The Oncology Aesthetics Podcast
Nurturing well-being through the cancer journey.
The Oncology Aesthetics podcast is a guide to enhancing well-being, self-esteem, and resilience during your cancer journey. Join us as we share expert skin care tips, practical self-care strategies, and inspiring stories to help you navigate life's challenges. Let's rediscover strength, radiance, and joy together—because thriving is possible throughout treatment and beyond.
The Oncology Aesthetics Podcast
Nighttime Skincare for Better Sleep
Ever wondered why sleep becomes so elusive during cancer treatment? Our latest podcast episode tackles this crucial yet often overlooked aspect of cancer care with expert insights from Lori, an experienced nurse navigator.
Sleep isn't just about rest—it's fundamental to physical recovery and mental wellbeing during cancer treatment. Lori explains how quality sleep helps lower blood pressure, strengthens the compromised immune system, and regulates appetite—all vital during treatment. Meanwhile, the mental stress of diagnosis, treatment costs, and family concerns creates a troubling cycle: anxiety disrupts sleep, and poor sleep worsens mental health.
We dive deep into how various cancer treatments directly impact sleep. Surgery creates pain and positioning challenges. Chemotherapy may cause nausea, urinary frequency, night sweats, and hot flashes that fragment sleep patterns. But here's where our experts offer practical solutions: Josanna reveals how addressing extremely dry, itchy skin with evening hydration rituals can dramatically improve comfort levels at night. Creating a calming bedtime routine—dimming lights, gentle aromatherapy, applying products with slow movements—helps signal to your nervous system it's time to rest.
The conversation yields actionable advice: slather on hydration before going to sleep, limit daytime naps to 30 minutes, exercise earlier in the day, watch caffeine and sugar intake, bring familiar items to hospital stays, and lastly, put away those screens before bed! Whether through professional oncology aesthetic services or gentle touch from a loved one, the power of physical connection in promoting relaxation cannot be overstated.
Ready to transform your sleep during cancer treatment? Listen now for these expert-backed strategies that support your body's natural healing processes. Your journey through cancer deserves the restorative power of good sleep—let us show you how to reclaim it.
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This podcast is brought to you by the Ricardo Fisas Natura Bisse Foundation produced by Lyons Creative. All the information contained in this podcast is intended only to provide general skincare guidance. The information is not a substitute for consulting with a physician or other qualified medical professional. Welcome to the Oncology Aesthetics Podcast, where we explore ways to enhance well-being, self-esteem and resilience while navigating cancer. We bring you expert skincare tips, practical self-care strategies and inspiring stories to help you rediscover strength, radiance and joy. Hello everyone, welcome back to the show. My name is Raejan, your podcast host and national educator with the Ricardo Fisas Natura Bisse Foundation. Today we've got Josanna and Laurie on the show. Laurie, welcome.
Laurie:Thank you. Thank you, excited to be here with you.
Rae:Josanna welcome back.
Josanna:Thanks, I'm excited to be back.
Rae:Laurie, if you could just give us a quick introduction of what you do.
Laurie:Yeah, so I am what we call a nurse navigator and I mostly deal with breast cancer patients from the time of diagnosis throughout treatment, and I work for a healthcare system here in the DFW area.
Rae:Wonderful. Thank you so much for being here. We love having nurse navigators on because I feel like you guys have such an intimate connection with the clients, like you were saying, from point A to point Z, so you really see so many different aspects of what people are going through, and today we really just kind of wanted to touch point on helping people getting better sleep. In our experience we have clients all the time that come to us and after they've received their service they talk about how they feel so much more relaxed and we hear a lot that they actually slept better that night after they've gotten that sort of time for rest already. Josanna, I love hearing your stories about how people can utilize their skincare to help them get better sleep. Maybe chat a little bit about that.
Josanna:Yeah, I think one of the things we talk about a lot when we're going through like the skin care guide or just giving patients tips or recommendations, is we always talk about, when you're experiencing dry skin, the goal of trying to get ahead of it.
Josanna:So in the evening, if you normally put on a layer of hydration, if you're going through cancer treatment, you may benefit from putting on a double layer, because having that extra hydration and really reinforcing the moisture levels in the skin can help the skin feel more comfortable.
Josanna:The benefit that sometimes we don't notice about that is when the skin's more comfortable it oftentimes equates to less itchy, and when we're not as itchy then we're typically not as restless in bed and when we're not as restless we sometimes can get more sleep. But it is something that we see consistently and we hear consistently from people that they can kind of mitigate or get ahead of the symptoms of that really dry, dehydrated, itchy skin by just doing what we all kind of think of... but don't always do, which is just making sure that we really hydrate the skin. And then I think on top of that, like you're saying, the benefits of coming in and getting a skincare service. There's something really relaxing in just having someone else care for you. A facial massage always feels different when someone else is doing it. A body massage always feels different when someone else is doing it. So I think there is that just nice relaxation that comes from the power of touch and then, on top of that, utilizing other tips and tricks.
Rae:I love that. Thank you so much. And, Laurie, from you I would love to hear from your experience, especially being so closely connected with so many clients as they're going through this cancer journey. What are some of the reasons someone may experience difficulty sleeping during, or even like soon after their cancer treatment? Right?
Laurie:Well, I think sleep is something that we often take for granted. I think patients have so much thrown at them so quickly, it's very easy to become overwhelmed, very easy to become overwhelmed. And sleep is important in two very important facets, one being for our physical health and also, of course, our mental health. To briefly discuss what about the physical health is that? Why is sleep important for our physical health? Well, it helps to lower our blood pressure. So a good night's sleep has been proven to help us lower our blood pressure. It helps to strengthen our immune system, which is very important because the immune system definitely gets weakened during the chemotherapy, and it also helps with our appetite, which is very important as we're undergoing chemotherapy. So, on the other side is how does sleep help with our mental health? That's a whole nother discussion in that how is their cancer treatment affecting their mental health, and we'll talk about that with. You know all of the stressors that patients face.
Rae:Yeah, absolutely. It is such an important aspect, I can definitely see why it would have so many parallels with the physical aspect of it and, of course, the mental wellbeing. I love that you touched on the importance of that, and what are some of the reasons that someone might have that difficulty sleeping?
Laurie:I think the mental health issues are really big. First of all is they hear their diagnosis and their first question is am I going to live? And I often find right behind that worry is probably one of the biggest lack of sleep issues is how am I going to pay for my treatments? All of that combines all of those mental health issues. How is my family gonna cope with this? Often the patient is the one who is the most vulnerable, especially if it's a mother, is the caretaker of the house, so they have all of those worries of how are the kids going to do how, and all of those affect their sleep. So they need to be able to talk through those emotions and those worries and because if they're not getting the adequate sleep, then the physical aspects come into play.
Rae:Yeah, I can see how that would start to compound on there. You know, the mental aspect of really just kind of the mind racing while you're trying to go to sleep at night would definitely cause some restlessness and then, like you were saying, that lack of sleep then makes the mental health even worse and the physical well-being even worse as well. Do you see those physical aspects coming in due to any specific medications or any part of the treatment? I can imagine there's probably things like headaches or nausea that may cause someone also that physical component of having difficulty resting.
Laurie:Yeah, there's throughout all aspects of treatment, whether it be surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. They all play into lack of sleep or a reduction in the amount of sleep. Surgery number one issue would be pain. Patients are uncomfortable. They're having trouble, you know, getting a comfortable sleeping position. They can't lay on their back or they can't lay on their stomach. All of those will do that.
Laurie:Chemotherapy itself has many issues with the reduction of sleep, really depending on, I think, one of the first things it combines mental and physical. When a patient hears they're going to receive chemotherapy, their first worry is how is it going to affect me? There's a very definite connotation that chemotherapy. People have a preconceived notion of what's going to happen to them and this may not be true, but it's what they've seen or heard other people go through. One of the major things is with nausea and vomiting. Some of the medications can cause severe nausea and vomiting. So there's things that the nurses can talk to patients about.
Laurie:There are medications that we can give that will help reduce that complication or side effect of chemotherapy. Some patients may develop urinary bladder issues. They may have more frequent urination, so they're getting up during the night multiple times to go to the washroom. All of those things contribute. The bowel habits, sometimes patients can develop quite severe diarrhea with their chemotherapy and again that interrupts and not only interrupts their sleep but it also depletes their vitamins and minerals, their sodium, all of those things. So it's a very significant side effect that needs to be monitored.
Laurie:Often people also can develop night sweats and hot flashes with chemotherapy and endocrine therapy and those certainly are a major disruptor of sleep patterns. Patients wake up from a dead sleep where they're sound asleep and they wake up and they're sweating and their heart is racing and all of those things. So I think education of what medications you'll be on and what possible side effects is really important for a patient to understand. I feel that the more they are educated of what can happen and what to watch out for helps them be able to understand and know what to do if these are experienced and hopefully like get ahead of it.
Josanna:I would think If you have the education of what the potential side effects may be. You know, going back to the skin issue, if we know that there's a side effect that could really cause dehydration, and maybe it's because internally there's changes happening that dehydrate the whole body, then you know okay, well, I'm going to go ahead and make these steps of helping to make sure that I'm keeping my hydration levels up, helping to make sure that I'm caring for my skin and hopefully kind of mitigate some of how those side effects kind of come to life.
Rae:Absolutely.
Rae:And I would also jump in and say with, just because skincare is kind of more my scope of practice, here I would encourage people as well to create some sort of nighttime skincare ritual that feels relaxing for them.
Rae:You know, turn the lights down, light a couple candles, if you like that kind of thing, and take a nice relaxing shower or take a nice relaxing bath to kind of help get you into the zone of okay, I'm gonna help myself relax and get some real rest here and then utilize that time that you're applying your skincare to move softly and slowly on the skin to really help start bringing that nervous system into a more relaxed state. Even beforehand, bring in elements of aromatherapy, bring in elements of whatever is gonna make you feel more relaxed. Maybe even have your partner rub some moisturizer onto your feet or onto your hands or onto your scalp, something that helps you feel a little bit more really just in the zone to get some more rest. Outside of that, Laurie, I would love to hear what you suggest to people to help them kind of on their own start to mitigate or even get in front of these potential side effects.
Laurie:W ell and I think that's really the secret is to be proactive, and I think patients don't realize that definite skin changes can happen. So if they start the extra hydration and the rituals of applying the extra moisturizer and looking at the contents of the products they're putting on, that will really help prevent worsening side effects, itchiness, pain, all of those things redness that will sometimes develop because of the medications. I think there's lots of things that patients can do and it just takes us to be conscious of the fact of when we're getting ready to, like you said, start to think ahead of different things that you can do. If you are having trouble with sleep, talk to your physicians. Don't go ahead and start to take medications off of the shelf. You never know. Even if they are from the shelf, off-the-counter medications, you never know how they could interact with your chemotherapy. So always have your physicians okay, before you start taking anything, even different spices. Some people will like to take it bedtime. They find it helps calm their nerves or things like that should be checked with your physician.
Laurie:Some people actually doing relaxation techniques has really shown to show the benefit of sleeping a good amount of sleep and a well rested sleep. Limiting your nap time during the day is very important and people forget that because you're tired so you think I'll just lay down and have a nap. It is. Research has shown that if you do that limit it to 30 minutes Going past, that can actually interfere in your sleep in the evening.
Josanna:I'll have to take that off of my wishlist
Laurie:afternoon because that is gonna really interfere with your. I have to take that off my wishlist.
Josanna:Yes, take that off.
Laurie:Yes, take that off. Um, you know other things like exercising. Most people find that if they exercise earlier in the day is better than exercising in the evening. Now, sometimes we just do what we have to do because of our schedules. But exercising, you know, lets off those endorphins and things, so you want to do that earlier in the day. We really need to watch what we're eating and drinking. Many of our foods have either high sugar intake okay, gets us all excited and energized, so we don't want to be having ice cream at bedtime. Our caffeine intake is very important and we have to watch what we're taking because we think some of these drinks don't have any caffeine and they find out we're loaded with caffeine.
Laurie:Other your sleep. It will get your body more energized and going, so those are kind of. The alcohol intake is another one that you want to limit at bedtime, as well as not eating too late in the evening. Okay, because I'm often injured where people say you eat a big meal and then you have a real active sleep and dream. Yeah, that's proven to interfere with your sleep. Yeah, all really good, often interfere. People say you eat a big meal and then you have a real active sleep and dreams. Yeah, that's proven to interfere with your sleep.
Rae:Yeah, All really good points. That's fantastic information, and I'm curious too, for some of our clients they sometimes have to go to a hospital overnight or maybe even for a few nights. What are some things that you would recommend to your clients if they wanted to try and get better sleep in an actual hospital setting?
Laurie:That's always going to be difficult in a hospital setting because the noises, the machines, the beeping, the constant checks of the nurses coming in checking your vital signs, all of that. I think if you could try to make yourself as comfortable, bring your favorite pillow from home, bring your blanket that you like. If you can try to make yourself as comfortable as possible, if there's an aromatherapy that you like, bring that to the hospital. Make sure they allow it. But typically that's not an issue. So just try to be as make it your own setting as much as possible.
Josanna:Well, and I bet, like your routine, that you were talking about, Rae, of kind of creating that habit in the evening of just having a moment for yourself, bringing that routine, even if it's something that you normally do at home. But bringing that routine to the hospital, I would think, would probably again, you're still in a hospital setting, but it helps the mind be familiar with what you typically do before you're going to sleep.
Rae:Yeah, it helps get you back into that zone, even on subconscious levels, of as a physical being, and going through this routine routine, the body kind of recognizes okay, this is my time to start quieting down, start relaxing a little bit more. I love that and I love that these are all things that people can control because, like you were saying earlier, with the side effects and even with a hospital setting, there's so many variables that we can't control. You know, it's almost impossible to mitigate these bowel or nausea or urinary side effects. So it's understandable that people will still maybe even be getting interrupted sleep. But I love having these tips and tricks on what can someone actually control and do in order to help at least mitigate what they can. I think that'll go a long way.
Josanna:And I love the when you're like the main thing is just be proactive.
Josanna:I think that's that try to talk a lot to people about and from the skincare perspective of being proactive.
Josanna:And then our team that works with hair same like when you were talking about chemo, and that there's some side effects and people get stressed with the minute they hear they're on, they're going to have chemo. There's kind of this like stereotypical side effect of hair loss that may happen and for some people it does happen and for other people it doesn't. But I think one of the things from a proactive perspective we talk about with that is if that's something that there's the chance it's going to happen with your sleep routine at night, start wearing a bonnet at night when you go to sleep, because if hair fall starts to happen, it at least collects it. So then if you did have a good night's sleep, when you wake up the next morning it doesn't get shattered by what's all over my pillow. So I just I thought of that when you were saying it because I think it's those proactive ways to kind of create a ritual in the evening that just help.
Laurie:Yeah, make it easier to have a good night's sleep.
Rae:Yeah, absolutely. I'll share my last tip, and then I would love to hear anything else that you ladies have in mind. But one thing that I think everyone could use is a little bit less screen time scrolling while they're in bed. I think that is really something that would help all of us. If we could reduce that, I think it would help everyone relax a little bit more. So, definitely, I would recommend, just from a personal perspective, even just to put the phone away, even 30 minutes, maybe an hour, before you want to fall asleep, and just take some time to either write out what you're feeling, talk with your partner about what you're feeling, talk into the blank space, do whatever it is that you need to do to get whatever's on your mind off of your mind so that you can rest. Well, what about you ladies? What else do you have?
Laurie:That is a very important, important point. The screen amount of time on our screens is definitely affecting this, our sleep, without doubt, and you know, like you said, put on some soothing music, journal. Lots of people like to to journal. Sit in bed and journal your thoughts. Whatever you do, put your phone away, don't look at Facebook, stay off of TikTok and just relax absolutely.
Josanna:I think you know all of those are good for all of us, anyone who who's listening to this, and then I think you know. The other thing I would just leave is, if you're you have the capability to to experience the power of touch in a facial treatment and a body treatment and a scalp treatment, um, either with someone like one of our oncology trained estheticians at the Ricardo Fisas Natura Bisse Foundation, or somebody that's at your home that can also just utilize the benefit of massage, the benefit of touch, because I do think that there's a power in that and it really does help us, just as humans, to relax, and I think the goal of being able to relax will lead us to, hopefully, a better night's sleep.
Rae:Absolutely, Josanna Laurie. It was wonderful to have you. Thank you for joining us. We hope you found this information helpful. It's your reviews and feedback that help make this podcast even better. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might benefit. Until next time, take care radiant, and we'll see you soon.
Josanna:Absolutely- Absolutely . Josanna, you.