Transcript of Episode 64: A Cellular Healing Journey with Dr. Brad Gorski
With David Asarnow and special guest Dr. Brad Gorski.
David:
Hello, everyone. I want to welcome you to Cellular Healing TV. This is episode 65. This is David Asarnow. Dr. Pompa and Warren are not with us today. They're actually enjoying the weekend at Lifebook up in Chicago with a group of natural healthcare practitioners.
Today, we have a very special guest with us. We have Dr. Brad Gorski. Now, I had the opportunity to meet and get to know Dr. Brad Gorski about a year and a half ago, when he became part of our program of practitioners. He's got a very unique story on how he started his journey towards cellular healing. First of all, Dr. Gorski, welcome to Cellular Healing TV.
Dr. Gorski:
Thanks, David. Appreciate you having me. I'm glad to be here.
David:
It's our pleasure and our honor to have you here. Why don't you share a little bit about your journey and your story and how it all started along the cellular healing journey?
Dr. Gorski:
Yeah, for sure. It's funny, I always grew up being very healthy. I played college baseball. I was very into health. About a year into our chiropractic practice, I started getting some really unusual symptoms. My wife and I had moved into a house we were renting downtown in Charleston. Immediately upon moving in, I started getting really unusual symptoms, all the way from fatigue—just like I always was tired, which was very unusual, because I eat well. I take care of myself. I do all the right stuff. My hands began to swell up after working in the office all day long.
Kind of the course of a month or two, I started getting all of these unusual symptoms. Of course, we kept getting better about nutrition. We kept taking better supplements. We were doing everything that we knew right. Long story short, some of these symptoms kept coming on. Over the course of it, my wife and I sat down. We're like, we maybe think there's something in this home making me sick. I've had a lot of my clients tell me, all of a sudden I start noticing all of these symptoms after moving in a home.
I started getting these symptoms, and we started thinking that maybe mold was a factor. We started checking for mold. Our house didn't have much mold in it at all. Long story short, I just kept getting sicker and sicker, despite no matter what we did. We moved out of the home. For two weeks, we moved in with my parents, which is always fun at 27. We're like, hey, let's try this. See if I feel better.
I moved out for two weeks. Man, my energy started coming back up. I started feeling a lot better. We made the decision that we were going to have to move out of this home. That weekend, I flew out to my best friend's wedding in Michigan. I woke up the morning after giving my best man speech, I had a massive stroke. Four different blood clots went to areas of my brain at 27. That's really what put me on my path of really—although I was doing so many things right, there were obviously things that I was missing. Obviously, toxicity is what really triggered my issue.
David:
Let's step back. Obviously, everyone just heard wow, you were 27 years old and you had a stroke. I know your story, and it was like, oh my gosh. First of all, how did your life change that moment, when that happened? What was the diagnosis? What did the medical doctors tell you what was wrong and why it happened?
Dr. Gorski:
Yeah. You know, when it first happened too, I know one of my focuses was, I can remember when it happened, I had no function on the right side of my body. I could speak, but in my mind, I always knew, “Hey, I can beat this.” I didn't know what it was when it first happened. I figured I had brain cancer. What's interesting was I was in the hospital, and after they evaluated me, one of the things they said was, “You had a stroke.” Being in the course of the hospital over two weeks, they ran pretty much every test on me. They said, “What we're going to call it is—” they call it “cryptogenic,” which means there's no known cause. Actually, if you know anything about strokes, 40% of people who have a stroke, they call them “cryptogenic,” which means we don't know why it happened, but as long as you take these blood thinners, most likely, it won't happen again. That was actually my diagnosis.
David:
As long as you take this, it may not happen again. That's really comforting.
Dr. Gorski:
Exactly. Yeah, they had no idea. They had no idea. They're like, “We maybe think you had a hole in your heart.” Then they ran these tests on me. I didn't have it. It was all these things. I knew that once we'd got out of the hospital, I knew it on my watch to get my health and my life back. Immediately, we started doing things like hyperbaric chamber to help my brain heal, which was amazing. I also know, too, I had to go back and figure out why.
Again, I had this feeling of, there had to have been a cause of why I got sick. If I could find that cause and remove it, I knew my body would get well. Truly, that's what started me on my own health journey of saying that hey, it's on myself to figure out what's going on and why it happened. Then from there, really the next two years was a learning process of doing anything, going to doctors, traveling, finding out, how could I get myself well? That's again, I think—I always tell you, my story and what I think I learned through going through my sickness is where I've learned a lot of what I've done. Just getting myself well.
David:
How did things change? How did your diet change? What did you discover about yourself, what was going on, your surroundings?
Dr. Gorski:
Yeah. One of the big things was, it was interesting. After I got out of the hospital, here I am—probably the first five to six months of me getting out of the hospital, I come back. I have a full chiropractic practice that I'm taking care of. I can remember, that was very tough on me. I can remember anytime I would eat, no matter how healthy it was, if I tried to eat before noon, I was always getting sick. I was always throwing up. It was interesting. My body was telling me about intermittent fasting, which we've talked about on the show. That's how I started getting healthy, is that if I ever tried to eat before noon, I would get sick. My body's way of saying, “Hey, I'm trying to heal. Don't feed me.” We forget about those symptoms. I always joke about that with clients.
David:
It signals that you were very aware. You started listening to the signals your body was sending.
Dr. Gorski:
There we go. There we go. Yeah, I started doing the—I know we've talked about the SueroGold, right? The SueroGold was the only thing that I could consume in the morning before noon. I wouldn't eat much through the day. Then it would come to dinner, and man, I would eat a lot at dinner. That's actually really how I started getting better, as far as nutritionally. I had so many issues with my gut. I had so many issues with energy. Not only just the process of healing from what happened with my brain.
One of the big things was, I'll tell you how we found out that really, what happened to me was autoimmune related. We had got back here to Charleston, and we started running every test that really we could. We tried to rule out genetic factors. They're like, “It's not genes.” I had an autoimmune number in my blood work. There were 16 numbers that showed I had this. It's interesting, but there's no known proof that it causes heart attack or stroke. It's the only thing in my blood work that was abnormal.
David:
Yeah. Once you understood, and once you learned about, okay, well, it points to “autoimmune,” what changed in how you approached what you were doing to help yourself.
Dr. Gorski:
It was huge. I think part of what I started looking at is, again, learning about, “Okay, how do we calm this immune system?” There's this whole Th1 and Th2 response. I started learning about that. I think one thing was really unique. Then, when I heard Dr. Pompa speak for the first time, what was unique is, as I heard him speak, I'm like—I couldn't conceptualize what I did to get well. Then I realized, hey, what he's teaching is what I did to get well. It was a really great parallel for me. Here's someone who had protocols and procedures in place, after I took about two years to stumble through doing it. Here's somebody who's actually teaching that to physicians, which actually was great.
David:
Learning through the process of your story, is how you started to get well—what would you tell people that are sitting here listening to this? There's people watching this live. There's people who are going to watch the replay. There's people who are going to listen to this on iTunes. There's a lot of people who are out there saying, “Hey, I've got a lot of symptoms. I don't know what to do.” What would you tell them?
Dr. Gorski:
First of all, I would say, “Listen to your body.” Sometimes, it's frustrating, being a practitioner. I always say, “You never want to treat symptoms, but symptoms show a sign, sometimes of dysfunction.” Symptoms are either signs of healing or signs of dysfunction. They're either one or the other. I think one of the first things I always will say is, “Are your symptoms signs of healing, or are your symptoms signs of sickness and disease?”
I think once you look at that, one thing I would also say, too, is that one thing that's not looked at in natural health at all today—and I went through two and a half, three years of actually traveling to doctors, before I really started understanding how to address the gut. Probiotics are great. They do not address the gut. I think that's a huge thing today, I would say, really, that—also, too, don't forget this whole connection of the gut-brain connection. I feel it's a huge thing that most physicians may miss. They understand detox. They understand some nutrition in a way, but they totally miss this relationship with the gut. Obviously, that's a huge thing of what we teach people.
David:
Yeah. Obviously, one of the things you just mentioned, fasting, was essential for your healing. Were there different fasts that you did at different points in time? You mentioned intermittent fasting. What other things did you utilize to target that gut-brain connection that we hear Dr. Pompa talk about a lot, too?
Dr. Gorski:
I did multiple fasts. You name a fast, I've probably done it. I've done straight bone broth fasts, which we've talked about on the show, Dr. Pompa's stock. I've done the pure whey water fasts. I've done that. I've mixed those two things together.
Two Christmases ago, my wife wasn't very happy with me, I went through a fast right around Christmas. I didn't plan it out well, but I did about 18 days. About four to five days of almost pure fasting, and then I kicked on almost a consistent intermittent fast for about the next—it was a total of 18 days. Again, using a mixture of the whey water, the bone broth. Also, the Beyond Organic products. Talk about adding a very, very unique bacteria to the gut. Starving down the existing bacteria that's in the gut. Obviously now, too, we know about all the viruses that exist in our digestive system and our gut. Also, that plays a huge role. Pure fasts, four-day fasts, intermittent fasts. You name it. Those are the type of things that I did from four days to two days.
When you start fasting, some of it doesn't always go well. My fasts started at two days when I wanted to go four. As you start doing those fasts, I can remember—I'm, today, about 180 lbs, but going through the course of my fasting, I probably got down to about 155. What was unique about it was every time I broke those fasts, once I was done, I never felt better. That was a huge thing. All of a sudden, after these fasts, it was like now, all of a sudden, I was less sensitive to food. All of a sudden, my energy was changing. All of a sudden, my brain fog was disappearing.
I know we've talked about the Terrain right, from Beyond Organic? Have you taken the Terrain products?
David:
Yes.
Dr. Gorski:
That was one of the first things I noticed, is how simple, is I would take those before meals. Most people take apple cider vinegar, and before a meal, they'll take a little bit and put it in water, right, because it helps with digestion. The Terrain from the Beyond Organic, which has four unique acids, I would do a little bit with that before I would eat. The first thing that I would notice doing that, I would notice my mental clarity started changing. That's actually a huge product that I use all the time before foods. Man, that completely changed the way I would actually digest, absorb, and assimilate what I was eating.
David:
We see you today, and no one would imagine that just a few years ago, you had that stroke. Tell us about the journey. It didn't just happen like this overnight, getting well. It's a process, isn't it?
Dr. Gorski:
No, absolutely. I think, too, I relay it this way. When I started trying to get well, I think I did a lot of things, because I really wanted to get my health back. I always say this: every path I went down wasn't a right path. I think sometimes what you do is you take action and you learn. You take and you learn, and you take action and you learn. Yeah, it was a process. I would say this. I would say I was probably 50% better within weeks of actually getting out of the hospital and having my stroke. I think what was tough is that for me to get from 50% to 100%, where I wanted to be, that journey took me two and a half, three years.
Some of it, too, was learning. A big part of that was once I started learning, the huge thing, which we talk about on the show, is once I started getting my gut well, I was doing the right nutrition. The second thing that I never was addressing was the cell. That's a huge, again, another misconception. People forget about, how do we influence the cell on a cellular level? That's all we are. We're cells. That's another component that it took me two and a half, three years to figure out. Once I figured it out, man. From there it was like a whole new level of where my health went.
David:
How has this experience changed your life and how you practice and what you do on a day-to-day basis, in working with both chiropractic patients and health coaching clients?
Dr. Gorski:
Yeah. I think what it was, I think—when you go through something like that, for me, I thank God. It was a great opportunity. I thank God for what I went through. I think when you live through something like that, it gives me a whole new appreciation for a patient. When a patient comes in or a client comes in and says, “Dr. Brad, I'm not sure you know where I've been,” I do know where they've been. I've been in their position.
I think that's a great thing. I think, also, too, it's given me the opportunity to take time away from my chiropractic patients and really focus on these tough cases of autoimmune similar to myself. One thing that was actually in my blood work that—again, doctors wanted to treat me with levothyroxine and testosterone. My body wasn't making testosterone. My hormones were screwed up. I was hypothyroid. Autoimmune hypothyroid.
Again, even natural doctors I went to wanted to give me hormones to help support me. At the end of the day, I knew that those things were effects, they weren't cause. I think once we got to the cell—remove the interference, heal the gut—that's really, again, too, I think, where my life really started to—where I went from the 50%, 60% better to where I wanted to be.
David:
Let's talk about that. How did your story coincide, then, with Dr. Pompa? Here's why I ask this. I actually spent a day with you at your practice. You had a talk one night, and it was about cellular healing in skincare, and the effects and whatnot. One of the unique things that I saw was, you live this, you breathe this. In your practice, you have videos going all day long. In fact, I got to see some older videos of Dr. Pompa up on the wall. The interesting thing was, how engaged—because I really got to sit back and just observe, as an outsider, how engaged all of your patients who came in for the chiropractic adjustments were, into understanding cellular health and eating right and living differently. How did this all come together?
Dr. Gorski:
I think I lost you there, David. I heard you say “engaged,” and then I may have lost you.
David:
Okay, how did your story—did you hear what I was talking about, you guys are showing these videos in your practice? Your patients are really engaged. You talk about how this whole story with Dr. Pompa came about, and why you chose to become part of our group.
Dr. Gorski:
Yeah, I think one thing, too, as you know—which I've been fortunate, as far as chiropractic, to be around a great group of doctors who understand chiropractic. We have an amazing system to educate people. Then you know one thing is, once I went through my sickness, I also realized, too, that there was a different level of severity. The autoimmune, the thyroid—like myself. It was my story. I realized that there was a part of those people that I wanted to spend time away from my practice to help. I knew they needed it, and I know what I have to offer from what I went through could really help those people.
I heard Dr. Pompa talk for the first time. Again, what I was saying to myself is I'm like man, just what that guy just talked about the last hour took me two years of stumbling through to figure that out, parts of it. That's really when I said—for me, it was, I wanted to take some time away from my practice to really help, again, get down to those other patients. Again, the 20% of people who maybe wouldn't get well from what I would normally do, and focuses time to really build, for clients—these plans really can transform someone's health who's in a very, very bad position like that.
David:
Let's talk a little bit about health coaching. What type of things are you seeing these days? What questions are people coming to you with? What are they facing?
Dr. Gorski:
It's interesting. I think one thing that's unique about my story is a lot of the clients that I have who come to me—and I hear this all the time. When we talk about autoimmune, which we're seeing today that so many people have autoimmune, but we understand this. The testing for autoimmune is in the stone ages. There's not great tests. One thing that really—I say this with—because you know, I hate—I never look at a patient and say, “Let me treat your symptoms.” Symptoms sometimes are dead giveaways. Again, I was talking about, “Are these signs of healing, or are these signs of disease?”
I think today, a lot of the symptoms—the brain fogs, the inability to lose weight, the hormone problems, from thyroid to testosterone to adrenal fatigue, these are all, again, what I call—these are the conditions that a lot of our patients have. I'm finding, today, that I think a lot of them, most of their issues are related to their gut. They're related to, again, bad cells, inflammation of the cell membrane.
Those are the conditions I'm seeing. A lot of cases that I'm seeing today are even, again, forms of colitis that have actually moved into other areas of the body. I actually have a client I'm working with now who, they didn't think it was possible. He's the only documented case in the country, where his autoimmune has actually moved from his colon out to other areas of his body. Those are the type of clients that I'm getting. These people have really been everywhere, and they're saying, “Hey, why can't I get results? I've done all the treatment that's out there.” I think that's what we provide, essentially, a unique approach to really addressing that.
David:
You just brought something up really unique. There's a lot of people who've been down a road. They've gone to doctor after doctor. They've gotten test after test, and they're just told, “This is what it is. You're going to be on this medication. In fact, when I was 22 years old, I was told I was going to be on an autoimmune medication for the rest of my life, and, “Oh, by the way, these are all the list of symptoms that it can cause. You should expect to see this.” It freaked me out, and I just flushed it down the toilet and decided, actually almost like you—intermittent fasting by accident.
Here's the thing. Dr. Pompa talks about the three-legged stool. We've got a lot of factors that are going on. We've got the physical, the emotional, the chemical sensitivities. We've got vaccinations that are going on. What's the best way to make people aware that it could be the food that you're eating? It could be the environmental situation. How do you explain that to people?
Dr. Gorski:
I think today, it's a great question. How do you explain to people? I think today, people realize, the fact that we live in this world where nutrition is changing. The presence of GMO. We're looking at the toxins in our environment. I think the thing that people connect with, at least from what I see, is—how I think we influence people and how we move, people are realizing that it's there. I think what they're not realizing is that the symptoms they have—they don't realize that that's an effect and not a cause. I think when we talk about going upstream, things like—in my story, one thing that was a giveaway—talk about immune sensitivity—at three months of age when I was vaccinated, I actually quit breathing. I lived on breathing machines for three years of my life. Go back in my history—
David:
I never knew that about you.
Dr. Gorski:
Yeah, yeah. If you will go back in my history, you'd think I was maybe a little sensitive to mercury. Obviously, we know, today, it's very well documented that vaccines, again, they can push—you look at Th2 response and Th1 response. Vaccines can completely shift the response of your body.
There you go. My autoimmune could've been started to be triggered at a very early age. Now, the presence of 18 years of age, putting—again, one amalgam filling is not much. These things, they build up over time. Then you get to a point where you hit that tipping point of where the disease starts. I think that's at where most people always—clients, when I sit down with them, they always have that one thing that pushed them over the edge. Again, there were layers before that, sometimes, that people got to go through and get well. That's why it took me three years.
David:
You just brought something up, really, that's important—immunizations. It's a whole huge debate these days, on a couple things you just spoke about. Immunizations. We have genetically modified foods that are frankly, banned throughout the EU, that they won't allow to be sold in all these other countries. Yet, they're prevalent here. That's a whole other story.
We've got all this going on. Then, people here—oh, maybe there's people who read, and they start getting into natural health and say, “I'm going to remove my mercury filling, and I'm going to get it replaced,” or “I'm going to remove my root canals.” Then, all of a sudden, they may feel better for a little bit. Then, all of a sudden, they get sicker and sicker and sicker. It's because they haven't prepped their body well. They haven't figured a way to catch and grab and bind the toxins and remove them. All of a sudden, your body releases it. Then it moves around. Then it resettles in other areas, and people get sicker. It's crazy out there today.
Dr. Gorski:
One thing which you bring up, and one of the things I went through—glutathione, which we all know is the body's number one antioxidant—your body uses glutathione to remove any toxin from your body. I can remember the process of going through and doing IVs of glutathione. I always use the analogy, that's not a bad thing. It can definitely help you. Again, when you talk about the way the cell works, unless you influence intracellular glutathione, that's also, too, the difference of, again, where detox can be good. Again, it can be targeted. Again, I think that's another thing that people are starting to learn. Where glutathione can be great, unless the glutathione of the cell changes through redox processes, that's where I think really the difference is made in people. I always use the analogy, you can pull toxins out of the body in a bucket, but unless you get them out of the tissues and out of the cell, the cell still doesn't work. You build the toxins right back up again. It's a two-part process. You've got remove the toxins from the body, but you also have to re-strengthen the cells so those cells can actually push the toxins out of the cell. They don't absorb more. Detox and retox.
David:
You actually bring up a really good point. Here's the challenge. I work with businesses. If a business is sick and they want to get well, they need a little bit more oxygen. They need a little bit more life in their business. What do they do? You get someone from the outside sometimes can see a whole lot better than you can on the path of where you want to go and how to connect the dots. Just like a business owner, sometimes in their own little encapsulation, they can't really figure it out themselves.
The same thing is when you're looking about going down a natural route and what to do, having that health coach in your corner on your side that is there to say, “Okay, ask you the right questions.” Sometimes, just having someone lay out exactly, “Okay, if you do this, if you change your diet this way—” “Oh, you're still eating grains? You're still eating that—” “Well, it's whole grain bread.” You ask the questions about the whole grain bread. Let's talk a little bit about that health coaching aspect and how valuable that could be for people.
Dr. Gorski:
Yeah, it's huge. I hear this all the time when I have patients, especially who've been through autoimmune and maybe even two. I have a client who comes in. Maybe their son is experiencing symptoms of autism. A big thing is they're like, “What about the gluten free, casein free diet?” It goes back to, I think, what we're learning about food today. Is dairy good or bad? It goes back to, what kind of dairy are we talking about?
Again, milk has amazing benefits. Beta 1 versus Beta 2 casein. There's two different forms. I think that's a level of, I think, customization with patients. Your clients come and say, “Where do I start with?” Sometimes, you've got to start with the gut. Sometimes, you've got to fix that before you can feed the body. Sometimes, too, you just need to increase the fats. That's a huge thing today, is we're realizing things that even—gosh, I remember six years ago, the bread. I would still eat that occasionally, but we unfortunately know, today, the way that stuff has been hybridized—unfortunately, I'd never consume that. We know what it does. It affects the gut. Causes leaky gut.
Also, too, I think that customization is huge. Not every person starts in the same spot. I was referred to [00:26:26] as a toolbox. My job is always to give clients every tool I need to get their health and their life back. When we use them, how we use them, and at what time do we use them is what I help them with.
David:
Any final thoughts that you would like to leave with our viewers and listeners?
Dr. Gorski:
Yeah. I would say number one, and just a huge thing, I think, for me, and I guess what I learned through my journey, I would just say that if you're listening to the show today and you have issues of autoimmune and you've had issues of hormone problem and dysfunction and brain fog, I would really suggest, again, also do something before it's too late. I think that's a huge thing. We always know that an ounce of prevention's worth a pound of cure. Action speaks louder than words. I hear a lot of people say that, but they don't take the action necessary to it.
The second thing I would say too, no matter which practitioner you go to, do not forget this connection of the gut brain. I think, again, from what I went through when I learned not a lot of people understand nutritionally how to affect the gut. Then also, too, how to affect the cell, and again, how to control inflammation of the cell through, again, the way the body uses fuel. Those are two unique things I would say. Don't forget about the cell. Don't forget about fixing the gut. Those are two things that if you do not fix you will not get well, and you won't get your health or your life back.
David:
Awesome. Thank you, Dr. Gorski, for being our special guest on Cellular Healing TV. Next week, we'll be back with Dr. Pompa and Warren as my co-host. I wish everyone an amazing rest of your week. Have an amazing weekend, and we'll see you next week. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Gorski.
Dr. Gorski:
Thanks for having me, David. Yeah. Appreciate for having me.
