When it comes to health, there are a lot of buzzwords like integrative and holistic health thrown around, especially on the internet. With blogs, social media, and sites like YouTube and TikTok, almost anyone can proclaim themselves as experts on “health.” But what is real health? What does caring for your entire body look like from a holistic perspective?
In the Checkable Podcast episode 9: What you can do to optimize your health today, we talked to Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy about optimizing your health with integrative medicine. Dr. Connealy is the founder of the New Medicine Center in Irvine, California, the author of two books, and also an integrative medicine doctor. Dr. Connealy says, “First of all, I’m a conventional medicine doctor. So that means I went to medical school and learned anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmaceuticals, and how to implement those pharmaceuticals.”
In this episode, learn how you can be proactive with your health and how to optimize wellness in your daily life.
Key Takeaways:
- Learn the benefits of blood tests
- The approach of treating a whole person rather than a disease
- What can you do to optimize your health
- Advances in modern medicine
- Understand a holistic approach to health
Check out our podcast selection for valuable info on health, wellness, and more, and continue the conversation in the Hero Moms Social Group on Facebook!
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About Checkable
Checkable is revolutionizing healthcare with fast and accurate at-home test kits, telehealth services, and a line of wellness supplements designed to keep you feeling your best while saving valuable time and money. At the forefront of home healthcare, Checkable is developing the first FDA-approved at-home strep test. Paired with a proprietary digital telemedicine platform to instantly connect consumers with healthcare professionals, you can skip the doctor's office and start treatment fast, right from the comforts of your home. http://www.testforstrep.com
Full Transcript:
0:00:00.4 S1: Hello. Today, my guest is Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, who founded the Center for New Medicine in Irvine, California, where Dr. Connealy serves as the Medical Director. The center focuses on a precise, personalized approach to healthcare that includes prevention, early detection of cancer, and internal medicine. Dr. Connealy feels that we must treat the whole person instead of just treating symptoms; they use advanced therapies to determine the root cause and restore total health. Her motto is “empower your body to heal.” It was an absolutely fascinating conversation that I had with Dr. Connealy and how she treats a patient, what her services are that she offers, an annual physical that she provides versus the regular annual physical, and really what are some things that we should look for in a physician and in treatments. I found Dr. Connealy on Instagram. And really, I suggest following her, she has so many great tips on how to live, how to eat, how to restore your health, things that you should be asking your doctor, and this episode is 45 minutes of truly wonderful information that you can get to be using right now, so without further ado, let's get into it with functional medicine, physician, Dr. Connealy.
0:01:44.3 S1: Hey, this is the Wellness Essentials podcast. WE for short, the WE Podcast is all things health and wellness, a place where women like you can come to be their authentic self and be a part of a community that supports them in their health during and every stage of life. This is the podcast for engaging Health and Wellness entertainment with actionable steps you can take into your everyday life. No topic is off-limits when it comes to health and women's lifestyle. Let's face it, being a woman comes with all sorts of fun. Hear real raw conversations and teachings from experts and everyday women who have been in your shoes, and get inspired to make things happen and have the tools to do so. This is the WE Podcast. Today, I am so excited to have my guest, Dr. Connealy. Dr. Connealy is the medical director of the center, Cancer Center for Healing and the Center for New Medicine in Irvine, California. Thank you so much for joining me.
0:03:07.1 S2: Thank you for having me, Patty.
0:03:09.1 S1: Absolutely, now, you are an integrative practitioner and you specialize in integrative medicine, for those of us that don't know what your integrative medicine is, let's start with the basics and talk about how you practice medicine and how it's different.
0:03:27.0 S2: Alright, so first of all, I'm a conventional medical doctor. So that means I went to medical school and learned anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmaceuticals and how to implement those pharmaceuticals. And so I learned early on that when we take care of a patient, that a drug is not gonna be the only answer to taking care of a patient. And so when I first started my practice 35 years ago, I decided to hire a dietitian because I did not learn nutritional teaching in medical school. And so I decided that I would hire a dietitian and I hired a dietitian who was a surviving anorexic because they would really, really know what it's like to have a bad connection with food and really empathize and be compassionate with the patient and then really, really know the science of food, 'cause she was an RD or Registered Dietician, so I started my practice out like that. And then when you have patients come in, you can't just look at the label of the disease, you have to look at the fundamentals of every disease, the why, where, when, and how... When did it start? And what is the progression? And how do they even come about in each person. So there are lots of reading researching, 'cause back then, 35 years ago, they didn't have all these planned conferences and planned...
0:04:57.5 S2: All kinds of things. They had books, I think they had books. But nothing like we have today. We have an unbelievable amount of information. But a conventional medical doctor will order a blood test, they will do a complete physical exam, they may order scans like ultrasound, CT scans, EKG, breathing test, so a conventional doctor does that and I will do all that, but then I will... And my blood test, the blood test I order, it's very complete, I'm checking many different things, so for example, when I order my blood test, besides ordering cholesterol, your CBC and a chemistry, I will wanna check your inflammation level, I would wanna check vitamin D levels, I will check hemoglobin A1c, which is a reflection of your sugar over 90 days, I wanna check your adrenals, your adrenals are your stress, immune and longevity glands, so just because you're 25 years old, that doesn't mean you're gonna have perfect hormones. So I will do a really good hormonal panel, whether you're 21 or 81, I check your hormones since hormone are the natural drugs to your body, then I always check all of the nutritional ingredients that are supposed to be in your body, so I do a blood test called a Neutra-Val, and that checks of vitamins, minerals, gut, Omegas, heavy metals, everything.
0:06:22.2 S2: So it's like 16 pages of the biochemistry of your body, and if you don't have that working, and all doctors took bio-chemistry and medical school, so they all know it takes B6 to do this and B12 to do this, and vitamin A to do this, and lipoic acid to do this, and glutathione to do this. So we all know this because is how your body scientifically, functionally works, so if you don't have, for example, let's just take Glutathione, which is your master anti-oxidant that we all make, but we might not make it... Well, for some whatever reason. And so glutathione, if you have a glutathione deficience, then you're not neutralizing toxicity, so that means all the toxins in your body, whether like let's say you drink alcohol, you breathe pollution, glutathione destroys all those toxins. So maybe you have lipoic acid deficiency, lipoic acid also is an antioxidant, neutralizing toxicity, protecting the cell. So you have to check these testing, it doesn't matter how old you are because everyone needs these at every age and every level. Vitamin D... Every patient should have vitamin D levels. What I see in my practice somewhere between 95 and 99% of the patient have inadequate Vitamin D levels.
0:07:44.1 S2: Really? Yeah, I live in California, so there's plenty of sunshine, but most people have low Vitamin D levels, so I will do that first, then I always do an assessment of their lifestyle, how do they sleep, how much water do they drink, what is the nutrient density of their food, so I go over what they eat in a day, I will go over their movement, do they exercise, 'cause most people today sit at a computer...so sitting is the new smoking. So most people do not do enough activity, movement, exercise, exercise is kind of like a bad word, so movement is a good word. And then I talk to them about stress. And so if they have stress, then I know that I'm going to have to deal with that aspect also. So we look at the panoramic view of a patient as opposed to minimalist and look at the minimal things, and if patients come in, your job is to make them better than when they came in. And I will tell you in our society today, 60% of the population is chronically ill and taking one or more medicines. US ranks 43rd in the world in healthcare, and we spend twice as much.
0:09:04.5 S2: So the new doctor of today, it's gonna combine the best of conventional medicine, which is amazing, there are thousands of blood tests we can do... There's wonderful imaging we can do, we can do whole body MRIs that have no toxicity, we can do ultras. In conventional medicine, this workup is incredible, giving us lots of vital information. And then we have all kinds of accessory blood tests, let's say we wanna check a patient for mold, maybe we want to check a patient for yeast, maybe we wanna check a patient for toxicity, environmental toxins are Glyphosate toxin or organic acid testing to look for toxic... So we have all these elaborate testing now for the biochemistry or the infectious etiology of a patient, so a typical doctor doesn't do these tests or a typical conventional doctor now, a doctor who goes back to school, like what we did in 1985, is not what we do in 2022, and every day, I am learning new things we can figure out all the time, so all of us doctors need to get up to the 2022, I always kind of give the analogy of the cell phone. 30 years ago, the cell phone is this big huge box, but now it's this little thing that can do thousands of functions...
0:10:28.6 S2: Well, that's what the new doctor of integrative medicine can do, she or he can now really, really, really look at the human body in this whole macroscopic, microscopic way to really understand what's going on with the patient. And I always tell people, You can't manage something you don't measure. So the top three diseases, number one is heart disease, so that's the number one cause of death, the number two cause of death is cancer, and the third is the conventional medical paradigm. So we should make sure that patients are not in danger of heart disease, and we need to make sure the patients don't have cancer, because cancer is now one in two men and 41% of femaless. So these are work-ups now that we can do today, that are available now today, and we need to be preventive, precise, personalized and proactive with our approach with every patient to really get them in human optimization, so they really only need you once a year without medications.
0:11:35.9 S1: It's fascinating. All that can be tested. So I'm holding your two books that I can't even believe the amount of research that you have compiled and put into these books, and it is so approachable that even just to look something... Oh, okay. It's almost like an encyclopedia that you should just have on your kitchen counter... Right. And look it up. Oh, then I should be doing this. Why am I feeling this? Okay. It's educating ourselves. So if I don't have access to you, and this interview is to allow people to learn other ways to be treated, other ways to, like you said, prevent cancer, prevent these slow deaths. We can prevent it, it is in our hands. And the tools are educating ourselves, so who should we look for?
0:12:36.1 S2: Well, that's a great question because I think that's what patients really, really are seeking for, they don't really know. So if you have a conventional doctor, he or she is gonna tell you, hopefully there's nothing serious, and I say hopefully... Because for example, I'll give you an example, I had a 25-year-old came in to me, this was in December, and she had had a teeny, teeny, tiny melanoma on her forehead, and so the doctor said, Oh, we removed it, we got all. You don't need to worry about that. So she took it upon herself to start educating herself. Who is gonna be more interested in taking care of herself? Her or the doctor? Well of course it’s you, it’s always you. No one's gonna have more interest in you than you yourself. So she started reading extensively because melanoma is kinda scary, melanoma is probably the worst skin cancer you can have, and it's dangerous and it's very... Can be very rapidly growing. Right. So she came to see me, and so I did her blood work, I did all of her blood work, I first of all, did a very complete history, so I kinda geared my blood work more to what she was telling me, 'cause I happened to add a Candida panel to her blood work, 'cause I asked her, So how many times in your life have you taken antibiotics? And she goes, Oh, like so many.
0:14:10.0 S2: Too many to count, so I'm like, Oh, well, what happens when you take antibiotics? Lots of Candida grow. What is Candida? Candida is a fungus. So just like women, if they take antibiotics, they’ll sometimes get a yeast infection or sometimes guys, they will get jock itch, that's a yeast infection, but you can have a yeast infection all over your body. So then I drew her inflammation level, which is... C-reactive protein, I check her vitamin D, I checked her adrenals, and so then I saw on one of her scans, her liver looked suspicious for fatty liver, so I ordered an ultrasound 'cause ultrasound’s the better way to look at your liver, so sure enough, she has fatty liver. And I said, Oh, well you had melanoma, but supposedly it was something called Melanoma in situ. In situ means it's just on the top, it's not systemic, so I said, We better look for circulating tumor cells, which is considered a liquid biopsy also, if you didn't have cancer, you could do it as a testing to see if maybe cancer maybe is occurring in your body, and so I said, We better do those, let's just make sure it hasn't gone inside your bloodstream, so we did all this blood tests and I saw for a second visit with her boyfriend and I discussed all of her results. Her results where high c-reactive protein, she had low vitamin D levels, she had fatty liver and she had circulating tumor cells already.
0:15:45.6 S2: Wow. And she's 25 years old. So you think 25, you should have nothing, right? At 25, I used to say you had a warranty until you’re 40, but I can't say that now, because young people today have what, 65-year-old people have. I always tell people, the babies and the young people are the canaries in the mine, they're telling us that something's not right by how they are manifesting themselves. And this is a very, I would say a very responsible young lady, but you know, things happened in her life, and so... I always tell people, It's not your fault, but it is your problem, right? And so now that we know this, but if she went to a regular doctor, none of that probably would have been discovered... Right, right. And so anyway, she now knows what we have and what we're gonna do, and I gave her a program and I told her this is gonna take a year for you to get optimal. Okay. Oh, wow, okay. So it takes about a year because you can't get a new liver for about four months, the circulating tumor cells are gonna probably take me a year or maybe a year and a half to get rid of, and then I can correct the Vitamin D levels.
0:17:10.8 S2: I can correct all these other things, but the candida is gonna take probably about three months, and so all these things... And we can't do everything. We can't build Rome in a day. So I always tell people, don't get panicked, don't get stressed out, you didn't get here, like this one day, you're not gonna get out one day. You have to decide if health is gonna be your number one value, if you don't have your health... I will tell you right now, there is nothing. There is no you. There's no family. There is no job. There is no life.
0:17:51.3 S1: Quality of life is everything.
0:17:54.1 S2: Yes, yeah. And who doesn't wanna be optimal and feeling their best...
0:18:00.9 S1: Oh my gosh, that's what we... That's why there's this industry, that there is where of wellness and everyone is coming out of the woodwork, but it is hard to trust and hard to decipher, and we are a quick fix now like, Oh, I made this change, I wanna see something overnight.
0:18:18.4 S2: Right. Well, I tell people, I'm not a quick fixer, I'm not a one-night wonder, if it's too good to be true, it is. And what I have learned in 64 years, if there is nothing easy, everything takes focus, clarity and execution of every intention you have.
0:18:40.5 S1: So with that said, where does someone start, if they know that they're unhealthy?
0:18:47.9 S2: Most people don't know. Yeah, that's true. Most people are feeling fine one day, they get a pain, they have rectal bleeding, they have a cough, they have something and it prompts them to go the doctor. So what we need to do is say, You know what, I need to partner with a doctor who can optimize me, so anybody looking for a physician should look for a conventional medical doctor who has training and has studied the integrated functional approach. Alright, okay, and just doesn't say, Oh, here's a statin for your cholesterol, here is a pill for your high sugar, and we now have lots of diseases, there's no pill for. So for example, autism, there's no medication. For fatty liver, there's no medication. For dementia, there's no medication. For mold, there's no medication. For Candida, there's medication and natural things that can work, and you kinda have to usually do both, but you must change your eating or you're just gonna grow more Candida, 'cause Candida grows in sugar; sugary, toxic environment. So if you don't change the terrain or the garden or the environment of your body, you can't change what is growing in there... Right, right.
0:20:06.6 S2: And so mosquitos only grow when the environment is right, so we have to change the unwell environment that the condition came in, whether it's high blood pressure, high sugar, cancer, heart disease, and it's not just one level of healing, we gotta go all the levels of healing and we have to know how the patient is living, so we can get the patient's life in order, and there's a natural laws in order of the human body that we all know, we might not wanna do them. Okay, we all know that sugar is not good for us, like we all know that, but we do it anyway, we eat it or drink it anyway, so we have to decide what's important, is it... What's important is our desire to be healthy, more important than that immediate gratification of sugar or cupcakes, or cookies or whatever it is, or French fries or whatever it is. And so you have to make that decision, you know, because I always tell people, I can't make the person... You can't make it. We all have to decide what is best for us. But I'm just gonna tell you right now, I always use the analogy.
0:21:21.3 S2: Okay, I always tell the patient, so you drive and you drove here and I go, Did you run stop signs? Well no, and I go, So why didn't you run stop signs. Well, we all know the answer. Well, you might kill somebody, might kill yourself, you're gonna get a ticket, lots of consequences, right? Lots of consequences for breaking all the rules all the time. You can break the rules some of the time, but you can break the rules all the time, so you might get away with running the stop, say once in a while, right. But you can't do that every day, that's why they have laws and rules for people driving on the highway, so there's not a crash every other second, and so you don't want crashes in your body, you don't want earthquakes in your body, which is a heart attack or cancer, because you don't wanna live like that. That is a day-in, day-out, dedication to yourself that you love yourself, and you say, Do you know what? I deserve to be healthy.
0:22:21.4 S1: Yes, yes. And that's something you have to repeat to yourself, because emotionally when we get broken down and weak... Right. Then we give ourselves permission. Yes, and then you continually give yourself permission, I think you end up not even realizing you're doing it.
0:22:41.8 S2: Right. Oh, that's right, because your subconscious, we live in our subconscious, and we have these recordings in our brain that we're constantly dealing with, and when you drive, you're not going, Oh, let me see, let me turn on the car, then I do this now, you do it all automatically, yeah, so that's... Our brain works like that every day, where we have these subconscious recordings going on and we're not conscious and conscientious of how we're living, and we all need to be more conscious, awakened, enlightened beings, because life is way better when we live like that. Yes.
0:23:21.1 S1: It feels so good to be healthy and... Just feeling alive. Right, exactly. What do you think about our society is so accepting of alcohol, and it just seems like everything is around alcohol, but to me it seems so unhealthy putting toxins in your body constantly. What is your take on alcohol and using alcohol?
0:23:51.2 S2: Right, well, alcohol, unfortunately, it's fully available, and unfortunately, people use alcohol as a medication and people will drink every day because that's what their medicine is, just like people who overeat French fries or cupcakes or whatever is their indulgence, because that's like therapy in their relationship with food, that's what makes them happy. And so, but alcohol, number one is a toxin, and if you knew the dangers of alcohol, it's not good for your gastrointestinal system, you don't absorb that well, it's hard on your liver because you're already detoxing all kinds of your liver and drinking seven days a week, can't possibly be healthy for you. If you wanna indulge in a glass of wine, a glass of champagne, you know, I can see that because people also wanna use that as a celebration... Maybe for a birthday or something. That's okay. But it's one glass. Right, okay. And women need to be very careful about this because women today are using alcohol as medication, right. And they're drinking wine daily because of stress and family, marital issues, whatever issues, and maybe they have a job that lots of entertainment, and that is just their way of living, but it's not healthy for you to do that, it's just not.
0:25:36.9 S2: And yeah, you can get away with things when you're young, but it all catches up with you, and it is, like I said it, alcohol is a toxin. There's no two ways about it. Okay, that's why when you drink a glass of wine or a glass of champagne, it's only 10%, maybe 8%, whatever it is, alcohol. And you have to learn like, that's enough. I personally, if I drink, that's all I will drink is a glass of champagne or...I don't like most wines. All wines now have lots of toxins in them now, and so you don't usually do well. European wines tend to have less toxicity than American wines, don't use it as medicine and it is used as a medication, and then what happens is, you wake up, you don't feel good, usually it's disturbing your sleep, your liver is affected because your liver’s gotta detoxify the acetaldehyde. The acetaldehyde is the by-product of alcohol metabolism. And so it's just that we have to change our relationship with everything. We need to go over is how do we live every day? How do you live every day, it's very important that every physician asks the patient...
0:27:00.3 S2: Tell me about your daily life. And like today, I had a patient come in, I saw him three months ago, he has a problem with sugar and alcohol. On his blood tests, his sugar was high, inflammation high, cholesterol high, etcetera, not exercising, so he had made improvements, he's exercising at least three days a week, he cut down 50%, of his sugar and carbohydrate intake, so I went over what he chose for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and then he cut down all alcohol, except for a weekend. He would have one drink, either Friday or Saturday. So I said, That is amazing. Because once you do that, you're like, Okay, if I can do that, then I can go to the next step. Yeah, so that's what I discussed with him today. It's like, Okay, I said, was that difficult? Was that hard? And then he likes now how he feels, and then he sees the measurements on his blood test. So he's like, Okay, that wasn't that bad. I always tell people when the student is ready, the teacher will arrive, you know, I don't make anybody do anything, I am just educating and teaching people how to live the best life possible.
0:28:20.3 S2: Okay, that's my job. Alright, and it's their job to execute what I'm telling them to do. Alright, I can't make people do anything, and I tell people though, something, a wall will come up for you that you will have to deal with yourself. Yeah, but why wouldn't we just all try to achieve optimal health and well-being, because think about how great the world would be if we all tried to do that every day.
0:28:51.9 S1: Yes, and when we stop rationalizing the behavior and get real, then you actually will address what needs to be addressing, even if it's listening to this podcast, listening to you and thinking, You know what, I haven't had... I haven't had a good check-up in 10 years.
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0:30:07.6 S2: Right. Well, I know what you're saying because I see patients who come to see me and they have worked with a practitioner who's not a medical doctor. And I truly respect good health coaches, good dietitians, good, all those people, but we also need to partner with a doctor and verify that that patient doesn't have anything serious. For example, my last patient tonight, she was a nutritionist and then became an integrated practitioner, so five years ago, she found a lump on her breast, and she had read exhaustively on PubMed that if she got a biopsy that she could potentially spread the cancer. So she said, I don't wanna do that. So she was following herself and then she found us, and so she knew that she had limited knowledge and limited scope of understanding. And so we decided to say, Okay, let's see. Is this cancer or not? So sure enough, we ordered all the testing and we are working, collaborating together, luckily, she's a very smart woman, and we are doing it together, but I appreciate that the partnership, because I don't want her to get endangered not doing something about this lump, 'cause I've seen patients do this, and then it has gotten out of control, and it's way serious than what the person was treating the patient for, not treating because health coaches don't treat, they advise, but we need to verify with conventional medical imaging, conventional medical testing, to make sure that that patient does not have something serious.
0:32:15.7 S2: Right, so that's the difference. Every health coach, every... I would say all those people should be partnering with a functional medical doctor to make sure there's nothing serious, and I say that today especially because today we are seeing very, very significant cases, patients don't just have little things, they don't have a cold, they don't even see you for a cold, they're seeing you for very big things, very big cases, and so don't ever think something is small, we need to verify it's not a big problem. I had a dermatological surgeon who is conventional, and she did her blood test and she had high inflammation, but not real high, but slightly elevated C-reactive protein. So she says, Okay, let me go to the cardiologist. She goes to the cardiologist and he says, No, I don't think it's a big deal, let's repeat it in three months, then she goes to her gynecologist, she's in Florida, she goes to her gynecologist, and the gynecologist says, You know, you look fine. Your pap is good. Go get a mammogram. So she goes to get a mammogram, she's 50 years old, she goes to get a mammogram and there's a cyst on her breast, and he goes, It's not a big deal, and she talked to the radiologist and says, You know, I'm gonna get one of those whole body MRI and I want, I just feel better.
0:34:01.2 S2: He goes, No, you don't need to do that. Because that's just overkill. And she goes, No, I just wanna do it. Well, what does she have? Stage four breast cancer.
0:34:10.8 S1: Oh my gosh.
0:34:12.5 S2: What? Right. And so now she's seeing me because she found my book, she found integrated functional doctors in Florida, but they don't do the cancer like we do, and so she's been doing consults and now she's gonna fly out here to get the rest of the testing done on that is an extreme case, but I had a 40-year-old school principal came in this week with stage four appendiceal cancer, were they diagnosed? And they came to see you, if they were diagnosed, had the surgery, they took the appendix out and they thought it was going to be a small case, but it was all in the omentum, which is the blanket of the abdomen, so they removed the entire omentum and then he has to do chemotherapy... Oh my gosh, I have a stage four colon cancer that he was stage four from the beginning, 'cause colon cancer in younger people seems to be increasing, and so we used to see cancer, we thought in 60 plus year olds. But now we're seeing a younger... My cancer patients are anywhere from 22 to
0:35:37.6 S1: 80s...
0:35:38.6 S2: Oh my goodness. Really? Yes, and I would say I'm seeing today a lot more younger patients... No, I used to say that we had a warranty until we’re 40, and then from 40 to 60, you're on the semi-warranty, and then 60 up, it's just pure repair, upkeep and maintenance. But today, I can't say that anymore, because you're seeing things that you didn't see in young people today, and so I tell people like, we have to be much more proactive about our health because the world around us is not that kind. Lots of environmental pollution, lots of electromagnetic field pollution, the food is somewhat good, somewhat not good, but you gotta buy organic food, pasture raised, be organic chickens, cage free, all these... You can't buy dead food, you gotta buy food that has some vital nutrients and then people are inactive, they don't move their 800 muscles, and movement is important for your immune system, for your brain, for your oxygenation, for your lymph gland, for not just like burning calories off what the machine says, it's all these other things that are done, and then our water supply, you have to have a water purifier because our water supply is all toxic, and so you have to have a good purified water, and then people are not sleeping great.
0:37:25.5 S2: And then people are extremely stressed today, and so our life is out of balance on so many levels, and now we live in 2022, you've got to say, Okay, how do we live in 2022 with the existing world around us? And I talk about this in both of my books, right, and the Be Perfectly Healthy book, I started writing those like 20 years ago. Really? Yeah, this is nothing new.
0:37:56.9 S1: You're not jumping on a trend here. That's very important to know.
0:38:02.0 S2: I started out real conventional medicine, and then patients started asking, Oh, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? And I'm like, Wow, I don't even know about those. I'm gonna go check this out. Yeah, and then that led to a googolplex of pathways where I am today, and now I see the magic and the how much you can help patients... Just teaching them how to live. None of us were taught that as a child, if you were taught this as a child, that's what you would know...
0:38:34.6 S1: Right, right. Yep, it would just come second nature. Yeah.
0:38:38.0 S2: It would be just normal. Right, but if we're not taught how to live in the very, very beginning, we would not be even having this discussion. Right. I really believe that we should be starting and preparing a woman six months before she even has a child, so because autism is like one in 43 or 47, something like that, so the mom is downloading toxicity to that new miracle that they're going to have. Both of the people that are gonna have this baby should be preparing, because if you look at the children diseases today, there are too many diseases... Like I said, children aren't supposed to have diseases. So we need to change the course of how we talk about health and how we really create and build health in our family and in our community. It's a conversation. It's a conversation, right? Yeah, and it's not like, Oh.
0:39:42.4 S1: They're like, the healthy people.
0:39:45.2 S2: Well, no, we all should be... We all should be healthy. That's right, we should all be healthy because we have the breakdown of systems when we don't have healthy people. When you see these patients in here suffer so tremendously, it's devastating when most things can be prevented, emergencies, accidents... The US Healthcare is unbelievable, but we can't use the emergency room as an urgent care or as primary care, we need to use our functional integrative medical doctor along with whether it's their nutritionist or whatever the person that they work with to help maximize and optimize each individual. It really isn't that difficult. You can turn your help around, but I always say, you can't manage something you don't measure.
0:40:46.3 S1: Yeah, that is true. How else are you gonna have that data point to know to reverse it, and that's in your book, so The Cancer Revolution: A Groundbreaking Program to Reverse and Prevent Cancer, even when reading them, we can do that? You can reverse and prevent cancer? Yes. So who did you write this book for?
0:41:08.2 S2: Well, I wrote the book on... One of my passions is early detection and prevention of cancer, but prevention doesn't sell... It just doesn't sell, people aren't interested until they have migraine headaches, they have Crohn's disease, they have a broken leg, they're just not interested, but then the people that have cancer, you wanna teach those patients who have cancer how never to get cancer again. Right, and so if you don't, again, evaluate the person's landscape to understand why they grew cancer to begin with, and you do the surgery and you do the chemo or the radiation, you haven't changed the landscape or terrain or the garden of how the cancer cell came to begin with. So it's just gonna come back, whether it comes back in six months, a year or two years or whatever, and then there's something called circulating tumor cells. Circulating tumor cells do not respond to surgery, chemo and radiation, and that's what's responsible for 95% of metastasis... The cancer traveling to a new home, nest or residence, so you can think your lump or bump is gone and you've done your surgery, chemo and radiation, but if you haven’t checked your circulating tumor cells, which actually start usually before the lump appears, 'cause that starts when something is about 1 to 2 millimeters, that's what we call the liquid biopsy, but it's critically and important for you to check that to make sure that you prevent the cancer coming back or going to a new home, nest or residence.
0:42:54.1 S1: And that's what patient... Age 25 had when she had that little melanoma. That teeny tiny couple of millimeters.
0:43:03.8 S2: Yes, and it was supposedly superficial according to the pathology. And so she had already had already be circulating. Now usually basal cell and squamous cell doesn't have circulating tumor cells. Okay, because those are not aggressive cancers, usually those are curable with removal of the cancer, but melanoma is a very aggressive cancer, and the younger you are, the more cancers tend to be aggressive because your DNA is replicating so fast that the margin of error is big. She understood this and now she knows... She's changed her entire lifestyle. It's amazing. Yeah, it is amazing. Yeah, so I told her, This is going to teach you how to live the rest of your life...
0:44:00.4 S1: Yes, yeah. I love how much you care about your patients...
0:44:05.6 S2: Well, I want people to do the same for me. Okay, we need to go beyond the call of duty with every person and teach them, educate them, and help them navigate their life, because everybody has divine seeds, and we can share our divine seeds with whatever expertise they... Each of us have, and I've been a patient before, so when you've been a patient, you know how you wanna be treated, and I don't want someone to superficially... I always use the analogy of the iceberg, it's very clear what's on top of the iceberg, it's not clear what's below the iceberg. It's our job as physicians, is to look beyond what is obvious. Yes.
0:44:59.2 S1: Oh man. That just sounds so good. I wish every physician that you went to see had the opportunity to do, and unfortunately, I think they are very limited in the amount of time that they can spend. Well, time...
0:45:14.1 S2: And it's also education. There's 1.2 million articles written on PubMed per year. Wow. Yeah, they can't read everything. One person, even if you had a team, so you have to constantly be researching, educating yourself how to make tomorrow better. How exciting is that?
0:45:35.3 S1: I agree, it is exciting, and from the patient perspective, I think it's exciting as well, because you can truly make a difference in your outcome of life, and we don't have to say, Oh, well, my mom and dad were diagnosed with this, and therefore I'm going to get it.
0:45:54.0 S2: Right? Genetics is not destiny, you're either turning on your genes because of your lifestyle, eating, sleeping, water, etcetera, and then your nutrition, and then we have epigenetics. Epigenetics means on top of your genetics, so whatever your 24-hour, seven days a week influenced by whether it's toxicity, stress, nutritional deficiency, hormonal imbalances, they all influence the genetics... So if you are practicing good lifestyle, you're making... You're turning on the right genes in your body, not the wrong genes.
0:46:33.0 S1: Stoking the fire the right way. Correct, right, fire. I like that very, very much. Well, it was an absolute pleasure talking with you tonight, and I found you by way of Instagram, and I'm going to tell everyone, audience, how do we find you on Instagram? What is your handle?
0:46:55.9 S2: Right, ConnealyMD. So it is great, people, I wanna encourage and being an inspiring message all the time, and tell people little nuggets, we can't read an encyclopedia every day, so if I spoon-feed people and just constantly encourage patients... That's just the best way. I get a lot of people who love... They love the Instagram. So
0:47:22.3 S1: Do you have more followers on Instagram or... Tiktok now? Tiktok. On tiktok. Okay.
0:47:27.7 S2: Yeah, and so, yeah, it's kind of funny 'cause I like Instagram bette rthan tiktok. I have to, I feel like I need to perform and I'm not quite a performer, so...
0:47:40.3 S1: You're definitely a natural. You know your stuff, I love you. Behind the camera, I take in your information too, and I'm always wondering What's she eating today? It's good. I think it's great. I liked it last weekend when you made your breakfast sandwich and... Yeah, but it's fresh ingredients and it's very approachable. Yes.
0:48:02.0 S2: It's easy to do. It's very easy to do. Everything doesn't have to be complicated.
0:48:08.4 S1: Yes, yeah. While you inspired me, I live in a new area, and so to find medical practitioners that will treat me the way that I want to be treated, I have to seek that out, it's not gonna fall into my lap, and so I encourage others to do the same and I will continue following you too, thank you so much for your time, and it's very nice to meet you.
0:48:36.0 S2: Oh, thank you. It's my pleasure and privilege to be with you today.
0:48:40.9 S1: Take care, Dr. Connealy, we hope you enjoyed this episode of The WE Podcast as much as us. If you want more wellness goodies, head over to the WellnessEssentialsPodcast.com or show notes, links and resources mentioned in today's podcast. Remember to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to get all the wellness details as soon as they are released. Cheers to living your healthiest and happiest life.
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