65: What No One Tells You About Healing After Cancer with Michelle Padadar

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Hello and welcome. I'm Dr. Jen Simmons, a breast cancer surgeon turned integrative oncologist on a groundbreaking mission to transform the conversation around breast health. If you're seeking to redefine the way that you think about breast health, you're in the right place. Breast health isn't just an aspect of well being. It is health, integral and indispensable human. Here on the Keeping Abreast podcast, we delve deep into the innovative ways to diagnose, treat, screen for, and prevent breast cancer. But it's more than that. It's about having the crucial conversations that empower, enlighten, and drive us all to a healthier place. As someone who has navigated the front lines of breast cancer treatment and now champions an integrative approach, I bring a unique perspective to these discussions with blending rigorous science with holistic health principles. Health is a journey, not a destination, and I am truly honored to accompany you on this path. Each episode aims to provide you with actionable insights and cutting edge strategies to take charge of your breast health and.

Your overall well being.

So whether you're here to learn about the latest in medical advancements or seeking tips on lifestyle changes that foster real health, they the Keeping Abreast podcast is.

Your go to resource.

Let's embark on this journey together, because when we talk health, every conversation matters. And now stay tuned for this week's episode.

So you've been diagnosed with cancer, you go through treatment and you come out on the other side and you're told that you're supposed to be grateful that you're alive. And it's so very hard to feel grateful when you don't feel well. And many of the treatments for cancer are the reason that you don't feel well. And starting from top to bottom, you have brain fog. You're depressed, you're anxious, you're afraid, you can't sleep, you have palpitations, you've gained weight, you have gut problems, you have heartburn, your joints ache, your bones ache, your muscles ache, you have no libido, your relationship is struggling. These are the things that people who have been treated for breast cancer are going through on the other side. And we call this survivorship. And we try to put a pretty bow around it and we try to celebrate, but it's so hard to celebrate life when you don't feel like this is worth living. And this is a huge dilemma and a part of cancer that we simply do not talk about enough. And so I brought on the expert today, someone who has dedicated her life to to survivorship after she has survived cancer herself. Welcome Michelle Padadar of Revival Health and Wellness. Michelle, I'm so delighted to have you here today.

Thank you so much. I'm so grateful to be here today. And I really, really appreciate.

In every sense of the word.

Yes, exactly.

To be universally here and grateful to be here.

Yes, exactly.

Michelle, I'm sure that everyone wants to know. I mean, you look at you and you look like the picture of health and vibrant and revived. And it wasn't always that way. Right. You have your own pain to purpose story that I would love for you to share with our listeners.

Absolutely, yes. And that is such a great point. How I look now is very different from how I looked before and right after cancer. I'm seven years cancer free. I just turned 40. I was diagnosed when I was 32 years old with stage two non Hodgkin's lymphoma. I feel like a big part of my story is what led up to my cancer diagnosis. And for me, that was a lot of stress. My mother was diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer about a year and a half prior to my diagnosis. And I was 30 years old. I was newly married, not knowing anything about life whatsoever. My mom gets six weeks to live after her diagnosis, and my husband and I moved her in with us and we became her caregivers. And at that time, I got a front row seat to cancer, to the ugliest sides of cancer, to seeing my mom completely deteriorate, to becoming a parent overnight when I was, you know, a child. Up until that day she was diagnosed. And it was so hard. It was the most traumatic thing. Still to this day, it's the most traumatic thing I've ever gone through because I was responsible for her life and death. Day to day. I was acting as her nurse, had to call ambulances, had her oncologist on speed dial. Like, it was just so intense. And it was the end stages of life. So the amount of trauma and stress that I was under while taking care of her I think really played a part in speeding up or contributing to whatever was also going on in my body at that time. So she ended up making it six months and then she passed away.

That is a huge testament to how you cared for her.

Well, thank you so much.

That's a big difference between six weeks and six months.

Yes. I will say she was incredibly stubborn and in denial. And I think that helped a lot because her mindset really pushed her through. And that's also something that I really learned being her caregiver too, your mindset, how you're thinking about things, like health is, as, you know, obviously, so whole body. But I'll get back to that later. But learning her mindset and how she kind of strived through and her strength around it was really amazing. But thank you so much for saying that. I really appreciate it. So about six months after she passed away, I started having all these very wonky symptoms. And it ended up being I had a benign pituitary tumor, and I had acromeglia that was attached to that, and it was just very rare. And how I presented was not typical. And I live in Chicago, so I have Northwestern right here, and they have an amazing care system. And my neuroendocrinologist was like, you need to get this out right away. You need to fly to Boston, get this tumor out right away. So I said, okay, I got the tumor out, and everything was fine. And my husband and I thought, okay, we're gonna get back to life and try to have kids and really try to put just the trauma behind us. And we started. We started trying for a family. And it was right around my mom's, like, one year death anniversary, and I had a dream about her. And in my dream, I was getting out of the shower, and I was brushing my hair, and all of my hair started falling out, and I started getting really freaked out. In my dream, I'm like, what's, you know, what's going on? What's happening? And she started leading me down this path, and I got very frightened and very scared. And I woke up from the dream, and it felt like I was clenching so hard. I must have twitched or something. And it felt like I pulled a muscle in my neck on my left side. And I thought, oh, my gosh, that was crunchy. Quite a dream. It's stuck with me forever. But the pain in my neck only got worse and worse every single day after that dream. And I thought, this is weird. I'm going to go to my primary. So I went to my pcp, and jokingly, when I walked into her office, I said, I just want to make sure I don't have cancer or anything. Because she knew that I was taking care of my mom, you know, a year prior. And she was like, oh, you probably pulled a muscle. You know, get a massage. Here's muscle relaxers. Let's do some preliminary blood work just to make sure, like, everything else looks okay. And he said, all right, that sounds great. And my blood work came back in. My D dimer level was slightly elevated. I Mean, slightly, slightly elevated. And she's like, you know, that's. It's not really elevated, but that's weird. She's like, this, this. I don't know. She's like, it's weird. And if you have any kind of blood clot going on, we have to take care of it right away. I just sat there and thought, blood clots, like, what, what's going on? Like, what is happening? What's going on? And it, and it didn't scare me that much because I felt like I was just in this whirlwind of grief and cloudiness and brain fog of like, I'm sure I'm fine. This is just, you know, a box that I have to check. So she's like, let's go in and we'll get an X ray of your lungs, make sure everything's okay. So I did the X ray and the X ray came back and they found a massive tumor in my chest. And it was actually pressing against my heart. So I had four blood clots going through my left arm. And. Yeah, and I. And I didn't know it.

I had no symptoms. You didn't have short breath or decrease exercise tolerance or.

I was doing hiit exercises five days a week. And I was traveling. I literally, the day that I got the results back, I was traveling. I was in New Orleans with my girlfriends. I mean, I'm on planes, I'm going everywhere. I had no symptoms. The only thing I will say is I thought my left arm felt or looked a little puffier than my right and my right arm and my husband's like, you're. You're crazy. Like, your arms look great. I don't see any difference whatsoever. But I had absolutely no signs other than that dream and the pulled muscle, which is really scary, right? Because cancer can present in so many different ways. But I think one of the scariest things about cancer is sometimes you don't have the symptoms. But there is different intuitions and different. You really have to get to know your body to understand when something is off, how to move forward with it.

That's a very, very important point that you make and one that comes up a lot in the breast cancer world. Because I talk to people. I really believe in self breast examination, even if your breasts are lumpy. And let me let you into, into a secret. Every single woman thinks her breasts are lumpy. I have never met a woman in my 25 years of medical practice. It's probably more now. I just don't feel like doing the math.

That hasn't said my breasts are lumpy.

Like, they all think that.

And the truth is that we just need to own our lumps. Right. Like, we need to know what our normal is so that we can know when it's abnormal. And this is true of everything. Like, we all need to do so much more dialing in and really knowing ourselves so that we can notice a difference.

I completely agree. And it's something that I tell my clients all the time, too. And it's also something that I've learned by myself throughout survivorship because is I've had cancer scares since my initial diagnosis, specifically breast cancer scares. And it's really like being able to come back to yourself, like you said, understand what's normal for me, what's changing. And investigating why is something feeling different? Why is something feeling off? Or maybe that wasn't there before. And being able to recognize and understand it early on is. It's so important for preventative purposes and to get an early diagnosis and to be on top of your health because your body is always signaling you in some way. And with all the noise around us, all the noise around us, it's so hard to get quiet and to dial in and to understand, like, what's actually happening.

Yeah. But our bodies are pretty smart and they do send us signals. So I wonder, and I do want you to get back to your story because it's fascinating and I know everyone wants to hear it. In retrospect, was your body sending you signals?

Oh, my gosh. So I believe so I think that I was clouded. So when I had the pituitary tumor and I had acromegalia, the symptoms of.

The acromegalia, not everyone knows what that is. So can you describe what it is and what it meant for you?

Sure. So sometimes when you get a pituitary tumor, it can do different things in your body. It can create, you know, prolactin levels to go up and down and things like that. So for me personally, it created an illness or a disease in my body to happen called acromeglia. So it was a byproduct of the pituitary tumor. It was something my tumor was causing to happen in my body. And for me, that meant I was. I retained 10 pounds of water over a number of years. Specifically my face. I look completely different. People thought I was getting, like, a nose job after I got this pituitary tumor right. Removed because my nose was widened completely. I had so much fluid on my forehead. All of my forehead was swollen. I had big creases in it. My hands went up. My ring size went up about a size and a half. My shoe size went up about two sizes.

Oh, my God.

So when they f. In my. I guess my peripherals were. Because it was growing so. So large, my peripherals were starting to get affected as well.

So when. So you. You had a field cut. You couldn't see. You lost your peripheral vision.

So I don't want to say that I lost it, but I will say this is a slow growing tumor that happened. My neuroendocrinologist that it probably happened over seven years. So, you know when things start to shift in your body, you don't recognize it right away or you make excuses for it. Right. Like, oh, I must have had too much salt, or it's that time of. Or you can kind of start to explain things away. So I think it was really small, gradual shifts of that acromylia that I didn't really notice. And then I started seeing pictures of myself. I'm like, that is not what I look like. What is going on? Like, I just started to look like a completely different person.

Yeah.

And when I was trying to have a baby, I couldn't get pregnant. And none of the. I went to IVF and none of the fertility drugs were working on me. And my IVF specialist was like, we need to get you in for an MRI because I just want to make sure your pituitary gland is working correctly. And that's when they found.

Was that the prompt? Actually, it wasn't the weight gain. It wasn't all those changes. It was that you couldn't get pregnant.

Yeah. Because every single doctor that I saw about these symptoms that I was having.

It's okay.

You're just stressed out, you're eating too much salt, you're over exercising. You need to relax. See, it was explained away by everybody. So there was never a cause for concern for me to dig deeper on it. And now I know much different. Right.

Just the nature of acromegaly, because I can't remember seeing someone with acromegaly who was a woman. I think all of the acromegaly that I saw, and I haven't seen a case of it in many, many years. And most of what I saw was from textbooks. But it's almost always men, which doesn't really make sense because pituitary tumors should have an equal proclivity to have acromegaly. Or in the case of when you make too much prolactin, you have lactational changes where you have. You Know, people lactating around the clock. So it's.

So.

It's so interesting. But I. I wonder how an endocrinologist missed that repeatedly, because it sounds like you had all of the physical changes that we expect to see with it.

So I didn't start seeing a neuroendocrinologist until they found the tumor.

And.

And when they. When I went to the neuroendocrinologist and he did the blood work, it's. He. He was floored because my prolactin levels were normal. Every blood work was normal. So he was like.

When we found nothing would be normal. And what's abnormal, I think, is growth hormone.

The growth hormones. My growth hormones were slightly elevated. Yes. And he said, you don't present how we learned about this in the textbooks. So he actually took my case. How dare you not follow the rules? And he's just. He's such a wonderful man. And he was. It was his last year before retirement, and he said, I'm taking your case. He took my before and after pictures and everything. He's like, I'm putting it in the Northwestern textbook. Because people need to be aware that not everything presents how you're taught. For it to present, you have to dig deeper. So he was like, you are my last big learning case before my retirement. So. So it was. It was something. But he. He caught it and took care of everything immediately. I think it was a week in between my MRI and me on a flight to Boston.

Wow. Okay, so let's get back to. You have a huge tumor in your chest and blood clots in your arm.

Yeah.

What? Like, how did you deal with that news? What did you do? How did you respond?

Yeah, it was a Saturday morning when she called me with the results, and my husband and I just had brunch, and I just fell to the ground. I was just. I couldn't even be. I was inconsolable. I was absolutely devastated.

How long after the pituitary tumor is this?

Six months. So it felt like, to me, how much can I take? I just buried my mom. I just had the tumor, and now I have a cancer diagnosis. And it felt like a sick joke, if I'm being completely honest. It just felt like a sick joke. It felt like there was a pile of bricks just stacking up on me, and I couldn't breathe. I will say my. One of my saving graces was I was seeing a therapist after my mom passed away, because I was so stuck in grief over her, and I had so much trauma that I saw and Experienced while taking care of her. I didn't know how to process it, and I was very stuck in that grief. So I started seeing a therapist. And throughout our time together, she shared with me that she was a cancer survivor. So I hear, of course. Right. Coincidence, but no such thing as a cross coincidence. So here I am. I get diagnosed.

You can call it whatever you want to call it. I'm going to tell you that that's God.

It is God.

You're not religious. You can say it's universe or, you know, what, whatever that the laws of attraction are, but, you know, God gave you what you needed when you needed it.

Absolutely. And, you know, my mom was diagnosed three months after I got married. Talk about if, you know, having a blessing. Like, I could not have done that without my husband by my side. You know, I really needed him to be able to handle everything that was coming my way. So I truly believe, you know, my dream and God, like, there were so many divine interventions that came into my life that I can now look back and I'm just blown away by. And it's. You see how all the pieces kind of start to fit together in the puzzle. But when I found out, you know, my therapist was a cancer survivor, once I got the call, I called her immediately because I was just. I was so distraught. And she walked me through, you know, processing it a little bit, But I was just completely stunned. And as you know, the next steps were biopsy. I went in and got my biopsy, and the doctor gave me a look and said, good luck. And I knew exactly what he meant. And I knew I had it. I just knew I had it. I just did. And so I was diagnosed. And they biopsied it, Bone marrow biopsies. I went through the whole realm of tests, and my primary care doctor said this did come back positive. It's cancer. I don't know what stage. I don't know what it is. And then she referred me to an oncologist who is absolutely incredible at Northwestern. And she spent three hours with me the first visit and walked me through all absolutely everything. And then I was admitted into the hospital Because I had the blood clots. They had to put me in blood thinners right away. And then I had to start doing the full body test to see where the cancer spread to. I'm very lucky. It did not spread that far. I was declared a stage two, and I ended up undergoing six rounds of chemotherapy. I was impatient, so I was in the hospital for five days on six different chemo drugs, on a drip every. Every 12 days. Yeah, it was hard. It was a hard regimen. And my oncologist was very, you know, and this is something to be said, too. And as, you know, like, being a doctor and the switch that you made to functional medicine. My doctor, my oncologist was. Had such a beautiful mindset and was so positive and strong for me that it helped me be strong, and it helped me be able to face cancer and deal with the chemo. And she told me, michelle, this is going to be a really rough chemo regimen. Like, this is intense. But she's like, it works. And you're young and you're. You're healthy otherwise, and I think you can handle it, and it's going to work. She's like, I will get you to your kids, I will get you to your babies, but we have to. We have to really make sure that your body responds to the chemo. Right? That's. That's everything. So I knew going into it that it was going to be a very tumultuous journey. But you don't know what you don't know, and there's no preparation at all that you can do before going into chemo because you don't know how you're going to react. You don't know what your journey is ahead. So I think that was very scary to go in blind and not really know what to expect. And, you know, my only experience with cancer prior to this was my mom and seeing my mom pass away. And so how can you not associate cancer with death? Yeah, that's my only experience. And I saw her go through these absolutely horrible symptoms and changes and things that were happening. And I'm like, is that going to happen to me? You know, it's a different type of cancer, but will that happen to me? So I had a lot of fear going into it because of what I just came out of.

And I also think that was your experience. Your experience was that chemo is horrible and leads ultimately to death.

Right.

And I'm gonna stop and give a shameless plug to my book right now because you said that you can never prepare for chemotherapy. But I am. I am actually going to disagree with you, and I hate to disagree with my guests, and I'm going to disagree with you in this instance, because there are a lot of things that we know now that we may not have known then or your doctor didn't know then, but there are specific ways that we can both prepare for chemotherapy emotionally and physically to make the chemotherapy more effective and to diminish the side effects associated with chemotherapy. And I talk about them in my book, the Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer, which is available on Amazon or wherever you get your books. But, you know, there's been several published works out of Valter Longo's lab at usc, where fasting around chemotherapy makes a huge difference in the effect on the normal cells. Because you don't want to have a significant effect on the normal cells. The effect on the cancer cell do want to have a heightened effect on the cancer cells. And fasting allows that to happen, so increases the effectiveness, decreases the negative side effects of chemotherapy, so better outcomes all throughout. And. There are certain supplements that can sensitize the tumor to chemotherapy, and there are certain supplements that can protect your normal cells. And so if you are on the path to having chemotherapy, and I am not saying people should not do chemotherapy, I don't. I'm not throwing the baby out with the bath water. I know that we have made advances in treatment, and there are some people who are in crisis, and that is the best decision for them at that time. But don't go in blind. Go with eyes wide open, armed with the things that we know improve outcomes. So if you have not picked up your copy of the Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer, now's the time. So you go in. How long over a period of time were you treated with chemotherapy?

It was about three and a half months.

Okay. And you're finished. You're on the other side of it. And I think if I. If I know your story well enough, it brought for you more questions than answers.

Yeah. You know, and I will say chemo was incredibly difficult, but recovery was incredibly difficult. You know, I think, like, looking back and even to piggyback off what you said, you know, having the right doctor, like, if that information about fasting and everything was available to me at that time, oh, my gosh, it would have. It probably would have changed everything, and it would have put me in a different mindset going into it. So I think that's really, really important. And also we're so. If you are going that. That keeps chemo route, we're so rushed through the process that sometimes we don't have time to pause and think about other ways of healing, of treatment, of everything. Because you're so scared.

And so that is one of the greatest downfalls of our system is the rush to treatment. Because giving people the time and space to understand what's happening with them and to maybe allay some of the fears and give Them a little more preparation, I think, would be of tremendous benefit. And I'm not sure why we don't do that. I don't know why there is such a rush to get people treated. There may be an inherent belief that it impacts survival, but we know that's simply not true. And waiting a week, two weeks in some cases, like for you, like blood clots.

Right.

Like you had a life threatening condition. So in that instance, I get it. Most people are not. Most people who get chemotherapy are not in that position.

Right.

So for you, that timeline might have been appropriate.

Mm, yeah. Yeah. And they. I mean, I. I did IVF before I started chemo. The week before I started chemo, I did IVF because they were really worried about it destroying my egg supply.

Oh, wow, you had an egg harvest.

Yeah, we. We had embryos. Embryos, yeah.

Amazing.

Yeah. So it was. Yeah, from. From when I was admitted to the hospital and finding out all the results, it was about two weeks to chemo. And that week in between, I did. They did this. Maybe it was a little bit longer, maybe about three weeks, but I did an expedited, like ivf. They rushed me through the process, you know, and it's fine. It was the best decisions that I made with the time that I had and what information was given to me. But a lot of my, you know, a lot of my clients that I work with, I hear a lot of similar things. And something that they often say is, gosh, I wish I had a minute to take a step back and really evaluate what was going on and what I was signing up for. Not that it might. It may have not changed the end result, but just, you know, we're. We're put into this fear mode of you have to start now. It's going to spread. You have to. You have to, you have to. And it takes away the ability to take a step back and process and to make decisions with different types of information. So your book and, you know, all of these tools and these steps are so incredibly important for people to know. It's different options and it's options that you can use with treatment as well. It's so important and it's so different now. So thank you for writing that because it makes such a difference from a survivor. I wish I had an ounce of that kind of information, support and help going through my diagnosis. It would have changed everything for me, I think.

So what were you struggling with after your treatment?

So I got out of treatment. I rang the bell. I didn't want any pictures taken. I was like, I don't ever want to talk about cancer again for the rest of my life. That was what I said. I was like, I'm done. Yeah, yeah, you're inundated with all of it.

You're.

You're completely burnt out. And I went back home, and I started to realize that, oh, my gosh, my gut was so destroyed. I didn't know that much about nutrition or anything like that at that time. I was working, doing training and development, working in the corporate world, and I started to realize that every time I ate, I couldn't absorb food. My body wasn't processing it. The food was sitting in my stomach. I couldn't have that nutrient absorption. So therefore, my chemo brain was not getting better. My fatigue was not getting better. All of these symptoms that I was experiencing were getting worse. And I kept going back to my doctors, my oncologist, as well as the nutritionist for the oncologist. Like, hey, I'm experiencing these things. What do I do? It's just time. Give it time. Like your body's just adjusting to recovery. The nutritionist, you're eating everything right. I was barely able to eat anything, so I don't even know how I was eating everything right. But you're eating everything right. You're doing what you can. Just give your body time. Well, time did not help. If anything, it was just getting worse and worse. And so I, of course, started researching myself. I'm such an information person. And I started to realize, oh, my gut, my gut is destroyed. I was on three different antibiotics, on six different chemos. No one told me to take a probiotic. Nobody said, eat these types of food. You know, there was none of that information. So I realized my gut was the foundation for my entire health. It was like the foundation for your house. Everything is built on top of that. And until I started to heal, that nothing else would get better. And of course, as we know now, right, gut health is very much connected to anxiety and depression. Well, after cancer, I mean, I had such bad anxiety and ptsd. Even with going through therapy, it was very hard for me to get a hold on my fears of reoccurrence. It traumatized me and plagued me for a number of years. It was very, very difficult. And I realized that I didn't know who I was anymore. There was a sense of self that completely changed. Who I was before cancer is no longer who I was during cancer. You know, it's such a fog. My therapist said it in such a great way that, you know, she's like you were kind of like an athlete. It was just get through each round, ring the bell. You had an end point in mind. And once you got to that end point, your whole body, your whole mindset kind of crashes. Right. And you can't process what you're going through as you're going through chemo. It's impossible to process all of it. And that's a defense mechanism. We'd have a mental breakdown if we could actually process what was happening. So as time was going by after cancer, all the processing starts to happen, and all of these thoughts and these fears and your body changes and the chemo brain, and you start to realize what you actually went through. And it takes a very big mental toll. So it was a huge loss of identity, Huge identity crisis. I did not recognize the person who I was in the mirror. You know, as women, too, and as men, I don't want to shortchange anybody. You know, your physical appearance is everything. You lose your hair, your eyelashes, your eyebrows, and I like, everything is completely different. And you become that cancer patient. You look at yourself in the mirror, and you look like the cancer patient. And it's very hard because it's a constant reminder. Even when you don't want to think about cancer, every time you look in the mirror, it's a constant reminder of what you went through. So it's such a journey to get to that place of recovery and gratefulness and feeling good because it's such a long road. And the lasting effects of cancer can be just monumental to most people.

Yeah.

So looking back, we know that the kind of cancer that you had, the kind of cancer that your mother had, these are environmental cancers. Also. Breast cancer is an environmental cancer. So have you been able to look back and think about what. What do you think happened? What was it in your environment that set the stage for cancer?

We're going to take a quick break.

From the show so that I can tell you about a test which has.

Really made an impact on how I.

Practice medicine, and I think is going to revolutionize how we screen for breast cancer. This test that I'm talking about is the aria test. Now, the aria test is the first breast cancer screening test that is powered by tears. And this is available for any woman over the age of 30, so we can accurately screen women who are young with very dense breasts. And when you get your results, you have the opportunity to speak with a breast health educator to review the results and answer questions. Now, this test is backed by 10 years of clinical trials. They have analyzed over 2,000 tear samples. There are peer reviewed publications and this was developed alongside breast radiologist and breast oncology surgeons. Now, what ARIA looks at is biomarkers, protein biomarkers in your tears. So the S108 and S100A9 proteins that are involved in early inflammation, in the process of tumor formation, and they can be elevated with these abnormal states in the breast. Now, this test has a sensitivity of 92% and a specificity of 50, 58%. And what they did was they designed their algorithm so that they could pick up those tumors, but they, so they didn't want to miss cancers. And so what this does is it allows you to know where you are in terms of risk and it allows to guide your screening. So I'll tell you how I'm using it in my practice. I am having everyone use this test and every year, and the collection couldn't be easier. You literally get a tear collector that you just put in your eye and you close your eye for five minutes and it does all of the work for you and then you just send it off to the company. And what this test has allowed me to do is say to women, you need screening with imaging every year, or you need screening with imaging every six months, or you need screening with imaging maybe every other year or every three, third year. So it has allowed me to guide my practice towards how I'm screening people, how often I'm screening people. And it also gives me the opportunity to help women to improve their environment, both inside and out, so that maybe I can prevent a diagnosis. Because if we have an increased tears test, if we have an increased ARIA test and normal imaging, I know that there is some inflammation happening in them and I can take that opportunity to get them to a place of better health. Now, the ARIA company has been so generous and they are allowing my community to take this test at a 20% discount. So you're going to want to go to Aria Care a u r I a care and use the code doctorgen20all caps d r j e n n 20 to get your 20% off. This test is something that I recommend people do every year. And so it should only bring you peace of mind. Now back to our show. What, what do you think happened? What was it in your environment that set the stage for cancer?

You know, of course, right? That's always. Nobody wants to shame and blame, but it's always very introspective to look back and say, what? What put me in this position? How did I get here? At 32 years old. And knowing what I know now, looking back, I mean, I thought I was healthy and eating healthy and doing all of the right things, but in reality is I wasn't. I was eating a lot of ultra processed foods, was eating non organic foods that we know are heavily sprayed with pesticides and glyphosate and all of the things, you know, I think all of that probably contributed. And then I personally think that the stress of what I was going through amplified and added to it. And the reality is, is that when I was taking care of my mom and that stress was happening, I was, I didn't have any stress management tools. I didn't know what that was. I didn't know how to practice that. And I did, I did exercise. That was a huge stress management tool. But it was hiit exercising. It was. You're adding to it, right? It's, it's.

Yeah. So I. That's an, that's a very important point that you bring up because I see this happen time and time again where people come to me and they are seemingly the picture of health and they're marathon runners or they do a lot of hiit workouts. And what people don't understand is this is extremely stressful. These are extremely stressful kinds of exercise. And for some people, that's going to be okay. And for other people, if you think about it, anytime that you burn fuel, you create exhaust, right? You create the bipod products. And most of the time the byproducts of whatever you're burning are toxic. This is also true in the body. There are some people who are amazing at clearing out those toxins. Those are the people that are the marathon runners, those are the aerobics instructors. These are the energizer bunnies that can go and go and go and go and they don't feel tired. Then there is most of us who don't have such great detoxification genes, who don't have such great detoxification systems. And I tell this story all the time for many years. So I'm gonna throw my husband under the bus a little bit right now. My husband, his weight in our 21 years of marriage has gone up and down and up and down and up and down. And in one particular point in time, he decided that he was going to be a spin bike addict. So he was getting up every single morning at 5am and going to the spin studio. And he eventually he lost 60 pounds doing this.

Wow.

So he was so addicted to it. I was like, okay, I'll try it. Even Though, Like, I'm the person. I can't run long distances. Sprints, Great, fine. Like I went to states for sprinting, but I can't run long distances. I just, my body doesn't do it. I feel awful afterwards, whatever. So I decide I'm going to go to spin class with him because he's there all the time and I want to be able to spend some time with him and connect. And every single day I would go to spin class. I would do fine when I'm there, but I would get to the office and by 10 o' clock I would be like asleep at my desk.

Yeah.

And I didn't realize 10 years later when I had my actual detoxification genes run and knew my genetics to know that I cannot burn fuel like that, can't burn it fast, create a bunch of byproduct and get rid of it. So I like make myself toxic when I exercise like that. And this is what happens when the marathon runner comes in and has breast cancer or the person that's doing hiit workouts four days a week and has breast cancer. This is what's happening is that their detoxification genes do not support that kind of intense exercise.

No, that's exactly it. I actually feel the same way every time I do. I don't do hiit anymore. But I tried it once a couple of years ago and I, I, when I got done with the exercise class, I came back, I started to lose my vision, like my body was shutting down from it. Like, I cannot handle that. And it's such a great, what you're saying is such a great point too, because it's. You have to get to know your body. You have to. We are so bio individual, all of our experiences, mental, emotionally and physically, everything alters ourselves. Right. We have to get to know our body. And unfortunately, it's hard to do that conventionally and through our healthcare system and the functional way you get to learn. It's. This whole world opens up to you where you're like, this makes sense, I get it now. And so, and I, you know, now I can look back and say, oh gosh, how did you get it?

I mean, because you were so ingrained in this conventional system and you had these symptoms and you were discovered to have a pituitary tumor and you had surgery to remove the pituitary tumor. And then you have this neck thing and you blood clots and you find out that you have non Hodgkin's lymphoma. And again you're put into the very conventional management way of chemotherapy. How did you become aware that healing happens another way?

So you know what, really? I became so frustrated after cancer. I was going to integrative nutritionists and everyone's like, oh, you have to do an elimination diet. And this. When I was trying to get help with my gut, I'm like, no, no, no, no. Nobody's listening to me. I felt like everything I was saying, what's going on, deaf ears. I'm like, I don't need to eliminate anything. Like, chemo has done this to my body. And then nobody wanted to touch me because I went through chemo and they didn't know about chemo and the effects of the body. So I'm standing in a place where I have amazing healthcare systems around me and no one can actually help me. And I got so frustrated.

Everyone's so afraid of the C word.

I know, I know. And they don't want to have any kind of responsibility around it. And here I am googling and trying to research and then I realized, why isn't there an exit plan for cancer survivors? If you break a bone, if you break a bone, you go through surgery and you at least get OT or PT from it. And an exit plan and a care plan. When you end chemo and cancer or radiation, there's no plan. Bye, see you in three months. There's no, hey, you might start to experience these things. Be gentle with yourself. You might have memories come up. There might be some trauma, There might be anxiety. Hey, you should start thinking about nutrition. Here are some ways to reduce your risk for reoccurrence. None of that. It is like I'm. It's completely, at least for me in.

My experience, conversations are starting.

I think they're starting.

But the problem is that in that conventional medical world, they do not know how. They don't know how to help people.

I know.

So I think on some re. On some level they certainly understand that things are going to come up for people. They certainly understand that people need support. Emotional, financial, physical. Like, they know that. And yet they're using like the old tools that they know to try to solve these problems. So they're like, okay, go, maybe you should go see a therapist. And let's just make sure that we get your next screening exam scheduled and your next follow up visit scheduled. Like that's what they think survivorship is.

Yeah. Or the long term effects of the treatments that you had. That's my survivorship team. Currently. They just, they coach me on the long term side effects. Of the certain chemo, which. Which is important for sure. But I just became so incredibly frustrated with this space and this lack of conversation and the lack of, like, support around it. So I. I got so into nutrition and learned. I started to heal my gut on my own, and I realized what was working for my body and what wasn't working. And once I started to get knee deep into the information, I was addicted. I loved it. I'm like, this is amazing. We can do so much. So then I attended IIN and got certified, through which I know you also attend. So I got certified through there. And then I realized, you know, there's this huge space where there's not a ton of support for cancer survivors. And it just became so clear to me that this is what I'm. This is what I'm put on earth to do. I. Nobody should ever have to end cancer and have to go through what I went through. We all deserve to have our handheld and have support and not to feel isolated, Isolated and alone in it. And that became my driving mission. And I've learned more and more every single year. And the biggest thing that I've learned is whole health. You can, you know, nutrition is a piece of the pie, but it's so much bigger than that. And I feel like, you know, you go on social media and, you know, all the articles and everything, it's very nutrition driven, but it's also very mindful and. But, you know, you have to know your body. You have to address the mental traumas as well. You know, there's so many aspects to health, and nutrition is one piece of it. So that's one comfort I hopefully give to my clients and to other cancer survivors out there is that, you know, healing is, yes, nutrition, but it's so much more than that, too, to really heal. And you want to change the environment that the kids are growing. Right? You want to change what you came out of so it doesn't reoccur. You want to make, you know, significant shifts in your life and your lifestyle. And it just blew my mind. And I. I love to learn about it, and I'm so passionate about it. And I really feel like cancer brought me to this purpose, that this is why I'm here. And I. I'm a guinea pig. I use myself as a guinea pig. I had to use tools and figure out tools and how to overcome anxiety.

We'll call you your beta test. So tell us about your mission now. What are you doing and how are you impacting this area?

Yeah. So right now I'm doing like six month, one on one coaching programs and workshops. And so I specifically work with cancer survivors and preventers, so survivors to help them rehabilitate their health, mind, body and soul and to get re acclimated back into life preventers, people, you know, who want to make those lifestyle shifts and changes to help prevent cancer, but also a lot of other diseases out there. So I work with those two groups of people and I focus, my program really focuses on certain key factors that I learned that most cancer survivors are faced with, which is mindset. Going from a survival mindset into a recovery mindset that is key for a good foundation for healing. We focus on nutrition, on movement and exercise, on establishing a new sense of self and really grieving who you were before. So a lot of that mental and emotional healing as well as like what we can control, how we can help reduce the anxiety and fears by focusing on what we can control. And then I also coach a lot on environmental toxins and detoxification. You know, our environment, as you obviously know, plays such a huge part of cancer diagnosis. And now I feel like people are talking about it so much more and the research is there and it's so, it's so amazing to be able to educate and help people understand that their everyday choices make such an impact in the long term for and with your health. It's such an honor and it's such a privilege to help people make those shifts and to help, you know, fight that reoccurrence. And a lot of people are just coming out of treatments that I work with. So it's also helping fulfill what their doctors are telling them too, you know, with lifestyle, nutrition changes. You know, as a health coach, you support what the oncologist is obviously saying as well. So working a lot with people on just a lot of different levels and then helping with workshops with people who, you know, might not want that one on one six month coach coaching, but they want the information, they want the how do I quickly detoxify my environment? What does that look like? And being able to offer kind of like bursts of information to make a difference because there needs to be more and more impactful conversations to help people make these changes so we can start to see some of these numbers change. Because it's just my, at least my clientele is getting younger and younger. I had a 19 year old for a consult the other day. It's just like, it's, it's overwhelming and I think a lot of, a lot.

Of people that, I mean kids should not have to deal with this horrible, horrible diagnosis. But unfortunately, it's. It's a reality these days. And it's. And that timeline has been moved up because we are not living on our grandmother's earth. We're not living on our mother's earth. I mean, honestly, in the last five years, we've also had a new thing come in. I'm not gonna name it specifically because I don't want this to get taken off the air or shadow banned, but, you know, we mandated something for a lot of people that has only contributed to toxicity and to a lack of proper reactivity of our. Or proper activity of our immune systems. And it's a huge, huge, huge dilemma. And we are only going to see the percentage of people affected with cancer grow until we make a universal commitment to stop poisoning people with food. Right? To stop mandating things that only make them more susceptible to chronic illness. To stop surrounding them with our electromagnetic field is only increasing, increasing, increasing. And all of these things, the way that we live our life, the busyness, the overexposure to light, to food, the lack of sleep, the just, you know, the combination of all of these things is really toxic. And we have the cancer to show it. And that is why people like you are so very important. Because we cannot let people come through treatment and be deserted on the other side. They need help, they need education, they need support, and they need all the things that people like you and I are offering.

Right.

I want to ask you two more questions. The first is, what did you learn in this whole process afterwards that was the most surprising to you?

You mean from a health perspective or, you know, how resilient our bodies are, how we can actually rebuild our body with the choices that we make? That is absolutely mind blowing to me. How you can rebuild your immune system, how your gut lining rebuilds every three to five days, all of the facts that make you feel like, hey, I can have some control over what's happening to me. There's so much that we can't control. But understanding that I have control over my health and how to do that is very empowering. So that was a very beautiful support because I truly believe that health and healing can happen at any point. No matter where you are in life or in sickness or in health, it can happen at any point. And that is such a miracle that we don't all tap into as often as we can.

I agree. I say all the time, at any age, at any stage, health can happen. So I want to end on, and I'm sure That you have done a lot of thinking in this area. But I believe that we are faced with obstacles all the time in a very intentional way, by God, because we are meant to learn something. What did you learn from this experience? Why do you think this happened to you?

Oh, my gosh. You know, if you can't learn through what you go through, what's the point? Truly, what I learned, I've learned so much, you know, and I'm so proud of myself for coming out the other end. But I think the most important thing that I learned was my purpose here and that cancer had to happen for me to wake up, because I was one of those people that didn't want to wake up. I think to wake up, but also to help others. I'm a helper at heart, and I think that this is my purpose. I feel very aligned at the end of the day, and I think that a lot of things that I was doing prior to this, I wasn't as aligned with. And there's no better feeling than helping somebody that you can completely empathize with, going through the same things. But those struggles and obstacles put in front of us are there for a reason. And finding the learning lesson in them, although it's so hard to do it when you're struggling through. You know, even now, when I look back, it's like, gosh, like, what. What did I miss or what could have that taught me? It's. It's why we're here, to learn and grow. That's why we're on Earth. That's a part of it all. We don't want to stay stagnant. Like, every year, we should be learning and growing. And, you know, we don't want those obstacles to get so big where it has to rattle us and take us to rock bottom to learn from them, you know, and tuning in.

And that's why we say that health is a journey and not a destination. And I know in your own personal experience, it definitely got worse before it got better, and that is true of most people. And you may not have a straight trajectory to healing, and you may not stay on a straight trajectory. So I know for me, I've had health challenge after health challenge after health challenge, and my most recent one was a few months ago. And it wasn't until I realized that I was not on the right path that I couldn't solve it until I corrected my path. And so this is a constant thing that we're all working at all the time. But life is worth it, right? And you're serving great purpose now. And I don't know what you were doing before, and I don't know that, you know, what you were doing before wasn't a great purpose. But I know that the world is a better place with you doing what you do well.

Thank you so much. That's so kind. And vice versa, because I feel like. I feel like if we could multiply you and all around the world, it would just be such a more of a better place for all of cancer, all of recovery, all of diagnosis. We need so many of you because what you do is so important and it helps so much.

It helps so much. Thank you so much. I do. I am optimistic. I do believe the world is changing. I do believe that people are becoming more and more aware of that power that is within and they are seeking help from the people that can actually help them to harness that power, that internal healing and, and make it thrive and bring it out.

Yeah.

And I expect that cancer treatment will look very different in 10 years than it looks right now. And it's because of people like you and I that that will happen. So I thank you so much for being here today, for your time. Where can people find you?

Yeah, absolutely. You can find me on my website, revivalhealthballness.com or an Instagram Revival Health Wellness.

And if you liked this episode, please make sure that you like it. Share it, leave us a comment, share it with someone who you think needs to hear it. And please know that I will be back next week, same time, same place. It's Dr. Jen. Bye for now. Foreign.

Thank you for tuning in to the Keeping Abreast podcast with me, Dr. Jen Simmons. I hope today's episode has inspired you and equipped you with valuable insights to take control of your breast health and overall well being. If you found our conversation enlightening, please consider liking and sharing this podcast. Every like share and comment helps us to reach more listeners just like you who are on a journey to better health. Let's spread the word and make a collective impact. If you or anyone you know is dealing with a breast cancer diagnosis, I highly recommend picking up a copy of my best selling book, the Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer. It's designed to guide you through understanding the root causes of breast cancer and provides you the tools you need to navigate the complexities of a breast cancer diagnosis, the complexities of treatment, and all the while providing you the tools you need to reclaim your health. If you or someone you know is navigating a breast cancer diagnosis and seeking integrative personalized care. Visit us@realhealthmd.com we're here to support you.

Every step of the way.

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