32: Rethinking Breast Cancer – The Holistic Truth Doctors Don’t Tell You with Dr. Jen Simmons

So this week's episode is incredibly near and dear to my heart because most all of us know someone or personally, our lives have been touched by breast cancer. And I am so excited to announce Dr. Jen Simmons, who is a pioneering force in the world of breast cancer care. She was once a world renowned breast cancer surgeon and she ended up transforming her practice after her own journey as a patient, becoming an integrative oncologist with a mission to revolutionize breast cancer diagnosis, screening, and treatment. Let's dig in. Welcome to Modern Thyroid and Wellness, the podcast that explores the intricate dance between health, wellness and thyroid, unraveling the threads that weave our vitality together. I'm your host, McCall McPherson, and I'm sorry. So thrilled to guide you on this journey to optimal wellness. I am so excited to have this conversation. I've been excited for it for months. You have an incredibly powerful message that I am delighted and honored to share with my people. Before we kind of dig in to the heavier content, the bulk of what we're going to talk about today, I would love to hear your story about your shift from like, conventional breast surgery to a more functional, functional medicine approach in this realm.

Yeah, it was a big leap. Let me just start with that. And one that, incidentally, was not welcomed by my family. Like, my husband and I went head to head on this one. And my best friend, I mean, this was it. That was by far. And I've done a lot of hard things. That was the hardest thing I ever did because I had everyone around me who I know and love and respect and rely on say that I couldn't do it. So let me just take you back long, long ago, because I didn't get into the breast cancer space by accident. It wasn't like something that I just chose later on in my career. It was absolutely, positively what I was put on this earth for. I don't remember a time in my life where I didn't know about breast cancer. It was part of the tapestry of my family. Like, I come from a very big family and every woman in my family gets breast cancer with the exception of my mother, who got colon cancer. So growing up, I had a first cousin. I'm much older than you are, so this story is not going to resonate so much with you. But I had a first cousin who was a singer songwriter in the 1970s, in 1980s. She was brilliant, beautiful, larger than life, the queen of Motown sound in Philadelphia. She wrote all the music for the Spinners and the stylistics. She wrote 54 hits in all and her most famous song, I know, right? Like, jaw dropping. Like, my cousin was literally a rock star. Some people, like figuratively use that term. Oh, you're a rock star. You're such a rock star. This one's a rock star. She was literally a rock star. So her most famous song that she ever wrote was the Greatest Love of All. And she wrote that song in 1977 as the title track to the movie the Greatest, starring Muhammad Ali. But it really didn't receive its acclaim till March of 1986, when Whitney Houston would record that song and release it to the world. And at that time, there was nary a person alive, wife who didn't know that song. And the legacy of that song lasted decades until today, really. But my cousin Linda would never know that because she died of metastatic breast cancer one month after Whitney released that song. I was 16 years old and my hero died. And her life, and ultimately her death gave birth to my life's purpose. Because I never wanted another woman, another family, another community to have to suffer the way that mine suffered. And so I did the only thing I knew how to do. I became a doctor, the first doctor in my family. I became a surgeon. I became the first fellowship trained breast surgeon in Philadelphia. I became the first oncoplastic surgeon in Pennsylvania. And I did that really well and for a really long time. And I did it long enough for my aunt to be diagnosed and long enough for my mother to be diagnosed. And with all the writing on the walls, I'm about 15 years into my career and arguably at the top of my career. And I'm running the cancer program for my hospital, I'm running the breast surgery program. And I'm a wife and a mother and an author and an athlete, a philanthropist. And I have like all of these balls in the air thinking that I'm an expert juggle, invincible until the day when, like everything comes crashing down and I go from being one of the most high functioning people you've ever met to I can't walk across the room because I don't have the breath in my body. And I go through this three day, really intensive workup and at the end of those three days find myself sitting in the office of my friend and colleague and physician. And he tells me that I need surgery and chemo and radiation and I'm going to be on lifelong medication. And believe me, I appreciate the irony. And despite the fact that these are things that I said all day, every day, without hesitation or reservation, I can assure you when those words are coming at you, they have different meaning. And I can still be transported right back to that place. I got right back to that time and space. And I'll tell you that even though I knew what he was saying to me was standard of care, even though I knew that these were things that I said to women all day, every day, the only thing that I could hear in that time and space, and you can call it God, you can call it universe, you can call it whatever you want to call it. I couldn't quiet this voice in my head that said, there's something more. Go find it. Now, I was a completely conventionally trained surgeon running a completely conventional cancer program, right? Like I'm running an NIH accredited cancer program. I did not know of anything else. Anything else didn't exist to me. So this voice that I was hearing, this message that was downloading to me, it made no sense. But I went on that journey because for the first time, I was asking the questions why? And the answer that. That I was getting, which is the same answer that I was giving everyone. It's just something that happens. It's bad luck, right? That was suddenly, absolutely, positively unacceptable. And I was not having surgery and having radiation and having chemotherapy without knowing why this happened. And so I refused treatment and went on this journey. And my doctor told me the same thing that I had told thousands of women before. What will happen if I don't treat. And he told. He's like, jen, you're gonna die. But I couldn't quiet this voice. There's something more. Go find it. So God is good. And in very short order, I find myself in a lecture hall listening to a bunch of speakers. And this tall, lanky guy walks on stage, big toothy grin, introduces himself as a functional medicine physician. Now, I am still my snooty booty self. I am still not a believer. I'm not a convert, because I don't even know what to convert to yet. Right?

Right.

And all I can think about is, I'm a doctor for 20 years. There's no such thing as a functional medicine physician. What is this quack talking about? Right? Right. And then I remember that I'm sick and I'm there for a reason. So I check my ego at the door, and I tune in, and thank God I did. Because over the next two hours, I would learn more than I learned in my lifetime thus far.

Wow.

Because not only would I learn how I was going to heal myself, not only would I learn what my future held and what my real, true Purpose was. But I figured out exactly why I got sick. I got sick so that I could be in that room at that time, listening to this man talking. Because the quack, as it turns out, is Dr. Mark Hyman.

I was wondering. Yeah, I love it.

And what I learned was that we're completely focused on the wrong thing. And especially in the world of cancer, all our focus is on the tumor. But the tumor's not the problem. The tumor is the symptom of the problem. And unless we're asking why, why is it there? What do we have that we don't need? What do we need that we don't have? What led us to hear what is causing our imbalance? What is leading to this chronic inflammation? Unless we're asking those questions and answering them, we're not helping anyone. And I certainly wasn't helping anyone by cutting out their tumor and sending them to the medical oncologist and the radiation oncologist. No one ever got healthier with a surgery and burning and drugging. No one ever. Right. And so I get really excited about things. I'm an early adopter and I'm a quick start. So I immediately enroll in the Institute for Functional Medicine. And I spend the next three years just really submerged, immersed in the study of functional medicine. And I come out on the other side. Thankfully, I was able to heal. I got a lot sicker before I got better. I didn't ask for help and should have. But in any event, I got to the place where I needed to get to. And I also got to the place where you can't unring that bell. And once you can unsee it. And I couldn't continue to be part of a system that is so very broken that the only thing that is rewarded in our system currently is failure. Right. Your patient has to fail before you get paid.

Right.

And the only thing that is rewarded in our system now is sickness. Right. That's it. Our doctors are not taught how to heal. They are not taught how to restore health. They are not taught how to reverse disease. They are not taught how to create health or not. It's not any part of the algorithm. And I didn't want to be that. I didn't want to be unhealthy and I didn't want to keep people unhealthy. And that's what our whole system is designed to do. Unfortunately, and I want to be very clear, doctors are very good, well intentioned people.

Yep.

Doing very well intentioned things that are not good.

Right. It's the system that's failing both.

It's the system that's failing and the doctors are unknowing pawns of that system.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I left and I put my shingle out and I created Real Health md, which is a functional medicine oasis for women with a breast cancer diagnosis to help them to restore their health and capture the health that they probably have never had before in their life.

Yeah.

And it was quite revolutionary when I did it. And it was not met with great reception from my family. It was a lot, because I wasn't the sole breadwinner, but I was a breadwinner. And it was going to mean a lot of sacrifice and a lot of change. And there was a lot of fear around it. Not my fear, because I was filled with certainty that I was doing the right thing. I was filled with certainty that God put me on this earth for something so much bigger than that one on one operating space. And I just knew that this was what I was supposed to do. But I can understand how my family and friends weren't filled with that same confidence. First of all, none of them had ever heard of functional medicine. It's not big in Philadelphia.

Yeah.

And so it just felt like the same thing that I felt when I first met Dr. Hyman.

Right.

It felt like quackery to them. Right. And like, how is one of the world's top surgeons suddenly leaving and practicing quackery? They didn't get it.

I fully expected for you to say, look, my colleagues, other people in the medical sphere, in my circles, I totally hadn't thought about the family, friends dynamic. And that is heavy, heavy to carry and make that decision.

But think about even now, like, because it's so many years later now it's almost 10 years. Think about even now when people get a cancer diagnosis and they want to go see someone integrative, think about how their family comes down on them for not using the conventional medical system. Yeah. So imagine that 10 years ago.

Right? Yeah, that's right.

Because now integrative medicine is so out there. Now people know about it, people know it exists, people are choosing it. But then.

Right.

It was for sure quackery. And they couldn't understand how someone who was held in the highest regard would leave that position. For quackery.

Yeah.

For what they perceived to be as quackery. Now we all know. Right. Like now the blinders are off. And even my colleagues, I went from being the smartest person in the room to suddenly I was, I don't know, lost. I lost my skills, I lost My mind now they're coming around to me. I have a great story of a woman who went to Penn to be treated for her breast cancer. The medical oncologist who she was seeing to her medical oncologist, is there anything else I could be or should be doing? And she's like, kind of like on the sly, on the down low, said, well, if it were me, I would just make sure that I was seeing Jen Simmons.

I love that.

And it's like, she's obviously not going to advertise that, but if it were.

Me, which is so important, is so important, and that's even important to have a provider that looks at you through that lens, because that means they're actually connecting to you as another human being, you know, which is.

Yeah.

Sacred.

And I want to say that I'm not throwing the baby out with a bath water. And there's a time and a place for conventional medicine, for sure, and certainly for acute care medicine, you know, like, if you fall and break your leg or have a ruptured appendix or something along those lines, our system works great. We're great at that. But when you have cancer, when you have diabetes, when you have heart disease, when you have dementia, when you have high blood pressure, when you have any of those things, our system is very broken. It does not do well in the area of chronic disease, because it doesn't understand chronic disease.

Right. I mean, ultimately, it's. It's the. What you touched on initially. It's. There's a acute difference between solving a problem or a sickness and making people healthy. And so far, we are in the business of solving problems and illness, not creating health or longevity for people, but.

Exactly.

That's why people like us exist. To shift that or at least adjunctively offer help to. To make people healthier.

Yes, but we're also, unfortunately, I mean, not you and I, but the system collectively is about creating disease and looking for disease that isn't really there and making it worse. So, like, did you read over Diagnosed by Gilbert Welt?

No, I won't, though.

Yeah. I mean, it's not a new book. I think he wrote that in, like, 2014. But it talks about all of the kind of opportunistic places in our medical system that they're really taking advantage of people because we keep lowering the criteria for diagnoses and then giving an intervention which only creates another disease state. So, like, you think about, they kept lowering the threshold for PSA, and then they used to do, like, six samples, and then they did eight samples and then they did 12 samples and then they did 16 samples. The harder you look, the more disease you're going to find.

You know what's so fascinating about that is in the world of thyroid, the opposite is happening. Like they are creating a lot of leeway before diagnosing, which is making people sick. Like they're trying to push now boundaries of TSH for treatment to 20. A few years ago it was pushed to 10. So don't treat anyone unless their TSH is about 10. Don't treat anyone unless their TSH Is above 20. Well, by the time it's 20, they have diabetes, they have heart disease, they're basically on disability.

Okay, so you just answered your own question.

Right? Right.

It's about creating more disease.

Right. Isn't that crazy?

Because you get a lot more disease that way because they develop and multiple systems fail. Yep. As you very well know. So that's what that's about, isn't that? It is. But think about like the cholesterol story and lowering that threshold to 200 so that you treat more people with statins so that you get more diabetes. Right. Because lest anyone think otherwise, the cholesterol story is that we're just creating drug users. When you put someone on a statin, you're not decreasing the cardiovascular event rate, the cardiac event rate, so you're not saving people from heart attacks. By doing that, you are lowering a laboratory value, but also increasing the risk, risk of diabetes by 63%.

Right.

Or it might be 68%. I always get that confused in any. It's not good. Right. And we can say that about a number of disease states. Specifically in the world of breast cancer, the more stuff you investigate that you find on mammogram, the more diagnoses you're going to make. And we have that borne out in the literature time and time and time again. And it also creates a lot of business for the system. So to start, 80% of the breast biopsies that we do are non cancerous. So that means that 80% of the time when we're biopsying someone, we're doing it unnecessarily.

Wow.

Right? 80%, that's despicable. Okay. And then the rest of the time, when you look at using mammogram as a criteria for. For breast cancer screening. Right. So first of all, it violates screening principles to start, because you should never be using a test that causes cancer to screen for cancer.

Right.

The other thing is that if you are screening, truly screening, you are talking about the healthy population who you have no reason to believe has the disease. Because if you have a reason to believe they have the disease, they have a breast lump or they have a symptom or something like that, that's a diagnostic test that's no longer screening. So when we're talking about the screening population, we are talking about women who are truly healthy. How can with integrity expose a woman who is allegedly healthy to radiation for the purposes of screening? How can we ethically do that? We shouldn't be doing it.

Right.

So we were doing it under the guise that mammograms save lives. Right? I'm sure you've heard this, mammogram save lives. And it's been said so many times that people just assume it's true. And no one's asking for the data. But the data, the data has been there for decades and here it is. When you look at population studies, mammograms do not save lives. The Swedish trials, 600,000 women. So we're not talking about small numbers. And because they have universal health care, everyone has the same access to care, everyone has the same level of care, right? So level playing field. 300,000 screen with mammogram. 300,000 just have physical examination. The same number of women die of breast cancer in both groups. No difference in mortality from breast cancer. Here's the only difference. If you screen with mammogram, you are 20 to 30% more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer. There's an increase in breast cancer diagnosis in the group that screens by 20.

Even compared to people who are screened in other ways. Right. Physical exam or ultrasound, etc, they're still.

Being screened 20 to 30% more now. Some of them develop breast cancer because of this screening, because it's radiation. And some of them are just getting diagnosed with subclinical disease, disease that would have never presented, because if it would have presented, it would have presented in the non mammogram screening group. Right? So this is disease that would have never become clinically relevant, never would have affected that woman's lifespan. And yet, once you get a diagnosis of breast cancer and get treated for breast cancer, those treatments do affect your lifespan, because if you're treated for breast cancer, you have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease two to three times. You have an increased risk of osteoporosis, of bone loss, and lest we forget, the same exact number of women who die of breast cancer every year die of a complication of a fracture. So osteoporosis is, is something to worry about, Right? This Is a real issue, and you have an increased risk of neurodegenerative disease. So if we are creating this disease for people and then increasing their risk of the other chronic diseases and cardiovascular disease is by far and away exponentially the threat to a woman's life, well beyond breast cancer, in every decade of her life past 30, and we're increasing her risk of that disease by two to three times. What are we doing? What are we doing now? If you want to call that study a one off, okay, then let's look at the Canadian breast cancer screening trial. So same thing. They have universal health care there. So everyone has the same access to care, and everyone has the same kind of care. 90,000 women, 45,000 screen with mammogram. 45,000 self examination, and they're seeing their doctor for a professional breast examination. Same exact number of women die of breast cancer in each group. The group that screens with mammogram has a 23% increase in breast cancer diagnoses. Same exact data in this group. Now, the difference in this group is this group is young women. Because we have this theory that, okay, maybe mammogram doesn't save lives for everyone, but it's important for young women. Right. There's a whole push to screen young women now. Well, those women were 40 to 59 years old. To me, that's young.

Absolutely, it's young.

So we know that it also doesn't save lives in young women. So mammograms do not save lives. They don't save lives, and in fact, they end up costing lives. Because if you factor in that we're over diagnosing about 25%, let's call it. We're over diagnosing, and these women are going to have accelerated heart disease, accelerated bone disease, and accelerated brain disease. We're hurting these women by screening with mammogram now.

Yeah. You know what I find fascinating is so I've gone for a mammogram after finding something on self breast examination. It is so fascinating to me that we start with a mammogram invasive in terms of radiation, et cetera. They find something, and then you know what they do?

They send you for ultrasound to get.

Clarity where there's no radiation. I'm just like, this makes no sense.

Well, it might not make sense, but it makes a lot of dollars.

It sure does. Yeah.

And that leads me to the next thing. And the reason why they're doing mammogram, even though they present it differently, but the whole mammographic screening program was Built on this promise that mammograms would save lives and save breasts. Right. And people really, really, really bought into that. Yeah. That mammograms would be responsible for early detection and people would have less treatment as a result because they would find cancers earlier and people would need less treatment. And so let's look at the data. Has screening with mammogram translated into less mastectomies because that's the less treatment. Right?

Yeah.

And in fact, screening with mammogram has increased, not decreased, the mastectomy rate by 20%. So we're not saving lives, we're not saving breasts. What are we doing using this archaic tool? Right. And I say this all the time. And they keep putting lipstick on that pig. They're saying like, oh, it's less radiation. Oh, it's less compression. Oh, it's less. It's less. People don't want less radiation. They want no radiation. People don't want less compression. They want no compression. We should not have to suffer for the purposes of screening for breast cancer. It shouldn't have to hurt. It shouldn't have to hurt physically, and it shouldn't have to hurt, hurt our health screen for breast cancer. And that's really why I'm on my mission to open up perfection imagings all over the country so that people have an option. I want every single woman who wants to screen without pain, without trauma and without danger to be able to do that. And we have the technology now.

Right. I want you to tell listeners about perfection imaging because some of them might not be familiar. And it is. It's like you've gone back to first principle thinking and medicine gets stuck in this hamster wheel of, oh, we're just going to make this one mechanism better. We're just going to improve it a little bit by little bit, as opposed to what you've done is completely revolutionize breast imaging and create something novel, safe, and unique. So I want you to tell us about that and give us some basic information.

Yeah, I'm happy to. I want to be clear that it is part of a bigger picture, because I'm not just using imaging to screen because that's just one piece of the puzzle. And we are holistic, intelligent beings. And I think that we all need to own our. Our health and own our own. Our bodies. Yeah. And this is not to put any undue pressure on you. Like, I don't expect you to be your own doctor. I wasn't even good at being my own doctor. But that no one is ever going to know you better than you know yourself. And no one is ever going to care about you more than you care about yourself. Right. So when I, when I developed my breast cancer screening program, I took all of that into account. So I am telling everyone to do self breast examination. That crazy recommendation that we should stop doing that because it's scary. No. Long self breast examination is no longer recommended because it incites fear, undue fear in people. I mean, come on, that is mind boggling.

I know so many people who have left an ob GYN breast examination and went home and found their own breast cancer.

Yes.

So terrifying.

Yes, that's true. Because your doctor who is examining you what, once a year.

Right.

Like first of all, what about all the in between? And second of all, that doctor is not going to know your body and breasts are lumpy and we need to own our lumps and know what we feel like when we're normal so that we can know what it feels like when something changes.

Yep.

So I want everyone to be doing self breast examination. That means looking at your breasts and feeling your breasts. Right. Once a month. You don't have to do it every day, you have to obsess about it. You know, it doesn't need to be part of your daily self care. Just once a month. Once a month, look at your breasts, feel them. So that's one thing. The second thing is I'm using something called the ARIA test, the ARIA tears test. I don't know if you've heard of this, if you've seen it, but what this test does is it looks for these proteins which when they are at elevated levels, they are abundant in your tears. So there's, I, I actually have a kit here. There's like a little tiny piece of paper that you put right underneath your eyelid and you hold it there for five minutes and then you send that little piece of paper off in a tiny, tiny tube to go back to the company in a week and a half later you get a result that is either normal or it's clinically significant. If you have a clinically significant result, that means that you have elevated levels of these proteins, the S100A8 and S100A9 proteins. These are the inflammatory precursors of breast cancer. You may not have breast cancer and you have this test that's positive, but if you don't have breast cancer now, you are at increased risk. And what you have, if this test is positive is opportunity.

Right.

This is your opportunity to prevent a diagnosis. You have information and you know that There is something that is driving an inflammatory process in your body and you have the opportunity to find out what it is. I now have a prevention program that I'm offering to everyone who has a positive clinically significant ARIA test so that we can work together to prevent a breast cancer diagnosis. This is also appropriate for anyone with a BRACA mutation. This is appropriate for anyone with a strong family history. But everyone should be doing this test because this is information to know about yourself. Yeah, and I have a discount code for everyone. This site is Ara Auria Care and my code is D, R J N N 20 Dr. 20. It takes 20% off of your test and makes it very affordable. So that's the second thing I'm doing and then I am telling everyone to get imaging, but 100% safe imaging. So if you are in proximity to one of the perfection imaging centers, I have two right now, but I will have 50. So I am making sure that everyone who wants access to this technology gets access to this technology. But in the meantime, this is sound wave technology transmitted through a warm water bath. So in a 20 minute spa like transformative procedure, you have a 3D reconstruction of the breast without pain, without compression, without radiation, without any of the unpleasantness that has conventionally surrounded breast cancer screening. This is truly a beautiful experience like you've never had before. Very intentionally curated because I want to take the fear, the discomfort, I want to take that out of breast cancer screening. We don't need it. It. We don't need anything else to be fearful about. We don't need anything else to disempower us because we have so much more power than we think. And I want to get rid of all the anxiety about breast imaging because we don't need to work up all of those things that lead to the 80% of biopsies that are done for no reason at all. I'm trying to get rid of that anxiety now. It's a little bit of a hard road to hoe here because I need radiologists and I need them to come on board and train and read the scans and they're very ingrained in the system and they're very highly trained to say, oh, that's a 3 millimeter something, we should biopsy it.

It.

They're very trained to say that. So I'm trying very hard to get them to unlearn that, but it's not easy. But I can assure you that is something that I am working very, very hard on is to create a beautiful experience and then to not have the Results be so defensive. We live in this society of practicing defensive medicine instead of having these open conversations with people that sound like, you know, this, this may be something, but let's allow it to define itself. And also let's take this opportunity to improve your health. Because when you do that disease goes away. And when you use the physical examination, the ARIA test and safe imaging, either QT or ultrasound, we are going to find the things that are meaningful and we're going to start ignoring the things that are not and focusing on what matters, which is your health.

Yeah, I love that. And you're such a badass for developing that and like creating that, that change because it is so needed and so much of medicine is not fully invested in women's health. So thank you for taking charge of that and making sure it happen.

But being an instrument of change is not easy.

It's not.

No, it's not easy. And it's often not fun.

Yep, I resonate with that. Tell me a little bit. When you talk about the program to prevent, either prevent breast cancer or deal with maybe lightly suspicious things that aren't, aren't quite breast cancer, et cetera, tell me a little bit about what we can do in our lifestyle to help combat some of this or what you feel like is driving part of this cancer.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm all about information. I'm about testing and not guessing. And so what my prevention program is based on is your individual genetics. One, to be clear, breast cancer is not a genetic disease. Even in the BRCA mutation carrier population. Breast cancer is not a genetic disease. Breast cancer is an environmental disease. Breast cancer is a metabolic disease, but it is not a genetic disease. However, your genes dictate how you deal with the environment. Your genes dictate what you need in order to optimize your environment. So the first thing that we're doing in my prevention group is we're testing. We're testing your genes so we can know for you what the best diet is, what the best exercise is, how you need to create the ideal sleeping environment, what your detoxification genes are like so that we know where you need support in terms of detoxification, how much detoxification you need, how much sleep you need, need, how much fasting you need. We're determining all of this. We're determining what your hormone detoxification genes are like because that ends up being a critical part of the picture for a lot of women. And we are also determining what supplements you need and what supplements you don't need, because everyone now has like a supplement graveyard, right? And it's like you don't know what's helping, what's not helping, what's real, what's not real. Like you don't know. And the reason you don't know is because you didn't test. And by testing. So that is, that is the paramount part of my breast cancer prevention program. And then we're just giving you all the tools. Some of them you may know about, some of them you may not. So it is an eight week program that is part of it is live, part of it is on demand, at your leisure. And then if there's more testing that you want to do afterwards, great, because you have your own personalized health coach, fdn that is trained to do all of this with you. So I think it's an amazing, amazing program for anyone who is concerned about a breast cancer diagnosis. So if you have a clinically positive ARIA test, if you're a BRCA mutation carrier, if you have a strong family history, any of these things, or you're just worried about breast cancer for whatever the reason this program is for you.

What about people with a history of breast cancer like 10, 15 years ago, they've been in remission. Would that be a great choice for them as well?

So those people go into my breast health blueprint and that is, they're also, they also get the testing because they need the testing too. But they have, they're in a community of people just like them and they have issues that the people who haven't had breast cancer have. Have. They have different issues and mostly their issues are surrounding what happened to them through the course of treatment. Because we take these women and treat them for breast cancer and we tell them that they should be grateful to be alive. And they are grateful, right? But it is very hard to feel grateful when you can't think right and you're anxious and you're afraid and you're depressed and you can't sleep and your joints ache, your bones ache, your breasts are deformed or absent, you've gained weight, your clothes don't fit, you lack self confidence, you have frequent urinary tract infections, frequent yeast infections. Sex is unwanted and painful. You have no libido, your relationship is absent or struggling. This is how we leave most women after breast cancer treatment. Honestly, it's the title to my next book. It's called the Forgotten Woman. And this is how we're leaving most women after breast cancer treatment. And we're telling them they should be grateful to be alive. Right. But it is very hard to feel grateful when that's what your life is. And that is literally how we're leaving most women. So for my women who have had a history of breast cancer from the time of your diagnosis on, I have another group called the Breast Health Blueprint. And this is where we're really helping these women through treatment and beyond, to establish their health. Some of them, for the first time in their lives, because the reason that they got to breast cancer is because they weren't healthy. That is a huge misconception amongst people that all the time I hear I'm healthy, except I have breast cancer. And there's no connection between the two. Like, your breast is just a reflection of what's happening in the rest of your body. It's not some separate organ that gets into trouble. You don't have breast cancer and have a bad breast. This is an environmental issue. So we're helping these women to reestablish that environment. Figure out what they have that they don't need. Figure out what they need that they don't have. Get them in tune with their genetics so that they can truly learn to nurture their nature and then create hormone health, because that's what they are so often lacking. And I think I'm one of the only people out there really speaking about hormone health and hormone replacement in the breast cancer population, because they're probably the people that need it the most. And we think of breast cancer as an issue of hormone excess, but actually it's an issue of hormone deficiency.

Yeah, talk with me about that. Because obviously I could pick 10 women off the street, nine or 10 of them, if we ask them about hormone replacement therapy and risk of breast cancer, nine or 10 of them would say, oh, my gosh, hormone replacement causes breast cancer. So I'd love to know the preemptive and then the post diagnosis of breast cancer and what that looks like.

Yeah. So, you know, that narrative is very intentional. It was created coming out of the Women's Health Initiative, and it was created with great purpose and great intention. Because if you don't have women on hormone replacement, then you have the opportunity for a lot of polypharmacy. Because, Right. If you're not on hormone replacement and you're depressed, great. We'll give you an ssri. You can't sleep. Great. We'll put you on sleeping medications. You have palpitations, great. We'll put you on beta blockers. Lipids are going off the charts. Great. We can put you on statins. Your whole body Hurts. Terrific. We've got pain medicines for you. You're losing your bone health. Great. We can put you on bisphosphonates. You're having memory problems. Terrific. We've got medicine for that. And on and on and on it goes. So you can easily see how not having a woman on hormone replacement can lead to 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, pharmaceuticals. Right? You're creating customers. Yeah, you're creating customers. Literally creating customers. So you can see how this would be beneficial to the system. Right. Like, instead of being on hormone replacement, we can have you on all of these drugs that lead to more drugs and lead to more drugs and lead to more drugs and lead to more dysfunction. And it was a very, very intentional narrative. But when we actually look at the data, even the data out of the Women's Health Initiative, the benefit of hormones is undeniable. And in the estrogen alone group. And that wasn't even bioidentical estrogen, Right. That was conjugated equine estrogen, which is horse estrogen, and has 30 estrogens that are not even endogenous estrogens. These are estrogens that our body hasn't even seen. And even then, there was a 23% reduction in breast cancer. 23%. Now, when we look at the population of women that take hormones as compared to the population of women that don't, they both get breast cancer. Right. We've seen since 2003, like, an 80% drop off in hormone replacement prescriptions. And yet what happened with breast cancer incidents? It just went off up. Right? So that didn't change. Breast cancer incidents. So both groups get breast cancer. But when you look at the women who take hormone replacement and compare them to the women who don't, they have better outcomes. They have less aggressive disease, they have less deaths from breast cancer and longer longevity and better lives, better quality of life. Okay, so hormones don't cause breast cancer. It's ridiculous. Now, when we look at the population of women who have breast cancer and divide them into those who take hormones after breast cancer and those who don't, because most practitioners won't allow them to. So there are only a couple of trials. There's been about 20 trials, and they're not big numbers. It's only a few hundred people and followed out over seven years or so. But the truth is that we don't see an increase in breast cancer recurrence afterwards. So not only does it not lead to an increase in recurrence, but there's also no increase of death for breast cancer. After, if you take hormone replacement. So this whole narrative is completely creative and not true, designed to scare women, because, again, if they're not on hormone replacement, there's a lot of opportunity for polypharmacy and for more disease and dysfunction. So it is literally being created for the purposes of more engagement in the medical system. But it is for sure, not for the benefit of the patients.

Right.

Not for the benefit of them at all. Quite the opposite. Quite the detriment. Right.

Yeah. And I'm hoping we're evolving out of that narrative. And thank you for being a voice to help us, but we have a.

Long, long, long way to go. That is for sure true. But there are more voices than ever in this space. And certainly when you take the breast cancer element out of it, there's lots of people out there and lots of loud voices now, celebrities and otherwise, talking about menopause. Right. I think Oprah just did something recently on menopause. The problem is, and this is what I contacted Oprah's team about, is that you can have a conversation about menopause and about hormone replacement without having a conversation around breast cancer. Because that is the reason why people say, no, women don't want to suffer, but they're afraid, because the doctors are afraid, and they think that there's something real there and that there's a connection. And so I told Oprah, you need.

Me on that wall, Jen, Are you going on Oprah?

I hope so.

Come on, Oprah. Let's make it happen. They need you.

Yes. Come on, Oprah. You need me on that panel. Because that is going to be the turning point.

Yeah.

When people see the actual data and know that that's not the thing.

Yeah.

There's a lot of things and a lot of reasons why people get breast cancer, for sure. But hormones isn't why. Bioidentical hormones is not why.

Yeah. And if you have any studies you want me to put in the show notes, I'm happy to include them. You can email them over to me. People love those little tidbits and takeaways, and I think it's important in shifting the narrative. I have a couple more questions for you.

Okay.

One is if you could give women one piece of advice on what they could do for longevity to protect them from breast cancer, whatever it is, what would it be?

So I think at the end of the day, we all need to remember that breast health is health, and the same exact things that you're going to do for a healthy breast are going to give you a healthy brain And a healthy heart and healthy skin, joints, bones, really healthy everything. So I just think about where is our biggest contact with the outside world. It's through what we eat, what we drink, and what we put in on and around us.

Yeah.

And so in as much as you can take responsibility for that, I think that matters. And you don't have to be perfect. This is not about perfection. Right. It is about progress. It's not about perfection. That's not my line. It's Tony Robbins. So I don't want to. I don't want to steal it. But it's. It's not about perfection. It's about progress. And every little good thing that you do every day begets something better tomorrow.

I couldn't agree more. And women get so caught up, especially nowadays, in the idea of perfection, and they feel like they're a failure if they don't get it. And, yeah, we need to remember that.

That'S not the case, but just remember that we are one system. One system. And no one has bad breasts or bad, bad something or other. It's one system. And we just have to work our hardest to protect the system.

Yeah.

And sometimes that means working less.

I. That's so true. And women especially, we work at work, we work at home. We do. We carry the load. And so we need to be mindful of that. More is not always better.

More is not better.

And then my last and final question is, I want you to share with listeners one where they can find you, of course, but share and, and your groups, but also about your. Your book. I think that's such a valuable, valuable tool for women.

Yeah, Yeah. I actually, I went on David Rosen Sweets Podcast. Do you know David?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's. He's just amazing. And he, he was the one that founded the Menopause Method, and he. He has his own bioidentical hormone training program. He's really amazing. And he has Holly Papanak on the weekly meetings with him and his community. And I had sent her the book, my book, the Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer. And she only got it the day before. I was coming on to be interviewed on their podcast, and I come on and she's like, Dr. Simmons, if I look bleary eyed, it's because I stayed up all night reading your book. Book. You must feel so good about the fact that you're going to save millions of lives. And I think that I have not been so touched in my life as I was in that moment. But I'm really proud of this book you should be. Because I do know that it is going to save millions of lives. And it's written in a way that is so approachable and it's really easy to read and important information for everyone because we are not now making informed decisions, even about things like mammogram. We're not able to make informed decisions because we're not being given the information.

Totally.

And I think it's really important for us to make informed decisions. We should be making informed decisions. So I wrote this book so that people could Now, I did write it with the woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer in mind because I want her to understand her diagnosis. I want her to know the questions to ask. I want her to know all about the treatments, what they do, what they don't do, because a lot of them over promise and under deliver. And I want her to know that she has so much more power than she thinks or has been led to believe.

Yeah.

And that health happens at home. Health does not happen in a doctor's office, in a chemotherapy suite, in a radiation suite, in a surgical suite. As talented as I am as a surgeon, I didn't make anyone healthy. Health happens at home with the things that you do every day. And that's where your power is. And you do have so much more power than you think. So my book, the Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer, you can pick it up at Amazon. And then all of my programs, my breast health blueprint for women with a history of breast cancer, my breast cancer prevention program, they can all be found@realhealthmd.com I have a podcast every week called keeping abreast with Dr. Jen. So make sure to tune into that. And you can get that anywhere you get your podcasts. And it's also replayed, I think, on YouTube every week. I'm not very good at keeping track of of that kind of stuff, but I think that that's happening. And then you can find me on all the social channels at Dr. Jensimmons. And my Jen has two N's. And lastly, perfection Imaging. And if you just go to perfectionimaging.com you can learn all about the scan, you can schedule your scan and you can share it with all of your friends because this truly is the imaging of the future. And I know that my legacy is here to not only protect millions of women from getting a breast cancer diagnosis, but to help those 4 million women who are currently living with a breast cancer diagnosis in this country to restore their health. And lastly, to forever change how we screen for breast cancer.

Yes. Well, thank you so much for your work. Truly, we need you as women. So thank you for making the hard decision, taking the hard steps, and standing up with and for us. Because, truly, you are and will save so many lives. So thank you, Dr. Simmons, for being here today.

Well, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.