“98% of the atoms in your body are removed and replaced every year.” – Udo Erasmus

I had the pleasure of speaking with Udo Erasmus, co-founder of Udo’s Choice, a multi-award winning product line featuring fresh omega oils, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and super greens, which can be found in Whole Foods and other health food stores worldwide. Udo designed the machinery for making oils with health in mind and pioneered flax oil, a billion-dollar industry.

He is also an author and acclaimed speaker and holds an extensive education in biochemistry, genetics, biology, and nutrition, including a master’s degree in counseling psychology.

We discuss: 

• Exploring contradictions and unity in life and science
• The journey from pesticide poisoning to nutritional enlightenment
• The importance of balanced ratios (including how Udo’s Oil® was born)

Exploring contradictions and unity in life and science

Life is full of contradictions. Or is it? If we look closely enough, we can find that underneath most contradictions is a one-ness and unity regarding the answer. That is part of what drove Udo Erasmus to where he is today.

“2 + 2 = 4. If 4 is the right answer, then there are infinite wrong answers, and you know all the wrong answers because you know the right answer. My thing about contradiction has been more about finding what is the whole, what is the unity, what is the one place where truth dwells that you can rely on,” he says. “Because if you're bouncing around between contradictions, you don't know what to rely on.”

If we look at the contradictions between science and metaphysics, somewhere in the search for truth physics and metaphysics are the same. 

In science, we look at the outside. In metaphysics, we tend to be looking on the inside. 

“When I studied biology because I wanted to know what life is—I didn't get life. I thought I would get life in a glass beaker. It would be liquid and shining, and they'd be saying, ‘There's life.' And that's how I pictured it. But I never got it,” Udo says. “Where I've learned about life was actually in the teachings of the masters, because the masters were teachers of human nature.”

Life is more than liquid in a bottle—more than blood and saliva and cells. It travels into our very essence and nature, how we exist on the earth, and what we do with that existence. 

And with all those contradictions and all that life happening there is an abundance of ways to take good care of our existence or poor care of our existence. To nurture or to harm both ourselves and others. 

The process of building a healthier, unified existence starts inside, and not only in the metaphorical sense.

The journey from pesticide poisoning to nutritional enlightenment

When Udo lost his marriage, he was upset. More than upset. He wanted to kill something, to cause harm, to do damage. 

“I was really upset. Immature, stupid, upset, but that's what it was. And so I took a job as a pesticide sprayer because I know the only reason we make pesticides is to kill living things,” he says. “Either we kill them by wrecking their respiration, or we wreck their nervous system.” 

He took to the work with zeal and, in his own words, a level of carelessness that would change the direction of his life forever.

“I walked barefoot through the lawns I'd sprayed with weed killers, and the skin came off the bottom of my feet,” Udo says. “It was a summer job. I liked to wear a bathing suit because I'm fair-skinned and I always wanted to have a tan. If I could have painted my eyes brown, I would have painted my eyes brown, and I wished I had black hair, because I was dissatisfied with myself. So I took this job.”

After three years of performing the job carelessly, he got poisoned. He went to the doctor searching for answers, for treatment, anything—but instead, he learned that there were no such treatments. 

“At that point, I was like, ‘Okay, my health is my responsibility. My doctor is not gonna be of any help to me. I better figure it out myself.’ I knew that the body is made from food, water, and air, and I was really focused on food,” he says.

Udo dove into research leveraging his background in biochemistry, genetics, and biology and looked at nutrition, health, and disease to see if he could piece a plan together to get better.

The essential role of fats and oils in our health

“The body is a construction site, and it's always turning over. You know, your skin comes off in the shower. The lining of your digestive tract is always shedding, and has to be replaced. 98% of the atoms in your body are removed and replaced every year,” he says.

If we look at the water in our body, our body being maybe 70% water—if we drink like we're supposed to—we drink more than our body weight in water every month. Meaning, every year, we drink about 15 times our body weight just in water. It’s always turning over.

“Your body is a constantly moving construction site, and because of that, healing is possible,” Udo says.

There are 42 essential nutrients: 18 minerals, 13 vitamins, nine essential amino acids that come from protein, and two essential fatty acids that come from oils. 

“I was looking at all that thinking, ‘How do I put a program together that has a high standard?’ I got stuck on oils because one day, I read a research article about omega 6, which is one of the essential fatty acids. An essential fatty acid, or essential nutrient, means you have to have it to live and be healthy,” Udo says. 

Udo came to three conclusions:

• We can't make omega 6 from anything else in our body and, therefore, we have to bring it in from outside 
• If we don't do that, our health will deteriorate, we will get deficiency symptoms, and our body is going to degenerate, leading to death
• If our health is deteriorating because we don't get enough of an essential nutrient, but we bring enough of it back into our body, then all of the symptoms from not getting enough are reversed 

“Life knows how to build you a good body provided you make sure that all the building blocks it needs to do it land in your body,” Udo says. “And if you want optimum health, then you wanna bring them in optimum quantities. If you're happy with minimum health, then you only bring in minimums. That's the definition of an essential nutrient.”

With this knowledge in mind, Udo set out to help himself and others obtain essential nutrients, dedicating himself to the task so much that he went broke for fifteen years, focusing on research and development.

The importance of balanced ratios (including how Udo’s Oil® was born)

After learning about the contradictions in oil manufacturing—damaged oil molecules leading to devastating long-term effects such as cancer—he buckled down to learn why that was the norm and if there was a better way. 

“I developed a method for making oils with health in mind. Oils are damaged by light, oxygen, and heat. They're our most sensitive essential nutrients—they need the most protection, and we give them the least protection,” Udo says. “And so we're doing something to ourselves because not only do we get the damaged oil, but there's pesticides in it, and there's plastic in it. Those don't belong in the body.”

Making health-first oils requires a few key ingredients: 

• Organically grown seeds—no pesticides
• Glass packaging—never plastic
• A method of pressing, filtering, settling, and filling that excludes light, oxygen, and extreme temperatures—clear of tampering from the elements

“That's what I built. That's what I put together conceptually. And then we had engineers make parts for the presses so that we could make oil like that,” Udo says. “In 1986, we started making flax oil, flaxseed oil, the richest source of omega 3s.” 

However, the journey wasn’t over there. It was only the beginning.

“A couple years later, I became omega 6 deficient on flax oil because the ratio between the two is important—you get too much of one, it crowds out the other.”

Because they use the same mechanisms in the body, the same enzymes, in order to be turned into many other molecules with health benefits, we have to get the balance right, or one of them can't do its job. 

“I fixed it [the omega 6 deficiency] by eating sunflower seeds, which have omega 6 but no omega 3,” Udo says. “When the balance came back, all of the problems went away.”

Udo realized if he wanted to help people be healthy, he’d need to make a blend where the ratio is proper. That idea would eventually become Udo Oil, a 9 ingredient oil that holds the ideal ratio of omega 3s and 6s.

That said, Udo only attributes maintaining the proper levels of essential oils for half of his retained vitality and energy. He's currently 81, but you'd almost never guess it.

“There's a lot of things that come from omega 3 that's missing from most people's diets. But the inspiration I felt—being able to help a lot of people—that gives you a lot of energy, too. You can't be inspired and depressed at the same time,” he says.

Udo cites inspiration as the source of his enthusiasm and health, a solar energy that runs deep, and through everything around us. Helping others—having a purpose—is a key fuel for staying sharp and alive.

What can you get inspired about? Where is your hope? Where can you make a difference?  

Be sure to check out Udo’s full episode for further insight into Udo Oil® and learn more at UdoErasmus.com!