Christa 0:00
All right, today, we are going to be talking all things around breast cancer. And this can be a scary topic. And I think, you know, I know some of my friends anyway, completely avoid getting mammograms because they're just afraid to find something or they avoid even screening, right? So I want to open up this conversation, to just be really frank about it, and put us in the driver's seat and really empower women, and what we can do about it. I think there's a lot of scary things, you know, out there, there's some scary statistics out there. But the fact is, the majority of breast cancers are lifestyle driven. And that's good news, because that means we can do something about it. So that's going to be our topic today. How do you feel about that tree?
Sheree 0:49
I think it's a really powerful topic, just like you know, we always say empowered health is your superpower. And so if you're able to understand that, yes, there is a genetic component to breast cancer to other cancers. But there's also another component, which you may or may not be familiar with in terms of epigenetics, which is really when we have control of the expression of the gene, and whether or not we turn it on or off. But then there's also like you said, the element of lifestyle factors, so much of our health and our well being we are now realizing is in our control. And I'm really excited to dive into this especially because like you say there is like me a lot of fear around it and you know, not wanting to be tested be screened, because you're fearful of what you find. Or maybe you do have a genetic predisposition and you're feeling like that's now just diagnosis or prognosis for you. And we want to share that there's things you can do to support maybe that gene not being expressed,
Christa 1:41
right. So we can't do anything about age, that is a factor in some people. And really, age becomes a factor because of just the burden of being alive for that many years, right? That mitochondrial inability, even some of those things, even as we enter menopausal years, there are still things that we can do about it to Yeah, turn that light switch on or off when it comes to genes when it comes to the effects of aging. So I think I want to start out with detox pathways, because that is really, I would say, the core of where we could focus on it. So I want to start out first by explaining how we detoxify anything in our body. And, you know, we have toxins that were exposed to their external toxins, right, like we have chemicals in the air, we have beauty products that we put on our skin. So we have things that are external, and then we also have internal toxins. So we don't want to demonize sex hormones are actually really beneficial to health. And I think the shining hormone in breast cancer is estrogen. Estrogen has a lot of really healthy benefits, though it helps keep our blood vessels pliable. So it really helps keep the arteries more stretchy. It helps with brain health and cognition, it helps keep our metabolism balanced with insulin resistance. Unfortunately, as estrogen goes down as we age and inter menopause, insulin resistance, which we'll talk about goes up. So there's a lot of benefits to estrogen bone health, I mean, the list goes on. But it can become a factor in driving. Breast cancer is in particular and and so what we can do about it, though, is make sure that we're not entering that estrogen dominant state. And so that's really multifactorial, but I would say it's pivotal to have an understanding and some empowerment around your detoxification system. So detox happens in three phases. Phase one is more of an enzymatic change. And that happens within the liver. But we take let's say estrogen, and we convert it into into its first byproduct, that byproduct now has an open molecule spaces, right, so it's actually a bit more toxic at that point, because free radicals can attach to it, it's just kind of waiting for the next phase. And this is where we want to have good methylation. So we want to have good B vitamins absorption, we want to have a good amount of sulfate in our body. We want we want nutrients, essentially, we want to have glutathione. So we want a healthy liver for phase two then to happen and kind of flop in to that molecule space. And that's called conjugation, which is phase two. And then after that, it's bound and it's ready for excretion. And that excretion is phase three. And this is probably the port part that everyone needs to focus on first, because we have to have once the bathtub is filled with toxins, we have to have a drain, right? We can't just have it sitting there. And so that's where sweating regularly through exercise, that's where hydration is super important so that your liver and your kidneys have plenty to flush through. And then you've got to be pooping every day, right because all of that is phase three. That's how we actually get rid of whatever toxin is that our body has gone through phase one, phase two, and now it needs to exit via phase three. So I think That's just like a high overview of the process that occurs with everything. But how do we support that? And I think you know, it's focusing on foods and supplements together sometimes that can be most helpful. I would say the top foods would be green leafy vegetables, berries that contain a lot of antioxidants, and then broccoli and I don't love broccoli by itself. I mean, it's okay, but I broccoli sprouts. Yeah, broccoli sprouts is kind of where it's at. You can add those to smoothies, you can add them you know, they're very mild in flavor. But broccoli contains possibly one of the most potent elements called sulforaphane. And that really does help break down there's actually been studies shown that they have taken cancerous tissue from a breast mass, and inserted sulforaphane ins inserted that into the cells and it actually eradicated the cancer there. So it's that powerful. And so we in our estrogen levels are higher, let's say the second half of our cycle after, or I'm sorry, the first right before ovulation on estrogen tends to be the highest. And then post ovulation where we're kind of dealing with the estrogen push, it's important to have a big push of these raw green leafy vegetables, broccoli antioxidants. And then in terms of supplements, and fill in the gaps here, Sheree, where you have found some positive ones that milk thistle is an important element that can really help support the liver, turmeric, or Curcumin is also another really powerful antioxidant helps with inflammation overall. And then dandelion root is also another really great one, you can find teas that have dandelion root. And then of course, phase two requires a good amount of B vitamins, right? So we want to be either ingesting foods and absorbing a good amount of B vitamins through animal proteins or some fruits and veggies, but then maybe it'd be vitamin. So that's kind of where I see it when we kind of start the conversation on the core of detoxification kind of understanding the three steps. But then how do we support that and ensure that, hey, we're keeping this pathway open through the way that we're eating, the way that we're supplementing the way that we're sweating things out daily, the way that we're paying attention to gut health, I'd love for you to add a little bit to your take on gut health and how it's important for detox and the immune system. Right. So what are your thoughts on that?
Sheree 7:20
Yeah, I love that. And I love that you explained that so beautifully, you know, the three different phases. And I say the exact same thing, when I'm expressing about detoxification is we actually need to start at phase three. So I always use the analogy, just to give people a little bit more context. Imagine your intestine. So this is the phase three, this is the part apart from the sweating, and urination, this is the other way we excrete toxins, particularly things like estrogen. And so you imagine your intestines are a road, right, and your stall was the bus that's traveling along that row. Now, inside the bus are a whole load of passengers, which are your toxins or in this case, your estrogen we can use for this example. And so what happens if the bus gets stopped on the road? Well, those passengers, those toxins have a chance to leave the bus and go walk about throughout the rest of the body, they ended up getting absorbed, they go back into the bloodstream, once they back into the bloodstream, they get filtered back through the liver. Now the liver may or may not be at optimal detoxification, but it will pop it back out back into the bloodstream, if it's not working effectively, if it's not able to toxify effectively and will go into a fat cell. And so every time you're kind of mobilizing these fat cells, or every time you are going through these detoxification pathways, if you've got a stuck bowel movement, if you've got constipation of any kind, you're probably going to find these toxins build up. And this is why we have more and more estrogen dominance that we typically see because those passengers are getting off the bus and they're going to walk about and that's another reason why you shed so beautiful that we do have to have a bowel movement every single day. And so if we look at that, from a gut health perspective, even if we think about just the bowel movements, sitting there with other toxins, it gives the body a chance to ferment on some of those bad things. It gives the body a chance for those bad bacteria to grow and maybe take hold of the control and your microbiome. And your microbiome is really a huge harm to your immune system. 70% of your immune system lives inside of your gut microbiome. And it is greatly affected by the foods that we eat. It's affected by stress, it is affected by alcohol. And so if we're constantly putting in high levels of those sorts of things is going to drive that inflammation up. And that's really sad to see the correlation I would say I guess between gut health and the immune system, the inflammation piece and how our detoxification pathways really do affect how well we're clearing things out and and how well we're going to be able to fight or die. support our bodies and not even switching on genes are expressing the sort of pathway.
Christa 10:06
Yeah, you mentioned alcohol. And, you know, that's, that's a dicey topic, right? I mean, of course, I don't want to say don't ever drink alcohol again. But statistics don't lie. And studies have shown that women who drink one alcoholic beverage a day are five to 9% higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who do not drink at all. So I think you know, everything in stride 8020 rule, right 20% of the time you have the drinks and 80% of the time, you just kind of weigh the pros and cons of it. But the fact is, estrogen kind of takes the backseat to toxins like alcohol, and so are our liver will prioritize the alcohol. And so that means we've got a bit more of a burden, toxic burden directly. A good rule of thumb is if you have pretty significant hangovers with one or two glasses of wine, that's probably your indicator that the detox pathways are not that efficient. And if it's not that efficient to manage that amount of alcohol, it's not that efficient in managing just your normal endogenous toxins that you know, our body has waste. You know, it uses up energy it uses up hormones and then it's gotta get rid of them. But it will prioritize direct toxins such as alcohol. So something to keep in mind once you know you cannot unknow that. So something to kind of keep in mind with that. The other thing I want to address is Endo. You know endocrine disruptors that we hear that word, but I think, how do we take that to heart and what are the things that really stand out? And what are endocrine disruptors, endocrine disruptors are really just any element that either mimics an estrogen or hormone or it depletes it. So it can upregulate it can mimic it saying okay, it acts as an estrogen like let's say BPA, that we know that that in plastics, it can actually mimic so it fits into the tissues and acts as if it is estrogen. So it kind of gives us high estrogen effect who might have more breast tenderness, let's say or more, more bloating, so with as if you have more estrogen going on. The other way that it can work is by displacing or filling in that receptor. So if you think a cell has like a round shape, or let's say more funky, a diamond shape, receptor, and this endocrine disruptor chemical is diamond shaped as well, but it's an empty vessel, right? There's no hormone in it, but it takes the place of where that hormone could be. And so it kind of depletes your body's ability to have the effects of that hormone, right. So it can either up regulate or down regulate that hormonal balance. And we know that when one hormone is off, it can kind of throw the other ones off. So examples of endocrine disrupters is, you know, I think off the top of my head, we know plastic bottles, right? Teflon pans, and I would say fragrances are probably the top. Yeah. What about you? Can you think of any more that are kind of the top?
Sheree 13:04
Yeah, this is a huge topic. And I work with a lot of people around this. And one of the other names I use for endocrine disruptors is liver, Lotus. And I think just a context as well. We talked a little bit about alcohol. If you are thinking, Okay, well, I don't drink that much. My liver must be fine. We're talking to these endocrine disruptors as massive liver Lotus as well. So please bear that in mind, just because you may, like I'm someone that doesn't drink all that often. This is an occasion. But I went through so many struggles with my liver health because I was loading my body up with so many of these synthetic things, whether that's the skincare that we put on, like if you're putting moisturizer on every single day that are loaded with these parabens and these sulfites and these fragrances, it does load up the liver. If you're lighting a candle every morning that soy based and scented, you're going to be hailing something that has a loading up the liver and they may sound like little things. But just like we talk about the daily benefits of drinking water, the daily occurrence of lighting that candle or inhaling or rubbing a lotion or something on your skin, the makeup that you put on your face the perfume you wear every day, it also has a cumulative effect. And I'm not saying you have to go down the pathway and completely clear everything out. In fact, we've got a beautiful episode about low toxic living that you can tune in and listen to we dive into some great ways to make these changes. But just bringing that awareness to some of those endocrine disruptors and a huge one that I've seen recently, and it was interesting, I even saw a study talked about it because we're so focused on plastic bottles and plastic containers and I do I have ceramic bottle I have all glass Tupperware at my house like it's a thing I made the move right? Receipts actually contain the BPA, but they're and I'm going to screw up the exact number so bear with me. I don't have the study in front of me, but it was something ridiculous like 100 or 1000 times more potent than drinking from a plastic bottle. And you think how How many receipts you touch every single day every single time you go to I refuse them and I have done for a very long time, if they make sense
Speaker 1 15:08
to now I'm like, I don't want to touch it with my little like,
Sheree 15:12
pinch pot of my nails. So it doesn't affect you. Because remember, your skin is a sponge. So if you touch it with your fingertips, it's being absorbed, and you can be walking around holding that thing for a while. I absolutely refuse them if I have to. I'm like, can you put it in the bag, and I won't touch it.
Christa 15:27
It is interesting. And some people in their job they work with receipts all the time. That film on top of these receipts are very toxic. It's the things that we don't we just day to day. And you're right, it's it's the little things that add up. Because we might think, well, you know, what's with the little makeup that I put on every day? Well, you do it every single day. And then you go to your friend's car who has a fragrance in the vehicle and then you go, you know, walking on a sidewalk, and you've got air, you know, exhaust from the plane from the vehicles that are driving by. And then you go to a restaurant and you've cooked everything on a Teflon plant pan. I mean, it's just all of these things that are liberal voters, like you said, so it's not just one thing, it's all the little things. And so I think when we are aware of the little things, we can really start to kind of chop that down so that our burden isn't so high to where we have this estrogen dominant picture, meaning we have an overload amount, it's not that we're making too much estrogen, it's that we're not being able to get rid of it. Or and or we're just being exposed to other endocrine disruptors that are kind of acting as though their estrogen
Sheree 16:42
you took I want to join because I feel like a big one while we're down the estrogen pathway, like I know I have an opinion on it but the mimicking of so I just while we're on this endocrine disrupters, while we're talking about the estrogen, the phyto estrogens, that kind of like I remember having a client being freaked out about taking flaxseed or flaxseed oil, and you got to kind of look at the pros and the cons. But like personally, the typical soy that you'll find in plant based alternatives can really have quite a toxic effect.
Christa 17:11
They can I think that more soy flax seed like estrogen mimicking, yeah, phyto nutrients are more appropriate for when you have lower estrogen. And you actually want a little bit more of that effect. But definitely, if someone's presenting with an estrogen dominant picture, I would say you want to avoid soy and flaxseed and things like that they have their place, but it's just, you know, food is medicine. Right? So we don't want to Yeah, I agree. And, you know, for people who are primarily plant based, there is a lot of high soy and some of those foods, right, they're overly processed for vegetarian versions of whatever, you got to look at the ingredients though, because they can be full of a lot of you think that you're doing the right thing, like, Oh, I'm vegetarian, I'm plant forward, this is for my health. But you gotta be careful about the content of what you're eating. If it's overly processed, it's still not healthy for your gut lining, you're probably still being exposed to a lot of Xeno estrogens or, you know, yeah, like phytonutrients that present as estrogens. That brings us to insulin resistance. And you know, this insulin resistance to kind of quickly explain it, it basically means, you know, our cells have to have a lock and key because glucose itself can be caustic to the cell. And so we can't just have free range of everything that we eat the blood glucose, it's in our blood going into all the cells because they will die, we have to have a regulatory factor. And so the cells do have kind of a lock and key effect, you have to have insulin present to open the door for the glucose to then enter the cell. The cell though, gets a little frantic when you've been eating a lot of high carbohydrates, refined sugars, alcohols, processed foods, you name it, anything that's driving up glucose on a regular basis, they kind of changed the locks a little bit. They're like, Oh, we're gonna change this a little bit. And so insulin has to work harder, meaning the pancreas puts out more insulin. Insulin is storage hormone, That's its job. So when you notice I'm having a lot of weight loss resistance, I'm having night sweats at night, and I'm not anywhere near menopause, that can be a blood sugar issue that you've had too much insulin push out, now you've kind of bottomed out and your body reacts in a way that creates kind of that rapid heart rate and sweating to push out blood sugar. But insulin resistance is a problem because high amounts of insulin affects our sex hormones. It affects the ovary. So when there's a lot of high insulin in the blood, it can produce it can cause the the ovary to then produce more estrogen than it should. It can also push the the ovary to to make more testosterone than it should and that's something that if gone on long enough or it's extreme enough, it becomes polycystic ovarian syndrome, where we have a lot of testosterone in the blood regularly that inhibits ovulation, you never quite have that balance of progesterone to estrogen to testosterone. And it's basically the majority of the time driven by high insulin. And you know, the reason insulin matters is because downstream it produces more estrogen. And we don't want that, right. We don't want this overabundance. What would you recommend? What do you recommend to your clients to manage insulin resistance or to relate to bring that down? This is one of my favorite things to talk about. Yeah,
Sheree 20:31
I'm gonna preach till the cows come home, I'm just gonna sit on the protein hos. Yeah, you really need to look at a woman or not. And if we think about tying this back to that breast cancer, awareness, and being aware of how we're nourishing our bodies and the choices that we're making every day to support our health, it's really is about getting enough protein, enough of those leafy greens. And the other stuff tends to fall into place. But if we're thinking from an insulin sensitivity, or an insulin balancing or blood sugar balancing space, if you've got enough protein, or if you're pairing the protein, like do not have naked carbohydrates, that's my thing, right? Like put some clothes on your cubs, make sure that you're not just having the apple by itself, you know, you're not just having the whole grain piece of toast, you are pairing it with something that's going to delay the blood sugar spike, slow down the insulin secretion, and not cause that massive rollercoaster ride that we end up on every single day, start your day with a high protein breakfast, but you don't even need carbs in the morning, like unless you are going and doing a real intense workout. You don't need those carbohydrates yet, for some reason, we have been taught to have cereal in the morning to have toast in the morning to like really get off that like when I was living with Krista for the week, like we made beautiful eggs, we had chickens. And we there was no carbs to be seen. There were microgreens and everything, right? We didn't need the other stuff. And so my high was on this and it comes into resistance and insulin sensitivity is making sure you're getting enough protein because it's one of the easiest ways to mitigate that blood sugar spike, you can also pair carbs with fats as well. But I do definitely think the protein has to be a key key component and that in turn, those protein gets broken down into amino acids, that supports our liver detoxification pathways. Because you need amino acids for those pathways to be working effectively. You forget that protein is the building block of our body. So Vega, my little whey
Christa 22:35
protein, and then I would say, you know, if you could bottle up a pill that would improve detoxification, improve, you know, some minor stress on the body to make our immune system more robust, and trigger mitochondrial health and decrease insulin. If you had that all in one pill. Would you take it? Yes, of course you would. That pill is exercise. Yes. So exercise does all of it. And when we move our larger muscles in our body when we're lifting weights, our muscle is as you mentioned before our I think you're talking about the skin also but our muscles are glucose sponges, they love to the the muscle and biocides love glucose. So when you are lifting when you are going on a run a walk a cycle, whatever you're triggering that response. And so even going on a 10 minute walk after a meal can be really supportive to drive down the need for insulin because the muscle tissue is loving the fact that you just ate and glucose is a little bit elevated, working out moves the lymphatic system, our lymphatic system does not have a pump, like the heart like the blood system does, right. So when we're moving, we're moving our lymphatic system. That's super important for our immunity, sweating, when we're working out to the point of sweating, we're detoxing, we're releasing this right. It's important for mitochondrial health because it's that much of a stressor to really stimulate, hey, we need more energy powerhouses in each cell. And so that helps detoxification so really exercise and high protein, I would say are the top two elements to really check yourself on. And, you know, tying all this back in to what we have and the power that we have over breast cancer is that if you of course we cannot prevent everything happening in our body. We can't. Genetics do have a role. We cannot we can't control everything. But I say this, we have a good chance if we are diligent with frequent screenings, so that if there is something we catch it early, if we are diligent about moving our body, if we're diligent about how we eat green leafy vegetables, high protein, if we're diligent about supporting our liver, through supplementation, avoiding overconsumption of alcohol, you do all these things and you make that your lifestyle habit, even if Even if you get diagnosed with breast cancer, you have a higher chance. Because number one, you're catching it early, because you're screening more regularly and your body is better equipped to tackle this with less intervention. So it's a win win. I mean, it is a win win to kind of understand your body understand the significance of these lifestyle changes. And hopefully that will help you to be more consistent with being motivated to continually show up for yourself and make better decisions based on what you now know. That's available to you. Right? Amazing.
Sheree 25:35
Yeah, 100%. I couldn't, couldn't agree with you more, again, just being empowered and your health, avoiding some of those endocrine disruptors and really just choosing you every day. And I think that's what we really got to get back to in our health and our well being. It's like, is this actually supporting me? Or is this hindering me? And how much of this do I want to control? Yep.
Christa 25:57
Thank you all for being here. I hope you found this information, uplifting and encouraging. And next time you find yourself kind of in fear around this topic. Listen to this and take note of all of the points of control that you do have. So until next time, extending
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