Dr. Christine Horner's Fight for Breast Reconstruction Rights
Dr. Christine Horner's relentless advocacy for women's rights in healthcare has fundamentally transformed the landscape of breast reconstruction following mastectomy in the United States. Until the late 1990s, many insurance companies denied coverage for such essential procedures, leaving countless women to bear the financial burden or suffer the psychological scars of radical surgery. Dr. Horner's pivotal role in championing legislation culminated in the passage of the Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act of 1998, a landmark federal law mandating insurance coverage for breast reconstruction across all states. Her five-year crusade not only resulted in laws enacted in thirty-five states but also underscored the critical need for equitable healthcare for women battling breast cancer. In this episode, Shelley Johnson and Kathy Tuccaro delve into Dr. Horner's extraordinary journey, her insights into breast cancer prevention through natural medicine and thermography, and her commitment to empowering women through education and advocacy.
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women empowerment, breast cancer awareness, breast reconstruction, women's health advocacy, Dr. Christine Horner, Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act, thermal imaging technology, holistic health approaches, Ayurvedic medicine, prevention of breast cancer, nutrition and breast health, stress reduction techniques, women's health education, alternative medicine, health and wellness podcasts, women's support systems, empowering women in healthcare, chronic disease prevention, natural health solutions, Women Road Warriors, Shelley M. Johnson, Shelley Johnson, Kathy Tuccaro
Transcript
This is Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.
Speaker A:From the corporate office to the cab of a truck, they're here to inspire and empower women in all professions.
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Speaker A:I'm Shelly and this is Kathy.
Speaker A: United States until the late: Speaker A:Not everyone knows that, but they should.
Speaker A:Not all states required insurance companies to do this.
Speaker A:Women who had to undergo radical surgery to win their fight against breast cancer were often permanently scarred unless they paid out of their own pocket.
Speaker A:That changed after legislation was passed that was spearheaded by Dr.
Speaker A:Christine Horner.
Speaker A: alth and Cancer Rights act of: Speaker A:That was the first law Congress ever passed that required insurance companies to pay for a specific surgical procedure.
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Horner even took her campaign to the White House where she met with President Clinton and Hillary Clinton.
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Horner mounted this charge for women and won after an insurance company refused to pay for one of her patients breast reconstructions.
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Horner is one of our modern day heroes.
Speaker A:She's a board certified and nationally recognized surgeon, author, expert in natural medicine, and relentless champion for women's health.
Speaker A:She wrote the book Waking the warrior goddess.
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Christine Horner's program to protect against and fight breast cancer.
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Horner is a popular radio and TV program guest.
Speaker A:She's appeared on numerous national shows including the Oprah Winfrey Show, NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Fox and Friends, and CNN.
Speaker A:She was also interviewed by Dr.
Speaker A:Oz and Dr.
Speaker A:Mercola.
Speaker A:We have the honor of featuring Dr.
Speaker A:Horner on the show with us today.
Speaker A:Welcome, Dr.
Speaker A:Horner.
Speaker A:Thank you for being with us.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Oh my goodness.
Speaker A:First of all, Dr.
Speaker A:Horner, I want to thank you for being such a powerful advocate and champion for women.
Speaker A:You've improved the lives for so many.
Speaker A:It's just wonderful.
Speaker B:Well, it was an atrocity, I have to say.
Speaker B:You know, I was a plastic surgeon and you know, and the insurance companies suddenly stopped paying for breast reconstruction.
Speaker B: I think that was like: Speaker B:And then just to, you know, experience the horrors that these women had, you know, with their insurance Companies where they, the insurance companies just pulled all sorts of things, you know, where they got them scheduled and then they, the day or two before surgery, they'd say, oh, sorry, we changed our minds.
Speaker B:And you know, it was, yeah, it was just terrible.
Speaker B:Um, so I just thought, you know, when I got a letter from an insurance company that said that they weren't going to pay for breast Reconstruction on my 32 year old patient because it was on an organ with no function, I was just like, that's what they said.
Speaker B:We're not going to pay for it because it's on an organ with no function.
Speaker A:I thought, well, they didn't know their biology, did they?
Speaker A:Or anything about their anatomy.
Speaker A:Oh, my Lord.
Speaker B:And I just thought, hey, I'm sure your wife is really happy about.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:But anyway, yeah, so I just got so mad.
Speaker B:I was just like, you know, you're going to pay and everybody's going to pay.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I, I ended up organizing, you know, the national campaign to pass legislation to make it mandatory that insurance companies pay for breast reconstruction after mastectomy.
Speaker B:And it was right after the Clinton health care, you know, kind of effort they did failed.
Speaker B:And so they said, oh, Washington's not going to hear anything.
Speaker B:You're going to have to do it in the states.
Speaker B:And I was like, oh, my go, it's not going to do it 50 times.
Speaker B:You know, the worst case scenario.
Speaker B:But, you know, we ended up getting 35 state laws passed.
Speaker B:And then I found a loophole law where it's called the Employees Retirement Income securities Act.
Speaker B:And so basically within that, it exempts, you know, virtually everyone from state laws.
Speaker B:So, like, even though you pass state laws, you're really not covering anybody.
Speaker B:So then I was just like, all right, that's it, you know, like, I'm to meet President Clinton.
Speaker B:And so, you know, I wanted to go straight to the top instead of working from the bottom up.
Speaker B:So I did this thing where every person I met for two, only two weeks, every person I met, I was like, do you know how I can meet President Clinton?
Speaker B:Do you know how I can meet President Clinton?
Speaker B:And so within two weeks, I met someone who knew someone on the Federal Trade Commission and had lunch with them.
Speaker B:And like five days later, I was in Washington, D.C.
Speaker B:talking to President Clinton.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:Bravo.
Speaker B:That's spectacular.
Speaker B:And I got to pay $10,000 for the opportunity.
Speaker B:Yeah, because, you know, our government's all bought and paid for, so it was, it was really an education.
Speaker B:But anyway, yeah, I talked with him and it ended up, it was like A five year campaign and, and just doing tons and tons and tons of kind of grassroots efforts and, and lobbying.
Speaker B:And so, you know, sadly, this is another thing with our government.
Speaker B:The bill was never heard in committee and it's all about who owes who a favor.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And so I had, works with Senator Ted Kennedy, you know, sponsored the bill and then I had Anna Eshu from California as a representative sponsoring the bill.
Speaker B:And then so that was the Democratic side.
Speaker B:So I said that that was the left breast.
Speaker B:And then the Republicans had their own bill.
Speaker B:So it's the right breast.
Speaker B:And so anyway, one of the sponsors of the Republican bill was running for reelection and he had this very complex bill that had lots of different things in it.
Speaker B:And he said, I need something to run on.
Speaker B:And they were like, well, you can't have everything.
Speaker B:Pick one thing.
Speaker B:And he said, all right, I pick breast reconstruction.
Speaker B:And so it was tacked onto the budget bill and the last day of Congress.
Speaker B:I mean, it kind of reads like a novel.
Speaker B:But I got passed.
Speaker B:I say there was divine intervention.
Speaker B:Now it is a federal law that all women have breast reconstruction available to them.
Speaker B:Every insurance company has to cover it.
Speaker B:And we included all sorts of things in it, such as doing cemetery operations.
Speaker B:So the two sides match with a concept.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:Yeah, so now that's a.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So insurance companies wouldn't pay for those operations.
Speaker A:They wanted somebody to have lopsided breasts.
Speaker B:You don't want to pay for anything.
Speaker A:Oh my goodness.
Speaker A:You know, Dr.
Speaker A:Horner, you and I were talking before the show.
Speaker A:You had said that even though insurance companies didn't want to pay for breast reconstruction, they would pay for penile implants.
Speaker A:Am I correct?
Speaker B:Yeah, you are correct.
Speaker B:So when I this the, I mean, the very first case that I had was medic, a Medicaid, you know, patient.
Speaker B:So that's like, you know, basically a physician who's a particularly a surgeon.
Speaker B:When you have a Medicaid patient, your overhead expenses for that person exceeds what you're paid.
Speaker B:You know, so it's kind of like you're, you know, you're doing a good deed, contributing.
Speaker B:But anyway, you know, my first patient that got denied was in Indiana.
Speaker B:I was, you know, working in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Speaker B:So I had offices in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana because they all kind of come together in a little corner by the Ohio River.
Speaker B:But anyway, it was an Indiana Medicaid patient.
Speaker B:And so, you know, I kept reading this letter I got and I thought, you know what, like they said I wasn't medically indicated or something.
Speaker B:And so, you know, I wrote him back and I said, hey, you know, like, if you pay for, you know, like, penile reconstruction, but you won't pay for breast reconstruction, that's a very sexist policy.
Speaker B:So he writes me back and he, you know, young lady, you're completely out of line.
Speaker B:You know, the lady.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker B:Yeah, of course, of course.
Speaker B:So I ended up, you know, with.
Speaker B:With the Medicaid government system.
Speaker B:There was a.
Speaker B:A state kind of like health care.
Speaker B:Like, it was like, you know, getting lawyers involved in everything where I had to present, you know, to them.
Speaker B:And so I just.
Speaker B:I came with, you know, tons and tons of studies that showed that women who, you know, had some form of reconstruction actually did a whole lot better, you know, psychologically, emotionally, and even physically.
Speaker B:And the woman who was the judge, that was like a state court hearing.
Speaker B:So the judge was a woman.
Speaker B:So she ruled in my favor.
Speaker B: ore Viagra, back in the early: Speaker B:You know, those were.
Speaker B:That was the number one case they paid for.
Speaker A:You know, isn't this an example of patriarchy?
Speaker A:You know, that's just disgusting.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:And, you know, the average person doesn't know all of this.
Speaker A:People need to be educated.
Speaker A:Kathy, I had a quick question.
Speaker A:You're in Canada, and you're from Canada.
Speaker A:Do you know what the policy is on breast reconstruction and reimbursement there after a mastectomy?
Speaker B:I'm sorry, I don't.
Speaker B:Okay, well, it's allowed.
Speaker B:I had, you know, some friends when I was working as a plastic surgeon.
Speaker B:At least it was, you know, that.
Speaker B:That worked in Canada, so it was allowed.
Speaker B:But, you know, they did.
Speaker B:They did experimental things here in the United States to begin with because, you know, we were having, you know, terrible budget issues, you know, with.
Speaker B:With our health care.
Speaker B:And so, you know, because the Clinton health care, you know, stuff didn't go through, then they.
Speaker B:That they wanted to try things experimentally in the States.
Speaker B:And so Washington and Oregon kind of took the lead.
Speaker B:And so, you know, in.
Speaker B:I think it was in Washington, they came up with this idea that they would just list every kind of surgical procedure that a person can have, and then they just arbitrarily, like, drew this line, and everything above the line was paid for and everything below the line was not.
Speaker B:So reconstruction, obstruction of every single body part, including, you know, prosthetic ears that, you know, have no function or the prosthetic eye that can't see.
Speaker B:All of those were covered.
Speaker B:And the only body part for, you know, reconstruction that wasn't covered that was below that line was that of the female breast.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:No words.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Obviously there weren't any women that had any kind of input into this.
Speaker B:Well, you know, I guess not until I came along.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And bravo.
Speaker A:What you've done is tremendous, and you need to be honored for all of your hard work because you've made such a difference in women's lives.
Speaker A:It's just astounding.
Speaker A:Stay tuned for more of Women Road warriors coming up.
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Speaker A: It wasn't until: Speaker A:Many companies refused because they said the breasts after reconstruction lacked any function.
Speaker A:This was done at the same time that they covered penile reconstructions and penile implants.
Speaker A:This changed dramatically after Dr.
Speaker A:Christine Horner launched a massive campaign to change this patriarchal and discriminatory practice that hurt women.
Speaker A:She was instrumental in getting laws changed in 35 states.
Speaker A: alth and cancer Rights act of: Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Horner has been a fierce advocate and champion for women's health.
Speaker A:She's a board certified and nationally recognized surgeon, author and expert in natural medicine.
Speaker A:She wrote the book waking the warrior goddess.
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Christine Horner's program to protect against and fight breast Cancer.
Speaker A:She's a wealth of information and she's doing so many things.
Speaker A:And now you're working to educate women about breast cancer prevention.
Speaker A:You do so many things in that area.
Speaker A:Did you want to talk about some of that?
Speaker A:Because you have some major insight that I don't think a lot of women are told about by their conventional doctor.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Huh.
Speaker B:Well, you know, so right, right.
Speaker B:At the same time, when I was working on the breast reconstruction legislation, I started noticing that my patients were getting younger and younger and younger.
Speaker B:The ones that were, you know, coming in with breast cancer and requiring, you know, breast reconstruction.
Speaker B:And finally I had women coming in my door that were in their twenties.
Speaker B:And I mean that, I mean that just like, I was devastated, you know, when that started happening.
Speaker B:And I just thought, oh my God.
Speaker B:I mean, clearly something is seriously wrong.
Speaker B:And, and you know, we know from epidemiological studies, so these are like studies of, you know, groups of people that people who are born in, at least this used to be before our terrible western, you know, culture is like contaminated the rest of the world.
Speaker B:But at one time, you know, Asian populations had the lowest, you know, incidence of breast cancer.
Speaker B:And, and so they found that if an Asian woman moved to the United States and adopt our American diet and lifestyle within one generation, her risk would match that of an American woman.
Speaker B:So it's like, well, duh, you know, what are they doing or not doing that we're, we're doing or not doing this, Making such a big differ.
Speaker B:And so, you know, this again, I mean, it's time flies.
Speaker B:Boy, you know, it's been 30 years right.
Speaker B:But I, I decided to start researching and kind of going through the medical research to find, you know, what, if anything, women could do to help to lower the risk of breast cancer.
Speaker B:Because, you know, we were never taught anything.
Speaker B:They just said, oh, get ma grams, you know, the best thing a woman can do and try to catch it early.
Speaker B:And that's the way we're going to save lives.
Speaker B:Well, my mom actually.
Speaker B:Side story.
Speaker B:So my mom got breast cancer.
Speaker B:And so she did great from her first breast cancer.
Speaker B:Well, then she ended up getting another breast cancer on her opposite breast years later.
Speaker B:So, as you can imagine, they were following her very carefully.
Speaker B:She did everything Western medicine told her to do, had all her mammograms, everything.
Speaker B:They caught it early.
Speaker B:And then five years after that, she suddenly said, you know, I think something's wrong with my leg.
Speaker B:I think I pulled a muscle.
Speaker B:And I saw her and I thought, oh, my God, that's not what that is.
Speaker B:So it turned out that she had metastatic breast cancer from stage one disease.
Speaker B:The initial became metastatic breast cancer to her femur, leg bone.
Speaker B:And so she, she was 75 and she decided that she didn't want to go through any horrible treatment.
Speaker B:She said, I'm not going to have, you know, chemo, I'm not going to do radiation, I'm not going to do it.
Speaker B:So then she ended up nine months later.
Speaker B:So that was another thing that really rocked my world because this was all at the same time, this was happening where I was just like, you know, my mom did everything Western medicine told her to do and she's dead.
Speaker B:You know, like this desperate work.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And so it's just like, okay, what can women do?
Speaker B: nd this was back in the early: Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And it's all stems from our horrible American diet lifestyle.
Speaker B:I mean, duh.
Speaker B:I mean, the criminal thing is too.
Speaker B:It's like, so here I went through medical school and board certified in general surgery and plastic surgery.
Speaker B:So I had one of the longest medical trainings you could have.
Speaker B:I did not have a single course in nutrition ever.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:You know, it's interesting.
Speaker A:A lot of doctors don't.
Speaker B:Well, more do now, thank God, but it's not universal.
Speaker B:And, you know, actually when I met with President Clinton the first time, I, you know, flew back to Cincinnati.
Speaker B:And so the television station sent a reporter, television news anchor out to interview me about it.
Speaker B:And it turned out that he'd been a teacher of transcendental medicine meditation for about 30 years.
Speaker B:And so he's like, you really need to learn how to do transcendental meditation.
Speaker B:I'm like, great, fine.
Speaker B:So I, I did that.
Speaker B:And then he said, well, you know, if you want to know more, it's like, well, there.
Speaker B:It comes from this system of medicine called Ayurveda, which I'd never heard of, I'm embarrassed to say at the time.
Speaker B:And so he's, you know, he's, he sent me to this, you know, spa in Fairfield, Iowa to do a detoxification program with them called Panchakarma.
Speaker B:So it's actually a 5,000 year old, the kind of detoxification, you know, program.
Speaker B:And so I signed up for about three days and 48 hours into it, I looked in the mirror and I looked 10 years younger and never felt better in my life.
Speaker B:And I thought, oh my God, these people know something.
Speaker B:So I started studying Ayurveda like crazy.
Speaker B:So I'm certified in Ayurveda.
Speaker B:And that, that really led to me deciding to leave my surgical practice and really focus on teaching people how to become and stay healthy naturally and avoid the knife.
Speaker B:So, so I did, I left my, my practice.
Speaker B:I decided I actually started working in the television, local television newscast on ABC and NBC, doing a segment on complementary and alternative medicine.
Speaker B:And I just started really falling in love with doing that because I felt like, boy, you know, on television you're really reaching, you know, thousands of people, lots of them.
Speaker B:You'd never, you know, normally have, have those people coming into your office.
Speaker B:And so I felt like I was making a bigger impact for the world than just, you know, doing liposuctions and breast augmentations.
Speaker B:And yeah, so I left my practice.
Speaker B:And then for about 20 years I worked, you know, kind of as a media doctor.
Speaker B:I've, you know, written a couple award winning books.
Speaker B:You mentioned the, you know, the book I wrote for, you know, breast health.
Speaker B:But I also wrote a book called Radiant Health, Ageless Beauty.
Speaker B:And it's about how to create health, which I never learned in medical school, but you know, it's got a foundation in Ayurveda as well as, you know, modern research.
Speaker B:But it's kind of like all the different elements, you know, that are important to be able to experience extraordinary health and longevity.
Speaker B:So yeah, for 20 years I did flew all over the country doing, you know, television interviews and radio interviews.
Speaker B:And I Had my own, you know, radio show and wrote for, you know, articles in national magazines and everything.
Speaker B:And, and then Covid hit.
Speaker B:So, yeah, so that was, you know, television station shut down.
Speaker B:No, in studio interviews, all the speaking engages didn't happen.
Speaker B:So, so I had been introduced to this technology called thermal imaging.
Speaker B:And this, it uses an infrared camera to take a picture basically of the body.
Speaker B:So it's non, invasive, completely, you know, safe, it doesn't use radiation and it, you know, picking up kind of heat, you know, patterns.
Speaker B:And it's a physiological test.
Speaker B:So it tells us how things are functioning in the body, but basically it can be used as a preventative tool.
Speaker B:And it's the only, you know, kind of imaging preventative tool that we have where it can take images of the body and see imbalances before, you know, you develop something bad.
Speaker B:And then you can, you know, institute, you know, various different preventative measures to turn things around.
Speaker A:So it's actually more accurate at an earlier stage than mammographies.
Speaker B:Well, you know, mammograms, mammograms, ultrasounds, MRI scans, these are a category of anatomical tests.
Speaker B:So what they're doing is they're taking a cross section of the human body and they're looking at the underlying architecture.
Speaker B:The only thing that they're going to pick up is if you have had a structural change to your body.
Speaker B:So in other words, they're only going to tell you about something that you already have.
Speaker A:So it's half.
Speaker B:Yeah, so whereas thermal imaging, I mean, that's really fascinating because we start to see these temperature changes that happen in the body to indicate that there's something going on as far as an imbalance, you know, years before somebody, you know, develops a significant issue.
Speaker B:And so those are the things that we can kind of pick up.
Speaker B:So for instance, if we're specifically, specifically talking about the breasts before a woman develops breast cancer, we start to see these physiological changes, like I said, years before somebody develops a breast cancer.
Speaker B:And so they're going to look like some vascular patterns or heat patterns or the thing we always look for is does one side match the other?
Speaker B:Because it turns out that the human body is extremely symmetrical thermographically.
Speaker B:And so whenever we have any imbalances, and this is all kind of a phenomenon that happens with a part of our nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system.
Speaker B:And that's the one that's involved in the fight or flight kind of reactions.
Speaker B:But basically the nervous system innervates the skin and whenever there's any kind of Underlying imbalances, dysfunctions, injuries, infections, anything like that going on.
Speaker B:The sympathetic nervous system causes the overlying skin temperature to change.
Speaker B:And our software program actually assigns a different color to every temperature.
Speaker B:So even if we have teeny tiny differences, it changes the color with the software program and it just pops out there to let us know that something's going on.
Speaker B:So we can pick up these very early imbalances where they're easily reversible with simple dots.
Speaker B:Diet, lifestyle and nutritional supplements.
Speaker B:So when I identify women, for instance, that look like they're at an increased future risk for developing breast cancer, we can interrupt that whole process.
Speaker B:I definitely use my book, the, you know, Waking the Warrior Goddess to have women educate themselves about all the do's and don'ts, you know, for lowering their risk.
Speaker B:And, and then we add certain key nutritional supplements and we get this spectacular improvement that happens usually within three months.
Speaker B:And so, you know, see how somebody's breasts are restored to health.
Speaker B:And again, it's the only test that's going to show us that.
Speaker B:And so we have this ability to monitor, you know, the health of the breast as well as the rest of the body, pick up these very early imbalances when they're at reversible stages, and then interrupt that whole process of creating a disease.
Speaker A:This sounds like a much better way to help women versus a mammography or a mammogram.
Speaker B:You know, squishing the breasts using radiation that actually increases the risk of the disease is looking for.
Speaker B:I mean, to me, that's the definition of insanity.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, and I think whoever designed the mammogram really hated his mother because who wants to slam your breast into a vice and then crank it down?
Speaker A:I mean, really awful, you know, and the machine itself, or what, I don't know what the parts are, but it isn't shaped like a woman's rib cage.
Speaker A:I mean, you're basically pushing yourself up to a tabletop and slamming your breasts into a vice.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:It is horrible.
Speaker B:And it's unnecessary because you know, what the research shows us is that, well, there's like long term studies that have been done on mammography following women for 20 to 25 years.
Speaker B:And this came out maybe six, seven years ago.
Speaker B:And so, you know, we thought mammograms were the golden standard.
Speaker B:They were the be all, end all.
Speaker B:That's the only thing you needed to do.
Speaker B:And at the end of those studies, what they showed was that, you know, that mammograms were not even remotely as good as we thought that they were and that they had all sorts of problems, you know, that we really, you know, kind of poo pooed or underestimated that were, you know, really significant.
Speaker B:I mean, it's not appropriate for women under like 40 or 50 because the breast tissue when it's younger is dense and you can't see through it.
Speaker B:But it turns out that even like 40% of women have dense breasts even after menopause, you know, so there's huge populations of women where it doesn't work very well because of that.
Speaker B:Also, it doesn't work well when, when women have really small breasts or if they have very large breasts or if they have implants in.
Speaker B:And so, you know, there's just a lot of, you know, categories.
Speaker B:So with the research looking at combining thermal imaging, you know, a physiological test with an ultrasound, you know, which is a completely harmless anatomical test, we actually get a much better evaluation of the breast tissue than we do, you know, with some, with mammography.
Speaker B:And it can be used in everybody, no matter what age.
Speaker B:I mean, both of those are safe for babies.
Speaker A:Oh, that speaks volumes.
Speaker A:Stay tuned for more of women road warriors coming up.
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Speaker A:Learn more@truckingmovesamerica.com welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.
Speaker A:As a nationally recognized surgeon who performed breast reconstructions, Dr.
Speaker A:Christine Horner saw more and more women coming in for surgery following a mastectomy who were in their 20s.
Speaker A:That sounded an alarm for her and set her on the road.
Speaker A:In preventive and natural medicine, Dr.
Speaker A:Horner could see something was clearly wrong with this picture.
Speaker A:She decided to do research on how women could lower their risk for breast cancer.
Speaker A:That led her into Ayurvedic medicine and her enrolling in a detoxification program.
Speaker A:Her journey took off.
Speaker A:She became certified in Ayurveda and left her surgical practice to teach people how to become and stay healthy naturally and avoid the knife.
Speaker A:She began a new segment on her local TV station about complementary and alternative medicine.
Speaker A:She became a media doctor and authority, writing a number of award winning books.
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Horner was also introduced to the technology of thermal imaging, which she now promotes and offers.
Speaker A:It doesn't use radiation, but picks up heat with an infrared camera that can see imbalances before a person develops a problem, so people can enact preventive measures to turn things around.
Speaker A:It's better than a mammogram, according to Dr.
Speaker A:Horner, which detects a condition you already have.
Speaker A:Plus, mammograms subject a patient to radiation.
Speaker A:And recent studies show that those tests are not the be all to end all solution.
Speaker A:It's not appropriate for women with dense breast tissue or who are under 40 or 50.
Speaker A:It's also not effective with women with very small breasts, very large breasts, or who have implants.
Speaker A:Thermal imaging along with ultrasound is much better, according to Dr.
Speaker A:Horner.
Speaker A:It's safe and appropriate for patients of all ages.
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Horner's giving us all kinds of important information that women need to know, especially about thermal imaging.
Speaker A:So do insurance companies cover thermography or.
Speaker B:Mostly no, because it's preventative.
Speaker B:Yeah, so there are a few insurance companies that do cover it, like in Florida and Texas and Arizona, but for the most part, they don't.
Speaker B:When I do thermal imaging, I always give my clients the various codes, you know, that they can submit to their insurance company.
Speaker A:Diagnostic codes.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So there's an ICD9 diagnostic and then the procedural code, the CPT code.
Speaker B:So occasionally, you know, somebody can get a partial reimbursement for the most part.
Speaker B:I mean, in Southern California, I've never heard of it happening, but yeah, I.
Speaker A:Think that there needs to be a movement to get the insurance companies to cover this because it makes so much sense.
Speaker A:And, you know, they're always talking about prevention, prevention, but they aren't practicing what they're preaching.
Speaker B:Correct.
Speaker B:And then they'll say, get.
Speaker B:You know, we offer preventative, you know, like testing and stuff, including mammograms.
Speaker B:I'm like, well, they're not preventative.
Speaker B:I mean, they only tell you if you've got breast cancer.
Speaker A:You know, you're educating women because, yes, Women are being conditioned to say, okay, every year I've got to have a mammogram if I'm past a certain age, yada yada.
Speaker A:Oh, and if you have dense breast tissue, you're at a higher risk of breast cancer.
Speaker A:Is that true?
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker B:Yeah, there is a slight increased risk if you have, you know, denser breasts.
Speaker B:But mammograms, like I said, can't see through dense breasts at all.
Speaker B:So it's a worthless test, you know, for those women, which is actually a significant portion of the population.
Speaker B:So this is, I mean, to me, you know, combining thermal imaging with ultrasounds.
Speaker B:Like I said, the research shows that by doing that we get a better evaluation and then having it where it's painless, it doesn't use radiation, you can use it on 20 year olds, you know, because I think it's very important to start doing some kind of preventative, you know, imaging in women that are very young because I operated on women in their 20s or I.
Speaker B:And this is not a comment, you know, for women to get breast cancer in their 30s and all.
Speaker B:And those women can't get mammograms, mammograms can't see anything.
Speaker B:And so, you know, here we have this, you know, really, really wonderful tool, you know, to help us.
Speaker B:And, and so, you know, to me it like is, instead of waiting, having, having women kind of conditioned to be like, oh, I don't even have to think about breast cancer until I'm 50, it's like, well then, no, that's not true.
Speaker B:And actually, you know, instilling really good health habits when you're young obviously has huge benefits.
Speaker B:And so by using thermal imaging, we're doing this in college campuses.
Speaker B:We're kind of introducing young people to this tool that can really help them to see if they've got imbalances in their body and then having conversations about what you can do to lower your risk.
Speaker B:Of course, the thing that I found when I was writing my book on, on breast cancer prevention is that everything that lowers the risk of breast cancer are the same things that lower your risk of every single, you know, chronic disease and, and produce good health.
Speaker B: o bed, you know, at a, before: Speaker B:That's, that was some of the most interesting research I thought, where we looked at, okay, all the different factors that affect our health from, you know, genetics and diet, smoking, all those kinds of things.
Speaker B:The one thing that affects our health more than anything, more than diet, smoking and genetics is feeling loved and supported.
Speaker B:That's the number one thing that influences us.
Speaker B:So if you feel loved and supported, I always joke about this.
Speaker B:You know, you can drink, you can smoke, you're going to live to be 100, right?
Speaker B:But the opposite is true where if you are in toxic relationships, it's the most toxic thing to the human body.
Speaker B:It's way worse than smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey.
Speaker A:Well, when you think about it, infants that don't have love and nurture cannot survive.
Speaker A: discovered, what, back in the: Speaker A:They needed the love and nurturing.
Speaker A:It's not going to change as we grow.
Speaker A:It's an absolute innate need that humans have.
Speaker A:And toxic relationships, oh, my gosh.
Speaker A:I mean, what it does to the body.
Speaker A:You're always in fight flight, aren't you?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:But, you know, it's.
Speaker B:It's just an interesting kind of twist to it where it's like, okay, you can have a.
Speaker B:Let's just say that you have super stressful job, you know, where you have constant stress from that.
Speaker B:The amount of stress that you feel from that and the damage it does to the body is not even remotely in the category as if you had relationship stress.
Speaker B:That's like a, A.
Speaker B:It's a whole different thing.
Speaker B:So I always say, you know, we're wired as human beings to be in loving, supportive relationships.
Speaker B:And it's the most important thing.
Speaker B:The biggest, you know, influential factor is it's astounding.
Speaker B:So, you know, when I was a surgeon, of course I was working ungodly hours.
Speaker B:And, And I mean, I probably worked 14 hours a day.
Speaker B:You know, I.
Speaker B:And I had like one girlfriend because there was no time, right?
Speaker B:And I would see her like once every three months or something.
Speaker B:So when I decided to leave my practice and then I, you know, decided to leave Cincinnati and move to Taos, New Mexico at that point, too.
Speaker B:But from reading all that research, I thought, okay, well, I mean, I'm vegetarian since I was 14.
Speaker B:I meditate.
Speaker B:I do.
Speaker B:I mean, I did everything you could possibly think up for health.
Speaker B:But the most important influence is having loving, supportive relationships.
Speaker B:You know, So I test actually to be slightly introverted.
Speaker B:So it takes me something.
Speaker B:But when I moved to New Mexico, I just thought, okay, this is the most important thing for my health.
Speaker B:So, like, when I went to the gym and I was in the locker room, I made myself talk to every single woman in there so that I could, like, quickly kind of form a whole group of, you know, girlfriends.
Speaker B:And so then, you know, what I've done, you know, after that is, like, I identify, like, the women that, you know, they're like best, best friends, you know, kind of women that just every time you're with them, it's just like, you always feel better and everything.
Speaker B:And so what I've done is, like, because those are my most important relationships, I schedule those people in my life.
Speaker B:So, like, I see one girlfriend every Tuesday night.
Speaker B:I have another girlfriend I see every Wednesday, I have see another one on Friday, I have a couple, you know, So I schedule it like that because otherwise, you know, you can find these wonderful people that you love to be with, but life gets in the way, and you can end up going months without seeing them.
Speaker B:And so, you know, for me, it's just like, okay, I'm going to schedule that in my life.
Speaker B:And then, you know, I really have this intention about being the most supportive, loving friend that I can, you know, to those people, you know, too.
Speaker B:So it's intentional, intentional living that's so important.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:You cover everything, and it makes so much sense.
Speaker A:Now you're certified in Ayurvedic medicine for our listeners who don't understand that.
Speaker A:What is that exactly?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, and Ayurveda are actually the two kind of major holistic systems of medicine that are still being practiced today.
Speaker B:So Ayurveda, Ayur means life, and Veda means knowledge.
Speaker B:So it literally means the knowledge of life.
Speaker B:I was like, how different from Western medicine was that?
Speaker B:So, so traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, you know, a lot of areas where they overlap, But Ayurveda, of all, you know, of all the systems, has got this incredible understanding of what it is to be a human being and a human body.
Speaker B:And so it's.
Speaker B:It recognizes all these kind of fundamental laws of nature, which, if you follow them, your body's going to be in balance.
Speaker B:And it enhances your body's inner healing intelligence.
Speaker B:If you violate those laws, like drinking, smoking, staying up too late, lots of stress, it's going to cause imbalances in the body which will, you know, lead to disease.
Speaker B:So they have the most sophisticated level of understanding, I think, about, you know, how the human body functions, what we need to do to keep it into Balance and how we can get it there.
Speaker B:They, you know, understand various different body constitutions where we're not all the same.
Speaker B:And, and so it can't be cookbook.
Speaker B:And so that's an easy thing to see where you have those really annoying, teeny tiny skinny friends that can eat anything.
Speaker B:And then you have people that just, you know, like, you know, look at a piece of cake and they gain weight.
Speaker B:So, and then lots of people that react to hot spicy foods where for another person, that's fine.
Speaker B:So this is really understanding, you know, the body constitution and then doing a very specific program that matches, you know, what your body constitution is that helps to keep you in balance, which might throw somebody else balance, you know, depending on their, you know, constitution.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:And then there's all sorts of techniques that they have that we call effective stress reducing techniques because it was recognized by a thousand years ago that stress is a major contributor to all the different, different chronic diseases.
Speaker B:And so like Ayurveda is the originator of meditation, yoga.
Speaker B:Sorry, if people say, oh, I haven't heard of it.
Speaker B:It's like, oh, yes you have.
Speaker B:You know, they're using herbs.
Speaker B:They do the breathing, like pranayama breathing techniques that helps to kind of balance the, the autonomic nervous system, the parasympathetic and sympathetic, you know, nervous systems.
Speaker B:There is sound therapy, you know, in it because we found that that has this like, amazing effect on b.
Speaker B:Balancing the human body.
Speaker B:So many, many different techniques that, that are all designed to help to balance the body that then results in enhancing your body's inner healing intelligence.
Speaker B:So it becomes very smart and it can take really, really good care of you.
Speaker B:But if you violate those laws, then your inner healing intelligence becomes stupid.
Speaker B:It can't take care of you.
Speaker A:You're helping your patients with all of this.
Speaker A:You're incorporating all these techniques with complementary and alternative medicine and teaching women how to stay healthy, reduce their risk for breast cancer, I mean, and other chronic diseases.
Speaker A:I mean, I still don't get why this concept is so foreign in Western countries.
Speaker A:And with the Western medicine we treat you after the fact.
Speaker A:It just doesn't make sense.
Speaker B:Right, you're right, you're right.
Speaker B: k in the early mid, well, mid-: Speaker B:When I did speaking engagements.
Speaker B:How many people have heard of Ayurveda?
Speaker B:It's like no hands went up.
Speaker B:And now really the whole room goes up.
Speaker B:You know, the health food stores were just kind of these mom and pop things that were starting organic was, you know, not that accessible.
Speaker B:Ethopax then.
Speaker B:So the difference that I've seen, you know, and I've been doing this for 30 years now, you know, so there's been this huge difference as far as, you know, people's awareness of, you know, all these different kinds of healthy things that we could do that fall into the category of, you know, complementary and alternative medicine.
Speaker B:It's it the, it is drastically different now than it, than it used to be.
Speaker A:Now one of your educational techniques is to teach women to eat the right foods.
Speaker A:What are the right foods.
Speaker A:I know that there are probably a lot of different options there, but maybe some quick takeaways for our listeners.
Speaker B:Yeah, so always, you know, we try to go for some, something that's organically grown.
Speaker B:So fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and omega 3 fatty acids.
Speaker B:Acids.
Speaker B:That's kind of the, you know, secret to good health.
Speaker B:So you definitely want to favor doing a mostly plant based diet and again, you know, not processed and minimizing, you know, sugars and stuff like that, but just going for those whole, you know, organically grown fruits and vegetables.
Speaker B:And we found that, you know, every plant has its own pharmacy in it.
Speaker B:They, there's hundreds of different kind of plant chemicals in that, that, that all act like, you know, they have these specialized medicines in it.
Speaker B:So this is why it's recommended to do a really colorful and diverse, you know, diet because then we can, you know, take advantage of all these, you know, different kind of natural medicines, you know, in the plant.
Speaker A:Aren't those called flavonoids?
Speaker B:So they're, that's a category, you know, of it.
Speaker B:So, so there's different molecules, we call them phytochemicals or plant chemicals.
Speaker B:And so each of them, like I said, has their own kind of natural abilities.
Speaker B:They're considered active molecules that have good anti inflammatory properties and antioxidant properties to them kind of across the board.
Speaker B:But they're biologically active.
Speaker B:And the pharmaceutical, see pharma, pharmaceutical companies, you know, study plants, they figure out the mechanisms by which they work and then they tell us that the plants don't work.
Speaker B:So like you know, for instance, turmeric, you know, so turmeric is Indian spice.
Speaker B:And so, you know, they've done just huge amounts of research on it.
Speaker B:It's the most researched plant that there is.
Speaker B:There's like, you know, like I don't know, 30,000 studies in the medical research or if not more, more and they're doing a lot of research in it and MD Anderson, you know, in Houston, the cancer hospital, but you know, they found that it has like 30 different anti cancer properties to it.
Speaker B:But there's like just millions of other things that it does too.
Speaker B:So it's almost like it's a too good to be true kind of a thing.
Speaker B:I take turmeric every single day, you know, supplement flaunt too, just because it's so, you know, incredibly healthy.
Speaker B:Last but you know, the, like I said, these things have all been researched like crazy.
Speaker B:So it's like when I first started, they say, oh, there's no research on it.
Speaker B:I was like, well, if you look it up, I mean, like I said, there's about 30,000 or more.
Speaker B:You know, every time I look it's, you know, 10,000 more published research studies on it.
Speaker B:So we've really, you know, studied the heck out of it.
Speaker B:And the other kind of area of interest in research that they're doing is that ever since we mapped out the human genome, it became this kind of favorite thing of researchers to look at everything, you know, from the exercise that we do to sleep to, you know, to all these different plants and look and see how are they affecting our genes, you know, so like what genes are being turned on and which genes are being turned off, you know, too.
Speaker B:So we really understand at a very sophisticated level about why, you know, these various different things like exercise.
Speaker B:Again, we used to think, oh, it's just good for your cardiovascular system.
Speaker B:But it turns out that when you're exercising, your body releases all these different kinds of chemicals and, and then it affects your genes and your DNA and stuff.
Speaker B:So that's where we get this huge kind of global effect, you know, positive health benefits, you know, from, from doing physical activity.
Speaker B:So yeah, so anyway, we did definitely, we've had, you know, this kind of explosion in research, you know, in the areas of looking at, you know, plants and, and more alternative medicine techniques too, and then having a really pretty sophisticated understanding of exactly why, you know, these things are beneficial for us.
Speaker A:This is so important what you're doing with women.
Speaker A:It's educating them on so many different things.
Speaker A:The outcomes that you're creating are tremendous.
Speaker A:Do you work with women virtually or do they need to come into your office in California or.
Speaker B:Yeah, so I, I work virtually.
Speaker B:I mean, I, I do have my own thermal imaging business where I go a variety of different places.
Speaker B:And besides San Diego, I go up to Palo Alto and do imaging there like four times a year.
Speaker B:I go to Cincinnati.
Speaker B:Greater Cincinnati area, because that's where my son and my grandsons are.
Speaker B:And so I do some imaging there, too.
Speaker B:But I work, you know, mostly, you know, online, and I do zoom consultations.
Speaker B:And so a lot of them really center around people who have had thermal imaging and they want to understand their results.
Speaker B:And then I do, you know, health coaching with them.
Speaker B:And then the other population of people that seeks me out really are.
Speaker B:Are women who are kind of newly diagnosed with breast cancer, and they want me to help them kind of navigate the system.
Speaker B:So there's all sorts of things that women can do from, you know, we'll say more natural, you know, kind of techniques that can, you know, unbelievably improve, you know, their outcomes.
Speaker B:And one of my areas of specialty also is helping women when they're going through chemotherapy because we found, you know, there's all these different kinds of, you know, herbs and supplements that are able to counteract the side effects of chemotherapy without interfering with it.
Speaker B:So we can create a situation where, you know, a woman most likely just kind of sails through chemo.
Speaker B:No nausea, no vomiting, no weight loss, their blood counts stay normal, and they just sail through.
Speaker B:Why isn't Western medicine doing this routinely?
Speaker B:We don't know.
Speaker A:Well, pharmaceutical companies.
Speaker A:Don't they pay for a lot of the med schools?
Speaker B:Well, they do, but there's no reason why you can't combine that, you know, with certain nutritional supplements and so forth that take away all the side effects.
Speaker B:And, you know, so those usually the side effects of chemo are the thing that kills the patient, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's terrible.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Horner, where do people find you?
Speaker A:What is your website?
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:My website is.
Speaker B:Is med thermsc.com so med m e d therm t h e R M and then S as in Sam C as in count stands for Southern California dot com.
Speaker B:So that's my website.
Speaker B:That's really the best place, you know, to.
Speaker B:To go because I have other contact, you know, if you can email me through my, you know, website or I have like a kind of a message line where you can leave a message.
Speaker B:Message if you want to do it that way.
Speaker B:And just lots and lots of really good information, you know, on my website.
Speaker B:And they have in.
Speaker B:In every form of learning.
Speaker B:So there's, you know, videos, there's articles, there's audio, there are radio interviews there posted.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So some of what we've covered.
Speaker A:People can delve in a little bit more by going to your website because.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:This is quite the education there's so many things to consider.
Speaker A:And I love the fact that you're working with people with a tailor made program versus conventional medicine, which is one size fits all in so many cases with baselines.
Speaker B:What you do is very impressive.
Speaker B:Just so you know.
Speaker B:Like, it's.
Speaker B:You make a big difference.
Speaker B:And this is phenomenal.
Speaker B:Thank you for everything that you've done.
Speaker A:Oh, you're welcome.
Speaker A:We need more people like you.
Speaker A:And I hope this has motivated some women to say, hey, we need some changes here.
Speaker A:Thermography.
Speaker A:Thermography.
Speaker A:Let's get this out there for diagnostic purposes, for prevention, and have the insurance companies cover it because it just makes sense to me.
Speaker A:If you can catch it before it happens, there's gonna be a lot of savings and a lot of grief that's saved for people, too.
Speaker A:People aren't gonna have to go through these surgeries and we're saving lives.
Speaker A:And that seems like what it should be.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Horner, you are a true champion.
Speaker A:And thank you.
Speaker B:Oh, you're welcome.
Speaker B:Thank you guys for what you do.
Speaker B:I mean, it's like you help to get this information out too.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:We're trying to empower as many women as possible in so many different ways.
Speaker A:It's so important.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, thank you, Dr.
Speaker A:Horner.
Speaker A:It's been an honor having you on the show.
Speaker A:We hope you've enjoyed this latest episode.
Speaker A:And if you want to hear more episodes of Women Road warriors or learn more about our show, be sure to check out womenroadwarriors.com and please follow us on social media.
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