The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #305 - Dr. Eric Zielinski

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Dr. Eric Zielinski
It's like people don't equate long-term, chronic, low-grade exposure to something that could happen in the future. It's literally impossible to avoid artificial fragrances if you live in America, because they're all over.

To know this is to realize just how powerful smell is compared to anything else that we do to impact our brain. And then once the brain is impacted and has the impulse, it responds in kind.

Melanie Avalon
Welcome to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast, where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health, mindset, longevity, and so much more. Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind, we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics flying here in. So friends, are you ready to join me? Let's do this.

Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast. Friends, it is such an honor to be back here today for the third time with the incredible Eric Zielinski. We talk about this in the show, but I have been a fan of his work for years. He's the go-to guy along with his wife, Sabrina, for the ultimate source in using essential oils for health and wellness. He's the author of so many books, including the massive bestseller, The Healing Power of Essential Oils, as well as his newest release, Essential Oils Recipes, which is a 52 card deck with so many incredible recipes. I love it. It makes an incredible gift for people. And he has become such a friend because he lives here in Atlanta. Today's conversation was so powerful. In particular, I think you will find the end so inspiring and we touch on so many things. We talk about the science of essential oils, how they compare to pharmaceuticals, the power of scent, both emotionally and how it affects our health, the horrible problems with fragrances and everything, problems with fake essential oils, secrets behind the blue zones, longevity, sensual oils, and so much more. I can't wait to hear what you guys think. These show notes will be at essential oils recipes. Those show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about. So definitely check that out. And there will be two episode giveaways for this episode. One will be in my Facebook group, I have biohackers, intermittent fasting plus real foods plus life. Comment something you learned or something that resonated with you on the pinned post to enter to win something that I love. And then check out my Instagram by the Friday announcement post. And again, comment there to enter to win something that I love. All right, I think that's all the things without further ado, please enjoy this fabulous conversation with my dear friend. Hi friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly honored and excited about the conversation I am about to have, and it is always such a joy and pleasure when A, I have repeat guests back on the show, and then B, when I actually get to know the guests in real life, because yes, I am here with my friend, Dr. Eric Zielinski, and actually, Eric, I wanna tell you, I probably told you this story maybe last time we recorded, or maybe the first time we came on, because when you first came on in, I think, 2020, maybe, it was episode 25, which is crazy, and then again in 2022, so the first time we came on was for your book, The Healing Power of Essential Oils, Soothe Inflammation, Boost, Move, Prevent Autoimmunity,

Melanie Avalon
and Feel Great in Every Way, and then you came back a couple years later for the essential oils apothecary, which was advanced strategies and protocols for chronic disease and conditions, and I will put links to both of those episodes in the show notes, they are deep, deep dives into the science of essential oils, and now you're back today for your new book, although it's a hybrid book, it's called Essential Oils Recipes, a 52-card deck for healing and home, but the story I wanna tell is, when I first launched this show a while ago, so I guess it was probably 2019 that I was really gathering episodes and everything, because now when I book guests, I'm on a lot of lists, I'm friends with lots of publishers and agents, so I'm kind of inundated with people wanting to come on the show, which is absolutely incredible, and I get to meet so many incredible people, but in the very beginning, I was really having to reach out and find people for the show, and I was so set on having you on the show, because I was so obsessed with what you were doing with your book and your work with essential oils, so when you came on, it was literally just me saying a prayer that you would wanna come on, and it was such an honor, and then it just turned out that you live in Atlanta, so we actually just got dinner again with you and your gorgeous, stunning wife, Sabrina, a few weeks ago for listeners.

Dr. Zelensky has an incredible family. They have seven beautiful children, and it's funny, I was showing my sister a picture from your Instagram yesterday, and I was like, they're doing something right, because when you guys take family photos, A, everybody is all dressed in theme, B, everybody looks so happy, like all the kids were like these pictures, so basically for listeners, Eric is such a wonderful, incredible human being, doing great things for our planet, really the go-to person and source and figure with his work for using essential oils to help heal our lives.

Yeah, so thank you for coming back. I'm so excited to dive into all the things, and yeah, I'm excited.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Lots of hugs that was great hanging out we went to our favorite persian restaurant room in atlanta and wonderful wonderful date with my wife and it's always fun to get together with local folks like you're you're you're part of what we call natural living family i mean it's real folks we have, you know thousands and thousands of folks that are part of our groups online and millions of listeners and readers and things over the years but i mean if you're local to atlanta reach out and we love hanging out we love meeting and.

Yes and you know i'll give sabrina props for the coordination of her clothing because that was something that i i really fought against like iphone oh yeah i fought against a lot of things like i fought against essential oils we'll talk about that maybe yeah i mean sabrina sabrina is a very strong woman. And she knows what she likes and she very is super smart she is very trendy and and she forced the she forces and forced the children to coordinate for many many years. In the same color and oftentimes the boys because they're so close in age will have the same exact shirt and and you know in care when they're two or three or four years old but as i get older they would complain and now it's just like whatever but i i kinda fought the system and i was always like. The sore thumb and in pictures and it's like a couple years ago i just i just embraced it and i like this is really kinda cool so anyway now it's kinda funny long story short is every sunday especially we coordinate at church and people now like. Coordinate and and and they take family photos and my pastor was wearing blue during blue day and he's like hey i'm i'm i i i match the z's so he jumped in and he photobombed our our family photo anyway creating a movement of coordination.

Melanie Avalon
That's so amazing. I love that so much.

I just like I see your pictures and then I have flashbacks to my family and like you know the one time we coordinate once a year for a Christmas photo and it's just like nobody's about it. So I'm like how do they do this on the regular?

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Yeah, there's an option. And hey, here's a quick little tip. Again, we're from natural living family. We're all about natural living and we're all about family, right? I mean, obviously we have seven kids, so we have family mindset.

But oh, shock, Melanie, I, as you know, right, I have a pretty large email following. I email our readers every day. And oftentimes I try to incorporate family photos, just encourage people and just to bring it like, hey, I'm real, like, right? I'm a dad, I'm 45 years old. I deal with issues too. And I bring in family life into that. Try to be just real and authentic as possible. And no joke, it was two years ago that I was scrolling through my phone because I wanted to post a family photo. I couldn't find one. And I had about, at the time, like 36,000 photos on my phone. I was scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. I had one of me and Sabrina. I had one and baby number four and a couple with three of the kids together and I had a lot of family photos, but none of all of us. Like, what in the world? I had to scroll like 5,000 photos to find one. I'm like, you know what? We're gonna do one after church this Sunday because when do we all get together? And I have a 16-year-old down to a baby, baby. I mean, it's rare that we're all together in a position. So every Sunday, I missed a couple here or there, but for the past two, almost and a half years, we've been collecting family photos after church. It's right after church. And the kids know this too because oftentimes we'll go to like, kill me crazy or some smoothie place and we'll get some smoothies or some special treats or, you know, after church. I'm like, all right, they get together. It's like formation. They notice smile and oftentimes it's fun. It's authentic. But we got this down pat to a science and at first it was like wrangling cats, herding cats together. But now I'll tell you though, folks, whether or not you have children or not, you have loved ones in your life and being intentional about taking those photos because now I look back and I just see our growth. I see us aging. I see just the fond memories it brings. And there's a lot to be said about as we get older, how important this is, especially for people as they, you know, deal with cognitive decline and they go through reminiscent therapy. And I've looked into all this kind of fun stuff. But the bottom line is we wanna be able to look back and smile and now I just have just a database of family photos. So.

Melanie Avalon
Anyway, little tip. I love it.

And speaking to that, one of the things we talked about at dinner, I really want you guys, and Sabrina especially, to write a parenting book because you guys, it was so inspiring when we were listening to everything you guys do with the chores and just all of it. It's like, this would be really helpful, like a really good book to have.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
There's a recent study that has clearly proven the most successful people had chores when they were a kid. This article that I read based off of the study was like, look, your kids need work. Your kid needs responsibilities. These are skills that will lead them to a very successful life.

When you're thinking of entrepreneurs, CEOs, and all that kind of stuff, they had work when they were a kid. Again, I go back to Sabrina. A lot of what we do is because of her. Truly, the recipes, the body care, the cleaning products, she formulated this stuff. We're an interesting couple in that. I'm the researcher. I have a public health research background. I'm the scientist. I'm diving deep into the literature. I'm like, hey, look at what the scientist came up with. Combine these four or five different essential oils with this or that. She's like, okay, let me make a body cream out of that. Let me figure out a hand sanitizer version of that. It's really neat. She got that from her dad. Her dad is a PhD chemist and retired at this point. He was an agroscientist for Dow Chemical. I guess a little family secret. Her dad helped develop GMO corn. Remember that? Crazy. I know. He worked with Monsanto on a secret government project in the 80s and 90s. This was legit. He felt and still does that helping feed humanity and all that stuff. Imagine having a PhD chemist as a dad. His whole life was based off of lists and check marks and all the fun little things. That set a framework for her, for organization, for thinking scientifically, and here we go. The fun thing is how to convert all that into a natural lifestyle. That's what we've been doing since we've been married 18 years.

Melanie Avalon
It's so amazing. So you said you were initially a little bit hesitant about the essential oils.

Was there a gateway essential oil for you, like a product she made where you were like, okay, this works?

Dr. Eric Zielinski
I like how you worded gateway.

Melanie Avalon
There's always a gateway one.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Oh, I love that. I mean, really, because I go back to what brought me down another path, there's always that gateway, right? It was actually before Sabrina, and I'll never forget Lavender. Lavender was always an anchor for me.

And for those of you who know my story, if you don't, I mean, I'm a Christian, and it's just a key part of who I am, and it's a key part of my healing story. And I'll never forget when I had my spiritual transformation, it was actually 22 years this month. At the house that I was staying at at the time, when I was just hanging out with a friend, and I had that transformation, he actually had organic lavender soap. I vividly remember this, and this is kind of maybe going into some of the teaching, a little bit part of the power of the olfactory system. Whenever I smell lavender, it brings me back to that place. And the thing about it, being a Christian was the best thing that ever happened to me. And maybe we can go into the story of why or where or how. But I was riddled with addiction. I was riddled with pain, emotional, mental, physical pain. I contemplated suicide. I was at a really, really dark place. And so I had my proverbial, I was blind, now I see moment. And so when I'm at Christ, it was like, whoa, everything, hope, joy, peace, health, healing. And lavender was right there in the middle of it.

So I vividly remember the first moment that I had and used this soap. And this soap was pure lavender. This was before they added linalool and other synthetic ingredients to make the lavender smell different now. Like, it's kind of sad to say, like, most store-bought stuff is just junk, knockoff. But this was real lavender soap. And it just brought just peace to my heart.

And I didn't know what it was. I just remember enjoying washing my hands with soap because I was raised with dial soap and the chemical soaps that had these fragrances in it that weren't good. And I was like, ah, I can't, I can't think of any happy memory of any cleaning woman of my childhood. But when I go back to being 23 years old, lavender. So lavender was always an anchor, Melanie, always an anchor for joy, for peace, for hope, and all those emotions that I experienced when I became a Christian.

But I kind of suppressed it in a sense, like, okay, that's for soap. I mean, that's for, like, when I go to Whole Foods or natural health stores. So when I met Sabrina, and she's, like, slathering these essential oils and making all this stuff, I'm like, okay, that's cool. That's for you. But I make the joke. It's not like I'm gonna go play, like, beach volleyball or pickleball with my guy friend smelling like ylang-lang. Like, they'll take my guy card away. Like, it's real. Like, there's a stigma. I mean, guys aren't supposed to smell pretty. I mean, let's just call it for what it is. And yeah, there are musky type of smells, but there is a real stigma out there. And I used to have guys make fun of me, by the way. And now, I mean, it's my brand. It's my business. So I love it.

And it's kind of funny. On a side note, I love it when a dude comes up to me like, bro, you smell pretty. You smell good. What are you wearing?

Dr. Eric Zielinski
And I'm like, citrus oils. He looks at me like for real. And like, you know, so I have like kind of like bro conversation. So I was hesitant.

I really was in the sense that I didn't understand it. All I knew was that lavender was, you know, a part of my my spiritual journey. And it was it was kind of cool. And I like the smell. And then to see Sabrina early on in our marriage. And I had my aha moment right at the time. when I was commissioned to write a series of public health reports on essential oils and a client I had at the time had me write just like a dozen, dozen white papers and articles on this stuff. And I had a, it was my job, I was getting paid to read just dozens, dozens, hundreds of clinical trials and like, wow, essential oils can help with inflammation, essential oils can help stop maybe potential tumor growth, essential oils can help with blood pressure, blood sugar, mental health, they stimulate serotonin, I mean, like what, what, what?

And as I'm going through the, this like scientific exploration, our daughter, Esther, who's now 16, she, she was a baby and she had 104 temperature. And this was at the time that I was right in the middle of chiropractic college, I was getting my doctorate and, and at that point you're being inundated with all the medical information. I mean, any med student, natural path student, chiral student, I mean, you know, you're, you're a living, breathing, hypochondriac walking diagnosis. I mean, you're just learning everything and like, oh, I stub my toe, I have multiple myeloma. I think you're just like, what, you know, like it's just crazy, I joke, but it's real. I mean, you know so much that you're diagnosing yourself and everyone and everything around you. So they teach you very clearly if a patient comes in, especially a child with a temperature over 102, that's an immediate emergency room referral. So here's my daughter with a 104 temperature.

I'm like, OMG, she's dying, Sabrina, take her to the hospital and Sabrina's like, no, we're good. We got this. I'm like, what? And this is mama bear and a big shout out to the mama bears out there. We need strong mamas who aren't going to just like fold at whatever the doctor says, at whatever their husband says, at whatever their friends say. And I'm telling you something, we need moms that are strong.

And thank God my wife is strong. And we have a lot of strong moms listening to this who are, and also a lot of men and women who have been fat, um, mothered by strong mothers. So Sabrina's like, I'm not listening to you, I'm going to take care of my baby. And so here's what she did. She just got like a couple of, you know, a little like half a teaspoon or teaspoon, tablespoon, whatever it was, half a tablespoon of coconut oil, couple drops of orange, essential oil, couple drops of peppermint. And what she did was, you know, Esther was at the time, I think like 13, 14 months old. She gave Esther a back rub, a foot rub, and a tummy rub with the essential oils. And within about 20, 30 minutes, that, that temperature just dropped to like 101.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Like, okay, that's pretty interesting. That's okay. What's going to happen? Like what's going to happen tomorrow?

Well, we checked tomorrow and it was like 101. Oh, I'm sorry. It was 102. I'm like, well, that's a market improvement from, you know, 104. And then we did it again, or she did it again. And then it dropped to 99. I'm like, wow, that's pretty cool. Next day, the temperature was like around 100. Well, that's still better. And then she did it again, dropped to 98, and then she was perfectly good from there on out.

And I was like, there's something to this. Like, I actually saw it in action. This wasn't just Sabrina's anti-aging, you know, protocol, because after seven pregnancies, she has zero skin marks. People always just marvel at the quality and youth of her skin. Most people think she's in her 20s and she's like reaching 50 years old soon. And she just has this wonderful natural anti-aging protocol that includes essential oils.

And I was like, okay, it's pretty. It smells nice. But now I just started seeing essential oils bring healing to my family's life, to the life of the patients in these clinical trials that I was reading about.

And then I was like, there's something to this. And that just started. And again, that was over 15 and a half-ish years ago now. And since then, you know, I've been to aromatherapy school. I've written three books on this. We just published this deck. We've taught this message now to millions of people. And I'm learning more and more and more just about how truly powerful plant medicine is. And at the core of that are the adaptogenic herbs and spices and things that we see in nature and how they are extracted into concentrated compounds that we know and love as essential oils.

And so I can go in a lot of different directions. And I want to stop because I have a tendency to teach. So I don't want to teach. I want to talk. So I'm sorry. You get me started. No joke. I'll go an hour. Like, I'll just talk. So anyway, I don't know what else to say other than I love essential oils.

And I'm so grateful that my wife was patient. And then she just like gently nudged me in the right direction.

Melanie Avalon
Yeah. Speaking to just one last thing about Sabrina, so she, she's done quite a few pageants. When was the last pageants she did?

Dr. Eric Zielinski
The last one she competed in was in 2019, yeah, she won that, Mrs. Georgia, and then she almost won.

She was a finalist for Mrs. America, and since then, she's the director now. So she, you know, once you win, yeah, you can't compete again. So she won. She now helps wonderful women reach their goals and growth, and it's just beautiful. It's her ministry for sure.

Melanie Avalon
It's so, so amazing, I love it. So, okay, I have so many things I wanna talk about.

Maybe we can briefly, rather than go, you know, super deep into the science, but I do want listeners, especially if they haven't read your books or listened to any other, you know, prior interviews with you, to get a little bit of an understanding how the health effects of essential oils compare to pharmaceuticals, for example. Because it's really interesting that all of this is really based on plants. So it's interesting that it can kind of go, or it often is, that it goes, you know, these two potential ways where we turn things into drugs and pharmaceuticals versus just using the natural, you know, plant itself. What's happening there? Like how similar are like common pharmaceuticals to essential oils?

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Yeah, that's a great question because before pharmaceuticals, there were essential oils and that was medicine. The key to this whole discussion is where we get the chemical structure for the medicine the pharmaceuticals people are taking up until recent just crazy inventions that are coming out of a laboratory that are really scary by the way. All medication up until the relative recent have had their chemical structures based from plants and the perfect example and I go back to this so often is because people can resonate with this because for thousands of years, our ancestors used willow bark for its pain relieving analgesic properties and so they created pulsuses and salves and they would just scrape the willow bark and soak it in oil and that would create some sort of ointment that they would rub or they would just rub the bark, break it down and mix it with any sort of liquid that they had available to them and put it on their skin to help. They just knew for some which is kind of wild like how would you discover that but that's just the genius of humanity and they found that it really helps.

Well, it was in the early 1800s, scientists started to experiment with okay, what are in herbs and plants and bark that help people heal and they uncovered this chemical that's known as a salicin and they found that okay, they think this is the isolated chemical in willow bark that has that analgesic anti-inflammatory property. And so what they did was they produced their version of it and it became known as what we know today as aspirin and it was literally the exact history of aspirin as we know it and Bayer has been selling this chemical, this salicylic acid that had a chemical structure based completely from the salicin in willow and same thing with the antibiotic. I mean before the antibiotic was invented in what, the late 30s, early 1940s, you know combat medics in World War I and World War II would use essential oils and herbs for infection fighting or pain relieving or whatever they could. I mean they had nothing.

So just to point out there like this, these essential oils specifically that we're talking about are concentrated from an extreme amount of plant matter and that's why they're comparable to pharmaceuticals. And this is not to put a knock on any supplementation at all whatsoever. But supplementation is different in that supplements are dehydrated, right, and created mostly in powdered form. There are some that have reconstituted some of the essential oil back, but a lot of the supplementation that we have are devoid of essential oils.

The essential oil, the compounds that are in plants naturally. So they actually have a different chemical structure and they work differently. They have a different therapeutic effect. So when you have something like again, going back to willow bark, the willow bark itself has a significant amount of compounds, like thousands of different compounds in it.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
And then when you steam distill it, only certain compounds actually survive through the steam distillation process. They have to be very light in weight. They have to be able to be able to survive extreme heat because steam is very hot. And then so they get condensed down, right? But what about all those chemicals that don't survive through and last through the steam distillation, right?

I mean, that's kind of what the supplement industry uses. And then you have this. So you got this wonderful array of different chemicals and they're all different. And the thing about essential oils, which different than anything else in the market and in the world is they're concentrated to a degree that is almost hard to fathom. Because when you're picking up an essential oil bottle, let's say a generic size, like a 15 milliliter size, that's like five pounds of lavender flowers. That's a lot. I mean, just to conceptualize, look how light. Just pick up, go to a florist or go to your local botanical gardens and just, you know, just imagine five pounds of that stuff, like just seven hundred and fifty thousand rose petals. If you wonder why rose is so expensive, it's a lot of rose petals, right?

About 50 rinds because the orange citrus oils are encapsulated in the rind. So you have to press those rinds together like you do olive oil. So you can't find this in nature. This is highly concentrated plant medicine, which when you compare to pharmaceuticals, that's really what the basis of pharmaceuticals are. It's like, OK, let's take the Salison and Willowbark, let's concentrate it, let's produce it in a manufactured way that we could control and let's mass produce it, put preservatives in it so it's not going to have a shelf life. And then we have a desired result, you know, according to the manufacturer, the pharmacist. And it's a repeatable, it's a controlled result. Another piece to consider is that every harvest is different, and every fruit has a different chemical constituency versus each other, you know, compared to one another.

So that is a very odd thing, and I don't know how much you've talked about this in the past or what your thoughts about this, but when it comes to regulation and supplements, when it comes to batch testing, very few companies do this stuff. And people wonder, like, I've talked to functional medicine practitioners like, yeah, I've had my patients on certain supplements for years and they get different results. Well, it's because the product is literally different in the bottle, year after year or batch after batch. And that's something you have to account for when you're dealing with medicine. So what pharmacy does, and this is, I guess, a positive thing, what pharmacists do, what chemists do is they take out those variables. They make it identical to each other, year after year, batch after batch. But a problem with that, also, though, is resistance. The body develops resistance. The body gets really smart. Bacteria, fungi, viruses start to develop, ooh, resistance.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
So inherently, and this is where, like, the faith aspect of creation comes into play, inherently because fruits and herbs and trees and wonderful, wonderful plants, adaptogenic plants that bring healing are constantly in flux. They're constantly adapting to their environment. So lavender flowers today have a different chemical constituency versus lavender flowers 20, 30 years ago because of all the different toxins out there, because the plant was designed to thrive. And that's really what the essential oil in the plant does. It protects the plant from vectors, infection, wards off, mosquitoes, and bugs. So the plant doesn't need pesticides. You grow the plant in its natural environment, wild-crafted, indigenous. It doesn't need all those sprays. But the plant has to adapt. If the plant doesn't adapt, it dies. So you have to think, it's constantly changing like us. So it's beautiful.

In a wild, beautiful symphony of change that we need to adapt to it. But because of that, too, the therapeutic efficacy will alter slightly, too. So the by and large of it all is when you compare plant medicine like essential oils to pharmaceutical, there are so many more unknowns in the plant world. But the wonderful thing is, unlike the pharmaceuticals, there is no adaptation that we could see. Bacteria have not become resistant. Viruses have not become resistant. Like, you have things like MRSA and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, nothing kills it while oregano can. Or time. Essential oils can kill antibiotic resistant bacteria because these bacteria are like, oh, I haven't been able to develop resistance.

Why? Because it keeps on changing. It's not that smart, right? It takes years or decades for these bacteria to develop. So, maybe if aspirin changed or Bayer or whatever changed their chemical structure every 6 to 12 months, it would prevent some sort of resistance. But they're not willing to do that, right? They'll cost so much more money and create so many more variables. And every time they do it, they would need new FDA approval, right? So, you got to think about this whole big money flow. And ultimately, what we have here is very similar, very similar therapeutic outcome. And I'll end with this because it still fathoms or it boggles my mind and I still try to fathom how this is. We have no scientific explanation is there's virtually no side effects other than the rare case of adverse reaction. Like there are no proteins. So, there's no allergic reaction. Like your body might have some sort of like topical sensitization because of a variety of different things. But there typically isn't a what's your typical allergic reaction. They're purified. They're purified of a lot of the components that people are allergic to. And there is what's known as cell selectivity. So, unlike the antibiotic, for example, which literally kills everything, right? It has this nuclear bomb approach. It kills all good and not good bacteria. Essential oils have what's known as cell selectivity. They target pathogenic harmful bacteria and microbes and they leave the healthy alone.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
And there was a recent study just last year to confirm it like over and over and over again. That is plant medicine. That's natural design in its finest. Like there's no explanation for it.

That's why they're trying to chemist and natural minded chemists, I should say, and researchers are trying to push that essential oils be included in animal feed because it's a highly, much infinitely safer and even more effective method than antibiotics. It's more money, which is going to be a hard sell for big ag to swallow. But the reality is no side effects, no resistance can develop with the bacteria that we could see. It's not going to harm the micro floral balance of the animals. It's like a win-win-win-win-win, right? And so when we look at this, like this stuff is pretty powerful and it goes back. It just goes back to just the beautiful natural design that we see out there and how we can tap into it.

Melanie Avalon
So incredible. It's making me so I have your deck in front of me right now and it's making me even more excited about it.

It was interesting I asked in my Facebook group for A for questions for you and for people's experiences with essential oils and overwhelming the amount of responses to people's experiences and their favorites and what they use them for and it's been interesting to like see what people say and then like check out your deck and it matches up like so many people were like were saying that um they use peppermint for headaches getting rid of headaches and then so I have in front of me your instant headache relief massage oil and its first ingredient is peppermint all of this is so fascinating I wonder do you have thoughts because there's so many of these different oils out there and they clearly have so many different therapeutic benefits which for listeners by the way the deck is separated into well there's five different wait one two three five different categories so there's basics rest and relief physical support household and body care clearly a lot of different oils can have specific purposes just when it comes to people preferring not specifically for any one ailment but when people think of essential oils I feel like people can oftentimes think of ones they love like you with lavender me with sandalwood and I can never say it what is it well angling oh yeah elangling okay elangling but then some oils I don't like actually orange is one and I don't like oranges is that like mostly emotional and memory-based then do you think like people's initial either wanting to move towards or away from the thought of a certain oil

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Now, there's definitely personal preference, right? I mean, when we and also contributes to your, your, your sense of taste. My son, for whatever reason, he's more of a savory guy. My other son is more of a sweet guy, right? So, I think there's a natural just inclination that we have towards certain things just because of the preference.

And that first is, is there's a myth out there in the essential oil world is that if you don't want something or if you are hesitant to, or if you're, I don't want to say the word opposing something, it's like your natural indication that you need it. And that's kind of wild. And people literally teach this. And I just had someone asked me yesterday because I taught a masterclass on this. I taught a masterclass live to a group of people on heart health. And this woman's like, hey, my husband just hates lavender. And I told him that means because he needs it. It's like he's lacking it. And that is not the case. And I, I don't want to say it's not possible, but the science and the research does not validate it.

And to your point, though, you alluded to something that is even more evidence based. And I think it's important to recognize that our memory is tied to our sense of smell. Like I mentioned my lavender example. So when you go back to smelling something, and just the science of olfaction, there are certain chemicals that are emitted into the air. And that's why these central oils are known as volatile organic compounds. VOCs, people think of, oh, harmful VOCs, right? Paint, carpet, I just bought a mattress. Like, yeah, those are volatile organic compounds that are being emitted that are dangerous for you. But what are they? I mean, volatile, meaning they evaporate at room temperature, organic, meaning they're carbon based and compounds, meaning there are several, not just one. I mean, compound is a compound collection of chemicals. So essential oils are a healthy, good natural version of VOCs. And whenever you smell anything, that's because a physical component in the air, which is undetectable to your eye, they're microscopic, a detectable to your nose. And when this physical component is inhaled through your nostrils, there's a stimulation of your nerve cells that directly communicates to the olfactory bulb in your brain. And it's a direct communication. There's no what's known as a thalamic relay, there's no interpretation by the brain of what is this, it's a complete, I have access to your brain, which no other sense in your body has that. And let me just take a step back. Why it's important to know this is to realize just how powerful smell is compared to anything else that we do to impact our brain.

And then once the brain is impacted and has the impulse, it now does something, it responds in kind. And so the impulse is directed to the amygdala or the Olympic system where your mood, your memory, your emotions are, or your autonomic function is managed. Heart rate, breathing rate, pulse rate. Now compare that to the last time you maybe hurt yourself.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
So think about last time maybe you stubbed your toe, or you're chopping your organic cucumbers or something and you sliced your finger. Just think, remember that slight delay in feeling the pain versus actually, yeah.

And for those of you who've been around babies, you see this. So Melanie, I don't know if you've ever seen a baby get hurt.

Melanie Avalon
Yes, I've seen videos where they like, there's like the moment in between where they're deciding

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Exactly, and you know what it is, now that moment, it's a lot longer than an adult because their nerve impulses are being developed still. And it's like, what just happened to me, 1,000, 2,1,000, 3,1,000, and baby starts crying.

Melanie Avalon
So it actually is, I'm sorry, I'm just so excited because I see those videos and they're presented like the, like the kid is making it up, you know, like, like they have this moment where they're going to think about if they're going to act like they're hurt or not. But you're saying oftentimes it's because they just haven't developed that speed yet.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
No, it's 100% of the time that they bet the baby cannot conceptualize. I'm gonna fake. I know that's what's wrong with Instagram The baby's not conceptualizing.

Do I want to make this up or not? No, what happens is when you hurt yourself There is an impulse directly sent to your brain, but it doesn't go to your Pain center yet. It gets interpreted by the thalamus and called what's known as a thalamic relay and the baby It's a thalamic relay the afferent efferent nerve processes isn't fully developed yet So it's super slow to compare to an adult And so you have this nerve impulse that says hey I got hurt knock knock knock knock knock I got hurt and then the thalamus is like, okay this thalamic relay says, okay Let me go bring this to the pain center. Let me bring this to the smell center Let me bring this to the sex center Let me give this to the whatever center of the brain and then after that the brain's like, okay I know what to do now, right? I get turned on I get hungry. I go ouch So you don't get any of that with smell Smell goes right to your brain. It's the and that's why this is important because We have completely desensitized our sense of smell As a people in industrialized societies. We have completely left and forgo the evolutionary advantage and the healing and protection that we get from sense of smell You shouldn't have to have your air purifier be screaming red at you To tell you that there's a gas leak in your house, but most people can't even detect anything. That's unsafe And thank god, we do have carbon monoxide, but you should not even need a carbon monoxide filter We should have a sense of smell that tells us hey something's wrong here That is what protected our ancestors from living in an area with high sulfur and high chemical outbursts in an area They just knew instinctively like oh, this doesn't smell good.

It smells noxious They knew what foods to eat. They knew what water to drink Primarily because their sense of smell and taste We don't have any of that anymore because we live in these cardboard boxes these wooden boxes And because we're overloaded with so much smell all the day long our body's like I can't handle all this I can't interpret this anymore So people are breathing in Toxic smells all day long and it's not stimulating the alarm centers in their brain It's it's similar to having your hand in a fire and keeping it there and not feeling pain If if you didn't feel pain your hand will get burned off.

You're not going to know. Oh, there's something wrong And pain is a good thing. Inflammation is a good thing. It's it's there to protect us but chronic pain chronic inflammation That's what really kills us.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
So we got to think about why we have these experiences And we have disconnected from the sense of smell So all that to say is if you don't like something it could be just because that's a personal preference But it also could be because something could be tied To an emotional memory or a trigger that is the exact opposite of my lavender example And some people have been unfortunately traumatized abused hurt Experienced bad things like imagine you get into a horrible horrible car accident And you have one of those, you know toxic tree air fresheners hanging in your car And you might not be able to have that toxic free or you know that toxic air freshener in your car anymore You might have to change up the smell like that would trigger that back And some people just because of the nature that we have dealing with trauma We kind of suppress those emotions and you don't remember what happened to you when you were two or three four years old But when you embrace this And you embrace healing through smell you start to see wow I can now Literally stimulate a physiological response by smelling certain things That's why some people get that gut visceral reaction when they're when they hear things when they think about things Right when they smell things because it's an actual physical adaptation It's a physical response to something that your body is warning you right, I mean, there's so many different examples, but You get that pit feeling in your stomach when you maybe you have to See somebody that hurt you or you don't like maybe they had a certain smell to them, you know perfume cologne or whatever it might be Those are warning signs that we can't ignore but it all goes back to this power of smell and getting more in tune Resensitizing our power of smell is so important like something happened like i'm so sensitive now and it's a good thing Like I literally cannot go into a you know, a big box store and go down their cleaning aisle Like I can't And I look at people and they're just like living in there smelling talking on the phone Like totally okay.

I'm like You know, I was at a party and a friend of mine had a candle, you know, just trying to be nice, trying to be cool, trying to have a nice smell. Like my nose was just draining. It was like, get out of here, get out of here. Nasal drip is a good thing. Coughing is a good thing. Headaches is your sign that something is wrong, right? I don't live with nasal drip, headaches, and pain all the time. So when it happens, I don't know if there's something that right. I had to get away. I had to get outside, right? I got to breathe. You should be sensitive to this kind of stuff. The more that we recognize it, the more that we could see the warning signs. And that's everything, Melanie. That's our body care. That's our cleaning products. I mean, that's why we do what we do. And that's kind of why the deck became what it was because I was talking to my publisher and they're like, okay, let's kind of wrap up this 10-year journey on essential oils.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
You've written three books. And how about we do the best of the best of your three books and give people like just what they need, just the recipes. And they could have fun with 50 different cards. I'm like, okay, let's do it.

And it's really been neat to see which ones people like the most and whatnot. But it's a completely different audience and like long form, deep book reader folks. These are just like, hey, I want a deck of cards. I want to pull up some things. I want quick access, you know, in my recipe box. But that's really what it boils down to is we're trying to help people piece by piece, little by little, maybe focus on the low-hanging fruit, look at what they're being exposed to and find alternative solutions because that could get them on a road to health and wellness like no other.

Melanie Avalon
No, I love it and I will say because I mean, you know me the show I'm all about the long form and the science and the deep dives and at the same time this also really appeals to me because it's so inspiring to like actually sit down and make them now because it's so like all of the options are right in front of me they're they're by category and then for each one you have like what it is and like a little bit about it and then very easy ingredients supplies and instructions so actually speaking to that and to what you just spoke to.

It's really ironic to me I think about this all the time you were talking about the candles the worst for me is when you are by somebody with a really intense perfume especially if it's like on an airplane and they're like right next to you and it's like how am I gonna how am I gonna breed this you know the entire flight and it's so interesting to me that the purpose of perfume is to attract people to you presumably but that it can have the complete opposite effect and at the same time that talks about the classic perfumes can people do find them attractive so I find it all just just really interesting this is kind of like a rabbit hole tangent if you're comfortable talking about this but I was going through the deck and you do have like you have a sensual bath blend and a sensual master blend and you and you actually say in the central bath blend enjoying sex is part of the abundant life that we preach about so much and then you have more and more there but I know your audience is very you know like a Christian audience and I was raised in the church as well and I think like if I had been given this deck when I was young in the church they probably would have taken these cards out

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Is the church friendly? Come on!

Hey, if God didn't want us to procreate, then sex would not be so pleasurable, right? I mean, there's a reason we have seven kids. I mean, it's just, you know, it is, it is. There's so many fun little things we could go with that.

Melanie Avalon
I found it refreshing throughout my life to unlearn some of those things I was taught growing up. But the role of oils and attraction to other people, what's going on there?

Why, from an evolutionary perspective, would that even work? I understand why certain ones would kill bacteria and disinfect and clean and soothe. What's happening with attraction?

Dr. Eric Zielinski
No, I'm gonna give you a tip before I forget cuz I just I thought of it and then you brought up sex and I you got me thinking about my wife and now I gotta go back. Okay, so as a buddy. So here's a tip. By the way, if you're next to that person on the plane, be a mouth breather because you're bypassing the nasal and olfactory and as much as my deep breathing breathing expert folks say you have to breathe through your nose. No way like if you want to protect your brain, you just breathe through your mouth and no joke. It's the best.

That's what I'm gonna do when I'm at the store and I have to go through that aisle to go to where I want to go or if I'm next to someone I breathe through my mouth that at least protects your brain is still gonna hurt your lungs but at least it's better and that's the office also thing too and I'm at the gas station or I don't know why you know, you know what it is. It's trying to overcome bad smell a good smell and that doesn't work. You're in an uber car. You're in a store. You're in an uber car. You're in an uber car. You're in an uber car. You're in an uber car. You're in an uber car. You're in an uber car. You're in an uber car. You're in an uber car.

Melanie Avalon
Oh, it's the worst. I will get out of an Uber, like if I get one and it's that bad and if it's like a longer trip, I'm like, I'll just order another Uber. I can't.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
It's it's hard. I actually had my head outside of a window one day like it was only a 10-minute drive But I was like, hey, can I roll down my window and I'm just breathing? It's like I can't deal with this I'm breathing out my mouth, but it's even scary though Melanie like going back to your question though, but why aren't they? Triggered by that and that's the problem.

That's what I want to say like you should be intolerant to sugar You should be intolerant to chemicals. We should not be okay and so that's what's happened and so We are attracted to certain things and when it comes to you much any Lang Lang and I mentioned rose and even lavender and other Oils that I include in my sensual blends, but it's just this is people have known for these they call them Aphrodisiacs. Well, it's not like they necessarily stimulate the brain to want sex Necessarily, but what they do is they put your you put your body into this this rest and digest parasympathetic state and Not this is not that we want to make this into a sex class But especially for men and ladies out there, you know A lot of guys aren't gonna want to hear this but they might need a little e-lang-lang and lavender in their life to get to the position if they have a rectile dysfunction and Ed is such a pervasive Thing in men that are high performers executives and high-stress men because it's harder I guess pun intended but it's more difficult to get an erection when you're constantly and chronically stressed And so one way to think of this I go back to my neuroanatomy class when I was a student But you think about point and shoot right to get an erection. You need to be in the parasympathetic state and Then when you you know shoot ejaculate that is the sympathetic state But go back to the parasympathetic state like that is hard. That is very challenging near impossible For a lot of people to automatically get into people are drinking themselves to that state They're trying meditating into that state. They're trying to biohack into that state They're trying to do whatever they can because we're constantly not in that state And I know you've talked a lot about this over the years in your podcast episodes So that's why what we see with men Especially a lot of these sensual love blends that are out there in the essential oil world They're tapping into natural aphrodisiacs and flowers that people just think hey this stimulates libido not necessarily right it can Through a different way though.

It just chills you out. It calms you down it allows you to be in the position where you can actually be and And That's that's a different frame of mind. That's a different. That's a different place to be where Your mind isn't racing for five seconds and you can actually focus on what's in front of you And you have someone that you love in front of you You have someone attractive right in front of you have an opportunity in front of you Right an opportunity obviously we're talking about sex here if you're not in that frame of mind.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
You're not being you're doing and You're doing your homework your housework your your your Work work you're doing something in the back of your mind that is keeping you away, and this is constant thing and So that's one of the beautiful things because when you smell flowers when you smell the extracted VOCs that Are in the essential oil and that we use and diffusers and body lotions and body oils and things it literally? immediately Immediately puts people into that parasympathetic state and the body is like okay the mind is like all right There's no harm here.

I could just I could relax for a second dopamine serotonin starts to get produced certain hormones start to be the breathing rate kind of settles a minute the pulse rate kind of settles and You just kind of chill All right, you just start chilling out for a moment, and then it's like oh You know now I could You know now I can think about other things and now my body can respond and there are other things We're starting to see more in the literature in the brain You know the addiction cascade parts of the brain that are stimulated for sexual arousal and that sort of thing and you know how smell and essential oils tap into that and That's exciting things like we do know that there are certain things that can stimulate, but there's this smell This this you've heard of this we all emit pheroms. We all have our own version of How we interpret but how we give off in aroma? That's kind of wild That lavender on you smells different than lavender on me

Melanie Avalon
Because of how it's interacting with the pheromones.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Yeah. And that's when it gets really wonderful. I forget the name of this movie and I got to look it up because this is the second time I've mentioned this in an interview. So forgive me for the people that created this movie.

But I was flying home and I watched a documentary on the flight from a conference I went to a couple months ago. And it was about a rugby player from, I believe, New Zealand, if not Australia. Famous rugby player who ended up taking a dive into a swimming pool and lost his function of his legs and became a paraplegic. Absolutely obviously destroyed his career as a professional rugby player. But he ended up regaining his mobility to a point where he started creating what is now a ministry, helping people overcome handicaps and disabilities and they hike mountains and they do crazy fun stuff. And he's still, you know, he's not 100% he'll never compete in professional sports again, but he's doing things like, you know, taking his first step was impossible and now he's like hiking mountains, right? And something that his wife said in the interview struck me. We're getting to the heart like this was your husband. I mean, just, you know, gorgeous still is gorgeous. Good looking man. His physique was, you know, picture perfect athlete. Great. You guys were just a beautiful young couple and here you have this tragedy. How did it affect you? How did it affect your love life? How did it affect your intimacy? And she said something that kind of really made me think more about this experience about smell and about olfaction. It really hit me at home and kind of brought me to tears. She said, you know, it wasn't that his physical body changed, right? His muscle structure just atrophy. Like he was on his proverbial death bed. They resuscitated him. He was recouping. It took him months and months just to get to the point where he can even consider taking a step and like all this, like his physical transformation was there. And she goes, but was what was really hard and what really affected our intimacy was how he smelled. Didn't smell the same, which makes a lot of sense because here he was a completely different person biochemically because of all the drugs that he was taking, all the medical interventions, his whole like, his whole pherom output was completely different. His pherom, his smell and we're not, you know, she didn't mention changing cologne. She didn't mention changing body care. It was just his natural smell. His natural odor was so different. She said she felt like she was making love to a stranger. That's how powerful smell is. And that's also why it's so important that when we're courting, dating, considering being with someone for the rest of our lives, that you're into their smell, that you could relate that when you smell them, when you get intimate, when you hug, when you kiss, that it turns you on and essential oils and the right blends for certain people really exemplify that. And it's like, it's so beautiful. It's so wonderful. And for when she said it felt like I was making love to a stranger. It's like her eyes were closed. It was dark. It didn't matter what he felt like.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Didn't matter, you know, what he sounded like matter what he smelled like.

Melanie Avalon
I had on Ricky Lake and Abby Epstein for their business of birth control, and I know there are studies on birth control affecting women and how they, like the attraction level to men and like the type of man they're attracted to, and I'm pretty sure there were ones involving those fair homes, which is crazy. So it means like basically if you're on birth control, you might be attracted to a different sort of partner than you would be if you weren't on it, which has a lot of implications if you go off of it, which is crazy.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Oh, Ed Jackson, his name is Ed Jackson. So if you want to learn about his story, about his swimming pool accident, check it out. Check out the documentary. It's unbelievable. Now he's aiming to set like this car pull record. Again, he's pulling cars now, like the dude's a beast again. And just, it's wonderful. It's so encouraging. If you don't cry, there's something wrong with your tear ducts. It's a great movie.

It's a great documentary. But anyway, look up Ed Jackson. Thank you, Ed and your wife for being so vulnerable. But folks, our smell, how we smell, I mean, those of you who have ever been around nursed babies, it's like, that's the baby smell. Like you want to just encapsulate, like there's nothing like a baby that's being nursed, that's, that's consuming breast milk only. It's just, you just kiss the top of their head and you smell them. And it's just like sweet heaven smell. And they're just emitting this wonderful, wonderful, beautiful smell. Cause it's coming from the most purest food on the planet. Like you cannot find a better food in the world than breast milk, right? If of course the mama's consuming good foods too, right? That's a big deal.

But yeah, it's so important and it's so important to follow your nose. I mean, ultimately it's important to follow your nose, but I want to caution people not to get deceived because our counterfeits don't follow your nose at the perfumery or the fragrance counter at your favorite mall. Don't follow your nose there. Just trust me. That's toxic. That is those chemicals in those fragrances have phthalates in them, have chemicals in it, parabens, others, artificial fragrances should be outlawed. And it, it really is scary. And I don't want to go down to the whole, you know, the sky is falling mentality, but it's infuriating. It's scary how much America allows in our country that other countries don't. Right. And the chemicals and our body care cleaning products, there's just, there's a thousand, 2000 plus chemicals more that we allow here that are banned in other countries, right? Why do we allow that stuff? Why do we allow these fragrances? So you can't just trust. We can't just trust what's available because it's not for our good. And I want to say that we need to be, you know, wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove, like the Bible says, we, we, we, we can't be ignorant of the devices of evil and it is evil.

There's no other way of saying it. It's killing people. Fragrances have been linked to heart attack, risk, stroke, answer, Alzheimer's dementia. Like we wonder why is there so much ADHD autism right now? It they're everywhere and they're in everything. It's literally impossible to avoid artificial fragrances. If you live in America. Because they're all over. And that is why it's really important to create a healthy environment in your home. Your home should be healing, whether you live in an apartment or a mansion, it doesn't matter. You should have pure error in your home that is free of artificial fragrances. So you got to be careful what's in your body care, cleaning products.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
What are you spraying to smell good? It's not worth it.

And the thing about it is that we oftentimes think of, well, you know, I'm okay now, I mean, you know, I don't have any issues now. I don't have any allergies. I don't have heart attack. I don't have cancer. It's like people don't equate long-term chronic low grade exposure to something that could happen in the future. Like, why would you want to put yourself at risk? You know, it's like, Oh, a candy bar once in a while isn't going to kill me. Well, I don't know. 80 years. What's going to happen? You know, it's like the, it's like the smoker a 90 years old. I've been smoking a pack of marbles my whole life. Well, okay, dude, you won the genetic lottery. Good for you. But for most people that doesn't work. So when we are exposed to thousands of chemicals every day throughout our life for 50, 60, 70 years, maybe that is a contributing factor to why our rates of chronic disease have not lowered at all.

And why so many children are obese because it starts with them in utero. Mom, well-intentioned, trying to smell good, trying to look good, trying to do what she wants to do. Body care, cleaning products, perfume, things that she's, you know, like your lipstick, I mean, what do you think's in that stuff? Why do you think it's waterproof? You're a mascara. There's forever chemicals in that stuff. PFOAs, moms, you're trying to, you know, do your best, create a good appearance, self-image, that's important. But if you're exposing yourself to all those chemicals, they're literally seeping into your bloodstream. We have found that those chemicals are in the umbilical cord blood. It's going into baby. So baby is automatically starting off day one at a disadvantage, like automatically infant boom. And then all the things that baby is exposed to in the house, you know, five, 10, 20, 30, 50 years from now, what's the health of that individual?

And so it's like, how do we stop this pattern? It stops with us. It stops with me. It stops at my house. And at the very least, I can't control what happens at my kid's school. I can't control what happens at the mall. I can't control what happens on the airplane, but I can control what happens here. And here is where we are most of the time, at least when we sleep. Sleep should be regenerative. Sleep should be healing. Sleep in my home. Hopefully you and your family are at your house at least 12 plus hours a day. That's half of the day. That's half of your life. Make that a healing part of your life. And you have absolute control in that area so that when you go outside, when you go into the world and you're exposing yourself to pollution, environmental toxins, rain water, that now we detect PFOA's forever chemicals and all the things that are out everywhere and every which way, you'll be OK compared to someone who is exposed to that all day, every day, 24 seven. And that's my message is control what we can because there are an infinite amount of things that are completely out of our control.

Melanie Avalon
I am so passionate about this topic and even with the fragrances, I talk a lot about the role of all of these compounds and chemicals in our skincare and makeup and even the word fragrance, it's a legal loophole from the 1960s so that brands can, it doesn't even have to only be fragrance, it can be whatever they want and the word fragrance. So it's a loophole for them to put in whatever they want and you have no idea.

You were mentioning the centenarians who, you know, say, well, they, you know, did all this stuff and they're fine and I think, I feel like the latest research on longevity, it's pretty much agreed and you touched on this, but they really did win the genetic lottery. Like it seems like there are certain combinations of genes and like super centenarians, they just have this quote perfect blend of genes that protects them from their potentially toxic choices that may be made throughout their life.

I actually have a question because when I asked listeners for questions, we did get a few different questions about, speaking of safety, about safety related stuff to essential oils. So for example, Anna wanted to know, she says, I use oils in my dryer, is it safe to heat the oils?

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Yeah i'm good question well it's safe yes it's never not safe i mean let's just point that out essential oils are unlike. Other compounds that again i mentioned have proteins that that heat can be nature proteins that is really the concern is anything that you might take medicinally Typically your supplements and other things there are proteins in them because they're not volatile organic compounds proteins are very heavy they can become the nature that's why you know some people claim you don't want to cook your food pass a certain temperature for you know all that kind of stuff it does change the chemical structure for steam distilled essential oils just remember.

They passed through piping hot steam so the these are the chemicals that survived through and pass through extreme heat already.

Melanie Avalon
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Interesting.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
So, essential oils are natural heat-resistant compounds, however, citrus oils are not because they are not steam-distilled typically, they're cold-pressed, so yes, you can potentially alter the chemical constituency, but is it safe? Oh yeah, 100%, you just might not get the therapeutic efficacy as you would in general.

So, good question as a whole because we cook, we bake with essential oils on a regular basis all day long. They're wonderful little flavor punches, but they give you that nice medicinal, just what we call a culinary dose of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties that are wonderful, but we don't, I'm not concerned about a safety, but there are several other safety considerations that we could talk about, but yeah, heating them won't make them, quote, dangerous, it just will affect the therapeutic efficacy as far as we can tell.

Melanie Avalon
Okay gotcha i was actually wondering speaking of the edible portion of it with the book did you contemplate at any point having like a food specific section can i notice some of them are. Edible there at all things.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Yeah, I mean, we actually do we have a couple things like we you know, our family favorite Italian dressing my wife has a vinaigrette We have a couple here and there. Yeah, that's I think that's part of the the household, you know they're Unfortunately, I mean you only have like 50 cards to deal with like it's I know the biggest issue we have is Is there's so much we could do in this world with aromatherapy?

But yeah, we wanted to give people a couple different fun recipes and just realize this just like, you know Maybe we got to underscore this. I probably should have said this at the beginning Everything you smell in your in whatever products cleaning products body care products Whatever at this point we could venture unless it says clearly made from pure on adulterate essential oils It's it's made from a same synthetic fragrance.

Okay parfum fragrance, mmm, whatever similar to anything you taste any food that you consume that has artificial or natural flavoring is Based off of some sort of adulterated version of essential oils unless it says flavored by pure essential oils The difference between natural versus artificial is they say derived from essential oils But that doesn't mean they're real essential oils They're still adulterated and or manufactured versions of essential oils And there's a couple different tricks that companies do they basically extract like a chemical like like corn mint Instead of using peppermint. They'll get corn mint, which is infinitely cheaper as this corn mint Wow.

Yeah Cheaper more potent kind of even smells nicer sweeter and they'll like use that instead of like peppermint or you know, kasha CASI a kasha is Devoid of a lot of the healing properties that cinnamon has cinnamon is rich in cinnamon aldehyde which has been shown to be in a Acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, which has been shown to help with Alzheimer's it helps with blood sugar on blood sugar Cinnamon bark is no joke. It's very healing but you'll find that cinnamon flavor can is actually knock off versions of kasha Why because kasha's infinitely cheaper? Sweeter people think it smells a little better and they're marketing it as cinnamon. It's very similar in smell So all that to say is this anything you smell anything you taste out there in the market is based off of essential oils just just know that because You can create a healing version of that at home and I get oftentimes people say well We shouldn't ingest essential oils.

Well, you're ingesting them all day. You don't even realize it I mean all day, especially kids foods anything with any kind of flavoring has essential oil based in it It's just the fake version or a knockoff that you probably don't want to take anyway And so what we just try to do is reconstitute our food with Read the real stuff like just a drop or two of oregano in your liter or whatever your pot of spaghetti sauce yum You know a drop of oregano in my more i'm sorry a drop of orange Oregano is kind of potent but a drop of orange in your morning smoothie.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Yay I love my matcha green tea lattes. I'll put like a drop of cinnamon and peppermint in it just nice Culinary dose it's not gonna like drastically change your physiology but it's pleasant it's it's minor and I love the minor aspect of it because What we do is we are trying to incorporate this anti-inflammatory What we call this natural living lifestyle in everything that we do like I don't use essential oils To treat blood sugar because I don't have blood sugar problems But i'm doing things like I eat certain foods And I do certain exercises and I use certain essential oils in general just to help my metabolism function better And it's a different mindset When you're not sick And I hope a lot of listeners are not sick right now If you are I pray that you get healing and I pray that you find the solution because when you're not sick It puts you in a different wellness mentality.

And so you start to think about hey, what can I do to enhance? my body's ability to Heal to perform to think to fight off disease When you're sick, you have a different mindset. You have to have more of a therapeutic dose because you're trying to treat something but typically speaking Unless you're trying to treat a litany of conditions, that doesn't mean that you go back to eating Twinkies and drink in Starbucks coffee every day thinking, oh, I'm not sick, I don't do anything. Our life should be preventative medicine, you know, Hippocrates, food is medicine. I think that's one of the things about the blue zones, you mentioned the centenarians, is by virtue of their life, though, they're constantly moving. They don't exercise, they just have an active lifestyle. They eat heavily, we could argue diet all day long, but they eat, you know, a kind of clean diet, and you know what the key to is to what they do, the real key? Relationships.

Lifelong, because they live in small communities, and they have lifelong relationships with people. Can you imagine having a friend for 95 years? Yeah. Right? And I just saw a Simon Sinek interview, like, that is the true biohack for longevity, by the way, community, social interactions, relationship, like, I'll tell you, I didn't come from a family that valued family. And I'll say this, and I don't know, bless her, God rest, bless her heart, I don't know, bless her soul. I'm not sure the Southern Baptist way of saying it, but my grandma was not a very loving person, and my, when my wife, because she's been past for several years, when my wife told my grandma that she was pregnant, my grandma said, I'm sorry, like, oh, I'm sorry, honey, like, that was a curse. I mean, imagine my mom, my poor mom, only child, she was abused, my grandma was not a loving person. I say that to say, I wasn't raised in a large family type of environment, I was raised in a huge, huggy, feely, extended family, like, I have virtually no contact with any of my family members, cousins, non cousins, it's just wild.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Now that I have seven kids, I have experienced something I never knew was possible, and going back to Simon Sinek and community, there's a reason I'm sharing this stuff, like, I get this immediate oxytocin hit every time I hug my babies, like, that's designed by God. You know, when we, when we hung out a couple weeks ago, and we hugged, like, that was an oxytocin hit, like, the body's like, oh, person, love, hug, yay. Imagine having that with like, six other people or seven other people in your home all day long. Like, that's one of the keys to the Blue Zones, y'all, you've heard of the Blue Zones? If not, look up Blue Zones on TED, or look up a TED talk on Blue Zones and Dan Buechner from National Geographic. These people that live had the highest rates of centenarians around the world, a big part of it really is community. And when you have a larger family, when you have kids, I get oxytocin hits all day long, every day.

And it hit me, it literally hit me like two weeks ago, I was like, I never kind of like, like, cognitively, it didn't connect. And I was just, baby just came up to me, Isaac, my little baby, or my, my, my not, not, nope, he's not the baby baby anymore, he's like, number six, but he's still two, he came up to me and just like, came up and just gave me a hug, random hug for no reason other than I'm dad. And I kissed the top of his head, I always do this, I always kiss the top of their head, I gave a nice big whiff, I do it, like smell is a big part of all this. I smelled his beautiful hair, I gave him a hug and I just felt joy, I felt peace, I had endorphin hit and like, ah, love. And then he left me and then I went back to work and then, you know, the stress of life came back and I go upstairs, I'm blessed to work at home and another kid hugs me or I see her, you know, give my, my, my wife a hug or, you know, a butt tap or whatever couple do to keep things alive, which you have to, by the way, you need that little stuff. And that's part of how we're made. We need that. And the, the biggest risk of premature death is isolation. And again, going back to Simon Sinek, it's, it's like, they're equating isolation to like, what, smoking two packs of cigarettes or something a day. It is the number one risk of premature death.

And that was the one thing that we were screaming from the rooftops against when everyone was in shelter in place, restrictions with COVID. That's the worst thing in the world you could do. And that's not to relive, but don't forget y'all what happened five years ago today. We're in lockdown. Again, today's March 20th, right? But we are in lockdown. We need to be with people. We need to embrace love. We need to embrace community.

how that has anything to do with aromatherapy, I'm not sure, but at least I know it's part of life. It's part of how we were created, I guess maybe to tie it into the topic. Hopefully, you enjoy the smell of the person you're hugging, but you know what I mean? But that really comes down to just how simple this is, how truly just really simple and, you know, I'm not to pick a hole in the industry that you are really thriving in.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
But this whole biohacking thing, I wonder, sometimes does it really overcomplicate things? Like when it comes down to it, you give me a hug out in nature in the sunlight. Think about all the biohacking in that, right? Smelling the volatile organic compounds, forest bathing, getting the vitamin D, right? And embracing one another, like, I guess the thing is, you can't live like that.

We can't live in the garden. And by the way, you know what that was, y'all? That was the Garden of Eden. Imagine, right, the biblical story being naked in a garden with the one person that you love. Like, just think about that. That is utopia. That is the Bible. Whether or not you're a Christian or not, you have your ancient text or you have your own philosophy of what, you know, the beginning was like. That was the picture perfect example of how humans thrived according to the Bible. Two naked people in a garden. I mean, just think about all the different variables involved with that. How do we recreate that? Obviously, we need clothes, right? But how do we recreate that intimacy with each other? That intimacy with nature. And that's where I guess maybe we could pull it back to aromatherapy is we can't live outside all day.

But what we can do is bring outside in. So we bring the smells of nature through aromatherapy in our home. And I encourage people, studies have shown this, you want the sight of nature in your home. So have plants. Have pictures of landscapes. Listen. Have the sounds of nature in your home. Listen to soothing natural music. There's nothing like it. And this is not to, again, compete with some of the wonderful biohacking, you know, the new version of binaural beats and stuff. I love brain.fm. I'm not sure what your take on that is, but I love brain.fm with sounds of waves, with sounds of trees, right? I love that too. How do we bring all those wonderful aspects of nature in our home so we have a healing place? Now, don't get me wrong. I love jazz. I love my electronic music sometimes when I'm really trying to like get into like a really cool groove and workout and stuff. Like I'm not living in this like zen aromatherapy wave moment all day long every day. But there's a time and a place for everything, especially at night, especially regarding your time with your family, intimacy, your lover. We have to be considering this stuff.

Melanie Avalon
No, I love it. I think it all relates so much. Going back to the the blue zones, I know they did a study on the factors most correlated to longevity with those populations specifically. And one of the ones most correlated, if not the most correlated, it was social related, but it was actually just the amount of different social interactions they have every day because they're meeting lots of people all the time. So I thought that was really, really fascinating.

I love this concept of what's funny about the biohacking. I agree. I think there's a lot of it and a lot of people can get obsessed with trying to find the tools and the hacks and the things to make themselves feel better without addressing the underlying foundation of what we actually need as humans, which is a lot more simple than all these biohacks. I feel like it's kind of, I was using the word gateway oil earlier. I feel like biohacking becomes a gateway for people to, like they might try something and experience because of whatever the thing is, like cryotherapy or some sort of parasympathetic activating device or red light, and they get a sense of how they could feel. And then it's interesting because they might want to do more and more biohacking things and also realize that just going back to the simple and the basics is so powerful. I was thinking about the different recipes we were talking about and one of my favorite things I do with essential oils is I make up breath spray and it's literally just water and peppermint. And it is one of my favorite things in my life. And it's like, I can't believe for so long I was chewing all these mints and these gums and all these chemicals when all I needed was water and some peppermint oil. That's all I needed. And it's way more powerful.

So I'm all over the place right now, but I'm just like looking at your cards in front of me and thinking how it really captures how there's so much health and wellness if we just go back to the basics.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Can you save a ton of money like we did this car comparison if you make our like the i think it is four dollars a year if you make a DIY mouthwash you spend about four bucks a year but if you're buying this natural organic or even like the chemical blue dyed one you're spending a hundred fifty two hundred dollars a year mouthwash you'll save thousands of dollars and hey maybe we can kinda help each other.

You know embrace biohacking in a new way because i really like what melissa young says from cleveland clinic like she defines biohacking. I wanna quarter here as a diy approach to self care that uses everything from lifestyle changes to high tech tools so let me present to y'all maybe you can argue with me or not i'm not the biohacking guru. But is it fair to say that essential oil and aromatherapy and all the stuff i'm saying is a biohacking like it seems like it is to me it's a non tech biohacking. Maybe like i don't know why not let's embrace it like some brace anything that hacks your body's ability to heal and be resilient it doesn't have to be plugged into a wall. End so that's kinda where it's like okay cool i'm the diy money saving natural biohack dude maybe i should i gotta rebrand because.

Melanie Avalon
I know. You said this was the end of a decade, but I'm thinking this book. One more.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Come on, I mean, so biohacking doesn't have to be, hey, it's another wearable or it's another thing I have to spend $5,000 on. There's a place, I love red light, I love my stuff.

I'm actually meant to ask you, are you wearing your Apollo?

Melanie Avalon
I use it every night are you wearing it now on the social mode no i was gonna ask you what motor using your phone if i were wearing it i probably have on the social mode.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Mm hmm. I have mine on recover. Yeah, that's another story. I guess this new change to daylight savings really screwed me up.

Melanie Avalon
Mmm. Oh my goodness. I could go on a tangent. I do not like stimulate savings

Dr. Eric Zielinski
I was on. I was in such a groove. I was in such a groove. Again, we have five kids in school. Well, not again, but we have five children in school. We don't homeschool. We have five children in school and that's a lot to get five kids ready and out the door and we drive them to school and stuff.

And so we were, I was in such a groove. I was getting to bed at a decent time. It's like 10 30 11 ish waking up at 6 30 without an alarm clock on the dot, which is great. I have my few minutes to myself, get my kids up after daylight savings. I've been struggling. I am just waking up so tired. I'm not waking up naturally anymore. We've been late to school every day since my actually daughter, I'm infuriated. My daughter got detention. She's a high schooler. She's getting detention tomorrow because she's been late to school so many times this last week.

And it's like, it's my fault that they changed the time on us. So I need to recover. So I'm thankfully, I'm, I'm like, you know what? I got a, I'm tired right now. I'm dragging like daylight savings really mess with my clock. I need to be in a recover mode. So thank Apollo for recover mode. But yeah, if I were king, when you become queen, you get my vote or president, whatever the, it's going to be called whenever it's going to be called, take away this horrible thing. Why do we have this still? It's screwing up, you know, heart attacks and strokes and premature death. It's like skyrockets the week, a month after a melee savings. It's like, why are we doing this to people?

Melanie Avalon
I dread daylight savings with my life, it is my least favorite day of the year. My favorite day is when we get the extra hour back, it's amazing.

This year is the first year it happened and I didn't realize. So now I have my, I have my hack for it going forward, which this is not a healthy, I don't know if this is a healthy hack, but it worked for me.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Confession time. Confessions of a biohacker. I love it.

Melanie Avalon
This is my being real. Like this is how I survived Daylight Savings this year. I, for the first time, I forgot what day it was. I had gone out the night before. I was out really late, having a lot of wine, organic wine though. But so I, so I got home. I was really tired. I just fell asleep. I didn't even realize it happened. And then the next day I was so excited when I woke up the next day and realized I got through it without having anxiety about it.

And then the next day I was so tired from going out the night before that I went to bed early again. And then I was just like on the new schedule. So now I know go out and party the night before Daylight Savings.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Go on a biodynamic wine bender, so you have to take a nap or help me.

Melanie Avalon
man. I know, right? Now you know.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
I took a nap i this is i've never been sensitive to it like this before it's the weirdest thing i have worked so hard to get to a rhythm and it's been so challenging with all the kids at home good for you i'm glad and i don't know if there's something also too i just turned forty five like i went through like my man i'm going to like a man a pause right now and it's like this is a weird. A weird year for me and my body just not yeah yeah forty four and i think sixty or the two years that are proven to have berman though yeah the most biological change wow yeah like i'm cool i just finished my forty fourth year and it's like this is like age and my body is yeah again i'm going through a man a pause thing and it's like wow it's weird like i'm not recovering the same and i'm definitely not recovering from daylight savings like i was so.

Guys listening you know if you're in your mid forties and your sixties or ladies whatever age you might be going through your cycle your change like if you're not recovering from things the same that might be a reason for it and that's okay you know i i'm doing what i gotta do i'm i'm still figuring this i'm figuring this one out like it's i i don't have that wine solution i've you know i i don't know what it is i gotta do but all that to be said is. I'm grateful for what i have available to me though and that's the key like you know i have my fun tech i have my natural remedies i have the things around me and i know that.

I can rest assured that i'm still going through this a lot better than what if i didn't because i see a lot of guys my age or others my you know my father men in past ages like really really struggle that that's a big thing cuz i. People ask like i don't feel different well. With the central oils you typically do you know like that's a cool thing you typically will feel especially if you're treating pain but someone be like well i don't feel different that i replace toxic body care with di why with the central oils i don't feel different well. Trust the process because you know next time you get sick you're not gonna be a sick right next time you go through something you're gonna be more resilient.

And that's where you have that aha moment like you know what i'm i'm doing okay. You know seasonal allergies as you know georgia right now it's green outside like we have this is pollen this layer of pollen all over the place i people around me like on zyrtec and all kinds of crazy stuff there on their prescription meds no i mean. I have a couple days my body's adapting to the palm and then i go back to normal like. By the way all you shouldn't have seasonal allergies that are debilitating that's not a good sign. No that that's a pre autoimmune condition like your body should have properly functioning immune adaptation right and so unless you're moving every year.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
And unless there's a drastic change in the foliage in the plants around you it's the same kind of stuff year after year your body will develop after a couple few years. And so you know these little signs i'm like okay i'm not feeling hundred percent but i'm doing okay and that's encouraging you know what i mean that's encouraging.

I'm there so many other things i could share i want to encourage people like having and it's not like you have to go out and buy my deck of cards and you know that have the remedies but. You know my wife's been going through some stressful stuff emotionally and she's forty six years old and and you know she just went through you know the pregnancy where she was diagnosed with hypertension. And gestational hypertension can lead to preeclampsia and that's dangerous they want to put you on drugs and now you're high risk or do a c-section. What to have. An essential oil blend for example that you know because of the research can help lower blood pressure to change your diet to do certain things that you know can help. Your disposal to prevent that to prevent those medical interventions to give you that maybe a little edge that you need that bio hack you can't put a dollar amount on that piece of mind. Like that it's kind of a marketing slogan and i hate to diminish it but it really is empowerment. And it's empowerment knowledge is power and being prepared as power and and having things at your disposal that you could go to his power and ultimately what's happened especially in america.

Is the powers that be right big gov big ag big pharma big business we've been disempowered. To do virtually anything on her own. how to cook, how to make, you know, how to grow food, how to take care of our kids. I mean, like, you know, just think about the systems that we're in. We can't do much of anything other than, you know, go in front of a computer and press a button. I mean, we could fall down this matrix discussion for a minute if you want, but it's like, how do we get our power back? And how do we get self-sufficiency back? And as crazy as it sounds, not like we all, because I live in a, again, you and I, we live in Atlanta. Like, I don't live off grid. I don't have a homestead. We don't homeschool our kids, but we do what I think anyone can do. And we create our own empowering experience by doing a lot of things that people buy and that people outsource. And that's pretty cool, making your own food. We have a garden and not that the garden feeds my family, but it gives us enough tomatoes for, you know, like a month or so worth of spaghetti sauce or it gives us enough herbs for pesto. It gives us some fun things, but it's also healing, right? It's the whole process, but knowing that we have that, knowing that if there is another pandemic and the stores are closed, we don't have to worry about soap because we can make our own, right? Knowing that we have, you know, at least three to six months of canned good foods in our pantry or cellar, the known case, you know, whatever, but it's also there because we don't want to have to go to the store every day, right?

Dr. Eric Zielinski
Just these little things, these little things, knowing that if our kid gets a bump or a scrape or a 104 temperature, we have something that we could do, that gives you an edge, that gives you just, you could put your shoulders back in a sense, right? You could stick out your chest, you could be proud. And I think that's a big part of this is people just are, that gives you confidence, that's what I'm looking for. A lot of folks just don't have confidence anymore.

They don't have confidence in their own ability to manage their health. They don't have confidence in their ability to manage their finances, to manage their whatever, fill in the blank. And anything we could do to create that own self-sufficiency is going to lend itself in other areas of our life. And that's why you say gateway, that's why I love natural health and that's why I love essential oils. It really is like the simplest, easiest gateway to this whole lifestyle if people are interested in this lifestyle. Because literally anyone can put five drops of lavender into a diffuser and press the on button to give them better sleep and help them chill out and relax at night. Anyone can do that, literally anyone. And that's affordable for most people, right?

You might have to invest 30 or $40 in the bottle of lavender and your diffuser, but that's affordable for most people. You could do that. And if that's your gateway into a whole nother world of knowing that you literally can change your physiology, you could change your mental state, you could change the environment in your home by literally pressing a button and letting mist permeate throughout your home. I hope that becomes infectious. And I hope you start to think, what else can I do? What else can I change? What else can I adapt? And if you're like us, my wife and I, for the last 22 years, we've been down this wonderful, wonderful journey and it's permeated virtually every part of our life. And it's fascinating, it's wonderful, it's empowering, it gives us a life worth living.

And being a source of hope, being a source of life, being a source of light for other people, is there been a really cool side effect of it because people will come to you, people will ask you for help, people will seek your advice, people will look to you for solutions or guidance. And that's just how it should be, right? You don't go to your neighbor for a cup of sugar, right? Imagine a world where we live together with our neighbors in a healing community environment like we did from the dawn of civilization until we now isolated ourselves in our homes. And it's just bringing that back little by little, piece by piece.

So that's my little soapbox. And I just always appreciate chatting with you and meeting with you because I know you get it and I know you want this and I want this too and we're doing this in our own way. And that's what I'm encouraged by when I go through your podcast episodes and the couple few hundred people you've interviewed, it's like, there's a lot of us out there and this is your podcast. What about the thousands or hundreds of other podcasts that are doing similar things?

Dr. Eric Zielinski
There are documentaries and blogs and websites. There's a lot of people that have been enlightened to this mindset and that want to.

And the more that we can do this together, the better because we truly are better together.

Melanie Avalon
I could not agree more. I'm like inspired for life right now. I'm sitting here, I'm staring at my, I have a lot of indoor plants like cucumbers and cilantro and flowers and things are all hydroponically grown, which I realize is a little bit divorced from the way it's done outside. But it just makes me so happy.

And I'm so I'm sitting here looking at all that looking at your cards, listening to everything you're saying, and I could not agree more. Just thank you so much for what you're doing. And it's been a pleasure having you on the show getting to know you in real life and just seeing how authentic you are and how you know, walk what is it? I can never say this phrase, walk the walk, talk the talk. Just thank you. And so friends, if you've been inspired by this, you want to actually start doing these things, implementing these things, you can get this recipe card book, you can, it's so easy. You can start with whatever is most approachable to you and you know, will be easiest for you and then expand from there. And, huh, this was amazing. We have to make this a tradition, I guess it sort of is a tradition now. But hopefully, when you have your next book, you can come back and talk on whatever topic that may be.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
I would love it and love you and just love what you're doing and I thank you everyone for listening. And yeah, just a lot of smiles, a lot of appreciation. I want to just leave everyone with that and myself included. I'm just like grateful.

I'm really grateful for this moment and grateful for this time and Melody, you're a gift. You're a gift and just keep on shining, keep on being bright, keep on sharing and I just know that you're helping so many people and it's impacting just generations. How wonderful is that?

Melanie Avalon
Thank you so much. And we know we're on the same wavelength because you answered my last question, which I ask people what they're grateful for.

I can't wait to go out again to another restaurant and listeners as they can, because they know a lot about how crazy I am ordering at restaurants. I feel very safe with you guys and my neurotic questions that I ask the menu and you know, like Sabrina even brings her own things for the food and it's wonderful.

Dr. Eric Zielinski
She brings her own oil for them to cook with and vinegar. Yeah.

So yeah, you were definitely a good place with us. We only go, we rarely go out to eat. And when we do, we're very careful, but it's like, yes, we are in good company together.

Melanie Avalon
It's a safe space. It is. I love it. So, well, thank you so much, Eric.

We will talk very soon and have a beautiful rest of your day. You too. God bless y'all. Bye-bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast. For more information and resources, you can check out my book, What Win Wine, as well as my supplement line, Avalon X. Please visit MelanieAvalon.com to learn more about today's guest. And always feel free to contact me at contact at MelanieAvalon.com. And always remember, you got this.