving them diagnoses like ADD and ADHD and prescribing these drugs that have very little success. They basically numb these kids and make them zombies and make them more prone to suicide and mental illness. And you talked about a gut brain reaction that almost no one is putting together. I don't think the pediatricians are putting that together. I don't think for a moment the psychiatrists are putting that together. So can you talk about that? What is the gut brain reaction and connection?

Well, and actually don't quote me exactly, but I think it was termed by John Hopkins. But I want you to think about this is. Let's start with this phrase before we get into that. Medical research and medical practice never seem to match up. They can research a significant amount of things, both immunologically and biochemistry, but because it doesn't equate into the conventional medicine that we know of today, it's left by the side. So the gut brain connection was not turned by a natural practitioner. And if you think about it, natural practitioners use it a lot because they may have more the tools to be able to deal with it, but it's actually a medical term. And so therefore what they noticed was that when there could be some immunological response from anything from digestion or any trigger from the Immune system that could be from some foreign substance, could be from a virus, could be from any foreign protocol. It could be from, no joke, if you pricked your finger with something that got underneath and created some inflammatory response. There was this immune system response. But now I tell people, and that's why I love analogies, I say, listen, your body's like a Swiss watch, one gear. So let's say the immune system is affected, but it's so eminently tied to other gears of your body that there can also be a hormonal response, there can be a neurological response, there could be a digestive response. And so therefore the body is so connected in so many ways that even though I might have been triggering the immune response, the gulf, the gut associated lymphoid tissue or other factors that were there, you know, maybe some IGA or some other issues happen. Immune system, there is a neurological response that happened and that manifestation can come out in many ways. Now we know that, for example, if all of a sudden we eat something, have a reaction, we could have a rash. Well, people look, well, it's just a reaction, but they don't equate that that reaction can happen to something neurologically, which can cause everything from a massive histamine response, a serotonin to dopamine response. So there could be both physical and psychological changes that happen that way. And that's why when people say, when they start to remove some of those major stimulants to those areas, to the immune response, to a digestive response, actually even to a psychological response, all the different parts of the body start to change and start to go back to normal. Well, that's all I was doing. I was looking for the things that were stressing my body out. And until years later I didn't understand that I was eating something like an egg. Now people say, well, doc, but your education when you went to school for being nutrition is that you could probably prove scientifically that if you look at the absorbability of an egg and, and the protein content egg and certain fat vitamins, that egg is one of the most important food sources on the planet. Sure. But for me it could be, you know, inflammatory and even, you know, severe to where I could die if you have an IgE allergy. So therefore it's important to understand that there's no diet that equates to everybody because something could be very inflammatory for somebody, something could be very life giving for others. And unless we test people and knowing kind of what's happening, it's really a big crapshoot it's, it's Russian roulette and not connecting the dots. There's a lot of people out there that have psychological problems that are stemming from maybe an immune problem or maybe some other biochemical problem that they're not looking for.

Yeah. So let's talk about why an immune problem would be connected to the gut. Because I don't know that people make that obvious connection just like they don't make the obvious gut brain connection. So in my learning, the gut brain connection is happening because the gut is actually directly connected to the brain through the vagus nerve.

Yep, it's directly connected. And that's why, and if we ever think of it this way, there's a significant amount of neurological tissue that responds within the whole digestive tract. That's why they call and so large. That's why I call it the second brain. But I want you, I want to go back to my freshman year in college when I realized, and I was sitting in my immunology class, my first one, and the professor talked about that, listen, the immune system, you know, recognizes self from non self and it's there to protect it from things that don't belong there. Well, a lot of people don't realize this, that in today's society and also even in the past, that a foreign substance can be something that just doesn't belong there. So if some improperly digested food, so undigested food passes by and gets into our bloodstream, the immune system says you don't belong there. For example, a lot of people do not realize this because they do not, you know, talk about this in great detail. But proteins do not belong in their bloodstream. Proteins that belong there, they say, well no, they do. No, no, no, no amino acids belong in the bloodstream. Okay, proteins. Once again, when I eat a piece of meat, if my stomach acid is not at a decent level, I'm not breaking down into the amino acids. So therefore, if that would now pass through my small or large intestine and digest into there, what happens is my, my immune system recognizes it as non self. And now because my protective barriers and everything are gone, I leave my immune system now to respond there. But now when there's immune response, there's histamine and other neurotransmitters that are released to connect to the vagus nerve and also even travel to our bloodstream and someone can cross the blood brain barrier which now create a neurological response to. So there's that constant cascade. So anytime that you put something into your body that's a foreign thing. And an undigested fatty acid or undigested fat, protein or carbohydrate can be a foreign thing. So foods can be foreign. So once again, foods are life giving, but if they are not digested properly and put into the system properly, there's now an immunologic response because the digestive system didn't do it. So the immune system now has to respond. And that's why a person can respond to anything. They really can. Just like if a. If you have weakened barriers and you breathe in pollen or you breathe in dog dander, you don't have to eat it to be allergic to it. It just passes in anything that goes into your body. The body saying, can I make it into self? If I cannot, it must be red. So that's why I realized that you can react to anything that passes certain barriers and that could pass your skin barrier, that could pass your mucous membranes, that could pass your digestive tract, that could pass, you know, know the, the, all the factors, like that's what you hear about the term leaky gut. That's nothing more than just you have a weak barrier and it passes through. And now it's not properly digested. And now once again, the immune system is left to go. We need to clean all this stuff up. That's not self.

Yeah. So I want to, I want to go back to a couple of things you said there because I'm not sure that all of these things are readily understood by people. So the first thing you said is that there are things that we consider to be healthy food that may not be good for you. And I think that like gluten is, is one example that gluten for everyone is going to cause some degree of leaky gut. Some. It's going to take those cells that line the gut apart. Some people will get a large amount of leaky gut from it. Some people get a small amount of leaky gut from it. But that is one of those things, like wheat is one of those foods that is just not, it's not well tolerated by everyone. It doesn't mean it's bad for everyone, but it's not well tolerated. Another thing that you spoke about is that foods that you do tolerate but are not digested properly can then create an immune response because we need to have things broken down to their lowest common denominator. And so if you're not chewing your food, if you're not eating in a way that allows for acid production, if you have damage to the parietal Cells of the stom and you're not making enough acid or if you're taking acid blockers, which is an epidemic in this country, people are prescribed acid blockers when they're supposed to be prescribed for two to four weeks of maximum use. And people are on the average person's on acid blockers for years. Right. So if you don't have enough acid or don't have enough enzymes to break down the food and when it arrives at the small intestine, it's not in its smallest common denominator and it's recognized as foreign.

Yep. And one thing that people don't really realize is the fact that the role of mental stress in the reduction of stomach acid. And that's why if you look at even during COVID or even during levels of just stress during the day, people have to be very careful eating under high levels of stress because by nature both men and women's hair just characteristic is the fact that when your body goes in fight or flight, we reduce our stomach acid production. So I tell people be careful on eating because you don't get proper sterilization and protein digestion when you're at high stress. That's why I kind of find it funny with the fitness industry to where they're going to drink a protein shake which takes a significant amount of time for that to even pass through stomach and intestinal tract that way. And they're going to go out and do a pre workout shake and then go hit it hard. Put your body in fight or flight which now shuts your stomach acid down and you have a load of protein sitting in your stomach. So I'm like, we just, you know, transit time itself doesn't make any sense. But that's ulnar topic.

Yeah. So really your area of expertise is in the immune system and in hormone balance. And breast cancer in particular is both a. For some people it's a hormone imbalance. For everyone it is a failure of the immune system. And it's kind of these, this chronic inflammation over time that is happening or coinciding with a decrease in your immunity. So can we talk about what happens with the immune system and what kinds of things are taking the immune system out of the picture?

Sure. And what I'll explain is this is what I always try to focus on. What I focused on my whole career was understand physiology and function. And I think that's where when you look at somebody's called an expert, they're an expert of studying some, some disease or some condition. I tell people, say, listen All I'm trying to do and anything I'm trying to restore, and it could be the immune system, could be hormonal system, could be anything is remember, natural means are the best way of doing it. It always has been, has been. We survived on for thousands of years since existence. You know, I never met any breast cancer person or I never met anybody that suffered from any condition, that suffered from a pharmaceutical deficiency syndrome. Now, a lot of people laugh when I say that, but we know that, listen, we know that, you know, you can have vitamin C deficiency, vitamin D deficiencies that lead to major diseases, but the concept, the fact that you're going to restore a body back to normal function with pharmaceuticals makes no sense. So therefore, that's why when people will try to argue experts. Well, let me ask a question. All the experts in pathology and stuff like that over the last three years have been proven that not only they are they corrupt, but they've also lied to people. So when we look at the immune system itself, you know, if we look at just how the immune system is developed, you know, we need certain, you know, stem cells and then they develop through the thymus and they develop in other tissues in the spleen. And that's why even, that's why even T cells got their whole name, you know, developing through the thymus. But they, they have premature cells and stem cells that come from our bone marrow. Well, do you understand that there's things that you can do to feed your bone marrow? Now, see, even when I say that concept right there, a lot of people like that doesn't even equate to make some sense. I'm like, sure it does, because you need to, you have regenerative aspects that happen all the time. You need to restore and regenerate your body on a daily basis. And that's important. And there's no pharmaceutical drug that does that. And you ever think of it this way, if you ever are depleted in your bone marrow or depleting your stem cells, they'll try to do immunology, bone marrow transplants, which are trying to take some other person's bone marrow and, and put it there to see if there can be some stimulation and growth there. See, so therefore there, there are nutritional things that really do support that process. Now, once again, this is a whole other topic, but for example, one of my favorite medicinal herbs, if you even start to look at, and they've even document this, this actually has great research behind it. You can actually look at the consumption of astragalus, astragalus Is a fantastic herb that does a wonderful job of. Of feeding the stem cell growth within our bone marrow. Well, therefore, if I'm even just want to start the most basic things, I'm going to look at doing the factors that I can feed my body in order to have its production. Because you can try to stimulate. This happens all the time. There was massive research done during COVID to where they were giving shots to people, but they weren't even getting an immune response. Why? Because their body was so deficient it couldn't even make those cells. See, so everything is dependent on normal function first. And then the medical field tried to stimulate a response with a vaccine. Now I'm saying, hey, listen, whatever you choose to do, that's up to you personally. But even if you want to get a stimulatory response from a vaccine or similar response to the virus naturally, you better be sufficient. Because if that body comes, if that virus comes into you deficiently, it doesn't matter if you go to a vaccine or try to do natural immunity, it can be a bad day. That's why people say to me, well, doc, you know, I want to do natural muti. I'm like, then you better be doing the things to keep your immune system normal. And if you want to do artificial immunity, you better be supporting your body to be able to respond to the shot that you get that way. See, so I tell people I'm.

I think that that's something that is really important for you to elaborate on because almost everyone who gets a cancer diagnosis and they're getting ready to get chemotherapy, they're given a whole bunch of vaccines that for them are probably not even effective because they're so depleted, which is why they got the cancer in the first place.

Yeah. If you look at cancers, they have two common things that they know. You know, the old pathological process that they're bad cells has been kind of, you know, pooh, poohed. Now it's still, it's still stayed for by the medical field, but there's some immunological problem, there's some metabolic problem. That's why it feeds off of sugar so much. So when you look at, you know, cancer people, they have a very common to have an immune deficiency syndrome. We talk about this. If you look at cancer is an immune deficiency syndrome. And just like there could be some metabolic issues in there too. But you think this way. There's no person that got breast cancer that is pharmaceutically deficient. Now if you look at the immune system that can be deficient it's very common for them to actually have T cells, CD8 cells, CD4 cells, which can be measured. And that's why I think I got a little bit of publicity during COVID Because it doesn't matter if you have cancer, the common cold, it doesn't matter if you have Covid. If you have deficient immune cells, you better be scared of COVID And just even the basic common cold, you better be scared of pneumonia. Because when your body goes to respond and the immune system has to respond a specific amount in a specific speed, if it doesn't, that virus can replicate or bacteria could replicate, and it's a very bad day. If you look at some of the most common things that we all know about this condition, if you look at hiv, well, HIV once again turns into AIDS when you become immune deficient enough, which means their CD4 cells become so low that the majority of people that have HIV die from some normal bacteria that you and I would have no problem deal with on a daily basis. Well, if you look at coming back to Covid, they talked about it being an elderly person's condition. Well, the only reason why it's considered an elderly person's conditions, because our current medical system leads elderly people to have to be very immune deficient, very nutrition deficient. So if they do come in contact with certain things, their body can't survive the episode. Yet I can show you kids that almost die from it. I can show you 80 year old people that got a sniffle. And once again, I was just saying we can measure those cells and I can show you literally hundreds of thousands. Not thousands, hundreds of thousands of labs. Because I don't care about people's guessing. I want to test everybody. Where you can sit there and go, you look at a person that has cancer, I'm like, listen, just get a basic immune panel done, get your B cells and your T cells and get your natural killer cells measured. And if you look at what they came up with, some massive documented research during COVID that natural killer cells could have been a determining factor to let you know if a person was going to respond negatively to the COVID virus or not. It really was. I could back that with minimally 10 articles and a snap, a button just by showing you that they study this. But you never heard about getting your natural killer cells measured during COVID You heard about PCR tests, you never heard about whether a person has cancer to see where their CD4 and CD8 cells are. But you think of this. If a person actually has cancer the most common method of treatment is chemotherapy, racing and surgery. Do you understand what those three things do? They mimic what your immune system is already programmed to do. But they're selective. They're selective. They can tell if it's a good cell or a bad cell. But guess what happens?

Well, your immune system can, but the chemotherapy cannot.

Exactly, Sid. That's nonspecific. And that's why there's a. And that's why if you ever notice, if you are into chemotherapy or radiation, and I'm not saying there aren't certain, Certain situations that may not be, Might. Might be warranted, but they have to also monitor your immune system because they kill it off. Why they're doing those therapies. Yep. Which once again, kind of works against what they're thinking and trying to do.

So let's get into why the FBI was at your house, because I think everyone wants to know.

Okay. So let's give the full story of it that way. So, of course, if it's ever brought up again, and I said so during COVID obviously, no joke, to give you a little history. I've been fighting medical tyranny for 30 years. It's not like this is new. It's not like this is new. Vaccines. They've been trying to do this and perpetuate. There was a time where they were trying to give teachers an opportunity to tell a doctor that they could give a child drugs and before a parent even knew because of how their behavior was in school. And I've been fighting medical tyranny for a long time. So when this all came out, like, yep, here we go. If this perpetuates, they're going to just try to come up with some vaccine. And this time they did it. That's why every year there's some scare of some virus is going to come wipe us all out. Okay? And every year. Every year, Every year. And this one, they just pushed hard enough that they got it. Okay. Not because it was true, just because they're always trying to add more vaccines onto a schedule. Because if they can put on a schedule, then it's billions of dollars, even government money, coming to the pharmaceutical drug companies that way. Because for poor people and less fortunate yet. So that's why when they started it and they pushed it, I said, listen, they're going to push it all the way down the kids so they can put on a schedule because now it's guaranteed billions every single year. So therefore, as they were doing stuff, they were talking about mandates. And I said this very Simply, I said, very simply, I said, listen, I spent a lot of money during COVID hiring good civil liberties attorneys, fighting for everybody's rights, because I believe that people have. Should have their own choice. I don't care what you personally do. You have to deal with your consequences of what you choose to do. So if you choose to get a vaccine, it's your choice. If you don't, it's your choice. So I spent a lot of time, but then obviously they were talking about doing mandates, and I made it very clear. I said, listen, I am a very big constitutional person. And so let me make this very clear about this is I said, listen, I am a very big second amendment person. I said, therefore, if some government official showed up my house with a vaccine, I would have no problem defending myself. And if they force it, I would shoot them. And of course, then I was listed as a threat and stuff. I'm probably listed as a FBI, some terrorist that way. No, I would tell you this. The FBI came to my house. They came my front door. They were very courteous. They were very nice. They have to. Because. Because what happened is because there's always haters. Doc. Jen, I've known you for a little while now, been a very big fan of all the things that you are doing.

And.

And you have haters. You have haters. Okay. And they're going to call the medical board. I, 24 years in practice, never had one complaint, never anything. And then during COVID which I will say is, I've never still this day ever had a patient complaint ever. But I had 12 people report me to the board during COVID yet they've never set foot into any of my offices across the country or Europe or anything like that. So they never had experience with any of my doctors or any of my clinicians. But the idea is this is like. But so therefore, during COVID there was people that reported, said, I'm a threat to society. So they showed up and they were. They asked me a couple questions. They even asked me if I was a threat. And I told them I was one of the greatest things for society because I'm fighting for freedom and stuff. And. And then once again, then they left, and I haven't heard back from them since. The only thing is, the cops were at the end of my driver for the next 12 hours after that and everything. So it was kind of crazy. It was definitely a story. But what's good.

Yeah, I'm sure the neighbors enjoyed it.

Yeah. And was I. Was I. And I just think personally it was a, was a once again intimidation thing. I don't think it was intimidation by the FBI. I think the FBI, they were very, like I said, they were very courteous to me. They were, they were just talking about the fact that they had to follow through because there was people out there that believed I was a threat to society and stuff. And I think it was an intimidation factor by people that didn't like what we have to say. But you know, it's really funny. I had an international best selling book that still sells a ton of copies every year. It's called I disagree and I disagreed with the way they looked at the immune system. I disagree with the hormone system, everything like that. And then just by not saying I disagree I decided to open clinics all over the world that allowed me to put these things into practice and we've been extremely successful. That's why I'm excited about my new book coming out that says I still disagree because you know why the premise in the physiology and function everything I'm teaching you that's just normal things that the body does and hasn't changed. Health is quite simple and normal. Disease and treatments and pathology are always changing. That's why they're looking for the next medical invention. But it also this, you know how, you know how to not get Covid have a strong immune system. There is no medication, vaccine or any medical therapy that makes the immune system normal. If there was, I would have taken it for myself, my wife and all my children, all my loved ones. But it doesn't exist. But there are compounds. But see where I go beyond and above that even the natural world has ever done is I believe that there's great labs that can be done that can guide which each person needs and that's very specific. And just like you talked about the immune panel, I if I run an immune panel on somebody, maybe echinacea, elderberry or chaga mushroom or turkey tail mushroom. But all depends on what your where your immune system is at. Maybe your vitamin D levels are going to be significantly changed. Maybe you do need a straggler. But on a regular basis we can actually do certain labs to help us really figure out what a person needs. But then on top of it we can retest you to see the progress and the building up of your immune system going back to normal, going back to normal and then how to maintain it. So then when the next made up pandemic comes through like what happens is this when I made up it doesn't mean the virus wasn't Real. I think enough scientific literature showed now that it's been produced in a laboratory, but the next time something like this happens, you can move forward without confidence of dying. Just for example, I got Covid and guess what happens? I actually got a little sniffle and a little scratchy throat on Friday, had a little low grade fever, lost my taste on Saturday and it was kind of cool. Then Sunday I was back to normal. Then I decided to draw my blood and check my antibodies in my T cells and they were very highly present. So I'm like, good, there we go. And that was my take.

So it's not whether or not you get sick, it's whether or not you recover. Because your immune system isn't always going to prevent you from getting everything. As we deal with these new situations and new pathogens, we are going to have a response. Right? But an intact immune system should be able to appropriately deal with that response.

Well, the one thing I want to come back for the people because the show that we did with you went viral and did amazing. You said something that was, that I have repeated now, and I wish I would have learned from you this 24 years ago, is the fact that like you talked about breast cancer, a lot of people get it. It doesn't mean you're going to die from it. It means a significant amount of people get breast cancer, but it doesn't mean you're going to die with. So you can, you can die with breast cancer, but you don't die from breast cancer. And you said that, I was like, huh? It's kind of true. The majority of people before they die will develop atherosclerosis. It doesn't mean you'll die from it just because by nature our body is going to oxidize and we're going to have some things happen. It's just that people are getting at such a young age today that. And then they don't know what to do with it. Then they, they go through common conventional medicine. So therefore something that they got treatment for and could have actually got more damage from treatment, that if they would have just kept on living, they would live longer just even having the condition. And that's quite interesting that, that when we look at things that we go through, there's no doubt that you're going to, you're going to, your body's going to have to adapt and go through things. It's just that most people's adaptations aren't there. Which adaptations help us live a longer, healthier life yet? Because most people are Running the body like an empty fuel tank, it's just not there. If you don't have enough vitamin D levels, you're going to have immune problems, hormone problems and other things there. Yet most people don't get those things measured. Most people don't know where their immune system is at. And on top of it. One of the things that I fell in love with 24 years ago because of my history, not my history, but my wife's history, was people don't really understand the concepts of hormones and how to maintain them or even how they're produced. And most women don't even understand that. And I come along as a 24 year old guy, you know, 24 years ago, teaching stuff and then showing people how to recover from it from a different perspective, coming from my background. And the biggest thing that they have is Chris, is my background instead of the clinical results that we get.

So we've talked about. Cancer is both an immune deficiency syndrome and a metabolic syndrome. For the most part. People are not going to investigate these things until they have a diagnosis. I mean, it's just human nature. We just don't act until we are confronted. Right. So for the people that either have recently been diagnosed with cancer or they're coming into it at a different stage and they've already been treated, or they're living with metastatic disease, first of all, how do you know your immune system is healthy? What are these tests that you're talking about?

Yeah, it's nothing more than a simple blood draw. I mean, it's that simple. I mean, once again, if you look at, just, just spend a little time looking at like your CD8 cells, your CD4 cells, your natural killer cells, your B cells, you can get a full panel done by any doctor born, any lab. You don't even need a doctor. It's just that taking markers to a lab and having them done and then what that does is you're going to find out, and this is very common, you're going to find out deficiencies, very significant deficiencies. Because we on a regular basis have cells that go abnormal every single day. We really do. It's how we, and we rid them through certain immune processes. But then what happens is this, we also have growth factors that can contribute to those cells growth. And that's when they talked about some of the metabolic diseases, including insulin and some other growth factors and metabolic diseases that contribute to it. That's why if you even look at pcos, which can once again, which is a, which basically is a preset to Cancer if not dealt with properly. Polycystal ovarian syndrome. If you look at this way, one of the first medications that they give a woman that has PCOS is what Metformin trying to, trying to affect their insulin, trying to affect the blood sugar levels, trying to flag the metabolic conditions and the pathways that allow those things to grow. And I said listen, instead of giving that woman metformin, get their blood sugars normal. There are other things that have been even studied. Now once again, if you, you want to see some really good research, they comparatively studied goldenseal and metformin and golden Seal outperformed it. PubMed documented. There's, they said there's so much documented research on stuff. So everything that I talk to you about today, I can, I can, it's well documented. It's just that one skim. When you can't attack the message, you try to attack the messenger. So that's why Jen, they've tried to attack you on many times. They're going, listen, show point the holes in my argument and let's debate the points instead of trying to do this. Because here's what happens this. When I was going through my own health issues when I was a young man, I went to the medical field, they didn't have answers so I had to go with a different direction. And because the answers that they were giving me made no sense. And today, and kind of funny if we look at the current medical approach, no matter what their expertise is, you have to look at their delivery and recovery is. I mean the fact that if you go to any medical establishment person and doc used to do this in your past history, what drug, surgery or vaccine do you want? You say, and that's the tools that you're equipped with. Now I'm not saying that they can't be beneficial during certain times. I'm just saying we spend $4.1 trillion on this currently right now. If we were so good, what are we getting for $4.1 trillion?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah. No, I mean when you look at us and how we rank compared to the rest of the world, I mean we have the most expensive health care system, really a sick care system. And we have, we are amongst the worst in survival and longevity. Right. Even, even if you look at survival, the last 10 or 20 years of people's lives are miserable and riddled with chronic disease.

Yep. Well, remember because, and I will tell you this, I think the medical profession should be given some kudos on some certain acute care because that's what they've always focused on. And if they. They stuck to acute care, like I tell people, an acute care process is, give me some good emergency rooms, give me some good things to survive, and then everything should be worked from there, from health and longevity. But once again, if you ever look at this, I had somebody bring this stat to me the other day, which, because I'm hugely involved in politics, there's always a argument during politics when it comes to the military industrial complex. And we spend more money than the next 12 people combined. And we're so large. And they talk about all the lobbying that goes on and why wars exist and everything like that. And I, and I looked it up, and the last bill that we got for the US government was $775 billion. And they would literally start wars to fund that whole thing. Guys, compare 775 billion to 4.1 trillion. Who do you think is really the complex that would do more things to start a war on the community and people and stuff like that? The military or the medical field? Why do you think we saw over the last three years that was a war and people weren't prepared? We were. And then on top of this, they tried to silence people that spoke out against it, just like people that spoke against the war. They try to silence them. They try to call them something different and they try to say that they're not American. Actually, I think I'm more American than the people that ever took the shot because I was willing to research and think and not follow. And it's really sad because now we're seeing the massive amount of blood clots everything is coming from. It's very scary.

It's very scary. And unfortunately, I think a large part of that cancel culture made it nearly impossible for even truth seekers to find the information. I mean, you and I are very lucky because we have a huge educational background and foundation to draw from. But for the average person who, you know, these terms are so foreign, and people really were dying, and it was foreign. Frightening. They couldn't find the truth. It was not available to them. And anyone that was speaking the truth got canceled. They got their social media accounts taken away. I know you did. I know I did. If you wrote a paper, it wasn't published. And it was. It was nearly impossible to get the truth out there.

It was. And I said, we're all centered big time.

Yeah, I want to go back to pcos because people ask me if I can speak about infertility, and I say, well, I essentially am the doctor for fertility. Twenty years later, when they turn up in my office for breast cancer because the issues driving their infertility were never dealt with. The conventional medical model is to give them more hormones when you already have some kind of imbalance. Throwing more hormones in there for the purposes of ovulation and retrieving eggs and IVF is never solving the problem. And so I see these people 20 years later, because nothing's been resolved, that inflammation is still there. And I see them for their breast cancer diagnosis. So we started to talk about PCOS and goldenseal versus metformin. I have two questions for you. First of all, I want you to talk about berberine. And second of all, I want you to talk about. People often accuse people in our space of just substituting supplements for pharmaceuticals. So. So can you address that a little bit?

Yeah. So let's start here. If you look at most medications, okay. For example, if you look at. Let's take metformin, do you know that metformin was copied from an herb? Look, it's history. It's called goats root. It really was. And if you look at, you know, aspirin, it was actually taken from willow bark. Okay? So there's a lot of correlation because they look at the mechanism of action, and that's why I've studied drugs so much through my whole career, is because there's always a mechanism, action that they're trying to accomplish. So if we go back to PC west in general, we can start from there. Okay. PCs, you're going to, for example, it's a very. It's actually no joke. I read a really bad stat the other day that they figure that 10% of women worldwide have it. 10%. Do you understand? That means out of 6 billion people, that means 600 million people have PCOS. As far as women, okay? If it was women. So let's say there's three. Let's say there's three. Three billion women. That means there's roughly 300.

You froze for a little bit for me. So will you just go back and tell me, you told me 10% of women worldwide have PCOS, which is a staggering statistic.

Now if we look at some of the things that are very commonality there, what happens is they have some metabolic condition. That's why, that's why sugar's so involved. And then they also have some androgen dominance, which is androgen hormones, okay? Things like DHEA and acetyl dion, testosterone, dht. But here's the thing, here's the one thing that a lot of people don't Understand, I think this is where it helped me not only figure out some things, home only, which led to me figuring out the things that happened with my wife. Why she was told she couldn't have children and now we have four daughters. So I gave you the end result, but I'll go back and work that way. When you look at hormone production, once again, a lot of women do not understand how their hormones are produced. And then when they're produced, they need to be converted to different forms. Well, those happen in certain tissues, mainly the liver. Now hormone metabolism is very important because if you look at PCOS is you're going to have, let's say, for example, a problem with certain things. Like people say, well doc, you know, I took Metformin, pcos and it didn't really have an effect on me. Well, that's because once again, or I took an herb, it didn't really help help. Well, that's because if you look at where metformin is, the most positive effect is when testosterone is converting to DHT because the 5 alpha reductase enzyme can be stimulated by, you know, metabolic issues like, you know, high glucose and things like that. And so Therefore when high DHT is 10 times more potent than testosterone because DHT stands for Dihydrotestosterone. And so therefore people once again, they start taking that and they see a reduction in PCOS and PCOS symptoms. Now it doesn't go away for them because it's just a lesson of effect because they never got all the hormones back to normal because once again they still end up androgen dominant. It's just that they have less dht. So therefore, guess what? They actually have reduction of growth and symptoms. Now if you remember, you say, well doc, what's happening? Why aren't those hormones converting? Well, hormones are meant to metabolize from one form to another, for example, that you can produce certain hormones when the ovary releases it. And I'm very surprised how women don't understand how that works. I was so surprised when I started 24 years ago. I said, you know, how's the ovary produced hormone? They're like, it just does. I started asking nurses and doctors, I'm like, it just does. I said, no, no, how does it really work? And it was foreign to them. I'm like, how can this be foreign to you? But I realized that they're so wrapped up in the end stage condition, they're not really wrapped up in the physiology and function, which that's what I studied since I was a freshman in college. Okay. So therefore I started to recognize that those hormone metabolisms can be stimulated or inhibited. For example, if a woman has some form of breast cancer, it's very common. Not. But it's not always, but it's very common more often than not that there is some estrogen dominance. So if you look at this way, they realize that there is a way to inhibit, inhibit estrogens conversion. So they give them something called aromatase inhibitors, which now by nature they show that they have less hormone available like estradiol and estrone and four hydroxy, which I just probably said that one. And most women don't even understand what that hormone is, even though it's one of our estrogens.

It's a breakdown product of estrogen, it's a metabolite, but it's a metabolic toxic, it's a toxic metabolite. So it's capable of DNA damage. And it's something that you don't want a lot of, let's just say.

Yes, well, and that's one thing I want to, I want to correlate because I hear this a lot in the medical field and I also hear this a lot in the functional medicine field. So I want to, I want to correct this because I think it's misleading. They'll say there's good and bad estrogens. That's not true. You need a amount of four hydroxy, esterone and estradiol. You do. If you do not, there is healthcare problems. If you have too much, there's healthcare problems. Do you follow me? So the idea there's good and bad estrogens, there is no such thing as good bastards. There's estrogens that your body, once again, if they get elevated, can cause massive damage. But guess what? So can estrone and so can estradiol and those would not be considered bad estrogens. All of the hormone metabolism is, is improperly done. For example, if you don't have specific nutrients, not, not medications, if you have certain nutrients, you cannot even keep some of those metabolites under control and therefore they get elevated. Now that can be very damaging and they will call them bad estrogens. But if you don't have enough fluor hydroxy, you can actually be deficient and actually lead to issues that are problems there too. Okay, so that's where and what you.

Were alluding to, which is you can have normal levels, but without choline, magnesium, B6, B9, B12, you're not going to be able to clear them. And so there's just Going to be a backlog having nothing to do with. With the inherent hormone levels, but your inability to clear them.

Right. And that. And you said the key word. Because I think a lot of people don't realize that unless you have a tumor that produces hormone, your body doesn't produce too much hormone. It doesn't. It's just that you got to think of like the hormones because there are reserves. But hormones are like a tub. You fill it up, the drains can get plugged. They can. And then your body naturally produces its hormone because of cycle. Because ladies, here's what happens to give you an idea. And, and I was surprised that this, this did not that they're not teaching young girls this because it would help them understand, you know, their, their cycle as a young also understand how birth control actually works and everything which is very devastating. Just drives me nuts that people accept birth control as actually acceptable thing. And now that they allow it to be over the counter, it's even to be more devastating for female hormones. But let's look at that ovary, for example. The ovary is fascinating, man. If you think about it, it's the momo. It's fascinating organs on the planet. And, and I see. I get so giddy about this because the female body itself is so cool. Our stuff is pretty simple compared to your.

I couldn't agree more.

It is. It's fascinating. I want you to think about this. I want you to think about this. When my last daughter was born and I have four girls, I want you to think how cool this is. Do you understand that my daughter was already born with my future grandkids? Think about how cool is because those primordial follicles, once sperm connects with the egg, that's released and everything that way, that guess what happens. Those things are life giving right there. But what happens is it's a. It's called primordial follicle because then the brain says, hey, I'm going to give you some fsh follicle stimuli hormone. And now as that follicle grows, it releases all of your hormones. So in order to even get hormone production, you need growth in life. Think about that. And therefore then all of a sudden that egg bursts open. The. The follicle changes in the corpus luteum. Who cares? And produces other hormones. And that happens every single cycle. Now that is genetically controlled. We want to see that happen. It's beautiful. But then what happens is if all of a sudden those hormones are not metabolizing, converting to its weaker forms and also forms that need to control their functions and then eventually rid its body. It starts to build up and people say, well, I have too much hormone. No, you have a problem with hormone metabolism. Now once again, if you have too much hormone, it can cause. It can actually. If you have too much hormone and immune deficiencies, you're just asking for breast cancer. You're asking for it. Okay, so that's why hormone metabolism.

But I want to be clear, the too much. The too much hormone is not an ovarian dysfunction, it's a detoxification dysfunction.

Thank you.

Unless it's exhaustionist hormone. Right. Like a tumor could produce a totally different story. You can be taking it or there are so many environmental estrogens and I would love for you to touch on environmental estrogens and the impact that they're having.

So estrogens, they're called xeno estrogens and there's a lot of things that mimic them, including a lot of pharmaceuticals, but also even certain pesticides and herbicides also. That's why if you look at soy, which once again there's a big debate on soy and once again my background being nutrition, I can discuss on soy. I know why soy is toted out to be one a very good health food because if you look at its protein content, it has the most protein content of any food. When it comes to vegan, Even though there are estrogen effects to it that there are. If a person was major deficient estrogen, I could see some benefit to it. I just tell people with all the other great foods I would just wouldn't do it because it's hard to control sometimes. Plus it's all GMO today, which once again are going to be.

I think that's a major problem with soy. I think non GMO soy and making sure that your soy is minimally processed because there's a lot of garbage food out there made from soy protein isolate. So please know that I am not advocating for any of that garbage. But I think that non gmo, organic, unprocessed or minimally processed soy can be a perfectly good addition to someone's diet.

It can, it's just that, you know, you want to avoid all estrogenic based things if you do have your labs are elevated because you wouldn't want to contribute to it that way. But the idea is this. And so there are factors outside that can cause those levels to increase and then we don't realize as you use the term detoxification, I like to use the term more hormone metabolism because here's what Happens when you cannot metabolize a hormone. A hormone is a fat and a protein. But you got to remember, ladies, that's why, once again, that's why sometimes you can't lose weight because you have fat. Metabolism problems. You have metabolism problem. Metabolism is a conversion. You're taking something that might be a fat and can't convert to water. You can't take a hormone and convert from a fat and protein convert to water. So therefore, then there's certain pathways within the body, including liver being number one, liver being number one, there's other pathways that liver is mainly number one. And then you look at all the things that can start to now cause those problems. And so therefore, if you look at, it's really a sad study, but they recognize how many people have non alcoholic fatty liver disease. It's very common. You can get with an ultrasound, okay, but the idea is this, and that leads to metabolism issues. There's other factors. Constant burden to your liver. Toxicity, vaccines, all these things can, you know, your liver has to deal with and it can be overloaded, it really can. But then when it's overloaded, it's left in circulation or what it does, which is even worse and is, is it actually starts going to other tissues. For example, your, your liver is supposed to get them immediately and process them, but when it doesn't, it actually toxins will be attracted to fat. Well, that's why if you ever notice if somebody's very toxic, your body will, will produce fat to hold it. But on top it'll also go to our other fatty based organs, which number one is our brain. And that's why we see a lot of problems. They've actually done studies about this, they've done this in monkeys too. To where they, they took obese monkeys and took skinnier monkeys and they inject them with vaccine. And they found out the skinnier ones actually had more chance at hitting the brain than the fat ones did because the fat grabbed the toxin before the brain got it. And so therefore that's why they see some of those things, different cultures. So because a lot of people get this, get this, because I'm a very big component eating organ meats. People say, well, the liver is the most toxic organ in the body. It's not true. That's not true at all. That makes no sense. Because the reason why it becomes and looks toxic is because it has a lot of stores of fat because of sugar consumption. So therefore fat holds toxins. And your liver is one of the first organs that holds fat before it goes to the muscles and other tissues. But anything that has fat, including your brain, can build up toxicity. So, yeah. Oh, there's so many tangents we go on that. But yeah.

So let's go back to xenoestrogens, though, because people, I get asked this all the time, like, what are environmental estrogens?

Yeah, we'll start here. Do you understand pesticides itself are. They have a negative. I mean, glycophosphate is. It's like you look at all these things that we're putting on our foods, they are leading to estrogens being mimicked. And that's why I said get away from those things. You understand, the certain medications do the same things. And it's really sad because as these things start to build up, it's very difficult for our body to rid these things. And therefore. And then if you're sick at all or have any health issues, which most people do, they just start to become built up and recirculate within our system. So that's why the least processed things that you consume in your body. But here, here's one thing that I know is going to be very interesting. There's a lot of cosmetics that have xenoestrogens. Are. You look at some of the binders of your makeup. They're made with those things. If you look at some of the lips, that's. It's just so sad because they fragrance.

Is a really big one and fragrances and almost everything. So. And it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't have to have a bad smell. It can even have a good smell or any of these, like, pleasing aromas. Right. This is. These are xenoestrogens. Antibiotics is another big one.

Yep, big time.

Right. And it's not just the antibiotics that, you know, you're taking. And I please know that I am not telling people with pneumonia to not take antibiotics or with strep throat to not take antibiotics. Like, there is a time and a place, and if you're sick and you need antibiotics. Absolutely. But 60% of the antibiotics in this country are in our food supply. Why?

Right, right. And the topic you'd be surprised, you know, this is going to surprise most people is talk about, you know, this is very. I had some people do this recently to try to prove me wrong. But do you know where a big source of xenoestrogens are? And your drinking water and your tap water? Because you know why? They're just recirculating birth control. That your, that your girlfriend or your wife peed out and there's no water treatment center that did it. And you can go get a, you can legitimately go get a report from your water treatment center to see the things that are in your water. And it would really freak you out. It really would. So we're constantly bombarded with all these things on a regular basis that can actually change our hormone levels. And that's why I tell people, control what you can control because you can control what you put in and on your body because there's so many things you can't control. There's things in the air you can't control. You know, we live in an environment that can have some toxic things that you have to keep your body in the best state possible. And what's going to do, it's going to lead to you just not dealing with some of the healthcare conditions that most people deal with. And if we don't make those changes, we're going to continue to see a rise. 4.1 trillion will turn to 5 trillion, turn 6 trillion over the next 20 years.

Yeah. So I know that you're a test, don't guess person. So I want to get into what kind of testing you're talking about doing when you have someone with breast cancer.

Yeah. Well, remember, here's one thing that's kind of confusing for a lot of people is I think that if you look at all of the estrogens, it's important. I know to you and I, this is so basic. But even to a lot of majority of doctors, but especially the public, this is where I think has to be spread. And I don't know why it took, you know, me at such a young age. I said, I'm 48 now. I've been doing this for 24 years. My wife was diagnosed with endometriosis. She has cysts and everything like that. And I love it. I love it how, you know, people don't realize what it was like approaching my wife and realizing she was told she could never have kids. They almost ripped her uterus out when she was 19 years old and she was very sick. And I want you to think about this. But, but here's what happens. The current form of medication stuff wasn't working. So once they have gone through all therapies they possibly know, they say, listen, the only thing we got left is surgery. Well, thank God they decided to turn that down. But here's what happens. We do know some general things even back then. We're sitting. Endometriosis usually has some hormonal factor that can contribute to it. It's not the only thing, but it's the majority of things that can do it. And I said, can I see your labs that your doctor ran on you? And that's when I came up with a simple phrase that really gets into people's brains but gets them to think a little bit differently. And I said, you know, I realized back then when I saw her labs that estrogen is not a hormone. And then people now when I say that, it grabs the audience, Doc, what do you mean? Yes, estrogen is a hormone. I said, no, it's not. Go look it up. And they said, well, no, estrogen is three hormones. No, it's not. Estrogen is much more than three hormones. So what I did at 24 years old, I started calling the lab companies and said, can I measure all these? And here was the response, yes, why an insurance doesn't pay for them. That. That's what I got from them. And I called the largest lab in the world still today. They said, yes, why? And insurance doesn't pay for them. I'm like, I have a woman in front of me that I want to marry that said they can never have kids. But here's the confusing part, Doc, and this is where it was kind of where I wanted to lead to. When they measured her estradiol levels, they were normal, and they told her she had no hormonal problems. And I'm going to equate it to kind of like this. It's like when people do this, it's like when they measure, Doc, I have my thyroid measured, and all I see on there is tsh. I'm like, and then now if today when I first started practice, that's all they measured was the gold standard, still is today on if they're going to medicate them. And I said, well, what about all the other hormones? Like, what do you mean? I said, because TSH isn't the brain hormone. It's not a. It's not a thyroid hormone. It's a brain hormone. And then people look it up and they're mad. And I said, why didn't they measure all the other hormones? And just like estrogens, why did they start measuring all the estrogens? And then this is what does the big thing. This was the big thing when I started to research all the estrogens beyond to measure them, I realized you cannot just do one test. You as we were talking about some of these hormones that metabolize, they're not found in the blood. You need to do other tests. So I started calling other labs saying, can we do these in the ear? And they said, absolutely, we can. So I started running multiple labs. And when they told women they didn't have estrogen problems, what they meant is they didn't have production problems, but they had metabolism problems, which was leading to estrogen problems, which now led to a lot of health care conditions. And I'm sitting there at 24 years old looking for normal function and then said, listen, I don't want to use drugs or surgeries or things like that to manipulate, inhibit those. What if I could actually find nutritional or herbal things and stuff like that to do that? And then even lab companies started calling me and saying, how can we stimulate the conversion of the liver pathway for 3A4 from estradiol to estriol? I said, well, we can use St. John's and then I started documenting all these things and researching things and started to prove this whole thing to the world 24 years ago. And that's why people started to get to know me about hormonal things. And all we're doing is like, you're talking about if you're deficient in certain things, or if you're excess in certain things, or if you don't have a certain pathway that's there, you better get those things back to normal. Otherwise, even if you deal with breast cancer, the reoccurrence is very high because the same problems that led to it are still there.

Yeah. And I think that that is true for so many chronic diseases. It's that the standard of care is to manage the symptom without asking the why. And we never correct the imbalance. We never get rid of the stimulus for the inflammation. We never help people with metabolism and give them what they need in order to be able to metabolize properly. And so what most people who are following what their doctor told them to do, what most people find is that they either have a recurrence of the same disease because nothing really changed, or they have the manifestation of the next disease. For instance, the vast majority of women with a breast cancer diagnosis are not going to die of breast cancer. The vast majority of women with a breast cancer diagnosis are going to die of heart disease because the chronic inflammation that led to the breast cancer was never, was never dealt with. Right. It's never immediate.

I started, I started a recent survey the other day and I. And I wasn't surprised because I think I already knew the answer is I started asking women and started pulling women said, what do you fear more, breast cancer or Heart disease. And every one of them said breast cancer. And I said, you know what's interesting? One out of three people will die from heart disease. As far as women, one out of eight women would die from, you know, breast cancer.

Yeah.

Breast cancer just had really good marketing. Really good marketing.

Really good marketing. That's exactly right.

Yes. They have really good marketing compared to like chronic heart disease because they will still die more from it that way. And so we're not even addressing sometimes the real heart issues and their own. You said, you said a keyword many times, many times, which is an immune response. The biggest contributing factor to all these conditions is still some inflammatory response. And we need to figure out what is happening there. And, and the majority of those things can be lifestyle related. They really can. Now once again, there is no doubt we can't control things that we can't control. We know that outside toxicity can definitely cause inflammation, but the majority of inflammatory things in our life we can control. We really can. That means it puts us in control of our health, not some other expert. Because we put our hands in the expert's hands the last three years. And how that do for the world, you say? That's a whole other topic on that too.

So let's leave people with something practical that they can really look to and resonate with. I know that you said that for immune system, you're checking their T cells, CD4, CD8, my trigger for people. Because almost everyone gets a CBC and if your total white blood cell count is less than 5, I think you really should look into why.

Yeah, yeah. And let's take some practical things that go by. So let's start with some lifestyle things. Let's run some labs. Okay. Yeah, lifestyle stuff. It's quite simple. Okay. If somebody wants to start the. Where I want you to add. Okay. I call it the ADD diet. Now ADD doesn't stand for anything. I just want you to add something because here's what happens. I would rather be sufficient and toxic than deficient and pure. Okay. That means I'd rather have sufficient nutrients, have a little bit of toxicity than deficient nutrients and fully pure. Never everything bad. Okay, so let's talk about adding some things. I personally believe that people do not get enough fiber. I really don't. And I'm in a, and I'm in a camp of fermentation because I do like fermentation. Because once again there's microbial things that we can get and, and got to remember, fermentation really helps a digestive process. If you ever Think of this way. I always tell people, even carnivore people, I can convince them to do fermented vegetables. You say, no, you can't. Yeah, I can. Because you're eating what the bugs have created. Okay, so you're eating the bugs too. But the idea is this. And that's why I love sauerkraut. I think sauerkraut is some of the most important things that we can do as far as some fermented fiber. I also believe that we don't get enough high dense nutrient foods. And that's why I'm very big into organ meats. Okay. Because now what do you mean by density? Well, I want you to imagine packing everything from fat, solid mineral, fat soluble vitamins, to trace minerals, to proteins, the fatty acids compared to like a muscle. Meat is not. It doesn't have as much nutrients as an organ meat. It doesn't. Even though they're both meats, you know, and what. And then if you look at some of the things that we're doing, if you look at a lot of people, they talk about, doc, you've experienced this. They said, doc, I can't eat healthy. I'm like, really? Do you understand? If you went to a local organic butcher, they sometimes have to rid and pay to get rid of their organ meats where you could pick them up for pennies on a dollar. A sauerkraut is extremely cheap. Fiber based foods are very cheap.

Now once again, these are things that you can so easily and simply make for yourselves.

Yes, you can. And a third thing I think is absolutely incredible is sprouts. You can raise them in your window for pennies on a dollar. You understand? You can, you can now I would say in weeks.

In weeks, yes. In weeks you can have a full tray of broccoli sprouts.

Yes. Which once again, broccoli sprouts has such, such amazing sulforaphane that also they've tried to patent as a drug, but once again didn't work. Made the Supreme Court, they even turned it down. It's pretty great because of its cancer effects. But on the flip side also too we have to bring down are available glucose foods. People consume way too much sugar. Because if you look at a lot of the metabolic diseases today, everything from psychological, from Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's today is called type 3 diabetes. It really is. You know, Sam. And if you look at enough people.

Still are not talking about. Right.

Yep.

Because we would so much rather think that it's just something that happened to us rather than something that happened as a result of decisions that we make along the way.

Agree. And that's why we need to just bring down our total consumption of sugar. Just in general, I believe that we, we eat too many calories. I really do. And I think as we start to get sufficiency in our food, we do eat less. You're going to find out that if you do start eating sufficient foods, you actually bring down your calorie intake because you're more full. I think that's important. And then once again, I think that we also have really, you know, moved away from some of the most ancient remedies that are there, like apple cider vinegar, which has been known to. It's actually, actually, I can't even coin this term, but it's known as a healing elixir because it has centuries of. Of massive benefits. But once again, fermentation is actually an incredible thing that we can do. Labs, I think they're essential. I think there's. I think there are certain anabolic hormone markers and thyroid markers that have to be measured. I wrote something called thyroid hormones. It's nothing more that you can than just a bunch of markers that show everything from thyroid to female male hormones that need to be measured with some inflammatory markers like crp, you know, vitamin D levels. And then I also believe that I think it's essential for every woman to have a urine metabolite test done. I really do. Because there's a lot of women that have, especially at the young age, if you are in the menopausal years, which, once again, it's important to have blood work done. But if you're cyclic, you need both blood and urine done. Because most women really have more hormone metabolism problems. It's why they suffer from pms. It's why they suffer from a lot of the problems that are listed as hormonal. It's because it's not because you have a production problem. Most women don't have production problems when they're cyclic. Women don't really have any production problems when they are later in life because they only produce so much, but they produce them from different organs. Adrenals will produce a lot of hormone, but they need to be converted from one form to another. So we first need to see how much is being produced. And just those labs right alone will give you such a global perspective on where you could focus some of your attention.

Are you doing any gut studies?

This is just me personally, because I've dealt with it clinically for 24 years, and all of our docs Do I'm a very big component of stool analysis. This very big component. I think that is probably one of the most overlooked labs there because here's what happens. If you ever look at some of the most common infections that women get. I used to sit across from women and as I was trying to teach them immunology and try and teach them some of the things that happen with infections, I'll say, have you ever experienced a vaginal yeast infection? And the majority of women say yes. Well, here's what happens. Where did that infection come from? Most women do not understand and most people understand that the majority of infections that people deal with are actually their own flora becoming abnormally at different levels. See on the flip side, just like this, you see these books and drives me nuts. The anti Candida diet and da da, da. And Candida is bad. I'm like, well that makes no sense because Candida is needed for normal digestion. The most common GI infection that we know of is H. Pylori. But if you don't have H. Pylori, you would actually couldn't digest food properly. So my point is this is it's all about a balance. It's about homeostasis that's there because if you don't have enough Candida, it's a bad day. And if you have too much, it's a bad day. If you don't have H. Pylori, it's a bad day. If you have too much, it's a bad day. So I believe that when we look at certain tests that stool tests are way overlooked because majority of our inflammatory responses are coming from a lot of bacteria and viruses and things that are just overgrown. They really are. And therefore now you have immune compromised and you have your own normal flora overgrowing things like that. Yeah. I think that is overlooked a lot.

And we need to get out of this mentality and mindset of our environment should be sterile. Right.

Well, it makes no sense.

Yeah, it makes no sense. But we did listen the last three years.

Yeah.

Have been about sterilizing the environment. Right. I have a friend who owns a soap and antibacterial company and he, he had a banner year. Right. Because everyone was sterilizing everything. Unless we educate our immune system, it's not going to know. It's not going to be able to protect us.

Well and people realize this, you know, because obviously it's become popular. You hear about the microbiome, you hear, hear it all the time. And I believe that people still don't really understand it fully but here's what happens. This. I say, yep, microbiome is very important, but what about the virome? They're like, what? I'm like, do you understand you have viruses that protect you? I'm like, do you understand you have viruses that infect bacteria to keep them from overgrowing and killing you? Like what you're saying? Because that's the thing. That's why I kind of. Kind of laugh. And if you ever think about this, I believe that if you ever look at this way, we're a big petri dish, okay? And if you look at bacteria, bacteria can produce vitamins. Like, a bunch of your B vitamins are produced in your large intestine when bacteria ferment your food that you have, okay? So they're productive for you. I believe that viruses are there to. To not only help you stimulate the development, but also maintain your immune system. Because if you think about this way, one thing you're seeing big time right now is the. Is the reintroduction of shingles. Now, shingles is nothing more than the varicella virus resurfacing. But you know how you keep that virus from resurfacing? In constant contact with it. So it was very normal for my generation and your generation to. For us to get chickenpox and our parents get exposed to it again just because you had it and you don't show any boils anymore, you're still getting the virus. And so therefore, it keeps your immune responses, immune cells constantly being stimulated to produce. But then, therefore, now that there is less prevalence of that, you're seeing chickenpox resurface because there's immunocomprosization. And now the varicella virus resurfaces itself. And what it does, it lives in neurological tissue. And they're finding out it actually helps you develop your neurological tissue. So therefore, chickapox is essential for neurological growth. But also, once again, if you don't have that constant stimulation from it, guess what? There's no saying you don't use it. You lose it. And then you have seen shingles resurface. And the reason why it's so painful is because it lives in nerves. See, it becomes a part of us and stuff. And, yes, there are viruses that, once again, don't belong in this. There's bacteria don't belong in this. But the majority of us, we're just a big old petri dish. And that's a good thing.

Yeah. And you have to continue to house those organisms that are driving our health. And the way you do it is through the things in the diet that you just talked about. So for labs, we talked about doing anabolic hormones, thyroid crp, vitamin D, the urine metabolite test for hormones, stool analysis. Is there anything else that you're routinely looking at for people?

Yes. I mean, that's a whole host. I mean, you can look at. You can look at foods, you know what I'm saying? So you can do immunological testing with food. You can, my goodness, you can look at peripheral neurotransmitters. Remember, there is no test. There is no test. Let me make this clear again. There is no test that measures the biochemistry of your brain. That's why this concept of altering the brain with SSRIs is very scary. That's why suicide's a very big side effect, those things. But you can do things like peripheral neurotransmitters. Those are significant because your body produces a lot of those in periphery. And some of them do convert and transfer the blood brain barrier. So you can see some of the stimulatory effects there. There's a whole host of things that you can do on a regular basis that labs are important. But see, here's the thing. Not everybody needs every lab. And see, that's where it can be very specific and therefore. But see, if you think of this way, all the labs that we're running are meant to see the function of each system of the body. It's not meant as a pathological test, see, because remember, medicine looks for diseases to treat and manage. We're looking to see the normal function of the body and what we can do to restore it. And there is no. I'm sorry, there is no drug or surgery that restores normal function of the body. You can't manipulate a part of your body without having a negative effect into other parts of your body because there's multiple pathways that exist that way.

Yeah. So I want to end by just talking about. You just said, like, everyone doesn't need everything. And there are going to be people that need different supplements depending on what part of your body is not functioning optimally, as you said. Are there a group of supplements that are kind of universal for you that you find that almost everyone needs?

Boy. That's a boy. That's a loaded question right there. But let me say this. Is there a universal things I see people need? Yes. But they could all be avoided by good lifestyle. And so let's do this. Okay, so let's start here. Do you know that your body only. You know, if you think about this way can make certain amount of vitamins, like for example, your bacteria can make your B vitamins okay, but your body can also make some vitamin D. I think that, I really think that we have to start there. I think vitamin D levels are just way too important to negate. I think that if you're not getting those measured and see what your levels are at, a lot of people get way too low on that.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at. Where do you. So you're measuring vitamin D on everyone?

Yes, it's universal. It has to be. It's just too important. It's known to affect every cell of the body and so therefore it's difficult for me not to measure it because I want to see the average person's range between 50 and 70 and if you have any form of autoimmune condition between every 70 and 90. But there's also been research done on certain skin conditions that they were given 50,000 a day for a long period of time. And so therefore that's one thing I think is universal. I think that people do not get enough vitamin D. I think that they this over advertising that the sun is bad for you has been detrimental for long term health, not your own.

We have, we have villainized the sun, much to our detriment. And I think it's, it's that, I think it's the sunscreen epidemic that we're in that, you know, everyone is slathering their children and themselves in sunscreen and we're not exposing ourselves to the nourishment of the sun. Even though the sun is our source of life and we have the disease to show for it. Right. Because vitamin D deficiency only leads to all of these disease states that we're spending so much time trying to deal with.

Yep. And therefore that leads into other vitamin deficiencies. I think that we are too fat soluble deficient. I don't think we have enough of our fat soluble vitamins, especially vitamin A and vitamin E. Vitamin E is so essential for regeneration of the epithelial lines of our cardiovascular system. I think that we are so vitamin A deficient that it's significant. The fact that if you look at skin issues today, they're an all time high. If you look at the other factors with eyes, people don't realize this. A lot of people do not realize that you can't get fat soluble vitamins from, from vegetables. They don't exist. Well, doc, I get vitamin A from carrots. No, you don't. You get beta carotene. You do not get retinol. So therefore that's one of the biggest missing things. Vegetables really have very little vitamins in there. They have provitamins in there which a lot of people's livers aren't even proper for them to convert. And most of the time if you ever look at, look at beta carotene you can only roughly convert about 3%. You'd have to eat significant amount of carrots. I think it's like £40 a day just to get your vitamin A supplement. Deficiency of retinol, therefore fat sub vitamins I think are essential for people to take. Now I'm more in the realm of doing them in a food source. So things like cod livers, organ meats, things like that. Now I know a lot of people, once again this is where I think I can't in my education justify vegetarian or vegan based diet because just the fat sub of vitamins, it's very difficult. I know people have personal issues with animal things and that's okay, I'm cool with that. But I believe there's going to be detriment to a person's health. If you look at all the herbs across the world, a lot of nutritional companies and I'm going to tear on them for a second, do this. This is the greatest superfood we ever found. It's in India. Well, what happened 2000 years ago if you didn't live in India? There's only one superfood that has ever stood the test time in every culture across the world and that's organ meats. It is. They were eaten everywhere, on every continent for, for ages before the whole animal thing. But if you had an herb that was, was from Russia, nowhere else, it doesn't say, it doesn't have a major benefit. But if you look at how survival of a species happened, I believe that organ meats equate so much good things for you, including your fat soluble vitamins and now they're wrong. Are there other products that can do it that way? So see that's the thing I look at. I look at foods to be always the first source because I can justify chamomile, I can justify astragalus, I can justify California poppy, I can justify almost every herb on the planet because of its plant benefits and what we can get from it. But I still think that we have to look at, if we don't change our lifestyle, there's, there's not enough gymnema and to, to counteract your overconsumption of glucose even though it does inhibit its absorption. See, so therefore I think lifestyle is still always the key. Now if you're suffering from things like pcos, I know I may be able to give you saw palmetto and other things based on your labs to help you almost like a drug. And that's why it's almost looked like a drug, but they're really not, but they're mimicked from it. And therefore I want people to have those long standing things that are attainable that they can do because without long term lifestyle changes, it's not going to, it's not going to last. You're just going to be managing things naturally instead of medically.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And you know, just like you can't medicate your way out of a bad diet, you can't supplement your way out of a bad diet. And that goes for lifestyle too. Right. So you know, these changes, if you, if you want your health, then you have to commit to your health. And that's a lifelong commitment.

Yep, it is.

It's unlike conventional medical treatment where you, where you're in treatment and then you go back to doing whatever you did before. Health is a commitment to changing your diet and lifestyle permanently.

Yes, it is. And that's thing, it's measurable and you can tell if you're on a good path or not. And that's the thing. It's measurable, it's attainable, it's repeatable. And therefore, once again, you have to, you have to talk to your doctor. And doctors should be more of a guide. I've always said that if you're a doctor that's dealing with somebody's health, you're a guide. If you're dealing, you know, if you're dealing to cut out breast cancer, guess what happens? You're a specialist. But if you're actually dealing with people's health, you're a guide. Because a specialist is going to go over there and stop you in the acute response of maybe dying if it is life threatening. But on the flip side, if your journey is health, you need a guide. But here's what happens. I mean, it's very sincerely and you've lived in this world, I guarantee you still have friends in this world. And I do too, considering it's not. My world is the medical field is guiding people with drugs or surgery that only ends badly if you're trying to accomplish health with that.

Yeah. The problem is that's not really the goal of the medical field. I mean, I think that doctors are very well intentioned. But the way that the system is set up, it's set up to make money. And you don't make money by getting anyone. Well, the only way doctors make money is for you to go to the doctor's office. And no one's going to the doctor's office because they're too healthy.

Yep.

Right.

Yep, yep. And then actually one little thing, like I said, go back to that. When talking about broccoli sprouts, the sulforaphane in there, they try to patent. And because they saw that they could patent it and then they could make billions off it, but they. So they wanted to stop people from getting exposure to that. And it went all the way up to the Supreme Court and it was all about making the patent medication so other people couldn't use it. And the Supreme Court knocked it down. So our healthcare has become corrupted with big business and government. And that's why we saw over the last three years. And the last three years have been very devastating. But it's also, it's been very great too, because it opened people's, a lot of people's eyes. And so then, even though the FBI showed up very nicely thinking I was a threat, it actually realized that, listen, I'm not a threat. I'm actually great for society because I'm showing people and guiding people in the right direction. And sometimes people have a hard time getting rid of old beliefs. It's going to take a long time before we see a big change that you and I are trying to do.

Yeah, that's very true. It's very hard to unlearn things. It's very hard to change practice guidelines. It's hard to change referral patterns. It's hard to change what you have been bullied into thinking is the truth. And it's truth seekers like you that will enact this change. So I am so grateful for you, for what you do. You have certainly inspired me to stay brave and continue, Continue to be a truth seeker and help to coach the people that are looking for our kind of solutions, the people who are ready to take responsibility for their health and ready to make permanent change so that they can have optimal function.

Yeah, thank you for that. It's been quite a journey for the last 24 years. I'm looking forward to, God willing, the next 24 years and things that we're going to do together to bring awareness to people, people that just. I said, I'm just a big person of choice. Let people choose. And if two people have different ideas, both people should be right to share their ideas and let the public choose. Because there's only one person that should make the healthcare for you and your family. It's you. It's not the government.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Where can people find you?

It's just simple. Just that my major website of all things is just the wellnessway.com so the wellnessway.com if you just Google my name, Dr. Patrick Flynn, it's pretty easy to find. Just try to always put a lot of good free information and stuff. We put a lot of videos out and so people can take control. Like I said, we're just trying to be a guide to people.

So the wellnessway.com and read I Disagree and we're looking forward to I Still Disagree coming out this fall. And we will certainly have you back for more of these discussions. And until then, everyone make your own decisions. Make the decision that is right for you. Because in the end, the only person that has to deal with your decision is you. And you might as well make a good one. It's Dr. Jen for this episode of Keeping Abreast. Bye for now. Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Keeping Abreast podcast podcast with Dr. Chen. I hope you found the discussion informative and empowering. Remember, rest, health is health. So by staying informed and taking proactive steps, you have the power to optimize your well being. My team and I encourage you to apply the knowledge gained from today's episode to make positive changes in your life and share what you've learned with others. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe 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.