Transcript #399 The Essential Oils Apothecary – The Best Essential Oils for Stress and Chronic Disease with Eric Zielinski

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1. Find out what’s in store for this Myers Detox Podcast with Eric Zielinski, who joins the show to talk about the best essential oils for stress, chronic diseases, Alzheimer’s, and more. Eric also discusses some of the great DIY recipes from his new book “The Essential Oils Apothecary”, why forest bathing is a great way to take in essential oils, and why leaky skin should be on your radar. So many great essential oil topics discussed in this episode!
2. Learn about why Eric decided to write his new book The Essential Oils Apothecary and the amazing resources you will find within.
3. Find out what leaky skin is and how many conventional skin products can contribute to leaky skin.
4. If you go to a big box store and walk down the cleaning isle without getting a headache, that is a red flag that you have adapted to toxins in a negative way. Learn more.
5. Learn about Eric’s key strategies for reducing stress in the body, and how essential oils play into it.
6. Find out how to do forest bathing, and why it is a great way to take in essential oils.
7. Learn about the how Eric addresses addiction in his new book using essential oils.
8. You can learn more about Dr. Eric Zielinski and his work at naturallivingfamily.com
9. Make sure to pre-order Eric’s amazing new book The Essential Oils Apothecary and receive over $400 dollars in immediate bonus content! Click here!

Wendy Myers: Hello everyone, I’m Wendy Myers of MyersDetox.com. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast. On this show, we talk about everything related to heavy metal and chemical toxicity, the health issues these pose in the body and how to detox them. On today’s show we have my really good friend and colleague, Dr. Eric Zielinski. He’s an expert on essential oils. He has a new book out called The Essential Oils Apothecary. We’re going to talk about this research-heavy book with all these DIY recipes and based on the research, ways to address all different types of health issues like chronic diseases, inflammation and skin issues. We’ll talk about substance abuse and addiction. We’ll talk about how essential oils can help with stress and anxiety. How they can help with Alzheimer’s and dementia. We’ll also talk about so many other things. We talk about forest bathing, going out in nature and part of the healing aspects of it, breathing in all these essential oils from the trees, the flowers and the other plants. I do jungle bathing myself, here in Mexico, where I live now. We’re also going to be talking about all different topics like leaky skin.

Wendy Myers: We’ll talk about all the different synthetic fragrances in beauty products and how they are super, super toxic. They contribute to leaky skin, which makes you more vulnerable because your skin is the first part of your immunity, it encounters different pathogens, bacteria and things out in the environment. We’ll talk about the problems with hand sanitizers, these synthetic fragrance and chemical-based hand sanitizers and the problems that they pose as well. It is a really, really interesting show today. Dr. Eric Zielinski is so inspiring. He’s so knowledgeable and so passionate about this. It’s a really good show, so stay tuned.

Wendy Myers: I know you guys listening to the show are worried about your body’s burden of toxins. That’s why I created the heavy metals quiz. Go check that out at heavymetalsquiz.com. It’s a two minute quiz. You answer a series of lifestyle questions that can determine your relative level of toxicity. After the quiz, you get a free video series about how to detox your body. Go take that at heavymetalsquiz.com. Our guest today, Dr. Eric Zielinski, is the author of the national bestseller, The Healing Power Of Essential Oils and his newest book, The Essential Oils Apothecary. Dr. Z has pioneered natural living and biblical health education since 2003. He is trained as an aromatherapist, a public health researcher and a chiropractor. He started naturallivingfamily.com in 2014, with his wife Sabrina, to help people learn how to use natural remedies like essential oils, safely and effectively. Now visited by more than 3 million natural health seekers every single year, naturallivingfamily.com has rapidly become the number one online source for biblical health and non-branded essential oils education. You can learn more about Dr. Eric Zielinski and his work at naturallivingfamily.com. Eric, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Wendy, you look beautiful, you’re glowing.

Wendy Myers: Oh, thank you.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: I love what you’ve done. How you’ve just shifted and adapted to the craziness of everything. You’re in a great spot. I just love you and appreciate you. You mean so much to our family. We had a virtual lovefest for a few minutes before we started the interview. Thank you. I mean, it’s my privilege.

Wendy Myers: I’m excited, I wanted to have you come on because you have a new book coming out called The Essential Oils Apothecary. You’re such a prolific writer about essential oils. I love that you’re constantly pushing the edge of the research on essential oils and how they can be used for so many different things in your life. I’ve learned so much from you about essential oils and how to incorporate them into my health routine. Can you tell us a little bit about your book and what people can expect from it?

Dr. Eric Zielinski: I was just writing up a little post to an inner circle group that we have on Facebook. I was getting a little emotional because the book almost didn’t happen, multiple times, and we ended up pushing out the publication date several months. I’m 41 years old, and to say this is the culmination of my life’s work at this point. I know there’s something else in me but this tapped me out. At this point it’s everything I had in me over the last 18 years of our Bible health ministry and professionally, full-time researching essential oils for roughly seven years now, this is essentially everything I’ve got.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: I’m being vulnerable to people because for those artists out there, whether you’re a research writer like me, or you’re a musician, it’s all art. In writing, you pour your heart and soul into something and I feel it, I feel the pain, I feel the suffering. We have millions of people following us online. We see their comments and we know people are really, really at odds. They don’t know what to do with their health and it’s chronic condition after chronic condition, after chronic disease, main causes of mortality and there’s fear. This book coming up is, I hope, a solution for a lot of people when it comes to even little nagging things. I say little nagging things like libido or erectile dysfunction, something that just robs your life. Something like helping you truly get a good night’s sleep or maybe helping you with those aches and pains. We go deeper Wendy, I don’t know of any other exhaustive literature review on essential oils to date. It is like fibromyalgia, cancer, fatty liver disease, we are hitting hard, the chronic illnesses that are debilitating our loved ones.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: I hope people see it as a source of hope and inspiration because I’ll leave you with this, as you know Wendy, we’re not a victim of our circumstances. We’re nota victims of our genetic lottery. We have the ability to manifest and to live health and healing. I believe using the plant-based medicine that God gave us through essential oils can be a key part of it.

Wendy Myers: Yes, absolutely. I just love what you’re doing. Like I said, I use essential oils in so many different parts of my life. I have natural perfumes that I use that I get so much benefit from. I use lavender to relax. I have eucalyptus in my bath and I put essential oils in my face creams. It’s helped me maintain youthful skin. Can you talk a little bit about leaky skin? I thought that was a really, really interesting concept from your book about using essential oils to help beautify your skin and help maintain a youthful appearance. What are some of the problems with the conventional products that we’re putting on our skin?

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Whenever leaky gut became more accepted in the community, there was a time about 15 or 20 years ago, even sooner, where the medical community was denying the very existence of intestinal permeability. We’re at that place right now, where leaky skin is the same exact thing as leaky gut. It’s just the microbiome on your skin versus the microbiome in your gut. When you have intestinal permeability, the microbiome in your intestines are not perfectly aligned, so you have micro slits which allow proteins and potential toxins to go through your gut into your bloodstream. It’s the same exact thing with your skin.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: More and more dermatologists and researchers are acknowledging it. It’s an actual term, look it up, you’ll be shocked. Why aren’t we talking more about it? In my world, what we put on our skin is a huge component of how we heal. It’s almost cliche because I love the fact that the realization that there is something called leaky gut created a movement, so to speak, where people are now trying to heal from the inside out. Amen to that but let’s not negate healing from the outside in. That’s really the key. That’s where the magic happens, where you not only are healing from the inside out by what you’re eating, by managing your stress and anxiety so you don’t have chronic inflammation internally. If you can also focus on healing from the outside in, with what you’re breathing, what you’re putting on your skin, what you’re wearing with your clothes, now you’re really incorporating true holistic healing.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: The concept is simple to conceptualize. I have basically damaged skin caused by toxins that are in our body care, namely drying toxins, toxins that dry out or dehydrating is a better word, dehydrating toxins, the triclosans and the registered pesticides. The chemicals that make up our hand sanitizer. One thing really shocked me, Wendy, as I was researching for the book. As you know, we’re coming from the wake of 2020, where people were sanitizing their apples for crying out loud. You remember when the FDA gave everyone that warning like, “Oh, guess what? These two, three or four dozen different types of hand sanitizers are not good for you. Don’t use them.” Remember that was a big deal? Well, I’ve been preaching that for like a decade, at least. When I realized the chemicals in this not only cause damage to the skin, but that damage can actually cause your skin to seep in because you don’t have the protective barrier that protects your body from chemicals that are on your skin.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: That causes inflammation, Wendy. Am I saying that could actually lead to other disorders? Yes. Yes, and that’s the danger. Immunology 101, the first barrier, the first layer of your immune system is your skin. I’ll never forget learning that in school when I was getting my doctorate, when I was in chiropractic school. We all think about our IgGs and we think about our gut health. I understand that 70% to 80% of our health is in our gut. I’m sorry, 70% to 80% of our immune health is in our gut. If you do not have proper intact skin function, and if your skin isn’t healthy, if your skin isn’t protecting you from chemicals, then you are automatically at a disadvantage. Leaky skin is so important for us to consider. When I was doing the research on the sanitization aspect of where we’re at right now, I didn’t realize this, but through Oxford journals, this isn’t some haywire off the wall research, this is legit mainstream research that no one can deny. In hyper-sanitized countries, developed countries like America and others around the world, the rate of Alzheimer’s is higher because of the sanitation. Why? We lack the bacteria balance that we should have, which causes your brain to be inflamed, which then will lead to dementia or Alzheimer’s, that’s the risk.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Am I saying using hand sanitizer is going to cause dementia and Alzheimer’s? No, but compounding with other things that you may or may not be doing, you are at a higher risk and that’s clinically proven. Why are we talking about this under leaky skin? Because it’s all connected. So like you said, what do you do? You can make your own, or you can buy the ingredients to hodgepodge your own little DIY body care, or buy something that you know is good that has essential oil in it.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: The reality is, it’s one of the main components that folks are essentially drawn to that caused this problem, this is the key, our natural propensity to smell. We love smell. We’re addicted to smell, we’re addicted to it. People don’t recognize it. You’re automatically drawn to something that smells sweet or something more vibrant. It is when the body care, lotions and potions, Bath & Body Works, comes out with their cornucopia of toxins that say, “Hey, this is going to make you smell good.” Well, that basically is doing the exact opposite of what essential oils do because they’re synthetic versions of essential oils. When you use them, the body can’t interact with these chemicals properly.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: So we can go a little bit more into the science if you want, on that. Public enemy number one are the drying agents, the antibacterial agents. Public enemy number two are the synthetic fragrances. Right there, that makes up the majority of the body care and the cleaning products out there. If we stop that, if we could nip this leaky skin thing in the bud and allow our skin to start healing, then we could really allow this barrier to be intact. Now we can start slowly healing from the outside in.

Wendy Myers: I just love that so much because I cannot stand these chemical-based hand sanitizers. I hate them. They’re so bad for you. People don’t realize it. They think they’re doing something good for themselves when they’re really not. Essential oil-based hand sanitizers are so much better for you, not to mention essential oil-based fragrances that you can use on your skin. I can’t stand the synthetic-based fragrances. I can always tell them from a mile away. In your book you have tons of DIY recipes as well. For someone starting out and maybe not really sure how to make their own facial moisturizer or hand sanitizer, you have tons of recipes.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: You mentioned something that I think is important. I’m actually taking a note so I don’t forget. I want to give everyone a warning sign. We could talk about all the science. We could talk about all the research. We could talk about why or how, but let me give you a test. If you can go to, let’s say the local big box store wherever you live, Walmart or some store where they have a cleaning aisle. Typically the cleaning aisle, the cleaning supply aisle, is right next to the food. This is really odd if you think about that, but that’s how Walmart is set up. If you could go shopping in that aisle and breathe, after being there for five or 10 minutes and find the cleaner you want, if you don’t get a headache, if you don’t feel nauseous, that is a red flag. Your olfactory system is not functioning properly. That is a red flag that you have adapted to toxins in a way that is not protecting you. That is a red flag that your senses are being dampened.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Why is that important? If you put your hand into a fire in a fireplace, or if it’s like a fire pit or on your stove, within milliseconds, you’ll feel the sensation of the pain and you automatically jerk away. That’s your adaptive response to a threat. That is exactly what the olfactory system is. It’s our primal sensation. It’s our primal system. Our sense of smell is at the core of who we are as mammals. That connects us with all other animal species that have that sense. That’s the primal brain. That’s the first part of the developing brain, where your mood, your emotions, your autonomic function, your heart rate and your respiratory rate are. That’s where it all starts and it’s through olfaction. Olfaction has no relay center.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: I don’t want to get too technical on this, but every other sensory experience has to go through a thalamic relay center in the brain. So when you touch something, there’s a hyper millisecond, you’re touching a hot stove, it’s a hyper millisecond to get pain. I have a brand new baby. Baby Ezekiel’s now four months old and something happened to baby Ezekiel where he hurt himself. You know how babies are, they have got little spastic movements. He accidentally hit himself in the head. I could almost count literally to three seconds until he started to cry. Why? Because his nervous system is developing. Why? Because pain isn’t an immediate reaction, smell is.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: The olfactory system, once you smell something, the nerve impulses immediately and instantly create a neurological sensation and a direct impact to your limbic system, to your brain. Why is that important? If you’re walking down that aisle with toxic chemicals in the air, and if you smell it, that means it’s in the air. That’s the key, please trust me on this. If you smell something, it’s a physical particle in the air. Why is this so important? I have dealt with toxic mold in my life. Why? Because I have dealt with chronic headaches in my life. Why? Because I was inundated by toxic airborne particles. I didn’t realize that was why I wasn’t well. That was one of the reasons why I had hidden with unexplained symptoms. I went to the doctor and he was like, “We don’t know what’s wrong with you. Here, have an antibiotic.” I was like, “Are you kidding me?” Until I fixed the airborne issue problem in my life, I wasn’t able to truly experience an abundant life. It hit me. I don’t see it, I don’t touch it, I don’t taste it, but if you smell it, there’s a physical particle being omitted that’s in the air.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: If you have a physical particle, that’s a chemical that’s interacting with your nose. If you don’t feel a headache, a nauseousness, an anxiety sensation, something that says, “Whoa, this isn’t good.” That sense of smell is not properly functioning. It’s so important Wendy, you live a detoxed life. You’re healthy. I found that people who are in literally a pre-autoimmune state, someone who struggles with seasonal allergies all the time, someone who’s always sick, someone who always just is unwell. In these folks, what happens is their body can barely handle what they’re barely able to handle. When a toxic substance, like a fragrance comes in, instead of taking you over the limit, the body adapts to it.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: In fact, I believe that’s the grace of God. There’s this adaptive ability where we need to adapt to our environment, or it’s going to take us over the edge. It really is. I mean, we need to adapt to our environment, yet temporarily. That’s the problem, people have become chronically adapted to toxins where they do not feel the negative sensation that they should. I would remind people, what did you experience when you first experienced that pungent smell of Clorox bleach? If you remember, go back to when you were a kid. Chances are, it gave you a headache and  made you feel nauseous. I look at my kids, especially the babies, and they’re just pure, they’re healthy. They haven’t adapted to years and years and years of abuse, of mental, emotional turmoil of all the things that they’ve dealt with. Even the abuse that has happened from the foods that we eat and all the things that we’ve done to ourselves.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: I see how quickly they respond to things, “Oh, I can’t do this.” At first I thought, “Oh, you’re being a baby, blah, blah, blah.” We make excuses, you give a child, a very young child, something that isn’t good for them, instinctively they will push it away. Instinctively. Their senses will be on fire. Their senses will be high alert, sight, sound, hearing, taste, olfaction, smell, and the sixth sense, I believe, intuition. It was like, “Ah.” Years after years after years of saying, “Nope, grin and bear it. Grin and bear it. Grin and bear it. You gotta do it. Gotta do it. Got to do it. Got to clean with this junk. You got to put this crap on your skin. You gotta eat this trash food. This is our way of life.” That’s basically what we do. I had to completely reverse that and quite frankly, it took a little bit of time. This wasn’t like, “Oh, let me go detox for a weekend.” No, it took several months, a year plus of regeneration.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: The Essential Oils Apothecary talks about why it’s important to live a detox life. Then it connects all these dots. Here we are getting you to the point where now your sensation of pain is working to literally help. That’s why diabetic neuropathy is so dangerous because people have gangrene and sores on their feet, they’ll have to amputate limbs because they don’t have the sensation of pain. If you don’t have the sensation of olfaction that says, “This is dangerous,” that’s dangerous for you. That could cause brain inflammation. That could cause dementia and Alzheimer’s. This is life or death. Why? Because Alzheimer’s is a top 10 cause of death. Wow, this guy is crazy. How excited can you get on this stuff?

Dr. Eric Zielinski: My wife’s family, her grandmother, her great-grandmother, they died of Alzheimer’s. Completely, completely avoidable. Completely preventable and completely treatable. If this speaks to you, then what I want to encourage you to do is give yourself that test, bake in that Bath & Body. I literally have to hold my breath to walk by that aisle. I’m so sensitive. Sensitivity guys, if you’re listening, if there are men or women who are maybe a little more masculine in the macho-ness, “Sensitivity is weakness.” No, sensitivity is not weakness. That’s something that I’ve had to deal with a lot with other men, myself included. Sensitivity is a gift from God. Sensitivity is what keeps us alive. Sensitivity is our lifeline, embrace that. Then there comes abundant health and strength.

Wendy Myers: I love that because even when I walk through a mall, you have the Bath & Body Works and these horrible smells. Abercrombie & Fitch gives me these horrible headaches from these petroleum-based synthetic perfumes just wafting through the whole mall. I think people don’t realize it’s just everywhere around them and they have just become accustomed to that. There’s another way through. Surround yourself with essential oils, the products that you put on your body, which just soak right in, a main line to your bloodstream. You want natural essential oils in all of those products and anything that has fragrance.

Wendy Myers: Let’s parlay into stress and anxiety. Right now, the last couple of years have been such a whirlwind of stress, mainstream media and fear. Collective fear around the planet. Essential oils absolutely have been one of the top things I’m using to deal with stress. Talk to us a little bit about what’s going on in the world and what are some of your coping strategies for stress and anxiety?

Dr. Eric Zielinski: It all goes back to what we just shared with the olfactory component. The olfactory system is, first of all, we need to stop the stressors. This is one thing we all can have a direct impact on. This is where the victim to victor thriving, the chaos mentality, this is where the shift comes into play. You and we, you and we, we all have the ability to completely transform our surroundings in our home, specifically. I would encourage those who are working at offices, or who are driving, to really be cognizant of the environment that you’re in.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: So number one is to stop the stress, you have to stop the stressors. I can’t put money in your pocket. I can’t restore your marriage. I can’t take the cancer away, but what I can do is I can help you at least stop the compounding factors. The reality is, like we talked about the synthetic fragrances being linked to Alzheimer’s, dementia and inflammation in the brain. Well that also causes chronic stress and a sympathetic response, it’s proven.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: I know again, it’s cliche, sympathetic fight or flight, parasympathetic. We’ve done such a good job, Wendy, in our natural health, natural living space, that people are almost immune or desensitized to these words. But this is real. You want to be in a parasympathetic state for most of the day. That’s how you rest. That’s how you digest, that’s how you think, that’s how you make love and we talk a lot about that.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Off the wall, the number one search term on my website, and we get millions of people on our website, is essential oils for sex. Why am I talking about that? Because people want help between the sheets. That’s why I have a whole chapter on it, guys. I have a whole chapter on it, ladies. It will help you.

Wendy Myers: That’s so key because if you’re stressed out, you are not going to produce sex hormones.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Thank you.

Wendy Myers: You’re going to have trouble with libido if you’re stressed out..

Wendy Myers: You need strategies around this.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: How do we work with stress and anxiety? If you notice one thing, I’m trying to be super practical. If I give you one solution, one idea, it will affect multiple things. Do me a favor, throw away anything you have in your home. It’s not even worth giving it away. This is hard for someone like my wife, Sabrina, who wouldn’t throw away anything and I get it. Actually, that was an argument. When I found out about this stuff a while ago, I threw away all the Bath & Body Works and all of this stuff, and that was like World War III.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Guys, don’t do that. Wives, don’t do that. Husbands don’t do that. Partners, be cognizant of your partner because they might not be where you’re at. You’ve got to be on the same wavelength. If you can, your aerosols, your poo poo sprays, your candles, anything with a synthetic fragrance, toss it. I can guarantee you scientifically, that without having those noxious chemicals in the air, will help reduce your stress response significantly to subtly, depending on where you’re at.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Okay, great. Now what? How do I actually do something proactive to reverse that and give me something where I can maybe have a get out of jail free card or something where I need immediate help? Well, I’m going to show you something. If you’re looking at a video or watching this, or if you’re listening, I’m showing people right now an aromatherapy inhaler. This is an attractive looking, lipstick type of tube here, that is glass encased with a cotton swab, organic cotton swab, that you saturate with essential oils. This is on-the-go, personalized aromatherapy that won’t affect your neighbor. You could be on a subway and no one would smell it. You can put this in your pocket, your purse, your car door, your office, or wherever it is.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Having something like this on hand, with essential oils that can help you and there’s a list of essential oils that could literally immediately put you in that parasympathetic state, starting with lavender. We have bergamot, which is a wonderful citrus oil, virtually all the citrus oils, by the way. Every citrus oil; bergamot, lime, neroli, petitgrain, orange, lemon and grapefruit. The list goes on. These all have an antidepressant quality. They are all rich in D-limonene, which has been shown to kill cancer cells and they help you boost mood. They also help boost mood to the point where it can help stop that stress response in its tracks. Because I used to struggle with anxiety and panic attacks, bergamot is something that I always have on hand. I found it can literally stop a panic attack in its tracks, just by inhaling it.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: What do you do? You literally get this aromatherapy inhaler and you just smell. Here’s the thing about smelling. You can be intentional, which is hard for me, I guess to focus, to close my eyes, to take deep breaths, to be meditative, or you could just enjoy your day and whatever it is that you’re doing, just enjoy the smell. Of course behind me again, if you’re watching, I have an aromatherapy diffuser. You can get it online on Amazon. There are other strategies, but tapping into that sense of smell is so key. That’s where having essential oils that work for you, work.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Other essential oils for anxiety and stress that people may not realize, because they think they’re for other things, are ylang ylang, again, going back to making love, most love blends, love potions they call them, have ylang ylang in it. Here’s the thing about ylang ylang, it’s not an aphrodisiac, but why would they include it in a love blend? It’s been shown clinically to reverse the stress and anxiety related to sex. Well, why would you have stress or anxiety? You name it. Past trauma, abuse, vaginal dryness, erectile dysfunction, performance issues, issues between you and your partner. A million reasons. I mean, sex can be stressful. The thought of stress, getting ready, anxiety, use lavender to help, but use ylang ylang to help specifically with that sex-related anxiety, but it can also be used for other things. I find that lime, frankincense and ylang ylang really blend well together. It’s a nice little meditative, reduces my stress, makes me feel good, kind of blend.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Then you have other oils, again with stress and anxiety. Whatever works for you. I’ve really been drawn lately, because my book recently brought me on a journey to learn about forest bathing. That took me on this wonderful … and I’m reading the book by Dr. Qing Li, look up his book, brilliant, on forest bathing. I’m finding myself drawn to the woodsy oils more than I ever have before. Why? Because I’m spending more time inside than I ever have before.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: There’s been more and more people, medical doctors and researchers saying, “Hey, we have got to get outside.” The benefit of being outside is stress-reducing, helps with anxiety, helps boost mood, but not get outside for the reason you might think. You go outside, not go out into a field or in a forest just to walk, to get exercise. Because of the volatile organic compounds that are being emitted by the plants, specifically the trees. There’s a form of healing known in Japan called Shinrin-Yoku, it’s forest bathing. They have Shinrin-Yoku centers all around the country of Japan. They actually have Shinrin-Yoku practitioners. There’s dozens of them, these huge, beautiful forests and centers.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: When you go to the center, you walk through a process with a healthcare practitioner that guides you through a pre- and post-evaluation of your health conditions and what you want to achieve. Then they prescribe a forest bathing session, and you get a post-checkup. Are you kidding me? They use a forest as medicine, sign me up. Sign me up for that. Why does it work? You have got the negative ions. That’s cool. You have got the fresh air, you have got the sun, but because of the aromatherapy, it was like, boom.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Here I am, like most people, whether I was literally forced to be in my home or because of the weather, or whatever. Most people now spend more than 95% of their life, and I would argue close to 99% now, of their life indoors. Especially with people who are just living on Zoom and doing their work online, like we have been for all these years. I have found myself drawn instinctively, Wendy.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: I can’t prove it, but I have a theory. I don’t think you could become essential oil deficient, like you could become deficient in a vital nutrient, like vitamin D, but I’ve felt this deficiency of the natural volatile organic compounds that I was getting outside. I was craving cedar wood, pine, Douglas fir, the other spruce oils that I would naturally get just by going outside. Because I wasn’t outside, my body was like, “Hey, we like that. Remember you used to go outside more?” I started bringing that inside and I’ve been much more intentional about spending more time outside too. That’s key if you have the ability. What’s forest bathing? I should explain it. It literally is just being outside. Nothing else, but just being in a densely wooded area, if you can, if not a park with a lot of trees, with no focal point of exercising or hiking. You’re just enjoying being human. Not being the human doer by just breathing and enjoying that process.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: A two-hour forest bathing session has been shown to rapidly increase your natural killer cells, which is an immune function that helps kill cancer, and other immune factors help improve your mood. This antidepressant helps boost energy, helps with stress and anxiety, helps with your self esteem, makes you feel better and gives you a higher purpose. When you’re outside, you realize you’re just a small speck in a microcosm. Really, it is the sense of awe. The sense of, “Wow,” this childhood wonder, it literally does all that”. All the research has proven it, but here’s the key though. In one two-hour session, all those benefits have been shown to last for more than 30 days.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: If you’re like me, if you have five kids, if you’re living in the city, I can’t live outside, but I’ll be sure to go have a day trip with my kids once a month, go up north, go to the mountains for a couple of hours and just enjoy, have a picnic, toss the ball, whatever it is. That right there, having that be part of your natural living lifestyle. If you’re like me too, maybe you work online, take your conference call outside. I can’t tell you how many times I’m taking conference calls and someone says, “Oh, I love hearing the birds in the background.” Hey, get on your Zoom mullet. You know what a Zoom mullet is? Have your fancy shirt on top and your Bermuda shorts on the bottom. Do it. This is the time in the season of life where we could truly have a better balance, where we’re out of our cardboard box of corporate America, which I was essentially stuck in for almost a decade, and we can enjoy that.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: All that is to say, for stress and anxiety, these are little tools. I’m diffusing these oils. I make salves with them, with coconut oil. We have so many recipes in The Essential Oils Apothecary that help with all of these little things. I want to encourage you to have fun with it because healing and the life that you’ve always wanted, I believe is truly in the palm of your hand. It’s within grasp.

Wendy Myers: I love it that you touched on so many different health conditions in this because I think the problem with branded essential oil websites is they can’t talk about any of the benefits of them. With you, because you’re totally non-branded, you dig into that research and you talk about all the different health issues, symptoms and the specific oils that could be used for those. You are just such a wealth of information. You have so much information on naturallivingfamily.com and in your new book, The Essential Oils Apothecary.

Wendy Myers: What you touch on in The Essential Oils Apothecary is chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, bone and joint disorders, Alzheimer’s and dementia and stress and anxiety. You also touch on depression and substance abuse. Can you talk briefly about that and the significance of that, the importance of it right now?

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Wendy, I come from a place of knowing intimately what that’s like. I am very respectful when I approach this topic because to say I was an addict, I think all of us maybe have a tendency toward something that we may abuse, whether it’s sugar, coffee or whatever it might be. For me, I dove into substance abuse, I was an alcoholic and I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. I abused street narcotics. That was coupled with depression, I was very depressed and I self-medicated when I was in my late teens and early 20s. The reason I pair those two together is because there are significant similarities between the two. One thing I realized, it wasn’t until I really started feeling better. It was really when I started to love myself and really was when I was out of the pit, out of the darkness. Someone who knows what depression is like, you know what I mean when I say you’re numb, you’re dark and you’re lost. It’s like, if I could help someone, out of everything that I do, this led me to consider how to take my life, that’s suicide ideation. Thankfully I never acted upon it but getting to the point where you start pondering, start thinking, start planning, start looking at all the variables. That’s a really, really bad place to be.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Coming from that, I recognize that if there’s one thing I could do is to help people feel better, meaning get a little happiness and joy in your life. Not synthetically, not by taking a drug like ecstasy, which I used to abuse, by actually taking something that will help you. Going back to what we shared earlier, that’s where the citrus oils have made a huge difference in my life and with millions of people.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: When it comes to addiction specifically, I outline in the book all the different oils that have been shown clinically to actually help with addiction. I’ll share one quick, off the cuff, black pepper has been shown to help with the withdrawal symptoms related to nicotine cessation. How many people are trying to quit smoking, but they’re Jonesing and they’re getting that withdrawal. They get the detox like, “Man, I can’t handle it.” You get the shakes, you get nauseous and you get headaches. I get it. I get all that. I mean, I couldn’t live a day, I couldn’t live a day without having a smoke.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: If I could give someone a solution that could reduce that sensation where it’s like, “Okay, I could get another day, another day, another day”. We have a recipe called quit sticks and going back to smoking again, whether it’s another drug, a lot of people have oral fixations. It’s really the thing in your mouth all the time, so that’s part of it. It’s part of the addiction cascade.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: We have a toothpick remedy. We got a toothpick remedy where we show people how to soak wooden toothpicks in a special, essential oil blend that I kid you not, that we have worked with people and it’s helped them quit smoking. When they feel like they want to smoke, they put the toothpick in their mouth, it satisfies the oral fixation and then they get Beta-caryophyllene, which is a wonderful plant compound that is also part of the endocannabinoid system. That’s another little tip why essential oils work similar to CBD. Black pepper is rich in Beta-caryophyllene, so you have black pepper and you’re just sucking on the toothpick and you get those plant-based chemicals in your system. Next thing you know, it’s like, “Okay, I can go another couple of hours, I can go another day.” We’ve helped people quit smoking this way.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Same thing with other self-inflicting, harmful addictions. There are many and I would leave people with the thought, when’s the last time you’ve gone a day or two without sugar? I’m not talking apples. I’m talking white processed, poisonous sugar. When’s the last time you’ve gone a couple of days without putting sugar in your coffee? I used to put sugar in my Cheerios when I was a kid. I can’t believe my mom and dad would let me do that. Remember like a spoonful of sugar, God, help me. Anyway, you could break this thing. You could beat this thing. There are other strategies we talk about too, but I want to leave you with that. I want to leave you with that. There are tools available to us and if essential oils can do nothing less than to make you feel better, then that’s a huge win. I was addicted, really, I became addicted to feeling bad. I became addicted to self-loathing. I became addicted to drugs. I’ve become addicted to feeling good. I became addicted to feeling energetic, to love life.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: That’s my personality. I’m an extremist. If you can relate to that, I’m telling you, life can be exactly what you hope it could be. Realizing we all deal with stuff at times, but having tools at your hands, like essential oils, to help you through those seasons, that’s life-changing.

Wendy Myers: Absolutely. Eric, it’s so inspirational talking to you. I love every time I have you on the show or we talk on the phone. You are so positive and so inspirational for so many millions of people. I love your work. I highly recommend everyone go out and get Eric’s new book, The Essential Oils Apothecary. Tell us, when does it come out and where can we get it?

Dr. Eric Zielinski: Available everywhere books are sold and it’s available now. Actually it publishes September 7th. I do have a really, really cool sweet gift as a thank you for people that buy it. If you go to eoapothecary.com, we recorded a series of demo videos that my wife and I show you how to make a lot of the recipes. We can have a little discussion because there’s only so much I could fit in the book. We talked a little bit about some other things that we couldn’t fit in the book. You’ll love it. eoapothecary.com. Wendy, thanks so much for having me. I love the background. I love how you’re glowing. Whatever you’re doing, keep on doing, girl. You’re doing great.

Wendy Myers: Yes, well I’ve been doing jungle bathing in Mexico.

Dr. Eric Zielinski: I love it.

Wendy Myers: That’s my secret. That’s my secret. Well Eric, thanks for coming on the show and always lovely having you and everyone. Thanks for tuning in to the Myers Detox Podcast, where every week we talk about different strategies, detox and natural healing modalities to help upgrade your life. To help to facilitate detoxification of heavy metals and chemicals. Thanks for tuning in every week. I will talk to you guys very, very soon.