The Breast Cancer Prevention Blueprint with Dr. Pamela W. Smith | TPE Blueprint #25

Did you know that one in every seven women are now going to face breast cancer in their lifetime? So this Breast Cancer Awareness month I have Dr. Pamela Smith here. She's a renowned physician, educator and author of brand new book called how to Prevent Breast Cancer before and After Diagnosis. She's got nearly five decades of experience so she's going to break down all the latest science strategies and give you hope for preventing breast cancer before it ever starts and stop it from ever coming back. Let's dive into it.

All right. Dr. Pam Smith, you're back. I'm happy to have you back on how you been? How you been? You've been busy, I know that.

Been very busy. But thrilled to be back.

Well, tell me what the latest is because you know, this is a very timely episode. Of course we're or timing it with Breast Cancer Awareness Month and making sure that I mean and you have the most timely answers and you know, studies and science and all the, all the things that we're going to dive into this episode. But I guess how would you, before we kind of dive into things, how do you, how do you like to present this? I guess and from your words.

Well, basically my newest book, book number 14 is, is this one and it is on breast cancer, how to prevent it and if you've had it, how to prevent a reoccurrence. And the great news is that there's things you can't change called non modifiable risk factors, of which there's six. And I'd love to talk about those briefly. But the great news is that there's 19 things that you can change and you can actually help prevent breast cancer and, and prevent a reoccurrence by doing as many of those 19 things as you can.

We will definitely dive into those non modifiable risk factors because that's. Yeah. Across the board makes, makes sense. Cause that's what we want to do in this episode is not only chat with you about the latest book that you've read. 14th book, that's wild. That blows my mind. So congrats on that alone. And just to name the book, it's called how to Prevent Brain Breast Cancer before and After Diagnosis. And of course in the show notes we'll link and make sure it's easy to grab it for after you're done listening here. But definitely we wanted to set the tone in this episode to talk about breast cancer awareness as a whole. Timely with being in October but prevention strategies that aren't just after diagnosis and also how environmental toxins are a big role that. Or, you know, it's playing a big role in this whole thing, which we've talked about before with you, you know, how toxins kind of relate. So I guess what I, Pam, I was. I wanted to dive into your personal journey because, you know, just talking about that first and why this matters so much, that almost like taking us back to a time in your life or career where this. This mission maybe stopped being professional became deeply personal for you, because I know you go really deep into this. So I'm just kind of curious.

Oh, absolutely. I have breast cancer on both sides of my family. On my dad's side, I never even got to meet my grandmother because she died of breast cancer before I was born. I had a cousin who died of breast cancer at the age of 51 on that side of my family. On my mom's side, I had two aunts who had breast cancer. One passed away from it, one survived, and then I have a cousin currently undergoing treatment. So I have breast cancer on both sides of my family. So my interest has really been there since I was probably maybe 15 or 16 years of age. And this is the book I've been wanting to write for 20 years because there are so many things that we can do to help prevent breast cancer and if you've had the disease, to help prevent a reoccurrence. So the book is timely for breast cancer awareness, but really it's a book for all times because there are so many things that one can do.

Is it pretty common that everybody kind of has a story around breast cancer in some way?

It certainly has become more common. Right now the stats are one in eight women get breast cancer. A new study will come out next year that at least at this point, is going to say one in seven women will get breast cancer in their lifetime. So we want to look at those things that we can do on Monday morning. We can change our lives today and really decrease that risk significantly. Because only 20% of breast cancer is. Is inherited. Some studies say only 10% is inherited. And that's one of the non modifiable. You can't fix your family history, but it's not as big a deal as people think it is. Sometimes people will go into a doctor and they'll want to look at hormone replacement or other things, and the doctor will say, oh, you can't do that because you have a family history. Again, that's only 10 to 20% of people. The other non modifiable risk factors are aging, although that one's changing the studies until this year showed that the older the patient was, the more they had a risk for breast cancer. That's starting to change because we're now seeing breast cancer younger and that has to do with toxins and some other things we'll talk about. There are genetic mutations that you can have, like the Broca gene. There's early cycling. Used to be the average age a woman started her cycle was 12.5 years, and now it's down to almost 10. And early cycling increases the risk. Older age at menopause, if women stop cycling after the age of 55, is a non modifiable risk factor. You can't change that. And the more the dense breast, if the person's not on hormones, the density of the breast tissue is something that may not be changeable either. So those are the ones that we can kind of put to one side and say, okay, I have a family history, or I'm now 71, which I happen to have just turned 71, I can't change those. But what else can we do?

Got it. Does it, does having kids, yes or no, for a woman or breastfeeding, I'm just curious if. Does that play a part with your risk factors as well?

Well, there's a lot tied around those modifiable risk factors. So breastfeeding does decrease a woman's risk of breast cancer. So that's one of those things that you can change. And breastfeeding actually produces a healthier child. But there's a caveat to that. And that caveat is toxins. The woman, when she gets pregnant has toxins already. And those toxins will go through the breast milk, they will go through the placenta. And so we really want to look at therapeutic plasma exchange, doing an actual treatment to get the toxins out before she gets pregnant. Because we know those toxins are related to an increase in add, ADHD and an increased risk in autism. So breastfeeding is wonderful. Healthier mother, healthier child, because the child will get a good immune system from the mom if they're breastfed. But we want to make sure we get rid of those toxins first. When it comes to having children itself, if you choose not to have children or if your first pregnancy is after the age of 30, and that is happening more commonly nowadays, people are having children older. If your first pregnancy is after the age of 30 or you have no children, that does increase your risk. It doesn't mean you should have children just to decrease your risk. But again, people should know fixable risk factors. So when you asked about childbearing and breastfeeding. Both of those things are risk factors that we can change or at least look at.

Got it. That makes sense. And you mentioned hormones, about family history. And I know you have a bunch of experience with hormone therapy and personalized health in general. So I'm just curious how. What's your perspective there as it particularly pertains to breast cancer?

Well, when it comes to breast cancer, it's really important to have a healthy immune system. And a healthy immune system is predicated on many things from gut health, how healthy your gut is, because 70% of your immune system is in your gut. It has a lot to do whether you're toxic or not, because if you become more inflamed due to toxins, your immune system does not work as well. But it's also related to what happens with hormones. Believe it or not. Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, dhea, cortisol, pregnanolone, melatonin are all hormones. They all decrease inflammation. And estrogen in particular builds the immune system. It stops something that we call immunosenescence, meaning as you age, your immune system becomes compromised and it doesn't have to. But the caveat with hormones is that it has to be done correctly in younger women. Many women are low in progesterone. They have a lot of estrogen, not enough progesterone for balance. That is called estrogen dominance. And if she has a lot of estrogen and not enough progesterone, that is a risk factor right there, that she can change, and that people with pms, pcos, pmdd, perimenopause, menopause, endometriosis. There's a lot of states that women can have where progesterone is low. Giving progesterone to balance that estrogen, whether the person is 18, 40 or 71, dramatically decreases the risk of breast cancer by having hormone replacement as natural, meaning the same chemical structure that God gave you to begin with. Natural hormones do help prevent breast cancer as long as they are balanced and they are the right dosage. Women only make baby amounts of hormones. Sometimes I see prescribers give these huge doses when it comes to estrogen. The dose that we make as women at 25, the peak of health, the time in our cycle, which is called pleuteal, where we make the Most is only 350 micrograms. Micrograms, baby, baby amount. And when we do hormone replacement with estrogen, we put it on the skin, but you really don't need big doses. The absorption is Very good, as long as you put it in an area of fat. And for most women, even if they weigh 90 pounds, putting it on the thigh is a good location. So having estrogen balanced with progesterone in the right dose is key. Most of that comes from knowing how to measure hormones. Very important to do salivary testing, otherwise known as saliva. It is not a spit, it is a swab. And when you put hormones on the skin, they do have to be measured by saliva, not blood, not urine. So having the right dose is key for building the immune system, balancing those hormones to help prevent getting breast cancer to begin with.

That's incredible advice and insight. Where would. So if someone. If this is already clicking for someone, light bulb, moment turned on, where would you recommend someone to sync up with the right doctor, you know, for testing, balancing, and all this? Like, are there any red flags, but also green flags? Like, where should people go?

Well, certainly the field, personalized medicine, has now become a specialty. It's discussed all over the medical literature. Sometimes it's called precision medicine, but it really is personalized to each patient because the hormones are compounded and made for them and them only. So they can certainly look for someone who's certified in personalized medicine. One of the easiest ways when you call a doctor's office or other prescriber is just to ask, do you do saliva testing for hormones? They don't do saliva testing. They're really not trained in this specialty. They. And it is a specialty. So that's a pretty easy way to find out. Are you at the right place?

Yes, that's. That's a good one. Do some research. But I like that. It's just a quick question, and you can probably weed people out pretty fast. I want to talk about the book, too, because, like, you put out, obviously, a lot of work into all of your books, but this is the most timely one you want to put out for a while. I think I could. Yeah. You. You might have already answered this a little bit, but. But why this book? What motivated you to spend so much time and effort, you know, writing this book and then putting this out as your 14th book?

Well, not just my personal journey, but one of my best friends died of breast cancer at the age of 51, and that was Dr. Sherry Lieberman. She was a PhD nutritionist. And actually, I probably would never have written a book if it had not been for Dr. Lieberman. She introduced me to my publisher, Square One Publishing, and she's the one that introduced me to Rudy Scher, who is the owner of the company. And that's how I got started in writing books, is having the right publisher and publishing company to begin with. And again, she died of breast cancer. I've had several really good friends die and then my best friend died 10 days ago of breast cancer. And so I've been on that journey with her for the last about two and a half years. So that gave me a lot of insight personally of this disease course and some things that we can do.

I'm sorry to hear that. Met your friend. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, very, very timely and maybe we dedicate this episode to your friend as well and to everyone else that you know that has been affected by breast cancer. If someone to read this, meaning a woman, if they closed your book and only remembered like one idea that could completely change their. Their lives, her life, what do you think that would be?

It certainly has to do with probably two modifiable risk factors. One is how you eat. Certainly it's anti inflammatory. That's how you want to eat. Decrease inflammation, which would be the Mediterranean diet that decreases inflammation in the body. So those good fats like avocado and the better meats like lamb. Almost all of the fat in Lamb is Omega 3s and related to that is decreasing sugar intake. Sugar causes inflammation. I'm personally still working on that one. I do have a sweet tooth that was really, really hard for me, particularly for chocolate. But you know, we all are a work in progress. But certainly eating more Mediterranean, decreasing sugar intake. Another modifiable risk factor is alcohol consumption. Women metabolize alcohol differently than men and we break it down slower and it also breaks down into a product which increases estrogen in the body. And so try and keep alcohol to a minimum does really help. In fact, the American Cancer Society now on their website has that if you have breast cancer on both sides of your family, you probably should not drink. So I don't. For everybody else, moderation is the key to health. So instead of two glasses of wine or beer or mixture drink, cutting it down to one would be great. We've known for a long time that cigarette smoking is problematic. It's not just the increase in lung cancer. It increases breast cancer. And then of course big time in the news now, high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup is the only sugar in the world that gets into the thou without a carrier. That carrier is the hormone insulin. So minimizing or avoiding high fructose corn syrup would be grand. Exercise helps. And then of course you knew I would get along to and around to toxins, particularly chemicals that are endocrine disruptors. They actually modify the hormones in the body, particularly estrogen, BPAs, phthalates. There's a number of toxins that are endocrine disruption disruptors. There's even fungi that are endocrine disruptors, like Zen, which is an abbreviation that's easier than giving you the big chemical name. But even mold and fungus toxins that really, if we can get rid of, which we now can, the science is here to do that, dramatically decrease the risk of getting breast cancer.

So talk to me, because this is where I wanted to go anyway with environmental toxins. You know, the plastics, pfas, pesticides like heavy metals and even mold. Like how. And you mentioned it, it's a lot of these will affect your. Your hormones, they'll modify it. So explain that a little bit more. And how this is then directly linked to breast cancer risk.

That's such a great question. Thank you for asking. Women have three estrogen receptors, so alpha, beta and gper. And these toxins are literally changing the endocrine system by being phytoestrogens. They act like estrogen in the body. They're estrogen mimickers, and they bind to those receptor sites and increase the risk of breast cancer. So literally, BPA will bind to the receptor sites just like estrogen does. And we couldn't get rid of bpa. In fact, I'm a toxicologist. My MPH is in toxicology. Five years ago, I quit measuring BPA because I had nothing to offer besides sauna, which only got rid of maybe 5 or 7% of BPAs. Now with therapeutic plasma exchange change, where we hook people up to a machine, take out their plasma, put back in albumin. So we get rid of those toxins permanently from the body, including microplastics and BPAs and mold and all those things, pesticides. We now actually have the science that the results are phenomenal. We can get rid of BPAs 92 to 100% in every single patient, along with all the other toxins I mentioned. Even toxic heavy metals that we couldn't get rid of before, like aluminum, like gadolinium, which you get when you have an mri. That dye they put in is gadolinium. Used to stay in your body forever. Now with therapeutic plasma exchange, we are able to get it out in everyone.

Wow. Yeah. And it just makes all the sense to get it out. And I know we've talked about that a lot with how TPE is leading the way, and it's. It's incredible. And yeah, had a bunch of people on here who, who have also had it done and talked about their experiences.

After this whole journey, what I really.

Learned here is like, there are a lot of health conscious people. I think I'm considering myself one as well. But there's a lot of things, no matter what you do, how much you.

Pay attention to it, how much you.

Avoid it, and sometimes it just got in and I think TPE give me a good opportunity to restart my body again.

Back to, you know, more about toxins. Of all of these that you've studied, is there like a single toxin that keeps you awake at night because you know it's silently harming people every single day?

Actually, all of them do. If you just took BPA itself, it increases the risk, documented with medical trials of 22 different diseases, including breast cancer. So you could just stop at BPAs and phthalates, which are the things that are plasticizers. Women have to be really, really careful with what they put on their skin and their hair. A lot of women get these toxins from face cream, eye cream, neck creams, their shampoos, their conditioners, fabric softeners, deodorants may have aluminum in them. A lot of these things are easily avoidable. But women probably get 70% of their toxins from things they actually put on their skin, hair, etc. For an aesthetically positive experience. The great news is there's much better products now that don't have all these toxins in them.

Yeah, that's because I was going to ask, you know, if there's any. If there's a single product that you just feel should just get wiped out, not ever show up in a home in America or wherever in the world. Is there one of those that come to mind? I know there's a lot of beauty care products, it sounds like, but is there, is there something that's just like, that's got to go, that cannot be in your home?

A lot of them really have to go. People need to read the package. The trouble is they don't. If there's something on any package, whether it is a food, whether it is a cosmetic, something you put on your skin, if you cannot pronounce it, then you best are not to use it because natural things are more easily to pronounce.

It's as simple as that. If you can't pronounce. Yeah, because these words sometimes are just, you know, I don't know how many syllables they are. 10 maybe. You're just like, what? What does that mean? Yeah. So Reading the labels of anything, because that's.

Yeah. And I know we can probably talk all day about the specifics of things, you know, but plastics, I know, come up a lot. So I'm sure that would probably be a starting point as well, you know, to eliminate a lot of the BPAs as well.

Well, people don't realize that even masks, when people put a mask on, those microplastics go up your nose and into the brain. There was an interesting study in this year showing that. So things sometimes that we do that we think are really, really healthy may not be. But we can get rid of microplastics now, too. Before tpe, we never could get rid of it. The thing about therapeutic plasma exchanges, it's not new. I started out as an ER doc in a level one trauma center in Detroit. We did TPE. This is my 48th year of pregnancy practice. And before Narcan, I think everybody's heard about Narcan. Now we jab it into people we put up their nose for drug overdose. Well, I practiced long enough that we didn't have Narcan. It was before it was invented. So how do you think we got rid of people who abused heroin or whatever? We did TPE. So TPE has been around for 50 years or more. So it's very, very safe procedure. It's a little time consuming. It takes about three hours. But TPE itself does not work. We've actually proven that it's TPE plus nutrients and other things. So at MD lifespan, what we do is we do tpe, which takes probably three hours. And then for the fourth hour, what we do is we give people IV nutrients, stem cells, exosomes, and other things to help their immune system, memory, help with heart disease, etc. So it's not just TPE itself, because that really doesn't work very well. We have to have all the other things added to it to get the great experience that we're discussing today.

That's good. That's good that you specify that, because we talked a lot about TPE and it itself. But it's the other things that are kind of lumped into the protocol that each person is given. Right. And there's a lot of different ways that can be shifted. Right. It's all precision. It's personalized.

It is absolutely personalized. People don't realize that when you work with them, it's not just how I get the toxins out. We want to make sure people avoid them. We want it. We suggest air filters for them and water filters and Other things to help avoid it, and even lowering cholesterol. One of those modifiable risk factors is high cholesterol. Lowering the cholesterol decreases the risk of breast cancer, getting rid of infection, obesity. If you're obese, it increases your risk. If you have high blood sugar, it increases your risk. So we want to work with people to have an overall experience. Experience to help them really decrease all of their risk factors. With therapeutic plasma exchange at MD lifespan, we don't see the patient for everything. We bring them in, we do the tpe, which we lovingly call an oil change, and then we send them back to their personalized medicine physician or other prescriber. If they don't have one, then we're happy to see suggest somebody in their area for them. But really, we are there for the TPE only.

It's really cool how holistic the process is, you know? And yeah, it's not just the TPE or even the nutrients and all that. It's everything else in our environment and being knowledgeable, which I know we're doing here in the episodes. But when it's personalized, it's like a whole different experience, which is really awesome.

It is. And one of those personalized things is methylation as a modifiable risk factor. Methylation is putting a CH3 group where it belongs in the body. And 50%. 50% of the people in the world are poor methylators. I am one of those. If you do not put a methyl group where it belongs, you have an increased risk in breast cancer for men, prostate, an increased risk in heart disease, an increased risk in stroke, an increased risk in cognitive decline, which is quite major, and an increased risk in getting bone loss, whether you're male or female. And for men, an increase in prostate cancer. Again, we've known this for 40 years, so it's really important to look at methylation. If people come in for TPE and they've not had a methylation study done, then we do do one for them to try and change these modifiable risk factors and help them be as healthy as they can be.

I don't know much about methylation. I mean, can you give us, like, just a quick. I'm sure you can go really deep on this, but just so we have an understanding of. Yeah. What it is and maybe some of the things that we can take action on.

Well, it's actually inherited on the gene, so there's different ways you can have a methylation problem. Okay. There's different parts of the pathway that may not work Depending on what gene you may have inherited. So for me, I have a problem with Metzath tetrahydrofolate reductase, big long, so mthfr, we abbreviate it. And that's the pathway that I inherited. A gene where in my body things do not break down well when it comes to methylation. The science is here. We can do a blood test, a methylation test to see what part of that pathway doesn't work and fix it. So that has to do with folic acid, which is B9. So I take methylated B9 or folate. So you put a methyl group on the folate, and then my body will make that whole reaction work the way it's supposed to. Other people, in a personalized medicine approach, they may have a different part of the pathway that's broken. The good news is we can measure the entire pathway. We can also fix whatever part of that pathway doesn't work well. And so the science is here to do that. If you want a really simple way to look at part of the pathway, the mthfr, you can have your doctor, if you're sitting out there today. Joining us, measure homocysteine. Any prescriber can measure that. It's homocysteine. H O M O C Y S T E I N E. Homocysteine can be done at any lab. It is a fasting study. And that part of the pathway that makes homocysteine and breaks it down, if that's the broken pathway, your homocysteine will be high. So perfect is 6 to 8. Mine is 16.7 without that special folate or B9. Other ways of looking at measuring it is again the whole methylation pathway. Or you can look at how estrogen is broken down in the body. That's a first morning urine. And believe it or not, that test is for men or women. We do that test and make sure estrogen is broken down and into the right estrogens to keep it simple. Two, four and 16 hydroxy estrogens. The two is a good. You want that one. You need a little bit of 16 for bone structure. Too much increases the risk of breast and prostate cancer. And if you have Ne4 hydroxy, it increases that risk of breast and prostate cancer dramatically. And of course, when I did my first morning urine, that estrogen breakdown, I broke down into almost 4 hydroxy estrogen exclusively. The great thing is we can change it in every single person. We can fix homocysteine in everybody. We can make estrogen breakdown perfect in every single person. And that is part of what we want to do as well, along with toxic removal.

Great, great information right there. And I think that gives the power to those listening and watching, you know, to. To take an action too. And there's a lot of. A lot of great things here. Now, you mentioned, and you've talked about this in. On a previous episode, but the connection between breast cancer in women, but also prostate cancer, you know, so I'm sure there's men watching, listening too. So I kind of want to connect those and at least put your thoughts around that and how maybe some of this, what we're talking about relates to men.

Almost everything I have said, the modifiable risk factors, all 19 of them, they actually are the same for prostate cancer. And also men can get breast cancer. The previous studies showed that 1% of breast cancer was in men. Now 3% of breast cancer is in males. In fact, personally, in my own practice, my second to last patient with breast cancer actually was a male. And so men can get breast cancer also, more commonly, they get prostate cancer. But doing all these things we talked about, from toxin removal to eating better to exercise, to fixing methylation that helps with men, prevent prostate cancer as well. And honestly, I would be very remiss if I did not talk about vitamin D. Vitamin D is actually a pretty prohormone. Vitamin D for men or women has to be 55 to 80 to help prevent cancer in general, particularly breast, prostate, and colon cancer.

When you say that range, that's. That's after getting a test, right? The correct.

Well, or, you know, when you do a test, any doctor or prescriber can do that test. We go, you know, to the basic lab. You don't have to be fasting to have that one done. And when people take vitamin D, if they need it, and most people do need it, then we take vitamin D3 instead of vitamin D2. Studies have shown that vitamin D3 works better in the body.

Good, good, good, good. So get the, get the labs. And that's just the. The blood test, right? The normal thing.

Normal thing. You just go to the lab again, not even fasting, and they can just do a vitamin D. So nice and simple on that.

I like it. That's good. Yeah. What are other. So, you know, I'm thinking of the different tests because we've talked about a lot, you know, saliva, urine, blood. So I guess just. Can you recap, you know, because I see. I think that's almost like a next step that a lot of people might be thinking about. Hey, I should probably get tested. So can you just kind of recap what all of the tests are and kind of just quickly kind of denote why?

I can certainly start off with on Monday morning, changing how you eat and starting to exercise. If you're not exercising. That's a great place to begin because we want to decrease inflammation. That's really all these things do. Measuring vitamin D, which can be done at any lab, is great. You can also measure homocysteine at any lab. If you're going to look at methylation and do an actual methylation test or look at the breakdown of estrogen, then that one you're probably going to need to see a personalized medicine specialist for. And certainly if you want to have a comprehensive toxin test, and we do recommend that for every patient after the age of 18, we really want to look at 109 toxins in the body. And that test is easily doable. So that one is a 24 hour urine to measure all those toxins. So you don't have to go to the lab for that one. You can be sent a kit, do it in the privacy of your own home, send it off UPS or FedEx, and then you can look at whether you have any of these kind of toxins we've talked about today. Except for microplastics. Microplastics. That test is best done in Europe. That one's kind of hard to measure. So it takes a little while for it to go back to Europe and come back to the, the U.S. yeah.

Well, I'm thinking, you know, so traditional doctors, you know, a woman who's listening. I mean, I just feel like for anybody, you know, going to the doctor's office could be kind of intimidating. But I'm curious from your perspective, you know, woman going in there, what can they ask that can maybe change the dynamic of, of that patient doctor relationship so it gets the woman in control of her health rather than just kind of reacting to what the doctor is saying. Is there something that you'd recommend women to say?

First of all, do not be afraid to ask questions, okay? That's what the doctor or other prescriber is there for, is to make sure you have all your questions answered before you leave. Do not let people intimidate you. Do not let people rush you and make you feel like, oh my gosh, I've only got five minutes. You're there for your own health. And everybody has the right to a personalized approach to health. And I didn't mention a gut test, but that's a stool test. Again, 70% of your immune system's in the gut, so talk to your doctor about that one. If they're going to send your stool off to the hospital and not do a whole specialized test that looks at everything from dysbiosis, meaning too much bad bacteria and not enough good, if they don't do a stool test that looks at inflammation and metabolic dysfunction, meaning how the body works, then seek out a personalized medicine prescriber, someone who actually does an approach where you're going to look at all of these different things. But again, you can start with your own doctor. Start by getting a vitamin D level done. Start by eating better. Start by exercising. Start by. If you're overweight, do the best you can to lose weight. You certainly can lower your cholesterol with your own doctor. I do recommend you see a personalized medicine specialist if you're going to look at hormones and have a saliva test done. But everybody out there today can avoid high fructose corn syrup and take decrease their sugar intake. These are things that we really can do to make a very big difference when it comes to breast cancer risk.

Definitely. We have a lot of control, which is nice. And so because you've practiced for over 40 years, written 14 books now and all that, I'm curious, if you were to go back to your 30s, let's say back in time, what would you take tell yourself to do differently to lower the risk of breast cancer overall?

Probably decreasing stress. It took me a number of years to just learn, basically, let go, let God and really decrease stress, which is cortisol, my stress hormone. I think most doctors and probably most people are really, really stressed. I kind of let that go and I can't control it anyway. So don't worry about all those other things because there's two things that really, really, really feed cancer cells, no matter what kind of cancer we're talking about, and that is sugar and stress. And by the way, cortisol, your stress hormone, is measured by saliva. That is a saliva test that's available at any lab in the world because that's the best way to measure cortisol itself.

I feel like the stress thing, everybody can relate to that in some regard, and everybody has these different ways to deal with stress, healthy or not, but definitely go on the healthier side. Any recommendations on reducing stress or, you know, maybe not just for yourself, but how you've seen most effective that you'd recommend? That's pretty.

Oh, absolutely. Prayer, meditation, tai chi, yoga, qigong, exercise, massage, breathing techniques, acupuncture, Acupressure. I mean, all of those really are. All of them have clinical trials showing that they do improve cortisol levels. And then you can also take nutrients adaptogenic herbs like ashwagandha, ginseng, rhodiola. There's some of the herbs that have clinical trials to show that they help normalize cortisol as well.

There's so many good things. And I know your book goes even deeper with the short time that we have here. So I want to thank you for being so open, Dr. Pam, and urge everyone to go and get the book. And again, we'll, we'll link it in the show notes how to prevent breast cancer before and after diagnosis. And thank you. Thanks for sharing that with the world as well. Dr. D. Dr. Smith, is there anywhere else that you would like people to go and follow you or maybe go deeper on things with you?

No, actually I would just love to have everybody read this book because it's a book for all times. It really does matter if you do these things for your overall health, not just the prevention of cancer. You can find my book at any major bookstore. You can find it on Amazon, which may be the easiest way to do it. You can in today's world. But it certainly gives you a nice, simple, broken down way of looking at risk factors that you yourself can fix. You can take control of your own health. Thank you so much for inviting me to be on your podcast. It truly is greatly appreciated. I very much have been enjoying being here.

Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're speaking on all the stages that I can possibly think of. So. And it's because you have, you're so valuable and you're sharing so much impactful, timely information. So appreciate you very much. Thank you.

Thank you.