Breast Cancer Screening Is Broken: What Every Woman Should Know w/ Dr. Jennifer Simmons

25:53First, what mammogram never accounts for is something called lead time bias. So let's take a woman, and she develops clinical disease at 55. There's a lump in her breast. She gets treated. And she dies at 59, okay? She is considered to not have survived the disease because she didn't live five years. Five years, okay. That same woman, if she were screening with mammogram, could have been diagnosed at, let's say, 46. She still dies at 59, but she is considered a survivor. Survivor. Interesting. It does not account for women who were diagnosed 10 years before their death. So if they live 10 years, they're considered a survivor.

26:56even though they didn't survive their disease. This is what is called lead time bias. And it's always going to favor mammography. Because mammography is, yes, going to find it before you would find it on physical examination. But what it doesn't do is change that woman's outcome. Because if she has aggressive disease, it's going to behave the same way no matter what.

27:21Just Ingredients:Well, okay. Here's my question, though. How do you know if it's a cancer you can live with for 10, 20 years or something that you need to get out immediately because it's metastasizing or has? Okay, so if it's going to be one of those cancers that's metastatic, it's metastatic from the beginning. This is why no matter how many mammograms we do every year, no matter how many screenings we do every year, the same exact number of women die of breast cancer. And that's been true for decades. Screening does not affect that at all. No one's screening affects that at all. The only way to affect that number is to screen in a way that you can detect not the cancer, but the dysfunction that precedes the cancer and reverse that dysfunction.

28:14This is what I'm doing at perfection. And this is why, you know, people come to me because they know my name and they know perfection and they want to come have a QT scan. But what they don't realize is that screening is screening in that it's only ever going to detect disease after it develops. But what I'm screening for is not breast cancer. It's the precursors. So we're screening the tears for the inflammatory precursors so we can know right now who's at risk well before we would see anything on imaging and help to mitigate that risk before. We are doing a metabolic screen so we can recognize metabolic dysfunction.

29:00So we can know who's at risk for breast cancer well before they would develop breast cancer. And that's where the focus needs to be. And mammograms never going to be that. But let me get back to why. I was going to say because I want to talk to you about your imaging. Yeah, we'll go back to that. But so lead time bias. And then it does not account for overdiagnosis. So overdiagnosis is this. It's kind of like you push someone in front of the train. You scoop them up. take them to the emergency room, and then claim to have saved their life. But their life would have never been in danger had you not pushed them in front of the train.

29:50This is what mammogram does. 20 % to 30 % of the time, it is picking up a finding that is not clinically relevant, that would never develop into cancer. Then we're giving these women this diagnosis, and then we're patting ourselves on the back for saving a life that would have never needed to be saved. Now your question is a valid one. How do you know? You know by using more sophisticated tools. So the QT scan is something that it's the only imaging on the market that can do true volumetric measuring. So we can see things and then measure them again. So let's say that someone has a QT scan today and we see a lesion, she's totally asymptomatic, and we have no reason to believe that this lesion is breast cancer.

30:46It looks benign. She's not symptomatic. Let's follow it. So what we're going to do is we're going to bring her back in three months, four months, five months, six months, depending on how suspicious I am. We're going to rescan her and measure the volume. Now, measuring the volume allows us to calculate a doubling time. Cancers, or things that we need to worry about, have a doubling time of less than 100 days. Things that either aren't cancer or aren't meaningful will have greater doubling times, and we'll know that we can safely follow them. And then we just continue to follow them until they tell us otherwise, right?

31:29So if it is just staying the same, I'm not going to do anything about that.

31:35Just Ingredients:Then why do chemotherapy or why do radiation? This is not something that I need to get involved in. The body is containing this. The immune system is doing its job. Yes, it's doing its job. We were not designed haphazardly, right? I know. Our bodies were designed perfectly by our creator. And if there is dysfunction, it's because we either have something that we don't need or need something that we don't have. And if we correct that, our bodies are designed to heal. This is new news to people, though, because before I saw this on your post and questioned it, I always thought if you have a mammogram and you see a mass, then you go deal with breast cancer.

32:21I know. We have been very much trained to think and to believe that finding a cancer on mammogram equals a life saved. Yeah. But it is not true a large percentage of the time. And just to give you a little perspective, in 2024, we diagnosed 310 ,000 women with breast cancer nationally in the U.S., 310 ,000 women. If 20 to 30 % of them were overdiagnoses, which statistically speaking, they were, then that means that we gave 60 to 90 ,000 women a diagnosis of breast cancer that never needed it, put 60 to 90 ,000 women through breast cancer treatment, many of which will suffer as a result. They will suffer from cardiovascular disease, from neurogenerative disease, from osteoporosis, and from a significantly diminished quality of life.

33:27Well, this might make a lot of people mad. I know. When this becomes common knowledge. But you can't not tell the truth because it's inconvenient. Right. Right? Just ask Del Bigtree. Have you had Del Bigtree on your podcast? I haven't. I need to. You should. He's amazing. He's amazing. But, you know, he came out with the inconvenient study. He told the world about vaccines. And, you know, it's okay if people want to make a decision to go have a mammogram after hearing the truth. That's okay. But they should know the truth. And we should be allowed to make informed decisions. But you can't make an informed decision if you don't have the information.

34:14Just Ingredients:Yep. I agree. Okay, so can I ask you another question about mammograms? Since we're learning so much. One of the things out there I want to know, is this a myth or is it true? People talk about the radiation with mammograms and that they hate how much radiation it is. Yeah, so what's so interesting is, obviously, the ionizing radiation is classified as a carcinogen, right? It is a known carcinogen. Radiation is known to cause cancer in humans. These aren't rat studies. It's not mice studies. It's not whatever studies. Radiation is a known carcinogen. It is known to cause cancer in humans. If you ask any radiologist, does radiation cause cancer?

35:03A resounding yes. You ask the same radiologist if mammograms cause cancer, and there is a resounding answer of no. Okay? So make it make sense. Now, listen. Did we have the best ad campaign possible? Yes. Did we give it a lovely name, mammogram, picture of the breast? Yes, we did. Did we not call it a breast x-ray on purpose? Absolutely. Absolutely. Right? But it's undeniable. Now, here's the excuses that they will come up with. Okay. And let's just debunk it all right now. The first thing that they will say is that, well, it's just a tiny amount. Tiny amount. Of radiation, right? Four millisieverts.

35:59That may be true in an ideal breast, which most women do not have. Because the larger your breast or the more breast density you have, the more radiation you get. So some people will get four millisieverts, but some women may get 10. Okay. Some women may get even more than that. Wow. So it depends on your breast density and how much radiation is needed to penetrate the tissue. Interesting. And it's not the same for everyone. That's one thing. The second thing is that I am not out there saying that if you go and have one mammogram, you're going to get cancer. And of course, there are women who have never had a mammogram who get breast cancer because breast cancer is caused by a lot of things.

36:55Right. But it's never going to help to put radiation on top of whatever is going on in your life. Right. So I am in no way saying that mammogram is the only reason that women get breast cancer. But is it a contributor? Yes. Are a certain percentage of women with breast cancer, do they have breast cancer because of repeated mammograms? Yes. Can I quantify that number? No. No one can quantify that number because how are we going to control for it? How are we going to say this is the only toxin that they were exposed to? Too many other factors. Right. But what I can definitively say is that radiation causes cancer.

37:40And the more mammograms you have in your life, the higher your risk is of being diagnosed with breast cancer. That's the bottom line. And that's true. You probably get a lot of hate for that from doctors and oncologists and OBGYNs. I sit there. First of all, I've had to stop reading the comments on social media. So if you were hoping to get at me by social media, sorry, Charlie, like it's not happening. And my team protects me at all costs.

38:11Just Ingredients:Well, and I always say this. If you think it's going to get through to me, it's not, which I love. Well, I only say this because when I went and got a thermography one time and I was just teaching what it was and what they were doing, the amount of hate I got on that post was like nothing else. And there are some pro mammogrammers out there and they will hold true to their words. So think about it this way, because I have someone who I worked with for many, many years. She's a breast imager. And she wrote to me, it was probably around a year ago, and I didn't read it. I gave it to my husband to read because I just had a feeling of what was the vitriol that was headed my way.

38:51They have spent their lives, and she in particular has spent her career recommending mammography, using mammography, believing in mammography. And if we're no longer recommending mammography, if we're no longer using mammography, if we are acknowledging that we maybe hurt more women than we helped, because statistically speaking, that is true. You will prolong maybe one woman's life, but you will cause 10 women to be diagnosed that never needed to be diagnosed and 200 women to go for additional studies, biopsies. And the biopsy rate right now, 80 % of biopsies are done for benign changes. So 80 % of the time, women who get breast biopsies didn't need that biopsy, right?

39:45It's just that we're using this unsophisticated tool to determine. And we want it to be, I mean, not we, but the system wants it to be unsophisticated because they want more biopsies. You know, someone said, you're trying to disrupt a$1 billion industry. I said, I wish that were true. I'm trying to disrupt a$4 billion industry, which is four times harder than disrupting a$1 billion industry. And that's just screening. I was going to say, that's only screening. That's not all the other medical issues that come. No. So if we as a society now say we're not using mammogram anymore, mammograms hurt people, if we tell the truth about mammogram, these people that spent their lives, spent their careers, and thought they were doing the right thing, right?

40:40Right. It takes into question, it calls into question their entire professional career, which for most people, I mean, certainly for me, like if you take away what I put out into this world professionally, there's not a lot left. Yeah, it turns your whole world upside down.

40:59Just Ingredients:Right. What was the purpose? What did I do this for? What did I miss all those times with my kids? Why did I miss travel and spending time with my family? And like, what did I do this for? So you can see why they are so hellbent. Yep. And also realize that I got my diagnosis to take off those blinders so that I could see the world for what it is. so that I could see the medical field and the medical industry for what it is. They have their blinders on. Yeah. It's the same thing in the food industry. Yes. It takes years of trying to teach people a simple concept, and some will accept it and some don't.

41:41Just Ingredients:Yeah. And so... I remember one of the anchors, when the food dye thing came up for a vote, and one of the anchors was on TV saying, well, is it going to change my Swedish fish? Is that what you're concerned about? Are you insane? Right. You're okay with us poisoning our children so that your Swedish fish taste doesn't change? And also, why are you eating Swedish fish? Well, we still have people, though, that believe that food doesn't affect their health. I know. So we still have to break that barrier. I know. Let's take a quick break to hear from our show sponsor. Q4 Quinn is rethinking the basics you wear every single day.

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42:59Just Ingredients:They also offer undyed options for the purest, most natural fabric, plus plant dyed pieces that add beautiful color without synthetic dyes or harsh chemicals. Q4Quinn has stylish basics for the entire family without compromising on comfort or health. Use code JUSTINGREDIENTS for 10 % off your order at Q4Quinn.com. Now back to the show. Okay, I want to go back though to your imaging now that you do. Because I'm sitting here thinking, okay, I'm 50 years old. I did have one mammogram 15 years ago. 15 years ago is about when I started my health journey. So things have changed over the last 15 years.

43:39And listen, you thought you were doing the right thing. I did. You thought you were being responsible.

43:42Just Ingredients:Well, my sister had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. I thought, oh, I better go check to make sure I'm okay. Okay, so I have not had one since. Like I said, had done thermography. You don't need to have any guilt about that. But I'm curious, like, okay, I want to come get imaging done with you. So what does that look like? I want you to hear this because obviously I believe in imaging, but imaging alone is never enough. It's just not enough. Because imaging alone is only ever going to be early diagnosis, right? It is never going to be preventative, and that's what you and I are about. We are about preventing disease.

44:24It's one thing to help people once they've gotten disease. And of course, that's what I do every single day is help women recover from breast cancer, restore their lives, and make survivorship a life worth living. But ultimately, we want to prevent disease. Yes. Right? I can't live for the day where I don't have to help women survive breast cancer, right? That is my goal. That is my dream, to be able to prevent disease. So if you're going to do that, you have to look for what are the things that are present before disease develops. So at Perfection, where we start with everyone, we do a body composition analysis.

45:10So you've seen the in-body, right? So you come in and you grab your ski poles and we do a grip analysis to see your grip strengths. And then you have a blood spot done. We're looking for insulin, glucose, your lipids, your C-reactive protein. We're looking for where are you in terms of your metabolic health. Okay. And then you have your scan. So your scan involves no radiation, no compression, and ultimately what this whole day feels like is a spa visit for your breast. So the scan is an ergonomically designed table and you lie down and your breast is submerged in a warm water bath and the lights come down and music goes on and you spend 20 minutes with God or meditating or, you know, doing whatever you want to do.

46:11Most women fall asleep. You know, we come back in and we're like, your scan is over. And they're like, can you just come back in five minutes?

46:20Just Ingredients:We're all exhausted. Everyone's there. It's a snooze button, right? And it's a lovely experience from beginning to end. And then we meet with everyone to go over their results so that they really understand where their risk is right now. Now, what everyone wants to know is, well, what happens if you find something? Right. Right. So if we find something on the pre-screening test, then I put you in my prevention program and we, oh, I didn't talk about the tears test. Oh, yeah. I was going to ask you that back. So the metabolic screen, and then we do the tears test. So what the tears test is, and you don't have to touch your eyeball and we're not going to poke you and you're not going to cry.

47:03But we put a little tiny litmus paper inside of the lid and you close your eye for five minutes. It's the same if you go to the eye doctor and have the test for dry eyes. It's the same exact procedure. And then we look for two proteins, the S100A8 and S100A9 proteins. These proteins, when they are both elevated and we're looking at the monomers, Calprotectin is the dimer, is those two proteins put together. We're looking at the two separate proteins. And if they are both elevated to critical levels, this is highly predictive of the very early stages of breast cancer. Oh, interesting. So we can know right now, today, who is at risk.

47:49Interesting. And if we see that you're at risk, then we know we need to look at why you're at risk. We need to start asking the questions, what is going on with you that is increasing your risk for breast cancer? Now, of course, we're imaging everyone. But 42 % of the time, if that test is positive, we won't see anything on imaging. Oh, interesting. And people call that, they say, well, that test has such a false positive. False positive. First of all, there is no false positive rate because this is not a test screening for breast cancer. It's screening for the inflammatory precursors. And inflammation is something that you either have or you don't, right?

48:42You're either pregnant or you're not pregnant. If you have this inflammation, you are at increased risk for breast cancer. And if you do nothing, 11 % of those people, when they have imaging in six months, will have clinical evidence of breast cancer. So there are no false positives there. And this is everyone's opportunity to either know that you're at risk. And if you know you're at risk, this is your opportunity to prevent a diagnosis. Yes. Prevent a diagnosis. So we have a prevention program. that is kind of like my book on steroids.

49:22Just Ingredients:Okay. And through that prevention program, it's a six-month program, and then we test people six months later. And the people that follow the program, lo and behold, that test reverses. Interesting. So is this prevention program food and just ways to reduce your inflammation? So the exercising, the sweating, the sleep, the reducing your stress? It's all the stuff. Adding more fiber to your diet. All of it. All the things that I teach. All the things that you teach, all the things that we know are foundational, are needed in order to create health. Do you have to be perfect? No. Do you have to do everything?

50:05No. But I don't think that there's a scenario where you're drinking wine every day as a way to relax that ends in a good outcome. Or having your bowl of ice cream every single night before bed. Right. So there are certain things that to me are non-negotiables and the rest of it, you don't have to be perfect and you certainly don't have to be perfect all the time. But it's what you do most that matters. There's no question about that. But we need to build these habits every day and make the times that you're not good the exception and not the rule. the norm every single day. That's the problem.

50:50Just Ingredients:I would love to know your non-negotiables. So I'm very tough. I am too. And please know that I have to come out at people at 100 % because I know that they're only going to do 80. But my non-negotiables are, I won't work with people if they're still actively drinking alcohol or using it as their mode of calming down. Okay. Right. Makes sense. It's just, it doesn't work for me. I won't work with people who say, well, I have to eat grains. I have to eat grains. I can't live without bread. It doesn't work for me. Okay. Right. And my third non-negotiable is that you have to be lifting weights. Oh, I love it.

51:40There unfortunately is just no path to long-term health and longevity without lifting heavy things. I love that. So those are my non-negotiables and everything else, I understand that people aren't going to change everything in one day. But if I have people who from the start are like, this is what I won't give up, that's fine. But you're going to have to deal with the consequences. I'm not going to pull you along. Right. Okay. Can I ask you more

52:14Just Ingredients:about this imaging? Yeah. So can people that have maybe gotten a diagnosis from a mammogram then come be imaged from you to see if it's one of those that will metastasize? Yes. Well, it's not metastasized, but let's say advanced because I'm not going to have any effect on metastatic disease, right? Like if it's going to metastasize. They should already know that from other tests after the mammogram. Yes. Okay. So you're asking if you have someone who is asymptomatic but has a finding from an outside study. That's a better question. Yes. Okay, better question. Can they come to me and follow? Yes, but I would also have them engaging in my total program.

52:58So I would want to know where they are from a metabolic health standpoint. I would want to know where they are. You know, do they have those inflammatory precursors in their tiers? Because mammogram doesn't diagnose anything. Ultrasound doesn't diagnose anything. MRI doesn't diagnose anything. And QT doesn't diagnose anything. The only way you can get a diagnosis is with a biopsy. Okay. Right. But if I have someone who comes in and they have a biopsy-proven cancer, right, and they are asymptomatic, They didn't know about it except for the screening. And they come to me and their metabolic assessment says to me they have a lot of metabolic dysfunction.

53:38I'm not taking that person on in an observational way because they have the stage set for aggressive disease. When we look at people with metabolic disease who develop breast cancer, they do worse across the board with everything. They don't respond to treatment as well. They have more recurrences. They have more metastatic disease. They are more likely to die of breast cancer. So to that person, I am saying, listen, we should treat this, but we should also work on your metabolic health. Because at this point, what my concerns are, aren't so much, you know, are we over-treating you, is are we under-treating you by just putting you through surgery?

54:23Because if that's what that person is going to do, that is under-treating them. And if they want me to just watch this cancer progress, I'm not willing to do that. Because statistically speaking, if you are not metabolically healthy, that cancer is going to progress. Okay. That makes sense.

54:44Just Ingredients:Yeah. Okay. So you are okay with radiation and chemo at needed times, but we also have to work on the metabolic health. Yes. So I think everyone gets what they need. And if you have aggressive disease, you don't have time for me to fine-tune your metabolic health and figure out where your toxin overload is coming from. You need something right now. Your sink is overflowing. Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, they mop up the floor. I mean, I have a patient right now. She has an impending fracture in her spine from a metastatic focus. you know she is getting radiation. She's probably getting it today.

55:28Okay. Because I don't want her to have a pathologic fracture. It is so hard to heal when you're in pain. And those pathologic fractures are so painful. So I use every modality I need because everyone should get what they need right now. But I'm also not giving chemotherapy to people who aren't fasting because I know that it's just not going to work. It's not going to work. So that is part of what I'm doing when we work together is that, yes, I use the conventional treatments when I need them and when they're appropriate, but they always go along with this side of things. We are always the end.

56:14You may need surgery. You may not. You may need chemo. you may not. You may need radiation, you may not. But you always need to eat a whole food, plant-based, low glycemic, grain-free diet if you have an active breast cancer diagnosis. You need a fasting practice because our bodies need rest from food in order to heal. You need to prioritize sleep. And if you're not sleeping, we need to get you sleeping. You need good detoxification practices, especially if you're going to be doing these treatments, right? Because we need to be able to heal your body. And you need to have ways of dealing with stressors.

56:58One of the worst traumas is getting your breast cancer diagnosis. We need you to have tools in your toolbox to be able to deal with these stressors. Because if you are in that stressed, sympathetic state, you can't heal. That's not a state for healing. Your immune system is completely turned off. Yeah. Right. If your body thinks that there is a saber tooth tiger that is imminently waiting to kill you, why do you need an immune system? Why do you need to fight off the common cold? Why do you need to fight off a cancer that is going to kill you in 10 years if that tiger is going to kill you in 10 seconds?

57:36Just Ingredients:And people don't understand this. No, they don't. But I love that you're taking the Western and conventional medicine, what we have, and taking the best of the Eastern Holistic and combining the two together. Yes. That's what we need to do. Yes. Every bay is so split, either one camp or the other. Yes. And you're just saying, no, let's take the best of both worlds. Yes. And help people heal. I'm straddling the fence. Yeah, you are. Yes. Okay, so if someone wants to come do your imaging, is it only in Pennsylvania? There are, I think now, eight or something like that QT centers around the country.

58:10Okay. But right now, the only person that's doing what I'm doing and following through with people like I'm following through, because you can get a scan at any of those centers, but the people running them are not a board -certified, fellowship-trained breast surgeon who was in practice for 20 years, right? Right. And the experience at mine is different, and I'm also screening differently, right? I'm doing this comprehensive screen for a reason so that I can not only help women to prevent disease, but that I can, even if you get diagnosed, I can make sure that you are given the tools that you need to come out on the other side of that breast cancer diagnosis better, healthier than you ever were before.

59:02And so where's yours at? So our flagship is in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Haverford, Pennsylvania. But New York.

59:11Just Ingredients:That's the one I know of. That's the one you know. But you're going to very soon know New York and L.A. and West Palm Beach. Amazing. And Dallas and Austin. Amazing. And so these will all be open this year. Wow. You've been busy. I've been very busy. I live a lot on airplanes. Thank God flying on an airplane doesn't cause breast cancer in the way that the medical industry would have you believe that mammogram is the same as a cross-country flight. Let me just say, can I just sell that right here, right now? That the radiation that you get in an airport or on an airplane or the background radiation of two weeks of walking on the earth is not the same as getting a mammogram.

59:59That is scattered radiation. And scattered radiation, while I don't recommend that anyone like sleep next to their router or anything like that, but scattered radiation is not capable of the same damage that the focused, cone-down radiation that is aimed at the compressed, traumatized tissues of the breast. It's not the same. Not the same. It's not the same. Scattered radiation that you get is not the same as the radiation that you get in a mammogram.

1:00:34Just Ingredients:They are not the same. That is so good to hear because you do hear that. All the time from practitioners. Yeah. Okay, so I want to come to this and try this all out. I would love to have the testing done and experience the whole spa. I can't wait to host you. But I'm thinking there's got to be a lot of people out there listening to this podcast thinking, Okay, I've done yearly mammograms. I get it. I don't want to do the mammogram anymore. How often do they have to do this? And at what age can they start? Yeah. So the tears testing, we start at age 30. Okay. I don't know that there's any reason that we couldn't do it before then, but the clinical trials were women from age 30 to 83.

1:01:17So it technically hasn't been validated outside of that age range. So that's generally what I say is we start the tears test yearly at 30 because things are going to change every year, right? For imaging, I generally recommend starting imaging sometime between 35 and 40. I would never recommend a mammogram for this age range because mammograms are more dangerous the younger you are. Because the younger the tissue is, the more active it is, the more likely you are to get damaged by that mammogram. That's why the screening guidelines started at 50. Oh, my goodness.

1:02:00Just Ingredients:Because it's not safe to screen women before that. But you've got a lot of young people screening now. I know. I know. because the guidelines are put out by the societies that do not have the same interests that we do at heart, unfortunately. I mean, I could get into the whole thing about the FDA, but the FDA never cleared MRI for screening. I don't think people know that, including radiologists. I don't think they know that. The FDA never cleared digital breast for primary screening. It was only compared to the other, is it as efficacious as the 2D mammogram. That's the FDA clearance. It's not a safety clearance.

1:02:46People don't know that. So anyway, when you start imaging, because QT doesn't have any radiation and no one, it's 100 % safe, no one's ever getting hurt. I say to start when you feel called to start. If you have a strong family history, if you have a sister that was diagnosed in her 30s, then I would definitely start screening at 30. Okay. Right? But if you had a mom who was diagnosed at 56, maybe you start screening when you're 40. Okay. Right? But the tears test, a no-brainer, it's a kit that comes to your home. So, oh, interesting. So anyone can do this. Anyone. All across the U.S. Anywhere in the U.S.

1:03:28can use this for screening. And my metabolic test can be done anywhere. It's a finger stick. Okay, I didn't realize that. We send these to anyone, anywhere, and then we go over them with them. And if you are not near a QT center, then you can have an ultrasound done as you're screening. It will not pick up calcifications. That's true. QT will, by the way. QT sees everything that all the other modalities see. But calcifications in and of themselves are never the issue. It's what's causing them. And if they are not associated with an underlying process that is solid, they're often not meaningful anyway.

1:04:17So I don't chase calcifications alone. I chase calcifications if they're associated with a mass or some other symptom. Okay.

1:04:25Just Ingredients:So then you don't need to do this imaging yearly, but the tears testing and metabolic yearly. Tears testing and metabolic yearly. The frequency of QT depends on what we see. Okay. Makes sense. So if we see nothing, your imaging is every 24 months. If we see something, but it's probably benign, we're going to ask you to come back in 12 months. If we see something and we're not 100 % convinced that it's benign, but we also don't think it's cancer, we're going to ask you to come back in three months, four months, five months, something like that, and measure that doubling time. Okay. But where you start depends on how much suspicion there is of cancer at a certain age.

1:05:17And the tears test and the metabolic screen, that is information that you want every single year. Because you want to know what your risk is right now and what you can do to mitigate that risk.

1:05:30Just Ingredients:And I'm going to order that right off your website right now. Yes. After this show. Yes. Okay. What website? Actionimaging.com. Okay. I'm going to be at your center and doing the testing. Yes. Well, I love that just from talking to you, I feel empowered. I feel like women hear the word breast cancer and they're like, oh my gosh, life is over. We're doomed. But you're making it sound like, no, there's so many preventative things that you can do. It can be in your body and your immune system can handle it if you're doing the right things. So thank you for making it sound like we're empowered to do something to help our bodies.

1:06:06I'm so glad. I do want to say breast cancer is a terrible disease, and there are 40 ,000 women every single year in the U.S., and even more abroad, obviously, that die of breast cancer.

1:06:20Just Ingredients:And we all know someone that's either passed away or has been affected by it, and it is terrible. It's a terrible, terrible disease. Now, that said, we can make a significant impact on prevention if we collectively work together to prioritize our health and to say no to all of these things that are literally designed to make you sick. Mammogram is literally designed to get you into the system, to get you to have more biopsies, to get you to have more studies. And eventually, it is designed to diagnose you with breast cancer, whether you needed that diagnosis or not. And there is nothing about that system that is benefiting you.

1:07:17Nothing. There is no survival advantage. to screening with mammogram. None. Mammogram does not save lives and it does not save breasts. And as far as survival goes, we have 4 million breast cancer survivors in this country. 4 million. And they are not living well. And we need to change the conversation. We need to change the narrative around hormones. Not to say that hormones are the be-all end-all or that they should be given to everyone and every survivor. But every survivor who has made changes in her life, who has lost weight, who has prioritized movement and sleep and built practices for stress management and has detoxification practices and has changed her life after her diagnosis in a way that benefits her health, and she still doesn't have the results that she wants, she still doesn't have that joy that you should have as a survivor, these are women that should be considered for hormone replacement.

1:08:25They should have the same opportunities that everyone else is having. Hormones are having a moment, but they're only having a moment to a select few, and we are leaving a large portion of the population out of that conversation, and it needs to end.

1:08:41Just Ingredients:Okay, I want to wrap up here, but I do have one last question about hormones because we only touched upon it really briefly. And there is the big stigma out there that estrogen causes cancer. So one, will you just address really quick, one, why that's not true for estrogen causing cancer. But then two, for those that have gone through breast cancer, can they go on HRT? So I'll answer the second question first, and it's yes, in general, women who have had breast cancer can take hormones afterwards because hormones don't cause breast cancer. Bioidentical hormones do not cause breast cancer. If you believe that bioidentical hormones cause breast cancer, you must also believe that every woman was put on this earth for the purposes of developing breast cancer.

1:09:35Just Ingredients:Well, I get so frustrated with this because my sister who had breast cancer, she now has passed away, but they would not give her bioidentical hormones, would not give her HRT. I know. It's ignorance and it's perpetuating that narrative because there is no benefit to the pharmaceutical company allowing people to believe, I say companies, allowing people to believe that hormones are not harmful because it's their gateway to giving you a whole lot of pharmaceuticals. And when women are going and asking their medical oncologist about the hormone safety, medical oncologists don't know. They weren't educated on hormones.

1:10:21Nothing like it. I wasn't even educated on hormones as a breast surgeon who was helping women with hormone-positive breast cancer. I was not educated on it as the director of our cancer program. Which is so crazy to me. Even gynecologists are not educated on it. We think gynecologists are hormone experts. They're not. They're surgeons. They're surgeons. They are not hormone experts. And unless you go and seek out that information, for instance, I went and trained with David Rosenzweig because I wanted to know. And if I was going to provide hormone replacement and come out and say hormone replacement is appropriate in the appropriately evaluated person, I wanted to know why.

1:11:14And I wanted to know how. And we are not educating our providers. We're just not. So if you ask someone who doesn't know the answer what the answer is, what are they going to say? No. Because they're uncomfortable with I don't know. That's truly their answer is they don't know. But when we look at the studies, and not that the numbers have been so huge, but we have approximately 20 studies of women who have had breast cancer and don't want hormone replacement, and all 20 studies. There is no increased recurrence and no increased death from breast cancer. And their quality of life...

1:11:59Just Ingredients:I was going to say is so much better. So much better. So for me, a net sum gain. It's not a net sum zero. It's a net sum gain because these women are living better. Yeah. So at the end of the day, women who take hormones get breast cancer. Women who don't take hormones get breast cancer because it's not the hormones. Women who have had breast cancer and take hormones have recurrences. and women who have had breast cancer and don't take hormones have recurrences because it's not the hormones. It's everything else that we talked about. It's how you eat and how you fast and how you move and how you sleep and how you think and what you drink and how you detoxify and what toxins you're exposed to.

1:12:47And are you living with purpose? This is what matters. And it's not the hormones. It's never going to be the hormones. Now, I'm not giving hormone replacement to everyone because if you are still drinking a glass of wine to cap off every day, I'm not putting hormones on that fire, right? But if you're doing all the right things and what you're missing in your quality of life is hormones, then by golly, I am going to give you hormones, right? Because it's the right thing to do. And I am not contributing to anything in terms of your disease progression because it's not the hormones. And we have long blamed estrogen for breast cancer because it's there.

1:13:36And it's like blaming the firefighters for the fire.

1:13:40Just Ingredients:It's crazy because people will say, I have an estrogen feeding cancer, breast cancer. Okay. That is the cancer cells survival mechanism, right? So a normal breast cell is going to have estrogen receptors on it. It's going to have progesterone receptors on it. It's even going to have the HER2-nube protein on it. This is normal. This is a characteristic of normal. As women get older and start making less and less and less hormone, and we have cellular damage, what happens is these cells, they want to survive. So what do they do? They need estrogen to survive, so they're going to upregulate that estrogen receptor.

1:14:24It's just a survival mechanism. This is why we see more breast cancer after menopause than we do before, because the hormones are protective. Breast cancer is not a disease of hormone deficiency. I mean, of hormone excess. It's a disease of hormone deficiency. And that's what providers do not understand. And the pharmaceutical industry does not want them to understand that. So HRT could help prevent breast cancer. HRT, when done correctly, and we can talk about the work of Dr. Rebecca Glazer, but Rebecca Glazer just published her 20-year data where she has an 80 % reduction in breast cancer incidence in her women who she's giving testosterone to.

1:15:2380 % reduction. That's a lot. Right? That's huge. Now, you can say maybe she's an outlier. And I think that she is an outlier in that most women who go on hormone replacement do not routinely get testosterone. And testosterone is quite protective against breast cancer. And that's because none of the providers are trained on giving women testosterone. None of them. So we know that hormones are protective. And it's when that protection goes away that we start to see more breast cancer incidents. And, you know, we can talk about the fact that we're seeing diagnoses earlier and earlier now. This has to do with toxin overload.

1:16:10But the more toxic you are, the less progesterone you're going to make. True. And the less progesterone you make, the less protection you have. Because if estrogen is the on button, progesterone is the off button. So if you start to lose that balance, then you're going to be more in a pro-growth state than you are going to be in a regression state. And the growth states are where we make more mistakes. So breast cancer truly is a hormone deficiency.

1:16:42Just Ingredients:Okay, so really quick then, let me ask you about this. Because I've had doctors on my show tell me that like an estrogen to progesterone ratio should be like a 10 to 1 ratio. but they find women at like a hundred to one ratio of way too much estrogen. So having too much estrogen, can that contribute to the breast cancer? So our bio-identical, like the hormones that our ovaries make, right? Estrogen itself is not carcinogenic. It's not. I love that you said that. There has to be something else at play. So you could have highly stimulated breasts and go for a mammogram, and radiation can then induce cell damage that can lead to a breast cancer.

1:17:32But the estrogen itself is not going to mutate cells. It's never going to mutate cells.

1:17:41Just Ingredients:Well, and usually a ratio of estrogen, 100 to 1 to progesterone like that, is usually because of something else like stress or toxins and endocrine disruptors and things like that. That's exactly right. Okay, so it all ties together with... I wrote a blog not too long ago, and it was entitled Estrogen, the Innocent Bystander. And this is what I speak about at conferences all over the world. just because it's there doesn't mean that it has anything to do with the origin of the cancer. So what a tumor will do in an attempt to survive, right? Because again, we started off saying breast cancer is a normal response to an abnormal environment.

1:18:25And if that cancer is sitting there in this environment and it just wants to survive because it feels threatened by whatever environmental shift has happened, it is going to affect the cells around it and increase the local estrogen because it's the estrogen that's helping it to survive. But the estrogen didn't cause it. I love it. It's just the innocent bystander there. And if you remove the tumor and the reason why the tumor happened, there is no danger in giving the body estrogen. But I'm not giving estrogen alone. I'm giving estrogen along with progesterone. I'm giving testosterone. And I'm checking everyone at all points along the way while at the same time making sure that they don't have active cancer.

1:19:22Right? That's the first part. If they do have active cancer, we use testosterone alone. That they are eating in a way that is helping them and not hurting them. That they're fasting. That they're prioritizing sleep. That they're lifting weights and building muscle and building bone because bone follows muscle, right? And the reason that people get osteoporotic is because they lose their muscle mass and therefore lose their bone. Makes sense. Yeah. So I make sure that they're doing all the things and then we're monitoring to make sure that you're not getting too much and not getting too little.

1:20:00Right. It's very much a Goldilocks thing. Too little was part of why they got into this position in the first place.

1:20:07Just Ingredients:I just love everything that you have taught today and everything that you have just made people think and question. And I love that there is hope. My sister, she actually passed away from an accident, not from the breast cancer. Oh, my God. But she was a 17-year survivor. And I want to tell people there's so much hope because her breast cancer had spread throughout her body. And there was not much hope for her at the time. But she changed how she ate. She lifted weights like none other. She prioritized her sleep, her stress. I mean, you name all the things, she did it. And she was so healthy and so strong and so full of energy and just a vibrant person to life.

1:20:48Just Ingredients:So she always taught me that even with a terrible diagnosis, there is great hope out there. And so that is what you're teaching. And I love that you're just changing the industry and helping people think another way. That is exactly it. And Edith Egar talked about she was a Holocaust survivor. And she talked about the fact that it's always your choice. That's what my sister always would say. And you can always choose hope. and I tell people that every single day. I don't know what's going to happen to anyone. Look at what happened with your sister. She technically survived breast cancer. She died of something else, right?

1:21:28There is always hope, but there's not hope if you're going to follow their rules, right? So we all need to get back to what we know from an ancestral standpoint is the right thing to do. We have to honor our sleep. We have to honor the sun, right? We didn't even go into all of the crazy vitamin D stuff and the fact that since we've been lathering ourselves with sunblock, we have the, like, explosion of cancer across the board. So we are modern beings living on a very old gene code. Our bodies want the food that we have. Yes. It wants the sunlight. It wants nature. It wants our feet in the ground.

1:22:19It wants ways to feel as if you can relax, right? It doesn't want you fighting all the time. That's not what we are designed to do. And if you are constantly at war with everything that God has provided, you are going to have dysfunction.

1:22:40Just Ingredients:I love that. And I love that it's coming from a conventional surgeon who had questions and just started asking. And that literally is what my whole page is about is like, just ask. Just ask the question. Go learn, be educated and empower yourself to have that learning so that you can make the best choice possible for yourself. Yes, I think it comes down to we all should have the ability and the opportunity to make informed decisions. But in order to do that, you need the information. I love it. And I love that you're out there doing that. I end every podcast by asking five quick questions. Are you ready for these?

1:23:20Just Ingredients:I hope so. Okay, the first one. I didn't study. What emerging health topic are you most excited about right now? Well, of course, I'm reinventing how we screen for breast cancer. So I think what I'm doing is paving the path to prevention across the board because the same things that cause breast cancer also cause heart disease and osteoporosis and depression and anxiety and dementia and all of those things. So while being out there on a breast cancer screening platform, I'm going to prevent a lot of disease and that makes me feel really good. I love that. Next one. What's a piece of advice you'd give your younger self?

1:23:56Oh, my God.

1:23:57Just Ingredients:Work less. That is not one that anyone has said on here before. So you're super busy. You're working a lot right now. I know. I know. How about enjoy your work? You enjoy your work. But I do enjoy my work. But I have two boys and two stepdaughters and five grandchildren. And I know that I have made a tremendous impact in this world. But I missed a lot. Yeah, I missed a lot. And I continue to miss a lot. And that doesn't feel great. it's hard to know where to make the sacrifices yes yes all right next one what's the one health practice you'll never compromise on no matter how busy life gets okay so i hate to work out i can't even tell you how much i hate organized exercise okay but i am not giving up my weight lifting ever ever ever i love that because nothing has had the same impact on my health as weightlifting has had.

1:24:58I do love weightlifting also. Oh, I hate it.

1:25:01Just Ingredients:Well, I like it because I do it with friends. So I actually did tell my friend this morning at the gym, I said, I hate when you're not here because it is really boring and I can't stand it. So yeah, I do everything I can. My trainer, hi, Jen. My trainer is a dear friend, but for 60 minutes, well, a little more, 80 minutes a week, I hate her. That's hilarious. But she is helping you so much. She is. She's saving my life, literally. Okay, last question. What is the best ingredient you've found to life?

1:25:40I think I'm going to have to go with olive oil.

1:25:44Just Ingredients:I love that. For all the anti-inflammatory reasons. Yes, I like the really, really green ones and the spicy ones. And I just think it makes everything better. It does. If you have a good one. I just went to Italy and wow. I know. I realized. You could drink it. Oh, it was so good. We were drizzling over pizza, over everything. I know. Like it was like butter. I know. It's amazing. I know. I know. Well, again, thank you so much for being here. Listeners, I really hope you just have learned to ask the questions and to think outside of the box. And that's what you've done for those dealing with breast cancer, to practitioners, to just everybody.

1:26:24Just Ingredients:You're just wanting them to ask a new question. And I love that. And also, you know, we don't have to recount the past, right? We don't have to revisit. We don't have to question whether we did the right thing, right? We made the best decision we could with the information that we had at the time. Exactly. But as the information changes, so too must our minds. Yes, I agree. And we would be remiss to not use the past to inform our future. 1 ,000%. It's not about blame or shame. It's about just being better today, doing better today, and paving a better path for tomorrow. And the bottom line is breast health is health.

1:27:07And we have to do everything we can to protect our breast health so that we can have healthy hearts and healthy brains and healthy bones and healthy muscles and healthy joints, healthy mood, healthy attitude, healthy sex life.

1:27:23Just Ingredients:all of it. Yep. I agree. 1000%. In fact, tell the listeners really quick where they can learn more from you because you are a wealth of knowledge. Thank you. So my practice is perfection imaging and wellness and perfection is spelled with a QT in the center. So you can see that on the website. I have my own podcast. It's called Keeping Abressed with Dr. Jen, where we try to just be truth seekers and talk about sometimes the uncomfortable things that we don't want to talk about in conventional medicine, but it's necessary to hear because people need the information. And you can follow me on all the social channels.

1:28:01I'm at Dr. Jen Simmons, and my Jen has two Ns.

1:28:05Just Ingredients:And you guys, like I said, she is a wealth of knowledge. You would be sad to miss everything that she teaches. And again, thank you so much, because I know how busy you are to spend time here and to help educate my listeners. Well, thank you for having me. I also want to mention my book because I forgot to do that. I actually have a copy right over there. I should hold it up. It's called The Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer. And of course, it is a guide for women to follow if you've been diagnosed with breast cancer. But it's also for women who have a history of breast cancer and they want to make the most of their health right now.

1:28:40and as much as it is for women who have a diagnosis, it's also the key to preventing recurrences and preventing a primary breast cancer. So it's really a book for everyone.

1:28:57Just Ingredients:Well, I love how you say on your page that when you're given a diagnosis or you find out you have breast cancer, they give you a medical plan, but they don't give you a health plan and that your book is the health plan. It is. And that is what everybody is looking for because I get asked all the time. They'll be like, oh, my gosh, my sister just got diagnosed or my mom. What should we do? What do you think we should do first? And so I love that there's your book. I'm just going to send everybody to your book. So thank you for doing that. That's what everyone needs to do. And thank you again so much for being here.

1:29:28My pleasure.

1:29:29Just Ingredients:Thank you for having me. It was such a delight. Thank you. Thank you for being here and being part of this community. don't forget to subscribe to the just ingredients podcast we've got so much more to share with you and if you're not already come join us daily on all social media platforms at just dot ingredients until next time keep choosing what nourishes you