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#410 How Breast Cancer Treatments Disrupt Your Digestion And What to Do About It?

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Better Than Before Breast Cancer™, we're talking about a common and little-talked-about side effect of breast cancer treatment and day-to-day living: digestive changes. If you've experienced bloating, reflux, fatigue, or that uncomfortable feeling of fullness after eating, this episode is for you.

You'll learn why hypochlorhydria (low stomach acid) is often misdiagnosed as high stomach acid, how breast cancer treatments like chemotherapy, radiation, and hormonal therapy contribute to poor digestion, and why treating symptoms with acid-blocking medications might be doing more harm than good.

Most importantly, we’ll cover simple, nurturing steps — like mindful eating habits and nutrient support — to help you feel better, absorb more nutrients, and reconnect with your body’s healing capacity.

 

💡 What You’ll Learn:

  • How chemotherapy and hormonal therapy disrupt stomach acid production
  • The surprising truth about low vs. high stomach acid symptoms
  • Why PPIs and antacids may worsen digestion in breast cancer survivors
  • Simple ways to support digestion naturally after treatment
  • At-home options to test for low stomach acid
  • The role of eating hygiene in restoring healthy digestion
  • Common symptoms and red flags that signal hypochlorhydria

 

📝 Mentioned in This Episode:

 

📌 Resources and Links:

 

 

 

❤️ Subscribe & Share:

If this episode spoke to you, please subscribe and leave a review. Share it with another breast cancer survivor who might be struggling with digestion — your voice could help someone finally find answers.

💌 Join my email list for weekly wellness tips & podcast updates → The Breast Cancer Recovery Coach

👩‍💻 Follow me on Instagram for daily inspiration → @thebreastcancerrecoverycoach

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 🎙 Subscribe & leave a review on Apple Podcasts → Better Than Before Breast Cancer with The Breast Cancer Recovery Coach

🎥 Watch on YouTube → @BetterThanBeforeBreastCancer

 


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 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, friends, welcome to episode 410

0:37
of better than before breast cancer. I am your host. Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach, and we're going to dig into something super important for our comfort, for our overall metabolic health, and something that I think can be really confusing and that just doesn't get enough information around it. We're going to be talking about some digestive issues, but specifically low stomach acid, and what that means to you, if you are experiencing things like bloating, indigestion, burping gas, or you feel like food just sits in your stomach after meals, you're not alone. But what do you turn to and what do you think causes that? So studies show that up to 70% of cancer patients experience some form of gastrointestinal side effects during treatment. That's not surprising. If you're going through chemotherapy, if you're going through radiation, depending on where you're having that at all of these things can affect our digestive tract. And for breast cancer survivors. A study in cancer research out of the UK said that these symptoms for breast cancer survivors often linger long after treatment ends. And so here's the important thing to understand. Many of us have been told that indigestion means we have too much stomach acid. I know that's what I thought. And when I was going through chemotherapy, the heartburn was horrendous, horrendous. It literally was debilitating. And so I turned to what most of us turned to for comfort, antacids or PPIs, proton pump inhibitors to deal with the discomfort of indigestion, heartburn, GERD symptoms, but actually, in many cases, and especially after cancer treatment, the indigestion, bloating and gas are actually signs of too little stomach acid and not too much. And having too little stomach acid is referred to as hypochloridia, and it's far more common than you may think. So in today's show, I want to talk about what causes low stomach acid, how you can recognize the signs, how cancer treatment plays a role, and most importantly, how you can support your digestion with simple healing habits and reverse this if it's Something that you're suffering with. So let's start by understanding why digestion can feel different after cancer treatment, chemotherapy, radiation, surgeries, drugs from surgeries, hormonal therapies. They don't just target cancer cells. They also impact these very delicate cells that line your digestive tract. So chemotherapy, for example, can cause significant damage to gastric mucosa, and that can lead to reduced acid production. So hormone therapies like tamoxifen, aromatase inhibitors, that block estrogen, they can also disrupt gut health, because estrogen plays a role in maintaining healthy gut lining and good proper motility in the digestive tract. On top of that, let's add surgeries and the stress of treatment itself, not just the physical stress of what the body physiologically is experiencing, but the mental and emotional stress of being in treatment long after that, what we call active treatment is done, right? Because we're on hormone therapies, often times for 10 years following the what we call active part of cancer treatment, the chemotherapy, the surgeries. So not only can treatment continue, but the stress of that can put you into a prolonged state of fight or flight, and that can dramatically suppress your digestive secretions, including your stomach acid. Stress is a big player in our health trends. Let's not forget that. So why is healthy stomach acid levels important? Well, it's essential because it breaks down proteins into usable amino acids that our body can use for repair and restoration. It helps absorb minerals like iron, magnesium, zinc and calcium, and our digestive tract also has another function, which sterilizes things. It protects us by killing past. Pathogens before they can reach the intestines, and when stomach acid is low, it can create a whole cascade of problems, some of them I referred to a minute ago, bloating, gas, nutrient deficiency, poor immune function, and even chronic fatigue. So why does it get overlooked? Why have you maybe never heard of hypochlordia? Because the symptoms of low stomach acid can look just like high stomach acid, heartburn, fullness, burping. But in the case of hypochloridia, food actually stays in the stomach longer than it should, and that pressure pushes contents upward and so that can mimic those feelings of acid reflux. So we treat the symptoms as if there's too much stomach acid, when, in reality, maybe there isn't enough to get digestion moving. And here's where it becomes a really big issue, when we assume the problem is too much acid, then we often treat it with an acid or proton pump and proton pump inhibitors, PPIs and these medications are designed to suppress acid production. So while it can be helpful short term in that it might relieve that burning sensation right away when you take them, if we use antacids or PPIs, long term, they actually lower stomach acid even more so when we have super low stomach acid levels, here's what happens. It worsens our digestion. It increases our risk of bacterial overgrowth and infections, because your body loses one of its main defenses, that ability for the digestive tract to sterilize things, it can increase poor absorption of critical nutrients like B 12, calcium, magnesium and iron, and so it can actually increase our risk of bone fractures and chronic fatigue because of these nutrient deficiencies. So the long term use of PPIs has been associated with an increased risk of kidney disease, nutrient malabsorption, and even infections like C difficile, according to the JAMA Internal Medicine Journal. Now I know this was a big deal for me, like, as I mentioned a minute ago, this this heartburn, and it went on for a long time, and I was literally going through a bottle of Toms a week. Oh, my God, I think back on some of the stuff that I did, but I didn't know any better, and I was miserable. And what happened is that my blood calcium levels went so high that my oncologist actually told me to stop taking Tums. And fortunately, I was being treated by an acupuncturist for the nerve damage in my hands and feet, the neuropathy caused by chemotherapy. And when I mentioned to him the digestive issues. He specifically targeted working on the digestive system, and it completely healed me. I can't even remember the last time I've taken a Tums or any kind of an antacid at all. So between learning about what my body actually needed, how to feed it properly, when to feed it, which makes a really big difference. We're going to talk about that in a minute, and just looking at all of these factors together and making adjustments in the way that I feed myself. I have not had any trouble with any kind of indigestion for a very long time. But what about you? How would you know if you have low stomach acid? Well, there really isn't a perfect test. The signs to look out for are some that I just mentioned, bloating, discomfort shortly after eating, burping, especially right after your meal, feeling overly full, even though you just ate a small portion, having undigested food in your stool, having gas or constipation, even if you have a history of B 12 deficiency or a history of anemia, or you take antacids and it doesn't help, the reflux doesn't get better, or maybe even gets worse. Some of those can be indicators. There's also a simple, safe test that you can do at home, not delicious, but it involves the use of baking soda. So it's a baking soda test where you mix a quarter of a teaspoon of baking soda into a glass of water, and then you see how long it takes you to burp. If you don't burp within a few minutes, because Baking soda is going to create gas, then it might suggest low stomach acid. It's not 100% diagnostic. And so here's another layer to the issue of low stomach acid. So stomach acid is what triggers the release of enzymes like pepsin proteases and lipases, which help us digest our proteins and our fats. And if acid is low, those enzymes don't activate properly, and that means that proteins and fats stay partially digested, leading to more bloating, more inflammation and even food sensitivities over time. So enzymes that you take in a supplement form might not work if stomach acid isn't high enough. And so what causes this? What is the deal with getting low? Stomach acid. Well, in many cases, that's very connected to your terrain, to your levels of zinc, to B vitamin deficiencies, to h pylori infections, which can be easily detected through a lab test, a simple lab test, and poor eating hygiene can definitely be a contributing factor to hypochlorite. Now if you're not familiar with the term poor eating hygiene, or eating hygiene, we're going to talk about it in a minute, but talking about the digestion of proteins and fats is an interesting thing, because sometimes a client can say, Well, I'm really eating enough protein. I actually have a good amount of protein in my diet, and yet their labs Show Low amino acid levels or high markers of protein breakdown, and that gives us an indication that maybe protein isn't being digested well, and this is another red flag for low stomach acid. So let's talk for a minute about eating hygiene, because this is where you have so much power to support your body without needing a prescription, without needing complicated dietary protocols. Eating hygiene is very simply how you approach eating, and it's all about creating an environment where your body feels safe to digest. Think about that so poor eating hygiene or the body feeling unsafe. What does that even mean? Well, it means that if you're rushing, you're multitasking, you're eating on the go, you're constantly stimulating that sympathetic nervous system dominance, so you're constantly in fight or flight mode, which suppresses stomach acid production and digestion overall, because digestion is that part of our nervous system, that's the rest and digest. So we can't be in fight or flight and in rest and digest at the same time. So we've got to look overall. How are we taking in food? I think this was one of the most fascinating things that I learned when I was studying Ayurveda. Was just so many practices around mindful eating, also called eating hygiene. So when we practice good eating hygiene, we actually can reawaken our body's natural digestive power. So let's talk about what that means and what habits are considered good eating hygiene. So slowing down before eating, taking three to five breaths. When I was a kid and we were raised, we always had to say grace before our meal. And now, when I think about that, it was a very mindful eating practice. We stop you become present with your food. You take a few breaths. You offer up gratitude for the blessing of food. So slowing down before eating, what it does is it helps to put your mind in this place where it recognizes and your brain looks and it says, I'm about to take in food. This food is about to become a part of my body, right? This food you're going to take in is going to be broken down into little molecules that we can use to help support our ability to heal, to help regenerate our body, to help give us energy. It's about to become a part of us. So before I go into some other tips, I'll share a story with you. I may have talked about this on the podcast before a long time ago, but when I was a student of Ayurveda, I was in Ayurveda college, one of the things that I did is I hired a Ayurveda practitioner to consult with me, because I wanted to experience the the client side of going through an Ayurveda lifestyle practice. So one of the things that many, many people that I work with and that I experience myself, one of the things that we want, and we want to know more about, is, what should I take? What herbs, what supplements, right? What are you going to give me? And I was so excited to get my herbal program. I don't know why that's such an attractive thing, but it is. Maybe it's just like we kind of know the natural intelligence of herbs, and we're excited to get something that's going to help us feel better or fill in some deficiency we think we have, I don't know, but I was super excited to go do my intake with this practitioner and to get my herbal protocol. So she went over everything with me, and at the end of my consultation, my homework was to go home and practice mindful eating, no herbs. I was so disappointed. I was like, Really, that's all I get go home and pay attention to my food, and I was really disappointed, and I thought that's kind of dumb. And I thought I had a healthy way of eating. I thought I had healthy practices around eating, until I got the guidelines for mindful eating practice, which includes step one like I just shared with you, sit no eating is allowed if you're not sitting, sit down and pay attention to your food. So when I went home and I started this, and then that means no phones, no TV, no music, no screens, nothing else going on, just you and your food for at least one meal a day, right? This may not always be possible for every meal that you eat, but connecting to your food is a big practice of. Honoring your body and understanding your body's responses to food. And yes, Ayurveda has known that for 5000 years, so now we're talking about it in the context of eating hygiene. But what I realized when I went home to do this practice was, Wow, I did not eat mindfully. I often ate on the run. I often ate while doing something else, which resulted in me not feeling satisfied, right, not feeling satiated, because my brain didn't even register that I'd eaten because I was paying attention to something else while I was eating, instead of just paying attention to what I was eating. And when I realized how challenging that was, it took me weeks of practice on mindful eating, to really get it down, to really understand and have a good practice around it where I could see this is what I'm taking in. This is how many times I'm chewing it right. Chewing thoroughly is as a part of good eating hygiene. Think about chewing 20 to 30 times per bite. Do you think you do that? Do you think that you chew your food that well, or do you take a couple of bites and kind of swallow it whole, minimizing distractions, like I talked about eating without screens or without work, and that doesn't mean eating in silence. When you're around people that you're enjoying food with your family, your friends, certainly, we're going to socialize, and that is an important part of good digestion, right? Joy, one of the things we don't want happening is we don't want stress while we're eating. So having a calm, nurturing environment when you're taking in food is very important, even lighting a candle, but sitting down and you know, think about times where maybe you've sat down to a meal, maybe you've been with someone that you're arguing with, or had an argument with, or, you know, maybe I don't know, somebody has bad table manners, or they're just aggressive, whatever it is, but, but you you're having a meal, and then someone's acting in a way that isn't calming, that isn't nurturing, that isn't joyful, and suddenly you just lose your appetite, right? You think, oh my God, I don't even want to eat. I can't even stand this. I'm feeling stressed, right? So creating a calm environment and enjoying food with people you enjoy is also a very important part of this. Also good eating hygiene includes good hydration, but not during the meal. So drinking too much fluid or water during a meal could actually dilute your stomach acid. So drink between meals to stay hydrated, but not necessarily during a meal. So these small shifts, right this sitting down to pay attention what you're eating, chewing your food, thoroughly, looking, smelling, appreciating the food before you take your first bite, minimizing distractions and creating a calm and nourishing environment around you. These steps can send a very powerful signal to your nervous system, and that signal says it's safe to rest. It's safe to digest. Think about the story that I just shared with you. If we're sitting at a table with someone who's creating stress, does it feel safe? It doesn't right. We're on guard. We're concerned. What was this person going to do? What are they going to say? What am I going to have to deal with? Right? So when we incorporate this good eating hygiene or mindfulness eating practices, it does tell our nervous system I'm safe and it's okay to come out of fight or flight and go into rest and digest. There was actually a 2018 study that was published in the journal nutrients, and it showed that mindful eating practices improved gastrointestinal symptoms by reducing bloating in women with IBS simply by shifting how they ate, not what they ate. That is powerful. And sometimes, well, a lot of times, people say to me, you know, I just don't think I'm stressed. I'm not a very stressful person. But if we step back and we look at our life and we really think about it, kind of like from a high level lens, there's something that I like to relate to my clients and say, like here, if we looked at the ground level, and we said, ground level is calm, but you're used to functioning at maybe 234, steps above ground level, that's become your normal. So then you think you're not stressed, because you become so used to being in this constant state of stress that you've got to be up at level six or seven before you even recognize stress. So this is something to contemplate for yourself and think, what are you really calm? Or have you learned to function at a different level of fight and flight? Your body is always on your side. It is always working for you. It is always trying to get to this place of homeostasis, to a good, healthy, optimal way of functioning. But we need to listen to it, understand its language and support it properly. So if you feel like you've had digestive symptoms that just aren't improving. And you're treating them with things like antacids and proton pump inhibitors. Maybe there's a little switch you can take here and think maybe it isn't too much acid, but too little. And so taking these simple, compassionate steps, like improving your eating hygiene, could maybe support that stomach acid production naturally, and you will feel more nourished, more energized and more connected to feeling good in your body, more connected to hearing and understanding the signals your body is sending you. And that is so incredibly important if you would like more support with understanding that. Go to my website, the breast cancer recovery coach, com, and download my free guide How to Eat without fear and guilt after breast cancer. This guide is going to go into mindful eating practices and other tips, accompanied by some journal prompts to just really help you tune in and understand the stories you tell yourself around food and your relationship with your body and your body's relationship with food. Okay, so go and check that out the breast cancer recovery coach com, scroll down right on the home page, and you'll see free downloads and get my guide on how to eat without fear and guilt after breast cancer. And if you want to dig even deeper into understanding the language of your body, let's do some metabolic health coaching. Let's take a look at your nutrition genome and understand the exact language of your body and what it tells you and how it responds, or how it's predisposed to respond to its environment, so that you can clear up the confusion about what your body needs. Super great. You can find that under my coaching and programs, and you can find everything I've created that is a combination of this mindset support and nutrition support and all the work I've done over the last five years in the better than before breast cancer membership, you can get all of that by joining that membership, and that also opens the door for you to do group coaching calls, live group coaching calls three times a month, and gives you access to private sessions with me, lots and Lots of great stuff to support whatever it is that you need so you can support your body's ability to be in an optimal state of fullness. All right, a link to the studies that I refer to for this episode in the show notes that you'll find below. And if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast platform, make sure to follow and rate or review the show. It's so helpful, and if you're watching this on YouTube, click subscribe, because the more you subscribe and follow, the easier it is for other people who need this information to find it. Thank you so much for your support, and I hope you found this helpful, and I'll talk to you again next week. Take

22:39
care. 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.

 

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