Delicious Nutrition to Prevent and Recover From Cancer with Nutritionist Kirstin Nussgruber

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:00:03) – Hi and welcome to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I am so thrilled to have you here as we dive into today’s episode. As always, innovating and integrating in the world of women’s health. And just as a reminder, the content in this podcast episode is no substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your medical or licensed health care team. While myself and many of my guests are licensed healthcare professionals, we are not your licensed healthcare professionals, so you want to get advice on your unique circumstances. Diagnostic recommendations treatment recommendations from your home medical team. Enjoy the episode. Let’s innovate and integrate together. Hi and welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m Doctor Jessica Drummond, your host, and I’m so excited to introduce you to Kirsten Nut Scrubber. She is a wonderful guest who has extensive experience working with women with cancer to prevent cancer, to prevent recurrence, and to support them during the acute phase of cancer treatment for a more optimal outcome and to be healthier during their cancer journey.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:01:37) – She has such beautiful insight into the experience of living with joy and wellness in the midst of a cancer healing experience. We went deep in this conversation. She shared a lot about her personal journey, and she is one of the most compassionate, caring, and skillful nutritionists in the world of cancer care, cancer recovery, and true post cancer thriving and prevention of recurrence. If you have a history of cancer, if you want to specialize in cancer, if you have family history of cancer and want to lower your risk of cancer. This conversation will be so valuable for you. I can’t wait until you meet Kirsten, and I want you to pay attention to how cancer is underpinned by so many of the things we optimize and functional medicine, from metabolic health to immune health to digestive health. Cancer is not out of the blue. There are genetic predispositions. There is terrain predisposition from a systems biology standpoint, and it’s not so different from any complex chronic illness that you or your clients or your family members are going through.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:03:02) – The other thing I want to say about Kirsten is go check out all of her resources. They’re listed here in the show notes. She makes beautiful, delicious healing foods and shares her recipes there not to be missed for yourself or your family, for your friends. Anyone who wants to fully recover from cancer. Let’s get into the episode. Welcome back to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I am here with my friend and colleague Kirsten Nuss Grubber. She is a nutritionist and expert in cancer care. And I want to talk to you, Kirsten, about what brought you to this work. You know, why did you start to specialize in cancer?

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:04:01) – Well, thank you, Jessica, and thank you for having me on your podcast. It’s a pleasure and honor to be here and help serve your audience. It’s a good question because how do we all stumble into this area? So I was always interested in nutrition. Since growing up. I grew up in a background where we lived in South Africa and my mother couldn’t drive.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:04:21) – She, for personal reasons, had issues to overcome and didn’t want to learn how to drive. You know, personal fears that she never really confronted. So she went food shopping once a month. And you can imagine that you can’t exactly consume a lot of fresh produce then. So I grew up with a lot of canned vegetables, and I didn’t like the taste of it. So I think I did an interest in learning how to eat healthily pretty early on, really as a teenager, and it stayed a hobby for quite some time. I started out on a different career path in human resource management business school route, and then I got an opportunity when we were living in Germany, in Munich, we were there on an assignment through my husband’s work, and I realized, well, I’m fluent in German because I grew up German speaking in South Africa, that what can I do while I’m here? Because I was surrounded by, you know, from the international school parents, they were all learning German. And I’m thinking, well, I don’t need to do that.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:05:19) – I could study here. And that’s kind of the penny drops, like, all right, why don’t you now formalize your hobby? And it was mainly meant more for educational purposes at that point. And I found a naturopathic school in the center of Munich, and they offered a really great in-depth two year nutrition course that didn’t compare to anything that I had found back in the United States, because I was comparing at that stage. And while I was studying, I was diagnosed with my own first breast cancer diagnosis, and then other pennies dropped. And that was then when I realized that’s actually who I want to serve, when once I graduate, first of all, for my own knowledge, for my own path, my own education, and creating my own health plan that way. But also, you know, that kind of helps me really connect with my clientele as well. So I really started focusing on cancer care and just got more and more into that and really have, you know, specialized in that area to the degree that’s really all I work with and all I want to work with.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:06:24) – So in all stages, you know, proactive prevention, going through the cancer journey or the diagnosis and treatment journey. And then of course, the beyond treatment phase, the longevity phase. So they’re very different categories to approach in the type of support that I can give, you know, nutrition and lifestyle support. And that’s just become pretty much a passion of mine. Also watching I think concurrently as interest is really picking up, you know, as women are becoming more and more astute in doing our research and in educating ourselves particularly, we were just talking about that. The clientele that you and I attract already, women that are proactive already, that’s how they find us in the first place, and that’s why they commit to signing up with us and working with us and being coached by us, because they’re already understand that, you know, they need to undertake a degree of responsibility for their own health care path forward. So it’s I think mainstream is still lagging behind, but it is for sure there is a change which is very, very encouraging to see.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:07:35) – Last October I attended the CIO conference, the annual conference that’s the society for Integrative Oncology. And these are medical oncologists. So if you take the spectrum of integrative healthcare functional medicine, they are one step away from just conventional okay. So they still have to be incredibly conservative. It’s a very small group compared to their peers. But they’ve been 23 years now in existence, and they have really grown from strength to strength, that they are now almost a partner to Asco, the American Society of Clinical Oncology. And that’s such a big step. It just shows you how that interest in we a patients need to be proactive. We want to be equal partners. And we want to understand what we can do with our choices in lifestyle nutrition and other living environment. How can we contribute to improving our health?

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:08:32) – Yeah. So you trained in Germany, then you had your own breast cancer experience. Are you working in the United States now? Do you work globally? What is your practice look like at this point? And then I want to circle back to what we were talking about around some of the more nuances of integrative cancer care.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:08:52) – So yes, I graduated there, and then we moved back to the United States, and I wanted to affiliate myself with a nutrition organization that has some street cred credibility. I became board certified in holistic nutrition, we are required to produce continuing education credits. Our board exam is as stringent, if not more actually as the board exam of a registered dietitian. So, you know, we’re doing a lot of legislative work educating the legislators on what type of qualifications we come with, because, you know, generally, nutritionists, that industry is not that very well regulated yet in the United States. I did all of that, and I do have a private practice, but basically all my clients come from referrals from various naturopathic oncologists or medical oncologists. So there’s that clinical background. So the clients I see are cared for in an integrative way by an integrative clinician. And then I can slot in with the nutrition side and help them implement. So it’s really about providing the big picture but then also helping with the implementation, which you know can be very time consuming and challenging, particularly if you are in the cancer treatment phase, if you’re going through cancer treatments.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:10:13) – Absolutely. So fatiguing to be then even the basics of meal prep and cooking and all of that. Yeah.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:10:23) – Yes. And when you’re experiencing the side effects, you know, how do you cope with that? Also allaying a lot of fears I think once very often when my clients get initially diagnosed, there’s that fear. I may have caused it with my nutrition choices. So that’s a whole area we go into that that renders an in-depth discussion okay, because it has so many factors to it. And my primary goal is to get the client to realize you’re not to blame for your choices and to understand, you know, there’s a bigger picture to this and all the different layers associated with that, and how we can now change a lot around and through the choices we now make. We can definitely positively influence that inner environment. It’s not too late to make a change.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:11:09) – Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a really important piece of the puzzle, because one of the things that I’ve noticed, the longer that I work with clients with complex chronic illness, there’s two key things that I’m seeing.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:11:21) – One is that it used to be a relatively big needle mover to implement essentially some version of elimination diet, right? Like eliminating certain inflammatory foods. You know, obviously the more processed foods, but even things like dairy and gluten and all of that, and And I still think that there’s a time and a place for certain types of elimination diets. But I think how we frame it becomes really important, because in the United States in particular, there’s a strong emphasis on personal responsibility when it comes to wellness. And I think that’s important. I mean, people should and do have some level of power over what they put in their mouth, how they exercise, how they sleep. And I think we have to put it into context that at the end of the day, you know, especially if you’ve lived in Europe, you know, that the food in the United States is simply more toxic. And so, you know, you could be eating very well, but our water is more polluted. Our sourcing of fruits and vegetables may not be as clean, and may be more expensive if they are from organic farms that are in healthier parts of the country.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:12:45) – So it’s not actually always about, or even ever fully about personal responsibility. How have you seen that shift through your career?

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:12:57) – You know, that’s such a fascinating topic, and it ties into what I was referencing, is helping the person understand the bigger picture and also helping the person connect with your own body. You know, everyone’s unique. The terrain that we present with is as unique as every different piece of soil and every different garden that we have around us, right? So we have to understand, first of all, if we can, you know, use the tools that we have available to us to try and figure out, well, what is my terrain like, what’s going on there, what could be influencing the choices that I make, even the healthy choices that I make? Because I have plenty of clients where you touched on the elimination foods and so on. And, you know, we can’t necessarily just follow this cookie cutter practice of if you reduce all those foods, you’ll feel better.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:13:48) – I have many cancer clients where almost the opposite is true. It depends, of course, on on what stage in their cancer journey they are at. The degree of, you know, debilitating side effects from their treatments and any comorbidities that they had and so on. So all of those individual factors play a role. But, you know, sometimes we have to introduce carbohydrates back. Right. Or you know, not that we ever take them all out completely. But obviously there is definitely a way in which we have to connect with our bodies, listen to our bodies, and just analyze our bodies as a big factor in trying to figure out what is the right nutrition. For me that goes hand in hand with yes, we are exposed to certain environmental factors that affect our food here in the United States or elsewhere too, in the world. But our bodies are also fascinating, right? And when we support them in the right way, going back to understanding where are my imbalances, what do I really need to focus on specifically and doing that consistently? You can strengthen your body to be able to deal with that.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:14:55) – They can cope with that to a degree, but they can cope with that so that we don’t run around feeling just doom and gloom, that, oh, we are just totally branded here in the United States and there’s no hope for us and we’re all going to become so toxic. That’s also, again, really going down a rabbit hole that is not really conducive to mental health either.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:15:15) – Sure, sure. Yeah. And I agree with you. I think there’s a balance to be had between that empowerment of we have the capacity to further optimise our detox pathways, our gut microbiome terrain, if you will, even. I mean, obviously, if someone is in the midst of cancer treatment and dealing with side effects and fatigue like them to personally start a garden may be a real challenge, but someone in their family may be able to help with that. There may be farmers markets local to them, like there are sources, and I think that point about terrain can be very empowering, because I think one of the things that’s been most interesting to me in terms of complex chronic illness, which some of which can predispose clients to cancer, such as endometriosis or post-viral syndromes.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:16:09) – These create environments in the body of relative toxic or inflammation or metabolic dysregulation overload that set up the stage for cancer, and we can talk about that in a minute. But there are two sides of the coin. One is trying to get access to the best possible sources of food and health, and clean air and water, and two people living in the same home. One could be struggling with mold toxicity type illnesses, and one person feels absolutely fine. So it makes a big difference what that personal physiologic terrain and genetic predisposition and history of whether it’s viral pathogen load or toxin load or whatever. So if you have someone who comes to you with cancer, let’s say they’re in that kind of acute cancer stage and they are, you know, they’ve already been drinking filtered water and eating as organic as possible. And they exercised. And, you know, we’re seeing especially a rise in colon cancer and women in their 30s. And where do you start to help improve things on both ends of that spectrum, both in that human’s individual body and in their environment and access?

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:17:30) – Again, if they are in the middle of cancer treatment, that’s your main focus is just getting through that stage and trying to obviously create an environment that is a supportive as possible.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:17:40) – You can’t overload your clients at that point because that can lead to severe anxiety that you know, where they just feel, I can’t win this battle because I’ve got all these other things to do as well. So it’s a very important focus at that point to just help calm them down. Because the problem with today, too, is we are overloaded with information at all times from so many different sources. And a lot of it, especially in the nutrition world, is contradictory, conflicting. Even. So, they often come to me totally confused and very revved up, very anxious, almost feeling like it’s a mountain. It’s just way too high and too steep for me to climb. Even so, my job there is to help ground them. So we start with pretty much the basics, okay? And so when it comes to nutrition, helping them understand, first of all, how are they eating? Can we start improving on that and explaining if there are certain choices in there that they are making, even if they’re healthy choices? You know, we have conversations around how that can contribute possibly to this imbalance or that, and then trying to match it up with lab work results that we have, maybe we have that already available.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:18:48) – I try and get lab work done before any treatment starts. If I can catch them at that moment to try and get a little bit more extensive lab work done, just that we know what we’re dealing with. So, you know, in other words, routing it in concrete information that we have. Okay. Then once let’s say we moved out of the treatment phase, or even if we are in the prevention phase, if someone comes to me and says, look, I’ve got cancer running in my family and I, I’m concerned, I’m all right. But you know, what can I do to improve that? I would love that in the same category. That’s when we can really start looking at, you know, we have to look at those. You mentioned the factors like genetic predisposition. You know, what types of SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphisms, mutations do you have. Having them doesn’t mean that they are expressed or switched on. So let’s evaluate what could potentially cause them to become activated. You know, having those conversations around all the little steps that are involved.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:19:44) – I call it building blocks, building Legos. Okay. So we’re going to make a really strong fortress out of you. But we got to start with the foundation. It’s about as basic sometimes conversations about where do you get your food from? What do you choose? All right. I only have a supermarket available. I don’t have a fresh farm available, for example, or I cannot exactly build a vegetable garden. It’s what is available to you. And how can you optimize what you have for giving people the empowerment that regardless of your circumstances, we can do something about that we can optimize, we can change. We can say with each situation, if your budget is such that you cannot only buy organic, let’s discuss what you should buy organic. Let’s go down that route. As you know, we have options in that sense. You know the Ben 15 and Dirty Dozen and so on. You know, we can apply strategies basically at every stage. And giving the client that sense of empowerment that is so important.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:20:43) – I am doing something. I am making a positive change and teaching them how they can see the changes. And I have noticed in the last 15 years that I’ve been doing this work is even the smallest changes. If they are consistently applied, they notice it. They notice something positive. That is the biggest motivator is when they feel something. So my questions in our sessions often guide it as I’m trying to tease that out if they haven’t noticed it themselves. We have conversations around me trying to for the client to identify on their own, not me telling them on their own My bowel movements have improved. I hadn’t thought about it, but I’m going every morning now before I, you know, could only go every second or third day, for example. Or. Now that you mention it, my left hip doesn’t ache as much anymore after my round of exercise, or I’ve noticed I’ve put on weight and I was like, all right, I have where? I can’t see it though. Well, but you started strength training.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:21:43) – You probably building muscle here. If they don’t have access to a composition scale that measures that, right? Many people don’t. Little talks like that that sometimes are pretty basic, but there are incredibly empowering to give the client the feeling that whatever I’m doing, no matter how small of a change I’m doing, I am creating the change that I want to see. And that builds more. Because because then you get really addicted. You get hungry, you get motivated, inspired. You want more. You realize if those changes that I’m making can yield that, what else could I potentially achieve? I’m not doing that in a two restricted environment. I’m actually doing it. I’m still experiencing joy in life, in food, in eating. That is so important. It’s a long term, sustainable way of living.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:22:33) – Yeah, because of course, long term you’re thinking preventing recurrence, keeping health in general. But also I think whether you’re dealing with cancer or any other complex chronic illness or short term or acute illness, usually takes a minimum of months to years to go through the cancer treatment and recovery.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:22:52) – And then there may be a recurrence. So we want to mitigate that. But even if that happens, I think one of the things I’ve learned a lot about in the last few years is really how to keep people more engaged in life, even if they are sick, by whatever that means. Because there’s a continuum, right? None of us are perfectly healthy. And so I think it’s really valuable. I agree, like the step one of all of our program implementations is exactly the same thing nervous system regulation and joy and feelings of calm attentiveness and not living in fear, which I would imagine is very difficult to do with a cancer diagnosis because it’s so well known as like, you know, with things like endometriosis and post-viral syndromes and autoimmune diseases. It’s not really this like specter of death. There’s definitely a specter of morbidity, which is significant and sometimes actually harder to explain. Cancer, everyone knows, but everyone’s afraid of it. And so what are some of the clinical pearls you use to help people shift out of that, like death mentality? Really?

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:24:14) – Depends what stage that I deal with.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:24:18) – Quite a few stage for us. Who are my main teachers? I would say then absolutely incredible human beings, because they reach a stage where they accept and surrender, not give up, but they just surrender. And they are incredibly powerful when they are in that stage and teach their surroundings a lot if they’re willing to receive it. First of all, there are so many examples of people stage one, two, three thriving. Then it’s the feeling of I can’t, you know, emphasize this enough, this feeling of empowerment that we are not just have to be passive victims. Now of a treatment modality that we know is very controversial, is very toxic, doesn’t necessarily guarantee a recurrence. We don’t need to feel that we are victims of that. We can very much feel like an active partner participant. And here’s how you do that. And then you go through the mechanisms of how can you achieve that, that you feel you are a partner. Things like, you know, we have conversations around what’s your conventional oncology care team like? And if there is any sign of disrespect, it’s like laying it out to the client for them again, for them to realize that it’s not for me to tell them.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:25:37) – Maybe I should actually look around for another team. Okay. Somebody who just respects me. I have to respect where they are coming from. We have to respect the limitations of standard of care and the conventional care paradigm. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t respect how proactive we are. That absolutely can exist. So teaching them tools how to achieve that, then also clarifying, I think providing a strategy structure around, well, what can I do to optimize my inner and outer terrain? And that’s kind of a phrase, that phrase, and another phrase I’ll mention just now that I use very often. First of all, how do you optimize your inner and outer terrain, and then how do you transform your relationship with cancer? Right. So that’s the title of my book as well, is Transforming Your Relationship with cancer. Because shifting out of that mindset of cancer is the enemy of evil. I have to fight it. And then when I’ve won and then I move on and I leave it in tatters, it’s actually moving beyond that and realizing in order to practice proactive prevention afterwards, okay, I better embrace this cancer because it’s around me.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:26:49) – It may not be active in me, but I’m living with it from a point of view that I need to be vigilant from now on. Because there again, is this divergent. You know, when you diverge from strict conventional oncology care into integrative oncology care, once treatment is over and you know, that’s it, you kind of are released. And then the only other kind of marker you have is very often the five year mark. And then you cure it, you know. And that’s way to limiting. So the integrative oncology care is a lot more proactive. You are a lot more engaged and it needs to be a lot more disciplined. So, you know, there’s extensive bloodwork you can do to look for potential microscopic activity that you could then track. There is so many things that you can do in a structured way, where you can keep an eye on things a lot more closely than what conventional care offers you at the moment. Just that alone is very empowering, might be very overwhelming. So you have to be cognizant of the type of personality that’s sitting opposite of you on the screen, or what’s their nervous system health like, you know, what are their stress management techniques? Those areas to me in my nutrition counseling is part and parcel of everything is how do we deal with that? Because, you know, if you have a nervous Nellie versus someone who can just take all kinds of blows, you have to approach them differently.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:28:12) – It doesn’t mean that a nervous Nellie will remain a nervous Nellie. It’s a bit more of a challenge, or it takes a bit longer, because you really want the individual out of their own accord to get there and have that moment, you know, which then I consider myself having been successful if I can guide such a personality to the point where they themselves realise I need to change, that, I overreact, I go down this path. Why am I doing that to myself when they get to that point and are able to work on that? And just coming to terms with the fact that working on your health is a lifelong mission, and you will constantly find challenges. You never, ever going to get to a point where you’re over the hump. You might be cancer free, but there are a lot of other things. And I can give you examples if you want to hear from my own health. Because this year I’m 12 years out of my second breast cancer diagnosis. Right? So 12 years past double mastectomy, a second round of chemotherapy, seven weeks of radiation therapy, round two of targeted antibody therapy, which is each a year long at a total of two years.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:29:23) – What’s your life like? Right. Doing all the monitoring that I’m doing all the time. But now, you know you’ve been in menopause for 12 years. Slap bang being thrown into it early 40s right now. You notice it suddenly you’re in 50s. You’ve been in menopause for so long, and there’s lots of things happening with your body that you now need to focus on so that you can age gracefully and embrace this longevity. I’m not thinking of cancer at that moment. I’m just thinking of I want to remain strong and active and physically fit and, you know, not dry up as a prune. You know, that kind of thoughts going. My heart health was affected by treatment. I had to focus on the heart health because cardiovascular health and woman is so, so, so very important. So again, I know what to look out for. You know, becoming cognizant of when you get messages from your body and understanding what those messages could potentially be. So that’s another whole chapter that you can focus on dealing with your clients, helping them identify that and just embracing the reality of it.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:30:23) – That’s what your life is like. Things will pop up and then you will deal with them. It’s not like you’re going to just be fit and thriving forever. No. How do we then approach it? And how do we the same old, same old? From an integrative point of view. Has anything changed? Have I started adopting certain habits that could potentially be contributing to that? Have I stopped doing certain health enhancing things that I have done before? Have I moved? Have I moved into an area Houston, Texas, where suddenly I’m sweating a lot, right? Because of the high humidity, I suddenly need a lot more electrolytes than before, just constantly thinking in a holistic way and then addressing them and going, oh wow, that made a difference. Now I feel better again, right?

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:31:13) – It’s so true. I think what you’re saying is there’s this combination of teaching our clients to begin to notice the things that maybe they had ignored. You know, I’m sweating more. I’m more fatigued. Why is that? You know what could have changed? Moving to Houston.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:31:32) – It was funny. We just put a sauna in our backyard here in Connecticut, and we lived in Houston for ten years ish off and on. And one of our friends from down there and posted when I posted a picture of that sauna, she was like, oh, my husband’s originally his hometown is really Houston, Texas, and she’s like, now Mark can feel it home by just like walking into the sauna in the backyard. So I think there’s the balance of two things. One is being able to sense the physical sensations when things are different without being hyper vigilant to the point of that kind of chronic anxiety. Right. And then the second part is looking at more nuanced markers around things like metabolic health and immune health. What are some of the things that you actually like to track over time, whether it’s through wearable devices or lab testing? What are some of those things that are really valuable to give that kind of annual? Just stay on top of it perspective?

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:32:40) – The cancer trend lab work that I do with LabCorp, they draw 19 vials of blood.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:32:45) – So it’s very extensive. There is the whole diabetic panel in detail, watching my glucose, insulin metabolism in my instance, noticing how we had a tragic episode with one of our dogs that affected me in a different way, in a much more substantial way than what I would have expected it to. That had an influence on my cortisol levels, had an influence on my hemoglobin A onesie, my three month basically average glucose metabolism, which was a wow moment for me because, you know, the results come back and go, okay, I haven’t really changed what I eat and so on. And then realizing elevated stress, elevated stress hormones has a direct effect on your glucose metabolism going, oh really? Could that have been. But I thought I was coping pretty well those conversations. Right. So the diabetic panel obviously a detailed cardiovascular panel looking at not just total cholesterol but everything around it. And side note, you know, once you’ve been in menopause for so long, guess what? And I don’t have to go through hormone therapy.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:33:47) – But you know, those of us who do, you know, your total cholesterol will probably be elevated, right? And LDL will probably be elevated. And it’s got nothing to do with how you’re eating, because I know how I eat. So there are other factors around that. Inflammation markers a whole host of inflammation markers. Where are you at there. Then we look at they are cancer biomarkers. You can look at just to see is there a trend, you know, certain cancer biomarkers related to certain types of cancers. So we look at those.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:34:14) – Things like CA 125. That’s what we’re talking about.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:34:18) – Yeah 53. Exactly. So give an example. So my CA 53, ever since I started tracking it it has always been flagged high. So it’s like always just kind of just a little high. But that seems to be my norm okay. So what I don’t want to see is an upward trend over time, right? So that’s another thing is, you know, when you get results back and something is elevated, you know, don’t have an immediate panic attack, but understand what could potentially feed into it.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:34:48) – And then depending on what the market is, you either test again in three months or six months or even just a year and see if there’s an upward trend or not. Okay.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:34:56) – And I think that’s what’s so valuable about tracking over time consistently, like having people work with you for years, even if they don’t see all the time. Just have that check ups, if you will.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:35:07) – Yes, yes. I mean, I have a spreadsheet where all that information is in so that it’s easy visible. If I ever go and see a different doctor, it’s so easy. You just go, here’s my stuff. And when instance they can see it, a trend or not a trend. And I’ve had those things happen where, you know, test comes back and you go, oh, where’s a bit elevated here? And then I had it recently where one vial must have, I don’t know, gone off. I had values there that were shooting through the roof and it was like, okay, we run those again, like, am I right? Because that can’t really be okay.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:35:38) – Right? Right.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:35:40) – And you know, it was exactly that. So they came back into the range. They are more or less normally at I look at my thyroid health, hormone health. I do look at bone health, understanding bone health as well. What’s going on there in terms of just again now you sliding into this. All right. As a woman menopause now for so many years you know started menopause pretty young you know how do I ensure that certain parts like my heart health, like my bone health are optimized again, okay. Despite the food choices that you take, I am on a very rigorous supplement program that I supervised and so on is adjusted and so on. But it is that concentrated nutrition is parcel of my life. I’m not doing any hormone replacement therapy. I know that sometimes bioidentical hormones are an option even for women who’ve had breast cancer. I personally am not at that stage yet where I want to engage in that. So what I’m doing through a master herbalist naturopathic oncologist, I am on a very specific tailor made for me herbal botanical regiment, a traditional Chinese herbs, and I’ve noticed.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:36:50) – Speaking of time in the year that I’ve been on that now, because that’s another thing I’m sidetracking here. Every year you go, what am I going to do different? Because when we are long term cancer survivors, we have to be on our toes and we have to introduce little things. And I’ll get back to that just now. I just want to finish my other thought here. So now, a year later, the strategy was I’m starting to have little rheumatoid arthritis issues in joints and so on. Can I do something about that? Okay. First of all, established, is that anything physical structural, you know, the usual. No. Okay. All good. Dexa bone density scan. All good. Okay. So okay. So it’s probably the lack of estrogen. What else can I do. So I’m on this regimen and I’m now a year later really can say it has made a mark. My hip pain is gone.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:37:43) – That’s amazing.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:37:44) – It’s like a year right. And I introduced specific weight bearing muscle strengthening exercises to under supervision of a personal trainer because I didn’t want to do anything wrong.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:37:53) – So again I’m not just suddenly relying on this concoction. I’m doing other things that I added in as well. Thinking long term health again so that teaching clients, if I can summarize teaching clients that it’s never just one thing.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:38:09) – Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know, it’s important for people to be aware that, as you said, you know, if you have a relatively younger cancer diagnosis and treatment and experience, and for in your case, it happened twice in your relatively younger years, there are other things that can happen. Hormonal shifts do cause, you know, low estrogen does cause musculoskeletal pain, which many people aren’t aware of. That and physical therapy and fitness training for strengthening the area, doing more bone building, maybe building a little extra because we know for older women, you know, one of the bigger risks is actually being not heavy enough, ideally with muscle more than fat. But, you know, for kind of building your older woman resilience, it’s more about gaining muscle weight, which is challenging to do when you’re in a low estrogen, low testosterone situation.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:39:08) – One quick question I had on your protocol or your lab testing, do you look at fasting insulin and oral glucose tolerance, or, you know, an insulin that’s challenged or, you know, how do you look at insulin? Because metabolic issues are so much related to cancer.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:39:25) – I just LabCorp just do fasting glucose, fasting insulin and then hemoglobin A1. See sometimes the estimated average glucose if need be. So at this point if it depends of course if they are issues and you know, sometimes we have clients whose A1 C is just rising and yet it’s not nutritionally related. And it’s also not necessarily cortisol related. So those are the more complex cases. When you then start looking into what else could be metabolically going on here that is revving that up. But yes, you know, insulin like growth factors. Another you know, hormone we look at too because that can also be regulated by dietary choices initially. Right. That’s the kind of first step that you try. So, you know, the metabolic health depends on how the client comes to you, right.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:40:14) – Have they had issues with that before? If yes, then of course that becomes one hot topic area that we focus on education wise as well, but also from a regulatory point of view. And sometimes we have to do very targeted supplements. You know, berberine helps a lot. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes we do need to go to metformin, maybe just for a period. Okay. But it depends. I mean as you know, other factors could be playing into that, you know, other dysregulation in the body. So we have to understand what else could be fueling it or is behind it.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:40:48) – Have you seen much use of the GLP one agonists in your population yet? No. Okay. Yeah. To me that’s a very interesting place to keep an eye on the research. I mean, I know it’s quite new in circulation, but we’re seeing so much benefit to all these inflammatory conditions that are sort of seen as side effects to the original goal of weight loss and diabetes. But I really think there’s something to be seen there for some of these kind of underlying causes of cancer that people don’t really think of as underlying causes of cancer, the metabolic syndrome, the chronic inflammation, the, you know, autoimmune type issues.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:41:27) – So because they’re very often not aware that they even have it, isn’t it. It very often hasn’t manifested yet. And, you know, I wish the type of more extensive lab testing that we do afterwards, I wish people would do that proactively before or see the need for it to, you know, now, afterwards, we’re looking for trends. We’re looking for microscopic changes. We should do that before to understand what’s brewing that we are not aware of. Because by the time we feel things, we have the symptoms often in these, you know, cardiovascular issues, metabolic issues and so on. And then we’ve been living with that, with the development of that for a couple of years. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know that before and addressing issues before I had a triathlete, but he was diagnosed stage four prostate cancer already and, you know, not aware of how much inflammation was being caused by that hard core physical exercise. Just not aware think, you know, because the person obviously was extremely fit, felt fit, felt healthy, looked fit, Healthy.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:42:35) – But there was a dysregulated glucose metabolism for a very long time. But not fully manifested. Not something that flags as high yet, but just about. But didn’t know it. And I’m not saying that caused it its way. I wish it was that simple, but it’s just something you could have focused on in this proactive prevention mindset. And then, you know, how do we change things? How do we optimize this environment. Because that wasn’t optimized, you know. So I just wish that in general I’m speaking for all of us. We would be motivated enough before to do what is right and not wait to be shocked into action.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:43:17) – Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, this is so valuable. I think. You know, that whole idea of, first of all, having some resources of how to find and collaborate with integrative oncologists is so important. And then how you really work with clients in a very personalized approach, starting with an extensive panel that just gives us things to track, in addition to being mindful of those messages that people get from their own bodies.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:43:49) – I so appreciate it. And we didn’t really have time to dig too much into this, but one of the things I love most about your work is that real focus on joyful, beautiful, delicious cooking. Not this sense of restriction. And you know, because I completely agree with you that bringing the joy in the midst of this challenge, and bringing the deliciousness and the beauty and making food, wanting to be eaten. Because for especially for people in the midst of acute cancer, just keeping weight on can be a real challenge. I love all of your cooking stuff. So is there any last things you would like to share or where people can find you if they’d like to work more with you.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:44:36) – My website. It’s my first name, Kirsten’s Cancer Care. Com so my first name and then an s. So here’s teen s cancer care. Com and I offer a, you know, 15 minute assessment call that can be booked there. You can purchase my book there. And you know the blog has a couple of things.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:44:56) – Got recipes there to. And so yeah, I mean, that’s the main source or, you know, Facebook or Instagram and find me and LinkedIn. Those are my kind of the main places that you can find me.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:45:07) – Excellent, excellent. Well, thank you so much for sharing this perspective and those really powerful clinical pearls and just your in-depth experience with this population, starting with your own experience, which is such an important driver for the meaningfulness of the work that you do. So thank you for being here and I hope we can get together again soon.

Kirstin Nussgruber (00:45:31) – Thanks so much for having me, and it’s been an honor and pleasure to be on your podcast. So stay healthy and keep on doing all the fantastic work that you’re doing. We’re all benefiting from it.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:45:42) – Thanks so much. You too. I hope you enjoyed that episode with the brilliant Kirsten Scrubber. She is a wonderful support resource for anyone who is struggling with a family history of cancer and wants to prevent cancer in their own lives, wants to support someone else with cancer, or wants to be fully supported through and beyond cancer treatment to a thriving, healthy life for years and decades to come.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:46:17) – One of the things I want you to notice in that episode, and bring back to your practice, is that cancer is not just something that happens out of the blue. It’s just like every other complex chronic illness. There are environmental factors, there are genetic factors, and there are individual factors that we can encourage the improvement of for our clients. And this is everything from metabolic health to immune health to digestive and gut microbiome health. And so as you are helping your clients to optimize their health on all levels, all systems, and even by bringing in much more joy in their lives, grounding their recovery or their optimization of their health in step one of the IUI protocol of Nervous System regulation. This will do everything to help all complex chronic illnesses, including something as can be as scary as cancer. So don’t skip the foundations. Start with step one help your clients bring more joy into their lives. Bring more joy into your life and start with nervous system regulation. Thanks so much for being with us today.

Dr. Jessica Drummond (00:47:34) – I’ll see you next time. Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. Please share this episode with a colleague and if you loved it, hit that subscribe or follow button on your favorite podcast streaming service so that we can do even more to make this podcast better for you and your clients. Let’s innovate and integrate in the world of women’s health.