Latest / Motherhood Alliance Podcast / Thermography, Part 2: Understanding Your Results w/ Tanya Voss | Keep Cool Thermography
Transcript
- Britney Suttner: Hi, I am Britt from motherhoodalliance.com and today I'm excited to welcome you to a three episode series with Tanya Voss, a certified thermography technician and the owner of Keep Cool Thermography. Through thermography, which is a pain-free and radiation-free imaging technique that uses heat and temperature patterns in the body, Tanya helps women and men identify areas of inflammation, increased estrogen activity, and other potential imbalances within the body. Outside of her work, Tanya is a wife and a mom of three who loves spending time at home with her family reading and she also loves hand embroidery. She and her husband are celebrating 10 years of marriage this year and together they're raising their three kids ages eight, five, and three. We are excited to dive into thermography in these episodes and I'm really excited to introduce you to Tanya now. Let's get started. Hey everyone, welcome back to our Thermography series. We are heading into episode number two. I will say that if you did not listen to episode number one, please hit pause right now and head back to that one. Cause that was really like our 101 episode where Tanya dove deep into like what, actually is thermography? Who is it for? Why would you do it? What does it actually mean? All of those basic questions. And I feel like that's a really good foundational knowledge Tanya: I'm going leave this off. Britney Suttner: that you're going to need heading into this episode. But in this episode, we want to spend a little bit more time talking about the results. And so, you you get your scan done, you get your results back, likely there's going to be differences in temperature coming from your body. like, what does that mean? Should you be getting nervous about it? Should you not? So I guess, Tanya, maybe the first question it's, and we might touch a little bit on some things that we touched on in episode one, just so that those jumping in here can Tanya: Thank Britney Suttner: have a basic knowledge. But what are you commonly seeing in a thermography scan? Kind of walk us again through what are you looking for? What is like a great image versus what are the red flags? Tanya: So a great image would be low estrogen, no hot spots, especially for the breast. But even for the whole body, there's like in our backs, especially there is always going to be inflammation because we're active moving beings. So I've never seen a scan that has not had there's usually three sentences. It's like number one, number two, number three. I think my children can say them in their sleep because I say them. all the time. mean, 90 % of scans have these exact same three sentences. Sometimes you only have two and that's great, but there's always like three, like with the lumbar spine, the trapezius and rhomboid muscular irritation, which is just normal. We're active moving beings, so there's always gonna be some sort of inflammation in our backs. That's pretty common. Now when it's one-sided, like say left shoulder That would be something that could be seen. Be like, yeah, I tweaked it when I was lifting or I tweaked it in tennis or just whatever happened. They usually are like, yeah, that happened. And they forgot about it, right? Until like you mentioned it. same with your knees, I like to run. And so sometimes my knee can get kind of wonky, but it's nothing to really worry about. It's just like a, yeah. gonna be some inflammation in there, you know. A good scan, you know, would be especially the abdomen. The abdomen, as long as we can keep that clean and like no inflammation in there, that is a gold star. That's what you want. Like that's the end goal because even for the breast health and even the thyroid health, it all starts in your gut. So you can calm that inflammation down, then you can focus on other parts of the body. So having your, and a clean abdomen scan. or not to say, but a no inflammation abdomen scan is like key. Britney Suttner: How often are you seeing a clean one? Are people's admins typically inflamed? Okay. Tanya: Yeah, they are. mean, mine included, right? I've been doing this for 12 years and I've had probably 100 scans at this point and I'm still working at it. So it's definitely if people are, if they do have a no inflammation in their belly, I am like, you are better than 80 % of us because you know, you're like one step ahead of most people because That's like the number one place you want to start. And after that, it's just kind of like a domino effect, right? Then you can focus on specific areas, but getting the gut calmed down first, when inflammation is going to be the number one thing to work on. Britney Suttner: Okay, so let's just stick there for a second. If somebody is showing inflammation in their gut, that's kind of the first place they need to start. What is your recommendation next for them to do? Do you refer them to a functional gut professional? Do you have certain supplements you're recommending? Like where do they go from there? Tanya: Sure, so I have different practitioners that I like to send people to depending on what they need and like especially when we look at the whole picture, right? Like not just their belly health, but how was their breast scan? Like how was their estrogen level in that? And then I can kind of pick and choose who I would recommend them to see after that. As far as advice, I can't give medical advice, but I can tell people what I would do if this was my scan and they can take that for what it's worth. There are different herbs that I like that are totally safe. My favorite for estrogen, especially is artichoke extract. And that one is just really great. It's an estrogen metabolizer. So it's not going to eliminate your estrogen because you don't want that. That's like horrible. We're women, we always need some estrogen, but it's going to kind of help metabolize the words and get it out of place so that it's not supposed to be like your breast, like your ovaries. So because sometimes like after we have babies done nursing, that estrogen doesn't get the memo that it needs to leave. So it just kind of hangs out in there. we can talk about that in the next episode. getting that out of there and keeping it at a normal level is gonna be really important because then that's when we don't see things start to escalate. Britney Suttner: Okay. And you've talked a little bit about thyroid as well. If somebody is showing a lot of heat coming from their thyroid, what does that typically mean? And then what are their next steps? Tanya: Most people are have their thyroid monitored even by their like their general practitioner. They don't have to be holistic, but they are monitoring your thyroid like, my thyroid is fine. Then I tell them not to worry about it. As long as it's being monitored by a medical professional, don't worry about it because truly the thyroid can change, you know, by the day. I mean, if you're nervous, sometimes it can be elevated if, you know, just if you're anxious or even just if you had allergies. I mean, so many things can impact that, that as long as it's being monitored. I used to people just trust your gut on that and then go with that. you're like, well, I am kind of noticing some things and it's like, okay, maybe it's time for another blood test, you know, and then you could talk to your doctor about that and go from there too. Britney Suttner: Is doing this on a regular basis, even like every few years, a really good prevention tool for cancer overall? Tanya: It is a preventative tool. only thing thermography cannot diagnose. The only way to know for sure if something is cancerous is by a biopsy. I mean, sometimes like your mammograms can say, looks like it could be cancer, but the only way to truly know for sure is by getting a biopsy. So, therography can not, like absolutely not diagnose, but it can detect inflammation. whether it was, if say you had a tumor, if there was no heat coming from it, I can't say it wouldn't be cancerous, but there will be no inflammation coming from it. So that's, to us, you wouldn't be able to even see it. You know what I mean? So say you have felt a tumor, but if there's no heat coming from it, we have no idea where it was. Cause therography detects inflammation. And so, say you had a cancerous tumor or even a tumor that had heat coming from it, we would be able to spot it. But with it being in the abdomen area, we wouldn't know for sure exactly what it was. It could be a list of a couple of things. Because like I said, in the first episode, there are multiple layers to your abdomen. Britney Suttner: Okay, but let's say that somebody has colon cancer. Will there be an indicator on their thermography scan? there be heat? Does cancer create heat? Meaning it will be on the scan if you have it, most likely. Tanya: Most likely, yes. Yep. There Britney Suttner: Okay. Okay. Tanya: are some rare cancers that are super slow growing that don't throw off any heat. And I have had one of those and my business partner has also had one. So in the collective 30 years that we've been in business, it's super rare, but it is possible. So that's why we would never say like this takes the place of anything. But looking at your overall health too, you can kind of know. Like if you're not doing saunas, you're drinking a lot, if you're smoking, if you're having processed foods, if you're having a lot of sugar, just very unhealthy, it can lead to an environment, an unhealthy environment, which can lead to cancers and tumors and things like that. Not a guarantee. Some people, you know, can do those things and be totally fine. But being aware and trying to be healthy and even if you have a bad scan or say something does come back, you can't go in reverse, but you can do things to combat that. Britney Suttner: Okay, so let's stick on that. Let's talk about lifestyle a bit. So if somebody has a scan and there's some things to work on, what lifestyle things can they change to start backtracking some of the heat and inflammation that they're seeing in their scan? Tanya: So when it comes to breast health specifically, sugar stress and soy are the three biggest things that impact breast health. So, and the reason we say soy is because it can act like a phytoestrogen in the body. It acts like an estrogen in the body. And so if you already have a high estrogen, you're putting potentially, and it's not in everybody. It's probably an eight out of 10 people that this can happen to. Flax is kind of another one, but that happens in even less people. say you have high estrogen, once you know what makes you feel better or worse, like if you have lot of the nightshades and they just don't make you feel good, you can kind of, Britney Suttner: What do mean by night shades? Tanya: those are some vegetables, They're good for most people like broccoli and things like that, but sometimes people with higher estrogen don't do well with them. So Britney Suttner: Mm. Tanya: kind of getting in tune with your body and seeing how foods make you feel, even something as simple as the foods and sensitivity test is a game changer for people. I know for myself, when I had my first scan done with my business partner, Melissa, before I started this, I had gotten a foods and sensitivity test after that. My estrogen was at a level three, which I can talk about. I'll explain what that means later, but it's a scale of zero to four and my estrogen was at a three and I was in my early 20s. So I was young. I wasn't on birth control, wasn't pregnant, wasn't nursing. So there's no reason my estrogen should have been that high. I had a flu sensitivity test and I cut most of my like high level sensitivities out for one year. And in one year, my estrogen went from a three to a one and my hotspots disappeared. So Britney Suttner: Hmm. Tanya: to say that you can't heal your body, is just not true. can. So once I realized how things made me feel, I didn't realize how bad I was feeling until I wasn't feeling bad and then introduced something back in that didn't make me feel good. So you only know what you know. And then, you know, once you can start to listen to your body, it's amazing what it will tell you. Britney Suttner: Yeah. I feel like a lot of what you're starting to touch on here, like sugars and alcohol and smoking and like these things, these are all overall just like preventative lifestyle things that we should be paying attention to. But in today's society, we're like cheeseburgers and fast food are screaming at us all the time. And we just, you know, the Packer game is on and you feel like you should have a drink with it. these things just overtake us in society, but these are the slow growing habits that can stack up to giving us results on our thermography scan, right? That maybe we weren't expecting. let's just talk about prevention in general and like really good habits. mentioned sauna and detoxing talk a little bit more about that aspect of how what somebody should be doing in those realms to help make sure that their body is staying in a, in a great study state. Tanya: Yeah, so detoxing is super important. there are local businesses that offer saunas if you don't have one in your home. And I know Beam is one, they're really great. And the infrared is awesome because you're allowing your body to detox like through your pores, but then also making sure you include a binder with it because you're gonna be like activating that. all those toxins and you want to be able to like bind them up and pull them out. but then also making sure that you can keep your lymph moving is super important because you do have major lymph nodes that go right from your armpit into your breast and so those can get clogged. So even something as simple as your deodorant, if you have a the, or a generic, or a Walgreens deodorant, like a Dover, I don't want to throw any companies under the bus, but they usually have metals in their deodorants which can clog your lymph nodes and they can get stuck in there and then that's just what we see. negative things happening from that. So getting a natural deodorant, that is a process. So if you're doing that, it is a process. So just stay with it and it will get better, I promise. So that, but your armpits essentially have to detox themselves. And so keeping a deodorant in your purse will be a lifesaver for you. But once you get through that detoxing period, it's such a game changer and you almost like don't really smell. Do you know I mean? Like you still put on deodorant just because sometimes you can get stinky, but otherwise once you get rid of those toxins in there, it, you don't essentially really stink. So it's just amazing. And, but just go with the process. And if you do decide to de-tax your armpits, it will get better. promise. Britney Suttner: Okay, and you're talking about lymph nodes. So I'm guessing you're gonna be heading in the direction of lymphatic drainage because that's also a part of detoxing. Is that something you recommend for people? And then in like what modalities? Tanya: Yeah, so there are really great people on Instagram. There's one that's called Jack Talks Detox. She has like amazing videos as to how to massage and make sure like even just all over your body like depending what you what lymph nodes you want to do or what lymph you want to keep keep moving. There's even like vibration plates but those can sometimes cause more harm than good like if you have some lymph blockage or lymph congestion. Essentially, if you're shaking up your lymph and then it gets stuck, you can kind of get like almost like a histamine sort of reaction. If you are already doing it and you feel fine, that's great. But just to kind of keep that in your back pocket that it's not for everyone. But and sometimes I recommend too, if people can't do the vibration plate or maybe they don't have one, when they like get out of bed in the morning or even just randomly throughout the day, if you just kind of rock up on your feet and don't like slam your heels back down, but just kind of go up and then lightly tap your heel onto the ground, that can essentially create that like motion and yep and kind of Britney Suttner: Pump. Tanya: keep things awake and just keep keep them flowing but those there's some really awesome videos as to waking up your lamp and how like what direction you should go because you know you have to go like certain ways and then even like just the breast cells like she'll just do all these things and it's really really awesome and very helpful videos on there. Britney Suttner: Okay, just to finish up this episode, do you have any example of somebody who came in with a type of scan? Obviously, you're not sharing their name or anything like that, but they had some sort of a scan. And let's save a breast example for next time. If you had anything from like a different area of the body where they came in, they had a scan that needed some attention, they worked on some things, lifestyle-wise, and then they came back and it looked better. Do you have any ideas or examples of when you've experienced that? Tanya: Yeah, I've had a couple, well several actually, who have come in and their belly health was really bad, just really inflamed, thyroid was off, just, you could just tell that they had general inflammation all over. And it was symmetrical, which is good, right? But like also really bad. and then once they kept coming back and worked with like some natural people to kind of get the inflammation down in their bodies, whether it was tumeric or whatever worked. best for them. had like other tests to see what was really going on. And then they've come back and now I mean, they have like perfect, you know, almost near perfect scans. And it's just amazing to see that you can actually heal your body. You can calm down the inflammation, which is just so cool and really encouraging. But it is a process. Like it didn't happen overnight. It's not going to change overnight. So being patient, sticking with it. I know it can be costly, but you know, your health is worth it. Britney Suttner: Yeah, that's great. All right. Well, we have one more episode coming up. We're going to be diving fully into breast health and how thermography is really becoming well known for prevention in that arena. And I can't wait to learn more and deeper on that topic. We've touched on it here in these last two episodes, but we're going to be going way deeper in this next episode. So thank you, Tanya. We have one more coming up.