#320 Breast Cancer and the Beauty of Biodiversity
The diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer can lead to a powerful disconnect from the body.
Many survivors feel betrayed by their own bodies and often that distance piles onto existing body image issues.
Sadly, when we lose connection with our bodies, there’s no way we can care for them in the ways necessary to support healing.
We lose sight of the magical interplay of our biology and how every part of our system has an important role and how strong and vital our connection to nature is.
Over recent decades this has led to a frightening reduction in the healthy biodiversity of the human gut.
In this episode, I hope to help you understand the beautiful ecosystem that is your body, and how important it is to understand the simple steps you can take to support increasing your own biodiversity.
Our gut health isn’t just a matter of poo.
Like the roots of a great tree is the foundation of the forest, our gut health affects our entire system, and getting to know and love how to support gut health can be a game changer for your body.
Listen now and hear about:
How human gut diversity is changing
What’s causing that to happen.
How our health is impacted by these changes
How you can turn the tide to support your metabolic health
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Read the full transcript below:
Laura Lummer 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.
Laura Lummer 0:33
Hey, friends, welcome to episode 320. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And I'm here for Tuesday terrain talk. Today, I want to kind of set the scene for our Train Talk. Recently, I did a podcast episode about Ayurveda. And in that episode, I talked about how the human body, how important the circadian rhythms are, and how important it is for the human body to align its circadian rhythms with those of nature, and how that connects to the foods that are grown during different seasons, the foods that are grown locally to where people live and how these things support each other. So today, we're going to talk about something that has a lot to do with our health. But I want to set the scene first, to kind of make that connection to how our bodies are so interconnected, in the same way that nature is interconnected to itself. I find and I have found over the years that I have worked with people teaching yoga, doing personal training, or you VEDA lifestyle programs, I see over and over again, a tremendous disconnection with our own body, a lack of understanding how our bodies function, I don't mean you have to be some kind of biologist or some kind of doctor, but just a basic understanding of the the interconnectedness, the working of the human body, we, I think tend to isolate things, you know, we look to Western science and Western science doesn't really look at the whole, oftentimes, it takes parts out and looks at parts. And we don't look at how things work together. For instance, tumeric Curcumin is the active ingredient in tumeric. And tumeric. And curcumin have been in so many studies, but the kumin the Curcumin is often just extracted, and we look at the effects of this active ingredient. But why is this active ingredient part of the whole route? What is the whole route had to do with supporting this active ingredient curcumin in working with our bodies, this is what I mean, when we don't look at the whole, we take science, we take things apart. And we have a tendency to look at our bodies the same way. And I think that that's a big disservice to ourselves. Because our body does not work in isolated silos. So let me share this little story with you. I was thinking like, how can I make this really make sense. And so I'm going to illustrate something. So bear with me, I'm going to come back to how this is important for our metabolic health. But I want you to think about a beautiful forest. Think about what you would find in a forest, you find this vibrant ecosystem. And we don't realize it maybe oftentimes, but every creature, every plant, everything in a forest has a role in supporting each other. So let's start off with a tree. Right, let's say that in this forest, there's a giant tree. And this tree with its strong branches with all of its leaves, it gives shelter to birds, to squirrels to insects. It provides acorns that fall on the ground. And other animals that are ground animals that aren't flying animals will come by and they'll use these acorns. And the roots of this tree are necessary to hold the soil together and to prevent erosion of the soil. And the soil is just teeming with bugs and earthworms. And we kind of go oh gross. We do the same thing with our body when we start talking about bacteria in our gut. Oh, gross. I don't want to hear it. But it's so important to think of how everything works together. So in the soil, you've got earthworms, and they tunneled through the dirt but what they're doing is aerating the soil, which makes it easier for plant roots to grow. And then as these earthworms move, they break down dead leaves, they filter organic or break down more organic matter. And they turn these things into nutrients that make the soil very rich and again, support the thriving of the plants of the tree that is giving shelter and giving roots right and kind of the the battle nation a pillar of this ecosystem. Right near the street, there's got to be water, right. So there's a stream that somehow filtering in through the soil. But in the stream, we have things like fish and frogs and lots of bugs, right. So the trees and the plants, the roots reach towards this water, so that they can thrive. And the leaves that fall into the stream are actually food for the insects and for the fish and for the frogs in that stream. And then we have also in the forest, we've got butterflies, we've got bees, and they're pollinating flowers and plants. And they're just exchanging this service of pollination for the food that the plants give to them. It's pretty cool. We've got birds that are doing their part by eating insects that could actually bring harm to these plants that are giving shelter to lots of things. And these plants, also our dispersing seeds, and the birds are helping to disperse the seeds around the forest so that the forest keeps growing. So that the ecosystem continues to be diverse, and continues to be resilient, resilient, because we've got weather, we've got fires, and the fires will come. And sometimes you know the fires are scary, especially when they're around humans and houses and things. But in a forest, this fire clears away dead wood, and leaves and it makes room for new growth. And some seeds need that heat. In order to be able to sprout, some seeds need to be eaten by a bird and pooped out by a bird to be able to actually grow they need to go through that birds digestive system. So this ecosystem works together so harmoniously, so beautifully. Everything in it is connected, even the fire, which we think sometimes it's destructive. Think of that also like in a human body, the fever, we get a fever, and we think, take something to make this fever go away. But the fever is the natural response in our body that is necessary. And it's a really effective part of our immune system that works to help us to heal. So we have the story of this beautiful forest. And think about the harmony of how everything works together. And then let's take something and introduce it into this forest. Let's introduce pesticides, pollution, toxins. And now we think about how this tree is starting to be weakened because it's got toxic chemicals from pesticides that seep into the soil. And so the leaves of the trees maybe turn brown, and the wood of the tree becomes weaker. And so the birds and the squirrels and the insects and everything that lives in this tree, they don't have as much shelter. So there are fewer and fewer of them that can be sustained by this tree. Right. The earthworms are in the soil, the toxins are in the soil. And so the earthworms definitely feel the pesticides and the chemicals, they're impacted greatly by these chemicals. And so their numbers reduced significantly. That makes poor poor soil quality because they're not breaking down organic things, they're not aerating the soil as much as they did when there was a larger population of them. The stream that now has this runoff from chemicals is not able to sustain life in the way that it wants did. So the fish, the frogs and the bugs that they ate, everything starts to deteriorate, and there are fewer and fewer numbers of these critters. And so we see a break in the link of this food chain. The bees and the butterflies definitely are affected by pesticides. And we see that now around the world, we see how bees are being affected and dying off and frogs are dying off. And this is a really critical part of our ecosystem. That is of great concern right now. So these numbers start to dwindle and flowers and plants and animals all start to struggle. So we have less biodiversity. And this ecosystem, this beautiful forest becomes more fragile. It's more difficult for it to seek balance, it's more difficult for it to seek growth and renewal. And it's more susceptible to infections, tree infections, fungal infections, right the soil starts to just deteriorate and rot away faster than it would and we start to see an ecosystem that used to flourish and have all kinds of biodiversity changed dramatically. Now I want you to think about your body in the same way. All right. Our body needs to have biodiversity. Everything in our body works together in this beautiful harmonious synchronicity. And it starts with this biodiversity in our gut, bacteria on our skin in our mouth. Hormones affected. Neurotransmitters are affected by hormones, hormones affect neurotransmitters. Everything in our body works to get other, each cell has this amazing amount of living things inside of it. They depend on each other that depend on mitochondria to stay healthy, in order to make the cells function, right to make the kinds of hormones, the kinds of neurotransmitters, the kinds of chemical reactions and the kinds of metabolites in our body that we need to function. Think about how we're connected to this earth that we grew up on that we evolved from, we're connected to the food, we're connected to the seasons, and the seasons and the food from those seasons support our body and the bacteria in our body in a way that continues to help our body work harmoniously. It's so beautiful. But then, like pesticides, and chemicals, we start to take in food that really isn't food, food that isn't grown from the earth, food that isn't harvested from animals and plants, we start putting chemicals and food coloring and dyes and things that we don't have the enzymes in our body to digest. And so then that impacts our digestive system. And we start weakening the biodiversity, we have fewer and fewer microbes inside of our gut. And this is a problem. And I'm gonna go into why that's a problem in a second. And then that affects our immune system. And then our immune system is less effective, and we're more susceptible to disease, to sickness to metabolic illnesses, our system gets weaker and weaker, and we become more and more vulnerable. We don't want that to happen. And one of the things that we're seeing is this lack of biodiversity in the human gut. And in fact, one of the big concerns in health now is the extinction of certain microbes that used to exist in the human gut as we're seeing less and less biodiversity. And this biodiversity is important, I'm going to tell you why. How it affects our health, why it's happening. And then what you can do to support yourself to change that, to increase the biodiversity in your gut, so that your gut can support what it is there to support your physical health, your mental and emotional health, and the overall way that your body works. Think of all of this interconnectedness in nature. This is we're a part of that. And we're so diverse. There's so much going on in the body. It's just absolutely fascinating. So what are the some of the reasons that we're seeing less and less diversity of the microbes inside the human gut? Well, one of them I mentioned, and that is the change in our diet. We have less diversity in our diet, and we're incorporating more processed foods, foods that normally would have to be refrigerated that you sit on a counter for weeks or months at a time, and they never mold and they don't start to deteriorate. I'll tell you one day a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months ago now at this point. My husband brought home these grapes. He had gone grocery shopping and brought home some grapes. He was eating the grapes. And he was saying to me, oh my God, these grapes are so good. And I looked at the grapes. And they were not organic grapes. And so I didn't taste the grapes. And I said okay, but you know, I'm not going to eat them. I don't know what's on those grapes. We went away for a weekend. I'm trying to remember I don't remember where we went. But we were gone for a few days. We came home. And when we walked in, and when I walked into the kitchen, I saw this basket of grapes. So sitting on the counter and Oh, gross, those are going to be so nasty, because I just imagined that they started to mold and to rot on the counter. But they were in perfect condition. And when I saw them, I said to my husband, this is not okay. These grapes are over a week old and there's no sign of them starting to rot. There's no sign of them starting to shrivel at all. He says I don't care. They're still good. Don't throw them away. So I'm like, Okay, I leave them on the counter. He eats those grapes for another week. There are maybe it was three weeks total that these grapes are just sitting out on the counter, no sign of rotting whatsoever. Not cool. That's not how it's supposed to work. So wherever those grapes were grown in, whether were some kind of fertilizer, whether they were GMO foods, whether they were some kind of pesticide on them whatever's on them, is preventing the natural breakdown of this food that's supposed to happen. So think about what's happening when you put that inside of your gut. This is like our forest story. It changes the biodiversity and puts toxins into your body and it kills off inside your gut. What aren't necessary and beneficial bacteria And then it also is going to feed something else, anytime we put something in our body, it's going to support something is going to affect something, right, as long as it's absorbed in the body, instead of just going right through the digestive tube in one end and out the other. But it's either going to feed good healthy bacteria that we want to, we feel well, or it's gonna feed harmful bacteria that we don't want inside of our gut, but that we feed with processed foods and chemicals and fertilizers and things of that nature. Now, some of that I don't want to demonize all of it, some of, you know, fertilizing, and it's hard to grow food, right, we have all kinds of environmental attacks on food, from bugs, from weather, from fungus, from all kinds of things. So we have to have some of these things to sustain the amount of human life that's on this planet. So I don't mean to demonize it, I just want to use it as part of this whole story so that it helps you see how everything is connected inside your body, and gives you ideas of how you could make different choices, to better support yourself and to feel better, and to make your system stronger. So this lack of biodiversity that we're seeing inside of the human gut, and the threat of actual extinction of microbes that we've evolved with over 1000s of years, are impacted by these dietary changes. Another thing that impacts the biodiversity of the human body and the human gut, is the hygiene that we have in society. Now, modern hygiene, and all of the anti bacterial things that we use are kind of like the fertilizers, right? There's a cost and a benefit. And so on the one hand, they've reduced the incidence of infectious disease, which is great, but they also limit the exposure to a variety of environmental microbes, that when our immune system was exposed to them, we used to build resistance to and so we kind of weaken the immune system by being too hygienic. And that includes things like going out into nature's wood into nature's into nature, which is one of the other reasons why we see this lack of biodiversity, because we have a lot of urban living and reduced contact with nature. And when we go out into nature, we expose ourselves to lots of different microbes. And this is really important for building a strong immune system. One of the things this is another blessing and a curse that we see in society more so seryan births. Now, this can be critical for the survival of a mom and Mother Child. But also what's been discovered, since we have been we I say I'm referring to sciences, digging into the importance of the microbiome. And the incredible impact that has on us is that the studies have found that babies that are born during C section miss that opportunity to be exposed to vaginal and fecal microbes from their mom. And so that is actually what began to colonize baby's guts. That's how they helped to develop their immune system. That's kind of the root of their immune system. So now we're even seeing in hospitals in birthing centers, that they might take a Q tip and take the vaginal secretions of the mom and put it into the nostrils of the baby to give that bacterial kind of a foundation to a baby. So it can start to build a stronger immune system. Because studies are showing that babies that were born through C sections, Miss that original colonization of their gut, and that later in life, it can lead to problems with their metabolism and their immune system. It's pretty dang fascinating. So why is this important? Why do we care about this, because decreased gut microbe diversity has been linked to all kinds of health concerns and diseases. We're talking on this Tuesday Train Talk about metabolic health. And one of the things that a lack of microbial diversity in your gut is linked to is obesity and metabolic disorders like type two diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, which metabolic syndrome is kind of a precursor that leads to type two diabetes if we don't take care of it if we don't address it. And we can see that this lack of diversity in the gut microbiota affects our body's ability to regulate glucose levels and even influence fat storage in the body. So this can lead to all kinds of metabolic disorders. We see that the reduced biodiversity in the gut leads to inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, IBS. And this is an interesting thing because many clients that I work with who struggle with these things who suffer from IBS Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, have a very small variety of foods in their diet because there's so much inflammation in their gut that It's uncomfortable and creates a lot of problems for them when they eat different foods. So they tend to find these foods that they feel safe with that their body doesn't react much to. And oftentimes those foods are processed foods, or they're high carbohydrate or highly refined foods, because when they increase the amount of fiber in their gut, they can have problems, right, because it starts to change the microbiome diversity inside the gut. So this is a really delicate situation, because you definitely want to work with a dietitian and nutritionist a naturopathic doctor, if you want to increase the diversity of microbes in your gut while you're doing with an inflammatory process. One of the other things that we see is actually more development of autoimmune diseases and reactions like allergies and asthma that can be linked to lack of diversity in the gut microbiome. And that studies have linked this lack of diversity in the gut to conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, even type one diabetes can change the gut microbiome and then that reduced diversity impacts the immune system's ability to distinguish between self and non self, right, that's what auto immune is, is our immune system attacking our own cells, which is not what it was designed to do. It's supposed to attack things that are not ourselves to keep ourselves safe. But in an autoimmune disease, that function gets lost, and we start to attack ourselves, which is something we don't want to do. Research has shown that the relationship between gut biodiversity and cardiovascular health is very important. And that lack of biodiversity in the gut can lead to health problems, including heart disease, and stroke. The gut brain axis has been shown over and over. And this is a really growing area of study in nutritional psychology, which is another fascinating field. And so it's showing that this reduced microbial diversity in the gut can be linked to psychiatric neurodevelopment disorders, including depression, anxiety, and even autism spectrum disorders. Now, one of the things that we know impacts the gut biodiversity is antibiotic use. And so this is a double edged sword. Again, blessing and a curse, antibiotics save lives. But the overuse or the misuse or the chronic use of antibiotics, changes the diversity inside of your gut. And then that can lead to an overgrowth of antibiotic resistant bacteria inside the gut. And then that makes infections more difficult to treat, it leads to this vicious cycle then of needing more and stronger antibiotics, which have bigger and bigger impact on the gut. And so some of the bacteria that are being looked at inside the gut that we see are decreasing in people, I'm not going to go into the names of them, because I don't think I can pronounce some of the names of these bacteria. But some of these microbes, the function of them is what is the important thing. So we're seeing a lack of the bacteria whose function is to help break down fiber and reduce inflammation in the body. So think about what I just mentioned about IBS, inflammatory bowel disease, all kinds of digestive disorders, people who struggle with chronic diarrhea, chronic constipation, alternating diarrhea, and constipation. And consider that some of these bacteria that we're seeing less and less of in the human gut, that's their job is to help regulate that to help break down fiber or move fiber through the gut. So this is an important thing to think of, because what feeds those, obviously, is going to be fiber. And as we bring more processed food into the diet, and as we have a lack of variety of food in our diet, that's less fiber, so it's not going to be feeding the bacteria that feed off of fiber, right? So we've got all these little living organisms, we need to feed them the right foods so that they grow and they repopulate. Now, one of the things that we as breast cancer survivors need to consider is the impact that chemotherapy, radiation, aromatase inhibitors and other medications have on our gut, because chemotherapy, for instance, is known to cause leaky gut, right. It has an impact on the gut system. You've been through chemotherapy, I don't have to describe to you what you go through, because it is miserable. And chemotherapy, what's its job to kill rapidly producing reproducing cells, and that's what we have in our digestive system. So you know, when you get a chemotherapy treatment, you have issues like I talked about, we've got heartburn, GERD, alternating constipation and diarrhea, it wreaks havoc on our digestive system. And so we have to be very intentional about supporting that digestive system by supporting the diversity in the microbiome to recover and support The healing of the digestive system, especially after we go through chemotherapy. Now aromatase inhibitors may not directly impact the micro diversity in your gut the way that chemotherapy does. But aromatase inhibitors, here we go again, right, another blessing and a curse. They're blocking certain hormones usually used in hormone positive breast cancer, right? So they're blocking certain hormones. And hormones have an effect on different bacteria in the body. So we're not going to stop taking a medication that you feel and trust to support your life and to help prevent disease. So we have to be able to support ourselves in other ways. And we're going to be taking these medications, what can you do to support your microbial health? What can you do to support the growth of good bacteria, even as you're kind of working to overcome some of the side effects of medication that you might need to be taking? Right? So we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, we don't want to freak out about it. We just want to accept. Here's the situation right now. Right, here's where you're at right now. What medications are you taking? What treatments are you doing? What tests are you doing? I have a PET scan coming up. And as we know, there's radioactivity and sugar involved in that. So I'm considering a week ahead of time, how do I prepare my body to have this put into it? And what do I do the day of and what do I do for the week after to help support my body's ability to cleanse itself and to restore itself after having sugar and radioactive substance put inside? So there's reason for the scans? Sometimes we do them, sometimes we don't. There are times where I've made a decision not to have scans because I didn't feel it was critical or going to impact my treatment at the point we were talking about. And sometimes, like this time, it's like, let's see what's going on? How is everything worked? Like? What do I need to do? I'm kind of wanting some more data right now. Not that anything was wrong. That's not at all what I'm saying, I'm doing great. But I want to understand where everything's at inside my body to give me even more direction on what to do. But in order to get that information, I'm going to be doing something to my body that could cause harm. So I've got to take steps to protect it. So what can you do in these situations where, you know, even when we're going through breast cancer, oftentimes, we do go on different rounds of antibiotics. Because if you're on chemotherapy, it has such an impact on your immune system and on your white blood cells that they can drop precipitously, and then they put us on antibiotics to make sure we don't get an infection while our immune system is weak. So this whole cycle could be happening with you, and what can you do to support yourself? So a really important thing to remember is start with food. First, I think we have a natural tendency to want to go take something first. So you're listening to me talk about the gut, you're probably thinking about taking probiotics, which I am all for taking probiotics, as long as you know it's safe. But first addressing the diet, because if your diet is high in processed foods, low in fiber, low in diversity, then it's kind of like you don't have a strong foundation to build your house on. So why go take something orally. And I think that mentally that also tricks us into thinking, Well, I'm taking a good probiotic, so I can still eat the ding dong. Right? We want to make lifestyle choices beginning with food first, because food is safe, right? When we start moving into supplements, we can talk about having reactions with medications, supplements can affect our gut in certain ways that we're unsure of. But when we look to food, it's safer because it's not in these intense dosage right, it's not taken and condensed down into something that's even more powerful than what you would find in nature, right food is the nature and some foods as we know are good for everybody. You may have a allergic reaction to certain foods. So foods can be a safer way of increasing the diversity in our gut. But I certainly don't mean go eat foods that make you feel sick. That would be silly. But we want to increase the amount of fiber that we put into our gut, we want to feed the good bacteria. And that can be done by eating whole foods, eating fiber rich vegetables, and incorporating fermented foods into the diet as much as possible. So think we want fewer pesticides organic as much as possible. We want more fiber, so lots of plant foods, and fermented foods because they feed the good healthy bacteria in our gut. And we can add those fermented foods so easily by you know, there are so many different lines now of sauerkraut fermented foods is like a big trend in the food industry. And I find that I don't really care for eating fermented foods on their own, but I love mixing them into vegetable dishes and mixing them into salads and I find that that It's more tolerable for me, because fermented foods for me are just really powerful, really strong flavor. So I like to mix them into something kind of dilute the strength of them a little bit, but I'm still getting the good bacteria that's in them. So considering how you can modify your diet to increase your intake of fiber, fermented foods, and Whole Foods, this is so important. If you decide that a probiotic is something that you could use, and honestly, I think most people can, it's important that you understand the right way to choose a probiotic. And I'm going to actually link to some information from the Cleveland Clinic in the show notes for this episode, that give you steps that you can look at and things you should consider when you are considering and using a probiotic on introducing a probiotic or prebiotic supplement into your diet. So probiotic. And prebiotic foods are where I suggest that you start. So what are those high fiber foods that feed good bacteria from mented foods that put good bacteria into the body. And I'll put a list of to some probiotic, and prebiotic foods in the show notes as well to help you out. So the show notes you can find at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash three to zero, or scroll down wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast, and you'll see the links there. So let's focus on dietary modifications first. But then if you want probiotics, use good sense. Talk to your doctor, make sure that anything that you're going to take any kind of supplement that you're going to introduce doesn't interact with any medications or treatments, you might be on safety first, always. But I want to introduce you to a really interesting probiotic bacteria. That is kind of an exciting area of study. So after I went through my first treatment for cancer, and I've shared this on the podcast many times and I went into menopause, I gained a lot of weight, I thought it was doing all the things to lose weight, I was doing all the exercise, I was monitoring calories in calories out, I was seeing an endocrinologist to look at what was going on with my hormones. And I was really into studying the gut. At that time, there was a test called you biome, I pretty sure they've gone out of business now. But I know there's other companies out there that look at the do analysis on your gut and let you know what kind of bacteria you have, what you're lacking in and what the current population in your gut is telling you. And I say current because your microbiome is going to be changing all the time. It's affected by stress, by sleep, by food, by all kinds of things. So we can get snapshots of it for different times in life to understand where we are at this point in time, and what steps we can take to improve our gut health. But as I was studying this, I was looking for the effects of different gut bacteria. And I was thinking, There's got to be gut bacteria that support weight loss. And sure enough, there were and there are gut bacteria that as I said a minute ago support our ability to process glucose that impact our fat storage. And there was this one bacteria in particular that I found. And I'm going to tell you the full name. And I'm going to refer to it by initials because it's a long name. So it's called akkermansia, new sin of philia. And I'll put a link to that. So you can learn more about it in the show notes for this episode. But this bacteria is really cool, because there are lots of studies coming up on it. But the studies I'm going to refer to and I'll link to here are small studies. So again, we want to realize that it hasn't been studied in large populations, but it's a small study that was done well, it's a good quality study. So this was published in Nature Medicine, and it was a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled study, which is really good kind of study, right? So people don't know what they're taking. And you've got a control group and you've got someone taking a placebo that they think they're taking the real thing. So you can kind of rule out what our mind does. Because anytime we're thinking we're taking something that's going to help us depending on how much we think about that and believe in it, it will help us that's the placebo effect. So this was a good study, and it was looked at to try to determine whether or not taking oral supplementation of this particular bacteria was safe. And so the study was looked at over three months in a small population. I think there were fewer than 50 people in this particular study. And it reported that the supplementation, really improved insulin sensitivity in this group of people that took it, it reduced insulin anemia. And it also reduced total cholesterol in the plasma of the people that were taking it. They also had a slight decrease in body weight in fat mass in hip circumference, compared to the placebo group. So that's really fascinating. And the conclusion of this study was that yes to take akkermansia mucin affiliate are a que que as its referred to was safe and that it did improve certain metabolic parameters. So when I first came across this bacteria, I couldn't find it anywhere. I searched high and low to be able to find this probiotic because I wanted to take it. And it was probably about a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago, I found a company that started making it. And it was pretty expensive at the time, it's still I think, a little expensive, but I take it on a regular basis. And the cost has come down over time from when I first saw it actually carry this probiotic supplement in the shop that's available on my website now. And it is a supplement and accompany and the quality of it has been approved and vetted by Dr. Nation winters, which is why I keep it on my website. So there's some that you can look at there, I'll link to it. So you can check it out for yourself and see what's in it. And also the link there will lead you to some other good probiotic supplements that have been vetted, and that are really good quality. But again, you want to check and make sure it's safe for you to take that before you start anything. Right. So I hope my hope for this episode is that it starts to just shift your mindset a little bit, to understand that everything in you works together. And everything in you is important to consider and the harmony of your body. And the harmony of your connection to food. And nature is essential for the health of your body. We keep putting things in our body that poison it, that introduced toxins into it, and think that it's going to work effectively. And then we get angry at our body right for not doing what we think it should do not healing the way we think it should heal, getting disease, all of this stuff. But what are we really doing to support it. And not just with food, although that is extremely important. We want to support the health of our body with good nutrition. But overall health is again, so integrated, it includes mental and emotional health, and the taking care of our gut supports that as well. So let's think about this beautiful body you live in. And think about the story of that forest and picture yourself as that forest. How strong are the roots? How healthy is the soil? Is the soil eroding? What are you feeding this beautiful ecosystem? How are you caring for it? How are you pruning it? How are you loving it? How are you taking care of it and supporting its ability to thrive? All right, if you have questions, if you have comments, I'd love to hear from you. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram as the breast cancer recovery coach Laura Lummer You can come and join my free Facebook group, the breast cancer recovery group where you can discuss any of these things and ask questions or come and get coached come and talk to me about where you're being affected where you're struggling. Coaching is such an effective tool when it comes to supporting our metabolic health, our mental and emotional health and the happiness and joy we have in our life. You can work with me by joining the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership, or go to my website the breast cancer recovery coach.com and sign up and have a personal private coaching session. All right, take good care of yourself. Take good care of your ecosystem and support your ability to feel well and thrive. And I'll talk to you again soon. Take care
