SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Transform Your Mind Radio Hour and Podcast, the number one self-improvement podcast for women in the world. This is Life Coach Rennie Young. And in my book, Out of the Snares, a story of hope and encouragement, I share my journey from being born in poverty in Guyana to having abundance in America. And I did it by being committed to Kenai, which is constant and never-ending improvement every day. Looking for personal growth? Let's do it. Each week, I bring you guests and one-on-one coaching sessions to help you transform your mind so that you can transform your life. Welcome back to the Transform Your Mind to Transform Your Life Radio, Podcast, and Television Show. I'm your host, Life Coach Rennie Young, and sitting in the guest here today is Dr. Jen Simmons. Dr. Jen and I are going to be talking on the topic Empowering Women, a guide to preventing breast cancer. Welcome, Dr. Jen. Thank you. I'm so delighted to be here. I'm so happy to have you here. As we close out the month of October, which is officially Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I wanted to bring you Dr. Jen. I wanted to bring you her expertise. I wanted to bring awareness to this cancer. And I wanted you to understand the different ways that you can prevent it, the different ways that you can screen for it. So definitely, if you're a woman at all, pay attention. So let me give you a brief introduction. Dr. Jens Simon started her professional career as Philadelphia's first fellowship trained breast surgeon. After spending 17 years as Philadelphia's top breast surgeon, her own illness led her to discover functional medicine. So, enamored with the concept of creating health rather than killing disease, she left traditional medicine and her esteemed surgical position in 2019 and founded Real HealthMD with the mission to help women anywhere along the breast cancer journey to truly hear heal. Dr. Jen is 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 they want. She crafted her signature course, My Answer to Breast Cancer, to give women the tools to ditch their diagnosis and design their destiny. Dr. Jen is a motivational speaker, maintains her private practice, runs group programs, is a frequent podcast guest, a summit host, an author, has extended TV and live speaking experience, is a wife, mother, grandmother, dog lover, athlete, and a friend. You wanted us to know you're all around the person.

unknown 3:17

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

I love it. All right, now before we get started, I wanted to let you know that I have a very personal interest in sharing this topic with Jim. I have my own personal breast cancer journey. About 15 years ago, um, at the start of my menopause, I had all these menopausal symptoms, these horrible hot flashes, and quality of life was very important to me. So I started human replacement therapy. And like two years into it, I don't know if you're sure if it's two years or a year, it's a long time ago. My memory is a bit fuzzy now. I went for my annual mammogram and they found calcified cells, which are stage zero, breast cancer. Now I didn't want to do anything about it because I said stage zero. They said there was a 12% chance of it turning into breast cancer, but my family put their foot down. They said, You're going to do something about it because we don't want you to turn into anything. So I had the biopsy, I had the surgery to cut those cells out, I had radiation, and I got to work because I haven't had any problems 15 years now. But my cancer was estrogen dominance, and that's something that Dr. Jen is going to talk to us about in this episode. So, Dr. Jen, I noticed that in your bio, you mentioned an illness. Was this illness cancer related? Can you share your backstory with us?

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Sure, sure. Um, so first of all, thank you so much for having me and for giving me the opportunity not only to speak to you about your experience, but to speak to all of your followers about theirs. Because the bottom line is that it's hard to live these days and not be somehow connected to someone who has breast cancer. And I never knew a time in my life where I wasn't touched, affected by, directly related to someone who had breast cancer. So growing up, I had a first cousin. Her name was Linda Creed. She was a singer-songwriter in the 1970s and 1980s. She wrote all the music for the spinners and the stylistics. She wrote 54 hits in all, and her most famous song was The Greatest Love of All. I know that. So she wrote, yeah, everyone knows that one. Yes. So she wrote that song in 1977 as the title track to the movie The Greatest, starring Muhammad Ali. But it really received its acclaim in March of 1986 when Whitney Houston would release that song to the world. And at that time it would spend 14 weeks at the top of the charts, and Linda would never know. Because she died of metastatic breast cancer one month after Whitney released the song. I was 16 years old, and my hero died. And she was amongst the many women in my family that died of breast cancer. And I never wanted another woman, another family, another community to have to suffer the way that my family suffered. And I did the only thing I knew how to do. I became a doctor, I became a surgeon, I became the first fellowship-trained breast surgeon in Philadelphia. I did that for a really long time and I did it really well. And I did it long enough to have my aunt diagnosed and my mother diagnosed. And my aunt, who I look like and act like and seem like, my aunt, about 10 years before her breast cancer diagnosis, was diagnosed with Graves' disease. And I'm about 15 years into my career, and I have a lot of balls in the air. I am a surgeon and I'm running the cancer program for my hospital, and I'm a wife and a mother and a stepmother and an athlete and a philanthropist, and I'm doing a lot of things. I'm burning my candle at both ends. And I went from probably one of the highest performing people you could ever imagine to not being able to walk across the room because I didn't have the breath in me. And I had an extensive three-day workup, at which time I found myself sitting in the office of my friend and colleague and physician. And he said, You need surgery and chemo radiation, and you're going to be on lifelong medication. And I appreciated the irony. These are things that I said to people all day, every day, without hesitation or reservation. But when the words were coming at me, I was having an out-of-body experience.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

And I don't know what made me walk out of that office that day. I don't know what made me say no. You can call it God, you can call it universe, you can call it whatever you want to call it, but there was divine intervention in that room that day. And I walked out and into the rest of my life. I walked out and went on a journey, a selfish journey to figure out how to heal myself. And what I encountered was how I was going to heal everyone else.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

That was beautiful. It was beautiful. Hey, that's your purpose. What was illness?

SPEAKER_02 9:13

So I was diagnosed with Graves' disease, which was the very disease that with your aunt? Yeah. Yeah. And I saw the writing on the walls. And why was I going to be different? Because without change, we don't get change. And I knew that if I did the same thing as my aunt did, if I did the same thing that my doctor is telling me to do, if I followed the same paradigm that everyone else follows, there's only disease ahead for me. And I didn't want more disease. And once I healed myself, that's all I wanted for my patients. And it felt wrong to stay in a system that doesn't promote wellness. And you know, I still have people come up to me because I operated on thousands of women for breast cancer. And I still have people come up to me on the street and introduce me to their children or their spouse or their whoever and say, This is the woman that saved my life. But I didn't really.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

I didn't make me want to cry. That's beautiful. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

I mean, listen, God gave me an amazing, amazing skill set. I mean, he gave me the privilege to accompany women on a journey in the very worst time of their lives. He gave me the ability for people to trust me to go to sleep on my table and trust their lives in my hands. So I am so grateful for the opportunities that I've had. What I have been able to do is nothing short of a blessing, nothing short of a miracle. But it when I was a surgeon, I was participating in a system that is broken. It's very broken. And I knew if I was really going to make an impact, if I was really going to change things, if I was really going to leave this world a better place than when I found it, then I had to help people find their strength. And I had to help people truly heal. And that's why I left. I left because in conventional medicine, there's no there's no space for that. There's no allowance for that, there's no room for that. But in functional medicine, we understand that this isn't about anything but optimal function. And we want everyone to achieve optimal function because when you promote health, disease goes away.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

And ultimately, that's my goal.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

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SPEAKER_02 15:51

I mean, I think so many people, professionals included, don't understand breast cancer, don't understand the disease, don't they understand what's happening?

SPEAKER_00 15:59

I'm glad it's not a question.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

You know, like it's somehow much easier for doctors to understand what it is on the cellular level than to understand what it is on the global universal level. Because on the cellular level, these cells have undergone a transformation. They have undergone a transformation from the normal reproductive cycle of the cell into survival mode, where there is no control over reproduction. But if we back up and think about why do why do cells go into survival mode, they go into survival mode for the same reason that anything goes into survival mode, right? It's threatened. What happens when you back an animal up in a corner? Doesn't matter how big that animal is, if you back my five-pound poodle up into a corner, he becomes five pounds of ferocious teeth.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

That's what happens. Well, when you take away the safety of the cell because you're under a tremendous amount of stress, because you have an overload of toxins in your body, because there is massive dysfunction and imbalance in your system, when you back that cell up against the wall because it's no longer in a safe environment, it transforms. And just like it can transform to this cancerous state, so too can it transform back to its state of peace. So I talk about a chemical transformation that happens in the body, and we are transforming ourselves from the chemistry of joy to the chemistry of stress. But just like that happens, we can transform back to the chemistry of joy, but you have to fill yourself with joy to do it. So you have to fill yourself with food that celebrates health. You have to fill yourself with water that is clean and pure. You have to get the chemicals out of your life, you have to decrease your toxic burden. And sometimes that means taking the trash out, those relationships that aren't serving you, the external pressures that are driving you to illness. You have to get rid of the toxins in your life, even if they mean toxic relationships. You have to prioritize sleep, you have to move your body. All of these things are the building blocks for health. They are the pillars for health. And when you implant those things, that chemistry of stress goes away and gets replaced.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

I love that. That's what I thought. That um right. That's what I thought. But then I heard something recently that said that cancer is just random. It's luck of the draw. I don't believe that you don't believe that for an instant.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

And there is absolutely, you know, it's very easy for the um for the conventional medical system to say that cancer is random because that way no one has to take responsibility. And I get it that we don't want to blame the victim, right? We don't want to blame the victim. And it is not your fault if you got cancer, right? You didn't do anything wrong, you didn't do anything to deserve it. It has nothing to do with that. At the same time, we do encounter things that adversely affect our health. And it's the person that can say, okay, I get it that I didn't want this, but this has been given to me. Let me figure out why. What am I supposed to learn from this? What is the meaning here? Because if all you do are the traditional treatments, if all you do is surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, hormone blockade, none of these things build your health, and none of these things begin to examine your why. They don't help you to figure out what got you to this, what got you to this state, to this chemical shift that allowed for this to happen. Now, the other side of it that we haven't really talked about yet is that yes, there is this chemical shift, and yes, there is this transformation of cells, but an intact immune system, immune system that is strong and empowered, should be able to recognize this cellular transformation in its infancy and not allow it to grow, not allow it to continue. But we are all living such immunocompromised lives these days because of all of these environmental factors that decrease the strength of our immunity, that decrease the health of our immunity. And, you know, it's it's ever present. It is moldy environments, it's heavy metal exposures from all of the problems with with our mouths over decades. It is foods that we consume that are not really foods, right? The all of these franken foods, these processed foods, things that are coming into our body that don't belong there, right? And then it's the stressors that we have in everyday life. We are not built for the amount of stressors and the frequency of stressors that we encounter all the time. We are modern beings living on a very old gene code. So we only know two states. We know fight and flight, that is our sympathetic state, and we know rest and repair, that's the parasympathetic state. So I'll give A scenario we are meant to come out of the cave in the morning and encounter a saber-tooth tiger and either be able to get away from said tiger in seconds or die. But what we are not built for is running away from saber-tooth tigers for three weeks or three months or three years.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

We live our lives surrounded by saber-tooth tigers in our job, in our relationships, cell phones. It's not showing up. But you you know what I'm saying. You know, every time that that ring goes off, that you got some alert that you you have an appointment or you have a message, you're an email, or you're something's happening on social media. Like we are not built for the bombardment of stressors that we have, and our immune system cannot keep up with it. It cannot.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

So we all we have to hit the off button. We have to say no so much more than we're saying yes, because when we say no to all of that stuff, we are saying yes to ourselves. Yes. We're saying yes to ours.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

Listen, I preaching to the choir, I make sure I meditate, I make sure I exercise, I make sure that I'm I'm, you know, I whenever I feel my body in stress, I, you know, I attack it right away. Because again, a lot of people are even turned off the feeling they're they don't even know when their body is in stress. That's amazing. Now, um, now my cancer was estrogen dominant. And um, of course you want to say estrogen positive. Positive, right? Estrogen positive. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you get the lingo right. But in your work, you talk about why is estrogen dominance so prominent? What is going on with this estrogen? Is it the humanity? Let's first talk about estrogen. Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

Okay, so estrogen is like the hormone of life. We literally have estrogen receptors from our head to our toes and everywhere in between. So our skin, our brain, our heart, all of our blood vessels, our gut, our uterine, you know, all of our female reproductive systems, our breast, estrogen receptors are everywhere. And they're everywhere because estrogen is so important. It is the vital hormone of life. And anyone who has gone through menopause, and you can attest to your personal experience, you can't think your cardiovascular health goes to hell in a handbasket. Within 10 years, we have a significant decline in cardiovascular health. Um, you are moody, you're miserable, you have no libido, no drive, sex is painful.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

You're getting the top one, hot flashes.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

Hot flashes are awful, right? Yes. And um, you have digestive problems, um, lots of people have breast soreness and things like that. Like we do not function well when we don't have estrogen, right? So to think that estrogen is the cause of breast cancer is such a ridiculous notion. And if you believe that estrogen causes breast cancer, then you have to believe that God put women on this earth for the purposes of getting breast cancer. That's okay. Yeah, there's no way that that's true. Right. And there's just simply no way. But if you're not a God-believing person, yeah, that's up to you. But let's think about it in a different way. The vast majority of breast cancers that we see, we see in the post-menopausal population. So if estrogen was the problem, why don't we see breast cancer during the times when estrogen is most available? Why don't why aren't we seeing the most breast cancers in 20-year-olds? Why aren't we seeing it in teenagers? Why aren't we seeing it in pregnancy? Now, I'm not saying it never happens. Of course, it happens, but it doesn't happen frequently. The vast majority of breast cancers happen in the postmenopausal state where estrogen is scarce and the cells are clamoring for it. And that's what happens. Estrogen is protective. Estrogen is protective, and we know that from our data. So the women's health initiative was the largest prospective study ever performed, and probably did the most damage to hormone replacement that any study has ever done and could ever do. The shame of it all is that the findings were completely false, completely manipulated, later retracted, but no one read the retraction. And that was a bell that was not unrung. And decades and millions of women suffered unnecessarily because of it. But when you actually look at the outcome of that study, there was a sub-population, a cohort of that study that took estrogen alone, that they had already had their uterus removed for whatever the reason, and they took estrogen alone, because we don't give estrogen alone to women with an intact uterus because it makes them um susceptible to getting uterine cancer. So, in that subset of estrogen alone, we found that those women had less cancers as opposed to the general population. Estrogen is protective. And if you take anything away from our talk today, know the estrogen is protective.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Hormone replacement, yeah. Let's clarify. So you're saying that human replacement therapy does not cause breast cancer. Absolutely not. It does not cause breast cancer.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

And if you see breast cancer is a 10-year process. In very rare instances, it is a more aggressive process. But for the vast majority of people, estrogen is at breast cancer is a 10-year process. So people who go on hormone replacement and get breast cancer a year or two later, that that process was already well, well, well in motion. And if all you do is go on hormone replacement and you don't stop the reason why that process is in motion, then yes, that's going to happen. And people on hormone replacement get breast cancer. Absolutely. I'm not denying that. Guess what else happens? People not on hormone replacement get breast cancer.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_02 29:29

Because it's not the hormone replacement or the lack of hormone replacement. It is whatever else is causing that transformation. It is that shift from the chemistry of joy to the chemistry of stress. It is that immune suppression that we are all suffering from because we are living in this toxic world that our immune system simply cannot keep up with. But it's not the hormone replacement. And let's not blame the hormone replacement because it's wrong. It's the wrong thing to do. And to make women suffer, to make women suffer because you don't know and you don't understand is wrong. And what my colleagues are doing is wrong. And making women with breast cancer suffer because they are under living under a false notion that hormone replacement causes breast cancer, that's wrong.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

It's wrong.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Well, that's good. That's good. Thank you for clarifying that.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

Yeah. Right. But you know, there is there is such a state of estrogen dominance. And we should talk about that a little bit because before I put anyone on hormone replacement, and I do put people who have had breast cancer on hormone replacement, because people who have had breast cancer don't deserve to suffer, right? Like they they've had they've suffered enough. They have suffered enough. They don't need more suffering. But before I put them on, I'm also making sure that their diet is right, that they're drinking clean water, that they've eliminated toxins, that they're moving their bodies because sitting is the new smoking, that they are sleeping at night and prioritizing sleep, that they have healthy ways of managing the stressors in their life, right? Like I don't want people drinking wine and smoking pot to manage the stressors in their life. You have to have healthy ways and healthy tools to manage the stressors in your life. And I want to make sure that whatever the reason is that they got breast cancer has been dealt with. And then, as long as we've done all that work, why shouldn't they be able to think? Why shouldn't they be able to have climate control? Why shouldn't why should they be achy? Why should they get heart disease? Why should they get osteopenia? And the solutions that the system offers them are terrible because I don't want them on antidepressants for the rest of their life that, by the way, don't work. And SSRIs to manage hot flashes, they don't work. And the medicines that they're given for osteoporosis, the bisphosphonates, they don't work. And the medicines to lower their cholesterol don't save them from any heart disease. They don't work. So these other alternatives that were offered after the women's health initiative, as you know, don't worry, you don't need hormone replacement. We have other solutions. They are not solutions, they don't work. And the only thing that works is hormone replacement because that's what we are supposed to use. That's what's supposed to keep us healthy. And quite frankly, you know, from an evolutionary standpoint, you and I would be long gone by now because we would have gotten eaten by an animal or died of some overwhelming infection. We would not be here. But due to the miracle of modern medicine, and believe me, I am not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I have many, many things that I am so grateful for in our modern medical society. However, we need to continue to support our bodies because we are living past menopause. We still need estrogen. We still need estrogen. We still need progesterone.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

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SPEAKER_02 35:07

Yeah. So, you know, all of those things that we talked about, the same way that you prevent breast cancer, you also prevent heart disease, you also prevent osteoporosis, you present, you prevent dementia, Alzheimer's, arthritis, like these things all go together. And an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So all of these things that we're talking about, getting your diet right, getting what what you drink right, getting your thinking right, avoiding toxins, prioritizing sleep, moving your body. Um, but the thing that we haven't really discussed, which is so very important, is living in a connected, purposeful manner. Because alive is all about connection. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

And unless you're connected and don't have anyone to call, oh, I'm sure that's a ton of stress. Of course.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

Of course, and we all need to be connected to someone and something, right? We have to live with purpose and we have to live connected to people around us because that is the key to life. And if you are not living a connected life, you're not living, and your body will fail.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

I agree. Yeah, that's why it's so sad where the older people that are in the nursing homes and nobody is visiting them. Yes, it's um it's very, very hard for them, right?

SPEAKER_02 36:39

Yeah, in order to live, you have to have something to live for.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Yeah, so you have to have, yes, you have to have love or something. All right, so let's say that um someone comes to you and uh you've done the test, the mammogram, or yeah, maybe we should talk about the screenings first before I ask you this question. So I was always under the impression that uh mammogram after age of 40 is what is the the way to screen. But I just recently heard that the mammogram only looks for the same thing that it found in me, calcification of cells. And it's not, it is not ideal. And I think I heard you say that in another podcast. So, can we talk about that? What are the ways that we can screen for cancer?

SPEAKER_02 37:25

Yeah, let's talk about screening because I think screening is so important. But let's let's first talk about mammograms, right? Because everyone knows that mammograms save lives, right? Because that has been told to us time and time and time again. It's been told to us so much that people are afraid to not get a mammogram because mammograms save lives. And no one asked the question. Wait, do they save lives? Do they actually save lives? How do they save lives? Because aren't they x-rays? Don't they deliver radiation? Doesn't radiation cause cancer? Are you sure that mammograms save lives? Right? Because we're not asking the question. Because when we ask the question, do mammograms really save lives, the answer is no. The answer is no. And this is the reason that countries across the world have abandoned their mammographic screening program because they don't save lives. So when we look at population numbers, because if we're telling everyone in the population between the ages of 40 indefinitely while you're still in good health to get a mammogram, we ought to have a really good reason why, right? And so when you look at the population statistics, for every one in 10,000 women whose life might be, and I stress the might, might be saved by mammogram, we are going to cause seven breast cancers. Seven breast cancers to save one person in 10,000. Does that make sense? No, and how would you feel if you were the one one one of the seven that got breast cancer because you used a mammogram? What right doesn't make much sense now? Mammograms are x-rays. We are in a grandfathered technology where we're currently using 3D mammograms, which um combine the 2D technology into um like slices like a CAT scan. So what what what's happening now is more like a CAT scan than a mammogram. So we're delivering not a lot more, but a little more radiation, and we're doing it more frequently because more and more women are getting called back for additional views. So they're getting double the radiation at that time. And then most women that get called back for additional views are asked to come back again in six months and six months later, and six months later, and six months later. So now we've taken what what they say is a safe amount of radiation, virtually approximately seven weeks of background radiation, although that seven weeks of background radiation is focused in on the very sensitive tissues of the breast. And we've taken that and we've six times it. And this is when I was a breast surgeon telling everyone else to do it, and knowing that I had to do it too if I was telling everyone else to do it. And I used to walk away from there going, what am I doing? This can't possibly be good for me. So mammograms do not save lives. And no matter how many women we screen, the exact same number of women die of breast cancer every year. We are doing nothing to impact the bottom line.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Everybody is thinking it every year, and yet all this breast cancer is around. Yeah, I put two and two together myself. I didn't think it's the radiation, but I was thinking that it's not a proper screening technique. So, you know.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

So I'll tell you what mammograms are doing. They are picking up lesions in people that probably have no meaning and would never come to clinical relevance or significance, but they are capturing those people, telling them they have breast cancer, treating them. And then once we treat a woman for breast cancer, that is not a benign treatment. So women treated for breast cancer are two to three times more likely to die of heart disease than women who are not treated for breast cancer. Now, the problem with that is twofold. The first is unless you deal with the reason why you got breast cancer, that inflammation, that that nitus, that stimulus is still there and will go on to manifest as heart disease. But the second reason is this almost all of our treatments for breast cancer actually accelerate heart disease. So we are trading in what is almost certainly a benign problem for something that is not benign, for something that is life-threatening, for something that will rob women of their life and livelihood. This is a huge problem. And as a collective community, we need to say so. I was very privileged to be introduced to a man about a year ago that invented a novel technology. This is not being done anywhere else, and it's not like anything else. This technology uses sound waves to create a three-dimensional image that has 40 times the resolution of MRI. It is fast, it's safe, it's painless, it's radiation free, and it's affordable. And I am on a mission to make sure that everyone in this country and abroad who wants one of these scans will be able to go to a center and get one of these scans. I am opening the first center in Philadelphia in just a couple of months, and I'm just gonna grow from there. I have committed to opening five in the next two years, and then I hope to enlist the help of others to get 100 opened in the next five years. But women will not have to be radiated anymore. We need to stop using a test that causes cancer to screen for cancer. It doesn't make any sense. And we need to make screening for breast cancer safe, comfortable, and available.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

I have a question. I heard that MRIs were a better choice, but you didn't mention MRIs.

SPEAKER_02 44:47

So MRIs are first of all, they're very expensive. They are cumbersome. I don't know if you've ever had an MRI, but um they take a long time, they are very uncomfortable, uh, and they require gadolinium. So gadolinium is a heavy metal that has to be injected in order for the MRI to be accurate. And the problem with that heavy metal is that it doesn't go anywhere. So it gets stored in your body, and if it gets stored in your body, it gets stored in your body at the expense of something else. So if you're having more gadolinium in your body, that means you're having less calcium, less zinc, less less whatever it's trading for. Now, if you absolutely have to have an MRI, I do tell people to take 60 milligrams of zinc one hour before. And hopefully that will prevent the uptake or the absorption of the gadolinium. Um, that is, you know, the least that you can do. If you are going to take 60 milligrams of zinc, please don't take it on an empty stomach. It can upset your stomach. Okay. All right. So let's, I'm still, I'm still here. But mammograms are I'm sorry, MRIs are not the answer. And the biggest problem with MRIs are access problems. So I'm I'm from Philadelphia. I'm very lucky. There are lots of MRI centers around here, thank God, because I have like broke just about everything in my body. And I've over the last year have had to have six MRIs. So I'm I'm very lucky to be in a place where there's a lot of MRIs and I have access to them. But there are plenty of places around this country and abroad where people can't even get MRIs. So forget the fact that they're expensive, forget the fact that they're cumbersome, forget the fact that they use gadolinium. They can't even get them. So we need a simple solution, which is why I'm so delighted to be bringing this imaging to everyone everywhere. Because this imaging is fast, it is affordable, it's nothing like an MRI in terms of cost. Um and it's you know, you know, your breast goes for a four to 15 minute swim. That's that's basically what it is.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

Wow, that's beautiful. Yes, no compression, no pain, no anything. Yeah. Yes, that's future. So that's amazing. All right. So back this the question I was about to ask just now. So someone comes to you, or you someone comes to you and you've given them a breast cancer diagnosis. What are you telling them to do? Because it doesn't seem like you are for, excuse me, the surgery and the radiation and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

So what do you I wouldn't say that? I wouldn't say that. I would say that I evaluate everyone individually. What is your disease burden? Where are you along the process? Because if you have a a lot of disease burden, right, your cup is overflowing, right? Your proverbial sink is overflowing. So you can't stand in a flood of water, right? You have to clean that up. Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, these are our mops. And depending on how much water is there, is how much of those modalities you have to use. But the far more important thing, the thing that everyone needs to do is figure out why their sink is overflowing. What turn off that faucet? So my work with people is figuring out what's what's turning on their faucet, what's keeping that faucet on, what is flooding the room? Because that's where the work needs to be. Because I can I did it for 20 years. I can cut out your breast cancer, I can make it go away temporarily, but unless I figure out why you got the breast cancer in the first place, what's stopping it from coming back? Or what's stopping you from the next manifestation, from getting heart disease, from getting Alzheimer's, from getting osteoporosis? You know, this is this is something that we're not talking about enough. As many women die every year as a complication of a fracture as do of breast cancer. Where are the ribbons for that? Right? We have to we have to figure out where our health is being derailed. We have to take care of ourselves, we have to promote our health, and this is how you do it. So I approach everyone the exact same way with curiosity and individuality. I try to figure out what has turned on their faucet and how do I turn it off.

SPEAKER_00 49:44

Well, this is so good. I mean, you know, it's interesting, it's just like nutrition. Um, when you can speak to four different nutrition doctors, and each person is telling you this food is wrong, and this one is telling you this food is right. You know, I was under the impression exactly what you just said. And then someone told me that actually, someone that's I'm not gonna call the name, but I admire a lot. And then they said, no, cancer's a lot of a draw, it's random, and you know, exercise is important and muscles important and and all these different things. And now I come right back to you, and I actually believe that because I do believe that you have to understand. I love your analogy. Why is the sink overflowing? You know, do you have something in the thing that's making the water roll over? Do you have, did you forget to turn off the tap? And I and I do believe that, you know, and the Bible says it, there's there's always a cause, right? Of something. And to say that it's random, um, yeah, you're taking away our responsibility to be the CEOs of our help. So I love that. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 50:58

Now, bearing in mind, not everyone wants that responsibility, right? And the the the people that don't want to ask the why, they're they're not coming to me. Or, or worse yet, they're the people calling me a quack and a this and a that. And that's okay. I mostly feel badly for them. Yes, I feel badly for them that they can't see, right? Because it's sad to be blind. It's sad because you miss out on so much of life. Yes. And please, I am not insulting blind people. Please, please know that I am not insulting blind people.

SPEAKER_00 51:37

Oh no, you're talking about, you know, um not regularly blind, but blind in the sense of figuratively. Right, figuratively.

SPEAKER_02 51:46

Right. It's the it's the people that instead of seeing their diagnosis as a punishment, that can see it as an opportunity. These are the people that flourish, these are the people that get to know real health, these are the people that have the opportunity to live a deeper, meaningful, more collective, more meaningful, um, more connected life afterwards. Yes, right? And that that that's opportunity.

unknown 52:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 52:22

That's opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

Because I heard stories where people can change their diet. You talked about the food that we're eating, change your diet and start eating vegetables and whole foods and the cancer goes away. I've heard people going on a spiritual journey and their cancer goes away. So what you're saying has foundation. I heard that, I've seen it. And so that's very, that's very true. Excellent. And when people talking about metastasis and the cancer coming back and all that, you just also, you know, mention that. But if you don't take care of the root, it is gonna go and attack somewhere else, whether it's your heart, whether it's your lungs, yeah, whether it's diabetes, whether it's dementia, I mean it's gonna go somewhere else because you haven't figured out what stopped up the sink. I love it. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

You know, just think about your garden. If you have a weed growing in your garden, what happens if you cut it off above the surface? It's just coming, it's just coming right back. The only way to get it rid of the weed is to get at it at the root.

SPEAKER_00 53:26

Yes, it's the same thing. Yes, so true as our love analogies, love visuals. So that's amazing. All right, so in your bio, you talk about that you have created a course. Yeah. Um uh so can you talk about um uh your course, how people can uh connect with you and um get more of what you offer? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:49

So all those things that we talked about today that are that seem so easy, right? Like getting your diet right and getting the water right and getting your thinking right and getting your environment right and getting your sleep right and getting your movement right, like these things all sound easy. And then we we don't suffer from a lack of information, right? We suffer from a lack of implementation. Everyone needs a plan. My answer to breast cancer is a plan to recover your health, to get you back to the place where you want to be, and even exceed that place, find excellence in yourself. And so I wrote this course, and this course is kind of like the bottom platform. And next month, I actually am creating the graduate program. So for anyone who has been through my answer to breast cancer already and they're ready for the next step, that's what's coming next month. And if you're just starting off on your journey and you need all those pillars and you need all those tools, my answer to breast cancer is there for you. And I just wrote my book. It's called The Smart Person's Guide to Breast Cancer. So if you are had an abnormal study, if you're dealing with a diagnosis, if you've been diagnosed and you're in treatment, if you completed treatment and you're wondering now what? This book, The Smart Person's Guide for Breast Cancer, is where everyone needs to start. Because it truly explains all the stuff we talked about today. What is breast cancer? How do you read your pathology report? What does it mean? What questions should I be asking, right? What should I be talking to my surgeon about, my plastic surgeon, my medical oncologist, my radiation oncologist? But what should what else should I be doing? Who should be on my team? And what what labs do I need? And what do I need to worry about? And how do I screen and how do I follow up? And how do I know that I don't have breast cancer anymore? And how do I prevent it from coming back? And so all of that is right there for you in the book. Um, and my my friend Katrina, who is um a breast cancer provider like me, read the book and said, You're giving too much of yourself away, Jen. And to that, I say, I'm on a mission to help millions of women recover their health. And this is one of the ways I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00 56:22

Not everyone can come and see you in Philadelphia. So this is a perfect way to do it.

SPEAKER_02 56:25

Now I didn't get is the name of your course Answers to Breast Cancer. It's called My Answer to Breast Cancer.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

My answer to breast cancer.

SPEAKER_02 56:34

Um, what's your website? My website is realhealthmd.com. You can see it right up here.

SPEAKER_00 56:42

Oh, right, okay.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

And then um, you can follow me on all the social media platforms. I'm at Dr. Jen Simmons, and my Jen has two ends. And also, we didn't talk about my podcast, which is keeping abreast with Dr. Jen. A new episode comes out every Monday. Please listen, please comment. And I have survivor stories on there, I have experts on there, I have people who are all doing great, extraordinary things in the breast cancer space.

SPEAKER_00 57:19

That's beautiful. Awesome. All right, guys. So this was an amazing interview. I love talking to passionate people that are trying to make the world a better place and to transform lives. So Dr. Jen has been doing that. She's left us a lot of nuggets, um, probably some questions. So if you have questions, then definitely go pick up a copy of her book, listen to her podcast, you know, take her course. Um, I will have a transcript of my conversation with Dr. Jen on the show page, which is blog.myhelps.us, and I will link out to all these things so that if you didn't catch them, you can just head over to the show page and um and link out to them.

SPEAKER_02 58:09

So and if you have questions, join my Facebook group, which is called Keeping Abreast with Dr. Jen, and you can ask all your questions there.

SPEAKER_00 58:19

Oh, that's amazing. All right, so I'll add that. Facebook group.

SPEAKER_02 58:24

I have a lot, I have a lot of stuff going on.

SPEAKER_00 58:27

Well, yeah, you did say you have a lot of balls in the hair. I do, I have a lot of balls in the hair. Yeah, yeah. And you do it looking so well. I love it.

unknown 58:35

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

All right, guys. Well, listen, thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Transform Your Mind to Transform Your Life. And I hope that as we end the breast cancer awareness month, that it doesn't go far from your mind that you're still aware that cancer is a killer. We specifically talked about breast cancer today because we're tapping into that, but there's over 200 cancers. So um I think that if you were to follow Dr. Jen's steps as far as wholeness and making sure that you're not stressed, you're sleeping and you're exercising and you're doing all the things for quality of life, then not only will you not get breast cancer, but you should not probably not be able to get any of the other four horsemen that kills or they're killers right now or anything else. So as you wrap up, Dr. Jen, any last words?

SPEAKER_02 59:30

Uh no, I mean, you just said it all. So uh I'm just so delighted to be here today and to be able to share this with your audience and um and let's do this again.

SPEAKER_00 59:44

Oh, yes, for sure. All right, guys. Well, listen, thank you very much for tuning in. If you're listening to this on iTunes, we'd love for you to rate and review and subscribe. If you're watching on YouTube, we'd love for you to just push that subscribe button so that you'll get notification of all the videos every week. Again, thanks, Dr. Jen. This was amazing. I love your passion, I love your energy, I love your content. So thanks again. Yeah, let's do it again. Absolutely. All right, absolutely. Great to tell you today. Okay, thanks. Until then, name a stay.