Beyond The Pink Ribbon: A Holistic Blueprint To Help Prevent Breast Cancer

Welcome to part 2 in our 2-part mini series focused on breast cancer.

Most people know the basics of breast cancer prevention—move more, drink less alcohol, eat plants—but what happens if you were already doing all of that (& more) and yet still got breast cancer?

In this episode we go beyond the standard prevention guidelines and show how your emotions, environment, and unique genetics create an inner terrain where cancer risk rises or falls, and we translate that science into clear, compassionate steps you can actually live with.

If this conversation inspires you to go even deeper... ⬇️

👉 Then I invite you to join our upcoming live 4-day workshop or watch the replays. Learn more here: https://groundandroot.com/breastcancerworkshop 

And please don't forget to subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a rating and review to help more women find grounded, science-smart prevention.

🌿 Let's Connect 🌿

Explore Coaching

Join Us On Substack 

Watch Episodes on YouTube 

Follow Us on Instagram

Transcript

Welcome And Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and 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 Detraz. I am so excited to be with you again today as we are continuing our two-part mini-series on breast cancer for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. A big goal I have for this podcast, if it's not already obvious, is to help us all understand the real root causes of cancer so that we are better prepared to prevent it from forming in the first place or to enhance our recovery if we've already been diagnosed and what to do specifically using a holistic, comprehensive approach to help us stay cancer free. When it comes to breast cancer, the statistics are scary. Many women are very worried about getting breast cancer, whether they've seen their friends or their family members go through it, whether it runs in their family or not. And it is a very preventable cancer. Most cancers are. So whether it's hormone receptor positive or

Beyond Basic Risk Factors

SPEAKER_00 2:45

negative, whether it's HER2 positive or negative, there are still a lot of the same risk factors like obesity, smoking, alcohol consumption, lack of physical activity, et cetera. Right. You'll get the full list in the previous episode. But then beyond that, because I feel like, again, the type of women I tend to work with, they've already checked off most of those things. They're like, I'm already doing all that. And yet I'm still here with this, either with this diagnosis or with this increased risk that I'm not okay with. What else do I need to think about? That's we go deeper. So emotions. Remember, we talked about the cancer personality. We talked about suppressing our feelings and emotions, especially difficult emotions like anger, hanging on to anger is a big one. Conflicts in our personal relationships, unresolved. I'll leave it at that because you again, when we think about emotions and emotional wellness, we are allowed to have difficult feelings, of course. What is most important is that we just allow ourselves to have the feeling, to process the feeling and to move through the feeling instead of avoiding it because it's uncomfortable, it's difficult, we don't want conflict, we don't want to actually make people upset with us by saying how we truly feel. It gets lodged, stuck in our system, and then begins a cascade, which can then make it easier for cancer to grow in the body. So there's the emotional aspect. Then there's the environmental piece. What does the diet look like? What is the lifestyle? Are there xenoestrogens or hormone disruptors in your environment? What about nutrient deficiencies, vitamin D, melatonin, iodine? How well is your immune system working, right? How well are you clearing toxins? All of this plays into the environmental risks when it comes to all cancers, but breast cancer, since that's our topic for today. And then the epigenetics piece. So your unique blueprint, your unique DNA, how well do you clear hormones? How well do you detox and methylate and anti-inflame and antioxidate? Are there certain systems of prevention that could be needing more support? So once you have a sense of your unique risks, then it's much easier to put together the game plan to stay cancer free. Like, what are the things I need to focus on? I'm already doing ABCD. What else do I need to consider to really help my body stay healthy and cancer free? Just a reminder, and I'll speak to this again at the end, that we do have a four-day

Emotional Health And Cancer

SPEAKER_00 5:20

workshop coming up where I'm going to be diving much deeper into all of this. So if this has piqued your interest and you're like, this is great, I want more, then remember to check out the link in the show notes so that you can join us for that upcoming workshop. Okay. So let's now think about, let's switch it from the risks to prevention. And we're going to go beyond the basic prevention guidelines, but let's start there, right? I always think it's important for us to know like what is already commonly agreed upon. And then how can we take that, you know, one, two, three levels deeper to make sure that we're really thinking through all the potential pieces. When it comes to breast cancer prevention, again, looking at American Cancer Society, World Cancer Research Fund, et cetera. Here are some of the basic prevention guidelines that are commonly accepted by probably almost everybody. I don't want to speak to there, might be some people who don't agree, but it's around exercise and being at a healthy weight and not smoking and having children before 30 or making sure you're breastfading, right? Consuming little to no alcohol. There's some support around following a more plant-based diet, less meat heavy. These are some of the more common, just basic breast cancer prevention guidelines. But I, of course, want us to go deeper than that. If you're not already doing those things, then of course that makes sense to start there, right? To start exercising or to help yourself to lose weight if that's something you've been struggling with, or to stop smoking, right? Or to drink less alcohol. Like certainly those are good places to start. I don't want to discredit that, but often it's not enough. So if you're already doing most or all of those things, then let's go deeper. So let's start with the emotions, the emotional piece. Okay. I would say out of all the risk factors related to emotions, trauma, conflict, emotional wellness, the most important thing you can do is feel your feelings. Express your emotions. If you are feeling angry, it is okay to feel anger. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to direct it at somebody else for it to be resolved, right? You can find other ways to release anger. You can scream into a pillow. You can hit your pillow or take up boxing, right? Something like this. You can find ways to move the anger through your body instead of hanging on to it in order to avoid it. That is probably first and foremost what is going to be important when it comes to emotional wellness and reducing our risks in that category, is just allowing yourself to feel the feelings, allow them to move through you, expressing yourself. That's a big one. The other piece to this would be if you are, if you were relating it all to some of those cancer personality traits that I shared in the last episode, then it's, I would say from that perspective, it's about how can you begin to put your needs first, which might feel really weird if you've never ever done that, right? If that's not your inclination, that can feel really hard. But feeling your feelings and putting your needs first, right? Or at least like bringing them into the mix, not putting everybody else's needs ahead of yours, like even if everybody was just equal, making sure you're giving some energy and time to what you need, to your self-care, to your desires. That's going to be another really important one. And then just in general, enhancing emotional wellness, which again, we will continue to share lots of ways to do that through this podcast. And certainly in the workshop, we will talk more to this. I'll give you a lot of ideas, but enhancing emotional wellness so that we can move from some of those less comfortable feelings like anger or even just disappointment or grief, right? Into a higher emotional, a higher emotion like love and gratitude and empowerment. And there's a lot of ways we can help our body shift those emotions. Once we felt them, then moving into a higher space. We can use lots of different tools. Probably one of the best tools you can use is to just get outside in nature and to learn to ground and earth. And not only is that gonna help with your the circadian rhythm piece, the environmental piece, but it's also gonna help your nervous system. It's also gonna help your emotional wellness. So that would be the emotional bucket is are you feeling your feelings? Are you putting your are you making your needs important too? Okay. And bringing in strategies that make you feel good, that help you feel more grateful, where it's gratitude journaling, being out in nature and the sunshine, making time for the things that you love that bring you joy, that are fun for you, right? Allowing yourself some pleasure, some fun in your day. Those they seem like such simple things. And yet they can actually have a pretty profound effect on keeping your immune system strong, keeping your nervous system regulated, and ultimately decreasing your risk for cancer. Okay, the environment category, that bucket is a bigger one. Right. So when we think about diet, there is some research around plant-based being important, but I think it's nuanced. And we're gonna dive much deeper into this in the workshop. But just to give you some of that here, I think we can all agree that minimizing

From Risks To Prevention

SPEAKER_00 10:53

refined sugar, processed meats, unhealthy fats, quote unquote junk foods is gonna be important for all of us to stay cancer free. I would go even further into saying maintaining balanced blood sugar is probably one of the most important things we can do, plus optimizing the nutrient density of what we're eating. So rather than target specific foods as being the enemy and being the problem, I think it's more about just the overarching pattern of how we're eating. Are we eating in a way that balances our blood sugar? Some of this is gonna have to do with your genetics. Some people tolerate carbs better than others, right? Some people tolerate fats better than others. So the exact dietary pattern might be a little different for everybody. But what is going to matter for everyone is having balanced blood sugar levels, balanced insulin levels, and high nutrient density. And guess what? Plants do provide a lot of nutrients. So I do agree that there should be a lot of plants in your diet. That doesn't necessarily mean there can't be any animal foods. And I will make sure in the workshop that we dive much deeper into that to that topic in particular, because I know there's a lot of questions around do I need to be vegan if I've had breast cancer, do I need to avoid all meat? Do I need to avoid all dairy, right? What do I do about soy and other phytoestrogens? We will get really clear around that because there is research on both sides of that argument. So I want to help you understand and come to a middle ground of what would be the right thing for you to do going forward. So that's diet, lifestyle. Obviously, we know exercise is preventative. So having some exercise in our regular routine is gonna be important. Vigorous exercise, so having that doesn't mean every time, but let's say a couple of times a week, really vigorous exercise is gonna be even more helpful with pre-menopausal prevention. So for those of us who are still younger, less than 50, or you haven't started moving through menopause yet, having some vigorous intensity exercise is going to offer more prevention. Being mindful about alcohol consumption, this is another one I'll spend a little bit more time on in the workshop because again, I think it's nuanced. If you could care less about alcohol, like you have no, it doesn't really matter to you whether you drink or don't, then don't. We do know that alcohol has, it does have cancer-causing compounds. So if you don't care either way, you might as well avoid it. And it's just one less toxin that your body has to deal with. But if you enjoy alcohol, you enjoy good wine, or you enjoy going out once in a while for a cocktail, you're like, I can't really imagine my life without ever having alcohol again. We're gonna talk about the nuances around that because again, depending on how well you tolerate and clear alcohol, how well you're clearing your hormones could dictate how much alcohol might be okay for you. It's really not black and white. So that one is gonna deserve a little bit more of a conversation. Minimizing toxic exposures, that's gonna be a big one. And it's gonna be hard to do because as we talked about in episode two, we're inundated with toxins, right? Since the 90s, thousands and thousands of new chemicals have come into our environment. And that could very well explain why cancer rates in general are increasing. When we think about chemicals that disrupt our hormones or cause excess estrogen in our body, that is more of the connection

Feelings First: Practical Tools

SPEAKER_00 14:25

between with breast cancer in particular, right? So we need to get really clear around what we are exposing ourselves to and controlling as much as we can. Now it's never gonna be 100% perfect, nor does it need to be. Okay. Like your body can handle some toxins. It's okay. We just want to make sure that it's not overflowing in toxins and that you have really good detox pathways to keep things clearing. That's like half the equation, right? What's coming in and then how well are you getting rid of it without damage in the body? So thinking about what you have some control over. When we think about chemicals that mimic estrogen in the body, and this is gonna be even more important if you have a hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, we want to get rid of some of those things. The BPAs, the phthalates, and plastics, right? Like reducing our exposure to plastics is gonna be a big one. Doing more organic insecticides, pesticides, weed killers, a lot of those have xenoestrogen activity. Chlorine is another one, right? So buying chlorine-free products or using a filter to clear chlorine out of your water, out of your shower. This is gonna be really important if, like me, you love to swim. I think about all the years as a kid I spent swimming in chlorinated pools, constantly being inundated with hormone disruptors. And then I wonder why my period was so wonky as a teenager. I'm sure that had a huge piece to do with it. Parabens in skincare, in cosmetics, in hair care products, right? PCBs in paints, what you're cleaning with. I mean, there's so many elements that you do have some control over. And I know this can feel very overwhelming when it comes to minimizing toxic exposure. I would say start with what's easiest for you. That's going to be different for all of us. And as you get rid of, as you use something up, replace it with a less toxic option so that you're gradually reducing your exposure and you're not wasting or just throwing things away. That's probably the most sustainable way to approach that category. Again, in the workshop, I'll make sure I give you like a laundry list of things so that you can be really intentional around how you're beginning to lower your exposures. We already talked about a bit about circadian rhythm support, but certainly getting good, deep, restorative sleep and making sure that you have healthy vitamin D and melatonin levels, all of that is gonna matter too in prevention. The epigenetic piece. So here's what's interesting with this part. Really, you're not gonna know unless you do some genetic testing, right? And there we can help you with that. If this is something you're like, I definitely want to know more about my DNA or my hormone levels. This is gonna be important because we can make assumptions based on signs and symptoms and like what you've maybe struggled with over the years. We can assume that certain things may not be as optimally expressed as we would like them to be. And then we bring in support for that, right? Or we do the testing, we run a DNA test or we run a hormone test to see like what is actually happening in your body right now. Right. The DNA, you're born with that. So it's not gonna change. You do it once for your blueprint. Your hormones are gonna shift, right? If you're still cycling, if you're moving through treatment, if you're postmenopause, like obviously the hormones are going to change, but doing some hormone testing can be helpful to see what is actually true for you right now, how much is in your body, how well are you clearing it? Are you clearing it down the more protective pathway, or is more of it going down the more toxic pathway, which means you actually have this toxic metabolite that could be creating DNA damage? Once it's been metabolized, how well are you methylating it? Is it creating inflammation in the body? Chronic inflammation is a really big factor when it comes to cancer and risks for cancer. So anything we can do to lower inflammation in your body while enhancing immune function is gonna help you stay cancer free, right? Or help you heal if you're still, if you're in it right now and dealing with cancer. We can also bring in foods to support that. So just as an example, let's say you're not actually clearing hormones super well, or your estrogen levels are really high. And let's say more of it is going down that toxic pathway, which we know because we did some testing and we see that. Of course, there's supplements that can help us shift that quicker, but even foods, cruciferous veggies, so it's like your broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, cabbage, etc., that category of vegetables is going to be your biggest ally in clearing hormones. And because it's also so great at detox support, it has known anti-cancer phytonutrients in it. That is one vegetable group that all of us can do, even if we don't know what's happening in our body specifically, it is only going to be helpful, right? So again, ideally organic, but organic cruciferous

Diet, Blood Sugar, And Plants

SPEAKER_00 19:40

veggies at least a few times a week in your diet, perhaps every day, if you've already had cancer or you're currently dealing with cancer, is gonna go a long way to help support healthy hormones, healthy detox, and anti-cancer protection. Another thing, let's say you perhaps you're not methylating well, perhaps you're not anti-inflaming well. So whatever estrogen metabolites you have is actually creating some extra inflammation in your body, or your body is having a hard time letting go of inflammation. That could be from toxic exposure, it could be from viruses or bacterial exposure. B vitamins are actually gonna be incredibly helpful at getting you to methylate better. So making sure you're eating lots of foods rich in vitamin B12, rich in folate. Um, if we do know your DNA, then we can also see what form is gonna be best. So if we're gonna bring in supplementation, we know if a methylated form is gonna be better or a non-methylated form is gonna be better for you. But enhancing that could be as simple as some foods and a supplement. And that's gonna make a huge difference. I can even tell you from my own personal experience when I started learning about my DNA and epigenetics. I it actually happened to be at a time where I was recovering from COVID and I had this lingering cough that wasn't going away. Perhaps you could relate to this if you've faced COVID yourself. Despite everything I words, despite all the things, it wasn't clearing. I learned that I don't methylate well. I don't anti-inflame. I learned what form of B vitamin was going to work best for me. And I brought in a lozenge. Within a week, my cough was gone. And that would not have been an intuitive hit for me to be like, oh, let's take some B vitamins to help get rid of my cough. But once you understand like how all these systems work together, we can be much more targeted in the remedies and the strategies to correct whatever's maybe not working super well. So if I hope that was helpful, even just to give you like a few ideas to get started, right, on your own plan. And if you want to dive deeper into this, again, remember we have a four-day workshop coming up where we're gonna go really deep into the risks and root causes. I'm gonna guide you through a blueprint so that you can actually do your own personal assessment so you can get clearer around what your unique risks are. If you decide you want to do testing, I'm gonna make an option available for you to do that. So you will have a way to go deeper into your DNA or your hormones, if that's something you want to do. And we're gonna get create a game plan around how to move forward. Once you have a sense of your risks, what categories are most at risk for you, then we're gonna get really clear on the strategies to help correct those risks or rebalance those risks, right? If that is interesting to you, certainly if you've had breast cancer before, I really invite you to consider joining us. Remember, the link is in the show notes. So you can go learn more, you can sign up. And if you're listening to this later, if we've already finished the live, don't worry. You still have access to the replays. So if this is information that you want, you still have access to it. Okay, just click the link below in the show notes and you can learn how to grab that. All right. In our next episode, we are going to continue this conversation a little bit further before we switch gears and move away from breast cancer. Not that we won't revisit this again in the future. Of course we will, because there's just so much more we could still talk about. But in our next episode, I'm actually going to be joined by a guest, functional nutritionist and hormone expert Lauren Papanos from Functional Fueling. And we're going to talk about the connection between, first off, let me just even ask this question. Did you know that women with thyroid disease, with thyroid issues, have an increased risk for breast cancer? Have you ever heard that connection before? I was surprised by this the first time I learned about it. And then I actually started noticing wow, a lot of my clients before they had breast cancer had thyroid issues. They were on thyroid medication. They were already having like thyroid problems. And then they develop breast cancer later. So I became very curious in what is this link? What is how is thyroid health connected to breast health? We're gonna dive deep deep into that with Lauren, who is an expert in all things hormonal, especially with thyroid health. So we're gonna talk about this connection between thyroid health, also iodine deficiency, and breast cancer risk. It's gonna be fascinating. So please plan to join us. Remember, if you subscribe to the podcast, then you will know right away when the episode drops. So you'll be the first to listen. And I can't wait to see you there. Have a beautiful day, everyone. Bye bye.