Episode Overview

This episode is such an exciting one, and honestly, it might just change the way you think about what you eat—especially if you’ve ever felt confused or overwhelmed about what’s “safe” or supportive after a breast cancer diagnosis.

I’m talking about two powerful cellular processes that are important for us to understand: autophagy and angiogenesis.

These are what researchers call hallmarks of cancer—but they’re also incredible opportunities for healing. And the best part?

You don’t need to fast for days or eat perfectly to support them. You just need to make some smart, loving food and lifestyle choices—and I’ll walk you through what those are.

We’ll talk about how to support your body’s natural clean-up system (autophagy) and how to regulate the way your body builds blood vessels (angiogenesis)—all through everyday foods, simple habits, and ditching the all-or-nothing mindset.

🥗 In This Episode, I Share:

• What autophagy and angiogenesis actually are (in plain English!)
• How fasting and eating the right foods can both support your healing
• Why food isn’t just fuel—it’s a daily tool for recovery and wellness
• Simple swaps to reduce inflammation and feel more confident at mealtime
• How to find a balance with exercise, rest, and movement that feels supportive, not stressful
• My personal experience with fasting, fear, and learning to trust food again
• A brand new 14-day meal plan I created to make this feel easier and doable

🔗 Links & Resources:

• 💌 Grab your free 14-Day AA Meal Plan
• 🎧 Want to hear what inspired this episode?
  Check out the Diary of a CEO podcast with Dr. William Li
• 🌿 More food and lifestyle tools are waiting for you on my site: TheBreastCancerRecoveryCoach.com

Connect with Laura Lummer:

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

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

👩‍💻 Follow me on Facebook → The Breast Cancer Recovery Coach

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

🎥 Watch on YouTube → @BetterThanBeforeBreastCancer

🧠 Keywords (SEO):

breast cancer recovery diet, AA diet, angiogenesis nutrition, autophagy support, breast cancer healthy foods, anti-inflammatory meal plan, intermittent fasting for women, food and cancer healing, polyphenol foods, healthy terrain diet

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
there, friends. Welcome back to Episode 414

0:37
of better than before breast cancer, with the breast cancer recovery coach, I'm your host. Laura Lummer, I'm so glad you're here with me today. I think you're going to be so glad you're here with me today. We're going to talk about something that I'm hoping will help to reshape the way you think about what you eat or what you don't eat. And you know, we can use all the help we can get when it comes to what we eat and how we think about the way that we feed ourselves. So a couple of weeks ago, I got a link to a podcast show from one of my clients, brilliant. I love it. It's the diary of a CEO podcast, which I absolutely love. And I will link to that specific show here in the show notes, because I would love for you to listen to it. And it's an interview with Dr William Lee. Now he is a physician and a research scientist, and he spends a lot of time looking into angiogenesis, and that physiological biological process of angiogenesis, we're going to talk about that on the show today, but as he was talking about it, as I watched the show, and I just started thinking more and more about two of these processes that are really, really important to us as people who have had a cancer diagnosis because these two biological patterns, angiogenesis, as I just spoke about, and autophagy, these are what researchers call hallmarks of cancer. They're two of the hallmarks of cancer, and they explain, to some extent, these two, they talk to us about how cancer develops and how it thrives. And so these two hallmarks that we're going to talk about today, it's not just medical jargon, but they're really great insights into how the body works at a cellular level, and some of the things we can do to influence these processes in the healthiest of ways by simple, loving, caring, daily choices we make to nourish ourselves. All right, so this first Hallmark that I want to talk about is autophagy. Now, if you have read anything or heard anything about fasting, you've probably heard the word auto fuzzy, because auto fuzzy is the body's cellular cleanup system, and it is often kicked into high gear going for long periods without food. So if you're studying fasting, if you've done any fasting, you've probably heard when we hit that 17 hours of fast, we really trigger that auto Fauci and let's talk about what that really is, because when it comes to fasting and these beautiful benefits that come along with fasting, it's not easy to get people not to eat. We don't like to not to eat, and it's a lot easier to get people to eat. And I want to talk about today whether you fast or whether you don't, and even though fasting is very powerful for everybody, what can we do when we do eat? Can we only support auto Fauci with not eating? The answer is no. There are actually foods we can consume so that while we are eating, we are supporting our body's ability to go through this process of autophagy, which I'm going to explain to you in much more simple detail here in just a minute. And I want to talk about two hallmarks of cancer, the autophagy and the angiogenesis piece, because it's interesting how they go together, right? And I want to explore how you can support both of these processes, not by depriving yourself, but by actually giving your body what it needs to function well when you are eating, because food isn't just fuel, it isn't just enjoyment, isn't just treats, but it's a really valuable tool. And your body is so intelligent it knows how to heal, and our job is to give it the right tools to support its ability to do that. So let's talk more about auto Fauci What is this weird word? Well, it's the process that your body uses to clean out damaged parts of your cells. So think of it like taking out the trash or recycling parts that aren't working well anymore, so your body can run more efficiently when auto Fauci is active, it helps to reduce inflammation, it slows aging, and it can even lower the risk of diseases like Alzheimer's, the risk of infections and. And it can even have a positive impact on cancer. So the most common way to boost autophagy, as I just mentioned, is through fasting. And there are simple ways to fast. So lots of people do intermittent fasting, which is going 12 to 14 hours between dinner and breakfast and triggering autophagy. But you don't have to fast to support it. Although fasting is great, there are certain foods, there are movement, there are rest, and all of these things can support this process without requiring you to skip meals for days on it all right, so, and by no means is this podcast saying you shouldn't be fasting, but we're just talking about periods when you are eating, because there's a lot of fear in this community of people who've had a cancer diagnosis about when I am eating, what do I do? And so I know even from my own personal experience, I feel like I started to put too much stress on my body by fasting so much because I felt safer mentally and emotionally when I fasted, right? I felt like all of these amazing biological processes are happening because I'm going without food, but then if I put food in me, oh, my god, what is going to happen? Now, I've learned a lot, but there was a point where that was very real for me. And so you can over fast, right? You can fast so much that it can put a lot of stress on the body. So we're not saying don't fast, but we're saying that there's two parts to life. There's going without food, and there's going with food. How can we feel good about both of those processes, and how can they work in a way where it's balanced and you feel good and it works with your life? So let me share with you a great study from the New England Journal of Medicine, because I think that it put the description or helped us to understand autophagy in a beautiful way. This study said that autophagy plays a pivotal role in preventing cancer, neurodegeneration, infections and aging by removing dysfunctional cellular components and reducing oxidative stress. Oxidative stress, like, for over simplification, like that rusting process of the cells, right? Toxins and oxidants hitting and damaging your cells. Okay, so I love that description, because it shows us that our bodies are already able to do this work, right? They know how to heal, and it's a matter of us helping them along, which can give that a boost. So how can we support auto Fauci when we eat? Well, we have to include certain foods like green tea, turmeric, onions, broccoli sprouts, olive oil, wild caught fish, avocado, MCT oils, which is medium chain triglyceride oils. Now this food list, that's a simple food list. I'm going to tell you much more about food in a minute. You probably like, oh God, you say the same thing all the time. It's always broccoli, sprouts, onions, turmeric, yeah, yeah, simple. There's a reason for that, right? There's an absolute reason for that, because they're so beneficial for our health, if you don't have the sensitivity to it right, and they can be such a great part of a healthy diet. Another important thing is to move your body, but not to exhaustion, just enough to challenge yourself. This is so important, and I think fear plays another part in this there's so many times when I talk to women who are really over exercising, they're driving their body body so hard and so much intense exercise sessions, sometimes multiple intense exercise sessions in a day, and they're exhausting themselves. Guys, exercise is great, but there is too much of a good thing. That's a real thing, right? So if you're exercising to the extent where you need a nap when you're done, where you feel exhausted, or someone the other day told me that she literally was so short of oxygen that her lips got a blue tinge. This is not healthy. This is not the point of exercise. The point of exercise is to support our wellness. Overdoing anything is not beneficial. So moving your body in a gentle way, but not so gentle that we're just like sitting around doing chair yoga all day. We got to challenge ourselves a little bit, but not so much that it puts us in pain or it completely depletes our energy. So let's keep that in mind. Okay, we need to prioritize sleep, which is when a lot of repair happens. Our minds get so caught up in electronics, in TV, in sound, and things always going on and worry on our mind. You know, we tend to turn to TV and social media and scrolling on the phone and all of the things that we do to avoid, like allowing that space for our mind to really process and kind of process everything that's happened through the day and through life so that we can wind down and get quality sleep. So that is really important, and if it works for. You, which it does for most people, practicing overnight fasting can be very helpful and support this and it's not difficult. It's just stop eating right after dinner. When dinner is done, the kitchen is closed, lights are out, that's it, right? So just as there are foods that can support this process of cellular cleanup, of auto Fauci there are foods that can get in the way. There are foods that can disrupt this process. And I bet you can guess those because of the same things you heard all the time, also, sugar, processed foods, constant snacking, right? The constant eating all day long. People say, I'm a grazer. This is not something we want to be doing. Alcohol, all of these things can put a break on auto Fauci and really shift your body into a storage mode, storing fat instead of the cleanup mode. Okay. So there was another fascinating study in cell metabolism, and it showed that time restricted eating improved metabolic resilience and helped activate auto Fauci pathways, even without a major calorie reduction, so we don't have to starve ourselves. Don't freak out and get scared about that. So here's what really I love foods that are rich in polyphenols, right? So think about things that are colorful. Turmeric that's got curcumin in it. Resveratrol is in red grapes. We're only a lot of red grapes because they're very high in sugar. Catechins, which are in green tea, these can actually mimic some of the effects of fasting. And I'm sure you've heard of fasting mimicking. So when you're sipping a cup of tea, when you're drizzling olive oil on your salad, you're not just eating you're really nudging your body towards more healthy mechanisms, right? So that's why I say I want to at the beginning of the show, I said I want to shift the way you think about the way you feed yourself, like look at these beautiful things you're putting on your plate and in your body, and think this is supporting my ability to be healthy. And remember, because judgment, we're so good at judgment, we're so good at judging ourselves. This isn't about being perfect. It's about being intentional and consistent. So consistent doesn't mean all the time. It means most of the time you can support your body's rhythm of repair without making food feel like a battle and a challenge. You know, I don't even do battle language in anything that I believe in, right? This is about healing, loving, self compassion, not self judgment. It's about curiosity. I love curiosity, figuring yourself out, figuring out what your body responds to, figuring out what it likes. So on the opposite side of cleaning out and getting rid of things that aren't working is this other hallmark of cancer. This is angiogenesis. So if autophagy is your body's cleanup crew, then angiogenesis is the construction team, and that's why I wanted to talk about the two of them together. Angiogenesis is this process of building new blood vessels, and in many cases, it's essential. It's especially important when we're healing from injury or surgery, right? We want blood supply to go to healing tissues. But where things get tricky is that cancer can hijack this system, and tumors can send signals to the body to build blood vessels to feed them and to give them nutrients and to help them grow and so abnormal angiogenesis is considered A key hallmark of cancer we don't want circulating tumor cells to find a place where they can land and get a blood supply and become tumors, right? We don't want them to start to accumulate. And so here's the part that empowers us. Scientists have found that certain foods actually help regulate angiogenesis and prevent it from going off track, and that's what I loved about that podcast I'm sharing with you, with Dr William Lee. He goes into so much information about the different foods and the different things he's discovered that support healthy angiogenesis. I think it's fascinating. So there was a review that was published in the Journal of oncology, and in this study, researchers found that bioactive compounds in fruits, vegetables, teas and spices inhibit abnormal blood vessel growth and that. Love this idea. I'm constantly talking to my clients about spices, cooking with spices, adding in spices, turmeric. Obviously, somebody we talk about turmeric a lot. It's a wonderful spice. We can cook with it all the time. But cardamom, turmeric, curcumin, just the whole spice rack. Cinnamon, there's so many great things in spices and foods that we can put in our toolkit, and your spice rack is like a medicine cabinet, like there's just some spectacular things. That stand out with food that help to support healthy angiogenesis. We're talking about berries, tomatoes. What are we thinking again? Colorful food, right? Where do we run into problems? The white food, right? The potatoes, the breads, the flours, the rice, the white foods. Where do we step into really healthy support colorful foods, berries, tomatoes, citrus green tea, turmeric, parsley, cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, arugula, right wild cut fish, olive oils, dark chocolate in moderation, these are foods that help to regulate the body's blood vessel growth, regulate it mean in a healthy way, supporting the good kind while slowing down the kind that tumors depend on. So there are also foods that promote excessive angiogenesis. So these foods help to support the healthy process these foods, again, it's not going to surprise you, help to promote what we don't want. And these are processed meats, excess sugar, refined carbohydrates, and oils that are really high in Omega sixes. We talk about seed oils, and I've done a podcast on seed oils that it goes into depth on why we want to be very conscious of how much Omega six we take in. Now, again, this isn't about restriction, right? Think about all the foods I'm mentioning and how much you can add into your diet. So it's all about stacking the deck in your favor with beautiful, enjoyable foods, and if something feels unfamiliar or like a lot of change at once. Just remember you don't have to do everything. Every small shift counts. One new habit, one new food, one less processed snack, one less can of soda. These things add up, all right, so these are two very powerful internal systems, auto Fauci and angiogenesis. One helps you clean house, the other helps you build it wisely. And both can either support healing or make it harder, depending on how we care for ourselves. So we just need to be aware, right? You have so much more influence than you might realize, and food is a huge part of supporting that ability to heal. So I put together a 14 day meal plan and just a lifestyle plan that talks about daily choices, offers you daily choices that could support your body's intelligence and its resilience. And I put it in there some infographics to help you really kind of bring home these ideas of auto Fauci and angiogenesis, and see how the simple little things you can do to support the healthy way of these things operating inside of your body All right, so you find the links below and in the show notes for this episode at the breast cancer recovery coach com, forward slash 414, where you can get the double a nutrition and lifestyle plan. It's a 14 day meal plan. Again, I think you're really going to love it. And this is another one of those conversations that isn't just significant for those of us who have had a cancer diagnosis, this is about wellness, not about cancer, right? Supporting these, what we call hallmarks of cancer, supporting these healthy processes in your body, is about a healthy terrain. And when we have a healthy terrain, then our body can support our healing. So for this podcast, to somebody else who maybe needs to improve the health of their terrain, reduce the risk of disease in doing so, and love themselves a lot more through the way that they nourish themselves. All right, you can find so much more support on my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com you can download this free aa nutrition and lifestyle plan, and there are so many other resources on my website, so please check it out and let me know what you think about it, and I will talk to you again next week. Until then, be good to yourself and feed yourself well. Take care.