Replace Routine Mammographic Screenings, with Dr. Jenn Simmons

Foreign. 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 and me and Jen Simmons. Dr. Simmons started her professional career as Philadelphia's first fellowship trained breast surgeon. And after 17 years, she Discover functional medicine 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. I do not. So I make my own version of that, but I don't eat Reese's or any commercially available candy or junk food.

I remember when I learned that vanillin was derived at one point from the glands, the anal glands of an animal, and I was like, okay, never again. It's gross. So anyway, not to get too off track, so you're into transforming the treatment of breast cancer. But I think to do that, we have to back up and talk about why do people get breast cancer? What does it look like? How do they know they have it?

Breast cancer? Well, 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.

And this is what happens. Damaged DNA is essentially a cancer cell.

It's so funny, because I just want to interrupt you, Jen. Cause I think about, if this were a testicle, we would never be squeezing it to death and saying, that's good. Men would never be like, yes, I'm going to go for my yearly testicular squeezing. No, never do that.

Never. But we have that all across the board. You know, mammograms is one area. But we can also talk about the fact that hormone replacement is considered a luxury. It is. Many people still consider it dangerous. And yet you would never say to a man, okay, you are going to overnight become disinterested in sex, still have to have sex. Sex will be painful, and it's going to go. You're going to be depressed, you're going to be anxious, you're going to have difficulty sleeping, your joints are going to ache, your bones are going to weaken, your heart is going to become less healthy. You're going to be at increased risk of Alzheimer's. But don't worry. Those symptoms that you're feeling will only last for about 10 years, and then they'll start to go away. The rest of the medical problems will continue to be bad and likely take your life. But this is how it happens, right? Men would be like, you're out of your mind. And that is unacceptable. And yet we say that to women all the time.

Okay, so. So let's go back to the mammogram thing. If it's not. 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 is definitely mammogram or nothing. But. But first, let's. Let's get 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. So 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. So 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 healthcare 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 and to have mammogram be useful for you in any way. And what we want to do is not develop the disease. And so breast health is health. 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 it's about eating in an anti inflammatory way. It's about getting the processed food out of your diet, getting the sugar out of your diet. It's about getting the gluten out of your diet. It's about getting the things that we know are harmful out of your diet. It's about moving. We are a nomadic people, all of us, even though we are living in modern times, we're living on a very old gene code and our bodies only know movement. And if you don't move your body, you lose it. So it's about being active and being active throughout the day. No exercising, couch potatoes, it doesn't count. You have to move throughout your day. It's about prioritizing sleep. We are a nation that only values the waking hours. And the truth is that sleep is when the healing happens. And if you're not sleeping, you're not healing. If you're not sleeping, you're not detoxifying. We are going to encounter toxins in the course of our day, for sure, it's unavoidable, but you need to sleep at night to get rid of those toxins. And the only way that you're going to do that is if you're actually sleeping at night. And it kind of has to be at night. We know that shift works.

We need to honor the circadian rhythm. We can't buck the system on that one.

Exactly. So we know that shift workers, people who work the night shift, have more chronic disease than people who are sleeping at night and working during the day. So you can't get away from mother Nature. You can't get away from circadian rhythm. I'm sorry. And I know we need shift workers, so, you know, I'm sorry if that's your lot in life, but it's just not healthy.

Right. It's not optimal.

It's not optimal.

Let's go back to. We've nixed the mammogram. 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 breast. 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. You know, that's a non starter. Like, this isn't a screening either. This is. She has discomfort. So the system's really woefully designed.

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

No, it's minimum product.

Yeah.

It's really minimum viable product management.

Yeah, yeah.

So what do people do instead of a mamma? Where do they go? What do they do? Yeah.

So the mammogram is for. Or the ultrasound or the mri. This is for people who have already developed a symptom. So 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.

That's fair.

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're 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 to two hours before your study. It will help to neutralize the free radicals that are generated in the radiation process. 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 now.

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

Yeah, right.

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

But I do want to mention that there is an FDA approved test that is 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. It's called QT imaging and it has 40 times the resolution of MRI. Wow, 40 times the resolution of MRI. 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. 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. Gen. Do you know whether in Boston. I want to go.

They're all on the. All on the west coast. Yeah. But there'll be one in Philly pretty soon. You can come visit.

You're going to open one?

I am.

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

I'm going to open 50, but start.

By opening one and then I think that's great.

Yeah.

Okay. So right now the diagnostic options are pretty limited, let's put it that way. Yeah. And, and then let's talk about really, how prevalent is breast cancer? Because every woman I know worries about breast cancer and every woman I know says to me, I don't have a family history. So I don't need to worry as much as the people who have family history. I'm like, I don't think that's the case, my friend.

No, it's not the case. It's not the case. And the reason it's not the case, basically everyone over their lifetime will be impacted by breast cancer. Everyone. Because if you don't get breast cancer, you're going to have a sibling, a parent, a friend, a neighbor, a colleague. Everyone is going to be impacted by breast cancer in some way. It has most to do with we are literally surrounded by xenoestrogens in our environment. And I know you know all about this. Xenoestrogens are chemical compounds, synthetic compounds that look like estrogen, and they bind to the estrogen receptor. But unlike estrogen, which does its job and then dissociates from the receptor, these, because they have a funny kind of shape, they hang on to the receptor, they don't dissociate. And even when they do, they are metabolized in a way that they remain toxic. So they're acting, they're overacting on the estrogen receptor in the body, and then they're overburdening our detoxification system. And as such, they are causing a lot of problems. And so the xenoestrogens that are around us, we're talking about things like plastics, antibiotics, fragrance, any of the antibacterial anythings. And so these are commonly found in what we're drinking out of our cookware, what we're cleaning our homes with, what we're putting on our body. And the microplastics have become a huge issue because they're in your dishwasher. If you're using those little pods, they're on your clothes. If you're using dryer sheets or the pods in your laundry detergent. So you're wearing the plastics, you're eating the plastics, you're drinking the plastics, and they're having profoundly negative effects on our body. And one of those effects is breast cancer. And so what? It doesn't mean that we're powerless. It just means that we have to respond appropriately and we all have to do our part in eliminating these toxins from our environment.

Well, let's talk about that, Jen, because so when you say do your part, what I hear is vote with your feet, vote with your pocketbook. Don't purchase, don't use, don't perpetuate the demand for these things. And. And I am always picturing that little cartoon that says, like, why don't you Vote, because it doesn't make a difference. And there's one person who votes, and then like a whole bunch of people, like, it doesn't make a difference. And there's thousands of. Of people. And so the. The power, yes, as an individual, maybe it doesn't go that far, but if you and your whole community and then their whole community are able to alter their behavior, it does add up. Especially if you call the company and say, I just want you to know I'm not buying your product. And here's why.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, I. I recently heard that Lululemon is making clothing where the crotch has pfas, those forever chemicals. And if you tell enough people not to wear Lululemon clothing because they are lining their. The crotch, which is close to your vagina, one of the most absorptive parts of your body, they're lining them with pfas, forever chemicals, people are going to stop buying them. They're going to make another choice. They're going to make a better choice, and they should. And you know what that's going to do. Lululemon is going to stop doing that. So we do have the power, especially now with social media, with platforms like this, we can talk to people, we can educate the public, and the public can make a better decision.

It's so interesting, Jen, that you can't make that choice unless you have the awareness, right? Like, if you don't know that, you're putting PFAS right in your vagina, which highly vascularized, a great absorber. If you don't know, you don't know to make another choice. So it's really the ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is danger. Right? So, okay, so let's go back to breast cancer. 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. And so I might, you know, 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, like, literally a knee jerk. And it was only years later that I kind of came up for air and went, yeah, it's not really clear if that's a cancer. Right? And 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 and 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. So 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. Right. We are not serving these people. And the ones that don't have mastectomy, they have the 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 are, 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. 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 dcs. Do you treat those people differently? 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?

Yeah. So I see any kind of change, any kind of inflammatory change as opportunity, and that's what we need to do across the board. And this is true for noninvasive 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. 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.

And so my dad, celiac came because he broke his hip. Yeah. 50 year old men don't break their hips.

Yeah, exactly. I feel it. That, that is the same, that is the same story that we were in a mentorship together with a guy called Kevin Ellis. He's the bone coach, and that's how his was discovered. And so, you know, we don't think about these things. No one's, 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. And so 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. Something. 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 what are the things that would change someone's outcome around breast cancer for better or for worse? Are there things that are clear that you can. You can go, okay, if you have these factors, this is concerning. And if you have these factors, it's helpful promoting.

Yeah. So I think that everyone's disease is different and we're meeting each person in a different place. And I think for. For most people, where this is coming from, where the change needs to happen, is fairly obvious.

There.

There are always going to be some people where it's not so clear. But like you said, I always go back to the foundation. I always go back to what does your diet look like? And are you eating in a way that is health promoting for you? There are some universal rules that I follow. I don't believe that sugar is good for anyone. Processed food is good for anyone. I don't believe that grains are good for anyone. Even if you're not celiac. I just don't believe that grains are good for anyone.

Well, let's pause. Let's pause there, Jen, because there's so many levels. Okay. Sugar, I said on some podcast, sugar's the devil. I'm like, dude, don't make me a meme. Sugar's the devil. Sugar's the devil. You know, like. But I said, sugar's the devil. So sugar, I totally get behind processed foods, Totally get behind grains. I think the biggest challenge with them is that they're not organic. They're contaminated with herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, particularly glyphosate, which is the most commonly used herbicide in the world, and that has its own risks for cancer and alters the gut microbiome in the immune system, et cetera. So is it that if it's organic and it's the actual unprocessed form, it's reasonable, or is it, period, grains are just a bad food, Even organic?

Yeah. So we can break it down. First of all, when you have people pull grains out of Their diet, everyone gets better because they're missing all of those chemicals that you were just talking about. And even when you're eating organic whole grains in general, maybe those crops aren't sprayed, but they are still next door to crops that are being sprayed. And so there is air spread, there is water spread. So you're still getting some degree of pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, glyphosate. If you're eating grains at all, organic.

Or not even organic legumes in the country, they're all contaminated with glyphosate, even the organic ones. It's horrifying. I'm like, so I'm like, I get my kids hummus. And I'm like, I'm just not looking because I'd rather have them eat.

Yeah, I hear you. And that is something that we do have to trade off. Like you cannot control every single thing. But here's my issue with grains. First of all, in the cancer space, it's almost impossible to eat grains that don't have a high glycemic index. Grains just when compared to other foods, have a high glycemic index. Cancers in general, most endothelial cancers are very tied to insulin, to glucose, to insulin, to insulin, like growth factor. And so what we want to do is keep people in low glycemic states, low insulin secreting states, so that we don't have the presence of the growth factors of insulin. So the glycemic index is part of it, but the other part of it. And this is really well elucidated. Elucidated in no Grain, no Pains by Peter Osborne, by Wheat Belly, by William Davis. But grains are the seeds of grass. Grass is what's consumed by ruminators. Ruminators have very long and redundant digestive tracts. So they are able to pass the grains back and forth for a very long time and be able to extract the nutrients from it. In comparison, humans have a very short digestive tract. And so not only are we not able to extract the nutrient from grains, but we really weren't meant to consume grains. So grains are seen as a foreign food by our gene code. And truthfully, we've only been consuming grains for the last few thousand years. Before then, we did not eat grains at all. And so everyone is going to get some degree of inflammation from grains. Some people a little, some people a lot. But I have to live in that anti inflammatory space. So I'm really not including inflammatory foods in a diet that I'm recommending to people. So are there some people that can tolerate grains that have good insulin levels, that have good glucose control. Yeah, probably. But if we never ate another grain again, we would suffer no nutritional deficiency. So if we have no nutritional need for grains, I just don't see why we should include it in our diet. I think our diet should be made up of things that benefit our health.

So it's such an interesting point you make, Jen, because if you. And as a celiac person, if you eat gluten and have the genes for celiac, you don't have to have celiac, but you have the genes. The DQ2, DQ8, when you eat gluten, specifically gluten, or the gluten grain. So barley malt, rye, wheat, kamet, spelt, triticale. If you eat those, you're going to open the lining of your tight junctions, meaning the outside world and the inside world are exposed to each other for four hours. If you.

Four hours.

And now if you have a standard American diet and you're eating gluten three times a day, essentially your tight junctions.

Are open, your whole day open, which.

Means your immune system is like, what is this? But here's the thing, here's the crazy part. If you don't have the genes and you eat gluten, you still open your tight junctions. It's just for less time. So it's about four hours. I'm sorry, excuse me. It's about 15 minutes instead of four hours, but you still open the tight junctions and get your immune system.

Maybe it's 15 minutes, maybe. I think that there are varying degrees of sensitivity to gluten. So I do think that time varies for people. And the people who are particularly not sensitive, maybe they have a 15 minute gate opening. But I think that there is a spectrum.

Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so avoiding sugar, processed foods and grains, is there anything else that impacts response to cancer treatment or response to crafting a wellness plan around food?

Yeah, well, I need to include dairy in there because the proteins in dairy are very similar to the protein in grains because that's where the dairy gets its protein from. Right. So the, the animals that make dairy eat grass and then that is converted into the dairy in that animal. So the proteins are very, very similar. So I do not advocate for dairy. Dairy is. The purpose of dairy is to make a baby something into a big grown something. It is a growth factor. And I don't think that adults of any kind need more growth factor. So I include dairy in there. And then, you know what, we eat matters, but when we eat really matters too. And So I am very concerned around fasting. And there are a number of ways to fast. And different fasting routines are important at different points in people's journey. But we are not meant to be grazers. We are not meant to be eating all the time. And mostly for the reason that you pointed out in that every time we eat or drink something, our immune system has to check that out and decide if it is friend or foe. So if you are constantly eating or drinking, your immune system is constantly on. Our immune system is like our army that's guarding our health. Right. So if you don't give your army a break, yeah, maybe it can do it for a day or two, but it can't do it for weeks and months and years on end. And yet that's what we ask. That's what we ask of our immune system when we are eating all the time. And in addition, what happens is if you're eating all the time, the other things that get tired, like your pancreas gets tired and you stop making as much pancreatic enzyme. So now you're forced to use your white blood cells to break down your food. Now your immune system is really, really shy. And these are the people that get into trouble with illness because their immune system is just exhausted from eating all the time. So we all need to get back to that evolutionary place. And the truth is that you were not out of the cave and eating at night, because if you were out of the cave and eating at night, guess what? You were someone else's food. Right? And so we are meant to function optimally either in a fed state or an unfed state. And most people will say, like, they get a little tired after they eat because your body is sending its energy to digest. And the truth is that, you know, it's not like you could come out of the cave in the morning and encounter a saba too tiger and say, hey, could you just wait a second because I haven't had my breakfast yet. No, Right. We are capable of having tremendous amounts of energy whether we're in a fed state or not in a fed state. And we need to respect that because it's only when we are in an unfed state that our body can repair and do all of the mechanisms of healing that it's supposed to do.

So, so is there a time frame? I mean, it's so funny because I've been intermittent fasting since before it had a phrase attached to it, because I.

Was just talking about this yesterday.

Yeah, I just. I just liked eating in a window. And that's just how I felt. Good. And then I laughed because I was like, oh, it's called intermittent fasting. But I've been doing it for years before that. So, yeah.

So I was telling this story. I. In college, between my freshman and sophomore year in college, the girl in the dorm room next to me, her name was Tara, but I can't remember her last name. College was a very long time ago for me, and Tara came back looking unbelievable. And I said, what did you do? And she said, I stopped eating after 6 o' clock at night. And I had no idea that that was intermittent fasting. I had no idea that that was circadian timing. Right. But not eating after 6 o' clock at night means you're not eating during the. During. When. When it's dark. Right. You're not eating after sundown and you're taking a long break from eating from one day to the next. So I started intermittent fasting as a sophomore in college because I wanted to look great like Tara.

We want to look like Tara.

Yeah. And so I was doing the same thing. And then when someone called it intermittent fasting and, you know, 2019 or whenever that was, I was like.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I think that everyone should take long breaks from food from one day to the next. Everyone, I think, has a different kind of rhythm that they need to be on. The rhythm changes depending on where you are in your menstrual cycle, because in the first part of the month, you definitely want to have a lower carbohydrate, higher fat to help with estrogen production. In the latter part of the month, during your luteal phase after ovulation, you're going to tolerate way more carbohydrate because that helps with progesterone production. There is a brilliant book that talks about all of this. It's Mindy Pell's Fast Like a Girl. I love that book. But Cynthia Thurlow wrote a book called the Intermittent Fasting Transformation that also talks about all of this. In the Postmenopausal Woman. You also want to vary your fasting a little bit, but you can vary it in the week. So five days a week you can do a longer fast, and two days a week do a shorter fast. Everyone needs a minimum of 12 hours. That is the absolute minimum. I think the absolute minimum looks more like 14 hours. And ideally you want to get to either a 16, 8 or an 18, 6, where you have a long period of fasting to allow all the healing processes in your body to happen. And Then have that eating window and have that eating window be when the sun is out. We really want to try to not eat after sundown because our digestive processes are not working as well. And we want to preserve that for sleep. And we know that you are not going to sleep as well and be as effective in your repair processes if you're going to sleep on a full stomach.

This is fascinating, Jen, and it's so funny the things when you leave the body to do what it's supposed to do, it gets in the right place, right?

Our bodies know how to heal. It's absolutely true.

Interesting. 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. And it comes down to everything that you talk about, 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've 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 move. 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, you know, get rid of your non stick cookware, stop drinking out of plastic, stop using antibacterial, anything you Know, change your, change your products that you're putting on your body, but change one thing at a time. Get used to that, get accustomed 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. Like, this is really paying it forward. When you get healthy, you are paying it forward without question.

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

Definitely our kindred spirits. Totally.

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. 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, you can follow me on social media. I'm Rjen Simmons and my Jen has two ends. 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.

That's right.

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 healthcare 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. And 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.