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[00:00:00] JJ Virgin: I am JJ Virgin, PhD Dropout, sorry, mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. I’m a certified nutrition specialist, fitness Hall of Famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe, but I’m driven most of all by my insatiable curiosity and love of science. To keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information that I uncover with as many people as I can, and that’s where you come in.

[00:00:35] JJ Virgin: That’s why I created the Well Beyond 40 podcasts to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode we’ll talk about what’s working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to powerful aging and prescriptive fitness.

[00:00:57] JJ Virgin: Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out. 100. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe [email protected] to start unlocking your healthiest, most energetic self. I’m gonna let you in on a private conversation, catching up with an old friend.

[00:01:22] JJ Virgin: Today on the show, I have Nicole Eggert. She, uh, you might know her from Baywatch, that’s where she was in, uh, iconic role on Baywatch. She also was in Charles in charge. And recently, most recently after Baywatch that you can watch on Hulu or Disney Plus, she’s an actress and a producer with a career spanning over four decades, which is quite something in la.

[00:01:48] JJ Virgin: She’s been a fixture on both TV and film captivating audiences with her versatility and charisma. But most recently, she’s also been. On another type of journey, a deeply personal journey. And that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today, where she, uh, discovered a lump in her breast and has been in it with breast cancer.

[00:02:12] JJ Virgin: And, um, it’s been quite a transformation. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about is what she, how’d she find it? What’s she’d been through, but what’s it done for her? And quite often you’ll hear someone say, you know, it didn’t happen to me, it happened for me. And that’s what you’re going to hear with Nicole on that.

[00:02:30] JJ Virgin: And it is a, an incredible conversation. Uh, she does have a podcast called Perfectly Twisted, so I want to give you the heads up on that. We’ll link to it in the show notes and I will be right back with Nicole. I’m also gonna link to, um, the episode we did with. Dr. Jen Simmons on uh, new ways to look at, um, detecting early detection and detecting breast cancer.

[00:02:55] JJ Virgin: ’cause I think it’ll be super helpful here as well. So I’ll be right back with Nicole Egger. Stay with me.

[00:03:11] JJ Virgin: Nicole. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Well, this is, so, it’s, it’s so, it’s like surreal and strange because I, the last time I saw you was, I was trying to think about it. It was like 13 years ago. Feels like a lifetime ago.

[00:03:27] Nicole Eggert: Well, yes, it has been a lifetime. Um, yeah. 13 years. I didn’t even have my youngest daughter.

[00:03:34] Nicole Eggert: I have a teenager.

[00:03:35] JJ Virgin: Wow. Yeah. Amazing. I mean, at the time, so I was. Getting, I was launching the Virgin Diet and my son was in the hospital, like coming out of a traumatic brain injury in a coma and everything else. So for me, I feel like, I don’t even can’t even tell you what all was going on. It was just such a crazy, crazy time.

[00:03:56] JJ Virgin: Um, and I know we were working on some weight loss stuff, which seems like the least important thing at this point now, doesn’t it? I, I know like the of life. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Life can put things into perspective for sure. No kidding. That’s an understatement. Well, what was interesting at the time is I still remember, and this is a good lead into where we’re going, is, you know, here I was launching a diet book, but I’d realized walking into that hospital, having to be at the hospital all day, every day and launch this book that was gonna ultimately be able to.

[00:04:30] JJ Virgin: Allow me to do all the things I was gonna need to bring my son back to, you know, functioning. Um, that it was so much bigger than the diet. And so it’s interesting that you say that ’cause we met for that reason. But, you know, your journey now, now you’re very, very focused on health, but your journey kind of has been convoluted to get there.

[00:04:48] JJ Virgin: So I’d love to kinda start with, because I think you’ve been pretty, uh, vocal about your breast cancer journey as. You know, how did you discover this? What was like the lead in, into all of this?

[00:05:02] Nicole Eggert: Well, um, you know, there I was getting my mammograms, I was getting my yearly mammograms. Um, I would also get ultrasound and I was, had, I was cleared each and every time.

[00:05:16] Nicole Eggert: And, and when did

[00:05:16] JJ Virgin: you start doing that? How old were you?

[00:05:19] Nicole Eggert: Um, I’ve been doing them probably since about four, since I was 40, I wanna say. Mm-hmm. I’m 53 now. In my forties, somewhere in my early forties, and, um, everything was fine, fine, fine, fine, and all of a sudden one day. Well, if I, if after thinking about it, and you know, obviously we think about these things nonstop mind is on like loop.

[00:05:43] Nicole Eggert: Um, my bra started fitting differently and every time I would look down at my bra, I was a little bit crooked and one side looked a little fuller and I really. I just chalked it up to, um, one breast was larger than the other, and my breasts have been these, um, ever changing, um, girls on my body. Anyways, they, I didn’t really start creating breast tissue till later in life.

[00:06:12] Nicole Eggert: Um, I had a reduction. They grew right back, so I really, really, yeah. So I, I just had this funny relationship with them and I was like, okay, one’s a little bigger than the other. In hindsight now looking back and for how long I, I was seeing that, but I didn’t know that I had breast cancer until I had a throbbing one day.

[00:06:36] Nicole Eggert: It was really throbbing. So, um, I started feeling around and I felt it. And, you know, my heart dropped. I, I, and I felt so stupid to be honest, because I thought, how was I living with that right there? And I didn’t even feel it. I wasn’t doing myself exams. And

[00:06:58] JJ Virgin: who does there? Okay. I really wanna know. I mean, it’s, you know, you go to the doctor and they’re like, okay, make sure you do this.

[00:07:04] JJ Virgin: And I’m thinking, okay, I was reading, reading, prepping for this, and I went. Does anyone really religiously do their breast self exams? Really,

[00:07:14] Nicole Eggert: I, you know, I wanna say that people do, but they don’t listen. Only 50, less than 50% of women are even still going to get mammograms these days. So every time I’m preaching mammograms and getting tested.

[00:07:28] Nicole Eggert: Did an early detection. I feel like I’m being repetitive all the time, but the fact is women are not doing it. And had I been doing those self exams, I would’ve found it much earlier and it would’ve been a, a much easier process to deal with early detection. How big

[00:07:44] JJ Virgin: was it when you found it

[00:07:45] Nicole Eggert: very big?

[00:07:46] Nicole Eggert: We’re, we’re talking over 10. Um. It measured out over 10 millimeters, so that’s quite large. What

[00:07:55] JJ Virgin: was that like?

[00:07:55] Nicole Eggert: What’s that feel like? Like a little, um, it feels like maybe like a golf ball. Oh

[00:08:02] JJ Virgin: my gosh. Mm-hmm.

[00:08:04] Nicole Eggert: Yeah, and it, I had my main tumor and then I had satellite tumors around it, which I wasn’t feeling.

[00:08:11] Nicole Eggert: The, if, if I had felt it, I could have, I could have had a, um, you know, a lumpectomy or something and been done with this. So, early detection really is so huge with breast cancer. It’s, it’s such a game changer. If you, you know, and you hear that all the time, but I don’t think women realize what a game changer.

[00:08:31] Nicole Eggert: It’s the difference between chemotherapy. It’s the difference between life and death. It’s the difference between amputating your breasts. It is a huge difference. This early detection. It’s a big, big, big deal. So the discomfort of a mammogram, I gotta tell you, is nothing. Compared to a mastectomy, it is nothing compared to chemotherapy.

[00:08:51] Nicole Eggert: It is nothing compared to the fear of going through all of that. Um,

[00:08:57] JJ Virgin: well, I’m gonna introduce you to Dr. Jen Simmons, who we’re talking about offline too, because she actually has a new technology that’s not uncomfortable, that’s like better than a mammogram. So love that. Right? I know. Yeah. So QT imaging, so it’s, it’s the new, it’s the new thing that she’s, her whole goal is to completely transform this.

[00:09:17] JJ Virgin: So we’re not like sitting there going, oh, great, I’m gonna have to go smash my boobs again. So,

[00:09:21] Nicole Eggert: right. Which again, listen, that’s, it’s no fun. It’s no fun for anybody, but it is, it is nothing compared to it. The consequences of not doing it. So it’s huge. And if I, I really hope there’s a, a better way to test.

[00:09:35] Nicole Eggert: I don’t have to worry about that anymore. But, um, I hope there is a better way to test so that more women get in there and are on top of their testing. I have, I had really, um, dense breast tissue, so the mammogram wasn’t picking mine up. Self-exam would. Oh, so it’s

[00:09:50] JJ Virgin: all of these

[00:09:50] Nicole Eggert: things.

[00:09:51] JJ Virgin: So, so you’d

[00:09:51] Nicole Eggert: had a mammogram and it hadn’t picked it up?

[00:09:54] Nicole Eggert: Yeah, they still didn’t really pick it up After I knew, we knew it was there and I had biopsy, it still was only showing a little thing. So the first team of doctors I had, they said, oh, you, um, you’re, you’re just gonna have a lumpectomy. Then we did the MRIs, then we did the CT scans, we did all of the things.

[00:10:11] Nicole Eggert: The test results came back and they were like, ah, it’s in the lymphatic system. It’s. It’s so big we can’t even operate. I had to do chemo first. Um, and luckily I responded to the chemo. It shrunk it to a place where they could then go in and remove the breast. It, it was a mess. And yeah, still not big. And you were how old at the time this was, um.

[00:10:35] Nicole Eggert: I was, so, I was 52. 51. Oh, 51. This is just, um, I’m still going through it. Um, wow. Yeah. This was the, just the tail end of 2023. Oh, boy. Yeah.

[00:10:48] JJ Virgin: I didn’t realize it was so fresh.

[00:10:50] Nicole Eggert: So fresh. Yeah. So I’m on targeted therapy and, um, I do all the hormone blockers and I’ve had to medically put myself through menopause, which I think chemo kind of did that for me already.

[00:11:05] Nicole Eggert: So my, my symptoms aren’t that, my side effects aren’t so horrible. Um, but I’m on a lot of stuff for the next 10 years and getting tested every three months. So it’s a lot. Yeah.

[00:11:16] JJ Virgin: Wow. How was your mindset going? I mean, and still going through all of this stuff?

[00:11:23] Nicole Eggert: So, well, at first it was devastating and I was frozen in fear and horrified.

[00:11:29] Nicole Eggert: And I couldn’t even read the paperwork. I couldn’t read the results. I couldn’t go online. I couldn’t do any of it. I was just really frozen in, in, in the fear and the, I was horrified. And, um. I knew that a negative body was not gonna heal properly. I knew I had to find a way to put my big girl pants on and, and fight for this.

[00:11:58] Nicole Eggert: And so for me it was diving into, um. I decided I was gonna do the chemotherapy. And I also am a big believer in, um, eastern medicine, um, holistic. I also am really big on all the juju and, you know, um, scientifically backed things and some that are not, like I eat apricot seeds and I, I drink this sour so.

[00:12:22] Nicole Eggert: Tea ’cause, why not? Um, so I really started just diving into how I could help my body along with the chemo. So what was I eating, um, that I should stop what was gonna, and it started with helping the chemo and then it really started shifting towards what foods are, you know, adding and contributing to cancer, the growth of cancer, which foods are fighting cancer, you know, and I just really started getting, um.

[00:12:50] Nicole Eggert: Into that side of it so that it took the focus a little bit off of my body right here, right now, and more of like, okay, let’s just do all the things. Let’s be proactive. Let’s control the controllables and, um, do what we can because you can feel very, very helpless and very, very scared. And for me, doing things made me feel like.

[00:13:12] Nicole Eggert: I was moving in the right direction here. We were going somewhere, so it was actually kind of hard. When I stopped chemo, I had a, a bit of um, some down moments too because it was like, I’m not doing something right. I was like excited to do the chemo. I wanted to be doing all these things ’cause it’s proactive and when that stopped it was scary.

[00:13:33] Nicole Eggert: It was really very scary. And how long ago was that? I, um, finished chemo in the end of July, 2024, and then I, um, did radiation for 30 days straight at the end of just, I just finished, um, at the end of 2025. I had, um, my first mastectomy in September. Um, of 2024 and, um, oh wait, I said 2025. We’re in 2025. 2024.

[00:14:04] Nicole Eggert: I had my radiation and my mastectomy, and I will at the end of this month have my other mastectomy, the other side. So, because I, you know, they say I have one healthy breast. Um, so I’ve been sleeping on it, so to speak, for a year, and my decision is to remove them both.

[00:14:25] JJ Virgin: In were you like in terms of risk for breast cancer, was this, and I know that genetics plays a small role, it’s not the bigger role, but was that part of it? ’cause I’ve had girlfriends who’ve literally done a mastectomy, uh, a prophylactic one because of their genetics, like their. Sisters all had breast cancer, et cetera.

[00:14:45] JJ Virgin: Like do you have those, the BRCA genes or any of that kind of thing?

[00:14:48] Nicole Eggert: I don’t, I tested negative for all the genes. Um, but both of my parents did have cancer. My mother, um, although she didn’t pass from it, she had colon cancer that was attached to the liver. They were able to remove that in one surgery. She didn’t have to do chemo or anything.

[00:15:04] Nicole Eggert: My father passed from skin cancer. God, how times have changed? Um,

[00:15:09] JJ Virgin: and, and especially you being, being on the beach so much as a

[00:15:13] Nicole Eggert: Well, I just had to have, I just. Took, things had to be removed and they got, they came back abnormal pre-cancerous. So I just had something cut out of my back. Just had six stitches removed a couple days ago.

[00:15:25] Nicole Eggert: So yes, it’s like, it’s everywhere. It’s everything. It’s wild.

[00:15:30] JJ Virgin: Yeah. Well, here’s what’s crazy. Um. Uh, and I have, I, I’d love to hear your thoughts ’cause I definitely, my thoughts as to why this is happening, but I was just talking to an amazing holistic vet I had on the show and she was telling me how one in 1.25 dogs have cancer now and die.

[00:15:47] JJ Virgin: And I’m like, oh my gosh. And, you know, and it was all. Toxins and so much of the stuff in our environment that we are being bombarded with, you know, so you look at and go, clearly it’s way more than genetics. Otherwise we wouldn’t have the rise in cancers that we do.

[00:16:05] Nicole Eggert: Well, that’s right.

[00:16:06] JJ Virgin: But let’s like, let’s go way back because how old were you when you were, you know, a Baywatch gal?

[00:16:13] JJ Virgin: 20. Like

[00:16:14] Nicole Eggert: 20 years old, something like that. Very young. Very young. Yeah.

[00:16:21] JJ Virgin: How long was that show on for?

[00:16:23] Nicole Eggert: Oh, I don’t know. I mean. 10 years or more. Uh, I, I did it for two, I did it for two seasons and, um, bowed out gracefully, so to speak, speak, um,

[00:16:37] JJ Virgin: even these shows, I remember I was on one show and I was like, please cancel the show.

[00:16:40] JJ Virgin: Cancel the show. I cancel. Like, please do not make me out to do any more of this. That’s how I felt. He’s like, yeah. I’m like, uh, yeah, I’m complete. You know, um, but you’ve been really like someone with a lot of the shows you’ve been on. It’s like, it’s been very body focused.

[00:16:56] Nicole Eggert: Yes. Well, you know, I pro I, I produced a documentary, um, called After Baywatch and worked on it for five years.

[00:17:04] Nicole Eggert: I got my diagnosis during, uh, the, the filming and when. We finished and wrapped and sold it and went out to promote it. I was in the middle of treatment, so here I was promoting Baywatch, um, with a mastectomy on my books and in the middle of chemo, completely bloated from all of the, um, the medications that came along with chemo.

[00:17:30] Nicole Eggert: The steroids just made me just blow up and um, and there I was bald. Bald, bloated and boob list promoting Bay Wash. The irony was not lost on me. I was. I, I, I just, and then it was weird because it also took a pressure off because I was like, you know, I’m in my fifties and then they’re gonna be comparing me to when I was in my twenties anyway.

[00:17:56] Nicole Eggert: So at least this way it takes some of that pressure off of like, what does she look like now? Well, she looks like hell, but she’s also fighting for her life. So, um, it, it, it took a little pressure off of that part of it, but, um, I

[00:18:09] JJ Virgin: feel like we’re kind of getting into some. Just a, a good place. Like I love the fact that Pamela Anderson’s walking around with no makeup on and looks fabulous, and it’s like, this is so great.

[00:18:19] JJ Virgin: Like, go you, you know?

[00:18:21] Nicole Eggert: Yeah. Be you. And I think then that’s when people are their most beautiful, right? Mm-hmm. When they feel the most beautiful and when they feel good and they’re doing what’s organically them, then that’s when you shine.

[00:18:34] JJ Virgin: I mean, you’ve been in the middle of like the pressure cooker of, you know, I mean the red, the red swimsuit and crazy unrealistic body image stuff.

[00:18:46] JJ Virgin: Like what? What would you say? Because it does, maybe it’s just what I’m looking at now. I’m like, I’m feeling like it’s a little different than it was, but is it or is it not? Like, are we kind of relaxing some of that craziness or not?

[00:18:58] Nicole Eggert: Well, I love the fact that curvier bodies have. Been trending for a lack of a better word.

[00:19:05] Nicole Eggert: Mm-hmm. Um, I love that smaller breasts are back in. Um, I, I think that, yes, I think that we’re, we’re more open like in the nineties with Baywatch. It was like you had to be super thin with huge boobs. That was like the ideal body type. And I wasn’t that, I was considered curvy. And I look back and I laugh and I thought, if that’s curvy, I will take that all day long.

[00:19:28] Nicole Eggert: I will take that back. But I’ll tell you, the one thing that cancer taught me was to really love my body, uh, because it was showing up for me every day, no matter what it looked like, I gained 50 pounds in treatment. Normally, I would’ve been horrified, like I would’ve. I would’ve been devastated, horrified, feeling terrible.

[00:19:47] Nicole Eggert: Um, ’cause I’m 5 2 50 pounds is a lot of weight. I was not, I was so happy with my body and I was loving on it and appreciating it. And, um, all that it does, it shows up for us. And so many times we sit there and pick it apart.

[00:20:03] JJ Virgin: And

[00:20:03] Nicole Eggert: it’s this, it’s what’s getting you there. It’s what’s allowing you to live your life to even care what you look like.

[00:20:11] Nicole Eggert: You, you wouldn’t even have that if your body didn’t show up for you. So we have to be more gentle. We have to have more grace with ourselves. And um, and I think in turn when you, when you do love on yourself like that, you also eat better and. Are more aware of the products you’re using on your skin and, and the foods that you’re, you know, digesting and, and it makes you kind of.

[00:20:36] Nicole Eggert: More aware of this country that we live in and like it’s really hard to be healthy here.

[00:20:44] JJ Virgin: Yeah, no understatement. It’s funny though, when you think about like, and I feel like it’s something that happens more in our twenties and thirties where we approach our body from like the self-loathing. It’s never small enough, it’s never fit enough.

[00:20:57] JJ Virgin: It’s never like never, never, never, never. And all of a sudden you turn 15, you’re like. Oh, who cares? Like, yeah, who cares? Like I just wanna be able to lift this heavy stuff over here. But you know, when you start to unpack. How, how do you really live a healthy lifestyle? And then you start to look at all of the things, everything from all the toxins, the microplastics, the, the, the air, just the stress.

[00:21:20] JJ Virgin: It’s like, ugh. So looking all that stuff, what, what have you done? How have you re-figure your life now? What’s look like? How do you live? And we’d love to know everything from the beauty products on down. So.

[00:21:32] Nicole Eggert: Well, at first I went really hard. I mean, I was completely vegan, clean. I was making everything myself.

[00:21:39] Nicole Eggert: I, and then I started to relax a little bit because, um, for me, maybe some people would thrive that way. For me, I think I was making myself a little bit more sick being that way. I have to, I have to have grace with myself that sometimes we can’t do anything about it. But, um. You know, I, the word sulfates and parabens have such a different meaning to me now.

[00:22:02] Nicole Eggert: I always heard that, but I thought, what does that mean? That means there’s some chemical in there that’s maybe not that great for your hair or for your skin. Like, I didn’t dive into that and I don’t think it’s ever really fully explained. Um, so. I went around the house, threw everything out. My teenager was horrified at some of the things I was taking out of her bathroom, and I’m like, I’m sorry.

[00:22:22] Nicole Eggert: I will take you shopping. You thank you later. Yeah. Yes. When you, when you’re able to have babies and all of your friends cannot, um, because this is something, an epidemic that’s happening with our young women and men, it’s horrifying and it’s, it’s. On our, it’s in our counters. It’s, it’s edges everywhere.

[00:22:40] Nicole Eggert: We’re doing it to ourselves and we’re not even realizing it. So for me, it’s, you know, learning to read ingredients, which is just mine. It is. So, it was so hard for me to wrap my head around having to do that. Um, but I really feel like buying the whole foods and eating at home, I feel the safest and I feel the best.

[00:23:02] Nicole Eggert: Um, I make my concoctions, I do a lot of fasting. Um. I do, you know, spiritually, I mean, I threw myself into healers, you know, a shaman healer. Mm-hmm. I, I have to do all of the things, uh, I, and, um, and I slip. I’m not perfect, obviously, and there’s days I can’t, I just can’t be perfect and I have to work really hard to keep my white blood cell count up, which means cardio and a ton of greens and sometimes.

[00:23:36] Nicole Eggert: I’m too tired to do the cardio and sometimes the green drink makes me wanna throw up. Okay. There’s days I am just not gonna drink it. I’ve been doing it for two years every day now, and there’s just days I’m not gonna do it. And then I go in and then I have to get blood infusions because I haven’t been doing those.

[00:23:53] Nicole Eggert: Things that, that week and it’s, you know, so I see where it’s effective and I see, but I also know that I can’t keep up all of it all the time. And that’s been a big part of it for me too, to say, don’t give up. Just do the best you can when you can, you know? And, and, and that tends to make it more often than not, because sometimes I would feel like I need to do all this right?

[00:24:18] Nicole Eggert: And when I did something wrong, then I would go, oh, well, you know, f it, I, I already messed up and, and would get maybe lazy or, you know, just not keep doing it. But I, I. I, I’ve really learned that it’s, you know, you have to be well-rounded and I, I don’t give up, I get right back at it. So one day I, yeah, maybe I don’t wanna drink the juice, but every morning I’m gonna get up and see like, can you do it today?

[00:24:41] Nicole Eggert: And yeah, you come back around, you know, and

[00:24:44] JJ Virgin: yeah, get, get a b plus, a minus. You know, that, that whole setup of like, I have to do this perfectly, or I’m not doing it. It’s like, you know what that means? You’re not doing it, you’re not doing it right. Yeah. Like if you just go, if 90% or even 89% of the time I’m gonna do it and give myself a little grace on the other, then you can do it.

[00:25:03] JJ Virgin: It’s manageable,

[00:25:04] Nicole Eggert: much more manageable and become so much more, um, natural. Like, or you can just do that organically because you’re not putting, you’re taking a pressure off. Right. There’s not that little, yeah. Mm-hmm.

[00:25:17] JJ Virgin: Well, you mentioned a shaman, like what are the things, had you been doing things like meditation or you know.

[00:25:25] JJ Virgin: Going to healers or any of that kind of stuff prior to this, or was this a new finding and what are you doing there? Well, I

[00:25:31] Nicole Eggert: was very much into a lot of spirituality when I was younger and I felt like I had really not, I had sort of given up here. We go back to that. I had not been. Practicing a lot of that.

[00:25:43] Nicole Eggert: And, um, this is sort of what I’m delving into now with the cancer as we talk about, like how, what we can do for ourselves now, what can we do for ourselves in the future. But I’m really looking at like, what did I do that caused this? Um, and not to blame myself for having it. But, um, with so many different kinds of cancers, um, mine was estrogen driven.

[00:26:04] Nicole Eggert: It was a hormonal cancer, and what did I do that contributed to it? And I can pinpoint a lot of things. And so, um, and not being spiritual, I think was a big one because I believe, um, stress and trauma that I had left undealt with mm-hmm. Um, is it was a huge contributing factor. Can raise our estrogen levels.

[00:26:25] Nicole Eggert: Exponentially. And, um, and along with a lot of diet, um, drinking alcohol, I will never look at drinking alcohol the same, the whole joke of like, oh, you know, the, like the wine no house mom, it’s not funny anymore because, um, there, there are looking to put black labels on alcohol now because. It’s horrible, especially for women.

[00:26:47] Nicole Eggert: It’s so damaging. So if you’re a little stressed out and you think having a little wine is good with your stress, you are shooting your estrogen levels through the roof. And what caused my cancer estrogen? Um, I. You know, using all these products that have hormones in it and all of the things that mess with your hormones, shooting your, your estrogen up there.

[00:27:08] Nicole Eggert: So the shaman, I was so freaked out that I needed to just escape. I needed to get out of my own head. So, you know, I went and sat with this man for three hours or so. I mean, we, we did it all, you know, drums, he was singing, blowing the stuff up my nose, meditating, all of it. And I just find it really works for me.

[00:27:31] Nicole Eggert: It’s something that I really, really, um, benefit from. And then I continue to do guided visualization a lot. A lot of guided meditation. ’cause I also feel like, um, if I leave it up to my own devices, the day will get away from me. So I make it a point to do it. And I, I do online ones and so I, I turn it, you know, I turn that on and I escape for 45 minutes to an hour and just a couple days a week.

[00:27:58] Nicole Eggert: And I think it makes all the difference in the world. Um,

[00:28:02] JJ Virgin: I totally agree. I think, uh, I found. Dr. Joe Dispenza during the pandemic. ’cause literally I was like, what else am I gonna do? You know? And uh, and I was jokingly going to a breath work. Meditation retreat for seven days in the middle of the pandemic was 1500 people breathing heavy in a room and no one getting sick because the vibration was so high.

[00:28:25] JJ Virgin: Um, but what a difference, and I, what you just said there was so powerful. I really love the fact that we are starting to focus on trauma. Because it’s been this kind of like thing out there that’s so amorphous, but when you really look at it, it’s, it’s like if it’s, if you aren’t actively working on peeling that onion of it, we all have it.

[00:28:45] JJ Virgin: How could you not? How could you be a human and not have some trauma in you? And it will just like. I think trauma and toxins are like the, the history book of your body that will just take you out if you don’t address them. And then you put the lightning, you know, the little, the lighter fluid of wine on top of it, and you’ve got the trifecta.

[00:29:07] Nicole Eggert: Sure. Do. Yep. And, and all the refined sugar, the desserts with the Yes, you’ve, you are just adding to it. And it’s, it’s, it’s so scary and a lot of people get it from church. You can get it in so many different ways as long as you get your piece. And it’s funny because I did therapy for many years and I, I felt like, um, I unpacked a lot.

[00:29:28] Nicole Eggert: And then for some reason, there’s a couple things I just left there and was like, oh, I can deal with, but those, I just could deal with those, you know, later, those aren’t causing me problems. So they, they sat away and I, they manifest into, into negativity in your body. I. It

[00:29:44] JJ Virgin: sounds like you’ve, like, this has been actually reframed as a really amazing experience.

[00:29:50] Nicole Eggert: It’s really weird. I, you’ll meet a lot of people who say, I didn’t wanna be here, but I wouldn’t trade it. Um, I wouldn’t trade it. It, it’s been a huge, I, I think it’s a wake up call for me. I think it was my wake up call. Um, I don’t find it to be like my doom or my death sentence. I, I feel like it was, um.

[00:30:12] Nicole Eggert: The universe’s way of shaking me up and making me change direction and I’ll never be the same person and I’m, I’m good with that.

[00:30:22] JJ Virgin: Yeah. And maybe kind of showing where you’re going next. I.

[00:30:27] Nicole Eggert: Yeah, and maybe not trying to control where I’m going next. Maybe living in the moment and appreciating the days and realizing that that is where my success is, is just enjoying the day instead of.

[00:30:41] Nicole Eggert: Always having something that I need to do. You know, always climbing, climbing, climbing, um, achieving, achieving, achieving. Sometimes that’s not where the success is. It’s, it’s just that you had a good day and like you enjoyed it and, and not thinking about the next, so, yeah.

[00:30:59] JJ Virgin: Yeah. Well, you, you like work in Hollywood where it’s much more of the doing than being, and I think in any career it’s so easy to fall on the trap of achievement.

[00:31:10] JJ Virgin: Yes. And miss, miss, the actual, the achievement is actually just being that you forget. So yeah,

[00:31:19] Nicole Eggert: I think the corporate world is full of it too. I mean, um, yeah, it’s always, you know, you the next job, the next doing the best. Yeah. And that’s not where it’s at.

[00:31:30] JJ Virgin: Well, I found very, like, it was interesting when I was working with a lot of actors and actresses in Hollywood, I remember doing a lot of adrenal testing with people and realizing that the most stressful time for them wasn’t when they were.

[00:31:43] JJ Virgin: Taping for a movie or doing their press junkets after the most stressful time was after that because they didn’t know what was coming next or if anything ever would, and if that was the best thing that would ever be for them. And it kind of made me realize, oh, like in life, we’re always, we’re always kind of there.

[00:32:02] JJ Virgin: And what if we were just happy with where we’re at? And everything else would be frosting, right? That’s right.

[00:32:09] Nicole Eggert: Yeah. Yeah. Acting’s one of those jobs where, um, you don’t get to just show up at work every day, and you have, there’s this stability. It’s, uh, you know, and it’s also not a job where you can send out resumes and go on job interviews and convince somebody that you belong in this position.

[00:32:26] Nicole Eggert: It doesn’t really work like that, and it, it’s the most unstable. You know? Yeah. Being any kind of artist is just so unstable. So you have to find where that happiness is otherwise on a

[00:32:39] JJ Virgin: female a, a female, like to be a woman enacting, where you literally have a clock where there’s like hot, hot guys can be in their seventies and eighties.

[00:32:50] JJ Virgin: I mean, look at Harrison Ford still playing action characters, but you don’t see it with the women. I hope it’s starting to shift some, but

[00:32:58] Nicole Eggert: I believe it is.

[00:33:00] JJ Virgin: Not enough. Not

[00:33:01] Nicole Eggert: enough. We all wanna

[00:33:02] JJ Virgin: see that, man. We all want, like we, you look at how many women are 50 plus that wanna see those powerful badass, I think there’s nothing sexier than a strong, powerful woman in her 50, 60 seventies.

[00:33:17] JJ Virgin: Like they’re amazing. I couldn’t agree more. Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. And the little flip that gets switched at 50, where you go, what were all those things that I was so freaked out about? You know, yours just got amplified with the cancer diagnosis.

[00:33:31] Nicole Eggert: Yes, yes. Yeah. The fearlessness that I have now is funny because it’s, yeah, it makes you go, wait, you were scared to make that phone call, or you were scared to, you know, walk into that room.

[00:33:44] Nicole Eggert: Oh my God. Like I. I’ll show you what fear is. Fear, you know? Yeah. I looked at fear in its eyes and I had to live with that, so, and still live with that. So yeah, normal things anymore, they don’t, they don’t scare me. You can’t scare me anymore.

[00:34:01] JJ Virgin: That’s what, when, when I nearly lost my son, I mean, that was the same thing.

[00:34:04] JJ Virgin: I go, oh, the things that you get freaked out about. They don’t even, it, it, it doesn’t even appear on my screen. Like I don’t even think about it. You know, that’s, talk about the real things that matter. So, you know, it sounds like you’ve made a lot of lemonade out of this one.

[00:34:20] Nicole Eggert: I have. I, I have. I’m grateful for that side of it.

[00:34:23] Nicole Eggert: I really am. And it’s funny because when you get diagnosed, they say to you, oh, a year from now this will all be behind you and you won’t even, you won’t even think about it. It’ll be behind you. It’s the biggest lie. What? Yes, it’s, and so many people would say that, and I, I, I really kind of had to come to terms with afterwards that no, this is something that, you know, I am.

[00:34:46] Nicole Eggert: I, I’m in, I’m surrounded by, we’ll always be involved with and, um, it’s not going anywhere.

[00:34:52] JJ Virgin: Right. But what if that was a blessing and not a curse? You know, I think that maybe they need to reframe there. Yes. Speaking of which, so what are you doing with all this? Like, what’s, what’s next for Nicole?

[00:35:04] Nicole Eggert: Well, um, next is my to do my mastectomy and my reconstruction surgeries.

[00:35:11] Nicole Eggert: Um, and then, you know, it’s. I, I, I have to, and just continuing to learn. I, I share, I share as I go along, but I don’t really claim to, you know, have too much to share yet until I have a success story in my hands and until I reach a certain place, then I’m, I’m, you know, really thinking about what, what do I do next to share?

[00:35:34] Nicole Eggert: Um, right now I, you know, I do have my podcast and I share a little bit, but it’s not around cancer or breast cancer. And, um. You know, I do work with the American Cancer Society. I do work with Susan g Komen. Um, I’m working with a company, plastico, and they help women with reconstruction. So, you know, there’s just a lot of things.

[00:35:57] Nicole Eggert: Um, in the works. I’m working on a product, a skin product that, um, will be healthy. And it is very well needed, very much needed in the space. And, um, just going, I’m just moving forward. Everything is a forward momentum right now, and I don’t know what really exactly what that looks like. I don’t know if that’s a book.

[00:36:20] Nicole Eggert: I don’t know if it’s a show. I don’t know if it’s a documentary or a movie. I don’t know. Um, but I think it will show itself to me as I unfold here.

[00:36:31] JJ Virgin: Yeah. And it sounds like you’re giving yourself the space so that it can

[00:36:35] Nicole Eggert: Yeah, I don’t wanna push anything. Yeah. I’m still, each step in this is like this whole new learning, you know, it’s, it’s a whole new rabbit hole every time I move on to something else.

[00:36:46] Nicole Eggert: You know, radiation was a whole thing in itself. Um, you know, and, and then how do I feel better after the RA radiation? And just, yeah, every step of it is this whole learning curve. So, um, I’m still there. I’m still learning. I. I’m still dod. Me too.

[00:37:02] JJ Virgin: I hope we all are

[00:37:03] Nicole Eggert: well, yeah. Yes.

[00:37:05] JJ Virgin: Right. Yes. Forever. Your attitude’s fabulous and you are fabulous.

[00:37:12] JJ Virgin: And, uh, what’s the name of your podcast that we can send everybody to? It’s called Perfectly Twisted.

[00:37:18] Nicole Eggert: Um, I have a bit of a twisted sense of humor and, uh, it’s about everything and everything and all things, and it’s just a good time. You can find it perfectly. twisted.com. Um, you can also listen anywhere you podcast, but if you wanna watch, it’s on YouTube and the, the website.

[00:37:36] Nicole Eggert: Um, it’s just a good time. It’s just a good all encompassed talking, reminiscing. We talk old school, new school. What’s happening now? What happened in the nineties? Um, I have. Huh

[00:37:50] JJ Virgin: uh, the nineties. Yeah,

[00:37:51] Nicole Eggert: the eighties and nineties. Um, I have callers, uh, or viewers write in, um, questions, so I, I answer questions.

[00:37:59] Nicole Eggert: It’s, it’s fun. It’s just a, it’s, it’s just a good time. It’s a perfectly twisted good time.

[00:38:05] JJ Virgin: There you go. Well, thank you so much. It’s so good catching up with you.

[00:38:08] Nicole Eggert: You too. Thank

[00:38:09] JJ Virgin: you for having

[00:38:10] Nicole Eggert: me.

[00:38:12] JJ Virgin: One of the things I’ve been focusing on with the show is really looking at, after an episode, what are some of the actionable takeaways that you can use and put into your life?

[00:38:22] JJ Virgin: And obviously one of ’em that I was writing down reminding myself too is Breast self exam. Breast self exam. Breast Self exam. So that is one. That I was thinking about as we were talking, it’s like how do you make sure this is something that happens as well for you? And you know, I teach everybody to get on a bio impeded scale.

[00:38:43] JJ Virgin: Impedance scale every day, and then once a week look at the trends and once a week do a waste and hip measurement. I think that’s the once a week do the breast self exam too. So why don’t we attach that so that it becomes something that we are all doing. On a regular basis. She had another reminder in there.

[00:39:01] JJ Virgin: And the reminder was really to focus on, you know, doing something mindful every day. And how she’d gotten away from that. Well, full disclosure, I had to, and I am really excited to be going back to a, Dr. Joe spends a retreat, but I, I am back in it and got reminded about that. Um. A while ago. So that has become, is just a part of how I frame my day because it is a super important thing that we can be doing.

[00:39:30] JJ Virgin: So, you know, there’s some takeaways for you is the breast self exam and then what, what you need to do for you on a regular basis to really help keep your mindset where you want it to be for your life. And then the third one that’s really important is the idea of, you know. That canny constant, never ending improvement, but not perfection.

[00:39:57] JJ Virgin: Because when you’re perfect, you’re either perfect or you’re not. And there’s no in between. But when you are improving, then there’s always room. There’s room for when you, you know, have a day where you’re like. It’s just a bad day and I’m staying in bed and there’s, you know, there’s just going for the B plus, A minus in life.

[00:40:15] JJ Virgin: You don’t need to have an A plus because most of the time if I see someone going for an A plus, I know they’re either getting an F or an an A plus and there’s nowhere in between. So let’s go for the canny instead. The constant never ending improvement. Alright, I’ll see you next time.

[00:40:36] JJ Virgin: Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips, and techniques you can incorporate into everyday life. To ensure you look and feel great and are built to last, check me out on Instagram, Facebook, and my website, jj virgin.com. And make sure to follow my [email protected] so you don’t miss a.

[00:40:57] JJ Virgin: Single episode. And hey, if you’re loving what you hear, don’t forget to leave a review. Your reviews make a big difference in helping me reach more incredible women just like you, to spread the word about aging powerfully after 40. Thanks for tuning in and I’ll catch you on the next episode.

[00:41:24] JJ Virgin: Hey, JJ here, and just a reminder that the Well Beyond 40 Podcast offers health, wellness, fitness, and nutritional information. That’s designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

[00:41:41] JJ Virgin: If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional. Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid, or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes, the use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.

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