Coming up on Inspire.

One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime.

And black women have a 40% higher breast cancer mortality rate, the highest of any US racial or ethnic group.

A discussion on prevention and the racial disparities of breast cancer next on Inspire.

Stay with us.

Inspire is sponsored by Kansas Furniture Mart, using furniture to inspire conversation.

And by the Blanche Bryden Foundation.

The Friends of KTWU honored to support programs and services that enrich the lives of our viewers and the Raymond C. and Marguerit Gibson Foundation.

Hello and welcome to Inspire.

I'm so pleased to be here with my co-host, Betty Lou Pardue and Leslie Fleuranges We're going to discuss a topic today that unfortunately impacts so many of us.

Danielle, for sure, this is a show that too many of us will be able to relate to due to a loved one's battle or their own battle with breast cancer.

Unfortunately, one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime, and it's the most common form of cancer for American women.

Not only is it the most common form of cancer, it is also the leading cause of cancer in the United States for African-American women, with rates of incidence higher among black women under 40.

Here to speak with us today about this important subject matter is breast cancer survivor Linessa Frazier and Dr. Rita Stanley of ReVital Wellness Center.

Linnessa and Dr. Rita, thank you so much for joining us today on Inspire It's a pleasure.

So take us through this statistic, which is so different that one in eight women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.

That's shocking to me.

I didn't know it was quite that bad.

That's pretty bad.

And then when you see the difference in broken down by racial group, it gets even sadder because you know that something is amiss and it doesn't have to be.

So, you know, breast cancer, even though, thank goodness black women don't have it as often is white women, like you said, we die 40% more from from the breast cancer.

So it's going to change.

But I believe it's going to have to change from a lot of different perspectives, from prevention to screening to treatment.

So it's going to take a lot of important people getting on board and they're doing it.

It's happening sort of quietly before we really see a shift in this.

So what is it that is different about African-American women versus white women with regard to the mortality rate?

Why is that so different?

Yeah, well, a lot of it has to do with just the social.

Okay.

Let's talk about the things that help a woman either not get breast cancer or recover better.

Let's talk about access to good, healthy food.

Let's talk about access to screening and early diagnosis.

There's a genetic component to it that is out of our control to some extent.

But fortunately, the genetic piece of it is a small piece of it.

A lot of it is around lifestyle.

So, you know, there are different variables that just make it difficult, even if you have breast cancer, to get the treatment soon enough to have access to the better treatment for your tumor type and to just have follow up in a systematic way so that if you have complications of the treatment, you can get the help that you need.

So it has to do with a lot of different things social, political, racial.

It just like a lot of things in this country.

And we will touch back on that.

Linessa I am so.

Thrilled that you're here.

I know we.

Are so happy for you.

Thank you.

I hate to take you back, but we need to take you back to what happened when you heard those words that you have breast cancer.

Wow.

That was such a momentous time in my life.

I had just changed jobs and it was just by happenstance, you know, at the end of a job, you have insurance that you need to use.

And sometimes there is a break in insurance between one job and another job.

And so as I was leaving my previous job, I had to a well, I went in to have all of my testing and screening done because I actually missed it earlier that year because I was with my mom who had just had a double bypass.

And so I was with her and didn't, didn't have it done.

So I went in to have the screening done and literally 30 days to the day of me starting a new job here in Topeka, I received that call saying, you have breast cancer.

And yeah, that was really scary.

Had young kids in a new community, really did not know a lot of people here and had no no historic history within my family with regard to it.

So it was really scary.

It was a great, you know, misnomer for me and my husband because we didn't know exactly what to even expect at that point.

So, yeah, it was a really frightening time.

Fast forward here, over a decade later, almost 17 years later, and I'm still here to tell the story and to help rally other women around just the things that Dr. Rita spoke about, you know, making sure that they're there, using preventive care, making sure that they're receiving the screenings and also participating.

If, you know, they're they're diagnosed participating in the screenings and the the actual opportunities for trials so that the next generation will have the opportunity to be well.

So I take it you found it pretty early?

Yes, it was relatively early.

It was initially they thought it was stage 1 B and they when they went in to do the double mastectomy, they actually found that it was not staged late enough.

I was actually in stage 2 B when they found it, and it was a mass behind the mass that they discovered.

And fortunately, I had elected to have a bilateral mastectomy.

It was only discovered on one side, but I was like, If we're going in, we're going to get it all taken care of.

We're doing everything in one fell swoop.

We are doing, you know, a little bit here and a little bit there.

We wanted to get it all taken care of.

So I did have a prophylactic mastectomy.

And yeah, that's what they found, fortunately.

Did you choose to have chemo?

Radiation?

Talk us.

Talk to us about what the aftercare was like?

Well, it wasn't really a choice.

My oncologist decided that the best route for me was to do chemo and radiation.

And I did chemotherapy first.

And I was living in Topeka, did chemotherapy in the Kansas City area, and pretty much had a routine where I could work on the Monday before chemotherapy, had chemotherapy on a Tuesday, worked half day on that Wednesday and was out that Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and went back to work on that Monday.

Now, that's not a schedule I would definitely recommend for everyone, but it worked for me and my family and I did chemotherapy for several months, took a little hiatus and then started with radiation for several months after that.

You were able to work with all of that going on?

Yeah.

Wow.

I was.

Wow.

Oh, my goodness.

Wasn't fun.

Wasn't fun.

And I would not necessarily recommend it for everyone, but it worked for for me and my family and what I was doing at the time.

You know.

And before we go.

To break, I just talked about your family.

It is essential to have that support group, is it not?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I don't know what I would have done without that support group.

And that support group didn't just include my family, my immediate family, because our daughters were relatively young during this time.

But I had in-laws who would come in from out of town and bring food.

I had church members who would come in and do the same thing.

So when they say it takes a village, it truly takes a village in that in that instance, to make sure that you're well taken care of.

There's so many more questions that we have from both of you.

We're going to take a short break and we'll be back to continue our discussion.

Please stay with us.

Hi, I'm Janet Thompson Jackson and I'm so excited to be a part of Inspire today.

Are you one of those people who feels like, I just don't have time to work out?

I want to.

I would if I could.

But I just don't have the time.

Well, today I'm going to show you some yoga moves and just some general movement that you can do while you're sitting in your chair.

You can do this in a small space.

If you don't have access to a yoga studio or if you just don't feel comfortable going to a studio, let's sit down and get started.

What we're going to do next is a simple forward fold.

If you have enough space between your chair and your desk, if you're at a desk, you simply want to have your legs a little bit farther apart and we're going to bend at the waist.

So this is really important.

We don't want to slump over as we're doing folds.

You want to keep your your chest high bending at your waist.

And a great idea is to always think about a string that's going from your belly button to your back.

Pretend that you're pulling that string back, engaging that core, bending at the waist and then coming down and just allowing your your hands to just fall there.

And you can just simply be for just a few moments and then pulling that string back with the core lifting up and that is giving you a nice core movement.

You can even sit on the tip of your chair and simply rock back and forth like this using your core muscles.

It's like doing a crunch and you've never left your chair.

That's great.

So another thing that we can do is to get a little bit of leg stretch with one foot on the floor, the other heel on the floor.

Again, we're going to bend at the waist.

I'm feeling that in my hamstring.

Nice stretch.

I can even pump my foot a little bit there.

I'm feeling a very nice stretch again.

You can do this pretty much anywhere.

You don't have to have any equipment for any of this.

You don't even need a yoga mat.

And I'm going to now switch to my other leg.

And you always want to make sure you're doing both sides so that you're nice and even you're giving the love to both sides of your body.

So that was for my hamstring at the back of my leg to get a little bit of a quad stretch I can simply lift my leg to.

I've been holding my knee to my chest and while I'm here, I'm going to do some ankle twists just to stretch out my ankles a little bit, give them some love, and I'm going to do the same thing here.

All right.

I'm Janet Thompson Jackson.

And I hope I've inspired you to replenish and restore.

Thank you for staying with us, Dr. Rita and Linessa On our last segment, we were discussing Linessa and we were joyous that you are a survivor and we were talking about the importance of family support and such.

Let's go to Dr. Rita.

It's also the support of the community and helpful services that you can tell us about.

All right.

I'm going to take the team.

It really takes an active team of professionals and social worker.

I mean, just the whole gamut of support.

And, you know, unfortunately, a lot of people don't have that.

So a lot of people can't even take the first step and find a mammogram that they can afford.

I just don't know how to get into the system or are afraid.

You know, people and I think most women have had an experience where something didn't feel right in that breast or they felt something.

Most of us could just say, let me call and get in and get the mammogram done, get a clinical breast exam, you know, get some things done.

But a lot of people just don't know how to tap into that.

Now, fortunately, the Kansas Department of Health here has a program where women can get free mammograms at different facilities, not just at Grace Med, but also at different facilities around the city in order to tap into those services.

But, you know, we talk about the team you mentioned having people who surround you and when you actually have the diagnosis, you know what really is critical?

A lot of young women, a lot of young black women get diagnosed with breast cancer and tend to have that.

You've heard the triple negative, which is just the worst type of breast cancer pathology that you can have.

So they have that diagnosis and die a lot more.

These are young black women.

And so I always think, why don't we prepare our young women sooner?

Like your daughter's age is to really understand, number one, the history in their family.

Most people don't take the time to ask the questions.

Did Grandma have breast cancer?

Did my aunt have breast cancer?

Does anybody so that they can begin that process of.

Listen, 30% of we believe 30% of breast cancers could have been avoided while just with lifestyle sort of things, 30%.

That's a.

Lot.

So what you hear about the triple negative, I didn't get what that meant.

Yeah, triple negative.

You know, when you when you have a breast cancer and then look at it under the microscope and do other testing on it, they want to know is there are hormone receptors like estrogen receptor positive, progesterone receptor positive, her two receptor positive.

These are just different pathological.

But when you have a tumor that has none of those receptors, it's a booger because the the treatments that are available for the other types are not as effective in these tumors that are triple negative, don't have any receptor markers on them.

So you can't use the the hormone treatment on those and those.

That tends to be the severe type of breast cancer that younger black women have disproportionately.

So again, my point really is that starting early in their lives and we don't do this around a lot of women's health, start with that discussion early in a young girl's life so that she can know her family history, so she she can know how to eat better and make better choices and why.

And so she will put all of these chemicals on her hair and all of these other things that act like these ugly false estrogens that stimulate breast and stimulate uterus.

So anyway, I'm just, you know, I'm always thinking, how could we have prevented this?

It is clear.

But, you know, you're bringing up things I have never heard anybody talk about, such as eating.

Right.

Right.

I mean, and this whole thing even about are you talking about putting straighteners in the hair and saying that that could have an impact on getting breast cancer?

I mean, I've never heard anybody a talk about that and that's huge, right?

I mean, because, you know, a black woman's hair.

Hello, everyone.

It's everything I said.

We are all accountable.

So, yes, you know, that's something that I think, you know, you talk about black women not talking to their family to find out, heck, if they knew that putting straighteners and all of these things are the wrong thing to do or can impact their health.

And plus they have someone in their family with a problem or who had breast cancer.

That's massive.

I mean, I had no idea that that was an issue.

So what else can you tell us about those you know, things that can really bring upon cancer, such as not putting straighteners in and that kind of thing?

Well, you know, there are a lot of chemicals.

I mean, I've got a list of them.

There's a lot of them that are well known to be toxic, not just to breast, to uterus and to other organs.

So really educating young women on, again, the choices that they make around, what are you what are you going to do with your cosmetics?

So you're going to get you got to make sure that it doesn't have lead in it.

you know just those things without getting too technical but just equipping and equipping them with that information so they begin to look at look for products that don't contain those things.

And then, you know, to me, the whole just the whole food piece of it.

And we know that's not easy.

We know it's not always easy to do the right thing around our eating.

But I believe that when people hear, for instance, one of the biggest risk for breast cancer is inflammation, right?

Mm hmm.

Inflammation is the root cause of every known disease, but cancer is one of them.

Breast cancer is one of them.

Why do you get inflamed?

Because you eat a lot of refined sugars and bread.

And, you know, we know this kind of intellectually by now, but I don't believe that we really, really drive home the point that you really do have a choice around what your body doesn't mean that you can never have these things, but you ought to know that if you're going to eat bread and gluten and potatoes and rice and pasta, all the time, there's going to be a consequence.

The good news though, inflammation is measurable.

So why aren't we measuring inflammation?

Was just part of our annual screening.

And I think to piggyback off of what you just said, I think a lot of people who have lower socio-economic conditions will gravitate to those things because it's cheaper, cheaper and the things and convenient.

And it's what.

We know and it tastes.

Good and it tastes good.

And that's what we've grown eating.

And so how are we going to go and get something like, you know, like a guava or a rutabaga or something that's more healthy for us, that may take more time in preparation or we don't know how to prepare.

That's healthier for us.

Well, we know that a bag of chips is really cheap and we're working on the inside of the grocery store aisle as opposed to the outside of the grocery store aisle.

So I totally hear what you're saying because we know to do better, but it's easier to go on the inside of the aisles as opposed to the outside, because I know that people with a higher obesity rate have a higher morbidity rate.

So, I mean, I'm totally hearing what it is.

you are saying..

So Linessa when you did your lifestyle change, what are some things that key takeaways that you can share with the audience how your life has changed?

You know, just like Dr. Rita said, first of all, making sure that you're knowledgeable because nobody loves you like you love yourself.

Amen.

And so one of the best things that I did was I come from a home where my mom was a nutritionist.

So it's not as if this was foreign information to me.

It was just actually enacting that information.

And so speaking with doctors like Dr. Rita, learning things about my body and what I could do and what I needed to do and actually doing those things.

One of the things that I did just this year to make sure that I am consistently taking care of myself and able to be my best self in addition to changing what I eat, the choices that I make, the food planning and preparation that I do to ensure that something is healthy when I reach, when I want to reach for something.

I hired a personal trainer and I'm one who could come to my home.

And so when you have somebody come into your home, there are no excuses.

There are absolutely no bad gym days.

It's like I just can't make it, you know, because I'm showing up at your front door right?

And so making sure that I take those opportunities and make the sacrifices so that I can make sure that I am the healthiest right accountable.

Well, absolutely.

Awesome.

Well, Linessa You are truly an inspiration for all of us.

And you give us hope in the battle against breast cancer.

And Dr. Rita Stanley, thank you so much for coming, ladies.

What an impactful discussion that we just had with Dr. Rita and Linessa.

And I have to tell you that my mind is blown by some of the information that was just shared about hair relaxers and about some of the things that we're eating.

What did you both think?

Yeah, I was floored by the whole straightener thing, because when I was 15, my mother said, Oh, my God, you have so much hair.

Let's go and have it straightened.

You know, you wouldn't know it today, but I used to have very long hair and very thick hair, so that really freaked me out because that was going on till I was, I don't know, 20, you know.

And so that really freaked me out.

And of course, I love my licorice, I love my candy.

So you know that, you know, you know, sugar is bad for you, right?

But when you hear something like that, it really just emphasizes or emphasizes how you really need to eat and also how upsetting it is to know that I'm at a higher risk level than, say.

You very low.

And the gluten, that was something that I wasn't I didn't know that had anything to do with cancer, you know, baked goods, all that type of stuff.

Absolutely.

Again, the whole sugar element and sugar and I knew some of that because my best friend's husband had cancer for a long period of time.

So they kept him away from as much sugar as possible.

So I knew that.

But again, we're talking about people who are in food deserts, right?

Again, in poverty situations.

Right.

And they're not able to necessarily get the good stuff.

They have only so much money.

And then we're talking about not having insurance, not having proper care, not having preventative care.

Right.

So some people, you know, in terms of diabetes, they could be having diabetes and not even know exactly that they're in that situation.

So there's a lot of concern when it comes to people of color.

Right, not having access to care, to be able to even know these things.

Health care is like the last thing on the list.

You got to keep your place where you're living.

So you got to pay your rent.

Exactly right.

You got to take care of your kids and feed them.

You got to feed yourself.

You have to take care of all your utilities and several other things.

And then maybe.

You know, you're going to get to the doctor yourself.

But you got to take the kids to the doctor, too.

Exactly.

So these things fall down the list.

And thus you may not be diagnosed with breast cancer until quite late in the whole process.

I mean, Linessa was lucky too to catch it in 2 B.

Right.

Yeah.

And then she has a mother who's a dietician she was able to afford, you know, someone to come and help, you know, be a life coach, whatever.

Right.

But like you were mentioning, not everybody has that.

In fact, the greater population does not.

And then when you actually have access to those things, right, you have to make it taste good.

Not eating anything that doesn't taste good.

No, I like we said, the rutabaga.

Right.

Nobody's going to be eating that if it tastes nasty.

And if you're going through chemo treatments and this, that and the other thing, it definitely doesn't taste good.

So exactly another issue.

You guys.

That's all we have time for today, doggone it.

But if you'd like to watch this program again or any KTWU program, you can do that online at watch.ktwu.org And if you are so inspired to learn more about our guests, find out what is coming up on future shows and get access to additional content.

Be sure to visit our website at www.ktwu.org/inspire Inspiring breast cancer patients and survivors.

Inspiring you on KTWU.

Thank you for watching.

Inspire is sponsored by Kansas Furniture Mart, using furniture to inspire conversation and by the Blanche Bryden Foundation.

The Friends of KTWU.

honored to support programs and services that enrich the lives of our viewers and the Raymond C. and Marguerite Gibson Foundation.