Squeezing Wisdom from Lemons: Bring Your Genes and Join Our Movement for Breast Cancer Education

When life handed Dr. Corinne Ellsworth-Beaumont lemons, she crafted a global movement for breast health education. My guest, the visionary behind the Know Your Lemons Foundation, transforms the sour reality of breast cancer into actionable wisdom through the universal language of design. As your host, Dr. Tiffany Montgomery, I'm thrilled to bring you this inspiring dialogue that weaves personal narratives with the striking metaphor of lemons to peel back the layers of breast cancer awareness. We dive into Corinne's personal journey and her crusade to replace fear with knowledge, ensuring that every person has the resources to recognize the signs of breast cancer early.

This episode is graced with potent stories from survivors like Briani and Jessica, whose proactive responses to the symptoms depicted by 12 lemons in an egg carton were lifesaving. As we dissect these accounts, the importance of self-awareness and self-advocacy in health care becomes clear; it's a testament to the transformative power of early detection. We also turn the spotlight on the Know Your Lemons app, a digital ally in the mission to educate and empower individuals to monitor their breast health proactively, proving that an informed community is a formidable force against cancer.

You might think you know the truths about breast cancer, but this conversation is set to uproot myths and plant seeds of clarity. We unravel the tangled misconceptions—from the harmless underwire bra to the inclusive reality that breast cancer is not gender-discriminative. Moreover, we explore the critical role of genetic testing and why it's essential to not let fear overshadow the need for regular mammograms. Join us for an eye-opening episode that arms you with the courage and knowledge to stand up to breast cancer, ensuring you're squeezing every drop of prevention and preparedness out of life's lemons.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

P23 Knowledge, access, power. P23, wellness and Understanding at your fingertips P23. And that's no cap.

Speaker 2: 0:20

Welcome to a very special episode of Demystifying DNA. Today, we are inviting a very special guest, know your Limits. I'm your host, dr Tiffany Montgomery, and we are going to delve into the crucial intersection of genetics and breast cancer awareness with our special guest, dr Corinne Ellsworth-Bomont. Ceo of Know your Limits. Dr Corinne Ellsworth-Bomont, mfa, phd, is a visionary digital designer who leverages technology and design to revolutionize breast cancer detection through the work of her global charity, the Know your Limits Foundation. Since 2017, her impactful campaign app and global educator program has reached over 1.85 billion people in 34 languages. Her foundation supports the work of a robust global partnership network that delivers Know your Limits breast education on a grassroots level in over 60 countries, saving lives worldwide. Beyond her groundbreaking work, corinne serves on international panels, including the WHO Global Breast Cancer Initiative, and has spoken at prestigious events like the United Nations Conference. Her TEDx talk highlights her innovative approach, earning a standing ovation. Alongside her professional endeavors, corinne enjoys travel adventures with her daughter. Welcome, dr Boma, to my show Can.

Speaker 3: 2:20

I call you Corinne. Yes, you can Thank you, tiffany Dr T.

Speaker 2: 2:26

You're welcome, just call me Tiffany, just call me. I'm so happy to have you and thank you for joining us as we debunk myths and explore the vital role of genetics and understanding breast cancer risk and prevention. Together, we aim to empower you with essential knowledge to protect your health and well-being. Corinne, I have to ask you you know this is a phenomenal organization. You've touched so many lives what made you start this non-for-profit? Know your Limits.

Speaker 3: 2:59

So when I was starting my master's degree in graphic design, I lost my second grandmother to breast cancer. And at that point I realized I think this is in my family, I think this is a health issue I should know more about. And I realized I didn't know anything about breast health. So I went online, I looked up a lot of information and went to a cancer library in my area and said, hey, I'm in my early 20s, I have a family history of breast cancer, what should I be doing? And they said, well, we don't get people your age coming in here asking these questions. But here's a book, here's some leaflets, here are some websites. And I ended up leaving with more questions than I had going in. And I was also looking at this through the eyes of a designer and looking at the materials.

Speaker 3: 3:54

And I don't know about you, but whenever you're at the doctor's office and you see pamphlets or the five-year-old issue of People Magazine, most of us are picking up the People Magazine when we're finding out how Brad and Angelina are enjoying their lives in France. So we do not go to the medical information. We'd rather read old celebrity news than learn about the five facts concerning whatever body part. So I thought design can make a big difference. As a designer, I can make this information interesting. So does it require two family members dying before we start to seek this out? What if this information became appealing? What if it became engaging and interesting to look at?

Speaker 3: 4:42

So that's where I started out with the basic questions I had were do I have an increased risk for breast cancer? When should I start getting mammograms? People say, fill for a lump. But what does a lump feel like? Because there's lumps in our body everywhere, because our bodies aren't just things of goo right, we've got an ad for it, especially with breasts. Right, we've got milk ducks and lymph nodes and all kinds of things. So just being able to understand those questions is where I began.

Speaker 3: 5:12

So I started working on it as part of my three-year master's project. I worked alongside physicians, I talked to patients. I really did everything I could to be in someone's shoes, just to understand the diagnostic process how are the different kinds of symptoms? And through that research came up with a whole new way of being able to talk about breast by using lemons as a visual metaphor, visual substitute for that, so that you can get really specific information to show this is what this symptom looks like without ever having to show a breast. You can show it on a lemon instead, which is great, because lemons have nipples, lemons have skin pores and if you cut a lemon, navel to navel, it resembles breast and abby. So there's a lot of really interesting things you can do when you have a new way of looking at the breasts and you can show people actual symptoms in detail without ever having to be censored.

Speaker 2: 6:14

And we talk a lot about the education part. I think that that is phenomenal. When we're younger, we joke about breasts or, you know, we refer to them without saying the word breast. I've heard people call them melons, but your approach to call them lemons was very unique. It stood out to me and it caught my attention and it helped me see the similarities that you just don't see. I think because the lemon is smaller and most girls, especially when they're younger, they kind of want more than just the lemon amount. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3: 6:46

Yeah, I mean, that's a great thing. So when I started off looking for the metaphor, I photographed 42 different objects. I did melons and jugs, and cones and all kinds of things. And as I was doing this I was like, ok, melons are known for size, so if I use melons, this is sending the subliminal message of breast cancer for larger breasted women. So I'm like I have to take that out. I can't use melons For things like milk jugs. Milk jugs look different in different parts of the world, right? Not everyone has milk jugs. So I'm like, nope, that's not going to work because it's not going to be able to translate globally.

Speaker 3: 7:27

So I wanted to find an object that people work familiar with that hadn't already been used with breasts, so that way it could be a fresh metaphor that didn't have something else attached to it, but something else really interesting. That happened when I was shadowing at an imaging center and I was talking to the mammography technician and talking to the radiologist and asking questions about what does the cancerous lump feel like? Because a lot of the literature just said feel for something different, you'll know it when you see it, type of thing. And I'm like, well, that's not a lot of information. Just to say you'll know it when you see it. What information is that?

Speaker 3: 8:04

So when I was talking to the technician because she had felt many lumps and she was doing her work, and I said, is it squishy like a grape? And she says, well, it can be that size. And I'm like, no, how does it feel? And she says, well, it's often hard like a nut. And when she said that, I thought or a lemon seed.

Speaker 3: 8:24

And then that's when the metaphor became complete Is it? If you're feeling something? Anything that feels different to anything else in the breast needs to be investigated, right? Cancer doesn't just say I present in this one way for everyone, but as the general rule, cancer slumps are hard, and the longer it is there, the more immovable it becomes, and so if you find something that's hard and immovable, that's definitely something that needs to be referred to a doctor. Sometimes these things are cysts, which is a harmless thing that happens in the breast, but you only know these answers when you get it followed up through testing. So you know, having that metaphor of the lemon seed and a lemon looking like a lemon and the inside of a lemon looking like breast anatomy, you could use it to educate on lots of different aspects of breast health.

Speaker 2: 9:19

Which is amazing. And I'm just going to ask you can you elaborate on your organization's commitment to not just being informative but also emotionally supportive in its engagement with individuals and I want to just say individuals, because we know breast cancer can affect men and women, right? So we want to be inclusive. I just want to know how do you foster that collaboration and that sensitivity?

Speaker 3: 9:46

Yeah, so the because we use lemons and whenever we show the lemons, they're not attached to a body, they're just lemons on their own. So because of that, we can communicate with any gender, because we're focused on lemons and not a body. So that's really useful. Also, because we're focused on lemons, it works for any ethnicity Because, again, we're not calling out a specific ethnicity, so we're not calling out a specific gender. We're not calling out a specific ethnicity. We're not even calling out a specific age. We were doing this because we're using lemons as the vehicle and lemons are not associated with an age or ethnicity or gender, so that makes it a very neutral way of discussing it. So that's why our campaign is so universal and we're able to use it around the world.

Speaker 3: 10:33

In so many places In some parts of the world, lemons are green, so our Know your Lemons campaign has green lemons that feature in that. So that's one of the adjustments that we make. But we use a lot of really colorful graphics, which makes the information friendly. So a lot of cancer related publications are very clinical looking, they're very serious and anything important is written through text. So for people who don't have time to read a lot of things which was most of us. For people who aren't interested in reading a lot of text, which is most of us like, the message becomes inaccessible at that point and then for people who have lower literacy, then it really becomes inaccessible. So our goal is to make it more accessible. To make it more universal is how can, how can we leverage visuals to do most of the communication in a way that requires very little text, is colorful and friendly in the way that it looks, so it's more approachable, and then also is universal, so it can appeal to all these different age groups and ethnicities and genders.

Speaker 2: 11:52

So before I get to the fun stuff. I'm going to ask you, just as fellow female business owner with a vision to fellow business female owner with a vision I know I have and I have to assume you have to also her people say why would you do this, or how is it going to work, or this is silly, yeah, and for those people today, I like you to share some success stories where your organization's friendly, inclusive, dynamic marketing approach has made a significant impact on individuals lives, with making this information more acceptable and accessible.

Speaker 3: 12:37

Yeah, definitely. I'd love to tell you a story about a woman named Brian E in Australia. So she was at her doctor's office getting ready to check out at the counter when she noticed our 12 signs of breast cancer poster up there and I realized we're on a podcast. So I'll just pause for a minute to see if you haven't yet, Go to know your lemons dot org and see the image that I'm about to talk about. So this, this is the image that has saved a lot of lives around the world, and what it is is it's 12 lemons inside of an egg carton and each of those lemon shows a different symptom of breast cancer. So this poster was hung up at this doctor's office. As she's checking out, she looks at the poster and one of the lemons catches her eye, which is a dimple. So one of the symptoms of breast cancers is having an indentation in the breast. And she looks at that and says, well, hold on, I have that on my breast. Is that a symptom of breast cancer? And so immediately she brought it up with her doctor and 20 days later she started her first chemo treatment for stage two breast cancer. Now, if Briani had not have seen that poster, how bad would it have needed to be before she recognized this was a problem? It was painless, there were no lumps. It, you know, there's. As we get older, we have other dents and dimples in our body that show up right. And so she just thought oh, this is aging. And so that that's one story. And there are many stories like that of people saying because I saw this image, it gave me information and it gave me confidence because it was communicated so clearly that I knew I needed to do something about it. So there's also Jessica in France. She saw our image on social media and decided you know what I need to get better at myself exams. So she decided, after seeing that image, I'm going to be regular about doing myself exams.

Speaker 3: 14:44

Couple years later she notices alum. She goes to her doctor. She's in her early 30s and and he says you're statistically this is unlikely, You're too young for breast cancer, so I'm not going to refer you for testing. So she's sent away. She comes back again and says I really think that there's an issue here. And he's again tells her no, I don't think this needs investigated. The third time she goes back and they said OK, fine, we'll refer you for an ultrasound. So she gets an ultrasound, the technician looks at it and says we definitely see something there, but it looks harmless to us.

Speaker 3: 15:35

But what Jessica knew was that she was now showing three symptoms of breast cancer and she's like there's no way I'm showing three symptoms of breast cancer and this thing that's appearing is harmless. She says I just knew, combined with the information she had and her instincts, something was wrong. And so they said OK, do you want to buy Opsi? And basically the biopsy was offered as a way of just being like. And then you leave us alone and she's like yes, I want to buy Opsi. So they do the biopsy and it was stage one, triple negative breast cancer. Now, triple negative breast cancer is a very aggressive form of breast cancer. It can grow very quickly and catching it early is really difficult. So for her to have found triple negative breast cancer at stage one is pretty significant and that was because she knew the symptoms, she knew her body, she knew what was normal for her and that this was different and she knew how to advocate for herself. So you know, we hear that story time and time again.

Speaker 3: 16:39

People see our work, they recognize they have a problem, they go to the doctor. Sometimes they're dismissed but they persevere. They know that something's wrong and then they insist on getting the testing they need and that's how they're diagnosed early. And when people are diagnosed early, that makes all the difference in survival. So when someone's diagnosed at stage one, the survival rates like over 99%. When someone is diagnosed at the latest stage, stage four, it's more like in the 32% range. So there's a huge difference in saving a life If you can get people diagnosed early.

Speaker 3: 17:16

And the two things for that are knowing what's normal for you by, you know, practicing regular self-exams just to get to know your normal. And the second one is getting screened according to your risk. So if you're average risk, you should start getting a mammogram every year, age 40. And if you're at higher risk, then you might need a breast MRI with that or you start mammograms at an earlier age. So knowing that information is really important and our Know your Limits app will help people understand what those risk factors are, what screening plan you should discuss with your doctor and send you monthly reminders of how to self-exam what each part of the breast feels like. Details on each of them is really useful.

Speaker 2: 18:00

I don't want to stop you, Karim, but did I just hear you say you have an app that we can download to remind us of when to do our self-exams? It will have the images of the lemons and what we should look for. And it will be an interactive way for us to look at what's going on with our body, and you're designing this app. Yes, and it's free. How much does it? It's free, wow, wow. So it's free. It's on Apple, I'm assuming, on Android and maybe Google Play Store, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 18:37

Yeah, it's for any device. We have it, so it's free. We don't collect any health information. That's your business. It all stays on your phone and we've won several Webby Awards, which is like the Oscars of the Internet were nominated. Wow.

Speaker 3: 18:56

As a top five health and fitness. So get it. It's really like saving. Several people have said I didn't know how to do self-exam until the app and now I feel more confident in what I'm doing, whereas before I kind of was like there's lumps, I don't know what to do, and they kind of you know, decide I'm not engaging with this anymore. It's too confusing. We've even had someone that said I found my love because of the app teaching me how to do self-exam.

Speaker 2: 19:23

So I'll have to admit, kudo, see you when I had about this app. I've had my husband get it because I'm like you can help me look for stuff. Like we need to be looking at it. Yeah, we're not going to write it off as just getting older, like we're going to be on the lookout because I do agree, early detection is the key.

Speaker 3: 19:39

So, for all the work that you've done until we have a cure for all the different types of breast cancer. The best thing we can do right now to save lives Absolute best thing we can do is educate ourselves and take steps for early detection.

Speaker 2: 19:53

You are amazing, so let's get to some fun stuff. Okay, a lot of people here, a lot of myths about breast cancer. We know is so serious it can be difficult to talk about. So I'm going to get into a couple of myths, and the first one is breast cancer is caused by wearing underwire bras.

Speaker 3: 20:12

You know, wouldn't it be great if we could just get rid of underwires and it would solve so many problems, like wouldn't that just be, nice to be like you know what we're on a rare bra and now breast cancer is solved right. So yeah, we don't live in that world. That's not how it works right, like like under wire bra. This may be uncomfortable, but they're not cancer-causing.

Speaker 3: 20:34

So, that's a myth. That's a myth, and anyone who's trying to sell you a bra that's going to like prevent breast cancer, they're trying to make money off of you. Good to know.

Speaker 2: 20:46

Now, what about this one? I think we can have the talks about this one, but we're going to go myth or fat, okay. Breast cancer only affects women.

Speaker 3: 20:55

Ask fiancee's dad that question.

Speaker 2: 20:58

Definitely.

Speaker 3: 20:59

I'll tell you that that is not true. That is not true. This is because both men and women have breasts. Both men and women have breast tissue. It's women are able to have milk producing facilities with their breasts, but men do not. But both men and women can get breast cancer. So it's rare but it does happen. So 1% of people diagnosed with breast cancer are men.

Speaker 2: 21:28

Here's one that I get all the time Breast cancer is caused by deodorant. If we take the aluminum out of our deodorant or put on baking soda instead of deodorant, we'll be able to stop breast cancer Again.

Speaker 3: 21:43

What a wonderful world to live in that if we can just switch our deodorant, like breast cancer goes away. That's not how cancer works. There have been several studies that have looked at it that have said that there's not a correlation between antiperspirant and breast cancer.

Speaker 2: 22:02

One of my personal favorites and I believe me, I'm not making this up. These are things that we hear, that we get a lot, so I would like to hear from you on it. Breast cancer is contagious. It can be spread from person to person. So if I have breast cancer and my husband touches my breast or we're intimate, can he contract breast cancer?

Speaker 3: 22:25

No, so cancer is under the category of non-communicable diseases. So non-communicable means you're not transferring it from person to person. It's not airborne. You can't chance where it was flew. That's not how cancer works. So cancer is where a cell doesn't normally grow and divide and die as it should. It doesn't follow the normal pattern of how cells develop. So it's a very broad term. There's lots of ways cells can go awry. So cancer and different types of cancer are all labeling different ways cells go awry. So this is why with breast cancer there's not just one kind. There's several different kinds of breast cancer and they're all treated a little bit differently. So kind of knowing that is also useful, that's. Another myth is that there's just one kind of breast cancer but there's many kinds of breast cancer.

Speaker 2: 23:31

The last one, breast cancer is always hereditary, so I don't have a family history of it. It's not something that I need to be concerned about, because you can't get it if it's not hereditary.

Speaker 3: 23:43

You know, this is the most prolific myth, and I think the reason why this myth is so beloved is because it feels like protection. And so this is the statistic that's going to surprise people who are hearing this 85% of people diagnosed with breast cancer have no family history of it. 85% of people diagnosed with breast cancer have no, no family history of it. They're the very first person in their family to be diagnosed. So the number one thing we hear when we're going out, we're educating people and saying hey, are you getting your mammogram? They say, well, you know, I could you know, but it doesn't run in my family, so I don't really have to worry about it. If you're a woman and you are getting older, congratulations. You need to worry about it because one in eight women will get breast cancer in their lifetime. So that that means if you have a room of 75 year old women and there are eight of them, one of them will have had breast cancer at some point in their life.

Speaker 2: 24:50

Okay, corinne. So we talked about the myth that breast cancer is always hereditary. We debunk that. You blow my mind with this 85% statistic right Of new cases not having the history at all. Tell me what happens in that 15% instance where there is a family history, or women do have that family history, of breast cancer.

Speaker 3: 25:15

Yeah, exactly. So if you have a first degree relative so mother, child, sibling that doubles your risk for breast cancer. So, and if you have multiple family members with breast cancer, then that can increase your risk as well. But there are other cancers that are related to breast cancer. So, for example, ovarian cancer is related, prostate cancer is related, there are a couple others as well. So, knowing that if you have a family history of a couple cancers, they might actually be related to a genetic mutation and that genetic mutation can increase your risk for breast cancer.

Speaker 3: 25:59

Now, the other day I ran into an old friend that I hadn't seen for a while and she was telling me that her mother had just had her second case of breast cancer. And she says, yes, and my aunts had breast cancer as well, and another relative had another breast cancer. And she says I guess I just have to wait and see if it happens to me. And I said well, have you had genetic testing? And she says, well, I don't know if I wanna know the answer. And I said you do, you want to know the answer? And the reason for that is that if you know you have a genetic mutation, all of these tests and options open up to you to help you find it earlier. So if you have, for instance, the BRCA mutation for breast cancer, then they'll say, okay, great, we're gonna do a breast MRI and we're gonna add that to your screening plan because that's gonna help us be able to spot things as early as possible if it shows up. So having a genetic mutation doesn't mean you will get cancer. It means you've got more of a chance of getting it. There's also other options of things you can do to reduce your risk. But if you don't know if you have that genetic mutation, none of those options for early detection that would help you will be available to you. So it's really important to know that. If you're looking at life insurance, it's good to get that life insurance plan figured out before you do genetic testing. So that's something to keep in mind. If you're looking at doing genetic testing, get maybe your life insurance plan signed up for then do the genetic testing afterwards.

Speaker 3: 27:48

But so in my family breast cancer on both sides. You have a 50-50 chance of getting a gene from either parent. So there's no such thing as, like just the mother's side or just the father's side genes mix. So I don't have a genetic mutation that is known. We're learning more and more about genetics as time goes on, and so right now I have no known mutation, but the more we learn, it might be that I have this genetic mutation that just hasn't been discovered yet.

Speaker 3: 28:25

Some other flags for if something could potentially be genetic in your family is that someone is diagnosed before age 50, if the person diagnosed is a man, if breast cancer showed up in both breasts at the same time, or both ovaries for a very cancer. So there are a couple of things that might indicate this could be genetic, if it's happening earlier or more aggressively those sorts of things. So it's good to know that information and really know your health history. So start by figuring out your health history and then talk to your doctor. The Know your Lemons app will ask you these questions and it creates a little bullet point list of risk factors for you to talk to your doctor about and to see if genetic testing would be useful for you.

Speaker 3: 29:16

You know we live in a day and age where we're able to get access to a lot of information and we're having testing that's more precise and tailored to specific things that we may have. Knowing answers only gives us more power to do something about that. You know, rather than you know. The last thing we should be doing is sitting and waiting for something to happen. It's we can be more proactive and do things. So again, if you've got family history of breast cancer or related cancers, really look at genetic testing as something that can help save your life and help your family's lives. You know, maybe you'll never get breast cancer, but maybe that's gonna save your aunt because you were proactive about it to say, hey, family, let's be on top of this. Let's not sit and wait for something to happen. Let's be proactive and see what we can do to reduce our risk and really take care of ourselves as a family. That's really important.

Speaker 2: 30:16

So thank you for sharing that. It is very much in line with the National Breast Cancer Foundation, and the most common genes that are looked at for breast cancer as it stands now are BRCA1 and BRCA2,. But you illuminated to a very good point, or you eluded to a very good point, when you said those are the genes we know about now. Right, so there could be another gene indicator that we're unaware of and, as such, you haven't been tested for it because it hasn't been offered. You mentioned both of your grandmothers, that's maternal and paternal, lost their fight with breast cancer, and I would have to assume it was detected later, because the later it is, the worse your chances are for success. Is that true, or have you found?

Speaker 3: 31:09

So there's different kinds of breast cancer, right? So if you have triple negative it's really aggressive. It's hard to find that one as early. Sometimes it grows more quickly. So there's kind of that option.

Speaker 3: 31:25

With my father's mother, she was diagnosed in her mid-30s. That was many decades ago now, so we don't have a lot of information on what type of breast cancer she had. My other grandmother was diagnosed in her late 50s and so again, there wasn't a lot of information that was really gathered at the time. So I've had genetic testing because of the work I do. I think it's I call it one of the work hazards is I'm hearing stories every day of people getting diagnosed with breast cancer because of this or that, et cetera. So I'm hyper-vigilant on it because I hear I know all the ways that cancer presents itself and all the different things. So yeah, but there are many different genes. I don't know the total number right now, but there's at least 30 genetic mutations that are connected to breast cancer. All of them have different implications on risk. I know some companies just offer, like the BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing. It's much better if you get the full test. I'll explain why.

Speaker 3: 32:51

My friend Suzanne that I lost to breast cancer. She was diagnosed in her late 20s and so we were thinking this has to be genetic, like to be diagnosed that young. And they did the test and said, no, there's no genetics. And then her sister was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years later and then they said, well, let's look at this again. And they did the full panel and recognized that she had the PAL B2 gene, so that that information wasn't available five years earlier. So it's really interesting to see the the progress that's made in genetics and in learning how this works.

Speaker 3: 33:42

And then there's also two different kinds of genetic mutations there's somatic and germline, and those are fancy terms, for you're born with it versus it just develops on its own. So knowing that can be really useful too. So again, we live in such a remarkable time where we have all this access to information at our fingertips and you know you can spit into a tube and and it will tell you information that you that can help save your life or make improve your health. So this idea of like it doesn't run in my family and so I don't need to worry about it. Just isn't true, because most people don't, and this is why you hear so many people say I didn't think it could happen to me, it's not in my family and and it's. It's growing and it's happening at younger ages and so you know, being aware of that and recognizing, just for being a woman and just for getting older, those are your two biggest risk factors for breast cancer. You know, if you find a way to stop aging, then sure.

Speaker 2: 34:46

We want to, we don't want to. We want to be here, we don't stop.

Speaker 3: 34:50

Until we figure out this like not aging thing, like we need to be getting our mammograms, we need to be getting self exam.

Speaker 2: 34:58

I will say that it is difficult. It's challenging when I separate being a scientist and being, you know, the super smart lady and the curious lady. At the end of the day, when I'm just wife, mom and just Tiffany. It can be hard. You think it's going to hurt and then they have a lot of changes. Like you said, it keeps changing ages.

Speaker 2: 35:23

So, it used to be. The standard of care was star screen and then 45, then it went to 44. Now they're saying 40 and I'm like it keeps going. But we're having more precedence of it, and earlier detection is the key. There's no pattern to it as you stated. It's unpredictable. So what can we, as women, do to get over the fear of that first mammogram or the pain that we think might be associated with it? And now you're talking to me, so convince me to get that mammogram.

Speaker 3: 35:55

Well, I'm going to give you some secrets. I will give you some tips. Okay, If you are menstruating, the best time to go is a few days after your period ends, because this is when your breasts are less tender. So you probably noticed, the last half of a menstrual cycle your breasts get a little talkative. They're like, hey, I'm here, I'm uncomfortable, Right, and you have tenderness, you have some swelling, you have like some temporary lumpiness. That is normal. That is hormones in the body trying to prepare you for a potential pregnancy, Right. And then it's like, oh, we're not pregnant, and then hormones go down. So there's, there's, there's that, that breast cycle pattern to know about.

Speaker 3: 36:36

So the app has a period tracker in. It will send you reminders to do a self exam at the ideal time every month. If you don't menstruate, it will send you a reminder on the first of every month to do it, so that that's something to know when you're scheduling your mammogram. And usually when you call the schedule, the mammogram, they will ask you that question of when when was your last period? So that's tip number one. Tip number two is to maybe take some ibuprofen 30 minutes beforehand if you're really concerned about pain. And so the last one is, as women we do far more painful things than a mammogram.

Speaker 3: 37:16

If you have had a bikini wax, you can handle a mammogram Right Like the. You know. If, if you can walk in heels all day, you can handle a mammogram Like like, this is nothing, this is nothing. I've had mammograms where I've definitely felt it and some mammograms are as like that's it. So sometimes it depends on the technician that you have. If you say, hey, this is my first mammogram and and I'm concerned about discomfort, you can let that technician know and say, I really appreciate if you can, you know be, you know, I mean they're going to be doing their best anyway, but sometimes just you communicating that can help.

Speaker 3: 37:56

But the best comparison is to think about it like getting your blood pressure taken. So you know you have that blood pressure cuff around your arm and you feel it and it gets tight, but it's not like painful and then, and then you have that release. That's really what a mammogram is like. You've got that, that compression, that tightness, and then and it only lasts for like a few seconds. So you know, if for women who who no longer menstruate, Then really you can kind of go in at any time to get a mammogram and that's not going to differ too much. You know, some women still have like hormone cycles that are that are happening even though they're not menstruating. So just just knowing your body, know if you have kind of this breast cycle and their you know times of the month that are more tender or not, whether or not your your menstruating is is good to know.

Speaker 3: 38:49

But I would say, don't let a small fear of potential pain not all mammograms are painful put you off from doing a mammogram. Think about the protection and help that that's giving you, because chemo is a lot more painful than a mammogram. Right, and if you can get diagnosed really early, you can avoid chemo. So it's that exchange of maybe a little discomfort now for you know, protecting your health, protecting your financial health. You know, by doing this, mammograms are free. They're included with any healthcare insurance. If you don't have insurance, your state will have programs to help you get screened. So there's there's fewer and fewer excuses now to avoid mammograms. They're they're less painful than they used to be. They use far less radiation than they used to. It's very, very minimal amounts, it's very safe, low dose and and it can save your life.

Speaker 3: 39:52

So, that being said, it's also good to know if you have dense breast tissue, and that's something that you find out with your mammogram. So dense breast tissue isn't perkiness, it's not something that you can feel or see. It has to do with the makeup of your own breast tissue. Black women tend to have denser breasts, and it can make a mammogram harder to see through that tissue, and so they have 3D mammography, which is available in a lot of places that can help see through dense breast tissue a little bit better, and then there's also supplemental ultrasound that can help with that as well. So it'd be good to talk to your doctor to find out what level of breast density you have. You only find that out by doing a mammogram, so you need to get that first mammogram done to find out if you have dense breasts. And if you do have dense breasts, talk to your doctor about if you need additional imaging to make sure that you're getting screened according to your breast type.

Speaker 2: 40:53

Thank you so much. You have convinced me. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. We're going to talk about it, all right, so thank you. Last question for you. Well, okay, I cheated. It's like a twofer. It's a twofer, all right.

Speaker 3: 41:08

All right?

Speaker 2: 41:09

The first one what advice does Know your Lemon and in particular you have for other organizations looking to adopt a similar approach in making health information accessible and inclusive in the context of wellness?

Speaker 3: 41:24

Yes, the first thing is to start by walking in their shoes. Work with the people that you're wanting to educate. See it from their point of view. Get their thoughts on things. If you're an organization that's looking at how can we better educate for health, that's where you need to start is having the people you're wanting to educate on board with you as you develop things. That's really important For Know your Lemons.

Speaker 3: 41:46

We have programs that make it really easy to bring it into the workplace. We have a schools program that we're doing right now testing out in some schools, which is going really well, which is because we never show breasts. We can show this in schools fairly easily. It's not part of sex education. Breasts are not a sex organ, as sexy as they may be to some. Breasts don't help you make a baby. Technically, they don't help you make a baby. This is health education we can do outside of sex, which is needed If we learn about this in school, when we're already designed to be learning about our bodies.

Speaker 3: 42:32

We learn about every part of the body except breasts. In school it's created this knowledge gap of people not sure if they should do mammograms or thinking I don't have a family history of it, so I'm fine. I don't know how to do self-exams, or I don't understand breast anatomy, so I don't know what I'm feeling. We can tackle that in schools. Then the students have the assignment to go home and show this information with their family and ask their mom have you been getting a mammogram? What can we do to support you to get this done? Do I need to remind you? Can I help you?

Speaker 3: 43:07

Having a child come home and say I care about your health and I want you to look after yourself is far more convincing than any commercial or billboard would ever be. How do we start these conversations at home about the most common cancer in the world that can save lives if we can just detect it early through education? We work with companies to do corporate wellness programs. We work with schools. We work with healthcare providers in being able to educate their patients more effectively. Reach out to us. We've already created the thing. We want you to use it.

Speaker 2: 43:46

Which is amazing. And then my last question you talked about this free app, which is just mind blowing, award winning, useful and helpful. You've talked about all the free education services that you provide, but how can our listeners and other business owners that I know are listening to my podcast support your efforts? How can we help increase your reach?

Speaker 3: 44:13

Yes. So there's lots of ways to get involved. So the first thing we say is we're here to educate you and then you can help us educate others. So download the app. You know you use it, you know do the screening assessment, all those things first and then, once you're educated, donate, become a monthly donor. You know the app is available for free because we have people who very kindly donate funds to us and then, as a company, you can contact us about bringing in the wellness program.

Speaker 3: 44:47

You can buy materials from our shop to educate your employees. We have cute t-shirts, we've got blankets, we've got all kinds of really fun things on our Know your Lemon shop on our website. So there are lots of different things people can do. And you can also volunteer so you can become a Lemanista with us and you can take our online training course and we will teach you everything you need to know about breast health. We give you teaching materials and you can come in and become one of our global Lemanistas. Join our global network, meet people from around the world who also care about women's health because this is a topic that's important to them. So we have breast cancer survivors who are Lemanistas. We have people who have had it in their family and want to make a proactive difference in it, and people who just care about the cause. So you know, donate a little bit of spit and get squished at your mammogram and make sure that you're doing everything you should, according to your risk, and taking good care of yourself and those around you.

Speaker 2: 45:59

I think I just came up with another marketing thing, the four S's Spit, squish, study and do what you should. We got to figure out how to make that work. We ended up kind of talking about the doom and gloom, but I do want to end on a positive note of what we can do to prevent or reduce these risks, even if we have the genetic predisposition or we don't. You've already said 85% at least of those new cases are no family history. 15% of them are. So how do we do that we know about maintaining a healthy weight and limited alcohol intake? What are some other things you can tell us we can do?

Speaker 3: 46:44

Yeah, I know. So how I like to explain risk is it's kind of like putting tickets into a really bad raffle, right? So maybe you exercise really well and you're a healthy weight and you don't drink or smoke, you don't have a family history, all those things. All that means is you're going to have fewer tickets in that raffle, but it doesn't mean you can't be picked. So maybe you've got three tickets in that raffle and someone else has 20. It'll be less likely that you get it, but it's not impossible for you to get it, whereas somebody may have several risk factors for breast cancer and so they've got 20 tickets into that raffle and maybe they're more likely to get picked, but it doesn't mean they absolutely will be. So that's what cancer risk is like. It's like there are things that you can do that can mean that there are fewer tickets in that bad raffle.

Speaker 3: 47:38

So exercise is good. If sometimes we think about exercises being like 30 minutes of rigorous aerobic activity, start with just moving around more, sitting a little bit less, take those small steps, Like any movement is good movement. And sometimes we think I can't do this big exercise thing, so I'm just going to sit on the couch. So just think about what some small movements that you can do. You know we're placing some things with better food, that sort of thing. Some other things that have reduced risk is, if you can, having children earlier in life can reduce your risk at breastfeeding, can reduce risk for breast cancer, those types of things. So those are considered controllable risk factors. I don't know how much we really can control whether or not to have kids and when to have them.

Speaker 2: 48:41

Or how long they'll take the breast milk, even if you do.

Speaker 3: 48:44

Exactly Right. It's like sure we could control that, but it's good to know. But again, it comes back to that kind of like raffle mentality, because every time online we talk about breastfeeding can reduce your risk for breast cancer Immediately, we have tons of comments of people saying I breastfed all my babies for this long and I still got breast cancer. And you shouldn't be saying this, right? So it's no, it means that it can pull some of those tickets out of the raffle. But there's no such thing, as nobody has no tickets in the raffle. So there are some things you can do to pull some tickets out of that raffle and there are just some things that it's just what we're born with and those tickets are there regardless.

Speaker 3: 49:28

Again, if you are aging, every year you might add a couple more tickets into that raffle. You know, if you're a woman, you got those tickets. So there are just some things that are controllable risk factors and some things that are not. So knowing what you can do, what you can be proactive with, you know and it's not just for breast cancer and any good habit we pick up is going to help us across the board, right. So thinking about those things and prioritizing it, taking time for ourselves. It's hard, it's not easy. It's not easy to say I'm going to keep up on exercise all the time. We have busy lives and I'm certainly guilty of that. Start by giving yourself small things to do, and any movement is good movement. Start with that and then work your way up till you find something you enjoy.

Speaker 2: 50:19

Thank you for that. I think that was the best analogy that I have ever heard, and thinking about it in terms of just that bad raffle, I mean that is powerful. So I appreciate you sharing. When you were talking, I immediately thought about my professor in college, who's an English professor, and the man. The professor lived in Auburn, alabama. My school was in Tuskegee, alabama. It's about 15 miles from Tuskegee to Auburn.

Speaker 2: 50:51

He rode his bike to school and back home every day. It's how he got to school. He was vegan. He was always doing something just healthy for himself. He didn't do like cars because he didn't like toxins and pollutants and like all of that kind of thing. And still, at 51, he had a massive heart attack and died. And you would think, wow, you know, I've done all of these things to eliminate my bad raffle tickets and still you get tickets in this raffle. And your analogy just really put it into perspective for me, because you think I'm doing everything right. You said, if I do this, if I do this and if I do that, it won't happen to me. And that's not what we're saying. We're saying you're going to take some of your tickets away. You still may win the raffle.

Speaker 3: 51:47

Yeah, exactly, and you know some people may say, well, if it might happen to me, anyway, you know why bother trying to pull any tickets out? Well, the thing is like think about his quality of life up until 51. It sounds like it was pretty good, amazing.

Speaker 2: 52:04

Amazing and he got to enjoy and do as much things, and be it. It was sudden, it was instant. He didn't die a miserable death, he wasn't wearing the pins or anything like that, he was fully functioning. So it happens, and unfortunately, death is not something that we can avoid. But if it's something that we can do on our own terms and a positive place, without pain and suffering or being losing our dignity or our finances, right, you still have that nest egg that you can leave for the loved ones that you have. Those are good wins. Those are called good ways to die.

Speaker 3: 52:48

Yeah, right, I mean, it's life. No one gets out alive, right? That's the nature. Yeah, that's how it is With our charity. Our goal is for you to die from something else. Don't die from breast cancer. Let's do what we can to take that off your list of like. This is what killed me, right? So live as long, happy, positive, wonderful life as possible. That's our goal, and you know we can do that through early detection.

Speaker 2: 53:21

Thank you so much for sharing. I want to be respectful of your time. I could go on and on. I know I still have like another. This is great. Have another like a battery of questions. So we'll have to do this again. Post my mammogram and we'll talk about the excitement of that first mammogram and that kind of thing. That'd be great. I want to thank you humbly for joining us. It's been very enlightening and informative, encouraging, and I know you've got a world to save right, so I'm going to let you go.

Speaker 2: 53:53

As we wrap up this enlightening discussion on genetics and breast cancer awareness with Dr Corinne Ellsworth Beaumont, ceo of Know your Limons, we extend our heartfelt thanks to each of you for tuning in. Remember, knowledge is power and understanding the genetic aspects of breast cancer can make a significant impact on early detection and prevention. This is how we save lives. Stay informed, stay proactive and join us on the journey to better health. Thank you for being a part of the demystifying DNA and Know your Limons collaboration. I want to encourage each of my listeners. I've never asked you for anything. Go to knowyourlimonsorg, download the app, become familiar and partner with this amazing organization. Thank you all and be well until next time. Thanks, tiffany, thank you.

Speaker 1: 55:05

P23 Knowledge, Access, Power. P23 Wellness and Understanding at your Fingertips. P23 that's no Cap.