Replace Routine Mammographic Screenings, with Dr. Jenn Simmons

The vast majority of women are getting diagnosed with breast cancer because they're getting mammograms. They're using a test that causes cancer to screen for cancer.

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Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Feel Freaking amazing podcast. Ed might or might not join us today. And you'll know he's joined us because he'll be next to me all of a sudden. But until he does, it's just you, me, and Jen Simmons. Dr. Simmons started her professional career as Philadelphia's first fellowship trained breast surgeon. And after 17 years, she discovered functional medic and made a complete career pivot through speaking, practice programs, public appearances. She's on a mission to change the impact of breast cancer by empowering millions of women to take control of their health and create the life she wants. Hi, Jen. Welcome.

Hi. Thank you. I'm super excited to be here.

I love the intersection between breast cancer, breast cancer prevention, and toxins, which, you know, it's like, we're like a Reese's, except that I don't. I don't eat that.

I don't know if you do, but I do not.

So why do people get breast cancer? What does it look like? How do they know they have it?

Yeah. Let's first talk about why most people know that they have breast cancer, because most people are stuck in that whole mammographic screening program. So if we could talk a little bit about one of the biggest toxins that we are telling women are good for them and necessary, and they're stuck in this cycle. The mammographic screening program was invented in the 1970s, and it was based on the premise that breast cancer was linear and predictable. So breast cancer starts at some minute size and grows in a linear fashion, reaches some critical mass, at which point it is more likely to metastasize. And if you could identify a breast cancer before that critical point, then you could decrease the amount of treatment people got and save lives. It's a lovely premise. It just doesn't happen to be true. The reason that we know this is because no matter how many women we screen every year and no matter how many cancers we find, every year, the same exact number of women Present with late stage disease. And the same exact number of women die of breast cancer every year. And no matter how much mammographic screening is going on, we are not impacting the number of women that die every year from breast cancer. So, you know, the vast majority of women are getting diagnosed with breast cancer because they're getting mammograms. They're using a test that causes cancer to screen for cancer.

Okay, you totally just threw a flamethrower in here. So why. That's like a pretty. That's a pretty bold statement, so back it up. What do you mean?

So mammograms are radiation. And what radiation does is it causes free radicals, and free radicals then cause DNA damage. And this is what happens. Damaged DNA is essentially a cancer cell.

So we're torching the idea that you need a yearly mammogram. But what. What else? I don't think that it's. It's mammogram or nothing, Right? What, what is. What are the other options for women?

No, it's definitely not mammogram or nothing. But, but first, let's. Let's get the facts out there. So we are told that mammograms save lives. And if a mammogram saves one life in 10,000 over the course of women's lives, when we're radiating women at least once a year, many times we're being radiated more than once a year because the callback rate is somewhere between 30 to 60%, depending on what state you're in. Now we're talking about radiating women multiple times a year and for multiple years in a row, because once you get caught in that callback cycle, you're called back again and again and again and again and again. This radiation, over someone's lifetime has nowhere to go. It is just building up in our bodies like a toxin. And that actually will reach critical mass and cause breast cancer. So for every one in 10,000 lives that we save using mammogram, we're going to cause about seven cancers, which is why the mammographic screening program has been done away with in countries all over the world. It's just not happening here because we don't have a health care system. We have a sick care system. And so there is nothing in place to protect people's health. So if you want to protect your health and you want to prevent breast cancer, mammogram has nothing to do with prevention. It's all about early detection. You actually have to develop the disease to have mammogram be useful. For you in any way. And what we want to do is not develop the disease. Breast health is healthy. And the same things that promote healthy breasts promote a healthy heart, a healthy brain, healthy gut, healthy bones. It's all the same thing.

So what are people's options? And it's so funny that we're having this conversation because I have a patient who has discomfort in her breasts. So I'm like, let's get an ultrasound. She just happens to be like 79 years old and they don't want to do it without a mammogram. And I'm like, patient declines mammogram. And I would say 95% of the places around us don't want to do it. And the one that does do it is booked until January 24th and we're now recording six months before that. So I was like, that's not really a starter, that's a non starter. This isn't a screening either. She has discomfort. So the systems really woefully designed to respond.

Yeah, so that, that is a CYA system. Right. And, and most physicians and their, you know, their programs, their systems, they are not critical thinkers. They are not thinking outside of the box.

No, it's, it's minimum viable product. Yeah, it's, it's really minimum viable product management. So what, what do people do instead of a mamma? Where, where do they go? What do they do?

Yeah. So you know, the mammogram is for, or, or the ultrasound or the mri, that this is for people who have already developed a symptom. So, you know, let's back up and say if you're doing all those things, if you're eating right and avoiding toxins and sleeping at night and managing your stress and you're doing all those right things and you still feel something in your breast, I think that using those modalities for diagnostic purposes is fine. What I am saying is we should not be radiating everyone every year under the pretense that we're saving their life, because we're not. But if you have something develop and you know your body and you know you've had a departure from what your normal is, I think it's perfectly fine to use the mammogram in that situation. And if you are having an X ray, a mammogram, a CAT scan, a DEXA scan, a bone scan, a PET scan, if you're having any of those radiation based scans, then take 100 milligrams of melatonin one at one to two hours before your study. It will help to neutralize the free radicals that are generated in the radiation process. And so it will help to protect your cells, protect your DNA. And again, I think those tools are perfectly acceptable, used appropriately for diagnostic purposes. What I am advocating against is using them for screening.

Well, they're not screening. It's diagnostic.

Yeah, right.

Like, but that's not what we think. We think about, oh, I'm going to get a screening test.

But I do want to mention that there is an FDA approved test that is only. Only available in a limited way right now, but will become readily available in the next five years. It has no radiation, it is fast, it is comfortable, it is affordable, and it's called QT imaging. And it has 40 times the resolution of MRI. Wow, 40 times the resolution of MRI. So a negative QT scan means that you don't need your breast image for another two years. That's how sensitive and specific it is. There are currently eight centers open in the United States and more to come. People like me, other practitioners around the country are actively opening centers right now. So QT imaging is what's going to replace mammogram and mri. There will never be a reason to screen with anything else.

That's amazing, Jen. Do you know if they're in Boston? I want. Now I want to go.

They are not. They're all on the. All on the West Coast. But there. There'll be one in Philly pretty soon. You can come visit.

You're gonna open one?

I am.

Okay. I'll come down to Philly and do it.

I'm gonna open 50, but I'm gonna start by opening one.

Start with one and then open. I think that's great. Okay. So typically, you know, it's so funny because I remember where I was when I got the call that my mom had breast cancer. And I was in New York, and I'm from Framingham, which is in Massachusetts. One of the chief residents was like, go home. I'll cover your call. I was a resident. I was an intern. He covered my call. I went home for the weekend. And my mom, in retrospect, didn't have cancer. She had dcis, but she was in the system. And what she entered was the system of lumpectomy, radiation, and five years of tamoxifen. Literally a knee jerk. It was only years later that I came up for air and went, yeah, it's not really clear if that's a cancer. I know that since mammograms have come into common use, the incidence of DCIS has gone up significantly. Into high double digits that we're calling things cancer that might really just be somewhere in the process of repair.

Yeah. And so, first of all, we know historically, because we didn't always treat DCIS, and so we know historically that only 50% of DCIS will even go on to become an invasive cancer. And that's with changing nothing. Because, you know, our conventional medical system does not do anything to recommend improvements in diet, improvements in lifestyle. It's not doing any of that. And so this dcis, once we've labeled people with DCIS and told them that they have cancer, and that's really the way that they understand it. Right. They're not told that this is a pre malignant condition, and they are thus treated exactly like they have invasive cancer. They're given invasive surgeries. If they're not undergoing lumpectomy, they're undergoing mastectomy. This woman with a non invasive change in her breast undergoes mastectomy, will never for the rest of her life ever forget that she had breast cancer. You have forever changed her, and she will ever live with the fear that she had breast cancer. We are not serving these people. And the ones that don't have mastectomy, they have lumpectomy, they have radiation. We know that radiation has very long term ramifications. And most of them are going on hormonal blockade. Hormonal blockade that then accelerates heart disease, accelerates bone loss, accelerates brain damage. I mean, these people, they're having depression, anxiety, they're at increased risk for Alzheimer's. We are really like, first do no harm. That has blown out the window. We are harming people. We are for sure harming people.

So now we're back to what's a girl to do, Right? So, okay, let's separate out the people with invasive cancer and set them in a different bucket. Let's talk about people who either don't have any diagnosis, any formal diagnosis, don't have any problems, but want to make sure they don't have problems, or someone who has been told, hey, your mammogram looks like you might have dcis. Do you treat those people differently, the dcis? I do. Okay, so let's talk about the DCIS diagnosed group. What do you recommend that they're doing to decrease their risk, decrease the risk of progressing to an actual invasive cancer?

I see any change, any inflammatory change as opportunity. That's what we need to do across the board. This is true for non invasive cancers as well as true for invasive cancers. You have to look at your why this is your Opportunity to figure out what is changing your chemistry. Because breast cancer is a normal response to an abnormal environment. So there's been some kind of shift. And this isn't about blame or shame. The asking why is not to beat yourself up or to blame yourself for having done something. So none of this is intentional. Even people who smoke cigarettes don't smoke cigarettes with the intention of getting lung cancer. And you can do everything seemingly right and still get breast cancer. So it's really about being honest, being inquisitive, being open to the possibility that there has been a shift that happened and you need to figure out how to shift back. So for some people it's diet, for some people it's environmental. I can't tell you how many people that their breast cancer diagnosis was the time that they learned that they have celiac disease, or they have mold in their home, or they've been suffering from chronic viral illness or parasites. And the list goes on and on. And these aren't things that people would know. Even the people with celiac disease. You can have celiac disease and have absolutely no gut symptoms at all, or you don't equate them with gut symptoms. Right. Because we know that gut symptoms can present in a lot of ways. Some people are just horribly anxious or depressed, and that's because the gut is connected to the brain by the vagal nerve.

My dad's celiac came because he broke his hip. And 50 year old men don't break their hips.

Yeah, exactly. I feel it. That is the same story that we're in a mentorship together with Kevin Ellis. He's the bone coach and that's how his was discovered. And so we don't think about these things. No one's thinking about celiac disease when they're diagnosed with a fracture or they're diagnosed with autoimmune disease. And no one is thinking to check for celiac. And yet a good percentage of those people will have celiac disease. And that is the NIDUS for them. And so it's really about asking the questions, looking at what this person has been through and taking this opportunity to improve your health. Because when you create health, disease goes away. I see disease reversed at every step along the way. Dcis, yes. But I see metastatic cancer reverse. Things that we're told are irreversible suddenly are reversible when you're doing the right thing for you.

So as awful as it sounds, pretty much any diagnosis is an opportunity to reverse. It's an opportunity to hit the brakes, pivot, go in another direction. And it's the indicator light, right? It's the check engine that something's wrong and we need to fix it. Okay, so any diagnosis, including breast cancer, is the check engine light coming on and then the opportunity to go back to basics. What I'll say are eat, sleep, poop, move, think ground de stress. These are the platform foundational behaviors that are required to reverse disease. Okay, so do you have any top tips to prevent breast cancer?

Yeah, absolutely. So at the end of the day, breast health is health. And the same things that we're doing to prevent breast cancer, we're also doing to prevent heart disease, we're doing to prevent Alzheimer's, we're doing to prevent osteoporosis. Right. And it's really clean living. Right. There are no shortcuts, there's no magic pill. You have to eat in an anti inflammatory way, move your body, manage the stress. The stress is ever present, it's always going to be there. So you got to build your toolbox. You've got to figure out how to not let the stress affect you. We are not built for prolonged periods of stress. We're just not. And almost everyone who comes to me with a breast cancer diagnosis, I ask them, tell me about the last two years and they tell me about a divorce, a death in the family, having to care for a sick child or a sick parent or a sick spouse. They tell me about trauma, they tell me about a job loss, they tell me about a movement. There's always something, right? And we can't avoid those things. People are going to get sick. We are going to change jobs, we are going to have difficult relationships, we are going to have deadlines. But the thing is, we can choose what we allow to impact us. And so you have to build your stress management toolbox. You have to prioritize sleep, you have to sleep at night. There's no way around it. You have to avoid as many toxins as you can. And it is doable. You don't have to do it all at once. I'm sure this is stuff that you counsel on all the time. Change one thing at a time. Change the low hanging fruit, get rid of your non stick cookware, stop drinking out of plastic, stop using antibacterial anything. Change your products that you're putting on your body, but change one thing at a time. Get used to that, get accustomed to that, let that become your new normal and then change something else. Every positive change you make will have a positive effect on your body. It will have a positive effect on your family, it will have a positive effect on your friends. This is really paying it forward. When you get healthy, you are paying it forward without question.

Yeah, 100% improvement. It's like sleep gets sleep, improvement gets improvement. And it's all a feed forward cycle.

Absolutely, absolutely.

This has been amazing and I could talk. I know. I love you to pieces. I could talk to you for hours about this. So tell me where people can find out more about you and we will put this all in the show notes so people can click on it.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So My website is realhealthmd.com and you can find me there. If you're looking to work with me, you can apply for a call there. You can follow me on social Media. I'm at Dr. Jens Simmons and my Jen has two N's. And lastly, if you want to be part of my community, I have a free Facebook community called keeping abreast with Dr. Jen. You can have access to me, you can ask questions and in that space we always publish what I'm up to. So you can see my latest videos. You'll probably see an announcement for this podcast and anything that you want to know about breast health, you're going to find there.

That's great, Jen. And you have a podcast of your own?

I do. It's called keeping abreast with Dr. Jen. So it is launching in two weeks. I am super excited about it and it's going to feature wonderful people like yourself and all people who are kind of like minded in the, in the health care space because we are truly about health care and not sick care. Our conventional medical system, as you very well know, because you came through it just like I did, our conventional medical system is very broken. It is focused on the wrong thing. The only way to get into that system is to fail. And it is really designed for failure. Because if you come into that system and you say, I'm tired, I'm achy, I have no libido, I can't sleep at night, what do they do? They run a meaningless panel. They tell you you're fine. They put you on the line of fine. I think that's your line and not mine. And they just send you home and tell you to come back when you're really failing. You know there's a better way. I know there's a better way. Health is not the absence of disease. Health is optimum function. And I, like you, want to help everyone to function optimally. And I'm having people on my podcast who are doing the same thing. We're focused on the right thing. We're focused on health.

Yes, I think that's a perfect place to stop. Dr. Simmons, thank you for joining us for this episode of the Feel Freakin Amazing Podcast. If you're listening, this is Dr. Jen Simmons. Ed didn't make it to hang out with us today, but he'll be here for another podcast. And, Jen, thanks for being here.

It was my pleasure. Always love spending time with you.

Ditto.

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