#172: Dr. Kristi Funk - Eat Plants, Crush Cancer
Dr. Kristi Funk, board-certified breast cancer surgeon and Author of Breasts - The Owner’s Manual
Rip welcomes back our cancer-crushing warrior, Dr. Kristi Funk, for her third appearance on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast
Dr. Funk is a board-certified breast cancer surgeon & physician, bestselling author of the book, Breasts - the Owner’s Manual, and women's health advocate. Simply put, she is an encyclopedia of knowledge and a dynamo personality, which is why she’s the perfect expert to dig into the latest in cancer prevention research.
They catch up on some of that research and discuss four healthy lifestyle habits that will minimize your risk of breast cancer and optimize your health for the long haul:
Eating a plant-based diet
Maintaining a healthy weight
Getting regular exercise
Putting the kibosh on your alcohol consumption
One of the big takeaways is learning about easy additions that can have profound benefits - simple things like adding in a little fruit each day or scooping a couple of tablespoons of flax on your food.
These little changes can make a huge difference in slowing cancer down and prohibiting it from growing.
Dr. Funk shoots straight. It doesn’t matter if she’s on Good Morning America, The Rachael Ray Show, or the PLANTSTRONG Podcast, she is always unapologetically promoting the benefits of plants to crush cancer.
Episode Timestamps
10:45 Dr. Funk describer her four-plan attack to reduce the risk of breast cancer.
11:49 Exactly why is eating plants our best defense against breast cancer? What does the research say?
29:00 What about processed plant-based foods?
33:20 Does a late-age pregnancy elevate the risk of cancer?
34:40 What is the median age of getting breast cancer and other important stats about breast cancer risk
39:10 Why in the world should people eat mushrooms?
40:30 Benefits of Exercise - Can it really reduce the chance of breast cancer?
43:00 What is it about alcohol that is a massive contributor to cancer growth?
47:30 Why you should be a Loser when it comes to weight and a quitter when it comes to smoking and drinking
52:30 Pink Lotus - Dr. Funk’s empowering website
56:20 What does the research say about coffee and cancer risk?
58:20 What about drinking sparkling water?
Episode Resources
Watch the Episode on YouTube - https://youtu.be/nXrNPE1nnIQ
Pink Lotus Website - https://pinklotus.com/
Dr. Kristi Funk Intstagram - @drkristifunk
Download the Free Holiday Guidebook - https://plantstrongfoods.com/holiday
Join TEAM PLANTSTRONG and run the Austin Marathon, Half Marathon or 5K with Rip! plantstrongfoods.com/team
Give us a like on the PLANTSTRONG Facebook Page and check out what being PLANSTRONG is all about. We always keep it stocked full of new content and updates, tips for healthy living, delicious recipes, and you can even catch me LIVE on there!
We’ve also got an Instagram! Check us out and share your favorite PLANTSTRONG products and why you love it! Don’t forget to tag us using #goplantstrong 🌱💪
Full YouTube Transcript
Rip Esselstyn:
Sometimes we all need a carrot that's dangling right in front of our noses to help get us out that door on a consistent basis and reach some of our goals. And so I want to dangle a little carrot in front of you here today, and I want you to put this on your calendar, and join me. I am so over the top excited to invite you all to join Team Plantstrong. It is our new national movement to celebrate how the benefits of a whole-food, Plantstrong lifestyle can keep us active, and allow us to move our bodies and feel utterly fantastic. I want to invite you to train with the team, and complete your choice of either a 5k, a half marathon, or even a full marathon. You take your pick of the litter. Now our first event is going to take place here in Austin, Texas on February 19th, and you're all invited to come and finish the race in my hometown of eclectic, iconic, and the capital of Texas, Austin.
But hey, I completely understand if you can't make the trip, you can still complete the goal virtually and earn a medal from this iconic first event. We'll also send you our team Plantstrong racing shirt, and you'll get access to our training plans, coaches, and everything that's inside our private community. If you've never run before, hey, no sweat. You just get over here. Walkers, you're absolutely welcome. Beginners are more than welcome, and season runners, absolutely. We would love for you to partake as we all work together towards this common goal. I can't wait to meet all of you. Come on now. Join Team Plantstrong at plantstrongfoods.com/team.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
So the median age, the average age in America where you get breast cancer is 62, which actually then means that half of women are at, or above 62, and half of women are under 62. And I love dispelling this fear and myth for women, because a lot of women know, yeah, one in eight gets breast cancer. That ultimately is a 12.8% lifetime chance. So if you wake up every morning, thinking you have a 12.8% chance of getting breast cancer diagnosed today, you might feel like you're all going to have it by next summer, right? So if you're 20-something, the chance of getting breast cancer between 20 and 30 is one in 1,479 women. Between 30 and 40, it's one in 209. Between 40 and 50, it's one in 65. Between 50 and 60, it's one in 42. Between 60 and 70, it's one in 28. Between 70 and 80, ding, ding, ding.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
One in 25. So this is our highest risk decade of life in which to get breast cancer, 70 to 80. And then 80 to 90 is one in 33. So when you add in all the one in's that I just went through, you end up with a lifetime risk of one in eight, but it isn't one in eight every day of your life.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn, and welcome to the Plantstrong Podcast. The mission at Plantstrong is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living, and envision a world that universally understands, promotes, and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your Plantstrong journey. And I hope that you enjoy the show.
I am thrilled to welcome back to the Plantstrong podcast for not her first, not her second, but her third appearance on the show, our Cancer Crushing Warrior, Dr. Kristi Funk. She is a board certified breast cancer surgeon and physician. She is a best selling author of the book, Breasts The Owner's Manual. She is an international keynote speaker and women's health advocate. Simply put, she is an encyclopedia of knowledge with a dynamo personality, which is why I love having her on the show to ask questions about the latest in cancer prevention research. Today, we are going to catch up on some of that research, and specifically discuss four healthy lifestyle habits that will help minimize your risk of breast cancer while optimizing your health for the long haul. And who doesn't want those things? Now, the four pillars that we're going to talk about, one, eating a plant-based diet, well that's obviously a bit of a no-brainer considering this is the Plantstrong Podcast.
Two, why maintaining a healthy weight is so important for warding off cancer, and specifically breast cancer. Three, the importance of regular exercise. And lastly, why we want to consider putting the kibosh on our alcohol consumption. And don't turn off the podcast, just listen and take it in. Now, I want you to know that today we spend most of the time on the benefits of plants. And one of the big takeaways for me, was just learning about how easy and simple additions to your diet can have really profound benefits even if you're not plant perfect. And I'm talking about easy things like adding in a little fruit each day, or what a couple tablespoons of flax to your meals can do. But it's these little changes that can even make a huge difference in slowing down cancer and prohibiting it from growing.
And that's what I love about Kristi. It doesn't matter if she's on Good Morning America, the Rachel Ray Show, which by the way, she was just on, or the Plantstrong podcast, she is always unapologetically promoting the benefits of plants to crush cancer. So let's get right down to it with Dr. Kristi Funk. So Kristi, this is the third time that you've joined me on the podcast. The first one, it was episode number 65, for people that want to go back and check it out. Of course, we were talking all about this gorgeous piece of work, Breasts, The Owner's Manual. What a gem this is, truly. After that podcast came out, I had more people that stopped me and told me how much they loved you, loved the interview. I gave away my two copies of the book. I just got this new one in yesterday, so I could hold it up and show it to everybody. But this is a gem, an absolute gem.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Thank you.
Rip Esselstyn:
And then you were also on episode 114, we actually took a segment of you from Plant-Stock. You join us for Plant-Stock 2021, and that was episode 114. So here we are. Who knows what episode this will be, probably in the 180s, or so. But I wanted to revisit with you because this message of yours , it's just so vitally important. I want women to hear about it. Obviously, I think you told me last time that you were on, breast cancer also affects men, right?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Indeed it does. So it's about 1.3 out of every a 100,000 men, so far cry from the one in eight for women. However, men don't realize that they have breasts. So 2,710 will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, and 530 will die. So it is important that men realize that they have breast tissue. Do you want to know a little fun fact about why that is?
Rip Esselstyn:
I would love to, but first before we do...
I want to know this. How do you keep all these numbers in your brain so elaborately and so perfectly, like 2,713? I mean, how do you do that?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
It is an oft repeated stat of mine. So you'll hear me go, "I better look that up," if I don't know what I'm saying.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. So what's the fun fact?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
In utero, the first tiny little fetus, six weeks of life, we are all the greater sex. We are all tiny little baby fetus girls. And then testosterone comes out and ruins it all. But the nipples and the breast bud have already formed. So they just stick around and out for all of men's lives.
Rip Esselstyn:
Isn't that something else? I know certain male friends that actually have a third or a fourth nipple. Do you know what I'm talking about? It kind of, it's running down their side.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
A supernumerary nipple, yes. You know who you're in good company with? Harry Styles.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
So all of you men who feel unmanly with your three nipples, he has four.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow, how did you find that out?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
When I was writing my book and wanted to talk about supernumerary nipples, I just did a little Googling and boom, there he is. Mark Wahlberg has one. Google info. It happens in one per 8,000 people, men and women.
Rip Esselstyn:
My daughter and I, we just went to go see Harry Stiles here in Austin, Texas a couple weeks ago. That guy can rock the house. He is something.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Oh, absolutely shaken that booty. So my friend had taken over just for part of the tour as his tour manager. And so she got us some very fine tickets, five of them, for my three sons, Bobby and I, we all go. I think I'm going to be the coolest mom that these boys have ever seen on the planet. One of them fell asleep, the other one was like, "Eh, so loud." And then the third one was standing there, like, "This is interesting, I'll be screaming, crying teenagers." So it was a little bit like, "Huh, I guess they aren't ready for this." They're 13. I'm like, "What's wrong with you boys?"
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, I'd say 90% of the audience were younger women, younger females.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
So you were the coolest dad in town for sure that night.
Rip Esselstyn:
But I couldn't believe how much love he poured out, and how he just was running around that stage the whole time. He was into it. He was so into it.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I know. I think he feels super grateful for his rise to stardom. I think he even is like, "What am I doing up here?"
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, for sure. So Kristi, you identify yourself as a health warrior. And to me you use a lot of language like couched in that terminology, right? I mean, "We're going to crush cancer," and what's that on your shirt again?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Eat plants, crush cancer
Rip Esselstyn:
There it is, "Crush cancer." Yeah. And the way you talk about phytonutrients and all these wonderful substances that are in plants, I mean, it is really, it gets me when I'm listening to you talk, super jazzed and yeah, I want to be part of that team.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Totally, chew down and swallow some turmeric and blueberries and you're like, "Eh, take that cancer."
Rip Esselstyn:
Exactly. So I want to jump into, and I know you've said this probably a thousand times, but I want to do it, and then I want to dive into a little bit of each of these four things. So you were recently on Rachel Ray.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I was
Rip Esselstyn:
How was that? Was that fun?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Fantastic. She is the funniest host. She just jives with you back and forth. It's so fun. I loved being on her show.
Rip Esselstyn:
You guys had a really fun exchange about mushrooms and fungi, and fun guy and-
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Her fun guy husband. Yeah, it was cute.
Rip Esselstyn:
But I'd love for us to go through the four-plan attack that you've outlined. And I mean, when did you outline this? And I've seen a lot of big celebrities that are helping you get behind this for plan of attack.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Yeah, absolutely. So Dr. Neal Barnard and I had a little powwow four years ago or so, and he was like, "What do you think are the main controllable contributors to breast cancer?" And without hesitation from my evidence-based research, in my opinion, it's going to be eating, well, the risk factors are eating animal protein and fat. So conversely, eat a whole-food plant-based diet. Number two, being overweight or obese. So get to your ideal body weight and stay there. Number three, being sedentary. So bust a move. And number four, drinking alcohol. So cut back or stop.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. So let's start, if you don't mind, I'd like to spend a little time on each one of those.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Love it.
Rip Esselstyn:
So let's start with, okay, you just named four, of those four, if I only want to do one of those four, which one would you recommend? What's the most important?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Eat plants.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay, eat plants.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
[Inaudible 00:14:00] forget it, just-
Rip Esselstyn:
Talk to me about plants and why plants are so important in preventing and reducing our chances of breast cancer?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I think what you need to realize in quite simple terms, is that every time you chew and swallow, you're releasing chemicals and ingredients, like all the little cellular makeup of whatever you chewed and swallowed gets into your bloodstream, gets into your body and starts bathing cells. So you want to think of your cells as sitting in this little bathtub. And if that cell happens to be mutated and is cancerous, you don't want what you just chewed and swallow down to be feeding and fueling it. You don't want it to have its lavender salts and its little rubber ducky, and the bubbles. You need it to be like, in plain water. Like, "This isn't any good," boop, apoptosis, "I think I'll die now." So what feeds and fuels cancer, estrogen, 80% of breast cancers are fed and fueled by estrogen. So your ovaries make estrogen. You don't have to do anything about that, necessarily.
If you have cancer, we sometimes shut them down. But in your natural life, when you go through menopause, maybe we should acknowledge that it's we're done with the estrogen, and find alternatives to hot flashes, mood swings, vaginal dryness, and the rest of menopause's gifts. In other words, don't take excessive estrogen in life. And then number three, don't be overweight. Or at least we'll get into that in more detail. But it has to do with the fact that fat makes yet more estrogen. But the fourth sneaky one that I don't think people think about, is when you chew and swallow down an animal, it was a living being. It had estrogen and you're swallowing it down. And you probably aren't going to find any higher estrogen content in a food than in cheese. Where you've got 10 pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese, you supersize that little cow that was, by the way, recently pregnant or pregnant now. A high estrogenic state, its entire life. The second it can't make milk, gonzo.
So these are high estrogen foods, high IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor, the big daddy that screams at everything, including your cancer to grow, "Grow bigger, grow into metastases." Number three, angiogenesis the birth of blood vessels to a tumor. You have to have angiogenesis occur if you are a cancer that aspires to be bigger than the tip of a ballpoint pen, which of course is every cancer's dream. So angiogenesis, and all of this kind of cascades into chronic inflammation, free radical formation, immune system damage. And now you're just paralyzed when a cell gets damaged, your immune system's like, "I'm so busy over here dealing with all the inflammation, the estrogen, the IGF-1, I, sorry, I didn't see that one happen. Oops, got away."
So plants on the other hand, quell all of that oxidative stress, that madness. One of my favorite studies was a very simple one. I don't think we talked about it before. It has to do with, they took 38 hyperlipidemic men and women and they measured their hourly oxidized LDL cholesterol. So this is a measure of oxidative stress after a meal. Oxidative stress is that thing, it's just pounding at your cells all day long. We're kind of grateful for it in that free radicals make you breathe. So I'm grateful for that. Or if you cut yourself open, brings all the inflammation and healing to that area.
But in excess, it's very damaging. So what happens when you take these 38 men and women and you give them a SAD breakfast, right? Standard American diet, pancakes and eggs, steak and bacon. Then they measure their hourly cholesterol, up, up, up. Noon, hamburger and fries up, up, up, dinner. These people are going to bed every night with fewer antioxidants than when they woke up. So antioxidants are going to quell the oxidative madness. And really the only good place you ever find any antioxidants are in plants. There are 64 times the amount of antioxidants on average found in plants versus animals, for example.
Rip Esselstyn:
Powerful, that's powerful. Super powerful.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
It's so powerful, because especially when you realize a mere wimpy, not wimpy, but just a mere cup of blueberries, which is completely something you could down easily any time of day has the equivalent amount of antioxidants, so one little cup of blueberries, which is 57 calories and 0.3 grams of fat, how many slices of pizza do you think Rip, you would have to eat ... Because your carnivore friends are going to be like, "Ah, come on, there's antioxidants in meat and cheese."
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, is this TGIF pizza? Or where's the pizza from?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Domino's. Cheese pizza from Domino's.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay, I'm going to say eight slices.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
27.5.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's ridiculous, right?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
For a mere 7,590 calories and 323 grams of fat. Or you can have the cup of blueberry. So back to our hyperlipidemic peeps. Okay, this is the beauty of the study. This will transform your eating forever. Even if you are just moving yourself closer, your plant forward and not totally plant-based, listen and learn. Same people next day, same SAD meal. Pancakes and bacon with a cup of strawberries.
Hourly oxidized LDL cholesterol down, below baseline down, and then up to normal for lunch. Hamburger and fries, one cup of strawberries. And now strawberries are like, "Are you kidding me?" So it inches up just a wee bit up, dinner back to baseline. Okay, so the antioxidant power in a mere cup of strawberries was so powerful to negate all that oxidative madness that initially it actually went lower. But then it just basically nullified all of the madness that terrible meal had caused in terms of oxidative stress. But what if? What if the meal had been steel cut oats and that cup of blueberries with some flax seed, a little cinnamon of couple of-
Rip Esselstyn:
Talk to me, sister, talk to me?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
And soy milk as your base. Okay, now all of a sudden those phytochemicals, those plant-based chemicals are going to take away the bubbles, take away the lavender salts, take away the little rubber ducky. And now the cancer cells are like, "Where did it all go? Where's all my angiogenesis and my estrogen and my inflammation and my IGF-1? It's gone. Oh, I'm gone." Boom. Cancer cell eliminated. And now these chemicals are like, "What else can we do today? Oh, atherosclerotic plaque. Let's just ..." I think I know a guy that in 2007 published a book all about preventing and reversing heart disease. I bet he eats oatmeal for breakfast.
Rip Esselstyn:
I think you're right.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I think I'm right. So the point simply being from this, major eye opener for me when I was writing my book Breasts The Owner's Manual, which you displayed.
Rip Esselstyn:
In 2016, right?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
In 2017, I was writing it. It came out in '18.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay, thank you. Yeah.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
And I was a Mediterranean diet, lean meats, chicken, turkey and fish, lots of fruits and veggies kind of girl, right? Never red or processed meat. Well, I had processed meat, I guess, I had turkey slices, but they were organic and that's okay, right? No, not right. But in that mindset I was learning and writing and transforming my own belief system on how food affects health. And this study was such an eye opener for me. As simple as it is, are you kidding me? A cup of strawberries. That's not even the most antioxidant laden berry there is. So what if you had some Indian gooseberries there, or blueberries? Anyway, the point about plants is that they do indeed have the power to be lowering estrogen, anti-angiogenic, squelching away the blood vessels that are nourishing that cancer. And then eventually when it gets to be a big enough thing, boom, exit strategies, straight through the same blood vessels to the brain, to the bone, to the liver. The person who has to slow that down is you. And it's so simple. You just chew and swallow, let a food do its magic.
Rip Esselstyn:
You mentioned a term earlier, and I'd love for you to let everybody know what it means. You said apoptosis.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Apoptosis is programmed cell death. But in easy, layman's terms, it's cancer cell suicide. One of my, did I already say one of my favorites? I say that a lot. There was the muffin study.
Rip Esselstyn:
The Muffin study. No, we haven't heard the muffin study.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Oh, let me introduce you to the muffins.
Rip Esselstyn:
That makes me think though of Shrek. There was a big muffin, I think, man or something, but okay.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Muffin man, exactly. Okay, this is going to be a fun one. Again, these are simple little things that you add into your diet and it's so transformative inside of your body. So flax seeds. Flax, you may know as the most concentrated form of healthy omega-3 fatty acids on the planet. Great. But what I love about flax even more is lignans. Lignans is a phytoestrogen, and it has incredible power to disable cancer cells. And let me demonstrate with a study. So this muffin study took 32 breast cancer patients who had a biopsy of breast cancer. And on that little core that diagnosed the cancer, they ran three tests. One was to look at the Ki-67, which is the division rate on tumors. It answers the question, what percentage of cells are one becoming two right now? Ki-67.
They looked at the expression of C-erbB-2, a very aggressive marker, badness if it's high. And your favorite word and, apoptosis. What percentage of cells under this microscope here are actually imploding? Okay, so we got that data. Everybody gets a muffin, except half of you get a muffin stuffed secretly with two tablespoons of ground flax seeds a day. The other has a placebo, a muffin a day. Nothing else was changed. This is slice of American pie people. These aren't all plant-based or whatnot, people. They're just doing whatever they were doing otherwise, right? Probably having chicken for dinner. So muffin, muffin, muffin, vegan, junk food every day. Then they have their definitive surgery, lumpectomy, mastectomy, and the whole tumor's out. Ah, let's look at it again. What did two tablespoons of ground flax seeds do in a mere five weeks of time?
Rip Esselstyn:
No idea.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Oh, I do. I know. I'll tell you. The Ki-67, the division rate dropped by 34.2%. That would be over a third drop in tumors turning away, doubling itself 34%. If you have a one centimeter cancer, generally about three to six months later, depending on what your age is, a one centimeter cancer dividing at say 60%, would be 1.6 centimeters. It's how the division rate works. So now all of a sudden, just because you have some flax three, months later is 1.3 centimeters. Or no down by a third 1.4 centimeters. So that's my favorite one. I love Ki-67. The C-erbB-2 expression dropped by 71%. And our favorite thing, apoptosis, increased by 30.7%. Just from flax. So again, what if it hadn't been just a junk food muffin? And then your diet with pizza and chicken as it normally was?
Rip Esselstyn:
And all that sounds statistically significant? And it sounds like all the markers are moving in the right direction?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Exactly, they are all slowing the cancer down and disabling it from getting the things it needs to survive and thrive inside of you.
Rip Esselstyn:
So before we finish talking about plant-based foods, I'm going to throw out some different ingredients that you make in your, Dr. Kristi Funk world renowned smoothie, right? Cancer-kicking compound smoothie. So let's start with you like a cup and a half of soy. People are wigged out about soy. Let everybody know why whole soy, like soy milk is not a bad thing?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Right, so it is not only not a bad thing, it's an extremely good thing and should be on your menu for two to three servings a day. So what exactly happened? Because I thought soy was a phytoestrogen. I hear the word estrogen, you just said 80% of cancers love it. So I think I confessed a few thousand times now, but I feel like I need to just say it over again. So sorry if you were one of my patients for the 18 years that I screamed at you to spit the [inaudible 00:27:08] out of your mouth, because it's an estrogen. What do you think you're doing? You have an estrogen cancer, and you're just fueling it. You think that cancer cell cares with its discriminating taste of where that estrogen came from? I think not my friend. Okay, I'm rethinking that. So I went into the data to prove with science and facts that that stance was in fact correct, and so embarrassing, completely wrong.
Let me tell you why. First of all, I think most of the bad rap came from a study that was shot heard around the world where mice were grafted with breast cancer tumors. I'm not a fan of animal studies, but we have this study. So we may as well learn from it, right? They grafted them with breast cancer, and they fed them soy, and all the cancers grew. Well, that's all I needed to know. Lady, you can't have soy. It makes breast cancer grow if you are a mouse. So sometimes the data transfers well to humans, and a lot of drugs are developed that way, et cetera. But in this case, it turns out that mice metabolize isoflavones, like genistein and daidzein, very differently than humans. And in humans it is breast cancer-preventive.
So let me explain. We have two receptors for estrogen in our bodies. Alpha is on the cancer cell, so when estrogen hits it, it tells the cell, "Hey, multiply and divide." But with 1,600% more affinity, the phytoestrogens in soy hit beta receptors. And beta receptors do some very fancy things. First of all, they shut alpha down. So it's off the cancer cell now. It has no antenna to get its fuel. And secondly, it goes out into your fat cells, where I already mentioned there's that aromatase enzyme making yet more estrogen, turns the enzyme off. And it doesn't have to do just with estrogen.
We don't really understand all the benefits of soy, because there are several studies that show a dramatic decrease in estrogen negative cancers. So it's more than just an anti-estrogen. It's anti-carcinogenic anti-angiogenic on multiple levels. Every single human study ever done with soy and breast cancer, every single one, uniformly, shows a decrease in occurrence, recurrence, and death from breast cancer. Whether you had never an estrogen positive or negative cancer. And generally across all studies, it's at least a 30% drop. Some are as high as 60% drop in breast cancer occurrence, recurrence and death.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's the real deal right there with soy.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
That's the real deal because it's in humans with breast cancer, it doesn't get any more real than that. And there are multiple multi-ethnic studies. One of my favorite, most recent ones was from 2020, and it comes out of Loma Linda where they followed 52,000 North American women. I particularly like this study, because 29.7% of the patients were Black. And I think our African American sisters are definitely underrepresented in multiple studies, no matter what you're looking at. And in this particular study, in the follow-up of 7.9 years, there were 1,057 breast cancers that developed. Oh, let's have a look. Who got the most cancer? Well, the most cancer was in the highest, they compared it to dairy consumption and soy milk consumption. So the highest amount of breast cancer was in your highest dairy milk consumers. And interestingly, when you compared the highest dairy to dairy, so 90th percentile to 10th percentile of dairy milk consumers, cow milk, they had a 50% increase.
So just the more milk you drink from a cow, the higher your risk. But what about the soy milk drinkers? They looked at the median intake. So this is average. Because sometimes these studies I think can get a little skewed. You're like the highest versus the lowest concerns. It's like, "Well, who drinks that much really?" So this was just your average amount and I don't remember what it was. It wasn't a lot. It was like half a cup a day. If you drank soy milk though, instead of dairy milk, you had a 32% drop in breast cancer. That's a beautiful study, because it's so high volume in your number, like 52,000 in longevity almost eight years. But I could go on and on. I won't,
Rip Esselstyn:
You could. You really could. But we got a lot of information that I want to cover here in 30 minutes.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I know. But I want to tell you one cool study, because it's hot off the press and I think you'll love this.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay? Yes.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I know you'll love this. And you may not have heard about this one. So this was a study that just came out in June, 2022. It's a cohort study over 12 years follow up of 65,000 women that adhered to a plant-based diet. And what they found was that there was over a 20% increase in breast cancer risk for those amongst this group who followed an unhealthy plant-based diet. So we're all vegan in this cohort, but there's an unhealthy version, and there's a healthy version. And I'm sure everyone listening and you can easily guess that the unhealthy version had a ton of processed foods, high in saturated fats, trans fats from our hydrogenated soybean oils, et cetera. Processed foods, cookies, cakes, bagels, chips, crackers, et cetera. So it does matter what plant-based food you are putting in that mouth and swallowing down.
Rip Esselstyn:
Absolutely. We're all about the whole-food plant-based, not the processed. Well, I love the way too, when you're talking about soy products, you talk about how it prevents the occurrence, recurrence, and death or helps, yeah, slow that down, prevent it. You just rattle that off. Occurrence, recurrence, and death.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I said before.
Rip Esselstyn:
So what, you also have cinnamon and turmeric and black pepper. So what is it about these that you're so fond of?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Right? So all of these are anti-inflammatories. Turmeric, if you don't know, is made a 2,000% more bioavailable by combining it with the peppering from black pepper, and it is fat soluble. So when you're eating your turmeric with some pepper, it'd be nice to throw a healthy fat on there like the flax seeds we just went through, right? Turmeric has been compared in Petri dishes to dripping curcumin, which is the bioactive ingredient, like the major one that turns your blender ochre yellow. So the curcumin drip- drops versus the whole turmeric plant drip-drops onto a Petri dish filled with human breast cancer cells, going head-to-head turmeric winds. So while it's all healthy, and I don't want the best to victimize better, right? You've got good, better, best. That was always a saying in surgery like it, stop, don't go for best, you're at better. We could do harm if we go for best.
You're not going to do harm with getting a more whole-food, eating the turmeric, but I just don't want you to think like, "Oh, I can't have the curcumin." Of course, you can, right? But that's interesting, right? Again, we're back to these synergistic effects in our whole-foods, over which we don't have complete knowledge, but just know that more of the whole-food in its initial form is always more beneficial. So turmeric has been shown to stop tumor invasion. So the little life cycle of cancer cell is, first it mutates, then it proliferates in place, and then it invades through wherever it is. We could be talking about a breast milk duct for an invasive ductal cancer. We could be talking about a colon cell for an invasive colon cancer, a gastric, any cancer, it has to invade. Then it has to get into a blood vessel or lymphatic, and then it circulates, and then all of a sudden it says, "I want out." And it has to extravasate into the new organ, where it invades again, liver, lung, brain, bone.
Then it's like, "Oh man, I'm all alone here. I've got to start all over again. I need whatever." Estrogen, angiogenesis, some VEGF factors, et cetera. And then I'm going to multiply and divide in place, take this organ down. And that ultimately leads to someone's death from cancer, because it's in an organ you cannot live without, like lung, liver, brain, or bone. Whereas breast cancer in a breast will never kill you. It has to go somewhere and shut something else down. Turmeric stops that whole process at every point. It's like, "No, you're not invading today. No, you're not getting your angiogenesis today."
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm going to come back to your smoothie in a second, but I want to take a quick detour, because you mentioned it invades organs and then death. And I saw on your Instagram-
Dr. Kristi Funk:
That was so uplifting?
Rip Esselstyn:
But you had a post about Kelly Preston, John Travolta's wife, who died of breast cancer. And you mentioned in it, the question was, does a pregnancy at 48 elevate her breast cancer risk factor? And, in your opinion, does it?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
So the evidence shows it's a mixed bag. So yes, it elevates cancer risk, but only for the decade after pregnancy. And we're talking about it elevating cancer risk relative to a nulliparous woman, which is the doctor talk for never having had a full-term pregnancy. So it elevates it about 40% higher than the nulliparous woman, but only for the decade after that pregnancy. And then you actually have decreased risk, relative to the nulliparous woman. Why? Couple of reasons. It is a high estrogenic state when you're pregnant and lactating. And so if there's already a mutated cell in your breast, it's going to get stimulated. So the pregnancy itself didn't cause the mutation. It already existed there in a tiny little form, and now all of a sudden it came to light. So probably you're just being diagnosed maybe five years before you otherwise would've had this cancer.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So you have some stats that I find to be truly interesting. And one of them is you say that only about 5% of breast cancer in women are under the age of 40, which, and that's something that you said has been holding stable since about 2005, right? Because I think most people, women, most humans probably are not aware that the vast majority of breast cancer hits women when they're over age 40.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Indeed. So those are not my stats, but the stats of the American Cancer Society, just in case anyone's wondering where I come up with that. And so the median age, the average age in America where you get breast cancer is 62, which actually then means that half of women are at or above 62, and half of women are under 62. And I love dispelling this fear and myth for women, because a lot of women know, yeah, one in eight gets breast cancer. That ultimately is a 12.8% lifetime chance. So if you wake up every morning, thinking you have a 12.8% chance of getting breast cancer diagnosed today, you might feel like you're all going to have it by next summer.
So the breakdown that I want you to understand is how old are you? And here's your risk of getting breast cancer this decade. So if you're 20-something, the chance of getting breast cancer between 20 and 30 is one in 1,479 women. Between 30 and 40, it's one in 209. Between 40 and 50, it's one in 65. Between 50 and 60, it's one in 42. Between 60 and 70, it's one in 28. Between 70 and 80, ding ding, ding, one in 25. So this is our highest risk decade of life, in which to get breast cancer, 70 to 80. And then 80 to 90 is one in 33. So when you add in all the one in's that I just went through, you end up with a lifetime risk of one in eight, but it isn't one in eight every day of your life.
Rip Esselstyn:
Got it. And then you also, I mean, have the number or the CDC, or our American Cancer Society, that is only five to 10% of breast cancer is an inherited genetic mutation.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
So we're talking about genes that you get from mom or dad, like BRCA, CHEK2, PALB2. And these create a very strong genetic predisposition to getting breast and other cancers associated with that mutation. Because it's broken. So most of these mutations are fixer genes, for example, BRCA. When your BRCA'S broken, it doesn't do its job. We all have BRCA, two of them, they function. And when they do, they see a breast or an ovarian or pancreatic or a melanoma cell, and it's like swoops in and fixes the DNA mutation or throws it away. But when you have a mutated BRCA, you can't fix those mutations. I'm super interested to see what comes down the pike in the next 10 to 20 years as more research unveils how to awaken or un-mutate the mutated BRCA. Because I think food can play a big part in that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, and I think we talked last time about how if genes at the high end are responsible for 10%, let's say of breast cancer, 80 to 90% are because of our lifestyles.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
Which is why we're going through these four steps that are crucial. And I'm sorry, I have to keep looking at the clock, because the information you're packing in here is wonderful. And so I'm going to move faster, and just say, people go to pinklotus.com and check out your smoothie, because it is packed with bananas, berries, Indian gooseberries, ancient Matcha, green tea, even like aloe. Some sort of aloe that you put in there.
I thought aloe was just for my skin.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I know, imagine. No, you put it on your skin not to make it like soft and supple, right? It's for a burn, like it's potent anti-inflammatory stuff. So we found a company that can cold process the entire leak. You don't lose any of the phytonutrients, and you swallow it down, and it gets inside your cells. Talk about squelching inflammation. It also has this mucopolysaccharide called acemannan that degrades estrogen receptors of cancer. Just FYI.
Rip Esselstyn:
Mucopolysaccharide. Look at you, just flows right off the tongue. So speaking of flowing off the tongue, when you're on Rachel Ray, you talked about how the food of the year is the mushroom. And tell people why they should eat white mushrooms, and how beneficial they are for lowering estrogen capacity?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
So this particular study was a meta-analysis, and it found that the highest versus lowest mushroom consumers had 35% less breast cancer. But what I love, is that the very fancy expensive ones that you think would have to be the winners, like the portobella and the cremini, et cetera, shiitake, while they are potent anti-inflammatory, anti-aging mushrooms, the absolute runaway winner for lowering estrogen, and therefore breast cancer, was the lowly white button.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh please, no, I can't [inaudible 00:42:27]-
Dr. Kristi Funk:
It's on every salad bar, what? The white button in one study of Chinese women lowered the breast cancer incidents by 64%. And you probably are thinking to yourself, "Okay, but how many white buttons do I have to eat a day? Like 400?" No, it was 10 grams. It's basically a half away button. The size of the tip of your thumb. Oh, so shroom it up, people.
Rip Esselstyn:
I can eat that.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I mean that in food, all food shrooms.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay, let's move on. Plant-based, I think people get it. Exercise regularly, that's number two for you.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Exercise is amazing. So it decreases estrogen levels. There's that bad actor again. But it enhances fat metabolism, it lowers inflammatory markers, and it strengthens your immune system. So much so that your question should be, does it really lower your incidence of breast cancer? And indeed it does. So one favorite study. Did I say that? Yes I did, twice. Of mine though, because it makes people go like, "Oh, okay, that's doable." It was a perspective study following 17,000 women for, I forget how many years, but they followed them.
And those who briskly walked, okay, so it was just power walking, you could chit-chat with your neighbor there, right, for 11 minutes a day had an 18% drop in breast cancer. So exercises, just getting a move on matters so much. And if you really want to take it seriously. So most people at this point are like, "Well I'm not sure I really have to do it though to see a benefit."
Ideally just move more. I'm happy if you decide to be like me and not have a desk in your office, and stand all the time. Or park farther away when you're going to the grocery store or the pharmacy, or take the stairs. One of a nice trick is if you work in a building that has different levels, walk the stairs to a different department to go pee, and then walk the stairs back up. Why are you using the bathroom right across the hall? So just little things to make you dusting with gusto as you vaccuum-
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So you have three sons. Are they triplets? Is that right?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
They are.
Rip Esselstyn:
So do you have dance parties where you guys all dance?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
That is so cringe. I can't even tell you.
Rip Esselstyn:
What does that mean? Cringe. What does that mean?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
That means your kids can't even be seen with you in front of themselves alone, when you do something like that. I used to. Let's say the dance parties are in the past.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay.
We're doing one tonight and we're going to play Harry Styles. So do you have chairs in your house, in your home?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
We do, but we don't use them. We always end up standing around the kitchen counter, eating. We hardly ever sit at the table. It might be because of all the boys jump on them.
Rip Esselstyn:
So I want to repeat a stat that I think I heard, and that was that you said estrogen fuels 80% of breast cancers. Estrogen. So if we can eat plant-based, which brings down estrogen levels, if we can exercise, which brings them down, I mean that's incredibly powerful. What about alcohol? Yes.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
So alcohol, let's just continue the theme, increases estrogen levels.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh my gosh.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
How did you guess that? I knew where you were going. But it also just, let's face it, is a carcinogen, straight up carcinogen. It forms acetaldehyde largely in your liver. But even if you just swish and spit alcohol out, it's already metabolized into this potent carcinogen acetaldehyde in your mouth, and then you swallow it down. It also impairs immune system function. And perhaps the biggest driver is that it inactivates MTHFR, which is not a bad word, it is an enzyme methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, which takes your folic acid from vitamins, and folate from your leafy greens, and turns it into the magic methylfolate.
Which very much like a BRCA gene will run around and babysit the DNA as it divides, fixing it if it makes a mistake. So when you drink, you knock out your MTHFR. When you drink, you may be one of the 30 to 50% of people on the planet who genetically have a suboptimal MTHFR. So now you're really whacked it out for the day. So you're not making any methylfolates, or your DNA's not getting itself babysat. So a drink a day in premenopausal women will increase breast cancer by 7% per drink. So go up from there. If you're more than one drink a day, a drink a day in postmenopausal women will increase breast cancer by 13%, two drinks a day 26%, and so on and upwards. So you do want to minimize or eliminate alcohol. Honestly, if you don't drink now, don't start.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you drink at all?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I do have red wine on occasion. Red wine, of all the alcohols, it might have a little bit of redemptive qualities in the resveratrol. Admittedly again, get it from the skin of red grapes, the kind with seeds, or blueberries, that you do not need to drink wine to get resveratrol. And it also, red wine is the only alcohol that has a estrogen lowering capacity. It's an aromatase inhibitor.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, I just did a retreat in Sedona with about 90 people, and there was a group of four girlfriends who all decided to come, in their 50s, and they all had gotten off alcohol in the last year. And they said their lives were so enhanced, so much better once they got off the alcohol for a myriad of reasons. But I just think it's in this culture, alcohol is looked upon as such a must-have when you're socializing. And that you can't have fun without it. I am so dead-set against that mentality, and I'm just trying to get people to get off alcohol it. It's not doing anybody really any favors. I love the fact that in one of your promotions for your four methods of decreasing breast cancer, you had, of all people, you had Ted Danson telling people to limit alcohol consumption.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Our favorite bartender of all times.
Rip Esselstyn:
Exactly. I don't know how you did it, but it's awesome. Maybe [inaudible 00:48:51] but-
Dr. Kristi Funk:
You want to know a funny story?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
So one night Andy and I came home from, we were out at a party and we, Ted Danson, we've since moved, but Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen lived next door. So we pull up to our house, and we're pulling in, and all of a sudden we hear this crash. And I jump out of the car and walk back. A man who was high or inebriated on something had smashed into their SUV, which rolled forward and smashed into their other SUV, because they didn't have driveway. They parked on the street. It's 11:30 at night, and we had just moved in a month prior. So I come running over, they come running out. And so we deal with that situation a bit.
And then when things calm down, the ambulance came and took the guy away, I got some big brooms and we were cleaning all the glass out of the street. And I went, I said hi to Mary and said who I was. She's like, "Oh my gosh, I know you because your friends with Sheryl Crow." It was a cute little, "I know who you are," which made me feel like warm and fuzzy. But then Ted and I are cleaning up the glass together. And he's, he's next to me. He's like, "Well Kristi, I will never forget the day I met you."
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes. Okay, let's move on to number four. Well, I think we understand alcohol. And there was a recent study from The Lancet that talked about how the safest amount of alcohol is the least amount. And again, just to hammer that had that point home for everybody. Number four is maintain a healthy weight. We're going into the holidays right now, and I just saw something that said, on average people gain seven pounds over the holidays. That is-
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Hard to do if you're eating whole-foods, plant-based.
Rip Esselstyn:
I would say almost impossible. So why does losing weight help reduce our risk?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
It does. So be a loser. So be a quitter when it comes to smoking, and be a loser when it comes to weight. Be a quitter when it comes to alcohol, and be a loser of weight by eating whole-food, plant-based. That can do wonders for weight loss. If you're heavy on the saturated fats, it's pretty easy to start melting away excess pounds. The big connection is, again, I mentioned it several times, that fat has an enzyme aromatase. It's taking adrenal gland steroids like [inaudible 00:51:07], making it into estrogen.
A recent study from 2022 showed that if you were lean at age 20, and gain an average of 22 pounds, you increase breast cancer risk by 40%. So gaining weight is a bad idea throughout life. The best, it's true that premenopausal, chubby, overweight women actually have some sort of poorly understood protective mechanism against breast cancer. But you're not going to melt those pounds magically at menopause. It's only going to get harder. And definitely postmenopausal overweight women have almost double the risk of getting breast cancer in between 50 and 250% more breast cancer recurrence and death, solely attributable to the weight.
So interestingly, it's not just estrogen production, there's burgeoning research, it's all from like 2019 to 2022, that is talking about how leptin in the leptin receptor, it's agonist. So leptin, if you don't know, is produced and secreted into your circulation mainly by adipose, by fat tissue. And then once leptin binds to its receptor, it crosstalks with multiple oncogenes, which then ignite numerous signaling pathways that release pro-inflammatory cytokines and growth factors, and the end game, bottom line, breast cancer initiation, progression, and metastasis.
The second thing being overweight does, is you have this adipose chronic inflammation, this simmering all day long. That's because of the inflammatory cytokines. And we've seen that this adipose chronic inflammation promotes cancer growth, metastatic spread, angiogenesis, all these words, I've been saying this all day. It modifies immune responses. So when your T-cells are like, "Oh, let's get after that cancer cell," can't, because it just got the oncogene stuff, got changed by the adipose to mediate the response in a negative way. And it interferes, get this with hormonal or chemotherapeutic treatments, thus worsening cancer prognosis. So that's the big connection. This adipocyte chronic inflammation is stopping the efficacy, how effective your medications are. If you're a breast cancer survivor, in the battle of it all, getting chemo, getting aromatase inhibitors, getting Tamoxifen, it is not negated, but significantly decreased in effectiveness. Hence that's why I just said, overweight and obese women have 50 to 250% more recurrence and death.
And the final connection between fat and breast cancer in a worse prognosis is insulin. So BMI, body mass index correlates directly to circulating insulin, and insulin activates aromatase. Great. So we're making more estrogen. Insulin directly stimulates the growth and invasion of breast cancer cells, and insulin decreases IGF-1 binding protein. The little body snatcher that gets your IGF-1 lower. So guess what? It's just freely running around, because nobody's snatching it. So it elevates your IGF-1, which then just leads to all the IGF-1 related badness that we talked about in videos past. I'm not done with this one. It stops apoptosis. There's our favorite word again. It's like, "Hey, cancer cell, don't implode, keep on going, keep on growing." And finally it elevates V-E-G-F, VEGF, which is this cytokine that promotes angiogenesis. Okay, being overweight or obese is definitely bad, but the beauty is if you lose the way you lose your risk, so be a loser, like we said.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. It's amazing to me how you just put all that together to help, I think, all of us realize how interconnected everything is between ... I mean, anyway, that's just jaw-dropping to me. Let's talk about some of your initiatives that you're doing, or you've done, and maybe are still going on. Like, Breast Buddies and local chapters?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Yes. Thank you for asking.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, go for it?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
So everybody out there, just man, woman or child can be a part of our local chapters. We currently have 25 throughout the country in major cities, and these are groups that simply get together to walk the talk. We run, bike, hike, cook, camp. I have a five day fast coming up in the LA chapter, because I don't like it when I have to do my five day fast, which I do every four months. So I want us to be miserable together on Zoom at night. So does that sound like like fun? No.
Rip Esselstyn:
I got to stop you for a sec, because we're not going to be able to get to it because we're going to run out of time, because both you and I have things we have to get to right now. But I want to have you back really soon to talk about all the benefits of fasting, and fasting-mimicking diet, and all the 5:2, the 16:8 protocol, time restricted feeding. I'm fascinated by that. So yes.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I'm all over it. Yeah. So join your local chapter. It's totally free and it's just about community and comradery. And the kids can come, the significant others can come. It's fun. Now just for my breast cancer thrivers out there, we have Breast Buddies. This is a sacred program to me. And you actually have to go through a couple channels to become a breast buddy. Because we want to make sure you're not a weird old man or something. So the breast buddies are specifically pairing newly diagnosed women with those who have been there, done that. But stage for stage, age for age, treatment for treatment. So you can go in there and be like, "I'm 42, stage two, chemotherapy, lumpectomy, radiation," and like match.com for breasts. All these women who are plus or minus five years your age, but chose your exact same treatments, will populate.
But they've been there, they're done. So they're there solely for the purposes of psychosocial support and community, and just friendship. Which you can be a voyeur and just look at who matches you and be like, "Oh look, she is a 10 year-old son. So do I. I want to talk to her about how she parented throughout all that chemo," or whatnot. So it's a really beautiful program. There are thousands of members, so you are very likely to find a match. And one of the reasons I and my husband Andy created it, was because I read a study LACE, Life After Cancer Epidemiology study, that came out in 2012 and it followed over 2,200 early stage breast cancer patients for an average of 10.8 years.
And those reporting out low levels of psychosocial support, and/or a lack of religious affiliation, were 58% more likely to have died in the decade of follow up, solely attributable to the lack of connection. And you know what? Not everybody has a BFF. Not everybody likes their family. So everyone can have a breast buddy. I really encourage you to tell your friends or family members about it, who have or had breast cancer. We've got a other stuff going on. Just check out pinklotus.com/powerup. Not only is there my super fun cook live, Rip, did you see?
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh my God, no. I have. I can't believe, that was at the top of the thing I was going to mention, is Cook Live with Chrissy and Dr. Kristi. I can't believe you hooked up with Chrissy Ross, Roth.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Roth, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
She's so wonderful. And so wanting people to become whole-food plant-based with her husband. It's beautiful. Yeah.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Yeah, she's so genuine and she has deep knowledge of plants and has been vegan for a decade and-
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, I just watched your Thanksgiving one where you made that kind of-
Dr. Kristi Funk:
My meatless meatloaf.
Rip Esselstyn:
The meatloaf, and yeah, you guys have a great chemistry. It's a great show, [inaudible 00:59:08]-
Dr. Kristi Funk:
And I think your viewers will love it. Because I always throw in a little, like the other day with this one I was talking about why chickpeas. And it turns out it inhibits that invasion that I was talking about. The matrix metalloproteinases that drill through the breast cell wall, colon cell wall, chickpeas stop it. What?
Rip Esselstyn:
That's right. They stop all those ne'er-do-well. What about coffee? I mean, should I wake up to coffee or not? Talk to me.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Wake up to coffee, my friend. It is completely safe in terms of breasts or any other. It actually has been shown in multiple studies to decrease breast cancer risk. However, it is a high amount. It's five cups a day. So if that's going to make you bounce off walls, don't do it. I will say two things. If your breasts hurt, if you have breast cysts, being highly caffeinated may worsen that condition. But neither pain nor cyst is cancer. So that's just that, it doesn't cause cancer. The methylxanthines are thought to be maybe the protective effect.
Now watch what you're putting in your coffee. I drink mine black. If I'm it's done with my 16:8 fasting that I do every day. I might have a little soy milk in it, unsweetened, just made from organic soybeans and water. But watch out. You know it, the mocha, soy mocha latte is going to be filled with lots of sugar and saturated fat, and stuff you don't want. So easy on what you're putting in that coffee.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well it's interesting, because I literally, just today, read one of Dr. Greger's posts about how milk and coffee actually negates all the beneficial properties in that coffee. I know that you recently were with him at the 10th Annual International Plant-Based Nutrition Healthcare Conference. How was that, meeting Dr. Greger? A wow?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
It was a wow moment. He is just such a generous, sweet soul. I mean, I screamed across the room. He endorsed my book, and so we've talked many times on email. So we're email friends, but we've actually never seen each other. So after my lecture I was like, "He's way over there. And I was over ..." And I just screamed out, "Dr. Greger," and I go running like a crazy fangirl to throw my arms around him. Luckily his wife wasn't around. What? But I have a very sweet picture with him and my three sons at the conference. It was delightful. He's just-
Rip Esselstyn:
I saw it, it is really nice. Question. What about sparkling water? Any thoughts on sparkling water? Versus still water? Like anything bad with sparkling water or nothing to it?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I got nothing there, unless you want to enlighten me. I will say...
Rip Esselstyn:
I've got nothing.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
... if you have some bloating. You probably don't want to drink down the air.
Rip Esselstyn:
I don't understand why, the women and the girls in my house, we go through, I don't know how many cases of the sparkling water. I don't like sparkling water. It doesn't satiate my thirst. But anyway, we have a hundred dollars a month habit of these sparkling waters.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
You probably then should invest in that bubble maker machine. [inaudible 01:02:05]-
Rip Esselstyn:
We already did, but [inaudible 01:02:06]-
Dr. Kristi Funk:
[Inaudible 01:02:07] water thing.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, I-
Dr. Kristi Funk:
I will, we caution, I guess if you have heart disease or hypertension, some of the bottled waters do have a high sodium content. So just check that if that matters for you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, all right. We got one minute. Any, the floor is yours, anything you want to say? Where can people go for more information on Dr. Kristi Funk?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
So pinklotus.com is a wealth of information. So from there you can segue into Power Up, that's our active community. You'll find the kitchen there, the Cook Lives. I have my annual summit that is also available virtually for download, and watching now, 11 and a half hours of me talking about this stuff. And way more. So there are 10 big segments I have in that summit, and eating is just one of them. So I have nine more that I deep dive. It's all research-based. I'm very proud of the summit. It's just [foreign language 01:02:57] talking. Some people are like, "I could listen to her talk forever." I'm like, "I hope you mean it." Because the summit feels like that. And I have Pink Lotus Elements, which is a very intelligent women's health store. It's the largest women's online health store. And it all has to do with products that I've seen over my 20 plus years as a breast cancer surgeon, are vetted with randomized controlled trials, or just from my own trial and error, I see that these products really help women make a difference before, during, and after a breast cancer diagnosis.
And especially two big winners in there, Menopause Miracle. So a non-estrogenic herb that really handles almost every menopause symptom that you could possibly throw at me. And number two, that I love, because it works so well, is Saffrony. It's just the Herb Saffron, but it's a medically tested dose of saffron that works against ADHD and mood disturbance, anxiety, depression, people love it. So check out the store. It's filled with all sorts of vetted goodness. And finally, if you need me, if you'd like a personal consultation, either just to reduce risk because your family tree is crazy with breast cancer. Or you yourself have a new diagnosis, or you were diagnosed years ago, but you feel like, "I may be needing a little refresher on how to make sure this never comes back," I would love to talk to you. You don't have to live in LA, pinkflotus.com/breastcenter. Just click on the breast center and contact us. I'd love to meet you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, you are saving the breast of America, truly. And I love the way, whether it's the morning shows, ABC, Good Morning America, Rachel Ray, you're so forthright as far as, "Listen, the number one thing that we can do is get a whole-food, plant-based diet." And you're not holding back. You're not saying, "Flexitarian, Mediterranean," you're not dancing around the bullseye. And I love that. You're just like, you're the bomb.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Oh, coming from you, that's so sweet. Means so much. [Inaudible 01:04:51]. Thanks for everything you're doing on this planet to promote plant-based diet. And of course, I love your family to pieces.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, thank you. All right, next time we're going to talk fasting, okay?
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Indeed, we will.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. Hey, hit me little Plantstrong love right here.
Dr. Kristi Funk:
Okay.
Rip Esselstyn:
Boom. That's a wrap. I want to thank Kristi for always shooting straight, and being such an advocate for breast health. Her resources are unparalleled, and I would encourage you to visit Pink Lotus, that's P-I-N-K-L-O-T-U-S, pinklotus.com for all of her resources, including Breast Buddies, her live cooking classes, and so much more. We can crush cancer if we move our bodies, get rid of that alcohol, find our ideal body weights, and of course, always keep it Plantstrong. I hope to see you next week. Thanks so much. The Plantstrong Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous truth seekers who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision, and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
