The Cancer Warnings Signs I Ignored! I Wasn’t Healthy. The Dangerous Truth About Alcohol. Julia Bradbury.

0:28Cancer saved my life. But at that moment, you are lost. You're just, oh, my God, I've got cancer. It's prevention, isn't it? It's like, don't let yourself get super sick before you make these changes. Tell me about stress and sugar. Your immune system doesn't understand this onslaught of refined foods. The immune system isn't working properly. You're clogging up your liver and other bits of yourself. You're basically... What would you say to someone who goes, I really love the idea of meditation, but I just haven't got the time? There is never enough time to do everything. What you have to do is sacrifice something to make way for something else.

1:12And when it comes to your health, if you do not make the time, you will... Julia, it's so special for me to be sat here with you, talking to you, because I feel like we've been together on our television journey. How much of a believer are you? Because I feel like you might be in how what you believe to be true has an enormous impact on what is true of your body. I genuinely believe that what we tell ourselves and how we feed our brain with information is incredibly impactful. I think it makes a massive difference. In the last few years, I've got into meditation and mindfulness and quietening myself, which I never did before.

2:00But I've always been into this positivity. And in fact, my mum gave me a set of 12 cassettes. Remember those? Yes. Not VHSs even, cassettes that you played. And I've still got them. I keep them. And they are the 12 Steps to Positive Thinking. I was listening to those when I was 11. So I really do believe. and I think if people feel this is a bit woo-woo, what I would say to you is if you've ever been heartbroken or if you've ever looked at your baby for the first time or a baby or somebody's baby or fallen in love, you will get a feeling in your throat and you'll get a feeling in your tummy and you'll get a feeling in your heart.

2:38Sometimes it's heartbreak. Sometimes it's just joy. That's real. That's happening to you. So if you can create that, it's a physiological thing. If that can happen in your body, I believe you can generate it yourself. You just touched on meditation and I'm hearing more and more about how meditation can be connected to good health. What would you say to someone a little bit like me who goes, I really love the idea of meditation, but I just haven't got the time? Yeah, I mean, it's the age old response to any sort of self-care. I haven't got time. I'm a busy mum. I've got a career. I've got an abusive relationship to handle.

3:21I'm busy at work. I just haven't got time. And I discussed this at length with Oliver Berkman, who's written a brilliant book called 4 ,000 Weeks, which I recommend. Oh, I got the poster where you cross off each week. It's very sobering and rather brilliant. It is, and for people who aren't familiar with it, if we're lucky, if we're fortunate, we've got 4 ,000 weeks on planet Earth if we live a healthy, full life. And then when you start to mark that down, it's not very much. So, for example, as a way of getting that scale in perspective, my parents, as I've said, who I love very much, were in their 80s.

3:57They're not going to be here in 20 Christmases. No. There is never enough time to do everything. We will never clear the email inbox. We will never do the to-do list. We will never in a given day get everything we wanted to get done. We won't. What you have to do is sacrifice something to make way for something else. There has to be a sacrifice to make way for it. And when it comes to your health, if you do not make the time to take care of your health, you will be forced to make the time to take care of illness. At some stage, it comes. And how much longer will that take? Days off work, colleagues, family, recovery, going through operations, whatever it might be.

4:45that is expensive time and you have to make the time for self-care you have to make the time for your health it's that old cliche of the oxygen mask coming down from the airplane with you and with your whole family you've got to get it on yourself first otherwise you can't take care of your family or your friends if you don't look after yourself if you don't give yourself that time so what i would say and what we we round about in a roundabout way this is what oliver and i came to the conclusion was give yourself five minutes don't tell me you haven't got five minutes no i've got five minutes so give yourself that five minutes first of all and go i can do five minutes and set yourself that time and what will happen because it's happened to me i suspect we're quite similar find it very hard to calm the ship down i i'm i'm rolling i you know i'm like you i hear now i can feel your energy.

5:36I'm there. It's so important to be able to steady yourself and calm yourself down. And I never really understood the value of that to be able to. I now I can do 20 minutes to feel in the morning. And I do. Do you do it every morning? I do it every morning. And that's my promise to myself. Now, sometimes I don't have 20 minutes, so I will do five. But it's a habit that I will not not do. It's my non-negotiable. What does it give you? It gives me calmness from a physical point of view it's reducing my cortisol levels it is steadying me before the onslaught of of the day's activity i do something in the morning where i get the morning lighting my eyes i i open my my windowsill i sit on my windowsill outside my bathroom i can't fall down come rain or shine i've got one of those dry rug things if it's raining and i pull it up and i sit there and I look at nature because we all need nature that's how we've evolved every human being on planet earth needs nature we need daylight we need nature we need that in our lives we need to move all of these things are essentials I look at nature I take in a few breaths I just take the calmness in and then I start my breath work and I get the daylight into my eyes like Julia you're freaking me out now so you've got sitting outside how long do you sit outside 20 20 minutes if I can.

6:57So 20, but how early are you getting up? If you're doing 20 minutes meditation. Depends what my day is. 20 minutes sitting on windowsill and breathwork. I'm stacking. You can do it all in 20 minutes. So you can. And then if you're lucky and you've got a bit of extra time, you go, I'm going to do an extra 10 minutes of breathwork. Okay. Or I'm going to, and your breathwork can be your meditation. What I would say to people about meditation is meditation takes many forms. And there are some people who, I've got family members who suffer from anxiety. There are certain types of meditation that wouldn't suit them because it's like a countdown and that could make you more anxious.

7:31So breathwork, mantras, five, four, three, two, one countdown where you look at five things and then you listen to four things and then you feel three things. That's a good one. There are all sorts of different types of meditation. and what I do is by getting the morning light first thing um here's the sciencey bit uh the morning light goes into your eyes and it talks to a part of your brain called the SEN which I think is the super charismatic nuclei and then that delivers signals to your whole body to say it's time to wake up guys and let's get those hormones flowing let's get the serotonin um melatonin what are we doing with melatonin now because we're awake we're not asleep it's incredible this is a biological chemical process that happens and that morning light sets everything off and it even helps you sleep better at night because it's your it's your you're clocking in it's like the time stamp we touched on this earlier but it's it it would be a shame and i want to touch on everything to do with your breast cancer if that's okay um in a moment but this idea of don't let that be the thing that makes you make these lifestyle changes prevent or give yourself the best chances of not triggering something happening in your body by doing these quite simple things for yourself I mean even just reading bits of your book and stuff and I've decided to make some massive lifestyle changes of my own some of them I'm already doing but some stop well we'll talk about sugar in a minute but it's prevention isn't it it's like don't let it be don't let yourself get super sick before you make these changes yeah and a lot of the changes are simple and are tweaks and a lot of them are hard and that's the tricky thing it is sometimes it's easier if somebody says here's a pill this is going to get your blood pressure down um or here's a pill to help with your cancer or whatever it might be or a zempick is a good example at the moment here's here's something that can help with your weight loss and it's a super quick way of doing it.

9:39And of course that in some instances is easy. And some people don't want to do the other things that you need because you do have to have a mindset that's ready for change and you do have to want to do it. And there is the conundrum because the cancer is the thing that triggered it in me. That's when I went, oh my gosh, I want to be here for as long as possible for my children, for my partner, for me. And this thing's frightened me. so I'm going to do everything I can to reduce my risk of reoccurrence. If you don't think there's anything wrong with you, and if you're motoring along, you might be a little bit overweight and you might be fine with that.

10:13It might not be hindering your life in any way. You might have super high cholesterol. Your blood pressure might be really high. You might eat lots of sugar and you're fine because you don't get fat. It doesn't do what it does to other people. You might think you're fine. But now there are things that you can check and it's pretty easy. There's something called metabolic health. There are five markers of metabolic health. You can go to your GP tomorrow and you can say, can we find out if I'm metabolically healthy? And they will test your blood pressure and your triglycerides and HDL cholesterol.

10:43And they will look at your waist to hip measurement. And there's a fifth one that I can't remember, but it's pretty standard. And if two of those things are not in check, you're metabolically unhealthy. healthy yeah i mean i was thinking about the three walks a day you know would somebody find that difficult but actually if you've got like a commute anywhere you could always park up a way away from your office and do a 15 20 minute walk into the office at lunchtime eat something and then go for a walk with your lunch hour and then at the end you've got to walk back to your car so that you know you could you absolutely kind of work you can build these things a friend and i were talking about this yesterday she's got a high she's a high level exec at a television company and she says, I do what you say now, I move after every time I've eaten.

11:26She even said, actually, it's helped me at night because I jump up to clear the dishes first because I'm thinking, I'm moving. So you can, I would say, if you said, Julia, what would your number one choice be? It would be a get up and walk. Do it for 10 minutes if you can. If two minutes is all you can do, do it. If you can't get outside, I want you to be outside as much as possible every day. We spend more than 90 % of our days inside. That's not how we're built. What's the stat about kids and people in prison? Oh, prison inmates spend more time outside than children these days. They have a required, their limit, you know, what they have to be outside for is they're spending more time outside than most of the younger generation, which is frightening.

12:09And, I mean, kids and what we need to do to help them is a whole other book story because it's massive. But you can build these things into your life and you build it into your kids' lives as well. Yeah, by doing it. Yeah. Just like your parents did with you, all that kind of inspiration from your mum. Yeah, my dad was the outdoor guy. He gave me the outdoor stuff. He took me walking from it at the age of six and it stayed with me for the whole of my life. What a gift. Yeah. I really hope you're enjoying this episode. And if you can, give us a follow. So you did end up successfully getting pregnant, even though it was a lot of work, wasn't it?

12:44Yeah. The second time with the IVF, but you've got three lovely kids. Yes. But then something happened. When did you first feel a lump? So I'm really bound with dates, but I think it was in, it was 2020. Is that when we headed into lockdown? Yes. Yes, that was the first lockdown. So in 2020, I was away on a job in Costa Rica, one of my favourite places because it's nature's paradise. And I was in a hotel and I was doing my breast checking, which I've always done very regularly. and I found a lump here, left breast, this bit. I was like, oh, okay. Looked in the mirror, could see the lump when I put the skin.

13:25So went home and lockdown had just begun and this thing called COVID was happening. Was it difficult to get an appointment? I have the best GP who's known me since I was 18. Oh, wow. So we did our first ever Zoom consultation together. Oh, wow. And then he said to me, okay, I will do my best. Yes, it is possible. And because of what we're looking at here, I think I can get you something. And he did. He got me an appointment. And it was weird because it was wearing masks and disinfecting your hands before you touched the pen and filling in. Anyway, I did get an appointment. I ended up having a mammogram and an ultrasound.

14:00And the diagnosis was you've got benign microcysts. But even with the mammogram and the ultrasound? Yes, benign microcysts. How can that happen? Well, we can now talk about dense breasts. Yes. I have dense breasts. I've seen your posts about dense breasts. Yeah. A lot of people don't know about dense breasts. If you're over 50, there's a 40 % to 50 % chance that you've got dense breasts. Dense breasts have nothing to do with your size, shape, how they move. I'm not even that big. It's the density of the flesh. And as one doctor told me, if you've got dense breasts and you have a mammogram, tumours are invisible.

14:35Wow. Because it's like looking for a snowball in a snowstorm. It's white on white. Your whole breast looks whiter because of the tissue. And tumours show up white as well on mammograms. But you had an ultrasound as well. I had an ultrasound as well, but nothing was picked up. It was missed. So this was a benign microcysts. And my consultant said to me, if I were you, I'd keep an eye on it. And even if you have to pay for it, do another mammogram and ultrasound in a year's time. Let's see what's going on here. Because I don't think there is, but it's worth keeping an eye on. So I did exactly that.

15:11And I had another mammogram and an ultrasound. Had it grown? And it hadn't grown, but it had become painful to touch. And on the second pass, my consultant couldn't see me for the immediate consultation. So they didn't really want to give me the mammogram and the ultrasound because he couldn't see me on the same day. I said, look, I'm going away on holiday. Let's just do it. And then it's now painful. They went, okay, yes, we will. And then come and see your consultant when you come back. And in that situation, again, came back, no, oh, we're looking good. Nothing to worry about. Go off on your holiday.

15:51Come and see your consultant when you come back. But it doesn't look as if there's anything to worry about here. Came back, saw my consultant, wasn't going to see him because I I thought everything was fine. Yeah. And I'm invincible. What's the point? What's the point? Won't waste his time. Won't waste my time. Sitting there, he and I are talking. We're talking about climbing mountains. I'm just about to stand up. He said, I'll just give you an ultrasound before you go. Let's do one ultrasound before you go in his area. Got his nurse in because you need two people. Gave me an ultrasound. And as he was doing the ultrasound, he looked at me and he went.

16:26And he took in this little sharp intake of breath and he went, there's something I don't like. And I went, what do you mean? He said, can you see that? I'm useless at screenings. Yeah, I mean, and also ultrasounds don't make any sense to me whatsoever. And it was a tiny, tiny dark prick. He said that. I said, well, what do you think it is? He said, I don't know, but I don't like it. Let's get you. I need you to go and have another screening with our imaging team in case I've made a mistake here. And if it's what I think it is, we'll do a biopsy. And I had the biopsy. A few days later, I had the biopsy, and that was the first time I shed a tear.

17:00because then I thought this is serious. And that was the beginning of my diagnosis. And three days later, I found out it was cancer. And then that was it. I was on the roller coaster. Where were you when you found out? I was at home because I'd engineered it that way. Right. I was meant to be out. Were you with your husband? No, he was on his way to work. And I said I'd phone him straight away. And I'd meant to be, I was meant to have been on location the Friday before. And I said, I can't take the call when I'm on location. I won't be able to handle whatever the news is. And I'm with all these strange people.

17:28I was up a tree, one of my happiest places, but it would have been a very unhappy call that day. So I was outside in my garden and I had a notepaper and pad and he phoned and he said, I'm sorry to say it, it is cancer. And he said, it's a big tumour. I just remember these words, cancer, big tumour, might be able to do a lumpectomy, probably will be a mastectomy. And so all in a couple of minutes, it was like, wow, I'm going to lose a breast. It's a big tumour. Does this mean chemo and radio? Am I going to die? What does all of this mean? So immediately I put the phone down and I phoned Jerry and said, how far are you?

18:07And he said, I'm not very far. I said, come back. And I told him and we cried. And I said, I'll do whatever I have to do to get through this. I will do whatever it is. If I have to lose a breast, if I have to lose my hair, if I have to go, whatever it is I need to do, I'm going to do what I need to do to get through this.

18:26and I've never cried at this bit of the story before but it's it's the moment you feel most vulnerable and it's also the moment that you know nothing you know I'm a journalist I can find out answers I can get to people I can I can work out what I'm going to do but at that moment you are lost you're just oh my god i've got cancer it's always the thing i think that we've feared the most but i think i do understand that for someone like you not to know anything to suddenly not be informed you're always informed you know everything about a subject it's like yeah i know nothing i know nothing i mean now i know every type of cancer is different every type of breast cancer is different.

19:14You know, you'll have a friend who's gone through breast cancer and she and I will sit down and have a story and we'll have had a different tumour in a different place and it will behave differently. Cancer is fiendishly clever and it's very complicated. And there's a reason why the war on cancer hasn't been won yet. You know, there are lots of things happening with cancer. I've now learned so much and I feel empowered and I feel informed and I feel that I can share what I've learned as part of my experience with other people. And the only thing that I can say with certainty is I don't believe there is one thing that will cure anybody's cancer.

19:50I don't think it's one drug. I don't think it's one treatment. I don't think it is one approach. I believe that cancer has to be treated holistically, that it is to do with so many factors. And if you're not metabolically healthy, if you're not a healthy person, if you're not feeding yourself the right foods, if you're drinking lots of alcohol and you're eating lots of sugar, that's not the best environment to fight cancer because it's a metabolic disease that's feeding off all sorts of things. It's not sugar. You know, people go, oh, it's sugar feeds on cancer. It's not that simple. Our brains need glucose.

20:27We need glucose. It's not that simple. I've learned that. But what is the environment around the tumour? What is going on with you? And stress plays a role and spending time outside plays a role and your community and your social fitness plays a role and what you're eating plays a role, what you're drinking plays a role and your mindset. All of these things play a role. And the future of cancer care will be all of these things. You'll have somebody to get you through your personal fitness. You'll have somebody to get you through your nutrition. You'll have a psychologist to help you with your mental, the mental side of things and dealing with stuff and how to handle stress because it all plays a I believe.

21:07After you had that conversation, I mean, I've got older children and my thoughts are whenever I've had a scare with something, I had a biopsy done, I was always like, at what point will they be okay if I die? Like, how old do they have to be? For me, I just want to see my children grow up now what is that age I mean your girls are in their 20s um of course I want to see my children reach their 20s yes I do but I want to see them reach their 30s as well I want to see them become capable loving adults I want to see where they go I want to see how they develop so there is no cut off you know you can't say well I'll be fine if I die when they're 25 or I'll be fine.

21:57If they get to 15, it'll be okay. No time is okay. You know, I want to be here. I want to see them. Did that fight take over straight away? Straight away. Did it? Yeah. What can I do? And how am I going to be here to be on planet Earth for as long as possible? Those two things were like, straight away. When did you tell the kids? I told them after all of the diagnosis and when we were very clear what treatment I was going to have how long it would take and what impact it would have on me so it was several months but I was scared to leave it much longer and I was also scared that it would come out somehow in the public you know and that would be terrible and or the school gates or something like that just I wanted to control the narrative with them and I wanted to control the narrative with the public as well which is why I did the first interview with a very trusted journalist friend of mine and I made a documentary about it yeah didn't make the documentary about cancer for people to feel sorry for me I made it to talk about the new stuff that's happening out there and tests that we can do and I also made it to show that it can happen to anybody yeah and to show that I was shit scared and that anybody can be frightened and it's fine and you can be and should be worried and tearful and not knowing, you know, not know what's coming on the other side.

23:20And that is all fine for everybody. And you even said in your book that, like, in some ways, the cancer for you has been a good thing, like a life changing experience, but in a good way. Can you talk me through that? I have said, and I knew it'd be a controversial line, but I really did mean it. Cancer saved my life. I was living at breakneck speed. Couldn't have children? IVF. What's at that job? Find a way. Phone somebody. Talk to your agent. Hustle. We can't have that job. Can you orchestrate this job? If you can't, somebody won't commission that program. Can you co-develop that series?

24:04Need to be in four different places? Yes. Okay. We can do that we can get a car on standby then we can get on a plane and can do it you can do it all i lived that life sugar loved it loved sugar breakfast lunch in between lunch dinner after dinner sugary cereal elevens is donut brownie on the road um pasta carbs refined sugar you would have called yourself healthy though right i called myself healthy because i was slim and i exercised every now and again and I didn't have a problem with weight now I know I was far from healthy so I know that you've had an issue with sugar as well and and I cannot impress upon people the more experts you talk to about sugar and refined carbs so the pastas and the pizzas and the breads those are refined carbs that turn to glucose very very quickly but is that white bread or brown like is bread fine a refined bread sourdough you might have that there's sourdough is fermented so there's a difference and it has benefits and people talk about that but it's not what you want to do every day no so i have to tell you what sugar does to you sugar affects your immune system your immune system is present in every cell of your body when you eat something refined a refined sugar a message comes to your gut this is very simplified forms and i'm not a doctor this is stuff that i've learned as well from a host of experts it sends uh it sends out a message and your immune system doesn't understand this onslaught of refined foods because that's not what we've we've evolved to eat whole foods vegetables nuts seeds meat fish i mean there's a whole you know we could go vegan or not there's that's there are all these debates you can go down but whole foods our bodies understand refined foods sugars sugary drinks the immune system doesn't understand.

25:54So it has a choice. It can either break up the cell, which causes inflammation, or if it understands the food, the whole foods, it can replace and it can repair and replace. That's the good thing. No inflammation with that. So it's inflammation that is causing the damage and these foods cause long-term inflammation. And the only way I can describe it is sugar makes your blood sticky like velcro and then it doesn't work properly and what you need to be doing is your immune system we've all got thousands of of cells cancer cells to deal with every day your immune system needs to be working on those it's busy with all the other stuff that you're doing the toxins the sugar um you're making your blood sticky the immune system isn't working properly you're clogging up your liver and other bits of yourself you're basically jamming everything By the way, also has an impact on your brain health.

26:53They're talking about diabetes 3 being Alzheimer's, sugar. And if you're constantly full of sugar, if your blood levels are very high with glucose because you're snacking the way I did, and it's always a refined carb or sugar, then you're also feeding your brain. Your brain needs glucose. The crisps are a refined carb, yes. And they're fried. And they're fried. It's a processed food. It's not great. I mean, I hardly eat crisps anymore, but I was just thinking that's also. Yeah, it also affects your brain. So not at the same level, but what you've got is this inflammation going on everywhere. And that is when disease makes its way into your life.

27:34Diabetes, type two diabetes is on the rise. It's going up and up and up. It costs about£3 ,000 a year to take care of somebody with type two diabetes. And at the moment, you've got people as young as 30 who are being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. And their life cost, you can go blind. It affects every organ in the liver. I think that's the thing that people are like, well, you know, you can treat diabetes. You can kind of take something for it. But actually, there's a lot that goes on other complications from diabetes. You're at a much higher risk of cancer if you've got type 2 diabetes. So I went, OK, I'm not going to snack anymore.

28:07So I'm not going to eat in between meals because I don't want that sugary roller coaster. And I don't want that constant flat line of sugar. So I stopped snacking, which I found easy to do after three weeks. It was hell for the first three weeks. So when you feel the pain, go for a walk or do something else. Yes. Jump up, do star jumps, phone a friend. It's sort of like an addiction, isn't it? It's like distract yourself a little bit. Do something else, but don't succumb to the snacking. Snacking helps really moderate your spikes. So that's good. And change your breakfast. I do a double breakfast.

28:40I have eggs. I have avocado. I'll have a bit of protein for the night before, maybe some leftover chicken, free range chicken or some sustainably caught fish or a little bit of that. And I'll put that on my plate with my veggies. I drizzle my olive oil because it's good for my cancer. Polyphenols, high in polyphenols. Squeeze some lemon, great for the veggies. Mixed of greens. Big plate. Love it. Then my pudding is blueberries. Yes. And my yogurt. I do coconut yogurt and nuts and seeds. But I love it. And I eat at about 11. And people go, where do you put it? But they've always said to me, you eat so much.

29:16But I love that. That carries me through till the evening. Amazing. And I don't get sugary cravings. It took about four weeks for that to become a habit. Yes. And for that to make sense. Now when I have a sugary craving, I only eat the dark chocolate after I've eaten my main meal. Yes. And I will use dark chocolate and blueberries. And there are some really good keto things out there that are low carb. And they are naughty and they have got sugar in them, but they've got honey maybe or maple syrup. And I'm not saying they're healthy, but if you do want that sugary thing, they're so much better than zero cocoa milk bars, which have got all this crap in emulsifiers and texturizers and all that in it.

30:02There are options out there, but you have to change your life. Yeah, I mean, it's... I'll hook you up with a very good shop that you will be... Great. Thank you. Yeah. We're taking a quick break to talk about today's sponsor, Fiverr. Have you experienced the immediate panic when you're asked to create something on the computer, but you have absolutely no idea how to do it? For me, it's social media. But I have realised that I can rely on Fiverr. It's an online marketplace. It's got talented freelancers who specialise in different areas, from social media and graphic design to marketing, website building and coding.