This special edition of the TPE Blueprint Podcast with host Joe Fier marks Breast Cancer Awareness Month by welcoming back Dr. Pam Smith—a renowned physician, educator, and author of How to Prevent Breast Cancer Before and After Diagnosis. With nearly five decades of experience, Dr. Smith dives deep into the latest science, personalizes strategies for prevention and recurrence, and brings hope to listeners. She shares her personal connection to breast cancer, the importance of environmental toxin removal, hormone balance, and actionable lifestyle changes that every listener can implement right away.

Topics Discussed

• Personal Family History: Dr. Smith’s deeply personal journey with breast cancer and her motivation for writing her latest book.
• Breast Cancer Statistics: The rising rates—from 1 in 8 to 1 in 7 women—and the need to move beyond awareness to prevention.
• Non-Modifiable vs. Modifiable Risk Factors: Explanation of which factors we can and cannot change, and practical focus on the 19 modifiable risks.
• Role of Hormones: How hormone balance, replacement, and personalized testing support breast cancer prevention and immune health.
• Environmental Toxins: The direct link between toxins like BPA, phthalates, heavy metals, and increased cancer risk—and what you can do about it.
• Therapeutic Plasma Exchange (TPE): How this innovative, science-backed process can help remove toxins from the body for long-term wellness.
• Nutrition & Lifestyle: Anti-inflammatory diets, exercise, sugar/alcohol moderation, and stress reduction as keystone strategies.
• Testing & Personalization: Which at-home and in-office tests matter—from vitamin D and methylation to advanced toxin panels and hormone evaluations.
• Men’s Health: Connections between breast cancer, prostate cancer, and why these strategies benefit everyone.
• Navigating Conventional Healthcare: Advocating for yourself, asking the right questions, and tailoring recommendations for your unique needs.
• Stress Management: Practical ways to lower stress levels and why this is critical for cancer prevention.

Resources Mentioned

• How to Prevent Breast Cancer Before and After Diagnosis: https://www.amazon.com/How-Prevent-Breast-Cancer_Before-After/dp/0757005357
• American Cancer Society: https://www.cancer.org/ 
• Vitamin D Testing: Available via most healthcare providers—simple blood test recommended for cancer prevention.
• Homocysteine & Methylation Testing: Ask your healthcare provider for these labs to assess cardiovascular and cancer risk.
• Personalized Medicine Provider Search Tools: Check with functional medicine organizations or inquire directly about saliva and urine-based hormone/toxin testing.

Connect with Us

• MDLifespan Website: https://mdlifespan.com/
• Subscribe and Listen: https://mdlifespan.com/the-tpe-blueprint-podcasts/ 
• Guidebooks: https://mdlifespan.com/guidebooks/ 
• Follow on Instagram: https://instagram.com/mdlifespan   

Loved this episode? Don’t forget to subscribe to the TPE Blueprint Podcast wherever you listen! Share it with a friend who’s passionate about prevention and proactive health. And if the insights resonated with you, please leave us a review—it helps this empowering message reach even more people.

Disclaimer: MDLifespan PlasmaXchange protocols are designed to support general health and wellness. They are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The information provided on this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not replace medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider before beginning any new health program, especially if you have a medical condition or are taking prescribed medications.

Did you know that one in every seven women are now going to face

breast cancer in their lifetime?

So this breast cancer awareness month, I have Dr. Pamela Smith here.

She's a renowned physician, educator, and author of brand new

book called How to Prevent Breast Cancer Before and After Diagnosis.

She's got nearly five decades of experience, so she's gonna break down

all the latest science strategies and give you hope for preventing

breast cancer before it ever starts and stop it from ever coming back.

Let's dive into it.

All right, Dr. Pam Smith, you're back.

I am happy to have you back on how you been, how you been.

You've been busy.

I know that.

I've been very busy but thrilled to be back.

Well, tell me what the latest is because you know, this is a very timely episode.

Of course, we're.

We're timing it with, um, breast Cancer Awareness month and making sure that,

I mean, and you have the most timely, uh, answers and, you know, studies and

science and all the, all the things that we're gonna dive into this episode.

But I guess, how would you, before we kind of dive into things, how do

you, uh, how do you like to present this, I guess from your words?

Well, basically my newest book, book number 14 is this one, and it is on Breast

Cancer, how to Prevent It and if you've had it, how to prevent a recurrence.

And the great news is that there's things you can't change.

Called non-modifiable risk factors, of which there's six, and I'd

love to talk about those briefly.

But the great news is that there's 19 things that you can change and you can

actually help prevent breast cancer and prevent a recurrence by doing as

many of those 19 things as you can.

we will definitely dive into those non-modifiable risk factors.

'cause that's, yeah.

Across the board.

Makes, makes sense because that's, that's what we wanna do in this episode,

is not only chat with you about.

The latest book that you've, 14th book.

That's wild.

That blows my mind.

So congrats on that alone.

Um, and, and just to name the book, it's, it's called How to Prevent Breast

Cancer Before and After Diagnosis.

And, and of course, in the, in the show notes, we'll, we'll link and make

sure it's easy to grab it for, for, uh, after you're done listening in here.

But, but definitely we wanted to set the tone in this episode to talk

about breast cancer awareness as a whole, timely with, uh, being in

October, but prevention strategies that aren't just after diagnosis.

Um, and also how environmental toxins are a big role that, that are, you know, it's

playing a big role in this whole thing, which we've talked about before with

you, you know, how toxins kinda relate.

So, um, I guess what I. Pam, I was, I wanted to dive into your personal journey

because, you know, just talking about that first and why this matters so, so

much that almost like taking us back to a time in your life or career where

this, uh, this mission, if you stop being professional, became deeply personal for

you, because I know you go really deep into this, so I'm just kinda curious

Oh, absolutely.

I have breast cancer on both sides of my family.

On my dad's side, I never even got to meet my grandmother

'cause she died of breast cancer.

Before I was born, I had a cousin who died of breast cancer at the age of 51.

On that side of my family, on my mom's side, I had two

aunts who had breast cancer.

One passed away from it, one survived.

And then I have a cousin currently undergoing treatment, so I have breast

cancer on both sides of my family.

So my interest has really been there since I was probably.

Maybe 15 or 16 years of age.

And this is the book I've been wanting to write for 20 years.

'cause there are so many things that we can do to help prevent

breast cancer and if you've had the disease to help prevent a recurrence.

So the book is timely for breast cancer awareness, but really it's

a book for all times because there are so many things that one can do.

is it pretty common that everybody kind of has a story

around breast cancer in some way?

It certainly has become more common.

Right now the stats are one in eight women get breast cancer.

A new study will come out next year that, at least at this point is

gonna say one in seven women will get breast cancer in their lifetime.

So we wanna look at those things that we can do on Monday morning.

We can change our lives today and really decrease that risk

significantly because only 20%.

Of breast cancer is inherited.

Some studies say only 10% is inherited, and that's one of the non-modifiable.

You can't fix your family history, but it's not as big

a deal as people think it is.

Sometimes people will go into a doctor and they'll wanna look at hormone

replacement or other things, and the doctor will say, oh, you can't do

that 'cause you have a family history.

Again, that's only 10 to 20% of people.

The other non-modifiable risk factors are aging.

All of that.

One's changing.

The studies until this year show that the older the patient was, the more

they had a risk for breast cancer.

That's starting to change because we're now seeing breast cancer younger,

and that has to do with toxins and some other things we'll talk about.

There are genetic mutations that you can have, like the broca gene.

There's early cycling.

Uh, used to be the average age.

A woman started her cycle.

Was 12.5 years and now it's down to almost 10 and early cycling increases the risk.

Older agent menopause, if women stop cycling after the age of 55,

is a non-modifiable risk factor.

You can't change that.

And the more the dense breast.

If the person's not on hormones, the density of the breast tissue is something

that may not be changeable either.

So those are the ones that we can kind of put to one side and say, okay, I

have a family history, or I'm now 71, which I happen to have just turned 71.

I can't change those.

But what else can we do?

Got it.

Does it, does having kids, yes or no for a woman, you know, or breastfeeding.

I'm just curious, um, if, does that play a part with, um, with,

uh, your risk factors as well?

Well, there's a lot tied around those modifiable risk factors,

so breastfeeding does decrease a woman's risk of breast cancer.

So that's one of those things that you can change and breastfeeding

actually produces a healthier child.

But there's a caveat to that, and that caveat is toxins.

The woman when she gets pregnant has toxins already, and those toxins

will go through the breast milk.

They will go through the placenta, and so we really want to look at therapeutic

plasma exchange, doing an actual treatment to get the toxins out before she gets

pregnant because we know those toxins are related to an increase in A-D-D-A-D-H-D

and an increased risk in autism.

So breastfeeding is wonderful, healthier mother, healthier child.

'cause the child will get a good immune system from the mom if they're breastfed.

But we wanna make sure we get rid of those toxins first.

When it comes to having children itself, if you choose not to have children.

Or if your first pregnancy is after the age of 30, and that is

happening more commonly nowadays, people are having children older.

If your first pregnancy is after the age of 30 or you have no children,

that does increase your risk.

It doesn't mean you should have children just to decrease your risk, but again,

people should know fixable risk factors.

So when you asked about childbearing and breast.

Feeding.

Both of those things are risk factors that we can change or at least look at.

Got it.

That makes sense.

And you mentioned hormones, you know about family history and I

know you have a bunch of exper uh, experience with hormone therapy

and personalized health in general.

So I'm just curious how.

Uh, what's your perspective there as it as it pertains to breast cancer?

Well, when it comes to breast cancer, it's really important

to have a healthy immune system.

And a healthy immune system is predicated on many things from gut health, how

healthy your gut is, because 70% of your immune system is in your gut.

It has a lot to do, whether you're toxic or not, because if you become

more inflamed due to toxins, your immune system does not work as well.

But it's also related to what happens with hormones, believe it or not.

Estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, cortisol

pregna, melatonin are all hormones.

They all decrease inflammation, and estrogen in particular

builds the immune system.

It stops something that we call immunosenescence, meaning as you age,

your immune system becomes compromised.

It doesn't have to, but the caveat with hormones is that

it has to be done correctly.

And younger women, many women are low in progesterone.

They have a lot of estrogen, not enough progesterone for balance,

that is called estrogen dominance.

And if she has a lot of estrogen and not enough progesterone, that is a risk

factor right there that she can change.

And that people with P-M-S-P-C-O-S-P-M-D-D, perimenopause,

menopause, endometriosis, there's a lot of states that women can

have where progesterone is low.

Giving progesterone to balance that estrogen, whether the person is 1840.

Or 71 dramatically decreases the risk of breast cancer by having

hormone replacement as natural, meaning the same chemical structure

that God gave you to begin with.

Natural hormones do help prevent breast cancer as long as they are

balanced and they are the right dosage.

Women only make baby amounts of hormones.

Sometimes I see prescribers give these huge doses When it comes to estrogen,

the dose that we make as women at 25, the peak of health, the time in our cycle,

which is called ple luteal, where we make the most, is only 350 micrograms.

Micrograms, baby, baby amount.

And when we do hormone replacement with estrogen, we put it on the skin, but

it, you really don't need big doses.

The absorption is very good as long as you put it in an area of fat.

And for most women, even if they weigh 90 pounds, putting it on

the thigh is a good location.

So having estrogen balanced with progesterone in the right dose is key.

And most of that comes from knowing how to measure hormones.

Very important to do salivary testing, otherwise known as saliva.

It is not a spit, it is a swab, and when you put hormones on the

skin, they do have to be measured by saliva, not blood, not urine.

So having the right dose is key for building the immune system, balancing

those hormones to help prevent getting breast cancer to begin with.

that's incredible advice and, and insight.

Where would, so if someone, if this is already clicking for someone light

bulb moment turned on, where would you recommend someone to sync up

with the right doctor, you know, for testing, balancing and all of this?

Like, are there any red flags but also green flags?

Like where, where should people go?

Well, certainly the field personalized medicine has now become a specialty.

It's discussed all over the medical literature.

Sometimes it's called precision medicine, but it really is

personalized to each patient because the hormones are compounded

and made for them and them only.

So they can certainly look for someone who's certified in personalized medicine.

One of the easiest ways when you call a doctor's office or other

prescriber is just to ask, do you do saliva testing for hormones?

They don't do saliva testing.

They're really not trained in this specialty and it is a specialty,

so that's a pretty easy way to find out are you at the right place?

Yes, that's, that's a good one.

Do some research.

But I like that it's just a quick question and you can probably

weed people out pretty fast.

I wanna talk about the book too, because like, you put a, obviously a

lot of work into all of your books, but this is the most timely one

you've want to put out for a while.

I think I could, yeah.

You, you might have already answered this a little bit, but, but why this book?

What motivated you to spend so much time and effort, you know,

writing this book and then putting this out as your 14th book?

Well, it not just my personal journey, but one of my best friends.

Died of breast cancer at the age of 51 and Doc, that was Dr. Sherry Lieberman.

She was a PhD nutritionist.

And actually I probably would never have written a book if it

had not been for Dr. Lieberman.

She introduced me to my publisher, square One Publishing, and she's the

one that introduced me to Rudy Cher, who is the owner of the company.

And that's.

How I got started in writing books is having the right publisher and

publishing company to begin with, and again, she died of breast cancer.

I've had several really good friends die, and then my best friend died 10

days ago of breast cancer, and so I've been on that journey with her for the

last, uh, about two and a half years.

So that gave me a lot of insight personally, of this disease course

and some things that we can do.

Mm. I'm sorry to hear that about your

you.

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, very, very timely and, and maybe we dedicate this

episode to and to your friend as well and to everyone else that you know that

have has been affected by breast cancer.

if someone to read this, meaning a woman, if it closed your book and only

remembered like one idea that could completely change their their lives, her

life, what do you think that would be?

It certainly has to do with probably two modifiable risk factors.

One is how you eat.

Certainly it's anti-inflammatory.

That's how you want to eat.

Decrease inflammation, which would be the Mediterranean diet.

That decreases inflammation in the body.

So those good fats like avocado and the better meats like lamb, almost all of the

fat in lamb is omega threes, and related to that is decreasing sugar intake.

Sugar causes inflammation.

I'm personally still working on that one.

I do have a sweet tooth that was really, really hard for me,

particularly for chocolate, but.

You know, we all are a work in progress.

But certainly eating more Mediterranean, decreasing sugar intake.

Another modifiable risk factor is alcohol consumption.

Women metabolize alcohol differently than men, and we break it down slower,

and it also breaks down into a product which increases estrogen in the body.

And so try and keep alcohol to a minimum.

Does really help.

In fact, the American Cancer Society, uh, now on the website has that if you

have breast cancer on both sides of your family, you probably should not drink.

So I don't.

And for everybody else, moderation's the key to health.

So instead of two glasses of wine or beer, or a mixed drink, cutting

it down to one would be great.

We've known for a long time that cigarette smoking is problematic.

It's not just the increase in lung cancer and increases breast cancer.

And then of course, big time in the news now.

High fructose corn syrup.

High fructose corn syrup is the only sugar in the world that gets

into the th without a carrier, that carrier is the hormone insulin.

So minimizing or avoiding high fructose corn syrup would be grand.

Exercise helps.

And then of course, you knew I would get along too, and around two toxins.

Particularly chemicals that are endocrine disruptors, they actually

modify the hormones in the body.

Particularly estrogen, BPAs, phthalates.

There's a number of toxins that are endocrine disruptors.

There's even fungi that are endocrine disruptors like

Zen, which is an abbreviation.

It's easier than giving you the big chemical name, but even in fungus toxins,

that really, if we can get rid of which we now can, the science is here to do that.

Dramatically decreased the risk of getting breast cancer.

So talk to me because this is where I wanted to go anyway, with

environmental toxins, you know, the plastics, PFAS, pesticides,

like heavy metals and even mold.

Um, like how, and you mentioned it's, it's a lot of these will

affect your, your home hormones.

They'll, they'll modify it so.

Explain that a little bit more and how this is then directly

linked to breast cancer risk.

That's such a great question.

Thank you for asking.

Women have three estrogen receptors, so Alpha, beta, and GPER, and.

These toxins are literally changing the endocrine system by being phytoestrogens.

They act like estrogen in the body.

Their estrogen mimics and they bind to those receptor sites and

increase the risk of breast cancer.

So literally, BPA will bind.

To the receptor sites, just like estrogen does, and we couldn't get rid of BPA.

In fact, I, I'm a toxicologist.

My MPH is in toxicology.

Five years ago, I quit measuring BPA because I had nothing to offer besides

sauna, which only got rid of maybe five.

Or 7% of BPAs now with therapeutic plasma exchange where we hook people

up to a machine, take out their plasma, put back in albumin, so we get rid of

those toxins permanently from the body and including microplastics and BPAs.

Mold and all those things, pesticides, we now actually have the science

that the results are phenomenal.

We can get rid of BPAs 92 to a hundred percent in every single patient.

Uh, along with all the other toxins I mentioned, even toxic heavy metals

that we couldn't get rid of before, like aluminum, like gadolinium.

What you get when you have an MRI that dye they put in as gadolinium

used to stay in your body forever.

Now, with therapeutic plasma exchange, we are able to get it out in everyone.

Wow.

Yeah.

And it just makes all the sense to get it out.

And I know we've talked about that a lot with how TPE is, it's leading

the way and it's, it's incredible.

And, um, yeah, I've had a bunch of people on here who, who have also had it done

and talked about their experiences.

You know more about toxins.

Of all of these that you've studied, is there like a single toxin that keeps

you awake at night because you know it's silently harming people every single day?

Actually all of them do.

If you just took BPA itself, it increases the risk documented with

medical trials of 22 different diseases, including breast cancer.

So you could just stop at BPAs and phthalates.

Which are the things that are plasticizers?

Women have to be really, really careful with what they put

on their skin and their hair.

A lot of women get these toxins from face cream, eye cream, neck creams,

their shampoos, their conditioners.

Fabric softeners, deodorants may have aluminum in them.

A lot of these things are easily avoidable, but women probably get 70% of

their toxins from things they actually put on their skin, hair, et cetera.

Uh, for an aesthetically positive experience, the great news is there's

much better products now that don't have all these toxins in them.

Yeah, that's because I, I was gonna ask, you know, if, if there's any, if

there's a single product that you just feel should just get wiped out, not

ever show up in a, in, in a home in America or wherever in the world, uh,

is there one of those that come to mind?

I know there's a lot of health, uh, beauty care products, it sounds like,

but is there, is there something that's just like, that's gotta

go, that cannot be in your own?

a lot of them really have to go.

People need to read the package.

The trouble is they don't.

If there's something on any package, whether it is a food, whether it is a

cosmetic, something you put on your skin, if you cannot pronounce it, then you

best are not to use it because natural things are more easily to pronounce.

It's as simple as that, huh?

If you can't pronounce, yeah, because these words sometimes are just, you

know, I don't know how many syllables there are, 10 maybe you're just

like, what, what does that mean?

Um, yeah.

So reading the labels of anything.

'cause that's, uh, yeah.

And, and I know we can probably talk all day about the specifics

of, of things, you know, but, um.

Plastics I know come up a lot, so I'm sure that that would probably be a

starting point as well, you know, to eliminate a lot of the BPAs as well.

Well, people don't realize that even masks.

When people put a mask on, those microplastics go up

your nose and into the brain.

There was an interesting study in this year showing that.

So things sometimes that we do that we think are really, really

healthy may not be, but we can get rid of microplastics now too.

Before TPE.

We never could get rid of it, but think about therapeutic plasma exchange.

It's not new.

I started out as an ER doc in a level one trauma center in Detroit.

We did TPE.

This is my 48th year of practice and before Narcan, I think

everybody's heard about Narcan.

Now we jab it into people.

We put up their nose for drug overdose.

Well, I've practiced long enough that we didn't have Narcan.

It was before it was invented.

So how do you think we got rid of people who abused heroin or whatever?

We did TPE.

So TPE has been around for 50 years or more.

So it's very, very safe procedure.

It's a little time consuming.

It takes about three hours, but TPE itself does not work.

Uh, we've actually proven that it's TPE plus nutrients and other things.

Uh, so at MD Lifespan, what we do is we do TPE, which takes probably three

hours, and then for the fourth hour what we do is we give people IV nutrients.

Stem cells, exosomes and other things, uh, to help their immune system memory

help with heart disease, et cetera.

Uh, so it's not just TPE itself because that really doesn't work very well.

Um, we have to have all the other things added to it to get the great

experience that we're discussing today.

That's good.

That's good that you specify that because we've talked a lot about TPE

and it by itself, but it's the other things that are kind of lumped into

the protocol that each person is given.

Right.

And there's a lot of different ways that can be shifted, right?

It's all precision, it's personalized.

It is absolutely personalized.

Um, people don't realize that when you work with them, it's

not just how get the toxins out.

We wanna make sure people avoid them.

We want, we suggest air filters for them and water filters and other things to help

avoid it, and even lowering cholesterol.

One of those modifiable risk factors is high cholesterol.

Lowering the cholesterol decreases the risk of breast cancer,

getting rid of infection, obesity.

If you're obese, it increases your risk.

If you have high blood sugar, it increases your risk.

So we wanna work with people to have an overall experience to help them really

decrease all of their risk factors.

With therapeutic Plasmic Exchange.

At MD Lifespan, we don't see the patient for everything.

We bring them in, we do the TPE, which we lovingly call an oil change, and then

we send them back to their personalized medicine physician or other prescriber.

If they don't have one, then you know, we're happy to suggest somebody

in their area for them, but really we are there for the TPE only.

it's really cool how holistic the process is, you know, and, and

yeah, it's not just the TPE or even the nutrients and all that.

It's everything else in our environment and being knowledgeable, which I know

we're doing here in the episodes, but when it's personalized, it's like a whole

different experience, which is really

It is, and one of those personalized things is methylation.

Uh, it's a modifiable risk factor.

Methylation is putting a CH three group where it belongs in the body and 50%,

50% of the people in the world are poor.

Methylators.

I am one of those.

If you do not put a mouth whole group where it belongs, you have an increased

risk in breast cancer for men, prostate, an increased risk in heart disease, an

increased risk in stroke, an increased risk in cognitive decline, which is quite

major and an increased risk in getting bone loss, whether you're male or female.

And for men, an increase in prostate cancer.

Again, we've known this for 40 years.

So it's really important to look at methylation.

If people come in and for TPE and they've not had a methylation study done, then

we do do one for them to try and change these modifiable risk factors and help

them be as healthy as they can be.

I don't know much about methylation.

I, I mean, could you give us like just a quick, I, I'm sure you can

go really deep on this, but just so we have an understanding of Yeah.

What it is and maybe some of the things that we can take action on.

Well, it's, it is actually inherited on a gene, so there's different ways you

can have a methylation, uh, problem.

Okay.

There's different parts of the pathway that may not work depending

on what gene you may have inherited.

So for me, I have a problem with Metso, Terah, hydro folate reductase, big, long,

so M-T-H-F-R, we abbreviated it and that's the pathway that I inherited a gene.

Where in my body things do not break down well, when it comes to methylation, the

sciences here, we can do a blood test, a methylation test to see what part of

that pathway doesn't work and fix it.

So that has to do with folic acid, which is B nine.

So I take methylated B nine or folate.

So you put a methyl group.

On the folate, and then my body will make that whole reaction

work the way it's supposed to.

Other people in a personalized medicine approach, they may have a different

part of the pathway that's broken.

The good news is we can measure the entire pathway.

We can also fix.

Whatever part of that pathway doesn't work well, and so the

science is here to do that.

You want a really simple way to look at part of the pathway, the M-T-H-F-R.

You can have your doctor, if you're sitting out there today

joining us, measure homocysteine.

Any prescriber can measure that.

It's homocysteine, H-O-M-O-C-Y-S-T-E-I-N-E.

Homocysteine can be done at any lab.

It is a fasting study and that part of the pathway that makes homocysteine and

breaks it down, if that's the broken pathway, your homocysteine will be high.

So perfect is six to eight, mine is 16.7.

Without that special folate or benign.

Other ways of looking at measuring it is again, the whole methylation

pathway, or you can look at how estrogen is broken down in the body.

That's a first morning urine, and believe it or not, that test is for men or women.

We do that test and make sure estrogen is broken down into the

right estrogens to keep it simple.

Two, four and 16 hydroxy estrogens.

The two is the good.

You want that one?

You need a little bit of 16 for bone structure.

Too much increases the risk of breast and prostate cancer.

And if you have any four hydroxy, it increases that risk of breast

and prostate cancer dramatically.

And of course, when I did my.

First morning urine, that estrogen breakdown, I broke down into almost

four hydroxy estrogen exclusively.

The great thing is we can change it and every single person we can fix

homocysteine and everybody, we can make estrogen breakdown perfect,

and every single person, and that is part of what we wanna do as

well, along with toxin removal.

a great, great information right there.

And I think that gives the power to those listening and watching, you

know, to, to take an action too.

And there's a lot of, a lot of great things here.

Now you mentioned in, you know, we've talked about this in on a previous

episode, but the connection between breast cancer in women, but also.

Cancer, you know, so I'm sure there's men watching, listening too.

So I, I kinda want to, uh, connect those and, and at least put your thoughts

around that and how maybe some of this, what we're talking about relates to men

Almost everything I have said.

The modifiable risk factors, all 19 of them, they actually are

the same for prostate cancer and also men can get breast cancer.

The previous studies showed that 1% of breast cancer was in men.

Now 3% of breast cancer is in males.

In fact, personally in my own practice, my second to last patient with

breast cancer actually was a male.

And so men can get breast cancer also.

More commonly they get prostate cancer.

But doing all these things we talked about from toxin removal to eating better, to

exercise, to fixing methylation that helps with men prevent prostate cancer as well.

And honestly, I would be very remiss if I did not talk about vitamin D.

Vitamin D is actually a pro hormone.

Vitamin D for men or women, has to be 55 to 80 to help prevent

cancer in general, particularly breast, prostate, and colon cancer.

when you say that range, that's, that's, uh, after getting a test, right?

The um,

Correct.

Well, or you know, when you do a test, any doctor or prescriber can do that test.

Um, we go, you know, to the basic lab.

You don't have to be fasting to have that one done.

And when people take vitamin D if they need it and.

Most people do need it.

Then we take vitamin D three instead of vitamin D two.

Studies have shown that vitamin D three works better in the body.

Good.

Good, good, good.

So get the, and the, get the labs, and that's just the, the blood test, right?

The, the normal thing

that

Normal thing, you just go to the lab again, not even fasting, and they can

just do a vitamin D. So nice and simple on

I like it.

That's good.

Yeah.

What are other, um, so, you know, I'm, I'm thinking of the different tests

'cause we've talked about a lot, you know, saliva, urine, blood, so, uh.

I guess just can you recap, you know, because I see I, I think that's

almost like a next step that a lot of people might be thinking about.

Hey, I should probably get tested.

So can you just kind of recap what all of the tests are and kind of

just quickly kinda denote why?

I can certainly start off with on Monday morning, changing how

you eat and starting to exercise.

If you're not exercising, that's a great place to begin 'cause

we wanna decrease inflammation.

That's really all these things do.

Measuring vitamin D, which can be done at any lab is great.

You can also measure homocysteine at any lab if you're going to look at methylation

and do an actual methylation test.

Or look at the breakdown of estrogen, then that one you're

probably going to need to see a personalized medicine specialist for.

And certainly if you wanna have a comprehensive toxin test, and we

do recommend that for every patient after the age of 18, we really wanna

look at 109 toxins in the body.

And that test is easily doable.

Uh, so that one is a 24 hour urine.

Uh, to measure all those toxins so you don't have to go to the lab for that one.

You can be sent a kit, do it in the privacy of your own home, send it off

UPS or FedEx, and then you can look at whether you have any of these kind

of toxins we've talked about today.

Except for microplastics.

Microplastics, that test is best done in Europe.

That one's kind of hard to measure, so it takes a little while for it to go

back to Europe and come back to the us.

yeah, well I'm thinking, you know, so.

Traditional doctors, you know, a, a woman who's listening.

I mean, I just feel like for anybody, you know, going to the doctor's office

could be kind of intimidating, but I'm curious from your perspective, you know,

a woman going in there, what can they ask that can maybe change the dynamic

of, of that patient doctor relationship so it gets the woman in control of her

health, you know, rather than just kind of reacting to what the doctor's saying.

Is there something that you'd recommend women to say?

First of all, do not be afraid to ask questions.

Okay.

That's what the doctor or other, uh, prescriber is there for, is

to make sure you have all your questions answered before you leave.

Do not let people intimidate you.

Do not let people rush you and make you feel like, oh my gosh,

I've only got five minutes.

You are there for your own health and everybody has the right to a

personalized approach to health.

And I didn't mention a, a gut test, but that's a stool test.

Again, 70% of your immune system's in the gut, so talk

to your doctor about that one.

If they're gonna send your stool off to the hospital and not do a

whole specialized test, that that looks at everything from dysbiosis.

Meaning too much bad bacteria and not enough good.

If they don't do a stool test that looks at inflammation and metabolic

dysfunction, meaning how the body works, then seek out a personalized medicine

prescriber, someone who actually does an approach where you're going to look

at all of these different things, but again, you can start with your own doctor.

Start by getting a vitamin D level done.

Start by eating better, start by exercising.

Start by, if you're overweight, do the best you can to lose weight.

You certainly can lower your cholesterol with your own doctor.

I do recommend you see a personalized medicine specialist

if you're going to look at hormones and have a saliva test done.

But everybody out there today can avoid high fructose corn syrup

and decrease their sugar intake.

These are things that we really can do to make a very big difference

when it comes to breast cancer risk.

definitely.

We have a lot of control, which is nice.

And the, so because you've practiced for over 40 years, written 14 books now

and all that, I'm curious, if you were to go back to your thirties, let's say,

you know, back in time, what would you tell yourself to do differently to lower,

uh, the risk of breast cancer overall?

Probably decreasing stress.

It, it took me a number of years to just learn, basically let go, let

God, and really decrease stress, which is cortisol, my stress hormone.

Uh, I think most doctors and probably most people, uh, really, really stressed.

Uh, I kind of let that go and I can't control it anyway, so don't worry

about all those other things because there's two things that really, really,

really feed cancer cells no matter what kind of cancer we're talking about.

And that is sugar and stress.

And by the way, cortisol, your stress hormone is measured by saliva.

That is a saliva test that's available at any lab in the world because that's

the best way to measure cortisol itself.

I, I feel like the stress thing, everybody can relate to that in some regard and

everybody has these different ways to deal with stress, um, he or not, but

definitely go on the healthier side.

Uh, any any recommendations on reducing stress or you.

Maybe not just for yourself, but how you've seen most

effective that you'd recommend.

That's pretty,

uh,

Oh, absolutely.

Prayer, meditation, Tai chi, yoga, Qigong, exercise, massage, breathing

techniques, acupuncture, acupressure.

I mean, all of those really are.

All of them have clinical trials showing that they do improve cortisol levels.

And then you can also take nutrients, uh, adaptogenic herbs like ashwagandha,

ginseng, Rhodiola, uh, there's some of the herbs that have clinical trials to show

that they help normalize cortisol as well.

There's so many good things.

And I know your book was.

Even deeper with the short time that we have here.

So I wanna thank you for being so open, Dr. Pam, and urge

everyone to go and get the book.

And again, we will, we'll link it in the show notes, uh, how to prevent breast

cancer before and after diagnosis.

So, and thank, thanks for sharing that with the world as well, Dr. Dr. Smith.

Um, is there anywhere else that you would like people to go and follow you

or maybe go deeper on things with you?

No, actually, I would just love to have everybody read this book

because it's a book for all times.

It really does matter if you do these things for your overall

health, not just the prevent.

Of cancer.

You can find my book at any major bookstore.

You can find it on Amazon, which may be the easiest way to do it in today's

world, but it certainly gives you a nice, simple, broken down way of looking at

risk factors that you yourself can fix.

You can can take control.

Of your own health.

Thank you so much for inviting me to be on your podcast.

It truly is greatly appreciated.

I very much have been enjoying being here.

Thank you.

I appreciate you taking the time.

I know you're, you're speaking on all the stages that I can possibly think

of, so, and it's because you ha, you're so valuable and you're sharing so

much impactful, timely information.

So appreciate you very much.

Thank you.