Episode 25 - The Integrative Cancer Revolution: Testing, Treating, and Thriving with Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Get ready to dive into a transformative conversation on The Beljanski Cancer Talk Show as we sit down with Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy – a true pioneer in the world of integrative medicine. As the founder of both the Center for New Medicine and the Cancer Center for Healing, Dr. Connealy has revolutionized cancer care by blending traditional medical wisdom with holistic approaches that focus on prevention, nutrition, and lifestyle.  

In this eye-opening discussion, Dr. Connealy takes us through her remarkable journey – from her roots as a conventional medical doctor to her unwavering commitment to integrative treatments. She’ll share her groundbreaking insights on the power of early detection, the profound impact of diet and movement, and why prevention is the ultimate key to conquering chronic disease. 

Her clinic now stands as the largest integrative medicine center in the U.S., and in this episode, she reveals how she’s reshaped the landscape of cancer care. Tune in for practical tips that you can apply to your daily routine to prevent cancer, boost your health, and thrive in the future of wellness.

If you want to take charge of your health and unlock the secrets to a cancer-free life, this is a must-listen!

Key Highlights:

🔍 Dr. Connealy’s Early Influences
⚕️ Her Journey Into Integrative Medicine
🔍 The Birth of the Center for New Medicine
💉 Why Prevention Matters More Than Ever  
🌿 The Daily Habits That Can Help Prevent Cancer

Podcast Page:
• https://www.beljanski.org/beljanski-cancer-talk-show/episode-25-the-integrative-cancer-revolution-testing-treating-and-thriving-with-dr-leigh-erin-connealy-md/

Hey there! If you've been getting value from our podcast, we’d be so grateful if you could take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support helps us reach more people, and it truly means the world. Thanks so much for taking the time—it really makes a difference!

==================

Want to stay in the loop? Sign up and grab a FREE chapter of Sylvie’s eBook! 👉 https://www.beljanski.org/podcast/

To help support cancer research, head over to https://beljanski.org and learn more.

Grab the book and support The Beljanski Foundation! Get it here: https://www.beljanski.org/book (Use code EP1 at checkout for FREE shipping)

Stay connected and follow us for the latest updates: https://linktr.ee/thebeljanskifoundation

Chapters

• 1:02 Introduction to Cancer Prevention
• 1:23 Meet Dr. Connealy
• 2:16 Dr. Connealy’s Early Influences
• 4:17 Journey Into Integrative Medicine
• 7:21 The Birth of the Center for New Medicine
• 10:19 Why Prevention Matters More Than Ever
• 12:44 The Daily Habits That Can Help Prevent Cancer
• 16:10 The 2025 Beljanski Integrative Cancer Conference
• 23:16 A Holistic Approach: Dr. Connealy’s Final Thoughts

Transcript

The Integrative Cancer Revolution_Testing, Treating, and Thriving with Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD

Introduction to Cancer Prevention

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Prevention is priceless. From one cancer cell to a tumor is about eight to 10 years. So that means we have so much opportunity to prevent cancer.

Meet Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy

Victor Dwyer: Welcome to The Beljanski Cancer Talk Show, where we uncover stories and insights that truly change lives. Today, we're joined by a remarkable guest, Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, a trailblazer in integrative medicine who spent over 37 years helping people heal from the inside out. As the Medical Director and Founder of Center for New Medicine and Cancer Center for Healing, the largest integrative clinic in the U.S., she's dedicated to addressing the root causes of disease and empowering people to take back their health. 

She's also the author of the Cancer Revolution and host of the Cancer Conversation web series, inspiring countless lives around the globe. You're in for something truly impactful today. Let's dive in.

Dr. Connealy's Early Influences

Sylvie Beljanski: Hello, Dr. Connelly. Thank you for joining us on The Belgianski Cancer Talk Show. I'm delighted to have you and honored to have you because you are really one of the top well known cancer doctor in the country and, and it's going to be a treat for everybody who is listening, is listening today.

You have a really interesting profile because you started your career as a medical doctor working in partnership with a nutritionist. And that's very unique because nutrition is one of the things that are not spoken too much about in, in medical, medical school. So what led you to this path of working from the beginning with, with a nutritionist and understanding the importance of food in our overall health?

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Right. Well, a lot of different paths in my journey have kind of brought me to that, but it really started early on. First of all, I'm number three of six children and my mother really would read all the books of Adele Davis. I don't know if you're familiar with Adele Davis, but she was a very famous nutritionist a long time ago and she's written many books on having healthy children, healthy families, etcetera.

And so, growing up, I usually ate at home and my mother cooked all the meals. We had raw milk, we ate liver, we ate sauerkraut, we ate foods that nourish and strengthen our bodies. And so we rarely went out. My mother never used a jar of baby food. She made all of her own baby food for all six of us. She nursed us all for a year.

So, that's how I grew up. I mean, I never grew up on going to a fast food place or anything like that. 

Journey into Integrative Medicine

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: And so then, when I was a teenager, my parents received a letter that my mother had taken DES when she was pregnant with me and that I needed to go to the local cancer institute, which happened to be MD Anderson in Houston, Texas.

And because they said all those offspring, male and female offspring, had increased risk of cancer, hormone problems, infertility, anatomical problems. And so, I started going to MD Anderson with a team of doctors examining me, biopsies, all kinds of things. And so they encouraged me to continue getting routine exams, etcetera.

And so, then… 

Sylvie Beljanski: I, excuse me, at the time, you were feeling well, there was no, no symptoms…

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: There was no symptoms, but I did have dysplasia. Okay. And so dysplasia is, so you have normal cells, you have dysplasia, and then you have cancer. So, I had a pre-cancer condition. And so then I was really good in biology and I said, “What can I do in biology and talk to people?”

And so, sure enough, I went to medical school and went to, I went to medical school and because I did not have two regular menstrual cycles, I found a doctor. This was many years ago and they immediately put you on birth control pills for really any abnormality a woman is experiencing, but especially irregular menstrual cycles.

So, I started taking the birth control pill. And when I was in medical school, which it, completely changed me physically. And so I was like, “No, this is not good way to go.” So, then I get out of medical school, I go to Harbor UCLA for training, and then I start working in emergency room, urgent care. And then. I met a doctor who was a pathologist and internist from Russia, and he started teaching me about things that I, like, “Whoah, we didn't learn this in medical school.”

And he did, he also told me about how you need to teach patients how to eat. And I was like, “Wow, this is, like, all novel,” even though it resonated with me. And so, then I started my practice 39 years ago with a registered dietitian and myself and doing comprehensive lab testing. And really the people that came to me were, they wanted to lose weight.

And because that's a great way to get patients. And then, so that path of my irregular menstrual cycles, the D.E.S., my upbringing, and this doctor kind of all, like, said “You've got to teach people how to live.” And sure enough, from a long time ago, I had people do food journals. I had people, like, I asked patients how their sleep, the water, the eating, food journals, all these things.

And then that led to everything that I'm doing today. 

Founding the Center for New Medicine

Sylvie Beljanski: And now your Center for New Medicine and Cancer Center and Healing is the largest and most advanced integrative functional medicine clinic in the U.S. So, how did you get there? 

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: It started at, as a clinic, just treating patients for everything, but really optimizing them and trying to de-diagnose their medical conditions.

So, we started out seeing everything from weight loss and then hormones and then metabolic disorders and autoimmune disorders and everything. And then I had, I was working with an oncologist here and I referred all my cancer patients to this oncologist and he was great and wonderful and I said, how would you be, would you like to be interested in doing an integrative oncology program?

So he said, yes, I was like, wow. So, we went down to Mexico and visited Oasis of Hope with Dr. Contreras. And he said, and Dr. Contreras is a cancer surgeon, so he was very impressed with what Dr. Contreras was doing. And Dr. Contreras had always wanted to open up a cancer center in the United States, but he didn't really have anyone that he wanted to partner with.

So, he partnered with me and this oncologist and myself, and we started that probably 20 years ago, and then Oasis of Hope, when people could come to Irvine, they didn't want to go to Mexico. So, we decided to amicably part ways. Dr. Fong developed an autoimmune condition, so then it was just me.

And so, then, I developed an integrative oncology program here, which we do today, which is constantly evolving because there's all kinds of new information. So, it marries the best of conventional with all the integrative protocols that are out there, whether it be vitamin C or different IVs, whether it's assessing people's voltage, their nutrients, their toxin analysis, heavy metals, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

And so we come, so the Center for New Medicine is the Human Optimization and Chronic Diseases and the Cancer Center for Healing are patients who've been diagnosed with cancer and they want to marry an integrative approach or they have failed, conventional medicine has failed them. And so, I would love everyone to be interested in prevention and early detection because, as chronic diseases is in the news all the time now, and our health system every day is becoming more broken and more expensive.

If we would focus on prevention and early detection from birth on, we would not be seeing the disease rates that we're seeing. 

The Importance of Prevention

Sylvie Beljanski: Yes. And speaking of prevention, so when people come to you and with freshly, let's say, diagnosed cancer, what is about the timeline of between the, it becomes, beginning of cancer, people should do, start to do something and they, the timeline where it's preventable, let's say and diagnosed, I would say.

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: So cancer is, I tell people prevention is And from one cancer cell in the perfect storm to a tumor is about 8 to 10 years. Now, if you're exposed to radiation like Chernobyl, you may get cancer in about three to four years. So, that means we have so much opportunity to prevent cancer. And in my book, Cancer Revolution, and in my upcoming book, Cancer Revolution Updated, I talk about and reiterate how we need to prevent cancer and or early detection.

And so, that's why we have so many, we have so much time to prevent cancer because it's not something that you just wake up one day with cancer, just like any disease. If you have Alzheimer's or heart disease, cancer, they're diseases over a chronic period of time. And so what we understand, the Warburg principle, we understand the mitochondrial principle of cancer, we can prevent cancer.

And in my book, I talk about this in detail and because I had lots of mentors in my life who taught me what I know today, and then because there's constant research coming out, new things coming out, new ideas, new theories, we all need to be open to these new theories and really corporate and collaborate to heal the patient.

Sylvie Beljanski: But for most people, when they hear you have cancers, they're stunned. It's falling, the reality is falling upon them, even though, as you say, it has taken years to develop and to get them to the stage of the diagnosis. So, what can they do? What should we do long before any possible diagnosis, eventual diagnosis?

What should we do to prevent cancer on a daily basis?

Daily Habits for Cancer Prevention

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Prevent cancer. They did a study of 44,000 identical twins, and they said the greatest single determinant of whether they were going to get cancer was their diet, what they eat, and their lifestyle. And so everyone needs to really look in the mirror and look how they live every day.

So, for example, when we see a patient, we always address their 24-hour life, because they, most 50 percent of the population doesn't sleep. So, we assess their sleep and are they sleeping? How much water and purification of water? Are they drinking water that, if you're drinking tap water, you're just drinking pharma water and toxic water.

Then, we assess what they're eating every single day, and then we assess their movement because exercise alone reduces cancer 60%. And most people today are not moving. They said sitting's the new smoking. And then we address their mouth. We address, do they have mercury fillings? Do they have dental disease? Do they have root canals? Do they have any other thing going on in their mouth? Because the mouth is the gateway to the rest of their body.

And then, we address stress and, because stress, as we know, creates a multitude of problems and changing the physiology and the biochemical reactions that take place in our body.

So, that's the first thing people can do is look and see, “How do I live every day? How am I in disorder?” And start working on it, because a lot of it you can just do yourself. If you, like, really assess and are honest with yourself, you can really assess “How am I living? How am I eating?” All these things. Okay.

Then, if you can partner with a physician, a functional medicine doctor, who's going to combine the best of conventional with the most, latest, greatest in integrative medicine or oncology, okay? Because all doctors should be assessing a patient and saying, “How do I prevent every disease? Not just cancer, but all diseases.”

Instead, our medical system is the doctor gets paid on how many diagnosis they have. So, the more diagnosis, the better they can bill. And so, we have to get away from that because right now, 18.5 percent of the GDP is spent on healthcare. And they said, by 2030, it's going to be much higher.

So, all of us together, doctors, public health people like you, like me, we need to be openly talking about this and say, “Look, this has got to stop because cancer and other chronic diseases are only escalating.” So that means we're just not going to have a healthy nation. And so, if we don't have a healthy nation and healthy people we can't all function together.

That's the bottom line. We're all interconnected and interconnected. 

Sylvie Beljanski: You just, touched upon the things that we need to do to prevent cancer. What what are the bad habits and the opposite things we need to get rid of to avoid cancer? 

Ad: The 2025 Beljanski Integrative Cancer Conference

Nathan Crane: That's the purpose of The 2025 Beljanski Integrative Cancer Conference, a meeting of the world's top minds in complementary, alternative, natural and integrative cancer solutions.

The proceeds go towards funding cutting edge cancer research, delving into a brand new area of science concerning cancer stem cells, which could hold the secret to ending cancer once and for all.

Daily Habits for Cancer Prevention (continuation)

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: First of all, sleep. You need about eight hours of sleep. Some people need nine hours of sleep. Your day starts when you go to bed. And the magic of what happens when we sleep, it's repairing, regenerating, detoxifying. So, we've got to make sure that we're sleeping. And like I said earlier, about 50 percent of the population has a sleep disorder and we don't want to give medications because medications really cause central nervous system depression, respiratory depression.

And so, that's not a good answer for sleep disorders. A lot of people are on their screen with the blue light and stimulating their, their body, and doing all these other things. Lights, the lights are not good for us for the most part, and all of that prevents you to creating a good night's sleep.

So, I tell people, you've got to create a sleep sanctuary, turn off the electricity to your bedroom. And if you need help sleep, try to find natural agents, Valerian, 5 HTP, there's all different things that, that are out there to help people sleep. And then people need to drink, be aware of their water.

You have, in this day and time you have to have some kind of water purification system because there are so many chemicals you can go on, environmental working group. You can see what chemicals and things are in the water. Heavy metals are in the water. Chemicals are in the water. Medications are in the water.

So, you've got to stop putting more toxins in our body. We already know that human beings have over 200 toxins in their body. They found it in blood and placenta and breast milk and doing environmental pollutant panels. We see all of these chemicals and toxins. And so, so they've got to have water that is purified.

Then, people need to eat real food. They need to eat fruits and vegetables, good oils, olive oil, avocado, tallow, these kinds of butter, good fats, okay? And then people need protein. And so protein sources are protein powders, although real food like lamb and chicken and buffalo and grass-fed beef, all these kinds of proteins are. And if you eat, some fat, some carbohydrates and some protein, you prevent the insulin roller coaster that happens when you eat lots of sugar and carbohydrates.

Sylvie Beljanski: Specifically sugar, that's a big, big thing in the traditional, let's say, conventional American diet. Too much sugar and even high fructose corn syrup. What can one do to eliminate sugar? 

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Just stay away, use natural sugars, which are fruits and vegetables. Everything has carbohydrates, like protein even has carbohydrates but stick to fruits and vegetables as opposed to cookies and donuts, alright?

A lot of people, in the morning, people eat cereal. Cereal's not really a good breakfast to eat, okay? They would be better off eating a fruit, eggs and maybe, a whole grain piece of toast. Okay. And then for lunch eat, again, like what I do for lunch because I eat a light lunch. I eat cottage cheese, which is a fermented food and I usually put bee pollen or something from bees on it and then fruit.

And a lot of times I'll have a little raw cheese. Because I want to be awake and alert. So, that's the kind of lunch I'll have. And then at dinner time, like I, last night, for example, I ate, I ate scallops with squash blossoms. And, and eating foods that are real and they're not processed fake foods and processed foods. Okay.

We need to eat foods that are found in nature as opposed to fabricated in some big food company that nothing is alive and nothing has, the food doesn't have energy, yeah, 

Sylvie Beljanski: No, it's just packaged to survive longer on the shelf and bring more profit to the company.

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Right. And then…

Sylvie Beljanski: It's not designed to be healthy.

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Yeah, and if you look at the ingredients, you have to look at the, you have to go down the rabbit hole, Sylvie, with everything today. You've got to understand everything that is in these foods. The chemicals, the dyes, all the hydrogenated fats, etc. If people did a forensic analysis of their food, they would really avoid, like, just recently, red dye was removed.

Sylvie Beljanski: Yes, actually.

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD:  Thank goodness. But there's many chemicals and toxins in food. And so not to mention, the dyes and the fat, that hydrogenated fats, etcetera, and or the seed oils. So, people just don't know. And so, we've got to educate people, and we've got to educate physicians about the power of food.

And then movement. I would say, there's 800 muscles in the body and our muscles are, they stimulate energy in your body. So, the more you move, the more energy you're producing. Okay. And but we are sitting down today, a hundred years ago, people didn't have the mobilization of things that we do now.

Now we have cars and now we have computers and we have all these things that are counterproductive to the functionality of our body. So, we need to move. We need to take every opportunity to move and before everybody did everything by hand, whether they wash their clothes and they forage for their meat and their produce and their fruits and vegetables and they churn the butter and they milk the cow, they did things that everything required physical energy and they were outside a lot of times and enjoying nature and sunshine.

And so now we're inside, everything's artificial, computers. So we have, civilization is not helping people survive and thrive. 

Holistic Approaches and Final Thoughts

Sylvie Beljanski: Yeah, absolutely. And there is a stress also. The stress, the mental health and stress that as a, I'm sure, as a holistic doctor, you are taking in, into account the stress level of your patients, especially when they hear the little sentence, “You have cancer.” That's what brings the stress level to the roof.

How do you tell your patients not to give up hope and give them the fortitude they need to carry on and sometimes make, include difficult changes to their life? 

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Hope is medicine, right? And the belief of something to be that can occur and I always give my patients visualization techniques.

So, we are very big on addressing the stress and the unfavorable emotional conflicts in someone's life. And so, I always ask the patient what happened to you in the last8 to 10 years? What, what went on? And patients all, I would say almost all the time, they will tell you exactly what happened, okay, and what contributed to the development of this cancer.

And I always tell people, cancer isn't just one thing, it's multitude of things. And so, that's why if you're going to a conventional doctor, he or she is going to say, “Okay, your options are surgery, chemo, radiation, and immunotherapy.” But we all know that does not work all the time. And also, we have to inform and educate the patient.

When you do a biopsy, when you do surgery, when we do chemo, when we do radiation and we do immunotherapy, they all have injurious, inflammatory, immunosuppressive properties. So, as a physician and caretaker of my patient, we need to be protecting the patient every step of the way.

And so, if a patient needs a biopsy, what is the protective protocol? Surgery, what is the productive protocol, etcetera. So, if a patient has high cholesterol, a lot of doctors give statins. I don't personally give statins to my patients but if you're a conventional doctor and you're giving statins, you should be giving Coenzyme Q10 and liver protection, and probably brain protection because we know those are consequences of giving a statin.

If you give an antibiotic, for example, and I had a patient the other day who had taken a hundred dosages of antibiotics. What happens when you take antibiotics? Even after one time, you deplete your microbiome and you increase the possibility of growing yeast or fungus, which contribute to the storm of cancer.

So, you have to think, everything I always tell people, “Every decision you make in your life is a health care decision.” So, you've got to look what you're doing. Is everything elevating you and advancing you to a higher level. And then the doctor you're partnering with, is he or she advancing you and making you better? If you're not making, if the doctor is not making you better, you need to find someone who's going to partner with you to make you better. 

Because any patient I have here, let's say cancer, but I treat everything. But if I have a patient with cancer in the first week, almost all patient, patients feel much better. Okay. Even if they're stage four and very serious. Okay. And in this day and time, Sylvie, we can't rely on the conventional paradigm for treating cancer because we live in a very different world and we know the tumor, micro, our environment, we know, you talked about stress, we talked about toxins, we talked about bugs, all these things contribute to the demise of the cell and the energy of the cell.

So, just addressing and killing the cancer is not going to work because you have to develop all these healing pathways.

Yes, sometimes a patient can have a simple lumpectomy in the breast and maybe survive for 10, 20, 30 years and the cancer never come back. Okay. Yes, there are those cases. All right. For example, I see many patients, I was diagnosed in 2018, I was diagnosed in 2019, and their cancer is back. Why is it back?

Because you didn't change the terrain and the garden that the cancer came from. 

Sylvie Beljanski: Absolutely. People don't get rid of the cause, and the same thing comes back again and again. Absolutely. Absolutely. You have a book coming up, right? 

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Yes, so I wrote Cancer Revolution in 2017 and now my book will be coming out this year and, hopefully, when we do the Beljanski big talk in April in Austin that you are organizing, I will be announcing pre-sales of Cancer Revolution Updated.

And because, as things are constantly evolving and I'm always adding new techniques, new things here in the clinic, when I read something new or I find something that can help the patient heal, I'm always looking forward to new things because what's out there now is just, it's just not enough.

So, we have to use these new updated medical revelations that are available to everyone, whether they are on PubMed or they go to lectures. And the problem is a textbook is outdated, and we're 20 years. I talked to a new lady doctor today. She is in residency and she grew up on naturopathy and she's “Oh, I just see the failure of medicine and I really don't want to practice just the conventional medicine.”

I told her it's very important that she went through her training like she did because she understands very serious things and she knows how to treat when you have an emergency or very serious medical problem because you need to know how to do that. The treatment of patients needs to be aligned with all the things that we know whether it's restoring the microbiome, restoring a patient's hormones, their nutrient levels, getting rid of the viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites, etcetera, etcetera.

And I was just so excited that we have a young person and they're more and more young people because we have, we rotate a lot of students, Sylvie, here. And so, it's great that these young people are interested in a new way of treating patients. And it's not really new, but it's, I just call it, it's whatever works medicine, right? An updated medicine. So it's exciting. 

Sylvie Beljanski: So, you said you have a lot of people here. Where is ‘here’? Can you tell everybody? 

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Yes. So, we're in Orange County. There's 33 counties in Orange County, and we're in Irvine, which is in the center of Orange County. So, that's about an hour North or South of Los Angeles, and then we are, San Diego's about an hour and 15 minutes South of us.

So, people fly in from all over the world, and I get a lot of referrals from physicians or naturopaths or other kinds of practitioners, or people read my book. Even the Cancer Revolution has lots of powerful information for patients to take charge. I've had patients just read my book and implement a lot of that and treat themselves.

We have a student here from New Jersey. She graduates, I think, in June and she herself got diagnosed with thyroid cancer and she read my book and changed her life and that's why she's here doing a rotation. So, cancer is being diagnosed, earlier and earlier. And so, so it's getting their attention and I believe our young people are going to transform the future of healthcare and humanity.

Sylvie Beljanski: Yeah, sure. They are going to take over the world. 

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Yes.

Sylvie Beljanski: The new generation is coming up, absolutely. I'm really excited and looking forward to having you at The Belgjanski Integrative Cancer Conference in Austin, Texas, April 25, 27. It's going to be a great weekend. We have the best speakers knowledgeable about cancer in the world of integrative medicine.

I know you will be especially honored and recognized and you fully deserve it. And you, with this wonderful clinic that you are, have been running now for many years, which is quite a great achievement by itself, but what you are bringing to the, to, to the cancer, when people suffering with cancer, there are more of them, it's really a blueprint for a healthy life and we all desperately need that, even if we are not touched by cancer.

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Our goal, I always say, that our number one value needs to be health because everything you do, whether it's with your family or having a family, or working, or your passions, they all hinge upon having a healthy system and, our people that come here for prevention, all of them, I would say, do not have homo-interruptus, which means a life interrupted.

And so, because they do the things they need to do that we find and then they learn themselves how to take care of themselves because I say that “Self care is the new health care.” And so people, though, think that they feel well, Sylvie. They think, “Oh, I feel great, no problem.” I had a patient yesterday, she had breast cancer in 2018, but she's got a big lump on her neck.

And she says, “Dr. Connealy, I feel great,” so I said, she goes, “It's hard to think that I have cancer.” And, and I hear that frequently, like people said, “I feel great the day before I had cancer.” So, your body is constantly trying to take care of you and get you back into homeostasis. It's so powerful.

And so, that's why people don't feel anything because your body is in this constant repair, regenerate mode and taking care of you. And I see how powerful it is when patients have significant disease and they feel okay. Like, they have stage four cancer and they actually feel okay. So, I always tell people, you need, you can't manage something you don't measure.

So we need to teach people how to take care of their health, then get a routine checkup with the proper routine and then say, “Okay, I'm good and I'm getting better” and see them in a year. Really, that's the way it should be. And, but, we're all in the medicine's in the business of disease and sick care as opposed to preventing and optimizing.

We're not in there. Now, is it changing? Yes, but little by little because the doctor today trained. She or he doesn't know about integrative functional medicine unless they personally seek it out themselves. And then if you go to medical school and you do training, you're busy the whole time. You don't have time.

You don't have time to learn, unless you just have a moment here, there and yonder, but, and learning integrative functional medicine is like a whole another world in and of itself. Just understanding nutrition, just understanding like the targeted nutrients like the OnKobel-Pro® or vitamin C or vitamin D. Understanding the necessary utilization of these things in a medical practice is very scientific.

It's not, “Oh, this is a great idea.” No this is scientific, and so doctors just don't, haven't learned that language and haven't learned that evidence based medicine, so.

Sylvie Beljanski: Well, thank you for sharing your knowledge and really, we look forward to having you and recognize you at The Beljanski Integrative Cancer Conference. This is going to be a huge moment and, and we thank you for gracing us with your presence.

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Thank you. 

Sylvie Beljanski: Is there any other topic you would like to address and cover? 

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: I think, I think we should cover the aspect of, like, when you get a diagnosis, don't panic and really try to get as many opinions with the conventional doctors and an integrative oncologist.

Because you need to look at all the paths of healing and you brought up stress and emotion. And if you look at the work of Bruce Lipton, the biology of belief. And then there's another lady who just wrote a book, I don't know her name, but she wrote a book called “Dying to Be Me,” and she had two weeks to live, and she had a near death experience and really realized her purpose in life, and she came out of it and is alive.

And if people could understand their thoughts, feelings and beliefs about themselves, a lot of people, I don't feel love themselves. They don't just think they deserve to be healed. I think they don't think they can be healed. And then most people don't truly understand their condition. So, I always tell people “You can't change your condition unless you understand your condition.”

And read as many books as possible, all right, that marry the conventional with the integrative functional medicine, especially oncology. Oncology is a whole another world. So, the typical functional doctor doesn't do oncology. So, make sure it's someone who does oncology every single day, understands the drugs and what they do.

And how to marry the conventional with the functional and integrative and knows how to use repurposed drugs and the IVs and etcetera, etcetera. And so, I think, like you said, the first thing when someone's diagnosed is immediately panic and fear. And I don't want to know, I don't know what to do and they're paralyzed.

Instead, look at it as an opportunity to explore all possibilities and learn everything that contributed to the cancer because, trust me, on PubMed, there is a voluminous amounts of information. I tell people there's 1.2 million PubMed articles per year. No doctor, no institution is keeping up with the amount of information available to a patient.

And talk to other patients who've healed themselves with other modalities other than just their surgery, chemo and radiation and immunotherapy. And so, look at all the things they do. And I know lots of people are talking about their journey and sharing all the things that they do. And in this day and time, you have to live differently.

If you're 30 years old, I used to say there was a warranty until you're 40. Now I can't say that. Because 20-year-olds are here with cancer. And young people. 

Sylvie Beljanski: Younger and younger, that’s terrible.

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: Right. And so, don't make quick decisions. Make educated, informed decisions. Because a lot of times I hear, “Oh, I should have been here in the beginning. Oh, I didn't know what I know now” because your disease did not just happen in the last 24 hours. It happened over the last 8 to 10 years. So, unraveling a disease is not just going to be doing surgery, chemo and radiation, because if you do those, you can create the growth of cancer actually, because there's chemo resistance, there's radiation resistance, there is complications from surgeries. There's all kinds of things.

So, that's why you've got to look at all the ways of taking care of yourself and restoring health as you go through a cancer treatment because just like getting chemotherapy alone, all right, chemotherapy damage every cell in the body. And so that means you have to be regenerating every cell, whether it's an immune cell, a liver cell, a heart cell, a kidney cell, brain cell, it doesn't matter.

We need to be caring and keeping ahead of the treatment because the treatment is so damaging. 

Sylvie Beljanski: Thank you. Thank you very much. That was awesome.

Dr. Leigh Erin Connealy, MD: You’re welcome.