A Personal Note From Orion

Hello, radiant beings! In this episode of the Stellar Life podcast, Dr. Jenn Simmons joins us for a mind-blowing conversation about debunking breast cancer myths.

Our spotlight guest, Dr. Jenn, started her professional career as Philadelphia’s first fellowship-trained breast surgeon. Her startling health crisis proved to be the catalyst that unveiled the transformative realm of functional medicine. Dr. Jenn boldly diverged from her distinguished surgical career in 2019 to establish Real Health MD. Her driving purpose is to  empower women navigating any stage of the breast cancer odyssey to experience profound healing on every level—mind, body and spirit.

In this episode, Dr. Jenn pulls back the curtain on the deeply flawed mainstream medical approach to breast cancer. With a blazing combination of science, wisdom and personal experience, she exposes hard truths about the potential harms of mammograms, root causes that are overlooked, and how we’ve been taught to create the diseases we fear most. More importantly, she illuminates hope-restoring alternative pathways using food as medicine, the transformative power of fasting and detox, and addressing the whole being on every level.

Her story and protocol for overcoming breast cancer holistically will blow your mind wide open. You’ll be inspired to trust your intuition, challenge dogmatic beliefs, and reclaim your health sovereignty. The leading-edge knowledge in this conversation can be applied to prevent all diseases and step into your most vibrant, radiant life.

Open your heart, engage your mind, and prepare to receive empowering wisdom that could alter your health and destiny. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the show!

In This Episode

• [03:43] – Orion welcomes Dr. Jenn Simmons. Dr. Jenn shares a core memory from her childhood and a personal story of coming from a breast cancer family.
• [14:52] – Dr. Jenn acknowledges the importance of balancing work and family but notes it’s difficult to do so, especially for women in male-dominated fields.
• [22:37] – Dr. Jenn reveals multiple factors contributing to her cancer diagnosis, including mold exposure, dental issues, and a root canal.
• [28:47] – Dr. Jenn argues that medical industries prioritize profit over health, citing mammography screening as an example.
• [32:42] – Orion and Dr. Jenn discuss the potential health risks of microwaves and mammograms, with Dr. Jenn expressing concerns about the directed radiation from mammograms and their cumulative effect over time.
• [40:58] – Dr. Jenn offers some tips for living a stellar life.
• [43:43] – Here’s how to learn more and connect with Dr. Jenn Simmons.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

Hello, Dr. Jenn Simmons. Welcome to the Stellar Life podcast. I’m so happy you’re here. We’re going to talk about something very important and relevant to many women these days.

All women, I would say.

Yes, all of them. Amazing. Before we begin, can you tell me one lovely childhood memory that comes to mind? Can you share it with us?

One of my favorite childhood memories is that we love food. My family loves food. My sister and I have always been really adventuresome eaters. Let’s call it that. Every Sunday night, my parents would take us out to eat at a really special restaurant.

So we knew fine dining our entire lives, and I looked forward to that Sunday night dinner where we would go out and experience delicious cuisine. It made us really sophisticated in a way, even as children. And I still love that. And my boys are the same way. They have a tremendous appreciation for fine food and beautiful palates.

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I have to share a funny story with you because when my older son was six, my best friend’s dog died, and she got a puppy. We were coming over for the naming party for the new puppy. So we have dinner, brainstorm about names, and pick a puppy name. She called my son and said, “Andrew, you’re going to come over on Thursday for dinner, and we’re going to name the puppy. What do you want me to make? I’ll make you whatever you want.” And he said, “Octopus.”She said, “Can I talk to your mother?”

She’s like, “I thought I was going to get chicken nuggets, pizza, or maybe sushi. And, like the really outside realm, he wants an octopus. What kind of child are you raising?” I’m like, “I know.”

That’s amazing. I love asking my guests this question because I love how they lay up when they connect that memory. It is such a beautiful thing. 

Tell me a bit about your background and your mission today.

Yeah. I come from a breast cancer family. And it’s no accident that I wound up being a breast cancer doctor. When I was a child, I had a first cousin, and her name was Linda Creed.

She was a singer-songwriter in the 1970s and 1980s. She wrote all the music for The Spinners and The Stylistics. She wrote 54 hits, and her most famous song was The Greatest Love of All. 

Wow.

Yeah, I know. I always get that—wow. I can imagine how I felt as a child because I had “wow” on steroids, right? My cousin was literally a rock star, and we went to see the opening of that movie.

Wow. I didn’t mean to say wow; it just came up.

I know. It’s what happens all the time. I mean, it deserves a wow. It’s a wow moment, right?

She wrote that song in 1977, but it received its acclaim in March 1986 when Whitney Houston released it to the world.

At that time, it would spend 14 weeks at the top of the charts. Only Linda would never know because she died of metastatic breast cancer one month after Whitney released the song.

I was 16 years old when my hero died. Her life and, ultimately, her death gave birth to my life’s purpose.

I did the only thing I knew how to do: become a doctor, a surgeon, and the first fellowship-trained breast surgeon in Philadelphia. I did that well for a long time, and it wasn’t until I got my diagnosis that I started to examine our medical system because it’s one thing to be in it as a physician and a whole other thing to be in it as a patient.

As my friend JJ Virgin says, “You can’t see the picture when you’re in the frame.” I was in the frame for a long time. When I stepped out of the frame as a patient, I realized that there are so many things in our medical system that we are doing wrong, and cancer is front and center for it.

When we look at cancer, we are focused on the tumor, but the tumor isn’t the problem. The tumor is the symptom of the problem, and no one’s talking about the symptom. Now, I didn’t come up with this. This is not my theory. As it turns out, when I got sick and was trying to figure out how to heal myself without surgery and chemotherapy and radiation, those weren’t things that when it came down to it, even though these are things that I recommended all day, every day, when it came down to it for me, I didn’t want to do it. It didn’t feel right.

Why?

All I can tell is that every cell in my body said, “There’s another way. There’s something else. Find it.” And you know, the day I walked out of my doctor’s office, he wasn’t just my doctor; he was my colleague and friend. And he said to me, “Jen, you’re going to die.”

I’m crying a little bit. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe him. I knew that’s what I said to women all the time. Every day, people would ask me, “Well, what would happen if I didn’t treat this?”

And I would tell them, “You’re going to die of breast cancer.” So it wasn’t that I didn’t believe him. It wasn’t that I didn’t know that that was the standard of care I did. I mean, that’s what I did every day. I knew. But a louder voice inside me said, “There’s something else. Go find it.”

You can’t see the picture when you’re in the frame. – JJ Virgin

So, I did what I told people never to do. I went to Dr. Google, and you know, at this time, it was 2017, and it was a little different, a little more reliable, and there was a little more truth to be found.

Less fact “checkers.” That’s some people with a lot of money.

It probably still had an agenda then, but not the agenda that it has now. Which is like, there’s no truth to be found.

Absolutely. I agree.

That narrative is 100% controlled now. But then, you know, when I asked Dr. Google, I got told time and time again that there’s a way to eat to reverse disease.

Now, as a conventional medical doctor, I went to one of the finest medical schools in this country. We have 15 hours worth of training and education around nutrition. That’s it—our first year of medical school.

And how many years do you study to be a doctor?

I’ve been in it for ten years because I’m a fellowship-trained surgeon. So we had 15 hours. The first year of medical school was like the break between the first and second semesters.

We had a three-week mini-course on nutrition. That’s what it was. The training in medical school is that if it’s not taught to you, it’s either not important, not true, or both. We came away thinking we knew everything we needed to know, and nutrition wasn’t meaningful except in obscure third-world countries where they didn’t have food.

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And if you had food, you were covering your nutritional requirements, and you know, as long as you had food, your body could figure out what to do with it, which means that a bag of pretzels that’s a hundred calories and a bowl of broccoli that’s a hundred calories is the same thing. It’s food is food, right? Calories are calories. 

I figured maybe there was something to learn there, something that I could add to my resources/toolbox. So, I joined a certification program, a nutrition coaching program called IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. First, I drove them crazy because I said, “I’m a doctor. What am I going to learn? Is this really worth it? Because it costs thousands of dollars to do this.” And they assured me, “Yes, you’ll learn.” 

I’m sitting in one of the first lectures, and Mark Hyman walks on the stage. Now, this was 2017. I have no idea who he was, have never heard of him before, and have never seen him before.

He walks on the stage and introduces himself as a functional medicine physician. I’m like, “I’ve been a doctor for 20 years. There’s no such thing as a functional medicine physician. What is this quack talking about?” And then I remember that I’m sick and there for a reason. So I checked my ego at the door, sat down, listened, and thanked God I did because within three minutes of him speaking, my whole world made sense, and I knew exactly why I got sick. 

I got sick so that I could be in that seat on that day listening to him speak because he was telescoping the rest of my life. He was allowing me to understand how I got here and telescoping the rest of my life.

What was the first thing you got that was actionable? When he started talking, you figured out, “Okay, there was something to it. I need to learn more.”

I have to learn more. I joined The Institute for Functional Medicine that day. It’s like doing another residency. In the midst of being sick, running a full-time practice, and running the cancer program for my hospital, I’m a wife, a mother, a stepmother, an athlete, and I’m doing tons of philanthropy work. Now, I am taking on this Institute for Functional Medicine training. But I knew that’s what I needed.

How do you do all that? How do you manage to stick time to the degree of doing everything you just mentioned?

In retrospect, it was a dumb idea. If someone else said to me they came to me because they were sick and they gave me that laundry list of all the things that they’re doing, I would say, “Of course you’re sick.”

You can have it all, but you can’t have it all at once.

I got this amazing advice, which I wish I had heeded long ago as a surgical resident. Even in the days that I was a surgical resident, there weren’t very many female surgeons because the lifestyle was God-awful. 

It was my first year of residency. There were three women of the 50 Surgeons in the Department of Surgery.

Were there three?

There might have been two. There were two women at the time that I started. One of them took me under her wing. She took me out to dinner very, very early in the process.

She said, “I’m going to give you advice that no one ever gave me. You can have it all. So if you want children, if you want marriage, if you want all the things, and if you want a rewarding career, you can have it all, but you can’t have it all at once. There are going to be times when you’re a wonderful surgeon, times when you’re going to be a wonderful department head, times when you’re going to have awesome academic acclaim and times when you’re going to be a good wife and times when you’re going to be a good mother. But you’re not going to be all of those things at once. You can’t appreciate the meaning until you’re there or live it.”

It’s true that it’s difficult to be full-time in everything. You can’t. Something’s got to give. And what did you give me during that time aside from my health and family?

I won’t say nannies and babysitters raised my children, but they did the things that someone else could do. I didn’t drive my kids to school and pick them up. I was at the important things. But if you ask my kids, they’ll tell you I missed a lot of things, and they’d be right.

Looking back, am I proud of that? Definitely not. This was not the right decision. You know, we make the best decisions that we can at the moment we make them. I was a doctor and a surgeon long before I was a wife and a mother. Even though that’s not how I wanted it to happen—I wanted family first—it just didn’t work out for me. It probably didn’t work out because I was too busy in medical school and the operating room.

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This is a huge topic by itself. It really touched my heart when you were so honest about that. I feel you regret some things; you don’t regret others. But you’re complete with yourself, and you forgive yourself for the things you can’t.

Actually, I regret it a lot because, you know, that’s something you never get back. My children will say, “My mom was never the classroom mom. She never did anything at school,” and that’s very true. I wasn’t ever the classroom mom. I wasn’t involved at school. We didn’t make any friends with our kids’ parents because we just weren’t there.

We weren’t there. My husband worked in New York, and we live in Philadelphia, so he commuted back and forth like we weren’t there. We were there entirely on the weekends. We made up for it on the weekends, and both of my kids were competitive athletes. And we toured with them around the country competing. With my older one, we actually went around the world competing.

Well, it looks like you did a lot of good, what you bring to the world today, the life you save, and just the person you are—such a heart-driven, beautiful woman. It’s so refreshing and nice to be around. I really appreciate you.

There are so many women who hit their stride in their fifties or even started in their fifties and built amazing things.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing everything that you shared with me as a mom. It gave me a lot of perspective. Because I’m struggling with, “Oh, I really want to succeed and be like one of those speakers on stage.” I went to the Mindvalley event yesterday.

What a great event.

It was amazing. I was in the audience, but it was like, “Dude, I could totally be on stage and rock the stage in front of thousands of people, but I want to be here for my son, but I want to be this. Why can’t I just be happy where I am?”

And that’s it. But I get it. There is this mission that is burning in your heart that you want to fulfill.

You know, there are so many women who hit their stride in their fifties or even started in their fifties and built amazing things. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive.

I don’t think you have to hit it now at the expense of your children. You can be there when your children no longer need you because, unfortunately, that day is coming. I shouldn’t say, unfortunately, that it’s all blessings, right? 

Every stage is a blessing. But you’re not limited; your window isn’t closing. You can always open that window and soar.

Amazing. Well, I wish I had the heart button on this program, and I’ll put lots of hearts on the screen. So okay, let’s go back to you. You’re sick, and you’re searching Dr. Google, and you find that institute.

I listened to Mark Hyman and enrolled in the Institute for Functional Medicine. It took me three years to heal myself, lots of struggles back and forth—one step up, two steps back. It was not easy. I also was self-treating, self-diagnosing, like, in retrospect, why I didn’t hire someone to help me.

Fluoride is a huge issue, and people need to understand that because they’re still doing fluoride treatments in children.

It’s beyond me, but I was just learning about all this. Philadelphia happens to be a pretty slow place for advancement. And so there wasn’t any functional medicine movement happening here. There were centers for integrative medicine, meaning they were practicing pretty standard medicine, but they would have an acupuncturist come to the office once a week or something like that.

They would integrate what I think of as Eastern modalities but were not practicing Eastern medicine because it is holistic. It’s not like, “Get some acupuncture and take a pill.” It’s like, “Figure out where the energy is off and fix that.” Acupuncture is definitely a part of that, but so is diet, mindset, and all the other things we know drive health.

And what was the root cause of your cancer experience?

It was a lot. First, I lived in a moldy home I had moved into six months before.

I had an interview with Dave Asprey about mold on this podcast. I had mold sickness, too. That’s the worst thing ever.

Yeah. That was a major thing for me. I also had lots of issues in my mouth. I had dental amalgams that had to come out like mercury fillings. I had metals issues and had a root canal that had to be treated.

It wasn’t one thing, and I was burning my candle at both ends, which I continue to do, unfortunately. So, you know, I have more of a cautionary tale because I did get worse before it got better. But also, it took me time to discover all of these things. Dentistry is one of the biggest healthcare issues in the world of cancer.

Because we’re told that all of these things are safe, and then I see people at the end of the line when they’ve already developed cancer when they already have mercury toxicity or cadmium or whatever metal alloys are in these metal fillings. The whole root canal thing is a huge issue because people harbor these microinfections in their mouths.

I have a friend who, through a root canal, got a very rare form of cancer, and she was supposed to die a long time ago, but she went through a very long road of healing herself through spiritual, physical, mental, everything like she did everything.

She’s healed. Thank God she’s here still alive and teaching; she is an amazing woman. Her illness started with a root canal. My whole family is going to this bio dentist and have to drive an hour to see him, but it is so important. With all the fluoride they put everywhere, it’s terrible.

Exactly. Fluoride is a huge issue, and people need to understand that because they’re still doing fluoride treatments in children.

And it’s in our water.

People are using fluoride toothpaste. It’s in the water supply, and it’s a huge issue. So, I don’t want to say it’s a conspiracy because I’m not a conspiracy theorist, although the reason that we started to use fluoride is we needed to do something with all the byproducts of industry.

But you know, I also heard in Germany, in the Jewish ghettos, they put fluoride in the water to make people more docile and more cooperative. Because apparently, it closes your third eye or numbs you to a certain degree. That’s what I heard. I don’t know if it’s true or not.

That could be possible. The other explanation you can get from that is fluoride competes with iodine. The iodine molecule is the center of our thyroid hormone. People all the time have thyroid tests. They are symptomatic in terms of feeling hypothyroid, right? And when you’re hypothyroid, everything is slower, weaker, depressed, also like dry everything and a loss of reflexes.

One of the biggest problems with fluoride is that it ruins our thyroid hormone.

There are some very serious consequences of being hypothyroid. But it gets replaced. When you test, the thyroid hormone levels are normal, but the thyroid hormone doesn’t work because there’s a fluoride molecule at the center instead of an iodine molecule at the center.

I’ve never heard that. That’s so incredible.

That’s one of the biggest problems with fluoride is that it ruins our thyroid hormone. That’s not my mission because I’m on a specific mission. Someone else will have to take on that mission, but that needs to happen.

We need to abandon fluoride. There’s a woman named Trina Felber. I don’t know if you know her. She is a nurse practitioner who had this crazy experience with her daughter. Her daughter was born with a cavity in her tooth, and the dentist told her, “We can put a temporary filling in, but it’s going to fall out, and you’re going to need to come back every two months until she’s 12 and the tooth gets replaced.”

This is what she had to look forward to from two to twelve. She was supposed to go in every couple of months and have this filling replaced.

What a torture.

She decided, “This is crazy. There has to be something else.” She also did a deep dive into dentistry and oral health.

She came up with this line of products she designed, like mixing essential oils and clays and tinkering around to heal her daughter’s tooth so she didn’t have a cavity and didn’t have to go back every two months to have it filled. And she did it.

Now, she has this whole line called Primal Life Organics and a dental detox kit.

We are using something to create diseases, such as fluoride and mammograms.

The name is so familiar. I think I came across it.

It’s really amazing. She’s helping people rebuild their enamel. Her daughter rebuilt that enamel, and that tooth lasted. She never had another filling because what happened was that it rebuilt the enamel and pushed the filling out, but there wasn’t a cavity underneath. It lasted until she was 12 when it fell out and got replaced by her permanent molar.

I actually just purchased that whole system for my entire house because our oral health is so important. Conventional dentistry is not protecting our oral health, and they’re certainly not building it.

Part of the problem, and not exclusive to dentistry; it’s everywhere in the industry, is that if dentists don’t drill and fill, what are they doing? What are they going to do? How are they going to make money?

They won’t make money. And that’s the problem with allopathic medicine. I’ve been to a conference, I think 15 years ago, where doctors testified that they had to leave the country because they found a cure for cancer.

That’s exactly right. Some of them didn’t get the treatment to live, actually. If you’re talking about billions and billions of dollars, what’s a life worth for people who make so much money?

So this is happening everywhere. They might discover a cure for cancer, but it will never be released to the general population. Never.

This is the perfect time to talk about mammograms because they are the same thing. We are using something to create the disease. The mammographic screening program started in the 1970s was built on an assumption.

The assumption was that breast cancer starts small and grows to some critical size, at which time it is more likely to metastasize. And if you find it before that time, you can save lives and get better outcomes, have people receive less treatment, and do things like that. And it’s a lovely theory. It just doesn’t happen to be true.

Breast cancer is what it is from the very beginning. There are breast cancers that are small and very aggressive. There are breast cancers that are large and not very aggressive. The large ones that are not aggressive can be neglected and treated in the 11th hour, and people are fine.

The small aggressive tumors—no matter what we do, these people do not have great outcomes. Then there’s everything in between, but size is not a predictor of anything. The only thing that’s meaningful is biology. So we tell all of these people that mammograms save lives, and it’s simply not true.

When we look at population statistics, if you look at 10,000 women and you screen them, you might save one from dying of breast cancer, and you’re going to cause or treat breast cancer in 10 women that didn’t need to be treated.

I heard that the radiation of mammograms can create the disease that causes cancer.

It’s undeniable. Radiation causes cancer.

Yes, that’s correct.

I went to a doctor, and he wanted to take me through a mammogram. I know what I know, so I told him, “No, this is not good for you, but why would you listen to me? I’m not a doctor. I’m just a random patient.” And he said, I took my mom from mammogram every year, and then she had breast cancer, and then she saved, in my mind, I was like, “You actually might have caused it.” She could have avoided all that if she didn’t have a mammogram. I didn’t tell him because we can’t argue with those people.

I get a lot of haters. Many people say, “Mammogram saved my life,” and I know they believe that.

That’s okay. It’s just simply not true. So, if you asked a hundred radiologists, “Does radiation cause cancer?” They would all say yes, right? It’s undeniable. Radiation causes cancer. We know that. It is a known carcinogen. You then ask them if mammograms cause cancer, and they say no.

Does microwaves do the same? God, I must get my husband to stop using the microwave.

Yes, the microwave kills your food. It’s like eating dead food after you’ve microwaved it. You don’t want to do that. Get rid of that microwave. There are way better ways.

I know.

Not only does it kill your food, but the rule of thumb is that if you put your cell phone in the microwave and hear it ringing, you are getting microwaved as well.

I’m taking it out today. I don’t care.

Instead of a breast X-ray, they call it a mammogram. They gave it this nice name so it sounds friendly and harmless.

I hate the microwave.

How can someone get a diagnosis, and what’s the treatment?

First, let’s talk about the overall issues with mammograms because they have been packaged up nicely. For example, instead of a breast X-ray, they call it a mammogram. So they gave it this nice name—it sounds friendly and harmless. Because if they called it a breast X-ray, everyone would be like, “Wait, that’s radiation.”

Now, you hear doctors talk all the time about the fact that mammograms give the same amount of radiation as a cross-country flight, and you would never tell someone not to travel. That may be true, but the cross-country flight is scattered radiation. A mammogram is directed radiation; because it is low-energy radiation, about 60 percent of those X-rays will be retained in the breast.

Yeah. Everybody wants to keep healthy; they go every year, and every year, they microwave their breasts until something shows up.

Most mammograms are actually done on the East Coast. About 50 percent of women who go for a screening mammogram will be called back for additional views, so that’s double the radiation. They’re called back in six months, then again in six months, then again in six months, and then again in six months. So, some women are getting about ten times the amount of radiation.

Mammograms will miss 40% of cancers in 40% of the screening population, which is women with dense breasts.

Even if it worked, which it doesn’t, because we look at its sensitivity, mammograms will miss 40 percent of cancers in 40 percent of the screening population, which is women with dense breasts. The women with dense breasts will get two, three, four and ten times more radiation because they have to dial up the radiation to be able to penetrate the tissues. It’s like we are creating the very disease that we pretend to care about.

If we create a disease, we can create a cure and make a lot of money. That’s the issue.

Well, we’re not creating the cure, but we are treating it. But treatment isn’t benign. We know that women who are treated for breast cancer are two to three times more likely to die of heart disease than women who aren’t.

Now, that is twofold in that the nidus, the stimulation, the driver of breast cancer is inflammation. And unless that inflammation is dealt with in some way, you are going to go on to manifest the next disease, which is heart disease.

But the other issue is that nearly all of the treatments for breast cancer cause heart disease. So, radiation causes heart disease, chemotherapy causes heart disease, and anti-hormonal treatments cause heart disease, amongst other things. So not only are we not helping these women who are being unnecessarily treated for breast cancer, but we’re also shortening their lives, really diminishing the quality of their lives.

I mean, this is a huge problem. We are hurting people by using the system. For a while, we thought an MRI would be the answer. An MRI is the gold standard for screening for women with dense breasts or a history of breast cancer, or if they have a BRCA mutation or anything like that, then they would be eligible to be screened with MRI, but MRIs use gadolinium.

Gadolinium is a heavy metal. It’s no better when used for MRI than when it’s in your mouth. Heavy metals are a problem for our long-term health. And anytime we introduce a heavy metal into our system, it’s stored at the expense of something else, like calcium in our bones or kidneys, at the expense of zinc.

So, MRIs are not a solution. They’re dangerous, they take a long time, they’re uncomfortable, and they’re expensive, but the biggest problem with MRIs is access. I’m very lucky. I live in Philadelphia. I can get an MRI anytime, but there are plenty of places across the United States and abroad where you can’t get an MRI.

It’s not available. It’s a very expensive machine. Not everyone is going to have one. We can’t have a gold-standard screening test. That is not available to everyone, especially in this country where, you know, we believe in equity. The whole breast cancer screening issue was a huge problem.

The National Institute of Health wanted to solve this problem, so they tapped on the shoulder of John Klock. He is a medical oncologist by training, but his passion is inventing. He invented the cardiac calcium score and the virtual colonoscopy. He has made a number of really important contributions to the medical science world.

He solved this problem with something fast, safe, compression-free, radiation-free, inexpensive, and 40 times the resolution of an MRI. In as little as 10 minutes and as much as 20, a woman can go and have what’s called a QT scan and come away with the knowledge that there is nothing to worry about in her breast.

Because it is more sensitive and more specific than anything else on the market, and that’s why it is the first FDA-approved device for screening for breast cancer in 50 years. Everything else was grandfathered in.

Where can you find that machine?

There are a number of centers open in California. There’s one in Scottsdale, and I’m opening it everywhere in the continental United States.

This is my mission. This is my big lift, which is why I’m going to let someone else handle the fluoride issue. You can only do so many things.

I want to be respectful of your time. I know you got to go, and we didn’t even get into treatment, lifestyle, nutrition, and all that. We could do part two of this interview.

At least quarterly, we need to be doing things that are more of a prolonged fast to allow our bodies to recover.

Let’s definitely do a part two.

Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack. Before we say goodbye, here are two questions: What are your top tips for living a stellar life? And then where can people find you?

Absolutely. The first two are easy because food is medicine—what you eat matters. The second part is what you don’t eat matters. I advocate for everyone to eat a whole food, plant-based, low-glycemic diet because sugar is killing all of us.

It is the most dangerous legalized drug that we have available to us today. The biggest problem with sugar is that it doesn’t kill you fast enough, and it kills you way too painfully because people die a thousand deaths over their lifetime because of sugar addiction and sugar overload. So what you eat matters, getting rid of processed food.

But then we need fasting. Fasting is the fast lane to healing, and our body only heals in a fast state. So we need to be mindful of overnight fasts and of spending enough time from one meal, the last meal of one day, to the first meal of the next so that our healing mechanisms can kick in.

But at least quarterly, we need to be doing things that are more of a prolonged fast to allow our body to recover.

When you say prolong, do you mean a 24-hour or water fast?

24, 36, 48, 72. 72 is really ideal. But you know, the data from Valter Longo’s lab at USC and his work with ProLon are game-changers for most people because it’s not that easy if you can’t do a 72-hour water fast.

I’m not going to pretend like it is, but the fasting-mimicking diet, the Prolon diet he has, is easy. It’s a way of eating beneath a threshold your body doesn’t interpret as food. It interprets it as food, but your body still thinks it’s fasting.

Women with dense breasts will get two to ten times more radiation in mammograms to be able to penetrate the tissues. It's like creating the very disease—breast cancer—that we pretend to care about. Click To Tweet

It’s below the threshold, so those healing mechanisms can still get triggered. You can successfully cleanse to eliminate damaged cells and flush out toxins. It’s wonderful. So I recommend people do either a 72-hour water fast or a five-day fasting-mimicking diet once a quarter. If you’re sick, you may need more of that.

Yeah. And we need a part two for this because there is so much more.

My website is Real Health MD. You can find me on all the social media outlets. I’m Dr. Jenn Simmons, and my Jenn has two “n.”

I have a book coming out in April. It’s called The Smart Person’s Guide to Breast Cancer. We’re going to release it on April 1st because there will be no fools on April 1st. If you liked hearing this, you can listen to me on my podcast every week.

It’s called Keeping Abreast with Dr. Jenn. You can find it anywhere you find your podcasts.

Thank you for being a light in the world. Thank you for this awesome conversation, and especially a big thanks. You have such a big heart, and you’re so kind and courageous to share this knowledge and help heal the world. So thank you for being you.

Well, thank you. Thank you for saying those very kind words. The light in me loves the light in you.

Thank you. And thank you, listeners. Remember to eat whole food that is low glycemic—avoid sugar overload—and get rid of processed and fast food to increase healing and have a stellar life. This is Orion. Till next time. Bye for now.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

{✓}Eat a whole food, plant-based, low-glycemic diet to avoid the dangers of sugar overload. Sugar overload leads to inflammation, weight gain, hormone imbalances and disease.

{✓}Eliminate processed foods from your diet. Processed foods are pro-inflammatory and nutrient-poor. Opt for fresh, whole foods without preservatives or artificial additives.

{✓}Practice overnight fasting to allow your body to heal. Try to get 12-16 hours between dinner and breakfast. This improves insulin sensitivity and reduces inflammation.

{✓}Do a quarterly prolonged fast (24-72 hours) or a 5-day fasting-mimicking diet to cleanse and heal deeply. The fasting-mimicking diet by ProLon or Longo allows nutrients but low calories.

{✓}Seek holistic dental care, and be wary of root canals. Metal fillings with mercury can cause heavy metal toxicity.

{✓}Avoid fluoride in water, toothpaste, and dental treatments, as it can disrupt thyroid function. Fluoride competes with iodine, which is essential for proper thyroid hormone production.

{✓}Question the necessity of mammograms, which use radiation and may contribute to breast cancer.

{✓}Explore alternative screening methods like the new QT ultrasound scan. It’s radiation-free and has high resolution.

{✓}Embrace a holistic lifestyle, looking at diet, mindset, and reducing toxins for optimal health. Use natural remedies, emotional work, and spiritual practices.

{✓}Visit Dr. Jenn Simmons on her website, realhealthmd.com, to access articles, videos and resources on holistic health. Follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for daily tips and inspiration.

Links and Resources

Connect with Dr. Jenn Simmons

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Previous Stellar Life Episodes

People

Further Resources

About Dr. Jenn Simmons

Dr. Jenn Simmons started her professional career as Philadelphia’s first fellowship-trained breast surgeon. After spending 17 years as Philadelphia’s top breast surgeon, her own illness led her to discover functional medicine. So enamored with the concept of creating health rather than killing disease, she left traditional medicine and her esteemed surgical position in 2019 and founded Real Health MD with the mission to help women anywhere along the breast cancer journey to truly heal.

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