#386 Why Methylation Matters After Breast Cancer

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Did you know there’s a process happening in your body every second that influences everything from energy production to hormone balance, detoxification, and even DNA repair?

It’s called methylation, and in this week’s episode, I’m diving into why it’s such an essential piece of the puzzle for breast cancer survivors.

For those of us on a healing journey, understanding how to support this process can be a game-changer. But here’s the thing: it’s not just about science. It’s about simple, actionable steps you can take to help your body do what it’s naturally designed to do.

In this episode, I break down methylation in a way that’s easy to understand (no biochemistry degree needed, I promise!).

We’ll talk about how sluggish methylation might show up in your life—like fatigue, brain fog, or trouble recovering from stress—and why this could be important for your recovery and long-term health.

Most importantly, I share three simple, practical ways you can support methylation starting today.

If you’ve ever wondered how to help your body thrive after breast cancer, this is a must-listen.

 

Referred to in this episode:

Better Than Before Breast Cancer™ Life Coaching Membership

The Four Pillars of Breast Cancer Recovery

90 Days of Wellness

Metabolic Health Coaching

#27 Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

 

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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 Lemmer. I'm a certified life coach and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills on the insides 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. Welcome to episode 386

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of better than before breast cancer. I'm your host, Laura lumber, the breast cancer recovery coach, and we're going to talk about some great stuff here today. So what we're going to talk about has a lot to do with many aspects of your health, and it's something I think there's a couple of terms that people throw around various health publications, and you might have even heard me talk about here on the podcast before we're going to talk about methylation, and I know I've spoken about it in a couple of different ways, but I get asked about this all the time, especially because there's some popular genes, the MTHFR, for instance, that people talk about and wonder if they have this gene or not, and what it means to them and that they i I've gotten a lot of questions lately as I review people's nutrition genomes on really understanding what methylation is and why it's even important to them. Why does it have any significance whatsoever to our health, but especially to those of us who have had a breast cancer diagnosis? So I know methylation sounds like a technical term, but I promise you, you don't need to have a biology degree to take care of your health, you just need to have a willingness to learn, to take small, meaningful steps, and to just be open to what's out there. So in this show, what I want to do is help you understand at the simplest level, what methylation is, why it is important to you, how you might know that you're having issues with methylation without a nutrition genome or any other kind of genetic report, what you can do if you think this might be an issue for you, how you can adjust your lifestyle, and I'm even going to leave you with a couple of recipes to boost your body's ability to methylate. All right, let's dig in. So let's start talking about what methylation actually is. Here's just the very basics. Methylation is a process that happens in every single cell in your body. So think about it like adding a little tag to your DNA or to other molecules in your body, and these tags act like on and off switches. You know how we have those breaker boxes in the house, and they're marked bathroom, kitchen, lights, microwave, kind of think about it like that. So it's got these, these tags act like on and off switches, and they tell your body what to do and when to do it. So methylation, the process of methylation, is involved in creating energy, in repairing DNA, breaking down toxins, processing hormones, including estrogen, big important one for us, and managing stress and mood. So you might think like managing stress and mood is a function of the way that I think, but it actually has a lot more to it than that and the way that our body works the neurotransmitters, the dopamine, the serotonin, the adrenaline, the nor all of these different things play a role. Hormones play a role in how they affect our brain, and then that has an effect on how we think, so it has and how we feel, right on our mood and the way we respond to stressors. So methylation is kind of like the body's maintenance crew, and it's always working behind the scenes to try to keep everything running smoothly. The problem comes in when methylation doesn't work smoothly, when it doesn't work perfectly, and that can be the result, and it can be driven by certain genes, like the one I mentioned, MTHFR, you've probably heard of it. There's another really big, important one, com, T. There's another MTR. In fact, there's many variations that have of the MTHFR, type of variants that affect methylation, but these three that I just mentioned are pretty big players, and they can make the process of methylation slower or less efficient in your body. So when methylation isn't working well, it can impact your overall health and how your body handles the processing of toxins and estrogens. And obviously that's critical for us as people who've had a breast cancer diagnosis. So let's dig a little deeper into that. Why would you care about this? As a breast cancer survivor. Well, one big reason is the estrogen that I just mentioned. So estrogen metabolism, your body uses methylation to process and safely remove estrogen, right? So this is an important thing. When we have hormones in our body, hormones do their job, and then what's. Leftovers got to be removed from the body, and if it's not removed effectively and efficiently, it transforms into other parts or other types of estrogen, and it has byproducts of the estrogen metabolism of trying to break it down so these more toxic forms of estrogen can cause damage to our cells and increase our risk of breast cancer recurrence. So methylation also helps your body manage inflammation and DNA repair. We know what big players these are in the game of health, right? We want to make sure that we keep inflammation at its absolute lowest, and poor methylation can leave your cells very vulnerable to damage from toxins. Again, toxins going to keep popping up here, or oxidative stress. And oxidative stress is kind of like the overwhelm if your body can't process toxins effectively, then they start to overwhelm the cells, and we have this oxidative stress, so that also both of those toxins and oxidative stress can have an impact packed on our cancer risk. And when it comes to detoxification, think about what we go through after treatments like chemotherapy, surgeries, radiation, multiple different pharmaceutical drugs that we may take and that our body has to eliminate the leftover toxins from all of these treatments. So supporting proper methylation can help support your body in this detoxification process, so it can happen more efficiently and so that you can recover more effectively. So another thing that can happen here is that if methylation isn't happening effectively, if we're having poor methylation, it can also lead to higher levels of what's called homocysteine. And homocysteine is an inflammatory molecule that's linked to heart disease and possibly cancer. So homocysteine is this interesting kind of a byproduct. The process of methylation requires some really important nutrients, which we're going to touch on here in just a few minutes. And if we either don't have enough of those nutrients, or if our body can't, for some reason, use those nutrients effectively, then that homocysteine can kind of be this leftover product causing a lot of inflammation, and especially homocysteine is linked to cardiovascular disease, which we definitely want to avoid. So how would you even know that you were having an issue with methylation if you didn't do a nutrition genomics. And the reason really I want to talk about this because I see methylation issues so often as a very high impact in a lot of the women that I work with, and so I know that it's got all this cascade of effect in the way that it impacts our body. But if you didn't know your genetics, if you didn't want to know your genetics, your nutrition genome, or how your genetics respond to lifestyle, how could you know if this was an issue for you? Well, there are a few signs that you can look for. One is fatigue. So if your body isn't producing enough energy, poor methylation could be part of the reason brain fog and mood swings. So methylation helps process brain chemicals, like I mentioned, those neurotransmitters, dopamine, serotonin and so if methylation is sluggish, you might feel a lot of brain fog or just kind of down or in a funk. If you notice that you feel worse after eating certain foods drinking alcohol or being exposed to different environmental toxins that could point to a methylation issue. So what does it mean if I say you feel worse? Obviously you could notice that you don't feel good when you eat processed foods or foods that have dyes or colors or, you know, chemical additives in them, you could notice that you don't respond to alcohol well and with environmental toxins. I did a show way back. I'll have to find it, and I'll link to a link to that in the show notes so you can listen to it. It was on multiple chemical sensitivity. So what if you, you know, go into these? I don't, I don't want to mention any company names. So candle parties with lots of scented things, and they smell lovely, right? They have lovely fragrances. But you walk in and you just feel sick, and you start to get a headache, and you feel like cold and clammy, you feel funky, you feel like something's off. If you walk down the cleaning aisle in the grocery store, or you go to Home Depot, where there's a lot of chemicals, do you notice that you respond in a way that is a little more intense than other people around you might respond, this could be a little bit these could be some red flags that you're having trouble with methylation. Is there a family history of breast cancer or heart disease? So variants and methylation related genes like the MTHFR can run in families. So if you see there's a history of that in your family, then you can think, well, maybe I have that too. Maybe something's going on with there. So if these kind of things resonate with you, it could be worth exploring. If you're open to understanding and knowing your nutrition genome, you can certainly find someone who practices functional medicine can help you that you can come to me, we can go over your nutrition genome, or you can follow some of these. Next steps, I'm going to give you these three tips on things you can do to support healthier, more effective methylation. And if you notice, you start to feel better when you do these things. That could be another indication of red flags that maybe I was having poor methylation issues. So the great thing about nutrition genomics is that it's highly influenced by food. So if you're having poor methylation, if you think you're having poor methylation, if you're noticing some of these symptoms of fatigue and these things that are bothering you, then I'm going to give you three tips that anybody could use to support healthy methylation. So even if you are already methylating in a healthy way, you can still do these things to be very supportive of that process that's going on in your body. So let's talk about some of the right nutrients, the nutrients that make a big difference in methylation, folate, not folic acid, folate, those are two different things. Folate is found in leafy greens like spinach, kale and asparagus. And sometimes there are certain nutrients that I know that from my nutrition genomics that I know I need more of. And I'll just go to Google and say, what are the foods that are highest in this so you can get lots of lists of food that way. So folate is a very important nutrient. B 12 is very important. B 12 is found in animal based foods, eggs, fish, chicken, all the animal based foods. You can find it fortified in some plant based milks or plant based foods, but it's still not going to be as effective if it's fortification versus just a naturally occurring part of these animal based foods. B 12 is one of those nutrients that hear a lot people who are vegans, that they suffer from some B 12 deficiencies. And the important thing about that is that B 12 is a really powerful nutrient in supporting this whole process of methylation. And this process of methylation, as I've just talked about, impacts many areas of the body. Okay, so B 12 is a big player. Choline is a big player. Choline is in egg yolks, Brussels sprouts, liver. I did a podcast a while ago on organ meats and how valuable they are to our health. That's gross to me. So when I say liver, I use capsules that are just organ meat capsules, organic grass fed, grass finished organ meat capsules so I can get more choline into my body, because this is an issue for me as well. Beetan is found in beets and in quinoa, so you can look for these nutrients in your food. I love to say to my people, and I know a bunch of people freak out when you talk about tracking food. People don't like to track food, I totally get it. I don't love tracking food, but I find a way to be curious about it, because I want to see, when I track my food, not how many calories I'm eating. I'm not worried about the calories. What I'm concerned with, what I'm interested in, is the nutrients. And so when I track my food, I want to see the nutrient values. Am I even getting the RDA, the recommended daily allowance of folate, of B 12, of choline, of betaine, of iron, of potassium, of all the things, right? And so a good food tracker, I use chronometer. It's an excellent food tracker. And that's really helpful, because if you have some of the symptoms I talk about, and you think maybe I am having trouble, trouble methylating. You could use this kind of a food tracking app, even if it's just for a week or two, to see, on the average how much of these nutrients are you getting. So an RDA is just the recommended daily allowance. It means the minimum amount recommended for an average healthy person, so that they go, don't go into deficiency. So if you're not even meeting the RDA on these nutrients, well, it's kind of easy to see that you would be going into deficiency. So let's think about if you think you're having trouble, if you know these nutrients are big players in methylation, and if you track your food for a few days and see I'm not even getting close to the minimum of these nutrients. Then there's another step you can take to improve your diet and see what foods carry these. How can I put more of them into my diet, and then do I feel better after that? Okay, so these nutrients fuel your methylation pathways. They help your body process toxins, they help repair DNA and they help balance hormones. So again, obviously the focus on whole nutrient dense foods organic as much as possible. Because obviously, if we're already having trouble detoxifying because of a problem with methylation, the last thing we want to do is put more pesticides and toxins into our body, right? We want to give our liver a break. We want to give our body a break. We want to reduce the toxic burden. Okay, the second step is managing stress. So stress hormones, like adrenaline, can build up, if methylation is sluggish, and then that can leave you with feelings of anxiety, tenseness, burnout. So things that you can do. People, I think, don't give enough credit to these at all, are deep, breathing, gentle yoga and journaling, yeah, journaling, the process of writing your thoughts out, the process of just taking a moment to sit back and take a deep, full breath, the process of moving your body gently with your breath. These can really be super helpful. And journaling can help your body process these hormones more effectively, because it's dealing with your emotions, right? It's dealing with your stress. So simple, easy breath work practice would be like box breathing. Breathe in for four counts, hold for four counts. Exhale for four counts. Hold for four counts. You could do this for five minutes every day, and it'd be a huge step in helping you to manage stress so easy and so powerful. You know, we don't have to go all out an hour a day, seven days a week, flipping tires, going crazy to be fit, we don't have to go to big meditation classes or hour long courses. We could just take a few minutes every day, because consistency is really the key to everything. So five minutes a day every day is so much better than an hour a day once a month, all right, so make little steps to support yourself now, the third tip is to detoxify your environment. Reducing your toxic load gives your body less work to do. So these are easy tips. Make sure you're drinking filtered water, avoid processed food and excess alcohol. When it comes to breast cancer, there is actually no safe recommended intake of alcohol, none. They say that any intake of alcohol increases our risk of recurrence, but the general recommendations for alcohol is not more than one drink a day. For a woman, a drink is one ounce of alcohol, like liquor or five ounces of wine. Okay, that's considered a drink. And so we don't want to go above these recommended allowances here. So on the food, we want to exceed the recommended daily allowance. On alcohol and processed food, we definitely don't we want to keep that as low as possible. And then, of course, using natural cleaning products and personal care products that don't have parabens and fragrances and colorings and things like that in them, those three simple things can make a huge impact and a huge change in your life. So let's wrap this up. We know that methylation is a powerful process that affects your energy, mood, detoxification, hormone balance, lots of things in your body. For breast cancer survivors, people who have had a breast cancer diagnosis, supporting methylation is an important step in promoting our long term health and reducing our risk of recurrence. And remember that the Journey to Health is not about perfection. It's about progress. You don't have to, like, figure out methylation, get everything right, get on B 12 supplements, or any of that stuff, but making small changes in your diet, managing your stress, checking out your environment, detoxing here wherever you can, cutting back as much as you can in additives and chemicals and things like that, and chemical exposures, all of these little steps and understanding why they're important for your body. You know, we hear a lot in the the public eye, in the public arena, is just like detox. And in California, we have these little prop, I don't know it's prop 64

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I think it was stickers. They're literally on everything, every package, everything. And they're like prop 64 this is a cancer warning on everything, every toy, every package, everything we can't live like that, like it's too overwhelming. And so do what you can. Understand why you're doing it right. So understand why you want to cut out toxins. Understand how they're impacting the way that you feel. And little by little, you will see your health improved more and more and more, and we'll get into that optimal range, and you'll get to know your body better, so that you can serve it better, and so that you're not guessing all the time about what it needs. I hope you found that helpful. You can always come and work with me. You can find all the details at the breast cancer recovery coach.com I have a life coaching membership that literally contains all the programs, all the workshops, all the things I do, and my members get to have weekly group coaching sessions with me and with each other, as well as opportunities for private coaching sessions and lots of discounts they get. And I also have lots of programs that stand on their own. My four pillars of breast cancer recovery, a wonderful, supportive program to move you through creating a life that's better than before breast cancer, I have the 90 days of wellness, which is a heart centered approach if you want to just like, how do I start loving myself more so I can treat myself better? That's an excellent program. Yeah, and then, of course, I've got all of my metabolic health packages where we look at your labs, we look at your nutrition genome, and we just help you understand how your body works, so you can eliminate all of the confusion and start putting your energy and your time into what you know works best for you. All right, it's all available for you. You can find it all on the breast cancer recovery coach com, and I'll see you again next week. And until then, go to the show notes for this episode the breast cancer recovery coach com, forward, slash, 386, and check out the recipes that I posted there that can help you create delicious meals that support your body's ability to methylate.

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