#90 – Why Americans are so overweight, how essential oils can cure addictions, and two house products you need to stop using. With Dr. Eric Z and Mama Z!
Welcome back to the Waist Away Podcast! This week we have a returning guest, Dr. Eric Zielinski. This time he is joined by his wife, Sabrina. Dr. Eric Zielinski aka Dr. Eric Z is the author of the best-seller “The Healing Power of Essential Oils.” He and his wife Sabrina founded DrEricZ.com, and in just four years, they’ve reached 6 million visitors per year and established their site as the #1 source for Biblical Health and non-branded essential oils education online. This episode is packed full of information about essential oils! Enjoy!
Audio version: https://chantelray.podbean.com/e/wa90/
Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exaSWySTjEQ
Dr. Eric’s website: www.drericz.com
Chantel: Hey guys. Welcome to this week’s episode. I’m so excited because we have a repeat guest, Dr. Eric Z. If you missed his first episode with us, you really need to go back and listen because we answered a lot of really good questions that first time around. But today we have even more exciting news because you’re in for a double treat because we’ve got his other half, Sabrina AKA Mama Z. is joining us as well. Welcome.
Sabrina Z.: Thank you so much for having us.
Dr. Eric Z.: So excited to be back.
Chantel: Well, it’s so funny because we had a couple people. We had posted that you guys were coming back and they were just like, “Oh my gosh. I’m so excited.” It’s great that you’re here. Now just in case you’ve been living under a rock, Dr. Eric Z. and Mrs. Z., they are the authors of the bestselling book called The Healing Power of Essential Oils. He and his wife, Sabrina, founded drericz.com and in just four years they’ve reached six million visitors per year. Their site is the number one source for biblical health and non-branded essential oils education online.
Chantel: We’re so excited. Anything new going on since the last time we talked?
Sabrina Z.: We have lots of different projects going on right now that we are so excited about, not just the book, The Essential Oils Diet, which we’re super excited about, but the practical applications of the book in my Italian class, my gluten-free allergy-friendly, Italian class and a salads class. These are an HGTV, I don’t know, quality which is a lot of fun. But also our gardening class and an exercise class that’s coming out that reaches people in all their fitness walks.
Chantel: Awesome. Now in your opinion, why do you think Americans are so overweight?
Dr. Eric Z.: We are fixated on quantity and we’ve left go of quality. That’s just the bottom line. As respectful to say and I definitely honer what Dr. Atkins has done in a lot of different areas. Yet the ghost of Dr. Atkins still haunts us where we’re fixated with the amount of carbs and calories and fats and proteins. Folks aren’t looking at really what’s in the food. The gluten-free industry is one of the biggest farces today. I mean it’s a billion-plus-dollar industry and most of the food is junk, filled with processed chemicals and things like, okay, it might be gluten-free, but you’re now loaded with pesticides. You’re loaded with genetic modification and just, hey, tapioca starch shouldn’t be your bread. I mean where did that go wrong?
Dr. Eric Z.: The reality is we’ve been on a mission to help people have food freedom again because people are trapped. Somehow apples became bad for them. People don’t know about fruits any more and they’re really paranoid about grains. The foods our ancestors ate since the beginning of time has become outlawed in a lot of circles. We’re like, you know what? Let’s get to the science. Not only just science, but let’s go back to our ancestral roots and take more of a common sense approach to helping your body reach your ideal weight.
Chantel: Now how do you think that essential oils can help people get past the bad habits and traps that they know are preventing them from living their best life?
Sabrina Z.: Well, one of the great things that essential oils does is it can really help curb some of the cravings and bad habits. It’s really neat how clove and black pepper and peppermint together actually really help, even in the diffuser can help. But you can make things like quit sticks that people use to even quit smoking, but also it helps curb those cravings that people get, especially when they’re detoxing from sugar because sugar detox is real. We’ve watched people go through it. It’s nice because essential oils can really help you get over the hurdle part of the process in trying to transition your lifestyle into something a lot healthier.
Chantel: In your book you say, “Slow metabolism is not a scapegoat.” What do you mean by that?
Dr. Eric Z.: There is little evidence, little evidence to support that slow metabolism is a factor in weight gain. In fact, the Mayo Clinic and other researchers have gone on record to say that people that are overweight actually have a higher metabolism. What is metabolism? When you look at it, the definition of metabolism is the sum of chemical processes required for you to live. I mean this is pretty basic stuff when you’re considering the amount of energy required to keep your heart pumping and you breathing and you blinking your eyelids and your skin regenerating, your immune system function. That’s metabolism. Going back to ninth grade biology, mitochondrial function.
Dr. Eric Z.: Remember the ribosomes and the their mitochondrial stuff we used to do in biology class? That’s metabolism. So if your metabolism, if the sum processes and energy required to sustain life, if that is being monopolized and I should say, even distracted because of the foods that we’re eating, toxins that we’re putting on our skin, thoughts that we have that are negative, depression, anxiety, things that trigger hormones and neurological responses that are seen as the body as a threat, the metabolism essentially becomes monopolized now. Instead of burning fat, reaching ideal weight, you’re barely surviving. That’s really the bottom line. You’re barely surviving because of the onslaught of toxins, of chronic inflammation.
Dr. Eric Z.: When you shift your emotional health, your mental health, your physical health, your spiritual health, your body can do what God designed it to do and it starts to heal. And then instead of always being in this fight or flight response, the body starts to balance weight. When you look at a toxin as the body does, the body sees whether it is a virus or a paraben that you see in your skincare, whether it’s a pesticide or whether it’s a bacteria. Any foreign threat will cause inflammation and the body will do whatever it needs to do to get rid of that. Well, what happens to that little extra piece of cake you ate yesterday? That kind of just gets left over there in your tummy and the body can’t focus on that.
Dr. Eric Z.: When you think of it in those terms, it makes a lot of sense that we need to start focusing on things that help boost your metabolic function, but essentially ease the burden so you’re just not always “surviving.”
Sabrina Z.: One of the things that people always ask us is, is what can we do first? This is a lot of information and all of that. We know we need to work on that toxic overload, but what are some of the things that we can do that are the low-hanging fruit? One of the two best things is to get rid of any of your aerosol fresheners, your plug-ins, any of those things that have non-essential oil-related smells to them. That’s perfume, all of these things that mimic the things that are in nature but have absolutely no benefit and actually can cause a lot of neuro dysfunction as well as contributes to hormone issues and other things like that.
Sabrina Z.: Really getting rid of that. Replace those things with diffusers and there’s ways to make it easy. But also your hand sanitizer, we know that that contains tricyclican, which is a registered pesticide. We’re literally killing off all the good bacteria on our skin over and over again. It’s helping not only cause superbugs that are harder to get rid of, but it’s also causing what my husband likes to call, and he’ll probably talk about this for a moment, but leaky skin. We heard of leaky gut, but what about leaky skin? So it really goes into show our skin is our largest organ and whether we’re breathing it in or walking through a room that has all these air fresheners and things like that or putting it on our skin, it all makes a difference, not only what we put on our skin and what we put in our skin, but the things that are around us and in our environment too.
Chantel: I have removed, I will not put on any perfume besides essential oils. I don’t use any kind of candles or anything like that. I’ve removed all that. The one thing I was thinking about is as far as shampoo. I was starting to look. Even though I use organic shampoo, I was still looking at some of the shampoo I am using. Do you guys have a shampoo that you guys love? Or do you guys make your own?
Sabrina Z.: We do a combination. One thing is is we have a good recipe for homemade shampoo on the website, which you do need to do an apple cider vinegar rinse. But I always recommend alternating that because whatever you use is going to have some sort of buildup of one thing or another. It’s really important to have something good, but have it tailored to your needs. One of the things I like to recommend is using the unscented Desert Essence Organics and then basically putting the essential oils that your hair needs in with the shampoo. So it’s six to eight drops for every one ounce.
Sabrina Z.: For instance, for me because I have had a lot of hair loss due to a molar pregnancy years ago. It’s thickened out and it’s grown out quite a bit since then. But rosemary, peppermint, lavender, and tea tree are a really good combination because it helps stimulate the follicle growth and it helps to relax anything going on and opening up those hair follicles so that those other ones are received really well. The tea tree is good for overall balance. That’s what I use in my hair and I actually do the dropper right in there. You can either do that right in there because that is a PET plastic and it can withstand the essential oils, or you could easily squeeze it out into a glass pump container. Add your essential oils, shake, and go.
Sabrina Z.: I do that both with the unscented shampoo and conditioner. That uses a coconut based surfactant instead of a sodium lauryl, sodium laureth. People have to be really, really careful because even if it says, “No sodium lauryl sulfates,” it still might be sodium laureth sulfate, which is a cousin, and all these other ones that are in the same family. It’s good to make your own and then alternate it with one that you have that’ll really help with the cleaning and cleansing of the hair.
Chantel: I love how you guys talk about the fact that there’s no oils that you’re just going to pop in and you’re going to be skinny mini. But what would you say are the essential oils that really help you curb cravings, curb cravings and just food addictions? Anything that kind of helps with that?
Dr. Eric Z.: Oh yeah, yeah. We have to get to the root cause too. I mean what is it that’s causing the addiction or the craving? Most common right now is over rampant blood sugar. People are just consuming way too much sugar. We have insulin insensitivity. The body’s craving more and more sugar and you just can’t get enough. So using cinnamon bark essential oil and inhaling it, ingesting it properly, and we give all the recipes in the book of course. But using cinnamon bark essential oil can be very effective because it actually helps insulin receptors be more sensitive to insulin, which is great. It could help reverse type 2 diabetes. People even with type 1 diabetes have been helped.
Dr. Eric Z.: We have no research to claim that it can cure type 1, but it could definitely help insulin insensitivity and other blood sugar balancing issues. That’s one. Black pepper is a key oil because it’s been shown to help reduce the addiction cascade regardless of what people are addicted to. We got to remember, addiction’s addiction. Whether it’s to sex, whether it’s to money, whether it’s to food, whether it’s to drugs, addiction’s addiction. There’s a mechanism that happens in the brain at the neurological level that if you could do anything to reduce the withdrawals … and even cell phones. We talk a lot about that in our book. Being free from the addiction of our cell phone.
Chantel: Yes.
Dr. Eric Z.: Essential oils can help reduce the withdrawal so you’re not jonesing for that next hit. That’s the bottom line. So those are two essential oils. Sabrina actually mentioned, we could give the recipe.
Chantel: Yeah. I think you should.
Dr. Eric Z.: Because you mentioned the quit stick.
Sabrina Z.: Yes. The quit sticks.
Dr. Eric Z.: Yeah. Give the recipe.
Sabrina Z.: Okay. You’re going to use a one-ounce measuring cup or a shot glass. You’re going to put 20 drops of black pepper essential oil, 10 drops of grapefruit, five drops of peppermint, five drops of orange, five drops of cinnamon bark essential oil, and then of course the carrier oil. You’re going to fill that up. What you’re going to do is you’re going to put 50 to 75 toothpicks in there and then have you ever seen those reed diffusers where they … It’s the same kind of thing. It’s going to suck it up through those little sticks and then you basically have those for that hand-mouth thing. So if somebody-
Dr. Eric Z.: Oral fixation.
Sabrina Z.: Yes. Oral fixation.
Dr. Eric Z.: A lot of people are addicted to eating and smoking. They just want things in their mouth a lot. It helps.
Sabrina Z.: Some people it’s even coffee. When you boil it down, people will say, “It’s that taking a warm something and putting it up to your mouth.”
Chantel: You’re taking the sticks. So you would literally take the stick and just kind of wave it under your nose?
Dr. Eric Z.: You suck it.
Sabrina Z.: You can suck it.
Chantel: You just suck on it?
Dr. Eric Z.: We’re talking like you chew on a toothpick, like you go to a diner. But you have to let the toothpicks dry. Let them dry overnight. Whenever you feel a hankering, you put the toothpick in your mouth. You suck on the toothpick. It’s a safe way to ingest the oil. But you chew on the toothpick. It helps because a lot of people, they just snack all day long. Well, no, chew on a toothpick for a few minutes and see how that helps you. We’ve helped people quit smoking, quit sugar, get off of drugs. This is just one little thing that could help.
Chantel: Right.
Sabrina Z.: One thing you can do is taking a bottle, a bottle like this, adding these essential oils so you have a good blend, and then also using that in your diffuser. You can use that four to six drops for a normal diffuser that you would have that’s filled with water. And then you’d have that same kind of thing. For one of our people, they were doing sewing all day long in front of their sewing machine, smoking all day long. That was part of what they did. She had the quit sticks and she would have it in her mouth. But then she had her diffuser, a well-ventilated room, but it was on the corner of her desk. Between all of that, it helped her over a month period be able to quit smoking and she had been smoking for over 20 years.
Chantel: Wow. Well, we’ve got two questions that I just keep getting over and over again. One of them is about the how do I know if an essential oil is edible or not? Do I have to use Young Living? Do I have to use this? If I went to T.J. Maxx, how would I know if this is an ingestible one or not ingestible because of the brand?
Dr. Eric Z.: Yeah. It’s really based off of purity. In theory, all essential oils, beside a few that are just known to be toxic like wormwood and bitter almond, things you can’t even buy. You can’t even buy those at the store. All essential oils that you buy at the store are theoretically safe to consume. It all depends on dosage. What do you think flavors your Coca-Cola and your root beer? Little micro-doses of essentials oils. The difference is when you’re putting one, two, three, four-plus drops and now it becomes a medicinal dose.
Dr. Eric Z.: So when we’re dealing with medicinal doses, there is a shorter list that are safe to consume. But the Food and Drug Administration has a list of over 100 essential oils that they recognize as safe in food consumption and we list that. They’re on our website. Go to naturallivingfamily.com. Type up internal use and you have a whole article and all the list. The core issue is, is the oil pure? So you need to do a little bit of research. We are non-branded, meaning we don’t associate ourselves with any company, by design. That also gives us a very nice freedom to speak about the true healing mechanism. Because if we were aligned to a particular company, we wouldn’t be able to say words like obesity, diabetes, or cancer.
Dr. Eric Z.: We would have to use generic terminology that, quite frankly, is a little restrictive and confusing. You need to find, and there are ways, we talk about that on the website and in our book, The Essential Oils Diet, how to find a good brand. You just want to make sure it’s pure, not adulterated, no synthetic ingredients. It’s not that hard. There are several companies that have pure essential oils. As long as it’s a pure essential oil, your lemons, your lavenders, your peppermints, a lot of these oils are very, very safe to consume. In general, the herbs and the spices and the mints and things that you consume, the citrus that you consume in your culinary dishes, a teaspoon of peppermint, a teaspoon of cinnamon bark, that kind of stuff equates to essential oil.
Dr. Eric Z.: It’s not a teaspoon of essential oil. It’s two or three drops of essential oil per teaspoon or replace a teaspoon of an herb or a dried powder or something like that. Again, we cover all that stuff in the book, but yeah, it is very, very safe to consume but it has to be done well within just good, minute doses.
Sabrina Z.: We go over on the article that he mentioned. People ask me all the time and I end up sending them this link. But if they just type, “How to buy,” it’ll actually go over all the points that he just said. It explains it even in more depth as well.
Chantel: Okay. Now another question that people ask all the time is that, they’re like, “I read this one article and it says don’t eat any gluten. This one says don’t eat any bread.” Another person said, “If bread is so bad for you, why is it mentioned in the Bible so much?” I want you guys to give your opinion about gluten and bread. It’s true. You can read 100 articles and 50 of them will say one thing, 50 will say something else.
Dr. Eric Z.: Yeah. I battled with that. I really did. There’s a concept in aromatherapy called sensitization, which let’s put things in context. You’re not going to go into a lavender field and see a pool of lavender. It’s highly processed, takes up to 30-some pounds of lavender just to get an itty bitty bottle of lavender. So when you’re thinking in those terms, if you put essential oils on your skin undiluted in its pure, unadulterated form, there’s so much chemical interaction that can happen with your skin. The skin might interact in a negative way and say, “Whoa, this is too much.”
Dr. Eric Z.: It’s known as a contact dermatitis, an allergic reaction. The same thing can happen with gluten. The problem with today’s wheat, in America specifically, is that today’s wheat has been hybridized to consume mass amounts of gluten because it makes the breads and the pastries fluffy, a little tastier, a little gooier. We like that in America. But you got to ask yourself, why don’t other countries import our wheat? Why has Russia banned our pork? Why has other countries banned most of our foods? They won’t eat it. How is it possible that celiacs, people that are allergic, clinically allergic, not sensitive, allergic to gluten, go to Italy and eat whatever they want and they’re fine? Allen paradox.
Dr. Eric Z.: It’s because what we eat in America isn’t really food any more. It’s been hybridized, genetically modified and/or processed to a point, sprayed with glyphosate-based Roundup, which is Agent Orange from Vietnam, and it’s just chemically ridden. So there’s nothing wrong with gluten. There’s something is wrong with the mass amounts of gluten. Why I mentioned sensitization is what’s happened, you look at your bread. It shocked me once I started looking at the labels. Again, quality over quantity. Look at your bread, the ingredients, unbleached or bleached, enriched wheat flour, and gluten. Why are you adding more gluten to the wheat? You’ll see that across the board.
Dr. Eric Z.: We have caused sensitized bodies to over gluten or essentially we’ve over-glutenized ourselves and the body’s rejecting it as a culture because it’s everywhere. It’s in your soy sauce. It’s in your cereals. It’s in your condiments. It’s in everything now. So we’ve become a victim of strong misrepresentation and bad education. To get people off of that train you kind of got to avoid it for a season to heal. Some people are sensitized to the point where they’ll never be able to go back. That’s happened to my aromatherapy instructor. She can’t be around peppermint. She, at one point, one thing led to another and she used peppermint a little too much and she was … She told me the story.
Dr. Eric Z.: She’s like now peppermint will give her a headache. That happens in gluten. Some people might, and I believe though and I’m hoping that people can go back to eating the good, proper grains like einkorn wheat, known as man’s first wheat, the wheat that’s been pre-hybridized, the wheat that has natural amounts, minimal amounts of gluten in it and healthy, very, very healthy for people. One thing we see too is when you look at the evolution of human civilization, people have lived on grains since the beginning of time. They still are a main staple in most cultures of the world. So we have to look at us as Americans and be like, what did we do wrong? That will enlighten you.
Dr. Eric Z.: A season of abstinence, that’s why in our book, The Essential Oils Diet, we have a two-stage program. The first stage is somewhat of a boot campy type of very restrictive stage. No alcohol, no coffee, no grains, no gluten, why? We need to bring healing. We try to get back to the point where you can have the normal amounts, healthy amounts of grains back in your diet. But some people, again, they become sensitized to it. But it can be reversed.
Chantel: What I decided to do because I’ve heard that so many times about people who, I had friends that they’re like, “If I eat bread here, I feel absolutely terrible.” And then they’d go to France. They went to Italy. They’re like, “I ate all the bread I wanted. I didn’t have any psoriasis. I didn’t have this. I didn’t have that. I felt like a million bucks.” I don’t like flying that much. I do it, but I don’t like long, long flights. So I decided to go buy some … I imported the flour from Italy that was organic and this, that I knew that was made in Italy. Bought my own bread maker and made my own bread here locally.
Chantel: I just imported and then put all the organic ingredients and ate it. I was totally fine. But I don’t do well with just if you gave me a piece of Wonder bread I’d be out cold on the floor.
Sabrina Z.: Me too. Those type of things actually give me, I feel like I’m choking. I definitely had really had even more. He can eat a lot of that stuff and I still I have to stay away from it.
Chantel: Well, before we get started with our listener questions, I’ve got to talk to Sabrina for a minute because she has such an amazing body. You need to stand up and show everyone how great your body is. I know that you have several kids. But you’ve been very transparent in your book talking about your struggle with disordered eating and bulimia. Let me ask you, what kind of broke you free them that cycle?
Sabrina Z.: Well, I definitely I had … It was very interesting. I knew that I was allergic to certain foods in the process of it. But because I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, it wasn’t actually, I’ll go full circle with this, it wasn’t until I met Dr. Z. that I actually learned about anti-inflammatory eating. There were certain things I had ruled out in my body that would make me sick, but I had terrible stomach problems even as a child. Literally, as an infant, two years old, I had chronic diarrhea. I filled my shoes every day literally. That was how it happened.
Sabrina Z.: I had gone on an elimination diet. They were feeding me all whole grains and stuff like that, but as we found out later, that was still bothering me. Years later, I was on all these medicines. I had ended up doing a water fast, which got me off of the medicines, but I still didn’t know what was bothering my stomach so bad. I would know if I had to eat out with customers at restaurants, I would always get sick. So I had gotten in just a cycle of knowing that I had to be certain places and I would literally make myself vomit because I knew I would get sick on the foods that I had had. You know you can’t purge all of that, so it just wouldn’t be as bad.
Sabrina Z.: It was just a recurring cycle. Throughout the time, I was actually gaining weight, which is kind of crazy to even think of. But I didn’t know. I knew something had to break. Literally I knew that I couldn’t do any kinds of dairy. I knew that I could not do any kinds of sugar. But at that time, that’s when the … What is the sweetener?
Dr. Eric Z.: Aspartame or Splenda?
Sabrina Z.: Splenda. That was when Splenda came out. The thing was is I realized I couldn’t do the Splenda. Everybody was doing Splenda. I would do it and I couldn’t feel my tongue the next day. Every day after, I couldn’t feel my tongue. So I knew I couldn’t do that. I’m like, am I only going to be able to eat certain foods? I was down to eating four different kinds of foods that didn’t make me sick because I didn’t know the other parts of the story. I met him. He ended up being an answer to prayer.
Sabrina Z.: I grew up as the daughter of a culinary cooking expert and an herbalist. She made beautiful foods, but a lot of the things had inflammatory ingredients in it to make all the connections and all the sauces and butters and all these different things. When I met him, it literally took that breaking. He made a lot of my food the first couple months. But everything he made was green or brown literally. It was super healthy and I dropped 20 pounds really within that first month. But I knew that I needed to survive on more than this green and brown stuff, especially being a daughter of a culinary herbalist. So I started looking at recipes. I prayed that God would show me exactly what to do because when you looked at all these awesome recipes, and 15 years ago they didn’t have quite the substitutions that they do now.
Sabrina Z.: But I started substituting recipe by recipe and making sure that all the ingredients were life-giving. Those recipes that I had grown up with that I loved that even though I loved them and they didn’t love me back and hurt my stomach, I could have these things and not be in pain. I knew that more people had to be suffering from these kind of things than just me. So as things went around we just started when I was pregnant with my first, my husband had given on my super greens container he wrote, “Mama Z, my baby-making machine.” It was a stick figure with a big diamond ring.
Dr. Eric Z.: I’m a fantastic artist.
Sabrina Z.: He’s a good painter though. Don’t let him fool you. Once I started converting things just so I would know which recipes were converted, I would put Mama Z’s this or Mama Z’s this. That way I knew that I had already converted them. Now that, years later, 15 years later we’ve had so many people who it’s opened their eyes to look at some of their good family recipes that they’ve had or they’ve shared with me and then they’ve made those same conversions, really eliminating those inflammatory ingredients and putting life-giving ingredients back into their foods.
Chantel: I love that you say that, life-giving. I love that. That’s really awesome. I personally when I was in college for about four or five years, I really struggled with bulimia. It was about a five-year span and I talk about that in my book as well. It’s nice to see people who are transparent and really can talk about that and how they’ve been healed.
Chantel: You mentioned, speaking of healing, you mentioned a 10-day water fast in your book. I just finished writing my book called Fasting to Freedom. It’s all about biblical fasting and doing extended fasting and extended longer fasts. What is your reasoning for doing the water fast? Eric, do you do it too? Do you guys do it together? Talk about your extended fasting.
Sabrina Z.: Well, my pastor, my favorite pastor used to talk about the dynamics of fasting, the Isaiah 58 fast. I really started studying those scriptures. I was on 10 different prescription drugs. This was 15-odd years ago. I’d gotten off of one, but I knew God wanted to free me of all of those. I just believed that I was to the point … I know not everybody would get off of all those kind of drugs and all that kind of stuff. But I knew in my heart that I was ready and I’d been praying. Literally I didn’t know I was going to be on that fast for 10 days. But when I did, I made relationships right.
Sabrina Z.: I went back to different people that I had issues with or they had issues with me and I got freed on the emotional level. And then I really was studying the Bible all the time. I was studying all the promises that God would bring forth healing speedily like it says in Isaiah 58 and the different things that went along with the promises that God had given in that time and really stood on those scriptures. I watched just my body change. On days three and four, I saw black stuff coming out of my pores. It must have been heavy metals of some sort, but my body was literally purging itself of these things.
Sabrina Z.: I’ve done smaller water fasts just periodically, and we both have. One of the ones that we like to do that we just did, we just did a seven-day master cleanse. We incorporate that. We really try to live a fasted life and really a life of detox. So we’re always doing certain things to help really eliminate or minimize our toxic load.
Chantel: Awesome. What about you, Dr. Eric?
Dr. Eric Z.: That was perfect, babe. The thing that I want to add to that, the only thing I can add to that is more of the spiritual component where the Book of Chronicles says, “God says, if my people who are called by my name, they humble themselves and pray. They seek my face and turn from their sin. I’ll hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.” I don’t know of any other way to truly humble myself. Of course you could fall on your knees and lift up your head and hands to God in prayer. Yet if you really want to be humbled and know your true humanity and your weakness, you skip a couple meals.
Dr. Eric Z.: If you really want to test it, we didn’t eat food for a week. Yeah, we had some juice and some other things, like a liquid deal that still humbles yourself. You essentially get free from this earth suit and you get in the spirit. You start to commune with God in a deeper way. We know fasting was part of the Tanakh, the Old Testament, since the beginning of ancient scripture was this a way. But there is very interesting things that happen is that you cry out to God more. You have more time to pray and you have more time because you’re not eating. You have more time to worship. You’re more focused. God does things like forgive your sin, heal your land.
Dr. Eric Z.: What is your land? Are you on the verge of a divorce? Is your company business about to go bankrupt? Are you overweight? Are you sick? Your loved one, where you just found out another one in our family, another one just diagnosed with malignant cancer? Their land is sick. Their land needs healing. So for me, whenever I look at this health aspect, in our book, The Essential Oils Diet, we encourage people just don’t do this for vain reasons, to look better and to feel better even. Do it like Daniel did in the Book of Daniel, for God, to fast away from the things. I’m not tempted to consume sugar any more. I’m not tempted. I’m not tempted to smoke cigarettes. I’m not tempted to get a case of beer and get drunk any more. I’m not tempted to do that stuff.
Dr. Eric Z.: In the same way we look at this, that’s what Sabrina means by the fasted lifestyle is that’s something that honors God. You know what the Bible says? You honor God and He’ll honor you. Next thing you know, I kid you not, our marriage starts thriving. Our kids are doing better at school. Less craziness happens at us. Our business starts to excel. It’s like this is the abundant life that God was trying to tell us about.
Sabrina Z.: You know-
Chantel: Talk to us. Go ahead, Sabrina.
Sabrina Z.: One other thing too is that it opens your eyes and that the very first time when I did that fast, it opens your eyes to how much is revolving around food. What it really showed me was that at church when people would then go out to eat after church all the time, once being away from it then I didn’t go back to that because I knew that I couldn’t really eat out anywhere because every place made me sick. Again, at that time I didn’t know what all it was that did. But what I would then do is schedule fellowship at my house and then I would make a lot of different things and have people come over and then change the culture so it wasn’t always eating out, eating out, eating out. It was more about fellowship and then food was secondary to that.
Chantel: Right. Talk to us about what you guys eat. What is the day in the life of your eating look like? What did you eat yesterday, Dr. Eric? And what did you eat, Sabrina?
Sabrina Z.: Well, we’re still transitioning off of our cleanse so we had made homemade vegetable broth. Of course-
Dr. Eric Z.: Well, how about a typical day?
Sabrina Z.: Oh, a typical day?
Chantel: Yeah, a typical day.
Sabrina Z.: A typical day I’ll usually do a super green shake for breakfast or one of our fat-burner matcha lattes. We love to do our super green shake. When we do it, we change it up all the time. So we’ll add different things. Dr. Z. will throw a full lemon in his shake and a beet and all of this kind of stuff. I vary mine as well. And then usually for lunch I will do either a nice salad. I will make either a tuna salad or I do a special kind of hard-cooked egg type thing. Again, this is another thing if you’re buying your eggs at a big box store that says organic, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good.
Sabrina Z.: You need to look at how your body responds to those things because you have gas and bloating every single time you eat it. Then it might be the things that they’re feeding those animals. So it’s really important to find a good local supplier that you can actually talk to the people. Or better yet, have chickens of your own. But I also like to do stuff like that. I do a lot of egg omelets because I really enjoy that. But honestly, a really good salad with an avocado cut up on top and all different kinds of nuts. I’ll put all different kind of dark berries or I’ll put pesto on it or a good-quality olive oil and vinegar. Honestly, that’s all I need for lunch.
Sabrina Z.: And then dinner what we try to teach people and what we do at our house is each day is like a themed day. We do a breakfast dinner on Monday. We’ll do salmon or tuna on Tuesday.
Dr. Eric Z.: A breakfast dinner meaning like our healthy-
Sabrina Z.: Not pancakes.
Dr. Eric Z.: Or waffles that the kids like.
Sabrina Z.: Yep. So we do fun things like that. We want to incorporate that. Or we’ll do a quiche or a crustless quiche. And then each night has its own theme. We do make pizza on Fridays. So we either make our own dough. We’ll do a cauliflower-crusted pizza. We’ll do an almond flour-crusted pizza. But then it gives the kids a chance to pick out different toppings. Subsequently, the night before because we usually have nut tacos or avocado tacos or we’ll mix it up. We’ll have a taco tray that has all these ingredients that we use in the tacos. So the best way to utilize your leftovers is include them in the next meal.
Sabrina Z.: So we’ll either put some of those toppings on that pizza or put those toppings on a salad. But we try to do that so that there’s a lot of variation in every single day that we can do. But then by doing that, the kids know what they can expect for that day and they know what our options are. But it keeps it varied all the time because just like we don’t go to the gym and do the exact same weights and the exact same workout every single day, we want to mix up our food. We want to mix up our essential oils. We want it all to have its effectiveness with our bodies.
Chantel: Awesome. Well, let’s jump right into the questions. This first one is funny. It’s from Amanda in Washington. She says, “I replaced most of my medicine cabinet with essential oils except for my blood pressure meds. I’m not quite ready to wean myself off those yet. When I told my doctor I was taking essential oils along with this prescription, he flipped a lid. He said this is very dangerous to mix essential oils with prescription meds. How do I know which …” She says, “Is my doctor being an oil hater or is there some truth to this? How can I know which oils are safe to mix with and which ones are not?”
Dr. Eric Z.: Yeah. That’s a very good question. Your doctor is uneducated on how to use essential oils by virtue medical school doesn’t even mention them. So your doctor would have to be trained in aromatherapy or work with a pharmacist who has been. In a nutshell, there’s a fear-based factor. Yes, there are known drug interactions. For example, blood pressure medication, you need to stay away from rosemary. That’s been shown to increase blood pressure. But a lot of oils have been shown to help blood pressure, like lemon balm, Melissa, or lavender and several other oils that can help you. Cumin oil can help lower and balance blood pressure.
Dr. Eric Z.: My recommendation, really, if you are on the essential oil lifestyle and if you want to do things naturally, find a new doctor that is more educated and that’s open and that can help you. Also, skip the doctor. Go to the pharmacist. I mean at the end of the day, hopefully, you have just a pharmacist who understands how things work. But yeah, there are known drug interactions. So the other question is, how do I know? People go to certification school and spend hundreds and hundreds of hours on this. This is now a medical type of training that I personally have taken and I’ve gone through. We did the master class. We wrote the books. You got to learn.
Dr. Eric Z.: I mean if you really, really want to dive deep you could become an aromatherapist, but who has time for that? Who really wants to do that? I would recommend taking our master class. We have an essential oils for abundant living master class you could sign up and get for free and see what it’s like. If you buy it, you get my chemistry and safety guidebook that lists out all known drug interactions like Coumadin, blood thinners. You don’t want to use clove. That could cause you to have internal hemorrhaging. People don’t realize that kind of stuff. But there are very few, in a nutshell, essentially very few known drug interactions. But they do exist. But it’s also common sense too.
Dr. Eric Z.: I mean we’re not drinking a bottle of essential oils. A dab here, a dab there, the Mama Z. Shampoo recipe is one thing. Putting a drop of cilantro in your guacamole, that’s not going to hurt you. But one thing too I want to end with this because this is a big one. Grapefruit, people have been told many times you can’t consume grapefruit because it could interact with your heart disease medication, only the fruit. So the actual fruit, the juice is contraindicated, but not the oil because the oil is extracted from the rind. The chemical that’s contraindicated with the medication doesn’t exist in the essential oil. So people can go and consume grapefruit oil, can flavor their water with grapefruit oil. They could inhale it through the diffuser and they could apply it topically. It’s part of our diet program-
Sabrina Z.: It is.
Dr. Eric Z.: … by design because we want to give people freedom again and that’s essential oil freedom. There’s a lot of fear in that and doctors don’t know. They’re like, “All forms of grapefruit.” Yeah, grapefruit, but what about grapefruit rind? That’s just a little thing that they just don’t understand about plant-based chemistry. So just things like that.
Chantel: I love it. Okay, Jessica in northern Virginia. “I can’t believe how expensive some of these essential oils can be. I’ve compared prices of some of the major brands with things I found at the local T.J. Maxx. Some of them are half of the price. Is it safe to use these less expensive oils? What should I be looking for on the labels of the oils that I buy?” Jessica in northern Virginia.
Dr. Eric Z.: Yeah. Go back to the article that we wrote about how to choose a brand. Go to naturallivingfamily.com, type up, “Choose a brand,” and it’ll help you. I mean it’s somewhat out of the scope of this interview. It could get intense. It could get a little … If you’re looking to use essential oils for your medicine like some people do, they’re treating cancer because chemotherapy didn’t work. This is serious. But for the by and large, most of the big box stores aren’t selling pure, unadulterated essential oils. You got to go through a private supplier. Don’t go to Amazon to get your essential oils.
Dr. Eric Z.: They are expensive, by design, because it could take a lot of plant matter, like 35 pounds of lavender to get one itty bitty bottle of lavender. It’s a lot of stuff. But you also only need a drop or two at a time. When you think of it in that terms-
Sabrina Z.: A bottle will last you a long time if you’re going to have rose and jasmine and neroli. But for some people, depending on their conditions, that could be just the oil that they need. So it’s really important to make sure you’re building up your medicine cabinet so that you do have some of those things that you can utilize at your fingertips. Even though you’re not going to use it very often, it will last you quite a while.
Dr. Eric Z.: Yeah. To put this into context, look at the copays that you’re paying on the pharmaceuticals that you’re consuming, about the same amount of money, if not more, than the essential oil bottle that you’re buying. Also we all hear it, but it’s pretty expensive to be sick. I mean at the end of the day, there are companies that will provide insurance and reimbursement. We belong to Samaritan Ministries, which is a Christian med share program. If we get diagnosed with anything and if a doctor recommends it, they’ll cover our essential oils. Sabrina had her entire home birth covered with essential oils and chiropractic care.
Dr. Eric Z.: Blue Cross and Aetna wouldn’t cover that. So forget insurance. We’re done with the health insurance.
Chantel: Tell the name of that for everyone again.
Sabrina Z.: It’s Samaritan Ministries.
Dr. Eric Z.: There are various med share programs, multiple Christian ones and there are secular now that the government opened up. It’s a loophole as well for business owners who don’t have health insurance. That’s how you get out of the penalty of not having health insurance. So there’s some tax benefits to that as well. But yeah, I mean I’m done with health insurance forever. It’s a waste of time and money.
Dr. Eric Z.: You know what, Mama Z.?
Sabrina Z.: I got to go pick up the kids.
Dr. Eric Z.: We’re having a Mama Z. moment.
Chantel: Okay. All right.
Dr. Eric Z.: I can hang out for just a minute too.
Sabrina Z.: Absolutely. Well, it was such a pleasure connecting with your tribe. Do you have any last questions for me?
Chantel: I think that’s good. I’ve just got three quick questions for Dr. Z. Thanks for joining us today.
Sabrina Z.: Yes. Many blessings.
Chantel: Bye bye.
Dr. Eric Z.: Bye, babe.
Chantel: All right. So this-
Dr. Eric Z.: I love our Natural Living Family. We’re as real as it gets, you all. This is how we do things in the Z. Household.
Chantel: That’s right. This next one’s from Laura in Pittsburgh. She says, “From what I understand, I need to dilute different oils with different amounts of carrier oil, and then additionally, I need to dilute them differently for myself and my husband, then for my kids. Does it really matter which part of the body I’m applying the oil when I dilute? This is all so complicated. Can you please simplify?”
Dr. Eric Z.: Yes, yes, and yes. I mean please you all, it’s not a sales pitch. You got to get the book. It’s all in there. There’s charts. You got to think of it. No one’s going to go to Rite Aid in the pharmacy and just get an over-the-counter sleep med and take a half a dozen just because they want to. They’re going to read the instructions. So you got to know the instructions. Yes, children and adults, it’s all different. You want to dilute. We talked about that a little bit earlier about sensitization. You don’t want to cause any allergic reactions.
Dr. Eric Z.: It’s really simple though. I mean in a nutshell, if you want to stick with some general, safe requirements for adults, it’s 2% dilution which means 2% of the mixture is essential oil. So just 2%. If you’re using a one-ounce amount of carrier oil, 2% of one ounce would be roughly 12 drops. You got 600 drops in an ounce, times that by 2%, 12. It’s kind of like that’s simple math where children, you drop to 1%. So it’d be six drops of essential oil per one ounce of carrier oil in total, no more than six drops. You got to make your blends and you got to have your individual … That’s the general, safe requirement for children generally over one year old. Under one, be careful. We talk about that in my book too.
Dr. Eric Z.: But yeah, it is really simple once you have that basic stuff down. But yeah, if you’re trying to treat something, follow the recipes that we give you. These are proven. These are safe. Everything from psoriasis to eczema. Where you apply them, that’s a really, really good question. I cover that in my first book, The Healing Power of Essential Oils. Research has shown that there are certain parts of the body, there are dermal patch … I’m just thinking about dermal patches like tobacco when you’re trying to be free of nicotine. The nicotine patch they recommend on certain parts of the body because those parts are more permeable. You’re not putting the nicotine patch on your foot because it’s really the least permeable part of your body because of the skin and because of the calluses and just because of the lack of vascularity.
Dr. Eric Z.: You want an area that has a lot of blood flow. So I like putting oils over my abdomen and on my chest, my back of my neck for systemic things. If you’re trying to balance blood sugar or lose weight, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, that’s where you really want to apply them because it’s an area where it’s not overly sensitive. The most permeable parts of your body are the obvious sensitive parts of your body, like your genitalia, your underarms. Who’s going to want to put oils there? You think about that stuff. There’s a balance. It all depends on what you’re trying to treat too.
Dr. Eric Z.: You’re trying to treat chronic disease. You’re trying to treat local issues. It does take a little bit of time and a little bit of research. But you get the books we write. You’ll follow the guidelines in the master class. We have a ton of stuff on our blog. You’ll get it. I mean it’ll make sense.
Chantel: Awesome. This is anonymous. “Pork is one of my favorite meats. I’m a big fan of pork chops and who could forget bacon? My friend gave me a pretty interesting argument against pork, saying it’s unclean and I shouldn’t eat it. I crave pork. How do you respond to people that say it’s unclean? Should I consider cutting it out?” Anonymous.
Dr. Eric Z.: You know you said you crave it, like there’s an addictive aspect to it. God knows what he was doing even though we don’t abide by the Book of Leviticus. I’m not going to stone somebody. There’s a reason God said, “Don’t consume pork.” It’s a very unclean animal. The lack of perspiration, the lack of natural lymphatic flow and detoxification in the pig, the sheer amount of trash and lack of discrepancy the swine have in what they consume, you’re eating all that. Pork, not only that, they’re a haven for parasites, bacteria, fungus. They’re disgusting.
Dr. Eric Z.: I haven’t consumed pork in 15 years. I did it because of biblical reasons. God said it. I was like, okay, I could do that. Same thing with catfish. Same thing with lobsters. These are the bottom feeders. They consume the trash of the world. Okay. You want to eat fish poop all day long, then eat a lobster. That’s really what you’re getting. Very void in nutrition, by the way. They’re not filled with nutrients. It’s very void. Yeah, high in protein, low in fat, okay. But it’s not worth the toxicity. I’d rather have a nice wild-caught salmon.
Chantel: I agree. I think the parasites is the biggest thing. I just visualize when I look at bacon, I literally am like that is ridden with parasites. No thank you.
Dr. Eric Z.: It’s gross.
Chantel: All right. This next one is Myra in Georgia. “I travel a ton for work and I have the hardest time staying on track when I’m eating out. I don’t drink alcohol. I’m usually alone on my travel, so food is kind of my thing. Even though I’m super strict with fasting and eating clean when I’m home, when I’m out and out of town I’m always taking two steps back when I travel. Any good tips for when I’m traveling and eating out?”
Dr. Eric Z.: I’m so glad. We actually have an entire section of the book devoted to that. Our book is divided into two programs, this quick boot camp, 30 days that’s just pretty intense. It’s going to get you where you want to get quick. And then a lifestyle phase which is designed for the rest of your life, which includes birthdays and holidays and my kid’s getting married and what do I do when I travel. We have a whole list of things. You know what? Proper planning prevents poor performance, the bottom line. If you struggle with certain things, make sure you bring the healthy snacks that you need for a crunch so you’re not going to binge eat or be tempted.
Dr. Eric Z.: But it all, to me, it boils down to conviction and the determination that you will do what you need to do. I can’t tell you how many times I find I’ll take an Uber or something, I’ll go to the local Whole Foods or natural health food store and I’ll get something from the salad bar if I can’t find a good healthy restaurant. There are a lot of options out there. Mediterranean restaurants are typically clean. They’re really good. They have a lot of vegetables and good rice and just general things. Again, you don’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Dr. Eric Z.: We were at LEGOLAND and all they had was a Ruby Tuesday. I mean I was hungry. What am I going to do? So Ruby Tuesday’s pretty good. They have some decent salads. As far as I know, they’re one of the few chains that don’t spray their salads, which is a big deal because a lot of these chains spray their salad bars because they want to have these things last. But I’ll do things. I will say, I’ll just load up on veggies. At Ruby Tuesday’s, what I did I got a big salad and I got a side baked potato with some sweet potato stuff, some steamed broccolI. It’s living to eat, not eating to live or eating to live and not living to eat, right? You have to make that decision.
Dr. Eric Z.: But enjoy things. And then look for things though. Bring the things that you need. Look for ways that you could treat yourself because I think we have this mentality, “I’m on vacation. I can cheat.” I was raised with that mentality. “We’re on vacation. Anything’s open.” No, no, no, no, no. If you’re really in that belief system that you reap what you sow, you will not lose track at all.
Chantel: We have an exciting thing that Dr. Z. is giving away. We’re getting five lucky winners. What do they get, Dr. Z.?
Dr. Eric Z.: They get unlimited digital access to our essential oils for abundant living master class, which will teach you. It has all the videos and the notes and the chemistry and safety guides, all the things that you need to know how to learn how to use essential oils. You get that for free. That’s a $77 value.
Chantel: Oh wow.
Dr. Eric Z.: We want to bless five of you and you’ll be aromatherapy experts by the time you go through our course. You’re going to love it.
Chantel: That’s so generous. Thank you for doing that.
Dr. Eric Z.: Yeah. You’re welcome. No problem.
Chantel: I love it. Well, if you have not been to drericz.com, there’s a reason why they’ve reached over six million visitors that go there all the time. You’ve got to get it, his new book, The Essential Oils Diet. If you haven’t picked up his first book, The Healing Power of Essential Oils, you’ve got to do it.
Chantel: Thank you so much for coming back on our show.
Dr. Eric Z.: Thank you for having me. I so appreciate it. Congratulations on your new book too and all your awesome adventures. It’s awesome to see you grow so quickly.
Chantel: Thank you. All right. Well, have a great one. We appreciate you.
Dr. Eric Z.: Bye bye.
Chantel: Bye bye.
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