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Transcript
- 01:38 About Dr. Eric Zilienski
- 05:40 Autoimmunity
- 09:01 FDA, triclosan and hexachlorophene
- 11:00 Environmental toxicity
- 13:17 Superbugss
- 16:15 FDA and the pharmaceutical companies
- 17:36 BPA and BPS
- 18:49 Germs and OCD
- 20:10 Skin microbiome
- 21:21 Essential oils
- 23:40 Aroma therapy
- 24:52 Using essential oils
- 29:12 Research on autoimmunity
- 30:00 Homemade sanitizers
- 31:01 Homemade soap
- 32:24 Autoimmune prevention
- 33:02 Essential oils and the autoimmune connection
- 34:44 Flu and vaccinations
- 37:27 Essential oils for autoimmune conditions
- 38:39 Vitamin C
- 39:28 Honey
- 41:37 Most pressing health issue in the world today
- 47:34 Essential Oils Revolution
Wendy Myers: Hello. My name is Wendy Myers. Thank you so much for joining us on the Live to 110 Podcast.
Today, I’m talking to Dr. Eric Zielinski about essential oils for autoimmunity, and we have a really interesting talk also about triclosan and antibacterial hand soaps, and why they were banned by the FDA, and how killing all the bacteria on your skin and your hands, these products can also kill the bacteria in your gut, and how that can promote autoimmunity.
So very, very interesting discussion today.
Dr. Eric Zielinski is an expert in essential oils, so I was thrilled to have him on the show to talk about essential oils, and focused on the really good ones for autoimmune disease, which is a terrible scourge on our society.
So many people are being diagnosed with autoimmune disease, so we want to talk about things you can do for prevention as well.
Please keep in mind that this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please keep in mind that this program is for entertainment purposes only. Please consult your health care practitioner before engaging in anything that we suggest today on the show.
Our guest, Dr. Eric Zielinski, he founded DrEricZ.com and Biblical Health Academy. Dr. Eric Z is a sought-after public health researcher, biblical health educator and speaker.
For over a decade, Dr. Z has been formally trained as a natural health care provider, chiropractor and researcher with the intent to educate, inspire and challenge people to live their God-given potential.
He was on the esteemed Research Track while earning his Doctorate of Chiropractic degree at Life University, and is working on his aroma therapy certificate with the Atlantic Institute of Aroma Therapy.
Dr. Z is currently on sabbatical from completing the Master of Public Health program at Emory University.
Dr. Eric Z’s mission is to provide the world with simple evidence-based tools that they need to experience the abundant life. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and children.
You can learn more about him at DrEricZ.com.
Eric, thank you so much for joining us on the program.
Eric Zielinski: Well, thank you for having me, Wendy. I just love you. We’ve had a chance to do a lot of stuff together. It’s really long overdue.
Wendy Myers: Yes, and so I’ve never had you in the podcast before. We’ve talked so much, and you were on my Medicinal Supplement Summit. And I was on your Essential Oils Revolution too.
So it’s great. I wanted to share some of the knowledge that you have about essential oils because you’re an expert in essential oils, and how they can help autoimmunity.
A lot of people have autoimmunity. It’s one of the fastest-growing subset of diseases in the world. And so we need more information about how to address it naturally because modern medicine doesn’t provide a lot of assistance in that area.
So first, why don’t you just tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and your background?
Eric Zielinski: Wendy, I’m on a mission. My wife, Sabrina, and I are on a mission of helping people experience the abundant life.
I was sick as a child, and just plagued with chronic issues for most of my adolescence, up until I was in my young 20’s.
And so I know what it’s like to battle depression and on suicide ideation.
I’m a thin guy. It doesn’t run in my family. I was never fat or obese, but I know what it’s like to gain weight, lose weight. I know what it’s like to battle an eating disorder.
It’s just that I recognize one thing, and something I appreciate about people like you and me is that people like you and I, we know what it’s like being in the trenches, and we’ve got out of the trenches.
And I just feel burdened. I feel burdened to share with the world what I’ve learned, and what I’ve experienced. Unfortunately, I guess, somewhat for me, I had to go through so much, but I’m going through so much, and my heart has just been filled with compassion, sympathy and empathy.
I haven’t had cancer, lupus or anything that significant, but I’ve had a lot of issues throughout my years. And a lot of it stemming in the gut, chronic gut issues that erupted, and chronic skin issues that erupted, and chronic pain conditions, and then mental disturbances, mental illness.
And at the end of the day, I know what it’s like surviving that.
And so it really all started 13 years ago, when I became a Christian. So I had a revelation.
And I say that because I’m not one of those kooky Christians that go to church.
I had a spiritual enlightenment that just, to me, it was through that religious persuasion. And it just opened up my eyes.
So very purpose-driven, and this is one of the reasons why I really appreciate you, Wendy, because we’ve got a chance to talk a lot, and I truly recognize that you’ve come from a heart to serve, to love and to do because you know what it’s like as well.
Wendy Myers: Absolutely. It’s great to live your life purpose and helping people. There’s no greater satisfaction than being able to help guide people out of their health issue. So I’m very, very thankful for that as well.
You’re very passionate about the topic of autoimmunity. Why don’t you talk a little bit about that and why you’re interested in this topic?
Eric Zielinski: I’m mostly interested, and this is recently, I’ve been specializing in biblical health for over a decade, and the last few years is when the essential oil piece to my pie came to be.
That’s a wild story, how it came to be, but I’ve devoted the last three-plus years in just deep study of essential oils and plant-based medicine, and I never found a connection to autoimmunity until recently.
And that’s why I’m so passionate about it because this is like, “Whoa.” My research eyes have been opened—because I’m a public health researcher. And that’s what my training is.
And so when I started seeing the data, when I started looking at the correlations and the potential causations of what’s happening right now, I just realized, you know what, what people had said through their testimonials might have bearing even though there are no clinical trials to prove it.
I can’t tell you how many people I’ve interviewed, or I’ve coached, or I’ve helped, or just friends or family, that simply apply diluted frankincense over their thyroid, and they say it’s healed them of Hashimoto’s.
You can’t prove it. You can’t say it. Well, you can’t say it’s not true. But at the end of the day, there’s no clinical reason to believe that.
Yet I know several people who swear by it. They just swear by it. They’re like, “Dr. Z, I haven’t changed anything with my diet, I haven’t changed anything with my drug schedule. All I did was start applying frankincense, and boom, I’m back to normal.”
That sort of thing happened over and over again. I dove into the literature and couldn’t find anything. I couldn’t find much of anything. And I’m like, “Okay, well, it’s anecdotal.”
It could be a fluke, probably not, but I just shelved it a couple of years ago until recently, I started seeing more and more data and research regarding the use of antibacterial products.
And this is the kicker, and this is what I really, really want to talk about is—I’ve been preaching this from the rooftops for years. Well, finally, the FDA banned triclosan, triclocarbans and 17 other chemicals in antibacterial products.
And that right there opened up my eyes to something interesting. It opened my eyes to something new that is very interesting because when you look at the research, triclosan has actually been proven to be a thyroid hormone disrupter, and it’s been linked to cancer.
Thyroid hormone disruption has been a main cause of autoimmunity.
And so I started going backwards.
And so it was September of 2016 that the FDA banned these products.
If we have time, I’d like to talk a little bit about this experience with the FDA, the news, the press release, and what this means to us.
But to answer your question, that’s really what got me on fire for autoimmune conditions recently is because I’m now seeing a connection more on the prevention side that’s now making me want to look into more of cause and effect.
So there are a couple of different pieces to the pie, but I’m telling you it’s all connected—FDA, triclosan, antibacterial stuff. It’s wild, what’s happening right now.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the FDA’s ban on triclosan, and what triclosan does to our bodies and the environment. The FDA takes a long time to catch up to the research, and finally, they got it together and banned this.
Why did they ban it?
Eric Zielinski: Well, we’ve got to go back to 1949. We have to go back to Dial soap and hexachlorophenes.
So what is soap? This is a fundamental question. Why do we need soap?
The reason why you need soap is that oil, greasy grime on your hands, attracts dirt, attracts certain bacteria that are lipid-soluble, that will not wash off with water.
Water and oil don’t mix. So if you have greasy, slimy, dirty hands, you get water, that won’t clean it off, 9 times out of 10. If it’s […], it’s especially greasy or fatty.
Well, soap acts as an emulsifier. So, soap actually allows those particles to be suspended temporarily, so water can then wash all that stuff away.
Well, Dial soap came out with a product called Dial. It came out with a product in the late 40s that said, “Hey, we’ve got a solution to soap, but you know what? It’s also going to help you with body odor,” because they found that antibacterial products that they use, one was called hexachlorophene, had a very uncanny ability to combat body odor.
So Dial marketed this soap, what was unnatural deodorant.
They never used the word antibacterial. They never advertised there was hexachlorophene in it, but they said, “Hey, we’re going to help you.”
Here’s an interesting thing. About five years later or so, in the epidemiology, we see a spike in autoimmune conditions—anything from MS to rheumatoid, there are so many of them.
You see, there’s a spike out of nowhere. And that was the time when a lot of people were starting to use—a lot of manufacturers were using chemicals like hexachlorophenes and other chemicals.
To me, the only way of explaining it is through the environmental toxicity. It’s the only way to explain why, out of nowhere, there was a rapid increase in autoimmune conditions.
Now, the wild thing was, the autoimmune prevalence continued to spike. It just continued. It was almost expediential.
In 1972, the FDA banned hexachlorophene because it was found to be a neurotoxin. It literally killed, I believe 39 or 40, I forgot, I think it was 40 babies in France, and 15 babies in the United States in the late 60’s/early 70’s.
They had a situation where talc powder had an ingredient. One of the ingredients was hexachlorophene. And moms, innocently enough, were putting talc powder on the baby’s bottom. And the babies inhaled it, and they died of brain damage.
And they linked it to hexachlorophene.
Well, the interesting thing was, Dial started using hexachlorophene, and then cosmetic manufacturers, and then talc powder manufacturers, and then all kinds of manufacturers started using hexachlorophene because of its uncanny ability to “kill germs.”
Hospitals started using hexachlorophene-based products.
So this is what’s wild. When the FDA banned hexachlorophene—mind you, Wendy, after 20 years of use. 20 years of unproven use, we basically were science experiments.
At the same time, autoimmune conditions are just rising, rising, rising. At the same time, more pesticides, our diet was changing. It was just the perfect storm.
While there was a staph outbreak in hospitals around the nation, right after they banned hexachlorophene, because they developed—in my opinion, we can’t prove it, but they developed hexachlorophene, in a sense, antibacterial, product-based resistance.
We’ve heard of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, well, when you clean a product, when you clean an area with a product, and then you stop using that product, there could be a chance, like in this situation with the staph outbreak, that they needed to come up with a different, stronger solution because regular, old soap and water wasn’t working in the hospitals once they banned hexachlorophene.
And it’s not because soap and water doesn’t work. It’s because they created superbugs. And that’s why we’re on this situation now.
We have people—there are strains of gonorrhea in China right now that are more deadly than AIDS because the drugs can’t kill it, because we’ve created superbugs—bacteria, viruses, fungi develop resistance.
And that’s exactly what happened to the staph outbreak in hospitals around the nation.
So they called, “We need help. We need something. If you’re going to ban hexachlorophene, government, give us something else.”
That’s when the manufacturers said, “Hey, we’ve got something called triclosan. And it’s been a registered pesticide since 1969, so why don’t we put it in our cleaning products? It should help.”
“For pesticides, it kills the plants, it should also kill for the hospitals, it should kill the bacteria on your hands, and here we go.”
Well, fast forward 40 years, we’ve been using triclosan mostly—most 75% and 90% of all antibacterial products—hand sanitizers, all the lotions and potions and stuff you get at Bath and Body Works, all that stuff has triclosan in it.
Well, the FDA just finally banned that after 40 years of use.
An interesting thing about this, Wendy, is that—the interesting thing about in the 80s is that once the manufacturers came out with the antibacterial label, the first time we see that was really in mid-80s, mid to late 80s. That was when another spike happened in autoimmune conditions.
So again, I don’t know where, and I’m not saying it’s directly a causation—there’s a correlation here. And I’ve got to be careful because my epidemiology friends are going to skin me alive if I say this is the reason. But come on, just look at the data, look at what we have here.
In the 80s, we see again a nice spike, and then we see an insurgence of antibacterial products.
And the problem with triclosan—again, we’ve talked about it’s been linked to neurocognitive disorders, thyroid hormone disruption, cancer, but the shame of it all is that triclosan has this uncanny ability to penetrate into the bloodstream, through mommy’s milk, the baby.
So any woman that’s nursing, that’s applying products on their body, which a lot do, in their defense—soap, shampoos, all these antibacterial stuff, if they apply it over their breasts maybe a lotion, it penetrates into the breast, the bloodstream, to the milk, to the baby.
We’ve created a catastrophic system where infants are being birthed with what? What was that EWG, the Environmental Working Group Study, I forgot, like 280 chemicals, they tested the cord blood.
They tested the blood in the umbilical cord.
And these infants don’t even have a fair shot. They don’t even have a fair shot.
And so I believe—I was born in 1980, at the beginning of all this madness, I believe I was part of that. I believe we’ve been victimized. I believe we’ve been victimized by this system that’s allowed this stuff.
And so my take-home message to people, A) don’t trust the FDA. Period.
Wendy Myers: No. Absolutely not. They are working for the pharmaceutical companies, and big agra. And they are not working for you. They do not protect you.
A lot of people think the government will protect them. You have to take responsibility for yourself.
Eric Zielinski: And don’t trust pharma, don’t trust the manufacturers, and folks, I hate to sound like a conspiracy theory, the world’s against us, it’s dollars and cents. It’s all it is. And the problem is, like hexachlorophene, on the market for 20-some years, triclosan, on the market for 40-some years, recalled—how many drugs have been recalled? Have many products have been recalled off of our shelves?
We’re just experiments. And they don’t care.
So here’s my message to everyone. Well, the message is, A) we need to do it ourselves. We have to DIY.
Now, I love oils. We can talk all day long about that. But here’s the thing—with this new ban, FDA has given all manufacturers one year to get triclosan, triclocarbans and 17 other chemicals out of the products—just in a certain segment of the products, not all shampoos, not all toothpastes, not all everything.
Just soap.
What about hand sanitizers?
So there are going to be so many chemicals on the market that still have it.
And here’s the other thing. Just like BPA—remember the BPA scare? Do you really think BPA-free plastic is still good for you?
Wendy Myers: No, they have something worse. They put BPS. It’s 20 times worse than BPA.
Eric Zielinski: Exactly. So what does that mean? They went from hexachlorophene to triclosan, to I don’t know.
So next year, when they come up with the new antibacterial solution because people are freaked out about germs, it’s not going to be good. It’s probably going to be worse.
Wendy Myers: I’m so happy that I instinctively, in the early 90s, I was always using the Dial soap, and I thought, “Soap and water kills germs, and gets germs and bacteria off your hands, I’m going to stick to that. We don’t need this new product.”
And people should not be afraid of bacteria. Our bodies know how to deal with that. They don’t know how to deal with chemicals.
That’s why my last husband and I split because he was a germaphobe, and I was a chemical-phobe. I’m not even joking. It was doomed from the beginning.
He’s a freak about germs, and there’s no sense in it at all.
Eric Zielinski: I want to give everyone a little piece of mind that we had created a culture of obsessively-compulsive—we just have OCD about germs. It’s this obsessive compulsion that—and I was there, Wendy. It was wild.
I was there just a few years ago. I remember every time I touch a door handle, every time touch this, every time I touch this—I had a hand sanitizer.
We had a hand sanitizer on my kid’s lunchbox for crying out loud—like they couldn’t live without a hand sanitizer.
And so I was victimized. I use that word carefully, but I’m telling you, folks, we’ve been victimized by misinformation because it’s hurting us. I was in that mindset. I need to always have that stuff on me, in my car, everywhere.
And now, it’s everywhere.
I’ve got to say. I don’t wash my hands like I used to.
Wendy Myers: I don’t either.
Eric Zielinski: I don’t use that stuff. And I’m healthier than I’ve ever been. You know what? I actually purposely like to go out, go on a hike, eat a carrot with my dirty hands, and guess what? It’s fine. Get a little dirt in my system.
Though I’m not going to eat a spoonful of dirt, but come on.
Wendy Myers: I’m definitely a dirty bird. I do not wash my hands that much. I’m not afraid of germs. Bring it on. It’s healthy for your immune system. Stimulate it.
Eric Zielinski: So folks, we need to remember one thing. And I know, Wendy, you talk a lot about the microbiome.
And I’m not here to teach on the microbiome, however, we need to remember there’s something called the skin microbiome. It’s not just in the gut.
So our microbiome—there are millions, trillions of bacteria and multifaceted microorganisms that create beautiful protection for our skin. And we’re in symbiosis with these things.
You’re looking at one human cell for every 10 microorganisms—I mean, looking at a person, looking at bugs.
So once you get beyond that—beauty, skin deep, look at my heart and my soul. So when you get to the point where all these products dry the skin, they break at the first barrier of your immune sytem.
That’s the concern—people don’t recognize the immune system starts here. This is it. You get sick, you get an infection, you get big time issues when the skin is compromised because that allows things to come in, problem things like viruses and bacteria and things.
And when you apply chemicals that we see like triclosan that penetrate in the bloodstream, that’s when things really get messed up.
So that’s why I like essential oils. I like doing it yourself. I like simple, coconut-based essential oil, oil-based products that anyone can make, that’s super cost-effective, that you don’t have to worry it’s going to kill you or your family.
And at the end of the day, you save money, you have peace of mind, and it’s really empowering. It’s really empowering to be able to really do what our grandmas and great grandmas did because they had to.
And great, great, great—all the way through the ancestry. Women were the healers of the home. Ever since the beginning […],women had this unbelievable ability, instinctively, to take care of their household, and their family, and they just have these awesome ability, all these little concoctions and things.
When you got sick in the early 1900s, you went to grandma’s house. She’ll take care of you.
And we lost that.
Again, I want to encourage the men out there to step up a little bit too because unfortunately, a lot of moms, Wendy, you included, you’re a mom, and you work. So it’s not like you have all day, every day to do this stuff.
So it’s a team effort now.
And guys, you got to step up, man. Essential oils aren’t smelly stuff for chicks. This is real life medicine that you need to use.
I’m talking to the dudes out there. We really got to take away that stigma because I didn’t say this earlier, but part of my story was, I stigmatized essential oils ignorantly as something that my wife did because it was aroma therapy.
And I was like, “Oh, she just wants to smell nice,” which she did. She smelled great. And I was like, “Well, I don’t want to smell like ylang ylang. Are you kidding me?”
My guy friends are going to take my man card away.
So I had to get over that stigma, but it was the research and all of the hundreds and hundreds of testimonials of people that I spoke to, worked with and saw about how oils changed their lives.
It’s funny. Oils, it predominantly, a woman, a female-based venture, or female-based natural therapy, where guys all day, they can talk about detoxing, and how many of us have people in our world that are male experts, and they’re like, “Heal your gut.”
Well, okay. What about oils? Anyway, I think it’s important.
Wendy Myers: How did you get started in aroma therapy and being a voice for essential oils?
Eric Zielinski: Research. I was a medical writer. That’s how I supported myself during school when I was getting my doctorate.
One of my clients asked me to write a series of public health reports on oils. It floored me. I started looking at MRSA, about how oils actually can kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA, how oils can help people with cancer, how oils can balance blood sugar, and help people lose weight.
Here’s another. Black pepper—I’ll never forget when I first wrote how black pepper actually helps people overcome the withdrawals of nicotine addiction. I’m like, “What in the world is this stuff?”
And then I started going deeper and deeper and deeper.
I’m very quirky. I’m very like “I have to see it to believe it.” I’m faith-oriented if I can see it, kind of person.
And so once I’ve got the faith of this, I’m like, “Man, these things are no joke.”
And that’s when I started. Really Wendy, that to me was—I needed to get into my mind, to get into my heart, because that’s when I realized essential oils, for me, was the missing link for my natural health on protocol because I never used them.
Wendy Myers: It seems like after you graduated from chiropractic school, you started your health website, DrEricZ.com, and you just hit the ground running with essential oils.
You’ve told me before that your wife uses them a lot and really taught you a lot, and you saw firsthand about all the benefits, how much they help you, your family, you and your wife and your family.
Eric Zielinski: Yes, Sabrina has been using them for—she’s really old. Hold on a second, I’m going to go back.
She’s just two years older than me. She’s an old lady. Mrs. Robinson.
Yes, Sabrina has been using that since she was a teenager, so she’s been using that for about 25 years.
25 years. Because you know what? Sabrina’s mother has a really good friend. Her name is Sheryl Buck. We call her Mrs. B. And she’s Cherokee Indian. She practices ojibwe medicine.
And Sabrina had an accident when she was a teenager. It was wild actually. She was visiting family in Minnesota.
She’s been there so many different times, visiting her grandparents. And Sabrina was using—I forgot what it was, some knock-off Clairsol skin facial thing that she was using. But the problem was it interacted with the chemicals in her grandparents’ water because they had well water.
And so whatever water softener thing that they were doing at the same time—and I don’t know because again, it was 20-some years ago, but it literally burned the first three layers of her skin from here down here neck, like open, oozing sores.
This beautiful teenage girl, unbelievable—she had to wrap her face. She tried the creams, she went to the doctor—nothing could help. And she was in a pretty bad situation for quite some time.
And her mom’s friend, Mrs. B, she gave her, her first kit with essential oils in it. And part of those is lavender. She was, “Sabrina, you really need to make an ointment with lavender.” She applied it over her face, and that stimulated the healing.
You look at her now, my wife, she’s 38 years old, she looks like she’s 20. She’s got beautiful, anti-aging skin primarily because of her protocol, essential oil-based products and everything that she does.
And so she really is the expert at DIY and stuff. I just fell in love with the research and fell in love with all the other things.
So I let her do what she does because she converts our whole house into DIY wonderland. It’s awesome.
But yes, I got to say, Wendy, I noticed the need for unbiased information on the internet because—and this isn’t the fault of anyone who makes money off of a product. But it’s very, very hard-pressed to find anyone talking about essential oils that isn’t selling essential oils.
And to me, just public health 101, that’s bias. That’s just bias. And there’s no way around that.
So I decided early on, I’m not going to sell these oils. I’m just going to educate people. And that’s where I came up with my Essential Oil Summit #1. You were on the second one.
We’ve reached over 265,000 people with those summits.
So that’s what I’ve done. I had really put my neck out there as the non-branded oil educator. And I’m glad because—I’ll end with this, it’s nice because people thank me time and time again because they just call me a safe place to land, like, “Hey, Dr. Z.”
I still offer them maybe a diffuser or aroma therapy products, but when it comes to oils, I don’t want to be in that game because when you start selling them, that’s when the FDA starts to restrict your language because that’s what they call drug claims.
So for me, I can’t now say, “Hey, the research says that essential oils can kill cancer cells.”
That’s now illegal if I’m selling oils.
So forget that. I am so much about my freedom of speech. And I just want to report the literature about that, in autoimmune conditions, and everything else I can.
Wendy Myers: That’s why you go on Young Living or any kind of website, they don’t make any health claims. They can’t. They’ll be shut down by the FDA. The FDA’s just breathing down their neck.
But there are so many healing benefits that you won’t find on the sites because they’re not able to do it. So we need resources like yours to actually learn what they do, and to target health issues specifically because you can’t find it on the sites.
You said that you’re a public health researcher, and you’re a writer, you’re an excellent writer. So what have you uncovered about autoimmunity that people need to know?
Eric Zielinski: The primary thing is going through the timeline that I just shared is the importance of doing it yourself. At the end of the day, the bottom line, whether it’s hexachlorophene, whether it’s triclosan, whatever chemical it might be, you can’t trust conventional body care products. Period.
There are some products out there that are really super intense, organic, non-GMO. They cost an arm and leg. Really, if you go to Whole Foods (a whole pay check), if you go to these places, you’re going to spend a lot of money on them.
But at the end of the day, it’s very cost-effective to do it yourself.
And so a good recipe for anyone—and I will say, I do have it in my car because sometimes I do get my hands dirty. I have a hundred kids—I only have four children, I have a bunch of kids. We always have baby wipes in the car.
So I always have a baby wipe that I can wet my hands with it. But sometimes, I feel like, “You know what? Let me get a little ‘hand sanitizer’ deal.”
And all it is, is a one to two-ounce spritzer glass. You put a couple of drops of Witch Hazel, a couple of drops of aloe, a drop of vitamin E, and you add about seven drops of essential oils per ounce of water, so you get, again, the essential oils, the Witch Hazel, the aloe, the vitamin E—you mix that together in a jar, fill it up with purified water, and you shake it up.
And that cool thing is a spritzer. But you know what? Because it’s aromatic, and because it’s healthy for you, I noticed I’ll just put some on me as a cologne, as a deodorant. It’s very effective.
And so that, again, is a really easy solution.
Another solution—how easy it is to make soap. Guys, it’s so simple. The men out there, I want to tell you, it’s really easy. You just get a little glass pump thing, and these little foam things that cost a couple of bucks on Amazon.
You fill it about three-quarters of the way in with liquid castile soap. And again, you could put a little bit of aloe, you could put some essential oils in it, and that’s really about it. You don’t even have to put water.
You could put some vitamin E in it. Witch Hazel is nice. It acts as an emulsifier
But that right there is soap.
And there are so many recipes that my team and I have come up with. That’s why I created my Dr. Z’s Essential Oil Club because we have, I don’t know, 75 recipes like floor cleaner, shampoo—because we don’t realize too, even though you might not be touching these things, you’re smelling them.
Have you ever cleaned with bleach, and you get a headache? Those volatile organic compounds are actually touching the nerve cells in your nose and stimulating a response in your lymphatic system, in your brain.
So yes, how you’re smelling—I have aroma therapy diffuser kicking right now.
So you’ve got to realize, even though we might not be touching it, even though we might not be swallowing it, we’re still getting it if we smell it.
And that’s the other standpoint too when it comes to autoimmune conditions, and when it comes to prevention. It’s more about prevention because to me, I’m about stopping the bleeding.
I help people stop the bleeding, put the Band-Aid on, and then work with a specialist like yourself or someone else who can really help take them into another level. But you have to stop the toxicity. You have to.
And to me, the two easiest things, and the two most useful things are the soaps and the hand sanitizer. Done.
Anyway, easy to fix, easy to make, and you start from there. It’s a way of life.
Wendy Myers: So let’s talk about essential oils and the autoimmune connection. How can people use essential oils to prevent autoimmunity in the first place?
Eric Zielinski: Really, it all boils down to, again, stopping the chemicals in the products, and making your own.
Really, that’s all that I could show through the research.
When it comes to other things, personally, Wendy, that’s a good question because what I’m not going to say is, “Oh, you need to use x, y, z oil every day.”
That’s a problem a lot of people fall into. It’s a trap. The trap is, there’s an oil for that. The trap is, I need to use oils medicinally as prevention which makes no sense clinically, and it’s actually been shown to harm people for a number of reasons.
These are very potent plant-based medicines—very potent. And people are becoming sensitized to oils because they’re overdoing it. And sensitization is essentially like an allergic reaction to essential oils.
You become sensitized to them that some people, innocently, overdo it. They use them as cold prevention, like a drop of frankincense in their mouth every day, to stay healthy, to beat cancer. And they find themselves like if they have frankincense, they bust out in a rash, or they have headaches or migraines.
It’s not that the frankincense is bad—it could be if you’re getting a bad oil, but assuming that the brand that you’re getting is good and the good stuff, so the thing is, when it comes to it, when it comes to autoimmunity specifically, it’s about minimizing all those toxins that cause autoimmunity, doing it yourself with essential oil-based products, and really keeping the immune system healthy and strong.
I do like to use essential oils once in a while, but I have this, what do I call it, this immune-boosting shot, especially right now, flu season, and it’s crazy how many people are getting the flu shot, and they’re getting vaccinated.
I got this really neat, little concoction that I put together. And me personally, I’ll have it maybe once or twice a week, during this crazy flu season, if I notice one of my hundred kids are getting sick, I might do it again.
Here’s the problem—we don’t want to be in the mindset where we’re using oils every day, long-term. And that’s a problem.
Now, if it’s in your products, if you’re diluting it, let’s say, 1% or 2% dilution, then that’s safe. It could be in your massage oils, your hand sanitizers. But when we’re talking medicinal—medicinal essential oils like a lotion or potion or something, that’s 5%+ dilution.
And when it comes to dilution, meaning this—300 drops in a tablespoon. So if you’re looking at a 1% dilution, that’s three drops of essential oil in a tablespoon, of whatever carrier that you’re using.
If it’s a 5% dilution, which is really high concentrated, don’t do that on kids. Do that with adults for acute, short-term conditions. That’s 15 drops of essential oil per tablespoon. That’s a lot.
It’s necessary at times, but that is what I’ve seen a lot of people do, is they overdo it. They have 5%+, 10%, 20%.
Some people are doing 1:1 ratios. They’re doing 50% dilutions, and they’re using it as cold prevention. And they’re A) they’re wasting. It’s not sustainable. They’re potentially hurting themselves.
Some people literally burn themselves. I did.
When I first started learning about oils, I had a pimple. I put oregano. I burned my skin. It was horrible. I learned the hard way.
So safe practices—so that’s what I wanted to share people. There are ways of doing it, there are ways of being wise, but at the end of the day, oils should be more for symptom-based management, if you’re using them medicinally, and not for prevention.
Wendy Myers: I learned a lot from your Essential Oils Revolution. I listened to a lot of the talks because I got really, really passionate this year about learning about essential oils. I never really dug into that as part of health before—natural health and healing.
And I was just really surprised just by the range of uses and healing that can be promoted by using essential oils.
So do you your favorite essential oils for boosting the immunity, or helping someone that has an autoimmune condition?
Eric Zielinski: Yes. I actually have an immunity blend. It’s based off of a lot of the immunity blends that you see the brands sell. The primary ingredient is clove. And from what I’ve seen in some reports, clove oil has literally, no joke, some of the highest concentration of antioxidants on anything else on the planet.
So what I create is a blend. And you can create a 1:1:1:1 ratio. Put clove, you can use orange, eucalyptus, lemon, rosemary and cinnamon. These oils, again, clove, eucalyptus, orange, lemon, rosemary and cinnamon—put them together 1:1:1:1 ratio, mix it together. You now have your immune-boosting blend.
If you find yourself immune-compromised, putting a drop of that in a teaspoon of coconut oil, just simply through it. It’s pleasant.
I don’t know what you feel about lypo-spheric vitamin C, I’m a big fan of it, or whatever vitamin C, if you really want a good vitamin C.
By the way, let me ask you, do you recommend a vitamin C?
Wendy Myers: I do. I like seeking health Seeking Health Liposomal Vitamin C. Quicksilver Scientific has a really good liposomal C.
I like food-based vitamin C also because food-based has all of the cofactors that help vitamin C absorbed into the cells. But liposomal has a much higher absorption rate.
Eric Zielinski: Is the one that you’re talking, is it a liquid form, or is it a pill?
Wendy Myers: The liposomal is in liquid form. The food-based is food, but you can get it in powder.
Eric Zielinski: So get Wendy’s liposomal vitamin C, get it in a little cup, put a teaspoon of coconut oil in that with the vitamin C, add a little bit of Himalayan sea salt, one or two drops of that immunity blend that I talked about, and me, I like a teaspoon of honey.
I’m telling you. Mary Poppins had it down pat—a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
And according to Webster Kehr, who’s the Cancer Tutor from CancerTutor.com, through his cancer research, he actually says that honey acts like a Trojan horse. Honey acts like a carrier. You shouldn’t be afraid of sugar, healthy sugar, if you’re a cancer patient or an autoimmune patient because healthy sugar actually can help bring, according to Webster, those healthy cancer-fighting chemicals into your cells.
It’s very interesting.
Wendy Myers: I take my Manuka honey every day very happily.
Eric Zielinski: You know about the honey-cinnamon cure? People have been using honey and cinnamon for centuries.
I’ll also add a little bit of cinnamon.
So my immune-boosting shot, again, is that lypo-spheric vitamin C, one or two drops of the essential oil blend that we just talked about, some coconut oil, a teaspoon-ish, a teaspoon-ish of honey, some sea salt, because we want those electrolytes, and I like pumpkin pie spice. I’m addicted to that stuff. I love it.
I need black pepper to overcome my addiction of pumpkin pie spice.
But you mix that together, I kid you not, it’s like candy.
And that’s what I came up to overcome pneumonia last year because like a lot of folks in our space, Wendy, we’re healers, and we sometimes work ourselves around the clock to help the world. And we help a lot of people. And I found myself somewhat overwhelmed last year with the amount of people that were following me for my Essential Oils Summit.
And I just literally worked around the clock. And I got sick—pneumonia sick. First time ever.
And that helped me get out of that hump.
Love that. But please don’t use that every day. This is something, again, once or twice a week, during flu season. If you are sick, twice a day, I max it at two weeks.
If you’re sick right now, or maybe you’re getting off, or if you’re trying to detox, you’re doing a cleanse, I recommend doing that twice a day, for one-and-a-half, two weeks or so.
And you’ve got to give your body a break. You don’t want your body to gain any sort of resistance. And you want, A) the bacteria, the viruses, whatever it is, to keep on guessing. So we want to switch it up.
Wendy Myers: So I have a question I like to ask all of my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Eric Zielinski: I think the most pressing health issue today is misinformation. It’s hard to say it as a researcher, but 90% of the research is falsified. And we have research reports that say that.
And the problem that we have is who do you believe, DrSoAndSo.com? Do you believe you, me? Who do you believe?
And to me, the problem is misinformation, and people are getting hurt.
The stuff I see on Pinterest, the stuff I see on blogs, it’s ridiculous. People are getting hurt because they are doing stuff—natural, medicinal. It doesn’t matter.
So to me, my recommendation is to find someone like you, Wendy. Find someone that you get to know, you learn to trust, and you let that person coach you through because the problem is, we’ve become health consumers, and I know you’re a coach, how hard is it when someone is completely not compliant to your recommendations because x, y, z website is saying five other things.
And so to me, it’s confusion, misinformation and you’ve got to find trusted sources to follow. That’ll become more clear.
Wendy Myers: I love that answer because I run into that myself a lot, and I see a lot of BS on CNN, and the Morning News Show, NPR, which is paid for by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other entities, and Quack Watch, which is funded by big pharma.
And people take these news, or these reports that are verified by research, and take that to be the word.
And it’s really frustrating because for myself, I’ve taken three statistics courses, all kinds of science courses, very well-versed in the scientific method, and research method. So I can look at a study and know if it’s statistically relevant or valid study, and most of them are not.
So unless you’ve had all that background research, you’re going to be misled by the misinformation you see on the internet and television.
So I love the answer.
So anything else you want to add to our conversation about essential oils, autoimmunity or anything of that nature?
Eric Zielinski: I want to give people encouragement, and maybe if we have just a minute or two, I could talk about—we’ll call her Sue. Her real name isn’t Sue, but for her protection, Sue.
Sue had a condition. Sue had an underactive thyroid, and she gained 50 pounds within a matter of a year.
She was post-menopausal, not sleeping, brain fog.
She was a wreck.
And I didn’t see Sue for about a year. She was a friend that I’ve met at church. And when we moved down to Georgia to study chiropractic, I didn’t see Sue for a little while, and when we go back home, we visited our old church, and then we’d see old friends.
But there’s a point I didn’t see Sue for one year.
And that was right after I started my blog.
And Sue came up to me right after church and said, “Eric, I need your help. I’m going crazy. I’m going crazy. I literally threw away all my drugs. I can’t do this anymore. I haven’t slept in five years. I have gained all this weight. My hair is falling out.”
And she had this litany of problems. She was like, “What can I do?”
And I could just tell. Her husband was a chiropractor, but they tried all the supplements they could—literally. Natural care. They tried everything they could. Nothing worked.
At least for them, they couldn’t figure it out.
And it came to me, “You know what? Sue, you need a good night’s sleep. Just start with sleep.”
Out of all the things.
And so I got her a bottle of lavender, a good therapeutic grade lavender, and I pretty much just threw the whole bottle on her like she said. I don’t recommend this, but she put it everywhere, all over. She diffused it, on the bottoms of her feet—everywhere.
She slept for the first time through the night in five years, and she woke up, and there was hope.
She woke up vibrant. She woke up energetic.
And her husband is like, “What’s up with you?”
She’s like, “I slept for the first time.”
And then she came back. “What else I can I do?”
And I said, “You know what? I can’t prove it, but I’ve been told by a lot of people, you can apply some diluted frankincense over your thyroid, and that could help regenerate some of those cells that are not producing the thyroxin.”
She got herself off of Synthroid which I never recommend doing that yourself. But she started doing that, and next thing you know, she started losing weight. Her thyroid started producing thyroxin.
And then she started putting a mixture of helichrysum rose and frankincense right under her eye because I taught a class, and I was teaching about how it helps with the skin.
Her vision went from 2.5 on her bifocals to 1.
So her vision got better, and her world got better. Basically, there is hope.
And I can’t promise that everyone will lose weight, get their hair back, and sleep, and get their vision back like Sue, but there is hope out there. And I want to encourage you all to be safe, always dilute your essential oils, test things, follow a trusted resource.
I invite you to join the club that I created. I created an essential oil club just to educate and to help. And just know that you can, and I believe it, you could find the recipe for you. And it takes some trial and error.
So with that, there’s a lot more I could share, but Wendy, I just want to thank you for having me on here. I just so much appreciate you and your work. And it’s just an honor. Thank you.
Wendy Myers: Thank you so much. Why don’t you tell the listeners about your Essential Oils Revolution 1 and 2? There will be links to all these in the show notes, so that you can find them, and there will be a link to your Essential Oils Club as well.
But tell us about your Essential Oils Revolution Summits that you’ve put on?
Eric Zielinski: The largest, non-branded, educational event ever. And it was awesome. I had no idea what to expect. We’ve got together chemists, bloggers, distributors, health care professionals from all sorts of different brands.
We just left the brand alone. We didn’t talk about any specific blends that are specific to a company. And we just talked healing properties of essential oils, and we’ve reached over 265,000 people.
And it’s just an unbelievable movement that we’ve been able to create.
And so a lot of things that we’re doing, a lot of things that we’re doing with the content, with those interviews, and that’s really what I’ve created with my club because my club has an essential oils TV.
So essentially, I have taken those interviews from my summits, and I’ve created the Netflix for essential oils, plus other interviews and DIY videos that my wife and I are doing.
So we have just a database right now of merely 80 videos that people can watch when they become a club member.
And it’s pretty cool. Nothing that I could see else out there about this sort of thing
So again, thank you for being part of my Essential Oils Revolution Part 2. You did a great talk. So folks, if you missed it, you’ve got to join the club, so you can listen to Wendy talk about detox and all things cool.
It’s been awesome.
Wendy Myers: That club sounds amazing for anyone that wants to learn more about essential oils and get that unbiased education, where they can get a real, deep down education about essential oils.
You’re writing a book on essential oils too, aren’t you? Can you tell us about that? Is it a little too early for that?
Eric Zielinski: I’ve got to be careful. I talked to my publisher. They said okay. We got away, but yes, it’s slated in February of 2018, which is overwhelming because of how soon it is. In our world, it’s like I got to plan this whole thing.
But yes, I’m writing a book. Again, nothing like this has ever been done, which is interesting because most essential oils out there are just aroma therapy 101 kind of stuff.
This conversation, we’re putting on print. That’s basically what we’re doing,
I think, because a lot of folks, because they sell products, or because they’re aroma therapy, they really haven’t put their stake, really attacking disease, and that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to really talk about how do oils really affect cancer? How do they help you balance you blood sugar, reverse diabetes, and that sort of thing.
It’s going to be wild—wildly adventurous. So we’re doing that. And I’m always growing my database, which is part of the club. I think we have over a hundred reports on oils, conditions from Lyme disease.
Actually, the article I wrote for your summit was […] about detoxing with essential oils. That was a huge article, a huge report.
We’re just constantly going on this, always learning. I’m tweaking. And that’s one thing too.
And that’s what I appreciate about you, Wendy, is that you grow. You’re not stuck to what you said two/three years ago.
I’m literally going back to my articles, and I’m changing things that I find are potentially inaccurate, or wrong.
We are humans. We’re trying, we’re growing, and we’re learning. And that’s my commitment to people is that I’m never going to stop.
So yes, we’re helping lots of people. It’s exciting.
Wendy Myers: And I totally identify with that. Not everything is 100% right. I have the stakes on my website that one day, I’m going to go back and correct that thing as well. But thank you so much, Eric, for coming on the podcast. I really, really appreciate it.
So tell the listeners where they can find you.
Eric Zielinski: They can find me at DrEricZ.com. If they want to check out the club, they could go to EssentialOilsClub.info.
Wendy Myers: And everyone, thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 Podcast. I so appreciate you tuning in every week because I wake up every morning just joyous and so excited to help to educate you about how to heal your health conditions naturally.
And you can learn more about me at myersdetox.com, and learn more about my healing and detox program at MineralPower.com.
Thank you so much for listening.
