In this episode, dive deep into the world of Vitamin D, more than just a common nutrient. Did you know it might play a crucial role in reducing the chances of cancer recurrence?

Explore the myriad benefits of Vitamin D, understand how your body synthesizes it, and discover the right balance for a robust, healthy life. As we unravel the mysteries of this essential vitamin-cum-hormone, its significance becomes ever clearer.

Plus, are you living an active lifestyle, or just scraping the bare minimum? Delve into the recommended activity levels for optimal health, interpret what your walking speed might reveal about your overall health, and gain insights on breaking through physical limitations to live a more active life. Don't just move, thrive!

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
Hello, this is Laura Lummer and you are listening to Episode 26 of the breast cancer recovery coach. Today is Memorial Day. And before I get into today's show, I have to apologize for missing my show two weeks ago, on Mother's Day, I actually had a great show planned and had some technical difficulties and had to get some equipment fixed. And unfortunately, I just couldn't get the quality of that show to come out so that anybody would even want to listen to it. So I'm really bummed. But I'm back today. And it is Memorial Day. So Happy Memorial Day to all of you. And a special thanks today to all of the men and women who have served our country and who continue to serve our country today. And especially I want to give a shout out to my very brave nephew, Max corner lino, my friend and listener, Gail Matthews, and the surviving husband of my chemo buddy who lost her life to lung cancer, mass sutas, who served in World War Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and he's even a survivor of the Battle of Iwo Jima, a true true hero. I have so much respect for the people who make that commitment to serve our country. And I hope that at some point, our government and the services they offer will treat these individuals like the heroes that they truly are. So without getting too much into that, I thought today would be a good day to talk about the role of vitamin D in our lives, which as cancer survivors is particularly important, and we're going to find out why. So while you're out soaking up the sun today at backyard barbecues, you can feel good knowing that your body is working to increase the levels of this vitamin slash hormone in your body. And we'll talk about what vitamin D is and why I just refer to it as a hormone. And what it does for our bodies, how we get it, and how it's linked to various cancers, including breast and ovarian cancer. So before we get into vitamin D, I want to talk for a minute about walking about getting outdoors and walking around on holiday weekend, because they go hand in hand with the topic of vitamin D. And another reason I was motivated to incorporate walking into this episode is that last weekend, I was at a graduation from my sister who congratulations Cindy just earned her second master's degree. And the family was there. My sisters, my mom. After the graduation, we all went out to dinner. And when we finished dinner, one of my other sisters and I had planned a special ride home on the train. And we were bringing my mom back home with us. So my mom is 77 years old, which is relatively young in this day and age, I think she's a healthy individual, she has no chronic diseases. She's never suffered a heart attack, cancer, stroke, nothing like that. She does have some mild COPD. So I guess I have to take back the chronic condition. But it is very mild. And it's due to many years of smoking. But the biggest issue that she has is that she's deconditioned. She doesn't exercise regularly. And as we age, our body only expends the amount of energy that we put into it, right. So because of this deconditioning it's really tough for my mom to walk any just reasonable distance and meaning like from when we got out of the Uber over to the train station without being out of breath and having to stop and kind of collect herself. It's really tough for me as her daughter and as a fitness professional to watch this because I know that her heart and her lung capacity and her endurance, her cardio respiratory endurance can be improved by moving more. But because she finds it difficult and she gets easily winded. Instead of moving more to train her heart and lungs to be stronger, she's turned to using a walker. And when you turn into using that Walker, you start to go down this very slippery slope of inactivity and of muscle atrophy. And nothing good can come from it. It does not end well because when you're not using your body properly and you're not working to strengthen it and condition it. It just goes downhill more and more rapidly, especially as we age. So after going through cancer treat

5:00
MIT, we often feel like crap, we have low energy, fatigue, brain fog, bone pain, arthritis, some are all are various combinations of any of these things. And we often I hear don't feel like getting up, I just don't feel like it, I don't feel like going for a walk, I don't feel like going out and doing these things. And the reason I bring up this topic today is because ladies, you must do this, just like you don't feel like paying taxes, or you don't want to write a check for that inflated registration fee on your vehicle every year. But you do it anyway. Because you have to, well, you have to get up and be active as well. And walking is a great place to start.

5:44
So I was born at the tail end of the baby boomer generation, which has been deemed the wealthiest and most active generation. But as I take away these years after having turned 50, I'm seeing a lot of changes in my friends and other people who are my age that I'm acquainted with. And women that I work with as they lose muscle more rapidly, and they become weaker and more deconditioned from lack of activity.

6:10
And I want to talk about this, because of the example I gave of my mother. Once you start to sit on that couch and lose that muscle mass, that lean muscle mass you your metabolism slows down, we tend to put on weight faster. And we tend to start seeing our body take on those diseases that oftentimes people think are just go hand in hand with aging. And that's not necessarily the way that it has to be if we get up and we take care of ourselves, and we exercise and we get all those enzymes and chemicals, and everything working in our body the way they're supposed to. And we're doing strength bearing exercise like walking, you don't have to get out and hit the gym and you know, be doing deadlifts and overhead presses. But walking is strengthening your bones, it's avoiding the osteoporosis. And you're continuing to sustain your muscle, which is going to be very helpful as we progress through this life and maintaining balance in having the ability to be independent. So I also want you to know that it doesn't take running a marathon or even a 5k to train your body and maintain your health. So now a lot of scientific studies have produced very conclusive evidence that the pace at which you walk is a very strong indicator of your health, and your longevity. So these studies reflect the expectancy of people aged 65 or older, that's really the focus group for the studies. But if you're a baby boomer like me, that means you are 54 or older. And so 65 is not that far away. So if you're not conditioned to Now, if you're not active now imagine where you're going to be in five to 10 years from now, if you don't start to do something about it, our bodies were made to move. And you'll feel a lot better when you move, I promise you this, even if it's a tremendous emotional, psychological physical effort for you to get up and get that started.

8:13
If you're currently walking at speeds of less than 1.3 miles per hour, which is not very fast, and you can time this with a stopwatch, or any of the plethora of health apps that are out there on your iPhone, I think automatically comes with the health app these days. That's an indicator of very poor health and functional status. If you're walking at a pace of 1.8 miles, that's pretty much the average for a group of people 65 and over. And 2.2 Miles is an indicator of healthy aging. And greater than 2.7 miles per hour is the indicator of an exceptional life expectancy. All three of these levels really not being that fast. If you've ever walked on a treadmill, you can think about when you put that speed at three miles per hour, the three is just a nice, moderate paced walk. So very, very important that we're getting out that we're walking, that we're maintaining our health, and that we're not just walking a leisurely walk like walking the dog and letting it smell everything and pee on everything along the way. But you're really walking a brisk walk is what you want to be thinking of breaking a sweat or feeling your breath. You don't have to be out of breath but you're feeling it you know you're walking and you can still speak comfortably. But you know you're exerting some effort. Now if you're already staying active by walking, running, biking or doing anything else that you love, keep it up because it's this consistent activity that will keep you strong and benefit you as you age and that goes for all you 40 somethings that are listening to if you're not active, meaning that you're not getting at least two and a half hours of moderate to vigorous exercise every week. Not every day ever.

10:00
weak, this is the time to start. This is one of the best things that you can do for yourself to prevent a recurrence of cancer exercise is at the top of the list. And I'm only going to use it with exercise activity being active maintaining activity and moving that body.

10:19
So if you have neuropathy or bone pain, there are things that you can do to improve those conditions and help you maintain activity because I know that can be a struggle for many cancer survivors, acupuncture and B 12 supplementations are tremendous helps for neuropathy. For me, that just turned my life around getting acupuncture treatments. And I would say maybe I have, if I had to say, on a scale of one to 10, I probably have a level two of the neuropathy that I have when I ended treatment. And I definitely credit that to regular b 12, supplementations. And to acupuncture treatments.

10:59
Joint Pain, bone pain, arthritis, a lot of times you can have that type of thing from chemotherapy treatments, from radiation treatments, and also from ongoing medications that we take to prevent recurrence. There are also many things you can do for those to relieve that and help you to be more comfortably active. Those can involve supplements, which you can talk to a doctor or naturopath about. And there are also some great new therapies like platelet rich plasma therapy. This is a non surgical way to treat joint pain and arthritis among many other things having to do with causing discomfort in the joints. So if you have these issues, and as you're listening to me, ah, Lord, I can't do that because my knee hurts, you know, there are solutions. And so it's time to not say I can't do that, because this hurts. But this hurts. How can I fix it so I can become more active? There are lots and lots of resources out there. Please talk to your doctor about them if you fall into this category.

11:59
So what if you think you don't have the time to be active for 30 minutes a day? You know, many times I hear that I don't have the time. I don't have the time. But we all have the same amount of time in a day. And many people manage to squeeze in some activity. So how are you managing that time? How are you managing your day? The good news is that you don't have to do all 30 minutes in a day of activity at the same time, you can do five or 10 minutes here and there you can walk at lunch, there was actually a study that showed that being active for three minutes out of every 30 minutes had a significant positive impact on health. And anyone can find three minutes a few times a day, right? So 10 times a day, maybe you take the long way down to the bathroom at work, you walk around, my mom said to me one time Well, I'm trying to start walking around my yard crate, walk around your yard, it doesn't take a whole lot. But it does take something and you've got to put that effort out into it. And while you're out there walking around enjoying nature and getting some sunshine, your skin will also be helping you to prevent a cancer recurrence by making vitamin D. I know some of you immediately are saying Hold on, I don't go out without sunscreen. And that's okay. And that's a great thing you shouldn't go out without sunscreen. But some UV rays still get through even when you're using sunscreen and you know that you have to reapply or even get some color depending on the level of SPF that you're using.

13:27
And when these UV rays get through, they turn the substance that's hanging out in your skin with this very scientific name called Seven D hydro cholesterol clearly discovered a named by some very smart person. So these UV rays change the substance into fat d3. And the vitamin d3 is actually inactive at this point. But it goes through a couple of conversions through your body, one in your liver and another one in your kidney. And then it comes out as this active form of vitamin D called kalsa trial and kalsa trial is actually a hormone, but it is the active form of vitamin D d3 in our bodies. Now, I'm sure you can imagine that there are several very detailed biological processes that happened between the sun hitting the skin and the body creating d3. But we're gonna save those for the science podcasts. And I'm just going to tell you one little tidbit that I thought was interesting scientifically, that there are genetic variants that can affect the level of vitamin D in your blood. So including food like fatty fish, eggs and vitamin D fortified foods or supplements as long as the supplements are approved by your doctor might be a good idea if you have lab results that show that you have consistently low vitamin D levels. And there are also other tests to show whether or not you have those variants which I am going to go through in another show.

14:56
So I'll move on to the good stuff, which is what vitamin D does for you.

15:00
So I know when you were a kid, you were told to drink your milk. So you would have healthy bones and teeth. And that really has nothing to do with the milk, right? It's all because the milk was usually fortified with vitamin D. And one of the roles of Vitamin D is to regulate calcium and phosphorus in the body, which is important for making strong bones. But over the years, many more actions that result from having healthy levels of vitamin D in the blood had been discovered. Here's a few of them. So studies have found that vitamin D suppresses the proliferation or the growth rapid growth of cells. And cancer, obviously, is the uncontrolled proliferation of cells. Every cell in our bodies is programmed to die. It's a process called apoptosis. But cancer cells ignore that programming. And rather than dying, they continue to grow. But Vitamin D plays a role in supporting the death of those abnormal cells. Vitamin D has also been found to support the prevention of new blood vessels warming to feed tumors, which causes obviously rapid growth of tumors once they have their own blood supply. Vitamin D blocks the production and the action of another substance in our body that promotes new blood vessel production. And it's also been shown in lab tests to stop cancer cells from spreading to other parts of the body metastasis. Ironically, studies show that one of the actions of kalsa trial vitamin D, is that it also stimulates production of certain proteins in the body, that repair genes that have been damaged by UV light, such as the sun, which is kind of weird, right, get out in the sun and make vitamin D and then vitamin D helps repair damage done by the sun.

16:41
It also suppresses the production of other chemicals in the body that create inflammation. And we know that inflammation plays a role in many diseases, including cancer.

16:53
Now, Vitamin D is not a cure for cancer. But evidence does support the fact that it can help support remission and make remission longer. It's one of the factors, right, we've talked about so many in walking exercise, one of those factors. So vitamin D is just another factor that you can bring in as a part of your healthy lifestyle to support your cancer free life.

17:17
A really interesting fact is that Vitamin D has been shown to reduce the pain that is often experienced when women are taking aromatase inhibitors. So if that's you, and bone pain is part of that issue that something you might want to talk with your doctor about.

17:32
If you don't know your vitamin D certain level, just ask your doctor to check it in your bloodwork. In my experience, it's just one of those routine things, it's category that I see on all of my blood tests, the National Institute of Health released updated recommendations for vitamin D intake and serum levels, serum levels being the amount of vitamin D that's in your blood. And they released these new recommendations really recently, March of 2018. And I'm gonna post a link to that article, because it's really interesting. And especially if you do like a little more of the science piece of what's happening biologically, there's a lot of good information in there about vitamin D. So I'll post a link in the show notes for this podcast. But basically, what they recommend a healthy blood level of vitamin D serum level to be greater than or equal to 50 nanomoles per liter, which you're just going to look at your report and go Oh, mine is that 50 Because they have the number on those little charts that they give you or the paperwork they print out, right? If you're between 30 and 50. This really says that they don't consider that level to be adequate for overall health. And if you're under 30, that's considered to be a deficiency of vitamin D. So this is really interesting, because that's a little higher than what the recommendations used to be. So they're saying that the role of vitamin D and the importance of it is really significant. We want to increase that level that we have in our blood. But you have to understand that vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin. So unlike when you go take your multivitamin or your vitamin C and you just pee out everything that your body can't use, that doesn't happen with vitamin D, it can be stored. So if you take too much, you can experience vitamin D toxicity. You can't get to that point of having toxicity just by having sun exposure so you don't have to freak out and think that you have to hide from the sun because your body will regulate that when you're out in the sun. It's not going to allow you to get to a level of toxicity.

19:37
So again, the National Institute of Health puts this level of toxicity at 125 Nano moles per liter in your blood. And some indications of having vitamin D toxicity can be very unpleasant and very dangerous. Nausea, vomiting, poor appetite, weight loss, confusion, heart rhythm problems and kidney damage to name a few

20:00
So do not go out and start pounding down vitamin D, okay.

20:06
It can also interact with other drugs that are commonly taken these days, like cholesterol reducing drugs like Lipitor, or diuretics. And there's a big list actually, because there's so many prescription drugs out there these days, and a lot of people may be on multiple different prescriptions, so you want to make sure and check with your doctor. I also read conflicting studies about vitamin D and active cancer treatment. And some of these studies said that vitamin D can actually sensitize the cancer and make treatment more effective. But then others had found that the cancer could kind of evolve to work around the effects of vitamin D, or even shut down the body's reactions to vitamin D. So please be smart and be safe and get your serum levels checked. Consult with your doctor before you change anything or take any supplements. So that's what I have for you today. A quickie podcast you can get out there and enjoy that barbecue. I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions. So please find me on Facebook at Laura Lummer and become a part of our thriving breast cancer community. If you haven't visited my website, Laura lummer.com and downloaded my book six habits of healthy happy breast cancer survivors. I hope that you will do that today. And I want to thank you again for tuning in. If you enjoy the show, if you get something good out of it, please take a moment go to the iTunes Store and drop me a couple of stars or leave a positive comment and thank you to everyone who's done that so far. I can't even tell you how much that means to me when I get on there and I I read a comment and hear that the show has helped someone in some way it really means everything. So have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend go soak up some sun go get in a nice walk and I'll talk with you again in two weeks and until then let your lifestyle be your medicine

21:59
you've put your courage to the test laid all your doubts to wrap

22:07
your mind is clearer than before your heart is full and wanting more your futures

22:17
given all you

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know has

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you been waiting

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this

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session