538: How I Beat Cancer

[INTRODUCTION]

 

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. Today, we’re talking about how I beat cancer. That’s what I’m going to share with you, how I beat cancer both the mindset that I utilized to when I was diagnosed to be able to deal with that really difficult news. It’s very challenging in a person’s life to be diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease. So, how do you approach that? How do you deal with that? And today’s episode is for anyone that is touched by cancer. So, whether or not you have it or maybe somebody in your life has it, you might even share this episode with them. And it also be helpful for you to learn if you have someone in your life that you are supporting with cancer.

 

And so, I’m going to share both the mindset that I utilize to not only handle the diagnosis in the most effective, positive way, but also to deal with the challenges of, I mean, it’s been seven years since I was diagnosed, and the challenges are still emerging from the side effects of the pharmaceutical drugs that I took, the chemotherapy and the other drugs that I took during the journey. So, the mindset is crucial to beat cancer but also the approach. For me, that was combining the best of Western medicine, allopathic medicine, and called Eastern medicine or holistic protocols that’s usually how I refer to it but combining the best of both worlds.

 

And the Western medicine that was going to target and kill the cancer, being that chemotherapy, and then the protocols, the holistic protocols that would enable my body to survive the toxic chemotherapy. And my cancer had a 20% survival rate. So, there was an 80% chance that the chemo was going to kill me as it does statistically for 80% of the people that go through that chemo regimen. And I believe it’s the holistic protocols that I utilized that are why I’m alive today because I was able to overload my body with nutrition and build my immune system and enable my body to detoxify from the toxic chemotherapy and survive and support my healing journey. So, we’re going to talk about how to combine that approach and utilize that in your cancer journey or, again, someone that you know or love.

 

What came up for me, the reason this whole episode I’m recording today is that last week, a friend of mine, a long-time friend, I found out that her husband was diagnosed with cancer just I think in the last couple of weeks. And I immediately reached out to her, and I offered to share my experience with her and her husband and any guidance that might be helpful. And that reminded me that considering how prevalent cancer is, I think it’s statistically one in two men, one in three women will get cancer in their lifetime. Don’t quote me on that but I believe that’s the kind of well-known statistic. And I realize that you might be touched by someone or you might be in someone’s life who has cancer or maybe you’re dealing with a diagnosis yourself.

 

And so, I want to make that same offer to you to share my experience and any guidance that I can give to you because having beat this really aggressive form of cancer with a 20% survival rate, I feel like I really learned what at least worked for me. And I studied a lot of what worked for other people. That’s how I got to figure out what would work for me. And so, I hope it is helpful for you or someone in your life that you love. And I do want to mention, by the way, in 2018, I did a podcast. It was Episode 211 called What I Did to Beat Cancer. And you can go back and listen to that one if you want. I listened to it yesterday just to make sure I don’t repeat myself too much today. But in that one, it was very focused on my story and my opinions on Western medicine, good and bad. And today, I wanted to dive a little more into specific aspects of what was my mindset, what was the approach that I took. So, that’s what you’re going to get today.

 

And before we move forward, I want to actually start the training, if you will, or the podcast right now because I realized at the end of the… I recorded the episode yesterday and I realized that I forgot to talk about one of the most important holistic protocols that I’ve utilized to deal with pain management, to deal with insomnia, to deal with loss of appetite. And that is cannabis, also known as marijuana. I think it was rebranded cannabis because marijuana had a bad reputation due to, well, we won’t go down that road. But cannabis, a plant, I believe it’s a miracle plant that grows in the ground. And, for me, it helped again with things that pharmaceutical drugs were not helping with.

 

It began when I was injected in my – it was supposed to be my spine with chemotherapy, and the nurse accidentally missed my spine and injected chemotherapy into my nerve along the spinal column. And this caused the most horrific, painful, unbearable migraines I had ever experienced in my life. Migraine headaches where I was in unbearable pain. I had to have earplugs in, white noise blasting, a mask on my face, eye mask. I was in so much pain. I couldn’t handle light. I couldn’t handle sound. I had no appetite. I stopped eating. And this went on for about seven days consecutively around the clock, these horrible migraines. And I finally was kicked out of the hospital because they needed the bed, the hospital bed for another patient. And it was so difficult just to move. I can remember vividly that day, and my dad was my caretaker.

 

Immediately, I got into a wheelchair. He wheeled me to the car. I went home. He helped me up the stairs to our apartment, and I went straight to the bed in eye mask, earplugs, white noise back on. And my poor dad’s watching helplessly as he’s whispering to me, “Hal, can you sip some bone broth? I made you bone broth.” And I’m like, “Dad, I can’t. No offense, but like you talking to me, even you whispering, it makes my head throb. I can’t handle it.” And so, my poor dad was watching helplessly as I’m like withering away. I’m losing weight. I’m down from 167 pounds to 127 pounds. I’m like a skeleton. And so, finally, my dad, after nothing was working, he said, “Hal, I’m sorry to talk to you,” but he said, “What about that cannabis that your friend dropped off at the beginning of this cancer journey?” You know, I was probably three weeks in, a month in.

 

And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Do you want to try that?” I said, “I’ll try anything.” And so, my dad pulled out the cannabis and I took two puffs, which was funny. My dad had never dealt with cannabis before so I was having to kind of coach him on what to do and how to put it in a pipe, which I had experienced from my younger days but I hadn’t done it in years. So, this was my first time in many years. And before, it was always recreationally, not medically. And it was medical cannabis that she delivered because she had used it for her chronic illness. And giving me that cannabis, I took two puffs and my dad went into the living room of the apartment, and I closed my eyes, laid back down.

 

And five minutes later, I stood up, I felt great. I walked into the other room and I said, “Dad, I am starving. Will you make me food?” Now keep in mind, my dad was almost shell-shocked, like I haven’t been up for seven days other than when I was forced to move from the hospital to the apartment. I was in extreme pain. I had no appetite. And now I’m standing up. I’m smiling. I say, “Dad, make me some food. I’m starving.” And then I called my wife, Ursula. And she was blown away because she hadn’t talked to me in many days. She was just talking to my dad. And I called her and I said, “Hey, sweetie, how are you?” She goes, “What’s going on? How are you calling me right now?” And I said, “I took two puffs of cannabis and I feel 90% better.”

 

And I’ll tell you that I was simultaneously or very quickly I became aware and angry that this wasn’t available to all cancer patients. And it’s becoming more available now as it’s legalized and I don’t know how many states but quite a few states now. But for me, it was like I’m being given all these harmful pharmaceutical drugs that are damaging my kidney and my liver. They gave me morphine and OxyContin. They gave me every pain reliever that they had, and none of them worked. And I was two puffs away, two hits away from total relief. And I was like how angry, how many thousands, hundreds of thousands of cancer patients in hospitals, of people are suffering from horrific pain. And there’s a plant that grows in the ground that could completely heal their symptoms in five minutes that has very little side effects.

 

So, you’ll see, I get charged about this. But here’s what cannabis did for me during my cancer journey. So, number one, pain relief. It cured seven days of migraines when nothing that doctors gave me did but a plant that God gave us, right, that grows in the ground, that cured that ailment. Loss of appetite, right? I had no appetite from the pain. I think it was a direct correlation. Well, that went away. I was able to eat immediately. So, immediately, pain relieved, immediately got my appetite back. And I went through an extreme bout of insomnia that lasted for I don’t know how long. I mean, it was off and on for a year or more. And that same friend that gifted me that medical cannabis said, “Hal, try it for insomnia.” And it worked. But they were giving me, again, all these harmful pharmaceutical drugs like Ambien. I can’t remember all the other ones. And the cannabis worked.

 

So, it’s like this one miracle plant that you don’t have to smoke. In fact, after that day, I didn’t smoke it anymore because that does do damage to your lungs. I immediately found tinctures, oils that I could just drop under my tongue, and it would give me those same benefits without any kind of smoke inhalation. So, it comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. So, yeah, I forgot to mention that in the episode you’re about to hear and I wanted to make sure it was such an important part. And you can do your own research. You can do your own research. Of course, I encourage you to do your own research to see the effects of cannabis, how it can help with cancer, and all of the different symptoms such as loss of appetite, pain, insomnia, etcetera. So, it helped me with all of that across the board with very little side effects.

 

With that, I want to take a minute to tell you about one of our sponsors, who their entire product line revolves around cannabis, and that is CURED Nutrition. CURED Nutrition utilizes all parts of the cannabis plant to give you a truly holistic solution, and they utilize it in all of their supplements. Now, the supplements you’ve heard me talk about with CURED Nutrition, my favorites are Rise, which is the nootropic that I take in the morning. I took it today. And then Night Caps or Night Oil, two different forms. One is night oil are tinctures. Night Caps are capsules but they both are a combination of CBD and CBN oil, which have a sedative effect. So, I take that before bed every single night to sleep.

 

Today, I want to mention to you microdosing cannabis and CURED Nutrition offers two products that can help you microdose both THC, right? Microdosing involves consuming small, controlled amounts of THC, which is the part of the plant that gives you a high feeling. However, this is not a higher dose that may induce intoxication or impairment. Microdosing is intended to harness the subtle effects of cannabis to enhance well-being and promote balance. And the other compound in these products I’m about to share are CBD. So, you get THC and CBD in small amounts. And the two products that CURED Nutrition offers are Serenity Gummies and Calm Caps.

 

Serenity gummies are exactly what they sound like. They are gummies that are tasty gummies that you can take. I just took Calm Caps this morning, and that’s again a capsule with a small microdose of THC and CBD, and they’re precisely dosed for you to get the biggest benefits to give you subtle effects that enhance well-being and, again, promote balance. I encourage you to try it out at CUREDNutrition.com. That is CuredNutrition.com/Hal and use the discount code ‘HAL’ for 20% off your entire order of Serenity Gummies, Calm Caps, or my other two favorites Rise and then Night Caps.

 

And then last but not least, I want to take just a minute to talk about boosting your nutrition. And, for me, you’ll hear me talk about throughout the episode that overdosing on good nutrition was part of my healing journey, and it is part of my journey to this day to stay in remission and CURED Nutrition and Organifi. Organifi is my sponsor that I utilize their products. They are all powder-form, organic, whole foods supplements that you can take in a glass of water or juice or put in your smoothie for an instant boost of nutrition, energy, relaxation. You’ll see there’s a whole wide variety of product line at Organifi.com/Hal. Again, that is O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, Organifi.com/Hal and use the discount code ‘HAL’ for 20% off your entire order. So, if you want to boost your nutrition in the simplest, fastest, easiest way, check out Organifi.com/Hal.

 

And without further ado, I want to share with you in-depth, this will be a long episode because I’m going to go in-depth on how I beat cancer, the mindset, the approach, and what I would do differently if I had a chance to do it all over again. Enjoy!

 

[EPISODE]

 

Hal Elrod: All right. So, I’m going to share a quick recap of my cancer story and that episode that I did before, Episode 211. You can always go listen to that where I went much more in-depth on my cancer story and also kind of my concerns with chemo and the doctors. And I’ll touch on all of that today, but today is going to be a lot less story and a lot more approach, mindset approach, and what I would have done differently. And that episode I do encourage you to go listen to because I did just relisten to it and I was like, “Oh, this was a great episode but I talked a lot about the story and my concerns and how to approach things from a very high level.” And today I want to get a little bit more granular, a little bit more tactical for you.

 

So, I’m going to share my story quickly here, relatively quick, then we’re going to talk about the mindset that I used to beat cancer, the approach that I took to beat cancer. And again, what I would have done differently now, hindsight seven years after being diagnosed. So, it was October 2016. I was diagnosed with a rare aggressive form of cancer, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which has a 20% survival rate. So, that was a terrifying prospect, especially with a seven-year-old daughter at the time and a four-year-old son being told that there was only a 20% chance I was going to live and an 80% chance that I was going to die. As my friend, Brian Johnson, says, “A diagnosis is information, not condemnation.” And that was a big part of the mindset that I’ll get into in a second.

 

But, in my mind, 20% of the people that are diagnosed with this cancer might pass away but I’m not most people. I’m not going to live in fear. I’m not going to accept some global statistic as my reality or my fate. And so, I said on day one, you know, my wife was really afraid. I mean, I was scared, of course, but I was focusing much more on my faith than my fear because I knew that’s what I needed to do. But I told my wife, I said, “Sweetheart, I know you’re scared, and I know you’re really focused on this 20% survival rate and that those aren’t very good odds and you’re afraid you’re going to lose me.” I said, “I’m telling you, in my mind, there is a 100% chance that I will be among the 20% to 30% of those who survive this cancer.”

 

So, I want you to really take that as the first kind of takeaway from this episode is that statistics are information, not condemnation. And no matter what statistic you or someone that you know or love is given the ultimate decision, your destiny I think lies in your hands. And it’s the 100% decision that you’re going to be among the 50% or 20% or whatever the percentage of survivors are with your particular cancer or someone that you know has. It’s a decision that, “I’m going to be among those that beat the cancer. There’s no other option.” And I do believe that our body, here’s a very nonscientific explanation, which is I’m not a scientist so any explanation I give is nonscientific.

 

But we have trillions of cells in our body and there is science that shows that our thoughts and our emotions and, of course, our exercise and what we eat and everything from the external environment that we put ourselves in and the internal environment that we create affects our cellular health. And cancer is often a response to foreign toxins in the body that then cause the body, the cells to replicate quickly. That was one of my factors of my cancer is my cells would replicate very quickly and the cancer cells begin replicating quickly and then attacking the organs and so on and so forth. But the point is, we have trillions of cells that essentially do our bidding, right? We have a lot more agency over our body than we might realize, and that’s a very important piece. I don’t want to get ahead of myself because when we get into the mindset piece of this, we’ll talk more about that.

 

But so back to the story. I’m diagnosed with this rare aggressive cancer and I decide there’s a 100% chance that I’m going to beat it or that I’m going to be among the survivors, the 20% of those that do beat it. And then I decided from that place, I have to optimize my mindset. I’ve got to figure out the most effective approach here. And those were the two main creating a binary of, okay, what’s the mindset? And then what’s the actual tactical approach? What are the things I’m going to do? What am I going to think? What am I going to feel? What am I going to focus on? That’s all the mindset stuff. And then what am I actually going to do? That’s the approach.

 

In terms of the mindset, here’s the first part. It’s total acceptance. Total acceptance. And what I mean by that, you’ve heard me talk. If you’re a first-time listener to the podcast, welcome, but one of the big messages that I’ve talked about for decades is the idea of accepting reality exactly as it is. The opposite of acceptance is resistance. And the source of all of our mental and emotional pain is resisting reality, wishing that something in our reality that is unchangeable or out of our control, wishing it were different, that creates our emotional pain. And an example of that, in case you’re not quite tracking what I’m saying, which is understandable, an example though, right, is if you’re in traffic and you can’t change the traffic, right? Let’s say there’s a person, there’s a car next to you, and then you’re in your car, and let’s say you’re frustrated.

 

You’re like, “No, I’m going to be late. I’ve got to be somewhere,” and you’re resisting reality. And you mistakenly think that the traffic is what’s upsetting you, right? “I’m upset because these cars are going so slow. I’m going to be late.” But there’s a person in the car next to you that’s headed to the exact same place, do the exact same thing you are. Maybe it’s your colleague. You’re both going to work. You’re both going to be in trouble for being late, whatever it is. Same consequence. But they’re smiling and looking over and they’re going, “Why are you so angry over there?” And you’re like, “Why are you smiling about? We’re going to be late.” The difference is one person, your colleague in this case, right, they’ve accepted reality exactly as it is. They’re not wishing or any different because that’s futile.

 

Wishing there were no traffic when there is traffic, wishing you didn’t lose your job when you did lose your job, wishing you didn’t have cancer when you do have cancer is delusional. And so, for me, I had practice that thankfully for 17 years up until the point when I was diagnosed with cancer and I went, “Oh, well.” First words that come out of my mouth is, “Can’t change it.” Literally, minutes after I was diagnosed with cancer, it’s like, “I can’t change it. Okay. I have cancer. That’s my reality. I’m going to be totally at peace with that. It’s the only logical choice that I have.” And I don’t want to rush through this piece because this is so crucial and this is so counterintuitive. When something happens in our life, whether it’s cancer or a divorce or you name it, whatever, anything, you lose a deal in business, whenever something happens that we don’t want to happen, it wasn’t the ideal result, human nature is to immediately resist reality. “I wish that didn’t happen. It’s so frustrating. Ugh, why did this happen? I’m so angry.”

 

And as we resist reality, we literally are creating and perpetuating emotional pain, inner turmoil. And to the degree that we resist reality determines the degree of emotional pain that we create, right? If you’re like, “Oh gosh darn it, I wish this wouldn’t have happened,” like a really low level of resistance. And you might be kind of annoyed or a little bit frustrated but if you’re like, “No, God, why? This isn’t fair. I can’t have cancer right now. Like, I don’t deserve this and I have a baby.” You know, for me, I have a seven-year-old daughter. I have a four-year-old son. Like, I can’t be given a 20% chance of surviving like no. That would have been, you know, you could justify it. You could say it’s reasonable, but it doesn’t serve you.

 

Resisting reality rarely, if ever, and I’m going to say it’s very close to never, resisting reality very rarely if ever serves us. But accepting reality exactly as it is, it doesn’t mean you condone something, someone did that’s bad. It means you just give yourself the gift of inner peace through the power of acceptance, which is the key that unlocks the door to inner peace and emotional freedom. Again, acceptance. Accepting reality exactly as it is, that’s the key that unlocks the door to inner peace and emotional freedom. So, that was the first part of my mindset is, “Okay. I have cancer. I can’t change it. There’s no point in wishing I didn’t have cancer. I’m totally going to be at peace with it. It feels good. Okay. I have cancer. Hm, what can I do? What can I do?” Right?

 

So, starting with this foundational mindset of where I wasn’t resisting reality, I wasn’t creating emotional pain, I wasn’t perpetuating emotional pain and stress, which not to mention that does raise your cortisol levels, right? When you live in resistance, stress, fear, you create not just mental challenges and emotional challenges, but physical challenges. You spike your cortisol levels, which has all sorts of negative effects on the body, from making it acidic to, I’m drawing a blank, but the point being, right, living in a fear state or a stress state does not support the body’s healing mechanisms. It does not boost your immune system. It has quite negative effects.

 

So, the first step, the first piece of the mindset that I use to beat cancer, and I’m encouraging you to use to handle any challenges in your life but in this context, cancer or anyone in your life that has cancer and you can have them listen to this. You can share this episode, of course. But the very first step is, “I accept my life exactly as it is. I have cancer. I’m at peace.” The second part of the mindset was gratitude, being totally grateful for my life, looking at all. And, literally, I would journal, “What do I have in my life to be grateful for? Well, A, I’m still alive. Okay, here we go. I’m alive. Right? Cancer hasn’t gone. I’m alive. I have a wife who loves me and who’s loyal and who supports me. I have two children who I love and who I get to do life with. I have friends, I have family, I have a roof over my head.” Right?

 

And some of the things you might not have. You might not have a spouse. You might not have kids. Whatever you are grateful for is potentially different. I’m sure there’s a lot of overlap, but gratitude is such an important piece, especially when we receive something like a cancer diagnosis or anytime we’re going through something difficult in life. Choosing to first accept reality exactly as it is so you can give yourself the gift of inner peace, that key that unlocks the door to inner freedom, which is acceptance, that’s the key. That’s where you start. Then you move into gratitude. What are we grateful for? Because think about this. What’s the opposite of that? You focusing on resisting reality and then focusing on all the negative, “Oh my God, I have cancer. Oh my God, I could die. Oh my God.”

 

And it’s not that you don’t think about those things. Like, I had to think about those things as a dad. It was my responsibility to make sure that I had my will in order, which is kind of it’s really weird. It’s a very weird space to be and where you’re having to accept reality as it is and be at peace and focus all your energy on healing. And we haven’t gotten to that part yet, the unwavering faith piece. But then you also have to accept, “But if I do die, I’ve got to make sure all my affairs are in order.” Like, oh, that’s a weird space to be in. It’s like you can’t focus 100% on just imagining that you’re going to live, at least not until your affairs are in order.

 

But I’d say that for me, if I had to give a ratio, I’d say 80% of my energy, if not 90% of energy, was focused on what I was grateful for and maintaining unwavering faith in the possibilities that I was committed to creating for my life, which was beating cancer and living to be 100 plus years old alongside Ursula and the kids. That was what I was committed to so that I created affirmations. And we’ll get into that here in a few minutes. That’s what I was focused on. So, only 10% of my time spent was focused on the things that I was afraid of or the things that I didn’t want. And that’s a conscious decision that you have to make. It’s a disciplined decision that you have to make and maintain. And by the way, if you don’t do it in writing, it’s very difficult to do because your thoughts and your fears and your emotions, they’re going to overtake you.

 

But if you have an affirmation in place, and again, I’m not going into that right now but we will get to that here at some point during the episode, but a written affirmation that articulates the mindset that you’re committed to. So, by the way, you can create your affirmation right now as you’re taking notes on this episode. I hope you’re taking notes either for yourself or for somebody you love that maybe has cancer. Or if you don’t ever want to get cancer or if you want to be prepared if cancer becomes your way, right, like this episode is for all of those scenarios, for someone that has cancer to share with someone else in your life that has cancer, or if you want to be prepared because the statistics are, right, I believe it’s one in two men and one in three women will get cancer in their lifetime.

 

And my dad has cancer right now. My friend’s husband just got, I mean, I know the amount of my… I won’t even mention all my relatives that have cancer but I have like seven relatives right now, aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws that have cancer right now. So, odds are you know someone that has cancer. And this episode isn’t the end all be all but I’m going to give you other resources, the resources that I used to beat cancer as well so this episode will hopefully be a really empowering starting place for anyone that is facing cancer or the prospect of it. So, first piece of the mindset is acceptance. The second piece is gratitude. And literally, both of these should be done in writing, “I choose to accept the fact that I have cancer and be at peace with it, so that I can focus on my healing and not being in fear or resisting reality.”

 

So, something along those lines would be the first part of the affirmation. The second part would be, “I’m going to focus on what I’m grateful for,” and then literally making a list to review every day. And I will address what could be an elephant in the room, which is like, “Well, what if you’re reading your gratitude list,” and then it causes you to feel sad or scared because you go, “What if I lose these things that I’m grateful for?” I wrote down my spouse, my kids, but what if I die? I’m going to say that’s completely normal. Don’t resist that reality either. Meaning allow yourself to feel the feelings. Never suppress your emotions, but never indulge in painful, destructive, fear-inducing stress-producing emotions. Don’t live there. Don’t live in a fearful, stressful state, but don’t suppress those emotions. You might go, “Easier said than done. Well, how do you do that?” Everything we’re talking about in this episode is going to help you to do that.

 

The third part of the mindset, so number one was total acceptance, right? Number two was focusing on what I was grateful for. And number three is radical responsibility. I just had last week I had Fleet Maull on the podcast and he wrote the book, Radical Responsibility. A phenomenal book. I encourage everybody to pick up a copy. But what does that mean? It’s essentially 100% responsibility for my life, for my recovery, for healing cancer. And what I mean by that or to give you another, a less responsible approach or mindset would be I’m going to leave it up to my doctors. I can’t handle taking responsibility so I’m giving it, I’m leaving it all to my doctors. It’s their responsibility to heal me and I’m along for the ride.

 

And that’s a very common approach because it’s heavy. It’s a lot to deal with the prospect of death before it’s your time or before you want to. Cancer and giving a diagnosis where it’s like the worst case scenario is that you’re going to die. That’s a lot to take on. And so, most of us as a defense mechanism like a self-protective mechanism is I can’t even think about it. I’m just going to do what my doctors say. I’m just going to take the chemotherapy and take the pharmaceutical drugs and hope it works and I’m not going to think about it because I just can’t. I just can’t handle it. I believe that I’m still here today because I did not leave it up to the doctors.

 

In fact, and this is a really important point that I would have made at some point so I’ll just make it now, if I would have left it up to the doctors, I would have had a 20% chance of surviving. Now, whether the person listening to this, whether your cancer survival rate is 60% or 20% or whatever it is, that’s based on global statistics of every person that gets your cancer, including those that have a horrible diet, that maintain a really disempowering mindset, that don’t take responsibility for their healing, and they leave it all up to their doctors. I believe that the reason I’m here is because the 20% survival rate, it’s like, “All right. I’ll give doctors, I’ll give you 20% responsibility to heal me. And I’m going to take on 100%, right? Or at least the 80% like I’m going to do everything in my power.”

 

And what that looked like, by the way, radical responsibility, was that I’m committed to doing everything in my power to beat cancer, me. And what that looked like, number one was studying. It was reading books on how to beat cancer. It was reading articles on how to beat cancer. I read books like Anticancer. That was a great book. Radical Remission, The Truth About Cancer. I got the DVD series as well. Love, Medicine, and Miracles, that’s one of my favorite books by cancer surgeon, Dr. Bernie Siegel. And by the way, I had him on the podcast a few years ago as well. But Dr. Bernie Siegel, he says in that book and he’s treated, I think, over 3,000 cancer patients. I believe he’s retired now. And in fact, yeah, he’s definitely, I think he’s in his 80s.

 

But in that book and I’m paraphrasing, he said that the number one thing that cancer survivors had in common was they made up their mind that they were going to beat cancer. There was no other option. It was this unwavering belief, commitment, faith, call it what you want, but they had decided, “Doc, I’m beating this cancer. It’s not going to take me out. Like, I’ve got this. I’m in. I’m going to win this. I’m going to beat this. I’m going to heal.” And he said that even he saw cancer patients that had very grim diagnoses beat their cancer with that mindset. And he said he saw the opposite where he saw cancer patients that had very survivable cancers but they lived in fear.

 

They basically were like, “Doc, that’s it. I always knew I had a feeling I was going to die. I had a feeling. My grandfather died from cancer and it’s like my whole life I’ve known it was going to take me out too. And here it is now.” And I don’t blame that person. I think that’s human nature. I think that’s normal, right? But that’s why we have to take responsibility. That person’s not taking responsibility for their healing. They literally are leaving it up to chance or up to like, “Oh, well, my grandfather passed away from this cancer, so I just decided that was probably going to happen to me one day. And here it is.” They’ve given up. And he said he saw many people with survivable cancers that gave up hope, faith, effort, and they passed away.

 

So, that’s a crucial piece of this radical responsibility that you decide, “I’m going to beat cancer.” And again, going back to that decision I made on day one, that the statistic of 20% survival rate, 80% death rate, I told my wife there’s a 100% chance that I’m going to be in the 20% of those that survive it. And I want you or whoever’s listening to this that has potentially has cancer like you are not a statistic. You decide, right? You can create your own statistic. You can heal your body. The body and the mind work in unison and are designed to heal.

 

And think about this. If you can perpetuate disease with stress, if you can change your biology and create as an acidic environment in your body by focusing on things that cause you stress, allowing yourself to go down those rabbit holes and dwell on the things that are fearful for you, if that can increase your cortisol levels, literally changing the chemical makeup in your body and perpetuating disease, if you can do that, if we can do that as humans, if we can make things worse in terms of our biology, then wouldn’t it make sense that by focusing on maintaining unwavering faith and focusing on what we’re grateful for and focusing on these practices that I don’t have any studies in front of me, but there are studies where they’ve taken subjects and they’ve had them focus on what they were grateful for or focus on optimism, things that are optimistic, and measured their brainwaves. And there are positive, measurable biological impacts on their body and their nervous system.

 

So, I believe that we have the power to heal ourselves. And if you’re like, “Nah, I don’t buy that,” okay. You know, I believe a lot of life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, for me, the Radical Responsibility, I read a lot of these books. Another one was Chris Beat Cancer, which I’ll talk more about that. That’s one of my favorite resources. I’ll just mention it now. I’ll talk about it again. But ChrisBeatCancer.com, C-H-R-I-S, ChrisBeatCancer.com is one of my favorite resources. He is someone that was diagnosed with I believe it was stage 3… Oh, why am I drawing a blank on the kind of cancer? It’s a very common cancer. The body part is escaping me. Let’s just say he had stage 3 cancer and the doctor said, “If you don’t do chemo, you’re going to die.” And he’s a very religious or spiritual person. And he prayed about it and listened to his intuition, and decided, “No, I’m supposed to heal my body naturally.”

 

And he believed that the human body is designed to heal itself when you give it all of the nutrition that it needs, the mental nutrition, the dietary nutrition. And so, he beat his cancer against the doctor’s odds. He beat it naturally. And he has since spent the last, I don’t know, ten-plus years, I would say, give or take, interviewing other people that have beat their cancer naturally to document, share their journeys, as well as a holistic oncologist and various medical practitioners and doctors that operate outside of traditional Western medicine as perpetuated by pharmaceutical companies and funded by pharmaceutical companies that make money off of the drugs that the doctors prescribe. And so, therefore, the education that they give is predominantly designed to, “Hey, prescribe these drugs. This is how we heal people in America, or beyond.”

 

But I won’t go too far on that. That, by the way, like if you want to hear my intense opinion about pharmaceutical drugs and some aspects of Western medicine that don’t sit well with me, go listen to Episode 211 because that’s where I went really off. I kind of I went too far off on that tangent, which is why I don’t want to do that again here today because I want this to be more specific. All right. So, when it comes to responsibility, the other thing is I asked myself, “What might have caused my cancer?” And cancer is a result of a body that is typically either nutrient deficient or overloaded with toxins. And as a result of one of those two, typically, our immune system is not functioning properly.

 

And now we have cancer cells that are replicating and that are spreading. Often our body creates a tumor, which, by the way, I want to mention this, and I’m not going to go in-depth on it because I’m not knowledgeable enough to but it’s very, very important. And by the way, I said this, it’s funny, I said this in the last episode that I did at 211, Episode 211, which is I suffer from brain damage. So, I do a lot of research and then I take notes and then I make conclusions but then I forget all of the details that got me to that conclusion. So, I only know, okay, I did a lot of research, like hours and hours of research to come to this conclusion but I don’t remember all the nuances or details of that research. So, anyway, I’m just putting that out there.

 

But a tumor is the body’s way of housing cancer cells so they don’t spread to the rest of the body. And I would encourage you to before you ever, ever, ever get a biopsy, doctors will immediately want to take a biopsy where they cut into the tumor and then they measure. They cut out a piece of tumor and then they measure to see how much cancer you have. Again, not my area of expertise, but I’m just telling you to do research on, “Can getting a biopsy cause cancer to spread?” Think about that. The body is a brilliant organism, and when cancer cells begin that are toxic, the body will form a tumor around those cancer cells to protect the rest of the body from having cancer spread. Do you think? Just think common sense-wise even though you and I, we’re not doctors. Well, you might be, but I’m not a doctor.

 

But common sense-wise, if that tumor is keeping those toxic cancer cells inside of it to keep it from spreading, do you think that slicing that tumor open would be a wise decision? Or might we be risking allowing those cancer cells to now be released from that protective tumor and spread into the body, get into the bloodstream, etcetera? So, something to consider. And I do work with a doctor. I work with right now I have three different doctors that I work with and I’ve worked with over a dozen doctors over the last seven years, and different doctors, doctors in very traditional Western medicine, various oncologists, as well as holistic oncologists as well as nontraditional doctors, functional medicine doctors. So, across the board, this isn’t just me winging it and googling stuff and like trying out, “Oh, Dr. Google said this was good, so I’m going to give it a shot.”

 

But one of the doctors that I’m working with right now, he did tell me, and it was because of my dad. We were talking about him getting a biopsy on his cancerous tumor and my doctor said, “Please, has your dad gotten a biopsy?” And I said, “I don’t know. I’ll talk to him.” And he said, “If he has, there’s nothing you can do to undo that.” But he said, “If he hasn’t gotten a biopsy, please tell him not to.” He said very often cancers that are completely treatable become and again I’m paraphrasing what my doctor said, not what I’m saying. He said cancers that are completely treatable, when they are cut into by a well-meaning doctor, that can cause the cancer to spread, and then a cancer that’s totally treatable can become deadly. So, again, his words, not mine, or at least his words paraphrased.

 

So, that was a little bit of a tangent. Let’s go back. In terms of the responsibility, for me, it was me figuring out what might have caused my cancer. And I literally and by the way, that wasn’t to beat myself up over something I couldn’t change, right? Like, I can’t go back in time so I’m not going to beat myself up. It’s to make changes moving forward. I want to look at what might I have put in my body that might have caused my cancer or what might I have, you know, what else might I have done? And here’s the list that I came up. This is like a brainstorming list just seeing this. This isn’t like a well-researched list. This is like me thinking just common sense-wise, what’s everything I put in my body that wasn’t natural?

 

That’s something to think about. Like, our cancer rates have, I believe, our death rate for cancer has tripled since in the last 100 years. And you think about what’s changed? What’s different? A big one is diet. Like, back then, there were no synthetic foods, right? Everything we ate, we grew or we slaughtered an animal, we killed an animal, we ate food with the meat, right? We didn’t have pesticides a hundred years ago, to my knowledge. We didn’t have all these artificial chemicals and artificial colors and sweeteners and dyes. Not to mention we didn’t have, I don’t know what year it was that sugar was discovered and invented. I just watched this documentary, That Sugar Film, which I think I might have mentioned recently. If you haven’t seen that, by the way, it’s free on YouTube. Go watch That Sugar Film. And if you can, watch it with your family, including your kids.

 

My kids are now 14 and 11. We watched it. The whole family completely was impacted by that film. And together we are making improvements by limiting, cutting back on the sugar intake that we have. It’s a really entertaining film, which is what I love about it because a lot of documentaries that I watch with my kids or I try to get them to watch are super boring. And That Sugar Film was pretty entertaining, was pretty well done. So, again, free on YouTube, That Sugar Film. But you know, before that was invented, the only sugar you got was from fruit. Think about that. I think an apple has an average of like four tablespoons of sugar. And if you were eating apples, you’d probably get done with maybe a couple of apples and you’re starting to get full because all the fiber in that food in that apple.

 

But if you juiced four apples, so you think about drinking organic juice, you think, “Well, that’s healthy.” But if it’s just fruit, right, so you’re drinking, you juice four apples, well, now you have 16. If there’s four tablespoons of sugar in each apple, and might be 4 grams, I’m not sure I’m going off of That Sugar Film my memory here, but you can drink that juice in about 20 seconds. And now you’ve got four apples. That’s four times as much sugar as the one apple. And you might have been able to eat a couple of apples before you got full. But you can drink that juice in 20 seconds and you’re still hungry. So, anyway, our lifestyle has totally changed. And by the way, I’m not trying to demonize organic juice drinking like I don’t mean to harp on that.

 

But let me go through my list here. Drinking tap water, there are fluoride, chlorine. There are chemicals that they put in our tap water to treat parasites and other foreign critters and objects that they deem unhealthy, which they may be but as are the chemicals that we drink. So, if fluoride is a poison, and if you think about, and by the way, if you want to know if something kills you, if there’s X amount of it that would kill you, then it is a poison, right? And that’s true with almost every pharmaceutical drug or same with alcohol. All right. You could drink enough alcohol to get alcohol poisoning and die. Yes? Yes. Okay. But if I only have one drink, I’m not going to die from one shot of tequila. No, not today. But how much poison can you take over how long of a period of time before it does kill you or it does cause cancer or some other disease?

 

And so, drinking water if you’re drinking fluoride in chlorine for decades might that have an impact. And by the way, these are all questions. I am not telling you that tap water causes cancer but my own list, okay, was drinking water, tap water, might that have caused my cancer? I don’t know, but I wrote it down as a possibility. Showering or bathing in that water. Our skin is our largest organ and absorbs everything that we put on it. So, if you’re absorbing all that fluoride and chlorine, as well. And by the way, it was a big focus for me to buy a house that had a well so that we wouldn’t have the treated city water. So, I know that’s not possible for everybody but you can buy various filters that will filter out a majority of the fluoride and chlorine.

 

You can google shower filters and drinking water filters. So, that would be something that I would highly encourage you to do. Again, the processed foods and preservatives. Now, the GMO foods, right? 100 years ago, we didn’t have genetically modified organisms. We didn’t have those foods. Soda, you know, I drank a lot of soda growing up. In fact, I drank Mountain Dew when I was in college. I drank Mountain Dew every day. Might that have caused cancer? Yes. The amount of sugar, caffeine, chemicals, all artificial. Prescription drugs, I took Adderall for a decade, and that’s one molecule away from the street drug, meth. So, might that it caused cancer? Possibly.

 

And again, this wasn’t to beat myself up. It was what are all of the unnatural things that I put in my body that may have caused cancer? Over-the-counter drugs, aspirin, NyQuil, etcetera. Supplements, right? It’s a largely unregulated industry. And when I was in my 20s because I wanted to be all muscular, I would go to GNC and buy all sorts of crap with red dye and blue dye and yellow dye 4, 40, 30, whatever. I mean, like all not regulated, horrible ingredients. Pesticides, eating non-organic food. How much of that poison can you take? How much non-organic food can we eat before it’s going to have a noticeable, significant, potentially detrimental effect on our body?

 

Household chemicals, cleaners. Chemicals used in products that we put on our body like sunscreen and deodorant and makeup. There’s aluminum and toxic heavy metals and a lot of these, fluoride in our toothpaste, etcetera. And of course, you can find alternatives. Right now, everything I use I make sure it doesn’t have chemicals in it. So, the toothpaste that I use and the deodorant that I use. There’s no aluminum, there’s no chemicals, in fact. And I should have a list. I don’t have a list of all the brands that I use but maybe I’ll do that on another episode of My Favorite Things. BPA found in plastics, right? So, BPA and other chemicals that they use in plastic can leach into the liquids. And I have a note here, Anticancer page 85.

 

This list, by the way, was written seven years ago when I first got cancer. I’m just reading it for you today. But, in the book Anticancer on page 85, it talked about how they’ve done studies where BPA found in plastics causes cancer. And I believe it was in mice that they were doing these tests on, also radiation from CAT scans, EMFs from computers and cell phones, childhood vaccines, flying. The list could go on infinitely. But here’s what I want to say about this list and about what you might be thinking. I’ve heard people say, “Oh, everything causes cancer so I’m not going to give it any thought. I’m just going to live my life the way that I want because everything causes cancer.” The response to that is that’s not true. Everything doesn’t cause cancer.

 

Most of what comes from the earth, right, the symbiotic relationship between humans and the Earth, most of what comes from the Earth does not cause cancer in its natural state. It’s when humans mess with it and we add chemicals and we add synthetics, and we add fertilizers and we add, maybe not fertilizers. I don’t know if that’s true, but, sorry, but we had pesticides and we had all these. There are many things that cause cancer or potentially cause cancer, but that, for me, it’s not, “Oh, I’ll throw my hands up in the air. Everything causes cancer.” It’s, “Hey, I’m going to be really thoughtful and mindful and intentional about minimizing the things I put in my body that could potentially cause cancer.”

 

All right. So, the last piece on mindset. So, there’s total acceptance is part one. There’s four parts here to mindset, total acceptance, gratitude, radical responsibility, and last but not least is the miracle equation. And I’m not going to go in-depth on this because I wrote a book on it called The Miracle Equation. After my cancer journey, that was what I was called to write because I felt The Miracle Equation is what enabled me to beat cancer. And there are also other podcast episodes where I’ve gone in-depth on the miracle equation. So, if you google Hal Elrod, the Miracle Equation, you’ll find episodes were either on my podcast, on this podcast where I talked about it. You’ll also find me on other podcasts talking about it.

 

So, if you want an in-depth deep dive on The Miracle Equation, google Hal Elrod The Miracle Equation. Here’s the quick summary. Two decisions that move your biggest goals from impossible to inevitable. The first decision is unwavering faith, and that was in the form of written affirmations. So, I had affirmations that affirmed my unwavering faith that I was committed to beating cancer no matter what. There was no other option. I had five reasons why I was committed to beating the cancer, the reason that I was committed to beating it for my wife because I promised her forever and a day, for my parents because they didn’t deserve to lose another child after my sister died when I was younger, for my kids, Sophie and Halston, because they need their daddy’s love, guidance, and leadership, and I want to be there for them and watch them grow up and be a grandpa someday.

 

I was committed to beating cancer for myself because I deserve to live a long, happy, healthy life. I call it enlightened entitlement where you actually you become entitled. I deserve to live a happy life, a healthy life, right? And I think that’s a prerequisite to success. In terms of our mindset is we have to have enlightened entitlement, where you’re not entitled like, “I deserve someone else to give it to me.” But you’re entitled and enlightened the way where you go, “I deserve this so I’m going to work hard for it because I know that I’m deserving of it. And if I give it everything I have, I will achieve what I set out to achieve.” So, unwavering faith, that I was committed to beating cancer. Why it was a must for me and which specific actions I was going to take. And I’ll save that for the approach that we’re about to get to. And then extraordinary effort. And that really falls under the category of the approach that I took. It was I’m committed to doing everything in my power and taking total responsibility.

 

So, it’s on me. I’m committed to beating cancer with the help of my team, my wife, my family, my friends, my doctors. But they’re on my team. I have to be the captain. I have to take ownership of this journey to beating cancer because no one is going to come and save you. You have to take responsibility. And by the way, God, I don’t want to leave out the most important asset, right? The most important resource and support is God for me. And that, to me, I won’t get into this, but my definition of God or the way I experience God is not just some being above that I’m praying and hoping will do something for me. I believe God is infused in all of us. The way I like the analogy I like to use is that if God is the ocean, we are all droplets of water in that ocean made of the same stuff with essentially at least a fraction of the same power to create, to heal.

So, for me, unwavering faith in God and through God, in my ability given to me, my God-given ability to create miracles, co-create miracles, I should say, with God in my life. So, again, without going too far down the rabbit hole of the defining spirituality and God through my eyes, that’s a little bit of a glimpse of it, but that part of the extraordinary effort was the approach was all people in my life that we were all on this journey together, but that it was ultimately up to me. So, that all incorporates the mindset – total acceptance, gratitude, radical responsibility, and the miracle equation as far as the approach goes.

 

It was combining the best of holistic Western medicine, right? Chemotherapy and holistic medicine, which was overdosing on nutrition, detoxing from chemo, which was huge, and building my immune system so that my body could do what it’s supposed to do. It’s designed to heal itself. That’s what the body does. When you get sick, the body has all sorts of mechanisms to heal you. And if you do nothing, if you take no medicine and you just wait it out and just provide yourself with water and nutrition, the body heals itself. It does that with everything else, right? Meaning like if you have a fever or you have a cold or you’re sick or you have the flu, the body heals itself. It doesn’t require manmade medical intervention.

 

And that’s an important piece because we’ve kind of been sold by this multi-billion or a fake trillion, I’m not sure on that, industry. The Western medicine, the pharmaceutical industry, we’ve been sold that if you want to feel better, if you want to heal this thing, if you want to address this symptom, take this pill, inject this drug, right? How often do our medical professionals say, “Hey, here’s what you need to do so that your body– here’s how you put your body in an optimal state so that it can do what it’s meant to do, which is heal you from cancer, from a flu, from a cold, from a headache, you name it. Whatever you get, whatever ailment or disease you have, the body is designed to heal itself.”

 

And the ironic thing is that pharmaceutical drugs, typically, increase inflammation, which perpetuates and exasperates disease and illness and cancer. So, when we take those drugs, they often can make us sicker. In fact, one of the side effects of at least one of the chemotherapies I was taking to treat my leukemia was leukemia. It literally said, can cause leukemia. And that was a real head scratcher for me. And it was a little bit scary. Like, man, I’m trusting this medical system, these doctors to heal me and to cure, to heal my leukemia. They’re not talking. When I ask them questions about nutrition and how it impacts my health, I literally got nothing. Just do what the nutritionist tells you to eat.

 

And it was like the cafeteria at the hospital. And I’ll try not to get on a soapbox here, but I can’t go without saying it. But the cafeteria, the hospital was serving soda, 32-ounce sodas. So, I’m watching people that are supposed to be healing their cancer eating cakes and pies and pizza and hamburgers with hormone-filled beef, not like grass-fed and finished, nutritious meat. No, like hormone-filled, antibiotic-ridden meat, and while they’re dragging around their chemotherapy tower, they’re getting their chemo while they’re eating this horrific diet because the doctor said, the oncologist told them what they told me, which is it doesn’t matter as long as you do the chemo. You can eat whatever you want as long as you do the chemo. Those were his exact words to me.

 

And how can you trust? How can you fully trust someone? And I don’t think he’s lying, by the way. I think that’s his knowledge base. That’s what he knew to be true. He wasn’t taught organic and that there are studies that prove that garlic and lemon juice can kill breast cancer. And if you can Google 2017 study, I’m not looking at it right now, but there are studies that show that nutrition can empower the body to heal itself. And so, that’s why you have to take 100% responsibility. That was the moment, by the way, I think when I’m meeting with my oncologist in our very first meeting and I said, “Hey, what part does diet play?” And by the way, this was me already having some of this knowledge.

 

I watched a documentary. I’ve seen multiple documentaries on beating cancer. But when I watched probably five or more years before I got cancer was called Healing Cancer From the Inside Out, and it was a two-disc DVD set. The first disc showed all of the fallacies, the problems, the flaws with our current medical system in how they treat cancer. One of them being the treatment causes cancer. Many of the chemotherapies that they give you cause other cancers. And then they beat one cancer and now, you’re back in the hospital for another cancer and you become a– I have a friend who she’s had cancer, multiple cancers for six years now. I have a relative who has had cancer for 12 years, and they cure one cancer, then he gets another one. They cure that, then he gets another one.

 

They create lifelong patients. Lifelong patients. You have to be aware of that. You cannot blindly trust the medical system, right? That’s why you have to take responsibility. And when my doctor said diet doesn’t matter as long as you do chemo, you can eat whatever you want, I immediately went, “Oh, I cannot put 100% of my trust into this human being or the system that he represents sitting across from me.” I cannot do that because he just proved that something that I, without a medical degree, know that what we put in our body impacts our immune system and our biology and various factors in our body. You don’t have to be a doctor. You don’t have to have a PhD to know that. Now, if you are a nutritionist, you might have more knowledge in that area.

 

So, combining the best of Western medicine, I didn’t want to do Western medicine, by the way. I don’t want to do chemo at all. And then I realized, oh, my cancer is so aggressive. I reached out to some of the best holistic oncologists in the country. I did some googling and to realize, oh, I only have one to three weeks to live. My heart, lung, and kidneys are all in the process of shutting down. And this particular cancer shuts your organs down. And most people die from being misdiagnosed because they don’t know it’s cancer. They think it’s something else. Like, I was misdiagnosed with pneumonia initially, and then, thank God, I went back for a second opinion, or I literally would be dead because they just gave me antibiotics.

 

Another example, by the way, you can’t just blindly trust the medical system, right? When I went to the ER, they said, “Oh, you have pneumonia based on these X-rays we’ve done. We’re going to give you a Z-Pak of antibiotics.” If I would have just listened to that doctor and taken my antibiotics, like he told me do for the next two weeks, I would be dead. But thankfully, a few days later, when I still couldn’t breathe at night, my wife said, “Go get a second opinion.” And I went to another hospital, and then they found out that I had cancer.

 

So, anyway, combining the best of holistic protocols, this is where I want to spend some time. And today, it’ll probably be a long episode. In fact, this could be a two-parter. But I’d imagine that if you or someone you know has cancer, you’re willing to invest some time. So, overdosing on nutrition, detoxing from chemo, and building my immune system, those were the three primary focuses. And I’ll unpack that here in a minute, the holistic protocols.

 

But I want to mention something else, which is the Miracle Morning. I focused all six of my SAVERS on beating cancer. That became my number one goal. And this is something for you to consider, if you don’t have cancer, that the Miracle Morning and the Savers, those are six practices that enable you to optimize your mindset and your approach to whatever goal or objective you are trying to achieve in your life. So, for me, whether it’s, I want to double my income, that was my objective in 2008 and it worked. In two months, applying the SAVERS, I doubled my income.

 

In 2016, my only objective was beat cancer, like none of my other goals mattered if I didn’t beat cancer. So, I focused all six of my SAVERS on beating cancer. What did that look like in real time? Well, silence, I meditated in a state of complete of gratitude and healing. I prayed to God. It wasn’t a God, please save me. It was a God, thank you for– it was a prayer of gratitude. God, thank you for empowering me with the knowledge and the resources and the discipline to do everything in my power to heal myself from cancer. Thank you for blessing me with these doctors that are doing everything in their power to help me beat cancer. I’m going to combine the best of Western medicine and the best of Eastern holistic protocols, right? Thank you, God, for that wisdom to help me do that. Thank you, God, for my body’s ability to heal itself, the body’s miraculous ability to heal from illness and disease. And I have unwavering faith that I’ll heal this cancer. These were just some examples of what I said.

 

And I will tell you this. I just came across these cancer affirmations that I had. These were like notes to myself. And here’s what I wrote. So, this is really a mindset piece, but I just remembered that I had these in front of me. Here’s what I wrote. Huge realizations. This was early on when I got cancer. My cancer is truly a gift, and in hindsight, will very likely be one of the best things that has ever happened to me, similar to my car accident. And the reason I have cancer that is so rare is so that I can talk about the power of our mind, unwavering faith, and defying the odds, and healing even the seemingly unhealable, just like I also did with my car crash.

 

Oh, I think this is content for the Miracle Equation book that I am supposed to write. Again, you guys, this was like in 2016 when I wrote these affirmations or these notes. Focus on the concept that based on such dismal odds of survival, the 20%, I had every reason to be in a state of fear, and it’s human nature to do so. But from my car accident to cancer, I experienced what’s possible when we consciously make the decision to trade in unnecessary fear with unwavering faith and easy effort with extraordinary effort. Anyway, I wanted to share that with you because, again, that was part of the gratitude is I was grateful that I had cancer and chose to see it as the best thing that ever happened to me, is an opportunity to learn, grow, and evolve. So, I applied all six of the SAVERS. My affirmations, I already share with you earlier, right? Three steps, I’m committed to beating cancer, no matter what, there’s no other option. Number two was the five bullet points, why I was committed beating cancer. And number three was the specific actions I was going to take, which was combining the best of Western medicine and the best holistic protocols that I could.

 

Now, those protocols, here’s where I want to dive into those. Diet, so it was eating as healthy of a diet as I could and removing food with preservatives. Now, to be clear, before I got cancer, I thought I was really healthy. In fact, I had organic salads for lunch. I ate grass-fed meats. I was mostly vegan, but made a small amount of protein pasture-raised chicken. I was really careful with my ingredients.

 

However, again, I was taking Adderall. I drank one beer a day. After work, I’d have a beer. It became a ritual because I’d have a little of a headache from the Adderall. I would take aspirin for the Adderall. And this is all going to lead into a very important point, which is not just what you put into your body, but what you don’t put into your body. So, I was putting a lot of healthy food in my body, and that created a narrative that says, “I am healthy.” You might think that about yourself and you might, I mean, it might be true, but because I put all these healthy things in my body, I wasn’t paying attention to the harmful things I was putting in my body, which is aspirin every day, Adderall every day, a beer every day, and vegan ice cream every single day, which had a ton of artificial ingredients, tons of preservatives. And I don’t even know what else was in it, right?

 

But the way you know if something’s not just from the Earth is if you turn it over to look at the ingredients and there’s like 32 ingredients. You’re like, “Oh, I don’t recognize a lot of those words.” So, we should be skeptical about those things. So, when it came to diet, it wasn’t just about eating healthy foods. I was already doing that. It was about removing the unhealthy foods and the pharmaceutical drugs and the over-the-counter medications and the excess sugar and any other toxins that I was putting into my body. So, I’d encourage you to consider that piece, which is not just, yes, you should eat. And there’s books, The Anticancer Diet, I mean, there’s so much information out there. Chris Beat Cancer has his whole diet. Again, ChrisBeatCancer.com, highly recommend utilizing that website as a resource for you, and they’ll turn you on to tons of other resources, books and recipes, and other doctors, natural functional medicine doctors, holistic oncologists, on and on and on. So, diet was a big one, right? Smoothies, lowering my sugar, again, salads, all of that.

 

Supplementation was the other piece. I was taking 70 supplements a day. And I’m not going to read you that list. I don’t have it in front of me. But if you Google anticancer supplements, you’ll find quite a few. Milk thistle is one of them. And get specific. I googled things like, when I realized, I research like, what are the side effects of chemotherapy? And a big one was liver toxicity, right? And basically, toxicity in a lot of your organs, but primarily your kidneys and your liver, which filter out everything that you put into your body. They filter out the toxins. Well, when you’re getting chemotherapy, and by the way, the proof is my liver to this day is I have the liver of somebody like 20 years older than me. And I’m doing everything in my power now. And it’s getting better to continue detoxifying my liver.

 

But I would imagine, I’m never drinking a lot of alcohol. That’s just not true. A beer a day, maybe, that’s a lot, I don’t know. But the chemotherapy rad did massive damage to my liver and my kidneys. So, I’m detoxing those regularly. So, googling how to detox your liver, natural ways to detox your liver. I’m sure there’s a pharmaceutical drug that they would give you to detox your liver, right? But who knows what those side effects are. But if it’s from nature, like milk, literally, to this day, seven years later, I buy organic milk thistle seeds, not the supplement form.

 

In fact, this is a really important resource, MountainRoseHerbs.com. MountainRoseHerbs.com. MountainRoseHerbs.com is a website where they have a lot of what you would buy as a supplement, but in the original form. So, for example, you can go to Amazon and you can Google organic milk thistle supplement and you can find milk thistle supplements. That’s not a bad idea. But if you can get something in its whole form, such as milk thistle seeds, not milk thistle seeds that were ground into a powder four months ago and then put into a capsule and shipped somewhere, and then sat on the shelf and were exposed to the elements and different temperatures, such as a hot UPS truck that was delivering them, right? Which would you rather have, the milk thistle seed in its whole form or ground powder?

 

So, again, supplement, I take a lot of supplements that are ground, but I will always strive to find where I can get the source of that supplement in its original form, whether that be the food that produces that supplement or a food that already has a high dose of that. For example, selenium is an important mineral that you need to survive. Brazil nuts are extremely high in selenium. So, in my smoothie every day, and by the way, this is its own category here. Smoothie should be its own category. And it kind of is combined with supplement because I buy organic Brazil nuts. So, instead of taking a selenium supplement that’s powdered that’s been sitting on a shelf for months, I get organic Brazil nuts. And then I put those in my smoothie every day, two of them, to get all of the selenium that I need in a natural, organic, whole food.

 

Organic milk thistle seeds, I buy those from MountainRoseHerbs.com. And I put a scoop, actually, one to two tablespoons of the milk thistle seeds into my smoothie every day. I love smoothies because you can throw all sorts of stuff in there that might not be pleasant to chew or it would take a while to eat it, but you just blend it up with some berries, organic berries that have anticancer properties, antioxidant properties, etc. What else goes in my smoothie? Well, MountainRoseHerbs.com, so here’s how I do it. Anytime I would find– this is during my cancer journey, I would google what supplements detox the liver, right? How can I detox my liver naturally? And I find the supplements or the different herbs.

 

I would first go to MountainRoseHerbs.com and see if they had a whole food version of that supplement. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t. In fact, I would say more often than not, or maybe 50/50, I don’t know, there are a lot more stuff than I could imagine, like milk thistle seeds. I didn’t know you could buy actual milk thistle seeds, so I did. Then if they didn’t have it, I would go to Amazon and I would type organic blank, milk thistle seeds, right? I would look for that. And usually, the supplements would come up. And then I’d find the supplement. But I’d always try to get it organic. And you find that there are– you’ll start to recognize brands that actually care about the ingredients. And then you’ll find a lot of brands. The majority, I’d say 95-plus percent that have all sorts of artificial preservatives and fillers, and they’re just trying to make money on their supplements. They’re not really looking out for you.

 

But one of my favorite brands is Pure Synergy. You can find them on Amazon or at TheSynergyCompany.com. What’s the other one? Herbal India, I think, is that it? Sorry, I don’t have this list in front of me, but you can go down the path that I went, which is like as you’re looking, you start to recognize, oh, this brand, they have all organic supplements. That’s awesome. And they don’t use fillers or binders or any other preservatives, etc. But I would encourage you to, if you can, find organic whole food versions of the supplement and then throw it into your smoothie every day.

 

So, I also did things like ozone sauna, lymphatic massage. These are different things that help your body to detox and that help you– sauna, by the way, is one of the best things that you can do. Sweating, that’s how our body naturally eliminates toxins. You can also do coffee enemas. Coffee enemas are one of my favorite protocols, holistic protocols. It’s the most awkward and uncomfortable the first few times that you do it, and then it becomes really, like meditative and relaxing. I still to this day, seven years later, I still do coffee enemas almost every single week. And when I had cancer, I was doing three of them a week.

 

Now, here’s something that you’ll find. When you start to search for natural, this is where you have to use a lot of discernment and a lot of critical thinking. When you start to search for natural, holistic protocols to beat cancer, that does not serve the pharmaceuticals agenda and pharmaceutical companies agenda, aka Big Pharma. So, you’ll often find traditional outlets that are pooh-poohing these protocols, that are saying, oh, this isn’t safe or it’s not proven or, yeah, well, that’s because the pharmaceutical companies that are paying for studies, they’re not paying for studies for things that they can’t patent or trademark, and therefore, they cannot profit from, right? You cannot trademark or patent something that grows, I should say patent.

 

You can’t patent something that grows in nature, that people can get on their own at the grocery store. So, that’s not something that our medical industry, and by the way, I’m going to have– oh, what is her name? I’m going to have a gal on my podcast soon that worked for the pharmaceutical industry. She’s an insider, if you will. And I was going to book her, and then she had a personal issue came up, so we had to postpone our podcast. But I won’t share her name yet until we book her. But I’ve been communicating with her, and we’re going to get her on. And she was on– actually, I can tell you. Hold on. Yes, Meg Kilcup. I encourage you to go listen to that episode until I can have her on this podcast. You can find Meg Kilcup. So, it’s spelled K-I-L-C-U-P. And she was on The Model Health Show. This is worth writing down. This is worth listening to, because she’s really knowledgeable and experienced.

 

And again, she was in that world, selling pharmaceutical drugs and then really didn’t feel good selling something that she felt was not in the best interest of people that wanted to be healthy. So, I don’t want to say too much there, but it’s Meg, M-E-G K-I-L-C-U-P, on The Model Health Show. So, you can find her if you Google that. And I highly recommend that episode and I will have her on ASAP. So, that was that.

 

But coffee enemas, the point is that, yeah, you have to look deep. You usually have to look into page 2 or 3 of Google before you find non-biased articles that are giving more of a holistic perspective, pun intended, holistic perspective on holistic protocols. In fact, I believe Chris Beat Cancer at ChrisBeatCancer.com. His name is Chris Wark. I believe that based on his research, that he said coffee enemas was one of, if not the most effective ways to get your body into remission from cancer or to prevent yourself from getting cancer because what it does is the coffee. It doesn’t caffeinate you the way it does if you drink it. When you do it through an enema, it stimulates bile and it basically hyper-releases toxins from your organs. And so, all the toxic buildup that can then cause your body to produce cancer cells, when you regularly do coffee enemas, you’re keeping that, you’re detoxifying your body regularly so it can prevent cancer in that way.

 

Again, I’m not saying that as a fact. I’m relaying, something that I learned from Chris Wark, who learned that through his hundreds of hours of interviews and researches that he’s done with holistic oncologists, functional medicine doctors, and people that have survived cancer and so on and so forth. So, that’s kind of the approach. Again, if you’re going to do chemotherapy, and I would never tell someone not to do chemotherapy, now, I didn’t want to do chemotherapy and I wouldn’t have, except I basically learned, reaching out to some of the best holistic oncologists. Doctor Burzynski, who cured Suzanne Somers of her cancer naturally without chemo.

 

But even he said, “Hal, your cancer is so aggressive that there’s nothing that I can do in the short amount of time that you have to live.” He said, “In your particular case, chemotherapy is your best bet.” And so, okay, I’ll do the chemotherapy, but I’m also going to do every holistic protocol that I can possibly put into my body that is not dangerous to heal my body, to detoxify from the chemo and the other pharmaceutical drugs that I’m taking. And I will say that the doctors were amazed at how quickly I got into remission. But for me, it’s about staying in remission.

 

And that was a really scary part. They always would warn you, hey, that the cancer can come back. We have to keep doing chemo because there could be cancer hiding. And maybe there’s truth to that. And I finally got off chemo after about two and a half years, and the doctors wanted me out for five years minimum, if not the rest of my life. And I got off it because the toll that it took on my brain and I probably talked about this before, but I was depressed, I was suicidal, I couldn’t think straight. And I still suffer from a lot of after effects now.

 

And so, into the last part, and this will be a very short part of the podcast and we’ll wrap up here, what I would do differently in hindsight. What I would do differently now is I would have listened to my intuition and I would have stopped doing chemo earlier. Now, I will say this, I say that it’s hard to know, it’s a very difficult decision to make. And here’s what I mean. I pray every day. I meditate every day. And after a few months into the chemo, and it was an eight-month, 700-hour chemotherapy regimen. And I think after my first month, the doctor said, “You’re in remission.” I said, “Great, I’m in remission, so we can stop the chemo.” He said, “No, because we have to keep doing the chemo and make sure we kill any cancer that maybe our tests aren’t detecting.”

 

Now, again, whether that’s true or not, I do not know. Whether that’s accurate or not, I do not know. Could I have stopped chemo after the first month when I was in remission and not done the next 600 hours of damage that it did to my body? Possibly. I will say this, though, I had such strong intuition saying, “Hal, stop the chemo. You are doing more harm than good. You are in remission. You took care of the cancer. The cancer is gone.” The doctors told you in remission. Stop the chemo. Like, I just kept getting that message.

 

And I would consult people in my life that loved me. I’d consult my wife and my dad and my mom and friends and my doctor, of course, and I don’t think he loved me. And out of fear, they would just say, Hal, we just keep doing the chemo. That’s the only thing that we know that’s working. We don’t know what else to do. Keep doing the chemo. And if I would have had other people in my life and, again, it’s my responsibility, not putting it on them. But if they would have said yes, Hal, listen to your intuition, like, you’re in remission. Stop doing the cancer.

 

But the doctors would tell you, by the way, which creates a lot of fear, whether it’s completely accurate or not, Hal, if the cancer comes back, you’re in remission. Yes, but if it comes back, there’s almost no chance that you’re going to be able to beat it. Like, if you beat it once, that’s one thing, but you’ve almost no chance you can beat it the second time. So, there’s this fear that they’re stoking. And then all my family saying, just do it. But in hindsight, again, it’s hard to say. I say that, in hindsight, I would have stopped doing the chemo earlier, but then when I really give myself a gut check, like, well, when? After a month to two? After month 3 or 4, month 6, when would you have stopped? I don’t know. I don’t know.

 

And so, in conclusion, here’s what I want to say. I wanted to beat this cancer naturally. And you may have that desire or you may think natural, that’s all hokey. If you’re listening to this far, you probably don’t think it’s all woo-woo. And it’s definitely not. Building your body through nutrition, nothing woo-woo about that, right? It’s the most natural thing in the world. Thinking that some manmade pharmaceutical drug that only has a 20% survival rate is your best bet, I don’t know, I’d call that more woo-woo.

 

But anyway, so the point is I wanted to beat it naturally because I wanted to empower other people to not have to use harmful pharmaceutical drugs to beat cancer. And I thought, man, I’m going to beat my cancer naturally, and then I’m going to be able to give other people guidance and hope that they can do the same. And that was part of what, not only was I scared of the effects of the chemotherapy, which I should have been, I mean, they’ve done a number on my body and my brain, but my biggest thing was– not my biggest, a very important part of that decision was, man, I really want to help other people go natural. But if I do chemo, then I’m just like everyone else that gave in and did the chemotherapy.

 

But along my journey later into it, when I kept resisting the chemo, which I know better than that, it was resisting my reality, causing emotional pain and inner turmoil, but eventually, I realized, oh, wait a minute, I was supposed to go through this chemo and combine the best holistic protocols available, because that’s the best guidance I can give most people. Because if somebody’s sitting there, if you’re sitting there crossing your doctor and they’re saying you have to do chemo, you’re going to die, most people are not going to go, well, I’m going to trust that author, Hal Elrod. He told me that he did it naturally, so I can do it naturally. And you’re telling your husband or your wife, so you’re, no, no, I read this book called The Miracle Morning and I listened to this guy’s podcast, and he beat his cancer naturally, so I think we can do it.

 

Well, the odds of you hearing from your doctor that if you do that, you’re probably going to die. I think most people are probably going to do what their doctor said. They’re going to take chemotherapy. We’ve been conditioned to trust the medical professionals. Anyone with a few letters behind their name, oh, you’re a PhD. Oh, you’re a psychologist. Oh, you’re a psychiatrist. Oh, you’re a doctor. Oh, you’re a general. Oh, you’re the president. Like, oh, well, you’re a person of authority. And I’ve been conditioned since I was a kid in school to trust people of authority, that you’re the authority, right? Sorry, I get on the soapbox, but that’s right. We’ve been conditioned to trust.

 

So, here’s the point. I think the best thing that I can do for anybody that has cancer is to encourage you to– if you want to go all natural and not do chemotherapy, like Chris Wark did at ChrisBeatCancer.com, which if you haven’t written that down yet, please check out his website. Watch the video on the homepage. That’s the best place to start. And he will say everything that I’m saying in a much more succinct way. Not everything, but the point is, for you, for anyone you know, if you’re going to do chemotherapy and you’re going to follow Western medicine, then if that’s what you feel is right, do it. That’s what I did.

 

But please follow my advice to take 100% responsibility for your healing and recovery. Do not leave it up to the doctor. Do not leave it up to a drug. Don’t leave it up to anyone. You and God, you and your people, you and your circle of influence, your spouse, your family, your friends, your doctor, God, they’re your team. You take responsibility for leading that team to the promised land, to total remission and a long, healthy, happy life.

 

And last but not least, please combine every holistic protocol that you possibly can. Utilize every natural earth born, God-given resource available to you. Detoxify your body and take your healing into your own hands. Because again, my doctors, not just one, but multiple oncologists said it doesn’t matter what you eat as long as you chemotherapy. And that’s not true. It’s simply not true. And if you have common sense and critical thinking, I would imagine that you know that what you eat, what you do or don’t put in your body in terms of the toxins absolutely matters.

 

All right. I’ll leave it at that. Goal achievers. I love you so much. Thanks for listening today. I hope this was helpful for you. And again, check out that resource, ChrisBeatCancer.com. And yeah, that’s a great place to start. And of course, there are the books I mentioned, Truth About Cancer, Anticancer, Radical Remission, Love, Medicine and Miracles. If you want to check out any of those four books and there’s quite a few more out there, I encourage you. That’s it too.

 

And if you do have cancer or someone you know has cancer, I want to set my intention for what it’s worth, and it may be worth to you, nothing, I don’t know, but I send you love and healing energy. And I send you unwavering faith that you can heal your body and that you can live a long, happy, healthy life with the people that you love. I love you so much. I’ll talk to you next week.

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