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Being Healthy on a Budget (Part 1) – Podcast Episode #10

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Being Healthy on a Budget (Part 1) - Podcast Episode #10

A common myth is that natural living is expensive. That’s not true! By making smart life choices, you can have a happy, abundant life and live healthy on a budget. In fact, you may even save money!

In this episode, we’ll share our best tips and hacks on how you can save money. We’ll discuss the money-saving benefits of healthy living, why you might not need health insurance, and every day changes you can make in your approach to spending.

We’ll share with you our tips for buying the best essential oils without breaking the bank and how you can save money with DIY solutions. Mama Z even has a tip for when you don’t have time to DIY!

Finally, we’ll show you why you don’t have to waste money on supplements. Natural living does not have to be costly; it can even save you a bundle. Join us as we show you how to embrace a healthy with little investment.

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Episode Highlights

  • What’s in our diffuser (2:24)
  • Is natural living more expensive? Tips & hacks to save big money (4:41)
  • Taking natural living to the extreme and finding balance (10:53)
  • Do you need financial fixes? (20:27)
  • Don’t compromise: living healthy will pay off (24:26)
  • Taking a hard look at health insurance and alternative options (28:21)
  • Essential oil buying tips (37:36)
  • Saving money with DIY as a way of life (47:47)
  • Stop throwing money away on supplements & protein powders (55:53)
  • Natural living tip and episode wrap (1:09:11)

Quotable Quotes

“Being frugal in one area allows you to spend more in another.” – Dr. Z
“The vast majority of people don’t need health insurance, especially if you’re younger.” – Dr. Z
“With essential oils, remember that purity does not guarantee efficacy and purity doesn’t guarantee safety.” – Dr. Z
“If you don’t have time to make hand soap, then get an organic, pure unscented hand soap and add your essential oils to it.” – Mama Z
“Many people are taking prophylactic, meaning preventative, supplements to prevent disease and they’re not getting helped despite spending hundreds of dollars.” – Dr. Z

The contents of this presentation are for informational purposes only and are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This presentation does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

[0:00 – 1:00] Prelude

Mama Z: Well, okay, so my dad…This is growing up. We would keep the house at sixty-two degrees, and at night he would turn it down to 58.

Dr. Z: And where did you live?

Mama Z: Michigan.

Dr. Z: It gets cold.

Mama Z: So I was in the room that one of my walls was an outside wall. The other wall was to the garage. And it was freezing, because it was like the attic up there. And it was freezing in my room.

Dr. Z: With a capital F.

Mama Z: Oh yes! And literally Frawley is my maiden name.

Dr. Z: Freezing Frawley.

Mama Z: Freezing Frawley. So one time, and I’m not kidding, my grandpa was there. And they kept their house more moderate like as far as temperature was. And so he just comes down in a snowmobile outfit. And he just sits at the breakfast table, and he doesn’t say anything. And he’s got like goggles on.

Dr. Z: [Laughs]

[1:01 – 1:30] Intro

Dr. Z: Hi! This is Doctor Z.

Mama Z: And Mama Z. And welcome to episode 10 of the Natural Living Family podcast.

Dr. Z: Each week we invite you into our home to talk about how you can master the art and science of natural living. And we share the very same tips our family uses each and every day to enjoy an abundant life. And you’re going to love today’s talk.

Mama Z: So come on in and get comfortable. After all, you’re one of the family, our natural living family.

[1:31 – 2:25] Sponsor Spotlight: Aqua Tru

Before we dive in to all the fun today, we’re excited to share a special note about today’s sponsor.

Dr. Z: Research has shown that more than eighty percent of water systems contain cancer-causing contaminants, and that almost all of us are being exposed to toxic water every single day.

Mama Z: And don’t think that bottled water is the solution, because it’s not.

Dr. Z: Our friends at Aqua Tru do have the solution. And it’s their countertop reverse osmosis system that anyone can afford.

Mama Z: To help you get pure water in your home, Aqua Tru is giving you a hundred dollars off your first order, plus a special gift only for our podcast listeners.

Dr. Z: Simply go to NaturalLivingFamilyPodcast.com to find this special link so you can redeem this deal on the show notes from today’s episode.

[2:26 – 4:41] Diffuser Reveal: Performance-Enhancement Booster Blend

Dr. Z: Hey there, everybody! Welcome to the show. Today we’re going to be talking about being healthy is not more expensive. And we’re going to give you our best money saving hacks for natural living.

Mama Z: We have fun stuff in our diffuser today.

Dr. Z: What’s our diffuser recipe? People always want to know.

Mama Z: People always want to know. So this is our performance enhancement boosting blend.

Dr. Z: That’s a mouthful. Can you say that again?

Mama Z: Yes, it’s performance-enhancement booster blend.

Dr. Z: Tongue twister! You decided that one, not me.

Mama Z: Well no, it came from your book.

Dr. Z: Oh, I know. But still!

Mama Z: So when I get up at 4 o’clock in the morning to go to my exercises and my workouts and stuff, this is the blend that I use in my little handheld inhaler in the car. And it really helps to get you motivated and boosted up. And so it has peppermint, rosemary, and eucalyptus.

Dr. Z: Oooh! I love it! Now, if you would have asked me to do that, I would have added litsea or may chang.

Mama Z: I know it. And that’s why I did not ask you to do it, because you always add a whole bunch of extra stuff.

Dr. Z: I love litsea, maybe a drop of spearmint, too. But anyway, I love that. Try it! It will enhance your mood. You know, yesterday, I don’t know what it was that you ate. But Sabrina, you can hear it in her voice. It’s a little scratchy this morning. She’s a little groggy.

Mama Z: Yea.

Dr. Z: She had a little bit of a food something or another that she ate.

Mama Z: Yea. And I was sensitive to onions. And there were a bunch of onions in there. And I get kind of like a funky response.

Dr. Z: Unless you grow your own.

Mama Z: Yes, unless I grown my own, because it’s something with the bacteria, because it attracts bacteria. And I can do dried onions, and I can do fresh. Like I pull them from the garden and use them right then, I can do that. But it definitely had an effect on me.

Dr. Z: And speaking of garden, if you haven’t, go to OrganicGardenClass.com. And you get free access to Mama Z’s mini-master class. She will show you her best tips on how to do a raised bed garden, herb garden, aroma garden, deck garden. You’re going to love it. And that’s our gift to you. But that’s not what we’re going to talk about today.

Mama Z: No.

[4:42 – 10:53] Debunking Natural Living Myths: Is Natural Living More Expensive?

Dr. Z: Today, we want to debunk the myth that living healthy, eating healthy, being natural living is more expensive than not.

And to set the stage for this, I’ve been hearing people say this since the very beginning. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to be giving you little tips and hacks on how to really save some money. And I’m talking big time money. And if you’re saving big time money in one area, that allows the other side of the pendulum go to where you could spend a little more money in the area that you need to. And we’re going to cover all that stuff.

But this didn’t dawn on me until you were gone one year–I forget, four years ago, maybe? Actually, I think it was four or five years ago when you were gone during your annual trip to Michigan.

Mama Z: Oh, yes.

Dr. Z: So share a little bit about your annual trip really quick. And that will set the stage.

Mama Z: So I think this is hilarious, because this story was really fun. But every fall, I go to Michigan to teach at the international school of Santa Clause. So I teach at the CWH, which is the Charles W. Howard International Santa Clause School.

And so this year we had over 325 Santa Clause and Mrs. Clause students. Over a third of them were Mrs. Clause, which is one of my passions, helping the women not only look and feel their very best, but also with all the health stuff and just being a representation of holiday joy and all that stuff. But one of the great things that I get to do is I get to teach health, wellness, and fitness class.

Dr. Z: To Santa.

Mama Z: I always say, Santa can wear the fat suit. He doesn’t need to be the fat suit.

Dr. Z: I love that.

Mama Z: And it’s cool because I’ve met some of the Santas. And one of them wrote a book. He’s from Woodstock, Georgia. He’s an awesome Santa. And he wrote a book, Santa Lost a Hundred Pounds. And he wanted to encourage kids that were overweight, that you know what, if Santa can do it, you can do it, too. So he speaks at schools and talks to kids about being healthy. And that’s a different platform. And I have a yoga Santa from Colorado that’s one of my favorites, and a black belt Santa. And also they believe that health and fitness are very popular.

But I’ve had some Santas come up to me who were Santa buddies, and they would go walking together. And literally within the time I had seen them from the year before, they said that that made such a difference that they lost over a hundred pounds together. And they said between the two of us, we lost a person. And it just makes such a big difference to get out there and be healthy. And they had the same thing. They thought it was going to be expensive. And it wasn’t. They’re like we get out there and walk and that’s free.

Dr. Z: So you go to Michigan every fall. You teach Santa’s some marketing. You teach Santa’s some exercise.

Mama Z: Some makeup.

Dr. Z: And you also help your mom. Your mom has her annual open house, where she converts the first level of her floor to like Christmas wonderland.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: And this is where Sabrina’s roots in the legacy of

Mama Z: Herbs and spices.

Dr. Z: Yes, being raised by a culinary herbalist comes to play.

Mama Z: And you know, one of the things I get to do is I make window vases. So I get to do arrangements and fun stuff like that.

Dr. Z: And you’re good at it.

Mama Z: That’s something we’ve done for a long time. A lot of times closer in the season, I’ll have a lot more herbs that I intermix with my bouquets around the house. But I do that every week. I’ve been doing bouquets for a long time. That’s why you said buying flowers for you isn’t as fun anymore. So you’ve gotten more creative on my birthdays.

Dr. Z: Yea, I just give you cash.

Mama Z: No, no, no. On my birthdays you give me a flower cake.

Dr. Z: I know, it was nice. It was cute.

Mama Z: You’ve given me a few flower bouquets.

Dr. Z: I’m a really good gift giver, by the way.

Mama Z: You are a great gift giver. This necklace was from you.

Dr. Z: And we’re talking about flowers. We’re talking about necklaces. And I’m sorry if you’re listening to this podcast, you can’t see. But we record this podcast and put it up on You Tube and Facebook and on our website. So if you want to see us, go to NaturalLivingFamily.com, and go to the show notes and episode, and you’ll be able to watch this, too.

And we’re getting caught up. We got a little bit behind on the video stuff because we’re so busy with the book and we’re so busy with the garden class. So if you don’t see the video now, check back in a few weeks or a month and hopefully it will be up there.

Mama Z: But I remember you saying, and I remember if you could have seen me, I was rolling my eyes, in Michigan. And you were like, my friend at school, he unplugs everything. He unplugs everything at the house. So you unplugged everything. Like I remember.

Dr. Z: That was Josh, Dr. Josh Perini, now, who before he left his apartment to go to school, he would unplug everything but the refrigerator, like everything. And he swears that he saved like twenty to thirty bucks a month on electricity. And I remember him at one point like being broke, like b-r-o-k-e in school. And whenever Sabrina went away, I would have the heat down. I actually would turn off the heat. I would completely turn off the heat when I was by myself. You would take Esther or the younger kids.

Mama Z: Yea, I took Esther and Isaiah and Elijah.

Dr. Z: I would turn off the heat, and all that stuff. And it got cold. But you really appreciate warmth. And you get stronger. But anyway, yea, I remember doing all of that.

Mama Z: I came back and like all my stuff was unplugged. My alarm was unplugged. Everything was unplugged. And it took me a while just to figure out where the plugs all went. I’m like what in the world! And I knew like I had rolled my eyes there when you said, because I was like really ticked.

Dr. Z: So that’s a little extreme.

Mama Z: Yea.

Dr. Z: That was a little extreme. And there was another one. That actually wasn’t the story I wanted to tell.

Mama Z: Oh really?

Dr. Z: Yea, you kind of went on a little bunny trail. The next episode, part two of this, I’m going to cover my grocery story, because living healthy does not have to be more expensive.

Mama Z: Right.

[10:54 – 20:29] Can Natural Living Be Taken to the Extreme?

Dr. Z: But this kind of leads in to what we want to talk about anyway, because extreme; like I am the extremist. If you haven’t watched or listened, watch or listen to episode two, where we cover our origin story, how an extremist, a health fanatic, and how a person with an eating disorder can come together and make this natural living family. It’s a wonderful story of redemption, of salvation, of healing, of blessing.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: And I am the extremist.

Mama Z: Right.

Dr. Z: So I know what it’s like doing things to the extreme to save money. But what about your dad?

Mama Z: Yea, how extreme.

Dr. Z: We want to set the stage, y’all. There’s the extreme, and then there’s the other extreme where want to paint the picture, because if you’re wearing designer yoga pants and buying organic water and spending all this money on things when you’re house poor…We have friends who are house poor because they’re spending so much money on other stuff. And then you have the other extreme like unplugging everything before you leave the house. And we’re going to talk about your dad being insanely extreme. It’s like there’s no balance in that. So we want to let you know there is balance to that.

Mama Z: Yes, you need the balance. You need to have balance.

Dr. Z: No offence to the fashion designer Lululemon pants, because you wear that.

Mama Z: Yea, I wear Lululemon pants.

Dr. Z: But do you pay a hundred dollars?

Mama Z: No.

Dr. Z: Because if you do, we’re having some words.

Mama Z: No, I go on EBay.

Dr. Z: Thank you!

Mama Z: I go on EBay. I love it! Most of the stuff people get and then it doesn’t fit them, then they put it on EBay.

Dr. Z: No offence to Lululemon. But you don’t have to go to the store and buy them full price.

Mama Z: No way. Anyway, I get them there because I buy them new with tags on, and they haven’t been worn. And they’re like a third of the cost.

Dr. Z: Yes.

Mama Z: Yea, so that’s how you do it.

Dr. Z: So your dad, the extremist. Where do you want to start?

Mama Z: Well, okay, so my dad, growing up, we would keep the house at sixty-two degrees, and at night he would turn it down to fifty-eight.

Dr. Z: And where did you live?

Mama Z: Michigan.

Dr. Z: It gets cold in Michigan.

Mama Z: And so I was in the room that one of my walls was an outside wall. The other wall was to the garage. And it was freezing, because it’s like the attic up there. And it was freezing in my room.

Dr. Z: With a capital F.

Mama Z: Oh yes. And literally Frawley is my maiden name.

Dr. Z: Freezing Frawley.

Mama Z: Freezing Frawley.

Dr. Z: Frawley freezing.

Mama Z: So one time, and I’m not kidding, my grandpa was there. And they kept their house more moderate, like as far as temperature wise. And so he just comes down in a snowmobile outfit. And he just sits at the breakfast table and he doesn’t say anything. And he’s got like goggles on.

Dr. Z: Is this Grandpa Frawley or Grandpa McKenzie?

Mama Z: Grandpa McKenzie.

Dr. Z: Oh, Grandpa McKenzie. Now Grandpa McKenzie was an uber successful guy, jewelry stores, and entrepreneur, finance guy, right?

Mama Z: Yea, he was in finance.

Dr. Z: He was just a self-made world-war 2, depression survivor man, who made it. He did well for himself.

Mama Z: He did very well for himself.

Dr. Z: And so he enjoyed the luxuries of life, aka, heating your house.

Mama Z: Yes. And he taught me so much about money. Both of my grandparents did. They were both very successful. And he came down and he just sat there. Like he’s in the full snowmobile outfit. Like he must have planned this out. And it was my mom’s snowmobile outfit. And he just sat there. And he didn’t say anything. And he just sat at breakfast. And my dad says, uh, are you trying to give me a hint? And so he turned it up for them.

But that’s the only time I ever saw him turn it up. And finally my mom is like, I had to take a stand. And so now they keep it, it was always at sixty-two degrees; now it’s sixty-four. It was always sixty-two.

Dr. Z: Oh no, it was sixty-two.

Mama Z: No, no.

Dr. Z: He just keeps it sixty-two. He doesn’t go down to fifty-eight. I checked last. You know why I know? When we were there at Thanksgiving, I put it up to sixty-five. I did it.

Mama Z: My mom said she complained, and then she has gotten him to sixty-four.

Dr. Z: Then he lied, I’m telling you. I’ll take a picture next time. He still keeps it at sixty-two.

Mama Z: And then he tells us, yea, it’s actually so much healthier. And he’ll say all that other stuff. And I’m like, you probably adjust to it.

Dr. Z: And well, you know, you’ve got that Humph guy who does water cold plunges and things. Like I get that. You don’t need to be cold to be healthy, though.

Mama Z: In the summertime, it’s always seventy-eight, always seventy-eight. And if it is cooler outside and it’s not muggy, all the windows go up.

Dr. Z: So that’s extreme. So what we’re trying to say is like that is way extreme. And again, the other extreme is going way above and beyond. Like we know people on a thousand dollar a month supplement regimen. We know people that pay uber bucks going to all kinds of different healthcare providers and all the different things. And don’t get me wrong, you got to do what you got to do at times. But we’re seeing people go broke.

And so when we talk about natural living, healthy living, the number one thing we get, across the board, the objection is it’s too expensive. “I can’t afford that.” We are telling you that’s not true. And natural living doesn’t have to be expensive.

So what we want to cover today is we want to give you some of our favorite, best, money-saving hacks. And so I hope to cover health insurance, essential oil buying tips, and supplements. And depending how fast we go, we might need to spill over healthy food and travel to episode part two. But anyway, we seem to have this like episode part one, part two thing going on here. But I kind of like it.

Mama Z: Yea, because then we can really dive deeper. And I think that’s important.

Dr. Z: Yea.

Mama Z: You forgot to mention the other extreme part. So my dad actually sews all his socks.

Dr. Z: He’s such a guy! I love him.

Mama Z: So he sews all his socks because he always gets a hole in like a certain toe, okay. So after he retired, he sews them up. But I mean I grew up like we couldn’t get a new pair of socks unless we had a hole in our socks. And we had to like earn them.

Dr. Z: Pick a thousand weeds, right? You’ve got to watch that and listen to that episode. You’ve got to pick a thousand weeds, remember?

Mama Z: Yes, of course you do.

Dr. Z: You said.

Mama Z: That was given. Like I didn’t get anything extra for that. That was like part of the deal. The part was when we moved to our new house, I took trees over to the new house in a wheelbarrow or a wagon. And then for every load I got, I got a new pair of socks. But I had to trade them in for one of my old pairs of socks.

So being a martial artist and I wore socks, I never would throw away my socks unless they had a hole in the ball of the foot and in the heel. And so when you saw that you have like a hole in your sock, so then you would rip them and say, yea, they’re done. So now I don’t have holes in both of those.

But it was really funny. So my dad is such an extremist, though, with all of that, that he had heard that for The Millionaire Next Door, that if you wrote in your money-saving tips and they used one, then you could get a free book. So he wrote a ton of them. And he got a free book. But he only did it because he could get a free book.

Dr. Z: He didn’t care about being in the book.

Mama Z: No.

Dr. Z: I love that.

Mama Z: He only did it so he could get a book.

Dr. Z: Well, you know what, though? He is so wise with his money. And he’s essentially our financial advisor.

Mama Z: Yea.

Dr. Z: I mean we pass everything through him; the executor of our estate–God forbids something happens to us with the kids and everything. You know, he has been so trustworthy and so honorable; yet extremely extreme. And so, what we’ll see though, he’ll sacrifice health. And that’s something we don’t want you to do. He’ll buy something super cheap at the grocery store just because he saves fifty cents.

Mama Z: And he goes to Kroger for free Fridays, and he waits in his email box. And my mom was like, oh my gosh, he missed it! It was free Friday today. He sacrificed his free Friday for you. And I’m like, oh my gosh, okay. But that’s the thing, with all the good things that we learned from him, there is something to learn about that balance.

He does spend a lot of time in the garden, and he is barefoot in the garden. And that’s probably what’s kept him from being sick for so many years, even with all of that. And I can’t wait for him to come over to the dark side. He always says that our food tastes really good.

Dr. Z: No, no, the light side.

Mama Z: The light side.

Dr. Z: Well you know, the thing about your dad, and this is something I want to impress upon y’all, is that he’s told me, he’s like I do this and I’m frugal in these areas so I can spend money in other areas that I want to.

Mama Z: Yea.

Dr. Z: So what does that mean when he wants to buy a new boat, when we needed a bailout? When we were dirt broke and we had maxed out credit cards in school, he was able to help us out and get us out of a little credit card debt. Like he’s been there for his family. Like when he wants something like a rototiller, he could go pay cash for it. So being frugal in one area allows you to spend more.

Mama Z: Yes.

[20:30 – 23:29] Do You Need Financial Fixes?

Dr. Z: And that’s the concept here. Are there areas of your life where you can maybe save a couple of bucks? Do you need to work out at a gym that charges you two-hundred dollars for your family? Or, like for me, I work out at this any time fitness place for ten bucks a month, and everything is there, everything that I need, everything that I really want. So that kind of stuff really adds up.

Do you need cable? Oh boy, don’t get me started on cable. By and large, that’s one of the worst wastes of money people are spending on TV. Get a SmartTV with Amazon Fire that costs you forty bucks forever. And you don’t have to pay a monthly fee.

Mama Z: And this is so funny. So we live in a valley. I had like the Cadillac model of antennas for the TV. The problem was that when the wind would blow funny or it would rain, we would lose stations. So I would have to get a dictionary, and I had like the ABC configuration. And I would have to like twist it. And one time my parents were there, and I had the dictionary. And I was like, I’m just going to have to hold the cord. And I would twist it, and I was like this is CBS, you know. And they thought that was hilarious. But they have never paid for.

Dr. Z: Mork & Mindy, nanu nanu, for those of you who are older. I could see you with like tin foil.

Mama Z: And I was like balancing on one foot holding the bunny ears to get them to work.

Dr. Z: So confession, we had nothing. We did have Netflix when we were in school. And that was the only thing we had, which was ten bucks a month. And then Hulu, I think, was seven dollars.

Mama Z: When we first got it, though, we had got it for a special deal. It was like $5.99 or $7.99 for like the first year.

Dr. Z: But two years ago, one thing that pained me was I like watching a football game, and I like the Super Bowl. And Sabrina wants to watch the Miss America Pageant. Unfortunately, we live in this valley in Georgia where we just get very poor reception, even with high powered antennas.

So what we did, we splurged. And our splurge was You Tube TV. And You Tube TV is only thirty bucks a month. So all we have right now, because we’re doing much better financially than we were when I was a broke student, so we have You Tube TV, Hulu, and Netflix. And so for a total of like fifty bucks a month, we have everything we need. We’re saving well over a hundred dollars.

We don’t have a landline because we have cell phones. And who has a landline anymore? And just these little things, tip by tip by tip by tip. But you know, it’s so important that you can, and realize we’re going to give you the tips. And we’re going to encourage you. We want to challenge you, because it’s about not compromising.

Mama Z: Right.

Dr. Z: But before we cover health insurance, essential oil buying tips, and supplements, we have a special word from our sponsor.

[23:30 – 24:25] Sponsor Spotlight: Aqua Tru

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Mama Z: Simply go to NaturalLivingFamilyPodcast.com to find the special link so you can redeem this deal on the show notes from today’s episode.

[24:26 – 28:34] How Dr. Z’s Mentor Cultivated Health, Strength, and Longevity through Informed Lifestyle Choices

Dr. Z: Okay, so here’s something I want to impress upon everybody, is first, don’t compromise. Don’t compromise.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: Living a natural living lifestyle will pay off in the long run.

Mama Z: Absolutely! And that means no cheat days. There aren’t cheat days. We don’t believe in that. And one of my favorite trainers said, it’s not the cheating that kills you. It’s the consistent cheating and allowing the door to be open like that just paves the way for more of that.

Dr. Z: Yes.

Mama Z: And there’s always an option. And people ask me what’s in my purse all the time. And they think that’s it like a bunch of makeup and stuff like that. No, it is I’ve got my Bragg aminos. I’ve got my stevia. I’ve got my healthy olive oil and my balsamic vinegar. And I have that. And I take that everywhere because I always scope out wherever we’re going to go. I know I can always have an option. And I pre-look at everything so that I can make the best choices that I can if we’re going somewhere.

And a lot of times if it’s something like a wedding or other things like that, we pre-call in stuff. So even where you think you don’t have an option, you have an option.

Dr. Z: You know, I’m making notes as you talk, because one thing I keep on thinking about is Enoch.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: Living healthy will pay off. Our friend, Enoch, my mentor in Christ, he is now seventy-seven, seventy-eight?

Mama Z: I think he’s seventy-eight.

Dr. Z: He’s been walking with the Lord for fifty-three years. And we actually just talked on the phone yesterday. So if I’m doing my math correctly, he’s seventy-six or seventy-seven. He’s on zero, capital Z-e-r-o, drugs; absolutely no drugs. He is one of the healthiest people I still know. He goes to the gym every day. He can still bench press over two-hundred pounds. And he is just a healthy, strong man of God, who has a very well balanced life.

His medical bills are virtually zero, which they are zero. The only medical bills he has are when he goes to the chiropractor and just other maintenance therapies. And we need to get him on. I think it would be great to talk about aging gracefully God’s way with brother Enoch. How cool would that be?

Mama Z: Yea.

Dr. Z: But I’m telling y’all, Enoch was there when the microwave first came out, right? It was the big thing. God told him then, and I know that we talked about this earlier in a previous episode; God told him not to do this, because this thing is not good. And Enoch was very counter-culture at the time. And he was like, okay Lord. And he didn’t have a microwave. And now we have found out that microwave does indeed cause disease. And it will affect your food and has been linked to neuro-cognitive conditions, cancer, and a number of other health concerns.

Mama Z: And I don’t know if you remember, but at my apartment I had the original Amana microwave. And it was such a problem because when it was on, it like disrupted the frequencies on the TV.

Dr. Z: I know, it was horrible!

Mama Z: But I remember one time we were watching the Miss America pageant, and we were popping popcorn. And I was taping it. And they were like shut it off, shut it off!

Dr. Z: Oh, because you couldn’t see. It was like pop, pop, pop.

Mama Z: It was like an older TV, but it would disrupt the actual like frequency.

Dr. Z: Imagine what it does to your food. And so Enoch decided to eat as healthy as he could within his budget. He decided to work out. He decided to take the good supplements that he felt he needed at the time. He has been using essential oils for many years.

And I’m telling you, in the long term, in the long run, eating healthy, living healthy pays off. But in the short term, it’s exceptional. And we want to help you save some money.

[28:35 – 37:39] Taking a Hard Look at Health Insurance

And I want to first talk about health insurance, because we have not had health insurance for many, many years. And now I know our proposed solution isn’t for everybody, all right, because some people have a pre-existing condition that without health insurance. And thank God for health insurance at times for certain people. But the vast majority of people don’t need health insurance, especially if you’re younger.

And there is a loophole. And thank God there still is a loophole in America, because if you own a business and if you don’t have health insurance, you will get fined. And I remember we got fined like twenty-five hundred dollars a couple of years ago because we didn’t take advantage of the exemption. And the only exemption is shared health-care systems. There are Christian and there are secular systems. But one that we’re a part of is Samaritan Ministries.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: So Samaritan Ministries for us, and you pay the bill on this one. What is it for our family of six? What’s our monthly premium?

Mama Z: Yea, I think it’s $495.

Dr. Z: Okay. I challenge anyone listening to show me a bill of your health insurance, even if it’s primarily or partially subsidized by your employer, that’s under five-hundred bucks for a family of six.

Mama Z: Right. I remember for me alone, it was like almost $300.

Dr. Z: Isn’t that crazy?

Mama Z: And that was fifteen years ago.

Dr. Z: So if you do have an employer that, bless your heart, pays for your health insurance, okay, cool. How much do you pay in co-pays? How much do you pay in deductibles? Most that I know of now, people have to pay out of pocket five-plus-thousand dollars before insurance even kicks in.

So the cool thing about Samaritan–and this isn’t a sales pitch for Samaritan; this is a sales pitch, so to speak, that there are options for insurance–is that it’s cash pay. And Samaritan Ministries will reimburse anything over $300. So as long as you can cover all of your medical expenses up to $300 per visit, which most people can, if you’re relatively healthy.

And the nice thing is for all of us, none of us have pre-existing conditions. We’re a healthy family. And should something happen, like your home birth, one hundred percent of your home birth was covered, including the supplements and chiropractic care and essential oils that your midwife prescribed.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: I’ll tell you, we had such an argument with Blue Cross when Sabrina was pregnant and I was working for Dow Chemical at the time. This was over ten years ago when she was pregnant, and we decided to get a home birth. They wouldn’t cover a penny of that. And I argued with them. Like this is a two-thousand dollar bill. But you will cover a ten-thousand dollar non-catastrophic vaginal birth at the hospital. I’m like why does that even make sense?

Mama Z: Yea.

Dr. Z: And so we love Samaritan Ministries. And also, we’re huge fans of Dr. Tony and Marcy Jimenez from the Hope for Cancer Clinic. We’ve known, and there are several patients that go to the Hope for Cancer Clinic in Cancun or Tijuana, Mexico. And Samaritan covers every penny including travel.

And so if you don’t have a preexisting condition, if you’re a younger family like us, I a hundred percent recommend contacting, go to Samaritan Ministries. And you can even say, hey, Dr. Z and Mama Z from Natural Living Family podcast referred us. And just join. Check it out. And it’s not just about saving money. It’s about the ministry. And share a little bit about your ministry, because this is part of your ministry.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: And I mentioned this earlier about her paying the bill, because I pay all the bills.

Mama Z: Except for three. I get to pay three.

Dr. Z: Yea, this is the one that she does, but it’s important. Like why do you pay this bill?

Mama Z: Because remember, this is a shared plan. So every month, and I would say only twice a year do we actually send a check into Samaritan.

Dr. Z: Yea, it’s actually once for administrative costs. All the other months we actually pay, we send a check to another person, another member.

Mama Z: Right, somebody who, like when I had my home birth, they were sending checks to our house. And then they would tell you who was going to be sending the checks. You kind of checked them off. And that’s how you get that reimbursed. So what I do is I find out who we’re going to be ministering to this month. And I pray over them. I pray for them.

Dr. Z: And they tell you, hey, this is going to Jim and Judy Jones, and Judy just had knee surgery. They tell you.

Mama Z: Right, yea, they tell you. And if there is a progress report, they’ll give it on there. Like praise God, they’re all healed. And so then I always like to send a card and some ministry. But then they also post if somebody had a preexisting condition. And they will post if you’re able to give $25 or whatever, that this would really help.

Dr. Z: It’s like a Barnabas fund kind of thing.

Mama Z: So, yea, we have been able to partner with lots of different people that we have never met. And gosh, one of the times, I knew one of the people, which was kind of cool. And so, it’s just been cool to be able to just send a loving note snail mail and be able to write a check that’s going to help another family. But you’ve got lots of different things to pray about. And they give praise reports and birthday and anniversaries and when people have had a baby. All of that stuff is in there.

Dr. Z: It’s part of your ministry.

Mama Z: It is.

Dr. Z: And you really focus on the intercessory prayer ministry much more than I. And I’m much more in tune with the teaching ministry that I do. So we really complement each other. And so I love it. And so we want you to know, folks, there are options out there.

Again, we haven’t had health insurance. This is the approved government loophole. And ever since the last two years now, it’s not just Christian oriented. There are non-Christian companies as well. So there is a variety of ones. But I know that there are over a hundred thousand members of Samaritan. They’ve never missed a bill.

And even for catastrophic or emergency dental, which is not covered, which most insurances don’t cover, they have that Barnabas fund. Like hey, you know, so and so whatever emergency extractions that cost four thousand dollars. Can you give a couple of bucks?

So again, five hundred dollars for six people. The nice thing, too, and this is key, and this is what really opened up my eyes to the just flat out scandal, just the horrible management of health care in our country. When you pay cash, you get treated differently. One-hundred percent they treat you differently. And we are cash paying customers now, because we don’t have an insurance card. Guess what they do?

Mama Z: They’ll be like, “Oh, are you sure you’re going to do that? Do you know how much it costs?” And I’ll be like, “I’m paying cash.” And they’ll go like, “Oh, well you get an immediate discount.”

Dr. Z: Yep, that’s it. It’s like that’s the thing.

Mama Z: And they’re like, are you going to pay in full? Yes. Then you get another discount.

Dr. Z: Yea, you save so much money. And then you don’t realize, I don’t know what else to say. It’s almost fraud. They double or triple every expense if you’re using insurance. And what do you think that does to your bottom line? What do you think that does to your insurance premium? What do you think that does to your deductible? And so you get treated a lot better, in my opinion. And you start realizing the corruption in the system. And we’re a solution to that. We are a small part of this big solution.

Mama Z: Yea! And the cool thing is that I didn’t realize they had been around so long. But one of our employees, Angela, she was telling me that she remembers growing up and her parents always had Samaritan Ministries.

Dr. Z: Oh yea, they’re cool. And so our medical bills are virtually zero. And that’s the other thing. We go to chiropractors and acupuncturists. We go to massage therapists. None of that is covered. And if it is, you might get ten to twelve visits a year for a chiropractor. And you’ve still got to pay a crazy deductible.

So in essence, and this is the writing on the wall, y’all, all across the board more and more medical providers and non-traditional medical providers are cash only now, because insurance is not a sustainable model. So now you start negotiating, and now you start paying cash for everything. And so they’ve got payment plans and all that stuff. But anyway, that’s one way you can save money.

Mama Z: Yes.

[37:40 – 47:48] Essential Oils Buying Tips

Dr. Z: Another way, let’s talk about essential oil buying tips. I want to talk about supplements and essential oils. You know us, right? We write essential oils books, and we have this essential oil master class. We’re all about oils. But oils can be super, super expensive.

Mama Z: I’ll never forget the first time. We always grew up, because my mom being a culinary herbalist, we weighed out fresh and dried herbs at the farmer’s market. And we had resins and powders and all kinds of different things. So I grew up with the rocks of frankincense and myrrh. But it’s different when it’s essential oils. And frankincense, I remember saving up for frankincense because it was expensive.

Dr. Z: It’s so pricey. So here’s my thought. First, if you don’t know this about us, we’re completely not branded. And we will not sell or even promote or even recommend a brand, because this is our commitment. And because of that, we have a couple of cool things. Number one, we get to the serve the world. And we realize that if we aligned with a company, even if it was like as an affiliate, we would alienate ourselves from millions and millions of other people who use and are very passionate about their network marketing company, which pays for their bills.

Mama Z: Right.

Dr. Z: That’s one thing. The other thing was ever since the Food and Drug Administration cracked down on the multi-level marketing companies back in 2014 to 2015, the freedom of speech was stripped, absolutely stolen from people. People now can’t say legally, they can’t say legally I used frankincense and frankincense helped me with my tumor. That has become illegal. And to me, that’s a travesty, because that’s freedom of speech, if people are aligned with a company.

So if you are aligned with a company, if you sell or affiliate, you cannot make any sort of health claim, even if it’s about your own kid. You can’t say, oh yea, peppermint really helped little Jimmy deal with asthma. You can’t say that if you’re selling an oil.

So one of the things that we want to do is maintain our integrity of freedom of speech and financial independence and non-bias. And that’s why my book, The Healing Power of Essential Oils, and that’s why our upcoming book, The Essential Oils Diet, can talk about losing weight, obesity, diabetes, all these things, because we’re not aligned. So anyway, don’t ask us questions. Don’t email us about our brands, because we’re not going to tell you.

Mama Z: We even had an article for you. I’ve had people privately, I know you don’t say this openly, over and over again.

Dr. Z: We love you.

Mama Z: And we love you, but we’re not going to tell you.

Dr. Z: It’s not important.

Mama Z: And it’s so funny because even our friends that come over. We have all non-branded bottles at our house. Like I purposely labeled all the bottles with even a company that was non-branded stickers. And then I used my label maker on all the other ones. And then I pour bottles into them. You’re not going to find out.

Dr. Z: The truth is we use several different brands. And we actually have friends, our friends that own essential oil companies, too.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: So here’s the thing about essential oils. Number one is that if you do want to be part of, or if you do enjoy the product of a network marketing company, join for whatever it is. It’s not much, twenty-five or thirty bucks or whatever. Join as a distributor, even if it’s just so you can save that twenty-five percent. Don’t just be a customer. You’re throwing money out the window. That’s the nice thing about these network marketing companies is they always give wholesale discounts to their distributors. So if you do like that product, save money that way.

The other thing is, and this is something I want to be careful about; but most people that I know that even sell these oils at a high level, they get oils from other companies, too. Sometimes your company doesn’t sell every product that you want to buy.

Mama Z: Right. That’s right.

Dr. Z: So that’s where non-multi-level marketing companies can come into play. And by and large, because of the marketing aspects and because of their sourcing and all these other different things, you’ll find they are in general cheaper in price. Okay, so I want you to think outside the box and realize you can have two or three or four different companies that you use. And don’t feel guilty. And that’s something, too. And I want to love on y’all, especially for those of you who are distributors of these companies. Don’t feel guilty. You’re not abandoning anyone. You’re not cheating on anyone. I feel like I feel so bad. No, no, no, no. You do what you’ve got to do.

And seriously, Melissa oil and rose and jasmine, these are super expensive oils. If you can get them half off somewhere else, why not, as long as purity is there. And that’s one thing about the essential oil purities. You have to make sure it’s a pure oil. And all the good companies are very transparent in their sourcing. They’re very transparent in any sort of contaminants or adulterants.

And they should have a GCMS, a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry report per batch. So you go online. You look up lemon oil. And there should be a GCMS report that says, hey, here’s what’s in this oil. And you should see a clean bill of report. That’s a level of transparency where you shouldn’t have to guess anymore.

Mama Z: That’s right.

Dr. Z: And so a pure oil is a pure oil. And we don’t want to make this into an essential oil class. But just remember, purity does not guarantee efficacy, and purity doesn’t guarantee safety. So what’s pure? In a nutshell, pure just means there’s nothing bad in it. Pure means it’s just real essential oil. There are no contaminants, there are not adulterants, and there are no pesticides. So you want to get a pure oil.

Now don’t get me wrong. Some oils from some companies have strong, or dare I say stronger chemical constituencies because of the way that they’re harvested, the way that they’re processed, the way that they’re grown. That is completely acceptable, and that’s common knowledge in the scientific realm. But just know, there are several companies that sell pure essential oils.

So one thing, like Sabrina mentioned about frankincense, is if you’re on a budget and if you want to start with essential oils, I would recommend don’t start with buying the most expensive. And frankincense is one that we love. But frankincense by and large is typically the more expensive of the trend of oils.

Here’s a tip, orange oil. Orange oil will give you as much a big of a bang for its buck. And I actually include a whole section on orange oil in my book, The Healing Power of Essential Oils. In my opinion, it’s the most underrated, least appreciated oil because it’s so cheap.

Mama Z: It’s one of my favorites.

Dr. Z: Yes. And cheap meaning it’s not bad. It’s the most cost effective because oranges and getting organic or locally grown indigenous oils are very easy, because there’s an abundance. You could get a good bottle of orange for as cheap as five bucks, upwards to ten to fifteen dollars per bottle.

Mama Z: Right.

Dr. Z: It’s extremely anti-inflammatory. It has been shown to fight off and literally kill cancer cells. It’s a mood booster. There’s almost nothing you can’t do with orange oil. It’s a great cleaner, it’s a great disinfectant, so many things. So if you’re on a budget, start with a cost effective starter kit with orange oil, a lot of peppermint. A lot of them have lemon. But just so you know, you don’t have to buy the expensive ones.

Ylang ylang is another one that’s usually cost effective. And that is a great MVP of all oils. Peppermint, ylang, ylang, clove, orange oil, you could pretty much do anything with those. And these are all relatively cheap I could say.

Mama Z: Tea tree.

Dr. Z: So think about that in those terms. Then when you get more money, then you can splurge on the Roman chamomile. The reason why those oils are more expensive is simply because the raw materials are more scarce. That’s it.

Mama Z: Absolutely. And I remember saving up for sandalwood.

Dr. Z: Yea, sandalwood is another one.

Mama Z: And I remember saving up for sandalwood. I remember saving up for a few other ones.

Dr. Z: Helichrysum, sandalwood, rose, jasmine.

Mama Z: Yep, helichrysum, sandalwood, rose, frankincense, and jasmine.

Dr. Z: These can be pricey.

Mama Z: And I just remember, you know, like I almost would feel guilty using it in a batch of something, because I know there are only eighty-five drops in this five milliliter bottle. Or there are two-hundred and fifty drops in this fifteen milliliter bottle, and to use them with caution.

But yea, you don’t have to. And that’s the thing, my very first essential oil kit had rosemary, lavender, and eucalyptus. Those were the three that were in there. And I used those for many years. I mean that’s the thing. And especially if you’re using them correctly with a carrier oil, then you’re not going to use as much of the actual oil. It’s going to be safer on the skin.

Dr. Z: Yes, use them appropriately. Use them the safe way.

Mama Z: And all that stuff, use them appropriately. And then all of that lasts so much longer.

Dr. Z: And get the bigger bottles if you can afford them, the fifteen, twenty, thirty milliliter bottles, because they will charge you. And it’s just, again, bottling. They want you to buy more. You’re paying for the bottle. Like stay away from the little tiny baby five milliliters. Even ten is still a little small. If they offer larger bottles, check the price. And you will typically find that the more you buy, the less you spend. And so just know that you’re committing to this now, right? You don’t want to get like a pound.

Mama Z: Yea, first of all, make sure you like that smell or that it agrees with you.

Dr. Z: Yea, that’s right. You go to a friend and say, “Hey, can I try this? I think I love it.” Okay, cool. So anyway, know that you don’t have to break the bank, because essential oils can get really pricey.

[47:49 – 55:56] Saving Money with DIY as a Way of Life

But now is where you can save money. Go to our website. Go to NaturalLivingFamily.com. Get my book, The Healing Power of Essential Oils, or The Essential Oils Diet. We have so many DIY recipes, where now you will save a ton of money on your soaps and shampoos, conditioners, your hand washes, hand sanitizers.

Mama Z: I’ll tell you, every person that has either come over to the house or has worked for us has liked loved, out of everything that they’ve loved, it is my peppermint granite spray. That’s everybody’s favorite, like favorite to make. We even had one of our friends, their daughter came over and she was like what is in this spray? She’s like I think I’m going to clean the counter just for fun. And she’s like, you’ve got to teach me how to make this stuff. I said no problem, you know, because, I mean it smells so great.

And so it’s like you would never want to go back to like the regular cleaners and stuff like that. Well (a), if you have been off of them for awhile, then they would really bother you. And number two, this does, I think, an even better and more effective job of cleaning the surfaces.

Dr. Z: Yep. So go to NaturalLivingFamily.com. Look up the DIY recipes that we have. And they’re all categorized. They’re easy to find. You can just search on the search bar. And we want to challenge you to make your own as much as possible. But we get it, too. Having four kids, we don’t always have time to DIY everything. And so you’ve always shared, what do you do?

Mama Z: Yes, when you don’t have time to DIY, then, you know, let’s say it’s even shampoo and conditioner. You know, I’ll go to Desert Essence Organics, and I will get their unscented shampoo and conditioner and add essential oils to it. It’s a coconut based surfactant that they use. And that’s sulfates and other things like that that are harmful. And then I’ll just add the six to eight drops of essential oils to every one ounce that’s in there. And I alternate that with a DIY one.

And you can do the same thing with hand soap. If you don’t have time to make a hand soap, then get an organic, pure unscented hand soap and add your essential oils to it. And so we make all kinds of different things over here. And you were on the phone with someone the other day, and you came in and you were like she’s actually just making hand soap over here and an oil for the bathroom.

Dr. Z: Oh yea. I mean we will give props to our friend, Samantha Lee Wright, who runs the Essential Oils Revolution Podcast. She is interviewing us soon. And we were talking, and I’m like she’s actually doing DIY right now. And that has become a way of life for us.

Mama Z: Yea, it is. I had my measuring cups in the bathroom. And I was doing all kinds of different things. It’s getting into gardening season, so one of my favorite combinations to use for gardening is peppermint. Or I’ll do peppermint and tea tree, or peppermint and lemon, because you’re going to get a lot of green stuff and black stuff and all kinds of junk all over you nails.

Dr. Z: And you save so much money.

Mama Z: And you save so much money. I mean there’s no reason to go and get these highly scented things that are so unnatural. And you don’t need it.

Dr. Z: And here’s the thing about why. And boy, we really should do an essential oils class.

Mama Z: We really do.

Dr. Z: But you know why we don’t want to do an essential oils class? It’s because that’s what we’ve been doing for four years. We have the books. We have the master classes. We have the website.

Mama Z: Oh, I could do it all day long, because it makes me happy.

Dr. Z: And just so you know, y’all, we have so many free resources for you. All you have to do is go to EssentialOilsforAbundantLiving.com.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: And you can watch for free our ten-part video master class. It gives you everything. My book, The Healing Power of Essential Oils, Amazon has had it on sale for twelve dollars for like the last year, the number one aromatherapy book in 2018. Like we have the stuff, and it’s there, and my website, our website, NaturalLivingFamily.com.

Mama Z: Yea, it’s ours.

Dr. Z: Go to episode one and learn why, our website. Just so you know, we have these tools because essential oils are so not only empowering, but you save money.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: And this is the key about it. We want to encourage you to make DIY a way of your life. And you will find that you are enjoying this. Especially the number one thing that we encourage everyone just to stop buying is hand sanitizer, because it is such a waste of your money, and it’s so harmful to your body, and it’s so cheap. You can make it for pennies on the dollar if you want it.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: And we actually don’t even use it much anymore unless we’re traveling.

Mama Z: Well, I use it on the kids at school. Like when I take them to school, I have my immunity blend in there, and I spritzers them down.

Dr. Z: But it’s not like hand sanitizer. You’re just like spraying them.

Mama Z: Right, it’s a spritzer. And actually they could, just the way that I do it, I mean you can use it for more purposes than that. And even within the car, like I make my own all-purpose cleaner. And I have a little spray bottle in the car. How many times do you go to the car wash, or you have had a sweaty workout, and then you like leave your sweat in the car? That grosses me out.

Dr. Z: Yuck.

Mama Z: Yuck. I put a towel down. And then when I get out, I use that towel in my little all-purpose spray to spray my chair.

Dr. Z: That’s the same thing you can clean your hand with. It’s the same thing you fumigate the kids with.

Mama Z: No, you know, I actually have two things.

Dr. Z: Oh.

Mama Z: That has the coconut surfactant in it.

Dr. Z: That’s what I use.

Mama Z: But don’t be spraying it in your mouth over there.

Dr. Z: No.

Mama Z: The other one, the spritzer bottle is the one for all over. And the one that has the trigger handle, that’s the cleaner. He’s spraying it. But that’s the thing, it’s all non-toxic.

Dr. Z: You know, we have a recipe on our website. Type up laundry on our website. We have a recipe that will cost you less than twenty dollars. And depending on your family size, up to six months worth of laundry detergent. That’s how you save money. So we’re again, we’re being smart. You’re not going to the story and buying all the organic stuff, unless you can afford it.

Mama Z: And if you don’t have time to DIY, there’s always My Green Fills.

Dr. Z: Yes, and so many other things that we have. And that’s the other thing. Go to our favorite products. So if you go on the website to NaturalLivingFamily.com, type up healthy favorite products on the search bar. You’ll see a list of all the things that when we don’t have time to DIY, we’ll go get.

But again, the moral of the story is you save money in this area, in DIY area,

then you’ll have more money to spend on something else. And maybe that is your self-love massage that Sabrina gets. We talk about the art of self love in a couple of episodes. Maybe you want to get like a red light therapy sauna, which is something that we just got. We’ve been saving our money, and we just got a nice luxury treat. We wanted a sauna for the red light therapy. We wanted the healthy detoxification benefits.

Mama Z: Right. I’ve been going places to do the infrared sauna bed and the sauna suit, infrared sauna, and also red light therapy and vibrational therapy. And I love all of those things. And so it’s nice that you can do those in your home.

Dr. Z: Yea, you’ve just got to save your pennies. So to wrap up this episode, I can’t wait for episode eleven.

Mama Z: Me, too. I can’t wait to dig into the food.

Dr. Z: Yes. So next episode, we’re going to be covering food buying tips. And there’s so much–healthy travel.

Mama Z: I can’t wait to talk about healthy travel. I might dominate you on that one.

Dr. Z: I want you to dominate. Yea.

[55:57 – 1:09:14] Are You Throwing Away Money on Supplements?

So I want to wrap up with supplements. And this is where I see a lot of you wasting a lot of money, throwing money out the door. Our heart breaks for our friends, our Natural Living family members who are going to, in my opinion, very unqualified doctors and health care professionals that are recommending seven to eight to nine hundred dollars, thousand dollars a month supplement regimens for people to take long term. And I’ll specify that. If someone is battling a specific health condition, whether it’s autoimmunity, whether it’s cancer, whether it’s something else.

Mama Z: Or if you’re doing a parasite cleanse or other things like that.

Dr. Z: This stuff can get a little pricey, but it’s short term. And I would much rather see someone take a thousand dollars worth of supplements than a ten-thousand dollar experimental chemo drug. So there’s a balance there. But what I’m talking about in general, many people are taking prophylactic, meaning preventative, supplements to prevent disease. And they’re not getting helped. And they’re spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

I want to encourage you and strongly invite you to revisit how you eat. And that’s going to be next episode. And that’s where our book comes into play. The Essential Oils Diet is a whole food based program which gets you off of most of your supplements.

Mama Z: Well, and the other thing about it that we’re going to talk about is a lot of people get into the gluten free trap of okay, well, I used to buy this and this and this, and now I’m buying all of this gluten free.

Dr. Z: That’s next episode.

Mama Z: But we’re going to talk about when you are spending, and I’ve gotten so many reports from people from the essential oils challenge that we’re doing. They are all amazed at how affordable it is to eat this way.

Dr. Z: Yes. And so here’s a special gift I want to give y’all. If you go to essentialoilsdiet.com, when you preorder the book–and the book is available for preorder–when you preorder the book at essentialoilsdiet.com, and you can go buy it anywhere. It’s available everywhere books are sold. We’re giving you a special bonus package. And we’re going to talk more and more about this in the upcoming weeks as we get ready for our publication date.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: But one of it is a free ticket and free all-access pass to our sixty day challenge, where your life will be changed. And you’re going to eat the best food you’ve ever eaten in your life. You’re going to exercise. You’re going to have a support group. And Mama Z does check-ins. And you’re going to get all the resources you need.

Mama Z: And each week, we kind of have a different theme. And when we have spent years coaching people, it’s cool, because there’s a natural progression of what you’re ready for. And it literally is called, the first part of it is called the fast track. And what’s so cool about it is that in that fast track, it really is a fast track to get your body on pace to do what God always intended it to do. And we’re excited to share it with you.

Dr. Z: And the reason it’s a sixty day challenge (which you might think, oh goodness, why is it so long) is research has shown it takes on average about sixty-six days to start a new habit. And so whoever started that myth that it takes three weeks, good for them. It’s not twenty-days to a new habit. Research has proven this. Some people take up to six months. Other people take five days. It all depends on you; but on average.

So we’re trying to reach the world here. And if you give us two months, and we’ll walk you through step by step by step by step, walk you through two months; you’re going to save a ton of money. Your life is going to change. Weight is just going to fall off if you need it. If not, you’ll gain the weight that you need to, by the way.

Mama Z: Yes.

Dr. Z: And you’ll get through the sixty-day journey with us so much more empowered and ready for the rest of your life. And then certain habits, your taste buds change. So in part of that, in the fast track, is what we call a little boot camp. We say no supplements, none, zip, nada.

The only supplement that we recommend is vitamin D, if and only if you live in an environment that isn’t sunny. Or like right now it’s kind of like winter/spring time for a lot of people, and they’re not getting the vitamin D. Then you could get a vitamin D3/K2, which is what research has recently shared is the best way of absorbing vitamin D. That’s the only thing that we would recommend.

And when people say that, they’re like what about all of this? Hey, save it for later. Save your money. When you’re getting a good whole food, predominantly plant-based diet, you don’t need a lot of supplementation.

Mama Z: Right. And one of the things that I’ve talked about many times is I used to watch my grandparents take junk vitamins. They would take a multi, and then they would take all these other ones, too. So I got in the trap of doing that. And I caused myself kidney stones because of those supplements.

And a good friend who was our team doctor, he said bring your supplements. And I thought well that’s really weird. Why would I bring all my supplements if I’m going through this? And he had one of those little Oscar the Grouch trash cans. And he took it and he put his foot down, opened it up, and he dropped it in. And he goes now let’s start over.

And, I mean, it’s the truth. You know, one of the tests people do is you get water to body temperature, 98.6 degrees, and you put your supplements in. And then after ten minutes, see how much has dissolved. And if not, then that’s all, you’re just pooping it out. And so it’s a good test on even some of your vitamins and stuff like that.

But think about it this way. In this way like resetting time, it’s important to not give your body a whole bunch of things to compromise as well and have to process through and all that. Let your body do the work. Your body needs to be able to process things. It needs to be able to process food and all of those things. You know, a lot of times people are taking different supplements because of the inflammation, because of other things. And if they are removing the things that are inflammatory to their bodies, then they’re not going to need those other things.

Dr. Z: No, no. And my heart aches for my mom, who took a calcium supplement for most of her adult life and was recently diagnosed with osteopenia, soon to be osteoporosis. It doesn’t work, y’all. Especially calcium supplement and multi-vitamins are a waste of your money. You can get all that in your food. You get enough calcium in your spinach and almonds, just eating that a few times a week.

So we are trying to encourage you all to think twice about what you’re spending your money on, so you can spend it on the good stuff. And the next episode will cover really about food more. But before we do protein powders, because I have found that protein powders, especially a lot of these collagens and these bone broth proteins and things like that, they are taking the natural health world by storm.

Mama Z: And you know, when they first came out, and this is the truth, most of these things, you know you wanted to dive deep and find out where they came from and all that stuff. And I think it’s important to note that if you’re avoiding GMOs and all these other things in your diet, then you need to know like (a) where that stuff is coming from that you’re taking, and (b) it’s not even needed.

Dr. Z: I know. I’ll never forget when I first found out that one of the largest manufacturers of bone broth protein powder, I found out that they were harvesting–I don’t know what else to say–the bones that they got to create this powder from the by-product of the conventional chicken industry.

So we live in Georgia. It’s chicken country here. And Sabrina shared on an earlier episode our local fence guy who used to work for the chicken factory, who ended up getting nosebleeds, and he had to wear a hazmat suit during work because it was so toxic, all the chemicals that they were spraying. And you see the horrid living conditions and the feed and the bad food that these chickens are getting. It’s just stuffed with hormones and genetic modification chemicals.

And what do you think happens to those bones? Well up until recently, those bones became trash or feed for pigs. Now those bones are now in your bone broth protein that you are buying, unless you can find out that it is for sure certified organic feed and then GMO-free fed and all of that. And to find a company, it’s becoming very, very rare to find good quality supplementation. And that includes the whole bone broth industry.

I’m not saying that there are none that exist. But I’m just saying be careful. And when this bone broth craze happened three or four years ago and I found out, I was appalled, absolutely appalled. And the levels of arsenic and cadmium and glyphosate and mercury in these, it’s just appalling.

So I am also of the opinion that most people, and I know Sabrina and I have slight disagreement, not disagreement, we just live slightly different in this way. Unless you are training for a specific athletic endeavor, marathons, Sabrina’s pageants, unless you’re a high level athlete, the majority of people don’t also need protein powder.

You will get protein in your fruits and vegetables, nuts, occasional grass fed beef, occasional–well not occasional–you can eat a lot of wild caught fish. It just has to be good fish, not just junk that’s filled with mercury and other contaminants. So that’s the other thing, too. Don’t waste your money on protein. And so people are trying to do well for themselves, and they’re convinced.

You get more than enough protein. This is something, too. The human requirement for the average person for protein is nothing what you would consider that you can’t get it in your food. And I can’t say sixty grams on average, because it all depends. It all depends on your weight, your height, your gender, your ethnicity, your activity level. There is no you need on average sixty-two grams of protein.

Mama Z: And when I’m not in my regular like training, my hard core training and stuff like that, then I’m not using it as well. Like when I am, you know, then I require a little bit more protein. But that’s the thing. I’m a high level athlete. And when I am training for different things, or if I’ve got races coming up or different stuff, then I know what I’m going to need based on that day even. So it’s something that I do every single day. But what we do every day is we definitely do greens.

Dr. Z: So you listen to your body. So we just saved some of you thousands of dollars a year on supplements. So first, throw away the multi, throw away the calcium. If you’re not a high level athlete, stop buying your protein powders.

Mama Z: And don’t get me started on chewable vitamins.

Dr. Z: Stop buying your protein powders unless you’re a high level athlete. And make sure it’s quality sourced.

And collagen is another thing. I know it’s a big word out there. But man, you can make your own bone broth. And that’s the other thing. You can go to a local health food store and get some organically fed, organic chicken bones. They’ll sell the bones. You make your own broth. Like that’s the best way of getting collagen, not dehydrated in a powder form, ya’ll.

You will suffer from convenience. And I want to talk about that in another episode, because we’re running out of time here. But convenience does not come without a cost. That is something that is ingrained in me.

Mama Z: Guess what, people? There are no shortcuts.

Dr. Z: Nope, nope, nope.

So with that said, I’m excited about what we’ve been able to do and been able to balance. Save money here to spend money there. And we just shared a lot about how to save money in some key areas that people are spending a lot of money in.

Mama Z: Right.

Dr. Z: The next episode we’re going to be covering food specifically and travel, especially if you want to stay healthy. And we’re going to cover our Disney protocol and what we did when we went to Cancun, which was really fun.

Mama Z: Yea, you get to learn about my go bag and my food suitcase.

Dr. Z: Yea.

Mama Z: I can’t wait.

[1:09:15 – 1:11:30] Natural Living Tip: Stop Buying Bottled Water

Dr. Z: And to wrap up today’s show, we have a special natural living tip for you.

Mama Z: Here’s one of my favorite money-saving tips. Stop buying bottled water. Plastic is horrible for you. And it shouldn’t be what you go for unless for emergencies or when you’re traveling. From the essential oils diet, make my metabolism boosting essential water concentrate. And guess what? It only takes five minutes for the prep, and it gives you four servings.

Okay, the ingredients are one eyedropper full plain or flavored stevia, ten drops of lemon or lime essential oil, and also ten drops of grapefruit or orange essential oil. Then it’s one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, one teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice. And then we are going to talk about this in a little bit. But you’re going to need to get some electrolyte powder–our favorite is the Ultima–and purified or distilled water.

So what you’re going to do is you’re going to put the liquid stevia and the essential oils, as well as the apple cider vinegar and the lemon juice into a one-gallon glass jug. And then you want to fill it to the top with your purified water or distilled. Then you want to distribute the concentrate among four 32-ounce glass containers, filling each of them half way.

You dissolve your electrolyte powder, one scoop or one packet, depending on how you buy it, into each one of these containers. And then you fill sixty-four ounces of purified water to each one of the containers to fill them the rest of the way up. This is a four-day supply. And drink no more than thirty-two ounces a day of this essential water concentrate, because you don’t want to exceed the maximum oral dose as outlined in aromatherapy safety texts.

So you can find large water glasses available at your local health food store or Whole Foods. Or, you know what? You can just use your quart size canning jars.

[1:11:31 – end] Episode Wrap-Up

Dr. Z: And don’t forget, as a special gift to our Natural Living Family podcast listeners, Aqua Tru is giving you a hundred dollars off your first order, plus a free bottle of minerals that create alkaline water that is full of life-giving micronutrients. So when you’re making Mama Z’s essential oil water concentrate, you can be sure you’ve got the best water possible.

Mama Z: Simply go to the NaturalLivingFamilypodcast.com to find the special link so you can redeem this deal on the show notes for today’s episode.

Dr. Z: And as a reminder, you can find all of the Natural Living Family podcast episodes, show notes, transcripts on NaturalLivingFamilypodcast.com. And while on our website, don’t forget to sign up for our weekly podcast newsletter, which includes a personal invite to join our private Facebook group, so you can connect with Mama Z and I one to one. And you can meet thousands of other natural living lovers just like you.

And don’t forget, please subscribe to our podcast and leave a review. We love hearing what you have to say about our show. Well, as always, this is Dr. Z.

Mama Z: And Mama Z.

Dr. Z: And our hope and prayer is that you and your family truly experience the abundant life. See you next time.

Mama Z: Bye bye.

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