99: The Shocking Truth About Cholesterol, Cancer & Prescription Drugs with Dr. Magaziner

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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 I have the distinct pleasure of having one of my personal heroes, who happens to also be in my hometown with me today. And I only met him recently. He reached out to me recently because he wanted to hear what I was up to. And as all of you know, I'm up to a lot and have been up to a lot in the last few years. And he happened to be willing to come in and be interviewed on the podcast. So I am so honored to have Dr. Alan Magaziner here. You really are a pioneer in this space. You have been doing functional medicine or integrative medicine or whatever title you want to put on that you were doing it first. And Philadelphia is not a progressive city. It is not a progressive city. And it could not have been easy for you to put that plaque on your wall.

It wasn't easy at the beginning. And over the years, thank goodness, it's gotten a lot easier. You know, the beginning people said, what do you do? And what kind of doctor are you? Because I always, you know, from day one, I dealt with integrative and functional medicine. I never did traditional medicine.

I mean, you truly were a pioneer. You are a pioneer. You Are.

Well, I got interested actually, when I was 15 years old. If we go way back.

Well, let's go way back. I want to hear.

Well, When I was 15, my mother was very sick with a lot of ailments, including hepatitis. And the doctors. She went to many doctors, and they said, we can't help you. And took quite a while, and she was still sick. And she had chronic back pain, chronic constipation. And I was one of five kids, so we were all crazy because you're 15 years old, and some were younger, some were older than me. And eventually she saw a doctor who helped her immensely. How did he do that? Well, she went, she saw him, and she had to bring a stool specimen into his office.

Mm.

And he looked under a microscope at that time and said, I want you to take the following nutrients and following substances, put on a whole list of different things. He said, I need you to change your diet. He said, I went you off all junk food, all sugar, all processed foods. She did it. She did whatever he told her.

Okay, what year is this?

Now? I'm giving away my age that way.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Okay.

I won't make you give away your age.

Okay. But it was a long time ago, as we can imagine. It was in the 70s. And so she. After literally about six weeks, she felt amazing. She felt so good that she. Soon thereafter, a year later or so, opened up her own health food store. Whoa. And I started working there in high school, helping out a little bit nights or weekends, and people would come in and buy their breads and their supplements and their juices and things like that. And I became a little bit interested, not knowing anything at the time. But my mother also was juicing at that point, carrot juice every single day of the week. That's what he had her do. The doctor had to do that, too. And at first I thought my mother was nuts because she was an artist, and you're 15 years old, and she was a little bit, you know, different for most people. And I became a little bit interested, and eventually when I went. So I worked there all four. Four years of undergraduate. I went to school in Philly and at Temple University. And then when I went to medical school, it was a whole different perspective, because everything was, please give this drug for this condition. You know, if you have high blood pressure, take an anti. High blood pressure pill. Of course, depression, take an antidepressant. But I knew that at that point that there was maybe something else different than that. I could potentially look into. But I didn't know how to do it yet because I'd, you know, seen the customers who would come in her store. I would page through some of the books that ran her store. Store. So I knew a little bit, but not much. By the time I was in my third year med school, I became a little bit disillusioned with the typical model, traditional model of medicine because it was very pharmaceutical and very polypharmacy. They'd come in, the patients would come into our clinic with a bag of their supper, their medications or prescription medications, and, you know, one for every little complaint that they had. And then they have more medicines to combat the side effects of the first three medicines that they're on.

And it was true then. It's true now. I remember when my grandfather went into the hospital with his, like, I don't know, fifth heart attack, six. He had nine before he died and two strokes. And the number of pill bottles that he would bring with him each time he went to the hospital. And it wasn't a low number. We're talking about, like nine or 10 or 11 pill bottles. And when he died, I was 16 years old when he died. And having this epiphany myself. And I said to my father, like, dad, not for nothing, but what. What is going on here? Why would papa be on all of these medicines? And ultimately, I think that he died of polypharmacy.

Not unusual. You know what? Prescription drugs and legal prescription drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Over a hundred, over 200,000 people die every year from the proper use of prescription drugs. I'm not talking about overdosing.

Yeah.

And nobody's paying attention to it. They're not recognizing this.

Well, it's an inconvenient truth, right?

Exactly.

It's a very inconvenient truth. Okay, so I interrupted you. You were, you were disillusioned with all the polypharmacy. You're a third year medical student. What do you do with all of this inquiry that's inside of you?

So I somehow learned that there were some conferences in my area. I went to medical school in Chicago. And there was something at the time called American Holistic Medical Association. I remember going to their conference. I looked into it, and we didn't have computers in those days, but I found out they were having a meeting. And I remember going to the conference and Dr. Bernie Siegel spoke. He was a very famous, very well known. A cancer surgeon. Yes. He was at Yale at the time. And I went to his conference, he was one of the speakers. And Dr. Alan Gaby, who's one of my mentors and one of my heroes as well, spoke at the meeting as well. And it was 15 different speakers that I went to over Saturday and Sunday. And it blew me away. It opened up a whole new world for me that I was never exposed to in medical school. And I said, oh my gosh, I'm not learning any of this in school. How do I learn more? And I, I started devouring books on these topics and I couldn't get enough of it. And then I ran across the name of a doctor named Jonathan Wright who was in Seattle, Washington. And I came upon his reading, his writings and I said, oh my gosh, this is amazing. So I contacted Jonathan, Dr. Wright. He was in Seattle and we didn't have computers. I wrote him a letter and I said, I have elective coming up in my fourth year. I have a four week elective in medical school. Can I come out and spend some time with you? And he said, well, actually turned me down at first. He said, I have another student during that month. Can you make it another month? I didn't have another elective. Make a long story short, somebody canceled eventually during my, that time slot. And it was, and I said, he called me one night, I remember it was like a Friday night. I said, this is Dr. Jonathan Wright speaking. Is this Alan? I started to shake, but I was speaking to Jonathan Wright and so I said, I will be there. So anyhow, I spent a month with him out there, my fourth year med school. And it couldn't have been better for me. I was reading literally three books a week out there because I didn't know anybody. I wasn't doing anything except I was there to study and learn from him. And I saw patients with him in the office. I sat right next to him, like we're sitting next to each other. And I saw patients, you know, every day for four weeks. Another night I would read at night, nighttime and weekends. Anyhow, so then he invited me to come back for a whole year with him. So I did my own like, preceptorship with him after I finished my medical school training, the formal training, I spent a year with him where I learned a lot. And, and just so I, you know, I mentioned the name Alan Gaby earlier. Jonathan and Alan were, were associates or partners before I was even there. And, and Dr. Gaby wrote a fantastic book on nutritional medicine. It's literally about this thick o that.

Bible on my desk. It's very heavy it's fantastic.

And so. And so I spent a year with him, and then I spent another year with another doctor who I greatly respect as well, because I also spent a month with him as a student. His name is. He's passed away, unfortunately. His name is William Ray. He's in Dallas, Texas, and he's. They call him the father of environmental medicine. So I spent a year with him as well, and a year with Jonathan Wright. And that's where I got a lot of my background, training in integrative and functional medicine. And then eventually I came home to. I'm now in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, my practice. Been there for 39 and a half years now.

And I see now you're dating yourself.

I know, I did. I did. I was thinking, how do I. How do I phrase this next sentence? But anyhow, so I've been there for 30, just about 39 years now in my own practice there and geared towards helping people with natural means as much as we can and helping them get off the pharmaceuticals if we can. Most time we're very successful doing so. And I see everything from children with chronic ear infections to autism to adults with cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease, and everything else in between.

Yeah. I want to know. I know you did a family med residency. How did you handle a family med residency given all that you were feeling and learning and driven towards? Because that is very much like, diagnose, prescribe, diagnose, prescribe, diagnose, prescribe.

It wasn't easy. And the answer sort of is I kept my mouth shut. I figured it's not worth making waves yet in my life because I knew what I wanted to do at that point.

Yeah.

So I knew I had a goal in mind. And I just said to myself, you know what? Sometimes it's not worth making waves. I just did what I was supposed to do according to hospital training. And I knew that very soon I'd be on my own. And that's what I did. And I opened up my own office. My mother, in fact, said to me, when I told her what I want to do, she said, well, who's going to come to you? Like. Because nobody knew what this stuff was at the time. And I said, I have to do what I believe in, where my conviction is. Yeah. I just can't do the traditional, you know, prescribing everything, hospital rounds every day and putting them on things that I don't now truly believe in.

Yeah.

So I did fine. And with. With my residency program and I went on my own, opened up my doors and been there ever since.

I don't know. Do you know Tom Lodi?

I know Tom very well.

Yeah?

Yes.

So I love it when he tells the story about. Because I'm. I'm just thinking of how you went through your residency and just kind of kept your mouth shut. Because he worked for Dr. Atkins and he is like a lifelong committed vegan. I mean, he's a whole food vegan and Because I struggle with that term all the time. Because as I am reminded frequently Twizzlers are vegan.

A lot of junk food is vegan, right? That's right.

There's a lot of junk food that's vegan.

That's why I had met with T. Colin Campbell, who wrote the book the China Secret, China Study. And when I mentioned to him the word, you know, vegan or whatever at the time, I was vegan then too. When I met with him, not so much now. But anyhow, I said to him something about me being vegan. And he said, he said, no, I don't, we don't, I don't want to be vegan. And I said, what do you mean? Because I was thrown off at the moment. He said, no, we use the term whole foods. I'm sorry. Yeah, whole foods. Plant based. Plant based.

Plant based.

Which totally makes sense because as you just alluded to with the Twizzlers, pretzels, potato chips, they're all vegan, but it doesn't mean it's healthy.

Yeah. And quite frankly, like you see the, all these activists and they don't exactly look like the picture of health. So I try to stay away from the political part of that term because that's really what people talking about. They're talking about like a political movement. They're not talking about health. So for the purposes of health, I also use whole food plant based. But it's just so funny to think about Dr. Lodhi, who is so anti animal, working for Dr. Atkins. And he used to tell me about, I think every Tuesday he had to have lunch with him. Like that was their catch up time. And each Tuesday Dr. Lodhi would have to come up with a new excuse as to why he wasn't eating because he never ate in front of Dr. Adkins. Dr. Atkins was like, he was hardcore, like put the meat and the dairy on your plate and that's it. Right. So Lodi would say, like, oh, I had a huge breakfast. Or you'd every week come up with a new excuse. And it was astounding to me how Dr. Atkins didn't pick up on the fact that he never saw Dr. Lodi eat.

That's funny. No. I knew Bob Atkins very well also. I actually went to his office and spent some time with him myself. And I've actually been out to Arizona at Dr. Lodi's office as well. And I almost visited him when I was in Thailand once, too. Yeah. Because he's out there most of the time now. Yeah.

Yeah. He spends most of his time there. In fact, I'm gonna be seeing him at the Beljansky conference. So that's the first time we're actually gonna meet in person. We've only ever met with.

We.

We call each other soulmates because, I mean, is astounding that the things that he says are things that I catch myself saying all the time and vice versa. But we haven't met in person. We've only ever met online.

Yeah.

So I'm very excited for that.

That's gonna be a wonderful conference. I've been using Belchansky project products in my office for 30 years now.

Yeah, that's another amazing.

Sylvia Belchy. Very, very well.

Yeah.

Dr. Hall, who's one of their research scientists. I've been to his conferences. It's a very. It's a wonderful organization. And their products have been very helpful for a lot of my patients.

Yeah. Yeah. They're amazing. And they were amazing enough that her father was killed because of how amazing his research was and what he did. And with that in mind, you know, you really did start a practice, and your mother said, who's gonna come see you? So who did come see you? How were the early days of that?

What.

What.

How did you get adoption? I. I mean, I'm not. I'm not joking when I say that Philadelphians are not progressive. They are not.

Philly is definitely not the hotbed of integrative medicine. No. Even today? Yeah, even today. I mean, thank goodness we have Jefferson that's doing some work in that field. Of course. But back when I started, we didn't. We didn't have that at all. And there were very few physicians I could even discuss any of this with at the time. So how did I get started? Well, I was lucky because I mentioned my mother owned a health food store, and I would come over there, and then she opened up a couple more in time, and I would come over there, and sometimes I'd schedule a talk. And so I would give talks in the store once in a while and on different topics, whether it be AD hd, whether it be arthritis, heart disease, high blood Pressure, diabetes, cancer, exercise, whatever it was. I would give talks and they'd be free to the talks I would give. And eventually people asked me to give talks at different associations. So we'd speak wherever they would ask me to talk. I remember speaking to the pta, you know, at different schools. I would speak in churches and synagogues. I would speak wherever, wherever I could to get some exposure. And people started coming in my name, you know, started to spread a little bit. And then I got lucky as well because I started doing a radio talk show here in Philadelphia on wip, which is now a sports radio station. But back then they also had a public service hour or two each, I guess they required. But anyhow, so I used to do a show in the mornings and then eventually had my own show in on Sunday nights. And it was a two way talk show. So people would call in from 8 to 10pm and and asked me questions about, you know, their health and what they can do, how they can improve themselves. Yeah, so things started to grow and that's kind of what happened between all the little marketing that I did because we didn't have the Internet, we didn't have social media.

I know.

So it was all through my own, I guess, efforts of lecturing and speaking and. Right. I did some writings and eventually about 25 years ago, I wrote four books. I don't know how I did it, but I did write four books within three years. And they were, books were lay public. And so I, I remember going to Barnes and Noble and they asked me to speak on my book and the topic. So they scheduled me in the evenings or on Sunday afternoons. And so little by little, you know, my name started to get around and people started coming in and I think they got helped and they referred other people to me.

Yeah, they did. Yeah, they definitely did. So speaking of books, there's a book by Gilbert Welch called Overdiagnosed. Do you ever read that?

I haven't.

This is an area that whether you read his book or not, you're gonna know a lot about because there are a lot of areas in what we do where over diagnosis is a huge, huge issue, like the cholesterol story. So as a family medicine doctor, I'm sure you were trained to look at a cholesterol panel and, and if the number was greater than 200, you were told to put people on statins. How do you feel about that today?

Well, I'll go back a step when I was in school and it was a number up to 250 was considered okay.

That's right.

But then it became a number of years later at 200.

Yes.

But anyhow.

So, yeah, we keep lowering the threshold.

Correct. So we can put people on.

Soon it's going to be 150.

Right.

So we'll have everyone on statins.

This story is way more complex and complicated than the cholesterol story, than just what your cholesterol is. And unfortunately, that's kind of what's still being used by most medical doctors.

Oh, absolutely. Without question. My own mother said her doctor told her she needs to take a statin. I said, why? She said, because my cholesterol is 217. I said, mom, you know, not for nothing, but do you think a phone call to me would have been useful first before you start your statin?

You're only her daughter. I know, but anyhow.

I know.

Yeah. It's. It's.

She said you're a cancer doctor.

I know.

That's the problem.

Right.

We are. We are so trained to think that everyone exists in a silo, but that's not what our world is about at all.

But getting. So to get to your cholesterol question, to me, it's so much more complex than what your total cholesterol is. So we do, for example, I've been doing for many years looking at a very much more complex panel of lipids and inflammatory pathways. And it turns out that, for example, one thing is the particle size. So depending on how small or how large, your LDL and your HDLS can have a lot to do with. Are you really at high risk or not?

Yeah.

And if your particles are mostly in a large form, they tend not to be atherogenic at all.

Yeah. Big, fluffy ones.

Exactly. Good. And so the large ones, the large particles offer a lot of protection. We also look at about seven or eight different inflammatory pathways. And if you have almost no inflammation going on, you are not at high risk for heart disease and stroke, even if your total cholesterol is high. And this is a concept that has not gotten out there to the public very much.

No. Well, it's another inconvenient truth. Right, right.

Absolutely.

Because if you're actually looking at risks and what is likely to happen to people, then you will decrease the number of people that actually take those medications exponentially.

Yeah. So that's just a little portion of it. But you have to. Also, we do very extensive panel looking at susceptibility for prediabetes, for diabetes, for insulin resistance.

Yeah.

Because insulin resistance is a big factor for heart diseases. Of course.

Yes.

And so we take a look at about six different pathways in regard to insulin resistance. I take a look at all the different Omega 3s, Omega 6 panels, because they have a lot to do with, you know, heart disease as well. And of course, we go over people's diets, their exercise or stressors or sleep. You have to look at the whole picture in medicine, in every field, but especially, I think, especially in cardiology. And 25 years ago, I wrote a book. It was called the All Natural Cholesterol Cure. Yes. And I talked about inflammation at that time and talked about some of the apolipoproteins and talked about some of the insulin resistance.

It was called the All Natural Cardio Cure, though.

I don't want to. What do I say?

Cholesterol.

Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, thank you.

I don't want to correct you with.

Your own book, but thank goodness you did.

I. I didn't come out as you said it. I was like, no, no, I don't think that's it.

Oh, natural cardio cure. I'm so sorry. Thank you. Appreciate that. Oh, we're imperfect. Humans are imperfect.

We are imperfect. And that's okay, right? That's okay.

That's what makes us human.

It's what makes us human. And it's what we do most that matters.

Yeah. So anyhow, so there's so much more to it. And we. And it's. And there's very little evidence. I mean, statins do lower cholesterol numbers. They absolutely do. They do. But at what expense? You know, we are more likely to develop dementia, perhaps. We're more likely, perhaps because we need.

Fat for our brain.

Yes. Brain. And. And. Or we need for our hormones. We need. We need cholesterol as a basic building block for all the hormones. We need it for vitamin D. Yeah. Need it for our liver. We. And so we need it for our brain for sure. And so there's mood. What's that?

Mood.

Mood. Absolutely everything. So I don't believe in just taking statins to lower a number on our blood test, which is what it will do.

Yes.

But I think the major way that if. If it works. The way that does work is by reducing inflammation. Inflammation, perhaps. I said if it works.

If it works.

I said that.

But that's a big if.

Correct.

That's a big if. Because the numbers don't support it working.

That is correct.

And what we generally don't talk about, which needs to be talked about because it ends up being so important in our world, is that you actually become less metabolically Healthy and it does increase your risk of developing insulin resistance, diabetes by 63%. These are not minimal numbers. So. And unfortunately, I know it sounds like conspiracy theory, but I do think that a lot of this is intentional in that the system is designed to give one drug that necessitates another, that necessitates another, that necessitates another. And I don't think they're trying to kill us, but they for sure don't want us healthy either.

Well, medicine is not about health, it's about disease. Traditional medicine.

Right.

And I talk about this when I give my lectures. You know, we talk about healthcare being a. It's really not a health care system. It's a health number one cost system and it's a disease system. That's how we're trained as physicians, as traditional physicians.

Yes, sure.

It's all about disease and what drug to give or a specific diagnosis. It's not how to change the disease and reverse the disease. Truly reverse the disease. We didn't learn in school how to reverse disease. We learned how to manage it and cover it up with prescription drugs. But you and I have deviated from that pathway, of course. And so we have a different emphasis.

Very naughty.

Yeah. Yes.

Okay, so I do want, I, I want to get back to inflammation because you said you run a big inflammation panel. That's a big buzzword these days. And everyone is kind of wondering, what does it mean? What does it mean for me? How do I find out if I have it, how do I reverse it if I have it, what do I do with this inflammation package that everyone is passing around?

So it is a big buzzword. In fact, the subtitle in my book called the All Natural Cardio Cure has the word inflammation, how to reduce inflammation in it. I don't remember the exact subtitle right now, but anyhow, so we run a blood panel first of all. And I'm going to throw out six or seven or eight different markers that we measure.

Yeah.

Now everyone's, not everyone. Most people have heard of what's called the SED rate, but that's a very non specific reflection. But we run at SED rate. We also run a crp, but typically what's called a cardiac crp. If we're looking for cardiac or a high sensitivity.

Yeah.

Yes, same thing.

Correct, Same thing, yes.

And in fact, I listened to a lecture, came to lecture at my organization 30 years ago, 35 years ago, Dr. Paul Ridger, he was a, an MD from, from Harvard and he spoke about. It was the first Exposure probably in this country to highly sensitive crp. And he spoke about the link between that and cardiovascular risk and stroke and such.

But anyhow, so that was 35 years ago.

Yes. And it still hasn't hit the mainstream yet.

It has not.

Right.

My husband has a concierge doctor, you know who you are. And I saw the list of his labs and I called, said concierge doctor and I said, you have to add this, this, this, and you have to add a fasting insulin, you have to add a high sensitivity C reactive protein. And maybe I send it to him in an email and he wrote back, why? What do you do with these? Yeah, it's very unfortunate and it blows my mind. Like what do you mean what do I do with it? How else are you going to assess my husband's risk for coronary artery disease? It is astounding that something so simple. And I will put fasting insulin on that plate too.

Absolutely.

Like people, the mainstream will ask for a glucose, but only because they're ordering a cmp. They're not really thinking about fasting glucose, but then they never ask about a fasting insulin, which in my opinion is far more important.

It is way more important because it gives you the three month indicator of where you are. Where is the fasting is just going to tell you where you are at that moment in time. And the moment in time can change pretty drastically at times.

Yeah.

So some of the other ones we indications or markets we look at especially for cardiovascular and stroke risk and diabetes risk, include something called PLA2 fibrinogen level, what's called F2 isoprostine, something called myeloperoxidase, missing one or two. But of course, insulin level, cortisol level, hemoglobin A1C, there's some good insulin resistance factor C, peptide. I'm probably missing one, but that's okay. But that's part of what we met. Oh, I sometimes do what's called interleukin six more so I would say, and sometimes interleukin E, perhaps more so for my cancer patients. But sometimes I do that for my cardiac patients. Oh, I know a couple more. We always measure galectin 3 levels and we also often measure what's called NT Pro BNP, which has to do with cardiac stress. Yep, Both of them have to do with cardiac stress and congestive heart failure risk factors. And Galectin 3 is a very complicated lignin. It's a molecule that causes great amounts of inflammation, especially if you're, if you.

Have cancer which does it cause inflammation or it's the result of inflammation?

No, it itself can cause inflammation, I believe as well. It stimulates what's called TNF alpha, and I sometimes measure that one individually too. And then TNF alpha is a very pro inflammatory substance as well. Another cytokine, like. Yeah, like interleukin 6 and 8 are different cytokines that we measure. So we do it so we can block. So getting to, what do we do? We'll get to lifestyle, diet in a second maybe. But one of the things I'll mention right now that can block Galectin 3 if it's high or not optimal. That's a better term for me because I always like to look at things optimal, not just it's not high, which we can talk about, but now something called pectisol C, which is a form of modified citrus pectin. And so that's been well studied by my very good friend Dr. Elias out in California. And so. So it has the ability to block this Galectin 3, which is a pretty inflammatory molecule and especially if people have cancer, because it can drive further inflammation and it can also contribute to metastasis of cancer cells and progression of diseases. Yeah, so that's part of my.

People get benefit from pectisol even if they don't have elevated collectin 3.

Absolutely. And it's used for so many other conditions, fibrotic conditions, autoimmune conditions. We use a lot of it and we. The labs will tell us, oh, it should be less than 18 approximately, depending on the lab. And if someone has a chronic condition already, whether it be heart disease, cancer, diabetes, we try to drive it lower than 14 or 15 if we can get it down there. Oh, I also check homocysteine on everybody too. Forgot that one too.

Homocysteine 2, probably a vitamin D as well.

I do that too. But yeah, so. And speaking of vitamin D, you know, getting back to my term optimal versus, quote, normal. Yeah. I always use this example for vitamin D, so thanks for bringing that up. You know, vitamin D level normal is considered about 30 to 100. Well, if someone's 34, 35. Most doctors who are not enlightened, perhaps like we might be, will tell people they're fine at 35, but you could then be at 70, which is 100% greater, and you're still told you're fine. Yes.

So I line a fine.

Yes. So we, I believe that we have to look at all the biochemical markers in terms of what is most optimal for. For most of us or for that individual. And so for vitamin D, for example, I like it above 50. And if you have cancer, I want it 60 to 90. And, you know, so just to tell people they're fine when they're 34, I think they're missing about quite a bit.

Don't you love all the people that come to you? And they're clearly sick. Right. Because they wouldn't be coming to you without it. I don't know about you, but I don't get the person coming into my office saying, doc, I'm here because I feel great, have nothing wrong, but I want you to make me the most healthy I can be. That patient has never shown up on my doorstep. I hope you get them. I don't.

Right.

I don't get them too often. I may have. I may have in my years, one or two or three of them, because you know what they read. I was written up in one of Suzanne Somers books.

I know. That was my. I was getting to that.

So after that book was written, came out about three years ago, I think in 91, maybe. I'm sorry, in 21. 20. 21. And may she rest in peace. Unfortunately, she passed.

What a beautiful, beautiful song.

It was amazing. Very good friend of mine. So anyhow, after that book came out, I did get a few patients that came into me saying, I just want to feel as best as possible and I'm here to prevent illness. And so it was great because, you know, it made my life so much easier. They already ate well, they already exercised, they already slept fairly well. They already, you know, get rid of the junk food. They, they did all the wonderful things. They're already taking some supplements.

They were drinking the proverbial Kool Aid. Not real Kool Aid.

No, not at all.

We don't advocate for any real Kool Aid. No, the proverbial Kool Aid, they were.

There for a tune up. And that's what we did. And it was great because you would find some things. I'd look at their minerals, for example, and we mentioned deep. And I'd look at B12, folate, which are not minerals or vitamins, but we look at zinc, magnesium, selenium, chromium, copper, iodine, all those things. And we'd see sometimes they might be low or suboptimal. And so we would talk to them about either increasing it through dietary means or perhaps if we had to, through supplements.

Yeah.

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I want to go back To D. Yeah. Why is D so important? Because, you know, in mainstream, they're still thinking, well, I guess you need it for your bones. Right. And so, and so that's what they're thinking about. So they're making no connection almost universally. I don't know if you're finding this, but the medical oncologists are not checking vitamin D levels. They're not, they're not.

I see five patients a day in my practice with cancer, and I don't think, I don't think I see more than one person a month who's convinced, who's conventional. Oncologist checked the vitamin D level. I know. So they're not checking it.

They're not.

So vitamin D is a very important nutrient. It's not just a vitamin. It's actually, it's a, it's a hormone. Yeah. And it actually has the amount. It's called a steroid ring. It's, it's, it's, it's, you know, the structure of it is called a naturally occurring steroid. I don't want people to think we're giving exogenous artificial steroids.

Right, exactly.

But now. So it's extremely important in that it regulates over 2000 genes in the body, many of which are anti cancer genes. And low levels or suboptimal levels of D have been associated with numerous cancers, including prostate men, breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, and probably various other cancers. But there's a very strong amount of literature showing. Yeah.

I mean, there's no way it doesn't correlate with ovarian, with uterine, with any of the endothelial cancers. And it's hard to believe that there's not a strong correlation with every cancer, with the exception of maybe the liquid cancers.

I would agree.

Yeah.

I had someone in my office yesterday, she had breast cancer. Her level was 16.8. And I was like, flabbergast. I said, no one's ever checked this. And she said, no. And her doctors, you know, treating her for breast cancer now. And I said, it's gonna be hard to fight this if you're, if your vitamin D level stays this low.

Yeah.

Near impossible.

Yeah.

What do you like to do to get people's vitamin D up into what we would consider therapeutic range? And I agree with you. I, I never let anyone go below 90. And I am checking their vitamin D receptor genes to see if they have good receptor genes or bad receptor genes, because that says to me, you know, if you have bad receptor genes, you need to keep those levels on the Higher side, you need to be closer to 100. So how do you like to get people therapeutic with vitamin D?

If they're really low, I do supplement with them. I put them on supplements. You know, how much you use? It depends on how low they are. So I tell the patient, because they often ask me, take 5,000, 10,000, whatever. And I'll say, I need to give you enough to get you in a therapeutic range. Yeah, I need to get up to 70, 80. So it could be 5,000, it could be 10,000, even 15,000. Some people.

Yeah.

The one I just mentioned was 16.8. Her vitamin D level. I put on oral and I said, I want you to come in for vitamin D shots twice a month as well, because I don't. She doesn't have time to wait, in my opinion, because she was. She was pretty ill. I said, you don't have time to wait months and months to get your levels up to a therapeutic range. So let's start off with oral, and then twice a month, intramuscular injections of vitamin D. And then we'll recess you in, like, six weeks. We'll see where you are.

Have you worked with any of the vitamin D lights yet?

No, I haven't.

I think there's one that you would really like for your practice. It's amazing work. The company is called Energy E, N, Y, R G Y. They're out of Scottsdale. And the founder is so interesting because he was talking about the fact that he lives in Scottsdale, plays pickleball. He's outside a ton.

Right.

Like Scottsdale, you're outside all the time. And his doctor said, yeah, let's just measure a vitamin D. And he was like, what do I need a vitamin D for? I spend five hours outdoors in the sun every single day. I walk, I play pickleball, I do this, that. And he measured his vitamin D, and It was like 24. And he lives in Scottsdale.

I read a study.

What's the hope for the rest of us?

I read a study number of years ago that said in the state of Arizona, 25% of the people are suboptimal or low in vitamin D. Yeah, I'm surprised, but that's exactly what you basically alluded to here. Yeah.

And that's what's happening. And it's a major problem. It's a major problem for everything. It's a major problem for thyroid function and people who are stuck, stuck, stuck, can't lose weight.

Right.

And they said their labs are normal. And I say, what's your Vitamin D. Yeah. Because it's impossible to be metabolically healthy if you don't have vitamin D. It's impossible to be healthy from an immune standpoint if you don't have vitamin D. You can't have a good mood. Mood stabilization if you don't have vitamin D. I mean, it's in everything you.

Remember during COVID that was one of the most important nutrients they finally talked about. But people forget about that in two seconds. Of course. But they said, if we have low vitamin D, we're going to be more susceptible to Covid. And more severe cases of COVID Yeah.

Hospitalization.

Yep, yep.

Being put on the ventilator.

Right.

ICU admission, all of it tied to vitamin D levels.

There's a higher risk also of neurologic illnesses with low vitamin D, including ms, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and various others, even dementia.

Yeah.

So it's a simple. It's a simple nutrient to take, simple to correct it. But you have to monitor it, you know? But I don't freak out, by the way. I've had some patients that said, oh, my doctor took me off and I said, how come? Because they said. He said the level was at 80 or 90. Right now it's too high. Oh, my gosh, here we go again. So it's like you have to reeducate your patients.

Yeah, you do. I ask everyone this. I personally have not. Have you seen a case of vitamin D toxicity? I think it's urban legend.

It's blown out of proportion. I have some patients whose levels are 110, 120, and there's really no issue with that at all. I've never seen a case where they've truly had medical problems. You know, if you swallow a whole bottle, maybe you'll get some nausea and vomiting from it, but that's with anything.

I mean, I just. I don't know if it's. You're down on what you're not up on, as Lindy Burke, Lindsay Berkson would say.

I thought that was Suzanne Summers said that one day.

Did she?

He did. So one of the two fell from each other.

She might have learned it from.

From Lindsay.

Lindsay. I call her Devic.

She's a good friend of mine.

Yeah, I mean, she is. She is.

She's great.

Amazing. So I don't know who said it first.

Yes.

I just know that.

That it's a great sentence, by the way.

She.

She. She is very famous for saying that.

Yeah.

So I don't know if that's it. I Don't know if. But for whatever the reason, or maybe it's just like, too simple a fix. And doctors inherently need to feel as if they did it. I don't know what it is. They are totally, totally uncomfortable with healing that they were not involved in. And I think this is tremendously demonstrated in Kelly Turner's books, Radical Remission and Radical Hope, which I'm sure you're very familiar with. And, you know, Kelly talks about the fact that she. She took all of her work and went to one of the medical oncologists who some of the patients were seeing, and she said, you know, why don't you. Why don't you talk about this? Why don't you talk about these people that have had these radical remissions? And the response from the medical oncologists were like, universal. We don't want to falsely get people's hope up like those. We don't know why that happened, but it shouldn't have happened. Right?

Yeah.

And they're so uncomfortable with it instead of being curious. I think that's the biggest issue.

I agree.

There's a whole. There's an entire lack of curiosity. It's like, oh, well, I don't know why that happened, and I don't care. Here, take your pill. Right. So. And nowhere is that better demonstrated than in the cancer arena. And you have been treating cancer patients for decades with out of the box things. I would love for you to talk about your experience and how you even got into that.

So about 30 or 35 years ago, some of the patients started coming to me and said they were diagnosed with cancer. Can I help them? And I said, I'm not an oncologist. I don't know how to treat cancer. So I said, but maybe I can learn. So I started going to conferences back then. Probably about 25 to 30 years ago, I started going to conferences. And it got to the point prior to the breakout of COVID where I was going to four to six conferences a year just on cancer Nutritional. It's called integrative oncology. Yeah. And that's where I met Tom Lodi, by the way, and many other wonderful physicians.

And so it's a really amazing group of people.

It's great.

And like, nowhere do I feel more at home than when I go to these integrative cancer conferences.

And though I believe that those physicians are true healers and they really have their heart in the right place. And that's where. So I started going to those meetings. And I, once again, I was like, so Ravenously hungry towards it. Because patients I noticed after I started treating, some started improving and started doing so much better. And those who were giving. Given death sentences, you know, maybe three months or six months were still in my office two and three years later. And I was like, something must be going right here. This is unbelievable. So I started. That's what happened. So I started learning from these other, you know, from the conferences I went to, and we all learned from each other, of course. And. And that's. And I started doing this in my practice and I put together. Eventually I came home like a light bulb went and went off my head one day, I remember. And because different lectures were on different topics, but all related sort of the cancer. And I put together in my own office like a. I call it my wellness360. It was like a circ circle, and in the middle was like health and wellness. And it could be cancer, it could be high blood pressure, it could be diabetes, it could be anything. And then periphery. I put.

You mean this could apply to anything?

To anything?

Any chronic disease? Yes.

Yeah, exactly that.

Yes. It's not exclusive to cancer.

Not one bit.

Any chronic disease?

Yeah.

Yes. And so I realized, light bulb went off, that, hey, it's all related to the same foundational information. It's oxidative stress, it's mitochondrial dysfunction. It's poor diet, it's excessive stress. It's. It's the toxins in our environment. It's nutrient. Nutrient deficiencies. You can go on and on and on. So I chose 12 and I pretended it was the clock, you know, so. So that's the model that I put together in my head. And then I physically put it in my office, a big poster of it. And I use that to guide me and show my patients, literally, you know, how. How I think and how we need to begin thinking in functional and integrated medicine. Yeah. So I've been. So I put together a whole program to support my patients who have cancer so that they can get through their chemotherapy and. Or radiation if they're. If they're electing to do those things. They can get through it much better with less side effects. They have much longer survival rates. They have better remissions or longer remissions. They are. And way less side effects. I mean, it's incredible. And we give them their health and their energy back. They come in and are falling apart and they can't move, and they have no energy, and they're nausea, nauseous, they're throwing up, losing weight, and the cancer is progressing. And many of these people have seen significant reduction in their symptoms, and their. Their quality of life has greatly improved. Yes, And I think that's an area, too, in traditional medicine. They don't pay enough attention to quality of life.

Any.

Okay.

Any attention to quality of life. Any attention. And that is before, during, and. And after. Yeah, right. That's actually the topic of my next book, which is called the Forgotten Woman. And this is the woman who's been through cancer treatment, and she's told that she should be grateful to be alive. And she is grateful to be alive. But it is very hard to feel grateful when you have brain fog and you can't sleep and you're anxious and you're depressed and you're scared and you have palpitations, You. You just don't feel well, you have fatigue, you've gained weight, your joints hurt, your muscles hurt, your bones hurt, you have no libido, Sex is unwanted and painful, your clothes don't fit, you've lost your mojo. It's very hard to feel grateful when all of that is happening. And yet that's how we're leaving most people after cancer treatment, because we completely ignore what got them there, what we do to them in the course of the treatment and what they're left with afterwards. We ignore it.

And the thing is, too, they only understand traditional medicine, only understands a disease plan. They do not understand the concept of a health plan at all. And a healing plan.

That's right.

So, you know, when I see my patients and I talk to them about what they're doing for their cancer from a traditional standpoint, and they say, well, after, you know, three months, my doc's going to do another mri, another PET scan. And. And I say, well, has he talked to you about how to prevent this maybe from coming back? No, he says he's just going to scan me periodically every three to six months.

I know they love that.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, you know, it's not a conscious thing, right? It is not a conscious thing, but they need them to come back. They don't want them to be done. There's no benefit to them being done. There's certainly no benefit to them dying. So don't get me wrong, they don't want them to die, but they also don't want them to be healed either. There's no benefit to them. A well patient does not benefit this current system. And I do think that a lot of the doctors. Hoodwinked isn't the right word, but they are blinded by the system, and they do not See, this is a perfect example of not seeing the forest through the trees. Like, they are so siloed into what their job is. And people ask me all the time, like, oh, what medical oncologist should I go to? Like, who's a really good one? You have to remember, like, in our system, the standard of who is a really good medical oncologist is the person that makes the diagnosis and gives the drugs. Like, that's. That's what a good medical oncologist is. And we don't really have good medical oncologists. Even Valter Longo, who was working with the people at usc.

Right.

On all the fasting, mimicking stuff. Do you know that? Why isn't that widely dispersed? Why aren't those medical oncologists talking about this at their meetings? Why aren't they telling their friends? Why is this something that's only happening at usc? It's astounding to me. And yet they are still doing the same old, same old.

Well, he's one of the. He's one of us in the sense that he's out of the box.

Yeah.

He's one of the minority.

Yeah.

That's gone in his own direction because he's seen that it's benefited. It truly benefited his patients.

Yeah.

You know, I see medical. I have medical students that rotate through my office a lot, in residence, interns, whatever. And they're amazed by what. What I do. I'm not bragging. I'm just like. They don't. They say, I didn't learn this in school. And I said, I know you didn't. That's why. And they. The elected come to my offices.

Yeah.

They find me somehow. Yeah. And they are astounded.

You're kind of famous.

No, no. So. But it's amazing. Like, they never been exposed to this kind of thought process, and they really enjoy it. Most of them have been like. And most of them have had a residency set, and they're already going to emergency medicine and anesthesia, wherever they might be doing, because they never. If they're in their fourth year or beyond.

Yeah.

They didn't. They say to me, I didn't know this existed.

I know.

And it's a shame because you don't get this in medical school.

You don't.

And it's hard to seek it out.

I know.

Unless something.

It's very hard to seek it out. I mean, you have to be very, very intentional about it. And, you know, for me, I was a very conventional breast surgeon. I mean, I was a great breast surgeon. Right. What is a great breast surgeon? You diagnose and you operate. Right. And I was a great surgeon. So did I really help people? Probably not. I mean, I took them over a bridge from sick to like not as actively sick to less sick.

Right, right.

Not as actively sick. I don't even know if they were less sick. But like not as actively sick. But I didn't. Did I help them? Did I really change the trajectory of their lives? No, no, of course I didn't. And that's a hard pill to swallow. And I think that that's what prevents a lot of people from doing that, is that you really have to have that hard conversation with yourself, like, wow, am I really doing the right thing?

Right. You have to admit, you have to question, you know, all these years, was I doing the best thing possible for my patients? And frequently the answer might be no. So it's a problem.

Yeah, it is.

I hear you.

So speaking of doing the right thing for the patients, I do want to end by talking about some of the out of the box things that you're doing. I know that you're familiar with Jane McClelland's book. Jane McClelland talks about a lot of off label pharmaceuticals. There are other nutraceuticals. We talked about pectisol a little bit. So tell me, what are your favorites? What are your go to, especially in the area of breast cancer.

So Jane McClelland's book, you know, how to Starve Cancer was a remarkable book that came out, I guess it's eight years ago or whatever it is now. And then she wrote the second book and I think she might have.

I do want to be clear. Her book is about cervical cancer and specifically her journey with cervical cancer.

Okay.

So I think that's important for everyone to know.

Yeah. So what I was going to tell you is that about 10 years ago I was in Florida at a conference and a person, I don't think he's a doctor. He's not. His name is. His last name is Christofferson. Travis. Travis Christofferson, who wrote a book called Tripping over the. Tripping over the Truth.

Truth, yeah.

So I went to his conference, I went to a lecture. It was, I'm part of one of the association, medical association, was president of it. And he spoke at our meeting and one of the cancer conferences he spoke at. Anyhow, he, he, I think introduced the concept of repurposed drugs to our, I believe, to our country. I think he was the first one to speak on it, if I'm right.

But anyhow, I mean, I think his work was very, very important.

So that evening I had dinner with. With him and about 12 of the speakers in this conference and we're all sitting at dinner and some of them I know and most of my know. And in fact, Naysha Winners was with us too, at the meeting. She was at dinner with us and various other people you would know. But sitting next to me was a lady that came a few minutes late. And I said, hi, I'm Alan magazine, or how are you? I'm a physician in New Jersey, etc. And I said, you know, she's had a British accent. She's speaking to me. I said, who are you? I'm writing a book. And I said, oh, what's your book on? She says, well, it's on repurposed drugs. And I said, oh my gosh, we just had a lecture on that three hours ago. She says, I missed it because I just flew in from London and I missed the lecture, but I'm here now for dinner. I didn't think much of it. She gave me her name, but it went in and went out the other year. And of course three years later she came out with her book and I said, oh my gosh, it's the lead I sat next to. And so we've become friends. And I just saw her up in New York a few about a year ago or so. And she refers a lot of patients to me at my practice. So anyhow, I'm using in my practice a lot of repurposed drugs which are, as you know, they are FDA approved drugs.

Yes.

And they're approved for purposes other than cancers? Most of the time, yes. For example, I mean, you know, metformin. Metformin's been on the market for 70 or so years and it's approved and used a lot for diabetes. But they're finding out now that it's one of the many repurposed drugs that may have a beneficial effect on cancer cases. Why? Because it seems to reduce the population of what's called the cancer stem cells, which are. Which is something else we measure in our cancer program. These are the cells that are not alleviated by traditional chemo and radiation. And in fact, traditional chemo radiation may actually make them more aggressive, more virulent and cause them to flare because they.

They select out for the more aggressive, more resistant populations.

Right, exactly. It's like survival of the fittest.

Yeah.

So anyhow, so there are. There's a whole regimen of different substances I use Metformin is One, there are others.

So you're not using metformin for the metabolic benefit, you're using metformin for its anti stem cell. Because people ask me this all the time.

Cancer stem cell. Let's be.

Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. Anti cancer stem cell. Because people ask me this all the time. They're like, well, my insulin's normal, my blood sugar is normal. Why do I need to go on metformin?

Right.

And I say you don't need to do anything.

Right.

But there would be some benefit.

Right. So, yeah, Even those who might have a C, a 1C of 5.1, 5.2, which is very good. Yeah. Sometimes I do put them on metformin because of its beneficial effect against the cancer stem cells.

Yes.

There are other medicines we also use off label, once again, once again, repurposed drugs, and these are very controversial today. We all heard of the controversy in regard to ivermectin, bendazole, methylene blue.

Yeah.

Etodolac. There's several different medicines that I use depending on the cases, but some of these have been very clearly shown to slow down, believe it or not, the progression of cancer to stimulate what's called apoptosis, which is, you know, programmed cell death to the cancer cells to reduce inflammation, to cut down on the, to reduce the side effects from traditional chemotherapy. So, you know, in the last 10 years, 8 to 10 years now I'm using a lot of these repurposed drugs.

To improve mitochondrial health function.

Correct, correct. So it's, We've seen some very good results with our patients. We, you know, we use a very well rounded program that supports their immune system. By the way, I also measure a lot of their immune cells. I, I mentioned the interleukins, but I also mentioned different cytokines. We did, we do take a look at some of their lymphocytes, something called the TMB cells, and I look at their natural killer cells. I look at their nigelase level, which is something else. So it's a whole program that I put together in the last 20 something years to give my patients the best chances of good quality of life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's amazing. I want to talk about Suzanne Somers.

Okay. I hope I don't cry, but let's do it.

Okay, I'll cry. She was amazing. And you got to spend a lot of time with her and she was a friend. Can you just talk about her, her, you know, journey with breast cancer? Well, I don't, I'm sorry, I didn't cry.

I first have to say that I wasn't her physician, so I don't know the specifics of her journey. I have an idea, but I wasn't involved in that part. We became friends because I was president of, it's called ACAM, the American College for Advancement Medicine for way back 25 years ago. And I had Suzanne Cummins to be one of our keynote speakers. So we became friends that way. And then she interviewed me for some of her books and the most recent book that she had written called A New Way of Life, I think it was called A New Way to Age.

A New Way to Age.

New Way to Age. She interviewed me for that book and I'm proud to say I was the first physician in the first chapter, the whole 20 pages where she interviewed me there. Yes. So we became friends and she was one. And I had the opportunity to actually go to her house. She invited me over with, when they, when we released that book, when published that book. And she had an event there where different doctors came that, that she interviewed. So it was an unbelievable evening in Palm Desert. And her husband Allen is amazing human being as well. But Suzanne was one, I would tell you, one of the most genuine, caring and sharing people you could ever meet in your life. She genuinely cared about human beings, about helping you feel better and get better. She would share any type of information that you would ask her to share. She didn't have an edge to her one bit. She had no ego at all. And you know, you think someone this well known, this famous, you know.

Yeah.

She was the most down to earth person you could ever imagine. And when it came to health, there was, there was no one like her. She would share whatever information she'd heard from this doc and that doc and this one, and guide you that way. And she was just so caring about everything she did. And she was just a wonderful human being. And she also bucked the traffic. I mean, several of her books were on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, which she was ostracized for a lot of that, as we know. And it's a lot of what I do too. And I learned from Dr. Wright back 40 years ago when I was with him, and how to utilize it, assess it and dose it, and when you know, how to adjust it. And it's a very big part of my practice. So Suzanne had interviewed me, you know, to discuss some of that with her as well.

Yeah.

And there's not a lot of Suzanne Somers out there. There's just, they don't make them like that.

She was highly, highly criticized for taking hormone replacement.

Yes.

After her breast cancer diagnosis, it was considered heresy. And in fact, I had a patient this week that said, what do you mean you want me to take hormone replacement? I had breast cancer. I said, I understand that, but you're suffering. She's like, well, my doctor told me that Suzanne Somers took hormone replacement and she died. I said, she died 30 years later.

Right. She died about 24 years later. And I'm going to tell you something else that I don't know if the public knows this about her, but I think it's. If I'm allowed to say, I'm going to say it, and hopefully I won't get in trouble from her family or all but a year or two before she passed away, she fell down the steps. She had major trauma, physical trauma, and I'm sure emotional trauma to the point where she underwent surgery on her neck and she was in a brace, a neck brace for a period of time. I don't know if it was three months, six months, for quite a while and. But she had at least one surgery and maybe two surgeries. And I'm going to go out in a limb here. I might be wrong, I might be right. I don't know. But I suspect that part of the reason her cancer came back was that the trauma and the stress that she endured and the pain and the pain that she endured for the pain is.

One of the worst drivers of illness and disease.

Yes. And that's what. That's. So that happened about a year, let's say, or a year and a half, sometime before her cancer recurred. And unfortunately, once it recurred back in, like, August of before the October that she passed away, I think it was in 23. She passed away. That's just over a year now. What was my point? Oh, the cancer came back and it then metastasized, from what I understand. And it wasn't her treating doctor to her brain, and that's when she didn't make it. So I think people need to know how, you know, she did amazingly well for 23 or 24 years.

She did.

And she wrote and lived a beautiful, full, enjoyable life. Right.

And she helped. The other thing is she helped thousand, probably the words, millions of other people.

Yeah.

Through her journey.

I think it's way over a thousand.

Yeah, yeah. Hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of thousands.

Yes. Without question.

Yeah. Between her. Her books and her lectures and her podcasts and everything that she did to help others.

Yeah.

That's what she was.

She lived life with great purpose. Without question.

Yeah.

And left an indelible mark on this earth.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

It's a big loss. But she did.

It's a big loss. And also. But she. She did something truly tremendous for us, for the industry, for women, for everything. Everything.

And for the men that are with the women. So it means for everybody.

Yeah, for everyone. For sure. In our world, we're all about hope because we know that disease can be reversed, that health can be regained, that. That health can be restored. We know all of that. What message do you want to leave people with who are just getting diagnosed trying to figure this out or they've been through their treatment and they're wondering now what. Because that is another terrifying time for people. Like, when you're diagnosed and treated. That's a very busy time. A lot going on. You feel very active, and then all of a sudden, they ring that stupid bell.

Oh, yeah.

They ring that stupid bell, and people are left in this horrible silence, frightening silence. The visitors stop. The appointments stop. It all stops. What do you say to those people?

Well, never let your guard down. Never give up. Never lose hope, and always strive to improve yourself. Because nobody knows what's in store for us, even today, later today and tomorrow. And you can't just listen to statistics. You can't just listen to doctors, wives, husbands, other people. Listen to your heart. Listen to yourself.

Teddy wants to.

Teddy wants to say hello. Yeah, Teddy's very cute. And so, you know, and try to stay. Try to get rid of that fear factor. If it means. Because fear is one of the most troublesome things in our life. And, you know, if it means going for special counseling or special. Don't hesitate. There's nothing to be ashamed of. And have a whole team around you. It's very important to have a supportive team, whether it's your own family at home, whether it's your medical team, whether it's your psychological team, your prayer groups, your religious groups, all that is equally important. It's not just about what you and I do. It's far greater than that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Amazing. Where can people find you?

Well, they can check me out in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, at. My website is Dr. Dr. Magaziner. It's spelled magazine with an r dot com. M a g a z I n e r dot com. That's my website. Dr. Magazine dot com. And I'm right outside of Philadelphia, 15 or 20 minutes outside of Philly. And people, you know, we see people every day. Go birds. That's right.

Thank you.

Thank you. Now, those who are Kansas City Chiefs fans may not ever listen to me ever again. That's okay. We get one chance. We get it. We get a Super bowl, too. But anyhow, so, yeah. And I have a wonderful team around me. I have that. I'm not just saying this. I have the best group around me. And you're only sometimes as good as a team surrounding you.

For sure.

Yeah. And so from the minute people call our office or walk in the door, we have a very supportive, caring, sympathetic team of people. And I have another physician, I have another pa, I have four nurses. I have just a wonderful group of people that are all caring and sharing. And it's great because I didn't, you know, you can't say I didn't have that always in 35, 39 years, but I do have it now. So I'm very happy and I'm very. I'm very proud of what I have around me, too.

Well, I'm very happy that you came here today to share your wisdom with my community. And I'm grateful for people like you who blaze the trail for people like me to follow along. Right. You drafted me. I just.

You're a first round pick.

And I hope that you continue to do what you do for a good long time because it's so very important. And I hope that you continue to be a shining example of what's possible because we need this. You know, we need this.

Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And this was fun. Yeah.

Great.

And if you enjoyed this episode, then please like it, share it. Send us your comments. Share it with someone who needs to hear it, and pretty much everyone needs to hear it 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. 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. Power to optimize your well being. My team and I encourage you to apply the knowledge gained from today's episode and 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 at. Dr. Jenn Simmons. And remember, my Jen has two ends. So until next time, remember to stay proactive, informed and confident in your breast health journey. The key to your health is you.