A Different Way of Thinking About Breast Cancer with Carol Lourie | How Humans Heal Podcast

Hi, everyone. We have a really important topic today which is talking about breast cancer. Supporting women through breast cancer treatment and recovery from breast cancer treatment and then prevention of breast cancer from coming back again. I'm talking about this with Dr. Carol Laurie, who is a naturopathic physician, but really more than that, she has gone on to specialize in also Chinese medicine, homeopathy, and helping people with complex health issues like breast cancer and others. So thank you so much for joining me today, Carol. I really appreciate it.

I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

You're welcome. And I think this is such an important area to give people more education, even just to know that support is available. Because so much of the time when women are going through breast cancer treatment, they feel isolated and alone and overwhelmed. Overwhelmed. And of course, they have their oncology team that's helping them through that oncology treatment. But there's also aspects of that that's not covered in oncology treatment, including help to prevent the cancer from coming back again. Tell us more. Like how did you end up finding this as an area that you like to help women with and more about that. Why is this an area of specialty for you?

Well, I love talking about this. When I was at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine as a student many, many years ago, of course, we had our oncology semester and it was a very generalized topic. And I knew about breast cancer, but it was a disease that was out there. It never impacted me personally. But the statistics for those of you who don't know, one in eight women and it's getting larger, will experience breast cancer within their lifetime. That happened to me when one day the phone rang and I thought it was a crank call, but it turned out because the person was hysterical on the other line. It was my dear friend who had been diagnosed and she said they found a lump. And at that moment I committed to going through 18. Turned out to be 18 months of treatment with her. Every infusion, every biopsy, every doctor's appointment. And those doctor's appointments at UCSF in San Francisco were five or six hours by the time we got there and waited and went through the whole protocol. It was all day, as was the infusion. And then I took care of her after we got home. So I had a very up close and personal experience of what was working within the standard medical care or allopathic care, which is a lot of. And then what was lacking.

On the other side. And one day we were with the doctor's appointment and the doctor looked at the blood work and then looked back up at us and said, I don't know what you're doing, but I want all of my patients to do it too. Because she was in such great shape. I mean, she said, the doctor said, you can't even tell. This person is in the middle of chemotherapy. She's not anemic, her white blood cell count is good. She looks great. What's happening here? What was happening was the integrative protocols of the smoothie and the acupuncture and the supplements used safely within the parameters of the stopping a few days before and after the infusion. So as not to interfere, I began to put together protocols for women who. My practice started being focused on women with breast cancer. There's three phases. There's the treatment, there's the recovery from the treatment, and there is the. The preventing recurrence phase. I created an online program called the Path of Breast Cancer, which provides the educational materials and the support of the meditation and all this information. How to make smoothies. What are the supplements.

That you need for each different phase. But when I asked my community, what's your number one concern since you've been diagnosed and there's thousands of people here, 80% of them said, I'm afraid it's going to come back. I don't want it to come back. I took my preventing recurrence part of the path of breast cancer and I created a live group coaching program for six weeks, which I just had week number five this morning with my lovely community. Everyone has six weeks of live coaching with me in which we go through every aspect that you need to know that you're doing everything you can to reduce your risk of recurrence. That includes dealing with the side effects from tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors that women are so often put on when they finished active treatment.

Well, it sounds very comprehensive and thorough and at the same time very systematic to be able to just. That's the thing is when you feel out of control with your health and your body, it really makes a big difference, I think, to be able to come to a program that says, here's the system, here's the step by step to cover everything you need with support and no matter where they're located. Right. Because it's online program that you offer.

That's true. I had a woman last time who was from Sweden, and now I have women from all over the US which is the beauty of the online community. But the issue with breast cancer and cancer in general is as a Homeopathic. This is a perspective that we look at. Cancers are cells that have decided to stop paying attention to the rules. So normally when we are driving, we all stop at the stop sign or stop at the stoplight. There's no conversation about that. But the cancer cells have decided to, like, forget that. I'm going to do whatever I want. I'm not stopping. I'm always going. That is called spreading and metastasis. And not only am I going, but I'm going to call over to the neighbors and I'm going to get them to join me too.

We need to break up that signaling, and we need to disrupt the cell phone messaging, so to speak. And we also need to make our body inhospitable to cancer. And because cancer is a metabolic disease, there's a lot that women can do to really impact whether their cancer comes back or not. And that's my message of empowerment, because it's called empowered against recurrence. Empowerment is a beautiful word because so many women think that recurrence is random or it's the luck of the draw. And not necessarily. There's a lot you can do.

Yeah, I love that you're really helping us to shift our view of it, because there has to be a level of acceptance of our body and our mind and in general first. And then to say, well, what is it about my body and mind and spirit that has me vulnerable to cancer cells taking off? By then asking that question and shifting the environment, then we can decrease the likelihood of. Of cancer cells happening. It's this looking at ourselves and what can we shift, but in a loving, accepting way.

Absolutely. And that's what I call a more feminine approach towards breast cancer. Because there is this attitude out there that cancer is a war. The role in cancer, something that we need to conquer. We have to fight cancer. I think those words create inflammation. They're inflammatory. And it puts the attitude of us versus them, us versus the cancer. And that kind of adversary is not healing. Any adversarial relationship is not healing. It creates inflammation. Inflammation is the foundation of all chronic disease. So what you just described is my more feminine approach. We need to look inside and begin to have a conversation, a dialogue with your tumor, my tumor. What's going on? Hi, how are you? What's happening? What are the messages that you're saying to me that I wasn't able to listen to? What do I need to change in my life? What kind of past trauma, even if it was 20 years ago, and I think, oh, it couldn't be that I've had conversations with women. Oh, it couldn't be that. That happened 20 years ago. Well. And it wasn't a big deal. Well, actually it was a big deal. And what we don't acknowledge in our brain, our mind gets put into our cells and they can appear. It can pop up 20 years later. Yes. That's a very beautiful way of describing a different, more feminine approach towards cancer in general. Yes.

It gives me goosebumps because I do so much of my work is focusing on how various types of stresses affect us. From emotional stresses, physical or toxins as stress, or certain foods that are stressful or ways of eating that are stressful and looking at it as okay, we know we're human, we know we're going to get exposed to some stresses, we can't avoid them. But at the same time we want to be aware of it and aware of what our bodies need in order to process and recover from that. Because if we don't give our body that support and processing, then a disease process can develop, whether it's cancer or something else. Sometimes it's with the diagnosis of cancer that we have a wake up. Like, oh gosh, you probably hear that from women all the time.

It should be a wake up. And if it isn't, I don't know what else is a wake up because it is a wake up. It's a serious illness and it is an illness and it can become an illness like any other chronic disease.

And the medical profession is getting better at really making more advanced studies and treatments. And there's now immunotherapy. And I think taking the best of both worlds, which is my approach, take the best of allopathic or standard of care medicine and then add the other side, which is me. Natural and integrative science backed complementary tools and protocols. Then you have. There is this tendency that women say to me, the anxiety gets worse at night.

I'm in bed and I keep thinking it's going to come back, what am I going to do? When you know that you're doing everything possible.

Medicine, allopathic medicine and natural care, you have your bases covered.

It makes it so much of a. Then you feel like you can be proactive and empowered. The word empowered you mentioned before versus afraid and overwhelmed. Right. And it's a total different perspective.

Makes a big difference in how you have a nice day, how you feel like you can do your life and knowing that you're really taking care of every little and paying attention to all the clues. That's another thing that we all need to do in our life, you know.

Listening to our bodies, right? And it's talk us through. Like in terms of what's included in the complementary approach to breast cancer, specifically, I'm thinking diet changes, maybe nutrients and herbs, but not that you have to go into detail, but just so people have a sense of what's included in that.

Well, I took all the chaos because breast cancer and cancer in general tends to create chaos.

Because cancerous cells out of control. So there's this, always this. And we match internally. As a homeopath, we tend to match the feeling of the illness. And cancer is one of those diseases, in homeopathic terms, it's the word called miasm, that energy has a certain disease and diseases have a certain energy. Cancer has this energy of rush, rush, rush, do, do, do, lots of chaos. I have to do this, I have to do that. So I've taken that chaos and I have contained it because women come to see me, and a lot of women, it's interesting thing about cancer, more so than almost with any other illness. It's like they do research and then they decide from Dr. Google that they need this pill and that pill and they come to me with their bags of supplements and 98% of the time they bought the wrong product, not made to pharmaceutical quality, or they're taking 25 different supplements and it's all over the place. And there is a very systemic way that we need to create your supplement protocol. So you're addressing certain aspects of the metabolic disease and it works for your life. So taking 75 pills a day all at once is not how we want to organize your life. Nobody can live like that. So my six steps, which is what I figured out after working with thousands of women, involves, as you said, nutrition. I call it nurturing nutrition, because nutrition is not just about. First of all, it's not a diet. It's not like starving yourself. It's not like necessarily depriving yourself. There are certain things that we very much need to limit. For example, one of the components of cancer is that sugar feeds cancer. That is across any disease of cancer, any type of cancer that was discovered in 1918 by the German scientist Otto Warburg. He discovered in those days, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for this medicine prize for this. That cancer given a choice between oxygen for energy, which we need oxygen to breathe, or sugar. It will choose sugar. Even though it gets less ATP or less gas in its gas tank, so to speak. And it's a more difficult pathway, it will always choose sugar. This was the beginning of the fact that cancer is a metabolic disease. And this discovery was sidelined for many, many years. And it's just come back into acknowledgment. Unfortunately, the standard American diet, with the initial sad SAD is also very dangerous because the component of the standard American diet is processed food, sugar, and simple carbohydrates. So we need to radically shift how we eat. And the good news is there's been a lot of research in what is the best diet. Now, there's tons of the best diets out there. People come in, they're on keto, they're vegan, they're vegetarian. And for me, in the work that I do, we need to address a cancerous and metabolic disease. So it needs to be very low glycemic, minimal carbohydrates, and very low sugar. But also, the Mediterranean diet has been widely studied for 25 years with thousands and thousands of women. They have found that when you eat that diet and you live that lifestyle, you have less cancer risk. I have what I call modified Mediterranean diet. In my approach to women with breast cancer. There are different types of cancers which need different types of diets. For example, brain cancer. There's classic, clear research that people with that illness need the keto diet, which is the best for that. But this is breast cancer. So I use the modified Mediterranean diet, and I think that people need to start cooking for themselves because you don't want to be deprived, you don't have to be deprived. And it needs. Food is about nurturing your body and your soul. So we need to find ways for you to incorporate a healthier version of what you had been eating.

Than you had been. And the other aspect of this is I believe that people shouldn't eat their genetic heritage. So if somebody is Hispanic or Japanese or from Spain, then we need to make a healthier version of those diets for themselves.

And it's so interesting, when I look at some of these cultural diets, they actually align with a Mediterranean diet overall. And, you know, we call it a Mediterranean diet, but I think it's more like, you know, culturally whole foods diet, right? Where it's, you know, vegetables, fruits, healthy proteins and fats. You know, that's what I think of as, you know, probably what you're describing as a modified Mediterranean diet versus in a more balanced. Right. Versus a diet that's too far extreme in one direction or the other.

Right. And it's interesting how many, many cultures always have fermented food as part of their culture food. So there's kimchi, there's kombucha, there's sauerkraut. I'm sure the Hispanic diet has some fermented food in it too. So fermented food we need because it has good pre and bacteria for our gut. Right. So I have people eat if they don't like sauerkraut, a lot of people do. But if you don't like it, you can eat a teaspoon of it a day and still be okay with that. Even if you don't love it, your body needs it, your gut needs it. So we have nutrition as step number one. Step number two is targeted supplementation. And part of that is I have to help people organize their research. So we have a protocol that matches a person's blood work results where they are in their treatment protocol. There's different protocols that we use when you're going through chemo and you're recovering from active treatment than if you finished treatment several months ago. There's certain supplements we don't use when you're in the middle of radiation or chemo, especially tocotrienols. We would never use that when you're in the middle of treatment. But when you're post treatment, we absolutely always include that. So there's these little. It's not so simple. It's not just about gathering everything that you've learned and putting them in a bowl and swallowing them.

And that's why, too. I mean, there's a lot of, like you're mentioning, depending on the treatment, certain nutrients that you need to avoid, or definitely avoid around the days of the treatment, and then we actually want them later. And being. It's a lot any person, I don't think anyone could really figure all that out on their own own. It really is a. You'd have to read a lot of research or go to a lot of trainings. And that's why, you know, you're making it easily accessible to say, hey, I've done all of the background work, you know, now I can just teach you how to. How to do this along the way, step by step. Along the way.

Absolutely. Learning how to put together protocols takes years of study in organization. There's a subtle science to it.

Yeah.

And the third step has to do with emotional trauma, incorporating, as you had so astutely talked about at the beginning, the right attitude and the right approach of I had cancer and how am I going to incorporate the reality of this illness in my life moving forward so it becomes part of who I am and not dominates my life all the time. Mm.

Yeah. It's so important because.

There'S a. And this is definitely, you know, aspect that I don't. With my patients. I don't find it gets addressed with the oncology care. But, you know, sometimes you get, like. It can be. It can take over your life for a number of months. Just the different treatments. As you said, these appointments are long and sometimes daily. And you're just. When you're recovering from a treatment, you're getting ready for the next treatment. And so it's so intense that sometimes you lose track of everything else in your life. But then when you come to the end of the treatment, it's almost like you kind of lose track of your purpose. You can anyway. And to have that, I think it's important to be able to be aware of that and to know, hey, I'm in this phase now. I'm going into this phase. And it's normal, I think, to be redefining yourself based on this very intensive experience that women are going through. Redefine themselves and redefine. What does their life look like going forward.

I think you brought up a really good point, which is. And a lot of women tell me this, that when they're done radiation, all of a sudden they find themselves being depressed and anxious because the treatment. Well, I have to be at radiation every day at this time. It gave them a sense of purpose, and it gave them the sense of like, well, I'm going to radiation. I know that I'm doing what I'm supposed to. It's going to reduce my risk of recurrence. And then all of a sudden, they're left with nothing. And one woman said to me, my oncologist disappeared off the face of the earth the minute I finished treatment. So there is this lack of community and this lack of sense of, who am I now and how am I going to move forward in that. And I think that's a very important part. The other aspect that I think is really important is that radiation is not without its serious side effects. Oxidative stress is a big one. It can really impact how you think, how your brain functions moving forward, how you feel in your joints and your muscles, how you're able to move. There are some very concrete tools that I have that I use and supplements, nutrition, positive movement, acupuncture. I find people, local acupuncturist, to get treatment with, to really reduce that oxidative stress, which is only going to benefit you moving forward. And talking about the emotional component of who you were when you Got diagnosed. What was your life like then? And how does your life need to change? Do you want it to change now? And the other aspect of this is, and we were just talking about this in my teaching this morning, which is one woman said, my husband has said, you're done treatment, you're back to normal now, right?

I've heard this from a lot of women. As soon as I'm done treatment, my family thinks I'm back to normal and I should be able to. My work thinks I should be able to. My family is tired thinking if I'm tired, that I'm being lazy. We need to get more education involved that it can take. The active radiation lasts for six to eight to three months, six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks. You're still having the side effects of radiation. You're not done just because you've stopped going to radiation every day. There needs to be an adjustment in the way the women think and the way their family and workplaces think about how is their energy and what can they get back to.

Something a lot of people don't know is that too much stress can actually create an abundance of health problems like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, anxiety, migraines, insomnia, even fertility issues. This is because high stress puts your adrenal glands on overload. They release cortisol and adrenaline which controls your digestion, hormones, immune system, energy focus and even your emotional response. So how can you beat stress when you don't know where to start? That's why we have a free 7 day stress reset program. It's designed to help support weight loss, digestive healing and hormone balancing. It includes support for integrating self care. Daily tips come to you by email and video. Gluten free dairy free meal plans as well as grocery shopping lists, journal pages and more. This free program will help you beat stress and put you on the path to wholeness in your body. Get your plan now for free@drdonnie.com and.

Then the fourth week I talk about how to talk with your oncologist about monitoring your health. Because there's extensive blood work that I order. The people I work with and I see what their oncologists are doing and there's a lack here. And the more information I have, the more information you have as a person with breast cancer, then we can really address what's going on in your body proactively. For example, copper tends to create angiogenesis or cancer spread. Copper is never tested in regular oncology. We want to test a person's relationship to their zinc and their copper and their seroplasm levels. So we can gather that information, and then, if necessary, we can help them detox from copper. We can avoid copper supplements. There's a lot that we can do for that.

I mean, and that's, you know, again, you know, to be able. It's so valuable to be able to have that information about which test to do, because a lot of tests just aren't done on a regular blood work. But then people feel like, how am I going to be able to know what to do or how to do it? But there are ways. There's ways where we can. You can get this blood work done. It doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars to get this information. And then.

They have you to help know what to do about it. I think that's wonderful. I do that also when I work with patients with HPV to be like, hey, how do we look at. Well, to begin with, which nutrient imbalances might have made them susceptible, but especially when they go through, say, chemo and radiation, now new nutrient deficienc deficiencies develop. And so you need to look at it again and say, okay, where are we now? What got depleted from the treatment? How do we help you get back to a healthy place and maintain it over time?

Right. And the good news for us as functional medicine practitioners is we have very specific tests. Genova Diagnostic is a nutrival. There's other versions of that also. So you can get a baseline, and then you can put people on a protocol, and then you can retest three to six months later, and you can really see how people get better. That's very empowering. People take all these supplements. I'm taking these supplements. They're a pain in the neck. I don't know if they're doing any good. But then when you retest and you see the difference, compare the first time to the second time, it's like, wow. Yeah, it really works. People get really excited. Oh, yeah. Taking all those supplements really made a difference. Here it is. Yeah.

Sometimes we need to see an objective number on a piece of paper. And then, because otherwise, yeah, I can feel like, okay, I'm swallowing, but I don't know what I'm doing. But if you see it, then you're like, okay, it's actually getting in. It's actually making a difference. And of course, the way they feel will start to make a difference for them, too.

And so the other step that I just talked about is the fifth step is lifestyle changes. And how do you put it all Together in a way where you don't get overwhelmed. Because part of the rushing sensation, oh, I have to do this. I have to create a toxin free home. I have to notice the word I have to. The word I have to or should doesn't lead to people consistently following through.

Right. Because then it's just another demand or expectation and then you're hard on yourself if you don't do it.

Exactly. So it needs to come from the sense one of understanding. Well, yeah, I mean, I don't want to have those plug ins in my house because they're toxic. I don't want to have that spray stuff. I had a woman who had to throw her sofa out because she had sprayed that junk so much on it that she couldn't detoxify it. And that junk that she sprayed is estrogen disruptor and chemicals and she needed to throw out her sofa.

So scary.

Yeah, that is scary. And she had her. Her number one problem was.

Unexplained infertility, which is a hysterical, quote unquote problem. Because it wasn't unexplained. It was. Yeah, you can't get pregnant at 35 because you have 29 estrogen disrupting chemicals in her home is what we discovered. And three months after she got rid of them and bought a new sofa and started taking, changing her Tide and supplements, she was pregnant without having to go through $40,000 of IDF. So anytime anyone tells you you have an unexplained illness, I want everyone to realize that they need to see a functional medicine doctor for further workup. Yeah, there's really no such thing as unexplained.

They haven't looked deep enough to find the real issue. Yeah, I agree.

And then.

The sixth step is putting it all together in a way that works for you individually and long term for your future good health. And there's lots of different components to your life as you are now. You've been changed, you've been through. Some people don't like the phrase journey, but I think any illness treatment is a journey from discovery, going through the treatment to the other side. It's a journey now in life. We can't choose what gets put in front of us. Which is why I call my program the Path of Breast Cancer. But how we respond, what kind of consciousness and determination and focus and empowerment we choose that determines how, what the outcome of this, you know, this. It's a big, it's a big stone in the path, but it doesn't mean that you can't go around it. And create a beautiful path, or you can't incorporate it into your path. You widen the path, and there's the stone. There's lots of images for you to use, but it doesn't have to be something that takes over your life.

Yeah, I agree. I often use that kind of analogy, too, because. And sometimes I talk about it as. You know, a lot of times we feel like we're on the path alone or in darkness. We can't see where the lights are. We don't know where it's going. We're just stumbling in the dark. And to be able to have a guide and an expert is like being able to have some lights on the path and say, okay, here's where you're going. Here's the next. And it can be individualized along the way. I think you really pointed that out that breast cancer is really different for each person. It could be different underlying reasons and different things to address to help prevent it. And so there's a general path, but we need to have lights along the way, including some of this lab work and information about your past that helps us to know, hey, where's. What is this path we're on? That's really your life path overall. It just happens to be part of your life path. Is addressing cancer at this moment?

Absolutely. Absolutely, yes. And it can be a beauty. I know this sounds strange if people are not feeling well, but it could be a beautiful thing, because there is a lot of beauty and truth.

And being diagnosed with serious illness such as cancer can really be a turning point in people beginning to be more honest with themselves about what is working and what isn't in their life. And when you get rid of a lot of debris.

There is a lot of space for the next level of creation of how you want this next chapter to be for yourself.

Yeah, yeah, I. I can see that. I didn't go through cancer, but I just recently went through having had a growth on my neck that was.

Like a cyst related to inflammation in my joints. But it really allowed me to experience similar path that a patient with, from the diagnostics and all the imaging to going through surgery and really asking myself, how is it that this was created? What do I want to do differently now based on knowing this? We can't know until our body gives us these signals and says, hey, something's overstressing the system somewhere. So now we can have another chance to say, hey, I want to do it differently.

I can relate to that. With this recent experience. I've been going through too well I'm.

Glad you had it resolved easily.

Yeah. Thank you.

It's continued because I have inflammation in the joint that's not quite an autoimmune disease, but.

A chronic inflammatory condition.

I'm looking at it as hey, and this growth could happen again. It's that sense of like, hey, okay, here's this chance of let me look at everything and see how do I want to relate differently. Even.

In this, I think relates to breast cancer patients too. How do we do our day to day life? How do we do our self care, our schedule, the way we feed ourselves, the way we sleep, the choices we make with relationships? It starts to touch on all these different aspects of our day to day things that sometimes seem so simple like which cleaning product am I going to choose or when am I going to go to bed. But these things do add up over time.

I want to talk a little bit because of what you just said about the messaging we get as women in society about self care. Yeah, here's two of my quote favorite commercials. One commercial woman is the problem is bipolar disorder. So they have a section of a house with different floors and every single floor, the house is a mess. There's dishes in the sink, there's laundry all over the place, the beds are not made and the woman is sitting there overwhelmed. The first time I saw this commercial I got so angry. First of all, why is it about a woman? Second of all, where is her partner? Whether the partner is a man or a woman? Why isn't somebody helping her?

Why is she responsible for the condition of the house? And then she takes a pill and the next thing you know she's folding the clothes, the kitchen is clean and you know, she no longer has this problem. I mean this, this is look and listen to the imaging and the messaging here. It's very alarming.

Yeah, I agree.

The second commercial is for an antidepressant. The woman is depressed.

Why is the man not depressed? Why isn't the woman getting support and help? The second scene in this after she's taken the pill is she is serving the family a picnic lunch. Why isn't the man in this case it was a man. Why isn't her husband, her spouse, whatever, serving? Why is she then serving?

Where is the message there of self care? There's no message.

No, it's a message of we're supposed to help other people first and if we take care of ourselves, it's as if we're too self centered or something. It's that it's true that messaging is still very present in our, in our society and in our, and I think other cultures too. And it's difficult then for women to choose to prioritize differently, you know, to be able to communicate and set boundaries around their own self care because they can feel, they can sometimes at first feel guilt or you know, conflict over those choices. And so to be able to help, to process that through and help with the communication with their partner or with other people in their lives to say, hey, how can this be different? How can we, you know, how can. Yeah. And in some ways I think it, it requires us to kind of acknowledge that we've been doing it a different way. Like, you know, based on our childhood, based on our culture, we've been doing it this way. But we realize that it needs to shift. So how do we start to shift it without creating also too much stress or overwhelm in the.

You can't shift it all at once. I mean, that's the first step. It's a process of shifting. And when you decide to change a habit, the habits are like very deeply ingrained in your psyche. So when you decide, I'm not going to do it this way anymore, and you've picked yourself up and you're creating another habit that creates, you have to create a new path. And that takes time and energy and it doesn't become second nature for many, many months. So you need to have patience with yourself and you have to move slower because it's not like automatic, like when you get upset and you're reaching for a cookie or a cracker and you've decided, no, I'm not going to do that anymore. You have to think about it. Well, what am I going to do? I'm going to meditate, I'm going to go for a walk, I'm going to eat an organic carrot. I mean, I'm not going to go for sugar, carbs and gluten. I'm going to go for a different activity. And the bottom line is I'm going to acknowledge why I'm upset and why I feel like I need to eat when I'm not really hungry.

It's so powerful. It really is. And I think women who are listening, whether they have breast cancer or not, they can relate to that.

And it would be preventing breast cancer in that way, I believe, because you're more than integrated with yourself and your experience in life and then also how you relate with others can shift. And that can be such a healing, healing process. But like you're saying, we can't expect Any kind of overnight miracle, it's going to take, it's going to take some, you know, willingness to kind of see what comes up and be present with it and work through it.

And I think women don't ask for help enough. In my first module, treatment, one of the, in one of the first or second chapters, I talk about how to create a Google sheet or a spreadsheet where you have every single thing that you do daily without even thinking about it that you're not going to be able to do now for several months now that you're in treatment. And so you write that everything down and then you need to have somebody hand that over to somebody and ask your colleagues and friends and you know, friends of your kids. If you have kids, who's going to help me in this, in these areas? Because you're going to be out of commission for several months. And if you have energy, you shouldn't be spending it cleaning the house and running around picking up your children. If you have children spending it resting and meditating and making juice for yourself or taking supplements or whatever are going for acupuncture treatment. Women don't ask for help enough.

The message that we get is that we should be able to do everything ourselves. And that is an unfortunate message. If you have teenage children at home, I think not involving them in the house care is a sign that you don't have self esteem because you're not the maid. And the kids, you know, it's a family, the family needs to work together to have a smooth running house. Who's going to. And you can teach the kids how to make a few different foods. Who's going to clear the table, who's going to set the table? If they're driving, they can be given a shopping list and they can go shopping once a week. I mean, the kids need to participate, strip the beds, do a load of laundry. I mean everything need to learn these activities for themselves. They're going to be adults and you need help. And you are not the maid. I always say this to women. You're not the maid.

I love it. Yes, that's, it's. I love how you're just very, you know, direct and loving too with the way you talk about these things, you know, just to help. Because sometimes we need to hear messages in that way to kind of scramble the current message and be like, oh, wait a minute, okay, yeah, you're right. And then start to make choices based on this new belief and this new way of looking at ourselves. Thank you for mentioning that. I know that also you do work to help women with connecting maybe with their partners or intimately after cancer treatment. Maybe let's touch on that a little bit because I do find that that's a big concern concern as well for patients that I work with too.

I had a mini summit. I think intimacy is such a serious concern and nobody's talking about it. It's like the elephant in the room. And so I had a mini summit where I brought together myself and couples therapist and an intimacy expert and a sex expert and we all spoke and everyone presented some really important information about intimacy post treatment or even forget the post treatment. Intimacy and long term relationships. In today's world, we're all busy and as you get older, it's not like we're in our 20s anymore. In our 20s it's a whole different experience. But when you get older, you can't just go from running around and having your daily life to being ready for intimacy. There needs to be a preparation period. You maybe want to relax and take a hot bath. If you have children, you need privacy. The kids need to be out of the house. You sort of need to schedule some time. And I know that might be ridiculous because the reality of it is if you have a busy life, you are not going to feel like being intimate when you get into bed at 10:30 at night and you've been up since 6 o' clock in the morning. And you have to be careful that it doesn't become just one more thing that you have to do. If you're feeling that way about intimacy, you know you have a problem. And also there is a lack of communication because your needs to become satisfied sexually change. And your partner, whether it's a man or a woman, can't read your mind. So how do you tell your partner? Well, this used to work a few years ago, but it's not working now. I need something different in a way where they're made not to feel like they're doing it wrong, but that your needs have changed. So there's a lot to talk about. And the most important thing is that your partner can't read your mind. And you also have to assume that if you, for example, if a woman has had breast cancer and has had a mastectomy or just one or both of her breasts remove and is choosing to or not do reconstruction, a lot of the times she has feelings about what's happening with her body and her partner doesn't have a clue how to talk to her about that.

That makes sense.

Yeah. And you can't expect. If your partner is a man, you can't expect your man to have the education and knowledge of how to talk to you, his wife. Honey, how do you feel about the changes that's happening to your body? I don't know how to talk to you to make you feel comfortable and for him to share his feelings. He may be freaked out about it or he may. You may be not showing him what you look like now because you have feelings of shame or embarrassment. And so there needs to be a lot of conversation about this. And this is not like there's. It's not like you can plug into a TV show and learn about this. So I talk about this in my program and I. I'm about to make my intimacy summit available on my YouTube channel for people to download because there's a lot of important information. The most important thing I think is we need to start having conversations about it in a way in a language that's not threatening and that your partner probably doesn't have a clue how to talk to you.

Yeah, that's. Oh, thank you. And thank you for sharing that. I think it's. And to just give women hope that they can. You can get back to these parts of your life that are important to you and your relationship that are important to you and that there are ways to support you to get there. And there are even say with, you know, sometimes because then hormone treatment is. Is not used usually after cancer treatment. So dealing with some of those low hormone symptoms, whether vaginal dryness or so on, that there are ways, ways we can, we can help with that too, you know, to be able to move around some of these. These symptoms so that you can still.

Have quality of life and enjoyment and pleasure. And, you know, as you get older, sex is not only about intercourse, is not only about intercourse. I mean, that's, you know, great when we're. We need to procreate. We're youngers, but, you know, from 50 up, it's no longer about that. So there are many ways of being intimate and you need to discover what they are. And the man's ability changes too. And that's just a natural part of life. How are we going to accommodate that post treatment and as we get older so that we do have pleasure and time for intimacy in our lives. That's the key here.

So important. And I want to make sure everybody knows how to find you. Your website is@carollaurie.com, but Laurie is spelled L O U R I E. Right. So C A R O L. And Then another L O u r I.

E.Com and there's a contact Me section on the top right of the headline. And it will enable you to send me an email. I get a lot of emails and I answer personally every single one. It may take me a day or two, but feel free to contact me with any questions directly.

Wow, that's really, really generous of you. And to be able to just the beauty of you sharing this knowledge.

From your lifetime experience helping other women in saying, hey, let's show this forward. Let's give this forward to other women who need this information and keep learning from each other along the way.

Absolutely. That's, you know, I have some friends who are a little, maybe a little older than me and they're retiring and their definition of retirement is golf and tennis every day. That's not my definition. My definition is I love my work. I want to continue my work to help women heal. So here I am.

I love it. I know. I feel that way, too. It's when you're passionate about something, you, you know, it's just like, of course, this is what I feel the best doing. So I'm going to keep doing it.

Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you so much, Carol. This has been such a ton of information. I think it will, you know, really help listeners who are, you know, either, because I think a lot of women walk around afraid of breast cancer, too. And so if you're, even if you're worried to know that they're sick, there's help out there in case it happens and to help guide you through and through the other side of breast cancer.

If you have a family history of breast cancer, you could have one or two appointments with me and we could put you on certain supplements and I can help you switch your diet around a little bit. There's a lot that we can do from the prevention aspect. Also make sure that you're getting appropriate monitoring. You need a different level of monitoring, and you're with the right type of doctor to do that for you. So that is something that's very important for women who has a family history in their genes. And the last thing I want to say is I'm about to relaunch, start some new classes of my Empowered Against Recurrence program through June. June. I wish it was June through September and October. So, yes. So if you're interested in joining one of my programs, send me an email through my Carol Laurie contact and I'll make sure that you get the information to join. I'm having several groups show up in September and October, because October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, of course.

Oh, that's wonderful. Oh, thank you so much for saying that, and I look forward to.

Sharing this with everyone. Again, thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to staying in touch with you.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been really an honor and a pleasure. Take care everyone.

Thanks for listening to how humans heal.

If you liked this episode, leave a.

Rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdani.com.