When it comes to healing after breast cancer treatment, gut health is often overlooked—but it shouldn’t be. Research shows that chemotherapy, radiation, and medications can disrupt the gut microbiome, leading to long-lasting side effects like inflammation, fatigue, and digestive issues.

In this week’s episode of Better Than Before Breast Cancer, I’m joined by Lee Holmes, holistic nutritionist, wholefoods chef, and author of the bestselling Supercharged Food series. After healing her own gut following an autoimmune diagnosis, Lee has made it her mission to make gut health simple, approachable, and delicious.

Lee shares her inspiring journey, how food transformed her health, and the practical, budget-friendly ways you can nourish your body with healing whole foods—no complicated recipes or hard-to-find ingredients required.

This episode is for you if:

• You’re recovering from breast cancer and struggling with digestion, energy, or inflammation

• You want easy, affordable ways to support your gut without stress

• You’re curious about how food can be used as medicine in real, sustainable ways

• You love hearing empowering stories from women who turned their health around naturally

Resources:

Free gift from Lee

It's Not Your Heart That Rules Your Emotions It's Your Gut

Lee's websites:
SuperchargeYourFood.com
SuperchargeYourGut.com

Lee's Wellness Programs

Lee's Books:

Heal Your Gut: A healing protocol and step-by-step program with more than 90 recipes to cleanse, restore, and nourish

Supercharge Your Life: How to put real food at the heart of everything

Supercharge Your Gut: Supercharged Food

Fast Your Way to Wellness: Supercharged Food

Eat Right for Your Shape: 120 Delicious Healthy Ayurvedic Recipes for a Brand New You (Supercharge)

Supercharged Food: Eat Clean Green and Vegetarian: Vegetable Recipes to Heal and Nourish

Studies:
University of Virginia Cancer Center
From the Bottom-Up: Chemotherapy and Gut-Brain Axis Dysregulation

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Read Full Transcript Below:

Hello and welcome…

I’m really excited to get to today’s show because I have an awesome guest this week who I”m going to tell you all about in just a minute, but first I want to give a listener shout out to
Mystbehabin who left this review in itunes for the BCRC Podcast

In times of anxiety, I turn to this podcast.

I am 4 years out from a double mastectomy and chemotherapy at the age of 39. It’s amazing the amount of anxiety I still have. Sometimes much more than others. This podcast has helped me tremendously to feel like any day at anytime I can listen and get a sense that I am still in control and can do something for my health. Whether it’s mental reassurance or physical ideas for changes in my diet, it helps to soothe my anxieties. I highly recommend all breast cancer survivors subscribing. Thank you so much for this podcast

 You are so welcome and thank you for listening and for that heartfelt review. It means the world to me to know that you find support here and because less anxiousness means more happiness and happiness is what I want for you. Thank you thank you for that review.

Ok, back to my lovely guest today Lee holmes

Lee is a holistic nutritionist,a wholefoods chef and author of the bestselling Supercharged Food series, which includes Eat Your Way to Good Health, Eat Yourself Beautiful, Eat Clean, Green and Vegetarian; Supercharged Food for Kids; Eat Right for Your Shape, Fast Your Way to Wellness, Heal your Gut, Supercharge Your Gut and her latest bestseller Supercharge Your Life.  Lee also runs online health programs; ‘Heal Your Gut’, Supercharge Your Gut and ‘Fast Your Way to Wellness’

As if that doesn’t keep her busy enough, Lee is a  columnist for WellBeing and Eat Well Magazines and a regular on ABC Radio.  Her articles have appeared in leading newspapers and journals in Australia, the UK and The Huffington Post in the US. 

And if you’re a shark tank fan, like I am, you’ll appreciate how cool it is that Lee secured a deal on Shark Tank Australia to further spread the Supercharged Food message.

I could do a whole show on this beautiful woman’s accomplishments. 

She also has a blog at www.superchargedfood.com a website which encourages S.O.L.E food: sustainable, organic, local and ethical.  It features delicious recipes, information, news, reviews and menu planning ideas to make it easy for people to enjoy a satisfying, wholesome and nourishing diet.

She is also the founder of, www.superchargeyourgut.com hosts a range of gut friendly powders, blends and Love Your Gut capsules, the number one natural gut health product in Australia.

Lee was recently traveling in long beach California promoting her book, Heal your gut, and I’m thrilled that she made the time to be a guest on this show while she was here.

If you listened to episode 29 you heard about how gut health impacts your brain, your weight and your overall health as well as ways to have your gut microbiome tested so you can get a real time picture of what bacteria are in your gut, what you may need to increase and an analysis of how the different bacteria impact your health.

For those of us who have been through chemotherapy, a study published in may 2018 From the Bottom-Up: Chemotherapy and Gut-Brain Axis Dysregulation looked at how chemotherapy impacted the nervous system, gut bacteria and the gut brain axis, which is the biochemical signaling that takes place between your gut and your brain...pretty fascinating stuff.

What they found was that several stages of the gut-brain axis become are impaired following chemotherapy exposure, and this dysregulation plays a major role in the intestinal, psychological and neurological complications following chemotherapy including chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment 

Even if your treatment did not involve chemotherapy

Melanie Rutkowski, PhD,  University of Virginia Cancer Center  Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology, found that disrupting the microbiome of mice caused hormone receptor-positive breast cancer to become more aggressive. And that keeping your gut microbiome healthy is very much associated with a favorable, long term outcomes for breast cancer."

Lee turned to strengthening her own microbiome to heal herself from an autoimmune disease which you’ll hear about in this show. And on that note let’s get to it:

What an awesome lazy with such a peaceful easy energy about her. I just love that.
I’ll post the links to Lee’s websites and books along with the link to her free Love your Gut Powder recipe book and I highly encourage you to check out her books and programs. 

My sister Kristie, who you heard in episode 42 Mother’s surviving cancer, is the one who told me about Lee and she is starting a book club with Lee’s book supercharge your life to help everyone exchange ideas, give feedback on recipes and just support each other in creating a healthier gut and a healthier life. That may be something you also want to try because it’s always easier to create change with social support. 

I’d love to hear from you if you decide to something like a book club or just incorporate gut healing practices into your daily routine, so follow me on Facebook as LL and Instagram as the bcrc where you can message or DM me anytime. And if you haven't subscribed to the BCRC podcast I'd appreciate it so much if you take a moment to do that now so you never miss an episode and while you're subscribing to it would be so wonderful if you could leave a  review for the show and you might just be the next listener shout out!

That’s it for now and we’ll talk again next week.