Suzanne Somers has written 20 books preaching the gospel of health and wellness since her “Three’s Company” days. But the Hollywood star’s latest health crusade is much more personal and far-reaching than anything she’s done before.
The glamorous actress has made herself the poster child for a ground-breaking new stem-cell procedure that has allowed her to essentially rebuild the breast she lost to cancer using her body’s own tissues.
In a series of exclusive Newsmax Health video interviews, Suzanne, still beautiful at 63, candidly discusses the intimate details of her breast cancer ordeal and the experimental treatment doctors used to make herself “whole again.” She explains why she believes birth control pills caused her breast cancer, and how she came to her courageous decision to become a “human guinea pig” by undergoing a new stem-cell procedure instead of conventional surgical breast reconstruction. She explains how and why her experiences may open the door for other breast cancer patients to use the new stem-cell approach.
Her story is both a compelling tale of Suzanne’s harrowing personal journey with breast cancer, and an eye-opening example of how the promise of stem-cell research is becoming a clinical reality. She says she decided to tell her story to Newsmax Health to bring wider attention to the procedure.
When Suzanne was diagnosed with breast cancer a decade ago, she underwent a lumpectomy to remove the tumor, but refused to have the conventional reconstruction surgery most women undergo to rebuild the breast.
The reason: She believed medical research would lead to a better way to restore her body and was willing to wait for it. Last summer, the wait ended when she became the first woman in the United States to undergo a pioneering new procedure: stem cell breast reconstruction. Today, she is spreading the word on the option so other women may be able to make a similar choice.
When speaking to Newsmax Health, Suzanne revealed for the first time what she believes was the cause of her cancer.
“I took birth control pills for 22 years,” says Suzanne. “Has anyone ever done the study to make the connection between birth control pills and breast cancer? I don’t know. I doubt it’ll ever be done, but what I do realize about birth control pills is that a woman doesn’t fully ovulate…so therefore you’re messing with nature. And any time you mess with the balance of nature I think you’re setting yourself up for jeopardy.”
While considering her treatment options, Somers’ doctor performed hormone testing. The tests determined that she had a genetic defect that causes an imbalance that her doctor said might leave her vulnerable to cancer.
“He said I’m worried about the possibility of your getting a recurrence,” she recalls. “My body doesn’t make estriol, which is the cancer-protective component of estrogen.
“The remedy is so simple — what he does now with my hormone regimen is he adds in the hormone replacement of the estriol…and I’m protecting myself from getting a recurrence.”
She believes the combination of birth control pills and her hormonal imbalance may have led to her disease, but acknowledges there’s no way to know for certain.
Although Suzanne underwent a lumpectomy, and not a mastectomy, her tumor was so large and deep the surgeons had to remove most of her breast.
“When they took the bandages off, two-thirds of my breast was gone,” she remembers.
The doctors gave her two options: implants or a type of breast-reconstruction surgery called a “TRAM flap,” where a woman’s own body fat, skin and muscle — usually taken from the abdomen — are used to rebuild her breast. Somers didn’t like either option.
“I asked why implants?” she relates. “They said, ‘Well you have to do both to create symmetry. And I said, so you’re going to remove my good one? I don’t think so. And I don’t want a foreign object in my body. And they said we could do a TRAM flap… [But] there’s a long recovery time and the look of it is not natural.
“So I said, ‘You know what: Sew me up. And something better will come along.’”
Suzanne considers herself lucky that surgeons were able to maintain the skin and nipple of her breast, but she did opt for radiation after surgery, which also had a significant downside.
“I had radiation, which kills the breast, and so month after month, year after year, it got flatter and flatter and flatter until it looked as though I’d had a complete mastectomy and there was no breast there.”
At the time she also refused chemotherapy and the anti-cancer drug tamoxifen, but stayed with her modified hormone-replacement regimen and ramped up her focus on organic foods.
“[It] upset my doctors that I believed it’s an environment of balanced hormones that prevents disease,” she says. “And I decided that I would eat as though my life depended on it and that’s when I really took my diet — relative to organic food — seriously.”
For more on Suzanne’s cancer treatment, go to her website at: suzannesomers.com.
Coming next: Suzanne tells Newsmax Health how doctors rebuilt the breast she lost to cancer using her own stem cells.
Editor's Note: Suzanne Somers Interviews the Doctors Quietly Curing Cancer.
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