Are those “health” foods in your grocery cart really supporting your recovery—or could they be quietly working against it? In this episode of Better Than Before Breast Cancer, we take a closer look at how marketing tactics in the health food aisle can give processed foods a deceptive “healthy halo,” and why it’s so important to read between the labels—especially after cancer treatment.

You’ll also learn about leaky gut, a condition that can result from cancer therapies like chemotherapy and radiation. If you’ve been experiencing symptoms like bloating, skin issues, joint pain, fatigue, or inflammation, it may be time to look at your gut health more closely. I’ll explain what leaky gut is, how it can manifest after cancer treatment, and what practical steps you can take to begin healing your gut and feeling more like yourself again.

This episode is for you if:

• You’re confused about what “healthy” really means on food labels

• You’re dealing with lingering health symptoms like brain fog, bloating, or joint pain

• You want to understand the connection between gut health and cancer recovery

• You’re ready to feel empowered in your food choices and take steps toward healing from the inside out

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Read the full transcript here:

0:01
This is Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach, a clinical Ayurveda specialist, a personal trainer, and I'm also a breast cancer survivor. In this podcast, we talk about healthy thinking and mindfulness practices, eating well, moving your body for health and longevity. And we'll also hear from other breast cancer survivors who have reengaged with life, and have incredible stories to share. This podcast is your go to resource for getting back to life after breast cancer.

0:38
Welcome to Episode 23 of the breast cancer recovery coach. I am Laura Lummer. And I'm so happy that you have tuned into the show today. Happy St. Patrick's Day, by the way. And thanks so much for just the continued interest in growth of the audience for the breast cancer recovery coach. It seems like every week I have more people reaching out and it makes me feel so good to know that you're finding value in the show. And it's giving you some kind of support and getting through what can be a hellish, hellish treatment, and also a really challenging recovery. So I think to everybody who reaches out through email and Facebook messaging, it just means the world to me. And if you have a chance if you're a regular listener of the show, or you get some value out of it, and you could take some time to go to the iTunes Store and leave a positive review, subscribe to the show. That would just be awesome because it makes it so much easier for other people to find the breast cancer recovery coach as it moves up in the iTunes rankings. So hopefully you can turn off right now go do that and come right back. But we're gonna keep moving on one happy St. Patrick's Day made the luck of the Irish be with you today and always and since according to 23 imeem about 32% Irish I'm especially happy to be celebrating this day. Today, we're going to be talking about health halos and understanding leaky gut. I want to start off the show today by talking about health halos. If you've never heard of the term health halo, what it means is that there are certain foods that are perceived as being healthy, basically, because of the way that they're marketed when they're really nothing more than just junk food or close to junk food. With very fancy packaging claims such as organic or all natural. When foods have health halos, we consumers have less guilt purchasing and consuming them. And so for that reason, we often over consume them. Several studies actually even show that we think of organic food as being more nutritious and less calorie dense than an identical food that isn't organic and less interesting. So let me clarify something. If you could make a choice between an organic, non GMO food over a non organic GMO food, my personal belief is that it is a better choice to choose the organic food. But just have an awareness that choosing that organic or that non GMO food only means that the food is less toxic, it doesn't necessarily mean that the food is more nutritious, or that it's a better caloric choice. And I'm talking about this subject today, what brings it up is that there was a recent natural foods Expo close to where I live here in Orange County. And as I was looking through the list of vendors that were going to be at this expo and checking out some of their products, you know, clicking through to their website, I was really amazed at how many of those products were just nothing more than junk food with a health halo. So let me give you a couple of examples of comparison. And these aren't necessarily foods that were at the Health Expo but this is what I'm talking about. So I compared a 28 gram package. So it's basically an individual serving package of Lay's potato chips to that same amount of sensible portions veggie straws, so I don't know if you've seen the veggie straws and veggie chips. They're actually really tasty. I have tasted them and they are good. And they're you know, looked like a Ruffles potato chip and they're orange and green and then they have the straw ones as well and they you know, have pictures of vegetables on the front of it. So that makes you think by looking at it that this is a health food. So obviously you can guess between the Lay's potato chips and the veggie straws which one has the health halo, but here are the facts. So the Lay's potato chip, the package had 56% of its calories from fat and the veggie sticks were 46% of their calories from fat, which is not a huge difference. The Lay's had 10 grams of fat. The veggie sticks have seven the veggie sticks have 230 grams of sodium, the Lay's only 170 grams. The veggie sticks have 0% of vitamin A, vitamin C, iron and calcium. The Lay's potato chips have 0% Vitamin A 10% Vitamin C to purchase Send iron and 0% calcium. So is one of these products really healthier than the other? I don't think so I'm going to call these two a tie. So the second comparison that I made was between Quaker chocolate chip granola bars because we all know that granola has a huge health halo, right granola brings in pictures to your heads of hippies and backpackers, and we just think of granola as this healthy snack. So I compared the Quaker chocolate chip granola bar to a Snickers candy bar of the same size. The Snickers had 220 calories, the granola bar 200 calories, the Snickers 10 grams of fat 29 carbohydrates, 29 grams of carbohydrate, and 110 grams of sodium 24 grams of sugar, and four grams of protein. The granola bar had seven grams of fat, just three grams less 34 grams of carbohydrate. So it's actually five grams of carbohydrate more than the Snickers bar 140 grams of so milligrams of sodium which is 30 more than the candy bar, and one gram of protein which is three grams less than the candy bar. So in my opinion, both of these foods sound like junk food to me. Now I chose the Snickers bar for comparison, because if I were going to eat a candy bar, that would be my go to favorite. However, I would not. Nor have I ever seen someone bring home a box of eight Snickers bars to have around for snacks. And why is that? Because Snickers equals candy. And granola causes us to think that it's healthy. So this product has a health halo. And even though it's pretty much exactly like the candy, very small differences. It's just not how we perceive it. So we don't think twice about buying it, eating it or keeping boxes of it in our house. You know, when you're checking out at the grocery stand, maybe if you're really hungry, or your kids are saying oh can I have candy can have a candy, you might grab a Snickers bar, but you're not going to grab eight Snickers bars. But when you go to the cereal aisle, and you're thinking of keeping healthy snacks in the house for you or your family, is it really going to be an issue to grab a box of eight granola bars. And then we think, Oh, it's healthy, and it has chocolate. So it's tasty too. That's really good. I got really lucky I'm eating healthy food and again eat chocolate as well. But it's not really healthy. So as we get into this show, and we talk more about gut health, it's really important that you become aware of what health halo means. And the difference between health claims versus nutrition information. So remember that marketers are paid a lot of money to make you want to buy their product. And they know the buzzwords that get us consumers to do that. So read the nutrition facts, labels and approach any kind of packaged food with caution regardless if it's in the aisle in the grocery store that has the big health food sign hanging over it. Be very careful because if it's not on the perimeter of the store, if it's not in the produce aisle or it's not back, you know in the the animal proteins, it's packaged, it's it's processed, and it's maybe not the best thing for your health or for the health of your gut. So that brings us to leaky gut. So in the nearly six years since I completed breast cancer treatment, I have put a huge amount of effort into managing symptoms and the changes that have occurred in my body as a result of treatment. Some of those changes. Some of those symptoms include fatigue, joint pain, weird infections that pop up and frequent illnesses like colds, sore throats, digestive distress, like bloating and heartburn. And also what seems to be the new setpoint for my bodyweight meaning that my body ended chemo at a certain weight and it just has not ever shifted from that weight. It just gravitates to that same weight no matter what I do. So last November, in 2017, I was referred to James Laval of Laval, metabolics and precision health and wellness. And I was recommended I was referred to James by an amazing trainer Alexandra Barnard, and she's the co founder of kilo strength society here in Huntington Beach, and she's just incredibly knowledgeable in nutrition. She's an incredible strength coach and I have a lot of trust in her. So I went to see James and after the initial and really thorough medical history, the questionnaire that I went through, he evaluated my blood work. He had a huge panel done physical assessment, and a urine test that looked at the many different hormones and how my body processed them like cortisol and estrogen and progesterone among others. And what he told me was that I had a lot of inflammation in my body. Okay, this was no surprise to me. Because the frustration for me was that I felt that I had been doing for a long time, everything possible to combat that inflammation and just not getting the results from it. So I wasn't surprised to hear at a lot of information, I could feel that in my body. But what he told me was that there was no doubt I had leaky gut. And that leaky gut is something that he commonly sees in people who have gone through chemotherapy. And that the symptoms that I was experiencing were very common to leaky gut, which can also go on to result in autoimmune diseases. So things other than chemotherapy can cause leaky gut such as radiation or other toxins like the prescription drugs, or any drugs that you have to take even consistently taking aspirin and NSAIDs can lead to leaky gut because of the reactions that they create in the body. But the studies that I found on radiation and leaky gut were all related to the abdominal area radiation treatment, so more like women who had struggled through ovarian cancer or something of that nature. Now, as you know, I'm a believer and a practitioner of our VEDA. And the underlying philosophy and our Veda is that all imbalances begin in the digestive system. Interestingly enough, this also agrees with the philosophy of Hippocrates, the father of medicine, who believed that all disease began in the gut. So I had been working on trying to improve my gut health with this knowledge in mind. And I've been doing this through food and through probiotic use. And I had also just taken the first of six microbiome test to see what little bacterial buddies I'm actually hosting in my gut. But when I went to see James Laval with his pharmaceutical background, and his naturopathic expertise, he totally took things to a completely new level of diet and supplement. And we went to work on healing and fixing this leaky gut, the goal of healing the leaky gut and reducing the amount of inflammation in my body, and then everything else coming back to, to the way it's supposed to be coming into balance. So it's been about three and a half months now that I started this program. And I really have seen a considerable improvement in almost every area that I was concerned with a lot less fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, I'm sleeping sounder. So I really thought that it was time to bring more awareness to this leaky gut through the podcast, and talk about what the causes of leaky gut are, what it can result in and what you can do about it if you think that leaky gut might be an issue with you. So what is leaky gut? As much as I'm an advocate of natural health care? When I first heard this term, and I know it's been some time ago, since I first heard the term leaky gut, I have to admit that I dismissed it as kind of hokey Enos because it sounds gross, right? It's like, what does that mean leaky gut. And shame on me for being judgmental without having looked into it and gotten proper information? Because as I investigated this, there's no question that it's a real issue, and that a lot of people suffer from leaky gut. Leaky gut is not just a result of cancer treatment. So again, it can be caused by poor diet, chronic stress, the use of other drugs and toxins imbalances in the gut microbiome, or the bacteria that's in your intestines, inadequate digestive enzymes, it can be caused by infections, and by excessive alcohol consumption. So there can be a lot of factors. But it's very common apparently, that this turns up frequently in people who've gone through chemotherapy. So in western medicine, if you start looking into it, you might find people say, oh, you know, maybe we're not sure about this leaky gut, or it's questionable, or there's not enough evidence. Well, what it's really called in western medicine, and in many, many studies that I looked up is intestinal permeability. So our intestines are designed to allow nutrients substances to pass through the intestinal lining and get into our bloodstream. And if this didn't happen, then everything would just stay in our intestines and literally go in one end and out the other. So obviously, that's not how our bodies work. The cells in our intestines are connected to each other by what's known as tight junctions. And this is the space that allows materials that are supposed to get into our bloodstream to pass through the intestinal wall. So leaky gut is when those junctions loosen up, those tight junctions become looser, they widen and they allow larger molecules that would not normally be allowed to pass through the intestinal wall to get into our bloodstream. And this is where the problem comes in. So before I go too much into the problem, I also want to point out the benefit if you could imagine that there's a benefit of leaky gut. But according to a article published in the Natural Medicine Journal, which looked at a small study of 60 breast cancer patients who are undergoing chemotherapy, the chemotherapy agents actually did increase gut premium bility leaky gut, right. But it was the fact that the intestinal bacteria moved around to other places in the body that was believed to make the chemotherapy agents even more effective at fighting tumor cells. So it wasn't like oops, we're giving you chemotherapy, and now you get leaky gut. But it's we're giving you chemotherapy, and part of that reaction in your body is going to be to have more intestinal permeability, permeability, and more bacteria is going to come out which normally wouldn't, it's going to move around in the body, and it's actually going to help these chemotherapy agents become more effective at fighting tumor cells. Now, this was especially true in these studies with platinum based chemotherapy agents. So in a November 2000 issue of science, a study found that the bacteria that was released into the blood because of increased intestinal permeability in mice being treated with cyclo phosphide, a platinum based chemotherapy drug was so important in fighting tumor growth, that when these mice were treated with antibiotics to kill those bacteria that were getting out of the gut, the anti tumor effect of this chemotherapy agent became ineffective, and 80% of those mice died. So that's really interesting. And the important message here, like so many other things that we have to go through in cancer treatment is that these treatments may suck, but they save your life. However, if you understand what happened to you during the treatment, then you begin to know and understand what needs to be healed. And you can start start going down that path of making yourself feel healthy again, you know, the problem comes in where we just feel like crap after chemo, where we feel like crap after radiation and whatever else steroids and and hormone therapies and this net, and we really just don't know what's actually happened to our body or if there are things we can do to address those issues. So how do you know or what might make you think that you have leaky gut, some of the symptoms of leaky gut include food sensitivities, especially to gluten and dairy. And those are the first two things that James had me eliminate from my diet. And to be really honest about that I am not 100% compliant, I'd say I'm probably 85 to 90% compliant with eliminating both dairy and gluten from my diet. I know that there's gluten and tons of things. And I'm not to the extent where I'm examining every label to make sure that it's gluten free. But I do make more of an effort to ensure that any foods that I buy or of course, to eliminate breads and grains that I know have gluten and it's really obvious. And I also freely admit that I love coffee, and I want cream in my coffee, please I love my cream in my coffee. And I don't have a lactose intolerance. This I know. So, if you do have lactose intolerance or you have celiac disease, then of course, compliance is a lot more important. But just having made that shift to being a lot more compliant with eliminating dairy and gluten in my diet has definitely made a huge difference for me. Some other symptoms of leaky gut can be joint pain, fatigue, bloating, all of which I had acne, mood issues and inflammatory skin conditions to name just a few. There's lists of them out there. So if leaky gut goes untreated, according to an article that was published in biomed, central gastroenterology, some of the diseases that are related to intestinal permeability include gastric ulcers, allergies, infections, irritable bowel syndrome, acute inflammation, inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, chronic inflammation, cancer, lovely, especially esophagus and colorectal cancers, obesity, and associated metabolic diseases like Type two diabetes, and type one diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. beautifulest, right. Not real pretty, not anything we want to have. But also things that I commonly hear and I know things that I've struggled with, is keeping or getting for that first couple of years working to get my blood sugar back under control, no matter how healthy I was eating, my blood sugar was still higher than it should have been cholesterol, things like that. So if you have some of these symptoms, or in hearing this information, you think you might have leaky gut, what could you do about it? As always, I will post links to some of the studies I'm referring to, and information in the show notes for this podcast on my website. So you can go there and look more into this information to decide if this is something you want to talk with your doctor about. Or if you want to be tested for leaky gut. I did find some information on several tests. that can be indicators of leaky gut. And I'll post the links to those as well. James Laval in his book, which is called cracking the metabolic code, he recommends that you take a lactulose and mannitol challenge tests up but that in the show notes too, I don't expect you to remember it. He also has a lot of information in in his book cracking the metabolic code on intestinal health as well as a quick quiz in the back that helps you kind of assess your intestinal health. And he gives some suggestions for improving that health. If you do have an issue with it, it's really great book really informative read, it's a big book, he's a really smart guy. So there's a lot of information in that book. I'll also post a link for that book in the show notes page. But if you think you might have leaky gut or you're experiencing any of the symptoms that I listed here, you might just want to begin by eliminating dairy and gluten containing foods from your diet and see if you start to feel better. You can also add in some prebiotic foods. prebiotics different are different from probiotics. So prebiotics are foods that have a lot of indigestible fiber, which is basically food for probiotics. So probiotics are these healthy bacteria, and prebiotic foods, give them something to grow on. So if you have an unhealthy bacterial environment in your intestines, then eating more probiotic prebiotic foods can really help to improve that bacterial environment. Some prebiotic foods are leeks, Jerusalem artichokes, which are also called sunchokes. And if you these are weird things when you see a sunchoke, you might look at it and go, What in the world am I supposed to do with that and what is even tastes like? Well, if you like artichoke hearts, I think that that's probably the closest description for what a Jerusalem artichoke tastes like. They're not pretty, they're these gnarled little roots. But all you have to do is to clean them really well just scrub them, you don't have to peel them. And then you can prepare them just like you would a potato, you can chop them up, you can pan roast or oven roast them, toss them into some with some fresh herbs like rosemary or good olive oil. And you can cook them until they're soft, just as you would with a potato that consistency. They don't have nearly that amount of starch. So not going to be mushy like a potato, but soft all the way through. And then they're actually really good. They taste like you're eating an artichoke heart in my opinion. So definitely try and check them out. I see them at the grocery stores all the time. More prebiotic foods are garlic, onions, asparagus, dandelion greens, which you can toss into salads and other dishes the way just use them the same way that you would use spinach. And just really think get your head around thinking of eating more greens, and that puts you on a good path to have a nice, healthy amount of prebiotic foods in your diet. You can also add a good probiotic into your daily routine, once you've checked with your doctor of course, but definitely eliminate processed sugary foods and beverages, even ones with health halos. Thinking of orange juice, you know high sugary juices, go with the mantra of eat more whole foods. If you haven't heard of the whole 30 food plant. That's also something that you might want to look at. And give your gut a break for 30 days from things like legumes and dairy and antibiotic written beats. You can find tons of information on the whole 30 plan online just Google whole 30. And trust me a bunch of information will come up. And if you follow that or make a commitment to it for 30 days and see if you begin to feel better, that might just be an indication that you have some leaky gut going on. I hope that you find this information helpful. And I really hope that as cancer treatment progresses, that we'll begin to see more follow up care by experienced licensed professionals who understand the damage that the toxicity of cancer treatment creates in our bodies. Of course, I and I'm sure like you are forever grateful that my life was saved by these drugs. But I would have loved to have an aftercare plan that included supporting my healing from the damage that was done through my treatments. And I hope that in the future for many more people who have to deal with any type of cancer treatment that we're going to evolve to include that recovery as a part of the entire process. So if you have tips and information that have helped you with your healing after cancer treatment, I would love it if you would share them with our community on Facebook and you can find me there at Laura Lummer or on Instagram as the breast cancer recovery coach. There are so many well informed ladies out there. Let's just help each other on this path to a healthier life. So I thank you so much for listening to the show. And I am eternally grateful. If you can take the time to go to the iTunes Store and leave a positive review subscribe drive to the show and just contribute to getting more reviews and making this easier for other breast cancer survivors to find. So have a happy and safe St. Patrick's Day and I'll talk with you again in two weeks and until then, let your lifestyle be your medicine.

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voices in your head, you've put your courage to the test laid all your doubts your mind is clearer than before your heart is full and wanting more your futures you know, you've been waiting all

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this

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