Episode 98
Dr. Jenn Simmons, MD:
Unconventional Wisdom: A Surgeon's New Take on Breast Cancer Treatment and Prevention with Dr. Jenn Simmons
In this episode, we chat with Dr. Jen Simmons, a former breast cancer surgeon turned advocate for functional medicine. Listen in as she shares her transformative journey, inspired by personal experiences with cancer. We delve into the power of a holistic approach to health, the harmful impact of toxins in our lives, and alternative methods for cancer detection. Tune in for practical advice on living a healthier, toxin-free life, and explore the misunderstood world of Hormone Replacement Therapy.
First Aired on: Jul 31, 2023
Episode 98
Dr. Jenn Simmons, MD:
Unconventional Wisdom: A Surgeon's New Take on Breast Cancer Treatment and Prevention with Dr. Jenn Simmons
In this episode, we chat with Dr. Jen Simmons, a former breast cancer surgeon turned advocate for functional medicine. Listen in as she shares her transformative journey, inspired by personal experiences with cancer. We delve into the power of a holistic approach to health, the harmful impact of toxins in our lives, and alternative methods for cancer detection. Tune in for practical advice on living a healthier, toxin-free life, and explore the misunderstood world of Hormone Replacement Therapy.
First Aired on: Jul 31, 2023
Table of Contents:
In this episode:
In this insightful episode, I am joined by Dr. Jen Simmons, a board-certified breast cancer surgeon turned functional medicine advocate. Dr. Jen shares her journey from conventional medicine to functional medicine, inspired by her own battle with breast cancer and the loss of her cousin. We dive deep into alternative approaches to health and discuss the importance of individual responsibility in healing, proactive health measures, and the challenge of toxins in our everyday lives.
I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you'd like to get in touch with Dr. Jenn, scroll down this page for all her links.
Dr. Jen's Journey into Functional Medicine
- Her journey from conventional medicine to functional medicine was inspired by her cousin's death from metastatic breast cancer.
- The traditional medical approach vs. functional medicine
- Dr. Jen's realization that the current medical system focuses on sick care rather than healthcare.
- A pivotal moment when Dr. Jen came across Dr. Mark Hyman's lecture on functional medicine, which led to a major shift in her practice.
Embracing Alternative Approaches
- Shifting focus from disease management to holistic health.
- Discussion on "blue zones" where individuals live long, healthy lives.
- Importance of diet, physical activity, quality sleep, and avoiding toxins.
- The harmful effects of a sedentary lifestyle, poor sleep, and exposure to toxins.
- Recommendation: Use filtered water in glass or stainless steel containers and avoid single-use coffee pods.
Tackling the Plastic Menace
- Criticizing the excessive use of plastic in everyday products.
- How small changes can lead to substantial positive effects on health.
- Mention of the book "Fatal Conveniences" discussing similar issues.
Towards a Toxin-Free Lifestyle
- Strategies for reducing toxin exposure and making intentional lifestyle choices.
- The concept of joyful movement and meditation as crucial aspects of self-care.
The Power of Lifestyle Changes
- Dr. Jen’s experience with health issues and the importance of investigating root causes.
- The power of embracing change and seeing illness not as a punishment but as an opportunity for improved health.
Questioning Conventional Medical Practices
- Critical discussion on the effectiveness and risks of mammograms.
- The potential of QT Imaging, an FDA-approved, radiation-free imaging technique, as a future alternative to mammograms.
Hormone Replacement Therapy: A Misunderstood Concept
- Debunking myths surrounding hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
- Discussion on the Women's Health Initiative study and its impact on the perception of HRT.
Hormone Replacement Therapy: A Comprehensive Approach
- Advocating for HRT in combination with a healthy lifestyle.
- The use of bioidentical hormones in HRT and their potential benefits on breast cancer outcomes.
The First Step to Health Improvement: Dietary Changes
- Dr. Jen's advice on adopting an anti-inflammatory diet as the first step towards better health.
- Mention of Dr. Jen's website, RealHealthMD, where listeners can find more resources and connect with her.
I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you'd like to get in touch with Dr. Jenn, scroll down this page for all her links.
Other Resources:
Connect with Dr. Jenn Simmons, MD
Episode Transcript
Julie Michelson: [Page//00:00:00] Welcome back to the Inspired Living with Autoimmunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Michelson. And today we are joined by Dr. Jen Simmons, the doctor with the answer to breast cancer. Dr. Jen is a board certified breast cancer surgeon who found functional medicine through her own bout with illness. So enthralled by creating health rather than managing symptoms, she left her prestigious career at age [Page//00:01:00] 50 to open Real Health MD, a functional oasis for anyone with breast cancer looking to reclaim their health.
In today's conversation, we discuss true breast cancer prevention, the dangers of mammography, the importance of hormone replacement therapy, and the solutions to whole health that will allow you to be the hero of your story.
Dr. Jen, welcome to the podcast.
Jen Simmons: Thank you. I am super excited about our conversation today.
Julie Michelson: I am as well. I have been looking forward to this for the last few weeks. So I'd love to start with story. I know you have like, like most of the people I interview an interesting story, um, share with listeners, how you, you know, what led you to, to start real health MD and totally shift gears as an adult,
Jen Simmons: Yeah. A real grownup.
Julie Michelson: a real grownup.
Jen Simmons: yeah. So, um, [Page//00:02:00] you know, I say that I am the doctor with the answer to breast cancer and I don't come by that title easily. I really never knew a time in my life without breast cancer. It was so pervasive in my life and, even as a very young child, I was well aware that my relatives died of breast cancer or that my relatives had breast cancer.
And I had a first cousin growing up. 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. So she wrote that song 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 released that song to the [Page//00:03:00] world. And at that time, it would spend 14 weeks at the top of the charts. Only Linda would never know it because Linda died of metastatic breast cancer just one month after Whitney released that song. I was 16 years old and my hero died and I never wanted another woman, another family, another community to suffer like ours suffered.
And so Linda's life and ultimately her death gave birth to my life's purpose. So I do the only thing I know how to do, I become a doctor, I become a surgeon, I become the first fellowship trained breast surgeon in Philadelphia. And I did that really well for a really long time and thought that I was truly serving my purpose.
So I'm doing completely novel things. I'm doing oncoplastic surgery, which means that [Page//00:04:00] I'm both a cancer surgeon and a reconstructive surgeon really think that I'm giving people a silver lining. And at one point I'm at the top of my career with a two month wait list to see me and I'm running my cancer program for my hospital.
And I am a mother and a stepmother. And an athlete and a philanthropist and I have all these balls in the air and I think that I can do it all until I couldn't. And one day all those balls come crashing down and I go from being super high functioning to not being able to walk across the room because I'm so out of breath. And I have this extensive workup. And after three days, I'm sitting in the office of my physician, but friend and colleague, and he tells me that I need to have surgery, and chemo [Page//00:05:00] radiation and beyond lifelong medicine. And despite the fact that these are things that I say to people all day, every day, without hesitation or reservation, when these words are coming at me, I'm having an out of body experience and all I can hear in my head is walk away, walk away, walk away.
And I did.
My physician and friend told me the exact thing that I said to people all day long, every patient of mine, every breast cancer patient of mine, when I was a surgeon would say to me, what is going to happen if I don't do anything, right? And I would tell them that they were going to die of their disease.
And my doctor told me the same thing. You [Page//00:06:00] cannot not get treated. You're going to die. And it's not that I didn't believe him, but that voice in my head was telling me there's another way. Now. I'm a traditionally trained physician. I have no idea what that other way is going to be.
So, what do I do? I go to Dr. Google.
Now, this is, this is 2017. So, Dr. Google could be trusted in 2017 as long as you had a brain that thought critically and you know, you got rid of all this sensationalism. Now you can't trust Dr. Google because the narrative on Dr. Google is completely controlled and serving someone else's purpose.
But at that time, I My research was telling me again and again and again that I needed to start by changing my diet. But here I am. [Page//00:07:00] I am around 46 years old at the time. I'm not overweight. And so I'm, I'm a trained physician. So I figure like I'm not overweight. I'm a trained physician. I must know what I need to know about.
Yeah. So, but I, I know that I need help. So I decide that I'm going to enroll in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, IIN. This is the certificate coaching program. And prior to my enrollment and giving them thousands of dollars, I drove them crazy. I must've called 20 times asking, are you sure that I'm going to learn something?
I'm a physician. Are you sure I'm going to learn something? So they assured me that they had plenty of physicians and that in fact, I was absolutely going to learn. And so I'm sitting in one of the very [Page//00:08:00] first lectures. And a man named Mark Hyman walks on the stage, he introduces himself as a functional medicine physician.
Now it's 2017, I am deeply steeped in the traditional medical world and I have never heard of functional medicine. So all I can think of is: there's no such thing as functional medicine. What is this quack talking about? And then I remember that I'm sick and I'm there for a reason. And so I check my ego at the door and I focus in on what he has to say.
And within five minutes of him speaking, my entire world makes sense. And for the first time since I'm sick. I understand why I got sick, and it's so that I could be in that room on that day in [Page//00:09:00] that seat listening to this man speak because not only is he telling me what I need to heal myself. He's telling me that what I'm doing as a surgeon is not serving my purpose.
Because our medical system is so broken. It's focused on the wrong thing. We do not have a healthcare system. We have a sick care system. Where all the focus is on being sick. And we know what we focus on grows. And so what happens? We just get sicker and sicker. And the more you're in that system, the sicker you get. And specifically in the cancer space. All our focus is on the tumor, but the tumor is not the problem. The tumor is the symptom of the problem. And the problem is why the tumor exists. And so I spend the next three hours on the edge of my seat, hanging on [Page//00:10:00] every single word that he says. I am someone that clearly gets very excited.
I'm an early adopter. Like if it makes sense to me, I am running with it. So that day I enroll in the Institute for Functional Medicine.
Julie Michelson: it.
Jen Simmons: I spend the next three years just immersed in the study of functional medicine. I Get certified and I walk away from my surgical job because I know that there is no room in there to heal people.
Because that's not what the system is designed for, unfortunately, and please don't misinterpret this as I think doctors are bad people are ill intentioned. I don't. I think they have bad training. I think they're, they're, they're taught to think incorrectly. And then they are, they take such a [Page//00:11:00] stronghold.
To that thinking that they've walked through their careers with blinders on and I had the God given opportunity to take my blinders off. So I heal myself. It takes me all of three years. The healing was not linear. I got way sicker before I got better, but I learned how to heal myself when I learned how to heal breast cancer.
And so at 50, I leave my high paying, very prestigious position, my community who previously, you know, I was the one running the meeting. Now, suddenly I'm out of my mind. You know, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm dangerous. I'm this, I'm that.
Julie Michelson: went to her brain. Yeah. Yeah.
Jen Simmons: but truth be told, you know, here it is [Page//00:12:00] now we're, we're getting close to four years later.
I left in 2019 and those same people that thought that I had lost my mind or like, Hmm, maybe she's onto something there. You know, like the metastatic patients that we have nothing to offer are suddenly getting better. What, what's happening there. So. You know, if I do nothing else but inspire curiosity and allow people who are so set in that conventional medical world to just take off their blinders for a moment and consider that there's something more, that's all I'm after.
Because whether or not people continue to use conventional therapy, I mean, I'm not, I don't believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater,
Julie Michelson: Sure. There's always a time and a place for, so
Jen Simmons: absolutely. [Page//00:13:00] But the thing that has to happen is this side of things, because we have to heal ourselves and healing does not happen in a doctor's office.
In a chemotherapy suite, in a radiation suite, in a hospital, happens at home. And the only person that can heal you is you. You are the only hero of your story. You can have a trusted guide. You can have someone show you the way, but the person that's going to do the work and reap the reward. Is you.
Julie Michelson: beautifully said, and I have three hours worth of questions I want to ask you because I want to talk about all of it. Um, let's, let's talk about, um, I love questions. I got kicked off of [Page//00:14:00] Facebook, um,
Jen Simmons: Oh,
Julie Michelson: at one
Jen Simmons: me too.
Julie Michelson: first, for saying -so controversial- that the body can heal. That was the only thing in that recording that could have been, you know, um, so I, I love, I, I just always love the opportunity to share with listeners that, yeah, even cancer can heal, right?
Like we, we tend to, once people are familiar with functional medicine, um, I found functional medicine in 2016 and I was like, how did I not know this was a thing, right? Like what's the best, it's the best kept secret
Jen Simmons: So functional mass medicine actually is traditional medicine, right?
And what people refer to in this country as traditional medicine is conventional medicine that is just abiding by that conventional wisdom, which [Page//00:15:00] most of the time is dead wrong.
Julie Michelson: Right. Well, it's, it's the folk, like you said, it's the training and the focus is it's sick care. It's diagnosis. Treatment prescription, you know, it's the whole thing.
Jen Simmons: It's the pill for the ill, as Mark Hyman would say.
Julie Michelson: the, let's start kind of in the beginning. Let's start with breast cancer prevention tools, because I have a feeling you're going to say we're doing it wrong.
Jen Simmons: well, absolutely. Um, so let's start with My entire, um, premise, which is breast health is health, right? And so the same things that are making your breast healthy are making your heart healthy. They're making your bones healthy. It's making your brain healthy. Yeah, it's the same thing. And in this [Page//00:16:00] country, we associate early detection with prevention.
Julie Michelson: What? the same thing.
Jen Simmons: but by that point, the horse is out of the barn. Early detection is detecting disease. That's what that's what we want to prevent. We don't even want to get there. But our entire system, you know, you think about it. If you go to your doctor and you say, I'm tired, I'm not sleeping, I don't have the energy I used to have.
I have no libido.
Julie Michelson: Oh, would you like an antidepressant?
Jen Simmons: Right. So,
Julie Michelson: first thing people, you know, it's terrible.
Jen Simmons: Right. Fibromyalgia.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Oh yeah. Pain. We don't know what it is.
Jen Simmons: exactly. So, what's going to happen is, Right. They're gonna run a lab panel, a completely useless lab panel that they don't even know how to read [Page//00:17:00] and, and it's not their fault. They've just not been trained.
Julie Michelson: their box.
Jen Simmons: So, and what are they going to say, they're going to say you're fine. And what they mean is, come back when you've actually failed, because we, they know, we know you're failing. We just don't know how to help you not fail. So just go and do the same thing you've been doing. Eventually you'll fail. And then I can write you a prescription, right?
That, that's what's happening all day, every day, right? And so it's not until you fail that you actually engage in the medical system. And this is the absolute wrong thinking. So we should have optimal health our entire life. We should die old, very young, but that's not happening. It is happening in other parts of the world, right?
It is happening in the blue zones. And these are pockets around the world where people live [Page//00:18:00] well over 100 years, and they're not spending the last 10 or 20 years of their life in the hospital. They're spending their last 10 or 20 years of their life exactly the way that they spent their first 80 or 90 years of their life. Living with purpose, being active, eating in the way that nature intended, right? And so we live in a completely synthetic world and expect health to happen to us. But health is something that's very intentional. So if you want to prevent breast cancer or colon cancer or any cancer
Julie Michelson: Alzheimer's, or autoimmune diagnoses,
Jen Simmons: hot heart disease or autoimmune disease.
Like if you want to prevent any of those things, then we need to eat a diet that is anti [Page//00:19:00] inflammatory because it's chronic inflammation over time. That leads to 80% of our disease states. You need to move your body. We are nomadic people. We we're supposed to
Julie Michelson: yes.
Jen Simmons: move. So that's why sitting is the new smoking. Because sedentary behavior is pro inflammatory. So we need to move. We need to sleep at night. Sleep is when the healing happens. So if you're not sleeping, you're not healing. Just short sleepers alone are at risk for a host of chronic diseases. Like heart disease, like Alzheimer's, like depression, like anxiety, like osteoporosis, like arthritis, like cancer, just because you're not sleeping at night.
Right. And so we have, and we have to avoid [Page//00:20:00] toxins. We are, we are living in a sea of toxins and so many of them you can avoid by just saying no to things. Get rid of plastics. You do not have to drink water out of a plastic bottle. You don't. And you can put a filter on your sink in your kitchen for a couple hundred dollars and drink from it for years. Out of glass or stainless steel. And stop using those coffee pods that you drip hot water through a plastic cup every day. I mean,
Julie Michelson: giggling because that was literally one day I was writing a presentation on toxins. And I've been doing this work for so long, right? And that's the other thing. It's ongoing because a, they're always making new chemicals and, and, and we're learning, you know, but I, I literally thought. [Page//00:21:00] You know, this is what I do for a living.
And I looked up and realized I was using a drip coffee pot. I had a stainless carafe, but like in that moment, I, you know, I used it every day. I looked over and I had
Jen Simmons: And look at all the, all the Keurig things and those little plastic cups. That people are doing that, you know, two, three, four times a day. And, and this is one that drives me really crazy. You know, all the fancy tea makers now, they're putting their tea in those beautiful, shiny bags that stand up on their own. They're plastic. What are we doing? Why can't we have, why can't we have fast, fancy, expensive tea in a paper bag that we don't get, that is not going to kill us.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, or silk, or there are options. It's not like, you know,
Jen Simmons: plenty of options.
Julie Michelson: to not have plastic. I mean, that's the thing that people forget.[Page//00:22:00]
Jen Simmons: know, I know,
Julie Michelson: I just had to share because it's my kind of, you know, admitting that, look, we're all in this together. And we're always all learning. And, and I love just Yeah.
There's no one like, Oh, just fit, just eat well and don't pay, you know, don't sleep and don't clean up your house and
Jen Simmons: but I, I don't want, I don't want to make people think that little changes don't matter because they do,
Julie Michelson: matters.
Jen Simmons: right? So do what you can do right now. And then once you master that, move on to the next thing and just continue to build healthy habits on top of one another. But don't, don't say, Oh my God, I can't do all of this.
I'm going to do none of it. Because that's the worst thing that we can do right is just kind of give up and accept that we're going to get disease because we can't tackle this mountain, like, just take a [Page//00:23:00] step at a time. That's all you need to do
Julie Michelson: I love,
Jen Simmons: Yeah.
Julie Michelson: yeah. And you alluded to it as you start where you're going to be successful, like start with the easy stuff. It doesn't have to be the biggest hit because that's going to give you that energy to continue the journey. And,
Jen Simmons: there are things that are so easy, like just getting rid of your nonstick pans, right? Swap them out so that when you're cooking your food every day, you're not, you're not getting that plastic inside of your body. And
Julie Michelson: forever chemicals. Yeah. And I don't care. I have to add, because again, I go back to my journey. I remember swapping out my, you know, probably Teflon or whatever it was for, actually, I will use the company name, a green pan, which back then in my, I thought meant. Oh, well, this is this is
Jen Simmons: Greenwashing.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, it's just so really, there is no [Page//00:24:00] nonstick pan.
That's not loaded with chemicals, unless you're using a cast iron pan for other than, you know, a stainless if you, if you want something that seems nonstick, but really, if you get a stainless pan hot before you add the oil, it becomes nonstick. Like it it's night and day. So I cook all the time and I haven't had a, but just don't fall for that greenwashing.
Jen Simmons: Yeah, yeah. And there is a ton of greenwashing. So, you know, people, marketers are very, very good at deceiving you and having you believe their narrative. So just, obviously, be careful. But I do think that the Always Pan and the Caraway Those are ceramic and those are nonstick, and I think they're okay.
Julie Michelson: ceramic is different than, yeah, you know, the new, what they do is they pick on, it's like plastic [Page//00:25:00] BPA free plastic. So people say, well, it's like, no, they'll, they'll pick on as people catch on to which chemicals are terrible then, you know, but there, it
Jen Simmons: they'll just substitute another one that you don't know about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of terrible It's kind of sad,
Julie Michelson: but
Jen Simmons: it is what it is and we have to be an educated consumer
Julie Michelson: We have to take responsibility.
Jen Simmons: Yeah, yeah, Darren O'Lean wrote a book recently called fatal conveniences I don't know if you've read that
Julie Michelson: I have not.
Jen Simmons: a really really good one I mean it will make you throw out just about everything in your house, but
Julie Michelson: I probably already have.
Jen Simmons: Um, but it I mean, it is amazing and I do think that knowledge is good.
Julie Michelson: It is. And again, it's about reducing, you know, handling your burden. Nobody, we're not saying go live in a bubble or don't [Page//00:26:00] ever drink tea or don't, you know, it's, it's about, I always say, if we can make our home our haven, it's a huge win. Right. And, and, and it really,
Jen Simmons: Absolutely. Where you spend your most time. Um, and. Listen, I am not perfect. So after someone listens to me talk about toxins, I'll get like, you know, 200 messages on Instagram about, but you color your hair. Yes, I do. I color my hair.
Julie Michelson: a
Jen Simmons: color my hair with the safest product that I could find. And I'm just not like, I have a full head of gray hair and I'm just not ready.
Julie Michelson: And that's,
Jen Simmons: I color my hair,
Julie Michelson: that's the whole.
Jen Simmons: polish my nails. I, you know, there are plenty of, all of my makeup is completely clean. I don't wear that much of it. Like I, I make my choices.
Julie Michelson: Intentional choices. And that's,
Jen Simmons: make intentional [Page//00:27:00] choices.
Julie Michelson: I think that's the best example. I had one client who literally, when, when I had my consult with her, um, she had said, this is maybe a whole different can of worms. I wasn't planning on opening up, but she had said she was a vegan. And I told her I'm not the person to help you.
And I'm not saying you can't heal autoimmunity as a vegan. I that's. That's not my specialty. And she was brilliant enough to say, well, just tell me what to eat. You know? So she, she did, she completely changed her diet and, and, but as we were cleaning up products, um, I said, you know, what kind of shampoo and conditioner are using?
And she said, that's not, I'm not even telling you cause I'm not changing it. And I said, fine. You know, we cleaned up everything else. Like that's, we all have.
Jen Simmons: Yeah, and you don't have to do everything. You just have to do enough to keep you well, right? You just have to do enough. [Page//00:28:00] Um, so that's, that's a great example.
Julie Michelson: Right. We just, we make the choices. And so I think, you know, I'm sure you'll be just as stunning with the gray hair when you're ready. Cause gray hair is gorgeous,
Jen Simmons: not ready.
Julie Michelson: I think you're living it's to me, it's a better living example, right. Of where we're just intentional and we choose. So I say, I know you do
Jen Simmons: you know, if you're, if, if your prevention plan is you're getting joyful movement,
Every single day, you're prioritizing sleep. You're managing your stress because the stress is ever present. It's always going to be there. And what we need to do is develop techniques to not internalize at all. Like we have the choice as to what we internalize, what we take in, what we allow to affect us.[Page//00:29:00]
But that, we're not born with those skills.
Julie Michelson: Right.
Jen Simmons: Right. So we all need to develop a skillset where we choose what we allow to affect us. And I'll take meditation for an example, because so many people, their objection to meditation is, Oh, I can't clear my mind. Well, no one can clear their mind. I mean, the mind is always thinking the only time that your mind's, you know, your mind stops thinking when you're dead.
And up until then, your mind is thinking. So there's a misunderstanding around meditation and what it is and what it is meant to do because we don't meditate to clear our mind and we don't meditate to get good at meditation. We meditate to get good at life
Julie Michelson: I love it.
Jen Simmons: this and a skill like anything else that needs to
Julie Michelson: It's an exercise. That'd been the whole point is it's an exercise. [Page//00:30:00] And I was one of those people who totally thought, you know, I suck at meditation because I'm making a shopping list or, you know, and so I love, that's like the first meditation myth I love to debunk for people is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you have the wrong idea, wrong idea.
Yeah. So.
Jen Simmons: you know, if you're doing that and you're prioritizing sleep and you're avoiding toxins and you're living purposefully, like that's really the key. And so if you're doing that and you still get breast cancer, this is the person that is going to do fine. This is the person that is going to do well afterwards.
Um, but if you're not doing any of that and you get breast cancer, you've worked to do, you've worked to do, and it does happen, it does happen when you are seemingly doing everything right, because there are things that we cannot control. So for [Page//00:31:00] instance, I was living in a mold home. I didn't know that, right?
And it took me years to discover that that was my issue and that was my driver. Because here I am, like. Learning and on the perfect diet, I've gotten rid of all my plastic and my non-stick and I stopped wearing perfume and cleaned out all the stuff in my house. And you know, my family hates me cuz they hate our new laundry detergent.
And I hate our new toothpaste and I hate our new
Julie Michelson: smells good and nothing.
Jen Simmons: smells good. And I'm cleaning with vodka and lemon juice. You know, like,
Julie Michelson: Which is awesome because I can't stand the smell of vinegar. So I love the vodka. That's awesome.
Jen Simmons: and, uh, and, you know, they're telling their friends that their mother has lost her mind and, you know, and I still, I still wasn't getting better. I was getting worse. So, you know, people who I tell everyone to ask their why, like if [Page//00:32:00] you're not, if you don't have the health that you expect to health have, or if you have a breast cancer diagnosis, you have to ask the why and you can seemingly be doing everything right.
But no one intentionally lives in mold. No one intentionally has trauma in their background. No one in, you know, like, we don't intentionally live in bad relationships, but they happen all the time.
Julie Michelson: right.
Jen Simmons: And so, and only an illness. This is about opportunity. It is really God giving you the opportunity to reevaluate and whether or not you want to take that opportunity, that's on you, but that's why no one can be the hero of your story but you, right?
We can't change the past, but we can choose to change the direction of our future.[Page//00:33:00]
Julie Michelson: Amen. I've been really and and I love your highlighting to we talk about responsibility, right? But it's not blame. It's just responsibility.
Jen Simmons: It's not. Yeah. It's more, it's more choice than anything else. And you, you can choose to say like, I'm not doing anything wrong, but it won't serve you. It won't serve you to see your diagnosis as a punishment. And it won't serve you to say, I'm unwilling to change because without change, you can't expect change.
Julie Michelson: Well, if you keep doing what got you sick in the first place, it doesn't, this doesn't make sense. There's no, there is no pill for that. There's just not
Jen Simmons: And you can't get sick in the same environment. You can't get well in the same environment that you got sick. And so, you know, it does, it does require change. And [Page//00:34:00] I would say that the vast majority of people, even though it's very hard on the front end, on the back end, they're grateful.
Julie Michelson: Oh,
Jen Simmons: They're grateful for the health that they have after
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Jen Simmons: because it's better than the health that they ever knew before.
Julie Michelson: Yep. And we normalize how we feel until we hit that wall, right? Drop the balls, can't walk across the room, whatever. And then when we get to the other side, it's amazing.
Jen Simmons: in many ways we're forced to, right? Because we go to the doctor and we told that we're fine.
Julie Michelson: Right.
Jen Simmons: And, and look at what conventional medicine has done. I mean, we have extended the standard range of what's normal so, so vastly because we don't know how to help people until they fail.
And so we just call more of it [Page//00:35:00] normal and we normalize,
Julie Michelson: Well, they're using normal as, as really average. So do you want to be the average of this really sick society we're living in? No, I don't. No, thank you.
Jen Simmons: For sure. I'm with you. I don't. I don't.
Julie Michelson: I want to and I promise I won't keep you to too much longer. But I really want to touch on, you know, we talked about that early detection is not prevention.
Um, what are your thoughts on, you know, the, the way women mammograms.
Jen Simmons: you want to talk about mammograms.
Julie Michelson: I do. I want to talk about mammograms. Spit it out, Julie. Just go there.
Jen Simmons: so our mammographic screening program, which was developed in the 1970s, is built on a premise. The premise is that breast cancer starts at some small size. [Page//00:36:00] And progresses in a linear manner, at which point it reaches some critical mass that you are now vulnerable to metastasis.
And if we find that breast cancer in that window before it's reached that critical mass, we can decrease the amount of treatment people need to get and save lives. It's a lovely theory. It just doesn't happen to be true. Breast cancer is what it is from the beginning. So if it's going to be an aggressive process, it's aggressive from the very start.
It doesn't grow in some linear fashion and then become aggressive. It starts aggressive. At the same time, if it's not going to be an aggressive process, it's not going to be an aggressive process ever, ever. So it may like meander along and it may grow, but it's never going to [Page//00:37:00] metastasize. And then we have everything in between.
So here's the bottom line, no matter how many women that we screen every year, we have same number of women presenting with later stage mammograms. We have the same number of women presenting with later stage cancers, and we have the exact same number of women who die every year of breast cancer, no matter how many people we screen.
So if screening really saves lives, why aren't we impacting that bottom line? Why aren't we able to prevent those same women from presenting with later stage disease? Why aren't we able to decrease the number of women each year that die from breast cancer? And it's because breast cancer does [Page//00:38:00] not grow in a linear fashion.
And there are some other problems with mammogram. So I never really understood using a test that causes cancer to screen for cancer.
Julie Michelson: say it again, please.
Jen Simmons: So it never really made sense in my head.
Julie Michelson: Right.
Jen Simmons: And the problem is now, now we have recommendations to start every woman, every woman at 40. We've had them from the inception of my career.
So I, I started practice in 2003 and. We were the American Cancer Society was recommending a screen at 35 one between 35 and 40 and then 40 on yearly and that's how I practice medicine when we when we started when we did the actual research on the safety of mammographic screening. We were talking about a 2d mammogram.
[Page//00:39:00] And since 2012, we're no longer talking about 2d mammograms. We're talking about 3d mammograms or, or tomography, and this is, or digital breast tomosynthesis. That's what it's called dbt, digital breast tomosynthesis. And this is two to three times more radiation. Now we justified it because we said we were going to cut the callback rate.
So the callback rate before was around 60%. Now, the callback rate is 50%. So we decreased it by 10%. In the meantime, people who are getting callbacks, they're not just having one mammogram a year and they're not just getting one callback a year. Because once you start in that callback cycle, you're called back every six months and you're called back for years on end, right?
Three, four. It's not unusual for women to get called back for [Page//00:40:00] three or four years every six months. Well, what's happening with these women over a lifetime? Because supposedly mammograms are saving lives. So if mammograms saves one life in 10, 000 over someone's lifetime, we're causing seven cancers in that 10, 000.
So we're causing more cancers from the radiation than lives we're saving. So our mammographic screening program needed to be abandoned many, many years ago. But the problem is... It makes a lot of sense, but the mammographic screening program makes a lot of dollars and it's not going anywhere. So
Julie Michelson: And women are scared and
Jen Simmons: women are scared, of course,
Julie Michelson: to do.
Jen Simmons: listen, the one thing that has been beaten into our heads for the last 50 years is mammograms save lives, right?
[Page//00:41:00] Who is unringing that bell? Mammograms save lives. People are scared to not get a mammogram. I hear this every single day. I don't want to get a mammogram, but I'm scared. listen, they did their job. Like they have convinced people that we need mammograms to save our lives, but it's simply not true. Just like the premise that the mammogram is built on is not true.
Mammograms are not saving lives. They are causing way more harm than lives we save. So I, I hate to pose a problem without giving people a solution. So here it is, here it is. All those things that we talked about already, breast health is health, right? So eating in an anti inflammatory way, moving your body, um, Uh, prioritizing sleep, avoiding toxins, living purposefully, [Page//00:42:00] managing stress.
All those things are super important. I think breast examination is super important. I think that everyone should know their body, know what it looks like, know what it feels like so that you can recognize a change if there is one. And if you need a diagnostic study, get a diagnostic study. If you are getting an x ray, a mammogram, a CAT scan, a DEXA scan, a PET scan, you're getting any of those things that utilize ionizing radiation, take 100 milligrams of melatonin one to two hours before your study to combat the effects.
Of radiation to neutralize those free radicals that are generated when you have radiation.
Julie Michelson: I love the solution focused.
Jen Simmons: Yeah. Now I do want to, I do want to talk about one more thing because there is FDA approved [Page//00:43:00] imaging. It is a novel imaging technique. It is 40. It has 40 times the resolution of MRI. There is no radiation. It is fast. It is painless. And it will replace MRI and mammogram. It's called QT Imaging. It is only available now at eight centers on the West Coast.
But I am opening up a center. I have colleagues that are opening up centers. And within the next five years, I hope that it will be readily available for everyone who wants to screen in a way that doesn't cause cancer. That is the definitive study, and if you have a normal QT scan, the, the imaging is so definitive that you do not need another study for [Page//00:44:00] two years. That's how sensitive and specific it is.
Julie Michelson: Amazing.
Jen Simmons: stay tuned for QT imaging coming to a town near you.
Julie Michelson: I'll be, I'll be coming to Philly soon. Um, no, it's, it's fantastic. And you cut, we covered, I promised I would, I would not make this a three hour interview, even though it's so rich.
Jen Simmons: We can be rich roll for the day.
Julie Michelson: I love it. I just is. It's exciting. I get excited. Of course, I'm such a geek anyway, but I really do. I get excited every time I meet a doctor that's changing the conversation and actually, you know, not bashing anybody, but Oh, baby,
Jen Simmons: I have a visitor.
Julie Michelson: um, you know, really providing solutions and new innovative approaches that work.
Um, and so I just am really [Page//00:45:00] grateful. For, for what you are doing for your patients,
Jen Simmons: Well, thank you so much for having me here. Hi. Um, I am on a mission to change the impact of breast cancer. And I just want people to know that health is achievable attainable, but it's up to you. Right. We can't, we can't farm out our health anymore. We can't look to someone to make us healthy. The only person that can make us healthy is, is right here inside of us.
Um, and. mammogram is not going to save you. Um, and the one thing that we didn't talk about today is that breast cancer is not caused by estrogen. Estrogen is
Julie Michelson: I wanted to talk about that.
Jen Simmons: Yeah. So let's just suffice to
Julie Michelson: touch on it. Let's touch on it, though, because I that's another scare tactic. Like [Page//00:46:00] people are afraid of hormone replacement therapy. Um, and so can we talk about that for a minute?
Jen Simmons: absolutely. So the, the reason that people are afraid of hormone replacement therapy is because of the, the women's health initiative
Julie Michelson: Yes,
Jen Simmons: So prior to that, nearly everyone was placed on hormone replacement. And so we decided to design a study, the biggest of its kind. I forget how many, I think it was like a 3 billion study.
So an unprecedented amount of money was placed towards this study. And the study that the lead researcher was a cardiologist and this study was powered to determine if hormone replacement protects against cardiovascular disease. So, first of all, people are under the impression [Page//00:47:00] that it was to determine if hormone replacement causes breast cancer.
That was not the intention of the study. That was a secondary outcome. It's not the intention of the study. Now we know that the vast majority of health deterioration that happens in menopause happens in the first 10 years. The average age of menopause in this country is 52. The average age of women on that study in the Women's Health Initiative was 63.
These women are 10 years past menopause. They have already developed heart disease. They have already had bone loss. They have already had brain deterioration. And then we put them, and then we randomized them to women with a uterus getting synthetic estrogen and progesterone, women
Julie Michelson: keyword synthetic.
Jen Simmons: [Page//00:48:00] yeah, synthetic, women without a uterus getting estrogen alone, and then the group that wasn't getting anything.
Now, it turns out that the group that wasn't getting anything, some of them had actually been on hormone replacement prior. So in that group that wasn't getting anything, they had a lower than normal, um, breast cancer occurrence, right? It was below the predicted number in the population. And that is because hormone replacement is actually protective.
Now, the other group that we saw that hormone replacement is productive is in the estrogen alone group. They also had less breast cancer, less heart disease, less everything. And there was only one group where they thought they saw an [Page//00:49:00] increase in breast cancer. After two years, they stopped the study because they saw an increase in breast cancer in this group.
Here's the problem. Breast cancer has like a 10 year growth history. So these women already had breast cancer when they came into the study and it has nothing to do with the hormone replacement. So the results of that study were, they were released prematurely before they could validate their findings.
As it turns out, their findings were invalid and a retraction paper was printed. No one read it.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Jen Simmons: and, and the truth is that generations of women have suffered. Because of that false conclusion of that study. So what I advise [Page//00:50:00] everyone to do is when you are in that perimenopausal phase, have your hormones evaluated. I don't believe anyone should suffer. My good friend, Annika Becca, told me that menopause is mandatory, but suffering is optional.
No one should suffer. So if you are having eye flashes, mood disturbance, a loss of libido, vaginal symptoms, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, if you're having any of those things, you should be evaluated for hormone replacement. Now, I don't do that in isolation. At the same time that I'm evaluating people for hormone replacement, I'm also making sure that their diet is on point, that they're moving, that they're prioritizing sleep and not choosing to binge watch TV all night long, that they are.
Avoiding all of these [Page//00:51:00] environmental toxins and Xeno estrogens that we are surrounded by that they are managing stress and building their stress management toolbox. So I'm not just writing prescriptions for hormone replacement. I'm making sure that people are prioritizing their health and then getting the supplementation that they need in terms of hormone replacement.
Right. And some,
Julie Michelson: you use only bioidentical hormones.
Jen Simmons: I do, I use bioidentical
Julie Michelson: You don't want to give your, your patients the horse hormones. And I love horses. I have horses, but, but I'm not a horse. I just
Jen Simmons: but I actually don't think that that's why, I mean, they did use synthetic hormones in that study, but I don't think that that's why they saw the results, and I think subsequent studies have been done with both bioidentical and synthetic hormones, and we still do not see an increased risk of [Page//00:52:00] breast cancer due to hormone replacement.
So, but there are bioidentical hormone replacement options readily available in, in any pharmacy. So it's not like you have to go to a compounding pharmacy. I mean, these things are readily available. So there's really no reason not to use the bioidentical form.
Julie Michelson: You just, it's, it's whole health is what I heard you say, right? Again, that's not a quick fix either. There is no quick fix.
Jen Simmons: there is no quick
Julie Michelson: of it.
Jen Simmons: And people on hormone replacement will doing all those things will still get breast cancer because we cannot control everything in the environment. But this is what I'll say about that. We know that the women on hormone replacement who get breast cancer have better outcomes.
Julie Michelson: Yes,
Jen Simmons: And they do. And it's probably, uh, [Page//00:53:00] twofold. It's probably because hormone replacement is actually protective, and it was doing the best that it could do. And, um, Oh my god, I totally lost my train of thought.
Julie Michelson: that's okay. Women on hormone replacement therapy tend to do better even if they have
Jen Simmons: Oh, yeah. And because women on hormone replacement tend to take better care of themselves. So they tend to be in better health. And so I am a firm believer in hormone replacement. I can't say this enough times. It does not cause breast cancer. Don't come back at me and say, but my, my cancer is driven by estrogen.
Guess what? Normal breast cells are driven by estrogen. Like it is normal to have estrogen receptors on breast cells. It is normal to have progesterone receptors on breast cells. So that is not what's [Page//00:54:00] driving your cancer. What's driving your cancer is the inflammation, is the xenoestrogens, is all, are all the health disruptors that are in your life.
You're so much better off looking for them than taking away all of the estrogen in your body, which is how we respond to it. And in doing that, we create heart disease. We create Alzheimer's, we create osteoporosis, things that claim way more lives than breast cancer. We are going about it wrong and we have to change, we have to change our paradigm because we are hurting people that first do no harm went way out the window.
Julie Michelson: this is just so good. People need to hear it. I'm like, how many times can I release this? People hear it. Amazing. [Page//00:55:00] So here's your opportunity. I always get surprised because I know you have a really long list to pull from, but what is one step listeners can take today to start to move the needle on their health?
Jen Simmons: Yeah. Our biggest exposure to the outside world is through what we enjoy. Absolutely. Changing your diet is step one and making sure that you are on an anti inflammatory diet, whatever that is for you. We are all bio identical and what works for me may not work for you, but yeah, we are all bio and oh, sorry.
I said bio identical. I'm, I'm still in my hormone
Julie Michelson: stuck on the hormone. It's all good.
Jen Simmons: So we are all bio individual and we are not all going to have the same diet. However, processed food is bad for everyone. Sugar is bad for everyone. Like we, we know there are things that are just [Page//00:56:00] not good for you and the sooner you can get them out of your diet, the better off you will be.
So I think that that is the most important thing and the first place that everyone should start.
Julie Michelson: I love it. Awesome.
Jen Simmons: Thank you for picking up on my bio identical, bio individual thing.
Julie Michelson: That's what I'm here for.
Jen Simmons: I would hate, I would hate everyone to think that I'm saying that everyone should eat the same thing.
Julie Michelson: I love that. Where is, and everything is going to be in the show notes, but for people that listen on the go, like I do, where's the best place for listeners to find you?
Jen Simmons: So, uh, my website is RealHealthMD. Uh, and there, if you want to talk to me, you can apply for a call. Uh, you can follow me on social media. I'm Dr. Jen Simmons and my Jen has two N's. Um, and I actually have a Facebook group, a public Facebook group where you can ask questions and be part of our community.[Page//00:57:00]
It's called keeping abreast with Dr. Jen.
Julie Michelson: Love it. Amazing. Dr. Jen, thank you so much. This was just packed with, I mean, just people could listen to any snippet and really get so much value out of it. So I'm just very grateful for your time.
Jen Simmons: It's my pleasure. I'm so happy to be here and happy to be with someone who wants to spread the same message that, you know, breast health is health and we are in control of our health.
Julie Michelson: Amen. For everyone listening, remember you can get the transcripts and show notes by visiting inspiredliving. show. I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I'll see you next week.
​[Page//00:58:00]
In today's conversation, we discuss true breast cancer prevention, the dangers of mammography, the importance of hormone replacement therapy, and the solutions to whole health that will allow you to be the hero of your story.
Dr. Jen, welcome to the podcast.
Jen Simmons: Thank you. I am super excited about our conversation today.
Julie Michelson: I am as well. I have been looking forward to this for the last few weeks. So I'd love to start with story. I know you have like, like most of the people I interview an interesting story, um, share with listeners, how you, you know, what led you to, to start real health MD and totally shift gears as an adult,
Jen Simmons: Yeah. A real grownup.
Julie Michelson: a real grownup.
Jen Simmons: yeah. So, um, [Page//00:02:00] you know, I say that I am the doctor with the answer to breast cancer and I don't come by that title easily. I really never knew a time in my life without breast cancer. It was so pervasive in my life and, even as a very young child, I was well aware that my relatives died of breast cancer or that my relatives had breast cancer.
And I had a first cousin growing up. 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. So she wrote that song 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 released that song to the [Page//00:03:00] world. And at that time, it would spend 14 weeks at the top of the charts. Only Linda would never know it because Linda died of metastatic breast cancer just one month after Whitney released that song. I was 16 years old and my hero died and I never wanted another woman, another family, another community to suffer like ours suffered.
And so Linda's life and ultimately her death gave birth to my life's purpose. So I do the only thing I know how to do, I become a doctor, I become a surgeon, I become the first fellowship trained breast surgeon in Philadelphia. And I did that really well for a really long time and thought that I was truly serving my purpose.
So I'm doing completely novel things. I'm doing oncoplastic surgery, which means that [Page//00:04:00] I'm both a cancer surgeon and a reconstructive surgeon really think that I'm giving people a silver lining. And at one point I'm at the top of my career with a two month wait list to see me and I'm running my cancer program for my hospital.
And I am a mother and a stepmother. And an athlete and a philanthropist and I have all these balls in the air and I think that I can do it all until I couldn't. And one day all those balls come crashing down and I go from being super high functioning to not being able to walk across the room because I'm so out of breath. And I have this extensive workup. And after three days, I'm sitting in the office of my physician, but friend and colleague, and he tells me that I need to have surgery, and chemo [Page//00:05:00] radiation and beyond lifelong medicine. And despite the fact that these are things that I say to people all day, every day, without hesitation or reservation, when these words are coming at me, I'm having an out of body experience and all I can hear in my head is walk away, walk away, walk away.
And I did.
My physician and friend told me the exact thing that I said to people all day long, every patient of mine, every breast cancer patient of mine, when I was a surgeon would say to me, what is going to happen if I don't do anything, right? And I would tell them that they were going to die of their disease.
And my doctor told me the same thing. You [Page//00:06:00] cannot not get treated. You're going to die. And it's not that I didn't believe him, but that voice in my head was telling me there's another way. Now. I'm a traditionally trained physician. I have no idea what that other way is going to be.
So, what do I do? I go to Dr. Google.
Now, this is, this is 2017. So, Dr. Google could be trusted in 2017 as long as you had a brain that thought critically and you know, you got rid of all this sensationalism. Now you can't trust Dr. Google because the narrative on Dr. Google is completely controlled and serving someone else's purpose.
But at that time, I My research was telling me again and again and again that I needed to start by changing my diet. But here I am. [Page//00:07:00] I am around 46 years old at the time. I'm not overweight. And so I'm, I'm a trained physician. So I figure like I'm not overweight. I'm a trained physician. I must know what I need to know about.
Yeah. So, but I, I know that I need help. So I decide that I'm going to enroll in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, IIN. This is the certificate coaching program. And prior to my enrollment and giving them thousands of dollars, I drove them crazy. I must've called 20 times asking, are you sure that I'm going to learn something?
I'm a physician. Are you sure I'm going to learn something? So they assured me that they had plenty of physicians and that in fact, I was absolutely going to learn. And so I'm sitting in one of the very [Page//00:08:00] first lectures. And a man named Mark Hyman walks on the stage, he introduces himself as a functional medicine physician.
Now it's 2017, I am deeply steeped in the traditional medical world and I have never heard of functional medicine. So all I can think of is: there's no such thing as functional medicine. What is this quack talking about? And then I remember that I'm sick and I'm there for a reason. And so I check my ego at the door and I focus in on what he has to say.
And within five minutes of him speaking, my entire world makes sense. And for the first time since I'm sick. I understand why I got sick, and it's so that I could be in that room on that day in [Page//00:09:00] that seat listening to this man speak because not only is he telling me what I need to heal myself. He's telling me that what I'm doing as a surgeon is not serving my purpose.
Because our medical system is so broken. It's focused on the wrong thing. We do not have a healthcare system. We have a sick care system. Where all the focus is on being sick. And we know what we focus on grows. And so what happens? We just get sicker and sicker. And the more you're in that system, the sicker you get. And specifically in the cancer space. All our focus is on the tumor, but the tumor is not the problem. The tumor is the symptom of the problem. And the problem is why the tumor exists. And so I spend the next three hours on the edge of my seat, hanging on [Page//00:10:00] every single word that he says. I am someone that clearly gets very excited.
I'm an early adopter. Like if it makes sense to me, I am running with it. So that day I enroll in the Institute for Functional Medicine.
Julie Michelson: it.
Jen Simmons: I spend the next three years just immersed in the study of functional medicine. I Get certified and I walk away from my surgical job because I know that there is no room in there to heal people.
Because that's not what the system is designed for, unfortunately, and please don't misinterpret this as I think doctors are bad people are ill intentioned. I don't. I think they have bad training. I think they're, they're, they're taught to think incorrectly. And then they are, they take such a [Page//00:11:00] stronghold.
To that thinking that they've walked through their careers with blinders on and I had the God given opportunity to take my blinders off. So I heal myself. It takes me all of three years. The healing was not linear. I got way sicker before I got better, but I learned how to heal myself when I learned how to heal breast cancer.
And so at 50, I leave my high paying, very prestigious position, my community who previously, you know, I was the one running the meeting. Now, suddenly I'm out of my mind. You know, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm dangerous. I'm this, I'm that.
Julie Michelson: went to her brain. Yeah. Yeah.
Jen Simmons: but truth be told, you know, here it is [Page//00:12:00] now we're, we're getting close to four years later.
I left in 2019 and those same people that thought that I had lost my mind or like, Hmm, maybe she's onto something there. You know, like the metastatic patients that we have nothing to offer are suddenly getting better. What, what's happening there. So. You know, if I do nothing else but inspire curiosity and allow people who are so set in that conventional medical world to just take off their blinders for a moment and consider that there's something more, that's all I'm after.
Because whether or not people continue to use conventional therapy, I mean, I'm not, I don't believe in throwing the baby out with the bathwater,
Julie Michelson: Sure. There's always a time and a place for, so
Jen Simmons: absolutely. [Page//00:13:00] But the thing that has to happen is this side of things, because we have to heal ourselves and healing does not happen in a doctor's office.
In a chemotherapy suite, in a radiation suite, in a hospital, happens at home. And the only person that can heal you is you. You are the only hero of your story. You can have a trusted guide. You can have someone show you the way, but the person that's going to do the work and reap the reward. Is you.
Julie Michelson: beautifully said, and I have three hours worth of questions I want to ask you because I want to talk about all of it. Um, let's, let's talk about, um, I love questions. I got kicked off of [Page//00:14:00] Facebook, um,
Jen Simmons: Oh,
Julie Michelson: at one
Jen Simmons: me too.
Julie Michelson: first, for saying -so controversial- that the body can heal. That was the only thing in that recording that could have been, you know, um, so I, I love, I, I just always love the opportunity to share with listeners that, yeah, even cancer can heal, right?
Like we, we tend to, once people are familiar with functional medicine, um, I found functional medicine in 2016 and I was like, how did I not know this was a thing, right? Like what's the best, it's the best kept secret
Jen Simmons: So functional mass medicine actually is traditional medicine, right?
And what people refer to in this country as traditional medicine is conventional medicine that is just abiding by that conventional wisdom, which [Page//00:15:00] most of the time is dead wrong.
Julie Michelson: Right. Well, it's, it's the folk, like you said, it's the training and the focus is it's sick care. It's diagnosis. Treatment prescription, you know, it's the whole thing.
Jen Simmons: It's the pill for the ill, as Mark Hyman would say.
Julie Michelson: the, let's start kind of in the beginning. Let's start with breast cancer prevention tools, because I have a feeling you're going to say we're doing it wrong.
Jen Simmons: well, absolutely. Um, so let's start with My entire, um, premise, which is breast health is health, right? And so the same things that are making your breast healthy are making your heart healthy. They're making your bones healthy. It's making your brain healthy. Yeah, it's the same thing. And in this [Page//00:16:00] country, we associate early detection with prevention.
Julie Michelson: What? the same thing.
Jen Simmons: but by that point, the horse is out of the barn. Early detection is detecting disease. That's what that's what we want to prevent. We don't even want to get there. But our entire system, you know, you think about it. If you go to your doctor and you say, I'm tired, I'm not sleeping, I don't have the energy I used to have.
I have no libido.
Julie Michelson: Oh, would you like an antidepressant?
Jen Simmons: Right. So,
Julie Michelson: first thing people, you know, it's terrible.
Jen Simmons: Right. Fibromyalgia.
Julie Michelson: Yeah. Oh yeah. Pain. We don't know what it is.
Jen Simmons: exactly. So, what's going to happen is, Right. They're gonna run a lab panel, a completely useless lab panel that they don't even know how to read [Page//00:17:00] and, and it's not their fault. They've just not been trained.
Julie Michelson: their box.
Jen Simmons: So, and what are they going to say, they're going to say you're fine. And what they mean is, come back when you've actually failed, because we, they know, we know you're failing. We just don't know how to help you not fail. So just go and do the same thing you've been doing. Eventually you'll fail. And then I can write you a prescription, right?
That, that's what's happening all day, every day, right? And so it's not until you fail that you actually engage in the medical system. And this is the absolute wrong thinking. So we should have optimal health our entire life. We should die old, very young, but that's not happening. It is happening in other parts of the world, right?
It is happening in the blue zones. And these are pockets around the world where people live [Page//00:18:00] well over 100 years, and they're not spending the last 10 or 20 years of their life in the hospital. They're spending their last 10 or 20 years of their life exactly the way that they spent their first 80 or 90 years of their life. Living with purpose, being active, eating in the way that nature intended, right? And so we live in a completely synthetic world and expect health to happen to us. But health is something that's very intentional. So if you want to prevent breast cancer or colon cancer or any cancer
Julie Michelson: Alzheimer's, or autoimmune diagnoses,
Jen Simmons: hot heart disease or autoimmune disease.
Like if you want to prevent any of those things, then we need to eat a diet that is anti [Page//00:19:00] inflammatory because it's chronic inflammation over time. That leads to 80% of our disease states. You need to move your body. We are nomadic people. We we're supposed to
Julie Michelson: yes.
Jen Simmons: move. So that's why sitting is the new smoking. Because sedentary behavior is pro inflammatory. So we need to move. We need to sleep at night. Sleep is when the healing happens. So if you're not sleeping, you're not healing. Just short sleepers alone are at risk for a host of chronic diseases. Like heart disease, like Alzheimer's, like depression, like anxiety, like osteoporosis, like arthritis, like cancer, just because you're not sleeping at night.
Right. And so we have, and we have to avoid [Page//00:20:00] toxins. We are, we are living in a sea of toxins and so many of them you can avoid by just saying no to things. Get rid of plastics. You do not have to drink water out of a plastic bottle. You don't. And you can put a filter on your sink in your kitchen for a couple hundred dollars and drink from it for years. Out of glass or stainless steel. And stop using those coffee pods that you drip hot water through a plastic cup every day. I mean,
Julie Michelson: giggling because that was literally one day I was writing a presentation on toxins. And I've been doing this work for so long, right? And that's the other thing. It's ongoing because a, they're always making new chemicals and, and, and we're learning, you know, but I, I literally thought. [Page//00:21:00] You know, this is what I do for a living.
And I looked up and realized I was using a drip coffee pot. I had a stainless carafe, but like in that moment, I, you know, I used it every day. I looked over and I had
Jen Simmons: And look at all the, all the Keurig things and those little plastic cups. That people are doing that, you know, two, three, four times a day. And, and this is one that drives me really crazy. You know, all the fancy tea makers now, they're putting their tea in those beautiful, shiny bags that stand up on their own. They're plastic. What are we doing? Why can't we have, why can't we have fast, fancy, expensive tea in a paper bag that we don't get, that is not going to kill us.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, or silk, or there are options. It's not like, you know,
Jen Simmons: plenty of options.
Julie Michelson: to not have plastic. I mean, that's the thing that people forget.[Page//00:22:00]
Jen Simmons: know, I know,
Julie Michelson: I just had to share because it's my kind of, you know, admitting that, look, we're all in this together. And we're always all learning. And, and I love just Yeah.
There's no one like, Oh, just fit, just eat well and don't pay, you know, don't sleep and don't clean up your house and
Jen Simmons: but I, I don't want, I don't want to make people think that little changes don't matter because they do,
Julie Michelson: matters.
Jen Simmons: right? So do what you can do right now. And then once you master that, move on to the next thing and just continue to build healthy habits on top of one another. But don't, don't say, Oh my God, I can't do all of this.
I'm going to do none of it. Because that's the worst thing that we can do right is just kind of give up and accept that we're going to get disease because we can't tackle this mountain, like, just take a [Page//00:23:00] step at a time. That's all you need to do
Julie Michelson: I love,
Jen Simmons: Yeah.
Julie Michelson: yeah. And you alluded to it as you start where you're going to be successful, like start with the easy stuff. It doesn't have to be the biggest hit because that's going to give you that energy to continue the journey. And,
Jen Simmons: there are things that are so easy, like just getting rid of your nonstick pans, right? Swap them out so that when you're cooking your food every day, you're not, you're not getting that plastic inside of your body. And
Julie Michelson: forever chemicals. Yeah. And I don't care. I have to add, because again, I go back to my journey. I remember swapping out my, you know, probably Teflon or whatever it was for, actually, I will use the company name, a green pan, which back then in my, I thought meant. Oh, well, this is this is
Jen Simmons: Greenwashing.
Julie Michelson: Yeah, it's just so really, there is no [Page//00:24:00] nonstick pan.
That's not loaded with chemicals, unless you're using a cast iron pan for other than, you know, a stainless if you, if you want something that seems nonstick, but really, if you get a stainless pan hot before you add the oil, it becomes nonstick. Like it it's night and day. So I cook all the time and I haven't had a, but just don't fall for that greenwashing.
Jen Simmons: Yeah, yeah. And there is a ton of greenwashing. So, you know, people, marketers are very, very good at deceiving you and having you believe their narrative. So just, obviously, be careful. But I do think that the Always Pan and the Caraway Those are ceramic and those are nonstick, and I think they're okay.
Julie Michelson: ceramic is different than, yeah, you know, the new, what they do is they pick on, it's like plastic [Page//00:25:00] BPA free plastic. So people say, well, it's like, no, they'll, they'll pick on as people catch on to which chemicals are terrible then, you know, but there, it
Jen Simmons: they'll just substitute another one that you don't know about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of terrible It's kind of sad,
Julie Michelson: but
Jen Simmons: it is what it is and we have to be an educated consumer
Julie Michelson: We have to take responsibility.
Jen Simmons: Yeah, yeah, Darren O'Lean wrote a book recently called fatal conveniences I don't know if you've read that
Julie Michelson: I have not.
Jen Simmons: a really really good one I mean it will make you throw out just about everything in your house, but
Julie Michelson: I probably already have.
Jen Simmons: Um, but it I mean, it is amazing and I do think that knowledge is good.
Julie Michelson: It is. And again, it's about reducing, you know, handling your burden. Nobody, we're not saying go live in a bubble or don't [Page//00:26:00] ever drink tea or don't, you know, it's, it's about, I always say, if we can make our home our haven, it's a huge win. Right. And, and, and it really,
Jen Simmons: Absolutely. Where you spend your most time. Um, and. Listen, I am not perfect. So after someone listens to me talk about toxins, I'll get like, you know, 200 messages on Instagram about, but you color your hair. Yes, I do. I color my hair.
Julie Michelson: a
Jen Simmons: color my hair with the safest product that I could find. And I'm just not like, I have a full head of gray hair and I'm just not ready.
Julie Michelson: And that's,
Jen Simmons: I color my hair,
Julie Michelson: that's the whole.
Jen Simmons: polish my nails. I, you know, there are plenty of, all of my makeup is completely clean. I don't wear that much of it. Like I, I make my choices.
Julie Michelson: Intentional choices. And that's,
Jen Simmons: make intentional [Page//00:27:00] choices.
Julie Michelson: I think that's the best example. I had one client who literally, when, when I had my consult with her, um, she had said, this is maybe a whole different can of worms. I wasn't planning on opening up, but she had said she was a vegan. And I told her I'm not the person to help you.
And I'm not saying you can't heal autoimmunity as a vegan. I that's. That's not my specialty. And she was brilliant enough to say, well, just tell me what to eat. You know? So she, she did, she completely changed her diet and, and, but as we were cleaning up products, um, I said, you know, what kind of shampoo and conditioner are using?
And she said, that's not, I'm not even telling you cause I'm not changing it. And I said, fine. You know, we cleaned up everything else. Like that's, we all have.
Jen Simmons: Yeah, and you don't have to do everything. You just have to do enough to keep you well, right? You just have to do enough. [Page//00:28:00] Um, so that's, that's a great example.
Julie Michelson: Right. We just, we make the choices. And so I think, you know, I'm sure you'll be just as stunning with the gray hair when you're ready. Cause gray hair is gorgeous,
Jen Simmons: not ready.
Julie Michelson: I think you're living it's to me, it's a better living example, right. Of where we're just intentional and we choose. So I say, I know you do
Jen Simmons: you know, if you're, if, if your prevention plan is you're getting joyful movement,
Every single day, you're prioritizing sleep. You're managing your stress because the stress is ever present. It's always going to be there. And what we need to do is develop techniques to not internalize at all. Like we have the choice as to what we internalize, what we take in, what we allow to affect us.[Page//00:29:00]
But that, we're not born with those skills.
Julie Michelson: Right.
Jen Simmons: Right. So we all need to develop a skillset where we choose what we allow to affect us. And I'll take meditation for an example, because so many people, their objection to meditation is, Oh, I can't clear my mind. Well, no one can clear their mind. I mean, the mind is always thinking the only time that your mind's, you know, your mind stops thinking when you're dead.
And up until then, your mind is thinking. So there's a misunderstanding around meditation and what it is and what it is meant to do because we don't meditate to clear our mind and we don't meditate to get good at meditation. We meditate to get good at life
Julie Michelson: I love it.
Jen Simmons: this and a skill like anything else that needs to
Julie Michelson: It's an exercise. That'd been the whole point is it's an exercise. [Page//00:30:00] And I was one of those people who totally thought, you know, I suck at meditation because I'm making a shopping list or, you know, and so I love, that's like the first meditation myth I love to debunk for people is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you have the wrong idea, wrong idea.
Yeah. So.
Jen Simmons: you know, if you're doing that and you're prioritizing sleep and you're avoiding toxins and you're living purposefully, like that's really the key. And so if you're doing that and you still get breast cancer, this is the person that is going to do fine. This is the person that is going to do well afterwards.
Um, but if you're not doing any of that and you get breast cancer, you've worked to do, you've worked to do, and it does happen, it does happen when you are seemingly doing everything right, because there are things that we cannot control. So for [Page//00:31:00] instance, I was living in a mold home. I didn't know that, right?
And it took me years to discover that that was my issue and that was my driver. Because here I am, like. Learning and on the perfect diet, I've gotten rid of all my plastic and my non-stick and I stopped wearing perfume and cleaned out all the stuff in my house. And you know, my family hates me cuz they hate our new laundry detergent.
And I hate our new toothpaste and I hate our new
Julie Michelson: smells good and nothing.
Jen Simmons: smells good. And I'm cleaning with vodka and lemon juice. You know, like,
Julie Michelson: Which is awesome because I can't stand the smell of vinegar. So I love the vodka. That's awesome.
Jen Simmons: and, uh, and, you know, they're telling their friends that their mother has lost her mind and, you know, and I still, I still wasn't getting better. I was getting worse. So, you know, people who I tell everyone to ask their why, like if [Page//00:32:00] you're not, if you don't have the health that you expect to health have, or if you have a breast cancer diagnosis, you have to ask the why and you can seemingly be doing everything right.
But no one intentionally lives in mold. No one intentionally has trauma in their background. No one in, you know, like, we don't intentionally live in bad relationships, but they happen all the time.
Julie Michelson: right.
Jen Simmons: And so, and only an illness. This is about opportunity. It is really God giving you the opportunity to reevaluate and whether or not you want to take that opportunity, that's on you, but that's why no one can be the hero of your story but you, right?
We can't change the past, but we can choose to change the direction of our future.[Page//00:33:00]
Julie Michelson: Amen. I've been really and and I love your highlighting to we talk about responsibility, right? But it's not blame. It's just responsibility.
Jen Simmons: It's not. Yeah. It's more, it's more choice than anything else. And you, you can choose to say like, I'm not doing anything wrong, but it won't serve you. It won't serve you to see your diagnosis as a punishment. And it won't serve you to say, I'm unwilling to change because without change, you can't expect change.
Julie Michelson: Well, if you keep doing what got you sick in the first place, it doesn't, this doesn't make sense. There's no, there is no pill for that. There's just not
Jen Simmons: And you can't get sick in the same environment. You can't get well in the same environment that you got sick. And so, you know, it does, it does require change. And [Page//00:34:00] I would say that the vast majority of people, even though it's very hard on the front end, on the back end, they're grateful.
Julie Michelson: Oh,
Jen Simmons: They're grateful for the health that they have after
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Jen Simmons: because it's better than the health that they ever knew before.
Julie Michelson: Yep. And we normalize how we feel until we hit that wall, right? Drop the balls, can't walk across the room, whatever. And then when we get to the other side, it's amazing.
Jen Simmons: in many ways we're forced to, right? Because we go to the doctor and we told that we're fine.
Julie Michelson: Right.
Jen Simmons: And, and look at what conventional medicine has done. I mean, we have extended the standard range of what's normal so, so vastly because we don't know how to help people until they fail.
And so we just call more of it [Page//00:35:00] normal and we normalize,
Julie Michelson: Well, they're using normal as, as really average. So do you want to be the average of this really sick society we're living in? No, I don't. No, thank you.
Jen Simmons: For sure. I'm with you. I don't. I don't.
Julie Michelson: I want to and I promise I won't keep you to too much longer. But I really want to touch on, you know, we talked about that early detection is not prevention.
Um, what are your thoughts on, you know, the, the way women mammograms.
Jen Simmons: you want to talk about mammograms.
Julie Michelson: I do. I want to talk about mammograms. Spit it out, Julie. Just go there.
Jen Simmons: so our mammographic screening program, which was developed in the 1970s, is built on a premise. The premise is that breast cancer starts at some small size. [Page//00:36:00] And progresses in a linear manner, at which point it reaches some critical mass that you are now vulnerable to metastasis.
And if we find that breast cancer in that window before it's reached that critical mass, we can decrease the amount of treatment people need to get and save lives. It's a lovely theory. It just doesn't happen to be true. Breast cancer is what it is from the beginning. So if it's going to be an aggressive process, it's aggressive from the very start.
It doesn't grow in some linear fashion and then become aggressive. It starts aggressive. At the same time, if it's not going to be an aggressive process, it's not going to be an aggressive process ever, ever. So it may like meander along and it may grow, but it's never going to [Page//00:37:00] metastasize. And then we have everything in between.
So here's the bottom line, no matter how many women that we screen every year, we have same number of women presenting with later stage mammograms. We have the same number of women presenting with later stage cancers, and we have the exact same number of women who die every year of breast cancer, no matter how many people we screen.
So if screening really saves lives, why aren't we impacting that bottom line? Why aren't we able to prevent those same women from presenting with later stage disease? Why aren't we able to decrease the number of women each year that die from breast cancer? And it's because breast cancer does [Page//00:38:00] not grow in a linear fashion.
And there are some other problems with mammogram. So I never really understood using a test that causes cancer to screen for cancer.
Julie Michelson: say it again, please.
Jen Simmons: So it never really made sense in my head.
Julie Michelson: Right.
Jen Simmons: And the problem is now, now we have recommendations to start every woman, every woman at 40. We've had them from the inception of my career.
So I, I started practice in 2003 and. We were the American Cancer Society was recommending a screen at 35 one between 35 and 40 and then 40 on yearly and that's how I practice medicine when we when we started when we did the actual research on the safety of mammographic screening. We were talking about a 2d mammogram.
[Page//00:39:00] And since 2012, we're no longer talking about 2d mammograms. We're talking about 3d mammograms or, or tomography, and this is, or digital breast tomosynthesis. That's what it's called dbt, digital breast tomosynthesis. And this is two to three times more radiation. Now we justified it because we said we were going to cut the callback rate.
So the callback rate before was around 60%. Now, the callback rate is 50%. So we decreased it by 10%. In the meantime, people who are getting callbacks, they're not just having one mammogram a year and they're not just getting one callback a year. Because once you start in that callback cycle, you're called back every six months and you're called back for years on end, right?
Three, four. It's not unusual for women to get called back for [Page//00:40:00] three or four years every six months. Well, what's happening with these women over a lifetime? Because supposedly mammograms are saving lives. So if mammograms saves one life in 10, 000 over someone's lifetime, we're causing seven cancers in that 10, 000.
So we're causing more cancers from the radiation than lives we're saving. So our mammographic screening program needed to be abandoned many, many years ago. But the problem is... It makes a lot of sense, but the mammographic screening program makes a lot of dollars and it's not going anywhere. So
Julie Michelson: And women are scared and
Jen Simmons: women are scared, of course,
Julie Michelson: to do.
Jen Simmons: listen, the one thing that has been beaten into our heads for the last 50 years is mammograms save lives, right?
[Page//00:41:00] Who is unringing that bell? Mammograms save lives. People are scared to not get a mammogram. I hear this every single day. I don't want to get a mammogram, but I'm scared. listen, they did their job. Like they have convinced people that we need mammograms to save our lives, but it's simply not true. Just like the premise that the mammogram is built on is not true.
Mammograms are not saving lives. They are causing way more harm than lives we save. So I, I hate to pose a problem without giving people a solution. So here it is, here it is. All those things that we talked about already, breast health is health, right? So eating in an anti inflammatory way, moving your body, um, Uh, prioritizing sleep, avoiding toxins, living purposefully, [Page//00:42:00] managing stress.
All those things are super important. I think breast examination is super important. I think that everyone should know their body, know what it looks like, know what it feels like so that you can recognize a change if there is one. And if you need a diagnostic study, get a diagnostic study. If you are getting an x ray, a mammogram, a CAT scan, a DEXA scan, a PET scan, you're getting any of those things that utilize ionizing radiation, take 100 milligrams of melatonin one to two hours before your study to combat the effects.
Of radiation to neutralize those free radicals that are generated when you have radiation.
Julie Michelson: I love the solution focused.
Jen Simmons: Yeah. Now I do want to, I do want to talk about one more thing because there is FDA approved [Page//00:43:00] imaging. It is a novel imaging technique. It is 40. It has 40 times the resolution of MRI. There is no radiation. It is fast. It is painless. And it will replace MRI and mammogram. It's called QT Imaging. It is only available now at eight centers on the West Coast.
But I am opening up a center. I have colleagues that are opening up centers. And within the next five years, I hope that it will be readily available for everyone who wants to screen in a way that doesn't cause cancer. That is the definitive study, and if you have a normal QT scan, the, the imaging is so definitive that you do not need another study for [Page//00:44:00] two years. That's how sensitive and specific it is.
Julie Michelson: Amazing.
Jen Simmons: stay tuned for QT imaging coming to a town near you.
Julie Michelson: I'll be, I'll be coming to Philly soon. Um, no, it's, it's fantastic. And you cut, we covered, I promised I would, I would not make this a three hour interview, even though it's so rich.
Jen Simmons: We can be rich roll for the day.
Julie Michelson: I love it. I just is. It's exciting. I get excited. Of course, I'm such a geek anyway, but I really do. I get excited every time I meet a doctor that's changing the conversation and actually, you know, not bashing anybody, but Oh, baby,
Jen Simmons: I have a visitor.
Julie Michelson: um, you know, really providing solutions and new innovative approaches that work.
Um, and so I just am really [Page//00:45:00] grateful. For, for what you are doing for your patients,
Jen Simmons: Well, thank you so much for having me here. Hi. Um, I am on a mission to change the impact of breast cancer. And I just want people to know that health is achievable attainable, but it's up to you. Right. We can't, we can't farm out our health anymore. We can't look to someone to make us healthy. The only person that can make us healthy is, is right here inside of us.
Um, and. mammogram is not going to save you. Um, and the one thing that we didn't talk about today is that breast cancer is not caused by estrogen. Estrogen is
Julie Michelson: I wanted to talk about that.
Jen Simmons: Yeah. So let's just suffice to
Julie Michelson: touch on it. Let's touch on it, though, because I that's another scare tactic. Like [Page//00:46:00] people are afraid of hormone replacement therapy. Um, and so can we talk about that for a minute?
Jen Simmons: absolutely. So the, the reason that people are afraid of hormone replacement therapy is because of the, the women's health initiative
Julie Michelson: Yes,
Jen Simmons: So prior to that, nearly everyone was placed on hormone replacement. And so we decided to design a study, the biggest of its kind. I forget how many, I think it was like a 3 billion study.
So an unprecedented amount of money was placed towards this study. And the study that the lead researcher was a cardiologist and this study was powered to determine if hormone replacement protects against cardiovascular disease. So, first of all, people are under the impression [Page//00:47:00] that it was to determine if hormone replacement causes breast cancer.
That was not the intention of the study. That was a secondary outcome. It's not the intention of the study. Now we know that the vast majority of health deterioration that happens in menopause happens in the first 10 years. The average age of menopause in this country is 52. The average age of women on that study in the Women's Health Initiative was 63.
These women are 10 years past menopause. They have already developed heart disease. They have already had bone loss. They have already had brain deterioration. And then we put them, and then we randomized them to women with a uterus getting synthetic estrogen and progesterone, women
Julie Michelson: keyword synthetic.
Jen Simmons: [Page//00:48:00] yeah, synthetic, women without a uterus getting estrogen alone, and then the group that wasn't getting anything.
Now, it turns out that the group that wasn't getting anything, some of them had actually been on hormone replacement prior. So in that group that wasn't getting anything, they had a lower than normal, um, breast cancer occurrence, right? It was below the predicted number in the population. And that is because hormone replacement is actually protective.
Now, the other group that we saw that hormone replacement is productive is in the estrogen alone group. They also had less breast cancer, less heart disease, less everything. And there was only one group where they thought they saw an [Page//00:49:00] increase in breast cancer. After two years, they stopped the study because they saw an increase in breast cancer in this group.
Here's the problem. Breast cancer has like a 10 year growth history. So these women already had breast cancer when they came into the study and it has nothing to do with the hormone replacement. So the results of that study were, they were released prematurely before they could validate their findings.
As it turns out, their findings were invalid and a retraction paper was printed. No one read it.
Julie Michelson: Yeah.
Jen Simmons: and, and the truth is that generations of women have suffered. Because of that false conclusion of that study. So what I advise [Page//00:50:00] everyone to do is when you are in that perimenopausal phase, have your hormones evaluated. I don't believe anyone should suffer. My good friend, Annika Becca, told me that menopause is mandatory, but suffering is optional.
No one should suffer. So if you are having eye flashes, mood disturbance, a loss of libido, vaginal symptoms, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, if you're having any of those things, you should be evaluated for hormone replacement. Now, I don't do that in isolation. At the same time that I'm evaluating people for hormone replacement, I'm also making sure that their diet is on point, that they're moving, that they're prioritizing sleep and not choosing to binge watch TV all night long, that they are.
Avoiding all of these [Page//00:51:00] environmental toxins and Xeno estrogens that we are surrounded by that they are managing stress and building their stress management toolbox. So I'm not just writing prescriptions for hormone replacement. I'm making sure that people are prioritizing their health and then getting the supplementation that they need in terms of hormone replacement.
Right. And some,
Julie Michelson: you use only bioidentical hormones.
Jen Simmons: I do, I use bioidentical
Julie Michelson: You don't want to give your, your patients the horse hormones. And I love horses. I have horses, but, but I'm not a horse. I just
Jen Simmons: but I actually don't think that that's why, I mean, they did use synthetic hormones in that study, but I don't think that that's why they saw the results, and I think subsequent studies have been done with both bioidentical and synthetic hormones, and we still do not see an increased risk of [Page//00:52:00] breast cancer due to hormone replacement.
So, but there are bioidentical hormone replacement options readily available in, in any pharmacy. So it's not like you have to go to a compounding pharmacy. I mean, these things are readily available. So there's really no reason not to use the bioidentical form.
Julie Michelson: You just, it's, it's whole health is what I heard you say, right? Again, that's not a quick fix either. There is no quick fix.
Jen Simmons: there is no quick
Julie Michelson: of it.
Jen Simmons: And people on hormone replacement will doing all those things will still get breast cancer because we cannot control everything in the environment. But this is what I'll say about that. We know that the women on hormone replacement who get breast cancer have better outcomes.
Julie Michelson: Yes,
Jen Simmons: And they do. And it's probably, uh, [Page//00:53:00] twofold. It's probably because hormone replacement is actually protective, and it was doing the best that it could do. And, um, Oh my god, I totally lost my train of thought.
Julie Michelson: that's okay. Women on hormone replacement therapy tend to do better even if they have
Jen Simmons: Oh, yeah. And because women on hormone replacement tend to take better care of themselves. So they tend to be in better health. And so I am a firm believer in hormone replacement. I can't say this enough times. It does not cause breast cancer. Don't come back at me and say, but my, my cancer is driven by estrogen.
Guess what? Normal breast cells are driven by estrogen. Like it is normal to have estrogen receptors on breast cells. It is normal to have progesterone receptors on breast cells. So that is not what's [Page//00:54:00] driving your cancer. What's driving your cancer is the inflammation, is the xenoestrogens, is all, are all the health disruptors that are in your life.
You're so much better off looking for them than taking away all of the estrogen in your body, which is how we respond to it. And in doing that, we create heart disease. We create Alzheimer's, we create osteoporosis, things that claim way more lives than breast cancer. We are going about it wrong and we have to change, we have to change our paradigm because we are hurting people that first do no harm went way out the window.
Julie Michelson: this is just so good. People need to hear it. I'm like, how many times can I release this? People hear it. Amazing. [Page//00:55:00] So here's your opportunity. I always get surprised because I know you have a really long list to pull from, but what is one step listeners can take today to start to move the needle on their health?
Jen Simmons: Yeah. Our biggest exposure to the outside world is through what we enjoy. Absolutely. Changing your diet is step one and making sure that you are on an anti inflammatory diet, whatever that is for you. We are all bio identical and what works for me may not work for you, but yeah, we are all bio and oh, sorry.
I said bio identical. I'm, I'm still in my hormone
Julie Michelson: stuck on the hormone. It's all good.
Jen Simmons: So we are all bio individual and we are not all going to have the same diet. However, processed food is bad for everyone. Sugar is bad for everyone. Like we, we know there are things that are just [Page//00:56:00] not good for you and the sooner you can get them out of your diet, the better off you will be.
So I think that that is the most important thing and the first place that everyone should start.
Julie Michelson: I love it. Awesome.
Jen Simmons: Thank you for picking up on my bio identical, bio individual thing.
Julie Michelson: That's what I'm here for.
Jen Simmons: I would hate, I would hate everyone to think that I'm saying that everyone should eat the same thing.
Julie Michelson: I love that. Where is, and everything is going to be in the show notes, but for people that listen on the go, like I do, where's the best place for listeners to find you?
Jen Simmons: So, uh, my website is RealHealthMD. Uh, and there, if you want to talk to me, you can apply for a call. Uh, you can follow me on social media. I'm Dr. Jen Simmons and my Jen has two N's. Um, and I actually have a Facebook group, a public Facebook group where you can ask questions and be part of our community.[Page//00:57:00]
It's called keeping abreast with Dr. Jen.
Julie Michelson: Love it. Amazing. Dr. Jen, thank you so much. This was just packed with, I mean, just people could listen to any snippet and really get so much value out of it. So I'm just very grateful for your time.
Jen Simmons: It's my pleasure. I'm so happy to be here and happy to be with someone who wants to spread the same message that, you know, breast health is health and we are in control of our health.
Julie Michelson: Amen. For everyone listening, remember you can get the transcripts and show notes by visiting inspiredliving. show. I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I'll see you next week.
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Dr. Jenn Simmons, MD
Functional Medicine Physician
Dr Jenn Simmons is a board certified breast cancer surgeon who following her own bout with autoimmune disease found functional medicine. So enthralled by creating health rather than managing symptoms, she left her prestigious career at 50 and opened Real Health MD, a functional medicine oasis for anyone with breast cancer looking to reclaim their health.
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