💗 Breast Cancer Prevention: Why an Ounce of Prevention Is Better Than a Pound of Cure
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month—a time when pink ribbons pop up everywhere and mammogram reminders fill our social media feeds. While early detection matters, there’s another side of the conversation that doesn’t get enough attention: prevention.
The truth is, there’s a lot you can do to support breast health and lower your risk. Here are five practical, evidence-based steps you can start today:
🌿 1. Balance Your Hormones
Estrogen and progesterone work together to keep breast tissue healthy. But stress, toxins, and perimenopause can throw that balance off.
👉 Eat plenty of cruciferous veggies, reduce plastic use, support your liver, and prioritize good sleep to keep hormones in check. And if possible, make sure your hormone levels are in ideal range through saliva hormone testing.
👉 Eat plenty of cruciferous veggies, reduce plastic use, support your liver, and prioritize good sleep to keep hormones in check. And if possible, make sure your hormone levels are in ideal range through saliva hormone testing.
🧠 2. Support Estrogen Metabolism
Your body processes estrogen through your liver and gut. You want it moving down protective pathways, not hanging around.
👉 Flaxseed, DIM (from broccoli family veggies), fiber, healthy gut bacteria, and gut motility all help your body detox excess estrogen naturally.
👉 Flaxseed, DIM (from broccoli family veggies), fiber, healthy gut bacteria, and gut motility all help your body detox excess estrogen naturally.
🏃♀️ 3. Move Your Body
Regular exercise is one of the most powerful ways to lower risk. It helps regulate hormones, improve insulin sensitivity, and support lymph flow.
👉 Aim for 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week—walking, gardening, weight lifting- or anything you enjoy.
👉 Aim for 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week—walking, gardening, weight lifting- or anything you enjoy.
🥗 4. Eat to Protect your Cells
A colorful, anti-inflammatory diet supports hormone balance and cellular health.
👉 Think fiber-rich veggies, healthy fats, antioxidant-packed fruits, and less alcohol (even one drink a day can increase breast cancer risk).
👉 Think fiber-rich veggies, healthy fats, antioxidant-packed fruits, and less alcohol (even one drink a day can increase breast cancer risk).
💧 5. Get adequate sleep.
👉 Not getting enough sleep can throw your immune system off, lowering the cells that fight cancer and increasing the ones that help it spread. Poor sleep doesn’t just make you tired—it can actually weaken your body’s defenses against cancer and boost the cells that help it grow.
The Bottom Line
Breast cancer prevention isn’t about being perfect—it’s about small, consistent choices that add up over time. You have more power than you might think.
🎥 Join My Recorded Live Mini-Course
If you want to go deeper, get your special recorded live mini-course:
💵 Cost: $20
📍 Zoom Recording
You’ll learn:
- Hormone balance strategies for midlife women
- How to minimize environmental exposures
- The role of nutrition and targeted supplements
- Practical steps to personalize your prevention plan
Spots are limited for the live session, and the replay will be available afterward as an on-demand course.
👉 Get your recorded mini-course here »
💌 Let’s make this October the month of informed action, not fear.
Warmly,
Dr. Valerie Bonnett
Helping women thrive through hormonal transitions with science, clarity, and compassion.
Helping women thrive through hormonal transitions with science, clarity, and compassion.
Bad advice about women's hormones can be found everywhere-from social media, wellness clinics, or even your own doctor's office.
The Hormone Advice That’s Harming Women (and What to Do Instead)
Some of the most dangerous hormone advice I see online?
- Using the wrong kind of hormone testing, which can completely miss sky-high tissue levels.
- Taking hormones by mouth, which can increase your risk of blood clots, heart attacks, strokes—or even liver cancer.
- And perhaps the most shocking—putting oral progesterone capsules in the vagina or rectum. Yes, really. That can cause dangerously high progesterone levels and increase the risk of yeast infections, bloating, mood changes, and more.
These aren't rare cases—they’re happening every single day in Facebook groups, clinics, and online forums.
The #1 Mistake: Using Blood Tests to Check Hormone Levels
The most common mistake I see?
Relying on blood tests to measure hormones—especially when using topical creams or gels.
Here’s the deal: sex hormones are fat-soluble, but blood is mostly water.
Fat and water don’t mix. To travel in the bloodstream, hormones have to bind to proteins—which keeps them inactive.
Fat and water don’t mix. To travel in the bloodstream, hormones have to bind to proteins—which keeps them inactive.
That means:
- Blood tests often show hormone levels that are 100x higher than the free, active hormone levels in your tissues.
- But only free hormones—the ones in your tissues—can bind to receptors and do their job.
So if you're using a blood test, you’re likely measuring the wrong thing.
It’s like checking your gas gauge by looking at the fumes coming out of your tailpipe.
It’s like checking your gas gauge by looking at the fumes coming out of your tailpipe.
What Happens When the Wrong Testing is Done?
Providers who rely on blood tests often recommend:
- Pellets or injections, to artificially raise blood levels
- High-dose topicals, just to “move the needle” on bloodwork
- Or even no testing at all, dosing hormones based on symptoms alone (a common approach promoted by pharma-funded groups)
But without accurate testing—like saliva testing, which reflects free hormone levels in your tissues— you’re flying blind. And you can’t find true balance that way.
The Long-Term Risks of Doing It Wrong
Sure, you might feel better at first—more energy, increased libido, maybe some weight loss.
But without the right testing and dosing, those benefits often fade…
and you’re left worse than before.
and you’re left worse than before.
Too much testosterone?
You might experience:
You might experience:
- Hair loss
- Acne
- Voice deepening
- Facial hair growth
- Clitoral enlargement
Some of those effects can be permanent—and incredibly difficult to reverse.
Not All “Hormone Experts” Are Created Equal
Let’s be honest: it’s a wild west out there.
“Functional medicine” clinics are popping up everywhere—often run by people who have never done a pelvic exam, delivered a baby, or cared for a woman’s hormones through the real stages of life.
Some “experts” have as little as 2,000 hours of direct patient care during their training-total.
Meanwhile, I’ve spent a lifetime learning what works—and what doesn’t—for real women.
Why I’m Different—And Why That Matters
I’m Dr. Valerie Bonnett, and I’ve dedicated my life to helping women understand and safely balance their hormones.
- I spent over a decade studying the science of the human body through medical school and residency.
- I delivered over 1,500 babies and cared for thousands of women as a practicing MD.
- I’ve pursued advanced training in functional medicine and bio-identical hormone therapy.
- I continue learning almost every day—to give women better answers than they’re getting elsewhere.
I’m not just frustrated—I’m heartbroken watching women waste money and wreck their health based on poor advice.
You deserve better.
Get the Right Guidance—Before It’s Too Late
If you're tired of the confusion and want to become your own hormone expert—so you can get real results that last—start here:
👉 Learn More About Hormonal Harmony
Already messed up by pellets, injectables, or high-dose topicals?
DM me for support. I’ll do what I can—but please know:
DM me for support. I’ll do what I can—but please know:
🔁 It's much harder to fix hormones after the wrong approach than to get it right from the beginning.
Your health is too important to leave to chance. Let’s do it the right way—together.
Recently, a dear friend confided that she was really starting to suffer with some perimenopausal symptoms. She just happens to be in the late perimenopausal stage and will probably be transitioning into menopause soon. Like many, if not most women in their 40s and 50s, she is also under a significant amount of stress. She said something that was sad, chilling, and all too common. Her comment was, “I can see why women going through this commit suicide.”
For quite awhile now, I have been reading about the link between hormone loss and its link to brain disfunction and mood disorders, including suicide. The website Hormones Matter has posted many articles by women who developed depression, hopelessness, and suicidal thoughts following hysterectomy. A study in Korea showed that women who had premature ovarian failure (ovaries that weren't producing hormones normally) had a much higher rate of suicidal thoughts. A study of Japanese mothers of teens showed that suicidal thoughts increased significantly during perimenopause and menopause.
What is the common denominator between hysterectomy, premature ovarian insufficiency, perimenopause, and menopause? Obviously, it’s the loss (or fluctuation) of hormones.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, one of the biggest problems for women who have had a hysterectomy or those who have just gone through menopause naturally, is that they haven’t been given appropriate hormone replacement.
The vast majority of women who have had a hysterectomy are placed on estrogen alone (or sometimes estradiol plus testosterone) being told that they do not need progesterone since they don’t have a uterus.
Progesterone is necessary for health. The only women who need progesterone are those with a brain, breasts, or bones! Pretty much every cell in our body requires progesterone to function optimally.
Also, for the vast majority of women, including those who have had a hysterectomy (or gone through menopause naturally), androgen levels are never addressed. The loss of DHEA and testosterone can cause severe fatigue, apathy, depression, loss of libido, brain fog, memory issues and loss of brain, muscle, and bone tissue. These hormones should be measured and replaced appropriately.
Stress and its impact on cortisol is another big issue that needs to be addressed. All women who have had a hysterectomy, and most women who are perimenopausal or have gone through menopause naturally, have had tremendous stressors. Yet most women never have had their cortisol levels measured. Chronic or severe stress can cause adrenal fatigue, with resultant brain fog, memory problems, exhaustion, depression, and overwhelming hopelessness. Adrenal health needs to be addressed. If a woman has adrenal fatigue, she will benefit from getting all hormones optimized. She may also need targeted and thoughtful supplements, improved sleep environment, gentle movement, healthy relationships (sometimes with improved boundaries), and stress reduction and stress management techniques.
How do you determine if each of these hormones (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, and cortisol) are depleted or in ideal range?
By accurately measuring tissue levels of these hormones through saliva testing. Once hormone levels are known, women should work with a specialist who utilizes saliva testing and uses low-dose, bio-identical hormone replacement to get each hormone into ideal range.
Being able to recover after hysterectomy or natural menopause requires looking at and replacing all of the missing pieces, not just estrogen.
Progesterone is one of my favorite hormones. Learning about the importance of our natural, God-given progesterone during my first functional medicine course was life-changing personally. It also probably marked the beginning of the end of my career in Western Medicine. Learning about progesterone (and other hormones, vitamins, minerals, and lifestyle modifications that actually could improve our health and reverse disease) taught me that allopathic medicine might have been able to treat symptoms, but not help us feel better or live longer.
Progesterone is vitally important for optimal health in women, and yet it is almost totally ignored by most medical practitioners–including those prescribing hormone replacement.
Women are told that they don’t need progesterone if they don’t have a uterus. Or that synthetic progestins have all the benefits of natural progesterone.
Both of these statements are untrue and harmful for women of all ages, from teens with PMS and acne, to women struggling with infertility, to postmenopausal women with poor sleep and osteoporosis.
Progesterone is important for all areas of the body, but especially for the brain, bones, and breast tissue. I would go so far as to say that it might not be possible to have a healthy brain without progesterone.
And yet many women who are given prescriptions for hormonal replacement are not given progesterone if they have had a hysterectomy. And even if they still have a uterus, many women are prescribed unnatural, unsafe, synthetic progestins. Progestins are molecules that are shaped similarly to progesterone but can behave the opposite of progesterone. Progestins can cause bone loss, mood issues, and an increased risk of breast cancer-and more.
And it’s not any better online. Some social media “experts” are recommending that women use dosages of progesterone that are up to 10 or 20 times more than a young healthy woman would make. Most of the time this is because they are using blood or urine tests to measure hormones. Using these tests can cause women to massively overdose on progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone.
Another reason women are overdosing on progesterone is because they are being instructed to use oral progesterone vaginally or rectally. This is very problematic for a few reasons. When progesterone is used orally nearly all of it is metabolized by the liver and only a very small amount remains as progesterone. Oral progesterone dosages are often 10 times higher than the amount made by healthy young women. When oral progesterone is used vaginally or rectally, it doesn't go into the gut initially and isn’t broken down by the liver. This usually leads to massive overdosing of progesterone. And that much excess progesterone can convert to cortisol-causing yeast infections, poor immune system function, high blood sugar & insulin levels, resulting in weight gain.
When it comes to progesterone, like many things in our bodies, more is not better.
Understanding the differences between routes of administration and dosages are extremely important. And knowing which delivery systems and testing is necessary to know how much progesterone is being absorbed is vital.
Most doctors believe that FDA approved hormones for menopause are safer than bio-identical hormones? Is this really true? Does it even make sense? Here are a few of my thoughts on the issue, and why I believe measuring levels and using bio-identical hormones are superior.
In this video, I review a discussion between a famous podcaster and a board certified OBGyn as they talk about hormone replacement.
This is my opinion based on my background as a family doc who did extra courses in functional medicine and incorporated this training in my practice, seeing hundreds of patients, and getting some remarkable results.
The purpose of this video is to provide an alternative to traditional hormone replacement, but with all online sources, use your own discernment and follow up with a well trained functional medicine provider for specific treatment options.
This is my opinion based on my background as a family doc who did extra courses in functional medicine and incorporated this training in my practice, seeing hundreds of patients, and getting some remarkable results.
The purpose of this video is to provide an alternative to traditional hormone replacement, but with all online sources, use your own discernment and follow up with a well trained functional medicine provider for specific treatment options.
