In this episode, Dr. Ron welcomes back Breast Cancer Conqueror, Dr. Véronique Desaulniers, or as many people know her, Dr. V. Dr. V first began her journey with Breast Cancer after she found a lump in her left breast in 2004. She chose to take the road less traveled and explored natural treatments. Having celebrated victory over Breast Cancer twice, she has become extremely passionate about teaching women how to properly conduct a Breast Self-Exam.
Thank You To This Episode’s Sponsor
Episode Links and Promotions
Healing Breast Cancer Naturally: 7 Essential Steps to
Beating Breast Cancer
www.facebook.com/breastcancerconqueror
www.instagram.com/breast_cancer_conqueroror
Episode Transcript
Disclaimer: The information contained on the Real Health podcast, and the resources mentioned, are for educational purposes only. They are not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as medical or health advice. The information contained on this podcast is not a substitute for medical or health advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. Information provided by hosts and guests on the Real Health podcast or the use of any products or services mentioned, does not create a practitioner patient relationship between you and any person’s affiliated with this podcast.
Intro: This is the Real Health podcast brought to you by Riordan Clinic. Our mission is to bring you the latest information and top experts in functional and integrative medicine, to help you make informed decisions on your path to real health.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: Well, hello everyone. It’s Dr. Ron Hunninghake, and it’s our good fortune today to be back with Dr. V, Dr. Véronique Desaulniers. I’m sorry for my poor French.
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: You’re doing great.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: Okay. Dr. V is here today and we’ve done a previous episode on the seven essentials that she outlines in her wonderful book, Heal Breast Cancer Naturally. I asked her though, to maybe take this to a little bit more personal level and maybe, for the sake of our audience, to tell them how the seven essentials manifested in her own cancer journey. Is that a reasonable way to start this?
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: That’s the great way. A lot of people ask me, why cancer? You’re a chiropractor by profession. How did you end up being the breast cancer conqueror? If we go back all the way to 2004, actually, take it back to 1983, where I been in practice and my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Of course, we know how that goes, right? Nothing they can do, you’ll be dead in six weeks. He bought that and he was dead in six weeks. With my training and my background, I knew in my heart that there was something that could have been done. If nothing else, to perhaps extend his life, or a better quality of life. No internet back then, so I did a lot of research, went to the library. I called a few clinics. Cancer clinics that were few and far between back then, and realized that there were things that people were doing to reverse cancer.
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: I took that fire in my soul and started applying these principles in my practice and saw amazing results with patients, from MS to cancer, to rheumatoid arthritis, to children’s diseases. You name it. If they applied the principles and did the work, they were getting better. So, 23 years into my practice, I’m getting ready for work. I was a busy mom, busy practice, and was in the shower. I was doing a breast exam, because my mom had had breast cancer and sure enough, felt a lump. I had to go back several times. It’s like, what am I feeling? Is this really something? It was that moment that changed my life, professionally and personally, forever. So there I was, the wellness warrior, Dr V, treating thousands of patients, and yet here I’m facing breast cancer.
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: That was a real humbling moment, a slap in the face. I just realized, okay, well, I know I’m not going to do conventional treatments, so what’s my plan of action? That’s when I had those moments, like anybody else. Dabbling here, dabbling there, doing this, doing that, I was all over the place. I kept asking myself, okay, what allowed the cancer to show up in my life? What am I missing here? That’s when I feel like, I still remember like it was yesterday. I just took out a pad and a pen and I said, “Okay, what are the steps here? What do I need to cover to make sure I get well?” And, that’s how they showed up the seven essentials. Then I just started working on each of those, and it gave me an opportunity to check those off, to make sure that I was covering all the bases.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: Yeah. One of the things that I talk about with our patients is, I ask them the question, “Do you have this disease or does it have you?” I think what I just heard you say is you took a step where you were bigger than the disease. You knew that you had to get a game plan on, and it was just in a moment of solidarity within yourself, to sit down and write that out. But then you’re no longer at the mercy of the disease. Now you are taking charge of the step by step process that can help you overcome it. And you did.
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: Totally. Totally. I knew cancer was just the symptom, just like any disease that shows up in our body. It’s just the symptom. We need to get to the root cause of what allows that disease to show up or to manifest in our body. For me, it was a big wake-up call and it took me two years to heal. There was a lot of work, a lot of tears, no different than any other woman, but I got to the point where I was no longer actively cancering, and so learned a lot in that journey and decided after, being in chiropractic for 30 years, that I would go into a new chapter and so sold my practice and then started asking myself what’s next?
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers:Several of my friends kept saying, you need to share your story with breast cancer, you can help other women. And then okay, well, I’ll just throw up a website and see what happens. And sure enough, women came flocking. I just was not prepared for that. Had no idea that there was such a need for that. In my third year being known as the breast cancer conqueror, I was burnt out. I was tired, I was frustrated. I didn’t feel good. I wasn’t sleeping well, my hormones were off, and I knew something was off in my body. Sure enough, cancer showed up again. I created the perfect storm for breast cancer to show up. I have to say that the second time was much more difficult for me, because I was the face of breast cancer conqueror. I’m teaching women how to heal cancer, and here I am, I had breast cancer again. That was more difficult, more humbling, but it was a big wake up call. It was an indication that I had to get really, really serious with my health, once again, and my life, obviously. I had to do things differently.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: A lot of women have told me they, when they get cancer, they feel like they’ve failed. There’s a moment of, can I really overcome this? Did you look in the mirror? Was this a spiritual shift that you made? Did you get relational, emotional support? What was it that helped you to jump that chasm of doubt?
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: Well, definitely I felt betrayed by my body, but I had to really, as you mentioned, look in the mirror and say, “Okay, look at your life and how you’ve lived your life thus far has given you these results. So if you want different results, you have to do things differently.” I looked at all the different aspects of my life and the big one for me was essential number four, healing the emotional wounds. I thought I had done a lot of healing. I had alcoholic parents. I was sexually abused as a child by a convicted pedophile. I thought I had all that taken care of. It was compartmentalized in a little box over there. But then when I really became brutally honest with myself, I had to see and admit, okay, there’s still some remnants of that, that need healing. And, I’ll never forget this, I was just finishing up a coffee enema, and I was just sobbing, just crying. I felt like I was detoxing, not just physically, but emotionally. I heard a voice inside of me and said, “Stop being so hard on yourself.”
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: My whole life, it was nose to the grindstone, right? Unless I’m producing, unless I’m successful or working my self-worth and my values is nothing. I was always push, push, push, push. Perfectionist to the core. When I became easier on myself and learned to connect with that little girl and love her and nurture her and do the same thing for the adult girl, things got a lot easier. I vowed that I would never, ever allow my work, my stress, to rule my life. I got so absorbed. I wanted to help these women, that I was working from sun up to sun down and so committed to them, but I didn’t set proper boundaries and it affected my health. I reorganized my work schedule. I trained coaches, so they could do the coaching.
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: I took some time off to really heal. It took me three years to heal. It was a slow process, but I was determined. It was difficult, because nobody knew except for a few close friends and my immediate family. What kept me going was that vision of me standing on the stage and coming out of the closet, and telling people, “This is what I’ve done and I’ve healed breast cancer again, a second time. If I can do it, then you can do it.”
Advertisement: There’s a lot more to this conversation, and it’s coming up right after a quick break. Today’s episode of the Real Health podcast is brought to you by the Riordan Clinic Nutrient Store. The Nutrient Store is your resource for the highest quality nutritional supplements. Every supplement in the store is hand-picked by the expert medical staff at Riordan clinic, providing you with the best quality purity, consistency, and effective dosing available visit store.riordanclinic.org to shop online.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: How did you utilize some of the other essentials? What were some of the steps that for you personally, that really stand out as transition points in this journey?
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: I learned to be more metabolically flexible, as we mentioned in another interview. My blood sugar, I was insulin resistant, so I really had to change my eating habits.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: It’s a big one.
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: Yes. I really did a lot of work in essential number two, to detoxify my body. Did a lot of saunas and sweating, hyperthermia, bio med, coffee enemas, skin brushing, just a lot of physical, detoxification, different cleanses. Then I made sure that I took the time every day to get into that parasympathetic response, to calm my body and my mind down. I used meditation, the heart math app to monitor my nerve system. Journaling. I read a lot of books about healing and Dr. Bernie Siegel and Joe Dispenza.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: What about sleep? The circadian cycle is really… So many women, because of all their duties, deprive themselves of adequate sleep or get into weird schedules of sleep. Were you able to restore a better rhythm in your life?
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: I definitely did that, because I had problems with my sleep for decades, just pushing the envelope, burning the candle at both ends. I really committed to learning how to sleep better and what it took. I did saliva testing and neurotransmitter testing, to see how I could help calm my nerve system. Being out in the sunshine more. I moved to Florida so I could get more sunshine, just really worked on my sleep, my hormones. Also discovered, we mentioned in another interview, about getting a 3d beam scan.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: Right.
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: Right? About making sure that there’s no cavitation. Sure enough, discovered I had cavitations. I had, on number 14, which is the breast Meridian, on the left side where the tumor was. My biological dentist discovered that I had an empty tooth. It’s called root reabsorption, and it’s an autoimmune condition. It’s very rare. But your immune system attacks your tooth, for no apparent reason. Well, it sat on the same Meridian as the breast, the left breast. What came first? The chicken or the egg? I don’t know. Took care of that and the cavitations. Did a lot of testing, did a lot of IVs. So I really took it to the next level.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: One of the things that I really encourage all women to do, is to regularly check your vitamin D level, because many people assume that I’m outside pretty much, and I’m going to be okay. But we’ve found that if people don’t check, first of all, they don’t take any vitamin D then, they’re making an assumption. I was wondering if there was ever an issue with vitamin D in this process?
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: I’m glad you brought that up, because that brings me to getting some genomic testing, some gene testing, DNA testing, because I have a genetic snip that prevents me from absorbing vitamin D very well, so I have to really supplement with high doses, 10 to 15,000, even here in Florida. When I cut back to 10, I was going down to 60 and 70. I like to be between 80 and a hundred. Yeah.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: So really had to bump that up. That was another thing that I learned in my second healing journey, is learning to look at my genes and my DNA and understand what weaknesses, what genetic snips that I had and how to best support them. Same thing with vitamin A, I have a problem processing, vitamin A. I have a methylation problem, so I don’t will break down my hormones properly. I have a problem with [inaudible 00:15:55] production. All these things that you need to know, so you can best support your body.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: This is where knowledge is power. Part of this journey is people taking steps to educate themselves about all aspects that we’ve talked about today, what you’ve talked about, what we talked about in our last interview together. This is a stupid question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Do you feel empowered now? Do you feel like you have a sense of resilience that you didn’t have before, simply because you were able to almost fight your way through these two bouts of cancer?
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: It definitely is empowering. It definitely gave me that feeling of I really understood my body a lot more. I felt more energized. And at the same time, I learned to set proper boundaries, and I learned to say “no” to certain things. I feel that my life is much more balanced in many ways, I can say that I’ve, I’ve never been happier and healthier since I went through that second healing journey. The second one was 2015 through 2018, so we’re looking, coming up on four years now, of no longer actively cancering. I apply essential number seven. I make sure that I get my thermogram every year, my ultrasound, I do my blood work. I check the circulating tumor cells. I do all these things to stay on top of my health.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: Okay. Well, I’m just thrilled that you were able to share this with everyone. To me, you’re a walking example of taking fear and misery, really, because what’s worse than getting told that you’ve got cancer, but transforming that into a, not only a lifestyle of better health, but a commitment to help others learn how to do this as well. So to me, I thank you, and I hope all of our listeners get a chance to pick up a copy of your book, Heal Breast Cancer Naturally. So Dr. V, thank you so much for being on Real Health.
Dr. Véronique Desaulniers: Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Ron, and thank you for sharing my message of hope with your community. I really admire and appreciate everything that the Riordan Clinic has done and is doing today.
Dr. Ron Hunninghake: Thank you.
Outro: Thank you for listening to the Real Health podcast. If you enjoy this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. You can also find all of the episodes and show notes over at realhealthpodcast.org. Also, be sure to visit riordanclinic.org, where you will find hundreds of videos and articles to help you create your own version of real health.
