123: A Family’s Fight Through Childhood Cancer with Ryan Sternagel

If you are ever wondering what stepping outside of conventional medicine can look like, then you are going to definitely want to tune in to the next hour. Because with me, I have Ryan Strangel of Going Integrative and how he Got to Going Integrative is a fascinating, deeply heartfelt and motivating story, and a story of heartbreak and triumph that can really fuel anyone's desire.

And knowledge and affirm that what you instinctually feel often is the right thing to do. So, Ryan, I want to welcome you to the show. This is your first time on Keeping Abreast.

Can't believe it.

I can't believe it either.

We've known each other for too long, Dr. Jen.

But in any event, it's true. It's your first time here. And because it's your first time here, and because I have heard your story a number of times, but my listeners have not. How did you get to be in the integrative medicine space? Especially in the integrative oncology space?

Speaking of the word integrative, we've got too many brands going Integrative as our membership community. Well, actually our podcast will be renamed to Going Integrative when that comes back online. Early 2026. Going Integrative plus is our membership community. The Stern Method is where you can. Where you can find. That's our main family brand. Because Stern Eagle is hard to spell and we like methodizing things. I guess it's the best we could come up with. The time still sounds pretty good. But.

How do we get into everything? Yeah, my wife and I were already fairly holistically inclined 12 plus years ago.

I started getting into, you know, truth seeking or whatever you want to call that whole thing. And in that process came to find out we were being poisoned and so on and so forth. Right. Fluoride in the water and whatever they're dumping out of the planes in the sky. And were you.

Were you raised with that kind of mindset?

No. No, certainly not.

So what do you think made you suspicious of fluoride in the water, which we are told is the reason why children have less cavities?

Yeah, I mean, how did I get into looking at all that stuff? I was fairly agnostic to everything. High school.

Early college. And then one day, a buddy of mine who's actually no longer with us, God rest his soul, but he showed me a. You know, it was the Zeitgeist movie. I don't know if you ever saw that one, but Law. Yeah. Yeah. And then like.

A flip just switched and I. I became hyper fascinated. With, with everything, you know, going on behind the curtains or whatever you want to call that. Right? And yeah, it never stopped. And you know, it's, I became politically involved for a long time and you know, it was back when like the Ron Paul days and stuff like that and yeah, yeah, it just became a, you know, one, wanting to know.

How to not be poisoned and two, how to, how to make the world a better place and all that stuff. Right. It just became, but I don't know, like I said, it was, it was pretty, it was pretty overnight thing. It was kind of crazy. But yeah, in that process started to learn about all that. It's, it's funny, it's either one or the other, right. It's like, you know, you can get into health stuff and then start asking why aren't we told all this stuff? And then that makes you a conspiracy theorist or quote unquote, whatever, right. And then, and then you can come at it from the other way like I did. You can start researching all this stuff and then the health stuff kind of comes with it and yeah, I remember listening to Dr. Group and Mike Adams and you know, those guys back in the day and yeah, yeah, it was kind of my first foray into, into getting healthy. So Teddy, my wife and I were both doing, you know, trying out different diets and.

Vegan for a long time and organic and you know, just all, it just, just the, the typical going down all the different rabbit holes. Right. And.

Yeah, yeah. And so you know that getting rid of EMF and living non toxically and all that stuff and so I mean, compared to, I don't know, 95, 99% of the population, I think we were, we were doing pretty good. But.

All that said, yeah, Teddy was nursing Ryder, our firstborn child son.

About a month before his first birthday and he was kind of bent over at the right position and she was holding his back and she felt a lump in his spine just right off to the side of his spine. And that was obviously concerning. And then, I don't know, like all these kind of red flags that one by one didn't really, you know, amount to a lot of concern. But then all those stacked together combined with he's got this lump in his back. So he was, he had fallen off the growth chart. He was born in the, I don't know, I go, I need to go back and look up the official numbers. But the 90 something percentile, right? And, and then, you know, fast forward 11 months later, he's down. I think, I think it Was in the twenties at that point. And he wasn't. He wasn't crawling, could barely roll himself over. It seemed like he didn't use your first. Yeah, he was our first. Yeah. And so.

So you didn't necessarily know that these were.

Yeah. I mean, even when we did, you know, kind of mention them to other people or doctors or whatever, we got kind of the. Everyone develops at their own pace sort of thing. And so it's like, okay.

But. Yeah, what else? He wasn't. He couldn't. He couldn't handle solid food. He'd kind of gag it up every time. Every time we tried to introduce anything like that to him. And. And he was also constipated, which. Which was also a new thing. Probably, you know, for the past three weeks before that, he'd been super regular. And then, you know, he just kind of stopped pooping. And so, yeah, all these things together were like, you know, something's. Something's going on here.

Yeah.

Took him to the pediatrician who sent us. Wasn't concerned with a lump for some reason that, you know, wasn't. It just wasn't. Wasn't a concern. But we came home with a prescription for occupational therapy to teach him how to crawl and speech therapy to teach him how to eat, I think it was. And, you know, that we didn't. Did not follow through with that advice. And so a couple days later, went to the hospital. Guy at the hospital took an X ray, and all he saw was that Ryder was constipated. And so we came home from that appointment with a prescription for a laxative. And he told us to come back in six weeks if the lump was still there. Right.

Yeah. I even remember him like, you know, we told him there was. I don't think there's much going on in his right leg. And he was trying to tickle it and couldn't get any response. And then finally, he finally got a little. A little kick. He's like, oh, good. Okay. He does have. He does have feeling there.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, I mean, again, you know, we did not wait six weeks to see if the lump was still there. We were back in the hospital a few days later asking to talk to somebody else and finally got a, you know, higher up doctor, I guess, and.

And that doctor in the nerve. And I. I think by that time my wife had already kind of diagnosed him with. With neuroblastoma. Right. Doing the. Doing the Dr. Google thing. And. Yeah, no, no, no. You know, it's. We're in the oncology ward Kids that have cancer don't look like your son does, and it's fine. But yeah, I mean, we, we just said, you know, please, just, we're, we're not going anywhere until we get at least an ultrasound. Can you just give us that to humor us? And got the ultrasound, sure enough, that showed masses and. Yeah. And then an MRI got scheduled for a few days later. And even before the mri, we kind of knew. Right. And so we were just hit the ground running, started researching and ordering supplements and calling around, getting advice and just everything we could think of. And. Yeah, then, then a few days later when the MRI came, yeah, I was scheduled for a 45 minute MRI and 45 minutes came and went. Hour, hour and a half. I think it was close to two hours later when the doctor and the nurse came back in and they both had tears in their eyes. And.

Yeah, the, the quote I'll never forget was, was the lump you felt in your son's back was, was just the tip of the iceberg. And yeah, it turned out he had a huge tumor inside of, inside of and growing out of his spine. So like, when you, when you look at the MRI from the top down view, it was like spine, spine, spine, spine tumor. And you could, you couldn't even, couldn't even see the spine. It was just completely. And a couple secondary tumors metastasis into, well, the, I mean, the, the primary was just inter, intertwined with the spine. Right. And then the metastases were also. The, the secondaries were metastasized into his hip bones and. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's how we got into the integrative oncology world, Jen.

Well, but you, I, I remember you didn't get right in because at that time they, they terrify you, right? And they tell you that, that your only option, even though they're upfront that it's unlikely it's going to work, but their only option they give you is chemotherapy. And you, you had a, you had an experience with an inpatient pediatric oncology ward. Can you, can you share what that was like?

Yeah, and I will say, I mean, one thing to be fair.

The difference between a lot of childhood cancer diagnoses and adult cancer diagnoses that, you know, survival rates are better for a lot of them.

Much, much better.

Yeah, what they don't tell, I mean, they, they kind of brush over it, but it's all the secondary effects. Right. And we, I think we had to sign paperwork saying, you know, he, he might be sterile, he might be infertile. All this stuff. And yeah, I mean, you look at the, you look at the, the stats on childhood cancer survivors and it's, you know, like 90 plus percent of them will go on to face multiple secondary chronic illnesses, and a big percentage of those secondary chronic illnesses are life threatening, such as secondary cancers and so on and so forth. Right. So. Yeah, but to be fair, some of the rates are. Are better, at least, at least initially getting you through it. Right. But yeah, yeah, that being said, that's the. They wanted to. We were in one hospital and they wanted to put us in an ambulance to go to another hospital 20 minutes away so we could start chemotherapy all that much faster. And that was the same people telling us to come back in six weeks, that the lump was still there originally. Right. And so it's like, oh, right, okay.

Yeah, now it's an emergency.

Yeah, yeah. And we, we did not take the ambulance. We. We drove and. But yeah. And so then, then when we got to the, when we got to the hospital, we got a biopsy. We got, we got. They said it was going to be a port. Turned out to be a Hickman line. So we had tubes sticking out of his chest because one, we weren't, you know, in the mindset that we're not doing chemo, no way know how. But.

You know, we did want a second opinion. And even if we did not do chemo, then we were already, you know, turned on to IV vitamin C and IV nutrient therapies and IPT and all these things. Right. So we figured we got to get the, we got to get the line one way or the other.

How are you already turned on to them?

Well, like I said, I mean, we were already holistically inclined to. So it was, you know, those, those few days of research, it was just, you know, not, not. Not hard to find out about these things. Right. Yeah. If you're, if you're motivated.

So did you. When you realized what you were dealing with, is that when your research really started into.

Integrative.

Things associated with cancer, like adjunctive things?

Yeah, it's. It's funny actually.

Part of our just health kick even before was.

We'D gotten super into like, just watching whatever alternative holistic cancer documentaries were out there at the time. We didn't really know why, but. Yeah, yeah, I guess we, I guess we do know why now. My wife's father had. Also had. Also had cancer. And so it was.

A bit of.

A bit. He actually passed away.

Not of cancer, probably. He was on, you know, he's on kind of Low dose chemo for, for a long time. Right. And so it was. Yeah, he, he had passed away just a few months before, before getting that diagnosis. So I mean, between those two things, yeah, we had already, already kind of found it. You know, we, we knew about juicing and cursing and.

Just, you know, very. What are the, what are the kind of. The go to supplements.

Yeah, you were already well on your way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

Yeah, yeah. And so yeah, we, we got the diagnosis, we got the biopsy, we got the, we got the line in and then we said, okay, thank you for, for those things. Now we're going to go home and get a second opinion. And that led to a huge train of doctors and nurses and social workers and.

Everyone they could bring in just one by one telling us, telling us not to do it. Right. And I also just through knowing about stuff, you know, I knew about child protective services and stuff like that and weren't sure if there was going to be a cop down in the lobby waiting for us. But yeah, we left and went home and just started, you know, just calling around everywhere we could think of between different, different hospitals trying to get a second opinion and different, you know, integrative cancer clinics and cancer coaches and reached out to the.

A good high school friend of mine. Turned out his, his family business is the, the Helen product, Helen951.

And yeah, I'd seen him post something about it on Facebook way back when and that guy memory got triggered and called him and yeah, he, he got us pointed in a million different directions and got us on that product. And I think that was, you know, if. I'm sure some people out there have tasted healing before. It's not, not great tasting to put it mildly. And that was the, that was the first thing to cross my son's lips besides breast milk. And he actually took it just fine. You know, I think he kind of knew that he needed. That something was wrong and this was what he needed or something like that. But yeah, yeah, so we just, just started going to town, right on, on everything we could, everything we could find out about and think of. And that only lasted a couple days though, because I think the, the night, the, the second night we were home, Ryder was in bed with us and my wife woke up to him with, you know, 100 something very, very high fever. And he started puking all over the place and we didn't know what was going on other than our son had just been diagnosed with stage four cancer and now it looks like he's going to Die right here. And so is, you know, that hospital that just, it just taken so much fortitude to leave. It's 90 miles on the freeway in the middle of the night back to that hospital. And turned out that the line that they got placed.

Yeah, he was septic with staph. There was a bloodstream staph infection. And so, yeah, at that point we were inpatient in the hospital with IV antibiotics and all of our.

Whatever hope we had of going to Mexico or Germany or anything like that, that was all out the window. And, and we knew we need. We. We knew we did need to do something about that tumor quick because, I mean, you know, a lot of folks know that they make it sound like an emergency when it's really not, but in this case, I mean, it really was. Yeah, those kids, some of these kids, when they don't get it caught in time, you know, they can get paralyzed, this sort of thing, just from the tumor and the spine. So we, we did consent to a round of chemo that was also interesting because even before, you know, when we decided that we wanted to do the chemo, we wanted to pump and fall as as much nutrition and supplements as we could. And so we wanted a feeding tube, which most kids with cancer get a feeding tube. But, you know, when we asked for that, like, no, that's, that's for, that's just for when they get sick. And we're like, well, we, we don't want them to get sick. So we, we wanted, We. We want the feeding tube narrow so we can give them a lot of good stuff. And that was like a half a day argument, right? And we finally won that. And yeah, I mean, so we, we had a, we had a juicer in the hospital room, right. And the family bringing us coolers of produce and yeah, just making, you know, whatever juice slash supplement concoctions we could to, yeah, just try to protect him as. As much as we could and build a system up and all that stuff. And so, yeah, within. Within, I don't know, a couple days, he went from having been a breastfed only child to all of a sudden getting healing and then getting all these juice and supplements pumped into them and. And then chemotherapy, right?

Yeah, yeah. So it was an interesting few days there and we, we. So yeah, we did the chemotherapy, cleared the infection, went home, thought we were back to okay, what do we do now? And then that's when child protective services showed up. And yeah, it said, heard you weren't complying with the hospital, but sounds like you are now so as long as you keep complying, then we won't take your kid from you.

Yeah.

And so it's really astounding, isn't it?

Yeah.

That, you know, the, the parent that's trying to protect the kid and, and promote their health and, and all of that comes into question, but the parent that is, you know, formula from day one, and I'm obviously not referring to people who don't have any other choice, but for the people that have a choice and are formula from day one and their kids are raised on junk food, like there's no issues there. Right. Child Protective Services isn't knocking on any of their doors.

No. I mean, let alone, you know, it's like, I would love to ask a CPS agent, like, how many, how many crack houses or meth houses have you come busting down the door with, you know, kids with fleas all over them and neglected and all that stuff, versus parents trying to do the right thing as they see. As they see it for their child. Right.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I mean, obviously the story has a beautiful ending.

It does. Yeah, it does.

Thank God. Thank God. Thank God he's well.

Yeah. I always leave people hanging too long there when I, When I tell them the story in person, but. Yeah, no, so, I mean, at that point it became a, like, negotiation with the hospital, and I was like, okay, well, what, you know, how many rounds are you trying to give them? What. What metrics are you looking for at the end of that? And they said it was going to be four rounds. And, you know, I said, well, what if. And I said, well, what are you looking for in those four rounds? They gave us some, you know, reduction in tumor size and, you know, other marker counts and stuff like that. And I said, well, what if we can get there in two? And they said, that's, you know, that's impossible. But, you know, if it, if it will humor you, then we'll, we'll give you a scan after two rounds and got to the two rounds and. Yeah, you know, and then we, we were just. We kept doing all the things right and found, you know, stumbled our way into one of the best naturopathic oncologists in the. In the country slash world office, because we were looking for IV vitamin C. And it turned out that that was, that was Dr. Paul Anderson, who's, you know, like right under God in the naturopathic oncology world. We didn't know that at the time. I just knew that, you know, I could go in there with all of My questions, you know, researching the most far flung integrative cancer stuff or alternative cancer stuff, and he'd have a, you know, well thought out answer to all of it. Like he was just studying this matter this morning, right? And yeah, so we, we were getting IV vitamin C slash DMSO and you know, continuing to do all the juicing and the supplements and turning our home into a little mini, mini healing clinic and ordering all the devices that we, we could and just were fundraising and all that stuff, right? And so got, got to the second round and blew everything that they said out of the water in terms of what they were looking for. And they, you know, at that point it's like, no, we, you know, we never said that or the story kind of changed and you're gonna have to do the four rounds. And so then we were coming up on round number four and we said, all right, so we're coming up on number four. It's gonna be over after this, right? And then, so it's like, whoa, who said anything about four rounds? It's gonna be eight and we need to start talking about radiation, all this stuff, right? And, you know, on the way home from that appointment, my wife just looked at me in the car and said, should we just move to Utah? And I said, yes. And under two weeks later, we were gone. And the reasoning for Utah was, I mean, I don't know, it's kind of one of the, it's both natural health friendly and high on the personal liberty scale, whereas, you know, not a lot of states meet both of those criteria. And it's not like it's some bastion of medical freedom here. And there's these kinds of stories here in Utah just like there were there in Washington. But it was, it was a, you know, we. Anywhere is going to be better than here type situation. And intuition, follow your intuition, follow your intuition, follow your intuition. And yeah, and we moved and we, you know, we did have to transfer to another mainstream hospital. But the, the, the team that we landed on was, well, one, they told us that eight rounds was, was always his, you know, from day one. That was, that was, that was the standard of care for his diagnosis. So they, they had never told us that, but it was, you know, it was clear they were just telling us whatever we needed to hear to get us to the next round.

Yeah.

And yeah, so, I mean, it, it was, he was only halfway through the standard of care at that point, but they were cool with, with, with backing off. You know, they said, we, we would like you to do More.

Obviously, but you're the parents and you know best. And that kind of freaked us out too. Right. Because it's like we, we had been.

Well, it's a lot of responsibility, right?

Yeah, yeah. We had been fighting for like, be.

Careful what you ask for.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, so that was, that was a gut check. Right. And it actually took us a couple days to actually say, okay, yeah, let's, let's back off. But I mean, you know, they were, I mean, they even said, well, you know, you can take a wait and see approach and if, if we do need to start again, then we'll turn on a dime and start again and we'll just get scans every few months and, and see where he's at and, you know, so. Yeah, I mean, our story is not a, you know, an all natural healing story, although they're as, as we all know, there are, there are plenty of those out there. But it is a story of treating everyone like an individual. Right.

And, and everyone gets what they need.

Yeah.

I think probably your objection and my objection to how it's usually handled is that everyone gets the same and there's no deviation and there's no consideration about the person in front of you and what else they're doing, responding. And most people don't have the advocacy to be able to say, okay, I'm done. Even though we had, you had proposed 12 cycles and I've only done six. I, I'm done. Where do you think you called on your.

Your confidence to be able to do that? Because again, it is scary.

Yeah. I mean, one. Just thank God my wife and I were on the same page the whole time. We always laugh about it, that we'll fight over the dumbest stuff. Right.

When it comes to the really, really big things.

Yeah. I don't know how it worked out like that, but I mean, we were just lockstep on the same page. And the craziest decisions, right between, you know, I lost my job later on and we decided not to get another job and just go full time with our online presence that we kind of built up, documenting the story and all that. So, I mean, that's, you know, that's why it breaks my heart whenever I. It's 95% of the time. Right. It's the, it's the mom that wants to do all the holistic stuff and the dad saying, just trust the doctors and all that stuff. Right. And that's, that's always so good job. Women having intuition and all that stuff. And. Yeah. I mean it's like it. So just family, you know, your, your immediate family supports really, really, really big. And two, I don't know. I mean, you know, I kind of joke about it that I, I wasn't. Wasn't the quote unquote best kid growing up from some metrics. Right. I got, I got good grades. But you know, I, I think the, the, the.

Did you give your parents a little bit of heartache?

Yeah. Yeah. There's some extra, extra, extra gray hairs on my, on my parents head. My wife too and. Right. That's like maybe, maybe we were building up our defiance of authority muscle back in the day. Is, is kind of how I, that's, that, that's the spin I put on it. So. Yeah, I mean that's, you know, that's always been a really big thing. I mean I, you know, especially me. That's never really a rule follower or order follower or whatever you want to call it.

And, and you're still not.

Still. Still not. Yeah.

Some things never change.

And that's, I mean that's, that's a really big thing. But you know, we were just doing a webinar with one of my favorite doctors and.

You know, it's like that, that was the, that was the parting note he left everybody on is stop, stop looking for approval from, from outside. Right.

Well, but while we're talking about that, and you did mention how lucky you were that you and your wife are on the same page. Right. And you have been on the same page this whole time. I think that is one of the biggest obstacles that people face is that they may want to go in one particular direction or the other, but their spouse isn't on the same page as they are. Their friends aren't on the same page as they are. Their parents, their children. They're not on the same page as they are. And it's very hard to make that decision and feel confident enough to step outside of your circle. How do you advise people who are in these positions where they want something different and are experiencing a lot of external pressure?

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Yeah. And I mean, again, outside of just, you're the most important person in your life. You have the intuition in terms of what's best for you. I mean, no one can replace that, that intuition and just, just knowing, I mean, just being, being confident in your research. And I mean, I, I don't know, just. I mean, for four people going through that, I don't know how many people have come up to me after the fact now. It's like I was. I was back home for a buddy's wedding a few years back, and, you know, it's like a train of old friends or, you know, acquaintances that we had basically lost, right, because we were the crazy parents taking our kids off chemo and all. They know people didn't want to be associated with that. And just how many people said, you know, I thought you were crazy at the time, but, you know, then my, my grandma got cancer and my mom got cancer, and I saw it from the, you know, saw it from the inside and started looking at all this stuff myself and just, you know, sorry for thinking that and, you know, good job trusting your instinct and, and knowing what's right for you and doing what's right for you and all that. So that's, that's one thing, I mean, the other thing is just preaching to the choir here, talking to a really great, you know, one of my favorite integrative cancer doctors. But don't just, don't just have it be all about your research, right? I mean, there's so much you can find out about and incorporate into your life that's, you know, we always talk about the foundational things are free, right. And there's a zillion of them between, you know, that sleep hygiene and circadian rhythm and positive emotional stuff and all these things. Right. And you know, that's, that's a big list and we can, we did all of those things, right. And we can talk about that more if there's time. But so there's all that stuff. But it's also just find one of the best of the best integrated. So not all integrative doctors or naturopathic doctors or you know, so on and so forth are cancer specific. And you don't want a kind of a general, general practice naturopathic doctor when you're dealing with a cancer diagnosis. You want a cancer specific doctor. But I mean there's, you know, that's not, it's not a long list in terms of like, you know, the best of the best out there with, with decades of, of cancer specific experience. But it's at least 100. Right. I've got a list of 50 some odd of my favorites on, on our website. And you are one of them, of course, Dr. Jen. But yeah, I mean it's, you know, when you talk to people like yourself or people like Dr. Anderson becomes very clear that these guys and gals know all the things that your conventional doctor doesn't know and your friends and family don't know. And so it's. Yeah. I mean, I think we've all got this authority complex built into us, right. And trust. Trust the authority and the.

Drilled into us.

Yeah, yeah. And so I mean, on the one hand you got to let that go a bit, but on the other hand it's just find a really good authority on the stuff that you're, that you're interested in that you're, that you're, you know, that the path you want to go down. And then it's not you just winging it based on listening to an interview like this or reading blogs and looking at Instagram reels about Ivermectin or whatever it is. Right?

Yeah. I mean, and then that's. You do all the things that is going to help no matter what. Look at the radical remission, nine factors of healing and.

All that stuff. Right. And just started throwing everything out there, throwing everything at it that, you know, get organized. That's, that's another big thing. I think that's where the method of our brand name, the Stern Method came from. Was neither my wife nor I were.

It, you know, we, we were not inherently, we weren't. We weren't little mini Dr. Jens and you know, type a. Go get them type people as I know you are. But, you know, we had to. We had to cultivate that in ourselves. Right? And so it was like we. We got super organized and we put, you know, we had little schedules and made routines out of everything and, you know, printouts on the fridge and morning routines and afternoon routines and night routines and Ryder doing breath work and when he could talk anyway and we could teach him, like, okay, okay, take these deep breaths and then do these positive affirmations. And if you scroll back far enough on our. On our Facebook page, you can find little videos of, you know, him doing his I am healthy, vibrant and thriving little, little chants and stuff like that. Right? So, yeah, I mean, we were doing all that stuff combined with. Working with people with decades of experience to. For that one just positive reaffirmation that. No, it's. You're not crazy. Here's somebody that can tell you all about cellular pathways and.

You know, possible potential drug, herb, you know, drug slash natural stuff interactions and okay, you know, it's not as big as. Not as big of a deal as they're telling you no to everything, but it's really no to this, you know, small handful of things. And here's the things that can help chemo work better and.

You know, prevent side effects. And it's like, why wouldn't it? Even if you are doing the full blown, you never question anything as far as the, The. As far as the, you know, standard of care goes and you want to do whatever they're saying, why wouldn't you at least protect yourself from. From side effects and, you know, probably help all that stuff work better under the care of somebody with decades of experience who. Who knows what the heck they're talking about, right? So I think that's.

Most people don't even know that's an option. I really do think that that's the case that they don't even. They. First of all, I think they think it's all or nothing, right? Like you're either all in on the conventional side or all in on the integrative side, and never the two shall meet.

And I don't. I don't think that they see the integrative side as supportive for the conventional side. I don't know. What do you think? What do you see?

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's really sad. I mean, we. We've. We had a. We had a friend, you know, a few years into the journey, a young man who got diagnosed and he was all, all into wanting to hear what we had to say at first. And then somehow it became.

I'll do all that stuff after I get through the treatment. Right. And you know, and I'm sure friends and family had a lot to do with that and. But, you know, I hear it all the time. I just got a text message from somebody like, wanting me to talk to them and then it was, no, never mind. I'm just going to go, you know, completely. So, yeah, it's, it is. I mean, I think.

That has been the case. I think things are changing very slowly and you know, not, not, not quickly enough. But I mean, there is, there's some interesting stuff happening between bridges being built and, you know, people, people taking immunotherapy on the integrative side and doing some really, really cool stuff with tailoring it with, you know, not just giving it because of the standard of care, but tailoring it based on genetic factors and doing intra tumor all rather than flooding the body with it. And I, I do see more and more, you know, I don't know, talking to like naturopathic oncologists, right. And they are developing relationships with regular oncologists and the regular oncologist will kind of discreetly tell them to go see this naturopathic oncologist to mitigate side effects and so on and so forth. So. Yeah, it's coming. But I mean, that's, yeah, that's the big thing is, you know, why, why wouldn't you at least protect yourself from, from all the side effects? It's. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, yeah. And again, I think just knowing that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

The, the answer is somewhere in the middle.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you know that, you know that there's. I, I've, I've definitely, I've never been. Our, our story is not a radically, like we said, all natural one or, or something like that, but going back to. Yeah, he was halfway through the standard of care and he probably, you know, in all my years of research, it's to finish the story. He was one when we got that diagnosis. Right. Eleven days before his first birthday and spent my 29th birthday and his, my birthday's right before his. So spent both of our birthdays in the, in the children's oncology ward.

And.

Yeah. But now he's, he's 12 and a half and living his best life. And the doctors had also told us that even if.

Even if he survived the cancer he'd probably never walk because of all the nerve damage. And now he's, you know, we live in Park City, which is a ski town and he's living the, living the Park City kids dream and skiing in the winter and mountain biking in the summer and doing jiu jitsu year round and all that stuff. Right. I forget where I was. What was the original question there? Dr. Jen?

It's okay. I want to talk about.

Obviously this whole experience with Rider. You can look back on it and recount all the really, really difficult times and difficult challenges and the fear and the trauma and, and all of that. But what, what came out of it for you that was unexpected?

Well, yeah, I mean it's, I can, I can point to several things, but it's, it's the cliche.

Cancer was the worst thing that, that ever happened at the time. So I thought. But turned out, you know, now we're living way cooler and better and more high vibration and whatever you want to call it life than, than we ever thought possible.

And you know, people will say I'm grateful for my cancer diagnosis. That's not my place to say because I'm not the one who had cancer. It was my son. And you know, he's probably got some, some trauma that he needs to work through. Just, you know, you hear about healing past traumas to resolve the cancer. But then, you know, cancer that he went through some really rough stuff. So. Yeah, yeah, not my, not my thing to be grateful but at least you know my, my role in it, I can be, I can be grateful for. And you know, we, we moved, we went on to be, you know.

Paranoid is probably not even the right word. It's probably fair to be really concerned about environmental toxicity. Right? Your son gets arguably born with cancer and something must be in the water. So yeah, I mean we, we ended up, we ended up buying a piece of land in the middle of the woods and building a house from the ground up with non toxic materials and all that stuff. And now we live in this awesome little homestead ranch, whatever you want to call it. We've got horses and donkeys and chickens and ducks and you know, we walk outside to just woods and moose and elk and deer and so it's, you know, we didn't see that coming. Right. Just having this, having this awesome life and also is a fulfilling your destiny, purpose, whatever you want to call it. You know, early on it was like listen to.

Listening to the, the, the whatever you want to call it truth slash alternative health podcast blog people. And it's like, oh man, these guys want to. Or these guys get to talk about this stuff all day. And that's, that's their job. You know, I want to do that. And I'd actually been, you know, on, on the side of my, on the side of my day job. Just research it like, okay, let's. I want to figure out how to have a holistic health website of some kind. And then when my son got diagnosed, it was like, oh, all that's out the window. I better just work really hard on my day job and try to afford all this stuff. But then putting everything we were doing out there.

Just, just documenting the story for fundraising, right? And we raised tens of thousands of dollars to be able to afford all this stuff that, that grew into a following and that grew into a website and a podcast and stuff like that. And then, yeah, that's when the day job went away and.

Took it as a sign from the big guy.

What did you do for your day job? I don't even think I know.

I was a, a sales guy. I went to, I went to school, I had a business degree and thought I was going to be a management consultant. And then I graduated in 2008 when everything went, when everything went down and nobody was hiring, nobody was hiring junior management consultants at the time, time. And I remember one of my professors, you know, she, she said in, in one of the classes, like about 90% of you will go on to be salespeople. And at the time I, you know, was mentally raising the middle finger and you know, and I'm, I'm going to be a consultant. And then, you know, here I am selling. So at first I was selling copy machines, the cliche, cliche sales job. And then the, the job I had after that when, when Ryder was diagnosed was I was working for a commercial energy savings company. So we made all office buildings and malls and stuff like that more energy efficient, which is actually kind of, you know, not a bad job for early mid 20something year old guy and got to fly different places. And so, yeah, I actually couldn't say that it was a terrible job. It was actually kind of fun. But yeah, but then, you know, that that job went away. It wasn't like a I got fired sort of thing. They just changed business models and didn't need sales guys anymore. And it was funny, I was speaking at the, the Annie Appleseed conference a year after. It was the one year anniversary of me getting, you know, losing my job. And my, my boss pocket dialed me and I called him back and I said, do you know what today is? And, and I said, I didn't know he'd pocket dialed me at the time, but yeah, I said, I said, oh, no way. And you know, so we talked about that for a minute. He said, you know, Ryan, it's like I fired I don't know how many, how many people over my lifetime. But, but you were the one that. I slept just fine that night, even knowing your circumstances, because I knew you were destined for something more than working for me. So, yeah, I don't know. There's like that, that old Chinese proverb, right? It's the, the, the, the old man on a farm has his one horse that does all the work for him or the horse and his son. And then the horse gets away. And all the villagers say, that's, oh, that's so terrible, your horse got away and what are you going to do? And the old guy says, I, you know, maybe it's terrible, maybe it's not. I don't know. And then the horse comes back and with, with a whole herd of horses behind, behind it. And so he, now he has all these horses and all the villagers say, oh, that's so great. You know, you, you got all these horses. He's. I, I don't know. And maybe it's good, maybe it's not. And then, and then his son is out, you know, trying to train all the horses, and then he breaks his leg. And they say, oh, that's so terrible. And now your son can't help you. And it's like, maybe it's terrible, maybe it's not. Then the army comes and drafts everyone in town because there's this crazy war going on. And you know, and then the son gets spared. It just goes on and on like that forever. Right? So it's, you never know. Yeah, you never know.

And assigning or a good or a bad to anything is relative, right. And there are, in, in most things, there are blessings.

There are. Yeah, yeah. And you know, we have our, like we were saying at the beginning, we've got our going integrative plus community. We get different, different doctors on and people get to ask whatever they want and these sorts of things. And actually just.

Just a couple days ago, we had one of my favorites, Dr. Jim Roach on and you know, he made the comment that.

The tougher souls sign up for something like this. Right? Because you want the experience. We're here to learn and grow. Right. And so, you know, maybe, maybe look at it that way, that, that you signed up for this.

I Don't know that we sign up for it, but we definitely are assigned. Right. Like, I do think that there is a master plan and there is a master creator and created all of us with unique purpose. And sometimes the way that our purpose gets shown to us seems like.

A little too much to ask and unnecessary or as the kids would say, extra. But it's only because it's what you were meant to do and what you were meant to be and what you're called to.

I do want to ask you, because.

Everything is not all right and everything is not all wrong. Do you think there is something in particular or some things in the integrative side that we are getting wrong with regard to cancer?

Some things in the integrative side that we are getting wrong when it.

I know we're getting a lot of things wrong on the conventional side, but do you think that conversely there are things that we're getting wrong on the integrative side?

I mean, I would say I get, I mean, it's a, I think it's a bit of a problem on the conventional side, but not so much because they've got their dogmatic. This is the standard of care and this is what you do and blah, blah, blah. But.

I think on the integrative side, the, the shiny new thing thing is like, I mean, one, it's good that cancer, you know, cancer keeps evolving, right. And it's get. It gets crazier and crazier and more complex. And you know, cancer in the 2000s is not the same animal that it was in the 1920s where you could just drink some essay act tea or, you know, right. Eat some cottage cheese and flax oil and it would go away. Right. I mean those, those are still, you know, it's like do the, you know, I put that in like the kind of might as well list now. I mean, just, just pack as much healing into your day as I can. But won't hurt.

Yeah, could help.

Yeah, it's. It's going to help to some degree, but.

Yeah, I mean, it's just there's, there's so many choices and new things to come out and so on and so forth that, I mean, you know, I think we, I, I mentioned ivermectin offhand because now that's, now Joe Rogan has talked about it. Right. So it's, Everybody comes in with their, you know, it's like they, they don't they. Going back to work with an integrative cancer doctor with decades of experience. I hear that with, with all of them, right, Is that, you know, patients already come in with their, their ivermectin and fenbendazole and blah, blah, blah. And that's, you know, it's not saying that stuff's not good. And it's actually, you know, there's some pretty interesting anecdotal slash, you know, research you can find on PubMed and stuff like that. But it's, you know, that, that silver bullet mentality. It, that's the conventional, I mean that is the conventional thing, right? Is just do the chemo and everything's going to be fine. But, you know, I see us not so much the doctors with decades of experience, right. But people just, you know, knowing that they want to, you know, take the integrative route, they still get fixated on. It's this one miracle supplement I heard about or this one miracle treatment I heard about or I'm just going to go to, I'm going to spend all of my money on, you know, three weeks in Mexico and I'm going to be cured. And you know, and then they've blown all their money on, on that expensive. And I'm not saying it's bad. Maybe if you got that, if that's like, you know, chump change and you got that lying around, then go for it. It's a huge, it's going to be a huge boost. Right? But it's. If you come home to the same toxic mattress that's been off gassing formaldehyde into your face all these years and now you just spent all of your money on this clinic and you can't afford a new mattress. You probably should have stayed home and just bought a new mattress and done. Also, it's like, yeah, it's, I think that's, that's a big thing is, you know, we, we keep, we. There's, there's still that silver bullet mentality and you know, it, we, we overlook all of the, you know, I mentioned the, the radical remission nine factors, if you haven't read that.

Foundational things.

Yeah, all those foundational things. And you know, working, working through your past traumas and that was, that was challenging with, that was actually frustrating with my son. Right. It's like, how am I supposed to heal past traumas with a, with a one year old? But, you know, we kind of came to the realization that, you know, we're, we're energy energetically connected and the more we can apply that to ourselves, the more it's going to kind of bleed off onto our son and blah, blah, Blah. And so yeah, it's, I mean, I think that's, that's the biggest thing is, is just, well, one, get rid of that authority complex or work with, with the right authority. And, and then I guess the, the other thing is again, not so much with the doctors, but with, you know, people, it's.

When they say, you know, I'm going to go the alternative route, it's like, that's, that's great, but what does that mean to you? Because, I mean, you know, a lot of people when, when I hear them say I'm, I'm going to go alternative. And then what, what that means is, okay, I'm, I'm finally avoiding toxicity a little bit and I'm eating more salads and you know, I heard about these couple supplements and I'm doing those things, right? And it's like, you know, cancer, cancer. I mean, cancer is you can call a lot of things, but it's, it's a disease of imbalance is one thing you can call it. And it's all the way extreme, like all the way over here, right? And just doing the middle, just eating, eating healthy and avoiding toxicity, that's not going to bring you back from that extreme situation all the way over here. You got to be extreme all the way over here because I mean, chemotherapy, radiation, whatever, that's, that's extreme all the way over here. And that's their version of trying to bring you back to the middle, right? If you're, if you're not going to do that stuff, then you need to, you need to be extreme all the way over here to get you back to that middle spot. Um, so, you know, I, I see a lot of that, of people, just not really. You know, you got, you gotta embrace that. It's, this is a season, right? And you're not, it's, you know, it's, it seems overwhelming and daunting. You know, I gotta do all this stuff. And I mean, that kind of just turns into the lifestyle, as we all know. It's um, you know, you just realize that this, this becomes part of your life then also, I mean, just going super, super extreme on all this stuff. It's, you don't have to go super, super extreme on all this stuff for the rest of your life, but you do need to do it now. And yeah, so I, I, I see people falling short on that side of things a lot.

And yeah, and then I do, I, I, I do agree with you that there is no silver bullet and we shouldn't, in the integrative space behave in, you know, a natural way.

That is comparable to the, the conventional way. Right. Like, just the same way that I don't think integrative doctors should substitute supplements in, for where pharmaceuticals are in the, in the conventional supplement space. Right. Like, it's not, it's not an even switch.

But there are.

There are a lot of people out there talking about ivermectin. And so I do want, I do want to talk about it a little more because Chris work is out there very much against ivermectin and I think our friend Dr. Nathan Goodyear is out there very much in support of ivermectin. And since it is so talked about right now, do you want to just get into it a little bit and, and give your two cents as to what you think about ivermectin and fenbendazole?

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Yeah, I mean, I, I put it in, I mean, one, just repeat everything I just said about no silver bullet, so on and so forth. Repeat that ad infinitum. I mean, a lot of things, I put them in a time and a place category, right? And I think.

I think people that, you know, hear that don't have cancer and just hear about, oh, I should be on ivermectin to stay healthy and maybe get rid of parasites and you know, whatever. It's. Well, now you're just, now you're just taking a pharmaceutical drug with that. There's plenty of all natural things that will get rid of parasites and keep you healthy that aren't a pharmaceutical drug with, you know, it's, it's got a good safety profile, but it's, it's still, it's still an unnatural drug. Right? So.

Yeah. And still has a side effect profile.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's not nothing.

No, it's, it's not nothing.

But I mean if you're, you know, if.

If you are truly doing all the things and you need a little extra firepower to force a couple mechanisms of action that you know, aren't, aren't, aren't moving the needle far enough on the, on the, you know, the quote unquote purely all natural side.

I don't know. I mean I've I've interviewed enough integrative cancer doctors who have, you know, who measure things and test things and add things in one by one and see what's moving the needle and what's not and so on and so forth. And I've heard enough stories now about that being the thing to, to move the needle to, to get somebody back into a good place to where you don't need it anymore. And if you're comparing that to.

If you're comparing the. Yes, there are side effects, but if you're comparing it to chemotherapy or radiation, you know, it's yeah, probably one thousandth of the side effect of, of those things. Right. So I, I don't know. Yeah, I mean we, I try to, I try my darndest doctor Jen to stay super undogmatic and you know, realize that just keep on repeating, you don't know what you don't know. And yes, you know, you do your best to.

You know, build a, build a framework of things you think that you do know and that are good no matter what and all these things. Right. But always staying open to new information and. Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, low dose naltrexone. Right. That's another thing where it's like, I would never, I, I'm not on low dose naltrexone just because it sounds great, but there's a crapload of research out there and you know, integrative cancer doctors that implement low dose naltrexone for their cancer patients and see really good results for it. And it's like, you know, I'm not going to be the guy to.

Go out there and say, you know, yes, I'm definitely not going to be the guy to go out there and say, yes, you know, drugs are good for everybody, but I'm also not going to be the guy to go out there and say there's, there's never a time and a place for anything like that. Right?

We've talked about those foundational things, right? The things that are essentially free, that are.

Probably the most important thing for everyone, which is, you know, eating a whole food diet and eating in the way that is right for you and a degree of fasting so that you're not constantly digesting and prioritizing sleep and drinking clean water and minimizing your toxic exposure and minimizing your EMF and moving your body, being in nature.

Healing past trauma. Like we, we've talked about these things.

And the integrative medicine world and in the integrative oncology world, we are often accused of only being able to access them if you are wealthy. And so as much as there is no silver bullet and as much as we don't like want to.

Have people make these decisions where they're, you know, giving away their last dollar for the new fad thing, is there something in, in that world that you think is really a game changer? Is there a gadget, is there a procedure? Is there a, something that you really believe in and think that it makes a considerable difference in people's healing journeys?

There's a few. I would never point to any one gadget or procedure or you know, something like that. But.

You know, in that same vein.

Well, this isn't free, but you know, turning, you know, turning your home into your own little like healing sanctuary slash clinic, right? So on the healing sanctuary part, it's getting rid of, getting rid of EMF and.

Toxicity and physical toxicity and all that stuff. But on the other side of it, it's just.

You can think of cancer as something super low vibrational, right?

The cellular voltage is gone. So what do you do on the flip side of that? The, the old. As within. So without. As within. As without. So within saying. And it's just, just fill yourself, fill your environment with as much kind of high, high vibrational goodness as you can. You know, get, get a bunch of house plants, but get, get a, get a speaker and you know, play healing frequency music or you know, classical music or opera music or, you know, it is just fill your, feel your life, get some, get some art that makes you happy. You don't need to like go to an art gallery, but just get a Print of something that, you know, makes you happy and just.

That makes you happy.

Yeah, just.

It makes you smile.

Open your windows, right? Let the. Let the air in. Just. Just feel your. Bring nature inside as much as you can. Maybe get a little water feature that, that actually adds negative ions to the environment and blah, blah, blah. Right? Just, just get. Yeah, Fill. Fill your life with as much beauty as you can. And then, you know, on the other side, it's. As far as gadgets go, I mean, I would say, I would never say there's one gadget that, that, you know, will do it all, but we are a big fan of healing gear. Right. Devices. And people look at our collection now and they, they say, well, I could never afford that. And we say, neither could we all on day one. But we just kept getting different things and adding to our healing gear, you know, arsenal rotation, whatever you want to call it. And, you know, the devices we got 10 years ago, we still have them today, and it's still part of the riders just healing routine. Between sauna and ozone and PEMF and hydrogen, slash Brown's Gas. And there's debate on whether hydrogen or Brown's gas is best. I like Brown's gas, but either one's great. You know, light therapy. So that's, you know, that, that's the expensive stuff, right? That does take fundraising and. But it's like, you know, I always say, like, if you're choosing between.

You know, paying a hundred dollars a session for something like this at a, at a, you know, at a clinic or something like that that has some of these devices or putting these things on a payment plan, which is that. That didn't exist 11 years ago when we were going through it. Right. Yet we had to fundraise the entire amount and then buy this one thing and then fundraise another entire amount or play the, you know, how many credit cards can we open before they catch on to us? And.

Yeah, yeah, we're still paying off some of that debt, but. But yeah, just the ability to put these things on payment plans now is way easier than it's ever been. So, yeah, that's, you know, that, that's not free, but it's, it's also, you know, just maximizing what you can do at home. But, I mean, I don't know, you listed off a lot of them there, Dr. Jen, but.

It'S cliche, but deserves to be repeated a thousand times that the mind is the most important factor above any.

Different supplement or chemotherapy or.

PEMF device or whatever it Is you get. I mean, that's all well and good, but if it's. What's. What. What did Jesus say about going on to fertile soil? It's, you know, it's that there's that. Right, But I don't know, I'm Jewish. Yeah, well, he was Jewish too. Right? So.

Yeah, but I don't do a lot of Jesus quotes.

Yeah, yeah, but I mean, so that.

There'S anything wrong with them.

That was the exact right one though. Because it's. I mean the fertile soil is like everything. That's all the things. Right, but.

The.

Just. Yeah, just, just the power of the mind itself, you know, in.

I mean the number one, the number one determinant of how long you will live is how long you think you will live. And the story that you tell yourself matters. And we know from the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza that what your mind thinks. Thinks is what materializes. And it can absolutely, in what is near an instant, change your metabolism, change your inflammation, change your chemical status and your chemical health. And so, you know, th, this isn't like woo woo. This is real science that's been demonstrated in a lab time and time again.

Yeah. I mean there was one, they did. It was, you know, so we've heard about the, the emoto work of Dr. Emoto of, of, you know, projecting different thoughts and sounds and blah, blah, blah underwater and then freezing those crystals or freezing the water and then photographing the crystals. And you know, what do you know the, the, the, the I love you water gets, you know, the, the beautiful, the beautiful designs and I hate you water gets the, you know, the ugly designs and, and all this stuff. Right? And then you think well you know, that's cool for water. But then, oh, we're made of water. So we, you know, probably want, probably want that water inside. But then even like, you know, there's the water thing, but then there's also like cells, they've done experiments where they'll put a petri dish of cells.

Yeah. They'll take two petri dishes of cells, right? And then a monotone speaker just recording, saying I love you, I love you, I love you to this one group of cells. And then monotone. Not even a human, you know, consciousness, right. Just, but then a speaker saying I hate you, I hate you, I hate you to the, to the other group of cells. And you know, what do you know, like, you know, they started photographing those cells over the time and the I love you cells got bigger and brighter and more luminous and radiant. And I hate you. Cells got, you know, kind of started looking deformed and it got less and less. You could see less biophotonic activity coming out of him and all this stuff, right? So it's. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, you can get esoteric with it or you can get just scientific with it like that, right? And it's okay. I, I want the, I want the high vibration cells. Yeah. Right. And so, yeah, I mean that's, that's a huge part of just.

Like a. I don't, I hate the word hack, but I, I don't know, going back to like routines and stuff like that. I've. The, the best thing I've found to do for that is just incorporate as many positive triggers as you can into your life.

Yeah, right.

It's like we're negatively triggered by all these things. And that's, that's part of it too, right? Is every time you do get, you know, feel your blood pressure rising or anxiety or whatever it is, or anger, just train yourself to take a step back, take a few deep breaths, you know, analyze the situation. What is it that I'm, you know, really looking for in this situation, you know, how. What's my next best logical thing to do from here and proceed forth and all that. But then, you know, just building in, building in as many positive. Then you can train yourself to just have that be whatever you want. Right. It's like every time you step through a doorway.

Take, you know, straighten your shoulders, take a few deep breaths, put it, put a smile. I mean, they, they teach that in like, you know, charisma training and stuff like that too, right? But yeah, they're gonna, they're gonna fly here. It's just every time you see your dog smile, you know, go, go tell your dog you love it anytime you're. Wait, like, I like the, the waiting one. Like anytime you're waiting in line or just waiting for a pot of water to boil or, you know, your glass of water to fill up or whatever it is, right? It's just every, anytime you're waiting for anything, just, just have that be a trigger, right? Instead of being annoyed that you're sitting in traffic, you know, just have that like, okay, I'm waiting. What do I do now? I'm going to take some deep breaths. I'm going to do a vibration check. You know what, what level am I vibrating at? Can I, can I instantly raise myself up a few notches on the vibration scale and I think about a few things? I'm Grateful for right now, in this.

Moment, for positive affirmations. Right?

Yeah, yeah. And work all that stuff into your day. Right, that's. And I always say, like, you know, it's. There's a. And then, yeah, there's. So there's the positive trigger thing. Right. Every time you step outside, you know, just, oh, wow, that's. This is, this is beautiful. So there's all that. But.

Yeah, and then just, just having.

Having some sort of consistent practice. You know, what, whatever it is, there's a zillion different things that you had to do. What, what, what type of guided meditation or tapping or yoga or breath work. I mean, I'm not going to sit here and try to say that this one's better than that one, but you should, like, look into all of those. Just, Just start exploring those things and find the ones that really resonate with you. And you know, it's. It's easy to, it's easy to find out about something like that and then say, yeah, I, I understand that conceptually that it's a good idea and you know, I tried it a few times and yeah, I felt better. But then, you know, life got in the way and just, I stopped doing it. But it's. No, you gotta. Whatever that thing is.

Find it and just, just that's, that's a, that's an appointment with yourself that you do not miss. Right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I know we're getting close to time. I do want to ask you because we're often accused in the integrative oncology specific space of recommending a lot of supplements. And so I just want your take on that.

And the ones that you have found to be essential and how you address that area.

Muscle is another thing. On the, the free, free side first. There's. Yeah, just exercise. And I mean, there's so much research on, you know, people think of exercise when it comes to cardio and stuff like that. But yes, cardio is good, but, but also just building muscle. It's even if, you know, you don't have to be a weight trainer or something like that, bodybuilder, but just doing more than you did the day before it starts sending. What is it called? Myokines, you know, that, that go out into the body and they're basically signaling molecules that, you know, are anti cancer themselves. And there's so much stuff. Right. We could, we could spend the next.

Next five hours on all the free stuff that does, that does move the needle. Yeah. And you listed a lot of them into Dr. Jen, but yeah. On the supplement side, it's funny, right?

I'll look at my, you know, printouts from early on that, you know, every time I'm going through paper, old papers or whatever, I'll find some of our old fridge printouts and a lot of the stuff, you know, it's like, oh, I forgot we even did that. Right. But I remember the thought process at the time and made sense and I'm sure it helped him in some ways. So there's some stuff that's kind of fallen by the wayside and some stuff that's remained throughout the years. And I've just started, you know.

Over.

Time I've tried to categorize things as much as I could. Right. And just put things into different buckets and just make sure I'm hitting all of those different buckets. And you know, the way my brain spit all that out is, you know, three broad categories between nutrify, which is, you know, kind of base level, super nutrition, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, essential fatty acids, trace minerals, you know, all stuff like that. Nutrify, correct and protect. So then you get into the correct category and that's detox, gut healing and homeostasis. Right. Balance, adaptogens, things like that. And then, and then you get into the protect category and that's stuff like, you know, more advanced immune support and mitochondrial support and epigenetic modification, anti inflammatory, stuff like that. Right. And it's. So yeah, I mean, early on it's weird.

Well, early on we were going really hard on all of those categories and.

And you know, and then later on, 11 years later, we're, we're still trying to hit all those categories just in a more strategic. You don't have to, you know, things overlap and you don't have to do all the things all the time and just try to rotate through things and make sure you're doing something to heal your gut one month and doing something to detox. It depends on budget and budget, you know, how much you want to do. And there's, you know, stuff you can do at home that doesn't involve supplements too. Right. But.

Yeah, and so then, you know, when it gets to the protect category, there's, there's the more high end stuff too. Right. That it's like those are the things that either you're really, really serious about prevention or that, you know, you're, you're going to be adding those, you know, more expensive formulations. And when it comes to, when it comes to. I have something I'm trying to reverse right now. Whether that's, you know, I mentioned the healing product that's, that's not cheap or things like poly MVA or metatrol or pectisol and.

Yeah, yeah, stuff that's you know, not the opposite of cheap, that does cost a lot of money.

But then yeah, they're not inexpensive.

Yeah. But then stepping back from that there's also, you know, I, I just call them the classics. Right. That have stayed true through the years and they only keep getting, you know, more and more and more research on all of them. And it's, you know, you hear whenever you look through PubMed and try to find out what has the most, you know.

Specific research to whatever, you know, particular condition you're looking at. And you know, some things have a couple. Because it gets overwhelming. Right. It's like pretty much any plant you can look up and there, there's some research on it. Right. But what has thousands of studies versus versus just you know, a couple studies. Right. And those are the things that have never, I mean they're, they're, they're not terribly expensive but they're not free. But they're not like those super, super high end, you know, really targeted things. But they're just going to cover. The reason that there's so much research on them is because they find out that affects this one pathway and then they say okay cool, then let's, let's see what happens on this pathway. And then yeah, it affects that pathway and okay, it's anti inflammatory but does it help the metabolism? And oh cool, it does help the metabolism. It just goes on and on and on. Right. And if they get nose to a lot of those answers and they just stop researching those plants but you know there's the ones that they just keep getting yeses to and they, you know, the research keeps growing and growing and growing and so yeah, I mean there, those aren't anything necessarily entirely exotic but it's the things that, it's like that the, the, that's going to be our baseline no matter what, no matter what other fancy stuff we, we add on. And you know that's again curcumin, green tea/egcg. Right. Or turmeric/cucuminegcg/green tea, quercetin, ginseng. Yeah. So I mean there's, I'm getting to. And I think what you were trying to prompt me to is you know we, we did after.

Kind of making these things our baseline for so long.

And just being ultra, you know, it's like going One getting tired of just buying different bottles for all those different things, right? And then have no, you know, it's just that that's a pain. But then also just requesting certificate of analysis from all these different manufacturers and finding out that it was. This guy did have a really good low heavy metal curcumin over here, but then it got bought by some pharmaceutical company and you know, now that's. Now it's terrible and all this stuff, right? And so, yeah, we took all those classics and eventually just rolled them into our own formulation called Our seven. Which, yeah, by the name, it's kind of Our seven.

You know, plant compounds, nutraceuticals, whatever you want to call them, that have not left our side from day one and made. Made to our standards, right. Which is zero glyphosates. No heavy metal or not. No heavy metals, but ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra low heavy metals. Is there. You know, it's like are, are they using synthetic chemicals in their. When. When they're trying to extract the nutrients or not? Is there a bunch of fillers in it? You know, are there fillers in it? Are there unnatural excipients like silicon dioxide and magnesium stearate and so on and so forth? So, yeah, I mean, we, we did just what we always wanted somebody to do is. Is rolling all these things into, into one product and with, with the, you know, highest possible degree of. We, we made it for Ryder, right? Because these are all the questions we asked for for Ryder. And yeah, we. We made it for him and now we're putting it out there for everybody. So that's.

Yeah, yeah, I actually, I love it. I take it every day.

When I can get it.

Yeah. On that note, I mean, yeah, probably, probably should mention we did set up a code for this. Dr. Jen can. So the, the, the. The comp. The. The product is called Hour Seven. The company we made for, it's our health. Naturally, we've got, got, we got. Going integrative. We got the Stern method. We got too many brand names around out there, but yeah, that's the company's our health.

Well, tell us a little bit again about all the different brands and the brand names and what they do and where people should go.

Yeah, so I mean, you can, you can find everything. The Stern method is home base. So you can find everything that, you know, if you're looking for us on social media, we did take a bit of an extended hiatus there, but we're coming back strong next year. So give us a follow and check out some of our old stuff and you'll, you'll find us next year with our new stuff. But yeah, so the, the Stern Methods where you find all that type of stuff and then our Health Naturally, you can find it on the main, the Stern Method website. But Also our health naturally.com is where you find the R7 products. And again, yeah, Dr. Jen will always get folks 10% off. And for, to reward all of your most dedicated listeners. Dr. Jen, for the first two weeks after this podcast airs, we'll do Dr. Jen 20 for 20 off. And that's even, you know, on top of whatever, you know, if you buy three bottles, you get a discount, six bottles, you get a discount. So you can get extra, extra 20% off of even that, those discounts. Yeah, so there's that. And then going Integrative. So our, our On Again Off Again podcast right now is called the Anti Cancer Revolution. You can, you can find it there and listen to old episodes. And then that will actually be rebranded to Going Integrative early next year as well. And then Going Integrative plus is our member community like, like I've mentioned before, where it's, it's, I mean, it's what we always wanted when we were, when we were going through cancer. Right? It's, you know, going, going back to find the best possible integrative cancer doctors with, with decades and decades of experience. Don't, you know, yes, research all you can, but don't, don't go alone on the integrative side. And so, yeah, we get, you know, I've got, I consider myself like a, I don't know, integrative doctor talent scout or something like that. At this point. You are, I keep going that, you know, I started going to all these integrative oncology physicians conferences, kind of talking my way in there just to learn all I could for Ryder. And I just kept, kept going and now it's just become this kind of passion of mine is to find the best, the best integrative cancer doctors out there. And so we, we get a, you know, you've been on the call several times, Dr. Jen. We just get to get it, get, get one of these people with lots and lots of experience and wisdom to share on a call. And it's different than just an interview because it's kind of open, open season Q and A and, and people just get to ask, you know, whatever they're trying to figure out. But, you know, sorting through all this conflicting information and, you know, not, not, you know, you can, you can, you can hear out both sides on the Internet forever and never really come to a solid conclusion. But just, you know, getting, getting to ask these types of questions from the folks that have been researching, you know, just actually seeing cancer patients day in, day out for, you know, years and years and years. That's. That's invaluable, right? And then people also use, like, it's. It's kind of cool that I like to say the one good thing that came out of the 20. 20 years was that telemedicine laws have relaxed. Right. And now people can see really great, because they're not. They're not everywhere. Right. There's probably not one of these really good integrative cancer doctors down the street from you, but there's many of them spread throughout the country and, and now you can see one no matter where you are. And so then it becomes, you know, who's. Who's the best for me to see? And I can say, you know, I get that question every day, right? Like, who's the best? And, you know, all I can say is, yeah, there is nobody I've got, you know, these are all the favorites that I've. That I've curated, and you're all my favorites. And then you can, you know, test drive them and, you know, see. See who resonates with you the most because that's. That's who the best doctor for you is.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

That relationship is so important and who resonates with you because this is a lifelong journey. Health is a lifelong journey, and it's important to have that person on your team who.

Respects your voice and who you have a mutual relationship of trust and understanding, and you're hearing one another. So.

Your list is invaluable because there are so many people looking for help and in the integrative space and it's not that easy to find. So what you've curated is so beautiful and so generous and, and invaluable.

Yeah.

As was this conversation today.

Oh, I should. I should know. Dr. Jen, if folks want to try that out, they can. They can do Dr. Jen 50 there on goingintegrativeplus.com and get. Get half off their first month and maybe you'll. Maybe you'll be on a Dr. Jen Q and A with us or you will be. Yeah. But, yeah, no, no, Dr. Jen, really, really appreciate you having me on. This has been. Been a long time coming.

It was my pleasure. So happy to see you. We won't make it so long before your next visit and happy that all of you joined us today. And if you can share this conversation with someone that you love, I'm sure that they would benefit from it. And I'm delighted to have been with you today and know that I will do that again. And I will be back next week, same time, same place. It's Dr. Jen. Bye for now.