Episode 211: What I Did To Beat Cancer

[EPISODE]

 

Hal: Wow. This is my first solo episode in a long time. Actually, at least I think it is. I don’t know. I don’t have the best memories so there’s a good possibility that I have recorded a solo episode recently and I just don’t remember. This is Hal Elrod. Regardless, welcome my fellow goal achievers to the Achieve Your Goals Podcast. We just got back, we being Jon Berghoff, myself and 49 of what we call our QLMers. QLM stands for Quantum Leap Mastermind and it’s a mastermind we’ve run for I think four years. This is the fourth year I think, and we have 49 awesome heart-centered, big thinking, just phenomenal human beings, entrepreneurs here just outside of Austin, Texas in Lakeway at this room that got the entire wall with glass and it was up high in the hill overlooking the water and the mountains. It was just magical and it’s hard to put into words what happened in the last few days, but it was really I guess echoing what our members said on the last day when they were kind of sharing just really powerful transformations. People were in tears saying that, A, what happened was not what they expected to happen, and that’s kind of our masterminds are very different than most masterminds and number one was they didn’t know what they expected or what they expected to happen. They didn’t know what to expect. It was completely different and they were in tears. Just a lot of them saying how they are a different person leaving those three days than when they arrive. It was really, really powerful. And at some point, Jon maybe will jump on a podcast and do a full in-depth recap and teach you some lessons from the retreat but that is not today.

 

Today’s topic, What I Did to Beat Cancer, that’s what we’re going to talk about and this is actually I’ve run in to write this into a book. I have a lot of people say, “Hal, are you going to write a book, Miracle Morning for cancer patients or something like that?” and I’ve really put a lot of thought into it because there’s so much that we don’t know that the general population, myself included, that we don’t know when it comes to combatting or the healing from cancer. And I was very fortunate and blessed that I’ve got a lot of great mentors and resources and I was able to discover kind of a path that led me to healing myself or not just healing myself but healing myself with the help of phenomenal doctors and friends and support and I want to talk about what I did to heal and to beat cancer if you will. And why does that apply to you? If you’re listening you’re like, “Well, I don’t have cancer and I don’t plan on getting cancer.” Statistically, it’s one in two men in our lifetime will have cancer and one in three women. You think about that, it’s crazy. It’s like a science-fiction movie where there’s this deadly disease that nobody fully understands or at least they say they don’t understand what causes it and how to prevent it. Now, without getting too in-depth, it’s a billion-dollar industry where people that make money from it may not want you to prevent it or me to prevent it because then they’d be out of business. They’d be out of a job. It’s something to think about. We’ll touch on that throughout today’s episode.

 

But if you consider that one in two people are going to get cancer, one in two men, one in three women, that’s what the stats say, and I don’t know where those stats actually come from. I should’ve googled and found that out. I’m sure you can in a few seconds but that’s scary. That means that half of the men on the planet, a third of the women are going to come down with this disease that they don’t have a full-blown cure for and the cure that they do have being chemotherapy and radiation wreak havoc on your body. So, you might say, “Well, there’s got to be a better way.” I have a sore throat by the way so I’m having trouble here. But there’s got to be a better way and that was really my approach when I was diagnosed with cancer. So, let me start at the beginning real quick. And again, if you’re listening and you don’t have cancer I’m going to talk about how to prevent cancer. I’m going to talk about what things we found that you can do to prevent cancer or to lessen or minimize your chances of getting cancer. Also, you may know someone that has cancer, and this may be an episode that you want to share with them. So, if you don’t want to get cancer, this episode is for you. If you have cancer, this episode is for you. If you know someone that has cancer or that you don’t want to have cancer, this episode is for you, for them, etcetera, so it really is an important topic.

 

And for me, years ago, roughly 10 years ago I watched a documentary called Healing Cancer from the Inside Out. I’d encourage everybody to watch that documentary. Now you might be thinking, “Well, Hal, you watched a documentary and you still got cancer,” so we’ll get to that in a second. But that documentary really opened my eyes to the causes of cancer and how a lot of it is self-imposed and I believe the only cause of death in the United States that is more prevalent than cancer is heart disease and both of those many types of cancer and heart disease in and of itself, those are often lifestyle-related, diet-related, etcetera. You can absolutely eat a diet that causes cancer and you can absolutely eat a diet that causes heart disease. In fact, it’s called the SAD, standard American diet. So, that means that you could also change your diet in a way that minimizes the chance that you’re going to get cancer. It minimizes the chance that you’re going to get heart disease.

 

So, I ate an anticancer diet and the cancer that I got was not diet-related. Typically, the cancers from my understanding and quick disclaimer, I’m not an oncologist. This is in my area of expertise. I’m just sharing with you from my personal experience and dozens and dozens of hours of researching and talking to holistic doctors and talking to people that beat their cancer naturally and working with one of the best oncologist in the world specifically for leukemia which is what I had, a blood cancer which they don’t know, apparently don’t know what causes it and it’s definitely not diet-related. So, it was really scary when I got it because it was like, well, I always thought if I got cancer I would just change my diet, I would improve my diet. I’d say it was great before I got cancer, but I would just go, it would be bulletproof and it would be not a piece of sugar in my diet, etcetera, etcetera. And before cancer, I definitely would have some coconut ice cream a few nights a week, etcetera, etcetera. So, it wasn’t perfect. It was good, but it could always be better. So, when I got the cancer that they said, “No, this isn’t diet related,” I was like, “Oh crap. I don’t know what else to do.” I don’t have any tricks in my toolkit on how to reverse this. I thought diet was the way I would be able to do it.

 

So, it was October 2016 when I woke up. So, for those of you that don’t know the story, I’ll give just a quick kind of recap of how this started. October 2016, I woke up in the middle of the night and I was struggling to breathe. I was gasping for air and I thought it was a nightmare. You wake up sometimes gasping for air if you’re having a nightmare. I thought that it was but I couldn’t catch my breath and my wife woke up next to me and I’ve seen her. She goes, “Sit up, sit up, sit up,” and she put pillows behind my back and as I sat up straighter as opposed to laying down, I was able to breathe a little bit better. Still wasn’t great but I was able to breathe a little bit better and then I had to sleep sitting up that night and the next day it was just as bad and so my wife sent me to urgent care. They misdiagnosed me with pneumonia and then a few days later went into my regular family physician and he ran a bunch of tests and came back and he called me in and said, “Hey, it looks like you have either some sort of weird viral infection that’s causing your lymph nodes to expand and swell up and it’s causing excess fluids to collapse your left long or it really is the signs of some form of lymphoma cancer.” And I mean for anyone who has cancer or you can probably imagine if you’ve never had cancer you go, “What? Like there’s no way. Never in a million years.”

 

I think that’s for most things like when I was in my car accident, hit head-on by a drunk driver you think, “Well, those things happen to other people like that stuff doesn’t happen to me like my life’s okay. I’m good.” Cancer, it’s sad. It’s a tragic thing but you think it happens to other people especially if you live a healthy lifestyle. I really thought I would never – ever since I watched the movie, Healing Cancer from Inside Out, and I started eating more in alignment and living more in alignment with that, I thought I was kind of immune from cancer and you kind of there are so many causes of cancer from the water that we drink that has chlorine in it to the food that we eat to radiation that we might get. So, for me the one of the theories is that when I have my car accident when I was 20 years old, hit head on by a drunk driver, dead for six minutes, broke 11 bones, ruptured my lung, punctured my spleen or punctured my lung, ruptured my spleen and I had to go through a ton, I had many surgeries and essentially I had a lot of radiation, lots of CAT scans, lots of MRIs and radiation manipulate your cells and it definitely can be a cause of cancer. About a week or two before I was diagnosed with cancer, I fell wakeboarding and I got a concussion and so I had to go in for a CAT scan, MRI, and the doctors one of their theories is that when you have radiation from those types of procedures that can manipulate your cells and actually create cancer cells that can kind of lie dormant and those can be reactivated if you get more radiation.

 

And so, that’s one of theories is that any manipulation to my cells or my DNA that occurred from the excessive radiation that I had when I was 20 years old, I’m 38 now, I was 37 when I had cancer, the theory is that when I went and have the concussion and I went and had a lot more radiation, well, not a lot more, a little more but the thought is that that could have reactivated those cancer cells and caused them to turn into this leukemia. It was a very fast-acting leukemia. So, I went and got a second opinion from one of the top cancer hospitals in the world, MD Anderson which is in Houston. I live in Austin, Texas. Houston, Texas a few hours away. We drove down there. We being my wife, myself, my father, my father-in-law flew in to kind of support me and help. They confirmed that I had acute lymphoblastic leukemia and maybe the worst part about that is the survival rate for adults with lymphoblastic or acute lymphoblastic leukemia is 30%. So, imagine if you were diagnosed with cancer and they say this is a very rare, very aggressive form of cancer, one of the most rare in adults. Ironically, it’s not rare in children so children actually, this is actually a very common cancer in children and there’s like an 80% survival rate so it’s actually pretty good chances and for adults for whatever reason, I don’t remember the reasons but it’s a 30% survival rate and for those of you that are glass is half empty, that’s a 70% you’re going to die rate which is if someone says, “Hey, you have a 70% chance of dying in the next 6 to 12 months,” that’s pretty scary. It’s optimistic or positive as you might be or I might be. That’s a scary thing.

 

So, when I got my official diagnosis, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, I looked at my oncologist in the eye and I said, “Hey, thank you. I’m not a big fan of chemotherapy. Chemotherapy it’s a very strong, devastating drug. It wreaks havoc on your body and the cancer.” One of my nurses who she specifically a leukemia nurse working with oncologist for the last 20 years or something, it’s kind of her expertise and she said that our approach is that, “The chemotherapy and the drugs that we give you that they kill the cancer and we give you as much of this chemotherapy as much of the chemotherapy as we can to kill the cancer and then we stop before we kill you.” That’s the goal and it was kind of like, “Hal, let me give you the real layman terms of like what this is. We’re giving you a drug that is wreaking havoc on your organs, wreaking havoc on your body. Our hope is that it kills the cancer before it kills you.” It’s like, “Alright. That does not sound like the best strategy to me. There’s got to be a better way,” and that was my thought especially having watched that documentary years before, Healing Cancer from the Inside Out.

 

And so, I went to my oncologist when he told me, and I said, “Hey, I don’t want to poison my body with chemotherapy. I’d like to cure my cancer or heal my cancer or beat this cancer as naturally and holistically as possible through diet, through supplementation.” I said, “I don’t even know all different ways, but can you support me in that?” And my doctor said, without hesitation, he said, “Hal, you don’t have a cancer that you have time to change your lifestyle or to implement holistic practices.” He said, “A week ago you were totally healthy. This week your lung is failing, your heart is on the verge of failing and your kidneys are on the verge of failing.” He said, “You literally if you don’t start chemotherapy in the next 24 hours, 48 hours, you’ll be dead between a matter of days and I estimate about a week at the rate that you’re going,” and I didn’t like that at all.

 

Not that, obviously, I didn’t like that I would be dead in a week, but I thought it was a scare tactic. I just thought the doctor was trying to scare me into chemotherapy kind of and so I didn’t like that and part of it is just a way I think he approached it that there was no consideration, there was no conversation. It was just I said, “Hey, doctor, can you support me doing this holistically?” And he was like, “You’re going to be dead in a week.” I said, “Okay. Well, can I have 24 hours or 12 hours or something to go talk to my family and kind of figure this out?” And he said, “Sure.” We jumped on to Dr. Google and consulted Dr. Google and when we consulted Dr. Google with acute lymphoblastic leukemia basically you find out that, “Oh, this is very real,” like the doctor it wasn’t a scare tactic. Most people die from and it’s ALL, acute lymphoblastic leukemia or ALL for short. So, most people die from ALL. Most people that do die from ALL they often die from it before they’re diagnosed with it like it’s so fast. It attacks your body so fast that most people they are kind of like me I was misdiagnosed with pneumonia and if I would’ve just thought that was the diagnosis and not just gone in to my family physician for kind of a second opinion and some testing, I would’ve just kept taking the antibiotics that they gave me at urgent care and I would’ve died so that’s what happens with a lot of people.

 

And so, when I did a little bit of research and consulted Dr. Google, I realized, “Oh, this cancer is no joke.” Not that any cancer is a joke but this cancer like it’s so fast to take somebody to kill someone that I don’t have time to try some holistic stuff and do other research and this and that. So, as much as it pained me, my hand was kind of forced and I went in for leukemia the next day and they hook me up. I started Hyper-CVAD. Now, let me give you a quick understanding of what the chemotherapy regimen that I was on, what it’s like. So, Hyper-CVAD and you can google that if you want. It’s Hyper-CVAD. Hyper-CVAD chemotherapy it’s one of the most intense chemotherapies if not the most intense chemotherapies in the world. Now, in other words, if chemotherapy wreaks havoc on your body, all chemotherapy does, this chemotherapy wreaks the most havoc on your body and I think that it’s also kind of there’s a correlation of why the survival rate for ALL is 30% because many people die from the chemotherapy. And so, it’s kind of terrifying. You’re like, “I’m going to the doctor to make me better but what they’re giving me is deadly like it is deadly. It is literally killing me while they’re giving it to me.” Their hope is it kills the cancer first and my body is strong enough to live through that period of killing the cancer before I die. So, it’s like, “Ugh,” especially I’ve got two kids. At that time, they were seven and four. They’re now a year older and I’ve got a wife and I’ve got a life that I’ve built that I love and to face this was just terrifying and I was extraordinarily optimistic.

 

The way that I look at statistics and actually I want to share this. So, I had 30% chance to live. I just recently listened to Brian Johnson. His brother was diagnosed with cancer just – they were a few weeks ago from the day I’m recording this episode. In fact, I had a call with Brian a couple of days ago and he’s in the Miracle Morning movies. So, Brian is a great friend. So, he just released this video which I encouraged everyone. Again, everyone that’s listening to this whether you don’t have cancer but you don’t want it which I would imagine is every person that doesn’t have cancer doesn’t want it, the best way to beat cancer is to prevent it 100% and we’re going to touch on a little bit of that in this episode. I’ll give you some resources and I really want to share with you the strategy that I took today. So, just so you understand like I’m not going to go in-depth on this episode on what you should do if you have cancer, how you beat it, what everything, all the supplements that you take and all the procedures and the practices. What’s the word I’m looking for? The protocol. That’s not what today is about. This is more big picture on, hey, here’s the mindset, here’s the strategy I took and if you want to prevent cancer, this is the strategy I’m encouraging and I’m going to give you resources that opened my eyes and gave me specifics on how to implement the mindset and the strategies that I’m going to share with you that I am sharing with you. I’m going to give you those resources.

 

One of the best is this. It’s a pretty brand-new video, Brian Johnson Conquering Cancer 101. And if you just go to Facebook and you type in Brian Johnson Conquering Cancer 101 on Facebook you should find that video and it’s a one-hour video and it’s ten different topics. Anyway, it’s very well done and I highly, highly recommend it. And Brian is on a mission. His older brother now has cancer. Brian is on a mission to help his brother solve or beat or cure, heal from the cancer and do it in this positive, proactive, healthy way as possible and, Brian, he is the founder of PhilosophersNotes, the founder of Optimize.me but Optimize is his business, his company and his business PhilosophersNotes they book summaries. So, he’s just a brilliant researcher and he’s a brilliant synthesizer of information and so that’s kind of he realized, “Well, hey that’s my expertise is finding the best information out there and synthesizing it in a way that people can take it in a quicker not have to read 20 books.” He reads the 20 books and then he synthesizes it into summaries that give you what you need to know from those books and what you need to implement to create results. And so, he’s doing that for his brother. He’s on a mission right now. His life is dedicated right now to saving his brother’s life essentially.

 

So, in that video though, he shared a great quote about the statistics of cancer, so I mentioned I had a 30% survival rate is what I was given and for most people that’s terrifying. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, I have a 70% chance of dying. I’m going to die. What if I die?” and they’re consumed with fear. I was not consumed with fear. Yes, it was terrifying to get the news but only for a few minutes and then I processed it and I decided, okay, well I cannot change the statistic that’s been given to me, but I can choose to be one of the 30% that lives and beats this cancer. So, think about that, right? When you’re given a statistic and you have – oh, and by the way, this is I don’t think funny is the right word, but I thought I was given a 10% chance of living. So, actually 30% I found that out after because I started quoting that I was given a 10% chance of living and speeches and interviews and then I thought, “I better make sure that’s accurate.” So, I googled what are the survival rates for adults for acute lymphoblastic leukemia and it’s not 10%. It’s 30% but here’s the deal. My reality was 10%. I don’t know where that came from. I don’t know if a doctor told me that or I found that googling or what, but I thought that I had a 10% chance of living statistically and a 90% chance of dying. So, that’s actually the statistic that my reality was based on because I don’t know how I got the misinformation, but I did. I didn’t find out it was 30% until a few weeks ago long after I beat cancer. When I started working on a new book and I want to make sure the information I was sharing was accurate and I went, “Oh shoot.” I was saying 10%. It wasn’t 10% but again our reality is our reality. So, imagine you’ve thought you had whether it’s 10% or 30%, I don’t know that matters, but I thought I had a 10% chance of living and I decided, “Well, I’m not a statistic. I will be one of the 10% that beats this cancer. There is no other option.”

 

And I implemented something I called the Miracle Equation and I’m going to talk about that in a few minutes here, the Miracle Equation. The Miracle Equation, by the way, is it’s been in my heart to write that book for a long time. It is the formula that I used back in the day to break sales records and then I used it with making the Miracle Morning the bestseller and then I use it to beat cancer and once I’ve used it to beat this cancer and to beat the odds of being given a 10% or a 30% chance of living, it felt like the timing is now right and so that’s the book that I’m working on the Miracle Morning Equation. I’m not promoting it or anything right now because it’s not going to be out for at least a year probably but just so you’re in the loop on that. So, Brian Johnson back to the statistics whether you’re given a 10% chance, 30% chance of living or whatever it is, he says, “Statistics are just information, not condemnation.” Statistics are just information, not condemnation in other words. Many people if they’re diagnosed with cancer and they’re told, “You have a 30% chance of living,” they take this as condemnation, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to die.” Again, they’re consumed with fear.

 

Now fear, right, what does that do? It releases cortisol throughout your brain and your body which is a stress response, and which causes all sorts of physical ailments, all sorts of it makes your body very acidic. So, you don’t want to be stressed when you’re trying to heal. You don’t need to be stressed at all but when you live in fear of what could go wrong, of the worst-case scenario, you are much more likely to manifest the worst-case scenario. So, if you are consumed with fear of the worst-case scenario especially if it’s a physical ailment, a death or cancer or whatever, literally, that fear is creating that worst-case scenario in real-time. So, knowing that, I decided like fear is not going to be part of this journey for me like the cancer journey. I’m not going to live my life in fear and if you’ve heard me share before the five-minute rule that it’s okay to be negative for five minutes but there’s no point, no value in dwelling on something beyond giving yourself five minutes to experience your emotions to vent, to cry, to scream, to punch something, not someone, but something like a wall or a pillow is better. But if you think about it that so accepting all things you can’t change, that’s something I’ve lived by for a long time.

 

When I was diagnosed to the cancer I immediately went, “Okay, this is terrifying. However, I can’t change that I have cancer so I’m going to accept it. I’m going to be at peace with it. I’m not going to live in fear of it. I’m going to focus. I’m going to accept 100% of what’s happening to me, 100% unconditional acceptance.” And I encourage you, I mean, that is the key to free yourself from emotional pain. When you accept it, it doesn’t mean you’re happy about it. I wasn’t happy that I had cancer but when you accept it, you’re able to be at peace with it and peace is not an emotion like happiness where it’s fleeting. You’d be happy one minute, you get bad news and now you’re upset. You get good news and now you’re happy again. But when you live in a state of peace which you access that state of mind or that state of being through unconditional acceptance, that five-minute rule is a great transition to acceptance where you give yourself – you don’t try to immediately accept it. You give yourself five minutes to feel the pain even feel the fear. Five minutes of fear is okay. Five months of fear will kill you. Five years or five decades of fear will kill you. And if five months of fear for me with cancer I probably would’ve made the cancer cells I would’ve fed them with fear and I would’ve been dead, most likely. It’s theoretically. I have no idea.

 

But where was I going with that? Brain damage from my car accident plus chemo brain equals a really tough time remembering stuff. I promise you that. You can ask my family too. My wife will tell you. But anyway, so statistics are information, not condemnation. So, most people take a statistic like you have a 30% chance of living as condemnation. They live in fear. You need to look at that as information and you need to realize that the 70% that have died of cancer and I can’t speak obviously for individual cases but I would imagine that many of them probably had a lot of fear and the 30% that lived, not that they didn’t have fear but I would imagine that their mindset, one thing I did is I read a lot of books. Anticancer was one of them. Great book. Anticancer, highly recommend it but I read a lot of books on beating cancer naturally. That was like my thing because I did the chemotherapy and then here’s my decision by the way.

 

For those of you that have hung around this long into the podcast, let me share with you my strategy overall for how I approached beating cancer and here’s the big picture of the strategy and this is what most people do not do, most cancer patients do not do this and I believe this is one of the main reasons why I beat cancer. Two reasons. Number one was my mindset, that I was focused on what I wanted. I was focused on the positive. I was focused on I was visualizing myself living to be 100 years. I was using affirmations every day. I was dwelling on not my fear but on my faith, faith in what was possible for my future, faith and the healing, faith in living a long, healthy, prosperous abundant life. That faith. I traded in the fear for the faith. So, the first thing was the mindset. That’s a big part of it. That’s a big part of the miracle equation which we’re going to wrap up with here in a few minutes.

 

However, the second part of it is the strategy and here’s the strategy. I simply combine the best that allopathic medicine has to offer, allopathic or also known commonly known as Western medicine. I combined the best that allopathic Western medicine have to offer which means doing what my doctor told me to do, one of the best oncologists in the world for leukemia, trusting him and doing what he told me to do. I combine that with the best that holistic practices have to offer. And I’ll tell you, when I asked my doctor, again, one of the best oncologists in the world, what part does diet play in my healing? What part does me detoxifying my liver since chemo a lot of people died, when they die from chemo they often die from chemo toxicity which is the chemo building up in various organs like your liver that filter out toxins, your kidneys as well and I ask what part, what are the best strategies to detoxify my kidneys in my liver because obviously, the chemo is going to be building up in those areas. And my doctor literally didn’t know. He didn’t know. Think about that. The best oncologists in the world, one of the best in the world, he doesn’t know. Why? Because in med school they don’t teach you, they don’t spend a lot of time teaching you about holistic practices. Med schools which are, and I don’t want to get political here or whatever but the general understanding that I have is that pharmaceutical companies largely fund a lot of the medical schools and I may be misspeaking where the funding comes from or where it goes. I have also heard that oncologists are the only doctor that get a commission for the drugs that they sell. Again, that’s hearsay. Don’t quote me on it. I don’t know if that’s a fact and I love and I believe my oncologist even thought he didn’t have a lot of knowledge around anything holistic or natural, I believe he’s doing the best he can with what he knows. So, and I believe that’s true for most if not all doctors, well, most doctors, right? They’re doing the best they can with what they know and I appreciate my doctor. If it wasn’t for my doctor that figured out that I had cancer, I’d be dead. So, I’m grateful for every doctor out there, the great work that you’re doing. Thank you for that.

 

But the reality was and I asked another friend who is a doctor he said, “What?” He’s an oncologist. He said, “How much time do you spend in med school on diet?” And they said or my friend said, “I think it was like three days or something.” So, how many years med school is, right? I think different opinions on what Ph.D. you’re getting. It’s different for each doctor but many, many, many years and there’s a few days spent on diet. So, my doctor, I said, “What part does diet play?” and he said, “It doesn’t really matter as long as you do the chemotherapy,” and I know I’m smart enough to know diet plays a role in everything. Sugar feeds cancer. That is unequivocally factual. I think the research is proven. There’s so much research out there from so many credible sources and studies that have proven that cancer is fed by sugar or forms of sugar, even bleached flour that then is converted into glucose in the body feeds the cancer, etcetera, etcetera. So, when he’s telling me it doesn’t matter, I’m like, “You’re killing me, doc,” and then I go, “Oh, is that why when I’m in the hospital cafeteria there are people that are hooked up to their IV literally getting chemotherapy dripped into their vein and because you told them diet doesn’t matter, they’re drinking a 44 ounce Big Gulp soda and eating an antibiotic-fed cheeseburger with a bleached flour bun and antibiotic-fed cheese, I mean, on and on and on, it killed me and at first it was very hard to trust my doctor because of the things that I knew from either, A, common sense or, B, just doing a little bit of basic research and he would say, “These things don’t matter,” or he would say, “I don’t know.” And it was hard to trust my doctor at first and then the further I went and the more books I read, I realized, “Oh, he’s telling me what he knows like this is his experience. This is his knowledge. This is the training that he has. He’s doing the best that he can.”

 

And so, part of my affirmations went from I went from being afraid and not being able to trust my doctor or not allowing myself to trust my doctor to I have an affirmation that says, “I trust my doctor. I have unwavering trust in my doctor that he is doing the best that he can and doing the best with what he knows.” And I decided I’m going to do everything that I would do on my own holistically as if I were not getting the chemotherapy. So, I’m going to basically cure my cancer in two ways. I took a two-pronged approach. I’m going to do it with allopathic western medicine, the best that they have to offer and I’m going to simultaneously do it with the best that natural holistic methods that have worked for hundreds, if not thousands of people that decided to do this on their own and do it naturally. Now, does it always work? No. Steve Jobs tried that and he died. He died. He had pancreatic cancer and now it said and that scared me a lot too. I thought he went totally natural and it didn’t work for him. He’s got all the money and resources in the world. From what I understand, Steve Jobs waited – I don’t know. You can look up Steve Jobs. I don’t want to make any false claims here about what Steve did or didn’t do because I don’t remember but I did do a lot of, you know, I read as many articles as I could on Steve Jobs in the very beginning when I was trying to decide whether to go all natural or not and that’s when I realized it was part of the realization that I got to get western medicine a chance here.

 

So, the point of it is this. If you go to a traditional oncologist, typically my experience and I talked to many, many oncologists, probably many, many being at least probably three or four so not many, many. Let me back up. The many, many being I talked to my initial oncologist. I talked to an oncologist so that was at MD Anderson. Actually, it’s not three or four. It’s probably a dozen because I talked to every oncologist. I met with many oncologists at MD Anderson. So, I talked to many oncologists there. I found two oncologists here in Lakeway to support me or in Austin, Texas where I live so I had two oncologists here and then I would read books by oncologists and so I learn from a lot of oncologists and they if I asked what’s holistically, that’s not their expertise. They usually don’t even know anything about it. And so, they would same as my oncologist just do the chemo and as long as I do the chemo you can do whatever else you want essentially and that’s not true. And if you look at the – and here’s what I would ask is, “Hey, doc. You have a 30% survival rate. So, do you think I should just trust you unequivocally without thinking for myself?” And that’s the problem I think for most cancer patients is they, “Yes trust your doc. That’s great.” But they trust their doc and they don’t take an active role in the healing process. They don’t take an active role in healing their cancer. They just do what their doctor says, and their doctor again doesn’t have the training typically in the holistic methods and practices that can aid in saving their life.

 

So, for me, what was I doing? Well, I was doing coffee enemas. Now, coffee enemas are controversial. You’ll find a lot of support that says they’re phenomenal. You’ll find a lot of support that says they’re not. Much of it is from the traditional community that oncologists and such that are saying, “No, no, no, this is a dangerous practice,” and whatever. But here’s the point. Coffee enemas are designed to it detoxifies your – I can’t remember if it’s kidneys or liver. You have to forgive me. I’m not a details person so what happens is I do all this research. I learn all the details and then I make a decision at that moment. Well, as soon as a week passes and for me that’s been many, many months but I don’t usually remember the details that led me to the decision that I made. So, I want you to understand that. So, if I forget stuff, it’s not that I didn’t do the research. It’s that I don’t remember the details. Again, brain damage from a car accident is a bitch. Brain damage from chemo brain as they call it is just icing on the cake. So, that’s the overall approach that I would encourage on. Let me give you some resources. First resource I already gave you. That is Brian Johnson’s new video. It’s totally free. I found it on Facebook. I don’t know if it’s on YouTube as well. It probably is but it’s conquering cancer 101 so just type in onto Facebook, Brian Johnson Conquering Cancer 101, highly recommend that. Now, that’s a new resource that’s only been up for a few days.

 

The resource that I leveraged through my journey was ChrisBeatCancer.com. Now Chris Wark is the gentleman’s name. I’ve spoken with him on the phone. I got a sense I wanted to talk to him to really get a sense for his heart and his intentions and I really intuitively felt that they’re very pure. He is someone that cured himself of cancer naturally. The doctor said, “If you do that, you’re going to die,” and I think that scare tactics sometimes come in place. Do the chemo or you’re going to die or it’s just to their knowledge that’s all they know. All they know is chemo. They don’t know anything else. And again, that’s a broad statement. I’m not saying it’s every doctor but they don’t know. Many oncologists don’t know anything else so in their mind either you do the chemo or you die because there’s no other option. They don’t know about, well, how about the hundreds or thousands of people that decided to be brave and heal their cancer naturally through various methods. What about them? And the oncologists I don’t know what their take is on that but again that’s not their area of expertise. So, by combining the best of both worlds was the approach that I took, and I truly believe it’s why I’m alive today. I combined the best of holistic and the best of allopathic medicine.

 

I didn’t quite finish explaining ChrisBeatCancer.com. So, he beat cancer I think it was 13 years ago, so he’s been in remission. He’s been clean of cancer for 13 years. When he was diagnosed, it was I think stage III colon cancer which stage III you’re pretty far along. It’s not like at that point and his doctors did tell him he’d be dead in a matter of I can’t remember how long, months or weeks. And he decided that he was brave and he went for it. What he’s done since then is he’s interviewed hundreds of people that beat their cancer completely naturally and he’s interviewed dozens and dozens of holistic doctors and oncologists, traditional oncologist as well to get kind of a full spectrum like what do all these best doctors in the world, what do they say and what is their expertise especially the ones that are holistic and that are natural? So, for me, I felt my hand was kind of forced. I didn’t have the option based on my type of cancer to go all-natural, all holistic. However, I decided that, okay, I’ve got to do the chemo but I’m going to do everything naturally to build my immune system, to detoxify my organs and to do everything I need to do to heal my cancer and support my body while havoc is being wrecked on it by this hyper-CVAD chemo. I’m so ADD. I forgot to close that loop as well. Let me close now.

 

The hyper-CVAD chemo I mentioned one of the most intense chemos in the world. So, many people that have cancer, everyone’s chemo regimen they’re different like for different types of cancer. Breast cancer, there’s a few different types of regimens for breast cancer. My aunt just was diagnosed with breast cancer sadly and, Nancy, if you’re listening to this, I love you. You’re going to beat this I have no doubt in my mind. Unwavering faith, maintain unwavering faith, Nancy. Focus on being one of those that make it. Statistics are not condemnation, they are information and you get to choose I believe. We have the power of mind over body or the influence of our mind and our body and so yeah, Nancy, I love you. You’re going to make it. So, depending on what chemo you get, I think Nancy she’s on one chemo drug and I think she goes in like once a month roughly for her chemo and that’s many cancer patients. They go through their chemo and often that causes them to be very sick, vomiting. You’ve seen probably in some movies of what it’s like for cancer patients to get chemo. Well, imagine one hour once a month of chemo and then maybe some oral pills as well.

 

Hyper-CVAD, the chemo regimen I was in was five chemo drugs, five of the most powerful chemo drugs in the world. Each one for 12 hours at a time consecutively over five days, so four to five days. So, I had a four to five chemo drugs, 12 hours at a time. So, imagine that. One hour of chemo a month can wreak havoc on your body. I had 12 times five. I had 60 hours of chemo every three weeks eight times, plus they stuck me in this spine with chemo drugs. It’s called a lumbar puncture because my particular type of cancer, ALL, tends to turn into brain cancer. So, what happened is they give chemo to patients and initially this is something they discovered as they kept having ALL patients come down with brain cancer and often die of brain cancer because what happens is the cancer would actually like hide from the chemo in the spinal cord and then it would creep up the spinal cord. It would keep trying to hide from the chemo and then it would go into the brain and it would become full-blown brain cancer and people would die. So, now part of the ALL regimen, the protocol, they give you spinal injections of chemotherapy to kill any cancer cells that are trying to go into your brain. I’m like as you can imagine, especially like I’m a supernatural holistic guy. I don’t like to take any even prescription medication and I’m going, “You’re going not just give me 60 hours of chemo through my vein,” and by the way the chemotherapy some of the side effects of the chemo are leukemia. Think about that. I have leukemia and the medicine that they were using to try to kill my leukemia before it killed me, one of the side effects is leukemia. It causes leukemia. So, it was a challenge mentally as you might imagine.

 

And so, I’m going to wrap this up with the miracle equation and it’s very simple. Unwavering faith combined with extraordinary effort is what creates miracles in everyday life. Unwavering faith combined with extraordinary effort creates miracles in everyday life. When you think about the greatest athletes in the world when the game is on the line and there’s only seven seconds left and it doesn’t look like there’s any chance that the losing team can beat the winning team, you take a champion like a Michael Jordan or a Kobe Bryant or Lebron James, those are all basketball obviously, you can take any sport and they want the ball because they have decided that at some point in their lives or their careers that they will maintain unwavering faith that they can make every single shot that they take. And even though there’s only seven seconds left they say, “Hey, coach, give me the ball,” and they believe with unwavering faith that they can make the game-winning shot and they put forth extraordinary effort to do so and they fight. If they’re being covered by their man, they fight to get free. I mean if you’ve ever seen Michael Jordan or any of these players in the last seven seconds like they’re being covered by the best defender on the other team because the team knows that this guy is going to want to ball. He’s the champion or he has the mindset of unwavering faith. They’re being covered the best defender, so they have an extraordinary effort to get free from that defender. They catch the ball usually it’s like fading out of bounds or falling over and they find a way to win the game and hit the shot.

 

So, unwavering faith is the first component and it goes back to the quote from Brian Johnson, “Statistics are information, not condemnation.” So, for me, I know the miracle equation works. I’ve seen it in my life. We don’t have time to go into detail on this episode but just trust me on this. The first step is unwavering faith because the first thing that goes out the window when you’re given a statistic that the odds are not in your favor is we usually lose faith that we’re going to be okay. Faith that we’re going to win. And that’s the first and it goes out the window. You have to consciously choose to maintain unwavering faith despite the statistics or the odds and then the second piece is extraordinary effort and for me doing coffee enemas, not comfortable. I took over 70 supplements. Now, I researched all the supplements to make sure that they didn’t have fillers and it was 70 total so I mean I was taking it any given time probably 30 to 40 supplements every single day, 30 to 40 supplements every single day.

 

And that was, again, I call that my extraordinary effort. I was juicing almost every single day. I was drinking fresh organic juice to heal my body, build my immune system. I was doing ozone sauna. Basically, when you start researching all the holistic practices, I was doing acupuncture. I was doing all these holistic practices going over and above even if it was uncomfortable, even if I was tired, even if I was sick from the chemo and I really believe I had minimal side effects. Yes, I had some side effects. Yes, there were some days or chemo treatments that were really more difficult than others and I was in a lot of pain. There was one lumbar puncture where they stuck my spine and they did it the wrong way and I had horrific migraines for I think eight days or 11 days or six days. I don’t remember how many days, but it was horrible. But for the most part, I didn’t vomit very often, I mean, only a few times in the entire eight months of chemo treatment. I didn’t vomit very often. I just overall my doctors would tell me when I would meet with my doctor and they say, “So, tell me how the side effect has been,” and I would tell them and they would go, “You have less side effects than people that are getting one hour of chemo a month and you’re getting 60 hours or chemo every few weeks. That’s amazing. How are you doing it?” I’m like, “Well, doc, I’m doing all the stuff you told me didn’t matter.”

 

And it makes sense at my voice right now. There was a real internal struggle in a sense of I don’t know if it’s resentment because again I know the doc is doing the best he can but it was almost it was just frustration with the entire medical system going, “Man, there are 1.5 million cancer patients in the United States, I believe that’s the statistic or that’s the number, that they’re suffering more than they need to because our traditional doctors, oncologists, they’re not being taught all these other practices.” And one theory is because you don’t profit when your patients do coffee enemas. You don’t profit when your patients take supplements or when your patients eat healthier. There’s no profit in that so the pharmaceutical companies that are profit-driven companies and again this is a theory. I’m not saying this is fact but that the theory is that the reason that our traditional medical doctors, oncologists and all types of doctors aren’t given all this natural stuff, this knowledge on all the natural protocols and strategies and techniques and methods and all of that is because they’re not going to spend a bunch of time teaching something that there’s not a profit from. They want the solution to be in the drug that they create. So, again, that’s a theory. It’s not my own theory but it’s one that may or may not be some truth to. So that’s it. Unwavering faith plus extraordinary effort and I believe the strategy that allowed me to not only beat my cancer but to minimize the side effects of the chemotherapy that was wreaking havoc on my body.

 

I was right around 170 pounds before I got cancer. I got down to 127 pounds from the chemotherapy. So, I’m 6 feet tall and I lost right around 40 pounds and it’s interesting. When you think about the picture of a cancer patient, you see someone who’s lost all this weight. They’re really skinny, they look sick and they lost their hair typically. They’re bald. That’s not someone who has cancer. That’s someone who’s getting chemotherapy. Think about that. Cancer doesn’t make your hair fall out at least not to my knowledge and most cancers make you lose weight. Maybe if you’re toward the end of your life and the cancer hasn’t healed yet, but it’s chemotherapy. I mean I literally lost 20 or 30 pounds in a matter of a week. Think about that. Not because of the cancer. My weight was fine. My hair was fine. Every hair on my body fell out. I lost 40 pounds in a matter of weeks from the chemotherapy because of the havoc it was wreaking.

 

So, that’s the summary of this episode. I want you to walk away with two things. Number one, if you have cancer or someone that you know, consider combining the best of traditional Western allopathic medicine with the best of natural holistic practices that builds your body, builds your immune system, detoxify your organs from the toxicity that the chemo is causing. So that’s the first thing. And again, ChrisBeatCancer.com is a great resource and then the other is the Brian Johnson Conquering Cancer 101 video. That’ll all be in the show notes. And then below this episode at HalElrod.com/podcast. By the way, that’s where you can find every episode of the podcast if not on iTunes or your favorite podcasting platform. The other piece is if you don’t want to get cancer, I would highly encourage you to again watch the same resources but I also encourage you to watch the DVD, Healing Cancer From the Inside Out. And again, I know you’re thinking, “Well, Hal, you watched that and you still got cancer.” Remember, I watched that and then the cancer I got was not diet-related. It was not necessarily or at least not to anyone’s knowledge.

 

So, and then last but not least, the Miracle Equation and this is for every person for how to live life to the fullest, how to create extraordinary results. That’s the way I define a miracle, not a religious miracle but results beyond what most people would consider possible to where it feels like a miracle. You can hardly even believe that it happened. That’s why the Miracle Morning is called the Miracle Morning, not just because it’s a religious book but because that morning ritual changed my life so fast, it felt like a miracle. That’s the type of miracle that I’m talking about. Self-created miracles. And not just self-created. I do believe that there is an infinite intelligence that is aiding us in any miracle that we create, any extraordinary result but maintain unwavering faith that you can accomplish everything that you want in your life whether it’s healing cancer or being happy or becoming a millionaire or winning the game-winning shot, unwavering faith that you can achieve everything that you want in life while you put forth extraordinary effort so that you deserve what it is that you’re maintaining faith in. Think about that. When you maintain faith, something is going to happen but if you sit back and don’t do anything to make it happen, you don’t deserve it. You don’t necessarily deserve it but if you maintain unwavering faith and then you put forth the extraordinary effort that is in alignment with that faith that will create the result that that faith is attempting to manifest, well, now you can create miracles results beyond what you might even believe at this point are possible for you.

 

I love you. I appreciate you. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Achieve Your Goals Podcast. Goal achievers, I will talk to you next week or maybe Jon Berghoff will. I don’t know if he runs the podcast with me. So, one of us, either myself or Jon Berghoff will catch you next week. Until then, we love you and talk to you soon.

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