Dr. Jacqueline Chan, Women’s Health Specialist, Tells Us Why We Need To Take Alternative Medicine Seriously
Just For Women
Alissa Kriteman
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Episode 55 - Dr. Jacqueline Chan, Women’s Health Specialist, Tells Us Why We Need To Take Alternative Medicine Seriously

Wow, if there is one interview that has opened my eyes and mind, it is this one! Dr. Jacqueline Chan shares with us what Integrative Medicine is (it includes body, mind and spirit) and why we should pay attention – especially as women!  Listen in as she offers great insight into the causes, as well as alternative approaches to prevalent women’s issues such as hormone imbalances, food allergies, breast cancer and depression.  As we become more and more aware of the impact of chemicals and toxins in food, products, and the environment, we will also need to know how to counter balance the damaging effects of being alive today, tune in and hear what this Women’s Health Specialist has to share!

Transcript

Transcript

Announcer: This program is brought to you by personallifemedia.com

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Alissa Kriteman: Welcome to “Just for Women: Dating, Relationships and Sex”. I’m you’re host Alissa Kriteman. This show is dedicated to empowering today’s women with the most useful information available in the areas of dating, sex, relationships, finance and health so we can live the lives we’re meant to live.

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Jacqueline Chan: Here at Clear Center House we have a reputation for treating per menopausal and menopausal women. Perimenopause is that ten year period around the time that somebody is about to go into their 40’s and 50’s and stop their menstruation.

Getting to your question of depression what are some other ways to approach it. St. John’s Wart for example is fantastic. They’ve done studies on it and the Lancet Journal from England and it helps with mild to moderate depression. It does not have the side effects that anti depressants do with the loss of libido and weight issues. St. John’s Wart will end up resulting in a person having higher serotonin levels, a better ability to focus, sleep, feel good and in addition St. John’s Wart also helps kill viruses.

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Alissa Kriteman: Today in the show I’m very ahppy to welcome Jacqueline Chan, Osteopathic Doctor and women’s health specialist. Not Kung Fu master as you soon see. She’s going to talk to us about what we need to know about alternative health, the kind of health issues that are facing women today and what we can do to heal ourselves. On the show today we will discuss integrated medicine. What it is and why should we pay attention to this alternative approach in health care. We’re going to discuss Osteopathic medicine versus regular medicine and health issues facing women today specifically related to hormonal imbalances and depression and what we can do about them.

Jacqueline Chan, thank you so much for being on Just for Women today.

Jacqueline Chan: Thank you so much. It’s a great pleasure.

Alissa Kriteman: I think it’s really funny, I love your name and I’m sure you’ve been through a lot in your life having a name like Jacqueline Chan and I’m sure a nickname Jackie Chan.

Jacqueline Chan: Yes, [laughs] high kicks are one of my specialties. [laughs]

Alissa Kriteman: [laughs] Oh, I’m glad you have a good time with it.

For those of you who don’t yet know Dr. Chan, she has ten years experience as an integrative medical Doctor. She’s a member of the prestigious integrative medical group, Clear Center of Health in Marin County California. She’s a board certified family practice holistic medicine and neuromuscular and skeletal medicine. She’s a member of the American College for the Advancement of Medicine and a whole lot more that I’m not going to get into.

Jacqueline Chan you are very much a women’s source for what is going on in health care today and I’m very excited to talk to you about that. Let’s just jump right in and talk about integrative medicine. It sounds like that’s very alternative, I’m very alternative. I like to do things that are off the beaten path and not very much into prescription medicines. So tell us a little bit about how integrative medicine is different from traditional medicine.

Jacqueline Chan: I’d love to. Integrative medicine is different from traditional medicine in that we really view the patient as a body, mind, spirit continuum. We have our fingertips ways to treat people that are above and beyond surgery or pharmaceuticals. Which is what most standard medicine physicians have available to them and have been trained and educated in.

For example if somebody were to come to me for let’s say a sinus infection, which is a very simple primary care type issue. The standard physician would probably just go ahead and prescribe them an antibiotic that they’d have to take for three weeks. That antibiotic could imbalance their gut. Also there have been studies showing the more antibiotics women have taken through their lifetime increases risk of breast cancer. An antibiotic has to be broken down by the liver and therefore burdens the liver in its ability to detoxify from other regular toxins that it surrounds.

If I had a patient come in with a sinus infection, I would treat them with an herb. If they had an, as an osteopathic physician there are certain areas in the head itself, like the base of the skull and the forehead where I can put my fingers on those areas and relieve the pressure and actually help the drainage of the mucus from the sinus cavities. Which are these holes within the skull bones and so it can actually help physiologically the drainage of that through shifting the tension and the placement of the boney structure.

There’s an emotional component to sinus infection which is often related to suppressed anger or rage which is something that Dr. Rob Ivecur talks about and so that’s another thing that we could address. Is there an emotional component to that?

Then there can be sometimes sinus infections are triggered by allergies, environmental allergies, there’s some simple dietary things that we could shift. Cutting them off of diary, because dairy, milk and cheese causes more mucus production. Sugar tends to make the white blood cells very sluggish so they can’t kill bacteria easily.

These are all things that an integrated physician would address that a standard physician in general probably wouldn’t address and certainly wouldn’t have the time for it.

Alissa Kriteman: Wow so it sounds like you’re treating the core of what could be going on with this person. In five different ways, you mentioned, versus the one antibiotic that’s really going to tax the liver.

Jacqueline Chan: That’s correct. My question is always whoever walks into the room; my question that I’m holding in the back of my mind is what’s really going on. That’s always the question that I’m really asking. What’s really going on? Another aspect is that integrated physicians tend to do a lot of lab testing that is different from what standard physicians are trained in or have available to them.

We use a lot of labs that a standard physician wouldn’t really know of or do. Such as checking for leaky gut syndrome which often can cause food allergies, which then can cause mucus buildup and congestion. That’s a urine test that we check. We can check for heavy metals, we can check for parasites, fungus. We can check for the liver’s ability to detoxify.

We have a whole slurry of different testing. Then what’s really wonderful about an integrated physician is that they still are a physician. They still have the background training of regular physician. They still, physician has their responsibility of being able to detect and catch the worst case scenario. Let’s make sure this sinus infection isn’t a tumor growing.

Alissa Kriteman: Right.

Jacqueline Chan: I mean that’s always one of the responsibilities of the physician is to be able to detect, make sure it’s not the worst case scenario and then what it is most probable. Yes every integrated has that background training so their capable of doing that as well.

Alissa Kriteman: How popular would you say are integrated Doctors today? Are people waking up and coming more to you than to traditional medical Doctors?

Jacqueline Chan: Well integrated medicine or holistic medicine, alternative medicine they all mean the same thing. It’s very popular. There was a study; I think it was in the New York Times that said that 1/3 of Americans are using alternative medicine. It’s very popular.

What I tend to find is the people who come through my door are very responsible people. They’re educated and they are proactive.

Alissa Kriteman: Indeed.

Jacqueline Chan: There is also a financial component to it, in that because of the limitations that insurance companies put on physicians in terms of the amount of time that they can spend with patients. I just don’t feel that you can really do a good job with a ten minute visit.

Our visits are all ½ hour or longer and so because of that we tend to have the patient bill the insurance. They pay upfront and they bill the insurance, which means they can’t just walk in and pay their $20.00 copay. There is a financial issue too. For example the patient that’s on Medicare or medical would not usually be the type of person that I would see here. Although I’m always open to making adjustments as needed because it’s more important to me that the patient get the care that they need.

In general people come here very well educated and very proactive. They really are ready and willing to make lifestyle changes as needed. They’re very grateful for the care they get.

The other person is the person who’s very ill and very frustrated with the standard medical and have not gotten many, hasn’t gotten much help with standard medicine.

Alissa Kriteman: Yes, let’s talk about that for a second. What… one thing I’m always curious about as I read my conscious little magazines and things like that, the amazing impact that prescription medicine has on our bodies. You mention that with an antibiotic it burdens the liver.

I want people to know and I want to understand what is going on with prescription medicine because from the little that I know, it sounds as though there’s one active ingredient in it. It goes in and it’ll directly affect one piece of what’s going on but it doesn’t like you said, it doesn’t solve the whole thing. The emotional issues that might going on, that if they were solved they would go away. What are some of the negatives effects of prescription drugs on our physical bodies?

Jacqueline Chan: What’s really happened with the art of medicine; is that we’ve come from a place where in the days of, in the Greek days you’d go on a long journey if you had a disease. Part of your journey would be part of your treatment and then you’d arrive and there would be plays that they would show every evening to highlight the psychological component. There would be jokesters in the hallway and someone would come in and look at your body in terms of qualities of air and dampness. So that was kind of the history.

Then we went through the Cartesian era of I think, therefore I am, objectivity and we had Louis Pasteur who isolated bacteria and was able to show that bacteria were the cause of certain illnesses. Then we had Koch who was able to come up with Koch’s postulates which is if you isolate an organism that is the cause of the disease and then you give it to the animal and it creates a disease and then you re isolate it. Do that twice and you’ve proven that that organism causes a disease such as Smallpox and the Influenza virus and etc.

Medicine got completely away from the emotional component and really started focusing on wow this is great, we have an organism that is the cause of disease. We kind of forgot about the other parts.

Then there was the whole pharmaceutical industry that come in and with that there became standardization for the masses. Now we’re living in an era with health care reform and health insurance companies where the buzz word is really standardized care and double blind placebo control trials. Unfortunately the companies that can afford the double blind placebo control trials, which really costs millions of dollars to conduct and do when you’re talking about a number of 10 to 15,000 people and a study that lasts five or ten years long, the only people who can afford that are pharmaceutical companies. The little herbal shop down the road can’t afford that on their herbs or vitamins and things of that nature.

The argument against natural things has been well there’s no controlled studies on it. There are to speak in defense of medicines, there are some incredible medicines that we’ve come up with which are very specific but every medicine is foreign to the body. It has to be in order to be patented. Every medicine is going to be in some way actually a toxin and a poison. Even though there are some very specific ones that do some wonderful things, it still is something foreign to the body and that has to be broken down by the liver. There are many things that our liver has to completely break down on a continual basis. Even the chemicals that are in French fries and the chemicals that are in foods and the air that we’re breathing and the water that we’re drinking. A medicine is going to add to that.

To me the more dangerous medicines are the ones that people are taking on a daily basis for years. Some women are on medicines for acne and they are taking a daily antibiotic for acne. Some of them are on, for example the birth control pill or there’s a lot of people on antidepressants or anti anxiety medications for years and years.

Alissa Kriteman: So you’re saying that to counteract some of the things that going on with women like acne, not wanting to get pregnant, antidepression we’re actually filling our body with large amounts of toxin and chemicals over time everyday. How do we not do that? What are some alternative approaches to; let’s just take depression because that’s like one of the number one afflictions that women deal with.

Jacqueline Chan: OK, I want to preface this as well with, sometimes I do feel that medication is the best approach, so I’m not completely against medication. I would prefer to do s something as natural as possible.

Getting to your question of depression, what are some other ways to approach it? St. John’s Wart for example is fantastic. They’ve done studies on it and the Lancet Journal from England and it helps with mild to moderate depression. It does not have the side effects that anti depressants do with the loss of libido and weight issues. St. John’s Wart will end up resulting in a person having higher serotonin levels and better ability to focus, sleep, feel good and in addition St. John’s Wart also helps kill viruses. It also helps with peripheral neuropathy. It’s not a burdensome to the liver.

The problem with herbs is the quality of herbs varies and there’s actually been studies where they’ve taken 22 brands of herbs off the shelf and found that only five of them had the active ingredients.

Alissa Kriteman: Really?

Jacqueline Chan: Yes, yes.

Alissa Kriteman: Man it seems to so difficult to heal ourselves. [laughs]

Jacqueline Chan: I know in fact it actually started with 60 Minutes interviewed Andrew Weil and he recommended a certain brand of Ginseng and they pulled it off the shelf and it didn’t even have the active ingredients. Andrew Weil if people aren’t aware, he’s from Harvard Medical School and he was really one of the forerunners in getting natural medicine popular. He’s extremely famous in the world of natural medicine. Even the one he recommended was not a good quality.

The herbs that we use at Clear Centers Health here in Mill Valley are from Australia from a company called Medic Herb and only physicians, chiropractors or naturopaths can actually stock these herbs. They are pharmaceutical grade and have been to their quality lab in Queensland, Australia. They do a fingerprint, molecular fingerprint of every herb that comes through the door. They check and make sure it goes through the intestinal lining that it goes unchanged with the bile and the liver enzymes and they’re fantastic.

You want to make sure that the quality of your herbs. That’s what’s nice about going to an integrated physician is that you can actually get the herbs from them from a reputable source rather than over the counter. Of the ones that are over the counter, Nature’s Sunshine is most reliable I would say.

Alissa Kriteman: OK, so Nature’s Sunshine if we go to Whole Foods and we want to start taking herbs, maybe we read an article or something, it’s not a total loss we actually could start.

See that’s the thing and why I wanted to talk to you today because I think there is so much confusion about how to know how to take care of ourselves. Especially the people who want to be proactive like myself, I was thinking of going to a Doctor where I’m going to get tested for all these food allergies. You mentioned something early on about leaky gut syndrome and food allergies.

Let’s talk about that for a second because I’m sure there’s lots of people who are like, “Oh, I’m lactose intolerant” or they have nasal congestion and they don’t really know why. They get pains after they eat something and they can’t really figure it out. What do you suggest for people who think they have food allergies?

Jacqueline Chan: The actual best test for food allergies is a test that you do on yourself. It’s the most accurate and that’s the Allergy Elimination Diet and that’s where for two weeks you would eliminate all foods that you usually eat on a daily basis and all foods that would possibly cause allergies. The three least allergenic foods are rice, lamb and pears. So you could start with, this is pretty drastic, but you could start with eating…

Alissa Kriteman: [interrupts] Especially if you don’t eat meat. [laughs]

Jacqueline Chan: Yes, it’s really, yes it’s very drastic so you could start with eating those foods for several days. I’d say at least three days and then one day at a time you start re-adding the foods that you normally eat and you look for a reaction such as joint pain, brain fog, fatigue. That is actually the Allergy Elimination Diet is the best test all together.

Food allergies in general are a symptom of something else going on. Usually that something else can be a leaky gut. We have a test here for leaky gut, it’s a simple $70.00 urine test where you drink a concoction of lactose and Mannitol and it’s measured as to how it comes out in your urine. Then you really have to treat the leaky gut.

What leaky gut is is that the spaces in between the cells have enlarged and the little blood vessels are larger. You’re absorbing foods, protein molecules from foods that normally would not be absorbed and then your body has a reaction to that. You produce a chemical called Histamine and you produce more mucus and symptoms of allergies.

Then there’s a simpler version of the Allergy Elimination Diet which is just to eliminate the top most common allergy causing foods. Those are milk and cheese.

Alissa Kriteman: Wheat.

Jacqueline Chan: Wheat exactly, actually corn, citrus so oranges, lemons, shellfish, peanuts, onion. Those are the most common and then reinstitute those one at a time. There is also a blood test for food allergies. Unfortunately it’s not just wheat and nowadays has about 80% more Gluten than wheat used to so it’s not even that the wheat itself is that bad it’s just that our wheat products now have been tainted and changed. So they may cause allergies now whereas if they were stone ground natural wheat that had not been manipulated by the agriculture department [laughs] you wouldn’t have a reaction to it.

I know many people who say they have allergies to dairy here and they go to Europe and they eat French cheeses and they drink the milk there and they don’t have the same reaction. Some of it is that yes, we have growth hormone and we have antibiotics in our dairy here in the United States.

Alissa Kriteman: And we’re having reactions to the additives that are being added to what is so called food. Jacqueline Chan, you are good.

Jacqueline Chan: [laughs]

Alissa Kriteman: We’re going to take a break. I could talk to you for three days, oh my God.

Jacqueline Chan: OK.

Alissa Kriteman: Let us take a break we’ll come back I want to talk to you a little bit more about women’s health issues in particular.

Jacqueline Chan: OK, great.

Alissa Kriteman: This is Alissa Kriteman your host of “Just for Women: Dating, Relationships and Sex”. I’m speaking with Dr. Jacqueline Chan, Osteopath, women’s health specialist and we’ll be right back.

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Alissa Kriteman: Welcome back, I’m Alissa Kriteman your host of “Just for Women: Dating, Relationships and Sex”. We’re speaking today with Dr. Jacqueline Chan about how integrated medicine is very different from traditional medicine and how it can support us in having a supremely healthy life.

Dr. Chan, let’s see, it’s so funny calling you Dr. Chan because I know you and you’re blonde and blue eyed and you’re beautiful and it’s really funny. [laughs]

Jacqueline Chan: [laughs]

Alissa Kriteman: It’s really funny to say Dr. Chan. Are you married to an Asian person?

Jacqueline Chan: No, I’m not this is my maiden name. My Grandfather was from Hong Kong and I’m ¼ Chinese. I went to Singapore about four or five years ago to meet my Grandfather’s brother who was, I thought the last surviving person in that side of my family and I walked in the room, the hotel room where we were staying and there was this pile of gifts. I found out I have 22 relatives over there. [laughs]

Alissa Kriteman: Amazing.

Jacqueline Chan: A room full of Asian people and myself. Yes, it’s one of those tricks of genetics.

Alissa Kriteman: [laughs] Yes, really wild. OK so let’s talk a little bit more about women’s health issues in particular. We talked about depression a little bit, St. John’s Wart, things that we could do alternatively then take very destructive prescription medications. As you said, sometimes that is the way to go but really you’re here to support us and help us in looking at a holistic approach, which is what integrated medicine is. Mind, body, spirit and really look at the deep core of what might be going on with our being and treat that. Treat all of the symptoms.

Again, let’s talk about what women come to you specifically for and how you treat those in an alternative way.

Jacqueline Chan: Here at Clear Center House we have a reputation for treating per menopausal and menopausal women. Perimenopause is that ten year period around the time that somebody is about to go into their 40’s and 50’s and stop their menstruation.

Alissa Kriteman: So which is as early as what? 38?

Jacqueline Chan: Actually as early as 35.

Alissa Kriteman: 35 wow.

Jacqueline Chan: Yes, at the age of 35 to 40 in the modern, just in the past 20 years the age of menopause has dropped.

Alissa Kriteman: Why?

Jacqueline Chan: It’s gone down and gone down and gone down and I’ll explain why that is. By that age the hormones, Estrogen, Progestin, Testosterone, DHA can start declining. They start declining and then in women they decline very rapidly which is why women can have mood swings and hot flashes and inability to focus and anxiety and feel like their losing their mind, loss of memory. That’s the ovaries no longer producing as much hormone.

Normally and naturally the adrenal glands, which are these small triangular shaped glands that sit on top of our kidneys in your back, normally those glands start producing 80% of the Estrogen and Progestin and Testosterone in a woman’s body. The woman doesn’t have really bad symptoms. She just kind of sails through the 40’s and 50’s with no problems. In fact in Japan they don’t even have a word for hot flashes. They don’t have a word for menopause because women there don’t tend to suffer the way women do here.

Alissa Kriteman: Alright we really need to know why? [laughs]

 

Jacqueline Chan: yes so what’s happening in our society is that the adrenal glands also have to make something called Cortisol. Cortisol is what gets you up and gets you going and keeps you alive. Cortisol is what you need to get up in the morning. It’s what you need to basically function.

If there’s certain things that cause you to produce, to demand more Cortisol being produced and that’s basically stress. If people are having a stressful lifestyle, working full time, coming home taking care of the kids, taking care of the husband, running around, maybe working more than full time, not getting enough sleep, not getting the nutrition they need, only having one or two weeks of vacation a year. All those things that especially in America we tend to have, then they just don’t have the reserves to make Estrogen, Progestin and Testosterone anymore.

A lot of it is actually lifestyle. Things that are good for your adrenal glands are eight hours of sleep a night. Vacation, real vacation I don’t mean Walt Disney World where you’re running all over the place. I mean like real vacation, your feet are up; you’re resting about two to three weeks a year. Eating protein. Actually protein which does not necessarily mean meat, if you’re a vegetarian there are ways of getting protein in but 20 grams of protein three times a day. Eating breakfast, lunch, dinner. Exercise. Healthy happy joyous relationships, work that’s fulfilling, all those things. Having a balanced lifestyle all those things are good for the adrenal glands.

Part of it is lifestyle and another part of it is that we have a lot of chemicals in our environment now that block our hormone functioning so there are for example heavy metals. There’s Cadmium in exhaust fumes. There is Mercury in our fish; in fact if you’re pregnant you’re not supposed to have more than one serving of tuna a month because of the amount of Mercury in that could affect the fetus.

Alissa Kriteman: Wow.

Jacqueline Chan: And heavy metals will interfere with the communication of hormones to their receptor sites of hormones. It could be that you have a pretty relaxed lifestyle, you have a balanced life but you’re still having hormonal issues and some of that is because of the chemicals in the environment.

We also have Estrogen and, we have hormone mimickers such as plastics. You know everybody walks around drinking plastic out of a, I mean water out of a plastic bottle now. You know that actually, the plastic that comes off of the plastic bottle into the water can effect how our hormones are functioning.

Alissa Kriteman: This is unbelievable. I mean, I’ve heard here and there things of this nature and now you know Sigg water bottles have their metal, there’s metal water bottles everywhere because everyone’s saying, “Oh there’s chemicals in the plastic”. I never understood why so what you’re saying is the chemicals that come off the plastic into the water and then into our body interfere with our hormones functioning properly.

Jacqueline Chan: Correct. I mean there are for example, 150 common household chemicals that have been linked physiological abnormalities. Like your household cleaning Ajax, Comet cleaner, Ivory dishwashing soap, Dove soap has Mercury in it. I mean it goes on it’s really about trying to think you know back to the days where we didn’t have those chemicals around and trying to be as natural as possible.

Trying to choose whole foods when you go grocery shopping. Not foods that have a shelf life of two years or things that, flavor enhancers like Hamburger Helper and things that are boxed and canned. Trying to choose whole vegetables or frozen vegetables that don’t have any sauces or chemicals in them. Trying to use cleaners that are as natural as possible. Now you can go into a grocery store and get Seven Generation, you can get Echo I mean there are defiantly like holistic cleaners on the market now.

Watching, getting a stainless steel bottle, the type of plastic that you can’t squeeze or mold, that’s much safer.

Alissa Kriteman: Wow, [laughs] it just goes on and on doesn’t it? It’s funny because you said think back to the day when people did things more naturally. I have no idea when that was you know? Way beyond my lifetime and generation because I grew up with all the sugar, wheat, chemical it’s amazing that a lot of us are even here.

Jacqueline Chan: Yes and actually I’m not surprised at all that we’re not winning the war on Cancer. I just heard a shocking statistic yesterday that they used to say that one in every ten Americans would get Cancer. Now they’re saying one in every two will get Cancer of some kind.

Alissa Kriteman: Oh my goodness.

Jacqueline Chan: And I that is very shocking. I’d really have to look into the validity of that quote but I do know that Cancer rates have not been going down. Brain Cancer rates in children have gone up 290% since 1970 and when you’re looking at brain Cancer in children, that’s not due to smoking or alcohol. You know we used to have this thing, stop smoking and you won’t get Cancer. Now we have, we’ve really beat the war against smoking. You know tobacco smoking has gone way down but Cancer rates haven’t.

Alissa Kriteman: What is that point to brain Cancer in children, is that chemical thing? Is that because women are not aware of what they’re eating or ingesting or have around them as the fetus developing?

Jacqueline Chan: This is simply conjecture because I haven’t actually looked into the causes of brain Cancer as I’m not a pediatrician but as holistic physician I can say there are much lower rates of Omega 3 fatty acids which are very important for a fetus when it’s developing in the first trimester in a woman. Omega 3 fatty acids are essential meaning we don’t make them in our body; we have to get them from our diet. When our beasts used to eat grass, now we have what’s called grain fed beef and 80% of the cows that are dairy cows never even see pasture in their lives. They’re kept in barns and stalls with lights that go on and off and their kept in cages and they’re fed grain.

What happens is the Omega 3 fatty acids that are normally in grass and nature that our animals are not being fed and are not eating that means that the meat and the cheese and the dairy, and this has been proven scientifically, are much lower in those fatty acids. If you have a woman who’s surviving on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and brownies and cakes and whatnot when she’s pregnant, her fetus doesn’t have the Omega 3 fatty acids to really help the brain and the nervous system develop and be protected. That’s one thing that may be partially the cause of increase brain Cancer rates. That is somewhat conjecture.

Another thing that we do here that I did want to mention when you initially asked what kind of patients walk in the door and I talked about peri menopause and I talked about looking at the toxic exposure of a person being able to measure that. Being able to help them with detoxifying and educating them on things in which they could have a cleaner lifestyle but also we use what are called bio-identical hormones. Which are hormones that are identical to the hormones in your body versus synthetic hormones which are not identical. We use those in a ratio that’s similar to what is in a woman’s body naturally. We use very, very small amounts of those physiological doses to help a woman with some of the symptoms she may be going through.

We also use other things like herbs such as Black Cohosh which is fantastic for hot flashes and things of that nature. To offer because one of the big scandals against hormone replacement therapy was the Women’s Health Initiative which was published in 2002 on 16,000 women where they showed an increase risk of Breast Cancer for women who are on hormone replacement therapy. Increased by about 30% and they stopped the trial and said that women were told that we can’t give you hormone replacement therapy anymore. They were having hot flashes and they were worried about Osteoporosis. When you actually look at the literature it was the Progesterone component of the hormones that they were taking that really increase the risk of Breast Cancer.

Alissa Kriteman: Say that again.

Jacqueline Chan: It was the Progesterone component of the hormones that really increase the risk of Breast Cancer.

Alissa Kriteman: So they kind of isolated what the problem was and it was the Progesterone was too high.

Jacqueline Chan: It was the wrong type. It was they synthetic type of Progesterone and it was increasing the risk of Cancer. It was off setting the benefits that a woman could get from Estrogen.

Alissa Kriteman: Unbelievable. See isn’t this unbelievable and you know what I really understand, starting to really see about this is we don’t really know. I mean it is a constant evolution of what really works and what I’m getting from what you’re bringing to us today is that the safest thing to do is to really look at alternative, healthy approaches because it sounds like these, the chemicals that we’re getting, they’re not going to help us. They are only going to tax us. It’s really time to wake up and start looking at what are some other ways I can really look at what’s going on in my life. How to get the nutrients I need. How to get the hormones in balance in a way that’s not going to whack out some other part of my body you know?

Jacqueline Chan: I completely yes, I agree and I know that earlier you had asked how do we educate ourselves. My recommendation, I mean realize that you’re only going to get the amount of help from the physician you go to based on how much that physician knows and what their scope of knowing includes. Physician is going to give you the best information that they have based on who they’ve been learning from.

Some people put all the power in what the physician says and they think the physician is God and the physician knows best but there’s this whole other piece of the pie that a lot of physicians are not learning and not becoming educated on. That’s what an integrated physician is going to know more about and also naturopaths are trained in this area as well. Some Chiropractors even know a lot about nutrition and toxins in the environment.

 I would get you could think of it as your holistic health consultant. I would get somebody on your side to guide you because there are things that you have to be careful about. Like if you’re on a medication and if that interacts with a certain herb and like I said before the quality of the herbs or vitamins that you’re getting such that you could be a little dangerous if you tried to just do it all on your own.

Alissa Kriteman: Yes.

Jacqueline Chan: Certainly there’s a lot of products on the Internet that are not of good quality that they have these incredible claims about and say it’s a cure all and you have to be careful about what’s on the Internet.

My first recommendation would be to find somebody in your area that you can work with. The second would be to get onto a newsletter. There’s some great newsletters out there. Life Extension has a wonderful magazine and I think they have very good products and they sell their products through their magazine as well. They have lots of research that they review.

The Green Guide which is only $15.00 for a year subscription. You can either get this in email or you can get it as a letter, you know paper letter. It’s the greenguide.com fantastic resource on what are, for example school notebooks that you can get for your children that don’t outgas PVC plastic. It’s got all kinds of links and not a lot of commercial information but just a lot of really good nuts and bolts and meat into it.

Dr. Susan Lark, L_A_R_K she’s a fantastic physician from Stanford medical school, Bay area and she’s got a wonderful newsletter as well. Dr. Julian Whittaker, he also has a wonderful newsletter. Those are some things that I recommend people.

Alissa Kriteman: Check out, wow. We have to wrap up but I almost feel a little stunned talking with you today about all of the things that go on in our bodies and in our society today. I’m so excited, it’s actually inspiring to talk to you today and know that Doctors like you exist that there is deep knowledge and wisdom in taking a more holistic approach to life because that’s kind of the in thing to do right now. Everybody’s going green but I like talking to people about why. Why that’s important and why it’s not just a fad but it’s really an important critical piece in our education about who we are as people and how to be healthy.

Jacqueline Chan: It’s extremely important. This whole green thing is not a fad. Another little tidbit of information, compressed wood, which is what we make backyard decks out of and children’s swings and telephone poles, that’s laden with Arsenic. The Arsenic sits in the soil from compressed wood for up to 15 years and all it takes is the hand swipe of one five year old handprint on that wood and they’ve just absorbed way more Arsenic than they would if it was in the water, drinking water. Arsenic is a known carcinogen and that goes back to that whole you know brain Cancer rates in children going up and why’s that being caused?

How many do you know of friends that has a dog or cat who has Cancer? Animals never used to get Cancer. They’re getting Cancer now because these small beings, our cats, our dogs, the little children we magnify it. A small amount of toxin to them is 10x more, a 100x more because they have smaller bodies.

Alissa Kriteman: So you’re saying they’re getting it in the food, they’re getting it in the soil.

Jacqueline Chan: Building materials, yes.

Alissa Kriteman: Yes, OK, thank you so much for giving us the greenguide.com and Dr. Susan Lark definitely ladies, gentleman check these resources out. Dr. Chan how can find you?

Jacqueline Chan: You can find us on the Internet at our website is www.clearcenterofhealth.com. Our phone number is 415-388-5520. I will do telephone consultations. We’re located in Mill Valley right across from the Throckmorton Theater which is where Robin Williams was discovered, it’s a wonderful, wonderful little place. We even have a beautiful little inn down the street if people want to make a vacation out of it. That’s how you reach me and it’s been a great pleasure for me to be able to speak on your show.

Alissa Kriteman: Yes, thank you so much. Women of the world everywhere, it’s time for us to wake up. I’m so glad that theirs alternative doctors such as yourself so willing to share this information with the world. It’s so, so important. It feels like this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Jacqueline Chan: I completely agree, I could talk about, there’s so much I haven’t even said. Yes, I agree it is the tip of the iceberg and I do, we also do give free lectures here as well. We’ve got one October 22 is the next one on Breast Cancer prevention and detoxification.

Alissa Kriteman: Awesome well maybe we’ll just have you back. We’ll pick a couple of topics that we want to delve deeper into and we’ll definitely have you back. Listeners if you do want that send me an email at [email protected] and again give me your comments, your questions, let me know what you want to hear and we’ll get that on the show. Also for text and transcripts and other shows from the Personal Life Media network just visit us at personallifemedia.com and don’t forget you can get a copy of my book, “Alissa’s Four Cornerstones to Living Your Dreams” on my website here at Just for Women as well as sacredspot.org. Just click on the book icon.

So Jacqueline Chan, Jackie Chan…

Jacqueline Chan: [laughs]

Alissa Kriteman: [laughs] Thank you so, so much for all your wisdom today and really help us understand and wake up how we can deal with perimenopause, menopause, leaky gut, food allergies all of these thing that are going on in our lives and in our environment today.

Jacqueline Chan: Thank you so much.

Alissa Kriteman: I’m your host Alissa Kriteman always expanding your choices here on Just for Women: Dating, Relationships and Sex. Tune in next week for more juicy news you can use.

Announcer: Find more great shows like this on personallifemedia.com

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