Introduction and Guest Welcome

Speaker 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome back to Hashimoto's Nutrition RX. I'm your host, Natalia Sands, a Hashimoto's dietitian and the founder of All-Purpose Nutrition. If you currently have breast cancer, you're in remission or worried about a loved one, or you simply want to protect your own health, please stay and listen to this episode. I'm sitting down with Jen Simmons, an integrative oncologist and thought leader in women's health to unpack how autoimmunity, hormones, and inflammation all tie together and what that means for your thyroid, your metabolism, and your long-term breast health. We'll talk about the real root causes behind rising breast cancer rates, how nutrition and lifestyle can become your strongest prevention tools, and how new radiation-free breast cancer options, screening, are changing the way women protect their health. If you're ready to understand your hormones and do a deep dive level and feel empowered instead of fearful, this episode is for you. Dr. Jen Simmons, thank you so much for being here. It's such an honor to have you. It's my pleasure. I'm happy to be here. Yes, we're so lucky for you to dedicate this whole hour to this podcast. Now, for those people who are listening or watching that don't know you, I would like to read an official bio because I think it's very impressive of the footprint you're leaving in the women's health world. Dr. Jen Simmons, a pioneering force in the world of breast cancer care, once a renowned breast cancer surgeon, Dr. Jen transformed her practice after her own journey as a patient, becoming an integrative oncologist with the mission to revolutionize breast cancer diagnosis treatment and screening. Dr. Jen is the author of the best-selling book, The Smart Women's Guide to Breast Cancer, held as a must-read for anyone navigating this challenging journey. As a host of the insightful podcast, Keeping Abreast with Dr. Jen, she shares her expertise and passion for holistic health. Dr. Jen's innovative approach does not stop there. As a founder of Perfection Imaging, she's establishing safe imaging centers across the nation, armed with revolutionary technology that promises to redefine breast cancer screening. Dr. Jen, again, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 2 2:34

It's my pleasure.

Dr. Jen Simmons' Personal Journey

Speaker 2:36

You have had a remarkable journey from breast surgeon to integrative oncologist and innovator, I'd say, in breast imaging. And your work is timely for the women in my practice who are managing autoimmunity, thyroid dysfunction, and hormone imbalances. So I would love to start by asking you about your journey. Could you share a little bit about your personal and professional journey? What led you from working as a conventional breast surgeon into this integrative root cause space of oncology and woman hormones health?

The Shift to Functional Medicine

Understanding the Root Causes of Breast Cancer

Speaker 2 3:13

Yeah. So I think, you know, what led me to the breast cancer space in general is probably what propelled me to where I am today. So I come from a breast cancer family. I think most people who are very mission-driven, there's a reason behind it, right? I think, especially in the cancer world, most people are motivated by personal experience. And that's what drew them to that space. So I come from a breast cancer family growing up. I had a first cousin. Her name was Linda Creed. She was a singer-songwriter in the 1970s and 1980s. She wrote all the music for the spinners and the stylistics. I am very much dating myself. Her most famous song was The Greatest Love of All. So she wrote that song in 1977 as the title track to the movie The Greatest, starring Muhammad Ali, but it really received its acclaim in March of 1986 when Whitney Houston would release that song to the world. And at that time, it would spend 14 weeks at the top of the charts. Only my cousin Linda would never know. Linda died of metastatic breast cancer just one month after Whitney released that song. I was 16 years old, and my hero died. Her life and ultimately her death gave birth to my life's purpose because I never wanted another woman, another family, another community to have to suffer the way that mine suffered. And so I did the only thing I knew how to do. I became a doctor, the first doctor in my family. I became a surgeon. I became the first fellowship-trained breast surgeon in Philadelphia, the first oncoplastic surgeon in Pennsylvania. And I did that really well and for a really long time. And I did it long enough for my aunt to be diagnosed, and long enough for my mother to be diagnosed. And with all the writing on the walls, I'm about 15 years into my career. And arguably at the top of my career, and one of the most high-functioning people you'll ever know. And I went from being that to being someone who couldn't walk across the room because I didn't have the breath in my body. And so I had this really intensive three-day workup. And at the end of the three days, I find myself sitting in the office of my friend and colleague and physician. And he tells me that I need surgery and chemo and radiation and all the things that I said all day, every day, without hesitation or reservation. And yet, when these words are coming at you, I can assure you they have different meaning. And despite the fact that this was what I did, and despite the fact that I knew that this was the gold standard, I could not silence the voice in my head which was telling me that there was something more. Go find it. And I went on a journey, a healing journey, which was a completely selfish, how am I going to figure this out for me journey? And all the while I was still working as a surgeon and still treating breast cancer conventionally, just knowing that treatment paradigm wasn't right for me. And so I am very much a believer that all of our challenges are there for a reason and that we are meant to learn from them. And I believe that God is good. And in very short order, I found myself sitting in a room and this tall, lanky guy walks on the stage and he introduces himself as a functional medicine physician. Now I'm about 20 years into my career at this point, and still very cynical despite what is happening with me. And all I could think of at the time was there's no such thing as a functional medicine physician. So I don't know what this quack is talking about. And then I remember that I was sick and I was there for a reason. So I checked that big fat ego at the door and I tune in and thank God I did. Because on that day, I would exactly why I got sick so that I could be there in that room, in that seat, on that day, listening to this man speak. Because what he was going to tell me was not only going to change how I was going to heal, but it was going to change the trajectory of the rest of my professional life. Because what I learned on that day is that in medicine, we're focused on the wrong thing. We're entirely focused on symptoms and not what's driving the symptoms. And in the world of cancer, the tumor is not the problem. The tumor is the symptom of the problem. But in conventional medicine, all of our focus is on the tumor. All of our focus is on killing. The tumor is a part of you. It's the part of you that's saying, This isn't working. And so I am an enthusiast, I'm an early adopter, and I'm a quick start. So that day I enrolled in the Institute for Functional Medicine, and I spent the next three years just submerged in the study of functional medicine. And I came out on the other side and knew that although I knew my contribution was in the area of breast cancer, what I was doing as a surgeon was not enough. And although I was performing a great service to a few people, I treated a couple hundred women every year. Because unless you really fundamentally change how you live after your diagnosis from how you lived before your diagnosis, nothing's going to change. Nothing's going to prevent the tumor from coming back. Nothing's going to prevent the next manifestation of the disease. For me, I knew that if I was going to not help thousands, but help millions, I had to step onto a different stage. And so at the age of 50, arguably at the top of my career, I stepped onto a different stage. And I opened Real Health MD, which is a functional medicine practice geared towards helping women with a breast cancer diagnosis to restore their health. And now I have shifted my practice even further to that woman who has been treated for breast cancer and now needs help. She needs hormonal help. And she's not getting it anywhere else. And so I have also redefined how we screen for breast cancer, and I'm sure we're going to talk about that. Because right now, every step along the way in our healthcare system is geared towards making you a patient. And I want to redefine what healthcare is. I want to redefine what healthcare does because what we should be doing is promoting health. And are people going to be perfect? No, of course they're not. Will there still be disease and dysfunction? Yes. But the power lies in the people. And that is what has been robbed from us. We have been sold this bill of goods that somehow we are to farm our health out to doctors and hospitals and pharmaceuticals. And our goal and their goals are not the same. Their goals are to keep you as a customer. That's how they make money. Doctors don't make money if you're healthy. Hospitals don't make money if you're pharmaceuticals, don't make money unless you have dysfunction. And our goal is not to have our symptoms managed. Our goal is to be healthy and well. So our goals are not aligned. And please know that I am not detracting from the original goal and intention of providers. Because doctors and nurses don't go into those fields to make money, right? No one starts off in a career in medicine saying, I'm going to be filthy rich. Like that. No one. First of all, you would have to be a fool. And second of all, that's not the person that goes into medicine. The person that goes into medicine truly wants to help people. And I don't think that's any different down the road. But the problem is our medical system doesn't want to help people. Our medical system can only survive with people who are sick. Right. And so they become a part of a broken system.

Link Between Thyroid Dysfunction and Breast Cancer

Speaker 12:23

Dr. Jen, this is such a powerful personal story and transition. And I think it resonates deeply with so many women in my community that have Hashimoto's, because I see the same realization when clients recognize that conventional care often treats symptoms, but rarely ask why the immune system, in our case, become dysregulated in the first place, right? The same root causes that trigger autoimmunity, like chronic inflammation, nutrient depletion, gut imbalances, can also set the stage for cellular changes elsewhere in the body, leading to overgrowth of the cells that creates that tumor. So, in your experience, what are the some of the shared underlying mechanisms between maybe autoimmune disorders like Hashimoto's and cancer? For example, like I said, maybe immune regulations, inflammation, or gut microbiome imbalance. Yeah.

Holistic Health: Beyond Breast Cancer

Speaker 2 13:26

Anytime that you have Hashimoto's, right, you have that autoimmune triad. So you have gut permeability, right? Intestinal permeability, and you have some kind of genetic component, genetic predisposition. And then you have whatever inflammatory trigger that is, right? So that is true also in breast cancer. So we see a lot of that dysfunction that leads to inflammation and chronic inflammation is definitely a risk factor for breast cancer. But there is a direct connection between thyroid dysfunction, hypothyroidism, and breast cancer. There's also a connection between hyperthyroidism and breast cancer. And that is because the thyroid is our master metabolic hormone, right? And so either way, if you have dysfunction there, and I don't care what you say, you cannot take out someone's thyroid either surgically or from a disease standpoint, give them thyroid hormone replacement and have it be the same. It's just impossible to provide the kind of balance that would come from a properly functioning thyroid. It just is impossible. We can try and we can manage labs so that it looks like it's working, but I'll tell you that the number of women who come to me with breast cancer who also have thyroid disease is enormous. Nearly all of them, at least 75%. At least 75%. And that's because breast cancer is a metabolic disorder. So when you have metabolic dysfunction, the end of that metabolic dysfunction spectrum isn't just diabetes, it's breast cancer. And so we think about the things that may predispose us to breast cancer with thyroid dysfunction, and one of them is hypothermia. So if your body temperature isn't what it's supposed to be, then you are susceptible to chronic infections, right? And chronic infections lead to chronic inflammation, which sets the stage for breast cancer. And we actually do see organisms that are associated with the development of breast cancer. Like we see the microbiome of the breast has certain organisms in abundance when breast cancer is present. So there's the thermoregulatory part of it. And then there is also the direct metabolic effect because when you don't have good metabolic health, and let's face it, Americans in general don't have good metabolic health. Part of it is because of thyroid dysfunction, and part of it is diet and lifestyle and that kind of thing. But we're talking about less than 10% of Americans having good metabolic health, right? That is a frightening statistic. So we have the stage set for breast cancer. And it's because we are not thinking about overall health. We're not thinking about promoting overall health. We are still siloed into we go to this person for our heart and this person for our gut and this person for our immune system. And we're spreading it all around. And no one is backing up 10 steps and saying, How healthy is this person? And what is happening in this system in it in its entirety? And I always say, breast health is health. And the same things that you're going to do to have healthy breasts are also going to give you a healthy brain, healthy heart, healthy gut, healthy bones, healthy joints, healthy skin, healthy bladder, healthy vagina, like everything. Because breast health is health. And the providers aren't taught that. And people don't know that. And we've been trained to be really useful idiots. Like we just have been very much trained that just live your life and don't worry about the implications of what you're doing today and what they might cause tomorrow. And we just don't live our lives focused on health. And that's why we spend the last 20 years riddled with disease.

Speaker 18:21

And this overlap is absolutely striking, I think. And in Hashimotis, we know that, like you said, intestinal permeability, aka leaky gut, dysbiosis, this chronic inflammation can overstimulate the immune system. Those same imbalances, like you said, can also create this oxidative stress that drives abnormal cell growth. And when we rebuild the gut health, calm the immune systems through everything, we're not just talking about addressing breast health. We're addressing everything, improved gut health, immune system. We're not just supporting the thyroid, we're actively lowering the risk factors that affect the whole body, including our breast. And going to the point that you said, we are just trained, not just as providers, clinical practitioners, but also as patients to concentrate or to micromanage one thing. Oh, if your gut is hurting, oh, let's get new supplements, let's treat this. What about the vagus nerve? What about your sleep cycle? It all connects to your gut. So we micromanaging certain organs or doing just a liver detox. What about your brain detox? What about shutting off Instagram and digital detox? What about other kinds of detoxes? So we need to stop micromanaging our body and look at it as the whole, just like you do in your practice. When you're working with women who have a history of autoimmune thyroid disorder, either hypo or hyperthyroidism, how often do you see a hormone or immune system issue that's showing up in their breast tissue? And how do you treat those people differently?

Speaker 2 20:12

I treat everyone the same in that I'm always asking the question, why do you have breast cancer? The same way that if you come to me with autoimmune disease, I ask, why do you have autoimmune disease? So I'm not looking to manage a lab, right? I'm looking to say, why is that lab abnormal? So many people say to me, How do I lower my CRP? How do I lower my homocysteine? And we're trained to say, like, this is abnormal, this is what you take, this is how it will, and so you have to help people to understand that something is causing this dysfunction, and just writing the lab is not going to help you. But we have a so much unlearning to do because think about like I don't know what the statistic is, but there's millions and millions of people on statins, millions, and they have been lulled into this false sense of security. That number is lower than it was before. That must be a good thing. And no one asked the question did I lower my risk of cardiovascular disease? Because the answer is no. No. You did not lower your risk of cardiovascular disease. You lowered your cholesterol, but you didn't lower your risk of cardiovascular disease, right? So we have shifted all of the goals, and this happens in the cancer space in a horrible way. But we've shifted the goals. We've created these surrogate endpoints, right? Instead of are we lowering the risk of heart disease? We're shifting the endpoint to are we lowering cholesterol? Yes, we accomplished our goal, even though no one got healthier. And in the area of cancer and chemotherapy, we have shifted that endpoint from survival to did we make the tumor smaller? So if we make the tumor smaller, that's considered a success, and those medicines get approved, and then people pay thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars because even though insurance is paying for it, our premiums have become absolutely unaffordable so that our insurance can pay for these ridiculous medicines that don't improve survival. They may shrink the tumor, but the people still die afterwards. It comes back. It comes right because we're not addressing it shrinks, but then creates resistant cells and it just comes roaring right back. So in shifting these endpoints, we create the illusion of success. People trust that, but then they're not any better, they're not any healthier. I'll go back to the statins because when you take a statin, you increase your risk of metabolic disease by 63%. Now, when we look at metabolic disease in the context of breast cancer, we know that if you have metabolic dysfunction, you are more likely to get breast cancer, you're more likely to get an aggressive form of breast cancer, you're more likely to be treatment resistant, you're more likely to have a recurrence, and you're more likely to have metastatic disease. So in taking that statin that's creating the metabolic dysfunction, you've actually increased your risk for getting breast cancer and dying of breast cancer. Oh wow. Yeah. And this is just one example. Levithyroxin is another example because it makes your labs look better, but you're not better.

Speaker 24:25

Most people taking thyroid medication only improves that number. It makes your lab look normal. Yes, nothing else improves. Your hair is still falling out, you still have gut dysbiosis, still have a ton of food sensitivities, you're still cold, your bone density is not there anymore. Yes.

Impact of Lifestyle Choices on Health

Speaker 2 24:43

Because it's the wrong endpoint. It's a surrogate endpoint. It's the wrong endpoint. So we need to in that person ask why is it there? Where is the autoimmunity coming from? What's the stimulus? What's driving it? And that's not happening. Now, with you, it's happening. And I think the conversations are starting to happen. And I think people are starting to ask why, but not everyone is awake. And for sure, inside of conventional medicine, it's not happening. They're not getting better.

Speaker 25:21

Like you said, a lot of people are awake, the conversations that are happening, but there's so much information right now that it's overpowering. It's confusing. Some of that information is not accurate, especially like with the thyroid disorders, because it's fairly, yes, we've known about this disease for over 100 of years, but we still have one treatment is levothyroxin, and of course, natural desiccated thyroid hormone. But that's all we have done in 100 years. So we have not advanced. So now that everybody's coming up with these new treatments that are not approved or just maybe not don't work for everything. So people are listening, but it's so overwhelming that they're, I think people are more confused now, more than ever, because there's not one source. Like I love that you're providing, you have a book and a podcast and social media platforms, and you truly address a person from every angle, from every perspective. And I think this conversation is very important. Even if you don't have any kind of breast health issues, I think we're talking everything that we're talking, all the approaches that we're gonna bring up, anybody can implement them to improve overall health without question. Without question, because breast health is health, right?

Speaker 2 26:43

Now, if you are suffering in some way and you do have dysfunction, there may be you can have all the foundational things in place and still have mold in your basement, right? And still have metal amalgams in your mouth or root canals that are chronically infected. So there may be some things that are specific to you that you need to work on, but the foundational things will get you 80% of the way without question.

Speaker 27:23

Absolutely. No, we started talking about thyroid hormones. Let's talk more specifically about T3, T4, and TSH and how they interact with our female sex hormones, our estrogen, progesterone, when it comes to breast health tissue. What should women understand about that crosstalk?

Speaker 2 27:45

Yeah, so your female hormones are not going to work well in the absence of thyroid hormone. So you may find that with your thyroid dysfunction, you're also experiencing more of the symptoms of menopause. Because again, your thyroid hormone helps to facilitate the function of your sex hormones, your estrogen, your progesterone. And so it is very important. Of course, if you need the thyroid hormone corrected, you need the thyroid hormone corrected. But I I see it all as one thing. I'm not doing them all at once in terms of correction, but I know that if I have someone with thyroid dysfunction, I'm gonna correct that first, figure out where it's coming from, help people to correct it. And you have to check it again and again because it's going to change as you clean up the gut, as you work on all of the lifestyle pieces, it will improve and you're gonna need less and less hormone replacement. But also, that is also true of women who are on menopausal hormone replacement. Because as you optimize the thyroid, you're also going to need less of the menopausal hormone replacement because it will work better. Receptors will work better and everything will function better.

The Importance of Thyroid and Hormone Balance

Speaker 29:30

Absolutely. I always tell my clients that thyroid sets the rhythm for every other hormone in your body. And when the thyroid hormone functions, is not only your thyroid can slow down, but if your levels are low, the liver's ability to metabolize like estrogen drops, which can lead to estrogen dominance. That's why a lot of my clients have estrogen dominance for that reason. So when I see symptoms like heavy cycles, water. Retention or even increased breast density. And I don't do physical exam on my clients. I'm a clinical registered dietitian, but they bring those symptoms up. They said, Oh my God, I just, I don't know why. I have heavy periods. I have increased breast density. And that sets like a little red flag or alarm in my brain and say, have you seen your OBGYN? Have you done the test? So it's not just hormonal, it's metabolic.

Speaker 2 30:28

Yeah. And it also, when you have thyroid dysfunction, you're going to have less progesterone production. And that is also going to feel like estrogen dominance because there's a constant balance between your estrogen and progesterone levels. And if estrogen is the on button, progesterone is the off button. And if you have thyroid dysfunction, you're you're probably going to have ovulatory dysfunction, which will lead to less progesterone production. And you're going to feel that imbalance. But you're very correct in saying that increased breast density does go along with all of this. And it happens as a result of inflammation, an increase in aromatization. So a shift from your progesterone to testosterone into estrogen. So you're going to produce more estrogen. And that is going to create more tissue stimulation. And yeah, thyroid dysfunction leads to a lot of downstream dysfunction for sure. And it is setting the stage for hormonal health one way or another and hormonal balance one way or another. So if you don't have the thyroid health, you are for sure going to have a complete imbalance in your hormones.

Speaker 31:53

And it's such a valuable perspective. And speaking of estrogen, I always looked at estrogen metabolites, right? That two-hydroxy versus 16-hydroxy ratio to understand how clients' body is processing hormones. And for those people who don't know the two-hydroxy versus 16-hydroxyestrogen ratio, it means how your body metabolizes estrogen essentially, how you detoxify and clear it, because everybody's doing this detox silly, I want to say stupid. And if that balance is oft, we can use nutrition strategies like cruciferous vegetables, flaxseeds, or like magnesium-rich foods to push detox down safer through those pathways. So it's a gentle but powerful way to support both like your thyroid and your breath health simultaneously. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 32:54

And I think that we also underappreciate our body's natural detox mechanisms, which are like the number of women who are not moving their bowels every single day, it's not nice to talk about pooping, and so no one does. And the truth is that's how we get rid of the majority of the toxins that come through our gut. Right? That is the major pathway. And no one wants to talk about it. But the bottom line is that if you are not pooping once, twice a day, your body is not getting rid of estrogen metabolites, all of the toxins that come in through your gut, they're just hanging around in your body and being recycled.

Speaker 33:44

The longer the stool sits in your colon, in your small intestines and large intestines, all those toxins get actually reabsorbed. It's not just not detoxifying, it gets reabsorbed and build up. And everyone, I would say 99% of people with Hashimoto's have this chronic constipation. We're talking about going to the bathroom three times a week.

Speaker 2 34:06

Yeah. Oh no, I'm much worse with that. And when you speak to these women and you ask them about their regularity, they're like, oh no, I'm regular. And I always have to push and say, what does that mean? I go every week. I'm like, oh, do you? Every week. And they've had a lifetime pattern of this. And this is what they call normal, right? This is normal to them, but it's not normal. And we've normalized it because we haven't talked about it. Because no one wants to talk about it because it's not sexy. It's not a conversation people want to have. Awkward conversations. We have to. I don't want to talk about it either. Actually, I don't mind talking about it.

Speaker 34:47

But I want to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah.

Alcohol and Breast Cancer Risk

Speaker 2 34:50

So this is something that just has to happen. And if it's not happening, you can make it happen. Like there are ways to train, and there are ways to eat, and making sure that you're drinking and all of that. And I can tell you from personal experience and from experience with thousands of patients at this point, this is something that you can correct, even if it was a lifetime issue. But you have to think about it and you have to make it a priority and you have to be aware of it. And most doctors are not talking to their patients about this. The other thing is sweating. Sweating is one of the major ways that we get rid of toxins through our skin, right? Making sure that you're sweating every single day, be it through exercise or if you're fortunate enough to have an infrared sauna or some kind of sauna or you can take a hot bath before you go to sleep at night, but some way of getting the toxins to come out through your skin. And then, of course, if you do it by exercise or sauna, please make sure that you get into a shower right afterwards and get rid of it instead of sitting around in your sweat and reabsorbing it into your system. So, like I tell my knucklehead boys who like come back from the gym and they're like, I want to eat. And I'm like, go take a shower. You can eat after your shower. And then the third thing that I think we're not talking about enough is what we're drinking. And I want to talk about two things with what we're drinking. First, the water that we're drinking, because we need to be filtering our water, and there's a lot to be filtering it for. So if you go to the EWG, the environmental working group, and you plug in your zip code, it can tell you what is in your water, in your zip code, and you have to filter it. And I generally recommend reverse osmosis water systems. And if you can't afford to do your whole house, but you can afford to do your kitchen, just make sure that you're drinking and cooking with that water. If you can afford to do your whole house, amazing. If all you can do is your kitchen and get a filtration for your shower head, okay, great. It's way better than nothing. If all you can afford to do is put a Berkey on your counter, put a Berkey on your counter and use that for drinking and for cooking. But the water that we drink, we have to drink good clean water. Have to. And the other thing is alcohol. Abstinence from alcohol is so important. We have completely normalized drinking. I understand it's ritualistic, it's social. I get it. I get all of it. And yet, especially as women, our livers are only capable of a finite amount of function. So every ounce of alcohol that you drink takes your liver eight hours to detox. And if it is busy detoxing the alcohol, because it will always prioritize what could kill you first, right? And alcohol is more toxic than your inherent hormones and even more toxic than the xenoestrogens that we're encountering every day in, day out. So your liver is always going to prioritize the alcohol, which means that it's not going to get through the xenotoxins. It's not going to get through your estradiol and estriol. It's not going to get through any of the other things that we consider normal in its daily jobs. So it's like the washing machine. It can only do so many loads in a day. So if you're putting more in the laundry pile, then it can get through. What's going to happen with the laundry pile? It's just going to build. So there is no safe amount of alcohol for women. I'm sorry, I know. Like I'm such a buzzkill. But there just isn't. And I'm not saying, are you going to never have another glass of champagne again in your life? No. But no more than one drink at a time, no consecutive days. And I stopped drinking over a year ago. But I generally tell my patients, first of all, I don't prescribe hormones to anyone who's drinking on a regular basis because it's impossible for me to know how to dose you because I can't predict what your liver is going to do, depending on what you're feeding it that day. And I tell my patients, if you're once in a while going to have a cocktail, don't take your hormones that day because your liver can't do both. Just can't. So that is one of the major reasons why we see women who drink alcohol on a regular basis are at a significantly increased risk for breast cancer because they're just becoming toxic. Becoming toxic because their liver just simply cannot keep up.

Speaker 40:13

So for somebody who's watching and listening, if they're doing everything right and they still feel like something is off, maybe try to avoid alcohol for a week or two or months and see if it makes a difference. Now, if you're only avoiding alcohol, but not doing all the other stuff, like you're only going to the bathroom once a week and you know, everything we talked about, it's also not gonna work. So you have to pick your battle, basically. It's hard to be healthy, it's hard to be unhealthy, it's hard. Just pick your hard. Do you want to be healthy? Yes, it's hard to do because there is so much we have to do that does become a second nature. So you don't have to think. And another thing, you don't have to do it all at once. You don't have to do ice bath and nasana and no drinking and this and that all at one day.

Speaker 2 41:08

That's right.

Debunking Breast Cancer Myths

Speaker 41:08

You don't just bring some things into your life, right? Yeah. Now we're talking about these great preventative strategies. But what are some of the biggest myths or maybe misunderstandings around breast cancer prevention? Are there any myths out there?

The Reality of Mammogram Screening

Speaker 2 41:27

First of all, I think the biggest myth is that mammograms save lives, right? Like we talk about mammograms in the same conversation with prevention when it doesn't belong there. It has nothing to do with prevention. First of all, it's if it's anything, it's maybe early detection, but it has nothing to do with prevention. And the statistics are that the more mammograms you have in your lifetime, the higher your risk is of developing breast cancer. Let that sink in. Right? Like the more mammograms you have, the higher the likelihood is that you're going to be diagnosed with breast cancer. There's a brilliant book by Gilbert Welch. I don't know if you read it, overdiagnosed. And he talks about all of these chronic diseases that we have really the these are the diseases of big business. Hypertension, lipid abnormalities, like elevated cholesterol, thyroid cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer. And these are major money makers for the system. And all of these have experienced a lowering of the threshold for who should get treated. And so we just continue looking harder and harder for these diseases or dysfunction or whatever you want to call it. And in translation, we are treating more and more people for these conditions. But what aren't we improving is survival. And there has never been a study that shows that screening with mammogram increases survival or improves survival. So just let that sink in. No matter how many mammograms we do every year, the same number of women die of breast cancer. No matter how many mammograms we do every year, the same number of women present with aggressive disease. And so all mammogram has become is like your ticket to get in. It's become the entry point to making you into a patient. Now I know so many women who get very upset when I talk about this, right? And I understand because, first of all, they've been told that for as long as they can remember that mammograms save lives, and this is including providers. Providers get very upset when I talk about this too, because they think that mammograms save lives. And everyone thinks that everyone else did the due diligence. But when you get down to it and look at the studies, when you look at 2,000 women screened for breast cancer over a 10-year period, the same exact number of women die of breast cancer in each group. There's no survival advantage. None. That's such an alarming statistic. It's horrible. It's horrible. And it's been proven time and time again in the entire population. So women aged 40 to 70 or 80, or whenever you think you age out of screening with mammogram. It's been proven in the young women population, the Canadian breast cancer screening study with women from 40 to 59 years old. And they looked at 90,000 women, 45,000 got mammogram, 45,000 did not. They just got physical exam every year. And the same exact number of women die of breast cancer in each group. And the only difference between the groups are that if you screen with mammogram, you're going to increase the number of women diagnosed with breast cancer by somewhere between 20 to 30 percent.

Speaker 45:33

So the diagnosis goes up, which is good, right? You find it earlier, hopefully, but the survival, your point is the survival rate does not change. So are we not screening early enough?

Self Breast Examination

Speaker 2 45:48

No, we are picking up disease that would have never become clinical disease. So this is the definition of overdiagnosing because we are giving a diagnosis to women who would have never developed the disease. And that's what screening does. If you use mammogram for screening. Now, mammogram is a 50-year-old technology, which I repeatedly say we need to stop putting lipstick on that pig. Right. We need to stop putting lipstick on that pig. Five years ago, there weren't other choices. There were no other options that were better, that were safer, that made sense, right? But now we have options. So when I talk about breast cancer screening, I talk about first of all doing self-breast examination. Because I think that no one is gonna know you better than you know yourself.

Speaker 46:49

Exactly.

Speaker 2 46:50

And your doctor or your provider who you see every year, they're not gonna remember. Oh, that's you, right? They're not gonna remember.

Speaker 46:59

So you know your baseline, and then you have to do it daily, weekly to see.

Speaker 2 47:05

I don't know if I would do it daily or weekly, but I would at least do it monthly. And I think it's important to examine yourself. I think it's important to look at yourself, to just make sure that nothing looks different and nothing feels different. But I don't want people like hysterical examining their breasts constantly. And I don't think that's necessary.

Speaker 47:26

Okay, what once a month? I actually I brought you into my shower as weird as it sounds, because I was watching your video.

Speaker 2 47:35

Okay, my husband will love that story.

Speaker 47:39

I was watching a video on Instagram, how to properly examine your breasts. And you said ideally you'd be in the shower because your hands are wet and you can feel everything. So I had my phone with you in the shower. Okay, good. Checking everything, raising my arm and going from the onset and down.

Introducing the ARIA Test

Speaker 2 47:58

But because it's funny because most people don't know how to examine their breasts. Maybe that's why they don't do it. But where they're doing it in this pet pad, and you want to smoothly run your hand around and take your time, enjoy the experience, enjoy the experience. So, yeah, so everyone should be doing self-breast examination. And then there is a test called the ARIA tears test. And I don't know if you've heard of this test, but this is a biologic, real-time breast cancer risk assessment. It's not a genetic test, it's not something that you do once in your lifetime, it's something that you do every year. And what it's measuring for is the inflammatory precursors of breast cancer. You take a tiny piece of litmus paper and you put it right inside of your eyelid, close your eye for five minutes, take the paper out, send it off to the company. A week and a half later, you get the result, and it's either normal or clinically significant. So, normal, I think you're done. If you have a normal exam and a normal ARIA test, I don't even think you need imaging. And this technology will be the determining factor of who does and who does not get imaging in the future. It has a 93% sensitivity, better than any screening method with the exception of MRI. So 93% of the time, if you have breast cancer, this test is picking it up. And then it has a 58% specificity, meaning that 58% of the time, if you don't have breast cancer, it's going to say you don't have breast cancer. But 42% of the time, if you don't have evidence of breast cancer, this test is going to be positive. But I tell people there is no such thing as a false positive on this test because it's not measuring for cancer, it's not measuring cancer cells, it's measuring inflammation. And if you have these inflammatory factors elevated, the S100A8 and S100A9 proteins, then you are at increased risk for developing breast cancer. And if you do nothing, within six months, you will have clinical disease. 11% will convert and have clinical disease. So this is your opportunity to take control of your health. And we're not accustomed to doing that because we haven't been trained. We have been trained to take ownership, but you can.

Speaker 50:36

Sometimes we don't know that there are options like this available. I know. That's why I'm so where exactly. So where do we get a test like that?

Innovative Breast Cancer Screening Technologies

Speaker 2 50:44

So this test is called the ARIA test, A-U-R-I-A. So it's aria.care. And if you use my code, which is Dr.Gen20, D-R-J-E-N-N, my gen has two ends, D-R-J-E-N-N-20, you'll get 20% off. It's a very affordable test. It is simple, easy at home, right? You can do it on anyone's schedule. And so I recommend that for anyone who does not have a diagnosis of breast cancer. If you have a history of breast cancer, we don't know if it is powered for recurrence or not. That's the next thing the company is going to work on. So we just don't have the answers yet. And so I don't recommend it for anyone who's had a history of breast cancer, but I recommend it for primary screening for everyone. And the company is recommending that you start at age 30. That's what their clinical trials are based on, 30 and up. But it's a hundred percent safe. So I don't worry about anyone taking this test. And you can take this test 10 times a year if you wanted, right? I don't think you have to. I don't think it's necessary. That would be totally over the top. But I do tell my BRACA mutation carriers, people with a genetic mutation that predisposes them, that makes them more likely to develop breast cancer, I tell them to do the test twice a year and just to really stay on top of your health and stay on top of your inflammation. So on the ARIA test. And then if you're going to do imaging or you have a clinically significant ARIA result, in addition to working on your inflammation, and one great way to work on your inflammation is to read my book, The Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer, and figure out where that inflammation is coming from and resolve it. But at my imaging centers at Perfection Imaging, we are using a technology to screen for breast cancer, which is 100% safe, painless, no compression, no radiation. It used to sound waves transmitted through a warm water bath. It's like a spa day for your breast. And we create true 3D reconstructions of the breast with about a 91% sensitivity and specificity. So it is excellent technology. I have no doubt that this is the screening of the future because I can't imagine why anyone would voluntarily radiate their breast for the purposes of screening for breast cancer. Like I don't get why we even used a test that causes cancer to screen for cancer. But then we have to remember our goals and the system's goals are not the same. Our goals are to be healthy, or they should be our goals. And the system's goals are to create patience and make money.

Speaker 53:54

Amazing. I think I will be seeing you in person in your clinic very soon, very soon, because I want to get a baseline of my breast tissue through non-radiation imaging. Because we always look for patterns. And I love seeing a baseline of somebody's blood work or thyroid ultrasound or in this case, imaging.

Speaker 2 54:29

And for the people that are coming for their QT the first time and they think that they're going to get all this information, you have to understand it's still imaging. First of all, no imaging is perfect. None. So there are things that QT will miss, there are things that Mammogram will miss, a lot of things that Mammogram will miss, there are things that even MR will miss, things that ultrasound will miss. So there's no perfect imaging. However, of all of the imaging modalities, QT is the safest, most accurate of all of them. Of all of them. Maybe MR has some diagnostic abilities that QT doesn't have, but MR is not 100% safe. And so I don't think that we should ever be compromising anyone's health for the purposes of screening. I just I think that it's unethical to compromise someone's health for the purposes of screening. Because what we're talking about in the screening population is normal, healthy women. And we should not be putting women in harm's way in order to screen for a disease. 100%. The problem with MR is the gadolinium. The gadolinium is a heavy metal, it's toxic. And the MR is useless without the gadolinium. So anyone who thinks that they're getting a non-contrast MR and that's an adequate screening, it's not. It's not now, Dr.

Speaker 56:03

Jen, somebody in the comment section asked about the code. Can you say the code again? Yes. And I'll put it in the chat.

Speaker 2 56:11

Actually, if you want me to, it wants me to connect. I don't know if I'm able to connect right now. But it's Dr. Jen20. So it's D-R-J-E-N-N-20. And the link to get your kit, it's aria.care. So it's Dr. Jen20. Yes. That's the code. Yes. And it's aria-a-ur-i-a.care. And it is available to everyone in the U.S. unless you live in New York.

Speaker 56:48

So I use a GI map stool test in my practice because that might biome. You cannot do that in New York. So with the workaround that we found, I ship the stool test kit from my office to somebody in New York, and then they can ship it out, but they cannot receive it. I don't know what kind of care that is. It's preventing you from doing stuff.

Speaker 2 57:13

Wait, do you know why? Do you know the reason why?

Speaker 57:17

I have I can speculate.

Speaker 2 57:19

Oh, I can tell you. It's a really simple thing. New York has a law that you cannot operate a lab in New York without New York's approval of said lab. So in order for New York to approve your lab, it's $500,000. And there's a two-year wait list apparently for the company.

Speaker 57:42

So it's all about money.

Speaker 2 57:44

It's all about money. And so you think about it, and these small startup companies that are trying to break into this market and compete with, let's say, a lab core or a quest or something like that. A half a million dollars to be able to participate with people in New York, it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. So it's horrible. And it's just another example of a reason why New York should be added to my needs to be annexed list.

Speaker 58:26

I'm so mad with New York because of that. That prevent they prevent from doing preventative care. They want to improve their microbiome, they want to treat chronic octas.

Speaker 2 58:37

Of course. But Diagnostic Solutions, which is the company that makes GI Map, doesn't want to pay a half a million dollars to New York. Or maybe they are willing to pay a half a million dollars and they're on the list of to be inspected and they're just waiting for their inspection. I will tell you that when things like this happen, like if Diagnostic Solutions does get on the New York accepted lab list, the problem is that $500,000 has to be paid for somehow. And I think that these functional testing companies are really trying to keep their products affordable. And it's silly rules like this that make it more difficult for these companies to keep their tests affordable if they have to pay these outlandish fees in order to participate in these different states.

Speaker 59:34

Yeah. And we're gonna, as consumers, as patients, we're gonna end up covering that. The test goes from whatever, $500 to $1,000. So you'll have less people finding the chronic infections, finding gut imbalances, not looking for cult protecting gut inflammation. So it's just a very sad time. But like I said, we found a way to work around it. So there's always a way.

Speaker 2 1:00:00

It's so what we do at Perfection is that when people come in, if they are from New York, we just have them do the ARIA test while they're here. Because in Pennsylvania, it's perfectly legal. Even if you're from New York, if you're in Pennsylvania taking the test in Pennsylvania, there's no issues at all. So we just have to, and it literally takes five minutes. So they just sit down and do it before their scan or after their scan. We have a beautiful waiting area, and it's very you're when you come here, you're just gonna be blown away. It is literally like a spa day. I have completely reinvented breast cancer screening and taken all of the trauma and all of the pain out of it. So yeah.

Practical Approaches to Reduce Breast Cancer Risk

Speaker 1:00:45

I love it. I'm actually looking forward to that experience. I want to see. Yes. So I will be seeing you in person, which is exciting. Yeah. Now, since we're already coming to the end of our podcast, I want to talk practical approaches. What are your top three habits you recommend for women who want to reduce their breast cancer risk naturally and maybe also support thyroid and autoimmune health?

Speaker 2 1:01:11

Yeah, absolutely. Because I'm always right, because breast health is health. And the same things that you're going to do for healthy breasts are going to give you a healthy everything, including your immune system. So 80% of our exposure to the outside world is through what we put in our mouth, what we eat and what we drink. 80% of our exposure to the outside world. People think, oh, my skin's my biggest organ. That's my biggest exposure. No. You eat how many times a day? You drink how many times a day. This is our biggest exposure to the outside world, and we have to be mindful of it. We are in a culture of convenience, and many of the things that we put in our mouth are not food. They may be food-like some substances, they are franken foods, but they are not food. And I'm even including people having their morning smoothie and adding their protein powders in and this and that. And I get it, like sometimes you need a little extra help, but please know sometimes your body doesn't know what that is because it's not recognized as food. Because our body recognizes the things that grew in the ground and fell from a tree and walked and swam and flew. That's what our body recognizes as food. And all the other stuff is noise. And maybe you have a little bit of noise, and maybe you have a lot of noise. If you have a lot of noise, you are not helping your body. Your body is in a heavy metal nightmare if you have a lot of noise in your diet. Okay. I hate heavy metal music. I like all music except for heavy metal. It's horrible.

Diet and Lifestyle Recommendations

Speaker 1:03:07

And heavy metals in the body. I was speaking literally and figuratively. Yes. Um and the fact that our bodies are not detoxing heavy metals naturally and normally and regularly. I think it's a big, it's a big problem.

The Importance of Purpose and Mindset

Speaker 2 1:03:25

So again, I don't get into the whole like, should you be a vegan? Probably not. Should you be a carnivore? Definitely not. Like, I'm not getting into the diet wars. What I am saying is that everyone agrees the amount of processed food in your diet should be minimal or absent. Like we should all be eating real food. And what I speak to people about in terms of a preventative diet for breast cancer or even a treatment diet for breast cancer is whole food, plant-based, because many of the things that you need to reverse cancer are plants and fiber. So whole food, plant-based, low glycemic, because metabolic health is health, and breast cancer is a metabolic disease. So we want to make sure to optimize our metabolic function. So low glycemic, grain-free, because we are as humans have no nutritional need for grains. And I don't advocate eating things that have no benefit for you. If we never had another grain again, we would suffer no nutritional deficiencies. And the number of people who grains are their immune trigger is way more than we appreciate. Way more. So that's the diet that I advocate for: whole food, plant-based, low glycemic, grain-free. Now, where you get your protein from is where you get your protein from. Like I don't want to get into that fight. I think that there are people who do great on a vegan diet and can do really well with vegetable proteins. There are some people who do really well with animal proteins. There are some people who straddle the fence and sometimes they're eating vegetable proteins and sometimes they're eating animal proteins. That's your own philosophy. As long as your genetics agree, you have good health and you are eating lots of plants, regardless of where you're getting your protein. I'm all good, right? So what you eat matters. What you drink matters. We already talked about it. Like you need to be drinking clean water and you need to be avoiding and abstaining from alcohol. Maybe not a hundred percent of the time, but most of the time you need to be abstaining from alcohol. And if you are actively cancering, if you actively have a cancer diagnosis, there is no room for alcohol in your world right now. None. None. Then when you eat matters. Because we were not meant to be grazers. We are not meant to be eating all the time. Remember that we are modern beings living on a very old gene code. And our people, our ancestors did not have refrigerators, they didn't have food storage. They ate when there was food, and when there wasn't food, they did not eat. We are designed to sustain long periods of starvation. And not only that, we are designed to function optimally in a fasted state. It's not like you could come out from the cave in the morning, encounter that saber-toothed tiger, and say, Hey, can you wait a minute? Because I haven't had my breakfast. Right? You just ran and you ran as well as you would run if you were in a fed state, maybe better. Maybe better. So we are meant to be fasting. If you're not fasting now or you can't fast, you need to set that as a goal. Because we now all need the metabolic flexibility that fasting affords. And we need the opportunity to heal. And we don't do our healing in a fed state. We do our healing in a fasted state. So every day you should not be going to bed on a full stomach. You should not be going to bed with food in your stomach because you need to do a lot of your detoxifying on a daily basis in your sleep. That's when it happens. Sleep is where the healing happens. And if your body is busy digesting, it's not doing the detoxification that it needs to do. And then we need long periods of fasting, like 72-hour fasts in order for cellular cleanup to happen. Every quarter. Every quarter. Yeah. So fasting is important. And the rest of the stuff is important, but again, 80% of our exposure to the outside world is through what you eat and what you drink. So you need to get that in line. And then the rest of the stuff that I talk about prioritizing sleep because sleep is where the healing happens, being active, moving your body every single day because we are nomadic people. We are meant to move our body. And if you don't move your body, you lose your body. And how you move your body over time matters. So before 40, you can pretty much do whatever you want. From 40 to 50, you need to start making that transition towards building muscle. And 50 on, you have to prioritize lifting heavy things. You have to maintain muscle mass, if not build it after 50. So movement, then toxins and minimizing our toxic exposure, detoxification, having those practices to get rid of toxins and to help your body get rid of toxins. And then the last thing that everyone needs to be thinking about is purpose-driven living, your mindset, managing stress, having a way to approach life, that you are connected, that you're experiencing joy, and that you have life's purpose. Because the number one predictor of how long you live is how long you'll think you'll live and what you're living for. Yes. Purpose.

Speaker 1:10:30

Purpose in life. That's it. I that idea, I think, got reinforced after the movie The Blue Zone, the Long Living People came out. And it says that people live longer when they have purpose in life. As soon as they stopped working, as soon as they lose a loved one, as soon as they lose purpose, they die. Gotta have purpose. And yes. Now, for other things that you mentioned, blood sugar control, of course, number one with my peeps, it's insulin resistance, insulin sensitivities. So we're always managing blood sugar somehow with nutrition, lifestyle, or supplement approaches. The only thing was the grains. As a clinical dietitian, and of course, I don't work with people with cancer, so I'm a little blind on that. Let me just pose something to you, okay?

Speaker 2 1:11:26

And if they don't bother you and they work for you, it's fine. I just don't believe in including anything in your diet that doesn't have any benefit. But grains are the seeds of grass. We are not ruminators. That's not how our GI tract is designed. So compared to ruminators, grass eaters, we have a very short GI tract. So the animals that eat grains have very long GI tracts where they're passing that grain back and forth. It goes through a much longer cycle of digestion and they have the ability to break it down and extract nutrients from it. We lack that. We lack that. So there's no nutritional benefit to us eating grains. I'm not saying that everyone responds negatively to grains, but in my world, where we need to be so cognizant of metabolic health, almost everyone gets a glycemic spike, a blood sugar spike from eating grains. Almost everyone, certainly from pulverizers.

Speaker 1:12:48

Carbohydrate, and that's a normal reaction.

Speaker 2 1:12:52

But for people who need more tight glycemic control, almost all grains are high glycemic foods. So in the acute phase of them getting control of their disease and getting control of their life, I tell them to be grain-free. If you're five years out, 10 years out from your diagnosis, you're doing fine. You don't have a weight problem, you don't have an insulin resistance problem, you don't have a blood sugar problem, you have good metabolic health, and grains are a part of your diet and you tolerate them well and they don't lead to autoimmune disease or autoimmune triggers for you. Okay. But as a staple in the American diet, I think it's a mistake.

Speaker 1:13:36

And you work with such a specific population. And I 100% trust your clinical knowledge, your opinion, and your experience, most importantly, because you worked with so many people. But just like you said, it's so personalized. And if you're in an acute um stage of treatment diagnosis, maybe cutting out grains will be one of the best things you've done to come, to let your body reset, to adjust. But for people that are listening, they don't have a diagnosis or not going through cancer treatment, we actually put, we don't prescribe a grain diet. We just advocate for a just overall holistic approach to eating everything fits. And even with my people with type one and type two diabetes, because that's my population, having or in enjoying grains and diet, especially ancient grains, the ones that are non-genetically engineered, modified, yes, like farrow and buckwheat and all that stuff, it actually stabilizes their blood sugar, especially in someone with type 1 diabetes, because you have all the phytochemicals and nutrients and most importantly, fiber that keeps the blood sugar stable. So it's definitely, I don't want somebody to just start on the diet as soon as they listen to this conversation.

Speaker 2 1:15:04

But it would be very surprising to have someone on a whole food plant-based, grain-free diet who doesn't have blood sugar stability, because where are they getting the instability from? There's so much fiber in a plant-based whole food diet that they don't need the grains. It's just that for most people, if they're putting whole grains in the place of pulverized grains, which is what they were probably eating before they found you, they're gonna have much better blood sugar. But I guarantee you, if you compare that person to one of my people who are on a grain-free whole food, plant-based diet, my people are gonna look better.

Speaker 1:15:54

I'm sure they feel better because they're battling one of the worst diseases you can get right now at this stage of our society. So I'm sure anything that is give you even the slightest chance or possibility of feeling better. Absolutely. I'm all for it. Yeah. Because it's such a dark, I was gonna say it's such a dark uh part in your life. But then your book goes from being scared, like you empower people. Don't be scared, be empowered. There's so much you can do. And I know you cover all of the diet part, the nutrition, and lifestyle in your book. So I hope if somebody's going through cancer right now, they would grab your book. Or I think it's it would be a great gift for somebody. It's a great gift.

Speaker 2 1:16:46

It also talks a lot about prevention. So I think I should rename it the breast owner's manual because it's really for anyone who has breasts and wants healthy breasts, which, of course, as we've said a number of times, breast health is health. And who doesn't want healthy breasts? So the Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer, yes, it is a guide for women with a diagnosis, but it's also your guide to preventing a diagnosis, reversing a diagnosis, and it's your guide to living well.

Resources and Final Thoughts

Speaker 1:17:22

And I love what you said. I read it somewhere. You said that breast cancer is never a blessing, of course, but it is a blessed opportunity to take control of your health. I thought it was beautiful. I'm like, I can apply that to anything. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's. That's how I became a Hashimoto's dietitian specializing in it. I don't think I was blessed with it, but to me, the opportunity to do what I do every day to help people, it's it led you to your purpose. Yes. So thank you for that saying. It brought light to my day. And I hope people who find your website and read your book, it will bring them clarity and most importantly, practical steps that they can take every day to either prevent breast cancer or to feel better right away, or to give hope to somebody who is going through it. So thank you so much for all the resources you're putting out there for the time you dedicated here. I know our listeners will find this conversation very valuable. I'm so glad.

Speaker 2 1:18:30

So if you're looking for that book, it's The Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer. It's available on Amazon or on my website at Real HealthMD. And if you want to hear more, I have a podcast that comes out every week. It's called Keeping Abreast with Dr. Jen. And you can get that on any of the places that you consume your podcasts. My medical practice is Real HealthMD, and that's where we're helping anyone with a breast cancer diagnosis. But we also have a prevention program. And then if you're looking for the imaging that we talked about today, it's at perfection imaging and the perfection is spelled with a QT. If you're looking for that imaging test, aria.care, a u r-i-a.care, and the code is Dr.Gen20, D-R-J-E-N-N-20. And then you can follow me on all the social channels at Dr. Jen Simmons, and my Jen has two ends.

Speaker 1:19:25

I love it. And I will link all of that information, everything you just said. I'll put it on the show notes so people can find it easily because we want this information to be accessible to everyone. So, Dr. Jen, thank you again so much. It's an honor to have you on Hashimoto's Nutrition RX podcast. And we would love for you to come back because there is so much more we can talk about.

Speaker 2 1:19:51

Absolutely. I'm happy to.

Speaker 1:19:53

Thank you so much, and we'll talk soon.

unknown 1:19:56

Okay.

Speaker 1:19:58

Bye.