The Marriage of Science and Nature

I want to start with something I wrote in 2019. Three months out of remission, still figuring out what my body had just been through, I was in a Facebook group for natural and homeopathic remedies. A woman posted asking for advice about her family member's diagnosis. And then the comments came.

Soursop cures cancer. Alkaline water. Someone's aunt who refused chemo and is still here. Remedy after remedy, shared with absolute confidence by people who had never treated a patient a day in their lives.

I couldn't stay quiet. This is what I wrote:

SENT TO A FACEBOOK GROUP  |  May 2019

Hi there my friend. I saw your post in the group. Cancer is a hard thing and I'm so sorry you have family battling it.

So, I'm a cancer survivor and living an extremely healthy life. I even ran a juice delivery service. I've only been in remission 3 months and it's been my mission to learn about cancer and the biology of our organ system.

Honestly, I've developed this terrible pet peeve for people giving cancer advice and their 'cures' without knowing it's far more complicated than 'soursop' or 'alkaline.' I saw someone's comment about soursop being better than chemo. How does she know that? When I see comments like that, I challenge them and ask where they got their info? It's irresponsible.

I still lead a healthy lifestyle but if you have an aggressive cancer and you want to live, seek medical help. You can maintain a healthy lifestyle after — but please see a medical professional. ...Expensive herbs are no match for a relentless cancer.

My cancer almost took my life too. I'm praying for you.

I share this not to be dramatic about where I was in that moment — but because that message is the foundation of everything I have built since. The philosophy behind Earthkiss was not born in a classroom or a lab. It was born three months after remission, in a Facebook comment section, watching people choose between two things that were never actually opposites.

THE DANGER OF THIRD-HAND CERTAINTY

Bad health information is not just wrong. For some people, it is fatal. And there is no do-over.

I want to be clear about something: there is a meaningful difference between someone sharing their personal experience and someone presenting themselves as an authority. If you say this is what I did, this is how it affected me, your situation may be different — I respect that. I appreciate that. Personal stories are powerful and they deserve to be told.

What I cannot get behind is someone who has absorbed a sliver of information from a third-party source, turned it into a niche expertise in their own mind, and is now broadcasting it as a universal solution to a disease they have never had and a body they have never studied.

There is an inherent distrust of the medical community right now. I understand it. But distrust is not the same as discernment — and when it comes to your health, you need discernment.

At the end of the day, how you choose to manage your health is your business. That is a deeply personal decision and I will never impose my beliefs on anyone. But I will always ask: where did that information come from? Who studied it? Who replicated it? What were the stakes when they were wrong?

Those are not anti-natural questions. They are survival questions.

SCIENCE IS NATURE. IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN.

Here is the thing that changed everything for me when I started researching more deeply: most pharmaceuticals are derived from plants and natural compounds. The majority of the medicines sitting in hospital IV bags and pill bottles started as something that grew in the ground.

What science does is take those natural compounds, isolate what is effective, measure it, study it, and make it repeatable. That is not the enemy of nature. That is nature being taken seriously.

When I look at an herb or a plant compound that has not been adopted by science yet, I think one of two things: either the research is ongoing and the data is not conclusive, or it simply has not proven to be effective under controlled conditions. Both of those are reasonable conclusions. Neither of them means the medical community is trying to suppress something. There is, however, an argument to be made about the “profit-over-people” theory held by large pharmaceutical companies as an incentive to withhold cures but that’s another discussion entirely.

Nature and science are not rivals. They are the same conversation happening in two different languages — and Earthkiss was built to translate between them.

I try to stay as close to the natural source as possible while understanding that science has made certain compounds more effective, more measurable, and more bioavailable. Both things can be true.

WHAT IT ACTUALLY LOOKED LIKE DURING TREATMENT

I used both. Let me be specific about that, because specificity is what separates a personal experience from a blanket prescription.

Every single day during chemo I drank a gallon of distilled water — not spring water, not filtered. Distilled. My mother-in-law was my designated water carrier and she showed up without fail. The reason for distilled was not ideology. It was practicality. With a compromised immune system, any bacteria in spring water that a healthy body would handle without issue could have been dangerous for me. That was a science-informed natural choice.

I drank fresh juice when I was well enough to make it. My non-negotiable combination was ginger, lemon, beets, and kale — not because someone told me to, but because those four kept the nausea manageable enough that I did not need medication for it. I took soursop. I made sure I had enough fiber to counteract what chemotherapy does to your GI tract, which spared me from needing additional medication for constipation.

And I also took the immunotherapy. I took the steroids. I took the shot that increased my white blood count.

I was not picking a side. I was using every tool available to me. That is what surviving looks like — not philosophy, but pragmatism.

Bloodwork is the universal leveler. Regardless of which school of thought you subscribe to, when you run labs you are measuring the same biology. You cannot argue with what the blood shows. That is science we all agree on, whether we realize it or not.

WHY EARTHKISS LIVES ON BOTH SIDES

I would be hard pressed to name a wellness brand that genuinely stands in both worlds without trying to win the argument for one side. Most brands plant a flag. They are either clinical and science-forward or they are natural and plant-based and subtly suspicious of anything pharmaceutical.

I refused to do that. Not because it is a clever positioning strategy, but because it is not honest. The women I am building for are too smart for that. They have been through enough to know that neither extreme serves them fully.

Think about it this way: the person who says they do not trust science and do not trust doctors — if they were in a genuine emergency, they would go to the emergency room. They would let a physician use scientific equipment and evidence-based medicine to keep them alive. They know that. And the person who relies entirely on conventional medicine for everything still makes ginger tea when they have a cold. They know that too.

We do not actually live at the extremes. We live in the middle — and it is time someone built a brand that admits that.

Every product I create will carry both. The science to make it credible. The nature to make it real. That is not a compromise. That is the whole point.

THE LINE WE NEED TO STOP DRAWING

I saw a video go viral of a beautiful Black woman at a football game having a hot flash. It was nighttime and you could literally see the steam rising from her head. People thought it was funny. I thought: that was me in a job interview when my glasses fogged up. That was me. It is miserable. And it is just one symptom.

In the comments of that video, a younger woman wrote: why do we need drugs if menopause is a natural part of a woman getting older?

That comment is the line I am talking about. The idea that because women have always suffered through something, we are supposed to keep suffering through it. That because it is natural, relief is somehow unnecessary or suspicious.

Erasing that line means women live fuller, more functional lives. It means we stop treating symptoms as character. It means we stop choosing between the wisdom of plants and the rigor of science — and start demanding both.

That is what I am building. And I am not picking a side.

Your Turn

The most powerful health decisions aren't either/or. They're both/and. Where are you drawing an unnecessary line?

Practical Resilience  •  earthkisswellness.com