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Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
This podcast is sponsored by Hiya Health. It’s a company that I love for my younger kids because typical children’s vitamins are basically candy and disguised. They’re filled with up to two teaspoons of sugar, unhealthy chemicals, or other gummy junk that I personally don’t want my kids to ever eat. And that’s why Hiya was created. It’s a pediatrician approved superpower chewable vitamin. Now, while most children’s vitamins contain sugar and they contribute to a variety of health issues, Hiya is made with zero sugar, zero gummy junk, doesn’t have the artificial colors, flavors, additives that we don’t know where they came from, but it tastes great and it’s perfect even for picky eaters.
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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com, and I loved recording this episode, which is technically all about natural living ways to reduce chronic inflammation and by doing so, avoid risk of heart attack and stroke, but it was so much more.
And I am here with someone long overdue for me to have a conversation with Dr. Z and really delving into his work around this. And if you’re not familiar with him, he runs with his wife, a website called Natural Living Family. I’ll link to a lot of resources from him in this, but he has such a passion for really helping people step into the driver’s seat, take ownership for their health and giving really tangible tools to do this.
And in this episode, we tackle how many toxins, including things like fragrances really can contribute to our inflammatory burden and how this can contribute to things like the body holding on to extra weight to sort of neutralize those things. He talks about how that’s linked to heart attack and stroke risk, how those are the really big killers and that they’re not given as much airtime as some of the others, despite being so important.
We talk about things like fasting. We talk about lifestyle factors that you can change, dietary faster factors you can change. We talk about the myths related to cholesterol and salt and so much more. I learned a lot in this episode and it’s always so fun to talk to Dr. Z. So without any further ado, let’s join Dr. Eric Zielinski.
Dr. Z, welcome. Thank you so much for being here for this long overdue conversation because we’ve known each other in real life for so long. Welcome.
Dr. Z: I know. Thank you. You know, I was thinking, um, just how grateful I am. I mean, you can talk more about my origin story. But when we started natural living family back in 2014 Katie, there were not a lot of examples for us at the time. And I’ve been just so blessed because you pioneered this. You really set the stage for people like me and Sabrina to do what we do.
And been very, I don’t know, nostalgic. We’ve celebrated 10 years of helping millions of people online. And it all started with looking at websites like yours and being inspired and following you. And so just thank you. Yeah. It’s like a warm hug.
Katie: Oh, I love that. And I love we get to do this episode and hopefully more in the future. And I know your passion for helping families is very, very deep. You’re also one of the few people I know in real life who has now more kids than I do. We were tied for a little while. So I love that. I know you can also speak to so many topics, but today we’re going to focus on natural living as a means for reducing our risk of heart attack and stroke and why that is so important because, I feel like we hear a lot about all these potential other causes of death that are actually pretty minor compared to when we look at the data when it comes to heart attack and stroke.
And so maybe to start off broad, walk us through why this became a passion project for you to begin with. And then explain a little bit about the amazing resource you created around this and then we’ll go into some tangents from there.
Dr. Z: Yeah, that’s great. And so again, this is just, I’m not, I haven’t been a big milestone person my whole life. Like I’ve, I’ve just kind of flowed in a sense and just appreciate it every day as it comes. But as I approach 45 years old and I just celebrated 18 years of marriage and now soon to have seven babies. Numbers are making a big deal for me.
So when we hit 10 years, when we reached our 10th anniversary of Natural Living Family, I just really started looking back at my life I thought back to my first published research study and that was on heart attacks, heart disease risk factors. And so my public health background started as a researcher evaluating these.
And I just really been thinking about, you know, what has happened since my first research study. And since then I’ve published several studies and I’m currently working on a clinical trial right now. It dawned on me, Katie, things aren’t better. At all. And not only are things not better than what they were when I first published my study just on general heart disease risk factors back 15 years ago. The problem is when you’re looking at the top causes of death, they’re all related to heart disease. I mean, diabetes isn’t killing people. That’s a misnomer.
And I started looking at it like, diabetes shouldn’t be a cause of death. It isn’t killing people. It’s what leads people to die from cancer. And you know what the number one cause of death of cancer patients is? Heart attack. Heart disease. So, that’s the reality of it. Now, that’s not to take away from the fact that cancer is a disease. is a killer. I mean what it does, but likelihood a tumor isn’t going to block your esophagus. It’s not going to prevent you from breathing or trachea. What happens to the person of to the point where cannot live anymore and their bodies deteriorates to the point of heart attack.
Same thing with obesity, same thing with diabetes, same thing with other issues. So at the core of all of it, when you look at all the contributing causes of death, the proverbial stroke. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is typically a heart attack or stroke. It’s just what happens. So when your heart fails to the point where it cannot recover again, people get into this cycle and it, it hit me recently.
We had a tow truck incident where I needed to get a tow truck car broke down, went to the dealership. I’m talking to the tow truck guy and we’re just proverbial. Georgia tow truck guy. I don’t know what else to say. I mean, he was just. hillbilly self-proclaimed hillbilly guy, really kind of funny and we’re talking about his fourth heart attack and second stroke and he just decided to quit smoking like last month. I’m like, wow, and that was the one thing his cardiologist and I was kind of digging deep into this I don’t know how he asked kind of what I was up to and what I did for a living. He’s like, oh, well, what do you think I should do? I just had, I just got out of the hospital. I had my fourth heart attack. I’m like, fourth heart attack. How are you alive? Right? He’s like, my cardiologist is trying to get me to quit smoking for all these years. I’m like, “What else has your cardiologist recommended?” So I kind of started doing some digging. Virtually nothing, no nutrition guidance. Of course, no herbs, no supplements, no essential oils, no lifestyle changes. Cardiologist was just like, take these drugs and quit smoking. And that will hopefully prevent you from getting like stopping the cycle. All these things were kind of just mowing through my mind, Katie.
And I was like, you know what? I got to get back to my roots and having this just nostalgic feeling. My, my first event on essential oils reached a lot of people. I hosted a summit back in 2015. I’m like, you know what, let’s get back. Let’s get on the other side of the microphone. Let’s interview some experts and let’s see what 2025 heart attack and stroke prevention and recovery looks like. And that was really, really the genesis of this event that we’re launching.
Katie: And I love that you’re taking the approach of focusing on chronic inflammation because this is definitely a recurring theme now in the essentially 900 episodes I’ve done on this podcast is that we are seeing this kind of rise in inflammation across the board and we know now that that’s affecting even children.
Children at very young ages. And to your point, like heart attack and stroke are two of the major killers and they’re tied into that chronic inflammation and into metabolic dysfunction. I know this is a very multifaceted conversation, but what are some of the kind of like low hanging fruit, like easiest, most impactful things we can do?
Dr. Z: I think, I think the one thing we all need to recognize, and this is something that our mutual friend, Dr. Tom O’Bryan taught me. Inflammation isn’t the root cause of anything. It’s the mechanism. It’s the vehicle that’s damaging the body, but what causes the inflammation? So when we look at root cause resolution of any disease, we have to find out what is essentially, what’s the, what’s the match that’s lighting the fire. And so that’s essentially what.
Our event became is virtually every speaker mentioned inflammation indirectly or had a whole protocol on how to reduce it. And, and the thing that is fascinating is we have more under control than what we think. We have the ability to not just soothe the proverbial soothe inflammation, but reverse the damage and it could be relatively quick. One thing to keep in mind is when this context of heart attack and stroke, you know, your first symptom of a heart attack is a heart attack. There are risk factors, right? People look at blood pressure and collect triglycerides, and that’s even debated topic. They look at other things, your blood glucose levels and, and your weight, just to see would you be at risk, but no one knows. And then, boom, you have a heart attack.
Stroke, very similar. And not just this mindset of what can we do to reduce our inflammatory load to, to prevent risk of, but this was the whole key. What about recovery? Because we don’t hear a lot about that. It’s like, Oh, you had a heart attack. And going back to my hillbilly truck driver friend, four heart attacks, two strokes. Like, how do you stop that cycle? Right? How do you prevent going back? It’s very similar to cancer, and we’ve done a lot with cancer work as well. How do you prevent the cancer from coming back? So it’s just not a recovery of Yeah, I want to get better. I want to I want to feel better. But it’s like How do I, how do we get my body to heal from this massive, massive damage?
Because that’s what a heart attack and stroke is. Massive recovery is needed if you want to enjoy a healthier life again. So when it comes to inflammation, Katie, I go back to a lot of what you’ve been teaching forever. And something that my wife and I have devoted our lives to, it’s really the little things that add up. And the fascinating thing is we all have our passion in this, in this world, in this natural living world, right? My wife and I have devoted years to helping people live a non-toxic life by using essential oils as home medicine. You look at what you’ve done. You’ve helped just think about the inflammatory load that you’ve helped people reduce just by making their own home and body care products. Like, that was one of the underlying themes.
And the whole discussion that we had during the event and cardiologist, naturopaths, chiropractors, the whole gamut of integrative medicine practitioners all agree, we need to reduce our toxin load, our toxin exposure. But the question is how, and it really comes down to the day in and day out. And the thing that I want to impress people with, which is so encouraging. This mind, this concept of chronic disease is really important because again, is long term, acute means it just happens to you. You have a damaging experience. A heart attack at its core is an acute, is an acute injury, but what caused it was chronic inflammation, chronic damage to your arterial system that got you to the point where your body just couldn’t handle the stress anymore. And it had what it did takes years to develop. You’re not going to develop a heart attack overnight or a stroke. And so with that concept of like, okay, what is this toxic accumulation?
What are, what are contributing factors? Like, what is really making my blood pressure so high? What is really causing the micro tears in my blood vessels? And you start thinking about it, it’s little, little things. And that. was something that was taught to me through books that I’ve read when I published that first study back in 20, at this point, what, 2010, 15 years have gone by in my own work. I’ve come to really appreciate the little steps that we take to make massive changes for the future. And so when it looks just maybe a different concept from what other people have taught, or maybe what you’ve heard about inflammation. But first we need to remember, inflammation is good for us. It’s a natural design by God to heal our bodies, to bring homeostasis from injury, but that’s acute inflammation.
So when you cut your finger and there’s blood rushing to your the area of where you cut soreness, there’s pain, there’s redness, there’s heat, there’s all these different signs and cardinals of inflammation, but that’s your body healing. But if you keep on cutting your finger over and over and over and over again at the same spot, you’re going to be at risk of severe infection, you’re never going to heal. And that’s essentially what we’re doing to arterial system. And that’s really the cause of plaque buildup. And I’m sure you’ve had other experts speak about this in past, but this whole cholesterol con, this whole cholesterol lies, just essentially misguiding people to go down a whole diets train that, that, keeps them away from foods that are healing.
And when you’re looking at what causes the damage that leads people to that, that final break, it’s like the dam has broken. The body cannot handle it. Heart attack, blood clot, stroke. It’s the little things over time. that’s what I want to impress upon people there is shift and it is required a dramatic shift that needs to happen, it takes time. we could talk a little bit about that as well. Um, but that was one of the things that I’ve been really inspired about all the more is when I look at my lifestyle, I start thinking about inflammation as the root mechanism and am I doing anything to cause it? Are my thoughts causing it? My breath, my breathing habits, Are they causing it?
The way that I’m exercising, is that helping? The way that I’m eating, when I’m putting on my body, when I’m smelling, when I’m doing what my house is like. So this heart attack and stroke prevention and recovery mindset needs to be an anti-inflammatory lifestyle shift as you speak to people and experts and as you go through all the different interviews that you’ve done over this podcast, piece by piece by piece by piece, You take from what these experts are saying you take from what these folks have specialized in over the years and you hold on to something like, Oh, I could do that.
You know, Tom O’Bryan said something that was really inspiring to me and mindset of I’ve always taught low hanging fruit. I’ve always taught you. You do the things that are easiest for you now that are affordable that you want to do and you don’t want to. You don’t want to have a list of things that are on your list. right? Someone goes to the wellnessmama.com and they’re like, I’m going to go detox my life. I’m going to go make 15 body care products and make 20 cleaning products. I’m going to buy all this and I’m going to kick V. O. C. S. out by doing that overwhelm. There will be paralysis by analysis if you don’t have a plan and if you put too much pressure of doing it all now.
So I’ve always focused on, Hey, do something quick and easy, something to get momentum, right? Do one little thing. And Tom kind of painted this picture of like, Hey, Even take a step back. If you could devote one hour a week, just one hour a week, you could split it up a couple hours a day, whatever. If you could do one hour a week of living this anti inflammatory lifestyle, doing a change, working towards the preparation, the planning, and the execution of it, what’s going to happen in six months from now? You’ve devoted 30 hours to your life. Of intentional living that’s going to put you at less of a risk of a heart attack and stroke. Put you at a greater place of recovery of anything that you might be dealing with. And then you’ll find yourself at a completely different place than what you were today.
You continue, he goes, in two years your life will be nothing of what it is now. And two years might be daunting to people like my doctor just said, I have to get on a Lipitor. I have to be on medication. I have a risk. family members, family history, whatever people might be in that state right now.
Like, okay, I don’t want to wait two years. Well, maybe we think about that differently and I would love to hear even from you Katie on how you would approach that concept of, you know, this is a long term lifestyle change and we need to approach it really in baby steps to have maximum impact.
Katie: I fully agree. Baby steps that are sustainable and not stressful, I think are key because that’s what actually lets something become cemented as part of a lifestyle and not just something that requires willpower over the long-term. I think really one of the. huge key parts of what you just said also is that base understanding that the body is always on our side.
I know that was a massive paradigm shift for me. When I had autoimmune disease in the past, I kind of bought into that story for a while of my body is attacking itself. And what I had to slowly realize and shift my mindset around was My body’s always on my side. It’s always acting in my best interest. So if I’m having the symptoms of autoimmune disease, I’m curious. Why is that? What am I not giving my body that it needs or giving it that it doesn’t need? How could I listen to my body more effectively and kind of be more on its side? And it seems like that’s what you’re, I’m really giving people tangible tools to do with this as well when it comes to, we are the ones making those daily choices that really actually create our health for the long term. And it seems like that’s what you really did a deep dive in when it came to the summit.
I would love for you to kind of detail what are some of the biggest offenders that kind of showed up as big contributors to inflammation. I know there is a level of personalization here, but when it comes to food or toxins, I know fragrances can be a big one. What were some of those big ones that contribute to inflammation?
Dr. Z: Yeah, when it comes to the food discussion, I mean, I don’t know, we had at this point, it should be, you shouldn’t talk about religion, politics, my world, you know, talk about your favorite essential oil brand at Thanksgiving dinner. Yum. I almost can’t talk about diet anymore without stepping on someone’s like, you know, spiritual or religion, it’s become that serious to people.
And I say that to say this clean, just, we all can agree on this. And Dr. Tom, again, man, his, his talk really inspired me in a few different ways. He spoke about a study that evaluated, um, primarily women and their heart disease risk factors and having. a diet full of fruits and vegetables versus not fruits and vegetables.
And, and the quick summary of this is obviously a diet high in fruits and vegetables, um, is good for you, right? I think we all can agree on that. Whether you’re keto, not keto, I’m not going to get in the argument there, but we need to increase more, you know, more plant-based ways of getting nutrition in our bodies.
But the key was this. There was a point where increased fruits and vegetables actually caused a detriment to people’s heart health versus factors. And you know what the contributing key of that was? Organic versus non organic. And, like, wow, right? So, the pesticides in the foods, at this point, it’s a, it’s debated whether or not it counteracts the benefits of the nutrition that are in the foods inherently. I’ve heard arguments about that in the past and, and this is where I’ve, I struggle with this because mean, Katie, we have seven kids. I mean, you have six kids. I mean, food’s expensive. It’s hard to buy organic everything. And to say to someone who’s barely making ends meet, you have to buy organic everything.
That’s hard. Yet. What do you say? Go back to Stouffer’s? Just, you know, I mean, get rice around me. I mean, so this balance, I’ve always told people this. I’ve always said, Hey, if you can’t afford it, just do your best, right? And try to get local, try to grow your own, do what you can. But I don’t want to put fear in people that, hey, if you are going to eat a lot of pesticide, You know, sprayed food, you’re going to at a risk of heart attack and stroke.
But the fact is that’s a fact. so that’s maybe where we take a step back and we go to the EWG working group and we look at those foods that are high, you know, the clean, I forget what it is. They’ve changed the number, but clean 15 dirty dozen concepts, right? I mean, no need to buy organic bananas.
You don’t need to buy organic cantaloupe. Like there’s certain things, common sense, thick skin. You don’t need to buy organic avocados if you can’t afford it. But berries. Apples, grapes, those kinds of things. Yeah. if it’s not, it’s almost not worth it. I guess that’s the end of the day, Katie. It’s not worth doing certain things because knowing that the cumulative effect, the reality is this.
I mean, I’m 45 years old this year. We’re walking experiments. one knows, no one knows what’s going to happen to an individual who has been exposed to the level of toxins that we have since birth. We are, we are literally walking through an experiment for the first time ever in humanity, and it’s only by the grace of God that we’re alive.
Like, I cannot, I cannot believe how resilient our bodies are. so anything we could do to reduce, to reduce that load is really, really important. Um, that’s one thing. So when it comes to food. That’s my long answer to food. It’s like, look, meat, no meat, vegan, no vegan. Just be careful. Reduce the chemical exposure.
And that’s really the bottom line to everything that we discussed during all the interviews, my own research. It goes down to chemical exposure. And you mentioned fragrances, which is where could definitely land and have a complete, we can land the rest of this conversation and talk about that forever. That really is the key in my opinion. And if there’s one thing that someone can do right now. a low hanging fruit is reduce the fragrance exposure that they have in their life, and that’s everywhere. And when I first started teaching about essential oils, I didn’t realize the ubiquity of them there. Anything that you taste, anything that you smell, your cleaning products, um, they’re all over the place. And so your pepper, like, you know, when people think of it, what do you think your peppermint mint patties and lemon bars are flavored with? It’s like natural or artificial flavoring. It’s either the real essential oil or a derivative of it or a synthetic, right?
Same thing for the fragrances. And when you’re looking at the data. And you’re suggesting what are we being exposed to on a regular basis that becomes a contributing factor that is highly, highly avoidable, and that’s easy. So if there’s one thing anyone can do just to reduce our risk, and by the way, fragrances have been linked to Alzheimer’s, dementia, cancer, obesity, autoimmune conditions, and of course. Right. Allergies and any COPD and respiratory conditions like that’s like the obvious stuff, but people don’t know. Oftentimes they’re not taught that it’s exposure to those systemic chemicals that ultimately gets them into a place where Increases the risk of chronic disease They are contributing factor of heart attack and stroke and there’s a chemical that are known as phthalates I know you’ve taught about this a lot.
They need to be out of our life unfortunately we’re at a disadvantage in America. Chemicals are allowed in America that are not allowed in other countries by large. It’s unbelievable. We’ve only banned, one of our interviews, Brian Vaisley from purity woods, he was explaining what, there are what 11, 000 chemicals that are banned in body care right in Europe. 12 or something that are banned in the U S so when you start looking at this, have to be a wise consumer and you have to look at those things that that that could be and very well are contributing factors, but fragrances are so easy to fix and living in my essential oil aromatherapy world for as long as I have, I’ve become so intolerant of artificial fragrances, and that’s something that I would love to talk more and more people about is If you, for example, can go to a big box store, right?
Whatever, Walmart, Kroger, whatever. And if you could go down the cleaning aisle and not experience symptoms of headache, runny nose, nausea, indigestion, or stomach aches, just gagging. That’s not a good sign. It’s, it’s not a good sign for you to get picked up in an Uber and then having just sprayed Febreze or having those little toxic tree things in there, in the rear view, if you could be in that car and be okay without any kind of symptoms of, you know, itchy eyes or runny nose, or that is a sign that you’ve desensitized, unfortunately, your olfactory system has been desensitized. That is synonymous to you putting your hand into a fire and not feeling pain.
Those symptoms, those olfactory symptoms, are some of our primal, primal evolutionary that have guided people from the dawn of humanity to go to and away from areas that have potential, whatever it could be, toxins in the air, that let people know maybe something’s safe to eat, safe to not, uh, Safe to smell safe to not. And that is the one thing over the last 50 years, it’s kind of been systematic since artificial fragrances were brought into the scene in the 1940s and fifties. We’ve relied less on our nose than ever before. And all these again, Chanel number five was the first. All these toxic chemicals, all these perfumes have replaced essential oils and herbs and flowers that our ancestors have used since forever. it was just the middle of the 20th century that that shift was happened. So our generation, my generation, we don’t even know what that’s like from the onset. Are, are my, my parents and my grandparents, they have at least part of their life that they remember life before fragrances. But getting free from fragrances, you realize just how toxic they are.
And then you start to get sensitive in a, in a good way. You want to be sensitive to these things. So that is a sign for people. And I want to challenge you. You can restore your sensitivity. You can restore loss of smell. A lot of people have dealt with that post COVID. You can restore that evolutionary advantage to let you know, like you said, you’re, you are your own doctor, whether or not something is good or not.
And the first thing is just reduce exposure. Stop the insult. Stop cutting yourself on the finger with the same knife. It’s just stop it. Throw away the aerosols, the plug ins, the poo poo sprays. Go to your website. Figure out how to make your own. You’ll save a ton of money. Like, that’s the other cool thing.
You know, family of nine over here. You’ll save a lot of money making your own. It’s fun. The kids like the DIY projects. You feel like you’re doing something better. You add essential oils to your life now. And that’s like, oh. that’s something that I’ve really impressed myself upon is like embracing this anti inflammatory lifestyle, which is just a different way of life.
Like a couple drops of essential oil in my, my lotion, my body cream, my cleaning products has a nice minor, just, just therapeutic dose. It’s not like I’m not trying to treat a disease here. It’s just a nice chronic therapeutic benefit. Anti-inflammatory, it helps your mood. So it’s like that is a shift, number one.
And then you start going through some of the other chemicals and then you can start having fun. You know, our mutual friend Warren Phillips, Non-toxic Dad. I mean, he blew my mind with heavy metals and just how everywhere the exposure of it, like what’s the first thing you do? Well, cookware. And then you can look at other things.
So the bottom line is if you take this as a project, a fun project, and just realize this and remember, please remember chronic disease, they’re all linked together. Inflammation is a primary root mechanism. What’s causing the inflammation? What is at your disposal? What do you have control under? You start to manage the things that you have control under first, and then you could start going deeper.
And like Dr. Tom said, six, 12 months down the line, the two years on the line, your life is completely shifted. And hopefully you’re like a lot of people that have followed your work and my work. Their doctors are getting them off of blood pressure medications. They start to feel better. They start to lose weight.
You know, Katie, I can’t tell you this. Like, man, you get me on a soapbox when we talk about fragrances and body care, because had just hundreds, hundreds of people that have joined our master classes and memberships, read our books, have come to us and said, you know what? I just lost weight just by making my own body care and cleaning products.
Like someone said, Dr. Z, I lost 10 pounds in the last two months. from what? I haven’t changed my diet, my exercise. All I’ve done is reduce my toxic load. It dawned on them. All I did was I stopped exposing myself to chemicals and body care and cleaning products. All I did was throw away the sprays and the aerosols. And you know what happened? They didn’t know this, but what I use that as a teaching lesson. What happens is when you do that, you put a less of a metabolic burden on your body. And instead of now your body looking at chemicals, fragrances as threats, because that’s what they do, it takes metabolic energy to process and fight off those, those essentially threats to your body.
Very similar to a virus, very similar to a bacteria, very similar to a fungi, very similar to a dangerous, harmful, self hurting thought, emotions, unforgiveness, bitterness, your body responds the same way. stop that? And now your body is like, Oh, I have more energy. I have more capacity to digest and assimilate food.
I could burn fat now and I’m not storing those chemicals in the adipose tissue. So next thing you know, you start losing a little bit of weight. That’s kind of fun. That’s a cool little side effect of just living a more natural lifestyle. And then you start to incorporate, you know, higher level exercise and diet changes.
And it’s like, Oh wow. I’m at a good place. So this is a really, really fun, really fun journey. And as you do these things, you start to think clearer mood, memory, emotions, because that’s all connected to the limbic system. When you’re smelling anything, it all connects back. To your limbic system and autonomic function, your breathing rate, your heart rate, things just start to work better. And so anyway, I’ve been really inspired by that and seeing the countless people that have come to us over the years and our colleagues. And it’s, it’s really exciting.
Katie: I love that so much. And right back to that, the body’s always on our side. You know, we always think of weight gain as a bad thing, but if you have this high toxin exposure, your body holding onto weight is actually your body protecting your organs and essential parts of your body from those things. So it makes complete sense to me that as someone eliminates those things, their body and its wisdom can release that extra weight that it was using to keep you safe. I think that reframe is so valuable. And also to your point on fragrances, you know, we used to use these amazing plant compounds that had benefits. And when I was formulating toothpaste and hair care, for instance, I realized we absorb a lot of what goes on our skin or in our mouth, especially, which to me means, of course, at baseline, we should avoid harmful things there.
However, that also means that we can use…… To be a way to absorb beneficial things to get benefit to nourish our body. So to me, like I said, the baseline should be, yes, not let’s not put harmful stuff on or in our body. However, if we make these natural products or find premade bought natural products need to have beneficial things, those also can absorb through our skin. We can get nutrients, we can get the benefits of essential oils. We can get that through our skin as well. And it’s learning that sort of that dance with our body that about
to speak the language of our body and know what it needs and how to give it what it needs. Um, and I can only imagine with Greenpeace that you did. Probably there were some surprising things that stood out to you or maybe some myths and misconceptions That came up that you got to debunk National summit. Does anything stand out as surprising or like a misconception or myth related to heart disease and stroke that you can debunk for us?
Dr. Z: That’s, you know, I want to be careful. I’m not a cardiologist, right? I have to make that disclaimer. But I interviewed cardiologists, right? Interviewed neurosurgeons. One thing I read a book and I still recommend it. Um, the great cholesterol con, and there was a lot of underlying suspicion from the experts that are in this day in and day out, right? There’s people like me and Warren Phillips and other people that are just, we’re just non toxic influencers and enthusiasts and researchers, but there are people that are literally doing this, working with people day in and day out. I heard these, these underlying suspicions of, Cholesterol. Like if that really is an issue, what is the issue?
What is the number? What is proper blood pressure? You know, guidelines and something to remember. And this goes with diabetes especially is there are powers that be. There are associations, right? American Diabetes Association, American Heart Associations. They determine based off of their infinite wisdom, the guidelines that we should be under history unfortunately is against them in that typically when they change the guidelines of what normal cholesterol should be, what normal blood pressure, what normal blood sugar should be, guess what happens? More people now are indicated to get on more prescriptions. It’s, it’s almost too ridiculous to accept, it’s like clockwork every time, right? Every time. Oh, guess what? American Heart Association just came out with new guidelines. 50 more million people are now should be on statins. Oh, great. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Just change the numbers.
So all that to say is this. The numbers are relative to you and all goes back to what you and I both very know I could sense and I appreciate you bringing this theme back. Our body knows, our body knows what our body needs and we need to be in tune. But that the problem is the disconnect is there’s a point when we’re not in tune with her body. Very similar to like I bring back that example of smell if you’re not in tune with your body You’re not gonna sense harmful fragrances You’re not gonna sense things like I can’t go into a swimming pool like chlorine I mean my body is so sensitive to that the chlorine the chemicals I’ll itch for hours I’ll actually get sick like my I can’t handle that like some people are just desensitized to that So there’s a place of becoming one And being more sensitive to your body.
So, you know, but even more importantly, this is probably the most important thing hiring and building the right healthcare team for you. Um, at this point, I’m, I’m a relatively healthy, you know, 45 year old male. I’m not at risk of any, you know, heart incident. I’m not building a heart health team. I’m just not actively there. for those of you who could be at risk, you are at risk. of what you’re dealing with right now. You could be having extremely high blood pressure. You could have symptoms of things that you know that are going to put you at risk. Family history. Yes and no. We can talk a little bit about that.
Kind of throws into the face of epigenetics. I hate to be a victim of what happened to my dad and my grandpa because there’s heart history. There’s stroke. My father was prophylactically like preventatively prescribed medication 20 years ago to help with blood pressure because of family history and a slight increase after a surgery he had. Was that the best thing for my dad? He’s been taking a blood pressure medication for all these years. Was it way out of the box where he was vision distortions, vertigo? No, just a little elevated blood pressure. Grandpa died of a stroke. You should get on this drug. You’re in your forties. You’re in your fifties.
You should do that now. My dad did it, being a compliant patient. Two weeks ago, my dad was at a restaurant. He had an incident where he started having vertigo. He couldn’t see for like 15, 20 seconds, full on sweats. My mom was thinking he was having a mini stroke. They called an ambulance, they came, he was perfectly fine within like two minutes, but it was a really, really scary like minute or two minutes for him. And what’s his solution? Well, go back to the cardiologist, change my meds, get on a diuretic. discussion. No discussion of anything else. Right? So this aha moment I’m having is the suspicion.
And I don’t want to fall, Katie, I know some people in our world kind of fall into conspiracy theory and the hate of medicine. the thing. And I know we’ve said this a lot in, in, in our circles, cardiologists and heart care is sick care. It’s not preventative. It’s not health. It really isn’t. It’s not true. They’re not trained. I partnered with Dr. Jack Wolfson, a cardiologist. Um, he’s my co-host for this event. Jack has devoted his life helping people prevent and have lifestyle shifts that are not medical at all. mean, he’s a D. O. and he used to do all the medical, all the medical avenues and interventions. That was what he was trained in. in the moment the light bulb went up for me and I hope for other people, they’re like, you know what? My doctor isn’t trained in anything else other than responding to. something that could or could not even be an issue. What’s that mean? Get a second opinion. More importantly, find someone. This is really important, by the way, in everything, right? Find care practitioner that aligns with your values and, and ideally in multiple areas, truly spiritual, physical, all these things, right?
And that’s someone that, that acknowledges who you are, but someone that wants to support you on your journey, it is a journey to live a more natural lifestyle. And if you go to your doctor, say, look, doc, I really don’t want to be on meds for the rest of my life. Can you help me? If your doctor says, no, I don’t do that here, would you go to that person? And I think because of the insurance model, a lot of people are stuck, Katie. And they don’t feel they have an option. I’m blessed. I belong to an organization called Samaritan ministries. I think at one point you were too, I think they did a member spotlight, right?
Katie: Yep
Dr. Z: Yeah, I love them. Samaritan is a healthcare shared coverage system where we share each other’s healthcare needs. It’s a ministry. I love it. But if you have preexisting conditions, that puts you at a different situation. So if you’re young, by the way, without symptoms, get on Samaritans. I’m sure Katie, you have a link on your web website or referral.
Please join you’ll find somebody and they don’t discriminate against your care. They don’t discriminate. And my wife, again, being pregnant, they’ll cover home birth. They’ll cover supplements. They’ll cover massage therapy. They’ll cover physio. They’ll cover essential oils, anything and everything that’s necessitated for us to give a healthy, happy, home birth. You won’t find that with insurance ever. And so that’s the other thing is try to work with your insurance provider. Think outside the box. Maybe consider other health care avenues.
We’ve talked to people that did crowd sourcing and crowd funding. Like if you really want to shape your life. Man, try something. You could do a crowdsource, GoFundMe, get five or ten grand from loved ones who can support you to do things so you don’t have to go to a doctor who’s trying to shove a Lipitor or statin down your throat. And so that’s where I’m saying just be a little suspicious. There’s a Bible verse that I, that kept on coming back to me as I was interviewing people, Katie, that says, test all things. Hold fast to what’s true. And at this point, again, we’re what, 30, 40 minutes into this interview. People have been following you. Like we’re preaching to the choir. I would imagine, like, I don’t think we’re like, you know, we’re talking to people like, you know, this isn’t health evangelism at this point, but what I look at is what we do is health evangelism.
I’m trying to like evangelize people to owning their experience. And if you’re a part of this discussion at this point, you already, you’re, you’re part of the ranks. You get this. This is a battle. This is a battle against your life. It’s a battle against your health. And, and not that any individual, but the entities as a whole, whether they’re governing, whether they’re big box, whether they’re big pharma, whatever, it’s not in our interest.
So how do we take a step back and own it? And that’s really the aha is we have to question everything we have to look and can we find the right team to customize our care and there’s other fun things to like man, cell therapy. I had no idea the regenerative potential post stroke and heart attack.
So there’s a lot of other things that people can do that they didn’t know. Like, how do I speed recovery? A dear friend of mine just had a heart attack and stroke and he is rapidly recovering in a way that doctors are like, you shouldn’t be walking right now. You shouldn’t be talking right now. And he had a very much super green based nutrition concept that really helped him and other things. And so there’s a lot that we could do. When it comes to recovery that we didn’t think of, some out of the box therapies, um, they can get a little pricey at times and other things are more affordable, but at the end of the day, the big aha moment is we need to question.
And if you really want to start down the rabbit trail, go pick up the book, Great Cholesterol Con. You’ll start to understand a little bit about more about the numbers, about the recommendations and the fact that by the way, we need the cholesterol to live. Yeah. And the last I learned, if you don’t consume six to eight eggs worth of cholesterol every day, your body makes it because every cell in your body has as part of its phospholipid protective membrane. is not our enemy here. I mean, go back to what causes buildup, inflammation, the root cause of all that, right? So it’s just understanding more about how the heart works. Because unfortunately, Katie, a lot of people in our space really aren’t talking about heart attack and stroke. So my big aha at the end of the day, For me personally was getting back to the basics of the pathophysiology of how this works, like the anatomy of it.
Like, oh, that makes sense. makes sense. That really, I can understand that I can understand the systemic effect of what’s happening when I put something potentially dangerous on my body, on my skin, when I breathe it, when I eat it. And I started connecting all the dots. And so it just really helped me create that fundamental knowledge again, something that I’ve long forgotten since school. And like, you know what? This is very basic science stuff and we need to simplify it more for people because if we can reduce that inflammatory load and live a more or less lifestyle, then we will see drastic changes.
Katie: Oh, so many good points you just made. And I think you’re right. Like being in the seat of our, being our own primary health care provider, and then building a support team of aligned practitioners who can help us on that journey, I feel like that’s where truly the magic happens. And like you, I was amazed when I went down the rabbit hole of researching Cholesterol and salt, actually both.
I’ve done podcasts on salt. I’ll link to that in the show notes. But just kind of how those things changed very much coincidentally with pharmaceutical recommendations and how, for instance, the lower your cholesterol, actually your risk of Alzheimer’s can go up and there’s an inverse relationship with cholesterol and longevity.
So actually if your cholesterol is higher, as long as it’s in good range, you actually live longer. There’s just so much. Things that kind of fly in the face of what we’ve been told. And so I love that you challenge some of those. And I know we’re getting close to the end of our time, but I also want to briefly touch on fasting and supporting mitochondria mainly because it’s top of mind.
I just finished my, for spiritual reasons, seven day water fast at the beginning of this year, which I don’t think all women need to do, especially it’s kind of hard on the body. I was very intentional about it. But I know you guys touched on fasting and supporting mitochondrial function. So maybe briefly walk us through, um, what we know about that.
Dr. Z: And perhaps we can do another whole follow-up episode to go even deeper on some of these topics.
Oh yeah, it’s again, going back to diet, I’m going to make the disclaimer, I’m not an expert at fasting yet. Very similar to diet. It’s you find what works for you. you find what works for you. And we interviewed the founder of the fasting mimicking diet, which was pretty fascinating to me. And the fact that you can eat sub levels of food that still help you feel satiated and give you a low level amount of energy, but still does what your body needs. for autophagy and for healing and regeneration. At the end of the day, this is something that I was convicted at very much. So is we need to live more of a fasted life. I think that’s the bottom line is I always look at everything. Katie has a lifestyle approach.
You mentioned kind of summarize very, very well when I was, when I was saying in a long way, by the way, I like your gift. You have a great gift to like, okay, I just said something in 10 minutes and you summarize in 30 seconds. You’re like my, my AI. I love it. I was writing, you said something that I want to, I want to emphasize, um, putting essential oils in your body care isn’t going to like drastically reduce your blood pressure.
But if you put a drop of a Lang Lang, it could have a subtle effect. the day, all day long, every day. And that’s basically what you’re saying is like this subtle essential oil lifestyle effect, this subtle anti inflammatory effect. It’s this subtle fasting effect. need to live a fasted lifestyle. And that is key. We have to stop things in our mouth. We have to stop feeding ourselves. The evidence is profound. risk factors, all risk factors associated with heart attack and stroke. Blood pressure, blood sugar, obesity, um, everything, chronic stress, inflammation, all the key triggers, all of them.
Inflammatory markers throughout the wazoo can be mitigated relatively easily by living more fasted lifestyle. People recommend for or against intermittent fasting, fasting mimicking diet, watering fasting. I would say at this point, start to just eat less. That’s a big deal. And in, in Japan and in other areas of the world, especially when you look at the blue zones. I know you’ve spoken so much about that in the past. We just eat too much should never eat to the point where we’re a hundred percent full. getting into a mindset like, you know what? I’m going to, I’m going to push away the plate when I’m about 50, 60, maybe 70 percent full only eating two meals a day unless you really need it.
You know, if you need a little snack, you need a little snack, but giving your body A significant amount of time where you’re not eating is important, and that should be at least 12 hours a day at least, but it’s hard sometimes when people are in this, this, this, this just stress lifestyle. We’re comfort eating, we’re, we’re doing things that we might not should write midnight watching Netflix nibbling on something eight hours later, six hours later, we wake up, have a cup of coffee, eat a bagel like we just didn’t even give our bodies an opportunity to properly. truly metabolize, digest and regenerate. So I always want to encourage people with that look into fasting. And Mindy Peltz wrote that great book of fasting like a girl. Um, because women shouldn’t fast like men. I’ve actually done some studies on that too. I’ve been taught through continuing education classes.
Men and women are completely different. And I want to encourage y’all, you need to fast according to who you are, and your needs and learning more about it and even having a healthcare professional help you. But just skipping lunch once a week is a good start. It’s putting basically Katie, there’s a one, there’s a mindset that we need to remember that we eat to live.
We don’t live to eat. And I think that’s the big thing is if you start to put yourself in a situation where you’re not eating just out of habit and you’re doing other things to cope. With whatever it might be, or it’s just this oral fixation. Like I used to be a smoker. I used to be a binge drinker. Like I get a lot of this addictive behavior.
I’ve, I’ve leveraged a lot of little natural therapies to essential oils and prayer meditation to help free myself of all of that. But that’s something I want to consider is it’s really important, very effective and enjoyable.
Katie: I love it. I have been taking so many notes for the show notes. You are absolutely phenomenal. And on the fasting note, I love that you made that distinction of women are not just small men. We have to fast differently. And I think it is about experimentation. And for me finding it was not helpful for my stress hormones to skip breakfast and then eat through the rest of the day.
So instead I now make sure I eat. Really hyper nourish myself at breakfast and all those safety signals to my body of food is abundant. I eat outside where there’s sunlight really make sure I get enough protein and micronutrients. And then I do the same with lunch, but I stop eating by about sunset. I find like for women, if we just stop eating.
When the sun’s not shining, that’s one easy way to lengthen that window is seasonally adjust.
I know we are about to run out of time. We’re going to have to, I hope you’ll agree to more episodes in the future because it’s so fun to chat with you, but I don’t want to leave without you explaining where people can find you to learn more from your work and also find this summit that we’ve been talking about.
Dr. Z: Yeah, please just go to naturallivingfamily.com. Check out the website. We’ll have links and all kinds of different avenues to getting plugged into the summit and we have a whole series of heart health articles and all those articles will be embedded and you’ll be able to see, we’ll have, um, you know, advertisements and things to click on, to get plugged in more, but, um, thanks again, Katie. It was a joy.
Katie: Well, you are just absolutely phenomenal. I love your work, love you and your wife, Sabrina, and I just am so grateful for your time today and for all that you’re sharing in the world and for how, how much this is really driven by a passion to help and serve others. So I just am grateful for you for being here. Thank you so much.
Dr. Z: Thanks again.
Katie: And thank you as always for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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