Episode Overview

October can be a complicated month. For some, the pink ribbons feel celebratory, marking survivorship and progress. For others, they can feel heavy and triggering, bringing back memories of treatment, fear, or loss.

In this episode, I invite you to reimagine October—not just as a month of awareness, but as a month of aliveness.

I share why prevention deserves the same attention as detection, how outcomes for metastatic breast cancer look different today than they did even a decade ago, and the daily choices that can help you live with more strength, energy, and peace.

You’ll hear stories from my own journey and from women I work with who inspire me every day to see life beyond statistics. And together, we’ll explore what it means to live between the fear of recurrence and the choice to show up fully for your life.

This episode will remind you: you don’t have to wait for the other shoe to drop. You can choose yourself—today.

Explore more support:

• Metabolic Health Day:
  https://metabolichealthday.life/ 
• Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership: https://www.thebreastcancerrecoverycoach.com/lifecoaching
• Creating a Life You Love in 168 Hours a Week: https://www.thebreastcancerrecoverycoach.com/168-hours-sp

💌 Want weekly support, new episodes, and wellness tips in your inbox?

Join my email list and get resources for healing, hope, and living with intention after breast cancer.

👩‍💻 Follow me on Instagram for daily inspiration.

👩‍💻 Follow me on Facebook

🎙 Subscribe & leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

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, friends. Welcome to Episode 431

0:37
of better than before breast cancer. I'm your host, Laura Lummer, I'm here to kick off the month of October with you. I want to start off with a little story, a little reminiscing. This last weekend, I had the privilege of hosting a very special VIP weekend for four of my original clients, and I'm just recovering now. My goodness, hosting retreats takes a lot of energy, but it's worth all of it. It was an amazing time. And you know, the theme of our weekend was connection, and it was connection to the self and to each other. And we spent a lot of time pampering, nurturing and listening to ourselves, which is so very important, right? It's so important, I think, to tune out the outside world and the influences of the outside world and the influences of other people's thoughts and opinions so often, which sounds weird as I'm doing a podcast and asking you to listen to it, but we really need to listen to ourselves more. We need to trust ourselves more and learn to love ourselves. You know, that's been a theme of mine for a long time, that health and healing and happiness is rooted in self compassion, in gentleness, and that used to not be the way that I thought at all. I was definitely the person who has drive yourself harder, overachieve, beat yourself up more than anybody else, and I found out the hard way that that just doesn't work. So we had an amazing time, beautiful time for my guests. It was their first spa day. There's an incredible spa out here in Southern California called Glen Ivy. It is spectacular. And I was so honored to get to take my beautiful clients down here for a day of pampering and massages and painting your body with shea butter. And it was so cool. And so I share that story with you, because I think it is the perfect opening to what I want to talk about today, when this podcast comes out, we're right at the beginning of October, and we all know what that means. Being on the other side of a breast cancer diagnosis, it means everything is about pink right? And everything is about pink ribbons. And I'm here today to offer a different version of October for you, My people, a different version that is not just about awareness. There's nothing wrong with awareness, but a version that is about aliveness, because the month of October, I know fully well, has a completely different meaning when we're on the other side of a diagnosis. And for some people, you can still celebrate it. It's meaningful. For you, you celebrate your and I don't know what better terminology to use, so I'm going to use the common ones as survivorship, right? You celebrate your survivorship. For some people, it's very triggering. It's very upsetting. And we see a lot of stories of loss and of illness and of things that trigger us, of baldness that we remember quite well, or maybe we're still in and I want to talk about some of these things today. And as I was thinking about this episode, I thought of a comment that my mom actually made to me the other night. She said to me, So doesn't it get hard when you're talking about cancer all the time? And I said to her, Well, you know, I don't talk about cancer like I rarely talk about cancer. Specifically, it's just, what do you mean? And I said, Well, I talk about living. I talk about better than before breast cancer, meaning how to love ourselves, how to have healthier lives, how to take better care of ourselves, how to nurture ourselves, how to find our voice, how to live lives we love. So when I was thinking about talking about in today's show, I was thinking what would be a real representation of what I'm trying to put out into the world for the month of October, and in the process of thinking through that, I actually came up with a brand new logo for my website, which you will see an image for this podcast episode, which is a rhinestone ribbon, right? I thought so. First of all, if you've listened to me or followed me for any length of time, you know that sparkle is my favorite color, and I think about a rhinestone ribbon because. Of course, these ribbons are just, I don't even know, actually, why the ribbon shape came up. For whatever reason, a rhinestone ribbon isn't flat, it's not quiet, it's sparkly, it's three dimensional. And to me, that's life after a diagnosis. That's what life after a diagnosis can be. And it's the energy that I want for us. I don't want the energy out there to be bracing for bad news and fearful of looking at anything that's going to trigger us, but an energy of showing up for our bodies with daily love. And I think about this a lot, because the theme we see through October and the theme we hear about so often when it comes to talking about breast cancer is early detection. And yes, early detection matters, but what matters more is prevention, because then we don't have to any have anything to detect, right? And I was thinking about this, and I thought, what if we gave the same seriousness to prevention, the same energy as we give to detection. So here's a little reality check that lives in my head through the month of October and pretty much all year round. But I want to offer you some numbers to think about this and think about what this might mean to you, and what it might mean to all of us who have had a breast cancer diagnosis and all of those who maybe never have to have one. So studies show us that over time, 20 to 30% of women who are diagnosed with an early stage will eventually face metastatic disease. And we're going to talk about that because I also want to reframe metastatic disease for you, and I feel like I've earned the right to do that now the exact number, the percentage varies because of tumor biology and years of follow up. There's all kinds of variables, right? That if we think about the fact that 20 to 30% of women who receive an early diagnosis will go on to receive a metastatic diagnosis, and then we think about other studies who show that only 6.8 so a little less than 7% of adults in the United States meet the requirements for optimal cardio metabolic health. What are the targets of cardio metabolic health? Blood pressure, blood sugar management, cholesterol, adiposity, body fat and the absence of cardiovascular disease. So if we think about it in these terms, that leaves over nine in 10 of us with room to improve our metabolic terrain that we live in every single day that supports prevention or recurrence. And what if we think about moving our body in 2020 there was a study that came out that said there's 20% just slightly over 20% of women hit both aerobic and strength training guidelines, and less than 50% of adults met aerobic guidelines in and of themselves, just alone. So that's a lot of us missing the minimum that helps mood, sleep, insulin sensitivity, strength, and that's an incredible opportunity. Now I'm not drawing a straight line between the numbers of movement in cardio metabolic health and the numbers of recurrence or metastatic disease, but I'm asking you to think about, do we over invest energy in catching disease early, and under invest energy in caring for ourselves daily? And what would it look like if we were to protect our sleep as fiercely as we protect a scan date because you don't miss those do you what if we were to schedule two short lifting sessions, heavy lifting sessions to protect that bone health and and build up that beautiful lean muscle and strength? What if you were to schedule two short sessions a week with the same seriousness and commitment that you schedule your follow up visits to your oncologist? What if we were so committed to our self respect and not discipline or punishment, to self respect and self love, that we intentionally consistently, not perfectly, but consistently, built plates of food and steadied our blood sugar and lowered insulin responses?

9:18
Why do we pour so much of our energy into detection, which is great. I'm not saying don't do it, but so much less into prevention. And if I'm honest, my belief is it's fear, right? Our brains are wired to over notice threats. Psychologists call that our negative bias, and so potential bad news is much louder than the quiet goodness of a walk after dinner, a good night's sleep. And I do think that when we name that bias, it helps us when we say, Oh, my brain has a negative bias, because then we can ask ourselves, well, if my brain automatically has a negative bias, what if I decided. Did that my vigilance would be based in love more than fear. What if I can keep my screenings and give the same devotion to protein and fiber intake and lifting and sunlight in the morning and lights out at an early hour of the evening, so that my body got the rest that it needs. Because let's talk about the hard, scary thing with some gentleness, that the idea of 20 to 30% of women getting a metastatic disease diagnosis is terrifying, and isn't that what we're always afraid of? That recurrence? I know it was for me, but now I'm living it, so it's a different experience. So we're not wrong for feeling that fear, but what if we switched it right? What if, when that fear came up, we were so empowered because we said, but I'm acting with love, and I'm taking so many more steps to support myself and support prevention that I don't have to experience as much fear. And I want to talk about this, not just for those of you who've never had a metastatic diagnosis, and hopefully never will, but for those of us who have had a metastatic diagnosis. I want to also talk about that, because a lot of scary information comes out about metastatic disease in the month of October. So I want to talk about what metastatic disease really looks like today without taking away the seriousness of it, because it is very serious, but it does look very different today than it did 15 years ago. On the average, today, women with a metastatic disease are living longer, but more importantly, I think, are living better as they live longer. There was actually a study in 2024 in the Journal of American Medical Association, and it modeled outcomes across decades when it came to metastatic disease, and it estimated that there's a 58% reduction in breast cancer mortality between 1975 and 2019

12:04
and the biggest contributions to that statistic came from treatment for stage one through three disease, then treatment for metastatic disease and then screening. So when the authors really zoomed in on survival after a metastatic recurrence, this model showed that survival improved from just slightly under two years in the year 2000 to over three years by the year 2019 and I know that may not sound like a lot to you, but as someone who, next week will be celebrating five years since a metastatic diagnosis, that means a lot to me. I feel emotional just thinking about it. It means more birthdays and more fun days and more sunsets and more sun rises, and that's just a statistic. That's just the averages. So let's think back to just a minute ago. The averages are based on a really metabolically broken society. So what if we focused on that terrain health and improving that metabolic health? Would these numbers also change? And let's talk about what some of their studies found when it comes to quality of life, right? Because I don't want us to have so much fear. I want us to understand that there's so much available to us that it isn't that cancer isn't scary by any means. That's not what I'm trying to say, but I'm trying to say there's so much hope and there's so much support. And when it comes to metastatic disease, there are different kinds of treatments. I was actually shocked when I was first diagnosed with metastatic disease. I thought it was going right back into IV chemotherapy. But there are all types of different oral therapies, and studies have found that combining these oral therapies with aromatase inhibitors actually resulted in less pain than just endocrine therapies or aromatase inhibitors alone, and the combination of these, what are called CDK, four, six inhibitors, actually delayed the amount of time that It women had between the onset of the diagnosis of metastatic disease and when they had to start IV chemotherapy or regular chemotherapy. And so that means a whole lot to someone with a stage four diagnosis. And there are new treatments coming out all the time. I am so amazed at the amount of women that I see, the number of women I see that I look to for inspiration, because they are 810, 15. I met a woman the other day, 24 years out of metastatic diagnosis. That is amazing and so hopeful, and so I want to openly address metastatic disease on this show, because I know how terrifying it is to people who haven't had it, and I'm worried that they might get it, and to those of us who do have it, and people think of it as a death sentence. So I just wanted to say that the outcomes, especially the quality of life, has improving so much. And in my retreat, one of my clients has a stage four diagnosis. As well. She's doing incredible. And we just talked about the fact that every single day we are alive is another opportunity for something to come out that can help us even more. And there are just so many advances in overall integrative medicine standard of care, as well as complementary care, therapies and tests that are coming out now. They're just so exciting and so hopeful. So I'm talking a lot about medicine because I believe integrative care is important, but is the progress that we've seen just medicine, or do daily choices really matter too? So if we look at the National Math and mortality, decline is largely credited to treatment and screening. But another truth also shows up when we ask women how they feel and function. So there was a nine month multinational randomized trial that was published in 2024 and it individualized exercise programs for women with metastatic breast cancer, and the women in that program reported less fatigue and better quality of life than the women who were in the controls and didn't exercise, and other studies showed that more post diagnosis physical activity is linked with lower breast cancer and all cause mortality, so our death rates so when we're contrasting prevention with early detection, think about this. In the Journal of Cancer oncology, there was a study that showed higher fasting insulin at diagnosis predicted worse outcomes in early breast cancer. And that's a huge and powerful signal that our inner terrain matters, managing that fasting insulin is so important. There was other more recent data analysis that tied metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of metrics, including blood pressure, glucose, lipids, so all of your cholesterol panels and your waist circumference to poor disease free survival after breast cancer. So if you had metabolic syndrome, he had a poor, disease, free survival prognosis. And I don't say this to scare you, because remember, this isn't about scaring people. This is about empowering people. This is about saying this is an invitation into the opportunities to support yourself. So these are invitations to protect yourself and to quiet down inflammation and know that you have the power to do it. So is metastatic disease scary? Yeah. Is it serious? Yes, of course. And it requires a lot of attention, believe me, a lot of attention. But at the same time, we are hearing scholars and we're seeing studies that are beginning to refer to breast cancer as a chronic condition, and that doesn't minimize the seriousness at all ever, but what it means is that, again, we're living longer, and that we can manage cancer in our bodies for long periods of time with both the attention on our metabolic wellness and the support of different medications. So I think that the best framing for this, I love the chronic illness. For me that feels powerful, because if you're living with meds, then you know, like me, that it's a very mental dance on a daily basis, right? There's there's holding fear in one hand, and there's holding a sunlight and connection and excitement and living and what you're going to eat and everything in the other hand. So I hope that the month of October for all of us becomes a time where we can refocus all of us who understand what it means to have a breast cancer diagnosis, and that we can share that experience with people who never have had one to understand that prevention as an act of self love, prevention as an act of self respect and not perfection as anything, but prevention is something that deserves that attention year round, all the time that we want to put that energy into short walks after dinner and sunlight in the morning, and connecting to the people we love. And know that it's worth it, knows that it's worth it all year round, that in between those scans is so much amazing life. And something else about the month of October that we can look forward to is that Dr Neisha winters and the metabolic terrain Institute of Health have established metabolic health day October 10 every year. And I love that because it's on the other side of fear of recurrence and fear of breast cancer and scary stories. It's stories of hope and stories of power. And I'm very excited when this comes out in a week, I will be heading to Tucson, Arizona for the metabolic health conference. And if you are going, I look forward to seeing you there. If you haven't heard about it. I'll put a link under this podcast where you can come in person, you can virtually attend and get all the recordings. I mean, the speakers that are going to be at this conference are incredible, incredible minds, incredible doctors, and so much information on things. Can do for the month of October and all year round, to support yourself so that we are acting out of love and we are acting out of hope and we're acting out of just an admiration and treasure for life, and not living in fear from scan to scan. So definitely check out that link. And you know, when it comes to attending a conference or attending it virtually or in person, a lot of times, people look at the cost of a conference, which conference? Conferences cost a lot, trust me, I mean, I'm putting on retreats for small amount of people. When you're talking about a conference for hundreds of people, it is a lot of money. So think about like pitching in with your friends and family and sharing these recordings and having watch parties and helping each other, because there's nothing better to support a healthy lifestyle and a healing program than support and if everybody's on the same page and starting to understand what they can do to help themselves feel better and have Energy and have a better quality of life, even better. You know, I had coffee the other day with a client of mine, and she had just come back from attending a retreat for women with a cancer diagnosis, and out of several dozen women that were there, she said to me, no one ever heard of the metabolic approach. No one ever heard of being in ketosis or understanding what a ketogenic diet was. No one ever read the book the metabolic approach to cancer. No one ever heard of Dr Nasha winters at that retreat, she said, at first, I felt lonely and alone and kind of like an outcast because I was doing things to support my health. And this woman has gone from a young, young age of diagnosis younger than 40, widespread, full blown metastatic disease to no evidence of disease through an integrated approach. She's incredible. And the neat thing was that at the end of it, she said to me, by the end of the retreat, she was getting all kinds of messages and notes from people saying how much they had given she had given back, how much knowledge they gleaned from getting to experience her and learn from her. And so hopefully more people will understand the power that they have to support themselves and to improve the terrain of their body and improve their outcomes as well. So I want to share that with you, because I think it's hugely important that we keep getting this message out there, this message of power, this message of empowerment. And I think that was a big theme at my own retreat last week, where my clients kept saying to me, you know, I just feel so empowered. I feel very empowered. And there's nothing that makes me happier than when I hear a woman say that to me that she doesn't live in fear from stepping stone and stepping stone that are that are dictated to us by medicine, not there's anything wrong with that, but you know what I'm saying, there's a protocol. And to feel empowered that that's not the only thing that's going to dictate the direction of your life is awesome, and you are all empowered for that. So remember, think of that rhinestone ribbon, multi faceted, bright, unapologetically, alive. You do not have to wait for the other shooter drop if you choose yourself every day with that same commitment and that same clarity and that same vigilance that we look to early detection with All right friends. I hope that's helpful for someone. I hope you find inspiration throughout the month of October and all year long in this podcast, and I'll talk to you again next week. Until then, check out the metabolic health conference and take good care of yourself.

23:41
You've put your courage to the test, laid all your doubts to rest. Your mind is clearer than before, your heart is full and wanting more. Your future's at the door.

23:59
Give it all you got no hesitating.

24:02
You've been waiting all your life. This is your moment. This is your

24:11
moment. This is your moment.