Conventional & Integrative Cancer Care – What You Need To Know

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

It is great to be here and share all of this great information we are going to be talking about.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Can you just back up and share with us how you got into this space because you are a conventionally trained physician?

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Yes. Everyone has their own story. I was born in the 50s, and my mother was pregnant with me. I am the third of six children. She started bleeding. So she went to her doctor, and her doctor said, We have this medication that will stop the bleeding and prevent the loss of the baby. That drug was called DES, or diethylstilbestrol, and that drug was used to prevent bleeding and miscarriage. 

Anyway, fast forward 14 and 15 years, and my parents received a letter. You were given that medication. There was an increase in cancer in both male and female offspring, hormonal problems, anatomical problems, and fertility problems. I started going to an MD Anderson, which is probably one of the largest cancer medical centers in the world and started getting exams. It is a teaching institution. Do you have a dozen people in exam rooms getting biopsies, exams, etc.? Fast forward, and I went to say, I have got to be a doctor. I went to college, got my degree in biology, then went to medical school, and then went to the U.T. School of Public Health to do my thesis on DES. That was a drug given for 40 years, knowing that it was cancer-causing carcinogenic. Fortunately, when I started my medical practice, I met a Pathologist who was also an Internist, and he taught me, Oh, you need to look at things very differently. So I started, I grew up naturally, fortunately, my mother was very adamant about us only eating foods at home and she cooked foods, etc. 

All the things that are popular today, like liver and sauerkraut, and all the good food that people have been eating for a hundred years—that is how I grew up. I grew up naturally oriented. Then, fortunately, I had all these people who came into my life to talk about cancer prevention. because I met people who had survived cancer. In my home mission, how do I not get cancer? I was fortunate to have these people in my interest. Plus, I have been a patient, and when you have been a patient, you completely change the way you think about taking care of yourself and taking care of patients. 

I did not have children naturally because I never had a period. I had a very traumatic incident when I delivered my twins, and I ended up having to have a pituitary transplant. Four years ago, I had 18 hours of back surgery because of scoliosis caused by DES. When you have these journeys, it opens your mind to so many things. The way medicine is done, here is a protocol for everything. Everybody does not fit into a protocol. So we have learned here how to be precise, preventive, and personalized with every single patient.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I want to get into that because I love what you said—that you get into being personalized with every single patient. what does that look like? Because we are living in this cookie-cutter environment. You have this; we do this. Everyone gets the same thing.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

There are some commonalities. But every individual is original. When a patient comes in, I will work with them very conventionally. What is meant by that is, what medicines are you taking? What is your family history? What allergies do you have? What surgeries have you had? All that stuff? 

But when we work up a patient, we go back to in-utero when a patient was in utero to where they are now, because your body keeps for everything and everything that happens to you matters. For example, if you have had a very long use of birth control pills, well, that is an important piece of information. If you had elevated prolactin, for example, that is a very important piece of information.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Just for those who do not know, what does it mean if you have been on birth control pills for a long time? Because there are so many people on birth control pills because that is the knee-jerk reaction by the OB-GYNs to put people on them to manage menstrual abnormalities, and they put them on and keep them on for years, decades.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Well, let us talk about how birth control pills work. First of all, what are they—birth control pills are synthetic estrogen and synthetic progesterone. Your body, each cell, has a membrane, which we call the magical membrane. There are over 30,000 receptor sites. Every hormone works on the cell membrane. When you have a synthetic hormone, it does not work as it is supposed to work through your natural endogenous production of hormones. That is the first thing. 

Second of all, you are turning off your hypothalamic-pituitary axis. What is that? That is, your hypothalamus sends a message to your pituitary to make your hormones. You completely stop your natural rhythmic production of hormones. That is how you prevent getting pregnant. However, stopping your natural endogenous production of hormones is not a good thing. Not to mention the synthetic hormones and how they work on cells. Unfortunately, today, as you mentioned, if a young girl and a teenager, not having periods. Well, a lot of 16-year-olds do not. I do not have regular menstrual cycles, and lots of patients might not have it until they are 18 or 20. The worst thing to do is interrupt their natural production of hormones. 

The other thing is acne. When women are diagnosed with acne, we rush to put them on birth control pills, but we are not treating the underlying causes of the acne. But we also need to tell the patient, what could be the side effects of taking birth control pills. We know the increased risk of breast cancer. We know the increased risk of yeast and candida, which are part of the cancer arena. We have decreased the production of nutrients. There are many things to which there is a downside. Now, I know a lot of OB-GYNs will not like that, but also, our job is to give our patients informed consent, meaning here is the good, bad, and ugly. 

I will tell you, if I have a 21-year-old come to me, I will tell her, This is going to work for you because you do not want to get pregnant. But also, here is the counterbalancing we should do to protect you. All of these hormones have to go through the liver. If you do not process, now everything goes to your liver. Our liver is overwhelmed with the amount of toxins. Then, a drug is another toxin, We have got to make sure that the liver is processing the estrogens properly. There is a great book, I do not know if you have read. It is called, The Pill Problem. It talks about all of these things. I know that sometimes, it is going to be important. But at the same time, we have got to tell our patients all the good and bad medical.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. I also think it is a significant part of our mental health crisis because estrogen does not just act on the ovaries; it does not just act on the uterus; it does not just act on the breast. We have estrogen receptors throughout our body. Our brain is a place that has a lot of estrogen receptors. I think a large part of our mental health crisis is tied to this whole estrogen-hormonal disruption.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Well, that is a good point, because you are saying that hormones are the natural drugs in our body. You said they control every single cell all over; it does not matter what organ. But another thing that happens is that you decrease your production of testosterone. Both males and females make testosterone because people think testosterone, is a male. No, it is a male and female hormone, and testosterone is reported to affect the sense of well-being, energy, mood, muscle mass, and all these things. and most women who take birth control pills have low testosterone.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, that is such an important point. Let us get back to, how you see everyone as an individual and how you treat them individually. You work them up the same way because the information that you want to know is fairly standard from one person to the next.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

But we also go into the details of how someone lives every day. As far as getting all their history, how do you sleep, and how much water do you drink? What do you eat? What is your exercise? What is your dental health? Do you have root canals, mercury fillings, or dental disease? A lot of women have receding gums. That is a chronic medical problem, and that causes other problems in the body. 

We also want to know what their life has been like in terms of trauma and stress. Because that is such an influential factor in the disease. Then we want to know what their family history is and what influences their parents have had on their lives. then what is genetic composition, even though genetics is only about 5% of cancers? But we know that if you have a family history of breast cancer, your risk is higher. But again, for me, I tell people that genetics is not destiny. It is how you live every day, and what exposure to toxicity you have. Of course, everyone’s exposed to toxins. But do you work in a job that may predispose you to greater exposure?

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Or the night shift? That is what significantly changes your risk for chronic disease. If you are working when you are supposed to be sleeping, that is going to affect your risk.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Exactly.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

You mentioned dental history, and I cannot resist because I do not think that the connection between what is happening in your mouth and what is happening in your breast is of any general knowledge at all. Can you talk about that a little bit, and why do you ask about dental history? What difference does it make? What is happening in someone’s mouth now?

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

I tell people that more and more, studies are coming out. The mouth is the gateway to disease—not only breast cancer but other cancers and heart disease. In your mouth, a long time ago, people used mercury fillings. Well, now they have the first mercury-free dental school because now we know that mercury is very toxic to the body. The other thing is root canals. Root canals, which people do not understand, are a chronic infection. If you just go in and clean it out, you still have not gotten rid of the infection because the dental tubules go on forever and ever. 

If you look at the biological dentists, they say that a root canal is a diabetic ulcer in your mouth. You have got to remove the tooth, clean it out with ozone and laser, and then put a new tooth and, with zirconian implant. The other thing is that if you have receding gums, receding gums are an infection—a chronic infection. Chronic infections drown out the immune system, so it cannot protect you. You have got to address that mouth. There are so many new articles coming out all the time about the connection between health in the mouth and being a very strong indicator of chronic disease.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Would you go so far as to say that every single person diagnosed with breast cancer should go see a biological dentist and make sure that they do not have a source in their mouth?

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Most of the patients that we see, when we ask them, can tell you, I have mercury fillings then the root canal. Most people do not understand root canals and the way that you need to address them. We have our patients; we have biological dentists that we use all over the United States. We all have patients who get an assessment. Of course, if they had a mean mercury filling and root canal, we automatically say this has to be addressed, and you need to get a panoramic CT in X-rays to make sure that there is nothing. Because a lot of the studies show there is a strong correlation between dental disease and breast cancer.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Absolutely. I am glad that it is getting more attention, but I do not think it is enough yet. I think.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

No, it is not. It takes 20 years for us to transform the landscape for doctors to get what is in the literature today, which has not come into practice for about 20 years, so we are behind.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. We need to continue to use our loud voices to tell people that even if you no longer have breast cancer, even if you are single, or even if you are thinking about prevention, we all have to think about the health of our mouths because it will dictate your health and breast health, as you mentioned, and heart health. This is all related. It is all one system. The whole system has to be healthy.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

The entire biological system. Exactly. A lot of doctors do not even talk about it now; I would think most doctors do not.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Agreed. You mentioned something else. Parental influence. What was your upbringing and how has that affected your overall health? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Well, parents have very strong belief systems. They are transferring their thought process—their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs—to their children. A lot of people think, My mom had this. Therefore, I have that. My mom and my dad do this. Therefore, we are at higher risk. Well, once you start planting belief systems in a person’s body, they become what they think about most of the time. and it is not. I always tell parents that it is not what you say. It is what you are modeling every single day. 

I know a patient of mine, a young woman, and she came to me for breast cancer. She has an anxiety disorder. Her mother has an anxiety disorder; her mother’s mother. She was telling me, I have to break this because I see my children have already taken on my anxiety disorder. So she says, I have got to break this pathway that we have in our family. It is so true. In the trauma, they talk about how we inherit nine generations of emotional heart history. We all have to look at our lives and say, What is the trauma and drama in our lives, and what are we passing on to our children? Because it is not just the eye color, skin color, or hair color; it is also the emotional DNA.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I think that has anything to do with the microbiome because we are passing on our microbiome from generation to generation. Do you think that it is part of that picture?

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Well, everything influences your microbiome. Every chemical in your diet and your thoughts do everything. Your cells are listening to your thoughts 24/7. What we eat and what we take influence the microbiome. We have all these different microbes. We have the oral microbiome, the skin microbiome, and the gut microbiome, and all of that is influenced by everything that we do in our daily lives.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. I want to shift to, you do practice conventional medicine, but you do it in a very modern and personalized way. Can you talk about your approach to treating people with fairly advanced diseases?

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

We marry conventional Western medicine, so what is that? Typically, that is blood work; it is scans; it is X-rays; it is imaging. Then the blood work that we order is much more comprehensive than that of a regular doctor. A typical doctor will order a chemistry panel. CBC in a lipid panel, maybe. Ours are very broad. It is not anything esoteric. It is just the blood test that we now know is significant in a patient, for example, cancer. But then the imaging for or the screening for cancer is called colonoscopy, mammogram, and pap smear. Well, you are going to miss all the other cancers when you do a screening for a patient. But those are the regular screening tools. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Right.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

I think that if you just use a mammogram, you are going to miss probably 50% of the pathology. Adjunctively, we will use a thermal gram and ultrasound. I know there is new technology coming out, which is great because most women do not do the mammogram process. Then read the reports. Mammograms do not save lives. There is a great book, as you probably know, Mammogram Truth, Lies and Controversy by Peter Gotzsche. Everyone should read that book. Every doctor should read that book because, for every 2000 mammograms, you save one life. then you overdiagnosed some of those patients.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

The numbers are even a little worse than that. It is one in 10,000 women. You will cause seven breast cancers in that. 

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

So we cannot use mammograms as an exclusive screening tool, even though that is what the dictates are. But women need to know about this.  A lot of my patients already know. Dr. Connealy, I do not, and I refuse to do a mammogram. I want to do thermography and an ultrasound. I honor the patient’s autonomy over their body. I educate them at the same time, I want them to be educated on their decision. Things change. What did we do a long time ago? It is like smoking. It took us 40 years to know. Well, we do not have 40 years. We need to be looking at the good, bad, and ugly of everything that we are doing now. 

Then our bloodwork is comprehensive. Also, we do all kinds of different testing here. We are checking the voltage in our patient’s body. Voltage is the energy of every cell. We do something called the Meridian Energy Assessment Device. We look at the voltage in the body. If your body does not have voltage, which is determined by your thyroid hormones, especially 4A3, and when you have surgeries, when you have scars and tattoos, and your body is laden with chemicals, toxins, and bugs, your voltage goes down, and so you cannot heal if your body does not have the proper voltage. 

The other thing we should do is look at your blood under a microscope to see the health of your body. We also do bio-energetic testing. Energy precedes action. Your heart is a bioelectrical organ. Your brain is a bioelectrical organ. Your nervous system is a bioelectrical organ. We look at the energy. You have acupuncture points, and we look at the acupuncture point, and we look at the energy of that acupuncture point. If there is decreased flow, what is causing that decreased flow? Is it toxic? Is it yeast? Is it parasites? Is it heavy metal? Then we give you a prescription plan because I always tell people that when a pitcher throws a ball to the batter, it is not a hit. That is the energy. It is the energy that the pitcher threw. 

We are capturing that energy because chronic diseases do not just happen. They take 10 or 20 years. Our job as doctors is to eliminate suffering and prevent suffering. I want my patients to not have an episode in their lives. I want them to have a productive life. We all deserve great health. In this country, we are suffering terribly in our healthcare system. Autism is one of the 37. 60% of our young elementary kids have one or more chronic illnesses. Our young people are being diagnosed with cancer at 25 and 30 years of age, and for our older people, we have no answers for Alzheimer’s and all the chronic diseases. We have very few answers. We deserve to have great health. We know today how to prevent disease, but we are not doing it. 

We should all be saying what is going on in our healthcare system. We ranked 43rd in the world in health care. We spend two and a half times more than any other country, and we have abysmal results. so this has to change. I know you, I, and many other people are dedicated to transforming the future of health care and humanity. That is why we do these things: we educate people because what is going on is atrocious, and we have got to start with mothers who want to be mothers before they even have a child, how do we get that husband and wife in the most optimal state to create the miracle that they want?

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I could not agree more, and it pains me how slowly this has to happen and how much resistance there is to it. Of course, we all know the reasons for the resistance, but in the meantime, people are suffering horribly. When we see these people getting cancer younger and younger, and when we see childhood obesity, childhood diabetes, childhood heart disease, and cardiovascular disease, it is crazy the things that we are seeing now that did not exist when we were children.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

We are supposed to be advanced. We are not advanced. We are regressing. Because I know that when I went to elementary school, there were no obese kids. No diabetic kids, no ADD kids, no cancer. No, there was nothing. How come it is okay with normalized disease? How is that okay? How are we normalizing this terrible disease? You said, all of them. It is a tragedy. Why is everybody going? Whoa, what is going on? This is what I understand.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, I do not understand how people are not appalled by the current state of affairs.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Yes. You can just see; that you do not have to be a doctor to see medical problems.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

No.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

All the medications that the doctors are just prescribing without proper basis because every drug affects the mitochondria. Every drug causes nutritional deficiencies. Why are we not looking at that? We know this. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. Absolutely. I want to get into a little bit of why you said you do standard blood work. But look at it a little differently. Can you talk about the things that you are looking for in standard blood work and maybe things that are not so standard that you are looking at to help make decisions about how to help people improve their health?

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Well, first of all, we do a chemistry panel that looks at your electrolytes and kidney and liver health, which most doctors do. We do a CBC to look at your white count and your hemoglobin. We also order iron, and ferritin on everyone because ferritin is the storage of iron. If you have too much, you are going to have an increased risk of disease because ferritin, which is an overcharge of iron, is inflammatory. We look at C-reactive protein as a nonspecific marker of inflammation. Inflammation is the precursor to all diseases. We look at your hemoglobin A1C, it is a reflection of your sugar over the past 90 days. The higher your hemoglobin A1C, the higher your risk of disease because elevated blood sugar destroys every cell, not just one cell. Every cell in your body. It is where we are seeing that elevated sugar, insulin resistance, and diabetes are probably 93% of the population, but they predispose you to heart disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and all the other chronic diseases. 

Then we do a complete thyroid test because thyroid diseases are increasing, not only Hashimoto’s and autoimmune but also thyroid cancer. We are looking at the thyroid in all of its production: free T3, free T4, or TSH autoimmune aspects of the thyroid since that is increasing, We look at vitamin D levels. We know vitamin D is a very influential factor in all diseases. Also infection, cancer, and heart disease.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I just want to take a quick plug and say that if you do not know your vitamin D level, you need to know your vitamin D level. Everyone needs to know their vitamin D level.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Then we check hormones on everybody because hormone imbalances are rampant in all age groups. When I say age groups, when I say, 20 on. As a child, your hormones are changing every day. But by the time you are 20, give or take, your hormones have landed, and so one of the big hormones is DHEA sulfate. DHEA sulfate is the hormone of stress, immunity, and longevity. So many people have lower levels than they should. But that is how your body defends itself—your adrenal glands. The adrenal glands are little glands that sit on top of your kidney’s little hats. 

Then we want to look at testosterone in both males and females. Because a lot of women’s hormones, if they are having regular menstrual cycles, they are changing daily. We may want to capture, through urine testing, their metabolism hormones, which we do a lot on breast cancer patients and other patients who are having hormone problems. It is just a good test to see how your metabolizing hormones are. Then we do liquid biopsies on our patients, a lot of them. I am very big into cancer prevention, not treatment, but it does not sell prevention, so people think, I am fine. I go, well, every patient diagnosed with cancer was fine the day before. So, do not use that as a barometer.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Don’t you have a lot of patients that tell you I am healthy, except I have breast cancer? Healthy, but I am healthy. But I have breast cancer.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Exactly. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. Can we roll that back again?

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Yes, it is so true. Yes. I am healthy, except I have whatever. Exactly. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, some horrible disease.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Yes, well, any disease is. Breast cancer is a symptom of a whole-body problem. You are just because it is just one part, No. Your whole body as you said, everything is interconnected in your body. Then we will sometimes do autoimmune testing. I am not that interested in cholesterol. Most doctors are checking cholesterol levels, but cholesterol is an important part of the membranes of your body. How your hormones are made, your nervous system, and everything. If you look at the studies on the use of statin drugs, they have not saved any lives at all. Again, heart disease is a multifaceted problem; just about every disease is a multifaceted problem. I am not that concerned about it.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It does sell a lot of statins, though,?

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

It does. I always tell people that cholesterol is not the enemy. People should know that because it is, it can be so damaging. The effects of taking statins include elevated liver sugar levels, dementia interrupting the nervous system, and everything else.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I wish people knew before they went on statins that they were increasing their risk of getting diabetes by 63%.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Exactly.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Because I do not think people would be so anxious to get onto those drugs if they knew what was coming down the line for them.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Then we may do, depending on whether someone has a low white count, which means they probably have a chronic infection. We will look for that. We will do the initial bloodwork. Okay. I encourage patients to do a liquid biopsy on this day and time because cancer affects one in two people now. We may order whole-body MRIs on our patients. Whole-body MRI is not a conventional, not treatment, but a conventional recommendation.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Practice. It is not standard practice.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

It is not standard practice. But it should be in certain cases because I believe that I use it on a case-by-case basis. We also do nutritional testing. We do vitamin and mineral testing, antioxidant testing, and heavy metal testing. I want to do a vibrant toxic load panel to look at all of the mold and toxins in your body, including heavy metals. It is a very comprehensive panel. I think in this day and time everyone should be doing that panel because we are living in a world that is extremely toxic and has more toxins than people could imagine. People always say, Am I toxic, you think? I go. There isn’t anybody who is not toxic. Okay.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. Oftentimes, your diagnosis is a reflection of that increased toxic load. Your body has not been able to compensate. That is where diagnoses come from.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Exactly. We know that toxins predispose you and can change how your whole system replicates its DNA. For example, heavy metals interrupt DNA replication and cause DNA toxicity. Heavy metals are one of the major interrupters of cell functioning.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

You take all of this information that you learn about people and create something very customized. But you do deliver; you do use conventional chemotherapy sometimes. Can you talk about the role of that and how you do it differently?

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Well, we do do chemotherapy here in the office, and we do it. It is called fractionated chemotherapy. Cancer cells have many more receptor sites for sugar than normal cells. We use it when the only reason we would use it is to shrink the tumor burden.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

You are talking about people who have a significant tumor burden. They have large tumors, and they have metastatic disease.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

They will need some chemotherapy to shrink their disease. We prime the patient. They come in fasting. We give them insulin to bring their blood sugar down to what we call the therapeutic moment, which is about 40. Then we introduce the chemotherapy because the cancer cells will take up the chemotherapy because they have something called insulin growth factors on their cell surface. They are to take up the chemotherapy, sparing the other cells that are not cancerous. Then we use nutritional things on top of that with the chemotherapy. We do a lot of collateral balancing when we do anything that has a potential downside. 

For example, all of our patients take immune support, nutritional support, pancreatic enzymes, vitamin C, and liver protection because everything is processed through the liver. We have for any one of our patients to do conventional; we put them on collateral support and protocol; just about every patient should do that. If you get a PET scan, there is a lot of radiation. You should be protecting your body from the radiation side effects. For example, if you need radiation, We know that hyperbaric oxygen and oxygen therapies increase the efficacy of radiation by 50%. But we also have to take care of the rest of the cells because radiation has a toxic effect as well. 

It is all about our patients receiving fractionated chemotherapy once a week, and then we will repeat the scan in 10 to 12 weeks to see our progress. It is done in a delivery way that is very protective for the patient, and the patients have much fewer side effects and a lot fewer problems with their day-to-day functioning than you and in the chemotherapy. It is used at a dose of about 10%. Whereas compared to the 100% dose of chemotherapy in the conventional world, and that has been around for over 70 years.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It is now, so my next question is, why do you think these best practices are not being adopted in conventional treatment centers?

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Well, in today’s world, it is what you follow in the NCC and guidelines. That is, you get surgery, chemo, and radiation. They do not consider anything with the patient. It is just the way medicine is practiced. They are practicing outdated medicine because I know the patients that come to see me. We recommend all of our patients see an oncologist. We want them to understand everybody’s opinion on their particular diagnosis. They get to have their understanding. then the patient can make their own decision about what they think is best. 

But when they go to an oncologist, the oncologist will say, That does not work. I do not know why you are spending your time, energy, and money on doing anything. Diet does not matter. Your immune system does not. Nothing matters. I am. Well, how is that possible? Because if you go online, diet matters. All the IV vitamin C matters and all the different things that we use in our practice have scientific PubMed studies. You just take.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Or, although in the defense of people, that is getting harder and harder to find.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

That is true.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

The narrative is that if you just do a Google search, the narrative is very tightly controlled, and your ability, especially if you are in the know, especially if you are a layperson and terrified, your ability to find the truth and to find these solutions that are proven but not mainstream, is nearly impossible.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

I know that. I agree with you on that. Yes, I see that because I see how much it changes when you Google something. You used to find things five years ago. Now, you cannot.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes. My last question for you is: if you could wave your magic wand, which I only pray to God that someday you can. If you wave your magic wand, what does prevention look like for us in the future? How do we not wind up in this predicament?

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Well, prevention is priceless. The cure for cancer is prevention. But this is true for all diseases. I do not have a heart attack once a year in the practice. How can that be since heart disease is the number one cause of death? The patients who come to us for prevention do not get cancer or do not have cancer. The only people that we see there already have a diagnosis of cancer. The key thing is that doctors need to do good physical exams. Number one. Number two, you need to do good bloodwork. Which, in this day and age, is not that expensive, and insurance will cover almost everything. 

The screening tools we have do not work. A colonoscopy is probably the best screening tool. Or Cologuard. I use Cologuard because it is noninvasive, has high sensitivity and specificity, and is noninvasive, and all the prep is gone and everything. But mammograms do not save lives. Getting regular pap smears, I still recommend them. But again, the screening tools we have are not preventing disease because how can cancer affect one in two people now? But if the doctors did good physical exams and bloodwork, and if they did the bioenergetic testing, which one of my mentors taught me about 24-25 years ago. 

His dream was to set up prevention sites all over the United States, but he died. He was diagnosed when he was 22. He died when he was 68. He did not die of cancer. He died of an infection. But he was one of my mentors 25 years ago. He taught me this and works with a doctor, which I am going to be doing a big documentary on in the future. He is a doctor from China, and he developed herbs that they have been using for hundreds of years. But when you look at the cancer’s ten-year timeline and you look and see if someone has entered that ten-year timeline, then you can prevent cancer. 

It is probably accurate, probably about 95% of the time, it costs very little. Then we have liquid biopsies; we have the laboratory that is in Greece called RGCC; it is called Uncle Trace. It is about a $500 to $600 blood test, and it has probably an accuracy of 85%. Then, in my office, we do thermography, which I am sure you are familiar with as a screening tool for breasts, and we do ultrasounds too. But that is only for breasts. But what about the rest? You can do, as I said, the whole body MRI, which is very expensive. It is probably a couple of thousand dollars now. 

But again, why are you going to wait until something shows up in your body? Your goal is to prevent, not treat, cancer. That is not what the goal of medicine today is; it is not prevention whatsoever. It is all a reactive process; in fact, so many patients come to me and say, My doctor said, we will just wait. I am like, Wait till there is an earthquake or a car crash, whatever you want to use that for. I always say that self-care is the new health care. 

Jennifer Simmons, MD

I love that. 

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Patients need to do an introspective analysis of how they are living and partner with an integrative doctor, like me or someone else. Our clinic is very modern; I would say we are very evolved and updated. I teach doctors, though; I lecture; I do podcasts; I do all these things to share this transformation of health care and humanity. and I know you do, too. If we just constantly put education in the hands of humans all over the world, we can change the healthcare system. 

I know you are doing it your way. I am doing it my way. We need lots of ambassadors, our patients. My young patients are now taking the bull by the horns and changing it. We have got to teach doctors. Unfortunately, doctors, when they go through the conventional medical system, get trained. I think it is important to know how the body works. medications, when you have emergencies, and how to look at the science of the human body. But we also need to give patients the right recommendations and let them have the life they deserve.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

Yes, when we started this conversation, you talked about awakening humanity and I love that,  that is your mission. Pretty much what you just said leads up to that. That is the real solution here; the solution is in us, and it is in all of us. What needs to happen is an awakening, and it is going to come at the hands of people like you. 

I am so very grateful for what you do, for the trail that you blazed, for the example that you set, and for the possibility that you show to the world. I just hope you keep your boots on the ground and keep doing what you are doing. I look forward to your next book. I hang on to your every word. Thank you so much for being here today and for spending the time.

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Yes, it is my privilege. Thank you for having me.

Jennifer Simmons, MD

It is Dr. Jenn. Bye for now.