98: The Power of Bio-Individuality in Healing with Teri Cochrane

Foreign.

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.

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So in the world of cancer, but actually in the world in general, what the functional medicine people like myself talk about is bio individuality and the fact that what's good for me is not good for you, what's good for you is not good for me. And having all of these general conversations and saying things like, well, this is how you should eat if you have breast cancer and you know, this is what you should do. And these are the supplements that you should take when you have breast cancer or any disease state is kind of contrary to that whole conversation and that whole dialogue about bio individuality. Because if we're all bio individual, but we all, we should all be eating in the same way and supplementing in the same way. It's contradictory. So I brought someone on to talk about that today because Tara Carrie Cochran is conquering that and she is talking about how it really is bio individual and that you need to do the investigation to know what's right for you. Because there are things that are right for you and are things that are wrong for you and even things that we think of as good for you may fall into they, they may be generally thought of as good, but they are not good for you. So first of all, Terri, welcome.

Thank you. So good to be with you and your audience.

I'm so delighted to have you here because this is a really important conversation to have because people are confused. People don't know what's good for them and what's bad for them. And they, they are following these general guidelines, but it doesn't apply to them. And you've kind of taken it to a whole new level. So first, I want you to start off by telling us about your background. How did you even get into this space where you understand what is good for people on an individual basis?

It's a long and a winding journey. And if you would have asked me over 20 years ago, would you be talking about this with Jen on her podcast today in May of 2025? I would have said, what? Who is what? What, what is functional medicine? And how do we even apply what I do to this world of bio individualized health? I was in institutional risk management, real estate. I ran a unit for Freddie Mac and their multifamily division. So I was a risk manager. I looked at the help, the portfolio of multifamily assets. Before then I'd been in bankruptcy and real estate on the institutional side. So I was all about managing risk and really getting into the core of the risk of the deal and how do we make a good outcome from something that may not be so good? And so with the birth of my son, my eldest, by the age of three, he was born prematurely, but the first year was okay. But by the age of three, we were told to expect brain seizures. He wasn't walking, he wasn't talking, he didn't. He had the bone density of an 18 month old and he was falling off the cliff. So we live in the metro Washington, D.C. area. A lot of great access to amazing hospitals, children's. We've got Georgetown. We have tremendously trained minds in the world of medicine, yet they couldn't figure out why my son was sicker and sicker. He had life threatening asthma as well. So by the age of five, I decided, well, this isn't working and he's only getting sicker. And I created myself an environment to have a night job, which is why is this happening to his body? And this is before Internet, before Google. I actually started looking at children, interviewing parents of the children. Were they thriving throughout the course of their preschool and kindergarten, were they not? Tremendous amount of research in libraries, interviewed so many doctors in every kind of space, allergic space, pediatric space, even Went to in terms of endocrinology, but I wasn't getting the right answer. So I really just dug in. And I'm a pattern recognizer and I started recognizing the patterns. And this one book, you have that tipping point, the Malcolm Gladwell tipping point philosophy. And this book was my tipping point. It was childhood allergies and the asthma connection, and it was just, whoa. It was all an immune response. And within four days of eliminating certain foods, peanuts, citrus, gluten and milk, he started breathing. And so I knew I was onto something. And that was the catalyzer for what became my side job during my day job, which a lot of my colleagues would come in and ask me, not the risk of the deal, but the risk of their child or their husband or their friend. And so I made a decision after 20, 20 years in that career to step away and start down a path that was unchartered and clearly uneducated. But I went and went back to school, studied many modalities.

Yeah. So it's really interesting because you went back to school to study something that really wasn't so available in school. I mean, how did you educate yourself? Because you were really talking about things that other people were not talking about. They're still not talk about that. There's still a lack of connection between autoimmune disease, between actual function functionality and what people are putting in, on and around them. Like, there's still a complete disconnect in conventional medicine.

I. I agree with you. And I had the, I guess the guidance. You think something greater is breathing through you. I felt like I was being guided and I. I was lucky enough to learn under Joe Pizzorno, the father of natural medicine, and then actually became a colleague of mine on a. On a project that we worked on together. And then Dr. Jeff Bland. So they created that foundational underpinning for me, kind of the guardrails for what is the body looking like Then I studied. I actually studied under shamans. I studied cranial sacral, I studied herbalism, clearly nutrition, but it still wasn't enough. So, Jen, I just kept studying outside the walls of academia.

And that's really what you have to do, unfortunately. Because inside of the walls of academia, there's a lot of ignorance that is pervasive and is clutching to what they had. Because as I'm sure you learned, when you figure out what is robbing you of your health, you are no longer reliant on pharmaceuticals.

Very true. And so there's a big, energetic push to stay with the standard of Care and science, we now know, is very iterative. Every day I learn something from my clients. We use applied kinesiology under modality that I've developed and it's very granular. We call it MRI in the wild. And real time body intelligence, it's giving us this real time body intelligence that gets to high granularity. Now we also do epigenetic analysis and we look at all sorts of lab work and so forth. So it is one of the really big aspects that I look at is what is your body telling us? And energy is where we are. That's how we sit. We know that we have a biofield around us. That's why they're able to measure our heart and our brain. It's, it's, it's electronic waves. And so that's what we are. We are an energetic being. And so the future of one of the portals of medicine is understanding what is the body telling us energetically. And so that's been a, a real tenet of the Cochrane method is what's the body saying and what are the hierarchy of needs within that specific feedback loop?

So we started off this conversation by saying that, you know, it is kind of ridiculous that in the world of cancer, specifically breast cancer, we talk about all of them should eat in a certain way and all of them should supplement in a certain way. In your opinion, what's wrong with that approach?

Well, the first approach is that if you're actually doing chemo, it depletes protein stores and so they tell you to eat a high protein diet. Well, in the world of the autoimmune world and the world of the pandemic, we know that viruses are being reactivated which actually feed on truncated protein structures from our food supply. And so then the wrong kind of protein can actually feed some of the growth in the cells that we don't want. And so we are very intentional around what are the right types of proteins and what are the right types of proteins for you? And I developed the wildatarian diet actually from an end stage cancer client that came to me after he was given his last rights with end stage amyloidosis, which was a rare form of cancer. And chemo put him into congestive heart and kidney failure several rounds. So he was told to go home and transition. And they found me. And when I started doing the research, what are these? What are these amyloids? This was about 12 years ago and I thought, oh my gosh, I had an NIH expatriate at the time that was working with me. An NIH researcher and I asked her to go find out about amyloids. And we found they were coming from the food supply and he was being given a high protein diet to manage his tough chemo. And the amyloids are measured by light chains in the blood supply. And within three months, Glenn had normalized light chains and he was able to then restart a chemo on a very. We worked very collaboratively with the oncologist. And Glenn, who was 44 at the time, is now living in California, having a great life. And so I knew I was onto something when we really looked at the amyloid burden. And he was told to eat certain things and a lot of fermented foods as well. And in his case, he'd had some history of bacteria and strep and Candida. And those are cell proliferators. And especially when we look at cancer and estrogen, which is such a cell proliferator, even whether or not you have breast cancer. But estrogen becomes a really big player. Estrogen builds cells. Candida increases the estrogen response. So if you're eating a lot of fermented foods, because Candida feeds on fermented foods, then that's a problem. Also. What's very interesting is they're told, they're. You're being told to take a lot of probiotics because it's going to be really hard on your gut. We have to be very intentional about those probiotics because probiotics tend to be high histamine and high histamine increases the estrogen burden, and then the estrogen burden is a. It's a bi directional feedback to Candida. So you have this organism that is actually not only increasing estrogen burden, but it's also in creating biofilm. And biofilm hardens and then creates an environment for not only cell proliferation, but then the hardening of that which becomes cysts. In an environment where there's a DNA impact, it becomes tumors.

Yeah. And you know, not even to mention the fact that Candida is so inflammatory. So it's also going to kick off a whole inflammatory cascade which when you are inflamed, it is first of all nearly impossible to heal. But it's also, over time, it's very immune suppressive. Right. So the same thing that you need to help get you out of this situation with Candida overgrowth is then being suppressed by the presence of Candida.

Exactly.

So it's this feed forward loop.

A feed forward loop. And it has another impact metabolically to the thyroid. So when you have Candida. In many cases, it can inhibit the conversion of T4, which is the inactive form of thyroid, to T3, which is the active form of thyroid. And so then you have another metabolic organ that's not working functionally to help preserve your ability to fight.

Yeah, yeah. So you had this renal cell carcinoma patient or a kidney cancer patient. Right. So how does that go on to develop, your interest in helping cancer patients in general and helping women with breast cancer?

Well, what we've seen is that in the last decade, the food supply has really grown into a terrain of mass destruction, because fundamentally, what we put and assimilate, it's not what we put into our bodies, but how we assimilate it and how those biochemical actions within the body use the food to create the miraculous transformation that sustains life or creates an environment that is an inflammatory agent for then other levers to be pulled in the body that then becomes an immune suppressor, an inflammatory maker, an endocrine disruptor, a meta, a detoxifying feedback loop of liver, lymph, skin. And then you get stuck in a spin cycle of lack of detoxification. And. And Jen, in the last two or three years, I've seen more cancer in my practice than I have in the last 20. And so we are seeing an exponential rise. And we're seeing an exponential rise in not just the way that cancer used to trajectorize itself, but you go from zero to third stage, metastasize. It's really skipping stage one, stage two. And so it's become of great interest because we've had a great body of learning through these people that walk through our doors. And food is everything. Food and supplementation. You do it right, things get. You have a much better terrain for a successful outcome. You do it right with air quotes, but not right for you. Then you don't have a successful terrain for a successful outcome. And so that interest became very acute because the traditional, even functional models were failing my clients, and we've had clients that have flown all over the world trying to get better, and it's not always tied to the better outcome.

So I'm curious about a number of things that you said there. I want to start with. You've noticed something different over the last two to three years, and you said it's skipping stage one and stage two. It always did. So, you know, like breast cancer growth is neither linear nor predictable. So this whole notion that the. Our mammographic screening program is based on is an assumption that breast cancer starts off as Non invasive disease or stage zero. And then it progresses to stage one, then stage two, then stage three, then stage four. Then it, you know, that actually is not true. Breast cancer is all about biology. So whatever it is, it's going to be from the very start. So it's birthed in whatever it's going to be. So if it's going to be a metastatic process, it starts off as a metastatic process. Right. And people don't understand that. Now what we are seeing, what I am witness to, the same way that you are, is that we are seeing more people present with late stage disease. And it's not, not that we missed the early stage, it's that they have more aggressive cancers.

Right.

Now we talked a little bit about it being food, but our food is not that different than it was two or three years ago. And I want to know what you think has changed in the last couple of years that might be influencing this presentation of more aggressive disease.

Well, anecdotally in my practice and it's in the clinical literature. So Covid has come in and really changed the landscape of the biochemistry of the body. The mechanisms of action in the body have changed. And so one of the things that we are observing, plus it's in the clinical literature is that Covid makes seven vectors of amyloid genesis. Amyloids are these truncated protein structures that have been linked to cancer, to kidney disease, to autoimmunity. When you have those vectors that are there plus the food supply. So one of the things that I have coined is called the disrupted mirror effect. The food supply did a, I believe had a fundamental change about a decade ago when the macrocosm had a shift twofold. One, the crowding of animals, which is what instilled the amyloids within their tissue. These truncated protein structures. Then the glyphosate which impaired protein digestion because it mimics glycine, it impaired sulfation mechanism which is necessary for the gut integrity, for neurotransmitters, for hormones, for joint health, for non calcification. Then it also for flipped our body's ability to really break down the oxalates, that protective mechanism because it minimized our body's ability to produce the Oxalobacter bacteria which is so was necessary in our GI tract to keep the good stuff from those plant based foods that had an oxalate component. So those really fundamentally change. What did Covid do? Did the exact same thing. So the spike protein changes the calcium ion channels in our body so we're more likely to calcify linked to oxalate metabolism. It actually turns on the histamine receptor gene, which then intersects with sulfation, which then intersects with calcification and an inflammatory response. And histamine has been a really, really, really big deal. And so when we look at food and then this spike protein.

Yeah, this layer on top of it.

It'S a really big deal. And then the spike protein also increases ferritinemia. So we are getting high, high iron levels in women, in vegetarians, even in mensing women. Cancer is fed by amyloids. Iron can then be amylogenic. Iron oxidizes lipids. What are our cell membranes made of? They're made up of lipids. When we have oxidated lipids running through our system, we can't create that buoyant cell membrane that keeps bad things out. That's creating an invitation for some invader to pierce into that DNA and start creating some bad stuff.

So all of these, it allows for cellular damage. Exactly, yeah. So I, I want to ask you, I, I understand that the spike protein is, is highly tied to these processes happening. Are you seeing it from people who primarily had the virus, or are you seeing it from people who got the vaccine which led to the production of spike protein? Because I think the data is showing that the amount of spike protein that is created when you're vaccinated, as compared to when you just naturally get the virus, is seven to ten fold more. So you're making more, much more spike protein if you're vaccinated than if you naturally acquire the virus.

In our practice, anecdotally, that theory has stood up. We are seeing much more aggressive, metastasized cancers for those that have been vaccinated. Now, that's not unique. We are seeing cancers in those that are not. The spike protein is ubiquitous. But to your point, the replication rate is now being seen clinically, that is much higher in those that were vaccinated.

Yeah. So, you know, I think there's a pretty clear explanation as to why we're seeing these more aggressive cancers. And it's not just breast cancer. We're seeing colon, we're seeing prostate, we're seeing pancreatic. And you know what? For many, many years, pancreatic cancer was a disease that we almost universally saw in older people. I don't remember seeing a 20 year old or a 25 year old or a 30 year old with pancreatic cancer all throughout my training and I'm a surgical oncologist. But we're seeing that now, not infrequently where nearly all of us in the cancer world know of a 30 year old who has metastatic pancreatic cancer. And it's really alarming because this was not part of what we knew or were accustomed to or, you know, we just didn't see it.

That's absolutely right. And we're seeing 20 year olds with end stage cancer. I have a, she's not a client of mine, but she's a friend of my daughter's with an eye cancer that is terminal and she's 26. And so why is this happening in this scope? Another vector that I have found is that again in the clinical literature, viruses are being reactivated in the herpes family. Varicella is very happy to land in the colon, cytomegala in the lung and the liver. And so these reactivation of these viral loads along with the spike protein, along with the, the oxidated lipids with the heavy iron loads with the oxalate burden is creating a terrain for an astronomical rate of increase in the wrong cellular proliferation. The wrong type of cellular proliferation. And so I agree. And when we look at, I was, I'm a medical advisor for a longevity mastermind and we were just, we just met last week and we were looking at new therapies and new techniques for identifying cancer early. And one of the things that I suggested is that we should get regular, very simple blood work to understand what our immunogamma Globalins are for IgG of the herpes family of viruses. Yes, 90% of us have been exposed to these viruses. But when they're, when their numbers are 5,000 rather than 50, that means there's something going on.

Yeah. And that there's a reactivation.

Absolutely. A reactivation. And we, we had linked and many, many years ago I had been really espousing guys. Hashimoto's has an over 80% hit rate against the Epstein Barr virus. Now that's in the clinical literature. And so hormonal treatment for Hashimoto's can create a thyroid storm. Let's look at it at the viral level. Let's stop feeding it by eating amyloids and oxalate rich foods and you will have a resolution. And in many cases we saw the antibodies return to normal. It's the real deal here.

And part of the problem is that there are so many people with Hashimoto's that their providers are not even measuring their antibodies. And it's mostly because they don't know what to do with the information. Right. So they just don't measure it, because they don't know what it means, they don't know what to do, they don't offer any solutions. They just put them on levothyroxine, which is synthetic T4 and send them on their way. And yet they're not even measuring T3. They don't even know if these women are or not. Women, everyone. Although hypothyroidism tends to be more common in women. But they don't even know if these, if these people are getting what they need to be euthyroid. They're not even checking, they're not.

Pathogenic loads are the deal here on the many, on the various levels that we've talked about, when the reason is, and I think I'm one of the first to at least put this into clinical application, is that when we take in these amyloids through exogenous measures, either whether it's Covid making the amyloids or the food supply making the amyloids, the actually the gut makes, takes the DNA fragments of amyloids and builds biofilm. And then the biofilm builds, feeds the amyloid. So it's a bidirectional pathogenic environment where they are then flipping our genetic expression to create these autoimmune diseases and worse in these acute decisions conditions, including cancer. And so pathogens have to be managed. But the way that we look at pathogens is you can't go in and try to kill right away. You've got to understand what are the mechanisms of action in their detoxification pathways. What are the foods that will help open up those pathways and mitigate the terrain for a feeder system of the same? What are you putting in on or around you? If you have a high oxalate burden and you're eating almonds every day and eating black beans and having an almond spinach berry smoothie with almond milk and almond butter. That is an environment for making bad cells turning on those viral loads. And I most recently was brought into an individual who was given four days. They gave her four days. She was end stage cancer. And what was so fascinating Jen around this is that she had gone to a detox clinic to detoxify. And in doing so she was doing all those green juices that have the sulfur, the oxalates, the histamine, taking high turmeric loads, coffee enemas, Coffee can be histamine. And she came back, she, she went in with a cancer that was being managed through very skilled practitioners and doctors. She came back with liver failure and the cancer was through the roof. Now that is just anecdotal and it's an n of 1, but it is a cautionary tale of what we might do to ourselves in seeking a better health terrain. It doesn't work that way anymore. Not always. And less and less so is what I'm seeing.

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So I'm curious as to how you make your decisions on how to individualize and Taylor recommendations. So first I want to know, what pathogens specifically are you looking for when you're looking at these people with, I mean, not just advanced cancers, but even early cancer diagnoses, what pathogens are you looking for that might be contributing to the disease state?

We look at varicella a lot and there's something in the clinical literature that we can share with your audience in the show notes later is that what we do know is that over 80% of individuals vaccinated have a likelihood of having a reactivation of the varicella virus. That's a big deal.

So you're talking about people that didn't naturally have chickenpox but instead got the varicella vaccine.

Let's just talk. Let me be clear on this. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Ok. The COVID vaccine.

So, yes, so we are, that is a very important point to mention that when people have the COVID vaccine, they often do have a reactivation of other viruses which had been suppressed before. And then we often see a reactivation.

Absolutely. So we look at varicella, we look at Epstein Barr. We look at cytomegala. We look at Coxsackie, we look at Lyme. Lyme is coming up again. We look at Candida. We look at H. Pylori. H. Pylori is now being linked to some cancers. We look at Streptococcus. We look at Staph. We also look at parasites. Parasites are ancient viruses and they've made an entrance of late. And then there's just in the fish, there's a lot more, a lot more parasites that they're finding in general. So we tend to look at E. Coli as well. So really a broad spectrum of, of these we pathogens, we look at C4A levels to see if, you know, biotoxin illness, mycoplasma, mycotoxins. And so those are really fundamentally important to understand and then how to go about taking them out, if you will, or at least mitigating them because you really, if you think we're going to kill them all, they, they outnumber us.

But yeah, we're not getting rid of.

Viruses as homeostatic as possible. Not bullies in our sandbox, I call them bullies.

Yeah, yeah. And so what are you using to test. Are you testing blood? Are you checking stool?

Are you.

What are you using to test for these organisms?

We work very collaboratively with many doctors, and so we really do ask to have ignition tested in, in those. In those viral loads and then antibodies. Right.

So that's a blood test or serum.

Yes. And then we also, we also look at. We look at stool tests for parasites. Although parasitic ova have a. Have a life cycle, you may. You may miss them. We look at the organic acid test to see is your Oxalobacter bacteria high or oxalic acid? Do you have a higher rabinose level? So those, those measures. And then we also muscle test. And again, we are not specifically diagnostic because I'm not a doctor, but we find the imbalances in the field, and so we test against those, and then we work collaboratively with doctors to have them validated through their. Through their blood work.

And so there's no question that you know that as viral loads increase, as parasitic loads increase, this is both inflammatory and immunosuppressive.

Right.

Because if your immune system is busy guarding against these pathogens, it can't do what it's supposed to do, like eliminate cancer cells in their infancy. Right. So we definitely see a direct relationship between an increase in these organisms and an increase in viral load and increase in parasitic load and an increase. There's a linear relationship between the increase in cancer incidence. Without question. When you're talking about what is good for people, how do you make those decisions, like, beyond dealing with the organisms, how do you know what's right for certain people?

It's a very personalized process. But we start with the epigenetic analysis. And I look at genes differently that I believe than most gene companies that provide analyses, because I look at the interplay between the genes, and I also look at the variance numbers within those genes. So just to say you have a gene variance is less of an answer to say, well, you have this gene variance, but you also have 75 double polymorphisms within that gene variance. And that also interplays with something else that has a correlative component to that gene. They play together. And so we, we look to understand what are your foundational vulnerabilities and in which order and how bad are they? Potentially bad. We don't want to say bad because it's just a, it's just a potential if you have protein malabsorption, you're going to be more likely to be less robust against viruses. If you have fat metabolism impairment, you're going to be less likely to break down that lipid layer of Candida. If you have, if you have hemochromatomy.

You'Re also going to have issues with essential vitamins like A, D, E and.

K. Yeah, you can't assimilate them. And so what we say is we have so many people that have been given gene analysis, genetic analysis from very reputable companies and they're like, oh my gosh, Terry, I'm so fat malabsorbed and I was given all of these fats and I feel awful. And I just gained 15 pounds and, and I have acne and I'm 48 years old. Right. So it's not about what the deficiency is or the variance is, is what you need is we have to now emulsify, not give more fat. We have to prepare the terrain to then be able to assimilate what it is needing. And so that again, that's how we're different. And so we have not only very bio individual but there is a specific sequencing that we, we recommend to what needs to happen, precedent to that other thing happening. And so that's why I believe we have such a remarkable sustainable outcome with many, many, many of our cases. Because we really do honor what the body is telling us, both from a genetic perspective, but then also granularly in muscle testing. Even if you have a wonderful practitioner that is really gifted in biochemistry and epigenetics, the body gives us the defining truth.

Yeah. And so because your genotype isn't always your phenotype. Right. Like so what we look like on a genetic basis doesn't always match with the functionality of our body. And some people are able to compensate. Right. And so you look like you could be a poor metabolizer of this or a non digester of that. And it turns out that your body has figured out a way.

Exactly, it has. And so what we do is we help prop up that those mechanisms that where they have figured out and we leave the other ones alone until this becomes ever stronger. And so for example, right before we met today, we, I had worked with a gentleman who was a professional ballerina ballet dancer, he with San Francisco and with ABT and then with the National Ballet of Canada. And he had been immunologically impaired for years. He had low immune function, he was always getting sick. This was our third consult and he is the strongest immunologically he's ever been. And he just went through a significant stressor of three months as he was going through a company, what do you call it? Unwinding. And he shared with me, Terry, I can't believe it. I was not sick at all. My energy was great. What was his foundational vulnerability? Protein metabolism. So when we first saw him, he had in our world reactivation of multiple viruses, which was keeping his immune system suppressed. And then with a ballet dancer who has been taught to be on high alert. And I've worked with the Washington Ballet. I worked with professional ballerinas, so I understand the dynamics of them. I've actually coined a term called the ballerina syndrome. Because these hyper perfectionists are always on high alert and their operating system, even subconscious operating system, is I'm on high alert. What does that mean? I'm pushing epinephrine and histamine that is opening at the tight junctions of my gut, that is creating fat metabolism impairment, that is allowing me to recycle hormones even if I don't have the genesis. So again, it's like the right questions lead to the right solutions. And he was just so happy.

Well, and just by virtue of being on high alert all the time, we understand that from a physiologic standpoint, we only know two states. We only know safety and danger. And if we're in danger, there's no reason to have our immune system turned on because what do you need to fight off the common cold for if you're imminently going to get eaten by a tiger? So our body says, listen, I'm going to wait and see what happens with that tiger. Right. And if we survive the tiger and get to safety, I'll turn the immune system back on. Right now you don't need it. And we don't have the evolutionary capability of living, of transforming our system into today like we are modern beings living on a very old gene code. So we don't know the difference between being a ballerina and having a tiger constantly on our tail. Right. Like we only perceive tigers, we don't perceive any other stressors. So that person has no way of sending up the safety signal and no way of turning their immune system back on.

That's right.

So you know, that's why he was getting sick all the time, because he virtually has no immunity.

For him. You're absolutely right, Jen. I couldn't agree more. And for him, what we had to do is allow him to break down his proteins, making him eat the right proteins and providing the right digestive Support and a lot of these even enzymes are Aspergillus based which is mold, which is not what we want. So I gave him a plant based bromelain digestive support. But we also gave him pineapple a DAO enzyme because he had a DAO variance which didn't allow him to break down histamine. So that those two and we, we talked about. Because he's almost graduated from our. We try to graduate our clients. Yeah, yeah.

It's nice when you can do that.

And so he, I said, you know, you know these are going to be long term player. I developed a supplement called Stress Mover which is beautiful for the autonomic nervous system. Also helps with modulating. It provides glycine for protein and it provides a rhodiola as an adrenal adaptogen. So I suggested to him because we're practically graduating, we'd like to go to what's the lowest common denominator. These individuals need to just be in a good space. And I said a DAO enzyme and probably my stress mover. You know, going forward that's going to be your game. Yeah. Because that's what you need.

But also meditation.

Oh absolutely.

Like we need, we need tools in our toolbox.

Absolutely. And so we talked about the fact that he is much more adrenally resilient because we have put in other mechanisms in place for him. Hot yoga, quiet space, meditation, becoming the observer, interrupting a broadcast that he was so fundamentally good at. So when you knew you were going to a pre trigger you're like wait, wait a minute, I under. I recognize this. I'm interrupting this broadcast and then I'm scanning my body to see where does it. Where is it landing and just send it some compassion. So a lot of techniques in that realm as well. Yeah.

Amazing. So out of curiosity, what do you use for your genetic analysis? What are you using to base all, all of this information on?

So we, we will take the ancestry.com and or well was 23andMe. I don't know what they're going to be doing now that they've been purchased. We and we'll take that route at it. But I really like functional genomic analysis fga. But then what we do is we run it through my algorithm. We think that's where the secret sauce lives. Yeah. Which gives us the intelligence to then move forward with the client. Yeah.

And you know, in my practice I'm using the nutrition genome, the DNA360 and what it comes down to is looking at these actionable genes. Right. Because There's a lot of genes there that you learn about in 23andMe and Ancestry.com, that don't, you can't do anything about them. You can't, you can't influence them. But there are a hundred or so actionable genes that we know about that we can do a lot of things about. Like, if you know that you can't break down histamine, then you can, you can support yourself with DAO enzymes, right? So you're, you're learning these genetic pathways. You're, you're learning how to support people, how to support them in, in detoxific, in their estrogen pathways, and you're giving them their own roadmap for life. I would like to transition into. You know, we started to talk about before foods that you think are good for you that as it turns out from a genetic standpoint, are not good for you personally. So they're like the good for your foods in a general category and then. But it turns out they're not so good for you personally. So for some people, for fermented foods fall into that category. I always think about something like oatmeal. Like, people think that grains are good for them and whole grains are good for them. And so there's a lot of people starting off their day with a big fat bowl of oatmeal, which in my opinion, you might as well start off your day with a bowl of sugar.

But.

You know, I tell my breast cancer patients in particular that we have no nutritional need for grains and if we never ate another grain again, we would suffer no nutritional deficiencies. So I don't really believe in putting grains in the diet. But what are some of the things that people think are good for you in general that you come up with in individuals and say, this isn't good for you?

So, great question. And again, everyone is bio individual, but in the state of this toxic food supply and then overlaid by this disrupted mirror effect of COVID oxalates are a really big deal right now. And so, for example, turmeric has been used as a master antioxidant. However, this is the dirty little secret of turmeric. First, if you have the CYP2D6 gene variants in the CYP4 family of genes, if you take in turmeric, you can reduce your liver detoxification phase one pathway by up to 50%. So right there you're just like, okay, detox, let's just give it, you just cut it by half potentially. But then turmeric is a High histamine and it's high oxalate food. So those two together in this environment is no bueno. And Jen, I had. This is before, this is before COVID but I had a gentleman who had come to see me with pretty significant pancreatic cancer. It was third stage. And we did his genetics and I suggested to him, look, turmeric. He was being given turmeric supplementation. Turmeric is really not for you. And here's your genes, here's all the clinical literature. Please take it to your oncologist to show them. Well, in our work, we were able to necrotize some of the tumors that he had, which is phenomenal. But he chose to move into a tumor specific protocol. And when he came back to me, the tumors had mushroomed. Mushroomed. And he had, he had, he had two months beyond that. And when you can't metabolize something, this is like the nature of body talk, and this is very rudimentary. But I could smell turmeric in my front office when he walked in. My. And I have offices, we have bays here. So he clearly was not metabolizing that turmeric and became an oxalate builder, which then created some really bad things. And I'm not saying that's for everyone and some people can take turmeric, but this is, this is a cautionary tale. And especially in a oxalate rich environment where we know we're with the calcium ion channel being challenged through the spike protein and our gut bacteria not able to break down oxalates. Oatmeal is an oxalate. It's not our best option. And so why can't we use our best genetic matches and in real time, what matches us to then help us make our whole ecosystem easier on itself? Yeah.

And that's a great point. And I think, you know, Stephen Gundry has been talking about oxalates for many, many years. And I think for some people it's a really relevant conversation. For other people it's not. And I think it's so important at the end of the day to really understand who you are and what is good for you and what's not. Right, Right. And so this is where personalized medicine becomes so very important. And the things that we talk about every single day, because that is not happening inside of conventional medicine. And inside of conventional medicine, everyone is being given the same exact thing. Most of it is geared around symptom management. It has nothing to do with health promotion. They're rarely, you know, you said that the person with kidney cancer was told to eat a high protein diet, which I'm kind of surprised about because I think that even the nephrologists know that if you have kidney dysfunction, you should not be doing high protein. But most of the time in the area of cancer, they're not being given any dietary advice at all. Or if they're given advice, it's the wrong advice. They're told to eat whatever they want. No matter what you do, don't lose weight, eat pizza and ice cream. You know, that's the advice most people are getting.

Absolutely. And what I say, Jen, is if you get everything else right and you get the food wrong, you're still going to get it wrong. Food is the alpha in my belief system and what I've seen in my practice in so many years, the alpha and omega and omega of how we fundamentally get better or not. Because food can, food alone can express your genes and that's how powerful food is. And to your point of the kidney situation, many years ago I worked with an 18 month old who, I saw him three weeks before he was ready to have full kidney transplant. He was going to have to live on dialysis for the rest of his life. Full kidney, both kidneys were, were failing. And because his hemoglobin was so low, the doctors, his children were insisting that he be fed meat, meat, meat, meat, meat. Because they needed to get his hemoglobin up so that they could do the surgery. This child could not process animal products. So in, instead we put him on plant based proteins and the right kind of beans and the right kind of rice to make the complete protein. This is a true story. The child who used to run from the meat would sit, his mother told me, would sit on the countertop eating the beans out of the, you know, out of the bowl. And within three weeks, one kidney was saved. It came back that fast?

Yeah. Yeah. So it just goes to show you when, when the children are adverse to something and welcoming of something else. This is the body speaking, this is biology speaking. Right. And it's really amazing. And our bodies were meant to heal. And I know that in my practice, I've seen it time and time again. I'm sure in your practice you've seen it time and time again where when you give the body what it needs and take away what it doesn't, really amazing things happen because we are perfectly made machines meant to operate perfectly. And it's only when we put up obstacles in the way of, in the way of our performance that we get into Trouble with our health.

That's beautifully said, 100%. You know, we get in our own way. And one of the things that is the biggest contributor, which you said earlier and said it so beautifully and articulately, is the stress response. And these last five years have really exacerbated our safety mechanism. And so if we're not safe, that is in fact fundamentally my Cochrane method starts with the hierarchy of needs, is you've got to calm the body first and put it into a safe environment. Because if you don't, everything else, not to say you can't get better, but it's going to be a longer road if the road is reached at all.

What are your favorite ways of helping people to do that? What are your, what are your go tos?

Everyone is different. If I ask somebody to meditate for 20 minutes and they, I can tell that they just can't do that, it's not going to be effective. So I try to meet individuals where they are. And we can start with a one minute meditation just many times a day, turn on, turn your phone for a minute and just don't think of anything for a minute. Even if you just close your eyes and you're still thinking of something. There have been studies done that in three months it can actually drop cortisol levels by a third. Yeah, easy techniques like throughout the day, even if you're really busy, feel your feet, feel your body, feel your sits bones on your chair, tap your thymus, ground yourself, take a breath, align yourself. And one of the biggest things that I learned from my mentor of many, many realms is that to not suppress what has happened, to recognize it for what it was, but to give it its place. And there's, she had a physical gesture to do that and it's with the left hand and you, you say that was then and this is now. And so when you say that was then, you're recognizing that whatever trauma, whatever betrayal, fill in the blank bad emotion that you, you experienced, you don't want to say, well it didn't matter, I should deal with it. It's like that was then, yes, it happened, but this is now. And when we do this energetically, we're aligning our chakras, we're gathering from source that this is now. And I'm interrupting those broadcasts to myself that are memories that are held on my cell membrane. I'm like, wait a minute, what version of myself just showed up? And let me wrap compassion around that version of myself and bring that self forward to my present and also bring my future self forward in and say, look, it's already designed beautifully in the quantum anyway, this is just our earth walk. So let's make those things matter, grow from those experiences. But then say it's one of my favorite lines of all time in the movies. And it was actually from love, actually, when this gentleman was in love with his best friend's wife and he says, enough now, enough now. Love it.

I loved love, actually. So cute. Terry, thank you so much for all of this beautiful insight that you've shared with us today, for the work that you're doing, for being brave and taking this novel approach because it's so important and you're setting an example and paving a path for people to follow behind you and start to practice the individualized medicine that we know that everyone needs. Where can people find you?

Terricockern.com I'm also on Instagram. We have a body of just free, free. Not advice necessarily, but data and just insights. On my website through the blogs, you can take a a wild type quiz to find out what wilditarian you are. And that goes to not specifically.

Oh, tell us about wildatarian.

Yeah, so wilditarian eating to your genetic blueprint in your current state of health, living as nature intended. Your individual nature is based on these tenants of the Cochrane method of protein metabolism impairment, sulfur metabolism impairment, oxalate metabolism impairment, fat and histamine. And so you can take a wild type quiz to find out generally what your wild type is and then it'll help you navigate course around these big metabolic disruptors that then can be linked to genes, not specific DNA, but predictive if you will. And we share about that in the book.

Amazing. So where can people find the book?

On Amazon. So you can find it on Amazon.

Amazing. And people can find you at your website. All right, terrific. Well, thank you so much for being with me today. I know that you have somewhere to be very quickly, so I just want to thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. It's such an important message and I hope that people hear this and use it as an example. And I think that consumers need to demand more. They need to demand more from their providers. And gone are the days where it should be acceptable to treat everyone the same because we are not the same. And everyone gets to that place for different reasons. Everyone comes to their diagnosis for different reasons. So we shouldn't treat everyone the same if everyone is different?

Absolutely. Yeah. And it's really our sovereign, sovereign right to ask to be treated like the.

Fingerprint that we are yes, yes, I couldn't agree more. So if you liked this podcast, please share it with someone who needs to hear it because we are only going to get stronger if we do this together. And I so appreciate you being here and listening to these messages and being another mouthpiece for what I am trying to to share with the world which is changing the conversation around breast cancer, around how we diagnose it, around how we treat it, around how we prevent it. And we are only going to do that if we demand better collectively. So thank you so much for joining me today and know that I will be back next week, 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. Chen. 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 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. Rjensimmons and remember, MyGen has two S so until next time, remember to stay proactive, informed and confident in your breast health journey. The key to your health is you.