From Emotions To Epigenetics: Rethinking How Breast Cancer Starts

Welcome to part 1 in a 2 part mini-series on breast cancer.

Holistic breast cancer prevention requires us to look at how biology, behavior, and context interact. In this episode we walk through the basics of breast cancer subtypes—hormone receptors and HER2 status—then connect them to what’s actually changing risk in everyday life, from circadian rhythm to detox capacity. The picture that emerges is practical and empowering: even if you “did everything right,” there are levers you can pull to shift your internal environment away from tumor-friendly conditions.

We explore why incidence is rising among younger women, what breast density and earlier menarche really mean, and how night shift work and low melatonin can blunt immune surveillance. From there, we dig into our E3 model—emotions, environment, and epigenetics—to outline the hidden drivers most people miss. You’ll also hear why genes aren’t verdicts—BRCA mutations explain only a minority of cases—and how epigenetics, methylation, and antioxidant pathways guide whether risky signals get amplified or shut down.

Want guided help turning insights into action? ⬇️

👉 Join our upcoming live 4-day workshop to identify your personal drivers and build a tailored breast cancer prevention plan. Learn more here: https://groundandroot.com/breastcancerworkshop 

If today's conversation helped, subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find this resource.

🌿 Let's Connect 🌿

Explore Coaching

Join Us On Substack 

Watch Episodes on YouTube 

Follow Us on Instagram

Transcript

Setting The Stage For Breast Cancer

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Ground and Root Podcast, where we are exploring the world of holistic strategies to enhance healing and help you stay cancer free. I am your host and holistic cancer dietitian, Dion Detrez. Today's episode is going to be one of two in a mini-series that I'm doing all about breast cancer. At the time of this recording, it's October. It's the middle of breast cancer awareness month. And I have a lot to say on this topic. I believe that there is so much more to the story around breast cancer than what is currently being discussed in public health messaging, in prevention guidelines. And I want to spend a little bit of time going over some of those pieces with you. I have to say that in my own personal practice, over half of the women who come to me have had breast cancer or are still moving through a breast cancer journey. So I feel like this is a specific type of cancer that we deal with quite a bit. And I've spent a lot of time looking into all the reasons why breast cancer grows. So in this first episode, we are going to dive deeper into the root causes of breast cancer. So this is important, particularly if you've already gone through a breast cancer journey or you currently are, or if it runs in your family and you already felt like you were doing everything right. I hear this all the time from women who come to me that, gosh, I was already doing all the things. I was already eating organic and plant-based and exercising and meditating and doing all the things. And I still got breast cancer. Why is that? I want to answer that question today for you, or at least give you more insight into the potential reasons why. And then in the next episode in part two, we will switch the conversation into the how. How do we truly lower risks by going beyond the standard prevention guidelines and taking a truly comprehensive and holistic approach? Okay. So let's dive in. And just to make sure we're all on the same page, because I know we're all coming to this podcast with different levels of information that we already have. So I first just want to start with what the statistics around breast cancer actually are. So currently, as of this recording, about one in eight women in the United States will develop invasive breast cancer at some point in their life. And there's a lot of different forms of breast cancer, but I'm going to talk about two of the primary ones that I see. So each year, out of all the women who are diagnosed with cancer, about a third, a little over a third, received a breast cancer diagnosis. And then, although breast cancer can occur in men, it does happen, it's quite rare. 99% of breast cancers are in women. If a man receives a diagnosis, the treatment is going to be very similar. And I would imagine that the risks and root causes are very similar too. So I think it's relevant regardless. Now, while advances in screening and treatment for sure have reduced the overall risk of death from breast cancer, which is excellent. It is not the death sentence that it used to be. The number of people diagnosed continues to rise about 1% every year. And as we discussed in episode two, when I shared more about our ground and root philosophy around why cancer grows and how we look deeper into the root causes of breast of cancer in general, much like cancer rates, breast cancer also, the rates are rising in people under 50. And for me, this is probably the even more concerning part is that younger and younger women are not only receiving a breast cancer diagnosis, but a more aggressive breast cancer diagnosis with distant involvement often. So when we think about this early onset group, which is basically women under 50 who would be getting a cancer diagnosis, breast cancer has the highest number of incident cases in this group. And about 16% currently of women with breast cancer are younger than 50 right now. So still majority are going to be older, but still about 16% are younger than 50. And like I said, the incidence of breast cancer with distant involvement, which obviously becomes more concerning, a more aggressive form of cancer, has increased, especially in women under 40, like between the ages of 25 to 39. That is like red flags for me, right? Like I certainly don't want to receive breast cancer, and I don't want these young women to be dealing with it either. And I will say, I am seeing this in my practice as well. I would say the majority of the women who are coming to me with a breast cancer diagnosis are under 50. The youngest we've worked with was 28. And we have a client right now who is 29 and also dealing with metastatic disease. So this is just completely unacceptable, in my opinion. And we need to understand more why this is happening so we can really take steps to prevent it from continuing to happen, right? And like I said in the very beginning, my goal, I know lofty, but I understand if we believe, if we understand rather the reasons why cancer grows, we can actually change these statistics, right? We can actually help both women and men have less cancer diagnosis. Okay, so moving on, I just want to make sure we all understood kind of the prevalence and who it's impacting the most right now. Now, like I mentioned earlier, there are many different types of breast cancer, but there's kind of two primary, I don't know if we'd say types or maybe categories that are important because when we understand these components of the diagnosis, it helps with the treatment plan. So it helps specialize what kind of treatment you're gonna receive, but it also helps us specialize what healing support you're gonna need, which is also gonna help us understand more the risks and root causes to prevent recurrence, or ideally to prevent it from forming in the first place. So, first we're gonna talk about the hormone receptor aspect of breast cancer cells. So that is kind of the first thing that's usually figured out at diagnosis. Is it a hormone receptor positive versus a hormone receptor negative breast cancer? And then after that, they look at the HER2 gene. And is that HER2 gene positive or negative? And those two pieces of information are going to be really important in figuring out the treatment plan. So let me talk about these a little bit and we're also gonna talk about the risks for these. There's actually quite a bit of overlap. Okay, they're not like completely separate cancers, if you will, but there are some nuances. So I just want to make sure we have a global understanding around that. So hormone receptor positive, actually, the majority of breast cancers, up to 80 to 90%, honestly, of breast cancers have hormone receptor positive expression. Okay, so that just basically means there are receptor sites on the breast cancer cell that can bind to hormones, which is typically estrogen, but could also be progesterone, or could be both. This is important because even though estrogen might not be the only reason the breast cancer grew, if we know there's receptor sites that are positive for estrogen and/or progesterone, then we know that those hormones could trigger more growth, right? Because estrogen, and we could have a whole other conversation around estrogen. Maybe I will do that on a separate podcast episode. But estrogen can fuel growth, good growth, but also not great growth if it's on a breast cancer cell. Now, of those 80 to 90 percent, about five to 10% are thought to be linked to a genetic, a genetic mutation of the BRACA gene, which is something it's BRCA, which is something you may have heard about. But as you will learn here on this podcast, and maybe you're already getting that by what episodes you've already listened to, that we have a lot more control over how our genes are expressed. So even though we may have this mutation, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to cause breast cancer in our bodies unless the environment is such that it triggers that mutation. So I'll talk about that more in a little bit. But about five to 10% are linked to that genetic mutation. That means that at least 70% are not related to a genetic mutation. And many of the women I see didn't have a BRACA mutation. And they're like, and they thought they were doing everything right, you know, and maybe it didn't even run in their family. And they're like, what in the world? Why did this grow? Obviously, that can feel very frightening when you're just not sure when we don't, when we can't see a potential why, then we don't know what to do differently going forward, right? So I want to help you answer that question. Now, hormone receptor negative. So that's gonna leave about 10 to maybe 15% of breast cancer diagnoses are gonna be hormone receptor negative. These cancers tend to be more common in younger women, women less than 40, and also have a connection to BRCA, more so the BRCA one mutation versus the BRCA-2 mutation. But again, there's still plenty that don't have that mutation. So it is not the only reason, right? Why it grows. Triple negative breast cancer, which you just heard Christine's story in the previous episode, is generally a more aggressive cancer. It has a higher rate for recurrence and metastasis, which means the treatment plan also tends to be much more aggressive and can be very difficult to move through. But as you heard in Christine's story, there are certainly ways to make it more tolerable, more manageable, to enhance recovery. And in her case, she's four years out and still cancer-free. So it doesn't mean that it's, you know, this is it, like it's absolutely going to come back. Obviously, if we again understand what might have triggered the growth, we can reduce the chance of it coming back. Now, the HER2 positivity, and this isn't about maybe 10 to 20% of breast cancers have this HER2 positivity. And what that means is the HER2 genes, this is another genetic expression, this gene doesn't work correctly in these women. It makes too many copies of itself. So the positivity just means there's like too much of it. There's too, there's these extra HER2 genes. And what they're doing is it's basically telling the breast cells to make more of the receptors. So again, we think about what is triggering the cell, a lot of that has to do with what receptor sites are on the cell, because then when that molecule binds to it, it could stimulate growth or reproduction, right? So part of that is with the hormone piece, the estrogen or the progesterone, but it could also be the HER2 piece, the HER2 protein. And if that is overexpressed, if there's too much of that, similarly to estrogen, it can cause the breast cells to grow and divide in a more uncontrolled way, right? Now, thankfully, as treatment continues to evolve, we get more options that help people remove these cancer cells from their body. And we do have very effective HER2-targeted treatments. So if we know there's positivity, then those extra layers of treatment come in to help suppress the HER2 gene, right? And this is obviously good. This helps with survival. Okay, so hopefully that made sense. That wasn't too confusing, but I thought it was important for us to at least understand some of the basic differences between the types of breast cancer that are out there. Now, what I'd like to do next is talk about what are the risks. And first I want to focus on the risks that overlap. Okay. And these are all established risks. After this, I'm going to talk more about my kind of functional integrative thinking around root causes. But this is just like going doing a search on the American Cancer Society or the World Cancer Research Fund, you know, WHO, like big organizations. These are the established risk factors when it comes to breast cancer. Now, for either type, okay, here are a few. And I may look at my notes just because I want to make sure I don't forget anything. If you're watching the video and you see my eyes go down. So here are a few higher breast density, radiation exposure, especially to the chest, and especially in childhood for whatever reason that might have been. Being overweight, particularly having a BMI, a higher BMI, can increase risk by up to 35%. So obesity, body fatness can increase risk, lack of physical activity, vitamin D deficiency, which many of us are low in vitamin D, and we would never know unless we're checking it, right? Smoking, of course, alcohol consumption, history of birth control use, and actually more risk the younger we start birth control. So less than 18-year-old, 18 years old will have a higher uh risk for breast cancer. And if the birth control was used for more than a year, there's going to be increasing risk with longer duration of use. Okay. And then another one that I think is interesting that is again, it's these are all established. This is not just my thoughts on breast cancer. Okay. These are accepted risks. Night shift workers. And this is interesting because the way I interpret that is around circadian rhythm disruption and probably melatonin issues as well. Melatonin deficiency. We know the hormone melatonin is also really important in immune support. And in certain cancers, we do see a connection between melatonin deficiency and increased risk. So night shift workers, this could be, I think some of the people that I've worked with where I've seen this, could be nurses like working the night shift, could also be flight attendants or pilots who are crossing time zones, like may have like really wonky schedules because they're traveling all the time, can also increase risk. Right. And now, if you remember, if you happen to already listen to the episode with Kazlan, we talked a little bit about circadian rhythm and how that plays a role in just cancer prevention and overall health. So here's an example where it's actually been shown to increase risk. Now, those were the overlaps. There's also some differences depending on whether it's hormone receptor positive or not. Okay. So for hormone receptor positive, it actually seems to be more common in older women. So in increasing age versus hormone receptor negative seems to be more common in younger women under 40. And again, these are risks, right? It doesn't necessarily mean that is always true, but these are risk factors. So more pre-menopausal women, we see an increase in hormone receptor negative, whereas more postmenopausal women, we might see hormone receptor positive. We're also seeing some increased risk with hormone receptor positive in women who use postmenopausal HRT. But we're gonna save this, I think, for another episode to just really speak to this in more depth because there is a lot of new information around this particular topic and there's a lot of nuance here. It's not just HRT across the board. There's a lot of levels that seem to matter here, like the type of HRT receiving, bioidentical or not, the dosing, the ratio between estrogen, progesterone, et cetera, other lifestyle factors. So I think there's a lot of, we can't just say across the board HRT is dangerous. I think that is no longer true. And many, at least functional practitioners, would agree with that. But there is nuance. So we are going to table that, I think, for another episode. Another piece with hormone receptor positive risk, beginning menstruation at an earlier age. So typically, if menstruation started before age 12, that can increase risk. And also beginning menopause at an older age. So basically, like the longer you've been cycling and having hormones circulating through your body, the more potential risk there is. And beginning menopause at an older age, it's like in quotes, older because everybody goes through menopause at a different age. There's no one right age, but it seems to be after age 55, there could be increasing risk. Also, having your first child after age 30 or not having children at all, not breastfeeding. So I think a lot of this has to do with like how many years have we been cycling with hormones, right? If the more times we're pregnant, the longer we breastfeed, starting our menstruation later or ending it earlier, like all of those things are going to contribute to less years of hormones in our bodies, right? And that's how to understand that that risk assessment. And then there's also certain environmental exposures that can increase risk, especially xenoestrogens. And I will talk about this more in episode two, but xenoestrogens are chemicals in the environment in a variety of forms. So I'll talk about that more, that can mimic estrogen in the body and can cause higher levels of estrogen in the body. So the more we're exposed to these sort of estrogen mimicking chemicals in our body, the more estrogen could potentially pose a problem for us. Now for hormone receptor negative. So I already mentioned like it the increased risk there tends to be with younger premenopausal women, African-American women as well. And then I think I had already mentioned earlier about the BRCA mutation. So if that is true for you, remember, again, that's five to 10%. So it's not that many. But BRCA one gene mutation is more associated with hormone receptor negative versus BRCA2 gene mutation increases risk for especially estrogen receptor positive breast cancer. But remember what I said, just because you have a certain genetic potential doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna be turned on or expressed, right? And so one example here is that we know that this particular mutation can be switched on by vitamin D deficiency, right? So again, it's like even if we have it, it doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna pose a problem for us unless the environment is such that it's triggering these genes to turn on. And with hormone receptor negative, another kind of long list of environmental exposures that can also increase risk. Everything from cadmium to too much zinc, chromium, copper in the blood, lead, strontium, a whole list. So we always have to think about the environmental impacts when it comes to risk. Now, those are all the established, again, you do your research, like you're gonna find those things online, most likely. But I want us to dive a little deeper because, like I said, many of the women who work with us could already check off most of those things as not true for them, right? They're already at a healthy weight, or they don't smoke, or they eat really well, and they exercise. And then maybe they had kids. Perhaps they had kids later, but maybe they breastfed or like they just don't have very many of those risks. So we need to go deeper. We need to understand more the physiology behind breast cancer. And again, thinking about it in a more global way around cancer prevention and the systems of cancer prevention in our body helps us understand why, right? Like why rates are increasing. So pretty specifically when it comes to breast cancer, I want to break it down by our E3 cancer risk model, right? So I shared this in episode two. And if you want to go back and listen to that, you can if you haven't yet. That is emotions, environment, and epigenetics. And it's often the interplay between the three that makes someone more at risk for getting cancer than somebody else. So let's go through each of them and I want to give you some examples. So with emotions, this is a really big one. And I'm going to dive into this more as we go, but just to give you an overview here, there is something known as uh cancer personality. And this is like just personality traits that tend to put someone more at risk for cancer. The reason behind that is because these certain personality traits make stresses and conflicts and emotional trauma more intense on their physiology, which can then impact the immune system, which then makes us more susceptible. So it's always like a cascade of events. You know, it's rarely just, oh, I'm feeling angry. Now cancer's growing in my body. It's not like that. So briefly, I'm going to speak to the cancer personality. It's the typically the people pleaser, the woman who's putting others before their own needs. Everybody else matters first, and then they take care of themselves. They tend to avoid conflict. They tend to avoid stress, or when stress happens, they have a hard time coping with it, right? They tend to internalize a lot of their feelings and emotions. They're not comfortable expressing themselves. They also may have perfectionist tendencies. I would say a really important common denominator, especially when it comes with a lot of cancers, but especially breast cancer, is suppressed emotions. So not really letting ourselves feel our feelings, especially the more difficult feelings like anger, right? And if you're avoid, if you're the type of person who tends to avoid conflict and stress, you're probably not going to feel as comfortable expressing what you're angry about, right? So this pent-up emotion can create, again, a cascade that puts somebody at more risk for cancer and especially breast cancer. We've also seen some studies that link grief or the loss of an important relationship can again trigger this cascade. Conflicts related to our personal relationships. So our spouse, our partner, our children, other family members, like people in our inner circle left unresolved. Cause of course, it's not like we're not going to have conflict with the people in our inner circle. But when that happens and it festers and it continues and we don't resolve it and it starts to get stuck in our bodies, that has also been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer. So there's the emotional component. Then there's the environmental component. And the environmental component for includes our diet. It includes whether we're exercising or not. It includes our stress and how well we're sleeping and our circadian rhythm levels, right? Or disruption depending on our jobs or depending on so many things, as you learned in Gazlan's episode. Probably the most important concern here is our increasing toxic environment, especially with xenoestrogens and hormone disruptors, right? Like we're inundated. So how how much of your exposure is going to be part of the equation? But then also how well you're detoxing, how well you're set up to clear those toxins is going to be another element. And this is why, as an example, I've had probably a handful of clients with breast cancer who worked in salons. Okay, there's a lot of chemicals. Unless you're working in a natural organic salon, you're going to be exposed to a lot of chemicals between dyes and straighteners and fumes, just so many different things. Now, not every woman or person who works in a salon is going to get cancer, but there is an increased risk there because of the exposure level. And then secondarily to that is how well are you set up genetically to clear those? And if you clear them really well, it may never be an issue for you, right? If you don't clear them well, then now your job has become like risk factor number one for you developing cancer. So just to give you an example there. Same with alcohol, right? And this is why, yes, alcohol consumption is a risk factor for cancer, especially breast cancer, but it also depends on how well you're set up to clear alcohol. And what's important for you to know here is when we think about toxins and how we're detoxing them, with alcohol, I mean, as with many things, but I'm just gonna use alcohol as an example because as alcohol gets broken down in our body, the acetylaldehyde compound is very toxic to our bodies. It's very harmful. It's a known carcinogen, which means cancer cause. Our liver is going to prioritize clearing that as quickly as it can, right? Because it's trying to protect you. It's trying to get rid of this element that could pose danger to your body. Now, what if this scenario is? Let's say I'm gonna give an example here of before I moved to France, I lived in Northern California, just north of San Francisco in Marin County. Okay, I spent over a decade there. I loved Marin County. It had many good attributes. In California, and I don't know if this is still true, but at the time that I lived there, Marin County had the highest incidence of breast cancer, okay, out of all of California. I don't know how it compared nationally, like statewide, but at least in California. Now, Marin is a very affluent county. There's lots of resources, people are buying organic, they're exercising, like they're, you know, it doesn't mean that not everybody is, but many of them are. Okay. Why would rates be high in that county? And there were public health campaigns to try to understand why this was. I think obviously it's multifactorial, but I think one of the main reasons is alcohol was very much enjoyed in Marin County. And there was a culture around it where it was completely accepted. You'd get home from work and you'd have some wine, or you'd and maybe you would just be drinking like throughout the evening with dinner, but just not stopping. When you met up with friends, you'd go get cocktails or you'd go get wine. There's we're very close to Napa, right? There's wine, it's a wine culture. So there's a lot of alcohol being consumed in a normal cultural way. But let's say that's you, okay. Let's say you're enjoying wine when you get home from work, you're enjoying wine with dinner. But what if now you actually don't clear alcohol super well? Okay. So it might be creating more toxin, toxic buildup in your body. And what if you also happen to be somebody who has high levels of hormones in their body? And there could be a lot of reasons for this. It could be what you're exposed to in the environment. It could be that you're just not clearing hormones really well, especially estrogen, that there's a more toxic byproduct of estrogen. I'm gonna talk about that more in just a second. But for whatever reason, let's say you also have high levels of estrogen in your body and you're drinking alcohol every day, okay? Your liver is going to prioritize clearing the alcohol, but your liver is also responsible for clearing your hormones. And the alcohol is gonna take precedence. So while your liver is busy dealing with the alcohol, it is not working on the hormones and the hormones recirculate. And if there happens to be a lot of toxic byproduct of estrogen metabolism, that is recirculating in the body, creating inflammation, creating damage. So you can see how it's not black and white, right? And it's gonna vary for each person depending on what's happening in your own physiology. Now, there are also certain nutrient deficiencies that could be playing in here when it comes to environment, like we already mentioned vitamin D or melatonin. Also, iodine is an important one that iodine deficiency has also been shown to contribute to an increased risk of breast cancer and damaging breast tissue. It could also be high insulin or blood sugar levels. Breast cancer cells have increased receptors for both. And we know that women with type 2 diabetes have an increased risk for breast cancer, about a 20% increased risk for breast cancer. So it could be just like your blood sugar metabolism or insulin resistance could be playing a role. Could also be immune dysfunction or immune burden. Perhaps there's latent infections in your body that are burdening the immune system and making it not as quick to respond when cells start to mutate or become cancerous. There's been some connections with mold, toxicity, with dental disease, with mercury fillings, with including periodontal disease, root canals, et cetera. It could be microbiome issues or it could be even latent viruses in the body. There's also been, we're gonna save this for its own topic because it's so fascinating, but there's also some research around the COVID spike protein and immune dysfunction, which can then lead to increased cancer risk. So there's a lot of layers here. And when I'm helping somebody think through their risk factors, I want to make sure we're thinking through all of those, right? Because whatever is potentially amiss for you is an area now that we can focus on to prevent cancer from coming back or to prevent it from forming in the first place if you haven't had cancer before. And then there's the epigenetics piece, which definitely goes beyond the bracket genes. So, like I've already alluded to, how well are you detoxing? How well are you clearing hormones? Are you methylating well? Can you anti-inflame okay? How is your antioxidation pathways? Like all of these systems that would be a buffer to cancer growing. What if you have certain genotypes that are suboptimal or poor, which means those are areas that your body might be struggling and you don't even realize that, right? I hope that makes sense. But for me, when I think about the causes, it's really the interplay between all of those things. And we do a global assessment to really help you understand your risks. Now, I have a special invitation for you because if you want to dive deeper into this, I am actually going to be offering a four-day workshop coming up very soon to help you get really clear on your personal risks or potential root causes of breast cancer, whether you've already had it before or not, maybe it runs in your family, maybe you're just worried about not getting it any and all are welcome. So you're gonna learn, we're gonna take what we just talked about, we're gonna split it up. That part's gonna be over three full days, not full days, but three workshops. And you're gonna learn. A lot more about not only the causes, but how to assess that personally for yourself, which of these areas might be a risk factor for you? Then you will also get really clear on how to come up with a game plan to move forward to manage those risks, right? To reduce those risks, to optimize your systems of cancer prevention. And it's going to be really great. I hope you would consider joining us. We are going to run it live in the next few weeks. So if you happen to listen to this episode soon, you can sign up and join us live. There will be a link below in the show notes where you can learn more and grab your seat. If you're listening to this later, no worries. If we've already done the live workshop, the replays will also still be available. So if this is something you really want to dive deeper into and start to create your own personal blueprint, then I invite you to still check out the link and you can get access to the replays. Okay. So that is in a nutshell, how we think about the risks and root causes for breast cancer. In part two, in our next episode, we're going to talk more about the how. So what do we, how do we take this information and turn it into a long-term holistic strategy to help us stay cancer free. All right. Subscribe to the podcast. You'll be the first to know when that episode drops. Please share with your friends and family if anybody in your life has face breast cancer, please invite them to listen. I hope it will be helpful for them. And I can't wait to see you in the next episode. Bye, everyone.