96: What They Never Told You About Mammograms & the Safer Option You Need to Know with Dr. Klock

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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.

So, as many of you know, I went on a not chosen health journey that started about eight years ago when it started with my own diagnosis and my own healing journey and my own start of looking for truth, for answers and to really ask the questions, are we doing things the right way in our system? And what I learned really shocked me. And although my journey of healing has not been easy, it has been tremendously mean, meaningful and rewarding. And one of the most rewarding parts of my journey, which I am really just in the infancy of and embarking on, is having the privilege of meeting Dr. John Klock. So Dr. John Klock is a genius, an inventor, a physician, a healer.

A.

Beacon of society, a philanthropist, a farmer, a chef. You're a lot of things, Dr. Klock. And I have learned so much from you and you have shaped what is going to be the rest of my life and the rest of my professional career. And you're really an amazing man who I want people to know you and to know your story because it's a really important one to tell. So, you know, start us off a little bit. First of all, welcome. I'm so delighted to have you here at Perfection Imaging and to be able to showcase what I have done with your technology. But I'd like you to start off by telling people how you got involved in this world. I mean, you started off as a medical oncologist, but you really were an inventor at heart from a very early age.

Well, thank you, Jen. It's nice to be here. I don't like to be the focus of anything.

I know you don't.

The first thing I will say is that there's so many people that I have worked with over the last 40 years of developing medical companies, so many people that have really come alongside and I just don't want to take credit too much credit for this because, you know, working with smart people is very important. And so I just want to make sure that people understand that this is not all about me.

Right.

It's all about a group of people. So.

And even at this stage, it takes.

A village, takes a lot of people. And I'll come to some of those, hopefully won't be able to leave anybody out. But it all started when I left the University of California to start medical companies a long time ago. We're talking 50 years now. So some of the first biotechnology companies started in the San Francisco Bay area. I was involved with, got to meet some really great people and I also got to understand how important the business side of things, the investment side, the, you know, people that want to build companies, how important they are and what is happening here at Perfection Imaging. So I would say I've always been involved in developing and helping to develop disruptive technologies, which are hard because people don't like disruption.

No, they don't.

I've been focused on women and children that whole time, including rare disease companies and radiology companies. So I think that this particular thing is really my last company. I think I've been working on it for more than 15 years. And the reason I've been working so long and put so much of my time and energy into it is that this is really important. 75% of the people in the world have no medical imaging. The imaging that's available is fairly expensive and only really, you know, possible in high end companies and high end facilities. Just to give you an example, the Mayo Clinic has more MRI scanners than the entire country of Canada.

Oh my God, is that true?

And you know, all of this technology is focused on these high end hospital systems. So this technology, which is an imaging technology, not just a breast imaging technology, but this will image bones and joints and whole bodies of newborn Creatures and really was developed because it's important to move imaging ahead. Just to give you some validation. The National Cancer institute gave us $20 million to develop this. So they felt it was important. This is not my personal idea. It came out of oil exploration technology. And without going into any kind of technical depth, the Image Quality is 40 times that of the best MRI in the world. It's 20 times better than X ray or mammography. And it's inexpensive and totally 100 safe. So this is what attracted me to this whole technology. And I think that, you know, it's important to understand that it took a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of energy and a lot of people to bring this forward. And the real joy for me right now is that we have a company called Canon Medical Imaging, or Canon. You know, it's a. It's a very important Japanese company, and they are taking a serious look at helping to sell this on a much broader basis. So that's a great validation for what we're doing. And it was really the purpose of my dream, because to get this to people, to women around this country and to women around the world requires a lot of help, a lot of help from companies like Canon. So. So that's the history of it, and I was very, very happy about it.

So just diving a little deeper because you said that it really wasn't your idea to start this and to kind of fulfill this need. Why did the NIH come to you? What was their goal?

Well, the gentleman at the NIH who directed all medical imaging at the National Cancer Institute, his wife had breast cancer. He also was the chief technical person for Alan Carmack at MIT who developed the CT scanner. So he saw very early on that this technology could actually replace something that he'd helped invent. And I think that, you know, just to be not sour grapes, but just to let you know that we applied for grants for the National Cancer Institute many times. Those grants were all rejected by academic people. And this gentleman, whose name was Houston Baker, he would sort of remove those grants from the rejection pile and move it into the acceptance pile. So really, it's Houston's energy and enthusiasm and really perception about what this could do that enabled this technology to be developed. So we're very grateful to him and to the National Cancer Institute.

And what was the goal from the onset?

Well, I think that it's hard to talk about this without sounding negative or sounding critical, but medical imaging is not safe. Recent study was just published a couple of weeks ago by the University of California showing that CT scans imaging cause 5% of all the cancers in the United States. A study done of hundreds of thousands of children in England showing the CT scans in small children and infants also increase the risk of cancer. I mean, their radiation involved in these and there's chemicals involved in these. So inherently, although the medical imaging is wonderful and it saves lives and it helps people and all the rest of that, it can be improved. And it's like all technology, it, you know, it will be improved. And so this is part of just the evolutionary process of seeing modern computers and software. And I like to say that, you know, this is a miracle in the sense that we use sound energy just above the spoken word to do these images. We do not use radiation or chemicals or you know, positrons or, you know, X rays or anything like that. So this is really revolutionary. So it's inherently safe and it's inherently, you know, many, many times more accurate in addition to being safe than conventional imaging. So I do think that, you know, the people that asked me to do this were not just the National Cancer Institute, but they were people involved in, you know, developing the first MRI systems and the first CT system. So these were smart people that, that knew the future was going to be in ultrasound. And I think Canon also realizes this. And you know, the people that are involved in that and involved in Canon ultrasound are brilliant people and they see it also. So it will take a while obviously, but right now women can, you know, access this and take advantage of it. And so in spite of the fact that there are a lot of people that don't understand it or maybe don't even like the idea of something replacing the current breast imaging system. So I think it will happen and I won't go through the other things I have developed, but pretty much everything I've developed has been disruptive and people don't like it. So it has taken a while for those things to come across and be accepted. But they are eventually all accepted.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just going to mention because I think it's important that you invented the cardiac calcium score, which is a very relied on technology today to predict who is and is not at risk for a cardiovascular event. You invented the virtual colonoscopy. I mean, these are not small things.

I have to be careful. I'm going to interrupt you here.

Correct me.

As I mentioned, there are plenty of smart people that I joined to do to be involved in these things. So I really helped start a company called Accu Image Corporation with people Like Douglas Boyd and Alex Margulis from University of California and so forth. That worked. I worked with them to develop these things.

Involved. You didn't do it alone.

Exactly. So I was involved.

Fair enough.

And having been involved in the company and being director of research for those companies, I was definitely involved in developing it. So I just, I think you have to be careful. I don't want this to come across like, you know, I'm sort of some sort of a.

Fair enough.

Some sort of a person that does these things. But I think you're correct and that these were things that were developed that were not very much appreciated or liked. They were rejected by the establishment and you know, the CT angiograms of the heart and all, all these things were rejected. It took really, it took until last year for the Medicare to finally reimburse for it and so forth. So it took about 20 years. So I do think that, you know, this technology we're talking about that you have here, it will take a while for it to be accepted, but I think it will be because it's the right thing to do. And it's, it's a super high effective, high resolution imaging system.

Yeah. So backing up a little bit because there is a lot of criticism always for something that's new and QT is no exception. So part of the criticism starts off with what we were talking about before where there is a pervasive message that the imaging that we're doing now is effective and safe. And you know, not to call out mammogram and not to call out mri. But there is, there is a message that is being repeatedly told over and over again that mammograms do not emit enough radiation to harm the breast and that mammograms are perfectly safe. And it is perfectly safe to screen a woman with mammogram over her lifetime at. And that mammograms are highly effective. So how, how do you respond to that?

Well, first of all, you know, there's always controversy in medicine. Medicine is also a business that's affected by economics. You know, I think that medicine is a business now. It's not like it used to be. So all these factors come into play in terms of the narrative. And it is important to make sure that people don't neglect to get medical care or medical imaging just because it's a risk. But I think people need to know what their risk is. So there is a very real risk of radiation in a radiation sensitive tissue like the human breast. There are lots of other Things that affect the development of breast cancer, as you well know. I would say that our goal has been simply to develop an imaging system or an imaging method that is more accurate than the current 1 and 100% safe. So we've done that. And women will still be asked to get mammograms by their doctors and so forth, which is fine, but this is an alternative. And you know, a lot of women opt out of the mammogram for reasons that I won't go into. You can ask those women why they are opting out, but it's a large percentage.

It's 35% of the screening population are OPS out.

Correct. So it's better for them to get something like the Perfection Image Ink system. If they're not going to get a mammogram, at least they can get some screening. So I, I'd like to make sure that I'm not, as you mentioned earlier, trying to disparage any particular medical technology and what people are trying to do. But if women want to have a completely safe, FDA cleared, effective breast imaging system and not have a mammogram, this is an alternative for them.

Another one of the criticisms, and I appreciate you saying that, because even if we did nothing more than appeal to the women who are not using mammogram for whatever the reason, for those women who have opted out of that part of screening, we can offer them an alternative which is 100% safe.

Well, we've gone to great lengths and spent many, many millions of dollars doing direct what I call blinded clinical trials, testing perfection imaging against digital mammography, digital breast homosynthesis, mri. And you know, we did that so that we could be completely confident in recommending this as an alternative to women. So we're not recommending something that's less effective than mammography, handheld ultrasound or mri. Actually it's better. And we have proven that with tests. So I don't think I need to defend it in the sense of not having objective blinded clinical trials. We've done those things. So I think women can, you know, they can have, the mammogram is fine, but they can have an alternative that's also safe and effective.

Yeah, and in the spirit of what you've been talking about from the beginning, those clinical trials were done with QT imaging before I was even involved or in the picture. So those, those blinded trials and head to head trials where you were actually doing the QT imaging at the same time that you were doing mammograms at the same time that you were doing MRIs and I'm assuming ultrasounds.

Yes.

And just looking at the, the raw data of what picked everything up and ultimately QT was the same or better than any of the other technologies.

That's especially true for women with dense breasts, which is about half of women. So, you know, I think we've been in front of the fda, we've explained what we're doing and you know, they've given us clearance. It's a broad clearance, it's not restricted. And you know, I think we're still doing clinical trials right now at major universities in the world. So the data will keep coming. I think it'll be very positive. And I think we, you know, we'll get more and more data. And it's like all these other things that I've worked with before. It will eventually, you know, the clinical evidence will become overwhelming and I think people will slowly adopt it. And I think that, you know, one of my dreams is to do an infant scanner, a body scanner for infants. And you know, there is nothing out there safe for newborns. I mean, you're not going to put your newborn in an MRI unit and inject that newborn with gadolinium. I mean, it's just, it's, it's really not good for them. So, you know, this will come, this will come. But it's hard if you're a pioneer, as you know.

Yeah, it is. And again, I think that people have a lot of fear for what they don't know and what they don't understand. And of course, when they have fear, they generally respond with criticism. And because this is a new and novel technology and because of the way that it was named QT ultrasound, and because it uses sound wave technology, I think a lot of people are confusing it with what they know and understand ultrasound technology to be. So one of the major criticisms by physicians or providers in general that don't want to adopt this is that it can't do what everything else does. Right. Like, one of the arguments I hear all of the time is when, well, how do you detect calcifications?

Well, first of all, I think people, without getting into too much technical stuff, but if you're a physician and you're listening or watching this, this is transmitted ultrasound. So this is totally different than every other type of sound based imaging. And number two, it acquires or gathers 200,000 times more data than a mammogram or an MRI. So it's extremely accurate and it does hundreds of thousands of times more calculations from many More angles than any other type of imaging. That's what makes it high resolution, and that's what makes it able to see things like calcifications and other things that cannot be seen by any other imaging modality, period. We're talking about the ability to see things that are 50 to 100 microns. That's the size of a human hair. You know, you cannot see that with any other type of imaging technology. So I think that technically it's, it's really special. And if anybody takes the time, especially if they're a physician or scientist person, to really examine what it is and what it's doing, this is unique.

Now, you and I have had multiple conversations about. Mr. And our criticisms of. Mr. And a lot of our criticisms besides the toxicity of gadolinium, which is inarguable. But beyond that, Mr. Has a lot of false positives. And some people's concern with QT is this just going to lead to more false positives. So how do you respond to that? Because you and I do share a similar goal in that we don't want people unnecessarily biopsied, we don't want them unnecessarily diagnosed, and we don't want them unnecessarily treated.

Well, I think that the first thing I would say about MRIs, it's not anatomical imaging. The contrast is very low or very poor, which is why they have to inject a contrast medium called gadolinium, which is a heavy metal. And that contrast injection actually shows something else. It shows the blood vessels, it shows the circulation.

Yes.

It shows the uptake and the washout of that gadolinium in a woman's breast. Yeah.

So it's primarily a physiologic test more than an anatomical one.

So I think because of that, not that it isn't accurate, it's highly sensitive. The problem is it's too sensitive. So it picks up a lot of things that are not abnormal. It picks up benign masses. It picks up, you know, normal tissue. It picks up a lot of things. And the false positive rates are high, meaning they're over 50%. So more than half of the findings. So if you have an MRI and you're a woman and you say, oh, well, you have a finding here, you have a spot here, or you have a focus here, you know, more than 50% chance that that's nothing, but for that woman, it may require a biopsy. The biopsies have to be done also with another mri usually. And, you know, they take a long time, they're painful, they're expensive and so forth. So, yes, and I think one of the things that the FDA has asked us to do is try to reduce the callbacks and reduce the false positives. And we have shown that in clinical trials, in head to head clinical trials. So I do think that we're trying to improve the quality of medical imaging. And so one of the things that people need to understand, if they're going to have things like MRI done, they have to understand what the false negatives and what the false positives are, what their risks are, and they need to make their decision.

Yeah, and I don't think there's a lot of informed decision making going on right now because I don't think people are truly given the information. And I think that the reason for that is twofold. First, I think there are a lot of physicians and providers who remain unaware of both the risks of the inherent risks of the test, mammogram and MRI alike in mammograms, mammogram with radiation and lifetime radiation exposure, and with Mr. The gadolinium. But beyond that, I think that there's also very little insight into what the real sensitivity and specificity of each of these tests are. And I can tell you, as someone who sat on the other side of this for many years, as you did, I mean, there, there are mastectomy is performed based on the outcome of an mri. And when that pathology report comes back and doesn't have any evidence of disease on it, you want to die a thousand deaths for that patient. And this is not uncommon where people are having more surgery than they need or surgery at all for benign changes in the breast.

Well, I think that, I'll say it again. Medicine today is different than medicine, you know, 20 years ago, and there is a lot of technology, there's a lot of newer treatments out there, but there also are, you know, situations where, you know, if you're a patient, you know, and you're ill or you're told you might have something, it's a frightening thing. So, you know, even though at that point, as a patient or a potential patient, I hate to say it, but people need to be educated. They need to understand what they're agreeing to understand what they're going through. And it's a lot of information is available and a lot of it's not true. A lot of it's true, but so navigating that whole thing. But I do think that if a woman takes the time to understand what she's being asked to do and understand what her options are and to really get educated, then she will make a better decision. So that's the only thing I'm asking. So that there are many women who have breast conditions that are not going to hurt them. I mean, there are even cancers that don't hurt you. 15% of women at autopsy have breast cancer that never would have hurt them. Right. And I'm a cancer specialist and I can tell you there's only two kinds of cancer. The kind that hurts you or kills you and the kind that doesn't. And we need to stop treating the kinds of cancer that don't hurt you. We need to stop treating prostate cancer in older men, for instance, who will never die of it. And you know, a huge percentage of men at autopsy have prostate cancer. Something like 80% more or more. Yeah. So people don't understand that about cancer. It's not a death sentence. Most women with breast cancer will survive, as you know.

Yes.

And most women will do very well. So it's not a death sentence. But understanding that is very important so that you as a woman, if you do have breast cancer or if you have had breast cancer, that you really understand what's going to happen to you. And, and that, you know, we have a. There's a very high survival rate and you know what the numbers are. I'm not going to mention them here on the, on the podcast. But you know, breast cancer will be cured, I think in the very near future because there's so many good treatments coming along and so many good non chemotherapy types of treatments and immune therapy and oncogene treatments, anti oncogene drug. So it's happening, it's going to happen. So women should be optimistic if they're in the concern about their breast health. And I think part of what you're trying to do here and what perfection imaging is trying to do is to help women journey in that direction so that, you know, people can be healthy and they don't have to have the same kinds of treatments that they used to. To have.

Yeah.

Because things are changing.

Yeah, I agree with you. And at the same time, we are not in any way saying that cancer isn't a horrible disease, because it certainly can be. And we are not in any way saying that no one dies of breast cancer or prostate cancer. Of course they do. But fortunately it's the minority and the majority of people can and will be cured that disease.

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So I want to continue to kind of dispel some of the negative narrative around qt, because every day there's more and more. As I gain more stronghold, I tend to collect more critics. So I read on my Instagram page a couple of days ago that one of the criticisms was, well, it's FDA cleared but not FDA approved. There's a big difference. Can you clarify what that difference is?

That's a misconception and a misstatement. The FDA uses the word approve for drugs. Only drugs.

Yes.

They use the word cleared, which is cleared for marketing for devices.

Yes.

So, you know, just so that everybody here knows, almost all medical imaging is done with an FDA clearance off label. In other words, if you have a CT scanner or an MRI scanner, you can use it for whatever you want. It's cleared as safe. Well, it's the same with perfection imaging. It has the same clearance that all these other devices have. In fact, it has five FDA clearances. And, you know, the FDA clearance says it is cleared to create transmission and reflection images of the human breast, period. That's its clearance. There's no restrictions. They say in the second sentence, it's not intended to replace the mammogram, but that doesn't mean it can't be done that way. It's up to the woman to decide if she wants to have a mammogram or not. But it's not restricted. It's 100 safe. It's much safer than a mammogram. I don't think anybody would argue that it's not safer. I mean, for heaven's sakes. Yeah, there's no radiation. It's certainly safer than mri. There's no injection. So why would someone object to something that's 100% safe? And to say that it's cleared but not approved is totally erroneous. There is no medical device that's approved.

Right. Exactly. Now, I want to get back to the statement that says that it's not intended to replace a mammogram. Can you just say more about that? Because that is another sticking point that is coming from the anti QT narrative.

I think people need to understand that mammography was never cleared by the FDA in the formal sense, that it went through a trial or it went through a testing period. My personal opinion is it would not be cleared or for use today based upon the fact that it misses so many cancers, especially in dense breast. So I think people, people need to understand that it's being. What you're doing here is being compared to something that was never put through a clinical trial in the sense that other things like QT scanner were put through a clinical trial. Number two, I think that the FDA recognizes that mammography is a, you know, it's a standard, It's a community standard. It's a community approved way to screen, you know, and I think without saying anything specific, I think, you know, there are a lot of countries that don't do mammography. Why don't they do mammography? Because the clinical trials and their interpretation don't alter survival. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, that breast cancer shouldn't be diagnosed and treated. Of course it should be. And that's how we get the high survival race. Right? So. But I think that it's important for people to understand that mammography is not universally worldwide accepted as, you know, a community standard. It's accepted here. And so, you know, it is what doctors say is what doctors think. But I think a woman has the right and the hopefully knows how to find out what mammography actually does and what the statistics actually show. So without getting into it at all, I think that again, that's part of what my recommendation is that women should be doing is they should be trying to figure out what, what do I need for me, what is my risk? What is my family history, what is my environmental risk? As you know, in your book, you talked about a lot of the environmental factors that affect the development of breast cancer. Women need to know that. And if they're doing things in their lives that are increasing their risk of breast cancer, that's something that they should also be.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I have said repeatedly at the American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine, where I spoke in December in Las Vegas, which is a conference for about 7,000 practitioners, mostly holistic practitioners like myself. And this year's focus was on metabolic health. And I actually spoke about metabolic health and breast cancer risk. And I have said repeatedly, if we would look for and test for metabolic health and actually promote metabolic health with the same intensity and resources that we do breast cancer, we would be a lot better off. Because quite frankly, breast cancer is a metabolic disease. And if we worked harder at correcting our metabolic health and establishing and promoting our metabolic health, the incidence of breast cancer would fall dramatically.

Well, there's another brilliant breast surgeon. You are a brilliant breast surgeon. And her name was Dr. Susan Love. She's a dear woman. She's expired. She died of cancer last year. But she was in charge of breast surgery at one of the Harvard hospitals. And breasts very Very capable. She spent her whole life, as you did, treating women with breast cancer surgically. And she realized exactly what you're saying, that there's something going on in women's metabolic health that's causing breast cancer. Just to give you an example, she put on a conference every other year at UCLA where she worked, was head of breast surgery also. And she showed me at this conference ten test tubes, little test tubes and a little rack. And what she did was she took breast fluid from women. You can express breast fluid in every woman. And she put them 10 different test tubes from 10 different women. And believe it or not, each of those test tubes had a different color. One was clear, one was yellow, one was green, one was brown, one was red, one was orange. And all of these colors reflected the metabolic state of that particular woman. What she did was she then analyzed why they were all these different colors. And of course she showed that there was microbiomes and chemicals. And if you're a woman and you're drinking alcohol, your breast fluid is going to be a darker color. If you smoke, your breastfeed is going to look terrible. If you take too many vitamins, which is not healthy for it, your breast fluid is going to be a funny color. So I think that also if you have a weird microbiome, you're so that convinced me of the physical evidence that the metabolic state of a woman's body is expressed in her breast fluid. So I think most women know that while you're nursing, if you're taking a drug or a chemical that's going to come out in that breast fluid and that baby's going to get it. That's why we tell women to be careful what they put into their bodies while they're nursing, because it's going to go into that child. So I think that's supporting what you're saying. And there's more research going on in this area. And I think as we do more research, more and more is coming out about how the metabolic state of a woman is affecting her risk for breast cancer. And I do think that, you know, having done this for 15 years now and seen over 25,000 women with the scan and watching them as they change their metabolic health. I have seen reversal of breast cancer, I've seen reversal of pre cancerous conditions. I've seen improvement in their, in their breast anatomy and their breast health. So I'm a believer that without knowing all the specifics of why, I believe that if women do alter their lifestyle, they can alter their breast breast health. And I wish I knew more and I wish I knew more precisely what's happening, but people are complicated. You know, their metabolism is related to their genes and what they're eating and what they're doing and their stress moving.

And they're sleeping and their exposures, all of it without question. But I think we are getting closer to answers and to be able to predict who, who might be at risk and who isn't. I mean, I know for me, of course I believe in QT technology, but for me it's just one piece of the picture. And you know, we're examining everyone that comes in for a scan and I also encourage people to do their own breast examination. But I, I'm also having everyone do the ARIA tears test because that is measuring for two inflammatory proteins, the S100A8 and S100A9 proteins, that, that when they reach a critical level, that person is at increased risk for breast cancer. It's not a breast cancer test, it's not diagnostic of breast cancer. But if you have a critically.

A.

Clinically relevant result, if you have a clinically positive result, that person is at risk for breast cancer.

One of the good things about the Perfection imaging system, it's not just a breast cancer detection system, it's a breath health test. So it's telling you the state of your ducts, it's telling you the state of your glands, it's telling you the state of your tissue through your menstrual cycle. We've done studies with this machine, over 450 women where we looked at them through their menstrual cycle and we were able to show how their breast anatomy and their breast health change through the cycle. And so if you're doing something in your life that's affecting your breast anatomy, we can see that. Now I can't necessarily tell you what that might be in your environment that's affecting your glandular health or your ductile health, but we can tell you if you have bad looking ducts, we can tell you if you have inflammation, for instance system, we can tell you this is calcification. We're 20 times more sensitive to calcium than the mammogram. So, and that calcium is reversible. So we have seen women who have this calcium and then it goes away. So we can prove that. And I would just have to say that as a, as a breast oncology physician and as a breast expert, I think that, you know, improving your breast anatomy and making all those things go away is good for you for sure, you know, because we know what the normal breast should look like. And most women do not have normal breast tissue. They have something going on in their, in their system that's related to our environment and our culture and stress and whatever. All the things that you talk about.

Yeah, well, and we know just statistically Speaking, less than 10% of Americans are metabolically sound. Less than 10%. So of course that's going to be reflected because you know, your breast isn't a separate part of you, it's a part of you. And so whatever is happening in your whole system is happening in your breast and vice versa. I want to talk a little bit about who is a good candidate for qt.

Well, I think again, everybody's different. So each woman has a bunch of things that are happening in her life, in her body. So you have a genetic background. So if you have women in your family tree that have breast cancer. Yeah, that's important. That means that there's some predisposing factor, some risk factor. Now most of these risk factors require not just the gene, but some environmental things. So for instance, we know that for colon cancer that if you have a certain gene and then you eat beef, especially barbecued beef, you're at high risk for getting breast colon cancer. So that's an example. The same kinds of things happens for, you know, prostate cancer and colon cancer and thyroid cancer and blood cancers and breast cancer. I mean, we're all have those risk factors. Second thing is that if you have a lifestyle that's not particularly good, and I think we all know what those things are, obesity is a big risk factor for breast cancer. So if you're a person who has, you know, that kind of anatomy, then you know you're making a lot of estrogen, you're making some other things, and depending on what you're eating, you could be stimulating your breast tissue. Certainly if you smoke, we know that's a risk factor for breast cancer. You get that black breast fluid I was telling you about. The same with alcohol, the same with certain other chemicals that you're putting into your system. Even things like vitamins and nutritional supplements, they're not necessarily healthy for you. So we do see very bad looking breast fluid for people that are taking too many supplements. So you know, you need to eat what you're supposed to eat in your body. You know, what is created a natural food source, a natural thing to put in your body. So I think people hopefully are becoming more aware of that.

And then of course there's the ELF diet.

Yes, the ELF diet. Friend of mine's a doctor. The ELF diet is eat less food. So certainly, you know, we are in a culture that's a food culture. And, you know, we're, you know, and.

We'Re eating too much, let's be honest. We all know that we're eating too much as a society, we're eating too much. And, and part of that is because we don't have enough nutrient in our food. And so we consume more in the attempt to get more nutrient and nourishment. But most people, the amount of food that they would need to eat, given the quality of the food that they are consuming, puts them in a tremendous calorie excess. Who is not a good candidate for qt?

Well, probably I didn't answer the question, but I think anybody who is concerned about their breast health is a candidate. The problem is, if you're not concerned about your breast health, then you're not thinking about it. So certainly, because this is a 100% safe test and because it doesn't need to be done every year like a mammogram, you can certainly get it done. When we develop other screening tests, things like the coronary calcium score and CT colonography and so forth and so on, we realize that after we scan tens of thousands of patients that these are good screening tests. They can pick up things early. Cancer doesn't develop overnight. It takes years. So you can pick these things up early. So we learned that, you know, for instance, if you can have a zero calcium score at the age of 50 and you have a zero calcium score at the Age of 60, you're probably not going to ever get a heart attack. I mean, that's good news. So you're spending a couple hundred dollars at the age of 50, 10 years later, a couple hundred dollars at the age of 60. That's good use of your money to show you that you're for sure really at low risk. So I think the same thing will happen with breast health. We don't have all those numbers yet, but I do think that if you have, you know, screening when you're young, if you're, if you're high risk in your 30s and you're okay, and you come back a few years later and you have another screening and you're also healthy, you, you don't have to have too many of those over your lifetime to show that you're healthy. And I think one of the real advantages of perfection imaging and the QT scan itself is it's very high resolution. We can see very small detail. So, you know, you don't need to be scanned every year, for one thing. And secondly, you know, this picks up very small things. And so serial imaging, you know, is going to be very, very good if you're at high risk. And we're certainly encouraging women who are at high risk. This is much better than mri. If you have to get gadolinium every year.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh, it's going to have some very serious health effects. I think we even know that now.

Yeah, and we're seeing that now.

And the same with, you know, with any type of radiation, whether it's, you know, mammography or anything else, if you have it. This is why you don't. You cannot get a mammogram usually before the age of 40, because they know, meaning the government and the medical people know that mammograms cause breast cancer. I mean, you can argue about the statistics, but we know that if you have that radiation every year for 30, 40 years, whatever, you know, you're putting yourself with a breast sensitive tissue, sensitive to radiation, at a higher risk than not having it at all. But having a test that has zero risk, you know, you could certainly be a lot more confident that, you know, you're not going to get harm from it.

Yeah, but there are some people who we've discussed who you don't recommend screening. So pregnant women.

Well, you gotta ask yourself, why don't the doctors want to recommend pregnant women? Well, because of the radiation, obviously. So.

Yeah. What about QT for pregnant women?

Oh, QT is perfectly safe for pregnant women. There's no radiation at all. Also, older women who, you know, who may have very slow growing cancers or something like that, you know, that will never hurt them. These are also women that don't need to be screened, although they can be screened. The problem is, what if you're an older woman in your late 70s or early 80s, and you have a cancer that's the size of a pea and it's not growing, it's not doing anything, it's just sitting there. Do you need a mastectomy? No, you don't need a mastectomy. I think now that we have technology that can find these really small cancers, one of the things we can do is look at the growth rate so we can tell a woman whether she has a stable cancer, it's just sitting there not doing anything, or it's growing very slowly, meaning it wouldn't develop anything for 10 years and she'll be dead in 10 years. So I think, you know, individual care and concern for the Patient is important. And so having good recommendation from people like yourself about who doesn't need to be screened, you know, but you know, in a, in a system where there's no risk whatsoever, it's hardly a concern, honestly. Then.

Yeah, but for the young woman, right. Like for you and I, it's a no brainer. When we see an 80 year old with a little cancer in her breast, we know we don't need to do anything about that. But what about for the woman who is 40 years old or 50 years old and comes in, she's asymptomatic, but you see a 5 millimeter nodule in her breast or a 6 or 7 meter nodule in her breast. What is your recommendation with those women?

Well, I think you have to understand that most women will survive breast cancer because, because when they find that lump, that 80 or 85% of the women that were, that it's just going to be that lump and not going to be anywhere else. Those are, the women will be cured with a lumpectomy or cryoablation, which is a needle injection or, you know, something like that. But don't forget there are two kinds of breast cancer. The kind that doesn't kill you and the kind that kills you. And unfortunately, there are some breast cancers that develop very early, that spread very early. And the problem with that is that mammography doesn't help.

No.

So if you have the kind of breast cancer that's already spread throughout your body, the mammogram and your lumpectomy isn't going to change your survival. You're going to die from that cancer.

So breast cancer is all about biology.

We need two things. First of all, we need a better test to differentiate those two kinds of cancers. So they are coming, those tests are coming where it's just a blood test. And that blood test can tell you is your breast cancer located just in your breast or is it located beyond your breasts? And this is why I think that lymph node sampling is so important. Sticking a needle in that lymph node or doing a little biopsy of that lymph node, that one sentinel node can tell you in that woman, is it spreading. And those women definitely need systemic chemotherapy or immunotherapy or whatever. They need a treatment for their whole body because that breast cancer has gone beyond her breasts. I think we can determine that now. And you know as a breast surgeon, that they're very, very good ways to comfort that woman, that she's going to be fine, that she has a high cure rate because it's only in her breast and it's small. So I think that it's possible, you know, with a thoughtful breast surgeon or a thoughtful doctor to work with women to get that information early and to avoid a lot of additional testing, a lot of additional expense, a lot of additional worry and concern if you have that localized breast cancer.

Yeah. But I. I do think that it's interesting because 80% of biopsies in this country are done for benign disease. So I do think it's an interesting facet of QT technology that you can bring people back in a short period of time and rescan them and actually measure the doubling time. And we can estimate who does and who does not need intervention. And it is not saying that we know this is definitely benign and this is definitely cancer, but. But we do know enough to know this is growing and this is not growing. Right.

Well, I think it is a standard of care in the community, even the mammogram community today, that if you have a stable, meaning an unchanging lump or image lump, I'm not saying, you know, a physical lump is different than a finding on a mammogram. A mammographic finding is just a shadow. So if you have a shadow and not a lump and that shadow is stable, I think it's perfectly acceptable to follow that over a period of time. And so even in the conventional breast imaging world, that's accepted. The nice thing about the QT scan is it's highly accurate, 99.8% accurate in terms of measurement and volume. So we can tell that woman in as little as eight weeks or nine weeks whether that's stable. And we can just say, well, let's keep following it. We're not going to biopsy. It's stable. And if it's stable over two years, I think every doctor would agree that that's something we should just look at and not biopsy. So we're not using it to diagnose cancer. We're using it just to determine whether your breast is stable, whether it's. This is who you are. You're normal, you're not changing. Let's just watch you.

Yes.

So we're getting close to time, and I just. I just want to ask, what is your vision for QT imaging, for the future, for perfection imaging? And what. What do you hope to see me do with this technology?

Well, again, I'm just without getting political, because this is highly political situation, and a lot of radiologists and doctors that are not familiar with it and so inherently they naturally have this knee jerk reaction that, well, it's not standard of care in the community yet, so be careful. So I would say that, you know, there are millions of women in the United States that need information on their breast health. And this is something that I think is just going to be a tremendous service by Perfection Imaging, because perfection imaging is more than just a place to come and have an image done. It's a place to come and get information. It's a place to come and get support. And I hope that that continues as you decide to open more centers. And so we're, we're here to help these women. I mean, we don't want to disrupt anybody or, you know, say bad things about anybody's doctor or anything like that. But if you're a woman and you want to know about your breast health, and you made the decision already not to have radiation, not to have the mammogram, whatever, then I think that's a tremendous service that you're providing for these women. And I think that having seen tens of thousands of women come through this and having good results and a great experience, because it is a, it is a good experience. It's much nicer experience than a mammogram or an mri. But I think that, you know, I think what you're doing will show itself for what it is. And I think what you're doing is helping women and encouraging women and educating women, and so what better thing could you do? And I think that, you know, having been a breast surgeon for almost 20 years at a major university and seeing everything that's gone on, I think you're in an ideal situation to, you know, to be someone to validate, you know, a newer way of doing things, a newer way of looking at breast health and breast anatomy. And, you know, God bless you. I just think that you're gonna do a great job.

Well, thank you. Thank you. And really, I will know that. I want you to know that my goal is to make you so proud of what. Of what I've done and really to just carry on your intention because you really just wanted to make this world a better, safer place and to end suffering in any way that you can. And you've done that throughout your life. You've made it your mission to do that with your work, with your philanthropy, with your home and personal life. I mean, you've really dedicated yourself to making life better. And I just hope to carry on your legacy.

Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Klock, and thank you all for joining us and I hope that this was meaningful to you and that you will share it with your friend and your mother and your neighbor and your cousin and your doctor so that we can all work cooperatively to make this world a better place. Because as Dr. Klock said, nothing is done alone. We all need each other. It takes a village. I will be back next week, same time, same 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 you to apply the knowledge gained from today's episode to make positive changes in your life and share what you've learned with others. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review. Your feedback and support mean the world to us and help us to reach more people who can benefit from these conversations. Stay connected with me on social media where I share additional resources, advice, updates and announcements related to breast health. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Dr. Jennsimmons and remember, my Jen has two N's so until next time, remember to stay proactive, informed and confident in your breast health journey. The key to your health is you.