#363 Caring For Your "Second Heart" After Breast Cancer

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In this episode, we explore the fascinating concept of the "second heart," a nickname for the soleus muscle in the calf.

Known for its importance in maintaining cardiovascular health, the soleus muscle is a powerful pump during activities like walking, running, and standing, aiding venous return and preventing conditions such as varicose veins and deep vein thrombosis (DVT).

Studies highlight the soleus muscle's critical function in enhancing heart function, improving cardiac output and cognitive performance, particularly in older adults, by maintaining adequate blood flow to the brain.

For breast cancer survivors, maintaining good circulation is vital for recovery, as it helps reduce swelling, combat fatigue, and prevent blood clots.

Understanding and supporting the second heart's function can significantly improve your circulatory health and overall well-being.

Check out this Tuesday Terrain Talk episode of Better Than Before Breast Cancer™ for all the details and simple ways to strengthen your “second heart”.


Referred to in this episode:

Work with Laura

Metabolic Health Coaching

Studies:

Reversal of Cognitive Aging through Enhancement of Cardiac Output

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Read the full transcript:

0:00
You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills and the insights and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life, that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started.

0:33
Hey, there, you're listening to Episode 363 have better than before breast cancer. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. We're going to talk about a topic I absolutely love today. This is our Tuesday terrain talk, where we talk about all things we can do to better support our health. You know, it's been interesting because a couple of my clients that I've been coaching over this past week, have been struggling. And I talk about this a lot on our Tuesday Train Talk, struggling with the idea of not being so symptom focused, right. I've talked about this recently, and bringing themselves back to the idea of for instance, like if it's What can I do about this increase in blood sugar? What can I do about these hormones being off in and bringing ourselves back to thinking these are symptoms of an underlying problem? There's because nothing in the body works on its own, including our heart, right? We don't just look at the heart and say, I can do these things to make the heart better. And it only it only focuses on the heart, right? There's lots of things we can do in our diet in our lifestyle, stress reduction, exercise, all these things, and of course, good nutrition to support the health of our heart. And you know, here's the funny thing. I'm so fascinated by the human body. And my granddaughter, she's 12. Now she she was here with me this weekend. And I had a talk with her. And I asked her if she would allow me to do a nutrition genome on her. Because I thought, How amazing would it be to know from the time you're 12 years old, this is the blueprint of your body. From the time you're 12 years old to have guidance and say, This is how your body works. And these are the things you can do starting now, to keep it healthy. Now she's a kid, of course, I don't expect perfection. But just having the awareness, having the interest and having the knowledge from the time she's 12. I'm so excited for her. And I'm so excited to do this review for her and help her understand how her body works. I believe so wholeheartedly that when we understand more about how things work, we're more more motivated and inspired to do things. So when we hear these generals, you should eat better, you should eat more vegetables, you should exercise more, it doesn't really mean anything to us, right? It's like why? What What is it really going to do? I mean, I feel okay, now, right? I hear this all the time, I'm pretty healthy, are you to overall healthy diet? But then when I say then why are you here? Like, what do you want to get from a health program? Well, there's inflammation and there's poor sleep, and there's all of these other things that they're dealing with. And we can dial that back and say these are symptoms of the metabolism of the body not functioning properly. What do we do to support the metabolism. So when my granddaughter was younger, when she was really little, and I'd go pick her up, she lives it's about a 45 to 55 minute drive from her house to mine. And I pick her up to bring her back to my house. And she would say, Grandma, tell me something about how the body works. She doesn't really ask me that question anymore, because I think she knows now, if she gets grandma started on that subject, there's no stopping meat, right? But when she was little, she found it so fascinating. And I loved that. So she would want to know, how does something work. And then I would just pick a topic and start telling her this is how it works. So she was really fascinated. And today, I want to help you understand something about how your body works. So that maybe you are a little more fascinated by it, and encouraged to move a little more. What if I told you that in the human body, there is something that is referred to as the second heart? No, we're not an earthworm. We're not have a bunch of hearts that are specific to the heart muscle. But there's a part of your body that is referred to as the second heart. And let's think about think about it for a minute before I do the big reveal. Where do you think it would be? Where would the second heartbeat what makes sense? Why does your heart what's the function of your heart? What is it doing? It's pumping blood through your body and your blood is full of nutrients of oxygen so it's deliberate Doing things throughout your body. When we exercise our heart pumps more and faster, right, we're injecting there's something called the ejection fraction. And that's because inside of our heart, we have these little spaces that hold blood and our heart gets the blood in pumps that blood out, right pumps it one way or the other, depending on what it's doing. And our injection fraction is how much of that blood is pumping out when it injects blood out of the heart, right? Pretty cool. So if we're thinking about the heart is up here in my chest is pumping as hard as it can. Where would it be more difficult to get the blood to? Well, down to the toes right down to the feet down to the bottom of the body, but we've got gravity working with us. So that's a good thing. But the heart is pumping, it's doing all that he can to pump blood all around the body deliver nutrients deliver oxygen, as efficiently as it possibly can. So wouldn't it make sense that the second heart will be down towards the bottom of the body, so that it could facilitate helping to pump that blood back up, get him back up to the heart, so the heart can do its job properly. And that's exactly why your calf muscles, specifically, a muscle called the soleus, is considered the second heart. So when we think about exercise, moving our body walking, not living a sedentary life, we're actually moving our body not just to improve the health of our heart, because we're strengthening our heart by getting it to pump more deliver oxygen more when we move, but we're strengthening the muscles in our legs, in our calves, which are helping to pump harder as they constrict. And they help to pump the blood from all the veins and arteries that are going down through our legs back up. So if you visualize your calf, we've got beautiful cats, right, you think about a beautiful shapely cap on the side of your calves is what's called the soleus. That's going to kind of be the side one. And the big, beautiful round muscle that you see on the back of your calf is the gastroc nemus. So when we think about the soleus, and think about it being called the second heart, because it's pushing blood back up to the heart, from the lower extremities, is working against gravity. So wouldn't it make sense that we would want our calf muscles to be as strong as possible. So we think of the bones and our cat in the front of the lower leg, that bone is the tibia, and in the back is the fibula. And so the soleus is going to be on either side of that fibula is going to run and be around the sides. And then the gastroc is going to kind of go from the back of the knee down to the back of the ankle and give us that beautiful curve that it allows when it's nice and developed. Right. So the soleus works really well and contracts a lot during activities like walking, running, or standing. And it compresses the deep veins in the legs, which helps to propel blood upwards. So because nothing in the body works on its own, and everything affects something else. Let's think about what this beautiful dynamic. What happens. So there was a study out of Binghamton University in New York, published in 2020. And it was really interesting because what this study showed is that cognitive impairment right or problems with our brain thinking, functioning working properly, cognitive impairment was closely linked to cerebral perfusion, right cerebral perfusion. So cerebral brain perfusion, getting the blood and the oxygen through the brain, and cerebral perfusion was a function of cardiac output. Remember, cardiac heart output what it's pumping out. In turn, cardiac output is completely dependent on venous return, which in the upright body standing up body relies on adequate soleus muscle activity. And because modern adults rarely squat, which is necessary for maintaining the soleus muscle soleus insufficiency can develop early in adulthood for a lot of people. And solely as insufficiency when it's reversed when we concentrate on building that muscle flexing that muscle resulted in improved cardiac output, cerebral perfusion and the prevention of cognitive aging. What? So he's thinking about, wait a minute, if I do Catholics, if I do calf raises, if I walk around more, I can actually keep my brain younger longer. Yes, yes, you can. But the soleus doesn't work alone. It's got this beautiful gastroc name is muscle. And that's also in the caf and that also plays a role too. So while you're listening to me, if you're sitting at a desk, or maybe you're walking a lot of people tell me hey, I listen to your podcasts every day when I walk. Yay. Good for you. I'll They're walking, listening this podcast, moving your calf muscles pumping your blood, getting your heart healthier and moving oxygen through your brain and staying younger and more cognitively healthy longer good for you. So while that's all he is, is more active while we're standing, and we're doing low intensity exercises, the gastroc kicks in during more vigorous activities like running or jumping, no running and jumping on for everybody after cancer treatment. Again, a lot of times we're not diagnosed with cancer until we're older in the 5050. Something is the average age for being diagnosed with cancer. So think about if you can't run, if that's difficult on your joints, if jumping is difficult it is for me, I've had cancer and radiation and my femurs and my hips and in my pelvis, so impact is not a good thing for me. So we can use things like trampolines, right? Or we can do weightlifting, where we're really pumping those muscles, right. So it's something more vigorous, that back beautiful shapely muscle on the back of your calf is going to kick into. And together those muscles. I mean, look how strong a calf muscle is right? I love admiring people's calves. When I walk behind people, I'm always noticing their calves. One of the things when I was a kid that really motivated me to do all of the athletics that I did, and to start lifting weights at an early age was that my dad had these huge calf muscles, he just was naturally very muscular. But he had these Jai normas calf muscles. And I just thought that made everything look so much stronger. Like he looks so strong because his legs were so strong. And I love that look, these are really powerful muscles. And together the soleus and the gastroc are going to be this very powerful pump that's going to improve and enhance your venous return. And it's going to help prevent blood from pooling in the lower extremities. But what if when you're sitting at a desk, or you're sitting in an airplane, or you're sitting watching TV become more mindful of lifting and lowering your heels of flexing those calf muscles right, tippy toes down on the heels up on the toes down on the heels, anybody can do that. Right? You can do that while you're sitting in an infusion chair getting chemotherapy, right so you can be doing that and helping with your oxygen circulation in your body. And for breast cancer survivors. Not only do we want to think about good venous return and good circulation, the helping to prevent things like varicose veins or blood clots. But for breast cancer survivors, maintaining good circulation is particularly important for our overall recovery. And our well being because enhanced circulation ensures that all tissues, including those affected by cancer treatments, get adequate oxygen and nutrients, which promotes healing and reduces fatigue. What do I hear so many times from my people who have been through cancer treatment or going through cancer treatment fatigue. So of course, this has to do with medications, there's gonna be a lot of factors in the body. But one thing we can do about fatigue is get the body moving, get the oxygen pumping through the body, get oxygen delivery, so that second heart can play a really supportive role in our recovery by reducing swelling and edema. So enhanced venous return helps to reduce swelling in the legs and the feet. And this is a common issue. after cancer treatment, it can improve energy levels, because better energy means more efficient delivery of oxygen and nutrients to muscles and tissues. And that definitely can help combat treatment related fatigue. So a lot of times I'll hear from people, oh, I'm too tired to do anything. I'm too tired. I can't go to the gym. And we get this idea in our head. Like the only place we can exercise is the gym. So I just gave you examples, a couple of minutes go sitting on your couch, watching Netflix and raising and lowering and squeezing those calf muscles. If that's all the energy you have to do, at least that's doing something to support you, right. But think about walking those soleus is activated during walking. So think about walking as far as you can. You know, I remember reading the book radical hope, which is the second book from radical remission being the first and the second radical hope. And the difference in those two books. Well, there's a couple of differences but one says that there are nine healing factors radical remission, and then the second one radical hope says they're 10 healing factors. And that 10th healing factor is exercise. In the reason it wasn't in the first book was because when they interviewed these people who were doing things to heal themselves from cancer, they were weak and sick for the most part. So they even though got up and tried to go outside or move their body every day as much as they could. They couldn't do it very much. They didn't have a lot of energy. So they didn't think about it as being exercise because it wasn't intense, right? It wasn't at the gym. It wasn't flipping tires, but When they went back and interviewed these people, again, they realized everybody was moving as much as they could. And as they started to get their strength back, and as their healing improved, they started moving more. And exercise was always something that was a priority, just doing as much as they could do. And now you can hear like just in moving your calf muscles, how much that can benefit your heart, your oxygen circulation, your nutrient delivery, and the health of your brain. And we all know that a big factor in cancer treatment is the way our brain is affected chemo brain is a big deal. And also in menopause and hormonal changes, this can have a big effect on our cognitive ability. And we can feel like we're forgetting things, we're getting foggy, or we're getting forgetful. So the delivery of nutrients and oxygen, super important. And would you normally think about it as like, oh, gosh, I need my brain to feel better, I should be flexing my calves, right. But that second heart plays a vital role. So some of the things that are so important are to remember, stay active physical activity is crucial. walk, ride a bike, swim, any form of exercise that gets your legs moving, and helps engage those calf muscles is going to help to improve circulation. And you want to aim for exercise at least 30 minutes every day of the week. Leg elevation. So again, if you have a sedentary job, think about moving your legs, right, we don't want to just have those legs being still all day long. So maybe even get a little ottoman or a stool or if you're watching TV or binging on something for the weekend, elevate your legs, put them up on the couch, instead, let them hang over the couch, and just helped us support that flow of blood back to the heart. And then exercises that are specific to strengthening the calves like calf raises. I always hated calf raises because they're so uncomfortable. You know, you've got some weight up on your shoulder and you're going up and down on your tippy toes. And my feet were just burned and I hated it. But I always did them. Because I love a shapely calf. I think it looks so good. And it's so helpful for our body to have healthy strong calf muscles. So up and down on the tiptoes walking and gentle, low impact exercises, right? Because as we get a little bit older, the 40s 50s 60s impact can be a problem. We don't want to put ourselves in pain. So yoga, I mean, we move people think of yoga, if they've never done it, they think of it as just this like gentle laying down stretching. There's a lot of muscular involvement in yoga. And there's a lot of things that cause you to go up and down on your toes in yoga, reformer classes, Pilates reformers were Oh, my goodness, I love those classes. And they're just really working your muscles. So when you think about exercise, and you think about weightlifting Are you think about moving, remember that inside, right, we've got these muscles that are covered in skin, but those muscles are surrounding and filled with lots of veins, they've got arteries running through them beneath them. And as they squeeze, whether they're through your abs, through your legs through your arms as they squeezed, they're just helping your circulatory system. And when your circulation is good, and the better your circulation gets, the better it is for overall everything in your body. So we can do a lot of small things that we have a lot of power over. And circulating oxygen is a big deal, especially for those of us in the cancer population. So I hope this helps. I hope understanding that is a little exciting for you. I know maybe it's weird, I get excited about the stuff on like, how cool is that, we could just strengthen our calves and improve our heart function and improve our circulation. That's a pretty cool thing. And it's easy to do. And if you would like more support with understanding how to just really love on your body and support it from a heart centered way. Look into my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com Check out my 90 days of wellness program. I think it's a beautiful starting place. If you're thinking I just want to start somewhere simple and easy and get a better understanding of what to do to support myself. I think that 90 days of wellness is a really powerful program, lots of good information and covers just a whole host of things from nutrition to exercise to stress reduction, and gives you some simple ways to understand how your body works and implement healthy lifestyle practices. And if you're ready to dig even deeper, I highly recommend my metabolic health coaching packages. As I started off by saying, getting this 3x Four genetics nutrition blueprint for my granddaughter. Imagine that. I think back about like when my kids were little I would have done it on every single kid and one of my sons had terrible asthma. My daughter had all kinds of good gastrointestinal issues and food allergies. And I didn't even know Right? Well, those things weren't available, but to know now that those kinds of things are available, and we could look at someone's blueprint, and then from that blueprint design a lifestyle and nutrition plan specific to that human body. That's some powerful stuff. And it avoids, I think, a lot of wasted energy and wasted money trying to figure out what would work and was this health trend good for me? And is that health trend good for me? And do I need to spend a fortune on these supplements? Like what have you knew? It's pretty cool. I know, I find it very exciting. So if you're interested in that, go to the breast cancer recovery coach.com Click on coaching and programs and check out my metabolic health coaching packages, you will love them. They're amazing, and I just get the best feedback on it's so helpful for people. And when we understand more, we feel like we have more power, and it's so important. It's important to feel like we can be in charge of our health. All right, friends, take care, move those calves and I'll talk to you soon.

 

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