Join Suzanne Sutherland, my thermographer, as we share the differences between thermography, ultrasound, and mammograms when it comes to preventative breast health. Having a mammogram to find a lump isn’t prevention…and by the time the lump is big enough to be detected by a mammogram, you will need some form of treatment for breast cancer. What if you could do it differently and detect issues much sooner and also understand your risk of breast health issues so that you can take preventative steps?

Well, you can, and the answer is in thermography, which is why I choose this option for my breast health, rather than mammograms. Tune in to learn what Suzanne has to share about how this non-invasive tool is used to help you be more empowered in your breast health and how it can also be used to scan the entire body and pick up on early warning signs elsewhere too. Then scroll down to Suzanne’s contact information below so that you can find a thermographer near you, if you don’t live in the Vancouver or Calgary area where Suzanne works.

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About the Guest:

Suzanne Sutherland has over 30 years of experience as a Wellness Practitioner. Originally trained as a Homeopath in London, UK. She has also worked in Homeopathic Pharmacy, Allergy Testing & Biofeedback. For the past 12 years, she has used Thermography extensively as a tool to help assess health. Her primary application is breast health but Thermography can also give valuable information to the health of other areas of the body. 

She is passionate about health with her main focus on ‘prevention’. Her professional mantra is ‘Early detection is important but prevention is the key’.

info@breastthermography.ca

https://www.breastthermography.ca

http://www.thermographyclinic.com

About the Host:

Melissa is an Integrative Health Practitioner and Master Practitioner in NLP, Timeline Therapy, and Hypnotherapy, helping people get to the root cause of their health issues and then get lasting results. Melissa neither diagnoses nor cures but helps bring your body back into balance by helping discover your “toxic load” and then removing the toxins. Melissa offers functional medicine lab testing that helps you “see inside” to know exactly what is going on, and then provides a personalized wellness protocol using natural herbs and supplements.  Melissa’s business is 100% virtual – the lab tests are mailed directly to your home and she specializes in holding your hand and guiding the way to healing so that you don’t have to figure it all out on your own.

Melissa is the winner of the 2021 & 2022 Quality Care Award by Business From The Heart and is also the recipient of the Alignable “Local Business Person of the Year “Award 2022 for Whistler.

Melissa has been featured at a number of Health & Wellness Summits, such as the Health, Wealth & Wisdom Summit, The Power To Profit Summit, The Feel Fan-freaking-tas-tic Summit, the Aim Higher Summit, and many more! She has also guested on over 60 different podcasts teaching people about the importance of prioritizing our health and how to get get started.

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Imagine getting up every day full of energy is if you were in your 20s. Again, what would that be like? What would that be worth to you? What is your health worth to you? Think about it. Your health isn't everything. But without it, everything else is nothing. And yet too many of us are taking it for granted until something goes wrong. No one wakes up hoping to be diagnosed with a disease or chronic illness. And yet, we've never been taught how to be proactive in our health through our school system, or public health. As a registered health coach and integrative health practitioner, I believe it is time this information is made available to everyone. Combining new knowledge around your health and the ability to do my functional medicine lab tests in the comfort of your own home will allow you to optimize your health for today and all your tomorrow's don't wait for your wake up call

welcome back to another episode of The don't wait for your wake up call podcast. My name is Melissa Deally your host and today I am bringing to you Suzanne Sutherland. And she is somebody that I go to for my own health. And I wanted to share her topic with all of you today because it may be something that many of you have never even heard of in the past, and it literally can be a life changer. So Suzanne has over 30 years experience as a wellness practitioner originally trained as a homeopath in London, England, she has worked in homeopathic pharmacy, allergy testing, and biofeedback. And for the past 12 years, she has used thermography extensively as a tool to help assess health. Her primary application is breast health. But thermography can also give valuable information to the health of other areas of the body. She is passionate about health with her main focus on prevention. Her professional mantra is early detection is important, but prevention is the key. So welcome, Suzanne.

Hi, Melissa. Glad to be here.

Well, I'm so excited to share you with my audience, because I fully agree with you on the importance of early detection, the importance of prevention. And, and as I said, I go to you for my own thermograms for prevention and early detection in my own breast health. And it's something that when I share that with my clients, as well, many of them have never heard of it. And so since the theme this month is on different types of healing modalities. I invited you to be on the show, so we can share this with more people. You have your own experience with breast health. So I would love you to share your story and how you came into working with thermography.

Well, it started back in my 20s I had actually gone into health through witnessing my partner's brother sort of really passed terribly from brain cancer. So it got me looking into different modalities for alternative health. And I found homeopathy and I started my studies. And then in my second year, my my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. And that was the beginning of when my whole life began to sort of change. I graduated after my third year, and sadly, she passed not long after that. And it was very, very traumatic to all of us. But for me as a practitioner, I went on to start treating people with all sorts of complaints but I I actively avoided anything to do with the breast area. I didn't actually get many people come my way that big with health issues through their breasts. But, you know, for me, I just met I just it just pressed too many buttons. And so I carried on and then eventually I came to Canada and and I was looking for something else to add to what I do. And thermography sort of fell into my lap. I was in Calgary at the time, and a bunch of us ladies drove off to Sylvan Lake, and we had thermography for this first time. And when I was being reemerged a few months later, I was watching the lady do it and I thought to myself, I could do this. And then I thought maybe I should and then I had this whole big thing come up for me where I started to feel very uncomfortable because I was starting to look at breasts again. And you know, there's a part of me even when I had committed and I was training I still was squirming away. But now it's interesting years later I couldn't imagine actually doing anything else. So all in all, it was actually quite a healing experience. And for every lady that I might help in any way to get their breasts healthier, and maybe push that breast risk of breast cancer away, I feel it's it's just a wonderful feeling. And I fell in some ways that's paying homage to my mum, because we didn't know anything in those days. thermography probably existed and was available, but not not very much. And probably in the UK, I'm not sure if it was available tool. But I'm really, really happy to be doing it now. I actually started doing it for my own breast health, because I realized that at 40, but particularly with the breast history that I have with my mother that I needed to start making an effort. And I wanted to really come from the proactive stance, and then I found really, the testing out there is very much sort of a yes or no, it's you either have a lump, which is then going to get investigated. But it really isn't about the health so much is whether or not you found something. So I want you to really come from a proactive stance. And actually, with my own breast health, I did find out that, you know, one of my breasts did actually have a bit of a risk that was a bit higher than I'd like. So I got to work. And the beauty of thermography is you can actually use it to monitor your breast health. So if you go away, and you do something that's really proactive, when you reimage, the images, the new images are always compared to the previous, and we get to see whether or not your breast health is stable, ideally improved. But we also get to see the latest where the breast risk is creeping up or jumping up a bit. And then they would need to really go and have that clinically investigated more.

So really, it is absolutely about that early detection, which then gives you time to address it in natural ways without having to, you know, use typical cancer treatments of chemo and radiation that are so hard on the body. And with mammography because it doesn't it detects lumps that are much bigger for you know, they have to be bigger before the mammogram can actually detect them. Not to mention how painful that is for people. And there is the risk to have with the squeezing of the breast that if there are lumps there that the cancer cells can be squished and then spread throughout the body. So there's some risk there as well, I understand that. All of that is if you have that lump, it's in some cases, it's almost too late, you have to go that path of that, you know, chemo radiation, or at least that's what you're directed towards. Whereas with thermography we're finding it so much earlier when it's smaller, and you're making recommendations of, you know, using supplements and using oils in order to change and shift the breast health, right.

Yes, and the other thing is that, you know, ladies tend to think of either having healthy breasts or very sick bras with breast cancer. But what I actually get to see is I very rarely see a lady with perfectly healthy breasts. But fortunately, I never get to see many ladies or I don't get to see many ladies who have full blown breast cancer, what I get to see are a lot of ladies with breasts that could be healthier. Right? And if they get to start work on their breast health when it's at that stage, who knows what we're actually pushing away. And going back to mammography, one of the problems is a lot of ladies have dense breasts. And if they do have dense breasts, mammograms are really not going to be able to see very well through that and could actually miss something. So with that said, Actually, I'd like to really just mention the difference between the structural tests and thermography. So we've mammograms which are in counted in the standard of care, and really the first thing that they want to do, it is an x ray. And like any x ray, X ray show hard calcified areas. So if you did have a tumor, which a lot of tumors are hard, and it was large enough, yes, it could possibly see an area but only a biopsy would then diagnose it as cancer. So you would obviously have to have the mammogram, which was some ages is painful, and there's some radiation going on there. But also then then there's a biopsy, which is, you know, again, another invasive procedure. I can't take anything away from the ladies who were found something in their breast that they weren't, they needed to be concerned about from a routine mammogram. But if you were just relying on that, it could actually miss a lot of the early signs, at least of what's actually going on with ultrasound.

Let's just stop there for a second because it We're both in Canada. And with our health system right now, it's, you know, funds are. Now, you know, doctors are being told they can't run testing as often because it's expensive and funds are limited. And so when I hit 40, I was told I should have a mammogram every year. But probably by the time I turned 45, I was told oh, no, every two years, because I didn't have a history of breast cancer in my family. But I had two arguments to that. One, I could be dead and gone in two years. And two, it has to start somewhere. It doesn't always just start because my mother had it. My sister had it. My grandmother had it, right. And so I just felt like those arguments weren't valid arguments for why we were suddenly going from annual checks that were supposed to be are told to us as preventative checks to now every two years, right. And that's when I started looking for other options and found out about thermography. And so I struggle with that in our you know, we're told one thing, but then it's coming down to money, unfortunately,

I believe it's actually been extended now to 50. So it can change

on money, right? Yeah, it can actually change.

But my biggest thing was with a mammogram is if a lady is thinking that if she has a negative result of a mammogram, that means she has healthy breasts, that is not always the truth. You know, it's just like before you have a heart attack, your heart would probably have become unhealthy. And it's the same with breasts, it doesn't go from zero to sort of, you know, 100, overnight, it takes years. And before that, you will be getting inflammation, and blood vessel patterns, that you can have blood vessel patterns in your breasts that are sort of regular patterns. But you can also develop patterns where they're starting to accumulate in one breast more than the other, or one area of the breast more than the other. And if you add a lot of inflammation to that, that could be definitely an area of concern, and one that should be monitored. So we get to see that sometimes years before anything would ever be found in a structural test. And that's valuable time.

It is and just again, for my audience, because I know you hear me talking about toxins all the time, and the impact that that has on our body, including raising our inflammation levels, you've also heard me talking about Omega three omega six balances. And omega sixes are inflammatory, essential fatty acids that are in so many foods, whereas omega threes are anti inflammatory, are in, you know, our wild, fatty fish, some plant based foods, but much harder to get. And we just live in a world today, if we're just going about our business, doing what we're told, based on the marketing systems out there, that our bodies are inflamed. So you said if you add inflammation to that, it's the inflammation is absolutely there unless people consciously know how to reduce their inflammation by balancing it and ensuring that they're reducing their toxic load, etc, reducing their stress levels, getting good sleep, optimizing nutrition. So this early detection is so important, because it allows us to understand what's happening, and we can do something about it at the same time that we're addressing the inflammation. So thank you, salutely.

If this if this was a scary test, that all I would be doing is seeing ladies and telling them negative things, I wouldn't be doing this. To me. It's a very, very empowering test. And it's something that I mean, I get just as excited if not more when ladies breasts reports come back, and they've dropped 40 points, because they've actually balanced their hormones, or, you know, really started to work on their on their health. I will say that the ladies I've noticed the most improvements from are definitely ladies who have started to work on themselves. I very rarely see breast health get better on its own, with the exception of a lady that goes from perimenopause into menopause. And she's gone from estrogen dominance. And then her estrogen is as you know, sort of got gone down. And you know, you can see that, but you really wouldn't want to wait that long. Right? Because the site, it could be years. So that's valuable time and then you know, you really want to be able to reduce that inflammation and settle those blood vessel patterns down. Yeah. So they're not as proactive and not as sore actually say, as inflamed and overarching.

And let's just talk about estrogen dominance for a minute there as well, that estrogen dominance is when our hormones are out of balance to the extent where relative to progesterone levels, we have too much estrogen. And that can happen because of our toxic load, our liver isn't able to function properly because one of its jobs is to detox our excess estrogen. But when it's already burdened from all the other toxins getting into our body, it can't fully do that. It also will happen when we're in is living in a state of chronic stress. Because when we're in that state of chronic stress, our sympathetic nervous system is turned on our brain is charged with getting us to safety. It's thinking that, you know, we have to be able to fight or flight or freeze, and it's pumping is full of adrenaline and cortisol will in order to do that, and give us the energy to get to safety, it shuts down other systems in the body that take energy, shuts down digestion, shuts down, our immune system, shuts down procreation, because we're not going to stop and make a baby if we're trying to run away from a lion. And when it shuts down procreation, it's not making as much progesterone because it's so busy making cortisol. And so that's how our estrogen progesterone levels is another way they can get out of balance. And we end up in estrogen dominance. And in the work I do with the labs, I see that all the time, and we do know that is a common cause of breast cancer. And so finding this early is so powerful.

Yeah, it is and and actually, particularly perimenopause, or ladies, that's when I see the biggest incidence of estrogen dominance. And it's pitched, I mean, they can definitely go and have testing and I advise that they do. But sometimes it's just so obvious also, what is coming off the image. And the other thing that we also get to see is fibrocystic breasts. And that often goes hand in hand with any with a hormonal influence to Interesting enough, when you have a lady who actually works in a restaurant dominance, you'll see that with the images, everything quietens down, and it is quite a dramatic improvement. And it's a wonderful thing to actually see and encourages them to actually carry on with that work. And actually, you did mention to about stress and emotional during this last couple of years of living through COVID. It took me a while to spot but I was getting so many ladies come back where their breast risk had gone up just a little bit. But in both breasts, and when we talked about it, and these ladies are very different from all different sorts of cultures, and builds and ages and sort of mentalities as well. All of them had had stress in common. And they, they needed to actually get to work on finding a way to, you know, alleviate that in some way. Whether it was meditation, prayer, walking in the woods, dancing, whatever it was. And now I'm getting ladies come back, who have actually instigated some of those changes, and I'm seeing their breasts drop again. So the mental emotional level can be huge. And I feel that if we're seeing it in the breast area, then it's systemic inflammation that is affecting the whole of the body as well.

Absolutely, absolutely. Very valid points to, for people to hear. So you talked about what mammogram is, and you were about to go into what ultrasounds are, when I interrupt, let's get back

to that. So ultrasound from awesome in the thermography field, if we were going to have a structural test, we'd really prefer ultrasound, because it shows it shows really sort of lumps with fluid in them. So a lot of the time we see loaders, and they have cysts, or fibrocystic activity. So an ultrasound is a painless structural test, which would be able to see the cysts where they are, how big they are, map them out. And then that would also be something to be monitored as well. So ultrasound and thermography together, could really give so much valuable information. Almost all of the picture could be found in some countries, I believe that they are focusing more on ultrasound now as a structural test than in North America. They still are doing mammograms first. But thermography will show the inflammation in the blood vessel patterns that will often relate to the cystic areas, if that is you know if that lady has a cystic or fibrocystic condition going on in the breast area.

And so yes, I would love to see us in North America get to that place where the ultrasounds are also offered as part of this package in terms of truly understanding what is going on inside the breast. Yes, we're not there yet, as you said, and I know that I went after my first thermogram with you I went and asked my doctor to take the next step and have an ultrasound but I wasn't able to access So that, unfortunately, but the more of us that are aware of this and lobbying for it asking for it, that's how we create change. Wise, definitely. So do you have, let's talk about thermography and other areas of the body as well. Because I know it's not just for the breasts. And what I love about all of this is when we get all of this early detection, and we can start the body healing, the body doesn't heal in just one place, it starts to heal all over. So just like if we're seeing inflammation in the breasts, guarantee, there's inflammation elsewhere in the body, but it works in reverse. So what other areas of the body can we use thermography for.

So first of all, when I started doing there, so it was predominantly breast, and then I branched into doing cranial and the cranial area, we'd get close ups of the front of the face and neck, and the side profiles, and then we get close ups of the thyroid area and the mouth. And where that is really useful is three of those areas that we are in the cranial area can actually affect the breast. So if you had oral pathology as a new head inflammation, that could be an infection in the mouth, we like to see if there is a breast that has a higher risk. And to see what's going on in that same side of the mouth. Hormones are really the primary factor that affect the breast. But definitely in my, in the past past years, I have seen ladies where the mouth has definitely had an effect on the breast area, particularly if there's been a root canal or a cavitation involved. So how we would see it is we would see inflammation in the mouth, and it would be running down the chin down the neck. And obviously what's down at the bottom of the neck is we have the heart area, lots of people have heard of gum disease and heart disease, but they don't really hear so much about what gum disease and breast disease. But the breasts are just there right next to the heart. So anything that's running down the neck could also affect through the lymphatic pathways. The rest area too. We get to see the TMJ, the temporal mandibular joint, lots of people clench and grind their teeth, or have pain in the jaw. And it's interesting that a lot of ladies who have TMJ issues also have breast issues. And lastly, the thyroid we get to see if the thyroid comes up call. And that would be that would point to it being more underactive, and that's whether a lady has been diagnosed or not diagnosed, she's on medication or not medication, it just would show that the thyroid is still a little bit underactive, we also get to see some hotspots. And that could be nodules. And that's useful to actually know because you could actually have an ultrasound on that and investigate that to other areas, we see a sinus and lymphatic congestion, we also get to see the carotid artery, it doesn't come up very often. But over the years, I've seen a few people where the carotid artery did show up. And that would be good to have that further investigated, because it could be narrowed or blocked. And in which case, they could be at risk of stroke, right? Because that is something that can be very valuable. More recently, I've actually started to do more full body. I always sort of really ask questions to see whether or not what somebody is looking for really fits that because it is actually quite a long time to do the imaging. And I want to make sure that they're not looking for me to sort of say at the end of it, they don't have cancer, because thermography is really not about that diagnosis. But we can actually start to see whether or not there's inflammation and sometimes nerve or circulatory dysfunction. So a good example is when I imaged a lady who had multiple sclerosis, she walked in and she was favoring one leg, and limping with the in the other leg was sort of really more dragging. And when I imaged her lower body, we could definitely see that the leg that she favored, was quite inflamed, and the leg that she was dragging was cooler almost disappearing from the image. And that's because she had circulatory and nerve damage in that we can sort of see the spine and the arms and legs and hands and feet very clearly. So sometimes it will show particularly if somebody had an accident and nothing in the X rays are showing. It's almost like they're not being believed, or graphene is very good at showing where there is inflammation. And sometimes it is very, very clear that there is a lot going on in an area that it might not have shown in another sort of tasks like an x ray. So can be very, very useful to pinpointing I'll give you One more example, I had a lady who was in a great deal of abdominal pain. And in her history, she had had a bladder repair, and they had repaired it with a mesh. And this mesh, this, this sort of procedure now is part of an international lawsuit, because the mesh was breaking down in a lot of people, and causing a lot of pain and inflammation. And she had had it removed. But there was one area that she still had a lot of pain, she could put a finger over that area. And when we imaged her, we could actually see very clearly this red circle. And that's exactly where she felt it. And when she had a conversation with a surgeon, he confessed that he hadn't been able to remove it all. And there was still a little bit left. And that's exactly where it was. So that was, you know, pretty amazing to actually to see. And it also gave her more information that she could go back and discuss with her surgeon. And then she found out that actually, it all made sense, and that she wasn't going crazy.

And sometimes that's just part of it is that is getting the information, because we talk about it, we feel it, we're listening to our body. And yet, there isn't any validation of that. And then now she had that validation. And hopefully, even though the surgeon said he couldn't remove at all, hopefully there was something that they could figure out in order to resolve it so that she didn't have to live with that pain.

Yes, yeah,

I love all of this, because knowledge is power. And when we understand what's going on inside our body, then we have choices into how we can help our body heal. But if we don't understand what's going on, we don't know what next steps to take. And so you know, full body, if you've had an accident, you know you've got pain, it's not showing up in X ray, but again, listening to your body, and keep looking for the answers. And this is one brilliant way to do it. If you're enjoying my content, and someone that wants to step into being proactive in your health and learning more, I would love to invite you to join my membership community. There's a link in the show notes for only 1999 a month, you get access to all of my content. And there's a lot as well as weekly calls that you can come and get your health questions answered.

It's truly priceless. I'd love to see you join the community, check out the link in the show notes.

I also want to go back to when you were talking about the thyroid too. And you know, the benefit of of understanding that through thermography is again, because there is a link between estrogen dominance and the slowing of the thyroid. When we're in that estrogen dominance state, the thyroid will start to slow our metabolism is slowing, weight gain is happening. And again, it's all triggered by stress in the first place, or that's a very common trigger. But seeing this so that you know that is very powerful. So something else I want to ask you to chat about is you do a cold water test. And not all thermographers do and I would love for you to talk about why you do that in the benefit of the cold water test.

Yep, so the cold water test cold water stress test is the very, very important part. We do it the traditional way. And the cold water test, cold water stress test has always been part of that. So to my understanding, about 20 years ago, some practitioners in the States decided that they didn't want to do the cold water test, and said it wasn't necessary and that our cameras were good enough to not to not do it. But for us, it's really not about the cameras are all our cameras are good. They're absolutely amazing digital infrared cameras, it's more to do with a challenge to the body. So when I image the breast area, after a period of 15 minutes of a climatization to the room, so that's sitting disrobed down to the waist. acclimatized to 20 degrees, we take the first set of brass damages, then I perform the Cold Water Challenge. So you put your hands in cold water 10 degree water for 60 seconds. Now when that happens, what it does is it shocks the sympathetic nervous system, and you will cool down and your blood vessels contract. After the Cold Water Challenge, we wait for three minutes and then we take another set of images, we get to see if the blood vessel partners in the breast area have contracted like they should. We don't read into it and diagnose anything but we just take it as extra information if there are blood vessel patterns that are not doing what they should do. And so if you don't do the Cold Water Challenge You've missed that whole valuable pot to the breast imaging. When they don't do the Cold Water Challenge, what they often do is reimage in three months to see if there are any changes. But really, they're generally not that much of a change after three months. So if you're looking to just gauge whether or not your breasts are actually going in the wrong direction, by reemerging three months, you're not really probably going to get much information unless what you have going on is aggressive. Right. But with the Cold Water Challenge, we're already getting some information that shows, okay, you've got these blood vessel patterns here, and they're actually not contracting. So and that's probably because they're dilated, they're active. And so you know, it's important information. And so we condition we, we continue to do it the traditional way. And our organization CACT, which is the Canadian Association of clinical thermographers. And it's the first ever Canadian Association for thermography, medical thermography. That is something that is listed as being part of what we recommend. And so when the public actually sort of looking into it, they would see that that is something that we feel very strongly about.

And I agree the more information we have, the more choices and options we have. And so if you're going to get thermography, you might as well get all of the information that you can.

I think so because we're not, as I said, we're not using it as a diagnosis, we're using it as information. And so therefore, when you have follow ups and I ought to mentioned really the first time we do this, it's a baseline, we have to take it that, you know, the day that we do it, this is the starting point, we don't know if the if your breast health has been stable, whether or not it's sort of improved, or actually sort of increased in risk over the years, we start with the baseline. And then the RE imaging is very important, because that's when we actually see we get to see whether or not your breast health is stable, or ideally improved. And so the new images when we do reimage, which could be a year, it could be six months, it all depends on what the breast risk comes back as, but the new images are compared to the previous ones. And then the report will recommend you know whether or not somebody opts actually, all the reports would recommend what somebody really should do next, when they should be re imaged whether or not they should go and have this clinically investigated. And they will also mention whether or not it's suspicious of who influence and five or six to SR captivity, there's a lot of information. And what I do is when the reports come in, and I email it to my clients, I make sure that we set aside some time to really go through that report, and break down all the information so that they fully understand it, and ideally make a plan of action. Or to me that is that is a huge part of what I do. It's

the most important part because you know, getting the report and reading it and fully comprehending it and then knowing what to do. You're paying for the report, but it's only as good as your understanding of it and your steps of action. Right. That's exactly what I do in my work when I'm, you know, reading labs for people. And I really appreciate that you do that as well, because I've done my thermography with you three times now. And just to share a little bit of my journey in that I don't have anybody in my family that has had breast cancer, thankfully, other than a great aunt who contracted it when she was 90 plus years old. And the doctor said she's gonna die of old age before she dies at the breast cancer because at that point, the cells are, you know, multiplying so slowly, right? So very, very low risk in terms of genetics in my life. But my health is important to me, and I want to take proactive action. So I came and saw you. And you know, as you said, you don't diagnose but you just point out where the imbalances are or the you know, risks are and what steps I can take. And so that first time I did some hormone rebalancing after our first imaging, and that was the baseline. And then the second time I came, we saw improvement in both breasts and one breast came right down to low risk. The other breast that was higher in the first place came into kind of the medium risk area. And we were both very happy with that. And then so I didn't do anything more. And then I came back and saw you earlier this year. And what we and that was the first time since COVID. So it had been a couple of years actually. And then when I So is my markers had gone up just a little bit in both breasts, and again, stress of COVID that we've all gone through, et cetera, I could definitely be one of those ladies that you're talking about. So you know, now I'm using some oils that you've recommended to just rub on my breast area every every night to just help boost the health of my breasts, break up some of that tissue, etc. And, you know, so that the next time I run my mammogram, hopefully those markers will have come back down. So it's not anything that I needed to, you know, rush out and get all different opinions from the medical industry, and that there was concern of, you know, immediate breast cancer, but we're just managing the risk, because I don't want it to get to that point where I'm now having to actually manage the breast cancer.

Yes, and I'll actually you touched on a point with genetics. I have, obviously a family history, my mother's mother actually lived to sort of 95. So I don't know of any other family history, but obviously having a maternal family history, your mother or sister or you know it, that that starts to be a more genetic factor. However, I would say that I really feel epigenetics is more important. So with epigenetics, it's your environment, how you live your life, what you eat, how you sleep, your stress levels, and just how you live. And thank heavens for epigenetics, because they can make such a huge, huge difference. I have ladies who have no family history, but have actually have developed breast cancer. And I've got, I've had one lady who's, you know, mother, grandmother, six of her sisters had all had breast cancer, but she had some of the healthiest breast tissue I've ever seen. And she lives her, she lives her life in a very sort of health conscious way. Not overzealous, but really balanced. And it's just a beautiful thing to see. So, yes, there's genetic, there is the genetic risk. But really, more importantly, is the epigenetics.

And I agree with you 100% And talk about that. And I'm just gonna throw in some numbers there, because I'm a numbers person. And what I've learned is that the genetic risk factor is only five to 10% of your health outcomes. But the way you live your life, as you mentioned, your sleep, your nutrition, your stress levels, your environment, what you're putting inside your body that triggers that inflammation is 90 to 95% of the impact on your health outcomes. So if you are health conscious, and you're keeping your body with, you know, healthy levels of inflammation, rather than chronic inflammation, you're not building up your toxic overload at cetera, et cetera, you do not ever have to trigger the switch that turns on the genes to the diseases you're predisposed to. And so that's why this lady, her body never triggered that switch, right. And so that's really empowering for people to just like, you know, doing your thermography. And getting this information is really empowering. Because you are not simply at the whim of your genes, you can make a difference. And that's new science. And we used to get told, Well, if your mother had breast cancer, and your sister had breast cancer, you're gonna get breast cancer. And that is not true. And that is a very damaging message to give to someone. Because when we have that running around in our mind, mom had breast cancer, my sister had breast cancer, I'm gonna get breast cancer, they told me I'm gonna get breast cancer, guess what happens when that becomes the focus, what we focus on, increases. And so now we're bringing on the breast cancer because we've got that running around in the back of our mind. And so for listeners to truly understand that, it's not all about genetics, and it is about the way you live your life and choosing to be proactive in your health can make a difference to your health outcomes that you're genetically predisposed to. And this we're choosing to do something you know, preventative like getting thermograms is so important.

Most definitely.

So thank you so much for sharing all of this information. And you know, many listeners might never have heard of thermography before just like I hadn't back when I was in the corporate world and it wasn't till I got into health coaching myself that I started learning about it and chose it as an option for me. So hopefully it gives people some other choices. And I just want to ask you before we wrap up, what does don't wait for your wake up call mean to you

And it means don't wait until you find something like if regarding the breast, don't wait till you find something in the shower. Start work now, start working on your breast health now and with demography, it will just give you that it will just give you some information about breast health. And then you can start working. Like I said earlier, you don't wait to have, don't wait to have a heart attack before you start looking after your heart. It's the same kind of thing. So again, my, my mantra is early detection is important, but prevention is the key.

I love that. And so how can people get hold of you, I know you're in North Vancouver for thermography, you do have to show up and be in person for the appointment. But there are listeners to this show that are in BC. And you also work out of Calgary, so please share all of that information. And then for others that are perhaps in the US, US or elsewhere across the country, is there a way they can find a thermographer close to them?

Yes. So um, as you said, I'm in North Vancouver and Calgary, probably the easiest thing is to email me at info at breast thermography.ca. Go to my website, there's links there, breast thermography.ca, my telephone numbers are all listed there. I'm predominantly North Vancouver, but I do go to calgary twice a year. Now the thermography clinic that I am part of, if you go to the McGuffey clinic.com, you could actually find a list of technicians that are all part of our organization. And they're all part of the Canadian Association of clinical demographers to

perfect, so thank you very much for sharing that because I do recommend all women consider thermography. And so now you know how to reach out to Suzanne, if you're nearby, or find a thermographer in your area that is part of her organization so that you know that you're also getting that very important cold water test as well. So just as we finish up here, do you have any last message that we haven't touched on that you would like to leave the audience with today?

I'm just I get some people sometimes where they say, Well, you know, wouldn't I know if I had an issue. And what I say is that thermography, we infer more graphy we see vocal and silent symptoms, vocal symptoms are speaking to pain, discomfort, you can feel something, and there's silence symptoms, too. And thermography sees it all. So don't, don't wait again until you are feeling something but also don't get, Don't get crazy about what you can feel. Because sometimes you go into your head and you make it a bigger deal than it actually is. So when you come to the McAfee, just be open minded. And we will get to see it, we will get to see it as it is. And sometimes there is something that we are spotting inflammation. And sometimes what you are focused on is actually not showing anywhere near as much as it has built up in your head.

And that's so often the case we build things up in our head just worrying about something worrying about things that might never happen. And it serves us no purpose at all other than to put us into that stress state, which we know now shuts down our immune system. So instead of worrying about it, take action, do something about it. So then you know what you're dealing with. And you will get next steps so you know how to deal with it. Yes. Wonderful. Well, thanks again, Suzanne, for being on the show. This has been a wonderful conversation. I hope it's helpful to the audience. And I invite the audience to share this with anyone that you think that it might serve and thank you for being a continued ongoing regular listener of the don't wait for your wake up call podcast.