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.

This is doctor talks. 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 you're integrative practitioner because your conventional practitioner is going to be pretty much the same no matter where you go.

So you're going to find, a medical oncologist can find a radiation oncologist from find a breast surgeon and a kind of plastic surgeon like those people generally are the same for everyone.

And that's just a matter of personality. And you like working with that person? Does that person resonate with you to that person, to you? Start with some respect to you, in your opinion, that kind of thing.

But more importantly, on the end over there and the integrative matter of having a functional person you can work with who is familiar with kids, who is 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 treatment.

We want to make sure that you're getting those commercial medical treatment that you are getting the most conventional medical treat. So how do you eat a supplement to 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 to get the most out of your situation.

So we talked about that. And 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 and it's difficult to find studies 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 right direction for you, because we are all visual, because the right thing for someone else is not necessarily the right thing for you, but also dialing into your intuition.

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 and trust your intuition, that's so 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 to think 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 pressed wood like in your cabinets or on your floor?

Is that an off gassing? Insulation, 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 minimizing the EMF that you're using safe paint, and that you, that you are conscious about the line I and we talked about some low hanging fruit and using nontoxic paint, but using an air filter, having a ceiling fan, changing your furnace filter, opening your windows, thinking about things that you're doing a lot.

You're reading all the time, right. So making sure that your air quality is good and then, and then turning off your Wi-Fi as much as possible, not just when at night when you sleep, but as much as possible if you're not used that a lot.

And keeping your cellphone in airplane mode, most of the time we don't need to be available. And so it was a brilliant discussion, and I really hope that you tune in and listen to it all.

It's Dr. Jenn. Bye for now. Welcome back to the Breast Cancer Breakthrough 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 Anti-Cancer Revolution and Going Integrative Plus, which is a platform for informing 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 the integrative medicine space.

Yeah. That's always, Yeah, 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 to cancer of the, cancer of the nervous system. Mostly, mostly a child had cancer.

So he had a big, huge lump inside of and growing out of his spine and a couple 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, on this event and, you know, fought with slash, navigated the conventional the conventional medical system and navigated the holistic medical world 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, I 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, Yeah.

So, 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 and, you know, in our peaceful little compound, we built that with his chickens and, greenhouse 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 and our 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 I 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'd, I wouldn't heartbeat.

But that's of course, the way it works or what. 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, Commercial Energy Savings Company.

What actually wasn't a bad job, but it was, you know, didn't didn't have a lot of meaning in it. And, I was, you know, listening to to really 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 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. Yeah. You know, I would say when you. Before Ryder was conceived, 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, started taking EMF, electromagnetic fields and Wi-Fi and stuff like that more seriously.

So we were we were ahead. 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, I'm finding out how we're being poisoned. And, 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, I, I'm, I'm grateful for that, that I was never too married to any preconceived notion, that 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 that we were obviously, locked arms in the journey and all that, but, yeah, I mean, she's she's the same way, and it's just it's it's really neat that that we were, you know, when we're getting arguments about really done 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 has been diagnosed with cancer or their, their child has been diagnosed with cancer.

And, you know, one of them wants to go the holistic route and the other just wants to listen to the conventional doctor or, you know, not even just a pure, pure, holistic.

Robert, 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 to 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, to, to two sides of that couple can't, can't come to the can't, 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 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 the 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 he's going to need me. Yeah, yeah. And on the, you know, on the, the noisy time and all that, it's, it's it it all.

It's always heartbreaking when it's the, 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, maybe it's the wife or 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 headed down that path.

Good job. Or you're curious. Yeah. Are you curious? Right. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, like I would say, I mean, you've got you've 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 the you eventually got the diagnosis through and now through.

No kind of really deep dive 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 this 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. But then there are there are conventional guys that even though there are 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. Yeah. Maybe, you know, that 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's, 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 as we move 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 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 oncologists no matter pretty much no matter where in the country you are.

So you can, you know, you can shop around and find a, find a good one on, on that front. And then, on the holistic integrative front, it sounds simple.

Now that, you know, I say 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 their, their, their valid differences, but somebody that, you know, somebody that utilizes natural medicines, alongside conventional stuff, but, you know, not just that you need one of those type of practitioners, and a functional MD or, naturopathic doctor, maybe, maybe a really well trained herbalist, 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 naturopathy doctor, that good 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. Can 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 those tend to be that you know, that 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 got to figure out all those things. Right? And, and pretty much fix them as fast as you can all at once in, in, you know, a cohesive, strategic manner.

So. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, so, yeah, there's, you've got to you pretty much have to fix everything all at once. Mitochondria defects, you know, 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, all that stuff.

Right. 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 two fold, 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 all have their own kind of different, they're different particular side effects. So that, you know, a really good naturopathic oncologist or a 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 a naturopathy 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, a tumor in your colon, in leukemia and the way you 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, you know, I respect the ones that say, I don't take cancer. You know, I, 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 naturopathy 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 for a second.

You know, that's the wrong, you know, you need somebody with decades of cancer specific experience. That's that's who 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 the primary two.

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 naturopathy or whatever doctors, they, 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 specializing 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 a one of those kind of more generic naturopathic doctors I was talking about.

It could be a chiropractor's office. It could be, you know, there's more and more just kind of functional clinics with ivy bars and stuff like that popping up.

But somebody that's got, you know, the ability to administer I. V. nutrient therapies, somebody with, you know, cool toys like ten pass 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 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, IVF, 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 don't get me on the soapbox there. 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 the nutritionist or are they getting that information from their functional medicine doctor?

I would say that's a it depends. Yeah. So 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 work, who, you know, is a well 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 catchphrase is, you know, flood your body with nutrition, right? So, Yeah, Chris, but. Yeah. Oh, he's 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 apple in and 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.

I mean, so, you know, you see all the you see it's easy to find kind of 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, for some of the, for some of the, you know, harder, like cruciferous vegetables, broccoli and 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, 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 in any more like kind of solid meals like that, actually cook or, you know, my, my favorite steaming or pressure cooking because you're only losing about, you know, maybe ten, 15, 20% of the nutrients, but you could eat like five times as much if you, if you steam them or pressure cooking.

So you're still coming out ahead there. Yeah. And, you know, if you're going through cancer, your digestive system is probably compromised, almost certainly compromised, because pretty much every body's digestive system these days is is almost certainly compromised.

So you're not, you know, you're 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 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?

Your naturopathy 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 your, your nervous system is 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, a where we, 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, an 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, acupuncturist energy worker, those those would be those be good additions from there. And then I always do like to say as well, you know, when we talk about therapies and ozone and, you know, a lot of, a lot of, chiropractors and functional doctors and stuff like that will have PMF pulsed electromagnetic fields and their office and, hyperthermia, sauna, things like that.

Right. And, you know, a lot of these things people pay, you know, either will pay, 100 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, 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 sauna.

It's a bit of an investment to get yourself an ozone generator, a bit of investment to get yourself, a good PMF. Either Matt or, you know, that there are a few different types of devices that you can get with with PMF, but, you know, those are kind of my 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 to use every day for, for, you know, the rest of your life, which is a lot.

Yeah. So I, 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 fives unless I've, 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, let's dive 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. And I mean, of course, you know, you have to know that it's only expensive because it's out of pocket.

And the, you know, the chemo 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, done.

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, you know, free in quotes on the, on the, on the conventional side anymore people's copays are going up and, out of pocket minimums and all that stuff.

It's getting crazier and crazier. So, yeah. And, and, you know, the 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, a quote unquote more expensive therapy like I. V.

vitamin C versus, you know, the IVs of chemo they give you, which. Yeah, the 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 want criticized. Will we'll use that as a criticism.

But, in all reality, it's just due to 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, the regular medical bills and things like that.

And, you know, the that there's, there's never been a more applicable, use of the, you know, worn out 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 all those things, whatever we felt strongly that we needed or whatever we were advised by the people.

We felt strongly that we, you know, that we we trusted that we needed, we 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 to, 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 the insecurity out the window, because it was literally a life and death situation. So. And it was your child. Yeah.

It was it was our 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's, you know, 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, 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 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, to supplement companies to, you know, there's a there's a 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?

Amazing. Now I've got the now I've got the kindness can really be tremendous. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You. But your point is well-taken and that you have to ask you you got to ask.

Yeah. And you go. You'd be sincere too. You can't just say, you know, can just add a little two, two 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, the your 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 asking for discounts all over. I mean, and 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 just got diagnosed with cancer.

I gotta, I gotta cancel unless you guys can, you know, cut my bill on a third or a half or something like that. And 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 wear it like that. 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, the flip side, we were really big with just putting everything we were doing out there on. 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, 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, Ivy 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. Amazing. You know? Yeah.

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 I, you know, I did woo woo stuff like that as well, just, you know, visualizing, goodness and resources.

Yeah. Coming to you. I was part of my morning routine every morning was just, asking the universe and not even asking just knowing the, you know, whatever.

Summoning. Summoning the help from the universe. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and I often encourage people to be really specific. Like, I need us honor.

Right. Universe, please send me and so on, and it works it out. You 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, functional, 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, and 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, but the more you, the more you learn the the less you realize you you really know.

Or that saying goes, you know, I can read 50 studies or I can ask, you know, one of one of my trusted naturopathy oncologists. Hey, you know what? 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 I'm getting, you know, no matter how many studies I read.

So there's that. I guess I finally 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 but that being 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 the 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. It's it's not 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 series of docu series, that first one, the first one just aired, I think like two weeks after my son was diagnosed.

So we, you know, we're sitting there with pen and paper, just take it out and write everything down. 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 a wash with all sorts of, you know, wild alternative cancer stuff. And that was like real information overwhelm. Right?

Because we were trying to that you were trying to, you know, peace between all of 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 they give you a little sprinkling of, you know, there's some research behind it, but yeah, that it's 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 and the information overwhelm is almost information underwhelm these days. Which, you know, highlights the highlights, the need to work with a natural path, like a functional medicine doctor that specializes in cancer even more.

But, you know, that being said, it's it's still a flood of information. You're still getting your friends used, 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 where, you know, where's my intuition, like taking me right now?

And, you know, there's, we've, 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 you've been on the call. Doctor Jen. But, she asks, like, every doctor, about this one particular kind of obscure supplement and, and finally, just the other day, I was like, you know, it just 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, 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 got to be the that you've got to find the thing with the best science behind it, like a double blinded now.

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. Then you get into all the stuff about how, you know, a supplement company can't afford a double blind study, like a, you know, a multi-billion dollar drug company and all that stuff.

But even still, it's, you know, you're even if even if they all could, they, you know, the risk profile is not the same, you know. Yeah. I mean, 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, a little more time than you bargained for on 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 they 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, even if they did all have double blind studies, I'm sure there'd 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 know, trust your trust your cancer specializing. That's your path, like a functional medicine doctor. But then you know that 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 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 naturopathy 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, that, you know, that that something that you're interested may.

Well, you know, b 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, you going back to the will, 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 some, 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 as into all that stuff. And it probably it's because she has a way better intuition than I do.

And, you know, you know, I'm trying 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. Yeah. So before you spoke about building a nontoxic house, what does that mean? 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, you know, 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 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, you know, cleaning with these endocrine, disrupting chemicals. And I'm getting all these heavy metals from various where, you know, I don't. No, no. Not right.

That, unfortunately applies to buildings and homes themselves and most of the things in buildings and homes, yeah. I mean, you know, the, the pressed would 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. An actress. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You mattress. Right. And that's that's another thing I talk about, like the, you know, the the. Do I spend 30 grand to go to an all inclusive clinic in Mexico or, 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.

Yeah, I, I would get yourself that organic mattress, you know what I mean? 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 7 or 8 hours every single day.

Right. So that's really meaningful. Yeah. And so it's I, I don't know I mean you don't God 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 electro magnetic fields thing. Right. The Wi-Fi cell phone towers, the cell phone in your house. So we, we went to the we went to the extreme of finding a piece of land removed enough from, it's 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 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 it's, it's again, you know, you can 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 our marketing there too. But a lot of greenwashing.

Yeah, a lot of greenwashing out there. But but I guess that's, that's the term you want to look for is, is building biologist. And that's, you know, if you're, if you're doing a, a remodel or if you're building a new house, then it's great to work with a building biologist.

But, 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 in a 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 you can, you know, you can you that a simple exercise is just, popping into a search engine, you know, toxic silverware and. Oh, what do you know? Yeah, you can get crappy silverware.

That's it'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 that's that that's a really good educational opportunity. Every time 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. We started with just one, and we'd 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, and then we finally we were able to afford another one.

And then he could have one in his bedroom, and you could have one in the living room. And, you know, nine, nine years later, we've we've got like, air Purifier Kingdom in our house and, fires 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, you've 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 the.

Let's take a look at the filter and the thing. And that's, you know, that's what's been circulating throughout your house. So, 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 seal in the off gassing from, from all the building materials.

So, you know, if you're using it short of building your own house from nontoxic materials, there's, you know, there's stuff you can do, right? 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, there's the, you know, the that's I was kind of go in 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, 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 a get a mold inspection.

Just to be sure there's, you know, that 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, trying out this, this got mold product right now where you just take an air sample and send it to them, and they'll they'll tell you how many mold spores are in your air, that sort of thing.

And, yeah, yeah. So mold is a really big deal. And then, you know, electromagnetic fields, 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 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 the earth, the earth. Natural frequency that, that we've, you know, 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, yeah, it's just that. Right? Just common sense.

If you're if you want to talk about logic and common sense, that's that's not that's not a we're, you know, we're, we're energetic beings. Everything is firing based off of electricity.

And you know, that that's where the where the 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 we're energetic beings. We 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, man made thousands and thousands and millions of times more powerful than, than anything wherever you of course, that's going to be a big deal.

Anyway, that being said, 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. 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 90s before we had Wi-Fi.

And they actually, they still work just just as eating just as well. So, yeah, I mean, we even be, you know. Well, 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. And that's why I 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 at our old house when we had a router, we 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. And 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 Ethernet cables, and we plug 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 is, you know, it's kind of as neatly as I could up, up, around corners and stuff like that.

And it 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, you know, always need to be reachable. 24 seven you know what I mean?

Just doesn't happen on an airplane or somebody needs to get Ahold of you. They can, you know, text messages and voicemails are great. You'll get the text message in the voicemail when you turn your phone back on.

And it's just, you know, it's it's mentally better not to be reachable 24 seven. And I was wondering when someone's going to text. 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 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 pike. But for right now, I mean, we 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 or last name stern angle.

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, method ize 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, you know, our website, social media, we're we're having fun having more fun lately on Instagram and Facebook and those types of places, putting stuff out YouTube, the 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 in here. And that's, that's the anti-cancer revolution. And then our, 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 doctor Jen 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 to our 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.

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 integrative plus program. You can sure. That's. 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. Doctor Jenn, it's Doctor Jenn. Bye for now.

Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices but empower your wellbeing.

For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website. WW dot doctor talks.com. Stay connected, stay healthy and join us next time on Doctor Talks.

Real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.

How To Biologically Engineer Your Life After A Cancer Diagnosis

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Ryan Sternagel

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