Christopher Wark (00:00.174)
I was very fortunate to discover a new imaging technique that is radiation free, it's painless, there's no compression. It uses sound waves to create a three -dimensional reconstruction of the breast that has 200 ,000 times more data points than MRI and has 40 times the resolution of MRI.

Christopher Wark (00:28.238)
Hey gang today I am interviewing Dr. Jen Simmons again. She's back and this time she's back with a brand new book and it's called the smart woman's guide to breast cancer. And I want to encourage you to watch our first interview because it's just an awesome, awesome interview. And she's got a lot more to talk about and I'm excited to have her back to share useful, practical, helpful resources and information for women with breast cancer.

And she is a former breast surgeon. So she knows what she's talking about. She has been on the front lines. She's been in the, in the belly of the beast, so to speak of the conventional medical machine. And, and she's one of those courageous doctors that I just have so much respect and gratitude for that, took a leap of faith and followed her convictions, and decided to walk away from.

you know, conventional standard of care because she knew, learned and knew that there was a better way to treat and prevent cancer, specifically breast cancer. And so Dr. Jen, great to see you. You look, you look healthy and well. Happy to be here. And I am healthy and well. That's so true. and I think probably like most people who have their blinders removed,

I didn't do it willingly or wantingly, right? I got thrown into it because I got sick and was trying to figure out a way out that wasn't going to ruin the rest of my life like most treatment does, right? And so I kind of clawed my way out of illness, but learned a whole lot along the way.

And for me, it was a bell that I couldn't unring. I mean, once I learned about functional medicine, once I learned about the functional medicine approach, I really struggled with going back to my, you know, putting my surgery hat on and cutting out tumors and thinking that I was making a difference. And when I walked away from surgery, you know, I was 50, I was at the top of my game.

Christopher Wark (02:53.134)
My colleagues thought that I lost my mind or my skills or maybe both. My best friend, God bless her, told me that I couldn't do it. That, you know, like I couldn't change careers at this point. It was too hard. I couldn't afford it. Like all of these things. My husband who wanted to support me in every way he could was also at the same time, like really?

I mean, you know, we spent the last 20 years with you as a surgeon. We're really going to do this different thing that is not all that accepted. And, you know, I'm from Philadelphia. We are a very, very, very conservative community. And there are very few, even now, where I think that functional medicine is like so out there now. There are so few functional medicine providers in Philadelphia. It's just... Same in Memphis. Yeah. And...

So, you know, it was pretty scary going out there on that ledge, but I've never looked back and never regretted it for one moment. And, you know, there are times when I'm being especially trolled because I talk about things that are provocative and triggering for people. And there are times when I'm being especially trolled by people who, you know,

five years ago would have said that I was the smartest person in the room. And now they're screaming that I'm killing people and hurting people. And, you know, there are times when I'm like, wait, am I missing something? Like, did I get it wrong? Am I really hurting people by doing this? And I'm like, Jen, come on. Like, of course you're not hurting people. You're helping people. They're hurting people and they're struggling with their...

like internal demons like, wait, is she right? Am I really hurting people? So I'm trying to kind of not listen to the trolls. I understand that they're gonna be out there and people are always afraid of change. They're terribly, terribly afraid of change. And so I'm just trying to, you know, show them a lot of love and forgiveness and hoping that they don't have to have this kind of

Christopher Wark (05:17.39)
life -changing illness to have their blinders taken off, that maybe they can hear it enough times to open their minds to the possibility that we weren't doing it right before and we have the opportunity to do it right now. I love that. It's just amazing and it just makes me respect you even more. Yeah, because you didn't quit surgery as a newbie.

You were well established decades in practice. I did not fall off the turnip truck into this. I was definitely there for quite some time. Right. Not a med school dropout. No. Yeah. No. And so, yeah, I just love your courage and your passion. It's awesome. And your dedication to truly helping people get well. And so, yeah, this is great. So,

Why don't we talk about, you know, one of the things I know that you've been, well, before we get into it, let me just agree with you. I've been attacked a lot. And, you know, one thing that I've found that the attacks do is they, they sharpen you. Right. Right. It's, it's beneficial when people attack you, it forces you to second guess yourself, to reevaluate your, your beliefs and your opinions and doubled, you know, really double and triple check.

what you've learned and cross -reference what you've learned. And so to me, I can say I'm thankful for the trolls because they really have made, forced me to make sure that I am confident in what I'm sharing, what I'm putting out there and not careless as so many people are, right? There's a lot of health and wellness influencer type people that are just carelessly barfing information onto the internet that has no

basis, right? It's not really helpful to people and it just ends up confusing people. And so, I'd say a fair amount of that happens in the medical community too, where doctors just regurgitate information they're told from the drug company rep, right? They're coerced and convinced into believing like drugs, that drugs are much more effective than they actually are or that, you know, Oxycontin isn't addictive, you know, stuff like that. You know that.

Christopher Wark (07:41.774)
particular drug haunts me to this day, right? Because I was a surgical resident when Oxycontin was introduced and we had the reps come see us. And we were actually the ones that wrote for all the prescriptions. Like, you know, I was trained during the era where the surgeon walked in the room, looked around, everything looks good. You got it, chalfen and leaves. And like the pre -care, the aftercare.

A lot of the during care was me. And so the drug reps told us, this is the best thing for post -operative pain. It's not addictive. And so I wrote 4 ,000 of prescriptions for Oxycontin. What I didn't do is ever see those people back in the office afterwards because in training, it's a surgical resident. I spent all my time in the hospital. And so I never saw those people afterwards.

I have no idea how many addicts that I created because that was addictive stuff, highly, highly addictive stuff that they knew about for years. But we didn't know because we never saw the follow -up. And I remember on a couple of occasions, my attending surgeon saying to me, what the hell did you give them? I was like,

What do you mean? I gave him Moxie Cotton. Our rep told us that this was the best, that it's not addictive. And it still haunts me to this day. It still haunts me. And we can talk about any number of things that we are told in the conventional medical model is safe. I mean, cigarettes were hopped by physicians. I prefer Camels. That's the brand I smoke.

I mean, it's crazy to think about that, the whole Vioxx story when they knew for years that Vioxx caused cardiac problems and yet they said nothing. And how many people had to die before they pulled that off the market? It's mind blowing. And I just want to say as a patient, you know, I wouldn't hold you responsible because you were lied to.

Christopher Wark (10:01.582)
You know what I'm saying? I mean, they lied to your face. The pharmaceutical reps lied to your face about this drug. And, and I want to, I just want to point out like, this is not a one -off incident. Like pharmaceutical reps are lying to doctors every day about drugs. And by the way, a lot of them don't know they're lying, right? They're repeating what the drug, the lie, the drug company told them. They believe.

when the drug company says it's non addictive and then they come and tell you it's non addictive. So like the real evil, you know, the evil really starts at the drug company, right? That's where it starts. And so this, this continues to this day and especially in cancer where drugs are misrepresented as being

you know, more effective than they actually are safer than they actually are. Like we, you know, we all heard the safe and effective, you know, this mantra repeated about a particular drug over and over, but that same strategy has been used in medicine for many, many decades. Every drug is safe and effective, right? Who wrote malignant? Do you, do you remember that book? That's Vinay Prasad. Yeah. And you know, it's a tough book to get through for the lay person, but.

Just suffice to say, the number of people that have to have any positive benefit from a chemotherapeutic drug is like 8%. And yet we're giving it to 100 % of people that walk down that path. And most people have dismal results from that drug. And I remember a celebration like,

not too long ago, about six months ago, about one of the breast cancer drugs that extended life and everyone was so excited about it. And it extended life by like 40 days or something like that. And I said, what are we getting excited about? So that you have 40 days of misery tagged on? Like it just doesn't make any sense. And especially when you look at,

Christopher Wark (12:21.166)
the benefits of diet and lifestyle, they're undeniable and the quality of life is so much better. And yet I'm a quack who kills people and the pharmaceutical companies are saving lives. It's just, it's so crazy to me. So crazy. It is mind blowing. And there's a couple of books I want to recommend for folks that want to, if you really want to,

to get an eye -opening insight into the corruption in medicine. There's a few. Dr. Vinay Prasad's book is, like you said, tough, but excellent, called Malignant. But some easier reads would be Cancer, Inc. and Sickening by Dr. John Abramson and Bad Pharma. Yeah, that'll just get you started. That's really enough. Yeah. Yeah.

But Deadly Medicines by, I can't think of his last name now. He was one of the sort of early guys at Cochrane. Yeah. He was an early, you know, kind of guy at Cochrane. But anyway, yeah. So folks, it's like, let me share an anecdote. So I got some blood work drawn and, you know, a couple things jumped out at me. Like one is there was another patient in there and this is just kind of sad and she was overweight.

And they couldn't get any blood out of her. Could not get blood out of this woman. She was, her blood was so thick. I don't know what the problem was. They just couldn't get the blood to come out. And that was like, Whoa, you know, man. And that's the difference. That's diet and lifestyle. Like puts you in that, in that disease state, but also in the waiting room, you know, they have a TV in the waiting room and it's just drug ads.

It's just one drug ad after another, after another, after another. The waiting room TVs used to have like regular TV shows. It's become a direct to consumer industry where people are seeing the commercial, yeah, that's for me. And they go and ask their doctor, I want this, I want that. And it's just more programming. It's just more programming. Like the whole time it's, and it's all pleasant, right? It's very pleasant.

Christopher Wark (14:43.63)
Programming. Even when they're talking about the side effects, like, that might cause anal leakage. Ooh, that's not a big deal. Yeah. No, or may increase your risk of certain types of cancer. Right? Of course. Like that's, of course, the side effect you hear so many times at the end of drug commercials, but they're always showing you people doing something really fun. Right? They're always like, you know, in a rowboat or skiing or on a bicycle built for two.

Or when they're talking about the like these drugs for like second line and third line and fourth line therapy. So these people are so, so, so terminal at that point. And they're out gardening and they're out doing things that like there's no way these people are doing. And they're for sure not doing it after they get that drug that works on virtually no one. Right. One of the drug ads that was in this, that was running on the television when I was in there,

was talking about the ESR1 mutation, which I don't know if you want to touch on that, but basically it was basically they're saying you need to know, it was sort of like an infomercial type of thing. Because this is a mutation that's caused by cancer treatment by drugs for breast cancer and then causes this mutation that makes the cancer resistant to the drug, right? Yep.

And then, and then, so they're going to, they're going to test you and then give you another drug because this is, this is how it works. Right. And I mean, it's a really, it's a sad, sad situation, right. Where people think that the drug companies have a goal of curing cancer, right. That that's what their millions and even billions of dollars of research is, is going towards curing cancer.

They have no intention of curing cancer. Why would they cure cancer? Like, they have customers. They want customers. And so I'm not saying that they're not trying to extend life. They for sure are trying to extend life. But if they ever discovered a cure for cancer, it would never see the light of day. Never. Which, I mean, I think it's a whole ridiculous thing to say we're going to cure cancer anyway, because...

Christopher Wark (17:13.389)
Cancer by and large is a diet and lifestyle disease and it is a completely heterogeneous group of malfunctions or dysfunctions or whatever you want to call it, where like the reason that you got cancer is different than the reason that someone else got cancer and on and on and on. And so there's not going to be a cure. But the fact is that no one's really looking for that anyway.

in terms of a pharmaceutical solution. Like that's not their goal, unfortunately. Yeah. It'd be like McDonald's trying to cure hunger. Yes. Exactly. You know? Well, they are. You know, it's like temporarily, right? But it's like permanently cure hunger, right? It's like, yeah, just eat this cheeseburger and you won't be hungry for weeks. Like, yeah, no.

That would not be in their best interest financially. So let's shift gears because one of these things, and I'm kind of harkening back to earlier before this wonderful rabbit trail we just took. One of your opinions that is controversial, that has certainly garnered attacks and criticism is in regard to mammograms and whether or not, well, I'm going to let you state your opinion, but basically you're very critical of mammograms.

And I know we touched on this in the last interview, but I'd love for you to revisit that and also talk about some of the alternatives to mammograms because there's some really good ones coming out, new technology coming out and things. So let's talk about that. Well, so is it my opinion? I mean, I kind of feel like it's a fact that mammograms are radiation and they cause cancer because if you know, if you had a

100 radiologists in the room and you said to them does radiation cause cancer? A hundred of them would say yes, and then you ask them if mammograms cause cancer and Most if not all of them would say no and it's because we've become so programmed we gave it a lovely name It's a mammogram, right if we called it a breast x -ray

Christopher Wark (19:34.445)
We all know that you got to hide behind lead when the x -rays are coming. We all know to shield when the x -rays are coming. But suddenly when we call it a mammogram, it's safe. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's crazy. Well, and they wouldn't even call it a breast x -ray, right? If they were being honest, they would call it 300 breast x -rays. Right. Or whatever. So that changed in 2012.

Right? So in the inception, like in the 1970s, when this whole mammographic screening program came into being, it came into being based on an assumption which was seemingly logical and aspirational and wholly untrue in that they thought that breast cancer growth was linear and predictable.

so that if you could identify a lesion when it's small and didn't allow it to get to that critical mass size at which time it would be more likely to metastasize, then you could decrease treatment and save lives. And it's a lovely theory. It just doesn't happen to be true. Because unlike other cancers, colon cancer has a more linear progression to it. So,

If you find a small polyp, even if it's had some malignant transformation, you can halt that process for someone. Not true of breast, not true. So breast cancers are what they are from the very beginning. Their biology is either aggressive or it's not. And if you find one with a non -aggressive biology,

It almost doesn't matter what you do, that person's going to do fine. And if you find one with an aggressive biology, it almost doesn't matter what you do because that person is going to struggle.

Christopher Wark (21:34.829)
With regard to mammogram, no matter how many mammograms we do every year, the same exact number of women will present with aggressive disease. No matter how many mammograms we do every year, the same exact number of women will die of breast cancer. 40 ,000 women are going to die of breast cancer every year, no matter how many women we screen. So we are not impacting the bottom line.

And when you look at the incidence of breast cancer, it's kind of flat from 1999 until 2012. And then in 2012, that it starts to go up and it's steadily increasing from 2012. Now, yes, do we have things in our environment that we didn't have before? Yes. Do we have more pollutants? Do we have more chemicals? Do we have more stress? Do we have more? Yes, we have all of that for sure.

But there's something more happening there. And in 2012 is when we introduced digital breast tomosynthesis onto the scene. And so this is what people call a 3D mammogram. And essentially what it is is the CAT scan of the breast. And so we took what was low level radiation and we virtually doubled it or tripled it. And what most radiologists don't even realize is that the way that that works,

is for women with larger breasts or women with very dense breasts, the machine automatically dials up the amount of radiation that that person is going to get to penetrate the tissues. So in a standard mammogram or even a standard tomosynthesis study, you may be getting a little more radiation than the 2D mammogram, but

For a woman with dense breasts or a woman with large breasts, she's getting 10 times more the radiation. And no one's talking about this. There is no informed consent about this. Women do not know. And so they could be in five years getting 50 times the radiation that someone who's not dense -breasted, someone who's not large -breasted or someone who's not screening,

Christopher Wark (24:02.381)
is getting. This is having a significant impact. So if we look at the population studies, if you look at 10 ,000 women and you screen them, you'll save one life. And then you're going to cause 10 breast cancer diagnoses in women that probably wouldn't have had them before. And they're going to get treated. And treatment for breast cancer is not benign. Treatment for breast cancer makes you more likely to have

two to three times more likely to die of heart disease, to have degenerative disease of the brain, so Alzheimer's, dementia, all of that, to have osteoporosis, right? We don't talk about the fact that as many women die every year as a result of a complication of a fracture as do a breast cancer. So if we are,

giving people this disease because they wouldn't have had it otherwise, giving people this disease, giving people this diagnosis, treating them and causing things that are worse. How are we helping? What are we doing? And when you look at the studies out of Denmark, I mean, Denmark has a study, you know, a million women more that they took the population that doesn't screen.

population that does, they have equal access to care afterwards, so their care is exactly the same. There is no difference in survival between the women that don't screen and the women that do. What are we doing? Why are we treating these women for breast cancer when they don't need treatment for breast cancer? And the only reason that we know about them is because we're doing screening mammogram, we're causing some and we're picking up others that don't need to be treated.

And you know, this is why Switzerland stopped, they abolished screening mammogram. They're not doing it because there's no benefit. But the only way you can arrive at that conclusion is when you take the commercial interest out. Because the commercial interest in this country is a really loud voice who says, mammograms save lives and everyone believes them, including the radiologists.

Christopher Wark (26:26.381)
I mean, you know, my haters, my trolls, the radiologists that scream at me, I'm killing people, they really believe that they're doing the right thing because it's what they've been told time and time and time again. And just because you say it loudly and emphatically doesn't make it true. And we need to back up and remember what we learned. Like the first day, everyone knows that radiation causes cancer. Everyone. It's not a surprise. And we need to take off those blinders.

and realize that we are harming people, we're really harming people. So I hate to point out a problem without a solution. And I think that there are many, and I think that there have been many for years and years and years, maybe not to people's satisfaction, but there have been alternatives for many years. So first of all, I completely support self -impressed exams.

I think that it is very important to know what you look like, very important to know what you feel like, very important to know what your normal is so that you can recognize when there's going to change. And anything that's going to be clinically relevant, you're going to feel, you're going to notice. And that's okay. When Denmark looked at their cases, the difference between the size of a screen detected cancer and an exam detected cancer,

was five millimeters. So five millimeters is not changing anyone's life one way or the other. And this is all about biology. So if all we did was self -examination, all we would pick up are the clinically relevant cancers, the ones that need to be treated anyway. So I fully believe in self -examination. Well, and let me interject because there was that study out of Canada where they compared mammograms and just physical breast exams.

And they found that mammograms didn't save any lives. The death rate was the same for women or survival rate, however you want to measure it, right? For women that had detected via mammogram versus detected just via physical breast exam. Yeah, that's exactly right. And, you know, a big part of the problem that we're not seeing in the statistics is for the women diagnosed with breast cancer,

Christopher Wark (28:51.309)
and treated for breast cancer that then go on to die of heart disease. They don't count as breast cancer deaths. And I get that. But the problem is the reason that they died of heart disease is because of the breast cancer treatment. And so that's why the numbers look the same and they shouldn't. They shouldn't. Well, then that's a huge gap in medical or scientific reporting is

cancer treatment related deaths, not just the breast cancer ones, right? Because a lot of people die as a result of cancer treatment and they're not considered to be cancer deaths. And it really does skew the statistics in favor of the cancer industry. It's sort of like they're hiding, right? These - Yeah. Well, they're saying like, we cured you of cancer. It's not our fault you died of heart disease, but it actually is. Right. The patient's like, I came to you,

to save my life, right? I came to you to not die. And, you know, like dying of heart disease is not better than dying of cancer, you know, unless you have a heart attack instantly. Well, that's, that's a faster way to go. But you know what I'm saying, but you still died. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And this is a huge problem. And it's a huge problem with informed consent because I think most people,

have no idea what they're getting into when they get into it with the conventional medical system. And it's definitely true of mammogram. I think people have no idea what the true effects of mammogram are. And I think it's true of all cancer care, that people are not adequately informed of what the real outcomes are with conventional cancer care. It's a huge issue.

It's huge and I'm so glad you have become such an outspoken advocate for the truth. The truth about the industry, about the risks and harms and the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of mammograms and actually saving lives. And you're, you know, Coleman is the organization that has pushed mammograms for years, right? They've made a lot of money promoting mammograms and funneling patients into

Christopher Wark (31:13.389)
the breast cancer industry and they get tons of money donated to them from the breast cancer industry and the drug companies. And so they're just in bed together to funnel patients into... And to create patients. I mean, we have to be clear here that there are, you know, there are a considerable number of patients created by screening mammograms.

who would have never come into the system were it not for the screening of the breast. Overdiagnosis, over treatment. Yeah. I mean, if you just take the 40 ,000 women a year alone, well, I'm talking about in Pennsylvania, that are treated for DCIS like it's invasive cancer, right? So,

That's wild. Just 40 ,000 women alone in Pennsylvania treated for stage zero DCIS. Wow. Yeah. And so when you look at those women,

These are women that that disease would have never hurt them. And then they go on to have surgery, radiation, take hormone blockade drugs. And all of a sudden now the rest of their life is changed, not for the better. Right? And they have heart disease, they have

all the things that go along with breast cancer treatment, only they never had breast cancer. So we unfortunately named it Deltacarcinoma in situ. All women here is carcinoma. Even on the physician side of things, people are treated just like they have cancer. And I was as guilty of it as anyone else. So I am not.

Christopher Wark (33:21.901)
pointing fingers or blaming, I'm just fortunate to be on the other side of it and know that that's the case.

So we have, without question, we are creating these situations where women are in, where they're not getting information, they're not being adequately informed, they're terrified, they're scared, and they are going to look to their doctor for what to do and trust their doctor. And this is what their doctor's telling them to do because like begets like, and they're just training one another, and this is where it's going.

And I don't think that most women are comfortable with the whole watch and wait thing and the self -exam thing. And so there's no doubt that we needed better imaging, but we needed that better imaging to be safer because for a while people thought MRI was going to be the thing, right? And while MRI doesn't use radiation, it does use gadolinium. And gadolinium is a heavy metal.

and it is stored in the body. In fact, I have women who haven't had an MRI for years and they're still spilling gadolinium in their urine. So gadolinium or any heavy metal, when it's stored in the body, it's always going to be stored at the expense of something else. And that's something else, it's something that you need. You know, we have all of this thyroid dysfunction because our iodine in our thyroid and our breasts even are being

displaced by fluoride in the water and toothpaste and that kind of thing. So we see this all the time, the dysfunction that happens as a result of heavy metal introduction. So we can't be ethically giving women gadolinium every year for screening. We just can't do it. And we can't even do it in the dense breast population, the high, like we can't take a subset and do that.

Christopher Wark (35:28.269)
I think for a while people really had hopes for thermography, but what we have to remember is, thermography while it's safe, it is not powered to find breast cancer. That's not what it's powered to do. It is, it's looking for a heat signal and it shows inflammation. But if you're going to use thermography for screening, you have to use it along with another screening tool like an ultrasound.

because the wrong if the alone is not reliable. I mean, yes, it will pick up a cancer if there's a lot of inflammatory response there. But there are a lot of cancers that are very slow growing that are not going to elicit an inflammatory response. And or that person's immune system is so overwhelmed that it's not able to mount an inflammatory response. So,

I don't think thermography is a screening tool for breast cancer. Does it have a use in our society? For sure. I think it's important to know if you have inflammation in your body. And I think that it is a screening tool of sorts, just not for cancer. But I was very fortunate about a year ago to discover a new imaging technique that is radiation free. It's painless. There's no compression.

It uses sound waves to create a three -dimensional reconstruction of the breast. That is a true three -dimensional reconstruction because when we do mammograms, when we do digital breast tomosynthesis, we're still like cutting slices and then making an average of it. So, you know, it's a guess more or less a guess. This is an actual 3D reconstruction of the breast that

has 200 ,000 times more data points than MRI and has 40 times the resolution of MRI. And it's the only functional testing on the market today, meaning that you can bring someone in, image them, see something. I mean, if it's an obvious cancer, we say it's an obvious cancer and that's the end of it. But if it's something that is seemingly benign or questionable,

Christopher Wark (37:53.261)
We can bring someone back in 60 days, re -image them, count the cells, measure a doubling time, and then we know that cancers have a doubling time of 100 days or less, and things that are benign have a doubling time of greater than 100 days. So we can actually say to that person, this has a long doubling time, you're fine, we'll see you in a year, or it's growing at a fairly...

fast rate and this is something that you need to take care of. And it's going to eliminate a ton of breast biopsies, which are so anxiety provoking and 75 % of them are benign with all that anxiety provoking time. And it's going to prevent a lot of unnecessary treatment because we're going to treat the ones that are aggressive. So,

In my opinion, it is absolutely going to change how we image breasts in perpetuity. The FDA agrees it is the first FDA approved device for breast screening in 50 years. Everything else was grandfathered in. So it was meant to replace MRI, but it is going to replace mammogram. And it's also...

This scanner that I'm talking about happens to be a breast scanner, but in 2025, the whole body scanner will be out. So it will replace MRI. So, you know, safe, reliable, fast, sensitive, specific, like all of those things, it really checks all the boxes and is gonna prevent a lot of pain and heartache.

for the women of the world. So, and eventually that will roll out to everyone. So I'm very excited about this. I think that it will be readily available to everyone who wants it in 2025. There'll be a number of centers open in 2024. So it's very, very exciting. So for the people that are not happy with self -exam alone, because some people really, they need to be more,

Christopher Wark (40:17.005)
more preemptive, right? They want more than just exam alone. And this is really the near perfect solution. And what's it called? The technology? It's called QT imaging. QT imaging. Okay. So people can keep an eye out for that. Now, is there a website or somewhere that people can learn more about it or follow it and see where it's available in different cities? Qtimaging .com. And there are a number of,

independent imaging centers opening across the country. Mine will be opening on the East Coast. It's called Perfection Imaging, but perfection is spelled with QT. And I'll be sure to send a link for your listeners so that they can learn more about the technology and find a place near them. That's great. I love it. Well, you know, I also know there's another emerging technology and maybe it's competitive, but the

the Pranuvo and the ESRA scans, which are MRI, but no contrast. So Pranuvo is MRI and it is a whole body scan. It does have a threshold of one centimeter because it's a non -contrast study. So, you know, that's the safe part about it. And that is definitely the exciting part about it. But it does have a threshold of one centimeter, which is a billion cells. So,

Not terribly early in diagnosis, but still good. I'm a huge fan of that scan. It's expensive. It's far more than what QT is. But still, listen, if we're moving forward in a safe and positive way, I'm all good. My hang up is we cannot cause...

the very disease we pretend to care about. And so when we are using these screening and treatment modalities that cause the disease or cause other worse diseases, we're not doing the right thing. So that's kind of where I come from and my take on things is I just want to leave this world a better place than when I found it. And...

Christopher Wark (42:38.349)
The time of blind trust is gone. And just because you say something really loud doesn't make it true. So mammograms don't save lives. I don't think chemotherapy is making an impact, right? And I don't think extending someone's life for four weeks, six weeks, and having them be miserable, like I don't see that as an advance, a scientific advance.

And I just want people to know and to be able to make an informed decision. And really, you know, that's the main reason I wrote my book is because I wanted people to be able to, you know, if you get a breast cancer diagnosis, you are terrified. You have no idea where to do, where to go, what to do. You're paralyzed with fear. You have opinions coming from everywhere that you should, right? You should do this and you should do that. And.

coming out of the woodwork, most of those opinions are very kind of standard, toe -the -line kind of opinions. You need to go see the best doctor here and the best doctor there. When you and I both know that health doesn't happen in the doctor's office or a hospital or chemotherapy suite or a radiation suite, health happens at home, right? And only you can make you healthy. So,

I wanted people to understand their pathology because you get handed this pathology report. It's like, you might as well be Greek. No offense to the Greeks. Like, you know, it doesn't mean anything to you. You don't understand it. I wanted people to understand their pathology report. I wanted them to understand the treatments, what they actually did and what they didn't do because, you know, almost everyone who has a lumpectomy gets told to go have radiation. Well, they all think,

that radiation is going to increase survival. It doesn't. It doesn't. And they're never told that. They're never told that. Well, you know, it may decrease a local recurrence in the breast, but that does not influence survival. And if most people knew that, I don't know how many would opt in for radiation. And I thought it was really important for them to know that. So I wanted people to make an informed decision, an empowered decision.

Christopher Wark (45:03.981)
I want them to know the questions to ask their doctor. Right? Most people don't even know what to ask. And you can't get the information that you need if you don't know what to ask. So I wanted to give them all of that. And I wanted them mostly to learn what they can do for themselves. Cause you and I both know that's what moves the needle the most. Right? If you can do the things that actually drive health, we have to know what they are first.

So I wanted to give that to them and for them to know that food is medicine, sunshine is medicine, sleep is medicine, love is medicine, laughter is medicine, joy is medicine. And so, you know, that's why I've spent the last three years of my life writing this book. I'm excited to read it. I'm so excited to read it because I know I'm going to learn a lot of new things from you. And of course we share the same message.

the same core message about diet and lifestyle and how incredibly impactful they are on your health and healing. And that if you really want to get well, then you need to be willing to change your whole life. And as you said, and as I say, healing happens at home. Doesn't mean you can't ever work with a doctor or go to a clinic or get treatments or whatever. But number one is you really need to understand and ask the right questions. I've been, you know, supplying my

a community with a list of questions for years. You've got questions as well. And I know a lot of them are the same kind of questions, but if you don't, if you're not armed with the right questions, when you go in to see that doctor, they will tell you a limited, they'll give you a limited amount of information that typically will, and I'm not trying to throw them under the bus, but typically it will mislead you, right, into believing that the treatments are, are much more effective than they truly are.

And they even use that word. They say, well, we have some, some drugs that are effective, you know, are very effective for your type of cancer. And when you hear effective as a patient, you think, that's cure. It's effective. It's an effective drug that it's, you know, they have drugs that could cure me. I mean, that's what the, you know, the patient hears. They get this false hope. And as you and I know, and maybe hopefully many of my listeners know, or I've learned at least from, if they've read my book is that effective just means.

Christopher Wark (47:31.469)
that the drug in a study funded by the drug company, typically, maybe an independent study, but that the drug shrunk a tumor, right? It was proven to shrink tumors in patients. It had an effect. There was shrinkage. That's all that it has to do for them to claim it's effective. The interesting part about that is that it does not have to mean that more people are cured.

So these are all what they call them surrogate endpoints, where instead of saying, does this save lives, they instead say, will this shrink a tumor? And they found that there are drugs that will shrink the tumor. But then once you stop the drugs, the tumor comes right back and it does not have any effect on survival.

They moved the goalposts. No, you finished my sentence because that's exactly what I was going to say. They moved the goalposts. So the goalposts at some point, I imagine in the past of cancer treatment was cure, right? Treat patients to cure their disease, period. That is a success. But then as they realized, well, many of the treatments we do don't cure most patients, then they start moving the goalposts closer and closer together. So it's like, that's

You know, we shrunk the tumor. That's a success, right? Doesn't matter if they live or die or how long they live or they live a little longer. That's a success, even though they die. And, and again, all of that can be lumped under this umbrella of effective treatments. And I know that's the, you know, as a patient advocate myself and as a physician, we're both trying to educate the public. so they understand what they're getting into.

and they can ask the right questions. And when you do, then you get very specific answers that will inform you so you can make the best treatment decision for you because you don't want to say yes to a treatment that has no likelihood of curing you, right? And is only going to cause suffering, right? You're much better off, even if you do nothing, you're much better off just going and enjoying your life. And so, but...

Christopher Wark (49:52.909)
Fortunately, there's so many more good things that we can do. And I know we have, we have, I still have some time, a few more minutes. And you want to touch on some of those things that, you know, that you've found to be most beneficial for patients in terms of survival, like the diet and lifestyle actions that people can take. Yeah. I mean, I actually want to talk about something that I know you and I have spoken about before.

But I hear this more and more and more. I'm talking about things to eat and of course like the protein conversation comes up because people worry about being on a plant -based diet and losing weight because that whole thing is put into their head that you should never lose weight when you have cancer, right? So that is programmed into their head. And so, you know, that...

That's one of the first things actually that I want to talk about is that if you are overweight and you have cancer, that is probably one of the reasons why you have cancer because that is an inflammatory condition. And with all due respect, I don't care what your doctor says. If you're overweight, you need to lose weight because that is going to be part of your healing. And

When you're overweight, we see a lot of metabolic dysfunction attached to that. We see high blood sugars. We see high insulin levels. We see high insulin -like growth factor. This is the rocket fuel for cancer growth. And in fact, I was just talking to Dr. Thomas Seyfried yesterday and he wrote the metabolic, no, he didn't write the metabolic.

He wrote cancer as a metabolic disease. And so many medical oncologists are still not, I don't know if they're not aware of this or they're not talking to people about this, but getting that metabolic health back and reversing the metabolic disease is so very important. And so what that means is when you look at your diet, you're talking about

Christopher Wark (52:18.593)
a whole food plant -based, grain -free, low glycemic diet, at least until you get your metabolic health back. I know a lot of people push back. They don't like the fact that I advocate for a grain -free diet. But we have to recapture our metabolic health. And at this point in the United States, 90 % of people do not have metabolic health. This is an epidemic of

unimaginable proportions. And all we're going to see as a result of metabolic dysfunction is chronic disease. We're going to see heart disease. We're going to see degenerative brain disease. We're going to see diabetes. We're going to see cancer. And we're going to see a lot of it, more than the system can handle. So that's the first thing that I really think about is really recapturing that metabolic health. And then,

I get questions all the time about the protein, right? And so I talk about soy. no, no, no. No, I can't have soy. Why can't you have soy? Because I have a hormone positive tumor and soy is estrogen. And there are as many people as doctors still saying this, that soy is estrogen. And I was speaking to

William Lee the other day and he kind of like put his head in his hand and shook his head because the data around soy being beneficial for people with hormone positive breast cancer is not only it's conclusive, it's definitive and it's old. Right? Like this is not a new concept. And yet,

There is so little understanding about food and what food is and what food does that they kind of boil it down to this overly simplistic model of estrogen bath, right? And it's because they don't understand. They don't understand what phytoestrogens are. They don't understand that they actually block the estrogen receptor and are beneficial. They don't understand this. And I don't know why.

Christopher Wark (54:41.901)
But, you know.

I will say it as many times as I need to say it to make sure that people understand that. I think, you know, there are things that are totally obvious to me and you that maybe are still not so obvious to other people. Like sleep needs to be a priority. Sleep is not a process that is inactive.

Sleep is a very active process. There is a lot happening in our body when we sleep. And so if we are not sleeping and if we're not sleeping in the right way, meaning that we're not going to bed with full stomachs because if you have to digest while you sleep and that's the work that you're doing and you're not doing the work that needs to be done. So, you know, sleeping in a fasted state, if you're using

drugs, alcohol to sleep, then you're not doing what needs to be done while you sleep. And, you know, we have a sleep epidemic in this country because, you know, 75 million Americans have issues with sleep. I mean, this is a huge problem. And it's because we are over consuming as a society. We consume too much food, we consume too much air, we consume too much light.

We consume too much information. You know, we're just over consuming and our bodies are up too much during the night processing all of this. So we all need to do less and prioritize sleep so that our brains can heal overnight, so that we can process the information that we get, so that we can decide what to keep and decide what to get rid of so that we can function the next day.

Christopher Wark (56:37.357)
But if your brain has brain fog the next day because you haven't gotten rid of toxins, like you can't do this for too many days in a row, months in a row, years in a row, because this is where dysfunction comes from. And same thing with the rest of the body. When we sleep, we are detoxing, we are replenishing, our immune systems are resetting. And if we don't reset our immune system every day,

And our immune system can't do what it's supposed to do. How is it supposed to look and survey your body for cancer cells if it was up all night, if it's exhausted? Right? And so sleep is one of those really major areas that we don't prioritize because we are a society that values the waking moments. And the truth is that we need to

prioritize a lot more sleep. I think relationships and purpose and the way that you relate to everyone around you, your drive, your joy, your reason for being, I think that's all really important along your journey. And...

people need to have something to live for, to live. And I know for me, when I was sick, it really redefined who I was and what I was here for. And I made sure that I was going to fulfill that responsibility, why I was here on this earth, fulfill my purpose.

Our illness is often our message. It's our body trying to tell us something. And if you don't listen to whispers, you get screams. And that's what I needed to put me back on my path. And you know, cancer isn't just something that happens to you. It's not bad luck. It is a message. It is...

Christopher Wark (59:00.493)
an opportunity, it may be unwanted, but it is an opportunity nonetheless. And for the people that see it as that, it sometimes is an opportunity to create something really amazing. And you know, there's no better example of that than you. Thank you. Yeah. Cancer did change my life for the better and it was certainly unwanted.

but it changed me and, and I, I just, my life is so good as a result of what I went through and the amount of gratitude and love I have. And, my perspective was totally changed by it. And obviously it's, it took over my life. I didn't expect it to do that. I wanted to just go back and get well and go back to my, you know, my regular normal life. And obviously I've become a patient advocate and,

author and you know, it's, it's. Do you miss real estate? Weren't you in real estate before? Do you miss it? I do miss it a little bit. There were, there were fun aspects of real estate that I enjoy, but there was a lot of headaches, a lot of hassles and headaches. And, and so I have to remind myself that. Yeah. So I could always go back to it if I decided to. Yeah. I'm pretty sure you could, you could get back in there. I could. There's.

I was mainly like renovating houses. I had flipped houses and I had rental property too. The rental properties were just always, always a hassle. But, but I always enjoyed, you know, taking a house that was run down or outdated and totally refurbishing it and making it look, you know, new and updated and beautiful. There's a lot of satisfaction in that. Yeah. A lot of satisfaction in that. Yep. But there's, there's a lot of.

You know, like I said, headaches and hassles and, you know, to manage those kinds of projects, especially if it's a big project. But anyway, you know, I just, I am thankful not really, I just have to say I'm thankful to God for delivering me, for getting, taking me through cancer to the other side of it, to health and healing. Because it was - It does give a beautiful perspective, right? Yeah. It gives a beautiful perspective.

Christopher Wark (01:01:24.877)
And you do, I mean, we are both people of faith, people of deep faith. And I know that God put me here with a purpose, God put you here with purpose. And then oftentimes we need to kind of look back and remember where we all came from, because I think it is living not in accordance,

with where we came from, when we go off the path and we're overindulging and we're doing too much. And I think oftentimes we need to get back to the simplicity of it all because that's really, you know, we are modern beings living on a very old gene code. And our current gene code doesn't understand all this processed food.

It doesn't understand all this artificial light. It for sure doesn't understand all this technology. It doesn't understand all this busyness. It doesn't understand all this conflict. I mean, you know, we were used to fighting wars once a decade, not every single day, every single moment of every single day. But yet that's what life is like. And, you know, we didn't talk about fasting today, but fasting,

from all of these things is enormously important in healing. And so fasting from food, fasting from news, fasting from conflict, it just shutting down. Even if it's only temporary for hours or days or whatever, whatever your version of fasting is and,

You know, we could speak specifically of what like the fasting mimicking diet does when people are getting chemotherapy or what prolonged water fast can do when people have disease that's advancing. I mean, there's a lot of benefits of fasting that are proven. The work of Walter Longo at USC is amazing what he's doing and what he's coming up with. So,

Christopher Wark (01:03:47.469)
At the end of the day, we all are doing too much. And when we slow down and get back to what we were meant to be like and meant to do and what our bodies and our beings were meant for, life, when it's a little simpler, it's a little simpler, right? And we don't have all the complications that come along with this complicated goal.

That's a great message. And I agree. You know, I think you really have to take a step back and look at your life and look at all the things in your life that are quote unquote unnatural, right? All the modern, you know, technology and advancements and the modern way of living that is so far removed from our ancestors. And when you look at it from that lens and you start to say, okay, you know, you see things you can eliminate, right?

see things you can change and trying to get back into living in harmony with nature, which was, you know, just an idea I had for myself 20 years ago when I was trying to get well. I was like, how can I live more in harmony with nature? And so I love that. Well, Dr. Jen Simmons has been amazing. How can people find you, follow you? Yeah. So my website is called Real Health MD.

and you can reach me there. You can follow me on all the social channels. I'm Dr. Jen Simmons and my Jen has two N's. We'll provide you the link, but look for the Smart Woman's Guide to Breast Cancer. That is absolutely what every woman needs at any point along her breast cancer journey when she wants to navigate her way back to health.

And my podcast is called Keeping a Breast with Dr. Jenn. And you were on it in the very beginnings. We'll have to have you back on now. And yeah, that's about it. Look for Perfection Imaging Centers. They're gonna be coming to a town near you. And we would love to hear from you. You can contact us at perfectionimaging .com. And that...

Christopher Wark (01:06:05.069)
perfection is dealt with QT.

We'll put a link to all of that stuff. Your book, your website, social media, perfection imaging, all that in the show notes folks. So you can learn more and connect with Dr. Jan and follow her and get her new book. So yeah, covered a lot today. Amazing. I knew it would be, I'm so glad you're doing well. I'm so glad you're doing what you're doing and that you are expanding like, you know, with the book and with, you know, this.

safe and non -toxic and highly accurate imaging, the QT imaging. I mean, it's, you're really pushing the ball forward and it's, I'm just so impressed and thankful that you're doing what you're doing. I'm living my mission. Yeah. I'm living my mission. It's good. Well, thanks everybody. Thanks for watching. Please share this video with people you care about. Obviously breast cancer is an issue that every woman really needs education on because

What we're being told by the media, by the drug companies, by the charities is not the whole story. It's, there's a lot of deception in there and, and women need to know the truth. And so a great start would just be sharing Dr. Jen's interview, this one and the other one I did with her, and so that they can hear, you know, this incredibly informed opinion from someone who has 20 years experience as a breast surgeon. It was on the front lines. Like,

knows the industry in and out. That's really who you want to learn from and left the industry for that reason because of what she saw. Anyway, again, thanks for watching everybody and I'll see you on the next one.