Welcome to Longevity. I'm your host, Natalie Knidham. I'm a nutritionist, a human potential and epigenetic coach, and I created this podcast to bring you the latest ways to take control of your health and longevity. We cover it all, from new technology and ancestral health practices to personalized interventions and a very special interest of mine, peptides and bioregulators. Enjoy the show. Hi, I'm Natalie Knidham, your host. While I have many favorite episodes from this year, I've put together a little recap of a few of the episodes that really seem to resonate well with listeners. Please enjoy a recap of these wonderful guests with inspiring and important messages for your longevity. Next, I want to tell you about a free gift just for listeners, and I'll thank one sponsor, and then we are off. So as a thank you, I've put together a free handout. Each month, I'm sharing three new habits to boost your longevity. You can access it at knidham.com forward slash free. Now, if you haven't already, I'd also love to invite you to subscribe to the podcast and rate it while you're listening today. It would be a huge help. Thanks so much. We talk a lot about skincare over 40, but honestly, upping your protein is one of the biggest glow ups you can give your body. Like many women, I was trying to hit my protein goals for muscle, metabolism, bone strength, but I feel like I had to blindly trust the proteins I was choosing because they weren't disclosing ingredient sourcing. Then I read that two thirds of protein powders tested had more lead in a serving than California's safety limits. Not exactly the morning ritual I had in mind. And that's why I switched to Puree PW1. I use the bourbon vanilla made with real vanilla seeds from Madagascar. It is so smooth and naturally sweet that adding it to my yogurt bowl or shake actually feels like a treat. Plus, for every scoop, I know I'm getting clean, high quality whey that supports my strength goals. Puree doesn't just say they're clean. They prove it. PW1 is a third party tested for more than 200 contaminants. And Puree was the only brand that earned the clean label project transparency certificate. That level of disclosure is rare and refreshing and honestly, necessary. If you want protein that supports your goals without the guesswork, go to puree.com forward slash Nat and use code Nat for 32% off your first subscription or 20% off anything on that site. And Puree is P U O R I dot com forward slash Nat. In this clip, Benazity explains why eat less moves more fails most people showing that weight gain isn't a calorie problem, but a hormone and cellular inflammation problem. He breaks down research from the biggest loser and gut microbiome studies to illustrate how calorie cutting backfires in the long term. The takeaway, you don't lose weight to get healthy. You get healthy to lose weight. Now, if this resonates with you, the full episode goes even deeper with practical tools for metabolic flexibility, keto done right, fasting strategies, and how to rebuild a resilient metabolism. I was like that personal trainer because I used to be a personal trainer and that's exactly what I told my clients, hey, eat less move more, let's get you in a deficit. It makes sense. It really does on paper. Like, yeah, if you just expend more energy than you consume, and you create a deficit, that's 3500 calories, that's about one pound of fat. You continue to do that until you achieve your goal body weight. It makes sense on paper, but when you actually apply it, it's a whole different story. And let me first say that calories do matter. They're just not the most important thing. They're a distraction. So this trainer was distracting this client. He wanted to do good. I like the recommendation for 5000 steps. I mean, that's fine. But to just say, hey, we need to get you to expend more than you consume. It's not the whole story. And the premise this trainer has, and still people to this day who follow that method, their premise is this, Natalie, I need to get you to lose weight in order for you to be healthy. But the body does not lose weight to get healthy. We get healthy to lose weight. There are no, yeah, there's no mechanisms in place in the body that count calories. We're not a bank account or a math equation or a calculator. We're a very complex chemistry lab. And as a matter of fact, that guy that you referenced that was in the gym, the 30 year old guy who was overweight, he did not, he does not have a weight problem. If you're overweight right now, you do not have a weight problem. I used to be obese. I never had a weight problem. It's a weight symptom. When you just focus on focusing, when you are only focusing on calories, you're focusing on treating the symptom. The real cause is hormones and cell inflammation. That's where the focus should be. And there are two studies I put in metabolic freedom where I discussed this in chapter one. And that's one study was on the biggest loser, which is a TV show. It was a TV show in the U.S. where they had these morbidly obese individuals. You remember it, right? Oh my God, it was so bad. Yeah, they put them on. I mean, it was so good, but it was so bad. It was entertaining, right? And they put them on these calorie deficits, exercise them similar to what this trainer recommended. They lost a lot of weight and they celebrated them on this final episode. And this one study followed up with 14 of those contestants. And it showed that 13 out of the 14 contestants gained all the weight back and a portion of them gained even more weight before they started the show. Not only that, they measured their hormones like ghrelin, the hunger hormone, which is through the roof now. They measured their satiety, fat burning hormone leptin. It had plummeted. They had destroyed their metabolism. This is why there's never a biggest loser reunion show. Another study came out showing the connection between the gut microbiome and weight loss. And it had two groups in this study. Everybody in the study was obese. They were both controlling their calories. They were monitoring their calories. One group had a fecal microbial transplant from lean healthy donors. The other group did not. So with this group that got the fecal microbial transplant, it repopulated their gut bacteria, created more diversity. They started to lose weight without any dietary changes, showing you that it's the gut, different factors that play here. But if you just focused on the calories, that you wouldn't see the full picture. And just one more thing, the challenge with the calories in versus calories out method is that it usually works in the beginning. It does. As a first intervention, right? Yeah. And it usually does work for most people in the beginning. But then the weight stalls. Is there a tiger behind you? What happened? Something just happened. Sorry. My door started moving. It's there, tiger. Coming out of the forest. Sorry. The weight does come off for most people when you start to go into a deficit. But then what happens? It starts to stall. And most people think, well, we need to just exercise more or cut more or do a combination of both. And then you lose some weight and then it stalls. And you could only cut so much until the metabolism just goes into the survival mode where it starts to really slow down and starts to become inefficient. And the metabolism doesn't even run in speeds. It's either efficient or inefficient. So we're not trying to create a fast metabolism. We're not trying to fix a slow metabolism. We're trying to create a healthy, flexible metabolism. And that's the goal that I should, the thing that I try to come across in the book, the plan, I should say, that I try to implement in the book. In this clip, Dr. Teo Solomani explains that while sunburns are never ideal, sun avoidance alone does not prevent the most dangerous skin cancers. He dismantles long standing sunscreen narratives with evidence showing that even diligent sun protection doesn't meaningfully change basal cell carcinoma rates. The full episode dives far deeper into the nuances of sunlight, aging, cancer biology, immune driven skin pathology, melanoma, supplements like astaxanthin and polypodium, and practical sun strategy advice that can genuinely change your daily habits. And this is probably really controversial coming from a skin cancer surgeon and dermatologist. Is that the vast majority of skin cancers that will kill people are not directly sun related? So that's a big thing, right? But we're going to talk about two issues today. So I'm going to let you go on with that thread. But we're going to talk about skin cancer, which is one thing. And then we're going to talk about skin aging, like the aesthetics piece, which is a different piece of the puzzle. So keep going. Yeah. So I think one thing people don't realize in that the sun avoidance doesn't necessarily make you survive or live longer from skin cancer risk. Now, the most common garden variety skin cancers are generally sun related, but there's a big genetic predisposition to them, which is why a lot of people from Northern European latitudes will show this, but people from equatorial latitudes won't have that inherent risk, even though they're in the sun much longer. So let's name those. That's the squamous or the basal cell. The three most common skin cancers we talk about, basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. Historically, melanomas have been our most life threatening or are worrisome ones. Ironically, the majority of melanomas don't have that chronic sun signature in their genetics. The majority of melanomas arise on sun protected skin, the backs of men, the lower legs, and backs of women. So I think genetics, genetic predisposition. Now dermatologists make a big stink about the sun because it's the only factor they can control. We can't really control your genetic predisposition or your family history, but what I can control is how much environmental injury you're going to get. But the reality is, sun avoidance doesn't necessarily protect you from metastatic melanoma as much as we want to believe that it does. What does? Great question. I don't know. Because I'm married to someone who had a classic man, middle of the back melanoma. Now he's British heritage. There you go. He's my vanilla guy. Yeah, yeah. Look, and there's things that you can do that will help mitigate the risk. Obviously, like every time you're in the sun, don't burn. Yeah, burn is basically your body's signal that, hey, you killed the first layer of skin. Like I didn't like this. You literally destroyed it. That's what appealing sunburn is. But aside from that, just surveillance and monitoring are really our only formidable way to protect against future melanoma risk, especially metastatic melanoma, which is really what we worry about. Yeah. Now the more common ones, like basal cell and squamous cell, a little more in sync with sun. Yeah. But again, genetic predispositions are a huge factor because when we looked at our randomized sunscreen studies from the mid-90s to now, when we looked at diligent sun protection versus no sun protection, the incidence of basal cell carcinoma didn't change. But what about the ingredients and did they control for the ingredients in the sunscreen? Like what about the narrative that, and there's a big narrative in my space, that a lot of the sunscreens out there actually have ingredients that they themselves are carcinogenic? It's a great question. These studies didn't control for them, but some of these studies didn't even use sunscreen. They used other forms of sun protection, shade, shelter, things like that. Right. Or like a shirt or a sunscreens. Yeah. You know, hat, broad-brimmed hat, things like that. So I think there's a lot to, you know, I think the over sun fearing or fear mongering is a problem. In this segment, Dr. Kerry Jones breaks down why perimenopause is so disruptive, not just because of hot flashes, but because estrogen decline affects the brain, joints, metabolism, sleep, and even things like itchy ears. The full conversation goes far deeper into testing estrogen metabolism, nutrients that support hormone pathways, and new diagnostic tools, giving women and the men who love them an empowering actionable roadmap for navigating perimenopause, menopause, and hormone health with clarity and confidence. Sometimes some women feel, oh, perimenopause, that's a hot flash. That's a nice wet. I don't get those. True. But do you get joint pain? Do you have inherited hair, skin, and nail changes, fatigue, sleep changes, metabolic issues, some weight gain, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Those still fall under the symptom category. There are over a hundred signs and symptoms associated with perimenopause. Itchy ears, random phantom smells like weirdo things. Yeah. I'm like, what? Yes. What are you talking about? Itchy ears. I did get itchy ears, but I never associate. I don't know. Yeah. Never occurred to me. And obviously itchy ears can be other things, allergies, things like that. But when estrogen declines, estradiol declines, it dries things out, which includes your tympanic membrane in the inside of your ear. So all of a sudden, you're 45 with your finger in your ear all the time, trying to scratch it out. Which I mean, there could be worse things in life, but you know, there could be worse. So there's an even smaller group of women that for some reason, they don't gain a ton of weight. Correct. They don't, you know, now to your point though, they may have had some symptoms, but not attributed them to menopause. And Lord knows that our doctors are very quick. I know I had a doctor that was very quick to say, well, you're getting older, get used to it. Yeah. This is what happens. This is, this is your new life. Welcome to the world. She didn't say, Oh, you're having menopausal symptoms, your hormones are shifting. We could probably help you with that by giving you this, that and the other thing, like there was, there was an Instagram, a social media post two days ago, I don't know if you saw it, but there was one, unfortunately, male doctor who came out and said, you know, before women consider BHRT or HRT, they should fix their lifestyle, fix their sleep, fix their diet, and fix their exercise. And in the world of new, the new world of stitch videos where another doctor can come on and play that clip and then say, so here's the thing. You can't really manage money in account in an account that in a bank account that's been depleted. And I, my comment was, well, never mind depleted, the accounts closed. And so, you know, so you have a woman who's not sleeping because she doesn't have any progesterone. And so now her hormones are out of whack and her cravings are out of control and her joints hurt so she can't work out. She's exhausted all the time and she's cranky, but you're telling her, here's the carrot, we can fix it. But first you have to fix it without the carrot. And I would argue, and I say this all the time, it's a balance of both, right? If you're up late, if you're working, if you're watching addicted to Netflix, if you're doom scrolling until midnight when you shouldn't have, if you've had two glasses of wine after bed and you can't sleep, is it partly lifestyle? Totally. Could be. Is it partly low progesterone? Yeah, absolutely, for sure. But I don't know which one it is. So we can do both. I can give you progesterone and I can coach you, hey, stop doom, strolling and go to bed. I need you to go to sleep. And you know, and I think this is where, if not to get into semantics, but it is about semantics, it's about the language that we use. It's how we frame stuff. And, you know, the first doc, who's milk, look, well-meaning smart person, right? Like not, not to diss anybody. And there's a good reason I'm not, I'm not naming names here because I don't want to embarrass anyone. I think the intention was really great that if the frame had been, and it's like the GLP wants, like you need to be doing the two things side by side, so that you have as many benefits as possible with as few as the consequences as possible. Now we're in a new world, right? And I think that this is where, because to get sound bites, we, some people are giving up on the nuance. And I think that doesn't serve anyone. And I've heard arguments of like, which came first chicken in the egg of, you know, like if somebody walks into perimenopause already metabolically unstable, if somebody walks into perimenopause or, you know, the whole menopausal transition already significantly immune compromised or what have you. And then the hormones change. Like, is it the hormones or is it the fact that they were already unstable to begin with? And I'm like, it's the straw that broke the camel's back. Like no matter what, when that estradiol declines and it's going to just whether or not you've metabolic, whether or not you have immune autoimmune, it doesn't matter. Your ovaries are going to shut down. You're going to develop menopausally low levels, what we call them, menopausally created estrogen, which is very low or progesterone, which is very like even lower, good gracious. And so it's just going to make everything worse. And oh, by the way, you know, like eating a nutritious diet isn't going to bring estrogen back. Super helpful for the systems in the body. We're not debating that, you know, but I mean, steak is not going to bring back estrogen. It's not going to just automatically turn on the ovaries again. So we have to have, it's definitely more nuanced when it comes to hormones. It's not one or the other. And it's one of the chicken or the egg questions that does have the answer. Yeah, because I think because it's what you just said. If you lose your hormones, you lose, nothing's going to bring them back from a, from a, from a lifestyle perspective. Right. That's, you know, you can, you can weather the storm better. You can support your liver. You can do, you know, you can do a lot of things, but you're not going to be replacing those hormones. They're not staying coming back on their own. And this is where we have a mutual friend, Dr. Anna Cabeca, who talks about hormone replenishment. Yes. Right. So we're replenishing something that we had so that we can continue to feel like we close to at least what we did. Yes. I was going to save this for the end, but this seems like a reasonably good time to ask this question. Like, what is the biggest menopause misconception that you wish every woman knew? Like, what's the biggest menopause myth? Oh my gosh. One menopause myth, one menopause myth. It's talked about so much now, which I'm a big fan of. I'm glad we're talking about menopause, but it's being treated as if it's a disease and that there's the, the, the, the ball is in somebody else's court to fix it. Like, the ability to help it is outside of you. And I quote Glinda the Good Witch all the time, like the power was within you. Even though you can't necessarily prescribe your own hormones, like getting educated about what is perimenopause and menopause, what is happening to my body, what can I request for as far as lab goes or hormones go, etc., etc., support that I need. There is so much amazing education out there right now that the biggest myth is there's nothing you can do. You're just older. It's a disease, best of luck or disorder. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. We've just been taught wrong. Have you ever tried a product so good you instantly become that person who insists that everyone else try it too? Yeah. Well, that's me with this honey, especially in this season of cold weather, recycled indoor air and germs on every doorknob and every airplane seat. So I've been reaching for Manukora, this rich, creamy, ridiculously delicious Manuka honey from New Zealand. Every morning, I take a big heaping teaspoon straight off the spoon. I let it melt, coat the throat and pretend I'm in a wellness commercial. This isn't regular honey. Manukora's bees collect nectar from the Manuka tree, which packs three times more antioxidants and prebiotics than normal honey. Plus, it naturally contains MGO, that rare antibacterial compound. It's ethically made, insanely tasty and actually supports my gut, aka 80% of the immune system. Now, if you want to make winter feel a little less, let's just call it germ forward, head to Manukora.com forward slash Nat to save up to 31% plus get $25 worth of free gifts with the starter kit. Oh, and news flash, it now comes in a glass jar. So once again, that's Manukora.com forward slash Nat. In this section, Dr. Ian White breaks down one of the most talked about concepts in modern longevity science, how circulating factors in the blood influence aging in surprising ways. He shares what researchers are discovering about the signals that keep tissues youthful and how shifting those signals might support better health as we age. The full conversation goes far beyond parabiosis, uncovering how pregnancy, amniotic fluid, exosomes and cutting edge regenerative therapies may actually hold the key to true age reversal. I think a lot of people have now heard of parabiosis because of what's his name, Brian Johnson. Doing a plasma, I think it's a plasma transfer between him and his son. But this is a whole other area of regenerative medicine. And maybe, can we talk about this a little bit? Is it really all that? What's your take on it? And you've clearly done some work here. Yeah, well, so I've been studying regenerative processes for over 20 years. I started really as a parasitologist. I was interested in how parasites interact with the immune system at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK. And what we sort of found back then, which we didn't really understand what we were looking at, was that certain parasites use exosomes to modulate the host immune system so that they can gain entry and survive. Now, we didn't know what it was back then, but we know now that they were using exosomes. And that sort of started my whole journey on trying to understand signaling and signaling modalities in the forms of exosomes and other modalities. So after studying that for many years and going down the route of cardiac regeneration and how the hematopoietic stem cell niche is maintained, I got very interested in the aging process because I realized that most of our diseases are associated with aging. And if we can understand the aging process, then perhaps we can understand disease. And one of those directions led me to heterochronic parabiosis. It was an experiment published several years ago from Harvard University, where they took a young mouse and an old mouse, and they sutured them together so they shared a blood supply. And based on my previous research at Harvard and at Cornell, I understood the power of young signals. And if you can take and harness those young signals, I ended up actually winning an award from the American Heart Association for my work on cardiac regeneration, looking at young signals and their influence on older tissue. But all this sort of came together in my mind, looking at the convoys research on heterochronic parabiosis, taking a young individual and an old individual, and somehow that old individual seemed to get younger. So markers of aging came down. Their immune system came back, their hair color came back, grip strength came back, cognitive ability was improved. All of these things that you want to see in a younger individual started happening in these older individuals. And so that sent me down this whole rabbit hole of trying to understand what those young signals are. And then that opened up my current career as a scientist studying longevity and aging. So when they sutured the mice together, again, just as a, did the old mouse get younger and the young mouse get older? Like did the signaling molecules from the old mice affect the, yeah? Yeah, that's what's interesting. So we do seem to accumulate sort of aging molecules. And what's fascinating is that it seems that just simply donating blood is a very cheap and inexpensive way to improve your health span and your lifespan. So just going and donating your blood to the big red truck that goes around is something you can do today to improve your quality of life. So yes, the younger mouse got older and the older mouse got younger. And it's because these young signals in the young mouse were passed to the old mouse, but this old stuff that's hanging around in the older mouse is accumulating now in the younger mouse and accelerating their aging. And so when you're donating blood, so you're not bringing in any youth signals, but you're reducing your load of old, of aging signals. Yeah. So typically what these guys do when they have a plasma exchange is they'll reduce their blood volume by a certain amount and then replace it with the same amount, but younger blood or plasma. And so isn't that, but okay, but wouldn't you reject somebody else's plasma? Like it's not like because blood is a tissue. So yeah, that's why he's using his sons because they're matched. So when you donate blood, they look for your HLA type. And you know, if you're an O or A or B, you know, all of these markers they look for so that when the bullet is donated and it's utilized in the hospital, they can call for the the the matching blood type. So it's the same same idea. You can't just take anybody's blood unless it comes from a cord. So an umbilical cord actually has this hematopoietic stem cell population that can recapitulate a bone marrow after ablation. And so that's used routinely in medicine where you would take a cord from a completely unrelated individual. You won't have the HLA match, but you can use it and you don't need to worry about rejection for the most part. And repopulate a person's bone marrow. Yeah. Interesting. And so how is so is this available? Parabiosis from a younger? Is this a commercially available process? But you know, I don't consider Brian Johnson. He's doing what he's doing accessing things that other people can't access. Is this something that somebody could do today? Yeah. So several years ago, there were some early adopting companies out there that the FDA sort of tried to reel in. There's some articles out there about it. But more recently, there are some companies that I've done a lot of research and I would say probably are more advanced than the the initial companies that were out there. But yes, you can find opportunities to do plasma exchange. I'm not sure about in the United States, but certainly abroad. Now in this clip, Dr. Lufkin explains that despite being deeply embedded in the medical system, researcher, professor, clinician, he realized many of the foundational teachings about chronic disease were outdated or just flat out wrong. The full episode expands on each of these so called lies, breaking down how modern medicine misunderstands chronic disease and giving listeners practical science back strategies to reclaim their metabolic health. For perspective, as you said, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm not a medical outsider. I am basically a representative of the medical establishment. I've spent my whole career as a professor at leading medical schools. I've written hundreds of peer review papers. My lab has gotten millions of dollars from drug companies and device makers in the federal government to do research about healthcare. I've had the honor and privilege of educating students and doctors in training and also the honor of practicing medicine. So I'm really, I am part of the system and the book, as we'll find out, is critical of western medicine. But before we get into that, I wanted to say a disclaimer. I think I'm a huge fan of western medicine. I think it has transformed our lives in the 20th century, the lives of all of us around the world, largely through the eradication of infectious disease and public health measures and the treatment of acute conditions. And there's pills and surgeries that really save lives and make the world truly a better place. And even today, if I get hit by a car out in front, you know, lifestyle will be important for healing and, you know, we'll talk about lifestyle. But what will save my life is western medicine. I will need a blood transfusion. I'll need a splenectomy. I'll need my bone set. So western medicine, even today still plays an important role. But the problem is, and what what my book strives to address is in the 21st century, we're facing now a tsunami of chronic diseases that while they were around in the 20th century, there are nowhere near in numbers or percentages that we're seeing today. These chronic diseases include, you know, obesity. Most people are overweight or fat, hypertension. Most people have hypertension. Diabetes now, most people are pre diabetic or diabetic. But on and on, cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and even mental illness are exploding in the numbers. And the problem is, when western medicine takes the tools that were so magical and transformative and so effective in the 20th century against infectious disease and acute conditions, when we apply those same pills and surgery to these chronic diseases, they don't always work as evidenced by the fact that these diseases are getting worse and worse. And to be clear, the the infectious, the pills and surgery may be life saving in a short term. If I'm a diabetic and my insulin or my glucose is through the roof, insulin will save my life. But if I go on as a type two diabetic to a lifetime of injecting insulin, that is the chronic downstream effects of diabetes, many of them will not be reversed by the insulin and will continue to get worse. So that's really the that's the premise of the book. But how I was drawn into this was, you know, I'd like to say, well, I want to make the world a better place or something. But it wasn't that way at all. I was mining my own business, doing my own thing. When I came down with four of these chronic diseases myself. And suddenly, it became real. And I went to my doctors and and they prescribed prescription medicines for each one of them. You know, and I, we talked about a lot of things. I said, what about lifestyle? I said, ah, it doesn't really work. You're going to need to take these pills for the rest of your life, you know, so get used to it. And I knew that wasn't going to end well. So it forced me to really examine what I believed and what many of my colleagues believed and actually dive deep in some of the latest research. And I realized that things are changing, that many of the things that I believe were true are not true. And many of the things that I taught and are still being taught in medical school are are untrue. And thus the title lies I taught in medical school. I really, I think that where you're coming from is the magic of the book. I think the fact that you are part of this establishment is the magic of this book, because it's too easy. I think too often it's too easy for people from the outside to criticize and to have a voice of someone who is in the system, who has appreciation for what the system does well and recognizes that there are shortcomings. Like I think that's how change can actually happen. Now, if you're a woman or you love a woman, this episode offers life-changing clarity on breast cancer myths, hormone safety, and what truly moves the needle for prevention. Dr. Simmons brings both surgical expertise and functional wisdom, giving listeners the tools to make informed decisions and avoid unnecessary treatments. She also introduces a potential powerful alternative to mammograms. The full episode goes deeper on how the current breast cancer screening system has so much more room for improvement. Breast cancer is becoming more prevalent as we've learned, and Dr. Jen Simmons explains why that is and what to do about it. For those that don't have access to QT and want to be imaged, you can use the ultrasound, but the ultrasound to me is problematic for several reasons and not for the reasons that most people think. So the biggest objection that kind of mainstream conventional medicine has to screening with ultrasound is that it won't pick up calcifications. Calcifications are often the earliest sign of something called DCIS, Dr. Carson Oman's side to that non-invasive condition that we talked about before. And it's true, ultrasound will not pick up calcifications. My response is, I don't care. Right? Like, I don't think all these women need to know about DCIS or that they have DCIS because it is not something that I don't, I don't think we should be treating DCIS like it's breast cancer. I don't think we should take a disease that is 100% survival, survivable, and decrease survival because the treatments for breast cancer are not 100% survivable. Right? People get heart disease from the treatment from breast cancer. People get osteoporosis from the treatments for breast cancer. People get brain degeneration from the treatments for breast cancer. Well, and isn't there a higher propensity of secondary cancers down the road? There are, but people generally are not getting chemotherapy from, for DCIS. They are getting radiation. And there are some radiation induced malignancies, definitely. So it does increase the risk of having a second malignancy. And also not for nothing, but the malignancies that happen, the cancers that happen after treatment tend to be far more aggressive cancers because these treatments kind of select out for resistant disease. And so the population that's left over that then gets to expand tends to be a resistant population. Well, and isn't there also damage? And I'm just asking this because then, you know, these are part of the narrative that we hear. There's also, to some degree, damage to the immune system's ability to function from a condition. Absolutely. So now you're left potentially with more, you know, more resistant, you know, kind of aggressive cells. Yes. And an immune system that's compromised isn't going to be able to function in the first as well. Yes. And, and quite frankly, part of the evolution of a cancer is an immune dysfunction. Because, you know, we all have this built in recognition system, our immune system, that is supposed to recognize these rogue cells, these, these cancer cells in their infancy so that they don't achieve a mass, right? So they don't expand and form a tumor. But our immune systems are so challenged anymore, right? It's like the busyness of life and all the toxins and the micro infections and, you know, you're and, and the food, food is a huge part of it, right? So if you're eating fake food, franken foods, processed foods, ultra processed foods, these are all things that are challenging your immune system every single time you put them in your body. So you're going to excess sugar, right? I mean, excess sugar is a depressant to the immune system. Yes. Yes. And five out for five hours after you eat sugar, you will be immune suppressed. Women will, and I get these comments on my feed sometimes when we're talking about hormones, women who are 10 years, 15 years, 20 years out from menopause saying, well, what about me? Can I still do BHRT or is it too late for me? Yeah. So it's absolutely positively not too late. Now, can we undo all the damage that happens in that period before you went on? No, probably not. But we can preserve, right? And so even if you've had all that bone loss, we're probably not going to get it all back. But we can stabilize that that condition. And we can make things a little better. Can we reverse all of the cardiac damage that's been done? Because when you lose your estrogen, you also lose the health of the muscles, the blood vessels, that kind of thing. Can we prove it a little? Yes. Can we reverse all of it? I don't know. But here's what I know does happen. The brain gets clearer. The brain fog goes away. The memory comes back. The word search gets better. The bladder symptoms get better. The vaginal symptoms get better. The mood gets better. These are really important things. Quality of life is what it's called. Yes. These are really important things that there is no timeline put on them. So when you're ready, go. Hey, folks, just a quick reminder that all of the information presented in this podcast is for information purposes only. No medical advice, no diagnosing, no treatments suggested here. Before you try anything that you hear about or learn about here, make sure that you check with your medical provider.
