The Full-Body Scan That Found Her Brain Cancer With Zero Symptoms

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Welcome to the Functional Aesthetician, a podcast where skin health meets whole body wellness.
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I'm Samantha Dunch, a licensed aesthetician, owner of Skin Deep Aesthetics, author, and a doctor of functional medicine.
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My mission is to help you see the bigger picture because healthy skin starts from within.
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In each episode, we'll explore the gut skin access, hormones, nutrition, skin care, and wellness tools you can use to transform your skin.
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Welcome to the Functional Esthetician Podcast.
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I'm your host, Samantha Dench.
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Today's special guest is Andrea Schaefer, an oncology nutrition consultant.
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We are going to talk about natural ways to heal cancer, nutrition, toxins, and mind-body-soul healing.
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Before we get to today's interview, let me introduce Andrea.
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Andrea Schaefer is an oncology nutrition consultant, advanced integrative metabolic specialist, terrain advocate, and founder of not just broccoli, oncology nutrition.
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She specializes in helping clients navigate cancer through a personalized, evidence-informed approach that addresses nutrition, metabolic health, lifestyle factors, and the body's internal terrain.
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Andrea's passion for oncology nutrition began after witnessing her mother's cancer journey as a teenager, inspiring a lifelong pursuit of understanding how food, lifestyle, and environmental factors influence health and healing.
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Her professional path took on new meaning when she was unexpectedly diagnosed with a cancerous grade three brain tumor in 2023.
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Drawing on her extensive training in metabolic oncology, she became an active participant in her own healing journey, combining surgery with personalized metabolic nutrition and lifestyle strategies.
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Today, Andrea blends professional expertise with lived experience to help clients move beyond overwhelm and taking meaningful action.
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Her mission is to empower individuals with the knowledge, tools, and support needed to optimize health and improve quality of life during and beyond a cancer diagnosis.
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Hi Andrea, welcome to the Functional Esthetician Podcast.
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Thanks so much for having me.
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I'm so excited to talk to you today.
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I'm going to have you introduce yourself, share a little story of how you got started and how you got to where you are today.
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I am an oncology nutrition consultant, and I got interested in oncology because my mom had breast cancer when I was a teenager.
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It was a thing that I knew that I may have to deal with in my lifetime, and so I wanted to be ready.
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And indeed, in 2023, after a very stressful year of moving across the country, I decided to focus a little more deeply on my health.
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And I decided to start this process off by getting a full body MRI scan at a company called Prenuvo.
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Now, this is a scan that's outside of the medical system, it is not connected to any particular doctor.
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You pay cash and you go get your full body MRI scan.
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So I get the scan and they told me you'll have your results in about 15 days.
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But that night I got a phone message while I was out at dinner.
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Andrea, we need to talk to you.
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There's something in your scan.
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And at 9 o'clock at night, there's no one to talk to about these things.
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I waited till the next morning, I called them, and I was able to speak to a nurse practitioner who gave me my scan results.
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They started with the top of the body.
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You have a 2.3 by 2.4 centimeter mass in the right temporal lobe of your brain.
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I had no symptoms.
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I didn't have any clue that this would be the news I would receive.
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But I'm an oncology nutritionist.
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Luckily, I had contacts that could help me move forward within the medical system, and I knew what to do outside of the medical system.
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I immediately went on a ketogenic diet because that is the best case scenario for a brain cancer.
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Brain cancers are very sugar hungry, so reducing the sugar in my diet and my blood sugar was top priority.
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And I managed to get in with one of the best neurosurgeons in the world at Barrow Neurological in Phoenix.
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And he was able to take out the entire tumor, which is a very fortunate thing with brain cancers.
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It was a grade three oligodendroglioma.
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And my neurosurgeon is a very special guy, and he agreed with me on how to approach my brain cancer.
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I would continue on to do as I was doing with the metabolic approach to cancer, and I would not do conventional treatments at that time.
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I just had a three and a half year scan, and my brain looks beautiful.
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Wow, that's amazing.
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I love your story.
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And I love that you went keto because I feel like keto can be controversial, but being a functional medicine doctor, I put a lot of people on a keto diet because I feel like it is so great for our metabolic health.
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And someone will argue with you and say like it's not the best, but I truly believe for brain health, it really is because our brain runs on ketones.
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And you mentioned earlier cancer loves sugar, and it's it's unfortunate that people have cancer and they're doing all these treatments and they're still eating candy and sugar and carbs.
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Sometimes in the waiting room.
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Yes.
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And it's October, so it's breast cancer month, and there's pink chocolates everywhere.
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Completely the wrong approach to give cancer patients sugar while they're having their treatments.
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Let's dive into the ketogenic diet because I feel like some people hear about it and they're not too familiar with it.
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The ketogenic diet allows your body to run on ketones, which is an alternative source of energy.
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We have sugar we can run on, and we have ketones we can run on.
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But how do we get there?
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We reduce our carbohydrates dramatically.
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I eat about 20 carbs a day, and we increase fat.
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Ketones are made from fat.
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And we generally have quite a lot of fat in the diet, and that way our energy comes from the ketones that are made in our liver, and it's actually a wonderful form of energy.
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It's clean burning, your brain will feel clear, and it's long-lasting.
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You lose that sense of, oh my gosh, I'm hungry, I'm hangry, and somebody better feed me now.
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I don't have that feeling ever.
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I started keto back in 2018, and then December will be three years.
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My boyfriend and I switched over to carnivore, and I crave red meat and I love eating fat.
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For me, the carbs they bloat me.
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I ended up giving up a lot of the vegetables, and honestly, I feel so much better.
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But for a lot of people, I feel like keto is good because it's like your vegetables are considered your carbs.
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Yes.
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I do encourage people to do a sort of Mediterranean style of keto rather than just bacon and slathering on fats that might not be as high quality.
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We definitely want high quality fats on a ketogenic diet.
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Yeah, for sure.
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Let's shift back to your cancer.
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So why is cancer more than just a tumor?
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Cancer is more than just a tumor because we are built on systems.
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Our bodies are made up of many, many, many systems, and tumors can grow when there are imbalances, be it blood sugar imbalances, toxins.
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In order to increase your probability of beating cancer, it's not just about attacking the tumor with chemo, radiation, surgery, immunotherapy, or targeted drugs.
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It's about creating an environment in your body that makes cancer not want to grow there.
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If you think about the body as if it were a garden, after you maybe abuse your body a little bit or you come in contact with a toxin or ample stress, the environment in your body is not as good and cancer can arise.
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But if you address all these things and you work on your health, then cancer has a harder time proliferating.
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And you said your doctor was okay with you not doing chemo and radiation, correct?
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My neurosurgeon was absolutely okay with it.
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He is trained in the metabolic approach to cancer.
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He's kind of a unicorn in the neurosurgeon world.
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And thank goodness, because my first few scans after surgery, what he told me was if you had done radiation or chemo, your brain would not look so good.
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That's amazing because I feel like most doctors wouldn't even have that conversation.
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Most doctors have to conform with standard of care, and that is directed.
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I don't even have an oncologist.
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I only go to my neurosurgeon.
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He monitors my labs every six months and we check in to make sure things are still going well.
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I also work with integrated oncology doctors who actually look at my terrain, at my body, and how it's working, and we look at it through labs.
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We do comprehensive labs every six weeks or so, and that gives us an indication of how things are actually going in the body.
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Labs are so key.
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And I love that more integrative, functional, holistic doctors will look a little bit deeper into labs, and they do run more frequent labs.
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For my patients, I always try to run them every three to six months, depending on the severity of what they come to see me with, because I feel like labs give the answers.
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I always tell people test, don't guess, because you can assume that, oh, this might be causing this, but until you actually see those lab numbers on paper, it's like, okay, this is where we need to focus our attention.
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It's a window into your body, it's your biofeedback.
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And having that information is super helpful.
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Now, a lot of doctors don't want to run comprehensive labs, and that can be an issue.
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So that is actually something that I often do for my clients so that we can get a real idea of what that looks like together.
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And you teach your clients how to advocate for themselves, correct?
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Absolutely.
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Let's walk through that process.
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Advocating for your health is the number one thing you can do to make sure you get what you need out of the medical system.
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Our net medical system, as I found out myself, can be very difficult to navigate.
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After I got my scan, I didn't have a doctor because we had just moved.
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And so I had to advocate for myself, self-refer myself into the medical system where we were living, and it was really difficult.
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And then when it came time to choose neurosurgeons, I know this one neurosurgeon in Arizona is amazing.
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I will likely go with him, but I felt like I needed to have multiple opinions.
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I always recommend that you get multiple opinions, and this is one way you can advocate for yourself.
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Not everyone approaches a disease in the same way, and so that can have a profound impact on your journey through it.
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So I reached out to the neurosurgeon at the local hospital system where we were living, and he said, You need to go get an MRI with contrast.
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I didn't want to do contrast, and there was a bit of back and forth, and initially he said he would not even see me.
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I knew immediately that he was not the doctor for me.
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It was something that was plainly obvious, so I did indeed go to Arizona, and I have never had gadolinium in my contrast or any contrast whatsoever in any scan I've ever gotten.
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Knowing what your limitations are, where you draw the line of what you will do with your body and what you won't do is really important.
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So I always coach my clients on this.
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If there's something that means something to you and you don't want to do it, let's say you decided you didn't want to do a mammogram but you wanted to do an MRI scan or an ultrasound instead, you should have that choice and you should be able to advocate for that.
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What do you feel about thermography?
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It can let us know that something is going on, but it's not specific or diagnostic.
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So if you truly have an issue, it is a good idea to look deeper with something like an MRI or a ultrasound, or depending on what is going on, further testing that would give you a little more of an idea of what exactly is going on.
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And the scan you got, let's talk about that because most people aren't familiar with it.
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Pranuo came out with a full-body MRI scan.
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Now these scans are contrastless and they essentially scan your entire body, which is so helpful.
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Had I just done part of my body, let's say I just had an MRI of my torso to see if I had any breast cancer or something else brewing in the middle of my body, I never would have caught it because it was in my brain.
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It's very useful to have a baseline scan to understand what's happening in your body.
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The brain tumor was not the only thing I learned from that scan.
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I actually had a nodule on my thyroid, which I later had ultrasounded and they couldn't find it.
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But it was there on that scan.
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Our bodies inside it's hard to know what's going on until symptoms arise.
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And I am super grateful that I got the scan before symptoms arose because ultimately the symptoms you get with a brain tumor are seizures.
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And in fact, the day before my surgery, my neurosurgeon said to me, Are you sure you have never had a seizure?
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No?
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No seizures.
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Because your hippocampus is being compressed in half, and that causes seizures.
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So I'm lucky.
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You're very lucky.
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Wow.
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People have seizures or headaches or migraines, or they get some kind of symptom or signal from the body that something's not right, and that's when they start to pay attention.
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I'm glad you went and got that scan.
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Me too.
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I'm forever grateful.
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And then let's talk about contrast because most people get contrast when they when they run certain tests.
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Contrast consists of gadolinium, which is a heavy metal.
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And what it does on a scan is it makes it images pop.
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My MRI images look just fine.
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You can see very well what's going on.
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But with contrast, it's even more obvious.
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And so a lot of uh doctors don't want to consider not getting gadolinium, but as a heavy metal, it does accumulate.
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My neurosurgeon claims, well, your kidneys do flush it out.
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But I can tell you, I have a lot of clients, and sometimes we do toxin testing, and gadolinium is always high.
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Brain cancers are often caused by toxins.
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Removing toxins from your life is very helpful.
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And that is one of the ways that I have managed to do that is not getting contrast and also detoxifying my entire life.
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I want to talk about toxins because as a functional medicine doctor, toxins are it's everywhere, and it's hard to not get them in your body.
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What tests do you run for toxic panels?
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I like two tests.
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Mosaic has a fantastic test, and vibrant wellness has a very good test.
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And both of those are very accurate.
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They can test for heavy metals, mold, all sorts of chemicals, BPA, plastics, all of the things that we want to know about.
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I love vibrant wellness.
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They're one of my go-to labs.
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Absolutely.
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And then what do you do to detox?
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With cancer, you have to be a little bit gentle.
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Big detox programs with chelation are not a good idea.
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How I generally do that is depending on what the treatment regimen looks like, maybe we do some sauna.
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We sweat.
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I think sweating is one of the best things you can do to detox, whether that's from exercise, movement, sitting in the sun, or more intensely in a sauna.
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And it stimulates your lymphatic system too.
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Absolutely, which we also want.
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And then food-wise, do you do everybody with keto or does it depend on your client?
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It depends on the client.
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We look at a lot of testing to determine is keto where we want to go?
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Always low carb, but maybe not fully ketogenic.
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We can also use fasting.
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This is another tool that we can use to create metabolic flexibility, and that really helps as well.
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Now, do you do like 24-hour fast?
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Do you do like 12 to 18 hour?
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What kind of fast do you recommend?
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We can do intermittent fasting.
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More 13 to 16 usually is where I aim for that.
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Or we can do 24-hour fasts.
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Or we can do three-day fasts or longer, depending on what someone's goals are, where they're at.
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There are other practitioners who also do very extended fasting, like 25-30 days, which is something that should be medically supervised by a doctor.
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100%.
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That's crazy.
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At least for my patients, I always try to recommend like a 12 to 18 hour because I feel like a lot of the women that come to see me, they're 40 plus, they're in perimenopause, they've had a lot of stuff going on.
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I don't want to elevate their cortisol too much because I know that's one of the things with intermittent fasting that can happen.
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But I feel like with cancer it's a little different because you're definitely trying to starve the tumor.
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And I don't think you have to intermittent fast every day.
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You can mix it up a little bit.
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Keep your body guessing a little bit.
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And you work mind, body, soul, correct?
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I do.
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Let's talk about that journey.
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A lot of times cancer can be driven by stress, by trauma, or sleep patterns that are not so great.
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And so I work with my clients extensively to work on these things, to reduce their stress, to make sure they're getting adequate sleep during the right hours, deep sleep.
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Sleep is a miracle.
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And I encourage my clients to really work with whatever traumas they have.
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We have traumas from early on in our life, and they still affect us, and working with those things are really important.
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Now I'm not a therapist, so I do recommend people either go to a program or they work with someone who specializes in trauma just for that.
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But it is something that is very, very helpful during a cancer diagnosis.
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How does trauma and stress cause a tumor to form?
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It's part of the terrain.
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I'm not going to say that just because you had a traumatic childhood that you're destined to get cancer.
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That's not true.
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But it is part of our well-being, part of our terrain, and it can be something that feeds into our blood sugar, how we move through the world, and that can impact a cancer diagnosis.
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I really think that addressing the whole body, mind, and soul is a great way to approach a cancer diagnosis.
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Because then you're treating the whole body, which, as you and I both know, all systems of the body are connected.
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And unfortunately, a lot of doctors they treat one system.
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You really can't give a complete diagnosis, and you really truly can't help somebody if you're just treating one system at a time.
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Exactly.
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It's a whole body thing.
00:20:45.279 --> 00:20:48.480
I love your approach, and I think that's amazing what you're doing.
00:20:48.720 --> 00:20:59.039
If our listeners are thinking I should go get a scan, or maybe I should start working on my stress, or things they can start doing to prevent tumors from forming or prevent a cancer diagnosis.
00:20:59.200 --> 00:21:01.920
What would be one thing they can start implementing today?
00:21:02.319 --> 00:21:07.680
First, I would see if you can start getting some regular labs drawn.
00:21:07.839 --> 00:21:12.160
Labs are our window into your body and to understand what's happening.
00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:19.759
And that might have an impact on the first steps you take to working to make yourself healthier.
00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:26.720
One of the number one things I would do trying to be healthier is make sure that you are sleeping well.
00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:30.640
That is something most of my clients come to me struggling with.
00:21:30.799 --> 00:21:33.119
Your body heals at night.
00:21:33.359 --> 00:21:38.559
Your brain and its lymphatic system cleans itself at night.
00:21:38.960 --> 00:21:42.160
So if you're not sleeping well, you need to work on it.
00:21:42.240 --> 00:21:44.799
And there are lots of things we can do to work on it.
00:21:44.960 --> 00:21:53.920
Making sure you have a great sleep environment, making sure that you don't look at your phone too much when you're supposed to be getting ready for bed.
00:21:54.400 --> 00:22:13.359
There are ways that we can supplement a little bit with some melatonin or Some other relaxing herbs, but I do recommend trying to fix things without supplements to start because there are lots of tools for making sure that you can get into a nice deep rest and that you sleep long enough.
00:22:13.680 --> 00:22:15.119
I work with women 40 plus.
00:22:15.440 --> 00:22:22.079
A lot of them are dealing with perimenopause, and cortisol gets elevated at that point which it slows down melatonin production.
00:22:22.160 --> 00:22:32.319
So for somebody that's dealing with a lot of high stress and they're in that state of fight or flight and their body can't relax, what would be something that you do to help them rest better at night?
00:22:32.720 --> 00:22:34.720
Lighting is super important.
00:22:34.880 --> 00:22:40.079
I didn't realize how important it was until I fixed my nighttime lighting.
00:22:40.400 --> 00:22:46.000
I lived for years not being able to sleep well, and that has completely changed.
00:22:46.319 --> 00:22:52.960
I have managed to figure out how I can get some good sleep, and lighting has been a huge thing.
00:22:53.279 --> 00:22:57.519
You really want to have more orange lighting at night.
00:22:57.680 --> 00:23:07.680
I like to use Himalayan lamps, but you can buy light bulbs, you can use candlelight, and this can really help you prepare for bed.
00:23:07.839 --> 00:23:14.799
It will signal melatonin release, and all of a sudden you're tired and it's time to go to bed and it works.
00:23:14.960 --> 00:23:18.400
Blackout curtains are another best friend.
00:23:18.640 --> 00:23:21.279
My husband didn't believe me that it would work.
00:23:21.440 --> 00:23:25.599
And I hung them up earlier this year, and it is a game changer.
00:23:25.759 --> 00:23:28.559
So I would really focus on your sleep environment.
00:23:28.880 --> 00:23:35.440
That's so true because I feel like that's one of the biggest struggles that I see women come to me with is they're not sleeping well.
00:23:35.759 --> 00:23:37.039
How can everybody find you?
00:23:37.200 --> 00:23:39.519
Where are you online, on social media?
00:23:39.920 --> 00:23:43.279
My business is called Not Just Broccoli.
00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:45.839
Hopefully that's memorable.
00:23:46.160 --> 00:23:46.720
I love that.
00:23:46.799 --> 00:23:47.920
That's an awesome name.
00:23:48.480 --> 00:23:55.359
My website is not just broccoli.com, and I'm also on Instagram under NotJust Broccoli.
00:23:55.519 --> 00:23:57.119
That's where you can find me.
00:23:57.440 --> 00:24:04.400
I love to work with people with cancer, but I also do work with people who don't have cancer, who are looking to prevent cancer.
00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:18.559
And the first step to working with me is doing an introductory consultation, and we can talk in depth about your situation, and we can come up with a plan together that makes sense to get you where you want to go.
00:24:18.960 --> 00:24:21.359
Is there anything else we didn't cover today?
00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:34.880
I would say my biggest piece of advice after having gone through what I've been through and found out about a cancer diagnosis off a preventative scan is don't be afraid to look deeper.
00:24:35.119 --> 00:24:38.000
If something feels off, look into it.
00:24:38.319 --> 00:24:48.880
It very well may be something you need to address, but I will tell you, after having gone through what I went through, I'm a healthier person today, and I'm so grateful.
00:24:49.200 --> 00:24:51.440
And our intuition really is powerful.
00:24:51.680 --> 00:24:52.319
It is.
00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:54.400
We just need to tap into it.
00:24:54.960 --> 00:24:56.160
Listen to your body.
00:24:56.319 --> 00:24:58.319
Your symptoms are messengers.
00:24:58.640 --> 00:24:59.759
They truly are.
00:25:00.079 --> 00:25:08.079
And I always tell patients too, our body gives off little whispers like, hey, you have a headache, you have joint pain, or I don't feel right, or I'm tired.
00:25:08.240 --> 00:25:15.599
And we push those down as women and we ignore them, and eventually our bodies start screaming at us, and that's when we're like, oh, maybe I should go to the doctor.
00:25:15.759 --> 00:25:19.039
Start paying attention while you have those little subtle whispers.
00:25:19.359 --> 00:25:20.319
Absolutely.
00:25:20.640 --> 00:25:22.799
Andrea, thank you so much for being here today.
00:25:22.880 --> 00:25:23.839
This was wonderful.
00:25:24.160 --> 00:25:25.200
Thank you for having me.
00:25:25.279 --> 00:25:31.200
It was such a great time talking with you, and I know a lot of people can benefit from our conversation.
00:25:31.440 --> 00:25:35.839
And I'll drop links in the show notes so that way everyone can click and connect with you.
00:25:36.160 --> 00:25:37.359
Thank you so much.
00:25:37.839 --> 00:25:39.119
Thank you for listening.
00:25:39.279 --> 00:25:42.559
Today we had on our special guest, Andrea Schaefer.
00:25:42.880 --> 00:25:55.359
We talked about natural ways to heal cancer, the ketogenic diet's role on brain health, the importance of sleep, and how toxins can affect the body and contribute to tumors.
00:25:55.599 --> 00:25:58.480
Please check the show notes to connect with Andrea.
00:25:58.799 --> 00:26:02.319
Be sure to tune in next Tuesday to episode 50.
00:26:02.559 --> 00:26:06.079
We are celebrating one year of podcasting.
00:26:06.319 --> 00:26:08.880
We are gonna do a celebration episode.
00:26:09.200 --> 00:26:11.200
You don't want to miss this one.
00:26:11.599 --> 00:26:16.000
And always remember, you deserve to love the skin you're in.
00:26:17.519 --> 00:26:26.960
As aestheticians, we have such a unique opportunity to not only care for the skin on the surface, but to guide our clients towards deeper wellness.
00:26:27.200 --> 00:26:33.119
If this episode gave you something to think about, share it with me on Instagram at skindeep IL.
00:26:33.440 --> 00:26:35.359
I look forward to connecting with you there.
00:26:35.519 --> 00:26:42.880
And if you enjoyed this conversation, subscribing and reviewing the podcast helps others find these conversations too.
00:26:43.119 --> 00:26:47.119
And always remember, you deserve to love the skin you're in.