Breast Health: Thermography and Personalized Screening

Episode 69

Podcast Drop Date: 

10/29/2025

Discover how to take a proactive, personalized approach to breast health with host Amber Warren, PA-C, and thermography expert Dr. Philip Hoekstra, PhD DABT. In this episode, they break down safe, functional medicine strategies for breast screening, including thermography, ultrasound, and other multimodal tools. Learn how these methods complement traditional mammograms and how a personalized screening plan can help you make informed decisions about your care. Perfect for anyone interested in functional medicine, breast health, and proactive wellness.

Transcript:

Amber Warren, PA-C: Welcome to the Functional Medicine Foundation's podcast, where we explore root cause medicine, engage in conversation with functional and integrative medicine experts, and build community with like minded health seekers. I'm your host, Amber Warren. Let's dig deeper.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Hi, everybody. Amber Warren here. We just wanted to present a little, um, not necessarily a disclaimer, but a little adjunct dialog to our podcast that includes, uh, the discussion of thermography. Um, I'm inviting our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Mark Holthouse, to discuss, um, all things as it relates to using mammography versus thermography, even versus things like ultrasound that we discuss to detect breast cancer as soon as possible. Breast cancer is the number one cause of cancer death in women globally. And early detection through any kind of imaging screening has found early stage cancers more often than just potential cancer production from the test itself. Specifically, in mammography, we know that there are concerns with radiation when we're using mammography as a detection screening tool, but the devil is always in the details. Regardless, we are recommending a multi-modality screening approach that involves thermography, whole breast ultrasound, and mammography. And combining all of those three tools we know is the most ideal approach to early detection. So please listen in to Dr. Holthouse as he kind of balances the other side of the coin, so to say, and discusses mammography and the shortcomings of any one imaging tool when it comes to detection of breast cancer.

Dr. Mark Holthouse, MD: Hi. This is Doctor Mark Holthouse, Functional Medicine of Idaho, wanting to share a bit of my perspective on the clinical safety and efficacy versus downsides of mammography in the context of thermograms and breast ultrasounds. A lot of female patients are concerned about the amount of radiation they receive over a lifetime of screening with mammography. The current studies show that with the more modern technologies, the more recent scanners using digital technologies has much fewer ionizing radiation exposures relative to the old film and screen-based machines. The screening has saved countless lives by finding cancers earlier and making them more amenable to successful treatment, as opposed to missing the opportunity and finding them at a much later stage. Other technologies, such as thermography, are available for looking at thermal imaging and heat signatures, which can find inflammation sooner and even before cancers development has has taken a hold. But they don't find the microcalcifications of early cancer that are seen with mammography. The actual incidence of breast cancers induced by the radiation received over the course of a lifetime is variable based on size of the breast, breast density, and how frequent the mammograms are being done. The current guidelines are from age 40 to 74, every two years for average risk women. If you have a strategy where they start at age 50 and go to age 74 every other year, the number of breast cancers found to occur per 100,000 women drops significantly just with initiating the initial mammogram at at an age ten years later.

Dr. Mark Holthouse, MD: Breast tissue is more sensitive to ionizing radiation in younger women. And so that is one of several reasons why we don't do mammography earlier in life. That and the problem with false positives, where you're going to find a lot of glandular tissue that makes it difficult to delineate or see clearly normal from abnormal tissue. The newer mammography machines are much better at getting higher resolution, which leads to fewer callbacks and fewer additional images, which in the past have often added to the radiologic burden. The current amount of exposure with a signal mammogram is equal to what you would be exposed to just walking around outside over about an eight week period. The number of breast cancers that are estimated on average per 100,000 women from mammogram is thought to be anywhere from 6 to 30 per 100,000, but is highly variable again on the frequency of screening, the size and density of the breasts, whether or not it's a screening or diagnostic mammogram where there are additional views on the diagnostic side. Thermography is a wonderful addition that can be used as an adjunct to mammogram and or ultrasound in certain scenarios, uh, looking for these areas of inflammation that can be followed. And if they're abnormal, further testing can be done. Um, we're looking for standardized processes using artificial intelligence that will improve the technology. And I'm hoping that someday it will maybe even supersede mammography. Uh, as the as a screening test that the FDA has approved. Mammograms have a high, uh, false positive rates and even false negative problems where they miss things when the breasts are dense.

Dr. Mark Holthouse, MD: And so whole breast ultrasounds can be a great addition to mammography, when used as a screening tool. It is important to know that ultrasound, whole breast ultrasound is a primary screening modality, is fraught with problems and considered dangerous in that it has such a high false positive rate rate that it can, um, Um, commit the client to needing unnecessary mammograms. It's best to be used when there's a palpable mass that you can feel. Or in the case of dense breasts with mammogram, where its sensitivity is improved over mammogram alone.

Dr. Mark Holthouse, MD: We believe at FMI, in a multi-modality approach that's individualized and based on the patient before us, based on whether or not they're taking hormones or not, whether they have dense breasts, large breasts, their age, what is their breast cancer risk as to which of these modalities makes the most sense? Always balancing risk versus benefit, trying to find cancers early versus avoiding overtreatment and overdiagnosis. Hopefully this is helpful. We'd invite each and every one of you to come in and have an individual discussion about what multimodal breast cancer surveillance looks like on a one-on-one basis, so we can tailor a program for you. I think it's important to not throw out any one modality, as always bad or always good, and realize that it's the individual application for the individual's needs and specifics that matter. Thank you very much. Hopefully this is helpful.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Welcome back, everybody. We're here with Doctor Philip Hoekstra. Talking about um, thermography. So Dr. Philip Hoekstra is a pioneering leader in the medical thermography, whose decades of research has revolutionized the use of infrared imaging in early disease detection, especially in breast health. Inspired by his father's Cold War era infrared work. Dr. Hoekstra began experimenting with thermography as a teenager and went on to earn his PhD in neuroscience from McGill University, completing advanced fellowships at Georgetown, Temple, and USC. As a past president and lifetime Fellow of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and longtime director of Thermoscan Laboratories, he has set international standards for thermographic analysis and continues to advance the science of medical imaging through innovation, research, and education. We are so thrilled to have you on our podcast. Doctor Hoekstra, how are you?

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Doing very well. Thank you. Amber, I'm pleased to be here.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Yeah, we've been working together for, gosh, has it been three years? Three and a half? Yeah. Offering thermography out of our clinic in near downtown Boise. And just last year we launched, um, we're now doing thyroid imaging, thyroid thermography. And that's been a really exciting thing to add to our field. So, um, can you just share your journey and how you got involved in this field? Because clearly you are an expert in this field and highly respected.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Thank you for that. It's been a rather long journey. As you indicated, I started this as a teenager. I'm actually second generation, uh, in this field. My father was one of the pioneers in the development of the equipment and its early application into medicine. He wasn't, uh, among the very first at that. Uh, but, uh, he had the great depth was in the knowledge of the equipment and uh, uh, also the fact that he was a scientist and not able to, uh, do any type of evaluations by speculation or guesswork. We had to have a defined, objective analytic method for everything that we did. And that was really something fundamental to transforming thermography, which is still the common word to derivation of that which I use more distinctly, which is thermology. When you apply the scientific method to what you're doing, when you have objective and quantified standards, uh, when you understand the mechanisms, the basic pathophysiology for the things that you're looking at, you really transform this from, uh, an empirical thermography to the more scientific, uh thalmology. But my father was instrumental in developing the infrared imaging systems that were put into satellites. And, uh, for many years, he was working with the people of the intelligence community during, uh, the Cold War. And for whatever era we want, we want to talk about that we're in now, whether it's global war on terrorism or whether it's evolved to something else.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Uh, the Cold War was a decidedly weird era, too. Um, full of, uh, secrets and, uh, um, black bag projects. Uh, he had one of the most enviable things for any scientist, which is an unlimited budget. Uh, and certainly he found all kinds of ways of spending great quantities of money. Uh, and the satellites, uh, that he developed the systems for the satellites, um, uh, just have absolutely amazing capabilities. Uh, uh, but, uh, by the late 60s, he had had a bellyful of working with the intelligence community. Uh, one of his favorite lines was, I don't know who to be more concerned about. Uh, these guys or the KGB. They're all crazies. So, uh, he took a contract from the American Cancer Society, which was at that time looking into breast thermography, uh, as it was being developed by, uh, such notable people as Jacob Kirsh and Cohen, uh, who was really the, uh, one of the two fathers of mammography in the US. Um, and, uh, a number of other people and, um, uh, he saw a great future in this type of thing. Yeah, tremendous point of development. And, um, uh, made the leap, uh, from the intelligence community as we started, uh, thermoscan together, uh, back in 1972, um, and Thermoscan was the first, uh, freestanding, uh, thermographic facility in the world. And our specialty, uh, from the beginning was in doing, uh, evaluations, uh, of images. So very rapidly. We set up a reference laboratory where people who had equipment such as what's in Functional Medicine of Idaho, was sent to us for what is our thing? The analysis and reporting.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Uh, now, um, based on some of his initial contacts, uh, I was able to get, um, uh, into fellowship programs at some, uh, major academic centers. Uh particularly my first was at USC in LA, where I worked with, uh, some, uh, very notable people in vascular thermology. Um, from there I went to Georgetown and worked with, um, people in neurologic thermology and was also part of the, uh, infamous breast cancer detection demonstration project while there as a ghost interpreter. From there I had the good fortune of working with Harold Hazzard, who was a professor of radiology at Temple University. Um, and, uh, he was a protege of Jacob, Kirsh, and Cohen. Uh, and learned, uh, a lot of his methodology in terms of, uh, breast thermography. Uh, and from there went to McGill University and worked on some more of the neurologic applications of this. And, um, um, one of the more notable moments was when, um, uh, Doctor Hazard, uh, was was very frustrated with me because I kept asking him endless questions of how one study was normal and another one was abnormal. What what features was he particularly looking at and out of frustration, he put his hand on my shoulder and he says, "okay, Phil, now it's your turn to turn this into a proper science". I took him seriously.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Yes you did.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : And, um, it, uh, a tremendous amount has been learned in terms of the basic pathophysiology that explains the heat signatures that we see that are related to breast cancer. And, um, I'm pleased to say that Thermoscan has been on the forefront of, uh, developments, in terms of incorporating that science into analysis to be able to deliver it for patient care. Um, so, uh, it's, uh, it in some ways, it's been a very exciting ride.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Mhm. Mhm. That's exciting. It's fascinating history. So can you break it down for our audience. What is what is thermography or thermography?

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Sure. Well, uh, well, let's start with thermography, which is the, uh, earliest version of this, uh, thermography is really enabled by the development of infrared cameras. Uh, infrared is beyond the ability of, infrared is a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that's of longer wavelength than red, hence infrared. Uh, first discovered in 1800 by Sir William Herschel, uh, when he discovered that with the use of a prism, he could heat, uh, something outside of the visible spectrum, uh, when he put some sunlight through a prism. Um, but, uh, technology came up with a means by which to visualize infrared and turn that into, uh, images that we could work with. And it really, uh, is a, um, uh, a new extension of the, um, um, human experience to be able to see something that is outside of our senses otherwise. I mean, it's basically the equivalent of the taste of a sound or the touch of a feel. Um, and, um, uh, thermography was, uh, because of the, uh, high tech equipment for this, uh, initially part of, uh, secret government project and medicine was the first application for that. Um, uh, so basically what thermography is a medical thermography is imaging of human beings for diagnostic purposes using this special extension of human senses through the electronic cameras of an infrared thermograph.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Uh, now initially, uh, the people who were working in this. And the real pioneer of this was a fellow by the name of doctor Ray Lawson. He was a professor, uh, at McGill University in Montreal. Uh, and, uh, there's a long story as to how he got his first, uh, thermograph. Uh, but, uh, uh, the appreciation for heat and medicine goes back to, uh, really ancient practices in medicine. It's written up in the book of the Yellow Emperor. Uh, the physicians of the, uh, pharaoh era of ancient Egypt, uh, appreciated the importance of heat in medicine. Uh, Hippocrates himself canonized, uh, the evaluation of heat body heat as a cardinal sign of disease, calling it calor. And while it may have sounded a little better in Old Greek, uh, he, uh uh is quoted as saying, wheresoever in the body excess of cold or heat is to be found, uh, or is detected, there disease is to be found. Um, and uh, physicians of his era were known to paint a thin slurry of mud onto the skin surfaces of the patient, and observed different levels of drying as an indication of abnormally cool or abnormally hot pattern or features. Uh, we probably couldn't get such a thing past the FDA these days as a new medical device. Uh, but, um, the electronic thermograph, uh, is something that has been sanctified by FDA and is cleared as a medical device.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Doctor Lawson had been doing experiments on his, uh, patients with known breast cancer, where he had discovered that the skin over the top of the cancer was hotter than other areas of that same breast, or certainly other areas in the opposite breast. Uh, he had no idea why it was an observation at that point. So empirically, uh, when he had the electronic thermograph, he could see the heat, uh, and by, uh, seeing this occurring in enough patients, he knew there was some type of connection there. Uh, but he didn't have a clue as to what that connection might be. So, uh, he theorized and thought that, well, maybe cancer, because it's uncontrolled growth. Uh, and heat is a byproduct of metabolism, part of that growth. Maybe that's why we're seeing the heat patterns, uh, related to cancer. Um, it was a good guess, but it was a it was wrong. Yeah. And a friend of mine, um, um, at, uh, Southern New York University, uh, Mike Anbar, uh, did a really elegant calculation by which he was able to show that. No, that can't be, uh, in order for a two centimeter tumor to maintain two degrees hotter temperature than the tissue around it, given the washout rate of blood through typical breast tissue, it would use up about half the caloric content of a person's food in a day.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : So that clearly isn't the case. And, uh, um, it's been discovered that the heat that we see is because of unregulated blood flow, of core body temperature. And I could get into that in raptures. It's one of my favorite topics. But, um, the bottom line is that, um, part of the basic physiology or pathophysiology of cancer explains why we see the heat patterns. And we know that it's a reliable indicator of the presence of cancer, uh, especially when you get into things like dynamic testing. Um, but, uh, thermology, when we apply all the sciences to this, and we do this in an objective way. Um, uh, is part of that transformation from thermography, which is simply the sort of like photography making pretty pictures and guessing what it is we're looking at to doing a proper analysis and evaluation, uh, on an objective and repetitive manner. Um, one of the big differences between thermal imaging as used in thermography and thermology, particularly thermology over mammography, is that mammography doesn't work with any real world units at all. It's not like so many ergs per cubic millimeter. Uh, and, uh, the evaluation of mammograms is strictly from a perspective of pattern recognition. In other words, you look at something and you try to discern its structure, um, by the the features that you're seeing.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : And, um, uh, mammography in all of its forms, film, digital or stereotactic is an x ray of the breast. Uh, it's evaluating the tissue, breast tissue by relative temperature or differences in tissue structure and is, uh, one of the issues is that it's really compromised under a lot of circumstances. It, uh, the effectiveness of mammography is greatly compromised. Uh, when women are built unusually big or small, they have fibrocystic disease of the breast. They take hormone replacements. They're pregnant, nursing, uh, they've had breast reductions or implants. They've had prior biopsies or the big, dense breasts. Half the women have dense breasts these days, and the overall effectiveness of mammography is very low at that. Under the best of circumstances, the very best mammography has a sensitivity of about 80%. Uh. From a practical standpoint, that means that 1 in 5 cancers is being missed. Um, from a more practical standpoint, the sensitivity is usually gauged at about 60%. Where mammography is really failing is in terms of specificity. And I'm sure that you've seen many of your women patients who've had biopsies. And, um, we'll call them needless biopsies because a mammogram was calling something of concern worthy of biopsy, uh, when in fact it was something else. Um, so the specificity of mammography is rated at about 19%.

Amber Warren, PA-C: I believe it.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Nothing to be proud of.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Do you have any any data? Sorry to interrupt you. Do you have data on the sensitivity and specificity of thermography?

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Funny you should ask. Yes.

Amber Warren, PA-C: I was hoping you'd go there.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : We do operate the most experienced laboratory in the world and we did a clinical study, an outcome study, uh, a few years back, where we were able to demonstrate a 96% sensitivity and a specificity of about 84%. Uh, not perfect, uh, but these were stand alone results. These were women that were followed for 6 to 7 years, uh, with the notion that if indeed we had missed something, uh, in our initial study, 6 to 7 years later would likely have, uh, emerged from some other means of evaluation. Uh, so, um, uh, this was published in peer reviewed. Uh, and, uh, I really think that, uh, with more development, we can do better than that yet. Um, so, um, thermology, uh, can is much more objective, uh, than mammography. Uh, it doesn't, um, um, uh, it's not really a subjective means. It's certainly not the way that we do it. And, uh, um. I'm also one of those obsessive compulsive people at this that, um, uh, if I can figure out a way to do this, uh, one tenth or 1% better, you know that I'm going to put full effort into doing just that.

Amber Warren, PA-C: What is your response to women that have concerns about the radiation, um, when they undergo mammography?

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Um, I have concerns about that, too. Uh, breast tissue is exquisitely sensitive to radiation, and the effects of radiation are cumulative over time. If you get a mammogram every ten years, the effect of the radiation is cumulative over time. And I think that the, the there is not a general awareness, uh, certainly among the medical community, as to the harmful effects of radiation.

Amber Warren, PA-C: You said a mammogram every ten years.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Uh, I'm sorry, I misspoke. One mammogram every year for ten years is what I meant to say. Thank you.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Yes. Okay. That's what I said. Well, yeah, I figured that's what you were assuming. But then we also have these these patients who are then with dense breast tissue. It's being recommended that they go in for diagnostic mammography every six months or for a six month follow up. So there's actually a lot of women that are being exposed way more than just once a year for a decade. And I agree with you. It's the cumulative exposure. And it's not just a mammogram. You know, even once a year. It's also the all the emfs we're being exposed to, in the microwave waves and the exposure from our laptop computers and cell phones. So it's no longer just an x-ray or mammogram once every few years. It's just this total radiation exposure that we're experiencing.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : It's very clear that, um, um, breast cancer has a multifactorial root to it, right? And, um, if we went back 150 years ago, uh, the incidence of breast cancer was remarkably low. And that's not because it was being underdiagnosed at that stage.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Right.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Then, uh, one in about 50 women was being diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. And currently, uh, we're at the precipice between 1 and 7 and 1 in 8 women with an increasing incidence will be at 1 in 7. Unfortunately, sometime fairly soon. Uh, and it used to be that if you, uh, weren't yet 65, you really didn't have to worry about any incidence of breast cancer. That's changed remarkably to, uh, the increasing incidence of breast cancer is largely being borne by younger women, um, in our facility. We've had, um, several instances of girls as young as 14 being diagnosed with breast cancer. And while that is extraordinary, uh, we're seeing, uh, horrible numbers of women into their 30s and 40s being diagnosed with breast cancer. Uh, this is not just an abnormal study from us, but this is, uh, ground truth from, uh, pathology. Um.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Why do you think that is, Dr. Hoekstra? Why do you think we're seeing younger and younger women? I mean, 14 I that's I have very few words in response to that.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : The nature of the disease, uh, is uh, is changing as a result of the nature of our lifestyles. There are so many factors into this, the common use of, well, the abundance of different plasticizers and, uh, and carcinogenic chemicals.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Endocrine disruptors.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Yes. Whether it's pesticides or plastics, uh, in our food, uh, whether it's, uh, the, uh, use of pharmaceuticals. There are just many, many routes, uh, to the origins of breast cancer in every individual. And basically nowhere in the world is somebody living as they were 150 years ago when the incidence of breast cancer was so low. Um, there was a just. Maybe it was ten years ago. There was a, um, essentially an epidemic of inflammatory breast cancer taking place through North Africa. Why? I don't know. There was something, whether it was burning oil wells there or what? I don't know. Uh, but, um, um, the nature of the environment has very much changed, uh, us and put all women at much greater risk for breast cancer at younger and younger ages.

Amber Warren, PA-C: So correct me if I if I'm mistaken, the data is truly that that thermology can detect cellular changes. Potential of breast cancer 3 to 4 years before mammogram can or am I way off there?

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : No, you're not way off there at all. The numbers vary. Uh, it is uh. It's virtually impossible to do a biopsy based on a thermology finding alone, because you do need to localize it. Specific enough to do a needle biopsy. Um, and for that, you need some other means of, uh, indication. The most useful means of indication is a targeted ultrasound to match up what we're seeing metabolically with, uh, a structural feature. But, um, uh, there has been some very August centers, uh, that have, uh, that use, uh, thermology, along with mammography, with ultrasound, uh, and do biopsies there right on the site. And they've been able to demonstrate that, uh, thermology was able to detect breast cancer, uh, five years and more before, uh, it was evident any other way. Doctor Guthrie did that. This Doctor Keyserlingk demonstrated this as well. Uh, there's there's others that have published on this. Uh, it's a difficult thing to say, but again, if you follow women in the multimodality approach, then you can, uh, come up with this as a conclusion.

Amber Warren, PA-C: I, um, I wanted to revisit a couple of the things you mentioned regarding insurance coverage, and I'm a big advocate and big proponent of patients being educated on the insurance world, especially the conventional insurance world, and being aware and informed of all the different, um, how do I say this? Replacements for conventional insurance, right. These different health share plans? Um, I hesitate to mention some of them, but I will. Samaritan ministries is one, Liberty Health share is another, Medi-share is another. Um, I don't have very specific recommendations on any of them. I've heard really good things, honestly, about all of them. But I think the important thing for our patients and our community and our nation to know is that you don't have to have a conventional insurance plan that dictates how you want to be screened for breast cancer or colon cancer, or how you want to spend your healthcare dollars, right. And so, um, because we're not I mean, thermography is not expensive. It's not thousands of dollars. We're talking hundreds of dollars. And there are different non-conventional health shares and coverage systems that allow you to choose to spend your money that way. Um, and are much more affordable than some of the more conventional insurance plans. So I think, you know, I think our patients need to understand there are options, um, that actually do support this way of, of of screening, um, and have preventative health care.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : And uh, often we're, we're too shortsighted on this type of thing. It isn't very cost very much for me to maintain my hair, but for most women, they'll spend far more than that on getting their hair cut and colored and and whatever.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Uh oh, yes, they will.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : But, uh, the unfortunate thing is that, uh, breast cancer is a major problem. And, uh, uh, if you're waiting on, uh, insurance, uh, to, uh, direct, uh, preventative care, and if you're waiting on guidelines, um, uh, to, uh, direct, uh, preventative care, uh, you could be, uh, really headed towards a very sad outcome.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Yes. Well, and in that same in that same breath, I've had such a difficult time in our community here in the Treasure Valley in Idaho, finding facilities that are willing to my patients that are, that are aware of everything. We're talking about, the radiation exposure and the shortcomings of mammography. I have had such a difficult time finding facilities that are willing. If we get an orb now, say we get a TH4 um, and then we know there's further imaging that's needed. A lot of these local hospitals and imaging centers refuse to do an ultrasound and consider a biopsy in these patients without a mammogram. And I have just been knocking my head against a wall for the past 3 to 4 years, saying why.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : I really appreciate working with your group there, because I know that the, um, it's not cookbook medicine. Uh, there's actual thinking that takes place in the care of your patients. And I see that, uh, even on my more distant end, uh, for patient care. And it's one of the reasons I really appreciate working with you and your group.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Thank you. Yeah. I'm biased. I think we have some of the most fabulous practitioners in the whole world. And obviously, I'm. I'm very biased towards the field of functional and integrative medicine. And I just love what we do and love the whole the whole body care we offer both men and women. So thank you for that. That's a huge compliment to us. Um, briefly, I just wanted to touch. I assume you have a lot of the same things to say about the thyroid thermology that that we do, and that you guys read as well. Same thing regarding, um, you know, trying to avoid radiation to the thyroid gland and trying to identify early cellular changes, um, to, to help detect thyroid cancer. Anything that's worth mentioning regarding thyroid thermology.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Uh, the thyroid seems to be increasingly under assault, uh, especially for the female of the species. Um, and, uh, uh, things like Hashimoto's and Graves disease, uh, simple hypothyroidism, um, are really only, uh, being detected at later stages. Uh, and, um, there's a great deal that can be done to help women, especially women, but all, all people, uh, who have, uh, lesser degrees of thyroid disorders. Um, again, one of the nice things about thermal imaging thermography is that it is completely passive. Nobody's getting injected with radioactive iodine. Um, uh, there's no dye injections. Uh, no poking, no prodding. Um, it's as harmful as having your picture taken, even if, uh, not quite as gratifying. Um, but, uh. Yeah. Go ahead.

Amber Warren, PA-C: No, I wanted you to finish. I didn't want to. I'm sorry.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : We can pick up the metabolic features of the thyroid itself because it is so superficial. And, uh, we can also, uh, look for the signs of the autoimmune destruction taking place in the thyroid by looking at the activity of some of the superficial lymph nodes in through the neck. Um. And I'm. You've seen our questionnaire. I think we have a really good questionnaire for, uh, common symptoms. And it's amazing how many people will, uh, be marking off, uh, many of these symptoms. And in their own mind, they think it's just part of getting older or from something or another they've experienced, uh, when in fact, these are signs consistent with thyroid disease.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Right, right.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : So with a simple screening, uh, we have a very good indicator. Uh, it should be done together with, uh, some blood tests, some blood markers. Um, but that and the clinical features, I think, make a very good, uh, combination, uh, diagnostic combination for picking up thyroid disorders in your patients.

Amber Warren, PA-C: And what are the advantages of thyroid homology over a thyroid ultrasound?

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Thyroid ultrasound can do a fine job of picking up things like cysts and maybe the physical size of the thyroid, but it doesn't tell you at all what the thyroid is doing. Uh, we can actually discern the the metabolic features of the thyroid gland itself. And that's a lot more useful in terms of, um, uh, learning about the patient's symptoms and how well it's working, uh, than how it's structured. So, uh.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Physiology versus structure, same as very similar.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Oldest argument in academic medicine. And the anatomist and the physiologists don't usually sit together at lunch.

Amber Warren, PA-C: They don't. That is so true. I just so appreciate your your wisdom and your intelligence and your experience in this, in this arena, because it's such an exciting thing for us to be able to offer. And I want to just shout it from the rooftops, especially, um, now during Breast Cancer Awareness Month and, um, yeah, I'm just so thankful for you and your heart for disease prevention. And thank you for your time.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Again. Uh, I'm one of your great fans, uh, and that of your staff. Uh, all the potential for the things that we've, uh, worked out in terms of academic medicine, uh, and diagnostic medicine don't mean a thing at all unless it's put into capable hands. Uh, the kinds of care that you're providing for your patients. And, uh, I'm I'm couldn't be any more pleased, uh, that, uh, you're utilizing this in an effective way. And we really appreciate working with you and your patients.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Well, likewise, we we so enjoy working with you. And I'm looking forward to a long, bright future of, um, of communicating and just helping people, um, find wellness and heal.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Good stuff.

Amber Warren, PA-C: Yes, I love it. Okay, well, thank you so much. You take good care. We'll be in touch soon.

Dr. Philip Hoekstra III PhD, DABT : Indeed. A pleasant day to you and all.

Amber Warren, PA-C: You as well. Bye, Doctor Hoekstra.

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Amber Warren, PA-C: Thank you for listening to the Functional Medicine Foundation's podcast. For more information on topics covered today, specialties available at the FMI center for Optimal Health and the highest Quality of supplements, and more go to funmedfoundations.com.