Healing a Diagnosis with Functional Medicine

Welcome to the Well and Worthy Life podcast. I’m your host, Deanna Pizitz a certified integrative nutrition health coach. This podcast is designed to inspire and motivate you to become a better you through sharing solutions, to your biggest struggles and concerns. In this second half of life, let’s change how we age by focusing on creating a positive mindset that allows us to flourish.

Nourishing our bodies for longevity, optimizing our hormone health for better balance movement that keeps us feeling young and active, and managing our stress to improve our mental health. Things are different now in our second half, and we have to do things differently.

Welcome back to Well and Worthy Life. I’m so excited to have another great guest on here for you guys. So you’ve heard me, I’ve had Cynthia Thurlow on here a couple of times, and she. Told me about Dr. Jen Simmons and I’m so excited to introduce you to her today and for us to learn more about her together.

I’ve just spoken to her briefly and I already love her so much, so you’re gonna love her too. But let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Jen Simmons. So she is a breast cancer surgeon. Actually, she was Philadelphia’s. First fellowship-trained breast surgeon, which I think is pretty impressive right there.

But then listen to this. She turned to functional medicine. Okay. What doctor said that, cause she gave a very lucrative career and rewarding career, she wanted to empower women on their breast cancer journey to achieve real health. So welcome, welcome to Well and Worthy Life Podcast. Doctor, can I call you Dr.

Jen? What should I call you? You can call me Dr. Jen. You can call me Jen. It’s fine. Just don’t call me Jennifer because then I’ll think I’m in trouble. Oh, okay. If the Jennifer comes out, I have done something wrong. That’s great. Well, Dr. Jen have you here and to learn more about your journey and how. In the world.

You went from being this breast cancer surgeon in Philadelphia to then switching gears Yeah. And getting into functional medicine. Yeah. So let’s just start at the beginning. It’s quite, it’s quite a journey. Yeah. So first of all, I have to thank Cynthia Thurlow because she’s given me a lot of street cred.

She’s, she’s talking me up and people are calling. That’s so, I love it. I have to thank Svia and who is an amazing, amazing, amazing practitioner and healer in her own right. So I will share with you the journey that I went on. But I think I can summarize it best. I’m about to leave surgery and I get asked to dinner by a friend.

His name is Mark Nicoletti and he is on the board of Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, and he was just really so concerned that I was making a mistake. And so he takes me out to dinner and he sits me down and he says, now let me get this straight. You’re driving down the Audubon in your Porsche doing two 20.

Yeah. On the top of your game. You pull over, get out of the car and get into a Prius

and get on the road again doing 55. What is going on here? Oh my God, I love that. But functional medicine was the bell that I couldn’t unring and anyone who has had their own. Health challenges and has been forced to be a part of our conventional medical system as a patient. Mm-hmm. Once you realize that there’s another way, you can’t ever go back.

I, so I am in the breast cancer space very naturally and organically. Growing up, I had a first cousin. Her name was Linda Creed. Linda was a singer-songwriter in the 1970s and 1980. She wrote all the music for the spinners and the stylistics. She was the queen of Motown sound in Philadelphia. Beautiful, brilliant.

Larger than life. Mm-hmm. And she was my hero. Mm-hmm. I mean, I had a cousin who was literally a rockstar. Like some people are like, yeah, hey, and my cousin’s a rockstar. I’m like, no, no. My cousin is a rockstar. Like literally, right. So the most famous song she ever wrote was The Greatest Love of All. She wrote that song in 1977 as the title track to the movie, the Greatest Starr Muhammad Ali.

But it really received as it’s a claim when Whitney Houston released that song to the world in March of 1986, and at that time, it would spend 14 weeks at the top of the charts. Only Linda would never know because Linda died of metastatic breast cancer. One month after Whitney released that song. Oh, I was 16 years old at the time.

And my hero died, and I literally don’t remember a time when I didn’t know about breast cancer and what breast cancer was because Linda was diagnosed at at 29 and died at 37. I knew the pain, I knew the devastation, and because Linda was so famous, I watched an entire community grieve like feel, their pain, and so that no other family member of mine because every woman in my family has breast cancer except for the ones that have colon.

So, So that I didn’t have to watch another family member go through it. I didn’t have to watch my own family go through it. I didn’t have to watch my community go through it or anyone’s community go through it. I dedicated my life to solving the breast cancer problem. Mm-hmm. And I did the only thing I knew how to do.

So I became a doctor, I became a surgeon. I became the first fellowship trained breast surgeon in Philadelphia, and I am doing amazing things. I’m doing oncoplastic surgery, I’m doing reconstructions. I’m finding a silver lining for people, and I, I’m running the cancer program for my hospital and I am literally 10 years into my career and I am at the top of my game.

And I do that, and about five years later, I go from being. A top surgeon running a cancer program, a wife, a mother, a stepmother, an athlete, a philanthropist, burning my candle at both ends and feeling invincible to, I can’t, I can’t walk across the room. I have no reserve at all. I’m so short of breath. I’m having constant palpitations and I have this exhaustive three day workup, and I’m sitting in the office of my friend and colleague and physician, and he tells me that I need surgery and chemo radiation, and I’m gonna be on lifelong medication.

And I realize that these are things that I say to people all day, every day, okay, do you have breast cancer? At that point, I didn’t have breast cancer, I had Graves disease. Which is an autoimmune disease of the thyroid that is life-threatening and treated just like cancer. And so like I completely appreciate the irony, and yet something told me that there had to be another way that I just inherently did not understand how God would give me an organ that I was going to remove obliterate.

And then had to replace what that organ was doing for the rest of my life, or I would die. Mm-hmm. Just didn’t make sense to me. Mm-hmm. And so I, I looked for answers outside of my system, even though I knew that this was standard of care. I’m running a cancer program, so you know, I’m, this is entirely hypocritical of me.

To walk out of that office. And my friend said, you’re gonna die like you. You can’t, you can’t not do this. You’re gonna die. And I mean, I know it was God that that guided me out of that office that day. I know that it was God that took me on the rest of that journey. I don’t know that I was as confident then as I am now.

You know, I have the benefit of the retrospective scope. Yeah. Looking back’s. Always 22. You always say that. It’s like, oh yeah, but sometimes you have to trust in God. I mean, and just feel and listen. Listen to yourself and listen. Which is. One of our biggest problems is that we have become so disconnected with our body.

We’ve become disconnected with our health. We’ve become disconnected with nature, with circadian rhythm, with the sun and the moon. Mm-hmm. That. You know, we, we lose our health in the translation. So I walk away and I do some research and I go to the place that I tell everyone not to go. I go to Dr. Google, which at that time actually was far more reliable than it is now, cuz now it is so censored that you really can’t find holistic answers on Google anymore.

You, you, you have to search in other places. Mm-hmm. But then, You know, I kept seeing, I, I said, you know, how do I heal my thyroid? And again, and again and again, I see references to diet, diet, diet, diet, diet. Now I’m a doctor for 20 years at this point, and I’m not overweight. And so, you know, I think that I know what I need to know.

And I certainly know what they taught me in medical school, and we were trained in medical school to think that if it’s not taught to us, it’s either not important or not true, or maybe both, right? So not true. I think I know everything I need to know and then, At the same time, I’m sick. So I feel, I, I realize that this is an avenue worth exploring.

So I decide I’m gonna enroll in I I n, but not after torturing them plenty because I did, you know, are you sure I’m gonna learn anything? I’m a doctor. Like what could you possibly have to teach me? It’s a certificate course. You know, it was thousands of dollars, which, yeah, no, I’m i n certified also. So yeah, I mean, mostly all of my health coaches are i n certified.

It’s actually an amazing program that I highly, highly, highly recommend. Right. So I’m in i n and one of the first lecturers is a man named Mark Hyman. So Mark Hyman walks on the stage and introduces himself as a functional medicine physician. Now realize that this is 2017. Mm-hmm. And though he had written some bestselling books, I had never heard of him.

And I’m listening to him introduce himself as a functional medicine physician, and I said, the hell is a functional medicine physician. Like there’s no such thing. What is this quack talking about? Right. Which is how everyone responded to him and told, They figured out that he was the only one in the room who knew what they were talking about, right?

So and I remember that I’m sick and I’m there for a reason, and so I decided to check my, my snooty booty self at my ego at the door, and shut up and listen. And thank God I did because within five minutes of him speaking my entire world makes sense. And I know that the reason that I got sick was so that I could be in that room, in that chair on that day listening to him speak.

Because what he’s saying, not only is the solution for me and my healing, but it brings light to everything that’s wrong with cancer treatment and how to really get people well. Because what I was doing as a surgeon was just delaying the inevitable. Right. Cutting out the tumor is not the solution.

Mm-hmm. Because it does not do anything to ultimately affect anyone’s health. Mm-hmm. Right. And it’s just delaying the progression of, of that disease, but it’s not getting anyone healthier. And it’s not eliminating the reason why they got the disease in the first place, so they’re just gonna go on to manifest the next thing.

Mm-hmm. Right. So all I did was scar them and delay the next manifestation. And in listening to him, it makes me realize that our focus on the tumor is the absolute wrong place to focus. And that what we need to do is focus on the person and figure out what is the cancer trying to tell us? Because all of our illnesses, they’re messages.

Mm-hmm. They’re so that we listen and when we don’t listen to the whispers, we get screams. And that’s what these diagnoses are. So my diagnosis, that was my body telling me, you’re on the wrong path. And maybe that was God telling me I was on the wrong path. So I am an early adopter for sure. Once I see I’m, I’m gone.

And so I enrolled in the Institute for Functional Medicine that day. Oh, I love that, that day. So spent the next three years just immersed in learning everything that I could about functional medicine, about integrative cancer care. So, And I resigned from my job, walked away from surgery at the height of my career and opened Real Health, Mt.

And I now, I still help anyone along the breast cancer spectrum, but I help them to restore their health so that for most of these women, they are actually knowing health. For the first time in their lives. Mm-hmm. Oh wow. What a story. I mean, truly a story. Okay, so I have so many questions. So one is you look very healthy today.

So obviously you were able to heal your yourself. I was. It was not a linear healing journey though. Okay. So remember, like I, nobody has a linear healing journey, do they? No. You know, I, because I had just start, I was not working with a functional medicine physician. Mm-hmm. Because I was only, I was learning the power of it a little bit at a time, and I was, I’m sure when you were at i n did you go on every diet you learned about?

I did not. Well, you didn’t. I didn’t. Oh, wow. God bless you. I went on every diet. I learned about every single one. I mean, I didn’t have, no, I did not. Good Lord. They go through so many diet. I know, I know. My family was like, we can’t take it anymore. You do your thing. We’re gonna do ours. Yeah. Yeah. And some of it was hard for me because like I am.

It’s not a political thing. I’m obviously, I’m like, I’m wearing a leather jacket, but I am like inherently a vegan. Mm. Not again, not for political reasons. Just like as a kid, you never had to tell me to eat my vegetables. It was everything else that you had to tell me to eat. Mm. And so the meat diets were not easy for me to try, and I actually didn’t feel well when I was doing them, so but I think that’s a great point right there though, that that one of the big things that we learned at i n is that we are all bio individuals and that, you know, just like how you said, you, you leaned towards more vegetables when you’re growing up.

I, I think if we could I watch my granddaughter now. I mean, she, she has been introduced to sugar, so she really came towards sugar. That is the biggest, biggest mistake. Like if I could, if I could turn back time and even like I try with my grandchildren, but you know when you’re The grandmother only? Yeah, the grandmother.

But that’s the biggest thing is like, wait as long as you can to introduce sugar and like the best time is never. Really, truly. I totally agree. Cause if you have a palette for it and Yeah. But I think it’s very interesting because we do gravitate towards what we really need or what, what our bodies really need.

Yeah. And so, and just like you said, you didn’t feel good on all meat. I feel better when I eat. More meat than when I, now I love vegetables, so I grew up, my grandparents had a farm. I used to go pick vegetables. I love my vegetables, so fresh vegetables, but I feel better like that. But if I eat a ton of grains, especially during the day, I feel horrible.

Yeah. And you know, I know some people can eat grains any time of the day and they feel Yeah, we’re just all different. Yeah. Although, I don’t think grains are good for anyone. Actually. They not. Mm-hmm. No. I mean, we can talk about why, but when I read Dr. Peter Osborne’s book. I think it’s, it’s either called No Pain, no Grains, no Pain or No Pain, no Grains.

I forget which, which one it’s, I did read The Grain Brain by, I Dunno. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That one. And that one’s amazing too. Yeah. I, I did think, yeah. Is that Pearl Mutter’s book is Green Brain? Yeah, I think that’s right. And then, and then Wheat Belly is I’ll think of it. Yeah. So between those three books, right.

I mean, the truth is that we are modern beings living on a very, very, very old gene code. Our genes have not evolved very much. Mm-hmm. In, in, you know, since the beginning of time. And we have only been eating grains for like the last 3000 years. Mm-hmm. And the grains that we were eating then, I mean, we were eating Encore Wheat, right.

Encore Wheat has 14 chromosomes. The dwarf wheat that is consumed in this country has 44 chromosomes. This is not the same, and we have not evolved to even know that as food. So brains are the seeds of grasses. Mm-hmm. Grasses are consumed by ruminators. Ruminators have a very, very, very different, longer, far more redundant GI tract than we do.

We, in comparison, we have a very short GI tract, so we are not able to unlock the nutrient from grains cuz we, it, our, our process is too fast. Mm-hmm. And so it’s really just seen as foreign body in us. So some people will get a little bit of inflammation from grains. Some people will get a lot of inflammation from grains.

I mean, if I eat grains the next day, everything is swollen. My brain is so slow. It’s like the, the, it takes 12 hours for me to clear out the brain fog from grains. Yes. I get so tired and lethargic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re just, you know, humans are not meant to consume grains. We’re just not. That grains are the food of ruminators.

Mm-hmm. And that’s, that’s a lot of the reason why people don’t tolerate dairy also. Yes, of course. Lactose. And we, and we don’t make lactose for a long time in life. So yes, that’s part of the issue. But the other part of it is that the proteins are essentially the same because if you have cows that are eating grass and then producing milk, where are those proteins coming from or coming from the grass?

Oh yeah. So there’s so much cross reactivity. So if you don’t tolerate grains, you’re not gonna tolerate dairy either because the proteins are essentially the same. Hmm. I’ve never thought about that because I, I had kind of cut down on my dairy, but then I was adding back in Greek yogurt and cottage cheese.

I, I’ve learned that I can’t really do a lot of cottage cheese either, though because it just, I don’t feel it’s good. But you know, I was trying to buy protein cause what we’re, what are we talking about? Yeah. All over women. We need to up our protein as we get older. Yeah. Especially, you know, when we cross over 40, protein becomes an issue for two reasons.

First, we get less and less. Efficient at extracting the protein from our food at digesting the protein from our food at absorbing the protein from our food. You know, you think about kids, I mean, not that anyone should, but kids can live on a very low protein diet because they’re extremely efficient at getting the protein out of, and all food, you know, even broccoli, a cup of broccoli has three grams of protein, right?

So all food has protein in it and children are very, very efficient at getting that protein. But as we cross over 40, we become much less efficient at unlocking that protein. The other thing is that our acid levels start to drop, and that is a major part of digestion that we, it goes totally unappreciated.

We have vilified acid in our society for the purposes of selling acid blockers, and we have people on acid blockers who well, well, well beyond what they were prescribed and and approved for. I mean, these acid blockers were approved for use over two to four weeks when you are healing an ulcer. Mm. And do you know that the average person is on an average on an asset blocker for four years?

Four years. I, I do believe that. Yeah, no, I definitely believe that. My, I think, well, before we started recording, I told you my father died of esophageal cancer and he used to pop those RO roll aids all the time. And I am convinced that, you know, Well, the reflux. Yeah. Like what aggravated him and so we put him on acid blockers for while.

Yeah. And so we didn’t ask the question like, why is the reflux happening? You know, what’s happening? That causes the reflux? No, no, no. Let’s just get rid of the symptom. Let’s stop your body from perceiving the reflux. And, and then you know what happens? The inflammation builds and builds and builds, and then you get a cancer diagnosis.

Mm-hmm. And so the incidence of cancer in the people that take acid blockers is like fourfold. Wow. Wow. And. Where’s the ribbon for that? Mm-hmm. Why aren’t we talking about this? It’s so crazy. So I think what most people after 40 need is not less acid. It’s more so. We probably need acid supplementation because we get less efficient at making acid.

Mm-hmm. And acid, if we, if you don’t have acid, you’re not breaking down the food to its lowest common denominator. So it’s not getting absorbed, you’re not getting the nutrient you need. And also acid has other. Functions in the GI tract. So as the acid and food bolus leave your stomach, they signal the gallbladder to release bile.

So if that’s not happening, then you’re not effectively digesting your fats, and you’re also not gonna have hormone balance without the bile salt because the bile is what helps to. Change the the hormones, which have ha have been broken down. Mm-hmm. It’s what makes them water soluble so that we can poop them out.

But if, if there’s not enough bile salts around, then they just get reabsorbed into the system and now you have hormone imbalance. So acid has ha, you know, acid plays a role all the way up that, that pathway and also acid is the signal for the pancreas to release. Pancreatic enzymes into the system.

Mm-hmm. So if you’re not doing that and not releasing pancreatic enzymes, then you’re also having maldigestion. You’re also not able to break down your food and get the nutrient, but then you are also affecting the function of the pancreas. And so a backed up pancreas is gonna have its own ramifications.

So we really have like, Intervene in a highly negative way mm-hmm. Against the body’s natural processes. And that’s why we’re seeing all this disease. I mean, it really makes sense. I mean, when you think about it, because, you know, you, we see so much more disease that today than we did even 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

I mean, it, it is, I mean, I feel like. Feel like so many women are diagnosed with breast cancer. It’s like, I have several friends and I feel like it’s one of those diseases that it’s almost like it’s not, if you’re gonna get it, it’s when you’re gonna get it. Yeah. Well, I I think that the statement that’s easiest to say is that like you literally will not go through life without being affected by breast cancer.

So it’s either gonna be you or someone, you know. Mm-hmm. Right. A relative, a neighbor, a friend, like it’s you. No one is getting through life without being affected by breast cancer, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Mm-hmm. It’s, its, there is a genetic component, certainly. Mm-hmm. But our genes are just like a guide.

They are not a mandate by any stretch of the imagination. And even if you have like a BRCA mutation, your genes are not a mandate. Mm-hmm. And it’s our environment that is the greatest influence on our health without question. Mm-hmm. And that’s the thing that you, you can’t control everything. Of course, you can’t control everything, but you can control a lot.

And it’s the people that take control, that have that, that get to be in this place of optimal health. And that’s really what we talk about in functional medicine. You know, in our current conventional medical system. First of all, we don’t have a healthcare system. We have a sick care system, and we think, I agree.

Yeah, we think of health as the absence of disease. But that’s not health at all. Health is optimal function. Mm-hmm. Right. But in the conventional medical system, they, you’re fine. Right? The line of fine, you’re fine. Well, I don’t feel well. Well, you all, your labs are normal. You’re fine. And you’re fine until you’re not.

Right. Well, you only have fine and failure. Mm-hmm. And there’s no in between. But in functional medicine, we know that there’s a spectrum and what we’re looking for is optimal. Right. We don’t want fine. Exactly. Yeah. Or average. I tell my clients all the time, don’t. When you go to your doctor and they say, well, you’re average, you know, your, your, your levels are average.

No, no, no, no. Well, you definitely don’t wanna be on this average, this average, which in includes two and a half standard deviations from the mean like that. You don’t wanna be average in that, in that capacity at all. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you, you healed yourself and it sounds like that’s a long process that it took you, it was, it was a long process and it definitely got worse before it got better, because about a year after I developed Grave’s Disease, I started to get the symptoms of ms.

So no, I, yeah. Which, you know, God is just so amazing. So it was right before I went to whichever I fm. So the Institute for Functional Medicine, they, they teach in systems. And so one of the systems is called energy. And in the energy system we talk a lot about mitochondria and mitochondrial health.

Mitochondria are the parts of ourselves that generate energy, and there are a lot of diseases that are associated with mitochondrial damage. Mm-hmm. So MS is one of them. Mm-hmm. Cancer is another, so, I, I started with facial numbness and my, my right hand was numb. I was dropping things. I was clumsy.

I had brain fog. I kept falling. And so I go to the energy conference and. One of the lecturers is Dr. Terry Wa. So do you know Terry Waltz? No, I don’t. Okay. So I have to, I’ll share this story with you as quickly as I can. So, Terry Walls is an internal medicine doctor. Mm-hmm. She is at the university of Iowa Medical Center.

Mm-hmm. She is, I think the residency program director there. So has a big job. Has a lot of responsibility and she develops ms. And she has primary progressive ms, which is a very aggressive form, and she goes from running the department to a zero gravity wheelchair where she can’t even support her own body weight in two years.

So this is very, very, very aggressive disease. Like to go from functioning to that? Yeah. Yeah. In two years now, this is a woman who is at a university hospital, has access to everything, every clinical trial, everything that conventional medicine has to offer, and she’s on all of it. She’s on every drug, every infusion, every everything.

Nothing’s working. She’s only getting worse. She gets fired. She gets let go from her job because she can’t perform the duties of her job anymore. I still can’t remember, and I did interview her I still can’t remember the exact thing that made her try this, but she decided to change her diet now.

She had been a 20 year vegetarian whose diet was very, very grain centric. Basically everything she was eating was some kind of grain, you know, sandwich on whole wheat bread, pasta, like very grain centric diet. So she cuts out grains, she adds in a ton of greens. Mm-hmm. And she adds animal protein back into her diet because she knows that she needs more protein and this is where she’s gonna have to get it.

I can’t remember like where she stood on the lectin side of things, but mostly what she did was remove grains. And do you know, three weeks later she starts to improve and by nine months she back at work, walking by a year. She’s, she is biking 20 miles a day. And now she is fully functional.

She’s not on any MS meds except that I think she still has some trigeminal neuralgia and takes Neurontin for it. But other than that, she is symptom free. Living her best life. She wrote the Walls protocol, teaching about it, helping thousands and thousands and thousands of people with MS. Reverse their disease.

And so I’m having all these symptoms and I go and listen to her talk and I’m like, thank you, God. Thank you God for putting this in front of me. So while I had like been trying every single diet according to I n. I immediately removed all grains from my diet, all grains, and don’t you know my symptoms went away.

Okay. That’s like right there. Just don’t you? It was crazy. Oh my. And I actually think that that’s what was the turning point for me and my thyroid disease because I hadn’t gotten rid of grains. And I think that that was probably my trigger. Wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Crazy story. But you know, that just goes to show you right there how powerful food is.

Mm-hmm. And I think that, you know, I didn’t connect the dots about how powerful food was until I mean, so much later in life. It was like, I thought, I thought health was about exercise. I mean, like, that’s what I thought. Yeah. Like exercising. You were good. Yep. But then I saw both my parents. Who had exercised all their life get cancer.

And I was like, wait something, you know, something else is going on. So it made me kind of, it didn’t wake me up though till I was in my fifties till I started thinking, wow. I may only have nine or 10 good more years since my dad died at 59 and my mom was sick with cancer at 60. Yeah. So wow. Okay. So let’s go back to, so I, I, but I do wanna expand on that exercise thing a little.

Cause I think this is a really important point and this is a talk that I was having with Mindy PEs. Do you know Mindy? Yes. I’m trying to get her on the podcast. Super brilliant. So Mindy and I were talking the other day, and. There is this preoccupation that health and exercise are equal. Right. And the more you do, the better it is.

Mm-hmm. And so women as they cross over and go through menopause and they start to gain weight and they think the solution is to do what they were doing before, but harder. So they start to exercise harder and they end up gaining weight. Yep. And this is what’s happening there. So, You know, whenever you burn fuel and essentially that’s what exercise is, you, you make exhaust, right?

We become less and less efficient at processing that exhaust. So as you cross over 50, as you go through menopause and you become less efficient at, at processing that exhaust, what’s happening, we’re just becoming more inflamed. Mm-hmm. So we need to like, Turn that switch off. We need to rethink that. We need more gentle exercise on the other side of 50.

We need to stop that, that heavy duty cardiovascular exercise. We need to stop like pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. It’s not good for us and we need to then shift the focus to lifting heavy things. Right short bursts. I think Dave Asprey’s new book talks all about this, but like short bursts of intense exercise and a lot of rest, and then you’ve gotta get that flexibility and balance in because that’s the mind body connection and that’s what we need to maintain.

So I’m totally with you on that. I mean, I had to totally change my way of working out. Mm-hmm. Cause I hit like 50, over 50 and I was like all of a sudden started gaining weight that I, and the things that, that made your cardio Yeah. I Right around your middle. Yeah. And so I had to change, and I tell my clients all the time, that too.

I think that, It’s so hard for people to understand, to make the connection because they’re like, no, I gotta burn more calories. But it’s, we have to be more gentler on our body and then that lifting heavy weights, I think is so important. Yeah. You got, you have to maintain your, your muscle mass and for a lot of ladies, you almost have to build some muscle mass.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’m working on building it at this point in my life. I mean, I, I feel like I’ve got good muscle mass, but continuing to build it because we’re losing it so fast. So I’m about to be 58. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, I wanna be strong. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta up your protein, gotta make sure that you have stomach acid and No.

How do we make sure we have stomach acid? Oh, you know what? You can just You can mix a little bicarbonate with, with water. And see how long it takes you to burp. You can, it’s all over the internet, how you check. Ok. Ok. I’m gonna look at that cause I’ve never heard that. Yeah. And and see, and if you have adequate stomach acid and a lot of people don’t and it’s something that’s really easy to replace.

So, and please know that this is not medical advice. This is just, this is for educational purposes only, but Replacing stomach acid is easy to do and you just take some tablets along with your meal when you’re eating a meal, and it, it makes a huge difference in terms of digestion. So, you know, another way that you know that you don’t have enough stomach acid is if you’re seeing undigested food in your stool.

That is like a, a dead giveaway that you don’t have enough stomach acid because stomach acid should dissolve that. Hmm. That’s really great information. Yeah. So many people, I’ve never heard this before, and sorry to say, but everyone needs to be looking at their poop. Yes. Now I definitely agree with that.

Yeah, we, we need to be comfortable talking about poop. We need to be comfortable talking about pooping. Like I was, I was, I was doing a, a camp physical for a friend yesterday and I’m asking her son about his poop and he was so embarrassed and I was like, I know buddy, but we gotta talk about it. Like, you just have to talk about your poop.

It’s so funny cause when I first started talking about it, I had Dr. Dr. B, Dr. William Sitz on my podcast. Mm-hmm. Oh, he’s brilliant. I love him. He is brilliant. And I was just like, I know he needs, you know, he’s very open and talk about Yeah. I’m like it doesn’t, you know, but yeah. Now I’ve gotten to be okay with it.

I have a friend that really likes to talk about it. I’m like, okay. Enough. Yeah. I don’t think you need to talk about it all the time. You need to talk about everywhere, but. You know, I, we, we need to talk about it. We need to be comfortable talking about it. I actually, my son’s gonna kill me for saying this, but I took him to the pediatrician the other day for his yearly checkup and she asked if he pooped every day and he said no.

And I’m like, what? Know this. And also every time I ask him to do something, he’s like, I can, I have to poop. So he lies to me. Oh, how funny. That is hilarious. That is so funny. Oh my gosh. Yeah. You know, that’s really important to have a friend who says she’s lucky if she goes once a week. And I keep telling her, I’m like, you, you’ve got something going on, girl.

You gotta. And, and it’s dangerous. Mm-hmm. Right? Because this is how we’re getting rid of our toxins. Mm-hmm. That’s one of the major ways. So we get rid of our toxins by pooping, by peeing, and by sweating. So, And if you’re not doing those every day, then you are not getting rid of your toxic burden. And we are living in an increasingly more toxic world, right?

We don’t live on our mother’s earth. We certainly don’t live on our grandmother’s earth and toxins are a bound, I mean, they are everywhere. We, life is a toxic soup. So we all need to be super vigilant about our detoxification. So you should be pooping. At least once a day, if not two or three times a day, drinking plenty of filtered water.

Your pee should be almost clear. Mm-hmm. That’s how, that’s how hydrated you should be and everyone needs to be sweating every single day. Mm-hmm. Every single day. Right. Well okay, so let’s go back cause we’re running out of time and I’ve got so many questions, so many thought going through my head. So, so right now you are a functional medicine doctor that really, I mean, are you helping mainly breast cancer patients, people that have been diagnosed with breast cancer walk through this and Yeah.

So I, I still think that I mostly appeal to the breast cancer crowd. And that if you don’t have a diagnosis of breast cancer, you’re a little afraid of me because you feel like it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like, you know, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna engage her because, you know, she, she, I have the, I have the breast cancer juju, right?

But But there are other people who hear my story and they have ms or they have graves disease or they have thyroid disease, or they have autoimmune disease. And and every now and again, not nearly as much as I would like, I get people who want to prevent disease, but those are few and far between.

Most people come to me because the horse is out of the barn and they’ve been diagnosed. So that preventative thing. So that’s what I, I mean that’s when I went to a functional medicine doctor, that’s what I was looking for, was really preventative. I wanna make sure, like I said, both my parents had cancer.

The cancer they had was not hereditary. My aunt had breast cancer. So there’s a little bit of that in my family. Yeah. So both of your parents’ cancers were environmental. Yeah. And you know, breast cancer, it’s just one of those sensitive organs. So cancer is a normal response to an abnormal environment, and there are any number of things that can make that environment abnormal.

And the reason that we see so much breast cancer, the reason that we see so much thyroid cancer is because these are especially sensitive organs. And so when the equilibrium is disturbed, they feel it more than most. But we have to stop thinking about cancer as other, right? It’s as much a part of us as anything else.

And the most important part for anyone before your cancer journey, when you’re on your cancer journey and after your cancer journey, because, you know, in, in our medical system, when we focus on the tumor, And the tumor is then gone. If you respond to treatment, people think that they’re done. Mm-hmm. And the truth is that for most people, that’s only the beginning because that’s your opportunity to reclaim your health so that you’re not in that same position or you’re not waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Because unless you find your why, unless you restore health, unless you restore equilibrium. That next manifestation is coming. Mm-hmm. And for women, you know, there are some significant things that we just don’t talk about. Like at every, in every decade, beyond the age of 40 women, exponentially die more of heart disease than they do of breast cancer.

Mm-hmm. Do you think 40 year olds are out there worried about. Heart disease. No, but they’re, they’re talking about breast cancer plenty. Right? Right. But they’re in, in, in your forties, you’re dying twice as often of heart disease as breast cancer, and people just don’t know and don’t understand that. But the most important thing to know is it’s the same thing at the root.

Of both. Both manifestations. So it’s that chronic inflammation that is caused by chemicals, untreated infections, poor sleep, like all of these things add up over time. And some people get heart disease. Some people get breast cancer. Now, the population of women that gets breast cancer, if you don’t intervene, if you don’t find your why, Those people are two to three times more likely to die of heart disease than the general population.

And yeah, and that’s twofold. It’s because first of all, you didn’t find your why, so you didn’t figure out where your inflammation is coming from, where that disease stimulus is coming from. And so you’re just headed for your next diagnosis. And all of the treatments for breast cancer accelerate heart disease.

So, Maybe, maybe not surgery, but chemotherapy. Definitely radiation, definitely. The hormone blockade that women get mm-hmm. That completely accelerates heart disease. So I are not talking to women about this, and we say that they’re making informed decisions for their treatment, but they’re really not.

They’re really not because they don’t know this. And they’re not being talked to about this. And I, I think it’s completely unfair of the medical establishment to ask these people to trade one diagnosis for another. So yeah, we’re saving you from breast cancer, and maybe that’s true, but we’re only setting them up for heart disease.

Mm-hmm. And I think that as a medical establishment, we need to really do a much better job. Now I think that there are some people that need all of those treatments, so, You know, if someone has aggressive disease, they have significant tumor burden, like their sink is overflowing surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, they’re mopping up the floor and you have to mop up the floor.

Mm-hmm. However, you can’t mop up the floor forever. And the far more important thing is to figure out why is your skin overflowing? And that’s where functional medicine comes in. Mm-hmm. So functional medicine to me isn’t an or. It’s an end and it’s the far more important part of the equation. Oh, wow. Okay.

I think that’s a great place to end. But I have, I definitely wanna have you back cause I, I want us to come back and talk more about Hormone therapy. Cause we kind of, you and I talked a little bit about that Yeah. Before we even Yeah. On this. So spoiler alert. Big believer. Big believer. Yes. Yes. So I really want us to have a longer conversation about this.

But I think that’s a great place to end, just to know it’s not Either or like you, you know, if you have a breast cancer diagnosis or any kind of diagnosis, or maybe you don’t have diagnosis, but you wanna prevent that functional medicine and, and here in Alabama it’s really hard. But the great thing is, is like people like you, you’re, you’re telehealth so you can help anybody, right?

Yep. And, and I have, I have a course online that anyone anywhere can take. That honestly, it will get you 80% of the way. It really will because most of these things that we need to promote health because that’s really what it’s about. When we promote health, disease goes away. So most of the things that we need to promote health, they’re there, they’re free, and they’re readily accessible to us.

Right. So we can choose to eat real food. Yeah, we can. We can prioritize sleep. We can choose to move our bodies every single day in a way that’s meaningful. We can make sure that our bodies are functioning, we can say no to as many chemicals as we can, and we can live with purpose. And this is really what it’s all about.

That’s how you drive health. And we see that on all. You know, Dan Butner wrote about all of those blue zones. Right. They’re not doing anything special. They are living life the way that we were designed from an evolutionary purpose standpoint to live it. That’s it. Yep. So that will my course, my answer to breast cancer, that will take you 80% of the way.

Now, do some people need testing and intervention beyond that? Yes, certainly. Yes. Yeah. And I always recommend testing and unfortunately, if you go to your conventional doctor, you’re not gonna get much testing. No, no. They’re gonna tell you that your labs are normal and you’re fine. That’s exactly right. Or what’s so crazy to me is that they’ll go, I’ll tell my clients like, you need to go and ask for a hormone panel.

And they’ll come back to me and they’re like, no, my daughter says she knows I’m in mental. So she doesn’t need to run a hormone panel. She knows I need testosterone, and I’m like, Okay, but still, wouldn’t it be nice to know where your levels are and where? Yeah. And the, the other thing is, and especially in the breast cancer population, you don’t need only need to know the hormone levels.

You need to know the metabolites. You know, you need to know how you’re breaking them down and if you’re able to break them down and how you’re breaking them down and are you getting rid of them and you know, are you getting stuck in any of those places? So I’ll just give a quick plug to the DNA company and the DNA 360 that test.

Because it is, I think, the best test on the market. It is totally actionable genes that tells you how to nurture your nature, so how to create the right environment for you. And they have a whole hormone panel that lets you know how you’re doing in all of that, in all of that regard. And so I, I mean, I use that test universally on my patients.

And and I, I, I think that it’s information that everyone should have because, like, don’t you wanna know the best thing for you, the right way for you to eat? What kind of diet you should be on? What kind of exercise is good for you? What kind of exercise isn’t good for you? How to protect your heart, how to protect your brain.

Mm-hmm. So, I, I, I, I happen to love that test. Oh, I love that. Okay. Well, Dr. Jen, thank you so much for joining me. My pleasure. You’re on the Well and Worthy Life podcast and tell everybody where they can find you. Yeah, absolutely. Everywhere you can. You can follow me on social media at Dr. Jen Simmons and my Jen has two Ns.

And then my website is Real Health md and. I have, I, I mean, I have so much coming out, but we’ll just follow you on Instagram. Just follow me on Instagram and, and you’ll get, you’ll, you’ll get information about everything that’s happening. There’s a lot happening. Oh, that’s so exciting. Well, thank you again for joining me.

My pleasure.

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