Hot Flashes: Part 3 Talkin’ ‘bout More Treatments

Hot Flashes- Talkin' 'Bout More Treatments 
 

Tina: Hello and welcome to the cancer pod. This podcast is for education, entertainment and informational purposes only. Do not apply any of this information without first speaking to your doctor. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast by the hosts and their guests are solely their own. 

Leah: Hey Tina. 

Tina: Hi Leah, How are you doing? 

Leah: I am doing really well. I am really psyched that this is the last installment. This is the third P in our pod on hot flashes.  

Tina: Perfect. The P in the pod, I mean. I know, that's a lot of alliteration. That's us. Alright, let's go. So was there anything you wanted to talk about before we get talking about nutrients and hot flashes? 

Leah: Yeah. I wanted to just kind of mention inclusivity. We try to be inclusive in how we speak our experiences with cancer patients are what they are. So, whereas I might say, she for a breast cancer patient and, you know, my male, prostate cancer patients, that's what I've seen. I've had one male breast cancer patient. 

So I do try to use the word patient instead of saying he or she. So we're trying with our words to express that we do understand that it's not gender specific.  

Tina: Yes. If we can strike a balance and be as gender neutral as possible, that is what we strive to be here.  

Leah: But we do slip up every once in a while, but I wanted our listeners to know that we are trying to be mindful. 

Tina: Yes. And if they feel compelled to correct us or call our attention, just be gentle. It's okay. To be constructively critical. Just be constructive  

Leah: On All aspects of what you are listening to.  

[laughter]  

Tina: In every way, shape and form. We're open to suggestions and even corrections or conversations, but yeah, just be nice. 

Leah: Be nice.  

Tina: Be nice, it's free. 

Leah: That's right. So wise.  

Tina: All right. So, onward and forward. What are we talking about?  

Leah: We are talking about nutritional supplements, diet and lifestyle, all of the other kinds of things that we haven't mentioned already in our previous pharmaceutical and phytoestrogen pod/ podcast. So, I wanted to start off today talking about kind of like the favorite of mine. 

Tina: All right. Let's start with your favorite. 

Leah: Start with my favorite: magnesium.  

Tina: Love it. 

Leah: Yeah. Magnesium is awesome. And I use it, I'm sure you do it the same way, where you look for any sort of functional signs of magnesium deficiency. And those would be things like anxiety, muscle cramping, constipation, and those would be the patients you would probably gravitate ...I would definitely gravitate towards using the magnesium because yeah, it's just awesome.  

Tina: Yeah. I'm going to give a little, a little clinical pearl for this one now.  

Leah: Nice.  

Tina: I just thought of it. So one of the things clinically that is a giveaway for magnesium deficiency is eye twitching. The little muscles in the face twitching, like, you know, just above your lip, your eye, over your eye, those little muscles. When they twitch it is more likely to be magnesium, whereas like Charlie horses in the thigh are more likely to be calcium. 

Leah: Interesting. 

Tina: Little clinical pearl ,who knows where it came from, handed down for generations I'm sure.  

Leah: Fascinating.  

Tina: There you go. Yeah. Something for the next cocktail party you're invited to. Hey, did you know  

Leah: Someone's eye is twitching... you're in like a zoom meeting and you're like, magnesium! Are you constipated too? And, because we are naturopathic doctors, we talk about poop all the time.  

Tina: It's true.  

Leah: So, yeah. So magnesium is kind of a good one. If you tend towards diarrhea, loose stools, I would just kind of be careful about that. There are different things that the magnesium is bound to. 

So something like magnesium oxide would be poor absorption. 

Tina: Right.  

Leah: So that would be better for somebody who was really constipated.  

Tina: Yes, because if you're constipated, you don't want the magnesium to go in your bloodstream. You want it to stay in your colon and pull in water with it and loosen your stool that way. 

That's what magnesium oxide does as opposed to magnesium citrate, magnesium aspartate, magnesium malate. There's a lot of magnesiums out there  

Leah: ...that have different, but better absorptions yes.  

Tina: Yes, they're all better absorbed than the oxide form, which.... that study for hot flashes in women with that did show magnesium helped. .. that was a small study...did use magnesium oxide. Yeah. So that shows you how little they needed. You know, they didn't absorb a lot of that. A lot of that to stay in their colon. That's added to the, you know, whatever their septic or sewer system is. 

That's to put it politely.  

Leah: It was flushed down the toilet.  

Tina: There you go.  

Leah: So, yeah, so, so that's, that's the, that's the big favorite. I have used in the past a few other things like vitamin E, mixed tocopherols.  

Tina: Yup.  

Leah: You know, I don't tend to use that with patients who are on Tamoxifen.  

Tina: There is that evidence that we've talked about before. 

Leah: Yeah. Where there is some interaction between the vitamin E and the Tamoxifen. Again, it was a super small study, but with my background working in hospitals where you are private practice. We were both trained in cancer centers and I stayed there and you moved on to private practice. And so I am used to being a little bit more conservative because I have oncologists to... who are going to ask a lot of questions, basically.  

Tina: Well, in, in, in that setting as well, I think hospital settings have to be much more careful, right? In general, just because dispensing chemotherapy or they're inpatients, or, yeah.  

Leah: And you know, there's a lot, a lot of stuff going on. So my recommendations you'll hear me a lot saying like, oh, but this is contraindicated with this, but that's just because some study out there that someone's going to see and we're like, okay, let's just, let's just be neutral.  

Tina: Yep. Yes. And, and some of the, some of the data. The vitamin E data, but some of the data in a dish might be translated in a hospital setting to say, don't even do it because we had this little cell study that said it could interact. 

Whereas in the real world cell studies and what happens in a human body are very, very different for all things, whether it's contra-indications or indications. So I'm just saying that now, because generally we throw out all the information that happens in a dish, except when it has to do with interactions between natural agents and drugs. 

Leah: Yeah.  

Tina: You know, 'cause any risk is too much sometimes.  

Leah: Exactly. Exactly. So you had a really great way of seeing if vitamin E worked for your patients.  

Tina: Oh yeah. So yeah. So what I have people do is get mixed tocopherols, which is a mixture of several different forms of vitamin E and just go straight to taking an 800 IU before bed, which is usually, or many times it's when hot flashes or night sweats are the worst. 

And if it works, it works. And if it doesn't, don't buy another bottle. So that's kind of how I do it. And it's, it's kinda, to me, it's one of those things that has an on-off, you know, there works or it doesn't, I don't have a lot of people wavering in between.  

Leah: It kind of works, but yeah, no... exactly. That's how I feel about all of these, these things that I'm, I'm chatting here about. The other one, that's kind of a " it works or it doesn't" I find is hesperidin. Hespiridin, derived from the pith of citrus fruits and thinking about it, hesperidin was one of those things I would recommend if the person also had allergies. 

Tina: That makes sense.  

Leah: Right? Because it's action on... what am I doing? What's my hand ... the... the... 

Tina: You're doing something that looks like a clam shell opening and closing.  

Leah: No, no, it's like the vascular... 

Tina: Oh, vascular integrity? There you go. Yeah. Yeah, it, it, it basically does that. And it also stabilizes mast cells for allergies. Right?  

Leah: Yeah. 

Tina: So that cellular membrane- whether it's the blood vessels or the mast cells- by stabilizing them, there's less histamine release for allergies with hesperidin. 

It makes sense that maybe in the background its role for hot flashes has to do with vascular integrity, again, like helping blood vessels stabilize and function and not be kind of susceptible to the hair-trigger of dilating or opening up, which is what a hot flash is, is when, when people have a hot flash and their skin turns red, that redness is the blood vessels near the skin dilating. 

And you know, that's part of the whole sweat process in a hot flash.  

Leah: Yeah, that kind of creeping red that yes. And then the drench that comes back down. The patients that I mostly used hesperidin with were patients with breast cancer who were not currently in chemotherapy, because there is some potential for interaction with both the taxane part of chemotherapy, as well as the cyclophosphamide part of chemotherapy. 

Which is the most common regimen that I've seen patients getting for breast cancer. I would tend to use it with my prostate cancer patients and it was like it was hit or miss some, it worked for some it didn't, but once the patients were on like an aromatase inhibitor for breast cancer, then I would try it, but I think there's some aromatase inhibition in it as well. So who knows, it all got complicated? I don't think it's cheap. So I don't know if it's really something that I went for unless the person really had allergies and they found it helped with their allergies.  

Tina: Yeah. If there was other indications for it. Right? 

Leah: Right.  

Tina: That's often the case with these things.  

Leah: So that's my hesperidin story.  

Tina: Alright, I like it. 

Leah: Thanks. Moving on. Moving on to gamma oryzanol. And the only place I saw that really used, I mean, I think it is in formulas for hot flashes- like, you'll see that on hot flash formulas. But I remember it being used when I was in my residency and then it stopped being used, but I thought it was because the company we used to order it from stopped making it. 

Tina: Well, that'll do it. 

Leah: That's why it was used less. Cause we couldn't get a good source for it.  

Tina: Okay. And I've never really used gamma oryzanol. Also. I don't have a good, you know, kind of first, second hand account of that. It just never made the map for me. I think the evidence wasn't strong. I do remember in some formulas, especially if there were some protein powders and things that are put in it's from a rice bran, right? 

Leah: Rice bran oil, yeah, bran oil.  

Tina: So it seemed pretty innocuous in that sense. I don't, I don't remember not using it with any thought that it was harmful. I just never, it never made the map for me.  

Leah: And yeah, because it wasn't really available... I remember it being talked up a lot, but I never, I never really used it. It was just something in my training. Something else that I was actually was recommended to me by a gynecologist. That was the Swedish flower pollen. The brand name is Relizin. It's one of the brand names and it's a non estrogenic formula. I think it came out of Europe. And it's not bee pollen. It's specific, this flower pollen. And there were like super, super small studies, but they looked at it and it did not in any way alter the metabolism of at least Tamoxifen. It also was not estrogenic. So it's this non-hormonal apparently safe. As you know, it's like a brand name, product that I've seen. There might be other brands too, but... 

Tina: I'm going to check that out. I don't know of it.  

Leah: It's super interesting. Super, super interesting. But yeah, I, I didn't take it because...  

Tina: Relizin, is it R E L I Z E N?  

Leah: Yes.  

Tina: Okay. Can I, I'm going to put a little tidbit in here too, 'cause that's what I do. If people are interested in looking up things, what I honestly do when there is a proprietary formula, I go to their website first, knowing that I'm getting a bias representation of whatever the product is. But if there are studies on it, they're going to post them because it's in their best interest. So I always start with, with them, with the actual company that makes a proprietary product and say, you know, do you have any studies suggesting that this works? If they have zero human studies, then there probably aren't any human studies out there. Because, obviously they'd post them that they had them. So I'm just saying that, saying that as a kind of shortcut, instead of like going to Google scholar or pub med and trying to find it. You know, the company, if it's in their best interest, they're going to put it out there.  

Leah: Do you want to know what my shortcut is? 

Tina: Yeah.  

Leah: I go to Memorial Sloan Kettering. They have an herbs and supplements database and they have the studies listed and they have the information on the complimentary product, whatever it is directed for patients. And then they have one for healthcare practitioners. That's the more in-depth one. 

And at the end they have all the studies. That's my cheat.  

Tina: All right. And they probably tell you when it was last updated on there.  

Leah: Yep. That's always where I start and then I kind of, then I tumble down the rabbit hole. So that's, that's kind of it for like those like specific nutraceutical things. 

There are so many other things that can be helpful, acupuncture.  

Tina: Oh, yes.  

Leah: I don't have much to say about it other than it works. And it's amazing. And I used it during chemo. I used it after chemo to help with the hot flashes. It, it helps with so much, so I don't need to go into studies, just acupuncture. 

Tina: Yeah. Acupuncture and even acupressure to an extent once people learn that. I mean, I would get the acupuncture done, see if that works. And if so, talk your acupuncturist about, about what you can do, you know, with acupressure points.  

Leah: Oh yeah. Maybe like in the ear, maybe there's some specific points that, because I'm not aware of them for hot flashes specifically, but it's addressing the whole person, right? It's addressing any sort of stress, aches and pains.  

Tina: And of course, if you have other symptoms that are lingering, like, I don't know, insomnia neuropathy, anxiety, whatever. Acupuncture is treating the full body, not just symptoms.  

Leah: Yeah. Yeah. So you're not going in, "it's just going to address your hot flashes."  

Like you might fall asleep on the table, even though you've had insomnia. Gold star! Acupuncture!  

Tina: Acupuncture. Yeah. We'll have a star rating system at some point. [laughter]  

Leah: Oh yeah, that'd be cool. [laughter] And then the other thing is like the diet part of it, and that's what kind of triggered this conversation in the very first place was my finding that article on a vegan diet reducing menopausal symptoms, but it wasn't a cancer related article. I was just kind of like, this is really interesting. It talks about plant based diet and hot flashes and you could easily translate it to a cancer patient.  

Tina: Yup. yup. and a plant-based diet in general will always be less inflammatory to the body, then an omnivore or a carnivore diet. Right? So there's, there's, I think there's also conscientious sourcing of animal products that people should be aware of... that we are what we eat, but the animal is what it ate as well. So if the cow ate grass that has omega three fatty acids in it, you know, that's one of its main constituents of its fat when it goes to slaughter. 

And if it ate corn in the last six months, just to get that good marbling, all that marbling is omega six or more pro-inflammatory fatty acid profile. So it's important to realize that, I think, for people when they're sourcing their foods, that that counts towards whether it's inflammatory or not so inflammatory. 

Leah: Oh, for sure. And the plant based... well, this was a vegan diet. It was a vegan diet that was high in soy foods. So it wasn't soy isolate. It was soy food. So that's the whole you know, soy phytoestrogen part tha we had touched on.  

Tina: Yep. Yep. We talked about it in the last, the last episode.  

Leah: Yeah. So plant-based diet. I mean, I like plant-based diet instead of just saying vegan diet, because then that way you can, if you enjoy having grass fed meat or your organic chicken, you can still have it and you're not going to have this guilt of like, oh, I'm a sort of vegan, cause there's no such thing. You're a vegan or you're not a vegan, but plant based plant influenced diet. That's kind of how I say things.  

Tina: So can we...can we agree that at least two thirds, maybe three quarters of the plate should be plant-based?  

Leah: Oh yeah, absolutely.  

Tina: I think that it's a good visual to have for people because you know, depending on where you live and how you grew up, you might've grown up where the steak takes up half the plate easily. 

Leah: Oh yeah. And for both of us having worked in the Midwest, you know, that's, that's a huge part of an American diet. Especially working with farmers who are like, you're trying to tell them not to do dairy and they're like, "I'm a dairy farmer." And then you remove your foot from your mouth and you're like, let's try cutting back on dairy. 

Tina: You know, and ultimately isn't that everything, that moderation idea of, you know, you want to it's okay. Most things are okay. I'm even going to go out on a limb and say, if you drive through you're on a road trip and you drive through Taco Bell, or McDonald's, it's not going to shorten your lifespan. You know what I mean? Like ... there's poisons out there, but not a lot of them are going to be served in a restaurant. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. Avoid arsenic to zero. You know no arsenic is good, but if you wake up one morning in the middle of nowhere and you need to eat something by noon, because you're taking a road trip and McDonald's is the only thing there, then, you know, really ? Is that really going to change anything in your life? I don't think so, once, here and there.  

Leah: You might regret it afterwards. [laughter] 

Tina: Yeah, no, if you're an addict I have had addicts... 

Leah: No, I just mean like, in terms of no, I mean like a little indigestion or something. If you're not, you're not used to eating something like that,  

For sure, yes, it might  

Tina: throw your body off if you're used to eating a good clean diet, but I'm saying that because unless you're like, a former addict of, of the drive-throughs and fast foods where this is a slippery slope in one visit means that you can't stop after that. That's different. But I'm just saying this because I want to put everything in context of, of a real world life, you know? 

Leah: Yeah. And I, I'm a big fan of what was it? Meatless Mondays. Like if it's hard to just shift to a majority plant-based diet, then try meatless Monday, or you can buy some of those like the plant-based cheeses. And use that every once in a while you have your regular cheese, you got your plan, you know, just to start shifting those in it doesn't have to be an all or nothing. 

Just start introducing things, introduce a vegetable. If you're not used to eating vegetables, introduce one vegetable. Don't try taking things out. I'm not a big fan of taking things out because that just creates animosity. So just to add something in.  

Tina: And real food.  

Leah: And yeah, there's no label on it, except maybe it's a little thing you scan to say apple, that kind of thing. 

Tina: Yeah. So real a real food diet. It seems more important than...  

Leah: Real food diet. 

Tina: Real food plant, heavy. 

Leah: Plant heavy. I like that.  

Tina: It's hard to play it heavy cause they don't weigh a lot.  

Leah: Plant forward. It's a plant forward diet.  

Tina: I've actually heard that term used and ... 

Leah: You don't like it?  

Tina: No. [laughter] 

Leah: Oh, I have a whole pork forward story that's too long for right now, but that's, that's our inside joke here is, is something is "forward." 

Tina: It's kind of one of those hedgy terms that they use in corporate America. That ... it seems meaningless to me. It's like terms like "wheelhouse" and things like that. There's certain terms I'm just like, "really?" I don't know, they're so corporate-y.  

Leah: That's okay, 'cause we're coming "down the pike." Moving on. [laughter] 

Tina: All right, let's go. 

Leah: Okay. So the, the, the other big trigger that we discussed before is stress, and so stress management, which is so easy to say, and it's so hard to do, especially with a cancer diagnosis. Finding ways to reduce stress. So whatever your way is, whether it's meditation, prayer, counseling, support groups. 

Tina: Kick-boxing. 

Leah: Exercise, just beating up a boxing bag, whatever those things are called, punching bag? Just, you know, I wanted to get? I used to, do you remember those things? They were like blow up toys? They were big and kind of like Weeble-shaped and it was like Superman or something and you could punch them and then they'd come back up? 

I remember in my residency wanting to find out where they, if they still make those things. Because there's so much stress going on in, in everything that you're doing... 

Tina: Wait, wait, so are you saying there's so much stress, you just wanna hit something?  

Leah: Yeah. I mean... 

Tina: I like the side of you. [laughter] 

Leah: [laughter] Something that you're not going to hurt! So it's like, someone's like, "oh, hit a pillow." No, hit the little bouncy blow up thing that we had as kids. Those were fun and it bounces back up and you hit it again. That's, that's my thing. But also... you know what, the other reason I like it cause it's silly. It's silly. I think silliness helps with stress. 

Tina: Yes. Especially when you hit it hard enough that it hits the floor and it comes up and hits you back.  

Leah: Totally. 

Tina: You know, it kind of hits the floor bounces right back and you'd take it on a chin. That's really funny. Of course, you have to be short to take it on the chin, but whatever.  

Leah: I just think that, that, as we mentioned last time, it's a hard thing to manage when you're going through what you're going through. Cancer is stressful on many, many levels. Finding something to laugh at is a perfect way to release stress, which if you get into a laughing fit, who knows that might trigger hot flashes, but you're laughing. And then that just makes you laugh more. I don't know.  

Tina: I like this idea of outlets, right? Like whether it's laughter or it's, you know, screaming into a pillow, or punching, you're going to let it out somehow, so you may as well do it in a constructive fashion because or else it's going to ooze out inappropriately at... I don't know... the repairman who's 10 hours late.  

Leah: Or those the people on the road who are driving alongside you and... 

Tina: Yes, Road rage.  

Leah: Road rage right. So that's kind of encompassing the diet lifestyle portion of this is managing stress, a plant-based/ heavy/ forward diet. So those are, those are kind of like the main, the main part of it. There are a few more things that people can do. It's not really addressing the cause necessarily, but they can help with the, the symptoms, you know, like quick management of a hot flash. Peppermint oil, that was introduced to me by a patient who she would dab peppermint oil on her pulse points. 

So back of her neck, under/sides of her neck on her wrists and peppermint oil has that peppermint Patty cooling action, right?  

Tina: Like icy hot, like icy hot. 

Leah: The hot party 

Tina: It feels icy, but it's...yeah. yEah. They call it icy-hot because it does bring blood flow to that particular area at the same time, because it's basically, it's an antispasmodic which relaxes blood vessels right there locally. Yeah. Peppermint oil is a very effective antispasmodic which is why when people have some things they'll put it, you know, obviously this is why we use it on muscle spasms, you know, menthol ,classic.  

Leah: It also, yeah, it also has those components in it that that affect pain receptors. But it can be incredibly cooling as an oil. You can also probably find it as like a mist, you know, try it to make sure that the ingredient is like peppermint oil and water or whatever. Like don't look for things that are peppermint perfume or fragrance. Try to find the real, the real deal. 

 Rose oil rose geranium. Those could be found as hydrosols, which is like an extraction of, is it an oil extraction?  

Tina: Hydrosol is a kind of like a distillation process.  

Leah: Distillation, that's what it is.  

Tina: Yeah. So it's basically grabbing the steam. If you were to make rose tea and you had some had, were capable of steaming it and catching the vapor and collecting it. 

Leah: Oh, I did see a video on how to do that. And those are like really you're using a sauce pan and it was kind of really smart. So yeah. So but you can also find them probably more like Etsy type places, but you know, people make them sell them in cute little stores, boutiques. So hydrosols of Rose and Rose Rose geranium are very cooling. 

There's kind of the cooling mattress, cooling pillow, cooling sheets, because you are having hot flashes night sweats. So trying those things out, I learned that memory foam is like super hot. And it collects moisture. 

Tina: And memory foam, which is not a natural substance is hot, and so is the latex based mattresses that you can get from like, you know, organic mattress stores, those kind of places . The latex based ones that are supposed to be eco-friendly and such can be super hot too. 

Leah: So getting those cooling pads, if you have one of those hot mattresses, that would, that would be really probably, a good move. The thing that I liked to recommend, especially when I lived in in Arizona and worked in Arizona are those cooling neck wraps that you soak in there, like a little beads in them. You soak them in water and then you put it around your neck. It looks like a little scarf. It does drip down your back a little bit, but if it's the summertime and you have to be outside and it's hot, a cooling neck wrap works whether or not you have hot flashes, but it can be helpful in that. There are other pieces like other cooling clothing that is out there. 

Tina: Do they essentially wick the sweat away?  

Leah: I think, I think so. I think some of it is just, it's all natural, maybe bamboo or some sort of fabric that is just naturally cooling,  

Tina: Breathes a little bit better than the rayons and such. Okay. That makes sense.  

Leah: And then I saw online there was a product called Ember, E M B R wave, and it's a little wristband. 

It looked kind of like a Apple watch... had a little square thing or a circle and it somehow it monitors your temperature and it cools you off in some magical way.  

Tina: Oh, a magic wristband.  

Leah: I, you know, if I don't know how something works, I just say it's magic.  

Tina: Yeah. Well, that's kind of nice.  

Leah: Yeah. So those are kind of just like quick tips. I don't know. Do you know any other little quick tips that you can think of off hand?  

Tina: Those are the big ones. I think that, you know, I think everyone kind of learns along the way to layer their clothes and try to be in a temperate space. You know, like if you can control it, I know you can't control it all the time, but we talked about triggers in that first episode, so all of those triggers are, you know, the only other thing that I can think of.  

Leah: Carry a fan either like one of those.... I just did the motion on how you open a fan. Like the ... 

Tina: here I'll give the sound. What she, what she meant when she said fan is, "pddddrrrr."  

Leah: The accordion type folded fans or even those little I've had patients carry the little handheld. 

Tina: Yeah, the a little battery handheld...  

Leah: Yeah, the battery operated, you know, in a pinch those work.  

Tina: So let me ask you this, as a yoga practitioner... you were talking to me about a cooling breath routine, what is that?  

Leah: Oh yes. So there is something called Sitoli, and it is used in yoga for heated situations, whether you're actually feeling hot or, you know, your irritated or somehow feeling heated. It's when you breathe in through a curled tongue, so you curl your tongue. If you're able, if you're not able to curl your tongue, then you just purse your lips and then you sip air through your curled tongue or pursed lips, just a sip, the air, and then exhale through your nose. 

And you just repeat that. And that is a cooling breath in yoga.  

Tina: All right. So when you say curl the tongue, you mean like a straw? 

Leah: Like a straw, yeah. I guess some people can curl it another way. That would be another genetic way of doing it. I saw it referred to as taco tongue. I keep curling my tongue. Yeah, like a straw, you curl your tongue, like a straw. 

If you're unable to do that, because you do not have the gene to allow you to do that, then just [quick breath through pursed lips] 

Tina: The fact that being able to curl your tongue is genetic is just a fascinating little factoid.  

Leah: Yeah. It's like one of those, like things you learn when you're little, you're like, "what's a gene?"  

Tina: Exactly. All right. And then our last...  

Leah: Our last little bit of woo. The one thing that there's really no explanation for it that I can find, but going back to diet, it's every two weeks, rotating pumpkin and flaxseeds with sesame and sunflower seeds and the seeds should be fresh, they should be raw, and preferably unsalted.  

Tina: Okay. 

Leah: And the flax seeds, you can grind them fresh or you can buy them pre-ground but then keep them in your fridge. And I don't know why it works, but it does work. If you don't take seeds, for some reason, don't eat seeds because of like GI issues or whatever, you can also do it with oils. You can alternate every two weeks, the evening Primrose oil with the fish oil. 

So that's the same thing. But for some people it's just easier to just incorporate it into their diet. And I don't know why, but it helps with all kinds of hormonal issues.  

Tina: Well, that's a, that's a whole nother conversation someday. Maybe we should have about, like how our hormones change on a 24 hour and a seasonal variation. 

Leah: That would be interesting.  

Tina: We as humans, I mean, not just me and you. 

Leah: Mine are on a 24 second . Who am I kidding? I have no hormones left. Thanks, cancer. So yeah, so the, the seed cycling, the oil cycling, some people pair it with the moon. Some people pair it with... if they still have a cycle, which cancer patients still can have a cycle or you have to start with the first of the month, if you, if you have no clue whatsoever. That's something to, to, to just try.  

Tina: I can put that under the "why not column" right? Why not try it? 

Leah: Why not? Why not try it? And it's going to sort of push you into that plant forward/ influenced /based diet.  

Tina: Yeah. Try it and see what happens.  

Leah: Yeah. So that's kinda that's that's that's, that's what I got.  

Tina: I like the woo. I want more, woo-woo.  

Leah: We'll try to incorporate some woo.  

Tina: The thing about woo, it's it's... well, I'm sure you could find this on Google, but you know, the more woo-woo you get, the less likely you can actually find that information online. The more unique the information becomes. I'm not saying we need to make up stuff, that's not what I'm saying.  

Leah: No, but there's such, there is random woo. Like, remember the whole leg cramp thing, like, oh, you put a bar of soap in your bed for leg cramps.  

Tina: I had a medical oncologist telling his patients to do that.  

Leah: Yeah, no. And it's like, but then there's a debate as to which soap you use. 

Tina: You gotta use Ivory. 

Leah: That's what I've heard, but I've also heard other brands. So it's, you know it, but it's woo. Like when does that come from? You do it. And so, yeah. So let's try to incorporate a little, we'll have a moment of woo and that's how we'll end our pod. Right?  

Tina: I like it. 

Leah: It's the last P in our pod.  

Tina: This is it. The series of threes that we're going to be doing on each topic. 

Leah: Maybe four, we might do a fourth.  

Tina: Maybe four? Okay. The odd pod.  

Leah: The odd part would be the even number.  

Tina: Love it. All right. So next time, we're going to talk about some of the things that are very confusing for folks out there, right? Like there's there's information telling you. Yay. Do it. No, don't do it right? Like alcohol. 

Leah: Is it good for you? Is it bad for you, right? Good for the heart, bad for the cancer. Yeah.  

Tina: Yeah. So that'll be good.  

Leah: That'll be a lot that might be, that might be a four Peapod.  

Tina: It might be. There's a lot of um, I like to think of it as like, are there virtues in some vices? You know, is it worth it? Is it not? 

Leah: Yeah. Moderation. 

Tina: Ah-huh. Well, don't give away the ending! 

Leah: No, but that's not necessarily the ending, is it?  

Tina: I know, that's the question.  

Leah: Stay tuned. 

Tina: Alright. I guess that'll do for today.  

Leah: Yep. 

Tina: We'll talk to you next time.  

Leah: Alright.  

Tina: That's me, myself and I, by the way, when I say "we." Alright, bye! 

Leah: Bye. 

Thanks for listening to the cancer pod. Remember to subscribe, review and rate us wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and as always, this is not medical advice. These are our opinions. Talk to your doctor before changing anything related to your treatment plan. The Cancer Pod is hosted by me, Dr. Leah Sherman, and by Dr. Tina Kaczor. Music is by Kevin MacLeod. See you next time.