How To Biologically Engineer Your Life After A Cancer Diagnosis

Introduction to Ryan Sternagel 0:00

Let's just have an awesome interview with Ryan Sternagel. We he is the founder of the Stern method. And we talked about a whole bunch of things. First, we talked about how to find a practitioner and create a team and the importance of making sure that your integrative practitioner, because you're conventional practitioner, is going to be pretty much the same no matter where you go. So you're going to find a medical oncologist. You can find a radiation oncologist from unimpressed surgery. A kind of plastic surgeon like those people generally are the same for everyone.

And now it's just a matter of personality. And you like working with that person. Does that person resonate with you to that person? Who are you? That person respect you and your opinion, that kind of thing. But more importantly, finding over self and the integrative a mantra of having a functional person that you can work with who is familiar with kids who was not intimidated by your cancer diagnosis, who understands the conventional medical world, and knows how to make the most of that. Because some of you will need conventional medical treatments.

We want to make sure that if you're getting us commercial medical treatment, that you getting the most of those conventional medical treatments. So how we eat those supplements, we support you best through conventional medical care. And that's going to come from someone who is familiar with cancer. Familiar with cancer care, and knows how to help you get the most out of your situation. So we talked about that. Then we talked about the overwhelm of a diagnosis and how it can feel really overwhelming to get information.

But now it can also feel overwhelming to try to find the right information because while it used to be readily available, now it is not so much difficult to find and it's difficult to find what is right for you and the importance of really trusting that relationship that you have with your holistic doctor, with your integrative doctor, with your naturopathic doctor, with your functional medicine doctor, trusting that they are going to guide you in the right direction for you because you are a viable individual, because the right thing for someone else is not necessarily the right thing, but also dialing into your intuition.

Ryder's Diagnosis and the Stern Method Origin 2:45

If you have thoughts or feelings about something and this is happening again and again and again, and maybe that is something that's right for you. And so being able to dial into your intuition, trust your intuition, that's very important. We talked about the fact that Ryan was very fortunate in being able to build his own house and build a nontoxic house. But not everyone is in that situation. And the things that you should be thinking about in your house are things. I mean, certainly everyone knows a thing about food and to and to eat organic food and to drink clean water.

But what are you cleaning your house with and what is your house made up of? What is the paint like? Do you have Crestwood like in your cabinets or on your store? Because that is off gassing insulation in your cabinets, your pillow, your mattress. All of these things will be off gassing and you're breathing on them. So he mentioned making sure that you're changing the filter on your furnace that you are and minimize anymore that you're using save paint and that you that you are conscious about applying.

Right. And we talked about some low hanging fruit and using nontoxic paint, but using an air filter, having a ceiling fan, changing your first filter, opening your windows, thinking about things that you're doing a lot. You're breathing all the time, right? So making sure that your air quality is good and then and then turning off your white tie as much as possible. But just when? At night, when you sleep. But as much as possible. If you're not used. Not a lot. Shooting up and keeping your cell phone in airplane mode.

Most of the time we don't see email all the time. So it was a really good discussion and I really hope that you tune in and will listen to it all. It's Dr. Jenn Welcome back to the Breast Cancer Breakthroughs Summit. I'm your host, Dr. Jenn Simmons. And our next guest really has had a life altering experience that I don't wish on anyone. But he has taken that experience and contributed so much to the world and to his community that I always say that things happen for a reason, and I know that this led him to his life's purpose.

Next, we have Ryan Sternagel with us. He is the founder of the Stern Method, The Anticancer Revolution, Ongoing, Integrative Plus, which is a platform for aid forming and inspiring families, preventing or reversing chronic disease to succeed on all fronts. So, Ryan, welcome. I'm so glad to have you here. And I don't know if you have gratitude for the reason that you're here, but I would love it if you would share your story on how you came to be in the cancer space and in the integrative medicine space.

Yeah, that's always, you know, I think about that a lot. Am I grateful for the horrible thing that led to the, you know, the awesome things that have come of it? I can't you know, I can never say that I am grateful that my son was diagnosed with stage four cancer. That's that's what led us to that's what led us to do everything we do today is, yeah, 11 days before his first birthday, our son Ryder was diagnosed with stage four neuroblastoma, cancer of the cancer of the nervous system, mostly, mostly a childhood cancer.

So we had a big, huge lump inside of and growing out of his spine and a couple of secondary tumors and metastasis to the bones and all that fun stuff and yeah, fast forward, we, you know, we did all the things that you're talking about in this event and, you know, fought with slash, navigated the conventional, conventional medical system and navigated the holistic medical world

Building the Right Care Team 7:00

and figured out how to, you know, make our way between the two and all those sorts of things and move states along the way. Because we weren't getting along with the conventional team. And yeah, built, built a nontoxic house along the way from the ground up because we were super paranoid about environmental toxicity, which I guess, you know, when you're when you're, when your child is born with cancer, that's probably to be expected. But yes. And, you know, fast forward, gosh, nine plus years now, Ryder is Ryder's doing great.

He's the healthiest kid I know and healthiest and happiest kid I know because he lives out in the middle of the woods in, you know, in our peaceful little compound we built with with his chickens and green house and horses and donkeys and probably forgetting a few animals in there. And yeah, yeah. Which, which all came of us doing everything we could to, to heal him and create the ultimate healing environment for him. And now, you know, for the past several years, it's been our full time mission to get to, you know, talk about health stuff and work, work with different doctors and do stuff with our podcast or membership group and social media stuff and website stuff and video stuff and all that stuff.

And it's been yeah. So I mean we're I'm living it couldn't picture I couldn't picture a better existence what I get to do every day now. But it came at the cost of great suffering. And, you know, not even my set. Well, it was, of course, our suffering, but, you know, I. Yeah, if I could if I could go back and trace what he went through, I wouldn't heart beat. But that's of course, the way it works somewhat. But the truth is that it really let you down a completely different path. I mean, what what were you doing with your life before?

Because you're doing this full time now. You're guiding people full time now. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was was a was an outside sales guy for a commercial energy savings company. What actually wasn't a bad job, but it was, you know, didn't have a lot of meaning in it. And I was, you know, listening to of listening to health podcasts and stuff like that at the time and even thinking, man, it'd be cool to be one of those guys. Funny how the world works out. Yeah. Funny how the world works out. So now I want to be clear that you do not come from a health background and all of your education really came with Ryder's diagnosis.

Yeah, we were certainly, you know, I would say when it before Ryder was conceived and we started saying, hey, let's, you know, let's eat more organic food, let's get rid of, you know, let's let's get rid of chemicals cleaning chemical cleaning products. Let's you know, I started taking EMF electromagnetic fields and wi fi and stuff like that more seriously. So we were we were. That's pretty intuitive. How did you how did you come to that conclusion and perspective? If I'm being 100% honest, listening to conspiracy type podcasts and stuff like that, yeah, finding out how we're being poisoned and all that.

It resonated with you, right? Yeah. And, and, you know, we all have the ability to hear all of these things, but we're not open to that, right? Yes. But something allowed it to resonate with you. Yeah. You know, I'm grateful for that, that I was never too married to any preconceived notion. I've always been open to new information and letting, you know, letting that new information take me where it take me where it does. Also extremely blessed that my wife, Teddy, who, you know, does this together with me and you know it was was that we were obviously locked arms and the journey and all that.

But yeah, I mean, she's she's the same way and it's just it's really neat that that we were, you know, with we're getting arguments about really dumb little things. But when it came to like the big, big, you know, life changing, you know, really big decisions after your son gets diagnosed with stage four cancer and even, you know, even even before when we were, like you said, starting to make these start to make these life changes really blessed that we you know, we found each other to go through this for our son because we were always on the same page with everything.

And I'll always breaks my heart when we get so many parents and even just, you know, couples that one of them's been diagnosed with cancer or their their child has been diagnosed with cancer. And, you know, one of them wants to go to the holistic role and the other just wants to listen to the conventional doctor or, you know, not even just the pure, pure, holistic route. We're not a not a no conventional medicine at any point. Dogmatic kind of conventional, you know, conventional people either. But but yeah, they go the conventional or excuse me, the holistic integrative route versus the pure conventional route.

And it's heartbreaking when, you know, when when, you know, 2 to 2 sides of that couple can't can't come to can't come to the same conclusion. And 95% of the time, it is the woman that probably because you all have the better intuition that wants to go the holistic slash integrative route, and it's the man that wants to, you know, shut up and listen to the conventional doctor. So, yeah. I think that that scenario happens way more than we're actually appreciating. I don't mean a man and woman part, I mean the discordance between what to do that the patient, the person that is kind of dealing with the diagnosis has one notion and the family or the friends or the or whoever their their support is, whoever their community is, they have a different opinion and it's a really noisy time.

So I want to start off by you. How do you how do you coach people on how to find a practitioner? Because that is one of the main things that people face when they get a diagnosis is who's going to help me? Who's going to guide me, who's going to take care of me and what's going to lead me? Yeah. Yeah. And on the, you know, on the noisy time and all that, it's, it's it it all. It's always heartbreaking when it's the, the patient themselves that doesn't want to listen to any new ideas. And well, it's heartbreaking either way.

But, you know, it's it's it's sad because, you know, maybe it maybe it's the wife of the husband or whatever that wants to wants to see their their partner do all they can for themselves. And yeah. So I mean, assuming you're open to going, the integrative holistic don't leave any options off the table route, which if you're watching this event, then you know you're either open to it or already already heading down that path. Good job. Or you're curious. Yeah. Or you're curious, right? Yeah. Yeah.

But you know, like I is say, I mean you've got, you got the conventional team that is the conventional team that you were kind of, you know, you went to whatever whatever doctor you went to when things weren't feeling right. And then they referred you to whatever, you know, hospital or oncology clinic or whatever it was that, you know, that you eventually got the diagnosis through and now through. No kind of really deep dove research of your own. That's that's your conventional team which, you know, they may be fine or they may not be fine.

You know, there's there's there's the standard of care that a lot of them follow. And so you're kind of going to get the same thing no matter where you go to an extent.

Navigating Information Overload and Trusting Intuition 15:30

But then there are there are conventional guys that even though they're conventional guys, they still think for themselves they still treat you like an individual. Maybe they're not utilizing every tool in the holistic toolbox that we're talking about on on this event here. But yeah, at least they're willing to treat you like an individual here. You know, hear your concerns maybe. You know, that was that was our thing is we were not getting along with the conventional team that we that we first had.

And it's it's it's a lot harder for parents of a child to get a new team because that means pretty much moving states because there is there's one hospital per Yeah. Per state that there. Aren't a lot of pediatric hospitals. Yeah. That that sees children with cancer. So I mean that's what we did is we moved states. But for, you know, for the vast. Majority of. People watching. This, I think your point is valid, but in that you describe it as not getting along. But but it's not being heard. Right.

It's so very important to be heard by your physician. And and they have to respect your opinion. Yep. Yeah. And so even, you know, like I said, I mean, they're they're not going to they're not going to have any every holistic tool and they won't know about a lot of stuff. But they should be they should hear you and they should be open to integrative stuff. That's, you know, the the team we eventually landed on said, you know, I know you guys are doing all that stuff. I don't know anything about it, but I'm sure there's merit to it.

And good, good job, you know, doing doing your research. And that's that's that's who you want on the conventional side. And for, you know, for for adults dealing with themselves, it's, you know, you've got your you've got your pick of oncologist no matter pretty much no matter where in the country you are. So you can you know, you can shop around and find it and find a good one on the on that front. And then on the holistic integrative front, it sounds simple now that, you know, I see it nine years later, but you don't know what you don't know a lot of times is you need a holistic slash, naturopathic slash, integrative slash, functional slash, whatever, whatever, whatever catchphrase.

Yeah. That, that particular doctor wants to go by and they're, they're, they're valid differences. But somebody that, you know, somebody that utilizes natural medicines alongside conventional stuff, but not just that you need one of those type of practitioners at a functional M.D. or at naturopathic doctor, maybe a maybe a really well trained herbalist or something like that. But somebody that actually specializes in cancer because there is a world of difference between the kind of generalist naturopathic doctor that that happens to be in your residential area that, you know, helps people with their gut issues or whatever it is.

And a functional medicine doctor or a naturopathic doctor that naturopathic doctors who specialize in cancer usually, you know, usually go by naturopathy oncologist world of difference between yeah just just your everyday functional medicine doctor your everyday naturopathic. And you talk about some of those just differences. Well, I mean cancer is just I like to say, if you can heal cancer, you can heal anything else. So that's those tend to be heard. You know, if if you've taken the time to really, really know all there is to know about healing cancer, then you know, all there is to know about healing. Healing most things. Right?

Because I mean, there's there's the there's a viral component. There's a bacterial component. There's an emotional component. There's a spiritual component. There's a toxicity component. There's, you know, gut all of that. You've got to figure out all those things. Right. And and pretty much fix them as fast as you can all at once in in a cohesive, strategic manner. So yeah, but I mean, so yeah, there there's you've got to you pretty much have to fix everything all at once. Mitochondria, defects, DNA, the list goes on and on.

But then, you know, a good one, like I said, is going to know a whole lot about how to work alongside whatever conventional medicine you're going through as well, be it chemo, radiation surgery, immunotherapy, checkpoint inhibitors and all that stuff, right? Yeah. And they're going to know they're going to know what natural therapies will work well with every specific type of chemo. And not only, you know, a twofold, you know, make that chemo work better and protect your organs from the specific damage that that chemo does, be it neuropathy or wiping out your gut or, you know, whatever.

They they all have their own kind of different they're different particular side effects so that, you know, a really good naturopathic oncologist or functional medicine doctor specializing in cancer is going to know about all that stuff. And then, yeah, I mean, even, you know, conventional medicine aside, there's, you know, there's a whole lot of different types of cancer. All those types of cancer are not the same. And there's, of course, you know, you'll hear from the naturopathic doctor. Well, we just you just treat the treat the person, not the disease.

Right. And there's of course, that's the fundamental the fundamental approach you should be going by. But there are there are still very real differences between, you know, a tumor in your colon and leukemia and the way you should approach that. Right. Right. And the timeline is different. The timeline really matters to people. And and I think the familiarity with what cancer is, what is used traditionally used and just being comfortable with cancer because there are a lot of functional medicine, doctors, naturopaths, integrative practitioners that are not terribly comfortable with cancer.

And that makes a difference. Yeah. And you know, a lot of them will know I respect the ones that say I don't take cancer. You know, I have you know, it bugs me when I see and I hear about it happening all the time where somebody says, Oh, I already had a relationship with my naturopathic doctor. And they've only you know, maybe they saw one cancer patient in the past, but they, you know, they they said they'd be willing to step up to the plate and help me through it. It's like, you know, that's the wrong you need somebody with decades of cancer specific experience.

That's that's all you need. Yeah. So while we're talking about that, who do you think should be on your team? Like when when you're building a team, what are the important components to you? Yeah, I mean, so I mean, we just we just listed off the the the primary to. Right. Yeah. Your conventional oncologist and your primary cancer specializing naturopathic or functional medicine doctor. And the nice part about that is, you know, these days I like to say that's the you know, that's that's the one good thing that came out of COVID is, is telemedicine restrictions got vastly loosened to where, you know, most most conventional and functional naturopathic whatever doctors that they could really practice across state lines that's you know that's pretty much been obliterated these days and yeah so you've got your pick of you can find you know you can find the cancer the best specialize in cancer doctors in the country and then you got you got your pick of of all of them.

And then so that kind of depends on, you know, if if you're a cancer specializing doctor is in your it does happen to be in your area and you can go to your and you can go to their clinic then you know great. But if not, I would say the next the next thing you look for is a clinic in your area, functional medicine, naturopathic, whatever clinic in your area could be, you know, it could be one of those kind of more generic naturopathic doctors I was talking about. It could be a chiropractors office.

It could be, you know, there's more and more just kind of functional clinics with IV bars and stuff like that popping up. But somebody that's got, you know, the ability to administer IV nutrient therapies, somebody with you know, cool toys like ten past ozone machines and or the new kid on the block with ozone therapy is IBU But yeah, so somebody with those types of therapies in their office to where yeah they don't they don't need to be your quarterback on the holistic side you just need to find somebody that can administer you know whatever IVs or various therapies that, that your quarterback might, you know, that might recommend is a good thing for you at this stage in your in your journey.

And I think the things that you mentioned are really applicable ozone, I.V. Vitamin C, mistletoe. There are there are a number of things that that really do lend to better outcomes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, don't get me on the soapbox there.

Creating a Nontoxic Healing Environment 25:00

Just go on go on PubMed and type in vitamin C and cancer or ozone and cancer or something as simple as curcumin and cancer. And, you know, see the thousands of studies and then tell me there's no there's no research behind it. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of which, what do you recommend in terms of do you do you generally tell people to work with a nutritionist or are they getting that information from their functional medicine doctor? I would say that's a it depends. Yes. I mean, a lot of some doctors will have kind of a nutritionist on staff, others will not.

And, you know, I would go under the go. My friend Chris Walker, you know, is a known kind of cancer food personality, not just food, but but, you know, I'm thinking of him in this food context. It is his catchphrases, you know, flood your body with nutrition. Right. So. Yeah, all the. Yeah. Oh, he's on that. Okay, good, good, good. Yeah, yeah. You know, that that's that's kind of the that's kind of the baseline, right? You know, you find out that sulforaphane from broccoli sprouts is good for you and beta carotene from carrots is good for you and allergen from celery is good for you.

And you know, you can even go on PubMed and just type plants against cancer and there's a few just kind of listing study. So, you know, you see all the you see it's easy to find kind of the the the anti-cancer foods and you juice the heck out of them. You, you know, if you if you eat as many salads as you can, if you'd for some of the for some of the, you know, harder like cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower and stuff like that. And pretty much anything anything that kind of takes some processing power.

There's the there's the all raw people. But lately I've been gravitating towards kind of the, you know, the Gerson therapy approach was to or was and is to to juice like crazy because then you're you're flooding your body with that nutrition. But then to actually add any more like kind of solid meals like that actually cook or, you know, my favorite steaming or pressure cooking because you're only losing about, you know, maybe ten, 15, 20% of the nutrients, but you eat like five times as much if you have a pressure cooker.

And so you're still coming out ahead there. And, you know, if you're going through cancer, your digestive system is probably compromise is almost certainly compromised because pretty much everybody's digestive system these days is is almost certainly compromised. So you're not you know, you're you're you're spending a lot of energy to digest that stuff. Whereas, you know, if you if you make things as easy to digest as possible, then your body's, you know, your body's energy can not be going so much to digestion.

It can be going towards rest and repair and healing and your immune system and all that stuff. So, I mean, there's, you know, there's kind of the basics, but as far as yeah, as far as, you know, it, it's, it's a good idea to to bring on a cancer specific nutritionist if if one, you know, is not provided to you through your doctor or you don't feel like, you know, ask, ask your functional doctor. Right. You're naturopathic doctor. Are you are you the guy to give me the cancer specific nutrition advice guy or gal or you know, should I be seeking that out somewhere else?

And, you know, either either answer is fine, but but yeah, I mean, you know, and then add on add on the auxiliaries from there. Right. You know, it's it's a good idea to see a chiropractor to get your get your spine and all that stuff straightened out because you're nervous systems connected to your spine. And that's a big part of your immune system. And just the way your body talks to each other, talks to itself. So yeah, go, you know, go see a chiropractor every once in a while, go find your local acupuncturist and get your meridians cleared and all that fun stuff and find a, you know, we're we worked with a couple different woo woo type energy workers along the way and really profound things happened working with those energy workers that, you know, energy healers, whatever you want to call them, people that don't even have to be in the same room as you and can use their mind and the way energy is connected throughout the world, and they can tap into that a little better than than a thick headed guy like me can and you know, do some I mean really, really, really amazing like that.

There's there's no way this was a coincidence type stuff happened to working with working with those people. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, you get your, you get your, your main quarterback on the integrative side. You get your, you know, you get your conventional guy, figure out whether, you know, you figure out whether you know, what what therapies you have in your area that you have access to. And yeah, chiropractor or acupuncturist, energy worker, those those would be those be good additions there that I always do like to say as well.

You know when we talk about therapies and ozone and and, you know, a lot of a lot of chiropractors and functional doctors and stuff like that will have PMF pulsed electromagnetic fields in their office. And it hyperthermia sauna, things like that. Right. And, you know, a lot of these things people pay, you know, either will pay a hundred bucks, a couple hundred bucks, a few hundred bucks a pop at a clinic or, you know, they'll pay 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 bucks to go to, you know, one of those all inclusive places in Mexico.

And then there's a time and a place for those those places, don't get me wrong. But, you know, I like to see how much you can do at home. You know, how about, you know, it's it's not it's it's a bit of an investment to get an infrared. So it's a bit of an investment to get yourself an ozone generator, bit of investment to get yourself a good PMF, either mat or you know, there are a few different types of devices that you can get with with PMF. But, you know, those are kind of a big three. And, you know, you pay a thousand or a couple thousand bucks for for them at one time.

And then then you have that to use every day for for, you know, the rest of your life, which is a lot. Yeah. So I don't know. And then there's, there's that as well. Figuring, figuring out how much of you know of the healing you can bring in home and not even need to go to. I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go given yourself IVs unless I've heard I've heard of people doing that get really. Adventurous doing that too. It's kind of crazy. But, but let's dove into that a little bit because people often criticize the integrative side of it as being very expensive.

So how do how can you do this in an affordable way? Yeah, I mean, of course, you know, you have to note that it's only expensive because it's out of pocket. And the you know, the chemo's and everything are the you're only getting the petroleum based pharmaceuticals covered by insurance. Yeah. They'll cover the poison, but the healing is on you. Less and less covered by insurance these days. You know, it's it's you're not even you're not even getting really anything for free on the free in quotes, on the on the on the conventional side anymore.

People's co-pays are going up and out-of-pocket minimums and all that stuff. It's getting crazier and crazier. So yeah, and then, you know, those prices are artificially inflated and so on and so forth. So I mean, as far as, you know, the actual the actual sticker price of, you know, a bottle of supplements versus a bottle of pills or, you know, a quote unquote more expensive therapy like IV, vitamin C versus, you know, the IVs of chemo they give you, which. Yeah, the sticker price on those is thousands every time.

Yeah. It's really not more expensive. It's, you know, so there's no there's no yeah, it shouldn't be. You know, the conventional people will criticize or will use that as a criticism. But in all reality, it's just the fact that the system is extremely warped towards towards the conventional stuff. But yeah, that being said, I mean, you know, it, it is what it is and you do have to pay for this stuff or you do have to find a way to obtain this stuff one way or the other. And it does add up, especially on top of all the, you know, the regular medical bills and things like that.

And, you know, the there's there's never been a more applicable use of the, you know, worn out to where there's a will, there's a way mantra. But that, you know, that that was what my wife and I, you know, we just we knew whatever whatever it was, whatever new supplement or therapy or consultation or, you know, all those things. But whatever we felt strongly that we needed, whatever we were advised by the people, we felt strongly that we, you know, that we trusted, that we needed we did make it happen.

And a few of the ways we made it happen were, you know, I think a lot of people get there. There's a there's a mixture of pride and insecurity in being able to ask for help or even receive help. Right. And I think that was that was our biggest thing is we were, you know, talking about earlier about not being married, you know, preconceived notions of how the world works and being able to change our worldview and all that pretty easily. We were pretty easily able to throw the pride and the insecurity out the window because it was literally a life and death situation. So.

And it was your child? Yes. It was your child. So would you rather be too proud to ask for help or would you rather have the you know, that that new ozone generator, infrared sauna or consultation with the doctor that's going to recommend, you know, you know, help you cut through the zillions of different supplements out there you can choose from and, you know, figure out what makes the most sense for your specific situation. Yeah, yeah. No, we we wanted we wanted that. So, I mean, that that's, you know, that that's the big mindset shift right there is just don't be don't be ashamed of your story and don't feel like you need to, you know, hunker down and just keep it to yourself and you can get through this on your own.

I always prided myself on being able to, you know, be very self-reliant and not really need help from anybody. But, you know, in this case, you need just the more help, the better. So, yeah, I mean, we used we used our story wherever we could in asking for discounts on things. You know, I don't know how many heartfelt letters I wrote to two supplement companies to, you know, there's there's little organic grocery store in town that, you know, I let them know what was going on. And, you know, we were having trouble affording all the produce for juicing and next thing you know, we're we're getting all of their bulk produce at, you know, at their cost, which was awesome, you know.

So now I've got the now I've got. Kindness can really be tremendous. Yeah, right. Yeah. But your point is well taken and that you have to ask. You got to ask. Yeah. And you go, you'd be sincere too. You can't just say, you know, I can just add a little to, to sentence I have cancer. Can you, can you give me some money or can you give me a discount or whatever? It's got to be right because people are people are getting hit up for stuff all the time. But, you know, you make your little you can make your little template of, you know, that you're concise but heartfelt story in the in the middle and then kind of change it based on the based on the situation.

So I mean, yeah, just ask him for discounts all over.

Affordable Integrative Care and Asking for Help 37:30

I mean and you know, I just mentioned supplements and organic foods, stuff like that. But I mean, you know, your your rent from your landlord or your, you know, your cell phone bill, you know, call your cell phone company and say, hey, I got diagnosed with cancer. I got it. I got it canceled. Unless you guys can, you know, cut my bill in a third or a half or something like that. You know, they won't do it out of the kindness of their heart. They'll do it to, you know, keep you as a customer. But it's. Okay. Yeah, right.

That's fine. But yeah, yeah. I mean, just we're like, look at every, every possible facet of, you know, you spending money and ask, how can your story help you in that in that money? And then, you know, on the flip side, we were really with just putting everything we were doing out there. And not everybody likes to, you know, put their life story on social media and stuff like that. But the on the online fundraiser thing really does help, especially if you, you know, stay consistent with with posting your stuff.

Don't, you know, don't don't get like obnoxious about asking for money all the time, but just post about, you know, your journey in general and what you're doing. And hey, here's me getting, you know, I.V. infusion. Cool. Here's me juice and whatever. And yeah, just, you know, remind people you've got a fundraiser to afford this stuff. We got, you know, I don't know how many, you know, multiple thousand dollar donations from people that we had never met before. And so. You know, it's just if if you put your if you put yourself out there, if you're genuine about it, you will resonate with, you know, the right type of people. And, you know, the universe will provide.

And and you know, I did woo woo stuff like that as well, just, you know, visualizing goodness and resources coming to that is part of my little morning routine. Every morning was just asking, you know, not even asking, just knowing that, you know, whatever. Summoning, summoning the help from the universe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and I always encourage people to be really specific, like, I need a song write universe, please send me a sonnet and it works. It that's. Crazy. Yeah, it's really amazing.

So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about. There are many times, and I'm sure you remember this, where it's just so overwhelming. You're in information overload. You don't know what's true. You don't know what's not true. There are so many different different opinions, differing opinions and not to mention, you don't kind of know what's true for you. So how do you help people or advise people through to sift through the information? Yeah, I would you know, more and more I circle back to that that holistic integrative function or whatever doctor that specializes in cancer.

Right. Because I mean, that, you know, and now that I've gotten to talk to so many of them, I used to and I still do, you know, but especially in the beginning, I used to pride myself on how many studies I could, you know, stay up till 2:00 in the morning reading on PubMed and blog articles and podcast episodes. And I mean inform yourself and take in a bunch of information, you know, especially, you know, because the more information you take in, the more commonalities you're going to hear. And, you know, you're you're going to get at least the basics of what you need to be doing your that that's that's going to come to you.

But then as far as, you know, choosing these ten supplements versus those ten supplements. Yeah. Yeah, it's you know, I with all I know or with all I've learned in nine years, which, you know, the more you add, the more you learn, the the less you realize you you really know where that saying goes. You know, I can read 50 studies or I can ask, you know, of one of my trusted naturopathy oncologists, hey, you know, what do you think about this? And the answer I get from them will be far more profound and, you know, evidence based and experience based than than than anything of getting, you know, no matter how many studies I read.

So there's that. I guess the only believe that there is data to support whatever you want to believe. Yes. And then well in the. Yeah, yeah. There's you can you can work your way to any any fairly logical conclusion. You know, I think post 2020 taught us that better than you know, better than any of us ever could have imagined, that people can come to wildly different conclusions based on available data out there. Right. But. And I but that being right is another problem in this space is that you can do a lot of research, but the truth isn't always very evident because I think the narrative is being highly controlled.

This is my conspiracy theory. I think that the narrative is being highly controlled and the outlets in which most people are searching, they simply cannot get information that they're looking for. Yeah, and that's you know, that's a sad reality today is I mean, even, you know, it's like DuckDuckGo is better than Google right now. And it's it's not as as far as like, you know, finding good natural health information. The Internet today is a very different place than it was nine years ago when my son was diagnosed.

You know, the The Truth About Cancer, that docu series kind of that that series of docu series that first won the first one just aired, I think like two weeks after my son was diagnosed. So we, you know, we were sitting there a pen and paper, just take it out and write everything down. And then and then it became really popular to blog about alternative cancer stuff because of the success of that series. And so you had the the Internet was just awash with all sorts of, you know, wild alternative cancer stuff.

And that was like real information overwhelm, right? Because we were trying to try to, you know, peace between all these different alternative protocols out there and stuff like that. And you search for, you know, alternative cancer stuff today even on somewhere like DuckDuckGo. And you're getting you know, you're getting articles by Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Harvard and, you know, all these places that say that they give you a little sprinkling of yeah, there's some research behind it, but yeah.

That it's probably not worth your time or you know, maybe, you know, you know, whatever. So it's, yeah, it's, it's the, the information overwhelm is almost information underworld these days, which, you know, it highlights the highlights the need to work with a natural path like a functional medicine doctor to specialize in cancer even more. But you know, that being said, it's still a flood of information. You're still getting your friends. You're you're still reading the blog articles, you're still listening to podcasts, all that stuff.

You know, I always, you know, outside of the doctor thing, you've got to actually make friends with your intuition and let that, you know, let that be. I mean, I would even you know, I would even let my intuition be the guide, kind of, you know, the talk about like automatic writing and just letting, you know, letting the words flow through you or whatever. There's almost like automatic clicking like, you know, and PubMed studies and stuff like that. Well, you know, where's my intuition? Like taking me right now? Yeah.

And you know, there's, we've got a, we've got a pretty neat membership group. I just I just talked about this the other day. There's a gal that she asks, we, you know, we get a different doctor on every week. And yet you've been on the call, Dr. Jenn. But she she asked, like every doctor, about this one particular kind of obscure or supplement. And and finally, just the other day, I was like, you know, it's if you're asking every doctor about it, it seems like your intuition is, you know, it's your body, your mind, the universe, whatever is probably telling you that's the supplement you need.

And I, you know, I don't know if I would ask any more doctors about it, their opinion about it, I would just I would just I would just take that supplement, you know what I mean? So yeah. And I mean, you know, we've been we've been trained to in this, you know, talk about the Western mindset versus Eastern mindset or conventional mindset versus holistic mindset or whatever. But we've been trained to just, you know, there's got to be science and there's there's got to be to that. You've got to find the thing with the best science behind.

Yeah, like a double blind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, there's, there's, there's certainly, you know, there's a place for that in the, in the holistic world as well. And you get into all the stuff about out, you know, a supplement a company can't afford a double blind study like a, you know, a multibillion dollar drug company and all that stuff. But even still, it's, you know, you're in even if even if they all could, they, you know, they. Risk profile is not the same, you know. So when you're talking about a pharmaceutical and you're bringing it on to market, there are real reasons to have to do that.

Extensive research. And it's because along with every single one of those drugs is going to come side effects and some of them are going to be really, really serious. And, you know, kind of the worst thing that will happen to you if you take too much vitamin C is that you're going to get diarrhea. Spend a little, little more time than you bargained for in the toilet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. You know, the stakes are so much higher, which is why studies like that are so important in the pharmaceutical space.

But don't generally apply. I'm not going to tell you that there aren't supplements that don't pose any danger to someone. Of course there are. But by and large, the risk profile is not the same. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, you know, that being said, that they could all have, you know,

Filtering Cancer Information and Choosing Therapies 47:30

even if they did all have double blind studies, I'm sure there would be hundreds of supplement companies that if they had the resources to do it, then there's going to be hundreds of supplements with like really interesting, compelling double blind studies that would come out. And you'd still be left with the same issue of choosing between all of these different supplements. Right? So again, it's you trust your trust your cancer specializing naturopathic or functional medicine, doctor. But then, you know, they're going to say, here are the things that, you know, you should you should absolutely take.

And here are the things that, you know, maybe there there are a couple, you know, supplements that don't get along well with cancer. So they'll tell you about those or at least, you know, questionable research. And that sort of thing. I hope they tell you about them. Yeah, right. Which, again, your you know, your generic naturopathic doctor probably is not going to know about that your your cancer specific one is. But but yeah. And then, you know, it's they kind of say whatever, you know, whatever your budget allows, I'm not going to tell you not to do that.

That, you know, that that supplement you're interested may well you know be be great for you it sounds great. It looks great. I know about it. So yeah, in that case it's you got to just, you know. Yeah. Going back to the we were opening yourself up to the universe stuff but you know, the more you can you can let your you can let your intuition guide you on that stuff and actually not just pay lip service to it, but really it takes some practice and it takes them, you know, you've got to be really intentional about it at first, but the more you can just kind of open yourself up to, you know, the answer is somewhere within you because yeah, going back to the everything's connected and we all share the same energy and you can get all, you know, esoteric with it and whatever.

But yeah, yeah, you do have access to the answer of what's best for you and the more you can just open yourself up to that and let your intuition actually be the final decision maker on things. I mean, my wife, you know, I'm actually more into like, you know, geeking out on different energy medicine stuff and energy workers and reading weird, esoteric books and stuff like that. And I think it's to compensate for the fact that, you know, my wife is not is into all that stuff. And it probably it's because she has a way better intuition than I do.

And, you know, I try to I'm trying to hack my way there. But, you know, we always let her her intuition was actually always the final decision maker. And whenever, you know, whenever we went with that, it was we were so glad we did. And whenever we, you know, logic our way into going against her intuition 100% of the time we regretted it. So, yeah. Listen to your wife. Listen to your wife. In an interview. So before you spoke about building a non toxic house, what does that mean. Mhm. Um well yeah.

I mean it's, it's I guess kind of part of the discovery process when you, when you take a look at your life either, um, you know, be hopefully before you get diagnosed with cancer, but definitely after you get diagnosed with cancer and you know, you start picking things apart and you start realizing, you know, you start like I like it like I mentioned, right? It's like, oh, I've been eating conventional food that has this glyphosate pesticide on it that's, you know, linked to cancer. And it's poking holes in my gut and all that stuff.

And I'm, you know, cleaning with these endocrine disrupting chemicals and I'm getting all these heavy metals from various. Right. You know, I don't know. Not right. Um, that unfortunately applies to buildings and homes themselves and most of the things in buildings and homes. Yeah. I mean, you know, the, the prestwood, be it particleboard or plywood that is off gassing formaldehyde for years and years and years along with various other VOCs. The paint that's used is off gassing the insulation is off gassing the you know, your your couch is off gassing your chair is off gassing your your cabinets again, those are used.

Those are Prestwood. They're off gassing. Everything's okay, right? Um, an. Actress. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mattress. Right. And that's that's another thing I talk about, like the, you know, the do I spend 30 grand to go to an all inclusive clinic in Mexico or not? And I mean, if you have like 30,000 extra dollars, go for it. Get that get that turbo boost. But if you're going to spend every last penny on on that clinic and then come home to the mattress that is off and pillow, that's off, gassing formaldehyde into your face every night as you sleep.

Um, yeah, I would get yourself that organic mattress, you know? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thinking about the things that you do most, right. Like you, you sleep on your pillow and on your mattress for hopefully like seven or 8 hours every single day. Right? So that's really meaningful. Yeah. And so it's I don't know. I mean, you don't know. Not everyone's going to go to the extremes. We did. But, you know, we we got we got and then there's the, the electromagnet magnetic fields thing, right? The wi fi cell phone towers, the cell phone in your house.

So we went to the we went to the extreme of finding a piece of land removed enough from its civilization, but still close enough to civilization that we can get to the you know, because we were still going to the hospital pretty frequently then. So we kind of found a best of both worlds type situation that wasn't still too far from, you know, the major cities and all that stuff. But at the same time, we could, you know, we don't we don't have a lot of close neighbors and so, yeah, the property didn't have any electromagnetic field readings on our on our geeky little meter.

And, and we worked with a building biologist to that's again you know you can there there are there are a couple like green. Well then you got to be careful with people using the word green because that's you know, that could be all marketing there, too. But a lot. Of greenwashing and a. Lot of greenwashing out there. But but I guess that's that's the term you want to look for is building biologist. And that's, you know, if you're if you're doing a or if you're building a new house, then it's great to work with a building biologist. But they they can even consult on, you know, on what you can do to improve your existing environment.

But again, it's just it's kind of that mindset like once you once you realize that that like the default choice with everything is is going to be toxic, be it be it food or be it medicine or be it, you know, your your your living environment. Then you just kind of have to look at everything, you know and say, you know, and especially as you're considering purchasing something new, you know, is this is, you know, could this be toxic or not? And, you know, it's it's you can you know, you can you a simple exercise is just popping into a search engine, you know, toxic silverware and oh, you know, you can get crappy silverware.

That's that's going to be leaching heavy metals into your food or you can get high quality silverware. That's, you know, not going to be doing that. You know what I mean? Yeah. So is that that's a really good educational opportunity. Every time you're you're thinking about buying something new. But I mean, you know, a couple a couple, you know, everybody should have an air filter in their house, right? Because not just one air filter. You just start start your air filter collection. Right. Um, we, we started with just one and we'd have it in Ryder's bedroom, and then we move it out to, you know, move it out to the living room.

And then we finally we were able to afford another one, and then he could have one in his bedroom and he could have one in the living room. And, you know, nine, nine years later, we've got like Air Purifier Kingdom in our house and purifiers everywhere. But, but, yeah, I mean, it's that's that's that's going to mitigate a lot of it. Having a fan, you know, having your ceiling fan running change your change your furnace filter. There's a you know, if you like most people you've never opened your furnace one time and you've never had anyone come out and look at it.

It just runs. Go pop that bad boy open and take a look at it. Take a look. The filter in the thing and that's you know, that's what's been circulating throughout your house. Yeah. Change that thing. Keep windows open. You can, there's a, a paint line out there called Safe Coat, AFM Safe Coat. And that line of paints is designed to be not only nontoxic, but actually actually a seal in the off gassing from from all the building materials. So, you know, if you. Think. It's short of building your own house from nontoxic materials, there's you know, there's stuff you can do right there.

There's also furniture. Most people are not going to build their own house from scratch. And use a building biologist. But what is the low hanging fruit like? What are the things that we should all make sure that we're doing? Yeah. And those, you know, the that's I was kind of going there with the, you know, the air stuff because that's that's that's a big one, right. You know, a lot of emphasis gets put on organic food. But think about how many times you eat versus how many times you breathe. Right.

And you find out that indoor air is, you know, it can be 3 to 5 times on average, hundreds of times, and in many cases more toxic than than than even, you know, polluted outdoor, you know, smoggy air. But so, yeah, that's that's kind of the that's kind of the, you know, the the air stuff I just listed off there. Always a good idea, even if you don't think you have a problem to get to get a mold inspection, just to be sure there's you know, you can find professional mold companies in most areas. There are various, you know, various mail order type things that you can you can get.

I just I mean, I'm trying out this this got mold product right now where you just take an air sample and send it to them and they'll tell you how many mold spores are in your air, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So mold is a really big deal and then, you know, electromagnetic fields,

The Stern Method and Community Support 58:20

um, all I can say is anyone saying that they're not a big deal, just that they don't know what they're talking about. They just don't, you know, there's so much so much research out there showing a myriad of, you know, problems resulting from electromagnetic fields. And it makes sense. You know, the Earth, the Earth's natural frequency that we've come up with over time is like it's like eight something hertz. And now we're talking about, you know, thousands and tens of thousands and millions and tens of millions of hertz.

Yeah. Just just that. Right. Is common sense. If you're if you want to talk about logic and common sense, that's that's not that's not weird. You know, we're we're energetic beings. Everything is firing based off of electricity. And, you know that that's why electrolytes are important, because we have electrical bodies and the electrolytes are conduits of or conductors of electricity. So, I mean, yeah, we're energetic beings. We're, you know, we're we're tuned to a specific frequency or specific range of frequencies and these chaotic frequencies that, you know, manmade thousands and thousands and millions of times more powerful than anything, wherever you are, of course, that's going to be a big deal.

Um, anyway, that being said, uh, I, you know, the, the, the advice out there on turning your Wi-Fi router off at night, I don't think goes nearly far enough. Um, I think bare minimum is you have it on while you are actively surfing the internet and then you turn it right back off. That's, you know, I'd say that's bare minimum for us. You know, there's these, there's these amazing things called Ethernet cables. They, you know, they worked really well in the nineties before we had wi fi. And they actually they still work just just as yes.

As well. So yeah, I mean, we even, you know, actually we don't have the problem now because we don't have Internet living in the middle of the woods. That's that's its own problem. That's why you have to rent this office in town to come to once a week to do an interview like this. But, but, yeah, I mean, even even in our old house, when we had a router, we, we, you have to call the, you have to call the Internet company usually and make sure that they remotely disable the wi fi and they won't know what you're talking about.

You got to make sure that they actually do it and that sort of thing. But you know that that's what we did. We had them disable the wi fi completely and then we just took Internet cables and we plugged the Ethernet cable in and we ran it up the wall across the ceiling, back down the wall to, you know, whatever, wherever the computer was. And, you know, I had those going throughout the house and I did it is you know, it's kind of as neatly as I could up around corners and stuff like that. And it didn't look horrible.

And people didn't really notice until we pointed it out. And, you know, and then we never had wi fi on in our house whatsoever. And that's, you know, that's a really big deal keeping your cell phone on airplane mode. You know, you don't always need to be reachable. 24/7. You know what I mean? Just just not an airplane mode or somebody needs to get ahold of you. They can, you know, text messages and voice mails are great. You'll get the text message and the voice mail when you turn your phone back on.

And it's just, you know, it's mentally better not to be reachable. 24/7 Always wondering when someone's going to take a shower. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. This has been so great, so useful, so practical. And I think that that's what people really need, especially when they're overwhelmed. They need practical things that are going to make a big difference. So I thank you so much. And to the bottom of my heart, I'm so sorry for the reason that you came into this space, but you are really making a tremendous difference for people.

And I'm sure I'm sure you know that. Yeah. Can you just share very quickly what you do and how you help people so that if they want to reach out to you, they can? Yeah, we've got we've got a lot of things coming down the pipe. But for right now, I mean, we put out we put out a lot of great information on our so our I guess, family brand is The Stern Method. The Stern method, our last name, Sternagel. But that's hard to remember or spell. So it got shortened to Stern. And you know, as you can tell, we kind of, you know, methodize or systematize or, you know, organize things the best we can because we my wife and I were both not, you know, inherently organized type A driver type people.

But we realized we needed to get super organized. So that's where that's where the method part comes in. So yeah, I mean, we know our website, social media where we're having fun and more fun lately on Instagram and Facebook and those types of places, putting stuff out, YouTube, alternative channels, things like that, and then firing the by the time this goes live, our Anticancer Revolution podcast will be fired back up. It's been on hiatus for for way longer than, than I wish it was but yeah, we've got, we've got a ton of new stuff recorded there and that's, that's just cancer specific, a whole, whole, whole ton of cancer specific info kind of like you're taking it here.

And that's, that's the anti-cancer revolution and then our and the membership I mentioned is are going integrative plus program where we get we get a top cancer specializing doctor holistic functional so on and so forth like Dr. Jenn here and and all of her best, best, best, best, best, you know, and I don't even just have any cancer specializing practitioner. I only have the best cancer specializing practitioners on there. And and it's just, you know, it's a really fun two hour Q&A and that, you know, our community members just get to ask whatever they want because that's, you know, that that was kind of one of the most valuable things that we could think of on, you know, that that would have made a difference in our journey is just the ability to like I said, you know, you can go through that, God knows how many studies.

But just getting to ask that one question to somebody that's been researching and practicing this stuff for decades every week really makes a big difference. So yeah, that's that's are going to be great of plus program you can. Sure does. yeah. And it's so important to have a trusted guide because as we talked about, there is a lot of information, there is a lot of noise, there are a lot of opinions. And to be able to have a team that can help you to determine what's right for you is so very important and you're so integral in that process.

So I really thank you for being here today, for doing what you do and for sharing it with the world. Right back at you. Dr. Jenn It's Dr. Jenn Bye for now.