Make Healing Happen: Your Personal Guide

Ryan Sternagel

It is good to be with you, Dr. Eliaz. It was not me, it was also my son, who was diagnosed. My name was twice there: Ryder is my son, and Ryan is me, but I just wanted to make it. I did not want anyone to be confused out there. Yes.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Neuroblastoma lives in very young children, of course. Anyway, of course.

Ryan Sternagel

But yes, this is what it needs to be on the other side. I am always the one asking you questions. Dr. Eliaz, we were just talking before we started recording that you were, for whatever reason—I guess not whatever reason—because you could do a lot of great work and I was out there hungry for the best information I could find. I reached out to you very early on when we were first going through everything and got to pick your brain, and you were very generous with your time. Then we met. I started going to cancer conferences to learn all I could to heal our son. You were keynoting the very first cancer conference I ever went to and got to talk there. So, yes, we go way back. 

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Maybe share with us your journey, how you got to where you are, and what your organization and your commitment involve.

Ryan Sternagel

Yes. I can mention that my son Ryder was diagnosed with stage four cancer, neuroblastoma. That’s a childhood cancer of the nervous system, 11 days before his first birthday. We had a big idea: it can be in your brain or the spine. But yes, it was in his spine. He had a big, big lump sticking out of his back that my wife first started noticing when she was breastfeeding him. If he was turned in that direction, she could feel this lump there. We took him in to get checked out. Despite lumping his back, it should not be there. It was quite a journey just to get the diagnosis. First, we took him to the fact that we were already fairly, if not nearly, as holistically inclined as we are today. But we were doing the midwife thing for having him born, and we are cleaning up our house of toxicants and these sorts of things. We were already going down the path. We took him to a holistically minded doctor who had been great up until that point but told us the same thing that we heard time and time again going forward.

Going forward, which yes, I do not know, come back again in six weeks if it is still there, that thing. That just did not feel right. Then Red Flag started stacking up in our brains. We realized that he was—is that a year old? He is not even crawling. He is barely able to turn himself over. He is having trouble eating, holding down solid foods, and these sorts of things. Everyone says they developed their own pace, which is true. But yes, all these things started adding up, combined with the lump on his back. It is now something that is not here. We finally got a referral to a mainstream hospital. Mainstream Hospital again told us to come back and told us to come back in six weeks that the one was still there and did not offer anything that did not feel to us. We were back in there, pounding on their door. I think that was on a Friday. We came back Monday and said, Can we just get an ultrasound or something to see what is going on? Their ultrasound was supposed to last 45 minutes. It lasted an hour and a half. We could tell just by the look on the ultrasound guy’s face that something was wrong. 

Sure enough, the doctors called us back and had us in for an MRI—the same thing, supposed to be a 45-minute MRI. Two hours later, the doctor and the nurse both come back with tears in their eyes. Then they said the phrase we will never forget: the lump that you felt in your son’s back was just the tip of the iceberg. Yes. It turned out he had a tumor bigger than his kidneys inside and growing out of his spine; it was all intermeshed in his spine. He had a couple of secondary tumors and metastasis to the bones, and yes, that’s the day our world turned upside down. It has never been the same, but yes, we immediately, as I said, knew what we wanted to do, what we wanted to take a step back and spend some more time on. I just want to make sure we understand the situation. We asked for a second opinion, which does not fly in childhood cancer, believe it or not. There is no medical establishment or government for the whole system. They think they know best. They think they own your child. Yes, that led to a lot of troubling events, to say the least. That is why we ended up having a Child Protective Services case opened against us for medical neglect. 

I always joke that I look at my bank account and tell myself that I was telling myself that I was neglecting my son with the tens of thousands of dollars we were spending that we did not even have. All the credit cards were maxed out, trying to afford all the holistic stuff. Yes. But we did what we had to do and did end up doing some chemotherapy. It is a long story. I always say there is a time and a place for chemotherapy. He ended up getting an infection from the line that they put in. We did consent to a line getting put in because, in our minds, we were going to go off and start getting I.V. Vitamin C and all sorts of things with it. That line ended up leading to an infection, a bloodstream infection. We were back in the hospital on I.V. antibiotics and all that stuff, and we knew we did need to do something immediately to get that tumor reduced because it was threatening to paralyze or kill him at any minute. We did a round of chemotherapy, went back home, started researching, doing everything we could, and consulted on the same thing that everybody goes through. At least when you are going down the integrative path, calling around to different cancer clinics, calling around to different holistic doctors, trying to get a feel for the situation, researching all we could, that thing. 

That is the point that it was made clear to us that if we did not keep playing ball with the conventional medical system, then they would take it more or less. We did what we could do—everything—all the holistic stuff we could do on the side while appeasing the conventional medical system as much as we could. We did the chemotherapy. We said no to a lot of things. That is the one thing that I do want to point out to people listening: just because you are doing some of the things that the conventional medical system recommends does not mean you have to go along with everything. That is where consulting with amazing holistic, naturopathic, and integrative doctors yourself, Dr. Eliaz, comes in. It is having someone to bounce these ideas off of and run everything. Every drug that is recommended to you, for example, Neupogen, Neulasta, the granuloma colony, stimulating factor, and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor. They wanted to give him that to keep his counts up. It took me 5 minutes to jump on Dr. Google and find studies saying that it aggravates existing neuroblastoma cells. So, we were those patients. They were questioning the doctor at every turn, which was a good thing. I might not have been so fiery about everything if I could do it over again.

But it is good to hold your ground, and again, make sure you feel good about everything you are doing. Anyway, we did that for a while. The situation became more and more intense, more and more controlling, and more and more unhappy. It was not a good vibe. We ended up moving states to where we live now in Utah and found a team that was willing to work with us, took our opinion seriously, and we stopped conventional therapy at that point, which was about halfway into the protocol that he was supposed to have, and went completely natural, integrative, holistic, whatever tagline you want to put on that from that point forward. Yes, here we are, nine years later. That’s writers doing great. It was before his first birthday that he was diagnosed. He just turned ten a couple of months ago. Every birthday is special for a parent. But every birthday is a little extra special for us, given that he was diagnosed before his first birthday, and we were told that he’d probably not make it. Even if he did make it, he probably would never walk due to the nerve damage in his spine. He is skiing and mountain biking and living his best life. Yes, that is a very, very, very short version of the story. 

We built a nontoxic environment; we got obsessed, as everyone should be, with avoiding all the toxicants of the modern world: chemicals, EMF, mold, and all those things. Wherever we lived, we were hyper-vigilant about making the most healing environment possible in terms of getting rid of all possible toxicity, from the mattresses to the air quality—yes, just cleaning with nontoxic products—all these things. That obsession eventually led to us building our own house in the middle of the woods. We bought a piece of land with zero on our EMF reader. It has no; it is far enough away from civilization that there are not a lot of cell phone towers out there and neighbors Wi-Fi and that thing, and I learned all about building houses with nontoxic materials and all that stuff. That was its adventure, building this nontoxic house in the middle of the woods. Now we have taken that to the next level of having a greenhouse, having our chickens, and all sorts of fun stuff like that. There is a very long story condensed, probably not even doing it justice there.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

But you did. You gave it flavor. We thank you, and maybe before we continue, just for the audience, some highlights of what you said in the beginning. Two very important things. First, you have always had time to think. Do not feel that way because you were diagnosed. It is overwhelming. Your whole world changes in a moment. Only a cancer patient can understand the experience of family. All your priorities shift, and in this moment, you always have time for a deep breath. The system will push you to make decisions. Take your time. The second thing is that if you do not feel comfortable with what you were told, and even if you do, try to get a second opinion because once you hit a certain road, you are going to go on this road, and you can make modifications, but you are on a certain highway. With this in mind, Ryan, you talked about so many things that you have done. You have taken it to a place where not everybody can. Of course. It worked well for you. But do things involve an investment in time and an investment in money? It is also a long-term journey. It is not something that happens when people start treating cancer; they think it is too late, and I will be vigilant. They can do anything for two months. No, it is a long journey. Maybe you can share with us how, as somebody who talks to so many people, you take this journey in an efficient, healing, and harmonious way.

Ryan Sternagel

Yes, that’s funny you mentioned that about them, I am going to this this is going to be a sprint for two months, and then I am going to get back to regular life and that thing. Yes, when we first moved to Utah, we thought that very thing. Okay, let’s just go hard and we will knock it out in a few months, and then we will move back, but half of it was that we fell in love with the place, and half of it was that it was a journey. It is a never-ending process. It is not something that you just deal with for a couple of months and then get back to regular life because, well, your regular life was what led to the cancer, whatever the circumstances might have been. But yes, that has been our thing. My wife, Teddy, and I were not necessarily organized people when we started this journey, but we realized that we needed to get our act together. Because when you start learning about all this stuff, it becomes, as you said, an overload of information.

There’s all this new stuff you have to afford. Yes. There are new things to work into your routine that you were not doing before, that you realize you do need to do, and all these different things. Yes, we just tried to be as systematic as we could about it and just as logical as we could in figuring out how we were going to make all this stuff work. Where to start? Just, I guess affording all this stuff, You mentioned that it is an investment, especially when you are going to. The medical bills alone from the conventional side can knock people out. But then, when you are trying to go holistic and afford all the supplements, saunas, practitioner visits, and so on, it can get overwhelming because it is all out of pocket. 

But yes, we tried to be as systematic as we could about that. As far as yes, I guess I will start there as far as affording all of the stuff, I think the obvious one there is is cutting out unnecessary expenditures. Just take a look at your credit card receipts or your credit card statements or anything else that has been there for the last few months and say, Okay, what’s necessary? What isn’t? Would I rather have the Netflix subscription or the extra bottle of supplements I want, or whatever it is, that is an obvious one. But I think the big one that we did was that I do not hear about a lot of other people doing it, or I do not hear enough about people doing it, just using your story wherever you can to get what you need to get.

That is the most obvious example there are discounts on things, I cannot tell you how many heartfelt letters I wrote to supplement companies, telling them our situation and asking if there was any way they could help us out just for a few months. No worries if not. But yes, time and time again, it is not cut and dry that, you cannot just say, Hey, I have cancer, can you help me out? You’ve got to put some intention into it because you have to realize that people are getting asked for help all the time. But sit down and take the time to write a heartfelt letter about what you are going through. Then change the beginning and ending depending on the situation, and yes, supplements are the big ones, but it could be anything. It could be your house or your rent. We called our utility companies and asked them for help. We called, what, cell phone companies and said, Hey, and I am going through a hard time now. I am going to have to quit your service unless I can get a break on it—all these sorts of things. Just think: what are all the things I am spending money on already that I could potentially get a break on, or what are the things that I need that I could potentially get a break on? 

We went to our local grocery store. It was not a big chain like Whole Foods. It is one of the smaller ones here in Utah. But we told them our story and told them we were trying to afford all this produce to do all this juicing for. The produce is getting expensive. They were getting produce at the cost that they paid for the produce so we could do the juicing. It was all just because we used our story and asked. Yes. That is a big one. then, as far as getting more money, because you have to save money, but you also have to have more money to do these things. Fundraising is not necessarily a new concept, but yes, we utilize both in-person and online fundraising. Yes.  We had friends do the bracelet thing, and they were set up in different businesses with a sign, and that went well. Then we leaned into the online fundraiser and not just posted the online fundraiser, but which can help if you have a good social network and that thing. We did get a big boost from that. But literally, I spent time. I just set aside a few minutes every night, every morning, or whenever it worked for my routine. I would go through every Facebook contact I had, everyone I’d ever sent an email to, all my work contacts, and every different contact on my phone, and I would just ask them, Hey, I haven’t talked to you in a while.

I do not know if you heard, but we’re going through cancer with our son. Could you please share my online fundraiser? It would mean the world to me, and that’s what kept it going for so long. We did start documenting our journey on Facebook, and that’s what led to us having a website, a podcast, YouTube, and all the other stuff we do now. But which also helped people follow along the journey? It resonated with us. We got the biggest donations from people we’d never met before. It was the most heartwarming thing. But, yes, the big thing was, that I did set aside a little bit of time every night just reaching out to people and asking them to share my online fundraiser. 

You have to deal with some disappointment there when not everybody does it and that thing. But more often than not, people would either at least donate to the fundraiser themselves, or they would share it, or they would donate and share it. That’s just what kept us going for a long time. in addition to a whole lot of help from family and friends, and that thing that hopefully goes unsaid for most people. Hopefully, your family and friends are going to come through for you. But that is not a never-ending well, either. You have to do everything you can. That was the other thing I was going to talk about. Oh, charities. There are a million different cancer charities out there that give money to people going through cancer. The big thing is that it takes a little bit of time to fill out their application. that thing. That’s something you can get somebody to help you with. I wanted to talk about building your healing team and that thing as well.

But that’s the thing that I see going underutilized a lot as well. You can just search for a cancer charity, do an Internet search, and search for a cancer charity, and you will find a never-ending list of cancer charities. The same thing will work into your routine as you apply for a few cancer charities every day. You will get it, and it could be you; it could be somebody on your healing team that you have just assigned to do that for you. When people ask, What can I do? That’s an important thing they can do: just apply to a few of these cancer charities every day. That’s another big thing we did. We got hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of dollars just from doing that. Yes, I do not know. That’s that’s a big piece of it. It just gets overwhelming because it is all out of pocket. But just think logically about it and do a lot of the things that I said there and you will be able to afford a lot more of the stuff than if you did not go.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

A lot of words of wisdom and experience. One thing that you said in the beginning when you were changing your life was that you could go back to your regular life. It is a common mistake. When you go to an oncologist, they say, Oh, now your treatment is finished. You can go back to your life. Your life is what created the outcome, so going back to the same life is not a wise option. You have to change your life, and you demonstrated it. People need to recognize it and make it their journey. You may have to spend more money in the short term, but have enough resources for the long term and have a strategy. Fundraising is very important for cancer. We have three basic concepts in Chinese medicine: time, effort, and money, and each of us has different strengths in different areas. When we pull a community together for fundraising, yes, they support us with money, but we create a community of support, and with this, I wanted to move on to my next question about building a support team and maintaining it. What is the optimal way of doing it? Because it is a journey that requires a team.

Ryan Sternagel

Yes, just on this note, and back to the fundraising note, you mentioned building the community there. I heard a story that somebody else was going through childhood cancer at the time that they lived in one of those states where you get money for turning in your cans and bottles and that thing. Somebody set up and used that, cleared out their shed, and put it out there to the community that, Hey, drop off your cans and bottles in the shed. Then, every week, they went in and turned it into cans and bottles, and the whole neighborhood and surrounding areas got in on it. They were getting thousands of dollars a week just from turning into cans and bottles, which was a neat story of the community coming together. But, yes, another idea for you if you are in one of those states. But, yes, the important thing is to build that community, to build your care team. 

You cannot do it alone. That is, I think, one of the biggest things that came pretty naturally to me, just knowing that I needed to do everything I could and that I wasn’t going to let any mental hangups get in the way. But you need to let go of your pride and your insecurities at the same time. just being able to ask for help and receive help. That was, and a lot of people have a hard time with that. If you have any friends networks or family networks, people are always asking, What can I do to help? The instinct there is just to say, I am fine, or maybe give them, I do not know. Maybe you could pick up some groceries for me at some point or something like that. But you do not utilize the help that you are being offered and the help that the people are offering to give you because, yes, I looked at it at the time and I still look back at it, and the way to look at it is that there’s a season for everything. There are four seasons in the year; we have the seasons in our lives and that thing. I just quickly came to the determination that this was a season where we needed help. I wasn’t going to be ashamed about that. But we were just going to do whatever we could, and whatever we could meant getting help.

That I think. I’ve got more of the practical strategies and stuff that I wanted to talk about, but I think that is crucial just to embrace that. In this season, you need help and do everything you can to get back to the season where you are helping other people. That’s, but fortunately, what’s come of our situation is that now we get to help other people because of the journey we went through. It is neat. It is a beautiful thing. But yes, as far as the care team goes, I break it into personal and medical. On the personal side, again, just take advantage of the help that is offered to you and be methodical about what it is you need help with. It could be simple stuff, but do you need to be mowing your lawn? Or, as an example, could somebody who’s offering to help come by? Could that be their job, mowing the lawn once a week? Could somebody come clean? Do you do grocery runs? Even if you have a smarter, more knowledgeable friend or family member who’s on board and into all the stuff you are getting into, all this holistic stuff you are learning about at the event here has to have some kind of research partner. Have somebody help you do the research. Just all these different things that your job needs to be is as much as it can be dedicated to healing. That has got to be the mantra every day: am I doing something to heal now in this moment or not? All the activities that are not directly about healing, do you want to be out on the lawn or do you want to be meditating, as Dr. Eliaz teaches you to do?

It is just trying to figure out everything you possibly can and farm out all those activities you possibly can to spend as much time as you can doing the healing stuff that you are learning about. Yes, what else could I do? I could go on. But yes, that’s the personal side. On the medical side, I think it is obvious, but then it is not obvious to somebody. Just getting into it is working. You get your diagnosis; you get the conventional team, whoever diagnoses you, that thing. Before I get to the holistic side, on the conventional side, it is not that you are going to find an oncologist who knows everything there is to know and can consult with you on the holistic side about the stuff you are learning about at this event. But at least get somebody who does not make you feel stupid, who does not make you feel dumb, who does not brush away all the things you are trying to do, even if you are not, and even if you are not, talking everything out with him, you are doing. You still at least want to have somebody that gives you a good vibe.

It is not what you said, Dr. Eliaz; there’s time to take a step back, and that time to stay could take a step back. How do I feel about this conventional oncologist? Again, he’s not going to know he or she isn’t going to know everything there is to know about the holistic stuff, but do I at least feel good talking to him, or do I get a bad do I get, do I come away from that visit feeling upset every time I see the guy, and if that’s the case, there are a ton of oncologists out there. You do not need to, but with childhood cancer, it was a little more difficult because there’s only one place in each state that sees children. We had to move states. But, outside of that, for adults, there’s a plethora of oncologists to choose from. That is the conventional side. But then on the holistic side. 

But as I was starting to say, it is very important to work with a holistically minded doctor of some sort. Is it a more naturopathic doctor, or a more functional MD? Someone along those lines and herbalist that, there are a lot of herbalists that specialize in cancer, but that’s what, that’s what I was going to say is it is not just good enough to work with the naturopathic doctor that you look up in the phone book, or I guess nobody uses a phone book anymore. But whoever has a clinic down the street from you, is not necessarily the guy or gal that you should be looking to get advice from when it comes to cancer. It needs to be a holistic doctor, be it. The term in the naturopathic world is a naturopathic oncologist. Everyone knows that it is a natural father doctor who has chosen to specialize in cancer because there are just a million things that come along with that. All the chemo interactions and interactions are here.

But there are just people who can help you through conventional treatment. If you are going through conventional treatment, people who can recommend the appropriate herbs and supplements, all these things, will tell you. Dr. Eliaz. But yes, that’s been our thing. I gravitated toward the doctors who specialize in cancer on our website. We’ve got a list in the practitioner’s section of all the different organizations that are holistically minded doctors who specialize in cancer. That’s important. Then and then I said, They do not necessarily need to live down the street from me at one time. That was probably the case. But I have to say that’s the one good thing that came out of Covid: Telemedicine finally opened up, and doctors do not have to worry about looking over their shoulder, whether they are practicing across state lines or that thing. If you have a whole world now of these holistic cancer-focused doctors that you could be choosing from. It is nice when you can see them in their office because there’s that personal touch. But they can be your quarterback from several states away, across the country, or the world. They can recommend things like IV vitamin C, and then you can go find a clinic near you that does IV vitamin C. It is not necessary to have it all in one place. 

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

I want to say so many important things. I want to just say that the audience is somebody who is on the side of being a practitioner. Has his own experience with healing, but also teaches a lot. When we talked about conventional oncologists, also set up your expectations. You want to be a conventional oncologist, which is an expert in conventional oncology. You want them to be open-minded, to give you space, and to listen to you. But you do not expect them to give you holistic advice on this. You have to find somebody. Ryan was talking with someone in another field. They expect them to be good at conventional oncology because that is what they are supposed to do. Just like the surgeon. You are going to not need to be your best friend; you need to have the best hands and the best post-op care. When it comes to holistic doctors, you will pick people with specialties but try to find somebody who is integrative, who does not have an opinion, who has never been against conventional medicine, who understands there’s a role for chemotherapy, radiation, and shamanic healing, prayer, and meditation. They become your quarterback, but without an agenda, the person you get ideas from, and they become your central pillar, the place where they are not going to tell you what to do, but they will create the space for you to have clarity. What is the thing for you? There’s no pressure, and they know it because it is a central part of what I do in my career and my relationships with people.

You talked about it, and so you have covered all the different pillars in each of them. They deserve a whole discussion. But you are coming out of so many years of your own experience and talking to thousands of people who share with you what they do not have time to share with doctors because you are in the same boat. Thank you so much for highlighting it. You just wanted the audience to pick this specific point, to understand the profound issue of this advice, because you are drawing a map of this journey, and you also said something important. It is a journey. Healing is part of the journey. It is not part of the outcome. Healing happens every moment that we have been exploring, which extends our lives, expands our hearts, and makes us more connected, less reactive, and more compassionate. That’s healing. The more we move there, the cancer is going to get better as a consequence. It is. You are giving people so much information. I just wanted to hear if you highlighted it.

Ryan Sternagel

Yes, I know. I am glad you are. I am glad you did highlight that you should find the best conventional guide that you can as well, not just somebody that makes you feel good, as I was talking about, but that they should be the best in their field. We also found out when he was getting his first initial scans that he had a heart condition as well. He had a double aorta. We allowed the one aorta to go out of our hearts. He had two, which was, as described to us, exponentially more rare than the neuroblastoma. They were wrapped around his esophagus and in his trachea. So we had just moved to Utah to find the cancer care team that we needed. the surgeon, we did not feel good about him whatsoever. We found the best surgeon for that particular heart problem. He had written in the book on Aorta Surgeries for Pediatric Surgeons. It turned out he was in Philadelphia, so we flew to Philadelphia and got the surgery done there. Yes. That is a good point.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Maybe a little bit of talk about how you refine your protocol from your experience with the patient to the support group, how you also adjust it, and how you create your daily routine. What have you learned from your experience? Now it is time to make a change. You talked about the Four Seasons and things changing, so maybe you can share a little bit about this.

Ryan Sternagel

Yes. One, just start immersing yourself in the health world, which you are doing. You are watching this event, which is awesome. But then, that can quickly lead to a lot of information overload, and you are listening to all these different interviews and reading different blog articles and all these things. It can just be that your mind can only hold so much and process so much at one time. A big thing that helped me was just on my phone, just having a little notes app that I just jotted things that, and if you do not, that’s good for you. If you do not use a phone and you have a little pen and paper with you or whatever, that would be the healthiest thing to do. But, yes.  

Any time that I was listening to a podcast, watching an event, reading a blog article, digging through studies, and all these different things, I just would do anything that, and that’s the big thing that it is something that resonates with you, and it is something that you are not already doing that you realize you should be doing. Just jot that thing down wherever it is so you do not get lost when you watch the next interview or read the next article, and these sorts of things are because you are hearing about all these things. But you cannot necessarily process and act on them all at the same time. But yes, it is. As I said, and you hear about a million different things at the end of the day, it is, you have to make a gut decision. Okay, this sounds like something I need to do.

You find out that average indoor air quality is horrible for various reasons. Everything in your house is off-gassing and these sorts of things. I know. I realize I need to get an air filter and open my windows as much as possible. then, jot that thing down, and then, if it is the little checklist apps, and then so, I said, set time aside, set another little time aside every night. I had my fundraising reach-out time, and then I had my integration time. My, what? Okay, let’s go back and look at all the things I jotted down today. What can I order that I need to order? Whether it is that air purifier or that new bottle of supplements that sounded like just the thing I need or these sorts of things, then also start building out a schedule. I went back to my wife, and I was not an organized person to begin with. We realized that, with all the stuff we were learning, we needed to get organized. So we, yes, we lived by what I had of just it wasn’t fancy just a running word document that and that we, I kept refining that word document.

You hear that meditating is a good thing. When am I going to meditate? What time of the day is that going to happen? Then you have your daily tasks, things you do every day, whether that’s juicing, taking supplements, or getting outside every day, not just once a day but many times a day. Things that do not come naturally to you, that’s, put it on your little schedule, that the supplements are a big deal, that’s the obvious place to start. You’ve got your first thing in the morning: empty stomach supplements. You’ve got your food supplements; you have got the supplements you are going to take between breakfast and that thing. You can start with your supplements and then build it out from there. Yes,  just and then that’s, that goes, that feeds back into that time you set aside every night to check stuff out. Your checklist is then refining your schedule every time you incorporate something new, and you are checking the thing off the list because you put it on the schedule, and now it is going to happen because it is on the schedule.

Routines go along with that, we all hear about morning routines, but what’s amazing is having a morning routine. Okay, I am going to go to bed early so I can get up before the rest of the family, which is healthier anyway to get up, to go to bed at dark and get up, at sunrise, and that thing and that’s when I am going to meditate and journal, and then what can you combine? For myself anyway, I’d recently combined I know I want to do the sauna and I know I want to meditate, but I do not have time to do both. I am going to meditate in the sauna. Yes, it is just, the more things that you can work into, or this is my mealtime routine, I am going to take my digestive stimulants beforehand, and then I am going to take my supplements with the meal, probiotics, or whatever. then I am going to get up and go for a walk after every meal because I found out that’s healthy and that thing. just,, work. That’s your mealtime routine. Just think about all the different healing things that you can stack into any different routine to make it as effective as possible. Now we have collected a go-ahead.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

It is so. You have an unusual ability because you are trained or may be born to handle all these details. What do you do about information overload? Especially in the beginning, every person and nobody is going to call and email with the miracles they have read online and do this and do that. Maybe a word or two about how yes

Ryan Sternagel

I think that the information, or that is part of just jotting things down as you hear about them, and then you can go back and review them later. But I think the other big thing is that once you find that quarterback, the holistic cancer-focused doctor, that you are going to put a lot of trust in, Of course, there is a time and a place for firing your conventional doctor. There is also a time and a place for finding a holistic doctor. If they are not doing the job, you have to give them time. ?  Don’t just go hopping around from doctor to doctor. I see a lot of people doing that on the holistic side as well. Give them time to build your plan and that thing. But assuming you feel good about them, that was our thing. Whatever our holistic doctor said, you should be doing these things. We did those things. Then from there it was as time and budget allowed, we would add in whatever else resonated with us that, we felt good about, we brought it to our holistic doctor and he said, that that would not hurt that when conflict with anything else we were doing that thing. That’s why I think that’s the big thing yes you cannot you cannot get shy and be conscious of whether or not you are having the shiny new thing syndrome where you are. You are always chasing the next thing was that was a hard thing for me.  I’d be so excited about whatever new light therapy device that I finally saved up enough to order or the new bottle of supplements that sounded cool

But then the second it got to my door, I was, Okay, I am not even excited about that anymore; we are all working in the routine, but I am on to the next thing. At some point, you do have to just learn all you can and implement all you can. It is a sprint at the beginning because, especially if you are overhauling your life, you do need to change as many things as you can as fast as possible, especially when it comes to getting rid of all possible toxicants and that thing. But at some point you do have to sit back and say, Okay, I’ve done a good job here of implementing the schedule and setting the routine I feel good about. I am doing holistic self-care practices, meditating, and all these sorts of things. Yes, just put your focus on nailing what you do every day and be happy with that.

That i where testing comes in. That is where, again, working with a holistic doctor, Dr. Eliaz, you can speak to all the ways of testing and monitoring cancer progression or regression a lot better than I can. But things like liquid biopsies, circulating tumor cell counts, and these sorts of things, which you will find out about from a holistic doctor, you will not find out about from a holistic cancer focus doctor: not any holistic doctor, and certainly not your conventional doctor.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

But I want to emphasize something, so make sure you do not get lost in it. You said something very important at the beginning of this segment. Once you find your quarterback, you need to build trust; otherwise, you are going to go crazy with doubts and with jumping and changing. Once there is trust, there is group energy, and then there is synchronicity. It is interesting for me because, consciously or unconsciously, you follow very profound principles of the more esoteric part of Chinese medicine that is not taught in Chinese medicine schools very often, and about it is fascinating and maybe offline. I’ll talk to you more about it. I want to ask you a very important question to end our interview. How can people get in touch with you? How can they benefit from the support groups and the support that your organization is offering?

Ryan Sternagel

Well, now I am interested in the esoteric aspect of Chinese medicine that I was subconsciously following because, as an author, I am all the crazy stuff that you are, Dr. Eliaz.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

But you do that. It is pretty logical. But we’ll interview how I’ll get my 20-year-old support group. It is a good topic.

Ryan Sternagel

That sounds like a plan. Yes. The Stern Method is our main family brand. That’s our website. The Stern method is dot-com because Sternagel is hard to spell or remember. It got shortened to stern and method because, as you can tell from this interview, we could try to methodize as much as we could and that thing. Yes, the Stern method is our main website, social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and all that stuff. then the support that we’re proud of now is our Going Integrative Plus group, where that’s a program, a resource for people that went through cancer, or, excuse me, people that went through cancer. For people going through cancer, it is the most valuable thing that I could think of, which is a lot of things. But the big thing is, as you have been on weekly Q&A calls with cancer-specific holistic doctors like yourself, Dr. Eliaz, where it was essentially an open Q&A for 2 hours. You can, again, work with a cancer-specific holistic doctor and have them be your main quarterback. 

But then, at the same time, how often do you see that doctor, and how often do questions come up between the time you see that doctor and having him be your main quarterback? But it is nice, too, if you are trying to figure something out, to be able to get expert guidance on whatever that question is, whether it is something to do with holistic cancer eating, what’s the best diet? How do I figure out what the best diet for me is? Or, what do you think about this supplement? Or, I have chemo coming up next week. What’s this type of chemo coming up next week? What are your thoughts on the best ways to protect my organs or anything else you want? It is valuable, especially when dealing with that overwhelming amount of information. I prided myself on going through as many studies as I could on that thing. But even so, the more studies you read, the more questions you have. It is a lot more helpful to just be yourself. That is, the more I learn, the more I stop reading studies as a layman. I just asked doctors with decades of experience: What do you think about this? This is how I’ve learned the most.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

People get to it through this sternmethod.com. They just have to go, so everything will be there?

Ryan Sternagel

Yes, you can go to the sternmethod.com, or you can go directly to goingintegrativeplus.com as well.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us, and I am so glad we had this conversation. It is a path and interview that will support many cancer patients. Thank you.

Ryan Sternagel

Thank you, Dr. Eliaz.

Isaac Eliaz, MD, MS, LAc

Thank you everybody for listening.