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The Stern Method Podcast Episode 013
In this Episode Dr. Eric Zielinski Discusses:
- Using a biblical lens to make health and cancer decisions
- Excessive supplementation may not be all it’s cracked up to be
- Living organic, save money
- Essential oils and what they are, where they come from, how they work and how we use them
- Relief essential oils have shown to provide from side effects of conventional cancer treatment
- Anti-cancer research to date on essential oils
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Full Summary of the Interview, and How the Information Applies to Cancer
How Biblical Health Applies to Cancer
I know first hand that a cancer diagnosis can call your faith in God into question. I also know that this is the time when we truly need Him most.
Never before in your life have you needed all to be well with your soul as you do right now.
Our purpose is to help kids thrive through conventional treatment. It is also to give hope to those who’s conventional course has run out of options.
The best decisions parents make that will lead to positive outcomes come from a place of empowerment, not fear. While we hope to empower, overcoming fear only comes with a true sense of eternity.
Teddy and I often talk about how if we could go back and change something about how we handled our son Ryder’s diagnosis, it would be to take better care of ourselves. Ever since we started getting proper sleep, nutrition, and exercise Ryder has directly benefited as we perform at a much higher level for him with these things than without them.
What writing this article has made me realize though, is that this whole ordeal has definitely caused us to get right with God. And I’m not sure exactly how to write it but the more we do, the better it is for our family. Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you as James 4:8 puts it.
Some of the toughest decisions we made on this journey, be it moving states away from our families and where we grew up, or stopping conventional treatment halfway through the protocol, were made on faith alone. And they have been turned out to be the absolute most rewarding.
While we do an enormous amount of scientific research, that research can lead in a million different directions. When you truly dive into the research, you start to realize that your instinct will pull you in certain directions and push you away from others, even if both directions have sound scientific backing. Call it what you want, we call that instinct The Lord leading us to what’s right for our son.
Speaking of scientific backing, the research out now confirming the power of prayer is overwhelming. Do not discount it. Treat it as part of your protocol. There are all sorts of prayer warrior groups to be found online, get your kid’s name into as many of them as you can find. And pray often yourself, as this is where you get the most clarity in what you need to do for your kid.
How Essential Oils Apply to Cancer
We always stress to parents we work with that they need to “go all out” in helping their child heal from cancer. If you don’t do it, it’s not going to get done.
This applies to everything from assembling the best care team, to fundraising, to making sure your child actually gets the supplements and treatments you and your care team have determined would be best for them. It’s a full time job.
With all that being said, especially with children we’re always looking for the biggest bang for the buck when it comes to ease of application. All of the optimal “get it done” mindset (which is crucial) aside, at the end of the day it is harder to make it all work with kids than adults.
This is why we do love essential oils for cancer. Be it for the relief from conventional side effects or the direct anticancer effects the research is showing, it doesn’t get easier than rubbing an oil on your child’s skin or diffusing it in their room.
We base our topical oil routines around bedtime and naps. Ryder will typically get some combination of oils before he goes to sleep and when he wakes up. And it feels really good to know that you’re helping your child beat cancer even while they’re sleeping by having a diffuser running in their room through the night.
As a side benefit, Ryder was always the best smelling kid in the oncology ward… except maybe right when he got back from IV vitamin C & DMSO infusions. ☺
Making Biblically Based Diet Decisions
When I asked Dr. Eric Zielinski how The Bible has shaped his decision on diet, as most do I expected him to start listing off the foods that were and were not consumed within those pages as most do. His answer was much better.
While we are all created in God’s image, we are all created uniquely, in God’s image. Just like snowflakes, no two of us are alike. Biochemical individuality to put it in more scientific terms.
So if none of us are alike then it would be a bit silly to think that there is one diet that is ideal for every single person.
Cancer or no cancer, we still need to be eating what works best for our bodies no matter the circumstances.
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On that note, a cancer diagnosis is all the more reason to be absolutely sure we’re putting compatible fuel into our bodies.
For Dr. Zielinski personally, this means a largely plant based diet. A little meat and a little raw dairy here and there, but for the most part a whole lot of vegetables, fruits, and grains. Healthy, life giving foods as he refers to them.
The overarching theme in principle in everything Eric does in health, is that his body is a temple for The Holy Spirit and he needs to take care of it as such. This would classify as a one size fits all approach. It might mean something slightly different for every person, but the guiding principle does not change.
This does mean that he absolutely will not take in anything that is unquestionably bad, or addictive. Some streets drugs and cigarettes were listed off, but none worse than… processed sugar.
Dr. Zielinski refers to processed sugar as poison. In his opinion processed sugar is responsible for more disease than any other single compound on earth. And its chemical replacement counterparts are just as bad.
The Biblical View to Whole Food Sugars in Cancer
When asked his thoughts on sugar from whole foods such as fruit or carrot juice, at the end of the day Eric says these are the foods that God gave us. The problem is that people have lumped anything sweet together in with processed sugars.
Eric invites us to look at Chris Wark, who juiced carrots until he turned orange. This is someone who beat cancer God’s way.
Just as Terry Tillaart referenced in a recent interview, Dr. Zielinski also brought up the Gerson therapy. If it were as black and white as “all sugar feeds cancer so we must avoid all of it” then the Gerson therapy, whose centerpiece is carrot juice, would certainly have not provided the results that it has over the last hundred years.
The Biblical View to Supplementation
Dr. Zielinski was also in strong opposition to elaborate “multi” products, be it vitamin pills or greens powders, with hundreds of ingredients in them. God designed us to take in limited numbers of ingredients at any one time.
From a physical standpoint it does need to be questioned how the body could be expected to properly process hundreds of ingredients all at once and really get the full benefit of each one.
Eric mentioned he does have his own superfoods powder, but he makes it himself and it has maybe a dozen ingredients in it. He buys each ingredient in bulk for maybe $200 total and has a year’s worth of superfood powder. The ingredients he threw out as examples were spirulina, chlorella, bee pollen, maca, and noni,
Eric emphasized the cost here and wants us to think about that yes, the “organic lifestyle” can be very expensive if you’re buying all of your food items and household products premade. But if you’re doing it right and making a lot of this stuff for yourself, from your food items to your personal care, cleaning and laundry products, you actually end up saving money.
Essential Oils – God’s Gift to Man
“The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” Revelations 22.2. Dr. Zielinski says he does not know of any bible verse that epitomizes what essential oils are more than this one.
Essential oils come from chemicals (natural ones!) in plants that God gave them to protect themselves from outside vectors such as flies, viruses, fungus, and so on. These chemicals serve as the medicines and antioxidants the plant needs to overcome infection and bring about health.
What we’ve been able to do for thousands of years now with the intelligence we’ve been given is extract these compounds for our own benefit. Plants, trees, bark, and roots all have their own molecules to offer and through distillation and cold pressing we can harness the power of their essential oil.
Essential oils are volatile organic compounds (VOCs), meaning they easily turn into gas. When we steam distill the liquid we harvest from the plant either through tapping (as one would a maple tree) or pressing, the VOCs will separate from the non-VOCs and once condensed back into liquid the oil and water separate, leaving us with the alcohols, terpenes, sesquiterpenes and so on that make up essential oil.
Even though the word essential is right there in the name, essential oils have no nutritional value and are therefore not essential to life. The primary metabolite of plant photosynthesis is glucose. Without glucose everything would indeed die. The compounds that make up essential oils therefore are secondary metabolites.
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Why Essential Oils Are So Effective
Dr. Zielinski notes that while they may not be essential to life, he couldn’t think of anything more essential to his medicine cabinet than essential oils.
Essential oils are lipophilic (fat loving / combines easily with fats) and hydrophobic (water hating / does not combine with water). This is what makes them so effective at creating change on the cellular level.
All of our cells are protected by a phospholipid (made from a fat) membrane. Without being able to readily dissolve into fat, many substances from nutritional compounds to drugs have a hard time actually making it inside the cell. This the mechanism that makes liposomal products such as liposomal vitamin C so effective.
This is the problem with most drugs, they don’t have a delivery mechanism to get inside of the cell. This is also why essential oils have been show to make drugs more effective, along with things like probiotics and enzymes.
When you take a step back and look at it, you’ll see that most all drugs are synthesized versions of these very compounds. There’s a good reason that the drug companies are spending billions to try to imitate and patent these chemicals, we’d just rather have the real thing.
Why use acetaminophen or NSAIDs for pain management when you could use marjoram, peppermint, or basil for example.
Essential Oils Create Homeostasis in the Body
Dr. Zielinski notes that the use of essential oils is not intended to be an outside in approach. As opposed to thinking of them as a drug to temporarily treat symptoms of a disease, essential oils help the body find balance. The goal is not to have everyone addicted to any particular essential oils for a certain ailment their whole life, rather to promote true healing when used properly.
Eric notes that two oils that have been studied immensely for overall homeostasis throughout the body are sandalwood and ylang ylang.
Ylang ylang in particular does things that medically speaking, it shouldn’t be able to do. Balancing conflicting measures as Eric put it.
Take high blood pressure and a low pulse rate. Typically if you give someone something to try and increase their pulse rate, their blood pressure will go up along with it which if it were already high wouldn’t be a good thing. Ylang ylang actually has a balancing effect, lowering blood pressure while simultaneously increasing pulse rate.
At the end of the day we still don’t know why essential oils are able to do some of the things they do, but they do. Again though, it comes back to the fact that their job is to create balance, not treat a symptom.
Essential Oils Provide Powerful Relief from Side Effects of Conventional Medicine
While Dr. Zielinski noted that right in line with the research showing essential oils make many drugs more effective, there is indeed research showing that they even make chemotherapy more effective. We did not get too deep into specifics on the topic as that is where Eric notes a good integrative oncologist (or naturopathic oncologist in conjunction with your conventional oncologist) comes into play. He did note that if your conventional oncologist is not at least open to the idea of things of this nature, it might be time to find one who is.
What Eric also noted though was the incredible relief from symptoms related to conventional treatment people have been experiencing using essential oils. How could a doctor say no to diffusing lavender or citrus oil to promote sleep and a better mood?
How could they say no to something that’s going to help relieve indigestion, nausea, headaches, or even cachexia? Indeed, essential oils can even promote appetite in the midst of cancer treatment.
Anticancer Research behind Essential Oils
There is more and more published medical research on the anticancer effects of essential oils by the day. Dr. Zielinski notes that the first thing to take into account here is that most of what we have at this point is still in vitro, meaning in a test tube as opposed to a long term human trial. That being said, he also notes that this is all that’s needed for many drugs to get FDA approval…
With that in mind, Eric says that oils that are coming to the forefront in the research are those high in a compound called d-limonine. This is found prevalently in the citrus oils, especially orange.
The best known oils for their anticancer properties are likely frankincense and myrrh. Interestingly, while frankincense is the more popular of the two, myrrh actually has the best research behind it (they’re both great though!).
Other oils Eric listed off with a good amount of anticancer research behind them are lemongrass, black pepper, and clove. Clary sage in particular has a lot of breast cancer specific research associated with it, which makes sense as it is traditionally known as a women’s health herb.
Use Caution with Essential Oils
Dr. Zielinski reminds us that while essential oils are “natural” substances, you don’t walk into an orange grove in nature and see a pool of essential oil. These are highly concentrated plant compounds and should be treated as such. It takes 40 pounds of lemons just to make one bottle of lemon essential oil for example, or 30 pounds of lavender or lavender essential oil.
Don’t get into it willy nilly, do a bit of homework first. Dr. Zielinski is actually putting the finishing touches on an online course that will go into detail on all of this, and we’ll be sure to let you know about it when he does. An easy way be notified of things like this that we think are important is to sign up for our mailing list, which can be done right at the bottom of this article or on the homepage!
Beat Cancer God’s Way
Speaking of courses, if healing cancer from a biblical perspective resonates with you, Eric has created just such a course for that. We love online courses and couldn’t think of a better topic than this. All the details along with a free online web class on beating cancer God’s way can be found here.
Listen to the Full Interview: Beat Cancer God’s Way with Dr. Eric Zielinski
If you liked this article, you’ll love listening to the full interview! Eric and I got much more in depth on all of these topics, and many not topics not included in the article. For this full interview along with a new episode featuring a new health expert each week on a particular topic pertaining to beating cancer, be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or watch the video below!
Resources Mentioned:
Listen to Episode 12 Epigenetics, Nutrigenomics & Cancer: MASTERCLASS: Dr. Paul Anderson
Listen to Episode 11 Healing Home vs Cancer Clinic… And Fruit vs. Keto!: Terry Tillaart
Listen to Episode 10 The Science behind the Gerson Diet: Dr. Patrick Vickers
