Get Empowered Against Breast Cancer Reoccurrence with Dr. Carol Lourie

Here’s the truth — illness starts before the symptoms appear. Treating only the symptoms of a disease does not help you recover your health. You need to get to the bottom of what caused your illness to begin your healing journey.

I’m speaking with gifted practitioner Dr. Carol Lourie on the podcast today to help us navigate the world of breast cancer. Dr. Lourie has over three decades of clinical experience as a naturopath, acupuncturist and homeopath, and has helped 1000s of women recover their health.

What we cover:

✨How Carol got into doing this kind of work

✨Why there is such a high rate of breast cancer reoccurence

✨Different herbs that help your health during treatment

✨Dietary recommendations for people with cancer, that can also apply to reducing chances of cancer

✨And so much more important information!

This is an episode you won’t want to miss! Carol is a wealth of information around the journey of breast cancer and recovery. Learn more about Dr. Lourie’s program Empowered Against Recurrence through this FREE class. And watch our interview below:

Dr. Carol Lourie is a dedicated practitioner with over three decades of clinical experience as a Naturopath, Acupuncturist, and Homeopath. She’s helped thousands of women recover their health after a breast cancer diagnosis through her holistic protocols involving nurturing nutrition, targeted supplementation, healthy and joyful lifestyle changes, and an empowered mindset. 

The path of healing helps you discover not only who you are, but enables you to create the life of your dreams. We support this by addressing the emotional and spiritual components of breast cancer, so deep healing can occur.

“There is always a path for healing.”

Check out Dr. Lourie’s website and don’t forget to checkout her FREE class, Empowered Against Recurrence.

Prefer to listen to interview on podcast? You can do so at iTunes or Spotify, or a variety of other places.  And we SO APPRECIATE reviews, because it is the biggest way to help us grow! If you enjoyed this episode or others, an iTunes review goes a long way ❤️  

Transcript:

Christine Garvin  0:02

Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of hormonally speaking. Today we’re going to talk about a topic that unfortunately impacts a lot of women’s lives. Whether their own personal journey with this or whether it is through a family member or a friend, and that is breast cancer. And today’s guest is really doing the work that needs to be done in this world because we know that when once we’ve had breast cancer it often reoccurs right. And there’s reasons that that’s happening. And we want to figure out why and for it to not reoccur, and obviously for those women that have never had breast cancer for that to not happen at all. So today’s guest is Dr. Carol Laurie who is a dedicated practitioner with over three decades of clinical experience as a naturopath, acupuncturist and homeopath. She’s helped 1000s of women recover the health after a breast cancer diagnosis through her holistic protocols involving nurturing nutrition, targeted supplementation, healthy and joyful lifestyle changes and an empowered mindset. The path of healing helps you discover not only who you are that enables you to create the life of your dreams. We support this by addressing the emotional and spiritual components of breast cancer. So deep healing can occur. Welcome, Dr. Laurie.

Dr. Carol Lourie  1:24

Well, thank you so much for having me. And please call me Carol. Oh, Carol.

Christine Garvin  1:27

Okay. So this topic is so important, as I mentioned, because it does, for unfortunately strike the lives of so many women right around the world. So before we go into how you work with it, how you work with reoccurrence, how you work with helping women to keep it at bay, tell us how you actually got into doing this kind of specific work?

Dr. Carol Lourie  1:50

Well, I was always interested in chronic illness, which is what breast cancer is, it’s a diagnosis of chronic illness, any type of cancer is that and we studied, I learned all about that when I was a student at the National College of naturopathic medicine in Portland, Oregon, many, many, many years ago. And then I moved to California, and I got my acupuncture license, and I’ve always been a homeopath for the last 35 years. So these three modalities work really well when you’re dealing with chronic illness. And one day I picked up the phone and I thought it was a crank call. And it turns out my dear friend was on the other line crying hysterically saying the four words that no woman ever wants to hear they found a lump. So in that moment, I said to her, you’re not going to go through this alone. I’m going to go to every session with you. And that was the beginning of 18 months of us going to UCSF which is where she was being treated for the initial appointment and in the room with her for the biopsy. And then the doctor’s visits and the chemotherapy infusions and surgery to have her uterus removed after she had a negative effect to the Tamoxifen and all the radiation treatments. So it was a very arduous journey.

Christine Garvin  3:14

So heartbreaking. Right?

Dr. Carol Lourie  3:17

And it’s difficult. Yeah. And so I took care of her. I went with her during the treatments. And then in the evening, I was taking care of her. And I really began to up my skill set of what was needed and necessary. And one day we were seeing her oncologist at UCSF and the doctor looked at the bloodwork and then look back at us and said what are you doing? And we both thought, oh my goodness, there’s a problem, right? And then I said, Well, I’m using you know, we’re doing herbs. We’re doing the smoothie, we’re doing acupuncture, and she said, Well, I want all my patients to be doing it too, because your blood work does not look like somebody who’s in the middle of chemotherapy. Wow. Yeah. So that was the beginning of I didn’t know it. At that point. She started referring all of her patients to me and my practice couldn’t take any more patients. And I developed my online program not only to reach women in the Bay Area, which has a very high incidence of breast cancer higher than any other places in the US.

Christine Garvin  4:15

Maria and Kent County. And they don’t quite know why. Right? Yep. I’ve read about that

Dr. Carol Lourie  4:23

done. It’s an exhaustive, exhaustive studies about that, and they can’t quite figure it out. Yeah, one of it is they think that women there drink more alcohol, whatever it is, they think they get more diagnostic tests because they’re it’s a wealthier subset of groups that are always going to the doctors that can’t quite figure it

Christine Garvin  4:42

out. Interesting. I know. I wonder if they’re gonna find something environmentally at some point, you know?

Dr. Carol Lourie  4:48

i Yeah, yeah. I mean, who knows? Yep, absolutely. But, um, so that was the beginning of the empowered through breast cancer empowered against recurrence. Power through treatment. Now there’s different phases of breast cancer, what you need when you’re in the middle of treatment is very different than what you need. When you’re through treatment and you are taking Tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors, you have side effects from these drugs, and you can’t sleep at night, because all you’re thinking about is what if it comes back? Did the tree get it? All? Right, it’s a very big concern, an appropriate concern of women? Yeah, absolutely.

Christine Garvin  5:26

Well, and I’m kind of surprised to hear that that doctor was even open to it. And I think that’s what happens, you know, when you can see it on the testing, but so many doctors tell their patients to not use any herbs, right? Because these things haven’t been studied at cetera, et cetera. And they’re worried about, you know, the negative effects when it’s like, these women need some real support, you know?

Dr. Carol Lourie  5:51

Well, there’s two things about that. First, there are many, many studies in PubMed about the benefits of certain herbs, augmenting, which means to benefit in chemotherapy, and reducing tamoxifen resistance and all of that. Secondly, I’m very respectful of chemotherapy. And I don’t want to do anything that’s interfering. So it’s very simple. If somebody’s on a three week infusion schedule, you stop certain herbs and supplements three weeks, three days before, you have your infusion, and you don’t do them for two days after. So there’s a five day period in the middle of that three weeks, where you’re not doing anything to interfere with your treatment. And then you can resume taking care of your body and reducing the side effects of the treatment. And it’s not difficult, right? Yeah, you got to stop take, oh, you’re three days before you don’t take this. You could continue not to take them for two days after three days after you can resume.

Christine Garvin  6:47

Simple. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it’s, I think it’s important. And I’m glad that you brought up that in PubMed, you can find plenty of studies, because I know sometimes, you know, clients that I have friends that I have will be either, you know, scared, or don’t really know how to talk to their doctors about these things. And so it’s, you know, to let people know, you can pretty easily go on Google, even if you don’t have another resource and just research that, print those out, take those to your doctor so that they know right, and so that they can be on board.

Dr. Carol Lourie  7:21

Absolutely. And I provide all that all those figures you did that? Yeah, part of my program, I don’t want them to spend their time on Dr. Google. Yeah. And doing that. That’s my job. Because if you don’t have a science background, it’s like if you brought me a Tesla, and said, Here, go on Dr. Google, and fix this car. It’s like, Are you kidding? I’m not interested. It’s not my skill set. That’s why I take it to somebody. And there’s a lot that women need to do in their lives, I want to do the research for them and simplify it. So they don’t

Christine Garvin  7:55

have to. Absolutely, I think that’s so important. That’s why, you know, having a resource like you when they’re going through this life changing, you know, experience and as you mentioned, and I’m this came up on another episode where I was speaking with the guests about breast cancer, to really look at it as a chronic illness, right, rather than just this kind of blip. That happens, because there are certain things that need to change for good, right. So maybe let’s talk about some of those things. Like let’s start with diet, what what kind of dietary approach do you guide the women on?

Dr. Carol Lourie  8:30

Great? Well, let’s start with the fact that cancer, all cancers are a metabolic disease. Unless you’ve been exposed to radiation like Chernobyl, that’s a very unusual circumstance, and very unfortunate, but breast cancer is a metabolic disease. And what does that mean? That means that there are a lot of abnormal chemical reactions going come together to create this lump that shows up. And that means that there isn’t one thing that creates breast cancer or any cancer, it’s not one thing unless we have this Chernobyl incident, right, which most people don’t have had happened to them. So it that gives women an enormous amount of influence over whether they’re feeding cancer or starving cancer. And let’s start with the very basics, which is cancer loves sugar. Cancer, given a choice between oxygen for the cancer gas tank and glucose shoot, or sugar chooses glucose, even though it has to work much harder to get that and it gets much less gas, so to speak. That’s known as the Warburg effect. And it was discovered in 1918, by the German scientist, Otto Warburg, and he won the Nobel medicine Peace Prize for that. Wow. And so that we

Christine Garvin  9:46

forgot about all right, we’ve known that for a long time.

Dr. Carol Lourie  9:49

Aside, you forgot about it. Last and now it’s had a resurgence in the last 20 years about and now it’s really up there and those of us who are doing integrative oncology work. We know that cancer is a metabolic disease. So cancer loves sugar. What do we want to do we want to not put sugar in the cancer gas tank. Now I know I’m simplifying this but it is it’s important to have images because you go out to eat, you go to somebody’s party and there’s this delicious pastry, chocolate cake, strawberry shortcake, whatever your thing is. And there’s this part of your brain that goes oh, I’ll just have a little piece but that little piece is going to put a lot of sugar in the cancer gas tank so you need to understand this so you have a decision inside of you that’s like I’m that’s unattractive food for me. Unhealthy unattractive, I’m just gonna have my organic you know, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries with maybe a little bit of organic cream or coconut cream on it if you’re not eating dairy. And I’m going to be just fine.

Christine Garvin  10:55

Absolutely, yeah. And and I just want to point out for people listening even if you don’t have cancer, if you don’t have you know, people in your life that have cancer, sugar has negative impacts on really all aspects of our health right? So many of the health issues that we have changed tremendously when we just pull out sugar just simply that one thing you know, I mean, we can go on and on to other things, but that’s a such a huge part of the issue. You know, that I think most people don’t understand how much sugar really is in our daily lives now with every packaged food having an insane amount of sugar in it.

Dr. Carol Lourie  11:33

Yeah. And people get crappy flippy yogurt, yogurt, Starbucks, coffee things. And as you mentioned, it’s not just cancer, autoimmune disease, colitis, mental emotional illness or distress, insomnia, anything period problems and utility sugar is needs to be eliminated. sugar feeds inflammation, inflammation is the foundation of all chronic disease.

Christine Garvin  12:01

Absolutely. And you know, the other day I was with my mom and she had bought a green juice from Trader Joe’s right. And I took a look at it, and it had, you know, sugar in it. 35 grams of sugar, right, because it’s not really a green juice. It’s actually mostly fruit juice, and then some little addition of green to make it green. And I you know, that’s one which

Dr. Carol Lourie  12:24

was probably spinach, which is unhealthy. Because

Christine Garvin  12:28

yeah, I don’t know if it was spinach or kale, but either way, same issue. Right. And so, it Yeah, it’s so interesting because people will, you know, they’re, they’ll think, Oh, well, I’m doing healthier because I am doing these smoothies or these green juices and it’s it’s frustrating to me because it’s they’re sneaky about it right? You always have to look at the labels you always always always have to look at the labels don’t trust that it says no sugar added or anything in there.

Dr. Carol Lourie  12:54

Well, Kombucha is healthy, but then you look at the label and there’s sugar in it and a lot of them

Christine Garvin  13:00

are like 16 grams. Yeah.

Dr. Carol Lourie  13:03

noncom Bucha sugar is a non sugared. Kombucha is a drink that you really need to develop a tasting for because it’s

Christine Garvin  13:13

vinegary. Yeah, it’s definitely it’s a uniquely vinegary taste. Yeah, so Okay, so besides sugar, what other things should people be looking for in their diet?

Dr. Carol Lourie  13:28

Well, let’s talk about what people eat for breakfast because this is a big thing. When I do my groups, I always open up the chat and I say just put, you know, put in the chat what you’ve had for breakfast. 100% of the time, there’s like 50% who are eating oatmeal.

Christine Garvin  13:43

I was gonna say oatmeal. Let me guess. Yeah,

Dr. Carol Lourie  13:47

so I was raised with those little round blue and red you know, paper things containers of oatmeal, and they’ve been around for a long time because I was young a long time ago. But now people are still getting them and now they’re getting the little pockets that they buy with you know, with the oven more process oats and they have sugar in them those packets and cinnamon and what something else but there’s processing, processing processing. So you’re not even really getting the whole grain but then people say well, I’m eating still cut out. So there and Okay, great. So it’s a real grain that hasn’t been flattened and processed. Number one, number two, it’s still gluten. Number three, even though it’s, it’s a more whole grain, if you eat it first thing in the morning, you’re still giving your body the messaging of okay, here comes carbs. And carbs are translated into sugar or glucose pretty quickly. So how you start your day provides the metabolic messaging that you’re setting up for your body. So if you start with carbs, the body goes Oh, great. I’m a day of carbs. And that’s gas for the cancer gas tank. If you start your day with good Green Tea, organic Matcha Green Tea two cups. And then you, you have leftovers from dinner, which is protein and fat and vegetables. You’re feeding your cells, you know the mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of your cells, you’re feeding them phytonutrients that then they need to get that healthy engine’s going, and you’re starving your cancer. Now, if you’re addicted to oatmeal, and I have women say to me, I love my oatmeal. Here’s the deal, you want to only have it like two or three times a week, and then most want to have it at lunch. And you want to have organic gluten free steel cut oats. And you need to add a lot of fat to it in the form of ghee or butter or almond. Not not not butter. Yeah, butter, because that slows down the gluconeogenesis the absorption of the carbohydrates into your bloodstream. Yes, you could put coconut cream in it. You could put heavy cream in it. I know. It’s if you’re eating dairy, everything has to be organic. And you don’t want to eat a lot of it. Right? Absolutely. Well, I mean, sometimes people are eating two cups of steel cut out, it’s like

Christine Garvin  16:15

I would crash out that’s the thing. But the way that that oats hit my blood sugar, I just, it makes me crash pretty, you know, quickly. And I think a lot of times people override that, right? Because they’re drinking maybe a lot of coffee and Exactly, yeah. And so and then they wonder why they’re starving and tire by 11am. Or even later, you know, in the day two or 3pm It’s all about that first meal of the day. And, and I you know, I love that you were talking about this? Absolutely from the point of having cancer or having had cancer. But this is also about how to keep cancer at bay. Even if you

Dr. Carol Lourie  16:56

were having out any disease. It’s not just that let’s just get really real, it’s about maintaining your health. It’s not about necessarily cancer. It’s about you don’t want to get an autoimmune disease. You don’t want to get abdominal belly fat as you get older, which when you eat oatmeal, it goes right to that abdominal belly fat, which is unhealthy fat.

Christine Garvin  17:15

Mm hmm. Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. And metabolic syndrome. I mean, we’re like, you know, so much of me, even if you look at cholesterol, that can be a huge part of that can be the sugar. You know, people always think that’s the fat, but really, it’s the sugar. And so, yeah, and so it’s, it’s, you know, I hope that this is driving the point into people’s heads. You know, I tell my clients this stuff all the time, but it’s sometimes we need to hear it from multiple sources. So I’m glad that came out from this perspective,

Dr. Carol Lourie  17:45

right? about health. It’s not only about cancer, the way you want to eat, if you’ve had cancer or have cancer is the same way you want to eat if you want to keep your heart healthy, if you want to keep your body healthy, if you don’t want to become an old person who’s bent over and in a wheelchair. And if you’re having infertility problems, these this way of eating, it’s not a diet. Right? Right. That’s why it’s don’t work diets are, oh, I’m on the diet. And then it’s the holidays. It’s a party, I’m just doing whatever they want. And walk the diet. Food, have a couple glasses of wine, eat butter, and bread. It’s like that isn’t doesn’t work like?

Christine Garvin  18:28

Absolutely. So besides the foods that we’ve kind of already talked about, and how important it is I like to you know, tell my clients to shoot for 30 grams of protein at breakfast to really get your blood sugar nice and set up and stable for the day. What other kinds of dietary recommendations do you have?

Dr. Carol Lourie  18:47

Well, I think 30 grams is great at breakfast. And if women are having a hard time getting there doing a healing smoothie is a really easy way of getting 22 grams of protein. So let’s talk about what that is because people say I drink a smoothie and just like you were talking about that green juice from Trader Joe’s, their definition of a smoothie is five different types of fruit, right? Cow’s milk, and they put it in a blender. Yep. So a smoothie has an organic, very specific organic pea protein isolate that’s a vegan can also be organic whey which is immunoglobulins which you give at different points that could be a ketogenic style powder which has milk solids in it and other products. It’s you don’t I in my opinion, when you have cancer had cancer, you do not want to be using collagen or collagen powders out there. I don’t think that’s appropriate for people who’ve had cancer. So we put a protein P isolate protein in the blender. We also then put either water or unsweetened not milk. Almond milk is good or half almond milk and half water There is a quarter cup of blackberries or blueberries because they have phytonutrients in them and antioxidants. I also put in one or two tablespoons of organic brown flax seeds, and two teaspoons of chia seeds. And then if there’s more, if I’m working with somebody, specifically, I can put a little bit of herb powder in there to help deal with certain blocking certain cancer pathways. And you have to blend it for like three minutes, because that gets everything to three minutes, like not just 30 seconds, you want to feel it blend. And then it’s the summer, and it’s warm out where we live in San Francisco, it really gets hot. You can put in a couple of ice cubes, you don’t want to use cold in the winter, coming up to the wintertime. And that could be breakfast.

Christine Garvin  20:50

Can you talk a little bit about the flax seeds and how they support? You know, from a hormonal standpoint point,

Dr. Carol Lourie  20:58

right? Well, flax seeds have omega threes, linoleic acids in them. And I think ideally, when you get them, you don’t think women say, well, I’ll just buy the flaxseed powder. So the powders already been sitting on the shelf, and already been exposed to heat, I guarantee it. And so it’s like, useless, you’re wasting your

Christine Garvin  21:17

money, rank it and can be damaging to exactly, you have

Dr. Carol Lourie  21:21

become overheated, and the fat turns into an unhealthy fat. That was a good point. So by the organic brown kind, there’s a lighter kind and the darker kind you want the darker kindness, more linoleic acids in there, you want to put it in a glass jar in the refrigerator. So ideally, you either want to get a mortar and pestle and take your two tablespoons and sort of break them up before you put them in the blender. Or if that’s too much for you, you want to get one of these little $10 coffee grinders, and you make it a different color from your other coffee grinders and you use it just to blip blip, blip, the flax seeds, and then you stick it into the blender, you don’t need to blip it more than two or three times because you don’t need to totally break them up and make it into a powder. Just want to break them up a little bit. And then all of those positive oils are released into your body when you eat them. And they’re great for you know, if you’re having period problems or fertility problems, but they’re they omega threes are one of the most important essential fats that we can get. And they’re essential because we don’t we have to get them through our diet, right? Not through our body, our body cannot make them. So they’re it’s an flaxseeds it’s an a wild salmon. Right? Those are the two main sources. And when I think you know if you have any kind of chronic disease, which you know, autoimmune infertility, polycystic ovarian syndrome, cancer, any type of inflammatory process, which all chronic disease is, I like about 2000 grams. milligrams a day.

Christine Garvin  23:01

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And what do you think about the phyto estrogenic component of flax? Is that supportive then in this? Because there’s a lot of debate, right? I know

Dr. Carol Lourie  23:12

that in soy, so um, I, first of all, you’re not going to get a huge phyto estrogenic input from two tablespoons of organic ground flax seeds. How many buckets maybe spoons every day? Come on? I mean, it’s not. And if it is phyto estrogenic. That’s not a bad thing. It’s a good estrogen that you’re giving your body and it’s tiny, tiny, tiny amount.

Christine Garvin  23:42

Right. And it can, you know, it’s it’s at least hypothesize that and I think shown in some studies, it can actually essentially, work against the bad estrogens. Right. And so sort of take the place in ourselves and kind of lock in. And so yeah, I mean, there’s massive debates around it all. And we’re individuals, right, so I, you know, can understand, but in general, it’s, we don’t have to be so fearful I think of the fight. So

Dr. Carol Lourie  24:10

I think that’s a good place. way of putting it. You don’t need to be forceful and fearful. And the issue with soy which I needed to bring up is that when you everybody says, Oh, I can’t eat, I’ve been told not to eat soy. So let’s look at the reality. The country of Japan had almost zero breast cancer, zero, before it became westernized were Americanized with the diet changes. Mm hmm. And what was what is their diet when it’s pure? It’s a ton of soy and soy. Yeah. It’s a notto. It’s, you know, soybeans. They’re real. They’re not GMO food. They had almost zero breast cancer like a 4% or something. I mean, or point. I mean, it was very tiny, and then as their diet became more westernized. The statistics went up

Christine Garvin  25:03

course. And, and I know some people will say part of that is that they also have a lot of iodine in their diet. Do you find that there’s a connection there? Yeah, that sort of like, essentially helps balance the soy, you know that we should be doing that together instead of, you know, not we don’t get hardly any iodine in our diet at this point.

Dr. Carol Lourie  25:26

Well, I hope people are not eating Morton Salt with iodine, right?

Christine Garvin  25:32

Well, I know, I dry No,

Dr. Carol Lourie  25:35

no, you have to find that salt

Christine Garvin  25:37

with iodine. Yeah. Now.

Dr. Carol Lourie  25:41

You can get your iodine you get your iodine from sushi from those little flat things. And even if you don’t go out for sushi, it’s very easy to buy those flat dance, you want to just put them over the heat of the stove for two seconds to give them a little toast with vegetables in there and roll it up and have a delicious,

Christine Garvin  25:59

Adam just soups, which is what the Japanese, you know, does. And that’s part of it. That balancing act, right? It’s gotten out. traditional cultures in general have figured out there how to really balance their foods and give what you need. You know, if you have one thing that has a lot of this and how you have this other thing that has a lot of them that that balances that out, right. And we’ve changed the way we eat so much that we’re not getting that balancing act.

Dr. Carol Lourie  26:28

It’s like the fermented foods. Every culture has fermented foods in japan, Japanese has miso. And the Europeans they have fermented sauerkraut. And there is also kombucha and there’s also the other from him, she came cheez it. Yeah. So the Americans, we have pickles, right? They’re not necessarily fermented, they are not true. Right? There’s a difference between fermented and brine from Brian doesn’t give your gut the pre prebiotics that it needs. So you when you’re going, you think, Oh, I’m going to be healthy. I’m going to eat. You know, it’s not hard to get prebiotics, eat a tablespoon of fermented sauerkraut or a pickle every day. Yep. But it must say fermented on it. Yeah, it has to be organic. Yeah. Otherwise, you’re just eating a nice food. But it’s not the same thing.

Christine Garvin  27:23

I will say and given I live in Nashville, and we have options that not everywhere does. But I’ve noticed more and more grocery stores, even sort of regular grocery stores will carry local fermented foods. And you can usually trust those more, you know, they’re doing after fermentation process. Yeah, that’s great. Huh. versus, you know, the things that are nationally done, and by the time they traveled to where all the all the stores and everything we don’t know how much is left?

Dr. Carol Lourie  27:54

I always think local is best. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. What the local people’s what the way to go? Yeah,

Christine Garvin  28:01

absolutely. So anything else that we’re missing in terms of diet support that you think is really important? That’s

Dr. Carol Lourie  28:07

the balls. Let’s just, I mean, let’s look at vegetables. Most people do not eat vegetables at every meal, right? I think they should be eaten at every meal. It’s not hard. They’re delicious. And I rotate my vegetables with the seasons. I only do organic. It’s not hard, except I just talked to a woman who lives in the middle of Illinois along the Mississippi River. And she said to me, honey, there is nothing here. Yeah. Are there farmers? She goes, yeah, and they spray. I said, Okay, do you have a local grocery store? And you know, the Moines or some major town would be five and a half hours away. Wow. Well, foods and I said, Okay, that’s not happening. Yeah. So is there a grocery store where you go shopping? And I? She said yes. I said, is there in the frozen food section? Some organic foods? She said, Yes. I said, so how about this? You’re a good customer to that grocery store. Why don’t you go over to the manager and say, I want these following frozen vegetables put in the grocery to put on this shelf all the time. Now, this is not ordeal. ideal, but it is better than not right. Right. Right. Absolutely. It’s better than eating vegetables that have been sprayed. Yeah. Yeah.

Christine Garvin  29:28

And people need to understand that I get their food deserts all across this country. Unfortunately, you know, but yes, it’s figuring out ways like you just said and you know, even getting deliveries of food boxes that are organic, you know, that’s another option to

Dr. Carol Lourie  29:46

not where she lives. I asked her that oh, man, she said there are some places especially not in the winter, you know, in the summer. We have winter coming up now. Yeah. So our you know, you can get canned frozen canned vegetable So, I think and you know, this is not our deal ideal. I like to have, you know, a plateful where I live, it’s really easy to get organic vegetables. But I have to respect that some people, it’s not possible for them to be fresh. So let’s go to the next best. It’s still better than eating fresh vegetables that have been sprayed. Right. Right. It’s those they go, Well, I’ll watch them. You doesn’t matter. Chemicals are in the cells of the food. Yeah,

Christine Garvin  30:32

yeah. Yeah. And especially with cancer, it’s like, you can’t mess around with that at all. Autoimmune Disease. I mean, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, that was a good covering of the diet, which I think is so important. What are the other aspects that, you know, women that have faced cancer really need to shift in their life?

Dr. Carol Lourie  30:54

You’re you are really interested in doing supplements. And it’s like asking me to fix a Tesla, I don’t know what I’m doing. Even if you’re reading and researching on the Internet, you’re on these Facebook groups. So let’s say you feel like you understand what quercetin does, and you’re going to buy some, most women have wasted hundreds of dollars on supplements, because they don’t know which companies are made to standards. And that’s why I call myself very proudly a supplement snob. I have done a lot of research. So and I visit a lot of these facilities. So I know which companies are making their products to pharmaceutical quality standards, they have research and development teams, they have third party testing, right? Not just have a nice label, right, that you go and you go, Oh, I’ve seen this label before I’m going to buy this. Right.

Christine Garvin  31:47

Right. And unfortunately, you’re not really going to find most of those on the shelves at the grocery store. You know, it’s just not, you know, people were like, well, Whole Foods. And I’m like, No, I’m still sorry.

Dr. Carol Lourie  31:59

Very few. There’s very few products, even Whole Foods carry that I know are made to pharmaceutical quality standards, maybe five right now I agree 100 that they have they’re five out of 100. It’s a very low percentage. Yeah. So I think women waste a lot of money, which is a bummer. So when I intake somebody, I have them put all this information on their Google Sheet and that I create, and then I look through at the name of the company, the product, and there’s the line that goes through 90% of what they bought. And sometimes I’ll say, Okay, let’s finish this up. And then we’ll switch over to something. But a lot of times I’ll say this is a critical supplement, and you’re eating basically nothing. Yeah. So we need to you wasted your sometimes the product was $60. Yeah,

Christine Garvin  32:47

I know. It’s so a lot of money to throw away. Yep. And it’s scary, right? Because not only, you know, people will say, Oh, well, supplements don’t do anything. But then they’ll turn around, you know, and then they’ll turn around and say, but it can do damage. And to me, Emily, well, that doesn’t make any sense. How can it if it does nothing, then it couldn’t do damage. But we do know that the supplements that aren’t super high quality can actually do damage, right? They can use their numbers in them what you need. Right, right. Absolutely. But they also have fillers in them, they have different things, you know that even the forms can, you know, be important for what’s going on with you. And so yeah, I think it’s so important to work with somebody who understands supplementation and does the research before you go out and buy a bunch of supplements.

Dr. Carol Lourie  33:31

I had somebody in my group and she was reading her Kokoon product that she had bought through some Amazon or internet sale. And ingredient number two was sugar.

Christine Garvin  33:46

Why do you need to put sugar in supplements?

Dr. Carol Lourie  33:48

Exactly. You’re trying to do good by your, you know, hit medical diagnosis cancer. You changed your diet, but now you’re taking a supplement that has sugar that comp that product needs to be returned to the company and you need to demand for your money back. Yeah, that’s unethical to put sugar in a supplement.

Christine Garvin  34:06

Yeah, absolutely. And this is, you know, a tangent. I don’t want to go down. But you know, it’s frustrating sometimes, you know, thinking about the FDA. Overtaking supplements is scary on the one hand, but on the other hand, it’s really tough because there are so many supplements on the market. I wish that there was a standard set by people that really know how to do supplementation correctly, you know, but yeah, anyways, well, like I said, I don’t want to go down that path. But I do think it’s so important. Like you said, third party testing the supplement companies that do that. A lot of the good supplement companies, they actually will only sell through practitioners too because they want the practitioner to understand how to use their products properly, right because it shouldn’t just be this willy nilly like Oh, I heard vitamin A is good for me. So I’m gonna take it thing you know, it’s like what

Dr. Carol Lourie  34:58

happens a lot of times when we go, Oh, I heard I should take your kumin Oh, I should vitamin C. I should take a probiotic. And they come in and they don’t. You know, with all due respect, it’s like asking me to fix a Tesla. Nobody was doing. Yeah. And they’ve wasted hundreds of dollars. So the come like there’s this one company, they only sell to practitioners or not a lot of companies, you could go on to the internet and find their product. But this one company only sells to practitioners. Mm hmm.

Christine Garvin  35:31

Yeah. So it makes a huge difference. And I tell people, in general, you should feel differences from taking supplements. Like if you’ve been taking a supplement for a long time and don’t feel any benefit from it. Then it’s not working

Dr. Carol Lourie  35:50

on to the next product. That’s real. Yeah,

Christine Garvin  35:53

exactly. Exactly. So yeah, so good. So okay, we’ve talked food, we’ve talked supplements. What about lifestyle?

Dr. Carol Lourie  36:00

Well, lifestyle is really important. And I’ll tell a story which is not about breast cancer, but a 35 year old woman came into my office and she had a diagnosis of unexplained infertility. And she was heading for $40,000 IVF. And she had on enough perfume that I thought I was in the ground floor of Macy’s. Those of you who know the ground floor of Macy’s is like the perfume makeup department

Christine Garvin  36:25

smacks you across the face.

Dr. Carol Lourie  36:28

I said, So tell me about scents and she goes, Oh, I love scents. I had the plugins. I had those sticks in oil. And already I’m having a heart attack and then this is essential she goes I spray my sofa with February’s so for those of you who don’t know, it’s this you see the advertisements, the sofas, smells and you spray it. So these that the chemicals in that product are estrogen disruptors, and so toxic, and then she had a dog and the dog would jump up, and she pet the dog and the chemicals are all over the dog’s hair. The dog would then sleep with them in bed. I mean, it was a toxic overload. Yeah. Well, I said when you go home, can you take all the products you have in your house and take a picture and send it to me? 29 products, hundreds of dollars, maybe even 1000. And every single one of them was chemical, chemical, and they were estrogen disruptors and toxic. So she had to throw everything out. Yeah, you had to buy eco laundry detergent. She’s She had to throw out her sofa. Because we couldn’t detoxify it

Christine Garvin  37:33

at that point. Yeah, with you’ve been breathing it for so long.

Dr. Carol Lourie  37:36

new sofa, all the rugs were washed with water, all the linens and everything was ego laundry and all the pots and pans. You know, there’s this big thing about nonstick is so great. Yeah, they have per prefer chlorine chloride chemicals in them. And when they’re exposed to heat. Those chemicals are in your food. Yep. Yeah. So there’s a price to pay for nonstick, just get a cast iron.

Christine Garvin  38:02

Right? Exactly. The cast iron is going to last you longer to

Dr. Carol Lourie  38:08

the basket, it gives you iron in your foods. Right. Right. So, um, three months didn’t take that long. Two months later, she was pregnant.

Christine Garvin  38:18

Yeah, oh, I think that’s such an important story. I’m so glad that you share that because people don’t I was actually just talking about this earlier with somebody, people don’t understand the impact of you know, of plastics in our environment of all of these chemicals that act as you know, from multiple different things, but Xeno estrogens, so they actually, you know, basically take the holes in ourselves where our estrogen is supposed to go in, they go in there and take the place, you know, and they build up in our bodies, and it is so hard to get them out. And so it’s just so important to really start to you know, I know you can’t not everybody can do it right away. But it’s I always tell women, you know, if you have a regular shampoo, finish that off, and then the next one that you buy, right and make sure it doesn’t have any chemicals. Yeah, make up

Dr. Carol Lourie  39:05

shampoo. Dryer sheets are the worst. Everybody never save your money when you donate as

Christine Garvin  39:14

well. And I want to also bring up because I think a lot of people are animal lovers. We know that those scents are very harmful for our animals, too. You know, I like there have been stories of cats just you know, dying out of the blue because we have these plugins, you mentioned those plugins, right, that’s at their level. Oh, and it’s, it’s their little bodies can’t handle the amount, you know, that we do. And obviously we’re not handling it super well, because cancer is a huge part that comes from that. But, you know, I sometimes I think it will take people to understand how it impacts their animals, even to be ready

Dr. Carol Lourie  39:52

to make the change animals ahead of themselves. Right, right. Right.

Christine Garvin  39:55

So at least know in this instance, it’s really impacting your animals too. So it’s you You know, there’s so many essential oils if you really like, you know, to have some sense it’s like essential oils is such a good quality essential oils is another way to go about it, you know, and, and just this Yeah, this need I think the perfume industry made us believe that we needed to like have this certain smell, right in order to whatever connects to the

Dr. Carol Lourie  40:25

opposite sex windows. Yeah.

Christine Garvin  40:29

Absolutely. Stuffy open

Dr. Carol Lourie  40:31

up the window. Yeah. Yep.

Christine Garvin  40:33

And that’s what they’ve always done in in Europe for long periods of time, right. So, well, this was so amazing to cover all of these different areas. And I know there’s so much more. So tell us a little bit about the program that you have that starting in just about a week, right? It’s empowered against reoccurrence?

Dr. Carol Lourie  40:53

Yes, we have two new groups starting October 24. Mondays we meet six consecutive Mondays. Okay. And then the next one starts on a Tuesday, November 1, okay. Okay. There’s two different classes that are now going to be open in honor of breast cancer awareness month. And Christine has a link that she’ll share with everyone to join and you get to see a free masterclass with me where I go into all of this in much more detail. And then I’m offering a complimentary Booko call to come in and talk to me about where you are in your breast cancer journey. What kind of obstacles are you having, and then I can tell you how the program and working with me, can like we want to get these obstacles out of the way. So you can have a joyful involved healthy life where you have energy. You know, I call this thing the couch potato syndrome. You don’t feel well, you’re on aromatase inhibitors or tamoxifen, you have joint pain, you have trauma from breast cancer, it’s a little bit different than, quote just depression or anxiety, it’s a little different. Alright, so and then you’re on the couch, and you don’t feel well, it comes as unhealthy syndrome. So how do you get off the couch, you know, the definition of insanity is trying to keep doing the same thing over and thinking you’re going to get different results. That’s where, and when you need to bring someone like me and join my live group coaching program, which has me plus, I have six weeks of Vault material or the library that matches what I do for the teaching for the week. So there’s an enormous amount of support that you get, and you join my community. And all the women in there are really interested in having the best possible life and using these integrative and holistic tools. So they feel well after having gone through treatment, and they’re on hormonal therapy, you can feel well, you do not have to suffer.

Christine Garvin  42:54

Oh, so good. And I just really want to point out the community aspect, right? You know, because so many women think that they’re going through this alone, you know, it can feel very alone, because nobody in their life maybe has breast cancer or had breast cancer. And so people don’t understand. And you’re offering not only all of this wealth of information, but that community aspect where it can just it changes so much when you are with other people that have been through the same thing.

Dr. Carol Lourie  43:22

Right? And when people ask you how you’re feeling and you go, you know, I’m a little anxious about this coming back and they go, Oh, don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Mm hmm. So they mean, we’ll need a little bit more than that, oh, don’t worry, you’ll be fine. You’re not really helpful. Know that you have a system that you’re following that is backed by science research that really works in multiple different ways to reduce your risk. So you can sleep at night and be free from fear.

Christine Garvin  43:52

So good. Yeah, thank you for doing this work. I think it’s so utterly important that you know, there’s not a lot of options out there from this perspective. And so it’s just it’s incredible work. So thanks for being with us today and sharing all this good stuff. And that link will be in the show notes. So you can head over there and listen to the free training about it and then a sign up for a call with you. Right. Wonderful. Perfect. All right, you guys. Thanks again, Dr. Laurie Carroll, for being here with us today and I will see all of you next time.

Dr. Carol Lourie  44:26

Thank you for having me.