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Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and this episode goes deep on a topic that deeply applies to all women in the modern world, which is a new method of breast cancer screening and prevention. I absolutely love this conversation and today’s guest, her initial answer to my first question literally could have been a TED talk on its own, but she really goes deep on the problems with the way that we currently think about screening and prevention of things like breast cancer and what the data actually says and what we can do that is more effective and that helps women more. I’m here with Dr. Jenn Simmons, who I got to meet last year and was blown away with her research, her personal experience, and the really informed data-driven approach she brings to this topic. She’s an integrative oncologist, an author, a podcast host, and the founder of PerfeQTion Imaging, which I will put notes to in the show notes. This is a really groundbreaking alternative to technology like mammograms, and she explains that in depth in this podcast. She started her career as Philadelphia’s first fellowship-trained breast surgeon, and she spent 17 years as Philadelphia’s top breast surgeon. But her own illness led her to discover functional medicine and led to all of these groundbreaking things that she’s now doing. So I know you will learn so much from this episode. If this topic is important to you, I think this approach is incredible and it’s one I will be pursuing myself and I will keep you posted on how that goes. But for now, let’s learn and join Dr. Jenn. Dr. Jenn, welcome. Thanks so much for being here.
Dr. Jenn: Thank you for having me. I’ve been so looking forward to our conversation.
Katie: Me too. And I’ll say I got a preview of this at Mindshare when you explained the technology a little bit. And I’m super excited to go deep on this today because I feel like this is an area that there have just not been spectacular options in the past and that this might actually be going on.
Dr. Jenn: That’s a really nice way of saying it.
Katie: Exactly. So I think this is going to be a huge step in changing that paradigm. So to start off broad, maybe give us a little bit of background on what we’re even going to be talking about in this conversation. What is this new technology?
Dr. Jenn: Yeah. Yeah. So first let’s talk about it in the context of how it usually comes up, because when we usually talk about breast cancer prevention, we always talk about imaging, right? But imaging is not prevention. It has nothing to do with prevention. It is early diagnosis. And the concept that early diagnosis would save lives and save breasts came about really in the 1970s when the mammographic screening program came into its inception. So, what we’re really going to talk about today is, what is screening? How should we screen? What’s the best way to screen? What does screening get you? And there are pluses and minuses of what screening has got you up until this point. And so I really want to give people a great foundation from which to understand the screening program, how it started, where we are today, and what we should actually be doing to prevent breast cancer, but not only to prevent breast cancer, but to prevent the negative side effects of breast disease. Because it’s not only cancer that affects us. There is a ton of benign changes. I don’t want to call it disease because it’s not disease, but there are a ton of benign changes in the breast that cause people a lot of heartache, aggravation, financial burden, emotional, psychological burden. So let’s just get everything out there. Have a really honest conversation because most of those aren’t happening and allow people to make an educated decision about how they should prevent breast cancer and screen for breast cancer.
So in the 1970s, the mammographic screening program was developed, and it was based on this foundational understanding that breast cancer growth was both linear and predictable. And so if you found a breast cancer when it was small, if you didn’t allow it to grow to some critical size, at which point it would become metastatic, you could save lives and breasts, right? Avoid mastectomy and avoid dying of breast cancer. And it’s a lovely, lovely concept and a great theory and seemingly logical. And it doesn’t happen to be true because breast cancer growth is neither linear nor predictable. And there are very small tumors that have very aggressive biology and very large tumors that don’t have aggressive biology and everything in between.
So when we screen and find these breast cancers, we treat them all the same. And no matter how many women we screen, find, and treat every year, the exact same number of women die of breast cancer. And no matter how many women we screen, find, treat every year, the exact same number of women present with aggressive disease. So we are not doing anything to impact the bottom line with screening. And as it turns out, with mammographic screening, we are neither saving lives nor breasts. It has only increased the rate of mastectomy. So we’re actually losing breasts. And it hasn’t done anything to save lives.
So this is a problem. And it’s mostly a problem because this is what we are universally recommending to women. And the United States Prevention Task Force just lowered the age at which it’s recommending mammography. Now, what’s the problem with mammography? I mean, if it finds cancers, and doesn’t it save lives? It would be nice if that were true. But it’s not. Mammography, because it utilizes radiation and we are taking the healthy population of women and exposing them to radiation, and this is low-energy radiation that is retained within the tissues of the breast, and it just adds up every year. So we’re actually causing a significant amount of breast cancers. So we’re taking healthy women and giving them breast cancer.
Now, the flip side of it is, will it find some cancers? Yes, it will find some cancers. So if you screen 2,000 women, you can potentially save one woman’s life. And you will cause 10 women to be treated for breast cancer that didn’t need to be treated. So over-diagnosis and over-treatment, finding these cancers that would have never become clinically relevant, and then we’re subjecting women to the treatments of breast cancer. And the treatments of breast cancer, especially when you don’t need to be treated, and I’m talking about 40,000 women every year who are diagnosed with DCIS or Ductal Carcinoma in Situ, this is a non-invasive disease. This would have never threatened their lives. And then we subject them to surgery. We subject them to radiation. We subject them to hormonal medications that block either the effect of their natural hormones or the production of their natural hormones.
And these things have very major consequences. Surgery has very major consequences. I’m not talking about whether or not you will survive the surgery. You will most likely survive the surgery. Very few women die in breast surgery. However, a woman living without a breast, has a very different life. It affects women on more levels than they can ever imagine. And we do not prepare women for life without a breast. We think of it as some external organ that may be important for breastfeeding, but we have formula, we can get around that, whether or not it’s important to sex. Well, if you ask a man, they can live without that, right? And we are very much living in a man’s world, especially in the world of breast cancer, because if you think about screening conversely, and if we asked a man to put his testicles between two cold, hard plates and have them compressed and radiated once a year, sometimes twice or three times a year, do you think that screening program would happen? So, we are very much still living in a male-controlled paradigm.
But in any event, we have these women who are treated for DCIS. They’re losing their breasts. And those scars run deeper than anyone can imagine. Then they’re subject to radiation, which in the short term has issues and in the long term has very serious issues. In the long term, we’re not just talking about firm breast tissue or a firm muscle underneath, but beneath the breast are the ribs and you’re subject to rib fractures from very minor trauma for the rest of your life. You’re susceptible to rib fractures. The heart is underneath. The lungs are underneath. So you take a disease like DCIS, Ductal Carcinoma in Situ, which would not have shortened your lifespan. And now all of a sudden, we’re giving people cardiomyopathy. We’re giving them cardiovascular disease and we’re shortening their lives. So just being treated for DCIS is going to shorten your life in a way that the disease itself would have never done.
And then we think about the hormonal changes that come along with treating hormone-positive breast cancer. And when you take women’s hormones away, you know, there’s a reason why we have estrogen throughout our body. There’s a reason why we have estrogen receptors throughout our body. It’s so we can think. It’s so we can see. It’s so we can digest and assimilate. It’s so we can breathe. It’s so our heart can beat and our circulation can flow normally. It’s so that our skin is good. Our hair is good. Our nails are good. Our urogenital system works. It’s so that we have a good mood and a good libido and can relate to the rest of the world and want to relate to the rest of the world. And it’s so that we can sleep at night. So when we take all of this away, we not only shorten the duration of people’s lives, but we considerably affect the quality of people’s lives.
So just in screening with mammogram, the repercussions down the line of causing breast cancers and identifying lesions that don’t need to be treated, the cost is tremendous. And mammograms should have been abandoned long ago. They don’t serve most of the population. So 40% of women who have dense breasts are getting up to 10 times more radiation. So they’re more susceptible to breast cancer because the mammogram that they get delivers way more radiation than the woman without dense breasts. And every mammogram you get is just increasing your risk of getting breast cancer and increasing the likelihood that you’re going to enter into this system that is going to shorten your life and not because of the breast cancer, because of the treatment. So this is a huge problem.
And I do not want to say that no one needs to be treated for breast cancer. I am in no way saying that. I am also in no way saying that mammograms are causing all breast cancers, or that breast cancer doesn’t need to be treated, or no one dies of breast cancer. Of course, I understand that 40,000 women die every single year from breast cancer. However, we treat 240,000 women every year for breast cancer. And the reason they’re not dying from breast cancer is not because our treatment is so good. Because if our treatment was so good, we would change that bottom line and we don’t. The reason that they’re not dying is because they don’t have life-threatening breast cancer. And we’re treating them and shortening the quality, the duration of their lives. And this needs to stop.
Now, in that dense-breasted population, we believed that MRI was going to be the solution. But there are many, many reasons why MRI can’t be the solution. Besides that they’re uncomfortable, besides that they’re loud, you know, women are tough. We can take a lot of things. But they use gadolinium. Gadolinium is a heavy metal. It is stored in our body. Anything that is stored in the body is stored at the expense of something else. And that’s something else is going to be a vital organ that you need. We cannot continue to give women with dense breasts gadolinium every year. It’s just not, it’s not possible. We’re poisoning them. We’re killing them. So MRI is not a solution, not a solution.
And it’s very hard to talk about the problem unless you have the solution. And until a year ago, this was a really hard conversation. But, about a year and a half ago, there’s been FDA-approved technology that is available to people, and that’s called QT Imaging. And QT uses sound waves transmitted through a water bath that creates a three-dimensional, true three-dimensional reproduction of the breast that allows us to see things that even MRI doesn’t see. It has 40 times the resolution of MRI. So it’s fast, and it’s safe, and it’s painless, and it’s comfortable, and it’s radiation-free, and it checks all of the boxes, and it does something really unique that nothing else does. It’s functional imaging, which means that we can bring someone in and if we find something, we can bring them in in another 60 days and re-image them. And in that 60 days, we’re able to count the cells and get a doubling time. We know that cancers have a doubling time of 100 days or less. And things that are either benign or don’t need intervention have longer doubling times. So if you have a lesion that has a doubling time of longer than 100 days, we say, see you in a year.
And what we’re doing by utilizing this technology is that we’re getting rid of unnecessary biopsies, things that didn’t need a biopsy. We’re getting rid of overdiagnosis because we know that these lesions are nothing to worry about. And we’re getting rid of overtreatment. And that is going to make the most significant difference for people. Because breast cancers are going to happen. And the most important thing for us is to identify who needs treatment and who doesn’t. Because we have to get that risk-benefit balance back. Because it is not worth the risk to take the healthy population and subject them to radiation. It is not worth the risk for these people that have these low-level lesions that are not life-threatening, it’s not worth it for them to accept the risk of breast cancer treatment because breast cancer treatment is dangerous. It is harmful. And if you have a life-threatening disease, you accept those risks, right? It’s all about making an educated decision. But no one has been allowed to make that educated decision before because they’re just not getting the facts.
And for so many reasons is why I wrote my book, The Smart Woman’s Guide to Breast Cancer. This is about preventing breast cancer. This is about what imaging you should be using and when. This is about what to do when you get a diagnosis. And for nearly everyone, there are a few exceptions, and I write about them in my book. But for nearly everyone, even if you get a breast cancer diagnosis, pause, stop, think, learn, educate yourself, build a team, a team of trusted individuals who can help guide you and do what’s right for you. Dial into your intuition. Trust yourself. No one is ever going to know you better than you know yourself. My friend Sachin Patel says that the patient is the doctor of the future. And that is true. And it’s not that we all need to take our own medical care into our own hands. We don’t need all of that responsibility, but we have to be an active participant. We have to because no one is going to care about you the way that you care about yourself.
Katie: Wow. Well, I feel like we just got a TED Talk. That was incredible. And I love that you ended with that quote about the patient is the doctor of the future, because I often say on here that we are each our own primary healthcare provider. That doesn’t mean we don’t work with experts who know specific things we don’t know, but we’re the ones making the decisions every day, the habits, the things that compound to build our health. And I think the best outcomes happen when you have an informed patient who’s taking responsibility, working with an expert who can give them that specific expertise. And I feel like this is one of the ways that science and technology are evolving in a way that allows us to do that better and to get better outcomes. So this is so exciting to me because I’ve always had a weird feeling about mammograms, and I’m just now hitting the age where that conventional recommendation is starting to be thrown my way. And I just have always been uneasy about it. But as you explained that, I realized the women who have a genetic history, for instance, of breast cancer are probably the ones getting the most mammograms. Because they’re worried about getting it and how much that could compound the problem and make things tougher for them. And I like the way that you frame that. Until last year, there wasn’t a solution. It was like, great, there’s this huge problem we’ve identified, and we have no good answers for women. And now that’s changing. So you mentioned this is a sound and water-based type of imaging that sounds much more accurate and probably allows people who maybe noticed a lump and know something’s there to have peace of mind if it’s actually not cancer that gives you so many more data points.
Dr. Jenn: Absolutely. Yes. Yes. It’s 200,000 times more data points than MRI with 40 times the resolution. So it does give a lot of answers that traditionally we had to use biopsy for. So the technology is truly amazing and will forever change how we screen for breast cancer. And for instance, for that population that you just mentioned, the BRCA population, or if you have a CHEK2 mutation, a PALB2 mutation, any of those mutations in the tumor suppressor genes, that’s what’s happening is those genes that we’re talking about, they are all there to protect against the development of cancer.
So everyone makes cancer cells from the very young to the very old and everyone in between. And we have a system of checks and balances inside of us that allows us to correct those mistakes as we make them. But because we live in this crazy toxic world, we’re making more mistakes than ever. And if you are born with a change, a mutation in one of those genes, you’re highly susceptible to getting a cancer and getting it at a fairly young age.
Now, the things that make us susceptible, those toxins, things like radiation, and so if you take someone who is already uber-sensitive to radiation, we know what radiation does. Radiation creates free radicals. It breaks your DNA. You know, radiation is a known carcinogen. And if you take someone like a BRCA mutation carrier and you start to image them earlier and more often, you are virtually guaranteeing that they are going to get a breast cancer. You are handing them their diagnosis. So it is so crazy to me that for all of these years, we’re talking about 50 years now, we’ve been using a test that causes cancer to screen for cancer. And when we put MRI in that screening mix, we didn’t help anyone. Because when we put MRI in that screening mix, we then introduce gadolinium into people’s systems. So we increased their toxic burden. We increased the work that their kidneys have to do in order to get rid of this gadolinium.
Now listen, I’m talking about the screening population now. If you are someone who has a lump in your breast, if you are someone who has a change and you need to have a diagnostic study, that’s a different story. You’re no longer in the healthy population. And I’m not saying you’re not healthy, but I’m saying in the asymptomatic population, it is immoral to subject these people to tests that cause cancer. We cannot do it. In the population of someone who has a change, who has a symptom, at that point, we are obligated to work it up with the best tools that we have. Now, will QT Imaging be part of that? I believe it will. Right now, it’s sitting in the screening seat. Does it have diagnostic capability? Yes.
But if you ultimately need to do something about that, the old guard hates change. They’re going to want the mammogram. They’re going to want the ultrasound. They’re going to want that conventional imaging. And that’s okay because we know how to prepare people for that. I tell people before they’re having any kind of x-ray, so I’m talking about a mammogram, but I’m also talking about an x-ray, dental x-rays, a DEXA scan for bone density, which I also don’t believe in, a CAT scan, a PET scan, any of these things that are delivering ionizing radiation, I tell people to take between 100 and 300 milligrams of melatonin, 2,000 to 4,000 milligrams of vitamin C, and you do it an hour before. And, you know, you can also add vitamin E into that mix. You can add turmeric into that mix, like any of these major antioxidants, any of these things that will bind up free radicals, because that’s what’s created when we get radiation. And then I tell them to take them for a few days afterwards at those high doses. It will not make you fall asleep, I promise. That melatonin dose is an anti-inflammatory dose. It’s not a sleep dose. And my patients take it routinely. People who follow me on social media take it routinely. The people in my Facebook group take it routinely. This is what you need to do if you need a scan. You need to protect yourself. And if you’re going to have an MRI, gadolinium will compete with zinc for uptake. So if you need an MRI with gadolinium, if you need a contrast-enhanced MRI, then you would take 60, 100 milligrams of zinc before your scan to try to compete with the gadolinium so that you don’t take it up and you urinate it out, hopefully.
So there are things that we can do to protect ourselves, but the very best thing to do is not to get these studies. Because they’re not of any benefit. I wish they were saving lives, but they’re not. They’re costing lives in so many ways. They’re doing way more harm than good. It’s time for change. And I’m just so delighted that the change is here.
Katie: Yeah. When I heard you talk about this, I immediately thought this is the only option I want to go with in the future, especially because I have a family member who had that experience decades ago with like, there was a lump, it was hard tissue. She went down this whole process. They did the biopsy. It was totally benign. It was a fibroid or something, but it was a substantial stress to her. And this was like a source of stress for months until all of that resolved.
Dr. Jenn: It’s horrible. It’s a horrible experience.
Katie: I’m guessing many people listening right now, I mean, like I said, it was a TED Talk. You gave us such a great explanation of the downfalls of what we’re currently doing. I’m sure people are wondering, is this at market? Is this available? And if so, how can someone find one near them?
Dr. Jenn: Yeah. So it’s at market. There are three centers open in California. There is a center open in Scottsdale. There’ll be a second center opening in Scottsdale soon. And I have the first center opening on the East Coast in July. And then I’m, you know, I’ll put up 50 in the next five years. So they they’re coming, they’re coming. There’ll be several available in Florida this year. There’ll be several available in New York Metro this year. So they’re coming. They’re coming. And my company is called PerfeQTion Imaging. And that Perfection is spelled with QT in the middle.
Katie: And I will link to that in the show notes for you guys listening. I certainly went down the research pathway with this after I heard you talk about it. I will also link to your book because what I love about the way that you explain this and your whole message and you on social is that you come from a place of solutions and hope and tangible things we can all do. And obviously a deep, deep passion for actually helping women and changing these numbers. So I have immense gratitude for the work that you are doing. I hope that you guys will join us for the next episode because we’re going to get to record about the hormone aspect of this and menopause after breast cancer and a lot more nuanced topics within that. But Dr. Jenn, you are such a wealth of knowledge and an absolute joy. Thank you so much for everything you shared.
Dr. Jenn: Thank you for having me.
Katie: And thank you for listening. I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.
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