75: Holiday Wellness with Dr. Jenn Featuring Ali Doyle, David L. & Ryan Today

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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. 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.

Hello and welcome back to the keeping Abreast with Dr. Jen podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jen Simmons, and I couldn't be more excited to bring you this special holiday episode where we're focused on something that we don't talk nearly enough about at this time of the year, and that's wellness. Let's be honest, around the holidays, health often takes a backseat. We're focused on family and festivities and for some of us, just making it through the holiday season. And the mindset is, I'll worry about my health after the new year. No one wants to be restricted during the holidays or think about what they can't do. And trust me, I get it. But here's the thing. Taking small, intentional steps now at least setting yourself up for the new year. This can set you up for a vibrant, healthy 2025. And it doesn't even have to be overwhelming. So this week, I'm bringing you three incredible guests who are doing groundbreaking work in the wellness space. I mean, really outside of the box, amazing stuff. So each of them has something amazing to share that can and should be on your wish list as you prioritize what you want over the holidays, what you want to gather over the holidays so that you can prioritize your health in the coming year. So first I'm chatting with Allie Doyle about an innovative, simple, fascinating way to screen for breast cancer that's also incredibly accurate and inexpensive and done from the.

Comfort of your own home.

You don't have to go anywhere. And then next, I sit down with David Letourneau to uncover the vital role that vitamin D plays in our health and how his amazing vitamin D light could be the game changer that you didn't even know you needed. And we get into all of the nuances of vitamin D and think things that are happening, symptoms that are coming up that you don't even know to attribute to vitamin D deficiency. So I'm not going to give you anything more because I want you to.

Go and listen to that.

It was a fascinating discussion. And then lastly, Ryan today joins me to explore the powerful benefit of infrared saunas. What they are, how they work, and why they're one of the best tools to boost your overall wellness. So grab a cup of tea, take a deep breath, and let's dive into some life changing conversations. Because this holiday season, the best give you can give yourself is the gift of health. Hi, it's Dr. Jen. The topic of breast cancer screening is a controversial one for sure. And I think that this is a question that I get asked time and time again and what is the best way to screen and what is the safest way to screen? And I have really been committed to bringing people safe ways to screen for breast cancer because when we're talking about screening, and I think it's important to define who the screening population is. But the screening population is the population of women who you don't believe has the disease. These are normal, healthy women. And I don't think that it makes any sense and I don't think it's ethical to put people in harm's way for the purpose of screening. And so I have been on a mission to find ways that we can safely and accurately screen for breast cancer. And I was so fortunate to come across a company and a test that I think is really doing some remarkable things. So with that, I want to welcome Ali Doyle onto the show today. Allie is a nurse practitioner and a breast health educator for the Aria test. And I wanted Allie to come on and talk about the test, talk about where she sees the role of the test and let people know that they have another safe and viable option. So, Allie, welcome.

Thank you.

I'm so Happy to have you here. I first would like to start off with some curiosity in that why is breast health and breast screening so important for you? Because you kind of took on this position that is all about that, so it must be meaningful to you for some reason.

Yeah. So breast cancer and breast health in general really came into my life about five years ago. My father's adopted and we did some genetic testing and found out that he had some relatives. And we were asking questions to those relatives and found out that I had an aunt that was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 42. This was alarming for me at the time because I was 26 and I was like, oh, what does that mean for me?

Yeah. And that's really young.

Yeah.

On any standard. Yes.

And it was a very aggressive breast cancer. And so I had just had a child and I was like, I do not want that to be. I want to find ways to promote breast health. And at the time I was a nurse, I hadn't gone to nurse practitioner school yet. I had thought about it and when I asked my provider about it, there wasn't a lot of info. It was, do self breast exams, you start screening at 40.

Yeah.

Okay. What does that mean?

Yeah. And you know, this is a problem, and it's a problem across the board because you were asking about breast health and you were essentially asking about prevention. And what you were given was, this is how we screen.

Right, Right.

Because self examination has nothing to do with prevention. Right. There's no magical way to feel your breast that's going to prevent breast cancer. And screening certainly imaging has never nothing to do with prevention. And it still astounds me how many women say, you know, I don't understand how I got breast cancer. I have my mammogram done every year. And so they've been so programmed to think that screening is prevention. Yeah.

When I think it's not personalized either. I think that my goal going into all of this was to help women learn how to personalize their career and understand that there isn't a one set option like we think of in healthcare, of this is what works for everyone.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay. So you were understandably dissatisfied with your provider's answer of start screening and then what?

So at the time, I was actually working at a local breast center in Arkansas and I had the opportunity to volunteer to take some tear samples with Aria. And that got me a link into asking more questions and learning more about my breast health. And I realized this could be a really great tool. And I started doing research on my own, on my personalized risk, how to take care of my own breasts, prevention, all the different options that were available to me at the time. And so I ended up just falling in love with Aria and I've been here ever since.

Amazing. So let's first start off by talking about what is the ARIA test. And I, I, I want to say that this podcast isn't about being a commercial.

Right.

I am talking about this because I think that what you guys are doing is really innovative and I think that it is going to change how we screen in the future. And even though screening has nothing to do with prevention, I think that there is a role for prevention with the knowledge that you get out of your test. So that's why you're here today, because I think that this brings a whole new element to the table that didn't exist before, where people have an opportunity to act early.

Right.

So with that said, tell us about the Daria test.

Yeah. So our is an at home breast cancer screening tool. We utilize it with tear samples. You take a quick deer sample at home, takes maybe five minutes completely to do the whole test and then you ship it off to us. And we are looking for two protein biomarkers that are present in tears when there is inflammation occurring in breast tissue. We found a really strong links to early tumor formation, meaning we can capture things as early as stage one or stage two, which is really great. If there's going to be something there, we can detect it and we can make moves to take care of it. It's also an extra data point for women to understand what's happening at the cellular labor cellular level in their breasts. Yeah.

So, and I don't actually consider stage too early. What, what about the woman who has inflammation and is developing atypia? Or the woman who has inflammation and is developing DCIs, which is non changes at the level of the duct. Are you seeing these proteins associated with, with stages that early?

Yeah. So with Aria, we are able to capture things like the atypias. We're also able to capture things like cysts that could be causing inflammation, which will give women more info to determine what's causing the cysts and gain more knowledge about their body. But we are able to capture dcis. We have great numbers for dcis and great numbers for atps.

Yeah, pretty amazing. And if, if what I understand is correct, it's the other side of things where it's not as reliable in that if you have a late stage cancer, do these proteins start to go Away.

Not necessarily start to go away, but we don't find as elevated of a protein level. So your ARIA score may not land in the higher clinically significant category. That would give you a call to action.

So who would be ideal for this ARIA test?

Yeah, so we're currently utilizing women ages 30 and over. We don't categorize women out based on dense breasts. This is actually a really great kit for women who have dense breast tissue and other screening modalities may not have been as beneficial for them. We can see through all breast tissues, all bodies, all breasts is really our slogan. We want everybody to feel included.

I love that. All bodies, all breath. And so how is the test reported? So someone goes and collects their sample and sends it off. What, what does the report look like?

Yeah, so you get an ARIA report in your ARIA dashboard that you set up whenever you order the test to be sent to your home. And that report will provide you an answer of either negative, meaning that we did not detect clinically significant levels of our protein biomarkers in your tear sample, which gives you a really strong 92% sensitivity, meaning you can be very confident that there's not something abnormal occurring in your breast tissue at the sample. And then the other option that you may receive is a clinically significant result and that does. It's not a diagnosis of cancer, it's a call to action that there's something occurring in the breast tissue and we definitely want to get a better look.

And so what does that better look look like? Where do you go from, from the results of the aria?

Yeah, great question. So we offer a breast health consultation that occurs with me. I host a weekly hour long chat, essentially a community consultation about what your RA result means and what the next steps are and how to access those next steps. We talk about all the different screening modalities that are available and encourage you to find a healthcare provider that has similar views to you on what health needs that can help you navigate what next screening option may be best for you.

So if you have a positive ARIA test and then you go for imaging and the imaging doesn't show anything, what are the recommendations from there and what is the meaning of that?

Yeah, so there are things that occur in the breast tissue that aren't always captured on imaging. Some things also dependent on your density and which imaging you choose to utilize. If you have dense breast tissue, things may be missed on certain forms of imaging. And so it may be a conversation of what other options are available to me with my personal breast density and having an opportunity to walk through that and see if there's an additional screening option. I encourage some women to go ahead and get other screenings that look for inflammation in the body, whether it be blood work or colon screening, to verify that there isn't an abnormality that is presenting in your tear sample that needs to be captured through another way.

And are these proteins that you're talking about, and I think they are the S100A8 and S100A9, are they specific to inflammation in the breast or are they reflective of generalized inflammation?

They are highly specific to the breast tissue. However, there are a couple of autoimmune disorders that also create an increase in one of the protein biomarkers or the other. For example, ulcerative colitis of the colon can also at high levels, like a flare. I tell people, like a flare of your ulcerative colitis, if you haven't known, may increase your ARIA results. Also, it could be ulcerative colitis or rheumatoid arthritis. There is a. Some overlap of one of the proteins as well. And so if you don't have known rheumatoid arthritis, maybe getting an evaluation or if you have known rheumatoid arthritis, monitor when you take the kit to make sure you don't take it during a flare.

And I don't, I know that we use this language all the time, but I don't know that everyone understands sensitivity and specificity. So when you say the test is 92% sensitive, what does that mean?

Yeah. So we selected for our sensitivity to be high, meaning that if you take a kit and you get a negative result, there is only an 8% chance that it's a false negative. And that can be really reassuring. We want as minimal false negatives as possible. We don't want you to get a negative result and think I'm great and not move forward. Whereas we choose to have a 58% specificity, meaning there are other things that could be causing that increase in ARIA score, like your colon or rheumatoids. And we did that and choose to make the sensitivity higher so that we knew that those women in the negative category could rest easily.

And that's because you want a fairly sensitive test because you don't want to miss those people. And then the specificity speaks to how often when the test is positive and it actually reflects disease there.

Right.

So there is a little bit of a delta there. Right. And there are, there is going to be a percentage of people who are told that they have an increased Risk of having something happening right now. Inflammation, the precursors to. To cancer. There are going to be a certain percentage of people who are told that they are at increased risk that don't currently have the disease, but they still are at increased risk.

Right, Right.

So if this test is positive, it is indicative of inflammation and the precursors to breast cancer, even if you don't have it right now. Is that correct?

Well, there's a 42% false positive, meaning that the inflammation may not be occurring in the breast tissue at the time of your testing. So it could be, like I said, a call to action to look at other areas of your body. It could be creating inflammation and giving you that.

False.

But there is inflammation.

Yes.

Right. Like if you have a positive test, there is inflammation.

Yeah. If you have a clinically significant test, there is inflammation.

Yeah. And is it still reported low, intermediate and high?

No, that was our previous form of.

And so now it's just reported clinically significant or not clinically significant or negative.

Is the current reporting.

Okay, that's far less confusing. So I like that. Yeah, I like that. That's how you're doing it.

Now. Women were that fell into the medium category would feel like that wasn't enough of a call to. However, like we discussed at the is, we'd rather manage those earlier. Yeah.

And. And from my perspective, I mean, this is an opportunity because if you know that you have inflammation, even if it's not specific to the breast.

Right.

Inflammation is inflammation and it is going to manifest as some kind of dysfunction eventually. And so this is the opportunity to kind of head it off at the past. Right. And intervene early. And if you believe all of the. The talk and the chatter about finding things early is meaningful, then this would be that in an advanced model, because sometimes you can find this before the disease even develops.

Right.

So just knowing that you have these inflammatory markers should be enough of an impetus for you to do the things that you need to do to drive health.

Right.

Can you talk about the test collection process a little bit? Because it's really fascinating.

Yeah, it's really simple. We send you a little kit. I actually have an example of one right here. This is the tiny little box that it comes into your mailbox and it's very cute. It comes with a envelope for use of your kit back. It comes with a little tube for you to place your tear sample strip into. It's called the Shirmer test. It goes right in the corner of your eyelid. Doesn't remember if you're wearing contact doesn't matter if you have makeup on. You don't have to change anything about your daily routine. You can just pop it in there, close your eye. It'll select the fluid from your sample. Usually have you set a timer for about five minutes to make sure that we capture enough data. And then you place that little sample into the tube.

Yeah. And then what's the turnaround time?

Yeah. So everybody has their results. We say 10 business days, but often it's way before that.

Yeah, it's pretty amazing. So what are the most common questions that people are asking you when they get their report?

So the most common question is something we've kind of already covered, but going over what their next steps are and where to go from here with their result. Another question is, how do I speak to my healthcare provider about this result? And how do I get the care that I feel like I deserve? And so we do a lot of empowerment as well on what verbiage to use, how to communicate to your healthcare provider, and also encouraging them to find a healthcare provider that is a strong fit for their needs.

And when you do this test.

Do.

You recommend doing it every year? Like, how often do you need to continue to monitor this?

I would say the most common utilization right now is every six months. We do prefer that women give it a full six months so that we can give you new results. So every six months is pretty popular to get additional data on their breast health. Also, once a year or before, a screening has also been popular so that they can determine if their screening is giving them the same information as their cellular data is.

Yeah. And then is there an absolute number that you guys are tracking internally to see if people's changes that they're making are having an impact.

So we're working on an opportunity for women to also submit their information from other screenings or information from their healthcare providers about their breast health to help us navigate, syncing that up with what's happening in their body and their ARIA results. So we can determine if there are other factors we're missing or if there are other things that we could be providing.

And talk to me about the false negatives, because I know that that has been an issue, and that's what we're all afraid of in every arena is missing cancer, which is why we've become oversensitive to it, because none of us want to miss it. So talk to me about the false negatives.

Yeah, so. But then we have an 8% false negative rate that's lower than a lot of other screening modalities. That exist. So women have a little bit more confidence that they. Their negative result means that they can continue with their normal life and that they are confident in their current breast health status. However, even though you take ARIA and you get a negative result, we do encourage women to continue other screening behaviors as well, or other prevention behaviors as well as just in case they are among one of those 8% that got the false negative result.

And is there some criteria or characteristics of people who get a false negative result?

Not from our current data set. There hasn't been a specific quality or specific data point that would increase the likelihood of a false negative.

So I thought that I had heard in the beginning that it is better for early cancer than late and that stage three, stage four might not have as much of that protein to trigger the outcome. True. And then what about recurrence in that? What if you've had breast cancer and you've been treated, can you use this test to monitor for recurrence?

Great question. So that is a piece of ARIA that we are working on developing and gathering additional data on. We don't have a. A very strong data set at the moment on women with reoccurrence. And that is something we are investing in and hoping to gather more data so that we can give women more confidence on their reoccurrence. Data that they get from aria. We do have women that are currently utilizing it to monitor for reoccurrence, but we just don't have a strong data set yet to say one way or the other how sensitive we are for that.

Yeah, it's interesting. And because imaging women who have had breast cancer is so difficult, it would be amazing to have this kind of test because obviously the liquid biopsies are out there, but the liquid biopsies are more indicative of systemic failure or metastatic disease than they are of local recurrence, which is, of course, what we would hope to detect and prevent metastatic disease.

Especially with our ability right now to capture things before they become a cancer, or even capturing things as early as stage one. We definitely want to be able to use our kit for reoccurrence so that women that have any form of recurrence that may be occurring, we can capture it before it becomes something large and encumbersome to deal with.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's certainly an area we want to use aria.

I had several people ask me, they have a lump in their breast and instead of having biopsy, they want to undergo the ARIA test. So what would your response to that?

Be. So I think that every piece of data that you can capture about your body is a positive. However, we do like to indicate that we are not a diagnostic test. So getting your ARIA result is not going to necessarily provide you with answers on what that lump is.

Yeah. But will an ARIA test be positive for benign things like a cyst or a fibroadenoma, which are the commonly found benign masses in the breast?

It is very dependent on the amount of. Yes. We have had samples come back with cysts or fibroadenomas that have been clinically significant with their ARIA results. It's very. Based on. I would say that size is likely going to have something to do with what the level of clinical significance is. If something is rapidly growing, obviously more inflammation is going to be present and it's going to create a higher REO result. But we do have women that end up in the positive or the clinically significant category with cysts and fibroadenomas.

Yeah. So it just, it stresses the importance of other modalities.

Right.

In order to further characterize. And I'm fairly certain that certainly in this day and age, it is not a substitute for a biopsy.

Right.

And that if you have a clinically significant mass in your breast, the same way that I encourage people to not to do CQT as a substitute for biopsy, ARIA is not a substitute for biopsy. And if you have something clinically significant in your breast, I believe that you should follow the traditional modalities. And I say this to kind of build on how this started, which is that I think the ARIA test is an amazing addition to the screening population. And as you said, it is not a diagnostic test. So if you have a lump in your breast, if you have a change in the appearance of the breast, if your nipple is inverting, you know, some people are born with inverted nipples, but if your nipple is inverting, if you have a change in the appearance of the breast, if you have new skin changes, if you have new skin retraction, this is no longer screening and you are in the diagnostic population and you should undergo conventional workup in order to determine what is happening. But if you are in the screening population, things like the ARIA test are amazing. So how do people get the ARIA test?

You can just go to our website and order directly from us to have it shipped to your house, or there are a couple of different groups that have elected to have them in the clinic so that you can grab and go.

So the website is ARIA Auria Care. And I Believe that I have a special discount code for anyone who's listening to this, and it's Dr. Jen 20, all in capital letters. And that will get you a 20% discount off of the test. And the test is already quite affordable. So I really, really applaud you guys and your work and what you're doing to contribute to this screening dilemma, because it is a dilemma. And I think that we all need to back up and say, you know, what are we doing here? Because it is unethical to create disease in the population. We have enough things to worry about as a population now that adding some toxic test into our bodies for the purposes of screening, to me just doesn't make sense. So I'm so delighted at what you guys are doing and the contribution that you're making. And I know that this technology will just get better and better with time. But in the meantime, it's really good now. So I encourage people to add this into your screening routine. As far as prevention goes, I again want to stress that screening is not prevention. And prevention comes by being mindful about what you eat and avoiding processed foods and focused on a whole food diet and knowing what, when and how to eat and moving your body, having a positive mindset, managing your stress, prioritizing sleep and movement, and avoiding as many toxins as you can, including toxic people. So with that, I am going to thank Allie for her time and I'm again really grateful for the work you guys are doing.

Thank you. It was so nice to share with your community.

Are you ready for our breast cancer screening revolution? Well, I'm thrilled to introduce to you a breast cancer screening tool that I have only recently learned about, but I have universally adopted. This is the ARIA test. This groundbreaking at home breast cancer screening test is one that I believe will completely, completely change the game. So imagine a screening test that's as simple as shedding a tear, because that's aria. It's a non invasive, convenient and perfect for all bodies and all breasts. Dense breasts, implants, no problem. ARIA makes it clear for everyone, even women as young as 30. Aria is backed by over a decade of clinical trials, thousands of samples, and it's developed alongside top breast health experts. Here's how it works. You collect a tear sample at home and then ARIA then analyzes it for protein biomarkers that can signal early breast cancer. And the best part, you get a consultation with a breast health specialist to review your results. Now, ARIA isn't replacing breast imaging. I am using it alongside qt. It's complementing it and giving you a fuller picture of your breast health. Knowledge is power and Aria is putting that power back in your hands. It's time to take control of your breast health and Aria is another way of doing it. Go to Aria Care a u r I a care and use my code DoctorJen20 in capitals D r j e n n 20 to get 20% off.

Back to our show. So I'm rounding out my holiday wellness topics and something that is always, always, always on the forefront for me is vitamin D. And I think that vitamin D is so misunderstood, underappreciated, and as a result we really are suffering as a society. And so I thought that a vitamin D discussion would be of the utmost importance. Especially as, you know, we look to the new year and everyone commits to their health again in the new New year. And I wanted to make sure that you all have the tools in order to do that. So I brought David Letourneau to speak with us today because he is arguably one of the world's vitamin D experts and has really focused his career on ways to make sure that you have adequate levels of vitamin D. So David, I want to welcome you.

Thank you, Jen. I really appreciate it.

My honor, I'm so happy to have you here. Let's start off with the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Why is vitamin D so important?

I think the best answer to that is the fact that we have almost 37 trillion cells in our body and almost all of them have a vitamin D receptor. That's a pretty important clue that we're given here once we have that information. And the way I like to look at it is we know the research is clear. 90%. 89.9 if you want to get picky. Percent of people in the US are deficient in their vitamin D. Now that's defining deficiency as down in the 30, 40 range. And I think you and I would probably agree that we want it significantly higher. As a company, we typically face 60 to 100, 80 to 100 being really great. And so the analogy I draw is this. We've got all these trillions of cells sitting there with a receptor and they're not getting vitamin D. And so as a cell now right down to the cellular level, we've got a cell that's sitting there saying, I, I, I need my vitamin D to do my job here to keep you healthy. That's part of what I was set up to do. And when it doesn't get it, there's going to be some bad things start to happen. Some of them happen quickly. Low energy, not sleeping well enough, balance fails as you get older, very. Things like that mid range when it's been a little longer, that you're not giving them the vitamin D or making sure they have the vitamin D. You get a cold, you get the flu, you get, you know, all the, what I would call a minor ailment pretty regularly. But then really a little bit longer term, we get into the things like your specialty, breast cancer, you know, Mississippi. Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, all of these things. The research points to that vitamin D is integral to our body's response.

So you said that 90% of people are vitamin D deficient, but that there's probably close to 100% of people who have insufficient levels of vitamin D. Why do you think that that is so misunderstood in that even when you look at like LabCorp or Quest or one of the big labs, their threshold for deficiency is like 30 nanograms per deciliter.

Right.

And there are so many people walking around with vitamin D levels in the 30s who think they're fine because they've been told. I got 31 doctors think they're fine.

Exactly. It's. So I think it's really clear. And unfortunately, this is just the medical community as a whole pretty much not staying abreast of the, of the current research.

If you go back, no pun intended.

No pun intended. Maybe there was a little pun intended there.

Maybe a little.

So if you go back a few decades, all we knew about vitamin D really was as it pertains mostly to our bone health.

Yeah.

The fact that, you know, it got started, we noticed that kids a hundred and some years ago had rickets when they were in England in cloudy, smoggy conditions, all that kind of stuff. Then we started to realize that there was this thing called osteoporosis that figured out that that was related to, you know, low vitamin D. So their bones weren't calcifying that whole side of it. So I really believe it's just not keeping up because at 25 to 30 nanograms per milliliter in terms of our, our vitamin D levels, we've got decent bone health. Virtually anybody would agree with that in the research community that, you know, osteoporosis isn't as big a concern if you've got even 25 or 30 levels of vitamin D. But what happened over this last few. It's decades now. So this is some pretty late news for some people. But. But the research started to find all these what they call non skeletal Benefits of higher levels of vitamin D. And there's an actual chart you can put together to say, okay, when you get to 40, what are the benefits you're now gaining when you get to 50, 60, 70, 80. A good example is, you know, in this case, breast cancer. The research that I've looked at says that the average woman with breast cancer in the US has had a level of around 17. And the women that are above 60 have an 80% less incidence of breast cancer. So that's pretty important stuff.

And it also speaks to the likelihood of recurrence or disease progression. And yet it's pretty uncommon for the medical oncologist, the surgical oncologist, to check a vitamin D level. Pretty uncommon.

Totally uncommon.

And if they do and they get a result of 30, they're usually satisfied with that.

And that is in itself the problem, because it stops so short of the benefits that we can get by being that much higher.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think that another thing, and correct me if I'm wrong, that has complicated this picture is that in an effort to sell more sunblock, we have completely vilified the sun, which is our main source of vitamin D. So even during the times of the year, I mean, I don't live in a place where I can get sun all year long. You do live in a place where you can get sun all year long. Sometimes the sun in the place that you live is rather unbearable.

And then we'll head north.

Yeah, you still have the possibility, but we have vilified the sun such that even during the times when we have the opportunity to nourish ourselves with vitamin D, we're not doing it because we're told that the sun is dangerous and you're going to get skin cancer. And since the liberal use of sunscreen, what if we had more skin cancer? Not lips?

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.

Right. And so. And we're not making this connection. I'm not sure why it.

It's alarming. And it can be directly traced to pretty much the dermatology community that have built this story, which, you know, and I'd say they're totally sincere. When they started this, you know, these warnings, they just went question. They just went too far. That's all. Just too far. And so if you look, for instance, at a book, we love this book called Embrace the Sun by Mark Sorensen and William Grant, and why we like this book so much is there's about, I think it's like 280 pages here that talk about all the benefits of sunshine. But they're very careful to say non burning sunshine. So the key is how long you stay. And that depends on your skin type. Of course, somebody that's darker can stay longer. You know, somebody that's fair, you better get it in quick and be gone. But what we like about it is they talk about all the benefits, which are huge. And they talk about all the things we've already talked about here and more. But then there's 70, I think roughly pages of the citations of the research that back what they've said here. 12, 24 research studies that give the evidence to support what they're talking about. And so really important, really important book, I think, from that standpoint, just from an educational standpoint of how important it is. So when you look at that, what you're talking about, of course, is the fact that, you know, if we live north, anybody that lives north of the 35th parallel, which is approximately from Las Vegas to Atlanta, sorry, but you know, in the wintertime and for several months you get zero UVB because it's dependent on the angle of the sun the UVB is bouncing off. We're not getting any of it there. Like you say. I happen to live in Scottsdale, Arizona. We do get UVB and vitamin D.

I didn't want to out you.

What's that?

I didn't want to out you.

Yeah, it's okay. Quite happy to be here, to be honest. But even here, here's what's so interesting. Even here, because of the angle of the sun, it's quite a ways south even to us. And so when I check my phone, which you can look on there to see where the UV index is, at least on an iPhone. I don't know about an Android, but I go to the weather on my phone. I scroll a couple of scrolls here and it says the UV index. Our UV index even here is only at 3 for the only about 2 hours. Very peak of the day. It's very short window even here. So it goes to show you. And of course, like I say, anything north of us, almost a little bit north of us, and unfortunately you get zero for several months.

Yeah, I'm in the zero place. Okay, So I want to geek out a little bit on what you said. Because again, 37 trillion cells in our body, almost all of them have a vitamin D receptor. So it's so tremendously important. Our bodies are intuitive and we are able to make vitamin D, but it requires a certain wavelength. And so talk to us about that. Talk to us about what is physiologically happening in our body. What do we need to make vitamin D such?

An astute question with a really long answer. But I'll give you the Cliffs Notes for your audience here.

Okay, we're all good.

And here it is in a nutshell. And this also underlines why the dermatologists get excited in a negative way about natural sunshine. Natural sunshine is 95% UVA rays. UVA happens to be a longer ray. It goes fairly deep into our skin and when we stay too long, we burn. We go too often in over a long period of time that can cause trouble. It's 5% UVB. We get vitamin D from the 5%. So we're getting the vitamin D from the little part. And so I'm sure you're going to give me an opportunity to do a little promotion later. But we, we built a device that flipped that right around. So we said, let's give most of the good part. And because we work with an LED device that we can design exactly what rays we're delivering. We deliver 95% UVB and 5% UVA. So when I mentioned this to my dermatologist and his first question was, so how long's the treatment time? And I said, well, it's one to two minutes on bare skin on your front, kind of 10 by 9 inches above your waist, and then turn around, do your lower back, one to two minutes each. His comment was, well, I can't hurt anybody. So it's a matter of getting this in right context. In other words, we're not overdoing the uva, which is the problem. And don't get me wrong, UVA is still good. Just it's the proportion we get that's the problem. We get too much A, not enough B. And so by, you know, doing the engineering thing, working with a spectacular medical advisory board and the right researchers and vitamin D experts, we were able to put this together so that we have a precision engineered device that delivers a really accurate dosage consistently in a really short period of time. So 2 to 4 minute treatment with our device equals the equivalent of 2 to 4 hours of healthy sunshine without the bad part.

So tell me what the research has looked like in terms of what have you done to validate this unit?

Case studies. You know, we used ourselves in our own operation here as a starting point and then we got some volunteers and did the case studies. And just as an example, because I'm here in Arizona, I love to mountain bike four times a week. I'm hiking, I'm outside. I grew up on the farm. And so I just, I like being outside. I don't like living in a real urban environment. And so I'm outside. So when we first got into this a little over three years ago, and I was talking to our executive team and said, okay, we got, we all got to get our D tested right away here. So we've got a baseline. And I already know I'm going to be high because I'm outside all the time, because I'd already been doing the research on, hey, if you're in the sun, you probably have a better level and all these kinds of things, and in the winter you're in more trouble. So I went and got mine tested, and under those conditions, my level was 34.

Yeah.

And now my level is people don't realize how much of your body needs to be exposed to that sunlight. Right. And there are, there are multiple things happening in terms of vitamin D production. I think it was my understanding that you had to have 75% of your body exposed for more than 15 minutes without any kind of sunblock or sun protection. And if it wasn't 75%, if it was 50%, then you needed 30 minutes. If it was 25%, you needed 45 minutes. But that you get into diminished return, like, you can't continue down that mode because you're going to start to burn because of that ratio of UVA to uvb.

Yeah.

And the, you know, the point of non burning sun exposure is well taken. Now, the burning sun exposure is multifactorial because people who are eating diets low in antioxidants are going to be far more likely to burn. People who are eating diets that are high in seed oils and volatile fats that are easily oxidized, they're going to be more prone to burning. And if you're outside with sunglasses on, you're going to be more prone to burning because you need your eyes to tell your brain to tell your body to send the antioxidants to the skin and protect you. And if you have sunglasses on, your brain thinks it's nighttime, why would it protect you? It's like you're taking your brain out of the loop. And yet most people you see outside during, you know, a sunny day, they're wearing sunglasses, and they're told to wear sunglasses by their ophthalmologist because their ophthalmologist is only thinking about their eyes and they don't want them to get cataracts. Right. And please know I'm not telling anyone to look directly into the Sun.

I know, but that I am a.

Big believer in proper sun exposure and then protective clothing. But that I don't believe in sunscreen and I don't believe in sunglasses, even though they're beautiful. Yeah, I just don't believe it.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of pieces to what you just said there. And we could go on for quite a bit longer than this is going to be. The first part that we get asked so much is, well, can't I just go out in the sun? And I think we've already covered part of that. We also get a lot of people that you would think would know more about this, that recommend to people, make sure you get out in the morning sun so that you get your vitamin D. Now, even here in Arizona, we're not getting any vitamin D in the morning sun. Now, it's still a good thing to do because you're going to reset your circadian rhythm. There's other reasons to do it. The blue light.

There are other reasons to do it for sure. To set. To regulate cortisol secretion, to regulate melatonin secretion, so that your body knows what time of day it is. Because we respond according to the position of the sun in the sky. And if you are inside all day, again, your body is not getting those signals. Your brain is not getting those signals. So your brain doesn't know where the sun is in the sky. And it's not filling that circadian rhythm. It's not tied to it in the same way. So absolutely, positively, it's important to get outside and be outside. But as you mentioned, the time to be outside for vitamin D production is during the time of the day when there is the most UVB availability. But that is not happening for everyone everywhere. So I could stand outside till the cows come home. And in Philadelphia, I'm not getting it. And also, I'm not having anything exposed on a day like today.

It's 20 degrees outside, having a fur.

Vest in my office.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so true. The other question that we get asked almost by everybody that we speak to about this is, well, can't I get it from my food? And of course, we know the answer to that. There's vitamin D in various foods we eat, but it's this much. So without getting into all the details, the answer is no, not even close. So that the body was designed in the first place when we all lived near the equator somewhere in East Africa or something, depending on who you believe. And there's a lot of sun there, and the body was designed to do that. And we've evolved since then. That's just a fact. The other piece is.

And we were wearing grape leaves.

Exactly.

And we had nothing.

And we had a lot more than.

75% of our skin exposed. Yeah. So the next thing that always comes up, of course, is, well, how about a oral, you know, a good quality oral vitamin D product? And we say, you know what? That's, that's a good thing. That's a good thing to be doing. But just so you know, you, you may fall a little short or you may fall a lot short. There's about 25% of people, 1 in 4, that don't assimilate, absorb, or otherwise make use of any oral vitamin D in their body. And that's just the way we are. And we run into them all the time where they'll say, I'm taking 10,000, 20,000 IUs a day and I don't get my D above, you know, some low level. And we just had a fellow recently, in fact, he did a testimonial for us, a terrific testimonial. Very knowledgeable guy. He's actually in the red light business, so he knows the science. And he said, I'm just frustrated because I can't get my vitamin D up, so I know I don't absorb it. And he was very excited when he met us. And, and he got a device, got in front of that device, treated himself 50 times in 70 days. So 10 weeks, 50 times. And his, his vitamin D, he did the baseline, he was at 37, and he went to 78 in 50 treatments. And so it's not instant, wasn't 78 after three, but he was, he was excited because he said, in 50 days. You're kidding. This is awesome.

So, so, you know, it's interesting because there are three genes that are associated with what we ultimately do with our vitamin D. There is the, this, the gene that's associated with manufacturing vitamin D. There's the gene that's associated with transporting. Because we have to take the vitamin D that we make in our skin and transport it to those 37 trillion cells around our body. And then those cells all have a vitamin D receptor on them. And you can be challenged at every step along the way. You can be someone that does not convert well. So vitamin D2 is the precursor to the active form, which is vitamin D3. And some people don't convert that. Well, even with proper sun exposure, some people convert it just fine. But then when you have to transport it, not everyone has a Good transport system. So you know those people who take whopping doses of vitamin D and their numbers don't bump, it's because they can't transport it. So they take it and it's, they can't do anything with it or they can't assimilate it. And then the last part is the receptors. And there are some people with very tricky, or however you want to call it, non receptive vitamin D receptors. And for those people this is a challenge. And so those people need even higher levels of vitamin D because they really need to saturate the cell in order for the cell to be able to use the vitamin D. And you know, it's fairly easy to test these things, although I don't. It's definitely not intuitive. You can't guess like which variant you have, but it's fairly easy to test it. You just have to work with someone that's knowledgeable and the average doctor is not aware of these nuances at all.

I'd agree with sales. Yeah. And the other part of oral that's really interesting is the research that's been done. Big pharma has spent tens of millions. I believe the number the last time I checked was 47 randomized trials through the FDA to try and prove that oral vitamin D would increase our immunity. They've all failed and so they get maybe little bumps but it's not going to as significant as we'd like. So that's. Now you look at it and you go, okay, so if, if I've got some of these conditions that make it so that my body isn't really making good use of the oral to start with, that's a problem. And then if it actually is, has the ability to deal with it, that's going to be helpful for sure. But if it's not really moving my immune system the way I'd like it to. Now I've got another problem because I live, you know, north or I can't get out in the midday sun or you know, all the other things that can happen. Which is now most of the population now. So how do you get it? And the answer is, well, we think we've come up with the solution, but that's up to, you know, that's up to you to decide, I guess in terms of.

Yeah, so I do want to talk about that solution, but I, I want to address one more thing before we go there. There is almost a universal fear that people are going to have toxic levels of vitamin D. I can tell you that I have not seen it in my practice. But what do you think that fear is about?

Probably the, it's again back to the medical community. They see a range of 30 to 100. And for instance my founding partner Scott Hansberry got his to where at one of the times he, he had a lab done and his, his level was 127 and his doctor just about had a niption fit, you know and, and so that it's lack of knowledge. So I went to one of the fellows on well there's both men and women but one of the guys on our medical advisory board is Dr. Bruce Hollis, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston. 46 years of vitamin D research. I've heard him introduced as the godfather of vitamin D on more than one occasion. This guy knows a lot about vitamin.

D. He sure does.

He's done the research. There are 70 some thousand citations of his work around the research community. So this guy is obviously highly respected. So when he agreed to come on our board, I was in Charleston to meet with him and discuss all this. And my first question to him was how many times in 46 years of dealing with this at an intimate level here have you seen vitamin D toxicity? And you probably already know his answer. 0. Haven't seen it.

Making a zippity doo dah sign. 0 for those of you that are listening and not watching made a big zero.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean I truly have not seen it, have not heard of it. But yet this is like some elusive legend that people talk about the, the, the vitamin D toxicity.

Right, right. So because you know, again coming back to my example, 127 is not worrisome for anybody that we know of kind of thing. So that wouldn't be defined as toxicity. Is it higher than you might need? For practical purposes? We don't really know that because we thought, you know, there was like I started with 40 years ago. We thought a level of 35. Even the most knowledgeable vitamin D people thought a level of 35 wasn't too bad at all. And we just know more now, maybe we'll know more in the future where maybe a hundred and something is the right level as of today. I haven't seen any research that shows many benefits or any. I haven't seen any benefits shown above a hundred, but doesn't mean that it's a problem to be over 100. It just means there's no real reason for it. So go ahead and let it drop back, take a few less treatments or you know, take a few less IUs of it and that type of thing because the research has also been done on the. On the light on, you know, in sunshine and our type of product. And it's very clear you cannot get too much vitamin D by being in the sun or in front of a light like ours. Your body is so smart. It makes sure you're topped up where you need to be. And it stops there. When the tank's full, it just doesn't make anymore. And that research revolved around, you know, lifeguards sitting in the sun in Southern California, landscape workers that work without their shirt and no sunscreen, all that kind of thing. They got to that hundred one hundred ten. They just didn't get any higher ever. It's pretty interesting.

Yeah, it sure is. It sure is. So let's go back and talk about your light because we talked about the ways that you can get vitamin D in the sun. But it's very, very, very unlikely that you are going to get adequate levels. Especially if you don't live in a place that has enough opportunity to come into contact with uvb. And most people don't live in a place where there is enough opportunity.

Yeah.

And you can supplement, but there is going to be a subset of people that will never adequately be able to get levels that are considered adequate or therapeutic with supplementation.

Correct.

So what, what are our other options?

Well, just to tag on that for a second, first, what we're also missing when we rely on oral in addition to the things we've already covered. When you're in sunshine or again using our light, which is the same benefits of sunshine. Because UVB developed from an LED is the same, it's the same wavelength. And so in addition to the vitamin D that we've spent this entire time talking about, people are also getting endorphins, serotonin, you know, the feel good stuff, the help you sleep better stuff, all of that. They're getting nitric oxide, our cardiovascular health. They're getting bdnf, our nerve health. And so there's all these other benefits that come by getting your vitamin D naturally. And so that's the first piece. So as far as what we.

When you say naturally, you mean not from a supplement, but. But from UVB exposure.

Exactly.

UVB light hits your skin and yeah, everybody's happy from there. It starts to. Starts the whole process. And yes, we'll get where we want to be. I should also mention I started out saying my level was 34 before we got into this developing of this system. And I just had my. I do my measure, I do My labs really regularly and just to see exactly where I am. And I was two weeks ago I was 87.8 so. And that's no oral as we know. Not much sun in Arizona right now because I'm inside when there is UVB typically because I hear working and, and.

No oral like the rest of us.

But I'm in front of the light most days so I'm, I missed the odd time but I'm probably five, six times a week.

So I'm curious because we would naturally make vitamin D during peak sun hours. Is that the same time that you recommend doing the your UVB light exposure and is there any contraindication to doing it after the sun goes down? I would think there is.

We don't know of any. And you know what it is is we want to get it at that time of day. But that's just because when it's available. But our skin is ready to make that vitamin D whenever it gets the UVB and the UVB hits the skin so it can be it. We haven't found any correlation with time at all. I typically do so it doesn't disrupt.

Sleep if you do it.

Oh, it's the opposite. It's the opposite. Really One of the most common things we hear very early in just even the first week or two of somebody being exposed to this is say they will typically say I'm sleeping better, I've got more energy. You know. I had an 82 year old man just recently that called me to say because he had his device and it was a short period of time only but he said I'm riding my bike again. He was all excited because he lost his balance which is something that goes, it's very, very real, very vitamin D related. So no it's, it doesn't seem to matter. It's. And of course it's the, because you're getting some serotonin, you're getting there the endorphins. So, so that's that side of it. And I'm a good example there. Just again myself I'm a serial entrepreneur, been in business my entire life. I'm. You might be able to tell I'm a bit of a type a kind of guy. And so I was always, throughout pretty much my whole life I've been a five and a half to six hour sleep kind of guy. And it wasn't because I wanted that. That's just I woke up, I couldn't go back to sleep now like I'd rather sleep a little longer. You do feel Better with enough sleep now after being on this light now for a year, on the weekend here, on the holiday weekend, I had a night where I was way over eight hours. You go, what? I haven't done that in two decades and now consistently seven, seven and a half is no problem for me to get that now.

That's amazing. That's really amazing.

That's exciting for me alone. And I think it would be that way for a lot of people that are short on sleep, which we've talked to an awful lot of people and man, that is one common thing that, well, I would like to sleep better.

So tell us about the light.

It's simple, you know, it's precision engineering and we've got three years and a few million dollars invested to get it to be so simple. But it is a device that. Go to our website to see it. The website is the company is Energy E N Y R G Y.

We'll put links to this on the podcast.

Yeah, so if you can put the link in. The device itself is like I say, it's a simple situation. It's driven by an app. So when a person wants to get a treatment, whether it be their own device or they're part of a facility that has one that they're going to be able to get treated there, they download the app, they're going to fill out the basic information you always fill out for an app, who you are and all that. It's also then going to go through the Fitzpatrick skin quiz and get people to describe, you know, what's their natural hair color, what's their eye color, all that kind of stuff, things about their skin so that we know their skin type within that app and that's where the medical people put the protocols together so we know how long they can be treated. It'll probably start at a minute and it'll increase to probably close to two minutes over time front and two minutes back. So very, very simple. The app won't let them treat themselves more than once a day, calendar day, but want to treat yourself every day, that's just fine. We think about two to three times a week is really the minimum or it's not going to be as effective.

Yeah, because we don't store vitamin D. Well, we don't.

And oral vitamin D, again, research shows it's about a 17 or 18 day half life. Vitamin D that we make naturally from light is about 2.6 times that. So it's about six weeks half life. So there's a nice advantage there. If you travel Once in a while and you're away from your light, you're probably okay if you're not traveling more than two or three weeks, that type of thing.

So does it feel like anything? Does it burn?

Is it hot?

Do you need goggles?

We designed it so you don't look at UVB light without eye protection. But we designed it in such a way that you really don't need it because you're treating your torso and it's in a housing so you just press your bare skin up against that, the bezel of it. And it's very simple and don't need the eye protection there. But if we also built in, we've got built in sensors so that if for some reason you back away, it shuts off because we don't want you to think you're getting treated if you're not. Because again if you're with light, it's exponentially drops off the further you get from it. So when you're at that precise distance that we've built the device force when you're pressed up against it, you're at the exact distance we want you to be for your best dosage. If you back away, it's just a few inches and you're getting way less. And if you know those people that are maybe a little heavier maybe got a little tummy, that's going to be in sounding a little. It's those sensors are going to cut the power a bit because we don't want. The worst case scenario is really simple. You get a very mild sunburn which in a minute or two isn't going to be a big deal. But right in the app you're going to get the opportunity. The first thing that comes up after you filled all this out, done it when you are doing this regularly, you don't need to fill that out each time obviously, but you do that. You push the button on the app, you scan the device you're at and the QR code, it knows that it's you and it's that device and it's going to ask you did you get red? Did you get any redness? And so if you say no, then it's going to keep your treatment time the same. If you say yes, I go a little bit. They'll cut your treatment time a bit. And so, so it's intuitive. It's an, it's a pretty sophisticated device, there's no question.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Well, I'm so delighted that we got to have this conversation today. Obviously the importance of Vitamin D is enormous. And I was actually most surprised that you talked about the 47 randomized trials where vitamin D did not increase our immunity. But I'm guessing that that has more to do with oral vitamin D maybe.

Oh, it's oral.

I know that with the COVID studies, the people with adequate vitamin D levels usually did not require hospitalization and did not develop pneumonia or complications. And it was really only the people with inadequate vitamin D levels that had complicated courses of COVID True, that's true. So I think that the information, despite the fact that I know the pharmaceutical companies are not particularly interested in vitamin D being.

Important.

Right. Because they are not able to trademark a molecule of nature, so they can't really benefit from it in any way. But I think that the information around vitamin D and its importance and its role in our overall health and it being so central to our, our cellular function, I think it's just going to become more and more commonplace. And I hope that conversations like this bring it to the forefront so that people can know and do the right thing. Because I think that when we know better, we do better. And I will for sure post all the links to this device. What's it called?

It's called the Energy Vitamin D light therapy device.

Oh, so you basically named it. You didn't make it confusing for us. There's no ambiguity there.

It's vitamin D. Amazing. A lot of people call it my vitamin D machine.

Yes, the vitamin D machine. We will put, put the links to the vitamin D machine. David, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you. And for those of here that are here without the video to see the links and whatnot, they can use the discount code which should be built into the link. If they can just click the link, that's even easier. But if they're just listening. JS so your initials JS 20. The, the. Just the numbers 20. JS 20 is a discount code that they can put in there and they're going to get 20% discount because they're associated with you.

Amazing. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful on behalf of my community. And we'll make sure, even if you're just listening, it'll be in the show notes so that you will have the links and you'll have the discount code. And I hope that everyone is able to build their wellness in this new year and this is just another way to do it. So, David, thank you for your time. I wish you and your family very happy holiday season and a beautiful, healthy vitamin D filled new Year.

Thank you. It's been my honor, and I just applaud this great work that you're doing. Thank you.

On behalf of everyone.

Going a little outside the box today, and I'm talking to someone who. Whose story really resonates for me, because while I have been very open and honest about my family history and my genetic orientation and all of the history of cancer, specifically breast cancer, in my family, what I have not spoken about is the equal amount of mental disease in my family. And I. My childhood was filled with memories of my grandmother.

I'm gonna cry.

My grandmother going away and having a lot of shock therapy, and.

It was.

Really something that I really struggled with my whole life. And, you know, I'm. I'm a part of her. And we. These are the struggles that we don't put out there and don't talk about a lot, but these are the conversations that we need to have because they really. They. They have a tremendous impact on your health. And the story that you tell yourself and the mental and psychological state that you're in is really important. And so I am so delighted to have Ryan today here. And Ryan has an amazing, amazing story of triumph. And I just wanted to share his story with you and then talk about a really important tool that he has incorporated to help not only him keep himself in the place that he needs to keep himself, but he's helping many, many, many others to do that. And since breast cancer is such a multifactorial disease, and since so many people who are walking a breast cancer journey have endured significant psychological trauma in their past, I just thought that this was an important story for them to hear and an important piece for them to incorporate into their puzzle. So, Ryan, welcome. I'm so delighted to have you. And for those who are just listening and not watching, Ryan has his ukulele, and it's so beautiful that I've asked him to continue to strum while he's speaking. So if you. If that's what you hear in the background, I just want you to know that it's intentional.

Thank you, Doctor. I really appreciate it.

Of course.

Of course.

And thank you for your vulnerability and your heart and sharing. That really, really matters to me. Thank you.

Well, you have quite a story yourself.

You know, we all do. And. And that everything is relative, you know, and so sometimes people hear my story, and they're like, oh, my goodness, if you could overcome that, you know? But the reality is all pain is relative. All trauma is relative. So we look at someone's stories that may seem Much worse than ours, but it does not mean that it's not felt in a similar way. And feeling is the healing as you're talking about in these emotions that we've heard many times and maybe you haven't heard it before, that the issue is in the tissues, and that's where our emotions reside. And the emotions we carry over time literally do shape the fascia, the fat form of our body. If you get angry, you can see the body posture, someone who's angry. If you beat up on yourself and you're slumped over, your body's going to form in that emotion. And so there's a lot of healing work that's actually breaking the body apart, breaking up the fascia, breaking up these things. So that way we can just have a new way of thinking and feeling with our mind and our body together.

Yeah. Amazing. So would you just share with people kind of how you arrived in your. The place that you are today? Because I think that the story is important and I think people need to hear about the triumphs too, and that there are major, major, major obstacles that seem insurmountable, that can be overcome.

They really are. And to that point, for someone who's listening and they're not necessarily as concerned about themselves as they are for someone else. There's the old phrase that you can't help somebody that doesn't want help. And I don't believe in that because I my story. I helped myself when I didn't want help. And I've helped thousands of people who did not want help by eliciting curiosity. Because even if you don't want a better life, you can be curious about your future self might. And that's why my name is Ryan today. So my story in a nutshell, is that I experienced quite a bit of childhood trauma. Many people do. But I witnessed multiple family members commit suicide, one in front of me when I was young. And so that I only tried once in my lifetime directly. And it was when I was nine. Eight going on nine. Didn't do. Didn't cut deep enough. And I'm grateful I didn't because that sobered me up. By the time I was a teenager, I was living on my skateboard, living on the streets because I didn't feel safe anywhere, right? So might as well be out there, be somewhere with my skateboard where I'm in control of the circumstance and, you know, and packing my backpack full of clothes and telling my mom I'm staying the night at a friend's house. And I'm really Just going out and sleeping under overpasses and just trying to do that. By the time I was 18, I packed my backpack full of clothes, jumped on my skateboard, and just hit the streets as a Dharma bum. Years later, I was. I could not skate off into that elusive sunset to trying to run for myself. And so I had this startling moment where I realized, huh, maybe the only reason why I don't want more is because I don't think I can have anymore. And my mind, my body's already caused with all this inflammation. I didn't know autoimmune was a thing back then, but I was dealing with autoimmune disease, Epstein Barr, all these things that was going on inside of me, and I was just trying to combat that. And so I elicited curiosity. I said, what if the reason why I don't want more is because I can't have more? My life's already pain. And the reason why I don't feel I can have more is because Ryan yesterday sold me down a river. Ryan yesterday did this. He drank this, he smoked that, he did these things, he thought these things, he said these words that landed me here. And so when I wake up on this shore, of course I don't want any more. How could I want more? So if that's the case, this began my work with. With systems thinking and conditional logic and saying, if that's the case, then Ryan tomorrow might want more. He might want responsibilities, he might want a family, he might want a life, but he'll never even have the choice to make that decision if Ryan today does what Ryan yesterday did. So what is Ryan today willing to sacrifice to give Ryan tomorrow a different shore, even if just slightly, just a different place to wake up to a different thing. And he might want more. So all these people, if you're struggling and you're thinking, I can't even imagine. I don't even have hope. I can't even see a better future. So what? It's not up to you to see what could be. It's up to you to do the work, to become someone new, to experiment and be a student of your own body, a student of your words, a student of your thoughts, a student of your actions, a student of the supplements and the medicines you take as you're going through these things, because that's where the wisdom is. And then yourself tomorrow, when they become you today, will have much more than you have.

Absolutely.

I couldn't agree more. You know, when we talk about breast cancer, we talk about it as being A normal response to an abnormal environment. And this is the body's kind of protective mechanism, if you will, in that there's a transformation of these cells. And the reason why the transformation is necessary is because the breast is one of the canaries in the coal mine. And the breast is a respite for all of these toxins that we take in every single day. And we live in a very toxic world. And we are not living on our grandmother's earth. We're not even living on our mother's earth. And the earth that we're living on today is fraught with toxins. And these are both things that you can see that are tangible. And there's so many intangibles. But the bottom line is that we need a way to clear out these toxins. And I know that that is a lot of what you talk about. So can you talk about your approach to detoxification?

Yeah, absolutely. And so the approach that I go to is just a very simple mechanic. How do things come out of the body? What are the. What are the pathways? And the kidneys, unless you're throwing something up, unless you're coughing something up, it's going through the kidneys, except the sweat glands. So how do we sweat? And is all sweat created equal? And so that's mainly what I'm researching, is utilizing the sweat systems and you activating different types of sweats, especially ones that are fat soluble. So some fats, when you have a fever, for example, your sweat is very milky, it's murky, there's a lot of fat in it because you're activating different sweat glands that are activated when you exercise or when you're in a traditional sauna where you're just getting hot and your body's saying, oh, no, it's hot, we have to cool the body down. It's activating your normal thermal sweat glands. But there are other sweat glands, the Ekan and Sebaceous, that produce fats. Now, a lot of these fatty, a lot of these heavy, a lot of the forever chemicals, a lot of the microplastics, a lot of the things inside us cannot pass through the system unless there's fat. You have fat soluble.

So xenoestrogens is. Is huge in that category. And xenoestrogens is one of the major, major causes of breast cancer. So that would definitely fall into that category. And we, we mostly see those as eliminated by the liver and through the stool. But I think what you're saying is that there's another avenue that's exactly right.

That's what I'm researching is sweat analysis and different means of doing that. And the reason why that matters so much to tie that into the start of this. The reality is, is that I started as a behavioral scientist. I started studying client compliance rates in the early 2000s. Curious about why is it that people finally get access to all this medical support, all this work, and they don't follow through. Absolutely mind boggling. But the reality is, is that when you don't feel well, it's really hard to do the right thing. It is so hard to do. And it's even harder to know what the right thing even is. I don't even know what the right thing is. You don't have the energy to do due diligence and to look through it. So it creates what's called solutions, dependence. Tell me what to do, doctor, tell me what to do. Infomercial, Tell me what to do. Salesperson. Just tell me what to do because I don't trust myself any longer. And then that also then creates the opposite side, which is solutions, resistance. Because we all know that the solution has to come from inside us. We have to own it. And so therefore the system now rejects the solution that you invested in, which will even save your life. It's very contradictory. This is why humans are very rationally irrational. And so the more that we can do to detox. That's how I got out of behavioral science and into biology and into physics was because realizing that if we just cleanse the body, we literally eliminate what I call garbage body syndrome. Ain't nobody playing at the dump. Nobody's playing having a picnic at the dump. If you just clear up the mess, we can really start to have the real conversations, start to have real fun, research the right stuff and deal with the real heavy issues that we can't even address because we're over here just bogged down with all this garbage.

Yeah.

So sweat.

So true.

And that little back there is, is a key.

But what are you gonna say?

I was just going to reiterate the fact that when you said, you know, it's nearly impossible to heal when you're suffering and when you're in pain. And most of us don't suffer from a lack of information. In fact, there may be too much information and many people are in information overload. We suffer from a lack of implementation. And I think a lot of it is that there aren't a lot of easy solutions out there and people just don't get into the habit and don't make things a priority that could really move the needle for them. So you pointed to something back there, and what is that something? And what, where does that fit in to detoxification?

Yeah. So that thing is why about two years ago I closed my private practice because I found this little tech here. It's, it's called the Relax Song. So you can see, so it just says relax on it. They call it a sauna. But since I met them, I'm actually, I now have this sauna, quote unquote, in schools, restaurants, lobbies, waiting rooms, psychotherapists, offices, places. You would never see a sauna because it's so powerful, it's so fast. There's no warmup time. You can literally sit down, zip up, and it's warm immediately. And we typically see within about four to seven minutes, we see 50 to 100% reduction in pain. People come in with headaches, migraines, joint pain, back pain, and 50 to 100% gone in 47 minutes. Long before sweating begins with their clothes on. This is how the company was selling their product at medical conferences, saying, look, doesn't it work fast? Wouldn't you like to use this as a sauna? It's the only sauna that doesn't have warm up time. Super powerful, deeper, faster sweat than anything else. I come along, I'm like, no, you don't understand. I'm a behavioral scientist. I've gotten so many people out of mental and behavioral health issues by teaching them how to regulate their nervous system, using their tongue, using vagal maneuvers, all these complicated things that people have to me a lot of money to find out that I don't have to teach them that if they can just sit down in here for five minutes on a regular basis, those issues just go away because they start feeling good on a regular basis. We are where we are because of bioplasticity. Not just neuroplasticity, but bioplasticity evolves, it changes. And so in the same way we got here, we can get out by just feeling a little better on a regular basis, oxygenating tissues, getting this. And so even though those little five minute sweat sessions, those middle sweat sessions, those little five minute sessions are sweat free, this thing, once you go 15, 20 minutes, you'll produce a deeper, faster sweat. And that was the first thing that I noted when I bought it a few years ago, is that the sweat that came out of it. I'm a student of my body. I'm again a neurobio plasticity coach. And so as such, I teach my Students, my clients, how to be students of their own bodies. And that includes being geeky and selecting my sweat, looking at it, taking pictures of it, pouring it out on some Pyrex, letting it dry, shaving it up, and looking at under a microscope. What is coming out of me just so I can see, tasting my tears to see. Can I test hormone profiles? I'm developing a portable tear analyzer so you can see. Oh look, happy tears. Oh, look, trauma tears. Oh, look. So doing the same thing with sweat. So this device, you can use it for five minutes with your clothes on in the middle of your day, you can pop in it for 20 minutes and get a sweat session as if you're in a normal sauna for an hour with less stress on your body, far more comfortable, far more relaxing. And then if you're a part of my users group, because I don't work with the company, they fund my research though, to be transparent.

Yeah, I wanted to talk about. You said you have them in schools and this kind of place, you have them there for the purposes of doing your research, not because you, you're a salesman for the Relax company, correct?

Yeah. So we're tracking blood pressure like in the schools are tracking. So that's what I'm researching is novel use of this and novel use of this device. Why this device? Why did I close my practice? Why did I get away from that? Because this is the only device I found in the world that is producing the exclusive band of infrared that Dr. Gin, you and I emit. This is the only thing, because what good is a tool but the hand of a master? So if you're not the hand of a master, you don't know how to use that tool. It's no tool solutions resistance. So it's not just the tool, it's how you use it. And so realizing that it's not just what you do, it's how you do it, you know, that's the, that's the reality of what I'm doing with this research and saying, okay, here's this tool. What, what is it? And what it is, is it's literally the same light that we emit. It took the company 10 years out of Taiwan. They produced a solid state semiconductor chip that's multinationally patented to produce again, just this narrow band of infrared. Now, you may not think about it when I say that humans are light beings. It's not a metaphysical statement as much as it is a raw physical statement that we emit photons, body heat, that we feel there is a photons that are coming out of us. That light is the same exact bandwidth of light that comes from the sun, that forms clouds. It interacts with water in just that way. So the sun is beautiful and brilliant and creates all these wonderful types of radiation. But it's this specific band for the geeks out there, it's between around, around 6 to 7 microns or 6,7000 nanometers, up to about 4,14,15,000 nanometers. That's the bandwidth that humans emit. It also happens to be the exact band from the sun that makes clouds possible. So if I'm going to advocate a tool for a tool, it's going to be the tool that gives us pure us. And that's why there's no warmup time. Because if any other sauna in the world, any other infrared therapy, red light therapy, you name it, tried giving you the amount of energy this is giving you, it would burn you. But this won't burn you because it's purely you. The frequency you emit, you can, you're perfectly absorbed. We can all hang out at a house party with people that are in our own same vibe. If none are not our vibe. Cool party, guys. Get out.

So you started to talk about that you see improvement from just five minutes a day. But what is ideal, especially for someone with a breast cancer diagnosis or a history of breast cancer, that they know that they've already had exceeded their body's ability to clear their toxic load? So what, what would be ideal in that instance.

Where somebody just knows that they, they have to cleanse? Is that right? To clarify the question, like where they're heavily laden? Yeah. The best thing you could do in that instance would be first and foremost, understand that much of injury is both the perception to the pain as much as it is the trauma of the thing causing the pain. So first things first, forgive yourself for going through this and just accept where you're at and don't react to the pain because you're going to make the inflammation worse. That's first, second, you're using this device. This device helps just relax you to make that more possible. If you're like Ryan, I understand that, I get it, I do all the mindset stuff, but it's just not sinking into my body. This is, that's going to do that for you with these little five minute sessions. So one, I would recommend five minute sessions on a regular basis for mindset nervous system calming. Along with that, I would recommend I, I call it start mild and grow wild. So start off with doing just some 15 minute sessions, 20 minute sessions, work your way up to 30. Because by the time you're in this thing for 30 minutes, the effect gets more and more intense over time. So by the time you're in there for 30 minutes, you're huffing and panting. It's a full blown exercise with medic. That's one of the other areas that I researched, I'm doing research on, is how does the effect change over time? So yes, in schools I'm testing short form sessions, in restaurants, I'm testing digestive metrics in psychotherapists offices, you know, metrics in, you know, their scores of their clients, how honest are they with themselves, things like that. But in this case, we're studying deep physiological responses and we found that 30 minutes in here is basically the equivalent of a three mile jog. So you can go sitting here for 25, 30 minutes and get the same physiological response as if you just went jogging for three miles. So.

Okay, so I just, I just want to say, however, for all my breast cancer people and breast health people that are out there listening, this is not a substitute for your exercise. This is an end, right? This is, you make that exercise even more meaningful. And this is another component that is easy to achieve.

Right?

I mean, you know, the heart, the.

Hard work you did already when you.

Went for that three mile run, this is your reward. And then it makes everything that you did before just exponentially better. Can you go through?

You can do it beforehand too. Do a little 10 minute warmup. You're going to hit your runners high so much faster. You warm up for 10 minutes in here before you go out for a jog, you're going to feel amazing coming out the door, hitting the track, running your body already.

Maybe, maybe a normal person would, I mean running is like the worst torture in the world for me. But let, let's say before I get on the tennis court. So I, I do want, I would love it if you would just run through though the benefits of infrared sauna because we, we talk about infrared sauna a lot in the breast cancer space, in the cancer space in general because it does have a lot of known benefits. So I would love it if you would just list them so that people know. And then we're going to give people an opportunity to get one of these, these because I'm doing a little holiday, my, my favorite wellness things promotion and this is amongst them.

Yeah, and we can circle back on this. I just, I'm, I'm working on, we're doing some major Revisions now that I got it to a new mentor. But I have a 27,000 word document on this particular product in cancer and utilization. There there are a number of oncologists who utilize this for their hyperthermia treatments. Whereas they can't use other saunas because the amount of stress that they put on the body to get the temperature higher is too much. This raises your core temperature in a way that's very relaxed.

Maybe I would love to be able to link to that so that people who want to take the time and read that can, can take the time and read it.

Yeah. And I can even I have a smaller version like abstract that I'm coming up with that's not so technical in the physics of it because I get really big into the atomic, molecular, optical by the physics of it, of how this is working on a molecular that.

Might be a little scary for my, for my people.

I'll create some.

Let's just, let's give like a 30,000 foot view.

Yeah. So here's the, the what this does the benefits of this. Think of all the benefits you can find for sauna and then we're going to add benefits on top of that. The benefits for sauna in general are, are reduced. All cause mortality. If you, if you sauna on a regular basis. There are a number of studies who've proven how if you sauna on a regular basis that the all cause mortality, all cause any reason you might possibly die will be reduced through regular sauna use.

Yeah, it's really amazing.

Then when we add an infrared. Now those who are dealing with breast cancer, they typically can't handle, you know, handling high heat stress isn't necessarily good. You can, you can activate too many heat shocks, proteins in the wrong way that you know, so going into a high, high heat sauna may not necessarily be as advisable as something that's lower temperature but still gets your body moving, gets the oxygenation, gets these things going. That's what infrared saunas tend to do. So infrared saunas allow you to get the sauna benefits without as much heat stress on the bodies. Different effect then. Now once we move to this sauna, we're taking that to the next level and we're saying this is going deeper into the body. This is going, this wavelength is longer. This organic infrared that we emit goes bone deep and then it resonates even further. So when you're sitting in here, the benefits from infrared you're going to get on your skin here, you're going to get it Everywhere and what those look like. The quick rundown is this relaxation reduces inflammation, increases mitochondrial production of ATP, so increases energy, reduces oxidative stress, allows for detoxification on a cellular level, allows for cellular hydration. This is key. You can be bloated, but be dehydrated. Why is that? Because your body can't utilize the water inside you. This is a water conditioner for the water in your body. So this actually hydrates you on a cellular level. It activates, you know, activates, helps with collagen production, helps with. With intracellular melatonin production. So you're going to sleep well, better. I could literally go on and on and on and on and on about all the things that it does, but someone's asking Ryan, how does it have all of these benefits? How does it do all these things? It's really just because of one simple reason. It's giving you more you. When your body has more of its own natural energy, its own natural infrared energy, the body does more of what it would naturally do. Shocker. There's the big scientific conclusion to all this research I've been doing for the past few years. If you give the body more of its own natural energy, it does more what it naturally do. And what it naturally does is amazing.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we are brilliant machines and we were designed perfectly, even though we're living in a very imperfect world. But ultimately our bodies know how to heal. We just need to give it what it needs and take away what it doesn't. We are brilliant, brilliant machines.

Everything else you do will be enhanced by this too. That's the other thing. The last thing real fast is just whatever else, because you mentioned bringing up exercise. This is an excuse not to exercise this. That's key thing that I'm researching is how this is a. As the ultimate adjunct therapy to everything else, whatever it else is that you're doing or you want to be doing, but you're not. This is the ultimate way to get better outcomes and results from what you do.

Absolutely. How do people go about getting one of these?

So there are simply go to the website. It's relax.com forward/R-E-N-N. If you type in the code Dr. Jen as well, there's a room for a coupon code. Type that in a checkout. That'll give you an extra discount of, you know, for a limited time, there'll be a little bit more of a discount. So go there, you'll get at least a hundred dollars off you. Make it a little More if you rush. So that'll get $100 off. Now that brings the price down to only for the rest of the year. Their prices are going up by 200 after January 1st through the rest of the year. Price on this one is normally 2100. So you get this one for 2000. There is a Silver Edition. This is the pro model. There's Silver Edition is. Starts at 1500. So with your code, they're guaranteed to get at least $100 off.

Yeah.

And the difference between the two is that they have the same generators. The black tent just has a thicker fabric, so it gets a little hotter, a little faster. That's why we call it the pro model. People who are very sensitive. So it's a 600 difference, you know? You know, so if 600 is a big difference to you, you're not losing anything by having the silver one. So the vast majority of people buy. We have. I think they have, like, less than a 1% return rate. People just don't return it. So even though there is a money back guarantee, just try it, use it. If you sign up, you know, when you order, you can email me. Ryan, relax, saunas. Tell me you ordered. I'll get you into our private members group, and I'll show you how to go deeper with this, and I'll get you access to all kinds of other research and support to help you through your journey.

Amazing. Ryan, thank you so much for your time today, for sharing your story, for your vulnerability, and for educating us on another great way to further our health. Because at the end of the day, no one can make you healthy but you. And you essentially just need the right tools, and this is one of them.

So. And to get back to play, because what's the point of healing, but to get back to play. So what is the path to healing? You know? So think of it that way. This is my little play today. I get to come in here for five minutes here, do this there, go longer, go deep sessions. So that way I can come out and just start a little be. Bring a little more playfulness to life. Because when we have that playfulness, it's very real medicine and it's very real growth for our brains, because the brain is a muscle like any other. If you don't use it, you lose it. And playfulness is how we utilize and grow all that goodness. And besides, it's just a lot of fun.

Amen. Amen. All right, wishing everyone a really happy holiday season, and I will see you next week. So same time, same place. It's Dr. Jen. Bye for now. Thank you for joining me on this.

Episode of the Keeping a breast podcast with Dr. Jen. I hope you found the discussion informative and empowering. Remember, breast health is health, so by staying informed and taking proactive steps you have the power to optimize your well being. My team and I encourage you to apply the knowledge gained from today's episode to make positive changes in your life and share what you've learned with others. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review. Your feedback and support mean the world to us and help us to reach more people who can benefit from these conversations. Stay connected with me on social media where I share additional resources, advice, updates and announcements related to breast health. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Dr. Jensimmons and remember, my Jen has two N's, so until next time, remember to stay proactive, informed and confident in your breast health journey. The key to your health is you.