👉 Visit https://nathancrane.com/ NOW for exclusive content! Don’t miss the opportunity! Join us for an inspiring podcast with Ryan Sternagel, founder of the Stern Method and host of the Anticancer Revolution Summit. Discover his incredible journey as a father, caregiver, and advocate for his son Ryder, who faced cancer at just one-year-old. We delve into the holistic approach to cancer recovery, bridging the gap between conventional and alternative therapies. Ryan shares valuable insights on self-care, integrative medicine, and the importance of a positive mindset in the face of adversity. Explore the Anticancer Revolution Summit and gain access to expert knowledge on cancer recovery from all sides of the spectrum.
Your host, Nathan Crane, is a Certified Holistic Cancer Coach, Best-Selling Author, Inspirational Speaker, Cancer-Health Researcher and Educator, and 20X Award Winning Documentary Filmmaker with Over 15 Years in the Health Field.
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Audio Transcript
(This transcript was auto-generated so there may be some errors)
00;00;00;02 – 00;00;22;01
Nathan Crane
Hey, welcome to the podcast. Glad you are joining me for this really special interview with my friend Ryan Straw Nagle. So this was an interview I did with him a couple of years ago. It’s not available publicly online anywhere, so I wanted to do a whole podcast around this and make sure that this important life saving information gets out to the world.
00;00;22;16 – 00;00;53;21
Nathan Crane
Reiser Nagel he’s an incredible person. Him and his wife, Teddy, they have founded the Stern Method. They’ve got an incredible website where they share all the resources they learned over the years in helping their child who was diagnosed with cancer. Had a big tumor, I believe, on the brain stem or on the spinal cord. And they share all the resources that they learned over the years in helping their child basically heal that cancer.
00;00;54;12 – 00;01;21;13
Nathan Crane
Even when conventional medicine was trying to force them to go one way, they chose to go a holistic approach and they were able to help their child heal. It’s an incredible story. There’s a lot of gold nuggets and good information and health education that I think everybody whether you’re a parent, you want to be a parent or you yourself are concerned about cancer, cancer prevention, cancer healing.
00;01;21;13 – 00;01;32;17
Nathan Crane
There’s a lot of good information in this interview that is going to be really valuable. So without further ado here is Ryan’s Schnabel.
00;01;32;17 – 00;01;35;17
Ryan Sternagel
Thanks for us. Thanks for having me on, Nathan. It’s good to be here.
00;01;36;18 – 00;01;55;04
Nathan Crane
So going back to that day when you guys first learned about your son being diagnosed with cancer, what was that like? What was the experience like hearing that your son had cancer? I mean, what were you and your wife thinking at that time?
00;01;55;04 – 00;02;16;14
Ryan Sternagel
You know, on the one hand, it was it was obviously the worst day of our lives. We kind of knew what was coming, you know, maybe back up to the to what happened before the diagnosis in a minute. But, you know, it wasn’t it wasn’t we had had a little time to prepare and know that the bad news was coming from that MRI.
00;02;16;14 – 00;02;41;02
Ryan Sternagel
But it was really bad on the one hand. But on the other hand, I did have kind of a peace. And just knowing that we were already, you know, I definitely didn’t know as much then as I know now. But we had already just out of general interests, seen like the Burzynski documentary and a couple documentaries on the Gerson Therapy.
00;02;41;02 – 00;03;11;27
Ryan Sternagel
And we’re getting really into using natural medicine to solve just general ailments and stuff like that. So, you know, I was already well aware of the healing power of natural stuff, for lack of a better term. And I knew how much was out there. And I just, you know, both of us were fairly calm in that way of just knowing that we were going to do whatever it took for as long as it took and leave nothing on the table.
00;03;11;27 – 00;03;17;20
Ryan Sternagel
And until we until we worked it out. And that’s a long story short.
00;03;17;20 – 00;03;36;20
Nathan Crane
What happened was that was that you’re like immediate thoughts was like, oh, yeah, we can handle this, you know, we’ll figure it out. Or was there, you know, a sense of like fear? Oh, my God, I can’t believe it. And then you guys made that shift to more confidence. What what was that like? Well, yeah.
00;03;36;20 – 00;03;56;12
Ryan Sternagel
I mean, it was it was kind of obviously I wouldn’t say it was it was ever just confidence without any fear, you know? I mean. But like the whole way was kind of immediately like immediately it was it was terrible. Obviously. Thoughts of the worst rushing in your mind. There’s no way to there’s no way to evade that.
00;03;56;19 – 00;04;27;04
Ryan Sternagel
But all the same, like within seconds, I was doing a mental checklist of everything I knew about and everyone I was going to contact and yeah, it just kind of, it was kind of dual, you know, for a long time actually just battling those, those two different mindsets. It’s, it’s almost like for for a lot of the time I just, you know, was too busy to, you know, to let myself get down in the dumps like that.
00;04;27;04 – 00;04;52;01
Ryan Sternagel
Just there was so much to do between all the fundraising and research and trying to ethanol stuff and dealing with the hospital. And so on and so forth. So I like I just kind of let that whole thing take me. But then every once in a while, especially early on, you know, I’m pretty, I don’t know, my wife sometimes describes me as like emotionally dense, you know, not only it gets to me.
00;04;52;01 – 00;05;15;07
Ryan Sternagel
And I did a pretty good job keeping it together, you know, even through that. But then every once in a while I just break down crying uncontrollably for a couple of minutes and then kind of dust myself off and, and get back to it, so to speak. But yeah, originally there was, you know, there was that fear and there was also the added knowledge of, you know, also something we can talk about.
00;05;15;07 – 00;05;46;07
Ryan Sternagel
But just knowing that with, you know, with the way the laws or at least the way the laws are portrayed and child Protective Services and the government and conventional medicine and all this stuff. You know, and I’m sure what most people watching this are going to be at least somewhat familiar with, you know, as far as the state is concerned, you don’t necessarily have a choice as to what your course of treatment is going to be, at least from the conventional perspective, when, you know, when your kids diagnosed and I was well aware of that going into it as well.
00;05;46;07 – 00;06;08;16
Ryan Sternagel
So there was that added, you know, just kind of confounding factor of, oh my gosh, not only is this my child has been diagnosed with cancer, but, you know, this is going to be an insane tightrope to walk between, you know, what I might want to do and, you know, and what I’m being made to do. So it was.
00;06;09;11 – 00;06;34;00
Ryan Sternagel
Yeah, but then, you know, also kind of jumping ahead. But you know, there is, you know, like everything you do. Nathan The integrative perspective we’re putting on an event around and integrative approach to cancer right now. There certainly is a time and place for conventional medicine. And, you know, when you see those original scans and this was something that yeah.
00;06;34;01 – 00;06;53;29
Ryan Sternagel
Made it made it even worse, just looking at it and realizing what was going on was so it was the tumor was in a spine and the cancer is called neuroblastoma. So it’s a cancer of the nervous system. And the it was tumors inside of and growing out of his spine. And then there were a couple of secondary tumors that all metastasized into his bones.
00;06;53;29 – 00;07;17;00
Ryan Sternagel
The secondary ones, metastasized bones. The big one that was like in the spinal column. And you literally couldn’t see his spine on MRI’s like when like from the down view where it’s kind of going down in the body. It was fine, fine, fine spine tumor and that’s, you know, it was all you could see. There was certainly a lot going on inside of our heads.
00;07;17;00 – 00;07;18;13
Ryan Sternagel
That’s for sure. When when it happened.
00;07;19;00 – 00;07;40;11
Nathan Crane
I could only imagine. I mean, I with my two children, I could only sympathize with like how emotionally challenging that would be to experience that. And then to try and hold it all together and then to try and stay focused and find solutions. It sounds like you, you know, found the right path, which is incredible. And we want to get into that.
00;07;40;11 – 00;07;54;24
Nathan Crane
But still, kind of at the beginning, what were what were some of the choices you were considering, as well as some of the biggest challenges you were facing in the very early days of trying to help your son?
00;07;55;09 – 00;08;17;18
Ryan Sternagel
Yeah, it’ll add on to the emotional piece. Just one more thing. I thought of another kind of weird thing was, you know, when you when you start looking into energy medicine and, you know, the whole interconnectedness of everything and a lot of the more woo side of holistic healing. But again, leaving nothing on the table and just the whole, you know, perspective, that energy is contagious.
00;08;17;18 – 00;08;39;20
Ryan Sternagel
And your thoughts have, you know, big impact on, you know, just the outcome of, you know, survivorship and all this stuff, you know, that could be, you know, your thoughts can be transferred to your kid or maybe not thoughts themselves, but just energies and projection and whatnot. So you going through like the most stressful time in our lives, but then also at the same time trying to project the most.
00;08;39;20 – 00;09;12;25
Ryan Sternagel
You saw a loving, healing energy. It was it was another thing that it was. Yeah, it’s it was and still is a trip. But yeah. Going back so yeah early on we were we were certainly, like I said, very naturally inclined, knew a lot about alternative medicine, so on and so forth, but then also didn’t want to, you know, do anything, just out of dogma or principle or do anything or not do anything.
00;09;12;26 – 00;09;41;21
Ryan Sternagel
I should stay out of, you know, out of those things. And that was kind of the I don’t know, the rope we walked in the beginning because the hospital and all the regular doctors and everything obviously had nothing to say about true healing, like really healing the body, what it was that caused this in the first place. You know, I asked several times, several different ways, trying to get an answer out of them.
00;09;41;21 – 00;10;01;14
Ryan Sternagel
And, you know, they confirmed they did some tests and it showed it wasn’t genetic. So they weren’t trying to say it was a genetic caused disease. But then when I said, okay, well, what is it they their own, the answer was, look, just it was just, you know, just bad luck. And I tried to ask why?
00;10;01;14 – 00;10;27;00
Ryan Sternagel
Why then childhood cancer rates were I mean, going up right along with adults. But also you go back a hundred years in childhood cancer and for all intents and purposes didn’t even exist. So something is clearly causing it. But yeah, yeah, they never had a good answer for that. But then on the other side, talking to all the you know, I was on the phone with one of the alternative cancer coaches and the more extreme end of naturopathy doctors and stuff like that.
00;10;27;00 – 00;10;50;17
Ryan Sternagel
And, you know, the sentiment I was getting from them was no chemo, no way, no how. If it was my kid, I’d be, you know, in a car on the way to Mexico or on a flight out of the country or blah, blah, blah. And, you know, but but none of them could it aside from the fact none of them could tell me how I was supposed to alternatively treat my son while on the run from the law, not able to use a credit card.
00;10;50;17 – 00;11;22;03
Ryan Sternagel
And none of the Mexican clinics would touch us with a ten foot pole. You know, aside from that, none of them could even really confidently tell me what they would do to guarantee or as close as you can get to a guarantee to, you know, shrinking this tumor in time to save his life. Because that was the other factor was every medical professional that sees these scans today is amazed not only the writer’s alive, but walking or, you know, because he wasn’t that was kind of one of the one of the red flags.
00;11;22;03 – 00;11;41;23
Ryan Sternagel
Looking back, is this was 11 days before his first birthday. And he wasn’t he wasn’t even crawling. He was barely pull himself up. And, you know, at the time, we were first time parents. Everyone told us that they developed at their own pace. But now we have a daughter and, you know, writers, a sister. And that’s clearly that was he should have been crawling long before then.
00;11;41;23 – 00;12;03;09
Ryan Sternagel
And that that was why he had this massive tumor inside of his spine. So a lot of these kids, I would say a lot, but it does happen that a spinal tumor doesn’t get caught in time and they are either paralyzed or become incontinent or die from that or some combination of those things. And, you know, that’s not what we wanted either.
00;12;05;02 – 00;12;34;16
Ryan Sternagel
So, like, immediately we just kind of started throwing everything we could at it from the alternative settlement perspective, you know, initially just trying to get supplements and doing by mouth, you know, just doing a lot of research on PubMed, looking up because there was nothing on childhood cancer, you know, in terms of like the integrative side, the holistic side, a lot of information on holistic approaches to cancer.
00;12;34;16 – 00;12;55;00
Ryan Sternagel
But then when you try to do any of that type of research for childhood cancer just didn’t exist. So it was me taking all of this adult stuff and then going to med and kind of cross-referencing different supplements with neuroblastoma to see what kind of research I could get on it in. There actually is quite a bit of research from that side of things on a bed in the actual published studies, you just have to go find it.
00;12;55;20 – 00;12;59;25
Ryan Sternagel
So we were we were looking in those places, we were talking to different people.
00;13;00;23 – 00;13;06;13
Nathan Crane
What did what did the doctors tell you? What was the recommended treatment that the doctor suggested?
00;13;07;12 – 00;13;35;11
Ryan Sternagel
And yeah, and this was kind of a source of contention throughout. And it’s actually what ended up, you know, we started in Washington State and we’re here and we live in Utah now because of it. So initially, they within neuroblastoma, there’s different this was stage four. They confirmed pretty early on in stage four. But then within the within stage four, there’s different risk groups, there’s higher risk, there’s intermediate risk, there’s low risk.
00;13;35;11 – 00;14;01;25
Ryan Sternagel
There’s something called for us, which is an entirely different thing. They didn’t have any of that information in confirmed, and those protocols are all very different. But they still wanted to start chemo yesterday and that just, you know, did not feel right to us. Again, not saying that we weren’t going to do it, but wanting at least a couple of days to get the most informed opinion.
00;14;01;25 – 00;14;25;06
Ryan Sternagel
But so they were originally they were originally saying it was going to be four rounds of treatment when we actually did get a get a you know, the plan out of them. And that was you know, that’s what they said initially. And we actually did say thank you for the diagnosis. We’re going to go home and get that second opinion before we before we proceed and do any kind of any kind of treatment.
00;14;25;18 – 00;14;48;29
Ryan Sternagel
We did get it before we left. We got a place actually it was a Hickman line at first. Those two particular had a chest type of deal that was that was kind of a trip seeing those mass those several tubes just sticking out your son’s chest. But yeah, we got the place, we got the biopsy and then and then we did say we’re going to go home and call around and just make sure we’re doing the best thing here.
00;14;48;29 – 00;15;09;07
Ryan Sternagel
And that was met with a stream of different doctors and nurses and social workers all coming in and trying to try to get us not to go. I wasn’t sure if there were going to be like security at the bottom or something or a cop or something. But we did go home and then within a couple of days, I think it was it wasn’t that night, but it was the next night.
00;15;09;07 – 00;15;34;10
Ryan Sternagel
He rider, rider was sleeping with was in bed and we both woke up. I think my wife woke up the first to him just radiating. He’s just super, super, super hot. I forget what the exact temperature was, but it was an alarmingly high temperature. And then all of a sudden he started throwing up all over the place. We didn’t know what was going on outside of our son had just been diagnosed with cancer, stage four cancer.
00;15;34;10 – 00;15;56;05
Ryan Sternagel
And now this is happening. And so we actually, you know, the very same hospital that had just taken all that to get out of 90 miles an hour on the freeway back to. And it turned out that he had as a result of getting that line placed got in the bloodstream staph infection, which is another even more acutely life threatening situation.
00;15;56;05 – 00;16;13;13
Ryan Sternagel
So at that point, we were, you know, kind of we’d been calling around all the different clinics and trying to figure out what to do. All that stuff was out the window and it was you know, we were in the hospital on I.V. antibiotics, you know, multi-week treatment, just clearing that staph infection and knowing that we needed to do something to shrink that tumor.
00;16;13;13 – 00;16;45;25
Ryan Sternagel
We did consult consent to a round of chemo and. Yeah, yeah, I got it, got it shrunk down. And all that and then went back home kind of thinking maybe we were going to get back to just going into things holistically and given, given the chemo break. But at that point, when it was made, it was made clear to us by, you know, government representatives say that, you know, that wasn’t an option that we needed to keep on keep on going to the program with the recommended course of treatment.
00;16;46;05 – 00;17;06;21
Ryan Sternagel
So then it became like, you know, what is everything we can do to protect him from the treatment while also doing all the stuff on the side that we could think is, you know, therapeutic and curative and all that. So it was it was researching all these different types of chemotherapies, figuring out what types of supplements to take in conjunction with them.
00;17;07;13 – 00;17;31;01
Ryan Sternagel
That whole that whole ball of wax. And there, you know, for anyone watching this, that does end up undergoing conventional treatment because, again, there is a time and a place for everything. And I good stuff. I would really encourage anyone to dig deep into that. You know, there’s a few great books, gosh, one that they can write on Naturopathy Oncology by Neil McKinney The Definitive Guide to Cancer by Lisa Altschuler.
00;17;32;18 – 00;18;03;13
Ryan Sternagel
What’s Andrew while has a good one naturopathic. Gosh, I can’t think of his book anyway. Andrew I was going to read cancer, but all of those three books, PubMed all has a ton of great stuff. You know, the best ways to mitigate like individual chemo’s. So we were digging into that. We were working with natural oncologists, you know, again on that front, also getting writer I.V. Vitamin C and intravenous I.V. Vitamin C combined with DMSO is what we’re doing at first.
00;18;03;13 – 00;18;19;29
Ryan Sternagel
So yeah. And then it became, I don’t know, at first they were saying it was four rounds and then I said, well, if we hit these markers, excuse me, you know what? What are you looking for in those four rounds? And they gave me some you know, we’re looking for at least a 50% reduction in tumor size and some other markers.
00;18;20;13 – 00;18;33;15
Ryan Sternagel
I said, Well, you know, can I get an MRI after two rounds? Because I think I, you know, I think we can get there in two rounds. And they said, well, that’ll never happen. But, you know, if it makes you feel better, go ahead. We got the MRI after two rounds and then it was oh, no, we never said that.
00;18;33;15 – 00;18;53;21
Ryan Sternagel
It’s going to be four rounds. And then and then we got to four rounds. And and it was where did you get four rounds from? Even though they’ve been saying four from the start. Yeah. Where do you get four rounds from. It’s going to be eight and maybe even to start talking about radiation and and all that stuff and all the while Rider was doing better and better and better.
00;18;53;21 – 00;19;21;00
Ryan Sternagel
So it was I just, you know, where is this coming from? Why are you changing things on us? And at that point, in air quotes, I needed to to move for work. And we moved to Utah. It was it was, you know, kind of kind of an educated guess. But just knowing that this is a natural health friendly state, but also a, you know, more personal, liberty oriented state than, say, Washington state is politically, it was it was worth it to make it the trip.
00;19;21;01 – 00;19;37;14
Ryan Sternagel
And that was this was actually this hospital was one of the places that we had called for a second, you know, conventional opinion. And they gave us the same basic, you know, yes, we would do chemotherapy, but I still got a better vibe. And when we got here right. Rider was so far along that the new team.
00;19;37;28 – 00;20;04;04
Ryan Sternagel
Yeah it’s not like Utah’s just some bastion of medical freedom where you can do whatever you want, but, you know, there’s stories of stuff here. But the new team was okay with taking a wait and see approach. And yeah, not, not necessarily saying we’re just quitting chemo or what, but saying we’ll actively monitor it. Well, we’ll be in here for a MRI’s every couple is every three months at first and then every four months and then six months and so on and so forth.
00;20;04;04 – 00;20;22;02
Ryan Sternagel
But yeah, taking a really active monitoring role and from the conventional standpoint and then obviously just going bonkers, you know, holistically and that was four and a half years ago. And I guess you could say we’ve been taking a wait and see approach ever since. Yeah.
00;20;22;27 – 00;20;26;23
Nathan Crane
Well, it sounds like you’ve been taking a really proactive approach.
00;20;27;05 – 00;20;30;00
Ryan Sternagel
As we see from the conventional side.
00;20;30;00 – 00;20;52;10
Nathan Crane
Yeah, yeah. Which is great. And then the proactive from the integrative, natural, holistic side and with the support and I’d say some confidence from the medical side I think is supportive, especially with a child. I mean, you know, getting those scans, getting a medical doctor who supports, you know, your decisions to say, hey, we’re not going to rush on this.
00;20;52;10 – 00;21;14;18
Nathan Crane
Let’s see if what we’re doing over here is actually helping and working and then actually having a medical doctor on your side and support with that. I mean, that’s so critical. I couldn’t even imagine I mean, I, I can’t imagine what that’s like to be in a hospital and have that pressure. Because when we had our daughter in Oceanside, California, we had her in the hospital.
00;21;14;27 – 00;21;38;23
Nathan Crane
And when we saw it, when we filled out all the paperwork originally, we let them know we wanted to have the birth as natural as possible. You know, we wanted to have like different options available while we’re, you know, have a midwife there, have all this, you know, just kind of a more natural approach. No drugs, no chemicals, no painkillers, all of that.
00;21;38;23 – 00;21;45;23
Nathan Crane
You know, bless my wife’s heart. You know how tough that is going through that experience. But it does.
00;21;45;23 – 00;21;47;05
Ryan Sternagel
The same thing. My wife.
00;21;47;18 – 00;22;19;26
Nathan Crane
Yeah, but the moment that, you know, she was in labour for too long from their perspective, which was probably maybe 12 hours, they really started pushing C-section. They really started pushing the epidural. Plus the the thing that forces the contractions. I forget what that drug is called, Pitocin. And they were they were and then when we started denying it, saying, no, we want a natural, it’s in our paperwork.
00;22;20;10 – 00;22;37;28
Nathan Crane
That’s what they did. They sent in the workers and they sent like five doctors and nurses. And it was like, they’re really pressuring us to, you know, do it that way. And it was just like and I said, look, we came here because, you know, you guys said that you’d honour what we wanted to do. And they said, Well, we don’t care.
00;22;37;28 – 00;23;06;23
Nathan Crane
You can find another hospital. And that was they’re like, you do it our way. We get out. We’re just like, you know, going through all of that emotional intensity while your wife’s pregnant, giving birth. And it’s just, you know, it’s the same thing. And it’s the that we have to do that, that there are still hospitals. And because there are integrative clinics, there are integrative doctors, there are medical doctors who are much more open who do say, okay, yeah, we want to support your decisions.
00;23;06;23 – 00;23;29;21
Nathan Crane
We want to support your health decisions. We want to be here as a support, not as a you know, as a military enforcement. And I think those are everyone tuning in. Those are the doctors. If you want to go an integrated approach and or have medical support on your side, find a doctor who believes in your what you want to do and someone who really supports you.
00;23;29;21 – 00;23;37;18
Nathan Crane
And like you said, you might have to move states which sucks, but, you know, that’s one of the things that you might have to do if that’s what’s needed.
00;23;38;04 – 00;24;01;06
Ryan Sternagel
Yeah. I mean, especially for adults, especially there’s, there’s no reason not to find a doctor that, that is willing to work with you and you know, really get on board with, with the course that you want to take children. It’s a bit tougher, you know, we did have there’s like one hospital per state or even four group of states that that sees children with cancer.
00;24;01;06 – 00;24;23;11
Ryan Sternagel
So it’s yeah, if you want and you want a new doctor, you got to move. But, you know, with adults, it’s like there’s so many different oncologists out there and so many of them that at least are, you know, I go to these I just went to the Society for Integrative Oncology, which the conference, which is kind of like, you know, the very milquetoast end of integrative doctors conferences.
00;24;23;11 – 00;24;48;10
Ryan Sternagel
But, you know, they’re all they’re at least, like, interested in learning about integrative stuff. And there was there was hundreds of them. So, I mean, they’re certainly out there. But yeah, just it’s funny, you know, you talk about your experience in the hospital there. I kind of I kind of glossed over it. But man, yeah, we had a we had a visit from the director of Hospital Patient Relations in our room and like a team of social workers and all that.
00;24;48;15 – 00;25;04;17
Ryan Sternagel
And this was back, you know, when you’re about to do the first round of chemo, after we got the staph infection because you know the words out of her mouth or something like, you know, we need to we need to be sure that this room feels safe to the staff and it doesn’t and doesn’t feel safe right now.
00;25;04;28 – 00;25;24;07
Ryan Sternagel
And I just looked at I was like, what have I done to make anyone feel unsafe? Because it was I was, you know, going back to doing everything we could before or before the chemo so we could, you know, do everything we could to protect him. Again, this is a one year old. It’s not like it’s not like he you could just tell him to swallow a bunch of capsules.
00;25;24;07 – 00;25;42;06
Ryan Sternagel
And then all this we were we were doing the best we could by mouth, but it was clearly not, you know, not a long term strategy. And I saw all of these kids with feeding tubes. There was always pictures of kids with feeding tubes. But the thing was, they were all like emaciated and, you know, it was clearly very, very late in the treatment and all that.
00;25;42;06 – 00;26;03;07
Ryan Sternagel
And yeah, that was that was when they couldn’t eat from appetite and all that. And I said, well, you know, I want those feeding tubes now and so I can get all this stuff into them, you know, now. And that, that was like a really big fight. Like I was demanding that we get a feeding tube put in and they couldn’t understand why I wanted a feeding tube put in before he looked like garbage.
00;26;03;20 – 00;26;23;14
Ryan Sternagel
And, you know, so I kept demanding it get demanding, asking very specific questions of the nurses, like, who do I need to talk to? Where is that person? Can we talk, contact them now and all that stuff. And that was that was just too much for him and but yeah, ended up ended up winning that, you know, winning that fight so to speak, and did get the feeding tube put in.
00;26;23;14 – 00;26;45;04
Ryan Sternagel
And from there it’s like we had to in the hospital room. We had a juicer, a big cooler full of produce. We had a juicing operation going on. We had a closet full of supplements like every time, you know, every time like the nurses and doctors left the room, it was, you know, juicing and emptying capsules into the juice and then, you know, syringes and all that.
00;26;45;04 – 00;27;06;29
Ryan Sternagel
And it was feeding tube and yeah, gosh, I’d like, you know, big, murky water filters. So we’d been out to drink the poisoned tap water and we’re making Whole Foods runs. And you know, get more stuff in a little rice cooker. We were steaming the vegetables. Yeah. I mean, it’s, you know, even in a conventional setting, if you really put your mind to it, there is there’s a whole lot you can do.
00;27;06;29 – 00;27;36;07
Ryan Sternagel
You don’t have to just you know, you’re definitely offered the path of least resistance the whole way through. And, you know, so it does take some some thought and some intention and some will to actually carry that, you know, carry your desires out. But, you know, if every step of the way you’re really thinking is this little part of what they’re offering, you know, really what I want, you know, you can you can you can avoid a lot of the a lot of the stuff that gets pushed on you.
00;27;36;07 – 00;28;02;04
Ryan Sternagel
Even if you do even if you do end up going for some, you know, primary treatment, it’s like that’s not the only part of conventional treatments. You know, you just talk about the chemo going into it, but then you get into it and it’s all these secondary drugs that are offered or you’re told you need to have that, you know, either deal with side effects or deal with, you know, different markers of they’re trying to stay on the chemo schedule.
00;28;02;04 – 00;28;37;27
Ryan Sternagel
Like if your counts get too low, though, like for your white counts, if those get to the offer, you g csf granulocyte colony colony stimulating factor a couple of brand names that are new Biogen and new Laster. But you know, they’re right in the insert where, you know, tiny prints were in the back all that. But one of the side effects for that thing is, is, is leukemia, you know, and and then I also found research on it stimulating, existing cancer cells, making them more aggressive and even, you know, specific to neuroblastoma.
00;28;37;27 – 00;28;58;13
Ryan Sternagel
I found research on it, making neuroblastoma, cancer cells more aggressive. So, you know, and we found out pretty quick that we, again, didn’t have a choice at first as to whether or not we were going to do the primary treatments. But we did put our foot down for all that other stuff and said, you know, we’re not doing that.
00;28;58;13 – 00;29;19;03
Ryan Sternagel
And it’s not like we just didn’t do that and call it good. We found natural ways to, you know, if his red counts were low, we didn’t go with whatever they’re offering. I played Doctor Google and, you know, naturally boost red blood cell counts and I found, you know, beet juice and whatever supplements there were. And I gave him those supplements and his counts came back up.
00;29;19;03 – 00;29;19;23
Ryan Sternagel
And it’s like.
00;29;20;11 – 00;29;29;06
Nathan Crane
So is your was your doctor in in Utah then? So were they fine with you doing that? I mean, did they know you were doing that? Were you doing that secretly?
00;29;29;18 – 00;29;52;15
Ryan Sternagel
Yeah. So I mean, it’s always been we learned well, like in Seattle, obviously, we learned very early on that, you know, the last we really talked about them with them the better. And it’s you know, some people will call that reckless, but we were consulting with a natural, basic oncologist who turned out to be one of the most revered naturopathic colleges.
00;29;52;15 – 00;30;15;14
Ryan Sternagel
He’s the guy giving the keynote sit at all of the at all the naturopathic oncologist conferences. We didn’t know that at the time. It’s Dr. Paul Anderson. But, you know, and he actually knew about all these different interactions and whatnot, whereas they would just say no to everything. But in Utah, you know, yeah, they they knew that, that we were doing the alternative stuff.
00;30;16;00 – 00;30;37;25
Ryan Sternagel
I don’t know if they put much credence into it. They’re there certainly they’re certainly of the mind-set that it couldn’t hurt which is which is great. And maybe some of it is helping and it’s just not it’s something that they don’t know about. And they think a lot of its unproven. But that doesn’t mean that they’re under the impression that none of it works.
00;30;37;25 – 00;30;55;25
Ryan Sternagel
If they whether they put any stock into that. And Ryder’s case, I don’t know. I think it was probably more of just that they were at least willing to treat Rider as an individual, because once we got to Utah and he pulled up like the original plans, it was, it was always supposed to be eight rounds from that.
00;30;56;04 – 00;31;23;04
Ryan Sternagel
You know, from the day he was diagnosed when they made the initial protocol, it was eight rounds of chemotherapy. But, you know, I guess they were just telling us whatever we needed to hear, whatever they thought we needed to hear to get to the next round is why that far in the you came in. But you know, you know, the Utah team was at least willing to say maybe that four rounds of chemo was enough for rider and that’s all we could really ask for from a conventional team.
00;31;23;04 – 00;31;25;18
Ryan Sternagel
And that’s what we got. And yeah, yeah, it was great.
00;31;25;27 – 00;31;30;10
Nathan Crane
So did you end up going through did Rider end up going through all eight rounds of chemo then?
00;31;30;10 – 00;31;47;07
Ryan Sternagel
No, no. Yeah, that’s, that’s like I said. So when we got to Utah, he was, he was only at four and, and after four weeks stopped. So that was, that was halfway through the protocol that he was supposed to have. So he got out of at least half of the treatment that he would have had had we had we stuck around there.
00;31;47;19 – 00;31;51;20
Nathan Crane
Plus, you were saying they were suggesting potentially radiation after that?
00;31;51;20 – 00;32;01;08
Ryan Sternagel
Yeah, they started you know, they just it was a couple offhand comments like that and it was designed to be like, whoa, this is just taking a really crazy direction. So, yeah.
00;32;01;08 – 00;32;25;08
Nathan Crane
And the persistence and the dedication and commitment that, that, that you guys, you and your wife, I’m sure, have really pursued throughout this journey is really commendable to you. And, you know, for other parents who might be experiencing similar situations. I mean, what would you say to them? Where did your commitment and dedication to this come from?
00;32;25;08 – 00;32;42;01
Nathan Crane
Obviously, the love for your son, but to this just sticking true to, you know, what, we’re going to find alternative natural approaches and we’re going to fight through this. Like, where does that come from for you? And how can other parents learn from that to support them?
00;32;43;02 – 00;33;23;10
Ryan Sternagel
You know, it’s funny, this is going to be like a really seemingly bad example or analogy, but it’s almost like, you know, I was I was an outside sales guy and that was that was what I did for leading up to the diagnosis. And for several years after the diagnosis, before we made the jump to full time doing this online thing, whatever, whatever it is you want to call what we do now, but I don’t know, it’s like it’s kind of the analogy of just like you have a goal in mind and there’s, there’s going to be all these different roadblocks and you kind of have to just piece together, you know, okay, I’m completely
00;33;23;10 – 00;34;01;04
Ryan Sternagel
blocked off at this at this angle. You know, I need to come around the back and, you know, in sales terms, it’s like find somebody else in the office to talk to you or whatever. But that was kind of, you know, it I hate to like simplify it too much, but it just seemed like common sense to me at the time and it still does today is, you know, and I think it’s I think for me and like for my wife and I, it was what like we were already kind of past a lot of the, I don’t know, mind control, I guess, for lack of a better term, that they were brought up
00;34;01;04 – 00;34;24;20
Ryan Sternagel
and today that, you know, the doctor knows best and the government’s here to protect you and all this stuff. We were we were already past that and knew that, you know, that that wasn’t the case. So I think we’re a lot of people get hung up is that, you know, yes, they are finding out about some of this integrative, holistic stuff, but it’s like still not really adding up that.
00;34;24;20 – 00;34;50;08
Ryan Sternagel
Well, you know, I really should have heard about this from a doctor or whatever, you know, that that was already that was already long gone for us. You know, Rider wasn’t vaccinated when he was born. We were already, you know, went down that road doing all that research. And so, you know, when we did get the diagnosis, we were already at a point where it’s like, I know that most of what I’ve been told my whole life isn’t true.
00;34;50;16 – 00;35;23;22
Ryan Sternagel
I don’t know everything that is true, but I know it’s not what I’ve been told, or at least it’s more than I’ve been told. So, I mean, yeah, I guess that’s even the better the better example or, you know, explanation is just knowing that there’s so much out there that I don’t even know about yet. And even if, you know, we start doing all this stuff and it doesn’t work or, you know, it’s not working as well as it should, or that we were wise and there’s a whole anther world of stuff that we haven’t tried yet, you know, like on your on the event that we’re putting on right now, I’m sure
00;35;23;22 – 00;35;44;27
Ryan Sternagel
on this event, there’s, you know, there’s more stuff thrown in out there than any person can do it at one time. And that’s a whole art form in and of itself is actually trying to do way through all of this stuff. But, um, but yeah, just, just knowing that, you know, why would you leave anything on the table when it’s your, when it’s, when it’s our son’s life on the line?
00;35;44;27 – 00;35;59;18
Ryan Sternagel
Or for an adult, when it’s your life on the line, probably, you know, I wished a million times and it just doesn’t work like this, but that, you know, that I could take the cancer from me or from rider and, you know, give it to me because then it would be so much easier when I would have to do all this stuff to deal with it.
00;35;59;18 – 00;36;17;07
Ryan Sternagel
But yeah, I mean, I guess that’s the thing is just, just knowing that, you know, is as long as there’s a breath in his lungs that that we’re going to be doing everything we can. Because, you know what? What else is there? What else is there to do?
00;36;17;07 – 00;36;39;19
Nathan Crane
Yeah, well, it sounds like you approached it with just a really open mind. In addition to the commitment to finding the the best solution. And yeah, I think your background of education and natural health obviously supported a lot. I guess the biggest thing people are tuning in here is, you know, education, when it comes to preventing or healing any disease that’s.
00;36;39;19 – 00;37;10;04
Nathan Crane
King. I mean, educating ourselves from, as you said, all the different options, modalities, solutions, and then finding an integrated approach to put them together because there’s never just like there’s never one only one cause for cancer. I mean, that’s a very rare situation, right? And usually cancer is caused by a multiple conglomerate of different situations of environmental factors and toxins and food and, you know, nutrition or lack of nutrition in our thinking and our beliefs.
00;37;10;04 – 00;37;35;06
Nathan Crane
And usually, almost always it’s a combination. Just on the reverse side of that, it’s almost a combination or integrative approach that you’re going to get the best results from, right? That if you just say, I’m only going to do vitamin C, intravenous vitamin C, well, guess what? You’re only going to get the benefits of that and not the thousands of other potential benefits from the thousands of other phytonutrients and natural chemicals from plants.
00;37;35;06 – 00;37;47;26
Nathan Crane
And then you add in exercise and meditation and all the other things that are scientifically validated to help prevent and reverse cancer and you’re missing out on all those other benefits, so. Yeah, fine. Yeah.
00;37;47;26 – 00;38;18;15
Ryan Sternagel
I’m sorry. I’m just j. I just feel like, you know, double down on what you’re saying. We that’s that was the approach that we took. And then it was like, how do we do this in the, like, the most effective way possible from an execution standpoint? Because as you know, like I said, it is like you were saying, it’s a mess trying to figure out, okay, I’m open to all these different things, but now there’s too many things to choose from or you know, I’m getting all this stuff, but like, how do I actually implement it also?
00;38;18;17 – 00;38;27;27
Nathan Crane
So what were some of those things that you found or believed or have come to find, to be the most effective that helped your son overcome cancer?
00;38;28;28 – 00;38;54;06
Ryan Sternagel
Yeah. And, you know, I suppose it’s not to give too much of a non answer, but it’s like all the stuff that’s probably being discussed on this event. You know, we at any given time he was on I’d say at least 50 different supplements and that’s you know, there are different schools of thought that say that’s overkill and you don’t need all that.
00;38;54;06 – 00;39;11;18
Ryan Sternagel
And some of that’s even going to be maybe cross, you know, we’re working against each other and that sort of thing. And we did do our best to work with natural paths going to colleges and integrative doctors to do specialized and supplements. And, you know, it’s just that we kept on saying, well, what if we had this? What if we had this?
00;39;11;18 – 00;39;15;05
Ryan Sternagel
What if we had this? What if you had this and, you know, most of the time they’d say, okay, you can do that.
00;39;15;14 – 00;39;18;27
Nathan Crane
What were some of those supplements that you were using? Yeah.
00;39;19;21 – 00;39;43;01
Ryan Sternagel
You know, early on, it was it was a lot of the a lot of the class sticks, I guess you could say we were doing in addition to like the intravenous vitamin C, I wanted to make sure he was getting a good whole food vitamin C supplement to, you know, to get all these cofactors because sodium ascorbate isn’t necessarily, you know, there’s more to vitamin C than just just the ascorbic acid.
00;39;43;01 – 00;40;10;22
Ryan Sternagel
The ascorbic acid, but it’s delivered and sodium ASCORBATE. Gosh, we were on like different all the all the different botanical supplements between, you know, human resveratrol, green tea extract, you know, all those guys we were doing a lot of low carb récents at the time. Gosh, June was a big one. That that goes, you know, flies under the radar a lot.
00;40;10;22 – 00;40;33;26
Ryan Sternagel
I don’t know if I don’t know if a lot of people are familiar with it, but it’s HeLa 1951. It’s APL and I believe and that is a that’s a fermented soy products that has, I think, something crazy like £50 worth of soybeans in each bottle. But and, you know, obviously then I thought soy was bad for cancer, but the main thing and there is is genocide.
00;40;33;26 – 00;41;04;16
Ryan Sternagel
And you look up genocide in combination with cancer and you might get even more studies than, well, probably not more than curcumin, but close. It’s you know, there’s really compelling research on genocide and it’s combined with that’s not the only the only flavonoid in there. There’s a few other prominent ones. But yeah, there, there’s a ton of research on that product in combination with, with pretty much, you know, every type of cancer, even, even, you know, conventional side of side effect mitigation, all that good stuff.
00;41;04;16 – 00;41;30;03
Ryan Sternagel
So we were getting a lot of that. I’m trying to think of, you know, stuff that might not be as well known. B Propolis is another one that, you know, that hasn’t really made the blogosphere, so to speak. But, you know, I wrote an article on it because I, you know, I thought it needed to be written. But yeah, yeah, there’s a ton of research on bee propolis out there in cancer.
00;41;30;28 – 00;42;07;19
Ryan Sternagel
So yeah, we were giving them a lot of that. The Nature and Nectar brand is, is what we were using there. Gosh, like, I don’t know like what life one that, that liposomal product that has quite a few different anti-cancer compounds in it, a lot of different you know blends like that. There’s a product called calibrate that we really like it’s really high on sulforaphane is is the big thing which is another thing that starting to get a lot of good attention for cancer but it’s got I don’t know sulforaphane is the main thing but then it’s got curcumin, mushrooms.
00;42;07;19 – 00;42;27;00
Ryan Sternagel
That’s another one. We were doing a whole ton of different, you know, alternative, different medicinal mushroom. It’s kind of rotating through different blends and then different single mushroom products. And I don’t know that, gosh, yeah, it was what poly MBA. We were doing a lot of that. So yeah, it became like what I was starting to get into earlier.
00;42;27;00 – 00;42;51;26
Ryan Sternagel
And now that I’ve just kind of listed off this big slew of supplements, it was, it was more of like once we got our feet under us and, you know, got out of just the throwing everything up against the wall phase, it was like, you know, what are all these different products doing? And it became more of putting everything into kind of individual categories or buckets, so to speak.
00;42;51;26 – 00;43;16;16
Ryan Sternagel
So it’s like, you know, we know we want the direct anti-cancer action of, you know, causing apoptosis or hitting the right epigenetic triggers to turn on cancer or tumor suppressor genes and turn off oncogene, that sort of thing. So kind of put that whole thing in one bucket. We want the immune system to be continually, you know, what’s the word modulated to its proper state.
00;43;16;25 – 00;43;35;14
Ryan Sternagel
So, you know, put all those immune products in another bucket. We want the, you know, the metabolism mitochondria to be as functioning as we can to put all those products in another bucket. And then it became kind of this thing where it’s, okay, we’ve got all these different categories and then all of our favourite products, you know, with any category.
00;43;35;24 – 00;43;56;22
Ryan Sternagel
And so now it’s more of a system where we’re rotating through all of these products within each category one because you can’t afford to do them all at once. And then two, it’s not even good to just stay on the same supplement, you know, indefinitely, because then, you know, cancer smart and find a way around it and that sort of thing.
00;43;56;22 – 00;44;19;08
Ryan Sternagel
So it’s yeah, the system we kind of worked out was nice in the fact that, you know, we were continually rotating through all the stuff and then not spending a zillion dollars on, on supplements, maybe only a billion, but yeah. Yeah. And that’s just, you know, plug for the plug for the website the stern method dot com and the what we use pages.
00;44;20;09 – 00;44;31;18
Ryan Sternagel
You know, I’ve done my best to kind of recreate that, that mess that I just described that’s mostly in my head, like, you know, in written form where you can actually kind of see what more of what I’m talking about. So.
00;44;31;27 – 00;44;57;21
Nathan Crane
So in. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you really took the supplementation seriously, which I think is critical for anybody with cancer, whether it’s child cancer or adults with cancer in addition to supplements. What changes did you make with writer’s diet? Actually? Did you make any big changes with any foods really?
00;44;57;21 – 00;45;17;03
Ryan Sternagel
Yeah. It all add on to the supplements real quick. The one the one other kind of, you know, factor in doing the research was researching the specific cancer especially for like that that epigenetic component. So, you know, back to what I talked about, going back to, you know, that and running all of these different magic herbs that you find online with, you know, what can I find on an actual neuroblastoma?
00;45;17;05 – 00;45;33;09
Ryan Sternagel
I encourage people, no matter what kind of cancer, to deal with, to do that because it, you know, it starts to narrow down the field or at least gives you an idea of what you want to focus on. So the big change was his diet was that he actually had a diet. He was he was just breast fed up until that point.
00;45;33;09 – 00;45;56;17
Ryan Sternagel
So that was, you know, yeah, he was he was just breast fed. And one of the reasons for that was obviously, we, you know, we were on kind of a as natural as possible kick and that’s kind of what we were finding was, you know, no rush to introduce foods and that sort of thing. But then also when we had try to introduce foods and anything solid, he was gagging back up.
00;45;57;00 – 00;46;36;10
Ryan Sternagel
And it turned out that when we were getting all of these initial scans and whatnot, that it was actually because he had an entirely separate heart condition. He was born with a double aorta. So we knew we had the main valve coming off your heart. We use only have one writer had had two fun fact when you’re when you’re in the womb I guess we have multiple orders and then for whatever reason they all kind of dissolve off or turn into their own pathways and then you’re just left with the one, but very rarely, exponentially more rarely than the neuroblastoma, as it was described to us.
00;46;36;10 – 00;46;53;28
Ryan Sternagel
You still got two in there. So they were they were compressing his esophagus in his trachea and, you know, and not allowing him to the food would get down to that point and getting it back into the feeding tube writer went from its, you know, funny is the wrong word. But he went from like never having an Advil.
00;46;54;10 – 00;47;21;08
Ryan Sternagel
Yeah. For that first year to having chemotherapy. He also went from never having anything outside breast milk to all of a sudden now we’ve got this feeding tube and we’re like, I started to describe. We’re doing a lot of juicing, trying to juicing. And it was, you know, kind of in in the early days or even today really following kind of a a gears and ask, you know, approach it.
00;47;21;08 – 00;47;48;12
Ryan Sternagel
We didn’t follow the the Gerson protocol to a T you know we did do the carrot apple thing in communist Asia. And we were throwing in like, you know, ginger and curcumin and stuff like that and then doing just entirely just for green juices, but just whatever, you know, watercress and kale and maybe cucumber and then throw in the turmeric and the ginger again for good measure and all that stuff.
00;47;48;12 – 00;48;07;15
Ryan Sternagel
So, yeah, we I mean, you went from having nothing to having all this all this juice and that’s, you know, early on his diet wasn’t entirely liquid because because it was that that’s the only way you can handle it was the feeding tube. And so we were we were kind of, you know, piecing together, okay, now he’s getting older.
00;48;07;15 – 00;48;28;07
Ryan Sternagel
And so we really should be having food, but he still can’t. And we could get the surgery, but we don’t want to subjecting to another surgery. Well, you know, we’re still trying to recover from cancer. So we were we were basically, you know, he was on a liquid diet and we were starting to mix mess around with different, you know, different greens powders and protein powders and and stuff like that.
00;48;28;07 – 00;48;51;01
Ryan Sternagel
Just, you know, just to make his nutritional needs as you got older work but you know, it did it all worked out when he got old enough when we did get the. I think so a year in we got the surgery to to correct the double aorta. And I think he must have already been able to.
00;48;51;03 – 00;49;11;20
Ryan Sternagel
No, actually, no. I take it back. We’re blending it and putting it through the tube, but we’re doing the body work protocol as well, the cottage cheese factor and this together. That was another thing we stayed on for for quite some time. It’s you know, everyone says the same thing about it. It sounds ridiculous until you actually start looking into it and then, oh, my gosh, there’s actually a lot of research and testimonial behind it and that sort of thing.
00;49;12;17 – 00;49;54;05
Ryan Sternagel
We eventually stopped that just because from a long term perspective, it’s really hard to find cottage cheese that is both organic and raw. It doesn’t really exist commercially, you know, maybe. And you know, as far as like chronic dairy usage from a long from a long term perspective, you know, so another thing that, you know, we we’ve kind of tapered off on for for multiple reasons, but, you know, that’s kind of it’s kind of another thing is not letting one dogma or, you know, way of thinking about eating or anything way of thinking about anything restricts, you know, your thought process in the moment.
00;49;54;05 – 00;50;14;29
Ryan Sternagel
It’s like, you know, yeah. Even when we started Ludwig, I was having these thoughts of this isn’t really maybe the optimal. I mean, obviously we’re getting organic cottage cheese, but it’s not raw. And, you know, there’s all this and then, you know, it sounds like dairy usage isn’t the best from a long term perspective. But at the end of the day, there is all this research and and testimonial either way.
00;50;15;02 – 00;50;34;01
Ryan Sternagel
So for a short time, let’s do it. And so, yeah, he was he was getting a lot of blood work early on and gosh, just, you know, a lot of smoothies that was the other thing is okay, not the juicer but the blender blending up all of that same stuff. And so yeah, that was that was kind of the diet was juice smoothies and Ludwig.
00;50;35;00 – 00;51;03;03
Nathan Crane
Yeah, my son’s three, he’s going on four and his primary diet that 70% is still smoothies of because he’s still just so used to it. And my wife makes, you know, fresh, really nutrient rich, diverse smoothies for him every day. And he just drinks it from his you know, from his bottle. And he’s because she he was breastfed for the first year, a little over a year.
00;51;03;03 – 00;51;19;19
Nathan Crane
I think, and then moved to smoothies because we wanted to get him as much nutrients as possible. And now we’re trying to get him to eat more. So he’s eating more, but at the same time, he still wants that smoothie all day. And I have no problem with it. I mean, if he wants to stay on that as long as he can is fantastic because he’s getting.
00;51;19;21 – 00;51;47;19
Nathan Crane
Yeah, I mean, we’re putting, you know, nuts and seeds and berries and kale and, you know, whole foods kind of nut from Whole Foods, Whole Foods, protein supplement powders and, you know, loaded with vitamins, nutrients, minerals. So it’s like and him, he can drink it. So, you know, that’s another great option. Obviously, chewing and getting the fiber you know, especially when you’re dealing with fruits, is super important, you know, long term as well.
00;51;47;19 – 00;52;01;08
Nathan Crane
But if all you can do is smoothies and juice, it works. You know, it definitely works. How long did it take for you to find out that he no longer had cancer?
00;52;01;15 – 00;52;24;24
Ryan Sternagel
So, again, he started out with the massive tumor in his spine, the secondary tumors and all metastasis. Over time, the metastases went away, the secondary tumors went away. The primary tumor did. It shrunk a lot when we were on conventional treatment. But then after we stopped, it continued to shrink, shrink, shrink, shrink for, you know, several scans out after that.
00;52;24;24 – 00;52;44;22
Ryan Sternagel
And then at some point, it just kind of levelled off and remained that way. It has remained that way, not really doing much of anything for anything of note. Anyway, it kicked up, you know, a little bit at one point, but then it stopped and it could it could have been his him growing. It could have been some benign cells hanging around in there.
00;52;44;22 – 00;53;13;24
Ryan Sternagel
But but yeah, then just entirely altogether again. So that’s been the past three years that I feel pretty good about calling it scar tissue at this point. We’re now that we’re a little ways down actually starting to get a few extra dollars in our pockets. Yeah, we’re I’m going to start exploring all the different you know there’s that there’s a book a cancer free are you sure by a junior project which lists out all the different.
00;53;13;28 – 00;53;36;22
Ryan Sternagel
You know, I don’t know if you want to call an alternative blood test, but yeah. Different, different tests you can take it to get different markers on on you know what the cancer activity may or may not be in your body. Something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. But it’s literally been okayed by another, you know, five bottles of supplements or get this test and things are still going in the right direction.
00;53;36;22 – 00;53;59;09
Ryan Sternagel
I want to go something good is going on here, so I’m just going to keep that going. So it was, you know, the supplements or the I.V. Vitamin C or whatever. I always, always point out. But yeah, well, we’ll get into that pretty soon and figure out which tests are best for. Again, like all of those different all those different tests, they’ll tell you if it’s good for breast cancer or stomach cancer or whatever.
00;53;59;09 – 00;54;11;21
Ryan Sternagel
But they’re not going to tell you if it’s good for neuroblastoma. Me going back to putting that and say, okay, what enzyme is it or what? You know, protein is it that they’re testing for and is that prevalent in neuroblastoma? And I’ll figure that out.
00;54;12;14 – 00;54;37;03
Nathan Crane
Well, that’s a that’s an important thing to note. Both Dr. Thomas Loney and Paul endured, say, in in our film, in my film, the integrative perspective. Both of them talked quite a bit about this, that, you know, even if you have a tumor, when the tumor is extending your life because it’s actually wrapping the cancer cells. Right. And helping to your body is trying to do something with it, actually.
00;54;37;03 – 00;54;53;08
Nathan Crane
So it’s not like you have to get rid of the tumor as we think when you’re told in conventional medicines, like we got to get it out of there as quick as possible. Actually the tumor doesn’t continue growing and it’s not limiting your quality of life like it’s not in your brainstem and it’s paralyzing you or something like that.
00;54;54;14 – 00;55;27;26
Nathan Crane
Then actually you can live a long, normal life, especially if it stays the same or is reducing over time. So you know that that like the fear approach that you have to get it out as quick as possible is not necessarily always the best approach. You know, some cases, yeah, surgery Is needed and you know, or, you know, some eyepiece and some potentiate therapy, really low dose targeted chemotherapy to help reduce it sometimes, you know, the reduction of the tumor quickly could be really important.
00;55;28;22 – 00;55;48;14
Nathan Crane
But just letting people know that just because you have a tumor doesn’t necessarily mean it’s actually going to impact your life at all. So the fact that it’s shrunk and it’s been stable and and sounds like you’re you know, your son is walking and jumping and running. I mean, is he mobile now? Is he.
00;55;48;29 – 00;56;19;24
Ryan Sternagel
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s been, you know, since that it did impact his nerves. Initially, he was barely moving his right leg. And so it’s you know, there’s been a lot of physical therapy and getting them frickin shoe inserts and, you know, all this other stuff that’s going along with it. But yeah, I mean, the more the older he gets, the more he’s catching up to his peers and even, you know, starting to get better at some things than his peers.
00;56;19;24 – 00;56;37;02
Ryan Sternagel
And so it’s been really neat to watch. Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s such a such a small percentage of what it was to start. And like I said, it just hasn’t really done anything that yeah, I feel good calling it scar tissue at this point. I still would like to go would like that scar tissue to go away for peace of mind.
00;56;37;02 – 00;56;54;26
Ryan Sternagel
But all the same, you know, it’s a our conventional oncologist even says, you know, especially when kids start out with a tumor that big, it is more common than not that some scar tissue remains. And, you know, he checks in with kids 15, ten years later that still have some scar tissue.
00;56;54;26 – 00;56;56;01
Nathan Crane
So, yeah, this is.
00;56;56;01 – 00;56;56;15
Ryan Sternagel
What it is.
00;56;57;03 – 00;57;28;00
Nathan Crane
Wow. Well, it’s incredible. I mean, the fact that you guys have gone through all this, I mean, I’m sure you’ve learned so much along the way. And now you’re you know, you’ve been sharing this through your website, the stern method to your summits, through a lot of the work you’re doing. I think I think it’s incredible and appreciate you for stepping up and helping other people who are or experienced in similar circumstances so or want to prevent circumstances the best the best that they can.
00;57;28;00 – 00;57;46;21
Nathan Crane
So talking about you, you have a summit called the Anticancer Revolution. Tell me about that. So what’s the main focus? Anti-Cancer. What does that mean? And what are some of the things that are being shared on the summit?
00;57;47;04 – 00;58;11;23
Ryan Sternagel
I like to think it’s a it’s a revolution against dogma. You know, from both sides, you know, the alternative. Because even when you get to the holistic, you know, and the holistic side of the fence on treatment, there’s still like the extreme alternative, all natural, all the way. I’m not going to step foot in the conventional establishment whatsoever.
00;58;11;23 – 00;58;45;06
Ryan Sternagel
There’s that side of the spectrum and then there’s more the you know, the integrative working with conventional therapy, doing what’s needed, at least from that perspective, when it’s needed and in the best educated way possible and that sort of thing. And, you know, those, those have been the two worlds that that I have had my feet in from day one because, I mean, you know, the truth about cancer was it was originally called The Quest for the Cures back then that came out like I want to say, ten days after I was diagnosed and we were already doing all this research leading up to those ten days.
00;58;45;06 – 00;59;26;26
Ryan Sternagel
But now, you know, that was that was huge. You know, it was like gave me all these different doctors and treatments and supplements and all this stuff to go look into. It was it was great. But then, you know, then I started going to these naturopathy oncologist conferences where they’re talking about all that alternative stuff, too, but then they’re also talking about the best ways to naturally mitigate chemo side effects and reduce toxicity, protect from toxicity, you know, even make conventional treatment more efficacious, different dosing strategies than what you hear in the hospital, be it low dose or even, you know, just different timings and a lot of interesting stuff brought up there.
00;59;26;26 – 01;00;05;28
Ryan Sternagel
So I can’t you know, I don’t remember how many times that like fasting got brought up as something that’s not only not only therapeutic for cancer in and of itself, but can protect healthy cells from chemotherapy while making cancer cells more vulnerable. All this stuff and it’s yeah, I mean quite similar to the work you’re doing Nathan is, you know, like those two sides of the, those two sides of the spectrum tend to stay on opposite sides of the spectrum, like a lot of those people, especially the integrative people, don’t necessarily want to be seen with the, you know, in the same room with the alternative people, so to speak.
01;00;05;28 – 01;00;24;03
Ryan Sternagel
So it was a challenge getting all them together. But I think because of, you know, us, my wife and I, and our mission, our cause and our story and what we’re doing, you know, that maybe quite a few who are willing to step outside of their comfort zone. So it’s kind of those two different worlds in one summit.
01;00;24;03 – 01;00;37;29
Ryan Sternagel
And it’s yeah, I’m really happy with the way that it turned out. There’s a lot of really good information from a lot of like a very diverse set of perspectives on, you know, how to how to approach cancer.
01;00;38;19 – 01;01;08;25
Nathan Crane
I love it. I mean, that’s why I’m really excited to be sharing this with our community as well and sharing your summit encouraging people to to watch it, because that’s the exact thing. One of the main things that inspired me to do the integrative perspective documentary film, because I saw this war happening between alternative and conventional and and I recognize that like, why would we be fighting against each other if the main intention is to help people?
01;01;09;03 – 01;01;28;19
Nathan Crane
The main intention is to help people. Why don’t we learn how to work together? And then I found out years ago that there are people doing exactly that. It’s called integrative medicine and they say, hey, let’s take the best of all worlds and use it for the intention of getting the best results to help people. And I think that’s the approach moving forward.
01;01;28;19 – 01;01;51;11
Nathan Crane
I think that’s the future of medicine. It’s looking at it from a holistic, integrative perspective and say, look, medical conventional treatment is not bad. They’re not bad people. They care about you. They care about doing good things that many of them are simply just not taught natural medicine. That’s it. But when they learn about it, oftentimes they become an integrative doctor.
01;01;51;14 – 01;02;18;00
Nathan Crane
That’s they change their they change what they do. They change their approach. And I know you’ve met many and I’ve met many have done that. And so, you know, learning as much as we can, I’ll say it a million times, it’s all about educating ourselves. It’s learning as much as you can from the medical side of things, what’s actually effective, as well as the natural side of things, what’s going to be most effective, and then how do they work together and complement each other?
01;02;18;11 – 01;02;40;19
Nathan Crane
So I love that you’re putting on this summit, focusing exactly on that, because people tuning in are going to learn so much from all sides of the conversation. And that’s the approach I think we need moving forward. So couple of things. What are a couple of key takeaways people can expect from the summit?
01;02;41;03 – 01;03;15;19
Ryan Sternagel
You know, they all have their specialties. And it’s it was neat to put them all together. And so, you know, you get the you get the best, well-rounded perspective of all of these different things that I need to be covering. But it’s so it’s not just this one thing. It’s everything. And yeah, I mean, just, you know, a lot of people aren’t even aware that there’s such a thing as a, as a naturopath, like oncologist doctor, a naturopathy doctor who has chosen to specialize in cancer that you know, that title tends to be more on the integrative working with conventional medicine side of the fence.
01;03;15;27 – 01;03;41;15
Ryan Sternagel
And if you are going through conventional treatment, you know, there are these people that are literal experts in all of the different supplements that you can you can take in conjunction with in conjunction with all the different types, you know, whether you’re talking about radiation or all the different types of chemotherapy or even immunotherapy or, you know, the new checkpoint inhibitors, the targeted therapy, you know, they can walk you through the best way to go about those.
01;03;41;15 – 01;03;59;11
Ryan Sternagel
And yeah. And so I’ve got a lot of the folks on there that, you know, are the ones giving the keynote presentations at those conferences. So you can and you can kind of tell that definitely a lot of them are used to just presenting to doctors and having like, you know, slide PowerPoints and stuff like that. And I encourage that.
01;03;59;11 – 01;04;14;03
Ryan Sternagel
I say, you know, if, if I don’t say two words this whole interview and it’s just you given a presentation, you just made the my job easy and, and a lot of them did just that. It was like, you know, me asking a couple of questions at the end like, like the conference would be. And so it was really neat.
01;04;14;03 – 01;04;18;09
Ryan Sternagel
It is a really diverse cast of characters on there. I’m really happy with it.
01;04;19;07 – 01;04;46;22
Nathan Crane
Yeah. And that’s, you know, that’s key open mindedness, you know, diversity and really expanding our plethora of knowledge in all these different areas. I mean, that’s what it takes. You know, cancer is complex, but at the same time, it’s also quite simple. You know, it’s complex and simple. It’s a it’s a paradox. But I love that you’ve put together all these incredible people.
01;04;46;22 – 01;05;08;26
Nathan Crane
We have a link for our audience tuning in. We have a link we’ll send you you’ll see it next to this video where you can sign up for the summit for free. I encourage you to do that if you’re catching this later after the summit, we’ll have another link for you as well. You could sign up for future summits and or the summit recordings on-going.
01;05;08;26 – 01;05;39;17
Nathan Crane
So take a look for that as well. Definitely encourage you to check it out. Wrapping up, I have a final question for you. Looking back at the beginning of this journey, what would you have changed if you had to do it all over again and pray to God you don’t ever have to, but if you if you had to do it all over again, if anything, what are some key things you would have changed early on or done.
01;05;39;17 – 01;05;40;01
Nathan Crane
Yeah.
01;05;40;22 – 01;06;22;20
Ryan Sternagel
That’s you know, the big one is, is pretty easy for me to you know to spot and that’s from a caregiver perspective self care. You know I was I was just joking with you that, you know, before we started recording this that I haven’t gotten a full night’s sleep in, you know, probably since the five years since Ryder was diagnosed, the first for the cancer, just trying to research all that I could and then, you know, trying to make the business work on the side of a day job and all that, but, you know, that being said, there’s a difference between not getting as much sleep as you could and still taking really good care
01;06;22;20 – 01;06;45;15
Ryan Sternagel
of yourself and like being really mentally well and just like having a having a wellness attitude about you versus what we were doing that first year was, you know, we always joke that we looked more like the cancer patients the writer did when, you know, when we look at those pictures because, it was he was the one getting all the juice and supplements and all that.
01;06;45;15 – 01;07;08;07
Ryan Sternagel
And it was almost like this weird thing where, you know, and again, this is just its wrong. And it was us not doing as good of a job as we could early on. But, you know, this weird thing where like, if, if one ounce of effort went into ourselves that wasn’t going into our kid, then that was something that we were like morally doing wrong.
01;07;08;07 – 01;07;29;00
Ryan Sternagel
We were doing wrong work did and so, you know, it was like me not shaving for weeks on end and barely eating anything. And it’s not like we weren’t like we weren’t eating bad food. We were still eating organic food, but just, you know, sparse and, you know, not the most nourishing stuff that we could have been eating and all this stuff.
01;07;29;00 – 01;07;56;22
Ryan Sternagel
So, you know, and we did come to that that realization about maybe a little less than a year end that we could be doing better by writer for by taking care of ourselves. And so, you know, I started working out again. I started going for runs again. And so, like, you know, like I said, still maybe not getting a hold as much sleep as I should be getting more sleep, but just, you know, treating, treating ourselves to some of the supplements that we were getting right.
01;07;56;22 – 01;08;31;27
Ryan Sternagel
Or and just making that mental flip more than anything. So that was you know, that was that was probably the big one is, you know, and that can be applied to a, you know, someone going through cancer themselves as well as it’s, you know, there’s you get wrapped, especially when you start researching all this stuff, you can get just completely wrapped up in the, you know, the go, go, go of it all and trying to fit as much as you can in and, you know, by all means fit as much as you can in, but do it in, you know, a productive way.
01;08;31;27 – 01;08;47;28
Ryan Sternagel
That’s where, like having a schedule came in for us that was really huge. As you know, we started mapping out exactly when he was going to take a supplements and when we were going to get out for a walk. And when we’re like, you know, we want to get out in the woods because that’s, you know, the whole time of research and just get out of the woods.
01;08;47;28 – 01;09;15;04
Ryan Sternagel
So I want to make sure to get that on the calendar and the sauna and so on and so forth. So I mean, it took a lot of like the mental stress of it all off once we sat down and actually like kind of mapped out our week so to speak. But yeah, yeah. And then just, just on top of that, just not letting you know because that’s you got plenty of people on here, I’m sure, talking about just purely the mental connection and the energetic, you know, side of it, which we didn’t really get into here.
01;09;15;04 – 01;09;40;10
Ryan Sternagel
But I mean, that’s, you know, that was huge for us just wanting to, like I said earlier, just, you know, keep the best possible, you know, energy of of our surroundings, of us. So, yeah, it’s, you know, you got to kind of tell yourself to keep that, you know, and give yourself, like I said, a little reminder on your phone, even if you are like, am I am I stressing about this whole thing or am I in a good place?
01;09;40;10 – 01;09;41;19
Ryan Sternagel
That is whatever you got to do.
01;09;42;28 – 01;10;01;06
Nathan Crane
Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, as a caregiver, you don’t want to be taking care of someone and then yourself get a diagnosis. Well, right. From stressing, you know, over things and eating poorly and not sleeping enough and all that stuff. So it’s that’s so awesome that you shared that because self-care can seem selfish, but it’s absolutely not.
01;10;01;06 – 01;10;18;23
Nathan Crane
It’s probably the most important thing you can do for the person you love because if you’re energized, you’re feeling good, you’re thinking good, you’re eating good, then you’re going to share that energy and that vitality with the person you’re trying to help. So yeah.
01;10;18;23 – 01;10;47;01
Ryan Sternagel
Yeah, I’ll even you know, it’s I came to the realization that it’s actually selfish to be in that, that mindset that I just described before we made the switch. Because then you are making it about like even like not obviously I wasn’t saying for me it was all about Ryder, but at the same time you are kind of making it about yourself if you’re like completely depriving yourself of all this stuff and you know, it’s just it’s kind of this weird thing that you do after you do actually get over.
01;10;47;06 – 01;10;48;21
Ryan Sternagel
Yeah.
01;10;48;21 – 01;11;09;17
Nathan Crane
What’s awesome Ryan, I really appreciate you being here and sharing, man. All your experience, your journey and the things you’ve learned, the wisdom you’ve gained. I want to share your website with people tuning in. It’s the stern method dot com. We’ll have that link on the website as well and we’ll have a link for you to check out the summit.
01;11;09;17 – 01;11;24;02
Nathan Crane
So take a look at that. And yeah, just again, Ryan, appreciate you so much, man, and congratulate you for getting this far in the journey. And I know you still have probably a little ways to go, but it sounds like you’re definitely on the right track.
01;11;25;24 – 01;11;33;18
Ryan Sternagel
That’s for sure. That’s for sure. And I appreciate I appreciate what you’re doing and for including us in it. So it’s.