Breast Cancer Myths & Healing Plants

Guest: Dr. Veronique Desaulniers

The contents of this presentation are for

informational purposes only and are not intended to
be a substitute for professional medical advice,
diagnosis, or treatment. This presentation does not
provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician or other
qualified health provider with any questions you
may have regarding a medical condition.

Ryan Sternagel: Welcome back, everyone to the Anti-Cancer Revolution. I am

your host, Ryan Sternagel, of the SternMethod.com and the Integrative
Answers to Cancer podcast. And today, or right now, I should say, we have
with us Dr. Veronique Desaulniers.

Dr. V is the founder of Breast Cancer Conqueror and the creator of the Seven
Essentials System: A Step-by-Step Educational Program. Her signature
process has empowered thousands of women in over 42 countries around the
world. Dr. V has personally conquered breast cancer twice which gives her an
empathetic perspective to understand other women facing a healing journey.

Dr. V, how are you? And thanks for coming on the Anti-Cancer Revolution.

Dr. Veronique Desaulniers: I’m great. Thanks so much for having me. I’m
really excited to be able to share and empower your listeners. We’ve got some
great information.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, we sure do. And just to get started, I just read your bio
there as you heard. But do you want to fill in any gaps in terms of what got
you into doing what you do and why it is that you’re so passionate about it
and how you’ve come to help now.

Dr. Desaulniers: Sure. Sure. So I’m a chiropractor by profession. I’ve been in

the wellness industry for over 40 years. And about 25 years into my practice

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where I was rocking and rolling and helping people get well (my passion was to
bring wellness to the world), I was in the shower and doing a breast self-exam.
And bam! Felt that lump that changed the course of my life forever personally
and professionally.

And so as I was going through that journey, it was like, “How could somebody
like me develop cancer?” I thought I was doing everything right. And there
were moments where I was afraid, like any other woman. I was frustrated,
confused, overwhelmed. I had all this information. What was I going to do
first?

And then as I was going through that process, I said, “If I’m feeling that way,
how much more so would the average person who doesn't have 25 years of
clinical practice behind them.” So that led me to create a process called the
Seven Essentials System. And it’s a step-by-step guide. So it takes the
confusion and the overwhelm out of a healing journey.

And I’ve written two books. The second one is still called Heal Breast Cancer
Naturally. It just was released, second edition of the book, updated
information.

And it’s updated because not only did I go through one healing journey. But
after being the breast cancer conqueror for about five years, I discovered
another lump in the same area on that left side. And it was because I wasn’t
taking care of myself. I was focusing on helping all these women. And I was
very stressed and anxious a lot of the time. And I didn’t practice self-care like I
should. And I had some problems with my thyroid. And I had another
cavitation sitting on the left breast, which I had no idea, left breast meridian.
So I created that perfect storm again.

And the good news is, three years later, as of 2018, I’m vibrantly healthy. I feel
great. I learned a lot. And that’s what I share in the second edition of my book.

Ryan: Well, yeah. I look forward to checking out the second edition. As you
know—well, I hope you know! Your book, even though it was called Heal
Breast Cancer Naturally, we’d just gotten so much good information out of all
the interviews that we heard you on and just followed your work online and
that sort of thing, that I certainly worked my way through it with everything
we were going through with our son when we were on our healing journey.
And we got a whole lot out of it.
Dr. Desaulniers: Thank you.

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Ryan: I certainly hope that anyone going through breast cancer picks it up.
And then, like I said, it’s just a wealth of information for anyone going through
cancer in general.

That being said, so let’s give everyone an overview of what the Seven
Essentials are. And then I want to drill down on a couple things we’ve talked
about drilling down on. But yeah, probably be best for the big picture to just
let folks know what—

Dr. Desaulniers: Okay. So what are the Seven Essentials? Well, this is a
process that you can follow whether it’s for cancer or autoimmune or any
disease. If you want to create vibrant health, you have to look at all seven
steps here.

So Essential #1 is let food be your medicine. And I think listeners, your

audience is very familiar with eating the right foods. And there’s no cookie
cutter diet. We’re all individuals. So what works well for one person may not
necessarily work very well for another. But the key is making sure that you’re
eating lots of super foods, densely nutrient-rich foods and lots of water. Stay
away from the processed stuff, just some basic stuff that you need to know.

Essential #2 is to reduce your toxic exposure. We live in a toxic world. So how

do we reduce our exposure to all these toxins? Well, you have to look at the
environment on the outside and then what’s in your home, all the chemicals
in your home, what you put on your skin. How toxic are you on the inside?
And then you have to regularly learn detox methods because you’re being
exposed to chemicals all the time. Even if we eat organic, 75% of the rain
water has glyphosate in it. So we’ve got to detox our bodies.

Number 3 is to balance our energy. We’re energetic beings. We’re one-billionth

physical matter. So certain modalities like chiropractic, acupuncture, exercise,
proper sleep, that’s so important in healing your body. And then for women—
well, and men. This would apply to men, too. But make sure that your
hormones are balanced because if our hormones are out of balance our body
is out of balance.

And for women specifically, don’t fear your hormones. Even if you’re diagnosed
with a hormone-positive cancer, it doesn't mean that your hormones are
driving the cancer. It’s all the chemical estrogens and metalloestrogens that
you’re exposed to. Aluminum antiperspirant—aluminum is a metalloestrogen.
The fillings in your teeth—mercury is a metalloestrogen. Pesticides, herbicides,
plastics, all those things. And so don’t fear your hormones. Just be aware of
what you’re being exposed to and how your body can break it down properly.

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Number 4 is the big one—our emotions. How do we heal the wounds from the
past? How do we manage our stress on a day-to-day term? It’s so, so
important to keep our bodies calm and to keep our hearts in coherence.

Number 5 has to do with biological dentistry because we know our teeth affect
every single organ in our bodies.

And 6, which we’re going to drill down into, is specific nutrients and
supplements that can help you to boost your immune system and kill off those
unhealthy cells.

And 7 is, how you know that you are cancer free and that you can stay cancer
fee is with keeping a pulse on your health with early detection. We have all
kinds of tools and technologies and blood work outside traditional medicine
that can help you with that.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, and on the very early detection, I would encourage folks to
check out Jenny Hrbacek interview. I haven’t actually interviewed her yet. But
I will have by the time people are watching this. And she’s a wealth of
knowledge on all of the different alternative tests, which you go into in your
book as well. And I know we’re going to talk about something that you’re just
now coming out with that I don’t even believe is in Janie’s book, which is
really cool!

To circle back, though—so we were going to drill down on number 6, the

therapeutic plants and all that jazz. But even before that, I’m speaking with
the breast cancer conqueror. Hormones, estrogen—that’s synonymous with
breast cancer and what people are concerned about there. And you mentioned
it briefly. So it was in the “balancing your energy” category. Before we get into
hormones specifically, do you want to just expound a bit on the concept of
balancing your energy? And how would I know if my energy was out of balance
and needed some work?

Dr. Desaulniers: That’s a great question. Well, if we just look at it from a

neurological point of view, we have a nerve system—your brain and your
spinal cord and all the nerves that affect every single cell in your body. Your
brain is communicating to the rest of your body through the nerve system.
And if you have your pedal to the metal, so to speak, you’re in that stress
mode. That’s a sympathetic nerve system. Your body is always going to be in
that fight-or-flight mode. That’s going to weaken your immune system. It’s
going to increase cortisol. It’s going to affect your digestion, your sleep.
Everything is going to be affected by it.

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And so we want to make sure that our nerve system is balanced. The best way
to do that is with chiropractic care. Then with acupuncture. We know that we
have meridians or lines of energy that communicate with every single part of
our bodies. It’s all interconnected. And if that gets jammed up, just like a
freeway of cars getting jammed up, that energy is not going to flow properly.

So for example, in my case, I had a cavitation and infection that sat on the left
breast meridian which indirectly affected my health in the left breast. And we
see that all the time. There’s a correlation. That’s another aspect.

Sleep. If we don’t sleep properly, how do we feel the next day? We don’t have
much energy. Sleep is very restorative. And it’s a normal, healthy function. So
if you’re not sleeping properly, guess what? That means that something is out
of balance. Either your neurotransmitters, your adrenals, your thyroid, all of
the above, unhealthy gut. You’re not going to produce enough serotonin which
converts to melatonin. So that’s just the basics of it. And then, of course, the
hormone aspect is a big one.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, so let’s dive into that then. So I guess a two-part question.
One, do you want to expound on what we might call the myths surrounding
hormones? You touched on it in your breakdown of the Seven Essentials. But
go into that.

And then after that, I do want to talk about—if hormones are out of balance,
there are all the metalloestrogens, xenoestrogens, so on and so forth that can
be throwing things out of whack. But then how do we get the hormones back
into whack, for lack of a better term?

Dr. Desaulniers: Bring them back into balance, yeah. Great question. So first
of all, I want to tell women out there your hormones do not cause cancer. You
need your hormones for every single aspect of your health—your brain health,
your bone health, your heart health, your immune system, your urinary tract.
Everything is so interrelated. So you need your hormones.

Now if you’re diagnosed with a hormone-positive cancer, for example, you may
be told that you need to take medications to really stop hormone production.
And temporarily sometimes it may be needed. I’m not telling you not to take
your medication. But when you look at the big picture, if our hormones cause
cancer, then every 20 year old on the planet would have cancer because those
are raging hormones. So it’s not our hormones, per se.

It’s a two-part answer. Number one, it’s what we’re exposed to—all the
chemical estrogens that we’ve never been exposed to before. And traditional,
agricultural, commercial meat, for example, has up to 400 times more
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hormones than meat found in Japan. So if you’re eating traditional meat,
you’re getting lots of hormones that way. We get it from tap water. We get it
from plastics, from pesticides, herbicides, the metals, everything we talked
about.

And if your body does not have the ability to process or get rid of those
aggressive hormones, then yes, that can accumulate in your body. So you
have to find out if you have a problem with what we call estrogen methylation
or metabolism or break down. Estrogen should be broken down into
metabolites that are not aggressive. And they should be just excreted from the
urine. But if you have genetic SNPs that prevent you from breaking that down
properly or if you have a very congested liver or if you don’t have the proper
microbiome, that’s going to prevent you from breaking down those estrogens
and excreting them from the body. So watch your exposure.

And then find out if you have a methylation problem. And you do that by DNA
and also a 24-hour urine test that measures those metabolites.

Ryan: So if someone wanted to find out if they had those SNPs, is this
something that would be covered just in your standard—? There are a lot of
them coming out now. 23andMe and Stratagene to interpret it is what people
were using for a long time. But I’ve heard interviews with companies called—
Onegevity was one. There was another one I just heard about.

So would this be something that would just get covered in one of those
panels? Or is this something you need to go ask a little more specifically to
make sure you’re getting covered? Or what are the SNPs that people are
looking for? That sort of thing.

Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah, you’re right. There are so many DNA tests out there
now. But the challenge I find is that there’s not much explanation. Sometimes,
you get all these genetic alleles. And you’re like, “What does this tell me?” So
you need somebody to help you interpret it or find a test that interprets it for
you.

The one that I’ve used for many years out of Australia is called Smart DNA.
And I like it because any layperson can read it and see that there is a
problem. And it gives you the explanation and what you can do to fix it. So
that’s one that I’ve always gone to.

But there are some like Nutrition Genome that are specifically for your foods
and how to best support your body. That one is a great one.

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So yeah, what do they look for as far as genetics? Well, you want to look for
the MTHFR. You want to look for COMT. You want to look for the CYP1B1
because that’s going to show you if you’re metabolizing and breaking down the
estrogens properly. And then you want to look for the glutathione—I think it’s
GSLT—to see if you’re able to produce enough glutathione to help get rid of
the toxins. And of course, you want to look at your liver in phase 1, phase 2
detoxification. Is it able to filter out all of those environmental toxins?

When it comes to your health, don’t guess. Work with somebody who can
guide you and coach you through the process. So that’s how you find out if
you have an estrogen methylation problem.

But how do you know if your hormones are balanced? Some people will do
blood work which, in my opinion, is not the most accurate when it comes to
really looking at your hormone levels. The hormones in your blood, when you
get blood taken, it’s for that particular moment of the day. And those
circulating hormones are protein bound. They have a large protein in them. So
they may not be user friendly. They may not fit into the receptor site of the
cell.

But when you do a saliva test and you measure the hormone levels that filter
through the salivary glands, those are more bioavailable. So it gives you a
better picture. It actually gives you a 12-hour window of what’s going on. So
you test four times during the day.

And you can look at the three different types of estrogens. You can look at the
estrogen quotient because you want those estrogens to be balanced in a
certain way. You want to look at your progesterone and then your
progesterone/estrogen ratios, DHEA, your testosterone, and then your cortisol
to see what’s out of balance. So saliva testing to me is the most accurate way.

Ryan: Oh, very good. Is there a particular saliva test, testing company or
brand or anything that you like?

Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah, LabRx is one that I’ve used for years. ZRT labs is
another one. There’s also a test called Dutch test which measures through the
urine. But they also do the saliva testing in conjunction with that. So yeah,
there are plenty out there to choose from.

Ryan: Okay. And so if estrogens are high, getting those tests back, that’s
when you would be looking to find out if you have one of these SNPs or a liver
issues and address them from there. Am I understanding that correctly?

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Dr. Desaulniers: Well, I think every woman, or any man actually, should get
their hormones tested and should do some sort of DNA testing because that’s
going to prevent, for men, prostate cancer and, for women, breast cancer
because both cancers are hormone related. And so you want to nip things in
the bud, so to speak, before things get out of hand.

Ryan: Okay. Yeah, very good. And as long as we’re talking about hormones,
we might as well go to the food really quickly as well. Especially women going
through breast cancer, they get told not only do they need to be on these
estrogen-blocking drugs. But they also need to avoid any sort of estrogen that
might come from food like the plague. Do you want to speak to that for a
minute as well?

Dr. Desaulniers: Well, food has been around for eons. And there are some
plant estrogens in some foods. But they have a very protective effect. They
help to metabolize the circulating aggressive estrogens. They protect the
estrogen receptor sites from the more aggressive estrogen.

So a prime example of that is ground flaxseed, for example. Ground flaxseed

was used in an experiment, in a study at the University of Toronto. Women
were getting ready to have lumpectomies, mastectomies. They had breast
cancer. And they fed them 5 teaspoons of ground flaxseed in a muffin. And it
probably was white sugar and flour for all we know. But nonetheless, they had
5 teaspoons of ground flaxseed every day. At the end of 30 days, their cancer
markers and their tumor markers were anywhere from 30 to 73% lower than
they were 30 days prior to that. So when it comes to food and plant estrogens,
very protective effect.

I know there’s a big controversy about soy. If you’re using organic, non GMO,
whole food soy (as in edamame beans), it’s very protective. As a matter of fact,
edamame beans have been shown to reverse the BRCA gene mutation. So food
is very potent, very powerful.

Fermented soy has been around for generations and generations. And we
know that women in Asia has a lower breast cancer risk because of the
fermented soy and, of course, the iodine from the seafood, seaweed.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, when you start looking at what all is in these foods, soy,
for instance, it’s high in genistein. I’m trying to think if flaxseed has some
genistein in there, too. But then you go to PubMed and search genistein in
combination with cancer and find thousands, I would guess, of studies, all
saying that genistein is probably a good idea to be taking in if you’re looking to
avoid or reverse cancer.

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Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah. Very, very, very supportive. Very healthy.

Ryan: Yep. And as long as we’re talking about some of the most common
breast cancer misconceptions, I guess you could say, before jumping into the
therapeutic plants, do you want to cover this BRCA gene that we always here
about when it comes to breast cancer?

Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah. Yeah, the BRCA gene. So Angelina Jolie has put the
BRCA gene on the map. And I don’t judge her. She saw her mom die a very
slow, horrible death as a result of cancer. So she chose to do a double radical
mastectomy and hysterectomy prophylactic, just in case, because she was
BRCA gene positive.

What most people don’t realize is the BRCA gene is a good gene. It’s a tumor-
suppressor gene. And less than 5% is actually genetic and familial. And even
then, it doesn't mean that you’re going to develop cancer. Cutting off your
breasts is not going to prevent you from getting a cancer. It has to do with all
of your lifestyle choices and the foods and the stress and all of that.

And so the BRCA gene is not the enemy. And it’s interesting to think about,
too. Why does the BRCA gene mutate outside of a genetic familial one? Well,
it’s been suggested that perhaps all the radiation from mammograms could be
causing some genetic mutations in the BRCA gene.

So the BRCA gene is not the problem. You have to look at the triggers that will
turn that BRCA gene into an aggressive problem. For example, somebody
might have a DNA test. And they may see all kinds of SNPs that tell them they
should be diabetic. But if they control their eating habits and they exercise
and they stay away from sugar and carbs, they don’t develop diabetes. And so
it’s the same thing with the BRCA gene.

Ryan: Are there any particular triggers? Of course, there are a million triggers
that we’re aware of just for bad gene expression in general with toxicity and
negative emotions and so on and so forth. But do you know of anything that
would be particular correlated, I guess you could say, with triggering the
BRCA gene the wrong way, more than all the other typical triggers one might
think of?

Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah, I would have to say radiation would be a big one. And
then lifestyle would be another one—how you manage your stress. And then of
course, your exposure to chemical estrogens and the standard American diet.
It’s all interrelated.

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It’s like a bucket. You fill it. You fill it. You fill it. And eventually, it gets to the
top. It overflows and spills. And that’s when the symptoms, the disease shows
up.

Ryan: Yep, it sure does. Well, speaking of the disease, let’s talk about maybe
some ways to go about either preventing or reversing it. So on the topic of
therapeutic plants, it’s one of the most overwhelming things for people going
through cancer. It’s a relief once you start digging into the studies, like we
talked about with Justine, and find out that there are all of these things (for
lack of a better term) outside of the conventional medicine that people might
be initially familiar with that will help. But then you start flicking around on
the internet and reading books and so on and so forth. And you end up with a
long list of different supplements and compounds that sound promising and
so on and so forth.

So the second part to the question will be asking you about the specific plants
that you like. (My light just went out, one of the hats.) How do you go about
deciding one plant or compound over another, if that makes sense? Weed
through them?

Dr. Desaulniers: There is a lot of confusion when it comes to what

supplements to take. What’s the protocol? What’s the best one for me? And
there’s no cookie cutter protocol because everybody is going to be different.
There are different stages, different needs. But if we just look at it from the big
picture, according to the National Institute of Health, 73% of people who have
cancer are now using what they call complementary medicine. They’re using
supplements and things to improve their health.

Now, one of my favorite, which should be at the top of the list for everybody, is
a vitamin D. Now if you have proper vitamin D levels, that’s going to reduce
your breast cancer risk up to 83%. So your levels should be between 80 and
100 ng/mL in the U.S. So make sure you get your vitamin D levels tested. And
sunlight is so important. So if you can, get outside. Obviously, if you live in
the cold north, you can’t do that. But get some sunshine on your body as
much as you can.

The next thing that’s so important would be iodine. Every cell in your body
needs iodine. And iodine is responsible for so many different functions in the
body. Specifically when it comes to women and breast cancer, your thyroid
and your breast tissue are going to compete with iodine.

And we’re exposed to so many, what we call halides—bromide, fluoride,

chloride. Bromide is a flame retardant. It’s in everything. It’s in our
electronics. It’s in our clothing, our carpeting, our cars. It’s in certain foods.
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It’s crazy. And that competes with iodine in the body and will kick it out. And
so if you are iodine deficient, oftentimes you’ll have thyroid issues which,
women who mask those symptoms and take traditional medicine, traditional
thyroid meds, are twice as likely to develop breast cancer than those who
don’t.

So how much iodine do you take? Again, don’t guess. You want to do a 24-
hour loading test. You take some iodine. You collect your urine for 24 hours
and see how much iodine is in your urine. It’ll tell you how deficient you are.
And then you’ll know how to supplement. So vitamin D and iodine are just
basics.

Ryan: Particular test you like for iodine?

Dr. Desaulniers: ZRT Labs does it. But there’s a lab called Hakala Labs. You
do need a prescription from a doctor for that test. But it’s well worth it. See if
your doctor can do that for you.

Another great superfood for prevention and for healing cancer or any type of
disease is broccoli sprouts. And broccoli sprouts are my favorite superfood
because they have 50 times more of this nutrient called sulforaphane than the
mature broccoli or the mature cauliflower, the cruciferous vegetables.

And so what’s so important about sulforaphane? Well, it turns on over 200

genetic switches in your body—anti-inflammatory, detoxification, anti-cancer.
And it kills baby cancer cells, breast cancer stem cells, the ones that
chemotherapy and radiation do not affect. So broccoli sprouts are at the top of
my list. Take it every day. You can take the actual sprout itself, a cup and a
half a day. Or you can do capsules, dehydrated. And make sure you get your
broccoli sprouts in every day.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, no. There are a couple broccoli sprout products we like.
And I believe you have a broccoli sprout product as well.

Dr. Desaulniers: I do, yeah. Brocco Power, yeah.

Ryan: Brocco Power, yeah. Yeah. But on top of that, we have a good four or
five large-sized mason jars, just on the counter top at any given time filled
with sprouts mostly, mostly broccoli sprouts.

Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. We talked a little bit about
flax. Flax is a very protective superfood. And it can also help with healing
cancer. Garlic—even the World Health Organization suggests that we take one
clove of garlic every day. Garlic has been shown to kill off cancer cells.
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But there’s trace minerals that are so important because the soil that we grow
our food in is so deficient. And so we need magnesium, for example. Low levels
of magnesium are pro-carcinogenic. That can actually trigger cancer. Zinc,
very important. Zinc is involving in 300 functions in our bodies. Selenium,
very important as well. And it’s not just any selenium. You want to make sure
that you use a methionine selenium, not a selenite salt or a sodium selenite,
but methionine selenium because that helps with the methylation. And it’s
better absorbed in the body.

Ryan: So let me make sure we’re talking about the same thing here or if there
is some clarification needed. Robert Scott Bell in his interview was talking
about selenium. And he just referred to whole food selenium as opposed to
sodium selenite or something that might have been manufactured. Is that
what we’re talking about when we talk about—I forget what you said—
methionine selenium? Or is that something different than if you were just to
go find a whole foods selenium supplement? Are we talking about two different
things here?

Dr. Desaulniers: No, it’s a supplement. So it’s a supplement. If you buy

selenium, you would look at the ingredient. And you want a methionine-based
selenium. And you want to take about 200 mcg a day. Zinc is around 30 to 50
recommended. Magnesium depends on your needs. You can do a blood test to
measure your red blood cell magnesium levels. And some people need as
much as 800 mg of magnesium every day.

And obviously, food is the best way to get it. But unfortunately, again, our
food is deficient. And our bodies are under a lot of chronic stress. So it’s my
belief that we really need to supplement a lot.

Ryan: Oh, yeah, yeah, no. And he was talking about a supplement. It was just
the supplement he was talking about he made note of saying it’s a whole-food
form supplement versus something else, yeah.

Good deal. Sorry to derail you there. Were there more plants we needed to get
to?

Dr. Desaulniers: Oh, yeah. Lots more. Lots more. So matcha tea. I love
matcha tea. If you’re going to drink green tea, I recommend that you drink
matcha. And 10 cups of green tea is equivalent to one cup of matcha. It’s very,
very powerful. It has 100 times more of the EGCG in it, which has so many
different positive effects—anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, kills breast cancer
stem cells. The list goes on and on.

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So make sure you get your matcha tea in every day. And you just don’t have
to drink it. You can sprinkle the powder on your food. You can put it in your
smoothie. There are all kinds of ways to enjoy it.

Spirulina is a plant. It’s an algae. But 5 teaspoons of spirulina is a therapeutic

dose for killing off cancer cells. That’s been proven in studies. So it’s very easy
to add that to your smoothies. Just throw in the spirulina. And you’re adding
some superfood that can really help you with the healing journey.

And of course, there are all kinds of medicinal mushrooms if you want to
boost your immune system. There’s agaricus, chaga. There’s turkey tail.
There’s shiitake. There are so many of them. And you can take them in
capsule. You can eat them. Chaga, you can drink the tea. There’s a great
company that I love. It’s called Four Sigmatic. I think they’re from Sweden.
But they have all kinds of mushroom powders that you can add to your teas
or to your coffee. And I use them every day.

Ryan: They make an exquisite hot chocolate that we were enjoying lately.

Dr. Desaulniers: Oh, I haven’t tried their hot chocolate.

Ryan: Yeah, yeah. It’s the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had. And it’s awesome.

Dr. Desaulniers: Okay, good.

Ryan: Mushroom chocolate. That’s crazy.

Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah, yeah. Cordyceps. They use a lot of cordyceps in their
teas and coffees.

Ryan: On the mushroom products, there are so many to choose from. And
within each manufacturer, what are your thoughts for someone going through
cancer, one of these products that has a blend of seven or 10 different
mushrooms in it versus just getting just a reishi mushroom supplement? Or
yeah, yeah, yeah, a lion’s mane or turkey tail mushroom supplement? Should
we be doing both? What are your thoughts there?

Dr. Desaulniers: How do you know which one to pick? Well, that’s a good
question. From my experience and one of the tools that we’ve used in the past
is something called the RGCC or the Greece test. And we look at different
products that they’ve tested against cancer cells to see which ones are most
effective. Agaricus and cordyceps come up very high all the time. But keep in
mind that we’re dealing with women who have had breast cancer. But the key
is to work with somebody and test to see what’s happening with your body

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and make sure that your numbers are getting better. But I don’t think you can
go wrong in picking two or three at a time and using those.

Ryan: Yeah, just for our general rotation’s sake, we’ll usually rotate through
one blend product, like I mentioned, and then rotate through one single,
higher dose product as well and rotate through the different strains that way. I
don’t know.

Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah. No, that’s good.

Ryan: —to cover our bases early.

Dr. Desaulniers: Oh, it’s good. It’s good to rotate. It’s good to rotate because
cancer cells will become resistant if you’re always staying on the same things
for months and months. So we recommend that you do a protocol for a month.
If you’re on a healing journey, do something for a month. And then switch it
up and switch it up. And then retest every quarter.

Ryan: Very good. Is there more?

Dr. Desaulniers: There’s more. Of course, there’s curcumin. It’s the most
highly studied food on the planet. There are hundreds and hundreds of
studies on curcumin, turmeric. Same thing—anti-cancer, anti-angiogenic,
kills the breast cancer stem cells. So again, depending on your type of cancer
and your age and all that, some people even do I.V. curcumin. That’s available
now. And that’s very, very potent. But yeah, high doses of curcumin have been
proven to be very beneficial.

Mistletoe. Mistletoe has been used in Europe for eons. And this is something
that you need a prescription for through a compounding pharmacist. You can
do self-injections with the tiny, little diabetic needle.

And then there are enzymes, proteolytic enzymes, high doses of enzymes. Now
enzymes go way back to the early 1900s. Dr. John Beard was an embryologist.
And he looked at the placenta and compared them to cancer cells. And he
said, “Wow! They’re very similar. They invade healthy tissue. They have a high
turnover. They’re undifferentiated. They create their own blood flow. But what
causes the placenta to stop growing at a certain time?”

And he recognized that it was when the fetus began to secrete pancreatic cells,
pancreatic enzymes. And he started doing some work. And then fast forward,
Dr. John Williams, Dr. Nick Gonzalez—they’ve kept up this work.

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And I personally used high doses of proteolytic enzymes for both journeys.
And I still take them. I keep some on my desk and throughout the day just
swallow four, five at a time because they’re very powerful. Think of them like
little Pac[men]. They weaken that cancer cell wall which is very fibrous and
very tough, boost the immune system. And there are a lot of good studies
showing the effectiveness of enzyme therapy and cancer.

Ryan: Do you have a particular brand of enzymes you like?

Dr. Desaulniers: Well, Dr. Nick Gonzalez worked with the Allergy Research
Company. And that’s the brand that I use. It comes in a big jar. And it’s pork
enzymes. Beef and lamb enzymes you can get. Plant enzymes you can get. But
they don’t work as effectively as the pancreatic pork enzymes. And now I
personally don’t eat pork. But you’re not eating the pork. You’re eating the
enzymes that are excreted from the pancreas of the pork. And these are New
Zealand, grass fed, very clean, no hormones/antibiotics ever. So that’s what
his research showed as the pancreatic enzymes that more efficiently worked.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, and he sure had a great track record.

Dr. Desaulniers: He did.

Ryan: So it’s definitely, definitely a good guy to follow his work. That’s for
sure.

Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah, yeah. There is something called LDN, low-dose

naltrexone. Now that’s not a natural supplement. It’s actually a prescribed
medication. It’s used for helping people come off addiction of drugs and
alcohol in high dose.

In low dose, 4 mcg, 4.5, it has been shown to really help to boost the immune
system and kill cancer cells. Look at the research. Go to the website LDN.org.
There’s all kinds of research that’s been done on various kinds of cancers and
diseases.

I think if you’re on a healing journey and you’re feeling stuck, LDN is

something to add to the mix. And it’s not forever. But it’s just something to
help boost. It’s like metformin. Metformin is an anti-diabetic drug. But it also
turns off specific pathways that cancer cells use to continue to grow. So again,
for a temporary fix to help keep your blood sugars really low for a while,
sometimes that has worked for people.

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Ryan: Yeah, a lot of off-label drug cases. There’s another speaker on the
summit Jamie McClellan who has mapped out off-label drugs to block every
metabolic pathway to cancer cells. It’s really—

Dr. Desaulniers: Wow! Wow. That’s awesome. Then if we keep going down the
list, there is apricot seeds and B17. We know that they have a glycol-cyanide.
It’s a cyanide molecule attached to a sugar molecule. Our healthy cells have
the ability to break down that cyanide so it doesn't affect us. But cancer cells
don’t have that enzyme. So it has been shown to kill cancer cells.

And like any of the things that we’re talking about, you have to proceed with
caution. Don’t take a handful at a time. Start with one and one per hour. And
it’s typically recommended as one per 10 pounds of body weight. So if you
weigh 150 pounds, your max dosage would be 15 a day, although I’ve know
people who’ve taken as many as 40 and 50. So if you’re getting a headache,
you feel nauseous, that’s a clue that you’re taking too much. Proceed with
caution. Very slowly is always the best way to start for sure.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, no. We enjoy our apricot seed snacks in the Sternagel
house. That’s for sure.

Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah, yeah. There’s wormwood, artemisinin, artemisan.

Again, kills off cancer cells. Helps with healing the gut as well, getting rid of
parasites.

Berberine, blood root. Blood root was something that I used internally and
externally in my first healing journey. But that’s one of those tricky ones
because blood root is an emetic. It’ll make you throw up if you take too much.
So again, you have to start with low dosage internally. It has a compound in it
called sanguinarine. And its main job is to kill cancer cells. It does not affect
healthy cells at all. And it boosts your immune system. So that’s another
possibility for you.

CBD. We could spend a whole hour on that, medical marijuana, CBD, THC.
Our bodies are designed for that. We have an endocannabinoid system which
was such an aha! moment for me. I had no idea. So our cells are just waiting
for the CBD, THC to hit those receptor sites to boost our bodies. So again,
work with somebody who is qualified to tell you about the dosage and how
much to take. And I’ve got some here, some CBD oil that I take every day. It’s
liposomal. I think it’s absorbed much better if it’s liposomal.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, I would direct folks to another speaker on the summit,
John Malanca and his United Patients Group.

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Dr. Desaulniers: Patients Group, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan: They do a great job of counseling people on how much to take that’s
best for their situation.

Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we refer to them all the time.
United Patients Group.

Modified citrus pectin. That’s a biggie. The pectin is that white stuff inside an
orange peel or a lime or lemon. And Dr. Isaacs—I think that’s his name.

Ryan: Isaac Eliaz.

Dr. Desaulniers: Yes, Eliaz. There you go. EcoNugenics. And so what he
found with his research—they modified the citrus pectin to make it a very,
very small molecule. And they found that not only does it help pull out heavy
metals. But it helps to lower an inflammatory marker called galectin-3.
Galectin-3 is associated with cancer. And so they also found that it helps to
decrease the risk for metastasis if you’re having a biopsy or surgery because
all those extra cancer cells are going to be floating around in the bloodstream.
And that MCP will help to prevent them from sticking as well. So MCP is a
must for sure.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, no. I had never heard about galectin until I heard him
speak at one point. And I think we’d already been on the supplement before
that. But just really diving into how much research there is on galectin and
just how tied it is to cancer is fascinating.

Dr. Desaulniers: Cancer, yeah. Yeah, and it tastes great. They have a lime
flavored that has no sugar or anything in it. And just mix it in your water. And
it’s a great-tasting supplement, just something to add. Don’t take it with a
handful of supplements, though, because it is sticky and may prevent
absorption. So take it on an empty stomach.

Poly-MVA. We know that alpha-lipoic acid is so important in keeping your

mitochondria healthy and keeping your blood sugar levels low. And poly-MVA
is a combination of palladium which is a trace mineral and alpha-lipoic acid.
And it’s better absorbed that way. It’s brought into the cell much more easily.
And it helps to keep those mitochondria nice and strong and healthy. So it
helps with liver detoxification. And they’ve got great testimonials on their
website as far as reversing cancer. It’s a very powerful product to have on
hand.

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Ryan: Yeah, that’s one been around for a long time. You can’t get people to
agree on much. But just about every naturopathic oncologist and their brother
I’ve ever met all agree.

Dr. Desaulniers: Poly-MVA, that’s right. Yeah, it’s been around for a while.

And then there are different nutrients like quercetin, resveratrol. Resveratrol
is very important for breast cancer. There are a lot of studies showing how
beneficial it is to help reduce the risk and to help reverse it.

And then the big one of them all is vitamin C, whether you do it liposomally.
But if you’re getting it I.V., it’s going to act in two different ways. The I.V. is
more of a pro-oxidant. The oral is more of an anti-oxidant. So if you’re on a
healing journey, you really need both.

Ryan: Very good. Well, I know we’re running just about out of time here. But I
did want to find out. You sent me a message about My Breast Friend and early
detection. And I just think this is the neatest thing ever. And I wanted to be
sure to touch on that—

Dr. Desaulniers: Oh, thank you.

Ryan: –before we wrap up.

Dr. Desaulniers: So according to the American Cancer Society, the first

symptom of finding breast cancer is a lump. And most women will find a lump
before they actually find it on a mammogram or an ultrasound. And it’s just
by happenstance. And the average size lump that a woman finds when they’re
not trained in a proper breast self-exam is the size of a ping pong ball.

Women who are trained in this method called the MammaCare Method—this
is a silicone breast model. And it’s called My Breast Friend. It has various size
lumps and depths in the model. And it’s a whole training system. It comes
with a booklet. It comes with an online training video that teaches you what
normal tissue is and what abnormal tissue is and what to feel for.

Size matters. If you can find a lump the size of a small pea versus the size of a
ping pong ball, then your chances of survival are up to 88% after 15 years. So
I’m really excited about this because both times I found the lump, and I feel
that that really saved my life because I found it at an early stage. So I’m very
excited.

The MammaCare Method has asked me to take this training system out to the
general public. It used to be only available to doctors and nurses. And now
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every woman who has fingers and breasts is going to be able to learn how to
do a proper self-exam.

Ryan: That’s great. Yeah. Yeah, detection is everything, I would imagine

especially for gals that even have been through breast cancer. Making sure
you’re on your guard to find anything earlier hopefully the second time than
you did the first time would be just huge. It’s everything!

Dr. Desaulniers: Absolutely. And even if you’ve had a lumpectomy or

mastectomy, there is breast tissue all the way up to the collarbone, in your
armpit, all the way down the side, on the chest bone. So you have to learn
what to feel for. And you have to learn to go very deep, all the way down to the
rib cage to feel for unusual changes in your breast tissue.

Ryan: That’s really neat. And folks can probably just find that on your
website, I would imagine?

Dr. Desaulniers: Well, at MyBreastFriend.com is where you can get it.

Ryan: Oh, My Breast Friend.

Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah. MyBreastFriend.com, yeah.

Ryan: Say that five times fast. Very good. Dr. Veronique Desaulniers. Do you
want to let everyone know just one more time where to find all things Dr. V
and anything else you’re working on that you want to point folks’ attention to
before we’re done here?

Dr. Desaulniers: Sure. You can find the information on

BreastCancerConqueror.com. We’re on all social media. MyBreastFriend.com.
You can find my book Heal Breast Cancer Naturally on Amazon. We do offer
one-on-one coaching with people. We’ve coached women in 42 countries
around the world. And we also offer yearly retreats called the Healing Diva
Retreats where you can get together with like-minded women and share your
heart, share your journey. And you’re in a safe place. We have lots of fun and
lots of tears and lots of laughter and lots of dancing.

Ryan: That’s neat! Yeah, the more in-person stuff that people can make it to
on a healing journey like this, the better for sure.

Dr. Desaulniers: Well, thank you so much.

Ryan: Dr. Veronique Desaulniers.

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Dr. Desaulniers: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing my message of hope
with your audience, Ryan. You’re doing some amazing work. And I know this
summit is going to be awesome for a lot of people.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, we’re pretty excited about how everything is shaping up.
Thanks so much. And thanks’ everyone. I’m your host, again, Ryan Sternagel
of TheSternMethod.com and Integrative Answers to Cancer podcast. And we’ll
see you on the next one.

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