[Mini] Quick Tips for Breast Health | Ep. 72

This mini episode is an extension of Episode 71 where Bridget interviewed Keiko, a coach who supports breast cancer survivors in feeling their best. The conversation explores the significance of reducing exposure to endocrine disruptors, prioritizing liver health, maintaining stable blood sugar, and rebuilding gut health.

Highlights:
• Importance of understanding endocrine disrupting chemicals
• Strategies to minimize exposure to plastics
• Benefits of buying organic produce
• Need for filtering tap water
• Evaluating skincare products for harmful substances
• Supporting liver health through dietary choices
• Balancing blood sugar for energy and mood stability
• Rebuilding gut health post-chemotherapy
• Listen to the full episode with Keiko for deeper insights

If you are feeling inspired to contribute to Pink Strength, a nonprofit that supports breast cancer survivors, they’d be so grateful for your support and you can check out more information here: https://www.pinkstrength.org/

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Chapters

• 0:07 Hormone Health Tips With Keiko
• 9:17 Breast Cancer Support and Education

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hey team, welcome to today's mini episode of I'm Hormonal. I'm your host, bridget Walton, women's hormone coach, and on this mini episode I'm going to be talking a little bit about the conversation that I had with Keiko earlier this week. You can check out episode 71 for the long forum of this conversation. But Keiko is a holistic nutrition and hormone coach. She works with breast cancer survivors and menopausal women to help them better understand how they can support their health, support their symptoms, feel their best, thrive in confidence and, as a breast cancer survivor herself, she shared about her story and what she learned along the way how she supports her health really, which is how she got to be in the career that she's in now. You can connect with Keiko by checking out her Instagram, which is at wellness underscore after breast cancer, or check out the link in the show notes here If you want to check out her free downloadable, which is on nutrition and exercise for menopause, and then, last but not least, there's a link there if you're ready for any one-on-one support working with Keiko. So the first thing I want to talk about in this mini episode today is endocrine disrupting chemicals. This is something that you've probably heard me talk about on the podcast before, if you've been here already, but endocrine disrupting chemicals are anything from the environment, whether it's our food, what we breathe, what we are putting on our skin. However, you know what we're drinking in our water that can impact our hormones, and so this is relevant to breast cancer. Keiko mentions it in our conversation, and the reason why this is important is because or I guess one of the reasons is because, living in our modern day world, we are going to have exposure to these chemicals. It's just like we can't we can't avoid it completely, but, on the right side of things, like there are a lot of steps, then, that you can take to protect yourself from those chemicals, and so I want to just run through quickly a couple of the top ways that you can do that. So the first thing that comes to mind is limiting your contact with plastic, and especially limiting what food that you're eating that had or has contact with plastic. Don't be heating food up in the microwave on styrofoam or plastic. If you can avoid storing your food in plastic, that would be cool too. Why? Plastic has a lot of chemicals and then, like you know, a variety of chemicals depending on how firm it is, how flexible it is and those chemicals can impact your hormones. So staying away from those. Also, if you're able to buy organic, or at least for the Dirty Dozen, you can check out ewgorg for Environmental Working Group and they can. You can get a downloadable that will tell you what are the dirty dozen, or the 12 produce items that generally have the highest amounts of pesticides or other chemicals on them in your area. So starting to buy organic for that list is a good, easy way to just limit your exposure. Another thing that comes to mind if you can filter your water, depending on where you live assuming you don't live in the Alps and you have beautiful, delicious, tasty, clear water then your water is probably being filtered through the city's system and maybe they're adding other chemicals that are necessary to clean it. But you see where I'm going with this right Filtering your water. That's one good way to minimize your exposure.

Speaker 1: 4:10

The last thing that I'll mention on this note is skincare products. So fragrances, anything that has a scent that is not, you know, wasn't created with that scent. Right, cinnamon, that checks out, it was grown like that. Your Febreze candles, your body, what's the one I'm trying to say? Your perfume, that's what it's called. You know perfumes there are some natural ones, maybe you can keep your eye out for that. But just remembering that it's okay to wear your favorite perfume because you love it and it makes you happy, but just thinking, okay, is this something that I can swap out with a cleaner product in the future that won't be putting these chemicals onto my skin? So I would encourage you to keep those in mind, noodle through that and see what makes sense for you to bring forward.

Speaker 1: 5:01

The next thing I want to mention is on the topic of what are three things that Keiko mentioned. She focused on after her breast cancer recovery in order to kind of get her hormones back on track, or as best as she could, and so she said that she focused on three different areas. It was her liver health, her blood sugar balance and gut health. So her liver health. She was able to identify through doing a Dutch test that her liver was a little bit sluggish. What does that mean? That just means you know our livers are asked to do a lot of work to filter out toxins, but also to basically filter out like get our hormones ready to be eliminated after our body has used them. So this is really common again in a world in 2024, almost 2025 now where, oh yeah, this episode will come out in 2025. So in 2025, where our livers are being asked to do a lot right Drinking alcohol. That's going to task or burden them too.

Speaker 1: 6:11

So what can you do to support your liver? That can be just something like eating more cruciferous veggies. That could be incorporating a dandelion root tea or another liver detox tea that you can find at your grocery store. Could be eliminating or limiting alcohol consumption. Could be, you know, just taking a look to see. Are you taking a lot of ibuprofen, right Medications that? And I'm not suggesting that you don't take those medications, but just taking a look to see. Okay, what am I asking my liver to do here?

Speaker 1: 6:48

The next thing that she mentioned was blood sugar balance. For her, this was really impactful when it came to her fatigue, and she also mentioned her anxiety, right, because if we're having blood sugar spikes and dips, then that can impact your mood, certainly. So Keiko had talked about really making sure to incorporate a good amount of fiber and a good amount of protein in your breakfast, so starting off the day with a good blood sugar stabilizing meal. Love this advice. What could that look like, maybe focusing on or shooting for maybe 30 grams of protein. That can seem like a lot, but I think that's why it's good to shoot for it, because even if you fall short, you still got 20 grams of protein. So maybe try to keep that number in mind, adjust to see whatever works best for you. And then, when it comes to fiber, just remembering that plants have fiber, so whole food plants. So what vegetables can you incorporate into your breakfast? Or whole grains that are going to provide that fiber and good structure to help support your blood sugar balance?

Speaker 1: 8:02

Now, the other and third thing that she mentioned was gut health and really helping to get her digestive system back on track, especially after chemo, which can do a doozy on your gut health, and so making sure to incorporate probiotics and prebiotics was important. Now, that can look like whole foods, of course, that can look like root vegetables for prebiotics. So carrots, potatoes, radishes, beets that can also look like for probiotics. Thinking of what are different fermented foods tempeh, kombucha, maybe like a low sugar kombucha, sauerkraut, what things like that do you like to eat? And then, of course, you can always supplement too with like a capsule probiotic, or I'm thinking seed. Seed is like a powder. That's the brand name, right, anyway? That's to say there are different mixes, right? Seed, or, I think, does AG1, also have probiotics in it. So there are pre-done mixes out there that you can incorporate into your day if that better suits you.

Speaker 1: 9:17

Now, this is only like teeny tiny bits of the tips that I talked about with Keiko, but if this is interesting to you, if you have somebody in your life who's going through breast cancer right now and you want to get a little bit more familiar with, maybe, what their experience was, then check out the longer form episode with Keiko, which again was episode 71. And just as a final reminder, because it's always important, I want to reiterate that this podcast and episode 71 is for educational purposes only, should not be used as a replacement for any sort of medical advice, diagnosis or other one-on-one support from the right practitioner for you. So with that, thank you so much for listening and I will see you on the next one.