Transcript of Episode 56: Understanding Autoimmune Disorders
With Dr. Daniel Pompa, David Asarnow and special guest Leah Block.
David:
Welcome to Cellular Healing TV, Episode 56. This is David Asarnow, and I want to welcome you. Welcome, Dr. Pompa.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Thank you.
David:
Now this is interesting. When I’m talking, I see a picture of you.
Dr. Pompa:
When you’re talking, you see a picture of me? Well, that’ll be fun then.
David:
It will be very fun. So we have a very special guest today. Why don’t you introduce her?
Dr. Pompa:
So I better watch what I’m doing when you’re talking. I can’t fiddle around with my whatever. Oh, gosh. Well, anyways. Yeah. No. We love having some amazing testimonies on Cellular Healing TV, and today we have a great one. And Leah Block, thank you so much for being on the show. I know it’s early where you are, and you had to get up early. And with a young baby, that’s not necessarily a good thing because you were probably up half the night. Weren’t you? We froze her. We have her in animation. She froze.
David:
She’s frozen.
Dr. Pompa:
We probably lost her as soon as it went live. You know how that happens.
David:
We lost her as soon as it went live.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s my prediction. Well, anyways, before Leah comes back on because she will find her way back on. These things happen. Leah, when she first came to me, I knew that she had some autoimmune issues, autoimmune issues that were really mostly attacking her skin. And I’ll let her tell the story about how every pregnancy made it worse. We’ll kinda talk about her last pregnancy. It was completely different, and she looks like a different person.
As a matter of fact, her husband, Austin, said, “Oh my gosh, Dr. Pompa”—he was a little broken in the process, but he told me that he had his wife back. “His beautiful wife,” I think, were his exact words. He was so happy to have his beautiful wife back. And he described her skin and her hair, and he’s like, “This is the Leah I remember.” And when I heard that, it really touched my heart. And I think it was after Austin, her husband, said that that I said, “You have to give a testimony.” And I don’t think Austin’s joining us. I wish he were because his testimony of just having his wife back, and I’m sure just more from even a physical standpoint because Leah suffered from depression, obviously, major skin inflammation, mood changes, irritability. I mean, just some—a lot going on with her condition, and so obviously, when he says that I got my wife back, he was referring to all of that. So anyways, so I can’t wait for you to hear this.
David:
Dr. Pompa, I did get the photos. I did get the photos.
Dr. Pompa:
What’s that?
David:
I did get the photos.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly, so maybe while she’s not on the phone we should try not to embarrass her.
Warren:
Hey, Dan, can you hear me?
Dr. Pompa:
Yes.
Warren:
I’m trying to help you guys out. What she needs to do is—to talk with her thing, she needs to press the middle button, and take off her video. Because if she loses—she has a slow connection and it can’t handle the video and the audio. So she just needs to go to the—you know where it’s at, David, to turn off her camera.
David:
Yes.
Warren:
Just have her do that, and that’ll fix it. Great job, guys. Hey, everyone on Cellular Healing TV, we do the show live, so there’s technical difficulties, but this isn’t scripted. This is from our hearts so that you can transform lives. Thanks, guys. I’m signing off.
David:
Do you have her number so I can give her a call, and help her get back on? I don’t want you to say it on the air.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I can’t, Merily will have to text it to you.
David:
Okay. I’ll ask her right now.
Warren:
I can send it over because I saw a chain of emails, so I’ll get that over to her.
David:
So, Dr. Pompa, do you want me to share my screen, and then while we’re waiting for her to get on, we can share some of the before images?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly, and her skin issue, I can’t describe it until you actually see how bad it was, especially on some of her limbs or extremities. And she was nice enough to—yeah, so I don’t know if you can see that, but that was her arm and her hand. David, I don’t know what the…
David:
Can anyone see this?
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, there you go. I can see it.
David:
Perfect.
Dr. Pompa:
Imagine that, right, folks? I mean, imagine your skin…
David:
Oh my gosh.
Dr. Pompa:
Attacked by your own body to the point of that type of appearance. And then you can see…
David:
One of the things that people who are watching right now are saying this could—I mean, to someone who doesn’t know could say, “Oh, is this measles? Is this chickenpox? Is it shingles?” How does autoimmune cause something like this?
Dr. Pompa:
Well, one thing I always say is, first of all, autoimmune is the most under diagnosed condition on the planet. The testing is in the Stone Ages, so many people who don’t feel well, don’t know why. Have weird things happening, don’t know why. It’s autoimmune. It’s become more common because of the amount of stressors, toxins, that we’ve been exposed to today. It turns on the gene. So you always get the autoimmune of your genetic weakness. And you can never, ever, ever, ever reverse any of these conditions unless you turn the gene off. I mean, it’s like this is the key. I mean, doctors will tell ya, “You can’t ever reverse these things.” Well, look, it’s—doctors don’t, but the body does.
If you read the article Autoimmune Answer on my website, you’ll see. It’s a three-legged stool, most people that have autoimmune have a gut issue. So think of it as a three-legged stool. If you read in her history—and she gave me a very in-depth history before we started—before she started as a client. So I had a really good in-depth look at what was going on, and she had digestive issues as a child. She was considered a colic baby. She had sensitive skin. And stressors, times of stress at life, would make them worse, aka pregnancy, so but she also had massive gut issues and digestive issues as a young girl, and so that’s one of the legs of the stool that we see with autoimmune.
And then we have an upstream stressor. Typically, someone who has toxins and bioaccumulating toxins—and she’ll tell you in her story that each time that she did any type of cleanse crazy things would happen because it would just pour toxins out into the system. And then of course, these toxins turn on the gene of autoimmune. So it’s that three-legged stool, really, as a cause of how autoimmune ends up occurring. And also, it is a solution. So read the article because I think it really gives some in-depth understanding of how these things happen.
But, yeah, David, I mean, of course, that’s how measles look, and that was the way she was. I mean, she went through pregnancies. I remember stories of her putting icepacks around her legs. That’s how inflamed they would become. Her skin would just inflame massively. And every pregnancy was a horrific event. Well, lo and behold, as a client, she hires me to obviously deal with this condition that she can’t live with. And I’m coaching her through. She’s back. I’ll tell the story.
But she ends up during this process getting pregnant again through the process while I was helping her. Well, lo and behold, we did get to do a lot of things before the pregnancy to improve her health. And then, obviously, during the pregnancy, we did a lot of things different. And she can tell the story, but she had the most successful pregnancy ever of her life. She didn’t have a pregnancy where she was icing her skin, and her legs, and all the inflammation, and all the crazy autoimmune things that occurred in her past pregnancies. She had her healthiest child and her healthiest pregnancy. And her husband, Austin, has his wife back. So Leah, you are back. So why don’t you share the story. I kinda gave them a little bit…
David:
Leah, I’m going to ask that you move your mouse to the top of the screen, and we can take your video off because it’s your slow internet connection that’s causing the challenges we believe.
Leah:
Oh, it’s my internet connection.
David:
Yeah.
Leah:
Sorry.
David:
By the way, we were looking at some before and after pictures of you. You look amazing.
Leah:
Thank you. It’s hard to look at the…
Dr. Pompa:
I look at your hair, Leah, and I remember that was…
Leah:
That’s my favorite part.
Dr. Pompa:
What’s that? Say it again.
Leah:
That’s my favorite part, is my hair.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, your hair, it’s amazing. What happened to your hair before, especially during other pregnancies?
Leah:
It fell out, like balding. It was really bad. I didn’t look like the same person at all.
Dr. Pompa:
And during pregnancies and after pregnancies is when it was its worse, correct?
Leah:
Yeah. I was never – I never had any issues at all. And we got married, and then within the first year we got pregnant. I was fine, and then towards the end of my first pregnancy, I started to get weird skin things. And then after my oldest little girl, stuff started showing up. And then it took about ten months to kinda settle down. And then I got pregnant with twins, and then it got really terrible. And after the twins was the worst. It was hell.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Well, I’ll let you tell a little bit about that, but David, you want her video off, right? Just so her internet doesn’t kick out all of a sudden.
David:
Yeah. If you could take your mouse and just scroll it up to the top. Then you’ll see a bar that will come up with a mike, and then there’s like a camera. And just click on the camera and it will turn your camera off.
-Technical Issues-
Dr. Pompa:
Okay, so we’re going to—now that—at least everyone got to see what you look like, so that’s perfect. But anyways, so talk about that pregnancy, and what happened, and what you experienced.
Leah:
With the twins?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Leah:
Okay. Well, it was so bad towards the middle of it that I have distinct memory of—I’m going to try not to cry. Calling my husband and telling him I can never have any more children because I was in so much pain. I had woken up from a nap. And this sounds kinda funny, but it’s not. It wasn’t at the time. My legs were so swollen and inflamed, and they itched terribly that to take a nap, I went and got—I guess I was out of icepacks. I don’t really know why I did this. But I packed frozen butter sticks, and put them behind my legs just so that I could get enough relief to fall asleep.
And when I woke up, my skin had melted the butter, and it was everywhere. It was all over the bed. And I don’t really know why I used the butter, but I just remember waking up and thinking, “Oh, my god. This is crazy. What’s happening to my body?” And calling my husband and telling him, “I think I’m dying. I don’t know what’s wrong.” That’s probably one of the worst memories I have. It’s just emotionally it was…
Dr. Pompa:
I remember—I mean, I remember you telling me—I remember reading your story, and you would just strap icepacks to your legs because your skin was so inflamed. And I shared while you were off some pictures. And it was your arms. Not your legs. Just to how horrific your skin actually looked.
Leah:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
But it wasn’t just the skin. I mean, you had depression. You had major mood changes that your husband would refer to, but obviously, your hair falling out. But, I mean, life as you know it was not good, obviously.
Leah:
Yeah, it’s funny because when I—I don’t have a specific diagnosis. Just the doctors never could really figure out. They knew I was in a state of autoimmune, but it was like I didn’t…
Dr. Pompa:
It didn’t have a name.
Leah:
It wasn’t defined. It wasn’t Lupus. It wasn’t celiac. It wasn’t Hashimoto. It was just something’s wrong with you, and your body’s attacking itself. And, yeah, I think probably beyond the obvious skin stuff, which people think, “Oh, you just had rashes,” no, it was debilitating. I couldn’t hard—I could hardly walk. Austin, my husband, he did everything for us. He had to get up in the morning, and make breakfast, and take care of—my little girl at the time was 18 months when I was pregnant with the twins. He had to get her ready for the day while it took me about an hour and a half just to get functional.
I couldn’t wear regular clothes. The fact that I can wear jeans now and leggings is miraculous. It’s the little things that nobody thinks about until you lose, basically, your life. And it’s still an adjustment right now to get used to being able to be more normal.
Dr. Pompa:
I have to say that. How old is your baby now?
Leah:
Isaac is seven weeks on Monday.
Dr. Pompa:
Seven weeks. Okay, so at this point, in past pregnancies, she would be an absolute disaster. So, I mean, this was—I remember, we were—obviously, you were working with me while you got pregnant. So at least I didn’t make the mistake of saying I got you pregnant.
Leah:
No.
Dr. Pompa:
But anyways, I think we all—when you said, okay, you’re pregnant, of course there’s two emotions that occur, joy and then because of your past pregnancies, fear. Even I had it, Leah, because I felt like we didn’t get to do—we obviously did a lot of things, but I still had things that I wanted to do further, detox. Well, further detox I should say. So what was your feeling when you realized you were pregnant again?
Leah:
I laughed at first, which is why we named him Isaac because it means laughter, and thought, wow, this has got to be a God thing because this is not—it wouldn’t be my timing. And then I was really scared. But you never let on that you were worried, so that was helpful. But yeah, I thought that you were not going to work with me because I’d be too high risk. And oh, I’m going to do this all by myself again. This is terrible, and I was really scared, but—and I could kinda tell you were concerned just in your, “Make sure you do this. You do exactly as I’m saying.”
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I felt like, look, you were on my watch. God did put me in your life for a reason at this time, and when you said you were pregnant, I knew it was for this time. So I just—I really was like, okay, I didn’t want to let you down. I didn’t want to let God down because I knew He had me serving Him to serve you at this very amazing time. Well, needless to say, it was a totally different pregnancy wasn’t it?
Leah:
Oh yeah. Yeah. Just at the very beginning was reminiscent of past, the past before you, and I really started to get going on our protocol. But once I got things—I’m sorry. I’ll be okay. Yes, it was a process.
Dr. Pompa:
I get it. No, it’s emotional. You can tell. I think this is almost emotional in a good way too. I mean, you think back about where you were, and you think about where you are now. That’s emotional.
Leah:
Yeah. So at the very beginning, it was really scary. I thought, oh my goodness, I’m going backwards. And the first signs were not the skin. Like you said, it was more the anxiety, the panic attacks. I remember messaging or emailing you like, “Oh, I don’t know what to do.” I started getting all the old symptoms. Almost like a psychosis type thing. People think it’s weird but hearing voices and just a lot of crazy stuff that happened to me as a result of toxicity, and hormones, and all kinds of stuff.
But within the first month of working together, complete turnaround. My emotions balanced. Everything stopped going backwards. And within about two or three months, I started getting better and better. And I don’t think you guys have pictures of me when I’m seven, eight, and nine months pregnant, but I look totally fine. And everybody in—I go to regular Bible study, and all the women noticed that the farther along I got in the pregnancy, which, really, before had always been my worse times, I was looking and feeling healthier and stronger with every month. And even my OBGYN and my midwives saw the changes in my body, which really had always been the opposite. So that was an incredible experience that at the end of my pregnancy to feel so good, and so strong, and to look normal. I hadn’t looked normal in a long time.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I have pictures of past pregnancies. Not this one and just— it’s amazing. I doubt if you could see it if it came up, but I mean, it—I’ll just show one of them here, but I doubt that they can see this.
Leah:
Yeah. You can.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s you and Austin at the beach, and you can see the back of your legs. I mean, you can see how swollen they are.
Leah:
Yeah, that was…
Dr. Pompa:
And also, you can see the nasty rash. And I have a close-up—David, you have a close-up of that rash. I mean, some of the—just how pustule it was. I mean, it looks so painful, Leah.
David:
I’ll show you on my screen. Let me share this. Can you guys see?
Dr. Pompa:
Not yet.
David:
That’s before on your face. Let me go to share screen. It only lets—it doesn’t—let me do this again.
Dr. Pompa:
In her face, I mean, you can see her face was swollen, puffy. But her face wasn’t nearly as bad, right Leah, I mean, as your legs and arms.
David:
Was this your—was your leg very similar to what we’re seeing here?
Leah:
Yeah, so if you look at the hand…
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I have a hand picture, David, I sent you with massive pustules.
David:
Is that—oh, wait. I have one more. Let me stop sharing my screen, and get the other one. It that this one, Dr. Pompa?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, I mean, that just looks bad.
David:
It looks very painful.
Leah:
It was very painful. Yeah. It was really painful. So if you took the redness and the ulcerated look on the skin, and then put that on my thighs and the backs of my legs, then that would be a pretty good description. And then it was extremely swollen. I remember, my husband, the way he would describe it to people is that my legs looked like elephant legs. They were so—they didn’t look human. I mean, it was really frightening. And I went to several doctors and had tests run, and they all kinda freaked out like, “Oh, my god.” But they didn’t have any solutions other than steroids, which isn’t an option when you’re pregnant. So with the twins, it was pretty frightening.
Dr. Pompa:
I remember you had gotten steroids in the past.
Leah:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
I remember from your history, and I remember horrific effects from it. I mean, in weight gain that you couldn’t lose too, right?
Leah:
Yeah. I had weight gain and—I had to go on steroids when I was much younger because I had Bell’s palsy, and it—I had effects from that for years, and years, and years. It affected my hair growth, weight gain. It wasn’t a good—it wasn’t good.
Dr. Pompa:
The fact that you had Bell’s palsy, right, I mean, that’s—neurotoxins, which is part of the definition. Neurotoxin, it attacks the nerves. You had signs as a child, I would say, when I looked at your history originally, as a neurotoxic child. I believe you were very colic even as a baby. Is that right?
Leah:
Yes, I was, very. For the first nine months, my mom said all I did was cry.
Dr. Pompa:
Most people—and I know that you have high lead levels. My wife got most of her lead in utero from her mom, which set into position—by the way, my wife too had a skin issue as a baby. They brought her to church, and she was actually healed. But this lead remained in her, and it caused hormone problems, Leah, just like you. It caused other issues, just like you, only to come out later in life. Well, why pregnancy? Well, obviously, it’s physically stressing, right, to the body, and we know that we can trigger autoimmune during any—with any stressor, but also, during pregnancy, lead comes out of the bones. Why? Because the body loses bone during pregnancy. I mean, it’s normal during pregnancy.
I mean, there’s that type of demand, but from the bone, then comes the lead. And then this toxin then can trigger the autoimmune. These toxins, obviously, can trigger many different things, but that’s why pregnancies become problematic for so many people. But again, your toxicity, Leah, started when you were a baby. And again, I don’t know the health history of your mother, or you probably told me at one time, but I don’t remember. But you definitely got a lot of toxins in utero. And then what else happened in childhood that we can attribute to that? And I know some—fast forward. You had some mold exposures. But give us some insight there.
Leah:
Well, with the lead, it specifically—I think probably one of the things that contributed to it was we lived in an older home, early 1900's. And one of the things that we did was restore it, and I was my dad’s sidekick for a lot of it. I loved helping and working alongside of him, and we used the heat gun to pull the old, old paint off. And I actually remember my mom saying, “I really think we should get a mask.” And at the time, nobody really—I don’t think they really knew about how dangerous it was, so my dad’s like, “Oh, we’re fine.” And that was years we did that, and then living near a highway, and eating stuff I probably shouldn’t have. I had a really—I go back now and look at the creek where we used to get our crab and shrimp. We used to crab and shrimp—catch shrimp when we were kids. And I’m like, “Oh, my god. I’m sure that stuff was loaded with mercury.”
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly, and once you have one heavy metal, like lead, now you don’t get rid of other heavy metals, like mercury. So I—looking at your history, I saw signs of both, honestly, and your body just—detox pathways really just shut down, and that’s how you ended up here. It’s the same story. But I can’t recall. I mean, how many—if you had amalgams. I’m looking back at your history here as I even speak. But I don’t think you did, and I want to point that out. Am I correct on that?
Leah:
Fillings in my teeth?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Leah:
I have them, but I don’t think any of them are—I think they’re all…
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. You had no silver fillings, right.
Leah:
My mom has a mouthful of metal, but not me.
Dr. Pompa:
Your mother did, right?
Leah:
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. So that exposure comes to you. When we look at a study, the number of silver fillings, amalgam fillings, that contain 50% mercury in mom’s mouth get to the portion of how much we find in the baby, and particularly the brain. So that was your first load. I’m sure you were typically vaccinated as a child. Am I right?
Leah:
Yeah. I was.
Dr. Pompa:
That was your second. Not to mention what it does to confuse the immune system. And then you start hitting the paint with heat guns. So, I mean, yeah, that’s going to—my wife also grew up—I mean, her mom, obviously, had heavy metal issues transitioned into her. And then she too grew up in an old home. They didn’t hit it with heat guns. They weren’t—but I’m sure they did some sanding. I’m sure they did some remodeling.
But just even growing up there—I remember years ago reading a study, and they analyzed houses built before the 1970's. 1978, I think, is when they outlawed lead and paint. But houses built before that, where all the paint had lead, they can analyze the dust in these homes, loaded with lead. Every dust sample loaded with lead. So just growing up in a home like that. Opening windows up and down just vaporizes lead. Now what you were doing, even more, right?
But again, I mean, I guess the point, Leah, is this too. And this is something that I’m always preaching, and David can attest to this. So many doctors, even alternative doctors, would’ve simply treated your hormones, your anxiety, and even give you a lot of wonderful things to help your skin. None of them—well, hopefully, some may have said, “Wait a minute. What is the actual cause here?” Because very few people, even on the alternative side, go upstream and say, “There is a cause and let’s remove it.”
And here’s the other caution is because they have—even if they do, they say, “Oh, let’s deal with heavy metals.” They put people on a heavy metal detox program for three months, or ten days, worse yet. I mean, and really, it’s deep rooted. It’s in the bone. It’s in the body. It takes time. And Leah, we did a lot of things even to improve your detox pathways, and your cell, and your cell function, right? I mean, we worked a lot at a lot of that.
Leah:
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
And you’ll attest we’re not even done yet.
Leah:
Oh, no. I know I’m not done. And I’m—I think that’s one thing I would want to communicate to people that are suffering from chronic health issues or things that are really scary is it takes time, and just have patience. I know it’s easy to say when you’re on the other side of a lot of the suffering, but even in the middle of all the pain, I had to really keep focused and not give up. And know that we would get better. I would get better, but it was going to take time, and patience, and diligence. So I know I’m not done, but we’re looking forward to continuing on, and one day saying, “We’re done.”
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. It takes—it’s the thing. It takes 10, 20, 30, 40 years to get where people are, and to think that it’s going to just go away in months is really absurd. My goal, Leah, was always to teach you what you needed to do, right, and continue to do, how to teach you how to fix the cell, and if you don’t fix the cell, Leah, you’d never have got well to where you are. Is that true?
Leah:
Yeah, and I think, also, just all that you have taught me in the process has taken some of the fear factor out because, I mean, you always have hiccups when you’re healing, and you do go backwards sometimes for a little while. And that can be really frightening. But now, knowing what I know about the cell and all the different things that we’ve learned, it’s not as scary. I know where I’m going. I know kinda—I understand more what’s happening. It brings the anxiety level down some.
Dr. Pompa:
My goal is always to teach the client, and David, you can attest to this because you hear me teaching doctors, right? And I’m always saying these things. It’s like, look, one of my fears when I started teaching clients, virtually—I should say coaching clients virtually, was that I’m not going to be able to do certain treatments. Oh my gosh, because people come in to your office, and they do treatments. Well, my biggest fear ended up to be the biggest blessing. Because when I went virtual, I had to teach and empower my clients with the knowledge, and you said that was like some of the freeing part for you. But it has been that that when you see these testimonies and others online, it has been that educating the client that is really why we’ve had the success that I’ve had, that they’ve had the success that they’ve had.
So it really wasn’t about the treatment. Treatments end. People come into doctor’s office, either they run out of money, insurance, or just get tired of going, and they stop treatments. And then what happens, they really never got well. When I went virtually, I really had to educate people on what they need to do, and continue to do to get their life back. That’s always my goal, and getting away from the treatment model was just the greatest blessing. Knowledge is power. And you said it. It not only empowered you to get well—if I went away, if you never say me again, Leah, you know how to fix the cell. You know how to detox the cell. Am I right?
Leah:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t want you to go anywhere.
Dr. Pompa:
I know. I know. I’m saying—but the point is though is that it really is the long-term. When you can get people to do these things, and you actually educate them to do them, they continue to do them. That’s how I got my life back. I didn’t go to a doctor for three to six months and get treatment. So that’s not how I got my life back. David, your life changed because of what you learned and the empowerment that you had through that knowledge.
Why is it different? Why is it different? Instead of looking at clients as getting treatments, forget treatments. We need to teach. That is actually what doctor means. And when we teach them, they can do things long enough, whether it’s cellular healing, cellular detox, whatever it is, dietary changes. Empower them. That’s been in the magic. My greatest fear going virtual has been, really, how, and the magic of how these, really, conditions that people would say it’s incurable or conditions that say are unfixable. The body can do it if you remove the interference, but you’ve got to educate the person to do it.
David:
Well, our bodies have innate power, and one of the things that you guys are talking about that so many people—everyone wants this quick fix. And what you said is it took a lot of years for us to get where we are. It’s the environmental factors from the womb. It’s the environmental factors from growing up. I remember peeling paint of the wall, and all these things, Leah, that you’re talking about. When you started saying—ooh, I remember that. Dr. Pompa saw me, by the way, going through my aha moments going through the neurotoxic questionnaire. Ooh, I remember this.
But one of the things that people don’t realize and all of a sudden you’re well, so many people all of a sudden say, “Well, now I can do this, and now I can do that, and now I can go back to eat this junk.” And then all of a sudden, if they do that, they’re going to go backwards and reactivate the bad genes. I guess I should say. I don’t know if that’s the right terminology or not.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
David:
But what happens is this is a life changing process that you learn and it’s staying the path. Then continuing to be different and doing things differently than you did in the past that will enable you to stay with the progress that you’ve made.
Dr. Pompa:
Well, and the only way to do that is to educate the person. And David, I remember the stories of mold. You’re going through the neurotoxic questionnaire and going, “Oh my gosh, we had this leak that came down in the ceiling continually.” I was like…
David:
I had the bulging ceiling in my bedroom. And I remember my dad used to take it, put a bucket underneath, pop it, and just let it drain. And we used to keep a bucket in my room because we didn’t have the money at the time to get it fixed. So we kept the bucket in the room, and it constantly leaked, and that’s where I grew up.
Dr. Pompa:
Leah, I know you had—I remember reading somewhere in your history that you also had some mold in your kitchen. Once you’re sensitive to one neurotoxin, you become sensitive to all, and obviously, you bioaccumulated metal, these heavy metals, as a child. Now all of a sudden you get a mold exposure. This is what I call the “perfect storm.” It’s like and then all of a sudden you have a physical stressor, a pregnancy. It’s like boom, boom, boom. There’s three fronts come together, turn on the gene, and now you end up with some bizarre autoimmune condition. That was your story, Leah.
Leah:
That’s funny. I forgot that the mold stuff was definitely true, David, of me in the home I grew up. So we had the lead and everything, but it was—the house was on the water, and it had this huge basement that always filled up with water. And it would just sit there. And I, yes, had that too.
David:
That’s kind of interesting. When you’re telling your story about hair loss, I’ve had that in my family as well with multiple members, myself included. It was like—in fact, when I was in my 20's, I was first diagnosed with an autoimmune because I lost—I have a heavy beard. I don’t know if you can tell. I shaved this morning, but you can sort of see the dark line. I’d lose patches of hair on my face, and then my pigment would go away, and I’d have white—I mean, I have a dark-complected skin. I’d have white pigment patches and no hair.
Leah:
Wow.
David:
And I have family members that have lost their hair over their entire body.
Leah:
Wow.
Dr. Pompa:
Well, the hair thing is a big problem and anxiety. I would say sleep, anxiety, and hair, I mean, these things are typically autoimmune, and people don’t understand that. I mean, David, you had that skin issue. I mean, that was autoimmune. But how do people get there? I keep wanting to point it out. Heavy metals are very difficult for our own natural detox pathways to get rid of. That’s why they’re heavy, heavy metals, they accumulate, they bioaccumulate. They stockpile from the time we’re in utero.
And great, if you didn’t get any more exposures, perhaps you’d be okay. But we start vaccinating kids. We start exposing them to silver fillings and all these different things in our life. Lead, we grew up in the lead generation. Oh, and then we move into the moldy home, the wet basement, which people have no clue. If there’s water, there’s mold. Mold is a nasty biotoxin.
Look at Leviticus 14 in the Bible. It was so serious that God warned His people. If you see this, do this. If it comes back, get out. Burn the house down. Take it to a place called Unclean. I mean, this stuff is evil. But you put these major toxins together like heavy metals, mold, and certain infections like Lyme disease and others, and add an emotional component, or add a physical component, the bottom falls out. The bucket spills over, and you end up with a disease of a genetic weakness. And most often today, we see these bizarre and unexplainable autoimmune conditions.
Leah:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pompa:
And Leah, we spent a lot of time in the beginning fixing your gut, right? I mean, that was a big part because, number one, it’s a detox pathway. Number two, it’s a major—one of the legs of the stool of autoimmune. So that’s where we spent probably a few months, remember?
Leah:
Yeah. It’s funny because when we first started talking, and you were like, “Well we got to work on the gut,” and I was like, “I know.” I had done it for years. I was the—I studied and researched relentlessly for the first, probably, two and half years of being really ill. And everything seemed to come back to the gut, the gut, the gut, the gut. And then when I went up to a clinic that specialized in this kind of stuff, I had tons of bloodwork done, and the one thing that they found that was really bad was my gut. It was obviously severely leaky.
And it was so discouraging because I had done everything I knew to do. I had done kefir and raw sauerkraut. My diet was pristine. I took tons of probiotics, and it still didn’t really seem to do a whole lot. So when you first said gut, I was like, “No.” But once I realized it wasn’t just gut, that was a part of it, and that there were other things missing that I had to incorporate in, then I was like, “Okay, we can do this. This will work.”
Dr. Pompa:
Actually, you raise a great point because, see, here’s the point. Is the gut’s one of the legs of the stool, right. I mean, obviously, the 5R's and how I describe that, that’s how we change gene expression. You don’t turn certain genes off. You’re never going to fix the gut, just like you’re never going to fix a thyroid condition. You have to be able to down regulate certain gene expression. Really, that’s what the 5R's takes us through. But then there’s the upstream stressor. How are you going to fix the gut if you’re really not dealing with upstream?
The analogy I love to give. It’s like we’re trying to get fish to live down here in the stream, and get all these good algae to come back in the stream, and we keep putting new fish in, aka probiotics. We keep putting new algae in, aka probiotics. But what’s happening upstream is there’s a factory that’s letting mercury out because they’re making batteries or something, right, or lead. And it’s into the water, and it’s coming, trickling, downstream, and it keeps killing all our good algae. The fish need to eat, etc. So our little ecosystem down here, despite putting thousands of dollars into trying to fix it, it’s not fixing. Until we lower the amount of toxins that are coming in upstream to a certain point, now all of a sudden these bacteria can start taking root, and things will start to happen.
And by the way, most of the bacteria that you get in a probiotic, it’s typically not the bacteria most people actually need. And if you read The Autoimmune Answer, I talk a little bit about that. Because we did some really unique bacteria work with you that obviously you didn’t get in the average place, so…
Leah:
Yes.
David:
We’ll just leave it at that.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Probably not the best place to talk about this, but we put some different bacteria in you, or I should say you did, that really just—you never were—really, never was part of any of the protocols that you did in the past. But the point is is that, yeah, you need bacteria to play a role, but you also have to give it an environment to take root. So, really, it is that combination of cellular healing working upstream and, of course, the gut. In a nutshell, that was it, right, Leah? I mean, that’s what we did special I would say that all these other practitioners didn’t do.
Leah:
Yeah. Well, I remember, right before we started working with you, we had gotten your newsletter that you send out. And it was talking about that three-legged stool. And when we read that, we immediately were like, “Okay, he gets it. There’s hope. Somebody understands.” And we knew we could move forward. So, yeah, it was not just gut. It was gut but the detoxification, and I want to bring up that before I was able to work with you, I did do a lot of alternative things. And honestly, I think I probably accidentally made myself worse because I did do a lot of detoxing without realizing that I had a leaky gut, that my detox pathways were blocked, and so it was already hard for me to detoxify. And then I’m dumping all this stuff into my system.
And now, working with you, I understand why all of a sudden I started getting liver issues, and I was getting worse. And it was because I was just dumping stuff into a broken system and then recycling it like you teach.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. You are autointoxicating. That’s part of what I call true cellular detox. True cellular detox, number one, most people don’t go up to the cell. They’re down here just in the gut, sometimes in the liver. But it is that combination of avoiding autointoxication, bringing it from the cell, assisting it out of the body. I call that true cellular detox. That’s what got my life back and so many. So David, you were going to say something.
David:
Yeah. Leah, you bring up a really good point, and it’s something that—and Dr. Pompa said it. It’s autointoxicating ourselves, but so many people, when they say, “Well, I eat clean; I have a great diet; I take probiotics; I take supplements,” that’s not it. And you actually brought it to that your detox pathways weren’t open. There’s so many things that we don’t—we think that we know, and the problem is, we just don’t know there’s a process and a procedure to be able to make everything work in harmony together. And that’s why so many people don’t get their lives back.
Leah:
Yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Well, Leah, you give a lot people hope because I get phone calls all the time of people who were—are where you were. And I so appreciate you because I could talk about different cases. I could talk about these stories, but it really never does it the same as if somebody comes on and says, “Look, I was here, and I’m here now.” And I think one of the best testimonies, I shared it while you were off the phone, is just your husband’s testimony of you. I think it was the last time we spoke, and really, what triggered me to say, “You’ve got to come on and tell your story.” And I think I had a conversation with someone that morning who was just out of hope. And I thought to myself, gosh, if they could just speak to you, I think that they would have hope. And so that’s why you’re here because it offers hope.
So I hope that woman’s watching this show. That’s for sure. Because I know that you’ll offer her and so many hope. But your husband’s words were, “I’ve got my beautiful wife back,” and he described your hair, and your skin, and that touched my heart. And that’s how you ended up here.
Leah:
Yeah. I wish that he could’ve been on. He’s watching all the kids right now and the baby, but I think his words are, “I got my Leah back.” Because when you’re chronically ill, it changes your personality. I was different person. I wasn’t who he had known all those years, and now he’s finally starting to see me again. And my personality is coming back, and my love for life, and wanting to do things, and just being able to laugh and be silly. That was gone for years, and you can’t really describe it. It doesn’t sound like it’s that big a deal, but it’s terrible when you’re in the middle of it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think even how you’re dealing with stress now is completely different.
Leah:
Oh, yeah. The stress level has not let up. I would say we are probably more stressed now than we’ve ever been.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, you’re right. Right now, financially, it’s very, very difficult. You told me the hardest ever. I mean, and it…
Leah:
Yeah. It’s the hardest ever financially. And now we have four children, 7-year-old, twins that are 5, and now we have our little miracle at 7-weeks-old, and we’re okay, and I’m happy. I couldn’t feel joy. It sounds so sad. And I did do a lot of counselling and different things thinking, okay, I just got some kind of an emotional issue. But I couldn’t feel joy because I was so ill. And so now, even with the stress and all the crazy things that are going on in our lives, I’m not just healthy, I’m happy. And that’s miraculous.
Dr. Pompa:
Well, I thank you for making that point. I’m actually writing an article right now about sleep and anxiety, and my point is always that it’s not the stress. It’s the fact that when we stop adapting to the stress. When you’re healthier, you’re adapting to—I don’t want to call it typical stresses because you’re under more than most people, but you’re adapting to the stress. And that’s the key to health. When you stop adapting to any stressor, now disease starts to set in and become worse. And now it becomes another storm that comes in to make the perfect storm and leads to further illness. You’re adapting, so that’s the key.
Well, Leah, thank you so much for joining us and just offering so much help to so many people. I couldn’t do that so thank you. And David, thank you for walking us through it, and showing the pictures, and asking all the important things.
David:
Thanks for putting on such an amazing show every single weekend. Leah, it was so great to meet you.
Leah:
You too.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. All right, talk to you. Bye.
David:
Bye-bye.
Leah:
Bye.
