Why You Should Think Twice Before Having a Mammogram

Here we go.

Awesome.

All right, doc, we should be all set to go. All right. All right. So sometimes I get interviews directly from my social media. Yeah. This interview that I have next came from one of my reels I made about mammograms. Travis, go ahead and play it. Yep. Hey, what'd you think of the video? That's how we got on today. Rain. Travis, I'm ready. All right, here we go. Hey, everybody. You know, nice thing about doing our media, we get to produce some amazing clips from the things that we do on a regular basis. It's always exciting. And the nice thing is they get spread all over the world and sometimes it leads to great opportunities to meet in some of the greatest people in the world. And it's exciting. So let me show you the video that our team put together that went out on Instagram that led to what we're going to talk about today.

It.

Now you would see if you look at the comments below, below that video on Instagram, you can notice that three quarters of them were absolutely fantastic. One core of them, people just lost their mind, you saying? Because what they do, they automatically think, you know, I'm swaying people to, towards some other kind of diagnostic. And I want people to understand that there was, you know, some major detriments that happened. That the full length video is obviously on the ADP show. You can see the background, see the set up there. But the nice thing is this, that being said, it led to somebody I believe that I want everybody to hear about because all of a sudden I get a nice message on Instagram from her. And it was great because we share some very, very, very close, similar views that way. I'm very surprised I've never met this person because all of a sudden, you know, we got on the phone on Sunday, actually we started talking about that way. And that is Dr. Jen Simmons. And it's kind of nice because I cannot wait till you guys hear her story. I cannot tell what she does for her living and her past. It's been absolutely fantastic. So we're going to step in. So everybody do me a favor. Welcome Dr. Jen. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great. I'm so happy to be here. That was a great account of how we met and yeah, it's interesting when you put things out in the world, how it connects you to like minded people. And I love that you said that. Three quarters of the comments were positive and supportive and a quarter of the people were outraged. That's kind of the story of my life. That like most people.

And I want, and I want to get into that.

Yeah.

I think you have a fascinating story. I think after spending with you, talking to you, I think we talked for about a half an hour on the phone. I can honestly tell you, if I didn't have to, you know, play with my kids, which I want to play my kids, but I didn't play my kids, I could have sat and spoke to you for hours on this stuff. But that's what I want everybody to know. And because here's what happens. The majority of people that watch this show obviously are women between the ages of 25 and 65. And obviously that's been your specialty care forever and again, excited for you to share your background, what you did for a living. But the idea is this, is they in order to even watch a show like this, they have to go through some mental transformation because we're all programmed in the form of healthcare from start. So I'd really like you guys, I really like you to start with your, you know, your background, your education, things like that. And then as you told me in the story, the evolution, where obviously I'll give a little, get a little hint, you know, being a surgeon and then how you evolved with your own personal story and then obviously we'll get to more some details that why the video appealed to you and things like that. So why don't you give everybody a good background?

Yeah, absolutely. So there actually was never a time in my life that I remember that I didn't know about breast cancer as a child. My first cousin was a woman named Linda Creed. And Linda was a singer songwriter in the 1970s and 1980s. She wrote all the music for the Spinners and the stylistics. She wrote 54 hits in all. And her most famous song was the Greatest Love of All. So she wrote that song in 1977 as the title track to the movie the Greatest, starring Muhammad Ali. But it actually received its acclaim in March of 1986 where Whitney Houston released that to the world. And at that time it would spend 14 weeks at the top of the charts. So here I am, a single 16 year old, so impressionable. I have this literal rock star as a cousin. Like some people say their cousin's a rock star, mine is literally a rock star. So Whitney releases the song and it spends 14 weeks at the top of the charts. And it's on everyone's mind and on everyone's tongue and it's so, so awesome. Only Linda doesn't know it because Linda dies of metastatic Breast cancer. Just one month after Whitney releases that song. I'm 16, and my hero died. And her life, and ultimately her death gives birth to my life's purpose. So I do the only thing I know how to do to try to end the suffering that women go through, that families go through, so that they don't have to go through what we went through. I become a doctor, I become a surgeon. I become the first fellowship trained breast surgeon in Philadelphia. And I really think that I'm making an impact. I quickly make it to the top of my field. I'm sought after, I'm respectful. I'm running my practice. I'm running the cancer program for my hospital. I actually get my cancer program and NIH accreditation, and I'm juggling a lot of balls in the air, right? I'm running my practice. I'm running the cancer program. I'm a wife, I'm a mother, I'm a philanthropist. I'm an athlete and have all these balls in the air, think I'm an expert juggler until one day in March of 17 where everything comes crashing down because I go from being as healthy as I think anyone can be to not being able to walk across the room. I am out of breath. I'm having chest pain. I'm having palpitations. I have three days of exhaustive workup. And at the end of that three days, I'm sitting in the office of my friend and colleague and physician, and he looks at me and tells me that I need to have surgery and chemo radiation and take lifelong hormone replacement. And I completely appreciated the irony. I mean, these are things that I told people that. That they needed day in, day out, without hesitation or reservation. And yet when the words were coming at me, it's like I'm in Charlie Brown's classroom, right? I'm underwater. Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. I still don't know today. Is it the universe? Is it God? Is it my rebellious self? But something told me that that was not the solution for me. Now I don't know why. Here I am. I'm a traditionally trained surgeon. I'm an md. I went to one of the finest medical schools in this country. I am operating literally and figuratively by the standard of care every single day. I know that that's how this disease is treated. I know that my life is in danger if I don't treat it. And yet something made me say no. Something made me walk away and look for answers. Because the answer that I was giving to all my breast cancer patients it's just something that happens somehow wasn't acceptable to me. And I couldn't see why God would give me an organ only to have it removed, take chemo, radiation, and have to replace that for the rest of my life. And so I went on a journey to selfishly to heal myself. This wasn't about making my patients better, wasn't about making the world a better place. This was about, like, figuring out how I was gonna. How I was gonna navigate the rest of my life. And so I enroll in a health coaching certificate program called IIN So I do it very reluctantly. I'm like a snooty booty, thinking, I'm a doctor. What could I possibly have to learn? I'm not overweight, you know, like, I know enough about nutrition. But I'm sick, and I need answers. And so I enroll in this program, and one of the first lecturers is a man named Mark Hyman. So he comes up on stage, introduces himself as a functional medicine physician. And at this point, I'm a doctor for, like, 20 years. And I said, there's no such thing as a functional medicine physician. What is this quack talking about? Right? And then I remember that I'm sick, and I'm there for a reason, and I should shut my brain down and open up my eyes and listen to what this man has to say. And thank God I did. Because within five minutes of him speaking, my entire world makes sense. And I know that the reason that I got sick was. Was so that I could be in that room on that day, in that seat, listening to this man speak, because he would inspire the path to the rest of my life. Because while I was a breast surgeon, I was not changing the trajectory of the rest of that person's life. I might have been delaying the next presentation, but as a surgeon and as any cancer doctor in this traditional medical system, all the focus is on the tumor. And that has serious problems, because, first of all, what we focus on grows. So we're only supporting the disease process. And the tumor is not the problem. The tumor is the symptom of the problem.

And nowhere, Dr. Merrier. Say that again. Say that again, because that's. That's powerful.

The tumor is not the problem. The tumor is the symptom of the problem. And nowhere in my medical training was I taught to think about why people got breast cancer. I was simply taught that breast cancer is a multifactorial disease. I mean, I can repeat this spiel to you again and again and again. It was so practiced. Breast cancer Is a multifactorial disease. It is the perfect, perfect storm. There is nothing that you could have done. It's something that happened to you. And this is what traditional physicians believe and still say, and they rob people of the opportunity to heal. And we all have the opportunity to heal. But we need to see it from a different perspective, because, again, the tumor is not the problem. The. The tumor is the symptom of the problem. And we have to back up and look to see where is that imbalance coming from. Because cancer is a normal response to an abnormal environment. So whatever is disturbing your equilibrium, that's what we need to focus on. That's what we need to get rid of. What do you have that you don't need? What do you need that you don't have? And this is the basis of functional medicine, and this is what I learned about on that day. So I'm an early adopter. So I immediately enroll in the institute for functional Medicine. I spend the next three years immersed in the study of functional medicine. And then once you ring that bell, you can't unring it. And I couldn't stay within the confines of traditional medicine because I knew that not only did that limit my ability to heal people, but in doing so, I was just condoning a system that is so very broken.

Now, doc, that's a very important point right there. When you looked at. You had that massive transformation. I can tell you right now, everybody can feel the passion. Everybody can see the big trans. You see the excitement that you did. That was your excitement within a different perspective of what you learned as a physician. And I think. And I think your excitement comes from. It broadens your approach to how you'd actually even take care of a patient. Now, I suspect. I never asked this question. I suspect then when you. When you find out and realize that kind of good news, you want to share it with people. And I guarantee you, from a public standpoint, as you were taking care of people, that the majority. Not everybody, but the majority, just like the 75, 25, okay, the majority of people were excited, took steps, think that. But the question I have for you is this. Your excitement would also want to share with colleagues, physicians, people within the medical field. How is that response when you start to share? Because being a respected surgeon and come along saying, hey, listen, breast cancer, we're just treating symptoms, that right there, I think would. I suspect that would not make you too many friends, But I could be wrong. They could have opened their heart up to it, and you could have just got it Right. I know I was, I could answer that question.

I went, I went from being arguably the smartest person in the room to the quack who's lost her stuff. Right. And you know, it's okay because I understand where they're coming from. First of all, before I knew, I didn't know. Right. So my first, like my visceral response to Mark Hyman was that he was a quack. Right. That's what.

And for people who don't know, he's actually trained, he's a trained medical physician. Oh, yeah. So he had to make that transition himself. He wasn't taught like we were in school. He actually had the, he had to change. And a lot of people don't realize this is his learning because I, I know him. His learning had to come from self learning and from other people like us that have been teaching for 25 years. And see, that's the thing. Just like this, it's a transition, but that they weren't taught that in school. And, and so let's go on. What was your colleague's response? And also, you know, we talked about this before. The stuff that you're doing now, what was your clinical training when you're in medical school? What was their view? How is it that you learned that this was quackery to now? It's like this is basically primary healthcare. So let's run the thought process of other people.

Yeah. So I actually want to share with you like the day that I decided to leave surgery because I think it pretty much exemplifies everything. So I'm in office hours one day, I am. If I'm not through my functional medicine training, I'm almost through my functional medicine training. I'm very close. And so there's a 19 year old woman, she's actually wheeled into my office by her mother. And I had just listened to Teri Wahl speak. So for those of you who don't know Teri Wahl, she is a physician. She was running the residency program at her university hospital. A very respected physician with access to everything, clinical trials, drugs, this kind of thing. She gets diagnosed with primary progressive ms, goes from super high functioning person to zero gravity wheelchair in seven years, despite access to everything, despite being on every drug, every clinical trial, every, everything gets released by the hospital because she cannot even perform her duties as a physician or an educator and goes on this journey to figure out how to heal herself because, you know, what's the alternative, right? She's just gonna shrivel up and die. So she changes her diet Takes, you know, has some integrative therapies, comes up with this plan that within a couple of years she goes from zero gravity wheelchair to riding her bike 20 miles every day. So completely recovers and then develops this plan, the Wahls protocol, which has since helped thousands and thousands and thousands of people with Ms. Recover their health. So I just listened to her speak, so I am like bubbling with excitement. So here's this 19 year old girl who's wheeled into my office because her Ms. Is so progressive that she can't walk the 30ft from the elevator to my office. She's coming to me for a breast mass. But I'm so excited about what I had just learned, that I just launch on all of these things that she can do and get the Wahls protocol and this and that. And I'm going on and on. And after about two minutes, she puts her hand up to stop me and says, are you going to do my biopsy or not? And I'm like, oh, yeah. Not everyone wants to help themselves, right? Some people just want the pill, some people just want the knife, some people just want the drug because they don't want to blame themselves if it doesn't work. It's so much easier to blame the system that failed them. Our medical system couldn't help them. And it's understandable and I get it, but I didn't want to live it anymore. I wanted to work with people that wanted to be empowered. Because the truth is, at the end of the day, Even though for 20 years when I was a surgeon, people saw me as the hero of their story. And I was, because they were giving away all of their power to me and at the same time depending on me for their outcome. Whereas in functional medicine, I can't be the hero of anyone's story. I can be a guide, I can be a trusted guide. I can make a huge difference. But I can't be the hero of their story. Only they can be the hero of their story.

There's a lot of people, as you've learned, that don't want to be.

That's exactly.

You know, I've always. Twenty years ago, I said, you know something? We're nothing more than tour guides, you understand, because I will lead you to the greatest tour that you'll ever get on. But you got to be on the bus. Yep, you really do.

Yeah.

And it takes active, because we said, like you said before, which is a very incredible thing. Breast cancer is really a symptom of the underlying multifactoral things. And the one thing that medicine and. And what we tried to explain to doctors and of the medical field is those multifactual factor things that you talk about can be research and can be figured out for each individual person that way, for sure. And that's where the individualized care comes in that way.

Absolutely.

Talking about breast cancer, now, obviously you had major success, you know, surgery, removing it. But there's one thing that you said, I think, and all the medical doctors, surgeons, doctors, everything, everybody I know, you intrigued me so much on Sunday because you said one thing, which statistically we know out, but you said one thing. I've never heard a surgeon, especially somebody that dealt with breast cancer their whole career, say something that is statistically provable, but they never put it out there. And it was one of the first things you said, and you eloquently said so. Well, you said, listen, if a person did get diagnosed with breast cancer, the medical field treats it all the same, very aggressively. And you said, listen, that right there is not a good approach because a lot of those people, by the form of their medical care, which may not even be needed. That was the key part right there, leads them to other chronic illnesses that if they just would have done something different, it wouldn't lead to other healthcare conditions because they treat all breast cancers aggressively. So run with that one.

Yeah. So I think this really ties into a really important conversation that we need to have, and that's about the intentions of the mammographic screening program. Okay? So in 1970, with very good intentions, we started a mammographic screening program where the thought was that if you could find breast cancers at their earliest point, you could save lives from breast cancer. Right. You could prevent people from dying of breast cancer. And it's a nice thought, but a completely false premise because it assumes that breast cancer grows in a linear and predictable fashion, and it simply doesn't. So breast cancer. So that whole premise is that breast cancer starts off small, grows to some critical size, at which point you're at risk for metastasis. And if you could catch that breast cancer before that random metastatic point, you could save lives from breast cancer. And it's a lovely theory, but it's simply not true. So here we are, and we're screening the population for breast cancer, and we find a lot of them. But the thing is that breast cancer is what it is from the beginning. So no matter how small you find an aggressive breast cancer, that person is going to die of breast cancer, and there's nothing anyone's going to be able to do about it. And we're also going to find large breast cancers that they barely need to be treated because this cancer does not have the potential for metastasis. And so no matter what you do, that person's gonna be fine. So we screen the whole population. We're finding all of these breast cancers and a large proportion of them, and especially the dcis, so especially the non invasive breast cancers. So we find all these cancers and we're treating them all, and we're treating them the same. Now, our treatments for breast cancer surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, anti hormonal therapy, these all have very significant long term ramifications. Let's start with surgery. We have people with dcis. They would never, never die of their disease. Never.

Doc, one thing, explain to them really quickly, obviously, because these are the wonderful women watching. Explain to you what DCIS is and then continue.

DCIS is called ductal carcinoma in situ, and they refer to it as non invasive disease. And we assume that people who have DCIS or ductal carcinoma in situ, we assume that they're going to go on to develop invasive disease. So we treat them like they have invasive disease. So these people who have a disease that would never threaten their life, a lot of them, 50% of them end up undergoing mastectomy. They have their breasts removed for a disease that would never have affected their life. What are the long term consequences of having your breasts removed? They're not insignificant. The psychological impact of having your breasts removed is not insignificant. And when you remove a breast, and I would counsel people on this in my years of surgery, and I would say to them, if I do a lumpectomy and I do my job well, which I will, there will come a day in the future where you will not define yourself by having had breast cancer. But if I remove your breast, there will never come a day ever again where you won't be defined by having had breast cancer. And as physicians, we use fear so often to have people undergo these therapies that really have all long term negative effects and no long term gain. So putting surgery aside, let's talk about the rest of the treatments for breast cancer. So chemotherapy, anti hormonal therapy, and radiation, they all accelerate cardiovascular disease, the number one threat to a woman's life. And the women that die of cardiovascular disease dwarfs deaths from breast cancer. So now we are using modalities that increase their number one threat to life. So we're quote, unquote, curing a problem and creating another one. So increases cardiovascular disease, increases neurologic disease increases Alzheimer, dementia, depression, anxiety, and accelerates bone loss. Pathological fractures are a huge issue. So here we are treating people for breast cancer and we're just creating more problems for them and we are never talking about it. There is no informed consent happening here. So the number of breast cancers that we end up treating from the screening program, we are actually in the end costing way more lives than we're saving.

Wow. Wow. That right there, Doc, was one of the most profound things and statistically easily provable that I think I've heard any doctor ever say.

It's inarguable. It's inarguable. It's a multi billion dollar industry.

That's the key.

Yeah, yeah. And so it's not going anywhere. And it's only through education by people like you and I that people can make an informed decision as to whether or not they want to participate in that program. I can tell you that I'm not participating in that program because I know that there is no benefit to finding a small tumor because if it is going to need treatment, it's going to become clinically apparent.

Right. So let's do this then. Finding that tumor and stuff. With Maverick ads, you know, I said their intent, technology wise is always good. It always is there. You know, obviously I always said aesthetic research, trying to come up certain things to not only save lives, but also forms of treatment. Their intent is fantastic. You know, that's why I tell people, absolutely, agreed. That's my analogy with the fire department going, okay, listen, we want people to put on fires, but the consequence of it that way is they, they need to move beyond that. And so let's say that, let's say that mammograms went away, which we know they won't, but let's say mammograms went away because people finally realized what would be the negative bet? What would be. Because this is where people get it wrong with me. They say when I, when I talked about mammogram, they automatically think I wanted people to do thermography. Instead, I'm like, no, that's actually you. I wouldn't even want to compare those two pieces of technology because they both do different things. They look for the things. So I'm not saying do thermography. What would you suggest women to move into? You know, besides the stuff that we do is this. We know that estrogen levels and other inflammatory markers, yes, we got to remove those, because then those are the multifactorial things that can prevent it. But let's Say women right now, because you got a lot of women right now watching live that are saying, I'm 45, I'm 50, and they're pushing me hard. And you, doc, you even said, don't replace ultrasound with mammogram. You as a surgeon, you as your history, you as having seen very devastating cancers, ones that could kill somebody, ones that need to be removed. Where would you guide these people to the technology of today for the safest. There is no safe area. That's this, guys. I can even take an X ray. It's people say it was safe. That's not true. There's always a little bit of a radiation irritation, ionized radiation. What would be the thing that you would encourage women to do instead of mammograms?

Yeah. So my perspective is that prevention is worth a pound of cure. Right? So I think people are far better off focusing on building your health, eating in a way that promotes health, prioritizing sleep, making sure that you have joyful movement, you get the toxins out of your environment and live in a meaningful, purpose driven, connected way. Right. So all of those things. And I also think that self examination is important. I think that no one is going to know your body better than you. And so I believe that self examination is important. If you happen to find something, if, if there's a change, I think it's okay to use traditional medicine as a diagnostic tool. What we really need is a test to determine which breast cancer needs to be treated and which breast cancer doesn't. The problem is that test is never going to happen because in this country it would be considered unimaginable to not treat a breast cancer. So the only place that a study like that could happen is in some underdeveloped country where there's not access to care and we get to see the natural history of a variety of breast cancers. We genetically sequence them and we can say, like, here's the genome of a breast cancer that is going to metastasize, and here's the genome of a breast cancer that doesn't need treatment. I don't believe that day is ever coming. Yeah, I don't believe that. Certainly not in, not in our lifetime. I don't think that that day is ever coming. I would love for it to come, but I don't think it's ever coming. And so. So I think that the best thing that we can do is prioritize our health and be aware of our bodies. But I don't believe in screening because I don't believe in Finding lesions that are not clinically meaningful.

Right. So in a way, getting women scared enough to do an ultrasound, excuse me, mammogram. Because you always hear they found something and then they have to go to a deeper diagnostic tool like ultrasound, like mri. And even when they are, they're picked up and biopsied, the majority of treatments that they're doing with them, once again, like you said, are, you know, not clinically relevant. And so therefore, it just leads to so much more health detrimental things. And for the people that when it comes to mammograms, what are they taught in school? Because obviously all you have to do, I mean, this is quite simple. You can, you can look at the load of, you know, radiation used during a mammogram, and they always, you know, they're always thinking, they always say the benefit outweighs the risk. What are they, what are they teaching?

But actually, that's not true.

So, yes, there we go.

You know, I was, I was quoted in a Fox News article with regard to the new FDA regulations that were released on March 8th. And the new FDA regulations are that by 2025, every mammographic center has to inform women of their breast density. And everyone's cheering. They think it's great. More information's better. And of course, what does Dr. Jen Simmons say? I'm really concerned about this. I don't think that this will have the outcome that it is intended to have because first of all, most doctors don't even know what breast density means. So they tell people that they have increased breast density or dense breasts, and to them, they think that they're at increased risk of breast cancer. But there's a big difference between having dense breasts in a premenopausal woman and dense breasts in a post menopausal women. Premenopausal women are supposed to have dense breasts and post menopausal women that are not on hormone replacement. Postmenopausal women, you know, the breast tissue starts to atrophy because it's not needed. So to tell a premenopausal woman that she has dense breasts and have her think that she's at increased risk for breast cancer and that she needs additional testing, not only did we not tell her the truth, but we didn't do anything to help her. We created anxiety and we're just creating more imaging. Well, you know what happens to a woman over a lifetime of imaging. Remember in 1971, we're talking about a 2D 4 view mammogram. Fast forward to 2014 or 2015, most women are getting 3D thermography. This is delivering three times the amount of radiation. Three times. And that radiation doesn't go anywhere. That radiation is additive. So every year, you're just adding a little more. And, you know, at the end of 20 years, or 30 years or 40 years, or however long you screen these people, you are giving them exponentially more radiation, and you're actually causing more breast cancers than lives you save. So we started off by saying, is this program doing what it intended to. To do? And the answer is no. Now, the reason that it's not is different, because originally their intentions were pure. Now it's part of a big machine, and we're no longer looking at the facts, because the facts are undeniable. We cause more breast cancers than lives saved. It's why so many European countries have abandoned their screening programs, because it does not make sense in the population.

So let's look at what they're doing and just your opinion that way. So I know what the women are doing. Nice thing about being in this career for a long time. And I'm going to play devil's advocate on this one, because all of a sudden I know, because most women, if you talk about the breast screening process and you say it's causing more problems than they do, they'll get massive fear because it's been so conditioning to them. But then they sit back and say, okay, Dr. Simmons, then what do I do? Because they're eliminated. But what if I'm one of those people? What if I'm one of those women that is. That does need you as a surgeon? If we don't have a screening process, are we going to get to the point of where a woman has to wait till death? Because that's what they do. They'll say, well, there's. You know what? So what. What's. If Dr. Jen Simmons was in charge of creating a new breast screening program, or on the fact of saying, here's the best way so we can minimize risk through the process to evaluate breasts, what would you say? Because they're going to say, I'm just going to default back on mammograms.

Yeah. So I'm definitely not going to default back to mammograms.

Yes, me neither.

So, you know my take on it, and we started to talk about it a little bit. You know, again, prevention is the best medicine, and I do think that there are going to be more meaningful tools to detect who does and doesn't need to be treated. So let's Talk about a little bit, you know, everyone here, here's that statistic. And I was saying this before in that same article that I was quoted voicing my concerns about telling women that they have dense breasts without giving them any information as to what that means or what to do about it. The end of that article after like three lines of quotes from me is that mammogram reduces of death from breast cancer by 40%. Right. So that's all people hear is they think mammograms save lives. But remember what they're talking about is they're screening the population, they're finding these breast cancers and they are assuming that each of those breast cancers would go on to become life threatening. And it's simply not true. So we are over treating all of these breast cancers and giving people heart disease, dementia, depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and we're like, hey, we saved you from breast cancer. Right? So they're taking credit for a completely false statistic. And when we look at the population of women that screen and compare them to the population that don't screen, survival is exactly the same. So the population that screens, they die less of breast cancer, but more of heart disease.

God. Oh, God. Okay, just if you can take a look at it. It's pretty dark. I did that step story when I was there. The three, four steps. So the darkness I think completely out. But I did think it was still there and there a couple little gray spots. But he just going to take it out for me real quick.

Want. I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened and I don't. I don't hear you. Oh, yeah, now I hear you.

Yeah, yeah. No, it was perfect. Your skin just fold. So you probably just had just a connection. Yeah. You ended like it's the exact same thing. And just. We'll just continue there. Nice thing about editing. We'll post that. They won't even know there was a change in there. This happens all the time. So Travis, let me know when you're ready for her to continue because then I'm going to move. Then I'm going to. Then when done with that point, I'm going to move right into the. The cancer summit and things like that. And then. Yeah. Can you talk again? Dr. Jen Y.

Can you hear me?

Okay, we got you.

Yeah, it's good.

Yes, it is. And, And just continue like you're talking because they would literally edit to where it stitches together. It'll look perfect.

So tell me, should I go? Yeah.

Nope, he's just, he's just, he's checking one more thing. Make sure everything's recorded perfectly. All right, good to go. Keep going.

Okay, so when we look at the population of women that screen and we compare it to women that don't screen, survival is exactly the same. So the women that screen die a little less of breast cancer, but more of heart disease, and the women that don't screen die more of breast cancer and less of heart disease. So ultimately, it doesn't matter if you screen or not. And it doesn't save lives. The only thing that saves lives is living better. That's the only thing that saves lives. And the only person that can control that is you.

Now, that's a really good point, because if you look at this way, let's go back to what is ingrained in you as a surgeon, ingrained of all your colleagues that way, is they talk about there's multiple factors. And would you agree with me on this? Especially what you've learned over the last couple years that way that people, women have the ability to have influence over those factors.

Absolutely. So all the things that I was taught are the risk factors for breast cancer. As it turns out, most of them are not true. Right. So.

Oh, doc, say. Oh, my goodness. Hold the phone right there, doc. I've said this. I've interviewed a lot of. A lot of doctors, a lot of, you know, professionals this way. But the, the, your, your. Not only your great understanding and stuff that, but just telling to it bluntly is so true. Because if I say that it's quackery, you know, even though I could statistically prove it, you say that they'll call you quack, but you been doing it for a long time.

Yeah. And I've actually gotten to the point where I'm okay with that. Right. Because I have the statistics to prove it. Right. So, you know, we're told that early menarche leads to breast cancer, late menopause leads to breast cancer. These things are not true. So. Right, listen, the number one risk factor for breast cancer as being a woman because you have more breast he issue, right. Age is a factor. But age is a factor because the more toxins you are exposed to over the longer period of time will increase your risk of breast cancer. Because the breast is one of those organs that is vulnerable to environmental toxins. And everyone has their maximum ability to tolerate a toxic burden. And you know, what's happening with breast cancer is that again, it is a normal response to an abnormal environment. And so it's about what is Creating that imbalance in your environment. Now, that is also happening coincidentally, with a decrease in your immune system, which is why we see breast cancers become clinically apparent. Because. Because breast cancers take years and years and years to develop. And there is a point at which the immune system is able to keep them in check. And then you have some major thing happen. A divorce, a death, a move. Some of these things can be positive. A new job, that kind of thing, a marriage, a wedding, something. But when we undergo these major periods of stress and our immune system comes down, that's when breast cancer can start to grow. But there are so many things in our environment that we actually can control. And I believe that one of the major issues, and one of the major reasons why we see so much breast cancer is, is a combination of two things. First of all, we are living in an ever increasingly more toxic environment. It's chemicals, it's the electromagnetic field. It's the way we treat one another, right? Toxins come in all different ways. And we are living increasingly more busy, stressful, less meaningful, less purpose driven lives. So we're creating a toxic environment. We're taking our immune system out of it. We are immune, suppressing ourselves by the ways that we're living. And I don't even know if you want to get into the most major contributor to immune dysfunction. Maybe we'll save that for another day.

My audience, obviously, you know, talk. We've talked about that many times, as you know, which gets all of us censored, you know, and everything pointing out.

So we won't talk about that except to say that there is something that has contributed to significant immune dysfunction which will only manifest as more cancers, right? End of story. So it is this environment that is leading to more breast cancers. Breast cancer is not a genetic disease. I know people like to believe it's a genetic disease. But the bottom line is that even in the BRCA population, right, Even in the people that have a BRCA1 or a BRCA2 mutation, they have a change in their gene code that makes them more predisposed to developing cancers. But even in that population, 100% of them don't develop breast cancer. There is something else in play, and that's the environment. And the environment is what we have control over. You can control the food that you eat. You can control how you store your food, how you cook your food, what you drink your water out of. You can control what you put on your skin, what you use to clean your house, your clothes. You can control this. And this makes a Huge difference. Because again like our genes haven't changed. We are living on the same gene code for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

Yep.

But our environment, that's changed and the number of chemicals that we deal with on a daily basis is exponentially more than even. Forget about your grandmother, even your mother, we are dealing with exponentially and our kids are dealing with exponentially more than we dealt with.

And there's one thing that I think you said very profound on our call this past weekend was the fact that medicine itself, regardless, it's life saving. Even by definition it's still a toxin. Chemotherapy is a toxin. Blood pressure medication is still toxin. So we're constantly changing that environment because of they dominate in the perspective of this is healthcare. Now that being said, we got a couple more minutes left here. We met because not only do we have such a like minded things that way and I definitely want to have you back on a regular basis to talk to this wonderful huge audience that we do have is you're put on a summit because obviously that's a big undertaking that takes a long time to do because you're, you're gathering different professionals and you asked me to be on it and thank you so much. And then. But I thought, I thought the best person to be on there especially for the, some of the things that we're doing in our company, our nurse practitioner Nicole is going to have a wonderful time with you on that. But you're doing a summit and what's, what's the, what's the basis behind that and when is it coming out?

So people really need to know that everyone with breast cancer gets a treatment plan. Right. 100% across the board. But I firmly believe that what everyone needs with breast cancer is a health plan. And there are so many people out there doing amazing work in the field of cancer by offering people a path to health despite their diagnosis. And so I have collected 50 experts doing amazing things and helping people to restore their health. And not only do they get to restore their health, but most people who adopt these things. I don't know if you're familiar with Kelly Turner's book Radical Hope.

Yep. Radical Hope. Yep.

So she talks about these 10 factors, these 10 things that people who underwent a radical remission, they're told that they have stage four cancer. There's nothing more anyone can do. And these people go on to live full lives for years and years. And we're talking about 20 years. People who were told that they have two months, two weeks to live are alive 20 years later telling their story about what they did and how they achieved health. And none of them is because they got chemotherapy or got radiation. And please know that I am not, despite disparaging the traditional medical system. Because at the end of the day, if you have cancer and you have significant disease burden, your proverbial sink is overflowing, right? So if your sink is overflowing, you have to mop up the floor. Chemotherapy, radiation, this is mopping up the floor. But the far more important question is, why is your sink overflowing? How do we turn off that faucet? And that's what these people are out there talking about doing, is how to turn off the faucet. Because cancer is not a chemotherapy deficiency. It's not a surgery deficiency, it's not a radiation deficiency. We are not those things do not cure cancer. And people hate it when I say that. And I'm okay with it. Okay, that they hate me for saying it, because I'd rather be right than happy. And I'm speaking the truth. So the only thing that is going to heal you is again, getting to the root cause, figuring out what you have that you don't need or what you need that you don't have, and creating health. Because the body is a brilliant machine. It knows what to do. If you give the body what it needs, it knows what to do. God doesn't make mistakes. He didn't make imperfect machines. He made us perfect. We just have to tap in to that perfection and we can all do it. But you and I, we know that we can't be the hero of someone's story. They have to be their own hero. They have to be their own advocate. And health is something that you have to go get. It's not coming to you. You gotta go get it, Doc.

That was amazing. Absolutely amazing. I honestly say I've known you now for a very short time, but I have massive respect, massive respect to even change your whole career after having a successful career. But I believe that you are going to make a bigger impact from that transition than current what you were doing before. And I want to. And you're gonna. I want to be part of that. And I also wanted to give you a platform to be able to share that your experiences over next years. Because the public needs it. You know, as we both live in a world of colleagues, I always tell people, when I started this company 24 years ago, I never cared what my colleagues or the medical field said. The public was in need. I think the public needs Dr. Jen Simmons more today. Than ever in history. So thank you for being on today. You are a life changer.

Thank you for having me.

I can honestly tell you I was thoroughly impressed and I'm even more impressed today. So thank you for taking your time out to be interviewed. Thank you for your time, for sharing all your thoughts. You are spot on. We're going to have you back. I'm going to get you scheduled right away in the next two months or so. Travis, let's get her back on because you're gonna have more adventures that you've been through in the next couple months statistically. Keep on doing your work and we'll let everybody know when the summit does come out and everything because, yeah, there's gonna be great professionals, including one of ours on there, which is kind of great. And like I said, I'm so appreciative to docs like you because you almost had to give up what you did before to be able to think this way. And so that's. To me, you can't get more credit than that. So appreciate you being on. We'll get some more updates that way. So docs, do me a favor, leave or people leave some comments down below what you thought of Dr. Jen, because I think that she has given you some concepts today that hearing from her expertise that are life changing. And do me a favor, don't forget to share and like and get this out there. So then. Because the information that you share from what Dr. Jen just did could actually really save somebody's life. So. All right, guys, we'll see you soon. Great job, Dr. Jen.

Thank you.

Fantastic. Yeah, we'd like to have you back again really soon for two things. We get probably a couple interviews in before the summit, which gives it more promotion.

Yeah. And also my book, God willing will come out in October.

Well, good, because then I want to be one of your first interviews pre sale. Do you know, Sam? Because then just like Robert F. Kane Jr. He called, he's like, hey, listen, I want to sell a bunch of my book. Can I get on? Absolutely. And we can get some good sales for it that way too. So. All right, doc, I apologize. I have to go to my next meeting and everything like that.

It was great to see you today.

It'll be played this Saturday. It'll be played this Saturday.

Okay.

And stuff of that. So it's like, it goes on all our platforms and things like that.

Okay.

Only thing that happens if it starts one platform, if they kick us off, they do it all the time.

Okay. And I, I have a free download. A breast cancer guide. I have a free download for your people.

Perfect. We'll do that then, too.

Okay, awesome.

All right, Doc, we'll see you there.

Thanks. Bye.

It.