470 The Essential Oils Apothecary, Safe DIY Everyday Natural Remedies For Sleep, Immune Function, Pain, Detox, Metabolism, Mental Focus, Digestion, Skin Health, Energy, Emotional Support, and More with Sabrina Zielinski

Go here for Sabrina's book and bonuses:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/eo

 

470: Essential Oils Apothecary, DIY Natural Remedies with Sabrina Zielinski

https://www.learntruehealth.com/470-essential-oils-apothecary-diy-natural-remedies-with-sabrina-zielinski

 

Highlights:

• 10:10:10 method
• Immune boosting essential oil blend
• Detox bath recipe
• Deep sleep blend
• Liver cleansing essential oils

 

Sabrina Zielinski, otherwise known as Mama Z, is the co-author of The Essential Oil Apothecary. Mama Z has created allergy-friendly food recipes and do-it-yourself remedies featured on Natural Living Family. In today’s episode, she gives some tips and advice on living a healthier life. She also shares how they incorporate the Bible in their health and wellness journey.

 

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Today we have with us. Sabrina Zielinski, otherwise known as Mama Z. Really excited for her to share some very fascinating stories with you, as well as recipes using a type of herbal medicine called essential oils in your life and powerful ways to support you day-to-day.

Now, Sabrina and I had a really beautiful heart-to-heart talk in this interview, after which she asked for my mailing address and she sent me the most beautiful care package, so I have to thank her for what she sent. She sent me a big bag with all of her own recipes that she makes in her kitchen for her family, and she talks about a lot of these recipes on the show today, so you’re going to get a treat. But all the recipes that are in her book, and I highly recommend getting this book. This is a great book to get for Christmas. 

So go to learntruehealth.com/eo. That’s learntruehealth.com/eo as in essential oil. That just makes it easy to get to right now. So you can go to learntruehealth.com/eo. That takes you to a special landing page on Sabrina’s website. Her and her husband, Dr. Zielinski, who I’ve had on the show as well. They write these books together. She brings in the perspective of a mom of several beautiful children. So she’s got this wonderful homemaker aspect raising kids, and all of the problems, all the dilemmas to solve using that from upset tummies, to trouble sleeping, to needing more energy, needing less energy, just across the board, bumps, bruises, and scrapes, and all the different things all different ways that you could use essential oils in your life.

We do talk about the emotional aspect of how essential oils can be used. I myself have had quite a roller coaster this year, as many of you have. So just processing and creating healthy strategies for managing, dealing with, being in, and working through emotions of grief, loss, stress, anxiety, and all the emotions that we are facing for some of us during these difficult times. This has been one of the most difficult years of my life, and she shared with me different essential recipes that can help.

Now, it’s not a cure-all, but this is something that if you learn to use essential oils on a daily basis, and her latest book teaches you. It’s an apothecary that teaches you from A to Z how you can use essential oils in all aspects of your life to help you improve the quality of your life, and that’s why I love her books. So go to learntruehealth.com/eo and check it out. When you go to that link. There’s a ton of freebies and stuff. They’re so generous.

So like I said, she sent me this big, and she even embroidered my name on the bag. I was really taken aback and just in awe of her generous nature. So what was in the bag were a bunch of really popular recipes that’s in her book that she uses on a daily basis with her kids, with herself. There’s a handmade, non-toxic hand sanitizer that has essential oils and aloe in it. There’s a room spray for sleep, and that has helped me so much now. 

I have a fairly good sleep, but you know when you’re under high stress, and I’ve been at times in this last year under high stress. The cortisol levels are running high even late at night, and using that room spray and it’s a combination of different essential oils that really helped to bring down the adrenals, calm the nervous system, and prepare for sleep. My husband enjoys the smell as well, so that has been really nice. And then there were a bunch of different salves for pain, for sleep, for comfort, for emotional stress, all the things I had shared with her that I was going through.

I loved her big gift bag so much and it really touched my heart. The quality that I got from the different gifts are all her recipes that are in her books, so that’s why I’m just so excited to share with you. I really think that if you get her book and you actually make some of her recipes yourself, you’ll really enjoy it because I really enjoyed what she shared with me.

Having said that, I want to thank you. Thank you for being a listener. Thank you for sharing this podcast with those you care about. This is an episode to share with your friends who love essential oils and also for your friends who are open to learning more about how they can incorporate herbal medicine in a safe way. 

That’s another thing I really like about Dr. Zielinski and his wife Sabrina is that they really take the time to outline how to use essential oils in a healthy way. They don’t align themselves with any one company. There are so many essential brands out there, but they do tell you—and we talk about this in our previous episodes—how to pick an essential oil, how to pick one that is high quality, and they definitely explain what to look for in an essential oil company, regardless of where you’re buying it from because there’s so many on the market.

I always want to go for the ones that are the purest, organic obviously, and have the strongest medicinal qualities, as do you. So they explain how to use them safely. Things not to do, things to do. There are certain essential oils that are not safe for pets, that are not safe for babies or children. These things we need to know. If you know how to use them in a safe way, then they can really enrich your life.

So go to learntruehealth.com/eo, check out their book. Enjoy today’s interview. It’s a really beautiful story, and you will see how big her heart is. I know you’re going to love my guest today. She’s such a big heart, and they have a fantastic community that you can plug into and we talked about that as well. If you want to keep learning from her after this interview, definitely go to learntruehealth.com/eo and sign up for their community as well because they really take the time to educate and to spread this information in such a compassionate way. I really appreciate that about them. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day and enjoy today’s interview.

 

[00:07:16] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 470. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have with us Sabrina Ann Zielinski, otherwise known as Mama Z. 

Now, we’ve had your husband on the show, Dr. Zielinski, a few times, and what I love is that you guys take essential oils and teach us how to use them safely and effectively. What most people don’t know about essential oils is that they’re the most potent and concentrated form of herbal medicine. So you don’t need a lot, it’s very powerful. Yes, essential oils, when you use high grade, medicinal quality, and use them correctly, it is very potent, powerful, cathartic herbal medicine. 

We have to remember that drug-based medicine was created to mimic herbs. So herbs were the first form of drugs for thousands of thousands of years. And then chemists came along and said, well, let’s patent something and let’s try to make a man-made version of this. So willow bark being what they mimic aspirin out of. Aspirin can kill you if you take too much, whereas willow bark, because it has all of the different components within nature. God is so intelligent that if you took too much willow bark, there’s a component in it that before you take too much to the point of killing you, you would start vomiting and you wouldn’t be able to keep it in you.

Herbs, when in their natural form, for most of them, have sort of a safety mechanism to prevent us from going too far overboard. Whereas drugs, as we know, don’t. With anything in nature or manmade, we need to make sure that we’re doing it safely so that we could get the medicinal effect without harming ourselves, and that’s why I love, love, love Sabrina, I love what you do, and I love what your husband does. You guys write these books together and your latest book, which is the Essential Oils Apothecary. 

Now, the link to your latest book, I have a little redirect to make it easy, learntruehealth.com/eo as in essential oil. So learntruehealth.com/eo will take you straight to their website to purchase the book and check out all of the cool videos, articles, and just amazing resources on the website. I’m really excited to have you here today because my understanding is you are the essential oils expert. You introduced your husband, Dr. Zielinski, to essential oils. 

The two of you really help so many people detox, balance hormones, mental and emotional issues, I mean, the list goes on and on. We’re going to get into it. You’re going to teach us recipes and stuff today, but I love that you’re helping us learn how we can introduce essential oils into every aspect of our life to help uplift us and help us achieve our health and wellness goals. So welcome to the show.

 

[00:10:33] Sabrina Zielinski: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here. And yes, using essential oils, the concentrated plant-based medicine, and some people don’t realize, it’s even more powerful to use less because when you’re using it with a carrier oil and whatnot, then it spreads throughout the body and it’s not evaporating. So you get more surface area, you get more penetration into your blood vessels, all of that stuff, and it’s all important. I’m excited to tell you how I got Dr. Z turned on to essential oils. He thought it was just smelly stuff underneath the sink.

Back when I was in the sixth grade, I had gone to my grandma’s house, she had well water. I had bought two over-the-counter products for my face, and they were obviously chemically-based. They had a reaction with her well water, and it literally left a huge chemical burn on my face. It was three-plus levels of skin deep, some places more. And it was completely from under my eyes all the way down to my chin. It was a complete scabbing over my entire face. And my mom—

 

[00:11:53] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

 

[00:11:54] Sabrina Zielinski: I know, it was crazy. And especially at that time in your life, it’s one of those things where you don’t forget that. At school, because I went to a public school, kids are mean. I had to wear a lot of makeup and then come home and literally soak my face just to allow the scabs to come off because of all the makeup. It was just terrible. But my mom’s best friend was an Ojibwe Indian, and she had taught me and got me my first essential oil kit in the sixth grade. It was a Christmas gift, she gave me a book of aromatherapy, and it came with three essential oils. I know it was lavender; peppermint; and eucalyptus, tea tree, or something like that.

 

[00:12:45] Ashley James: Those are gateway essential oils. Lavender and peppermint were my first two essential oils, and then the eucalyptus was shortly thereafter. That’s so great. There are so many applications for those three, it’s pretty amazing.

 

[00:13:08] Sabrina Zielinski: It is. And so when my face had burned off like that, I sent myself right to the research looking for anything that would help, and of course, we know that vitamin A and E helped to feed the weave of the collagen and elastin under the skin.   I really started, before I knew what I was developing, and using the essential oils, I was using those things on my face with the lavender because I knew it would help calm it down. I used aloe vera, and eventually, years later, I ended up coming up with the skin healing serum, which I’ll share today. My dad ended up using it to help heal skin cancer.

It healed my face, and it was more for me because there were lots of scars, so I needed not just the face to be healed, but also the scarring. Within six months, everything was completely gone. I had terrible marks on my face, you would never know that today. Thank God for that, of course. But I grew up using essential oils, teas, tinctures, and all of those things. We would exercise our lymphatic system. In front of the TV. We would switch our legs back and forth to crisscross them just to make sure if we were not feeling well that we were moving stuff in and out of our body quickly.

When I met Eric, he just thought that I had this smelly stuff under the sink. And even having our first home birth, I used all essential oils and my mom’s best friend came up with oils for every phase of labor. Once to prep the house, once for afterward, once for healing, so we came up with my birth blends. And every single important phase of my life she would come up with different blends. I grew up making my own blends and doing all of those things, and he just thought it was smelly stuff until he had to start writing research regarding essential oils. And then he’d come home and go, oh my gosh, did you know that this did this and this did that? And I’m like, yeah, I did.

 

[00:15:35] Ashley James: Why did he have to start writing research?

 

[00:15:37] Sabrina Zielinski: He had taken the research route with his doctorate, and he had started a writing business because the writing was in his past as well. Once he started the writing business, one of his clients needed research articles on essential oils because they were going to be using it all over their website. So it was all topically based, and he was a ghostwriter for essential oil topics. But it was so funny because he thinks he just found out who hung the moon, and I’d be like, I know. That’s why I have this recipe or that’s why I have this recipe. So it was super fun to work it out with him, of course.

 

[00:16:30] Ashley James: I love it. When I was a teenager, I had summer jobs since I was 11. Mom thought it was a really good idea to have a strong work ethic, and I didn’t even care about the money. I just love that I got the experience. It was just for me, that was fun.

So one of the jobs that I repeat that I came back every summer, and I had several jobs during the summer. I was kind of a workaholic as a kid, but it was fun. It was like seven days a week. One of my jobs was working at an all-natural day spa up in Muskoka Ontario called Beauty Comes Naturally, and it’s a cute turn of phrase because it’s all-natural products. You go for your aesthetics but you’re using all-natural products. 

There are these smelly oils. I thought nothing of it. I’m about 15 years old. One day, I woke up and I had a stomach bug and I cannot go to work. I’m throwing up, I have a fever. I’m just really, really crummy. I’m in bed and my mom calls my boss and tells her. My boss says, come over and get these two oils and go home with them. 

My mom brings these oils home and I remember lying in bed. I’m just miserable. And she takes olive oil because it’s the only oil we had in the house, we used that as a carrier oil, she rubs lavender on my chest and my stomach, and then she makes a pot of hot water from the coffeemaker and puts one drop of peppermint in the entire pot and has me inhale it and sip it. Well, the moment I started inhaling it and sipping it, I stopped throwing up. My nausea goes away. I’m done throwing up. I fall into a deep, deep sleep, and when I wake up, my fever has broken. By the next day, I was back at work and I was fine.

I was such a believer from that moment on. So then my boss hands me a bunch of CDs to listen to and books to read. I became such a huge believer of essential oils that everyone that walked into the spa, the moment they walked in, I was like, oh, you got to come over here and smell this. This does that, this does that, and sample this. I ended up being the number one salesperson for the essential oils just because I was so passionate about it and I was excited. I was excited about their health benefits.

The last time I had your husband on the show, when I interviewed him, I was still pregnant. This was the beginning of March, and I actually just published his episode. When I was interviewing him, he was sharing one thing that you guys do to lift spirits, and that is orange and vanilla blend. 

Well, as many listeners know, I lost our daughter during childbirth. We don’t know why. We think maybe her cord got impinged right as she was coming out, but she was alive right until she came out. That was devastating to me and to my husband obviously. I’ve been dealing with recovering from postpartum, also recovering from grief, and moving through my grief. 

Then, a few days later, I got COVID, and then a month later, we had to pack up our house that we lived in for seven years and move. It’s been like bang, bang, bang, bang. Working through all these emotions, I notice that there are days when I feel the grief and the sadness, and I feel the overwhelm. So I turn on my diffuser and I put in the wild orange because that’s what I have. I haven’t found vanilla yet, but I have wild orange and I put that in. Clary sage is another one that’s one of my favorites.

But during our birth, I also was using essential oils. One thing I wanted to share is I was really excited to breastfeed and I was so happy that my milk came in, but also very sad because our daughter had died and I couldn’t breastfeed. My midwife was really nervous that I would develop mastitis because here I am, I’m sick in bed grieving and recovering being postpartum, then all sudden COVID, and now my milk has come in. She was just worried that on top of everything else, my body is so taxed. On top of everything else, she was really worried I would get mastitis. 

I remember reading that jasmine essential oil can actually stop milk, and so with a carrier oil, I used Jasmine essential oil and it immediately, like that same day, my milk would decrease so significantly that within days it had shut off and I felt a difference.

So I want to say, there are times when we wouldn’t want to use jasmine oil when you want to have your milk come in and be healthy. But if you need to turn it off in a safe way to prevent mastitis, like if you’re done nursing or if you’re in my position, then I was so impressed with how quickly jasmine oil turned off the manufacturing of breast milk.

 

[00:22:08] Sabrina Zielinski: And just the opposite, before you go into labor, it helps to drop in your milk supply until the baby’s born and then it does the opposite. It’s incredible. The last two weeks of pregnancy, I’ve never seen a due date for me. I’m always really, really late.

 

[00:22:36] Ashley James: I don’t understand having a due date thing. I mean, I think this is just a bunch of men made this up. I mean, I do not think women doctors got around and made up this whole idea of a due date. I think it’s totally made up by men. Listen, I love you, men, but butt out of women’s health because this idea that we’re supposed to give birth at 40 weeks is absolutely ridiculous. I can’t remember the statistics, but it was something like 70% something of births are 41+ weeks. This whole idea of 40 weeks is the cutoff and anything else is considered “late” is completely ridiculous.

My aunt who’s 85 I think or 86, oh no, is she in her 90s? Oh my gosh, my aunt, I love her, I love her to death. She’s amazing and she gave birth to two amazing guys who are just so wonderful. But both of them were close to four weeks. She baked them for a very long time.

 

[00:23:35] Sabrina Zielinski: My last one, 10 ½ months and I’m not joking. We conceived him January 4th, he was born October 17th, so that wasn’t even considering the two weeks where the egg comes down and stuff. But yeah, sometimes there’s just a different clock going on there.

 

[00:23:56] Ashley James: Right. So in the last part of your pregnancy, you don’t exactly know when real labor is kicking in, but you use jasmine essential oil. You used it the whole last trimester? At what point are you going to start to use it?

 

[00:24:12] Sabrina Zielinski: No, 38 weeks. Thirty eight weeks I use jasmine and clary sage together, it helps to drop in the milk supply. But as soon as you have the baby, you can’t use jasmine, just sage oil, or anything that has sage in it. Sage will dry your milk up immediately. So you can’t have turkey stuffing because that usually has Italian seasoning or sage in it. You always have to be mindful. So for me, because I do organic gardening, I have to make sure I have gloves on even tending the garden with all the sage plants that I have. Because I have a variety of different sage plants outside. It’s very interesting, and it really does work.

It’s amazing because it also helps to facilitate labor if your body’s ready. Well, my body, for whatever reason, never seems to be ready at any kind of 38 weeks. It’s like yeah, no, we’ll talk to you a little later. But this time, I had had COVID at six to eight weeks in utero, and it calcified the placenta, but we didn’t know it at the time. And so any upper respiratory infection would have done that, but we had no idea because we kept just checking with my backup care and whatnot, so it was a little crazy.

Between my third and my fourth baby, I had a molar pregnancy. It’s an improper duplication of twins. The baby instead of two, it’s one with 69 chromosomes. We had no idea that anything was wrong or anything, and then I had massive amounts of hair falling out. We’re talking I got up off the couch and there was like a ponytail’s worth of hair on the couch. I thought, man, I remember I’d lose a little extra hair there during pregnancy, but not like that. Then I started hemorrhaging.

When we found out that it was a molar pregnancy, I had been pregnant for a full three months. It messes up your thyroid, it turns your body into hyperthyroid, And then it’s also a precancerous condition. You have to do whatever you can to get down to zero hCG. Some people have had to use chemotherapy. Well, that would never happen over here.

 

[00:26:48] Ashley James: Wait a second, what?

 

[00:26:50] Sabrina Zielinski: Yes. I don’t know if you remember there was a show called The Little People, and the lady had a molar pregnancy. So if you have a partial molar pregnancy that a baby was present, if you don’t, if you had no baby present, then it’s a full molar pregnancy. We had already seen the fetal pole and whatnot, so we knew that mine was a partial, but your pregnancy continues on even after the baby’s gone. The hCG grows just not at the same rate. it’s supposed to double every two days. Instead, it grows at a very interesting rate.

It’s giant masses of cysts in there. They told me it would probably be a year before my hCG would go to zero. But it was only six weeks doing this the natural way, believe it or not. But you have to balance your thyroid, I had to balance my hormones, and I also had to balance the emotions and all of the other stuff because, obviously, it was a loss as well. You’re just getting done with the first trimester thinking, okay, well, we’ve made it through the first trimester, we’re good to go, and no, we weren’t.

So I was able to balance the thyroid, balance the emotions, and go down to zero hCG in six weeks, and they told me it’d be a year. So we used the essiac tea, and then we used clary sage, geranium, and ylang-ylang to help with balancing those emotions and all of that stuff. And then with the thyroid, we had to get right in there because it’s interesting how the thyroid works, especially with essential oils.

If you have dysfunction, you’re going to use clove, and then you want to add myrrh and lemongrass, and then also peppermint if you have the imbalance, but it works both directions. So you’ve got something that helps with hyper and something that helps with hypo, and they work together to balance everything out, which is amazing. I combined those essential oils together and use six to eight drops total for every one ounce of carrier oil. I purposely love to use a blend of different carrier oils because one of the things that I found is that when you use the different viscosities of oil, it goes to the different depths of your skin.

So I use 54 ounces of coconut oil, 16 ounces of almond oil, 8 ounces of jojoba, and 4 ounces of vitamin E, and I use pure vitamin E now. If you have other things going on with your body, you can always add shea nut oil, especially in the wintertime to keep it liquid. You can add rosehip seed oil, your natural vitamin A, and you can add other things to it. If you have allergies, you can always make changes, but that’s my basis for my carrier oil, which we call Mama Z’s oil base. I find that it’s super effective especially with balancing the thyroid and the hormones.

Now, just like you mentioned, the orange and vanilla, that’s what we call our joyful blend, and absolutely so powerful. You can use a CO2 vanilla, you can use a vanilla oleoresin or vanilla absolute. There are a few different options when you use the essential oil together with other oils. At first, I didn’t know that there was a difference. So I went and got some organic vanilla extract. Let’s just say, you can’t use that and substitute for vanilla essential oil.

 

[00:31:08] Ashley James: Is vanilla essential oil made from the vanilla bean or from the vanilla flour? What part of the plant is the vanilla essential oil from?

 

[00:31:17] Sabrina Zielinski: You know, that’s a Dr. Z question. I just know how to use it, and I actually do make my own vanilla extract. That’s a great gift, by the way, is you get 10 organic vanilla beans. You buy organic vodka, and you fill one of those old bottle top containers. You put all the beans in, you fill it to the top, you literally wait three to four months, then you switch it out, and you fill the container up again. It’ll go on for years. It’s like the gift that keeps on giving.

 

[00:31:57] Ashley James: Really, the 10 vanilla beans will just keep?

 

[00:31:59] Sabrina Zielinski: Yeah. It is. It’s such a great thing. Let’s say one day, it’s a little lighter. So all you do is cut one bean in half, don’t do anything else, no joke. You just keep using it. So what I do is I take canning jars and I’ll fill them up and then have another one. I just always put the date on it, that way I know it’s three months or whatever because we go through a lot of it the way that we bake and stuff using all anti-inflammatory ingredients.

So because of the natural sweeteners that we use, instead of using a teaspoon like a regular recipe says for vanilla, we use a tablespoon. So you can see we go through a lot more of that organic vanilla, but it works, and it works great and that’s a great gift. With my mom’s company, because she’s known as the herb lady, she does cooking with herbs. I would tell you, we probably sold hundreds of those kits because they’re so effective, and they’re such a great gift that you can use them for so long. And once they had the vanilla bean shortage then a couple of years ago, we were grateful that we had bought so many vanilla beans in the rears. We didn’t have to really worry about that.

 

[00:33:22] Ashley James: Besides baking, what do you use vanilla bean extract for?

 

[00:33:27] Sabrina Zielinski: Well, we do a lot of baking, and we do a lot of recipes. We make even a butternut squash souffle, totally anti-inflammatory, but just that little bit of vanilla helps that we make a lot of our own. We use matcha green tea and we make a fat-burning matcha latte, and so we add vanilla to that. And of course, you can always do a liver cleansing one, and instead of adding peppermint and cinnamon essential oils to it, you can always go with spearmint and put an immune-boosting essential oil in there, but we always incorporate essential oils.

Anytime we do it with food, we always make sure that there’s fat to mix the essential oils with, that way it properly dilutes it. But we use that in a lot of the beverages that we make. We play beach volleyball, and so we have a lot of friends that really enjoy coffee. I’ll have coffee every so often, and I always like to make sure it’s a very clean and pure deal. But for them, they love it. So I’ll make homemade nut milk and I’ll match the stevia with the nut milk that I use. And then I’ll add a little bit of vanilla as well. And then I make our own ice-cold coffee lattes that are stevia-sweetened.

So we use that in a lot of the different things that we make just on a weekly basis. I always said I was really cut out for the assembly line with having five kids. We pump things out kind of like that. And so, because of that, we make a lot of things in advance. Also, for instance, at our school, they know that our kids can only have Mama Z-approved snacks.

So if somebody has a birthday coming up when one of our kids has a birthday, I’ll make cupcakes that way we freeze all the other things because we don’t eat a lot of sweets, but we bake a lot and we give a lot of that away. And so we end up freezing all these cupcakes, and then when it’s Susie’s birthday I put the frozen cupcake in a little cupcake container, and then it goes in the front of the bag the day before. So when they go to school, they have their own Mamas Z-approved snack for that special birthday. And the same thing if they go to a birthday party or any of that, we always bring our own version of whatever it is that they’re having at the party.

 

[00:36:14] Ashley James: I do that too. I love it. Our son has allergies. We’ve been gluten-free for, gosh, 11 years now. We’ve been gluten-free for so long I forget when we started, but it’s been a long time. And then dairy-free. My husband and I are both allergic to it, to begin with, and then I found out I have an egg allergy and then our son has all these different allergies. He’s got all my husband’s and my allergies combined, plus a few ones he invented himself. Luckily I’m seeing he’s growing out of it, and a lot has to do with histamine.

We’ve been as natural as possible, let’s just say. We’ve been as absolutely as natural as possible, and so it always perplexes me why he had these issues, but I think it has to do with gut health because the more we look to strengthen gut health, the better his histamine is getting. So we’re on the way to reducing histamine naturally. I do the same thing where we bring our own version of a healthy fun snack to birthday parties, and he looks forward to that. I’m so, so grateful that he gets it because he doesn’t like feeling sick.

My mom was very strict and so I rebelled in my teenage years and gave myself all kinds of health problems through food. I gave myself type 2 diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, and polycystic ovarian syndrome. And then in my 30s, I worked on reversing all of it, and I did. I reversed all of it. I was told I’d never have kids, I’d never conceive naturally. I was told by an endocrinologist that I was completely infertile, and changing my diet, supplements, and coming back to rediscovering natural medicine is how I healed myself. I no longer have those problems. But I rebelled, and so I don’t want to create that same thing for my son.

I’m looking at, how do I create this balance where I teach him the benefits of eating healthy so that when he’s on his own, he will make that choice instead of my mom just was like the sergeant general, do what I say, and then I rebelled. I’ve allowed him sometimes to try something, and then it’s like, okay, that’s the consequence of what it is to taste that because then he feels sick. And then the next time he goes, I don’t want to feel sick. He’s like 100% will never ever eat anything from McDonald’s. He wants to go there for a toy because he knows they have toys there, but he’s almost six, and actually six and a half years old this month, and he’s told me, no, I absolutely will never eat anything else because he knows it’ll make him sick. I’m glad that he’s deciding this for himself.

But learning how to make these little changes, it’s overwhelming when someone’s coming from the more mainstream, wait to get sick, and then go to a doctor. Eat whatever at any restaurant, eat whatever, right? Eat whatever that has been handed to you without question and you suffer. Maybe you have bloating, you have some weight issues, you have metabolism issues, you have hormone or thyroid issues, and skin problems or eye problems. 

You’re just sick of being sick, you’re sick of being in pain, you’re sick of being fatigued, and then you discover natural medicine, and all of a sudden, this whole new world opens up. Now it’s like, okay, now I have to really be picky about what goes in my body, what goes on my body, and what comes into my house. Yes, we have to be picky, and it can be overwhelming if we think of everything that needs to change, but make little changes one step at a time.

The first change I ever made was going 100% organic. My husband and I decided to shop—well, two changes, shop the perimeter of the grocery store, and only choose organic. That was something we did back in 2008, and I was incredibly sick at the time. I was suffering so hugely, and I was on constant antibiotics. After one month of just shopping the perimeter of the grocery store, we were still eating dairy. We weren’t gluten-free, we were still eating dairy, but we went organic and shopped the perimeter of the grocery store. I hadn’t even cut out sugar, and a month into that, my chronic infections went away. 

I thought, if I could change something so significant in my health by making this one change, what else can I do? That’s what led me to mentor under naturopaths and change my diet and supplements to the point where I reversed all those conditions, and then that’s why I started the podcast to get this information out there.

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the people who need this the most, the listeners who let’s say are in overwhelm because I’m in overwhelm on a daily basis managing being a mom, now being a teacher because we homeschool. We’ve started first grade, doing the podcast, and everything else. Just life and managing everything that happens. We’re managing so much right now especially as parents and as moms. Our routine has completely changed.

Food is getting more and more toxic. You know this because you shared with me, maybe you can share with the listeners in a moment why you know this. But here’s the thing, I’m in my early 40s and the food that we grew up with in the ‘80s is not the food that we have today. We have to remember that. 

Cheerios is not the same, right? The Cheerios that you had in the ‘80s is not the same Cheerios now. Cheerios now has glyphosate in it. Glyphosate is a chelator that has bound to heavy metals and will release them when pH changes. So the pH changes when blood goes to urine and when blood turns to the cerebral spinal fluid. It’ll cross the blood-brain barrier. Glyphosate deposits heavy metals such as aluminum into the kidneys into the brain. I have interviews on this. The evidence and the proof are there. An entire country banned glyphosate because it was killing their farmers. We have to get that what is banned in other countries is on your shelf ready for your kids to eat in our country.

We have to be like the gatekeeper. You have to be a gatekeeper. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the most overwhelmed and those who need it the most. Please, can you walk us through, give us some steps. So talk to those listeners who really, really need some steps, need some direction, need some guidance so that they can take those baby steps to start feeling better.

 

[00:43:26] Sabrina Zielinski: Absolutely. And I completely understand how that is because I was on 11 different prescription medicines. A lot of them for my stomach and other things growing up because even though my mom was the herb lady, she focused on culinary cooking, so it wasn’t necessarily healthy, but it had incorporated a lot less of the fats because again, that was more of the ‘80s and a lot more of the herbs for the flavor.

But my dad created GMO corn, that’s what he did. When they were told about the project that they were working on, they said, no, this is going to cause more allergies, and some of the food is not going to be as nutrient-dense, but we are going to be able to feed the world was what they told them. Well, I just happened to be one of those people with lots of those allergies.

 

[00:44:16] Ashley James: Maybe that’s why my son has allergies.

 

[00:44:22] Sabrina Zielinski: Our grandparents, they didn’t go through this kind of stuff. They don’t have all of this Roundup in their stomachs that is just staying around. They don’t have all of these heavy metals. They didn’t because things were done differently. But anytime you try to play God and do something a little bit better than what God has done, you always have to pay the price. When I first got off of the prescription drugs, I really prayed about where would I even start?

I did end up doing a 10-day water fast, and I felt that that was the key for me. I don’t recommend that unless you are being observed by a natural healthcare professional. But I did and I did get off of all of those medicines. I had weaned myself off of one, and then it was the other 10 during that 10-day period.

I also wasn’t as smart about figuring out what I was allergic to before I met Eric. I thought, I think I might be possibly allergic to dairy. So I went out and I got two pints of ice cream and I ate them both back. I thought, I am going to check this out. I’m going to see what happens. Oh my goodness. Well, let’s just say my stomach was probably not the same for a couple of days after that.

Then I thought, I really think I have some kind of an allergy to sugar. So I decided to eat two bags of Tootsie Pops just to see what would happen, and also not a very smart idea. I realized that both of those were a trigger. I thought, you know, that probably wasn’t smart. I don’t think I’m going to do that kind of stuff again, but at least I know that those are probably not good ones. Then learning about gluten and all of the other inflammatory ingredients that are in our staple food that is available. Then that’s when we started cutting out all these other things, but that’s when I met Eric. He was really the key to learning about some of those other inflammatory ingredients.

Like you’re saying, starting small, for Eric, that was throw everything away in the pantry and start over. For me, I was like, well, when that’s gone, we’ll replace it with good things. Not everybody can throw everything away in their pantry and start from scratch. Eric was like, at all cost, throw everything away. I’m just like, well, we’ll just substitute with better ingredients as these things are gone. You can do it either way, but the end goal should be the same to get all those inflammatory ingredients out of your pantry and your staple goods.

The other thing is, is when we focus on detoxing the areas of our home, we’re talking the pantry, the kitchen, the laundry room, the bathroom, and your garden spaces, once we hit all of those areas, and it’s really one by one by one by one by one is the way to do it. We did a toxic-free healthy homemaker over with our house. We ended up filming it because people were like, well, how do you do that and what do you do? 

But the bottom line is you start small like you said. The biggest thing is to throw any of the smelly stuff and perfume away, you have to. They all mess up your hormones. They’re all toxic. All your plugins and things—toxic. Focusing on essential oils, and I’ve dedicated my time and my life to making sure that I have the healthy scents and the other things that we used to look forward to as the seasons change. You can make healthy alternatives for everything.

The other thing is that hand sanitizer has been pushed down our throats like we’re supposed to literally bathe in it, which is terrible because not only do we have our gut health that we have to worry about, but we also have our skin microbiome that we have to worry about as well. And those products are filled and filled with chemicals and pesticides that are wreaking havoc on the layers of skin.

We tell people to do the 10:10:10 method. So that’s 10 drops of essential oils. We love an immune boosting essential oil blend as we talked about in the Essential Oils Apothecary, and that’s equal parts of cinnamon, clove, eucalyptus, lemon, orange, and rosemary. Let’s say you have an essential oil bottle, it’s empty or you buy some empty bottles. Then you mix your own essential oil blend for boosting your immune system. 

So you use 10 drops of that blend. Then 10 drops of aloe vera gel, organic of course, and then 10 drops of a high proof grain alcohol. You can use the highest that you have, and then you fill up a one-ounce bottle with those things, and the rest of that bottle up with purified or distilled water. You shake it and go. You can use that for a variety of different things. How easy is that?

 

[00:50:11] Ashley James: So like a hand sanitizer, perfume, when you say a variety of things, what do you mean?

 

[00:50:16] Sabrina Zielinski: Yup. All of those ingredients are also edible. I spray it on the kids when we roll up in the car line. It’s really funny because the people that take the kids out, they’re like, you know, your car doesn’t smell like the other cars. I’m like, well, thank you. I do not want it to be a microbiology experiment over here. The kids are part of it, and they know they’re not allowed to use any of the hand sanitizers.

I also make that same blend of essential oils. You can DIY your own hand wash, or you can get an organic unscented hand wash and you can add eight drops to every one ounce of your hand wash with those same essential oils, shake it up, and go. So I actually make hand soap for every sink that each one of my kids has, and the other teachers liked it so much that I ended up just making so much hand soap, and then I made so much hand sanitizer that the administrative people wanted their own hand sanitizer too. Even though the kids didn’t have them for teachers, they wanted the same thing.

And then they were like, well, can you also make some for my nephew as well if you’re already doing it? So our school is covered with our hand soap and hand sanitizer because it’s so much better for you. That’s the thing, you have to start small, but you’d never know where your influence ends. Now they want us to come and teach people how to naturally boost their immune system. We count it all joy because these are things that are super simple that you can do today.

Doing a detox bath before you go to bed is one of the best things that you can do whether you’re a child, you’re pregnant, or you’re just an older gentleman, it doesn’t matter. Using Epsom salts and Bragg apple cider vinegar, lemon, and lime essential oils, I’m going to give you the recipe for it, but those will help to detox some of those heavy metals. Using a cup of Epsom salts, a fourth of a cup of Bragg apple cider vinegar, one tablespoon of a carrier oil that is liquid the whole time with one or two drops of lemon essential oil, six to eight drops of lavender helps dilate those blood vessels. Lemon helps cleanse it through with the Epsom salts.

And especially if you have skin irritations or other things going on because we know that there’s that brain skin gut connection, then that’s going to help gently exfoliate those skin cells. You’ll actually see pieces of skin that float around the outside of your bathtub. You’re like, what is that? Well, that’s your skin just naturally detoxing. You want that, we need that. We need to make sure that our bodies are less burdened because we live under webs and webs and webs of Wi-Fi, 5G, and all of those other things that we don’t have any control over. Some we have little control over.

Doing what we can to naturally detox our body and increase our immune systems are some of the only things that we have control over. It’s something that you can do regularly. Our kids, if they are starting to feel like some symptoms or whatever, we’ll do that same recipe. We’ll half that recipe for the younger ones, then still fill up the bathtub and they know they just soak there.

Our son broke his collarbone twice actually in the exact same spot—once at camp and once when he was playing tag at school. Well, they weren’t supposed to be playing tag, but it was the same eight boys. So I soaked him and that helped him feel a lot better. So he wasn’t sure that he was even injured because he felt so much better. And then, of course, we did end up taking him in there because his shoulder did not look right. He did have it broken, but he healed within a couple of weeks and it was great.

So using essential oils for those kinds of things, that’s the great thing about plant-based medicine is you get a lot of options, and you get a lot of different kinds of essential oils that you can work together whether you make your own blends or if you use a company’s blends. A lot of the things that we do are non-branded because we want you to feel comfortable with whatever you’re using to be able to incorporate it into your health.

In the Essential Oils Apothecary, we kind of take a deeper dive into some of these other chronic diseases really to help you navigate at those starting places. Because I think it takes looking at those areas of the home that I mentioned, but I think it also takes us looking at what are our pain points right now? Is there anything that we can try to do to manage some of those things to start with because it does us no good to detox everything if we’re still not sleeping? So we want to make sure, yes, we’re detoxing everything because that will help.

But then using some good oils for sleep. We love our deep sleep blend where you have your equal parts of lavender, chamomile, and vetiver. We incorporate stuff for our kids. We alternate the essential oils that we put in their diffuser as well because just like we don’t go to the gym every day and do the exact same workout, essential oils are like that too. We don’t want to have a mono diet. We don’t want to have a mono essential oils diet, so to speak, so we want to make sure that we vary. The nice thing about essential oils is there are so many different ones that work for different ailments.

You and I have our own bio-individuality, so certain ones may work really good for you and maybe work okay for me, but you still got a whole other list of things to try and find out what works best for you and your family. So all of our recipes are a great starting point. I always tell people, I love it when they take our books, write all in them, and make it theirs because that’s really what it takes to have us work together as a team to find out what’s best for each and every person.

 

[00:57:29] Ashley James: I love that you said your pain point. You could totally revamp your life, but like you said, if someone’s not sleeping or what if you have pain? Like for me, I’ve had to really do some triage work in the last few months. And so looking at, are you in physical pain, are you in emotional and mental pain? Is your pain point that you’re struggling with eating, making healthier choices around eating or maybe you don’t know what you’re allergic to? Is your immune system your pain point, your hormones your pain point? What is your pain point and then let’s start with that.

If we can really get a leg up on feeling better about where you’re suffering, I don’t use that word lightly.

 

[00:58:25] Sabrina Zielinski: You get hope.

 

[00:58:26] Ashley James: I think everyone listening has a section like a little piece of the pie, right? If you break down your life into pieces of a pie, there are pieces of the pie that are really fulfilled. Maybe you are really fulfilled spiritually and have a great connection with God and a great connection with your Creator, but your career feels really empty and meaningless. Or maybe you’re struggling with your relationship with your kids, your spouse, your parents, or your siblings, but you have really great relationships with your friends, right?

If you’d write down sort of like a pie all these different pieces in terms of your health, so you have your mental health, your emotional health, and your physical health. Then physical health can be broken down into how’s your sleep, how’s your energy? How’s your eating? Do you eat at home or are you eating all takeout? How’s your home cooking kind of thing? And then how’s the quality of your relationships? You’re moving your body every day in a way that brings you joy.

Are you feeling stiff, are you in pain, or are you feeling like you have mobility? Do you feel younger in your body than your actual biological age? Because that would be great if younger, and I want everyone to know that they can. They can make little changes to get to the point where their cells are expressing themselves in a younger, more youthful, and energetic state than their biological age, which is what we want everyone to have.

I felt like I was 100 years old in my 20s. I felt so bad. I’m still working on my health. It’s like a work in progress. And it’s something I highly, highly value. Every choice I make, everything I put in my mouth is either hurting me or healing me, and that’s the level of seriousness we need to take. That’s why I love your book because the Essential Oils Apothecary is something where we can identify where is my pain point? 

If I could take a magic wand and give you this one wish. If you can rub Aladdin’s lamp and ask for this one wish that changes one part of your health, what would it be? Or maybe three things in your life, what would it be? And then open up the Essential Oils Apothecary and find the guidance around improving those areas. And then, once you get a leg up, now you’ve got more energy, and like you said, hope and drive. And then you can start doing things like looking in the cupboards and clearing away what’s no longer serving you.

We have to remember that sometimes we turn to substances like sugar and alcohol because it makes us feel good at the moment. It’s really harming us in the long run. A lot of us self-medicate because those are our coping mechanisms. If we can self-medicate with a healthier coping mechanism like taking a few minutes to rub essential oils with a carrier all over our body, inhale them, put them in our bath, put them in our foot bath, put them on our clothes, or spray them on, and just take a few moments to take really deep cleansing breaths, it changes the biochemistry inside you.

It makes such a huge difference on a mood level, on an emotional level, but it also changes your biochemistry and helps you with your hormones, your metabolism, and your immune system. So I really recommend looking at what are my coping mechanisms? Do I turn to sugar every night? Do I turn to a glass of alcohol every night? Those things are pro-inflammatory. They disrupt sleep. They disrupt your detox. They disrupt your immune system. It actually makes your white blood cells go to sleep, it’s actually really scary what sugar does, and alcohol is sugar. Also, your body burns through its vitamins and certain minerals, it burns through, so we ended up becoming depleted of vitamins and minerals when we consume sugar and alcohol.

So if you do consume sugar and alcohol, try to maybe commit to let’s say seven days without sugar and alcohol, and instead, use essential oils to create a healthier coping mechanism for destressing and bringing yourself back into a place of joy. 

Coming from someone who, this year, I have been working heavily on managing my grief, healing sadness, and increasing my joy through all this. I can tell you that alcohol and sugar ultimately will lead to your devastation, whereas a connection with source, with your Creator, a connection with your family, with your loved ones, building a connection with your body, and finding things like the right essential oils you can utilize makes a world of difference and will actually decrease inflammation and pain, increase sleep, and increase productivity.

You’re either spiraling in the wrong direction or spiraling in the right direction. You’re getting compounding interest.

Way back in the ‘90s when I was really, really first getting into essential oils, I’d read a study. So this is a long time ago but it is so fitting. In Japan, and I’m sure most people know that the work ethic in Japan is outstanding. They never want to take a sick day. There’s a banking company that decided to diffuse lemon essential oils in the air at all their branches to see if it would make a difference. What they saw was that it significantly reduced sick days taken. In Japan, they only take a sick day if they’re actually sick, and I thought that was really interesting.

Lemon is also uplifting in terms of your emotional state, but it actually significantly reduced people getting sick and spreading infections like colds and flu. How interesting is that? That’s something so easy, lemon essential oil. It’s not like frankincense or ones that are not as typical, right? Everyone knows what lemon is. Everyone knows the smell of lemon. If you’re just getting into essential oils, then lemon would be very familiar to you. I love that you said that your detox bath contains lemon because lemon and lime are something that is so supportive of the immune system.

 

[01:05:41] Sabrina Zielinski: It is. When you were talking about other ways to cope, being outside barefoot in the garden is so powerful. When you think of aromatherapy and when I’m outside with all my herbs and spices, I mean, it’s a beautiful thing. Really taking time to connect, to put your cell phone away, and really connect with the people that are around you—your family, your loved ones. If you don’t have a lot of people really close, going outside in nature, but we try to take our family walks. I have the kids, they all do their jobs because I want them very invested and know how to do all of it.

I had two sisters growing up. I cleaned up after them in the bathroom, and wouldn’t you know, both of them, they don’t keep house the same way. I realized that back then, I had to make sure that I kept the kids involved with everything so that they kept that standard in their own life. If we don’t teach our kids to spend time with one another, and let’s face it, every single thing that we have around us—the television, the phones, all that stuff—is really eliminating a lot of the personal connection time. It’s really important that we make sure that we keep that connection time.

It’s also important that for our spouse and whatnot, that we also keep that date time. We make sure that we do have babysitters that come a couple of times a month so that Eric and I can continue to date one another. All of those things are important. I’ll know he’s excited for a date. He’s got his essential oils on, he’s got his favorites. I’m like, oh, he is ready for a date. I can already smell him over here.

There are certain things that make you happy. You’ll find certain blends that really speak to you, and that will change over time because we change over time. I love combinations that have spearmint, citrus, peppermint, and stuff. All those are uplifting, and you’ll find that certain ones just speak to your soul at that time. Because we are ever-changing, those things can change.

I’ll tell you, I never liked the smell of clary sage, geranium, and ylang-ylang until I had the molar pregnancy. I did not like them, and I needed them. I lived off of those. I needed them for my body at the time. I use that when I’ve come off of my pregnancies and I’m trying to shed some of the extra hormones. But at that time, it was literally food for my soul, besides what I was eating. That brings me to tell you, some people think I’m going to just do without. I’m going to do without all these things that are my favorites.

I’ll never forget my mom. Our book before this is called The Essential Oils Diet, and it really is the essential oils lifestyle, ultimately. She really changed all her diet and different things, and my dad was like, well, when are you going to go back to eating normal? I was trying to tell my dad, because he’s the only person that probably should have his Fitbit taken away because he like reports to that Fitbit like somebody reports to a boss, and I think it’s because he’s retired, so he wants to give updates and stuff. So he sends us all his stats.

We’ll be like, dad, what is this, your sixth bike ride today? Because they close their gym in Michigan for 18 months or something like that. He and my mom would go to the gym first thing every morning. And so instead, he was riding his bike. He’s like, oh no, this is my third bike ride. I’m like, dad, listen. You do not have to check in with your Fitbit so much if you actually eat good food and not crap. He said, well, I like to eat the crap, that’s why I exercise like I am. We can’t look at it like that. 

There are so many good alternatives that when I was making baked goods, I tested them all out on him. Why? Because he’s the sugar guy. He wouldn’t even say, I like that. He would just say, yeah, I’ll take another piece of that, or he’d say, yeah, you don’t have to make that one again.

On our website, naturallivingfamily.com, we have so many recipes. So if you’re starting out and you really just want to make some of those changes, or look at what you have and find out what some of the alternatives are to the things that are staples that are in your pantry, then you won’t have to feel like you’re starting from scratch. Because right now, there are so many more alternatives than there were 20 years ago when we were doing this, and it is amazing. A lot of things have come so far. I’ll tell you, my favorite thing is the almond cow.

I would grind up the nuts with distilled water, add a few other ingredients, a little vanilla and like a pinch of stevia. You’d buzz it up, and then you get a nut milk bag—organic, of course—then you’d squeeze the nut milk bag, and then you’d have nut milk. Oh my goodness, walnuts or pecans, sign you up for some carpal tunnel. It is like quite a workout. 

The almond cow, you literally put nuts in, you put the water in, and you push a button, and it comes out with nut milk and not meat. So you have both things that you can use and tons of different recipes. And so really, doing something like that is easy really and then you get such a much better product. Because a lot of these shelf-stable things use bad oils. They use other products that you wouldn’t want to put in your body. And over time, a lot of these small companies have been bought out by big companies that own other products that we wouldn’t want to ingest, and so they’ve changed the products.

Like you said, the food isn’t as good as it was even 10 years ago, let alone 20 and 30 years ago. Really being mindful of those things and knowing that there are so many good alternatives out there. One of the best places to start is on the foods that you would like to consume, some of your favorites. Looking at our family recipes that have been staples for decades and decades, I went back and really converted them to an anti-inflammatory diet. It’s one of those things that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but you sure can.

You can go back to all your favorite recipes and eventually make positive substitutions for each of those ingredients that may not be on the top 10 positive list.

 

[01:13:51] Ashley James: I love it, and your website, naturallivingfamily.com, it’s an online source for biblical health and non-branded essential oil education. What do you mean by biblical health?

 

[01:14:05] Sabrina Zielinski: Sure, we follow that John 10:10 that God really wants us to live an abundant life. We focus on some of the promises that are in the scriptures. We know that the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations. We really believe that essential oils are the epitome of that. We take it back a step to when things are a little bit more simple than we are now and focus on the principles that the Bible teaches regarding that. We try to let people know what the Bible does say, how that really relates to our health, and maybe some other areas that might help people connect on a spiritual level.

 

[01:14:58] Ashley James: I love it. Is there any scripture relating to health that you feel called to share today?

 

[01:15:06] Sabrina Zielinski: Yeah, it’s Psalms 138:8, God will perfect that which concerns you. When I was going through trying to figure out, I know my body can heal itself. I’m on 11 different prescription medicines. This is ridiculous. I learned about true fasting in the Old Testament, and it kind of walked you through how to fast. I did just what it said. I really clung to that scripture because I knew that God would perfect those things that concern me.

Another scripture says, where things are impossible with man, all things are possible with God. I’ll tell you, at that time, it was music to my soul. I’m like, I know there’s got to be a way that I don’t have to live every single day on medicine. There’s got to be another way. This is ridiculous. 

I was on ADHD medicine when I was in second grade. The Ritalin and all of that stuff, I would literally have to time out because I competed in pageants. I’d have to time out my interview time with my medicine time in order to make sure that everything would be optimal at the time that I would interview. That’s bondage. If you have to figure out all that stuff in order to do what you need to do, then you’re not doing what you need to do. Your body has the ability to heal itself. 

Especially with fueling it with the right fuel, Eric will always say, you can try to live the essential oils lifestyle, but if you also try to live the McDonald’s lifestyle, then it’s like two steps forward with the essential oils, and three steps back. He’s like the dad that will spank you on that one, but it’s true because we have to look at what we’re fueling. And really, the things that I was fueling my body with were not helpful. They were not helpful for my brain health and development at the time. I didn’t know any of that. I ate what every American person ate—crap. But I thought that that was good. 

Even though I had home-cooked meals, they had inflammatory ingredients in them, and my body started just rejecting everything. At one point, I got down to eating about four to five foods that I knew that would make me sick, and I could not figure it out because most people are like, oh yeah, I’ll just go to the restaurant and I’m going to just order some salad. Okay, well, that’s great, except for the fact that they spray preservatives, and many restaurants have licenses to spray the preservatives on the greens so that they will last longer. 

I would have to ask everywhere I went because I realized that 20 minutes after I ate a salad, I’d be running for the restroom, and that’s not even putting dressing on because if we’re talking about dressing, then that is the number one area that has all the inflammatory ingredients together. You got your soy, you got your gluten, you got your sugar, you got your dairy, all this like concoction. Now you’ve turned a healthy salad into a Big Mac right in front of your plate.

They’re like, all right, well, where do we go from here? Well, let’s say you did have to go to a restaurant. Let’s say they didn’t spray the greens with preservatives. So you got yourself some greens and you got some steamed salmon, have them put that on top of the greens and have your main dish be your salad dressing and do that at home. You’re taking a bite of that with a bite of that and you’re having those good leafy greens, that way you’re getting in those micro scrubbers for the gut, you’re doing the things that you need to do, you’re allowing your body to be more freed up.

Even for me, I even take sabbaticals on my supplements. I do that because I want my metabolism to be freed up for a little bit, and I don’t want it to get too used to some of the things that I do. I go right back to some of the things that I need. Obviously, that changes over time, whether I’m breastfeeding, not breastfeeding, pregnant, not pregnant. All those things factor in because our body changes and our needs change. But making sure that you’re just always free that you live free.

And it says in the Bible that whoever the Son sets free is free indeed. We want to make sure that we’re free. We’re free from feeling like we’re bound by our medicines, and then equally, we want to make sure that we don’t feel like without our supplements we can’t go on for the next day. Yes, we want them to be a benefit to us. But we don’t want to change one thing for another. We want to stay as free as we can from technology as well because we’re only going to be bound by the vices that we have and making sure that we try to stay as free as we possibly can.

 

[01:20:34] Ashley James: I love it. Now, you have many books, and the latest, which is my favorite of all your books so far, although all your books are fantastic. The Essential Oils Apothecary can be found at learntruehealth.com/eo as in essential oils, learntruehealth.com/eo.

You had mentioned to me that you are also a big fan of the sauna. I love my Sunlighten Sauna. For those who have a sauna or go to the gym and use a sauna, although you have to be respectful when in public spaces. In my gym, this is of course pre-COVID. Gosh, isn’t that weird? We’re going to be doing that for a while. The BC and AC—Before COVID, After COVID. 

But before COVID in the steam room of the gym I went to, I’d bring some kind of respiratory like eucalyptus or some kind of respiratory blend that had eucalyptus in it or Olbas. I love Olbas. It’s a blend for sinus and respiratory. Just as a side note, I used to get sinus infections, and then I discovered Olbas way, way back when I was a late teenager. You can find it in most health food stores. I just put a few drops of that in a big bowl of really, really hot water like that just comes from being boiled with a towel over my head, inhale, and then of course have the tissues nearby. I do that a few times a day, and then after I blow my nose and blow everything out, follow it up with colloidal silver nasal spray. 

Now, I don’t get sick, knock on wood. I don’t really get sinus infections often anymore, thank God, but I used to get them more frequently in the past. And then when I use this system, I no longer needed antibiotics. That my sinus infections would come and go very quickly. The combination of using essential oils and then colloidal silver nasal spray. I’ve done neti pot a few times.

 

[01:22:41] Sabrina Zielinski: Yeah, me and the neti pot don’t get along well either.

 

[01:22:44] Ashley James: Me neither. If I have to, if it’s kind of real deep in there, I think once or twice my entire life I’ve gotten the neti pot out because I was kind of desperate. But for me, it’s like waterboarding. Some people love it, dude, but it’s not a pleasant experience. It’s kind of like nasal waterboarding. But what I do love is taking my sinuses to the spa. 

So if you have irritated sinuses from wildfires, smoke, and all that, pick your favorite essential oils and maybe even just eucalyptus or frankincense, that’s great for the lungs. But one or two drops in a big bowl of really hot steaming water, put a towel overhead, make a tent, and just inhale through your nose out your mouth, and then blow out your sinuses. It’s so wonderful. It’s antimicrobial. All essential oils are antimicrobial, so they kill fungus, viruses, and bacteria, but some are more antimicrobial, more anti-viral, for example than others. Which of course, the Essential Oils Apothecary Book is going to tell you all about that. You can go to learntruehealth.com/eo.  

So back to talking about saunas. So in my private sauna, I have my own sauna. It’s Sunlighten, and I’ll do whatever I want there. But in public saunas, I’ll take my bottle and I’ll ask if I’m in there with someone, is it okay if I use some of this? I’ve always gotten a yes because they love it and they enjoy it too. But you got to be cautious of people around you and their preferences if you’re in public using essential oils.

So in a sauna, what do you use in terms of safety, right? Because we don’t want to go overboard because we’re already opening up all of our pores. They’ve tested sweat, this is something you can even look at Wiki. They’ve tested the composition of sweat and there are traces of heavy metals in sweat. This is one of the ways that I healed my liver.

My liver was incredibly damaged. I did the ketogenic diet and I damaged my liver hugely. My liver was actually sticking out. You could see it sticking out. It was so inflamed. My naturopath wanted to do a biopsy of my liver. She was very concerned. My liver enzymes were through the roof, and so I ended up getting a sauna as one of the things to detox and help support my liver. I did successfully heal my liver from that because anytime you sweat, you’re helping your liver by removing toxins through the skin instead of having the liver have to do it. Not all the toxins the liver does, but some of them.

[01:25:15]

So here you are, you’re hot, you’re sweaty, you’re doing some great things, especially if it’s infrared with the light because infrared light is so good for you. What essential oils and how would you use them? Is it during sauna, after sauna, or before sauna? Maybe you can walk us through what’s the best practice for utilizing essential oils with sauna therapy?

 

[01:25:42] Sabrina Zielinski: Absolutely. And the other thing too is that our sauna has like a little cup that you can actually, with the heat in there, have a blend of essential oils. It’s in glass so you just rinse it out with some soapy water and put a new blend in. I love any respiratory blends. Your favorite company has its own. I love the combination of eucalyptus and peppermint. You can always add sandalwood, frankincense, a joyful blend, that immune boosting blend.

You look at different times in our lives and I think back to when I had headaches and stuff. I would do cold compresses. I purposely make up cold compresses that have peppermint essential oil on purpose, and of course, lavender ones as well, so that I can put those on my head even when I’m in the sauna.

Now, in our book, we talk about that a little bit. You can take—just like you had the bowl of water and add essential oils and some carrier oil, mix those things up, and allow your washcloths to absorb that and then you squeeze them out. Not like you’re squeezing out the one from washing the dishes, but enough that it’s still together, and then I put them in Ziploc bags and put them in the freezer. 

Those are really good because in the sauna, and ours goes very high temperature, but you get in there and Eric works out in the sauna. My husband works out in the sauna. When I’m there, it is really hot. I mean I like it, but it is really, really hot. I want to make sure that I can do what I need to in order to stay there. 

I’ve done everything from an infrared sauna suit to being in the regular infrared sauna. I like to incorporate vibration therapy before I go into the sauna, so I’m really getting that stuff stirred up in the lymph system, and then when I go in there I’m sweating it out. I even have a red light therapy machine that I have in front of the sauna that I get on the vibration plates, and so I have little goggles on and I do that.

But the great thing is that a lot of gyms have what’s called a Beauty Angel. It’s this thing in the corner that nobody uses, and it literally incorporates vibration plates and red light therapy altogether, and there are so many gyms that have it. I remember talking to someone and they’re like, oh, I think I saw one of those in my gym in the corner, but I’ve never seen anybody use it. It’s the best machine in your gym besides the sauna and the steam shower. I like to incorporate that.

When you mentioned about the liver, I love incorporating colonics and utilizing a liver gallbladder cleanse. I like the Dr. Hulda Clark method. I’ve incorporated that regularly. I really feel like when you are cleansing that liver, it is like an oil change for your body, so there are ways to help that. That sauna is like your number one way—besides your sweat—to really get your body to move those toxins out.

I also really like the ionic foot baths as well. The ionic foot baths are almost like a test for your body. Well, after 30 minutes, it’s all going to look like junk anyways in there, but in the first 10 minutes, the stuff that comes out, if you’re really dealing with the heavy metals, you’ll see particles that look black that come out. I usually wait until about six weeks postpartum and then I’ll do my first colonic. 

The one pregnancy that I was on bed rest for a long time, I had a lot of blood mixing. I almost lost the baby because I had half of the womb hemorrhaged out. It was a full placenta previa and God completely healed my body. I was still able to have the baby at home. But there was a lot that happened between point A and point B.

Well, when I went for that colonic and then that foot ionization bath, and I always like to do the sauna in between if I can. When that happened, I had little blood droplets in the water within the first few minutes, and my body was just cleansing the blood. So different things, different markers will pop up, and it kind of will show you if there are other things that you need to deal with.

One of the times a few months ago, joints popped up. So you’re like, oh, I might need to do a joint cleanse or something like that. I find it’s like a test for the body. Yes, it helps to detect some of the other stuff going on after the sauna. But then you can see if there’s something else maybe you want to attack next. Your body will tell you the game plan of where we should go from here.

 

[01:31:41] Ashley James: Oh, I love it. I’ll share with you. The ionic foot spa that I love is called Platinum Energy System. I’ve had Kellyann on the show several times talking about the PES. She does give listeners discounts, but what I love about her—Kellyann is amazing. She’ll spend hours on the phone with you. When your foot spa arrives, she spends an hour or more on the phone with you walking you through how to set it up, and while you’re taking your first one—she also has these little pH test strips that she gives you and you take your saliva and you see where your pH is. 

Then right after your foot spa, after you’ve washed your feet, and you wash the system, she says you have to wash it and descale it, then you take your pH again and it always drops to three points right into alkaline. It’s absolutely amazing.

Every day I was tasting heavy metals in my mouth. My body, I could smell like this garbage smell coming off of me. Colonics are helping a little bit, but my liver was distended and painful. I started doing three sessions a week of the PES, the Platinum Energy System and it was such a game-changer. I saw those big floating black things in the water. She said, that’s heavy metal. I’m thinking to myself, what do you think, I’m stupid? Giant things don’t come out of my feet, right? Do you think I’m gullible?

I’m the biggest open-minded skeptic. I’m willing to try it, but I’m also not going to be like just because it’s natural it’s good. No, I’m going to question everything. What happens is you get really close to that water with the end of a pencil like with an eraser. I took it and I tried to pick up the giant floating flakes of black stuff. What happens is when you touch it, obviously you don’t want to touch it with your skin, with your hands, putting your finger back in the dirty water, it dissolves. Because the water is really hot so it opens the pores. 

What she said is the electromagnetic frequency—and these heavy metals are also magnetic—pulls the particles out of the lymph system from your feet, our lymph system. And then because it’s magnetic, they bind to each other. They find each other, they bind to each other, and they create these kinds of clumps or flakes in the water. But if you touch them, you’ll watch them dissolve right in front of your eyes because they’re actually tiny, tiny particles so small that they could go through your skin from your lymph system out of your body.

She has done tests. I interviewed her and she talked about it, but she’s done numerous tests. She proves, she published all these tests, and she has all them that she can give you showing that there’s so much cadmium, lead, aluminum, and the list goes on and on of these heavy metals in the water after a 30-minute session. There’s a lot of really cheap knockoffs from China. I would not recommend anyone get a cheap sauna or a cheap ionic foot spa. It’s like cheap essential oils, don’t even. Not only is it going to cost you money because you’re wasting money on something that doesn’t work, it’s going to hurt you.

The cheap stuff is knockoffs that will hurt you. I’m not asking you to spend millions of dollars. Yes, these machines are expensive, and it also does something so amazing that you end up with these amazing health benefits. 

This is how I learned about her but because I interviewed a doctor who’s actually local to me, but he’s known worldwide. He’s been practicing for over 40 years. He takes children who are nonverbal who’ve been diagnosed with autism. They’re beating their heads against the wall, and he detoxes them of heavy metals. One of the things he does is he uses Sunlighten Sauna. He also uses the PES, the Platinum Energy System. He does a bunch of other things like these green smoothies with spirulina and with different herbs. Get some away from Wi-Fi, change their diet, and sometimes get some homeopathic or supplements. These children detox from heavy metals and now they’re completely able to speak, they’re hugging their parents, they’re looking them in the eye.

The question is if they were on the spectrum and then after all the detox, a year later, they’re no longer considered on the spectrum, was it actually autism? How many children are suffering out there right now with heavy metal poisoning in their brains because of glyphosate in the food. And also, Dr. Stephanie Seneff who’s been on the show says that glyphosate is in the MMR vaccine. It’s been proven that it’s in there.

Glyphosate is dropping heavy metal straight into the brain of these children, and then this is how the nervous system responds, it’s how their system acts. Basically, it mimics autism symptoms. That’s why we went from 10,000 in 1 children when I was in school having autism, to now it’s 1 in 26 are something, which is so sad for these children and so sad for the parents who are frustrated.

I learned about Sunlighten and the PES, the ionic foot spa, from Dr. Klinghardt who I interviewed, and then I went on to find the creators of those and had them on the show. Those two companies made such a huge difference in my detox that I just had to keep interviewing them and sharing it because it made such a big difference.

I love that you also do the same thing. But incorporating essential oils in your care with sauna, that amps it up to a whole nother level. And then my third thing, which I don’t know if you know about, what you could do in the sauna, and this is one of my favorite things to do in the sauna is doing a magnesium foot soak.

Kristen Bowen, who I had on the show, was 97 pounds having 30 seizures a day almost nonverbal in a wheelchair at her worst, and she shares her story of how she got her health back. Soaking in this very bioavailable magnesium from the Zechstein Sea is one of the things. She doesn’t say it’s like this cure-all miracle, but magnesium is the most needed mineral of the body, and we are so depleted because it’s not in our food in the quantities we need it.

And so by soaking in it, you get about 20 grams. Between 20 and 24 grams is absorbed in one hour by soaking in it. I incorporated that and you could just put your feet in it and soak in it while you’re in the sauna. That is the coolest thing. Then you could add some essential oils to the little foot spa and take it to the next level. That’s what I did to detox heavy metals and heal my liver.

 

[01:38:55] Sabrina Zielinski: And there are some great oils for that for cleansing the liver.

 

[01:38:59] Ashley James: Please share them.

 

[01:39:01] Sabrina Zielinski: Yes. Clove, geranium, Helichrysum, and myrrh. I like those because they help to stimulate that function so that you can move the junk that’s in the body out. Many people are like, why the feet? There are over 10,000 pores on the bottom of your feet. The second part of that is if you look at the reflexology chart, not even if you care about reflexology, let’s just look at blood supply alone. That’s why when I look at the reflexology chart for both hands and feet, especially with all the stress, upper respiratory, and all these other things going on, if there are areas that are ailing you, I like to make sure to utilize those areas because it’s like a pathway right to the blood supply in those areas.

Now, there’s a caveat to that. I have seen some feet that I don’t know if anything would be carried up to the system because the feet are not properly taken care of. We really need to take good care of our feet. We need to make sure that we’re getting the calluses off, that we’re maintaining the skin in our body. I love utilizing the shower gloves for the body. I have a pumice stone for my feet, and I try to do that every day. 

That’s one of the things that when I was in the shower one day, I’m working all of this stuff, trying to work my lymph system and keep everything cleansed and clean, and all that stuff. One thing that I really felt God say to me was, you know how much time and energy that you’re putting into this, we also have to make sure that we do the emotional work too. We need to make sure that just like we’re taking this pumice stone to the feet, we got to do that to our heart too. We got to keep our own little pumice stone there in the heart because if we’re going to do all this physical work, we got to do the emotional work too.

It’s important to address the emotional concerns and things that are going on and not just stuff them down because there’s a reason why certain things are ailing our body. As we’re opening, available to the healing of our bodies and to the healing of our souls, we’re going to get not just closer to our Creator, but we’re going to be able to connect and be available to our family, but our bodies are going to take that next level. 

Just like you and I were sicker than dogs in our 20s, we wanted to have a much better 30s and an even better 40s. I’m 43 and I think God that I’m in such good health now, but we can’t just rest on our laurels as you know. We have to continue to strive to do something different.

So as you hear things in Ashley’s podcast and it resonates in your soul, incorporating these little nuggets of knowledge is huge because it’s going to be what helps take you from good to better to best over time. That’s how all this happens is over time. All of these tools that she and I have mentioned are all wonderful things. We’ve added slowly over time that ended up changing our life and our frequency and the things that we do to keep our bodies as less taxation as we can possibly have on it.

I would encourage you, yes, we can totally use the essential oils to cleanse those areas, and each ailment that we have when we talked about those pain points, we’re talking about some of those essential oils, utilizing things like the foot soaks, and incorporating some of those essential oils that go with those pain points are also going to help therapy that. Our goal is to have you not just feeling better, looking better, but functioning better and being more available to your family.

 

[01:43:34] Ashley James: I love it, I love it. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Sabrina, and sharing just so many nuggets of wisdom. It’s such a great reminder to look to the Bible for reassurance, look to God. I mean, there are some listeners who maybe don’t have a close relationship with God or that’s not their wheelhouse. I have found it so comforting at times when I haven’t gone to church in a long time and then all of a sudden I just hear a scripture and it just reminds me to ask God to be in my heart.

It’s nondenominational. I sort of walked on that fence. I don’t want to offend anyone, but at the same time, there’s this beautiful healing that comes from handing your life over to your Creator and asking for divine guidance, asking for support, and asking for that intuition. Please, please share with me, please guide me, handing your life over. So I love that in naturallivingfamily.com that you incorporate biblical health because looking to strengthen our spiritual health is another piece of that pie. It’s a Vesica Pisces, right? Our physical body, emotional body, mental body, and spiritual body, right? 

If we’ve ignored our spiritual body our whole life, that’s 1/4 of our being, right? Some people would say it’s all of our being because it’s a pretty empty world if you don’t have strong and healthy spiritual health. It just takes a mustard seed. It just takes a little bit. You don’t have to quit your job and go live in a cave and dedicate your life to God. But sometimes, it just takes a little bit. 

I do have several friends that will just open up the Bible at random and read. God, just guide me and they just flip over the Bible, put their finger there, and it’s the exact thing they needed to hear, and I’ve done that too. Just go to a website that gives you random scripture and just meditate on it and see if that brings you any peace, guidance, or joy. It’s a beautiful exercise.

I have been surprised because I was raised Anglican and raised to believe that communication with God is one-way communication. That you pray to God and that there’s zero talking back to you. You don’t hear back from him. You just have to have faith that he’s there, and there’s no communication coming down from heaven. But I’ve met so many Christians, Catholics, Mormons, and other denominations as well who have shared with me that in prayer, they receive messages from God. That in their heart, they receive intuition, they receive guidance, and I have been amazed. I’ve had interviews on the show where people talked about in prayer, they receive divine guidance, and that is so beautiful.

So there’s so much of this in this world that we don’t know, right? You don’t know what you don’t know. Sometimes our suffering is because of something we didn’t know was even there like maybe someone didn’t know mold was an issue, parasites were an issue, heavy metals were an issue. It might be that we don’t know that our connection to Source or to God is missing, right? I love that you incorporate biblical health along with all your essential oil guidance on your website. Is there anything that you’d like to say or teach or share to wrap up today’s interview?

 

[01:47:39] Sabrina Zielinski: Yes, you were mentioning that prayer, and sometimes it doesn’t have to be like your eloquent prayer that you see on the TV, at your church, or whatever. You don’t have to be a biblical scholar to come up with a prayer. Sometimes the best prayer is just help and help me God. I’ll never forget, it was 20 years ago, it was before I met Eric. I was like, God, I know I need to make some changes. I do not know what I’m doing, and I just prayed over my hands. I’m like, God, anoint my hands because I do not know what I’m doing but you do, and help me to make the decisions that I need to in order to help my body.

Literally, once I made that relationship, and I grew up in more of my mom went to church and my dad didn’t, but I never had a relationship. So when that happened, I really felt like that’s when the doors kind of opened. That’s when I was reading the Word in Isaiah 54 about true fasting. I read exactly what it said there. It said, give all the food that you would have eaten to the poor. It talked about that healing will come forth speedily and all of these things will happen. I did exactly what it said there. And in fact, I read it like it was, and it’s kind of funny.

Where we lived, there weren’t a lot of people. There was this one area where there were homeless people. So I put every canned good I had, again, I didn’t know that canned goods were probably not the best idea. But I got all the canned goods that I maybe would have eaten and a can opener and I did all that during that fasting time. But even though that was maybe not the best idea and I gave those things away, God still honored that because as I knew better, I did better. As we know better and we’re doing better, that’s where that accountability comes in. We have to be in tune with those things. 

I just really encourage you that you know, yes, the Bible has been around for many, many years, but when we say it’s the last will and testament of our Lord, there’s definitely some nuggets of knowledge in there whether you believe it or not. When you put those things to work, they work for you. Not for that reason because God really wants to be in fellowship with us. But I have seen where so many of the scriptures, like you said, just opening up the Bible and finding something for that day. 

There are so many nuggets of knowledge in there that it says basically in Proverbs that if you ask for wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and all things, God will give it liberally, which means without restraint. We need to pray for that knowledge and wisdom because God will show us. He will show us some of the things to come and really help to arm us with the knowledge that we need in order to tackle not this day but the days coming ahead. I think that’s important, not just for us and our health, but also for our family too.

 

[01:51:27] Ashley James: That’s beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. I feel compelled to ask, would you pray over our listeners?

 

[01:51:37] Sabrina Zielinski: Yes, absolutely. Heavenly Father God, I pray right now over each and every person hearing this message, Lord, and I just thank You, Lord, for the people that are listening. I thank you, God, as they’re putting their works to their faith, God, that you will bless and multiply the works of their hands, God. That whatever they put their hands to, Lord, will prosper in their health, mind, soul, and body. And God, I just thank you for that Psalms 138:8 that you will perfect those things that concern us. So I just thank you, God.

It says in your word, Lord, that when we decree a thing, you will establish it. So as we decree over our health and we make good affirmations, God, I thank You, Lord, that you’ll establish those in our hearts. And, God, I just pray right now for people who if you’re in the thick of everything that’s going on, and I just pray for peace—peace in your body, peace in your heart, and in your soul. I thank you, God, that you release any of the burdens, God, that they will roll-off. And I just thank you for freedom in every area, God, mind, soul, and body.

I thank You, Lord, that you want us to be healed and whole, and that’s from the top of our head to the soles of our feet. I thank you, Lord, that our whole body will line up to your will and your way. And it says in your Word that you promised your beloved sweet sleep, and we need that for our bodies to renew just like the wings of the eagles. And so I just thank you, Lord, that you will renew each and every person listening, Lord, with that strength. We know that your mercies and compassions are new every day.

And so as that example, God, we just thank you, Lord, that you will help us, not just see with what’s going around us, but God that you’ll give us your eyes, your view over it, which is a much higher view than ours. It’s just like us looking down from an airplane. You see the beginning and the end of all of it. So we just thank you, Lord, that you will help us to be able to navigate and be good stewards over the bodies and the souls that you’ve given us. And we just thank you, God, for being with us.

As we look at things that could be impossible, God, we know with you all things are possible. And even with that mustard seed size of faith that I heard my dear sister mention, God, you can move mountains with that. And that’s to your heart, to your liver, to your emotions, to your mental capabilities. Every single area, you know the very hairs that are on our head and how many there are. So, even more, you want us to be, to live to the full that John 10:10 abundant life, and I pray that over each and every person that is hearing my voice, God. That you would allow that freedom to come and just break off any chains that there could be that would be keeping these people from it.

God, I just thank you for your abundance and your blessing. You promise to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all we could ask or think, and that’s according to the power that lives within you. And so I just pray that over each and every person here today, and I just thank you, God, that with you we know all things are possible. In Jesus’’ name, Amen.

 

[01:55:10] Ashley James: Amen. Thank you so much Sabrina Zielinski for coming on the show. I highly recommend listeners check out her and her husband’s website. We can’t forget your husband, Dr. Z, naturallivingfamily.com. And for their wonderful book, go to learntruehealth.com/eo as in essential oils. It’s been such a pleasure having you on the show, Sabrina, and I’d love to have you back. This was just such a treat. Thank you so much.

 

[01:55:39] Sabrina Zielinski: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It’s such a blessing.

 

Get Connected with Sabrina Zielinski!

Natural Living Family – Website

Facebook

Books by Sabrina Zielinski and Dr. Eric Zielinski

The Essential Oils Apothecary

The Healing Power of Essential Oils