From Doctor to Healer: Erica Elliott-True Medical Detective

0:00Welcome everyone in the United States, Canada, and around the world to another powerful episode of the It's a Rap with Rap Podcast. The podcast that shares real stories of hope, resilience, purpose, and a discussion of relevant topics. I am your host, Ron Rappeport. Now today we are fortunate to have Dr. Erica Elliott, a physician, healer, and author whose work bridges conventional medicine and holistic healing. Her trilogy of books titled From Dr. to Healer, Medicine and Miracles in the High Desert, and From Mountains to Medicine, chronicle a powerful journey of transformation, both personally and professionally. In this episode we will explore her life story, her philosophy of healing, and the profound

1:02insights she has gained working with patients in unique and often challenging environments. Now welcome Dr. Elliott to the podcast. I have read your books and I must say your writing is outstanding and I encourage our audience to read them. They will not be disappointed. Thank you. Now Dr. Elliott, take us back to the beginning of your journey. What inspired you to pursue medicine in the first place? Okay. So what the reader will find in the second memoir is my long journey to find purpose in my life. As a little girl, I always knew that I was here for reason, but I had no idea what that reason was and I never told anybody because I didn't want to be considered a nerd talking about purpose in life, but I was just so little. And so after I sort of figured out who I was, because we moved around a lot, so I adapted

2:11to all these different environments and different languages and different accents and different clothing and so forth. So I'd fit in. I sort of didn't know who I was. So I had a breakthrough, discovered who I was and then I was really gung ho on finding why I'm here. So I tried all sorts of different things and they all led me towards medicine, but I didn't realize at the time. And I also, in my DNA, I had three generations of doctors on the Swiss side. So you think, why didn't you figure out that this was your DNA? How come it took you 10 years to figure it out? Yeah. That's because I was under a misconception. I thought you had to be a genius to be a doctor because the only doctor I knew because I was so healthy was my uncle who was a doctor in Switzerland and he was a true genius. In fact, when I visited him and stayed there for a month and learned what he did, I interviewed

3:18his patients and they all said he's an absolute genius. He's able to get terminal cancer patients well, people with all kinds of chronic conditions that mainstream medicine can't help them. And I knew I was smart, but I knew I wasn't a genius. So I never put myself on that track. But I finally found my way to medicine after 10 years and everything I did during those 10 years helped me be a better doctor, like teaching the kids on the Navajo Indian reservation and climbing high mountains in the Peace Corps and so forth. They all helped me in my path. And how I realized this is the last thing that we can wrap up this part, but how I realized finally that I could be a doctor I didn't have to be a genius is when I was back in the States in Colorado, I was getting my master's degree in secondary education and it was so

4:24easy that I had all this extra time. So I decided to sign up for advanced placement science courses because in college decades before I got such high scores on the entrance exams that I didn't have to take those courses unfortunately. And so when I signed up for the advanced placement classes, I was the oldest person in the class, everyone was 10 years younger than me. And I discovered that they were on a path to be doctors. They were all premedicc for me. And then I had an epiphany, an awakening. I realized these kids are not geniuses at all. They are, they good memorizers, the excellent memorizers and they're excellent at spitting back. They learn something, they memorize it and spit it back and take a test and get 100. And I thought, God, I'm really good at memorizing. I had to memorize long poems in England when I was in the, when I was six years old in

5:26the first grade in England. These long poems that I didn't even know what they meant. So I had a really good memory. And so I thought, oh my God, I've been under misconception most of my life. These doctors weren't all that smart. And so, yeah, so I went to, I breathed right into medical school and on a full scholarship and so forth. So I'll wind up that part and wait for your next question. Well, you've gone through quite the health journey on one of our audience to know now. One instance, the environment played a huge role in setting up health problems. And in another instance, a type of metal implanted into your leg after a snowboard collision occurred, set off a cascade of problems. Can you tell our audience about those two journeys you suffered through? And what our audience could take away from hearing about them?

6:28Okay, they're pretty horrible, but they all have a wonderful ending. So don't despair when you hear about what happened to me. And so I made a deal with the devil, so to speak, because I was a single mother with a small child. I could not stay up all night seeing patients on duty, on call. I could not deliver babies constantly on night. I couldn't work on the weekends. Because then I'd never seen my young child. So the deal with the devil was signing up with corporate medicine. Back then, corporate medicine was a new phenomenon. Now it's everywhere. And this was rather new. And I knew it wouldn't be my kind of medicine. I sort of intuitive that, but I felt I had no options. And it was really a horrible experience because I couldn't give patients the care they needed. You had 15 minutes for most visits, unless it was a new patient.

7:31Then you had a half an hour. And so some of these patients had really complex problems. And all you could do is order a lot of tests and give a pill for each symptom. And I felt so lousy doing that. But I felt there was nothing else like it. What could I do? I sort of had to do this because of being a single parent. And I love people. And I love helping them feel good. And it broke my heart that I couldn't give them proper care. It just killed me. But anyway, something happened that got me out of that situation, it pushed me out of that situation, which ended up a godsend because this was no way to practice medicine. And so that thing that sort of saved me, but wrecked my life for a while, is the chemicals they used in the clinic. It was a brand new clinic. It outpaste nasty chemicals from new building materials.

8:33They sprayed pesticides that are now banned for indoor use because it caused brain damage. They used toxic cleaning products. They used air fresheners, which are petroleum-based, which caused cancer. They had the windows that didn't open. It was so toxic, but I didn't know about toxins back then. Now it's my specialty environmental medicine. But I was just as ignorant as everybody. I didn't know why I was getting sicker and sicker and sicker. And first I thought, well, I'm getting sick probably because I hate working here. And everybody thinks it's psychological when you have problems that they don't know how to explain. All in your head. And I went down that route for a little while to myself. I even saw psychiatrists. They put me on antitip lesson. And all that did. I still going down the tubes, but I wasn't as worried about it. So I finally... So they're practicing the same thing or throwing them up. They'll let you. That's right. They treated me the same way.

9:34Yeah, exactly. And so I got worse and worse and worse and worse. And I just didn't know what that was going on. I was so scared because I was tired all the time and it started to affect my brain. I got confused. I couldn't remember things. I had rashes all over my body. I had migraine headaches. I was a wreck. And this way... What about the other... Yeah, they were all... They all had problems too. But I was the worst. And like they couldn't use their contact lenses because their eyes burned. There were six miscarriages and people were saying they're tired all the time. But mine was the worst. And I didn't know why. Here I'm a world-class athlete. And I'm the sickest. What's going on? I never get sick. And so... And so years later, I found out why I was... When we got the most sickest because my genetics, I can't clear toxins very well. And why didn't I know that sooner? Because I was never in a toxic environment.

10:36So, you know, I was the picture of health. And so it got so bad... A patient start to notice that he came in and he was talking. It was a little cramped room with no windows. The ventilation was really poor. And all of a sudden, he stopped talking and he looked right into my eyes. And he said, Dr. Elliott, what's wrong with you? And I thought, oh God, I've been caught. And so... I was so... It is the first time somebody really saw me. And saw me that I was in distress. And so I cried for the first time. I put my head down and cried and he came over. Next to me, put his arm around me. And he said, can you... Dr. Elliott, tell me what's happening to you. And I said, I don't know. And I said, I'm getting sicker. It's sicker. I used to be...

11:36I'd never get sick and I was so strong and healthy. And he said, I know what's making you sick. I said, what do you mean you know what's making me sick? He said, it's the building. I said, what about the building? He said, this building is toxic. You have... I never heard the term. He said, you have sick building syndrome. I said, what's that? He said, the building is harming you. I said, how do you know? He said, because every time I come here, I feel horrible. I have a headache. I have sore throat. I can't think properly. It is a toxic cesspool. You have to get out of here. And so anyway, so that's how I got out of corporate medicine. And I thought, my career is over. I'm done. I cried on the couch. I was such a mess. I thought, you know, I'll never be able to practice medicine again. My brain is damaged. I'm with body's damage. I felt so depressed. And I'll wrap this up real soon, but I'll just tell you this one part.

12:41After about three days of just feeling my life was over, and I don't know how I was going to support my son and stuff, then I heard a knock on the door. And I first I thought, I'm not going to answer it because I had, you know, crying and all that stuff. But then I just kept knocking. So I splashed water on my face. I opened the door. And the person standing outside was a former patient of mine. And she said, Dr. Elliott, can I come in for an appointment? And my brain was so mixed up. I said, what do you mean? Come in for an appointment. How do you find my house? She said, oh, I just asked people. I said, but you want an appointment from me? I'm brain damaged. And she said, oh, we know about it. Your nurse told us all about it. But you want an appointment from me? Yes. Can I please come in? I was so confused. I opened the door. She walked straight into the living room, sat down.

13:43And she said, and she started talking. And I was listening to her intensely, but I couldn't, it's like learning a new language. You can figure out the first sentence. But by the time the second sentence, you don't know what the first sentence was. But I just made this intense eye contact. And suddenly she said, are we done? I said, oh, I tried to act normal. I said, well, are you done? And she said, yes, how much do I owe you? I said, you don't, you don't notice. And you don't owe me anything. I didn't do anything. She said, Dr. Elliott, I want to tell you something. You're the first doctor in my whole life that's ever really listened to me. And heard me, here's $100. And so then as she left, she said, I'm going to tell my friends about you. Oh, my God. And so here's what happened. They all knew I was damaged, but they wanted to be heard and seen. They were all patients like me who'd been harmed.

14:45And so gradually there's this guy who was trained in environmental medicine, which is all the things you don't learn in medical school. You know, I'll teach you any of that stuff. You don't teach you the real things like what you eat, what you breathe, what you put on your body, what you wash your clothes with, what you clean your house with, what you put in your garden. They don't teach you any of that. They just teach you about pills. And so, and so everything I learned bit by bit, I told all these patients, okay? So they were learning with me. And pretty soon, you know, I was attracting, not just people like me, I was attracting anybody who had a mysterious illness and they weren't getting proper diagnosis. And my techniques were so simple. All you have to do is care about the patient and ask simple questions like when did you start feeling bad? What was different in your life? What made you feel better? What made you feel? It was pretty easy.

15:46So I'll stop here and wait for your next question. Now that sounds like you were one of the first functional medicine doctors. Yes, they didn't call it that. They don't have a name. They just, they had all sorts of names for what I did. They called it spiritual healing and they called it holistic healing. They called it integrative medicine. Yeah, they still do. Alternative medicine. And then now it's called functional medicine. And guess what? More and more young people are fed up. They're not waiting to get sick like me. They know that this is a bad system and they're quitting and practicing like me. The only sad part is when you practice like me, you really don't do insurance because you want, you don't want to spend all your time doing paperwork and all that stuff. And so then it's rough on patients that have to pay out of their own pocket. So I do a sliding scale or something or some kind of exchange or something.

16:50Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At what point did you feel that conventional medicine wasn't enough? When I got sick, I realized I really opened my eyes. I sort of, ever since I've been with my uncle Ernst in Switzerland and you know, long before it was just when I was out of college. So he sort of planted a seed in me. So that seed was always there but didn't have a chance to sprout. And so I always had the potential of being very alternative. But I was just trying to be a good girl and do a good job and pass all the tests and do everything they say. But it took a disaster for me to get real, become myself, practice medicine in a way that I really believe in. So it took a disaster to get me to where I want. So my message, one of my messages to your listening audience is when you have a terrible

17:52experience, often that opens doors like a portal to transformation to where you're really supposed to be. Because what happens when it's really bad, your adversity, you're kind of stripped. And so where's the benefit in that? Because you can start remaking yourself according to who you really are and what your spirit wants and what you're good at and what you love doing and you give it to other people and help them. And that's profoundly meaningful. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I've heard so many stories and sure everybody has, you know, they can, people are out there saying, I had a colon cancer, they gave me four months to live. And they just said, all right, you know what? You can't help me. I'm not going through chemo radiation again. Because you're giving me four months and opens the door to other modalities of treatment.

18:59And here they are 15, 20 years later, talking about it. Yes. It does open the doors up. Now, in your experience, how important is the mind, body connection in true healing? And can you give us an example? Oh, yeah. Okay. I can give you an example going way back to my time with the Navajo people. That's when it was really clear the mind body connection because I witnessed things that white people never saw. But this is back when Navos were totally traditional. They were beautiful, except for the alcoholics. And they didn't eat junk food. They real food. They were strong. Nobody had diabetes. Nobody was obese. Nobody had strokes, heart attacks. That's all from living like white people and eating that kind of food, kind of wreck them. And probably, and probably the casinos didn't help, right?

20:00No, no, the casinos didn't help at all. Yeah. So here's to answer your question. When I started learning Navajo, they totally accepted me into their culture. I crossed the cultural divide. And I was totally welcomed into their sacred ceremonies and stuff. I saw things white people never see and probably never will. And so here's the answer to your question. I got to see the mind body connection and action. From their ceremonies, people would be sick as dogs and look like they're going to die or something. And they'd do these ceremonies were the whole area. All the people in the surrounding area would come and pray. Have you ever wondered how much one human being can endure and still find the strength to heal? Some stories entertain some stories inspire. And then there are stories that forever change the way you look at life.

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24:14that reminds every reader that even after life's darkest moments, hope can still prevail because survival is only the beginning. Healing is where the true miracle begins. Available now on Amazon in hardcover paperback and Kindle formats. And dance and sing to the sick person and they get well. And basic babies, I saw it with my own eyes and they'd have peyote ceremonies where they'd have miraculous healing and I witnessed that myself. I experienced it myself with a tumor I had, a lymph node tumor. And you know, the one reason why it took me so long to write the first book is because I thought nobody's ever going to believe what I'm writing. Even though I got permission from the medicine man to write the book, I just thought, you know, I don't want people to think I made up the whole thing. So I finally, decades later, I was convinced. I, people convinced me to go ahead and write it. They said, who cares if they don't believe you, just tell the truth.

25:17So you saw it, the mind body connected. I saw it. I saw it. It wasn't abstract. I saw it. I saw it and I experienced it my own self. Now the book, the book, one of the books of the trilogy, Medicine and Miracles in the High Desert, which was in New Mexico, paints a vivid picture. It drew you to practice in that environment. And what influence did it have on your approach to medicine and healing? So after my medical training, I went back to treat the Navajo people. And what they did is they used me for mainstream medicine and then they combined it with their own way of healing. So it was, may long, a mixture of what I was doing and what they do. And they did it very skillfully. They knew when it would be better to do white men's medicine and when it's better to do their own medicine. So I saw that firsthand.

26:18Okay. What drew you to work in the Navajols in the first place? Okay. So when, when I was in college, I was an art major and the last minute I realized I probably starved to death as an artist. And so I quickly changed to education. I crammed in all the education courses before I graduated to become a teacher. And so by the way, you can always become a teacher, so not to do. Anyway, that's what they told me. And so I said, okay. And so I was looking in the catalogs at all the positions where they were looking for school teachers. They looked so, I don't know, boring. And my intuition said, don't go to any of those. And I couldn't tell people why I said that because they had a good salary. There's nothing wrong.

27:19But I just, my intuition said, don't go there. So I thought, well, I don't know where to go. And then one place, one single place caught my attention. And it was this remote boarding school in the middle of nowhere in Arizona. And it was a fourth grade. They were looking for a fourth grade teacher. And when I told my friends where I was going to go and my family, they said, are you crazy? Why would you want to do a thing like that? Do you know anything about them? Navajo Indians? And I said, no. Why are you going to go there? I don't know. I don't know. You had a calling. I had a calling, a strong intuition, but up here I couldn't explain it. But I felt it in my heart or whatever. And I just said, I'm sorry, I can't explain it, but this is what I need to do.

28:20And in the beginning, when I got there, I thought, geez, I made a huge mistake. Because I didn't know the culture. That was terrible. I didn't know anything about none of the school teachers who had been there 20 years knew anything about Navajo culture. They were just doing government job and they didn't enjoy their work and they didn't like the children. And when I went into the classroom, the children didn't talk to me. They didn't look at me. I didn't know. I thought, oh my God. And I wasn't seeing the beauty. I just saw it looks ugly. It's a boarding school. Everybody was right. How stupid I was to come here. What a mistake I made. And so I called my father. I said, you know, I should have listened to you. I made a big mistake. I want to come home. And he said, well, you know, he called me by my nickname Ricky. He said, Ricky, this too early to judge.

29:23You've only been there a week. You can't know a place or a people or country from being there one week. Why don't you wait three months and then if you want to come home, come home. But give it a chance. I thought, oh brother, okay, brother. I don't know. I'm going to stand the three months. And the next day by coincidence, the teacher aide who spoke fluent English and Navajo because her father was a very famous code talker in World War II. Carl Gorman, very famous and also an artist. And Navajo is the hardest language in the whole world. And it was the only code that was never broken in World War II. And it wasn't even a code. It wasn't even a code. He was just a language. Nobody knew. It was a language and nobody knew it. It was too hard. It was terribly hard. And so my teacher, Adana Scott, had been on different military bases.

30:24So she spoke perfect English. She knew about white people's ways and she spoke her own language and ways. And she, this is the very next day after talking to my father. She took me aside and she said, you know, I can see how hard you're trying and you're very different from the other white teachers. You're really trying hard and I want to help you. First of all, probably you're like the other teachers you haven't learned anything. You don't know anything about Navajo culture. I said, yeah, I'm terribly sorry. I don't know anything. I'm totally ignorant. And so she told me a little bit about their culture and why they don't look at me. They're showing respect. They only look at you if they're your friends or they're totally angry at you. And so they're being polite. And then she said also they're often gone. The reason why they don't speak English is because they're often gone, helping to hurt

31:24sheep or delivering, helping their mothers with a new baby or something. And so this was a boarding school. So it was hard for the family to give up those children because they helped with life, the difficult life with raising their sheep and goats and stuff. So she explained all this to me and she said, I know exactly what's going to help this. She said, if you learn just a few words of Navajo, she said those white teachers, they don't even know one word of Navajo. They don't even know how to say yes or no. She said, I'm going to teach you something and there's no way to write it because back then they didn't have symbols for the sounds that don't exist in English. There's about 10 sounds that are totally don't exist. So they didn't have a way to write it back then. Now they found symbols for it. And so what she taught me how to say in Navajo is, good morning, my children.

32:28My name is Erica Elliott. What's your name and where do you live? Oh my God. It was so hard to make those strange sounds. But I was a polyglot. I had learned lots of languages from moving around. So I knew if I really tried hard, I could learn this language, but I'd have to really work hard at it. But like I said, I was wired for languages and I spoke multiple languages already then. And so, but this was like no language I'd ever heard. I mean, I have a sister who speaks Chinese and she said, this is harder than Chinese. And so anyway, so just to wrap up, just to wrap up this part is I practiced way into the night all these strange sounds. And I looked in the mirror when I talked. And that morning I walked in and this is what I said. Yat E Shaul Chen Sheer Erica Elliott Yines Sheer Nisha

33:32Chasin Yeh Chatana Na And they all looked up like this and looked right into my eyes. And one little girl went, and then they all burst out laughing. And that was the beginning of my love affair with the children, Navajo children. And from there it just took off. And I eventually could really be conversational in Navajo and I was invited to their homes, to their ceremonies. Each weekend a kid would ask me to drive in my Jeep deep into the canyon so they could see their mother and father and their grandparents. And so I participated fully in Navajo culture. They taught me how to butcher sheep. And I mean, they called me a white Navajo. Yeah. Now both of the teachers they just didn't care. They didn't care. They were just waiting for their pension so they could go back to wherever they lived. Yeah. Yeah.

34:33Well, I know. How do you balance scientific evidence with intuitive or alternative approaches? You know, people think their world's a part, but they're not. It's just sometimes we don't have the science to explain intuition. But you know, I'm all for science, but the here's this is the political part. There's science and there's science. So this group says that they hold the science and this group said no, they hold the science. So it's a moving thing. What science is constantly changing. And so people people think science is this fixed thing. No, it's not. We keep learning new things and new things so we can finally explain some things and stuff. But then it turns into political. No, this isn't real. No, this isn't going to help you. It's not real science. So that's why I say which science you talking about because you know, there's not the science.

35:37It's not that way. So what advice would you give patients seeking say deeper healing beyond symptom management? I think they should, if they can't find a doctor like me, but there, it is a growing thing now. I mean, I've been doing this for 35, 33 years and these are beginners, but they really are learning fast. And so I would say find a doctor like this to get help. And if you can't and you can't afford it, you do your own deep dive into science that brings true to you because they're like I said, they're science and they're science. And the pharmaceutical company has manipulated the science. So it's hard to tell what science is really valid and which is just corporate takeover of the truth. And so, but some people are able to figure it out and heal themselves. They study like the effects of mold and mycotoxins.

36:41The public, there's a branch of the public that's getting really educated because they have to because they can't find good doctors. So they're taking things in their own hands and doing very deep research, but they have trouble too distinguishing what's what's influenced by corporate medicine and what's real. You know, it's very hard. They do. Yeah. So you would say a lot of the corporate doctors kind of rainwash. Yes, it brainwashed because like in medical school, we were learning things of, you know, the first two years were great because it wasn't political. I loved the first two years of medical school. It was straight science with no influence here or here or pharmaceutical influence. It was straight science. Yeah. And I loved that. I loved it. And then afterwards I thought, you know, this is pretty murky. Some of the stuff we're learning doesn't, it doesn't fit common sense or critical thinking.

37:44Like for example, now this is way back. Things have changed in some ways for the better and some ways not. But I'll give you an example of the things that didn't make any sense. Okay. One was when we were in cardiology rotation. I raised my hand and I asked, I said, you know, you first start with giving pills. This is like 45 years ago. You start with pills, but why don't you start with, you know, lifestyle, like the what people are eating, what they're exercising, are they getting outside and so forth. And he said, that's a waste of time. People want quick. They want something quick and they're probably not going to do all those things. And anyway, so I, I gradually learned not to ask questions because they weren't welcome. But one of the huge lies and the professors weren't liars.

38:44It was like you said, they were brainwashed. So it wasn't like they were going to be deceitful. They were just telling, passing on what they learned. Right. We're using critical thinking and common sense. That's what was lacking among our professors and our students, common sense and critical thinking. Okay. So here's a whopper. So we learned that saturated fats cause heart disease. And the bells went ringing, ringing, ringing in my head because why? Because of my own experience. When I lived with the Navos before junk food team, they had everything with saturated fats. I mean, they had butter from their sheep. They had the meat. They cooked it in large or tallow or whatever you call it. It was all saturated. And they didn't have... Have you ever wished that change could happen instantly, that one moment of inspiration,

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42:53The book is available from Amazon, Books of Million, Burns of Noble, and wherever books are sold in hardcover paperback and Kindle formats. Any of those things, they didn't have any heart attacks or strokes, they had alcoholism, that's about it. And when I lived in Europe as a young girl before junk food came there, they ate tons of cream and butter and egg, and all that stuff. And I went to the library as a little medical student and before computers, of course. And I looked at the graphs between heart disease in the US. This was in 1980, the graphs between the US heart disease and Germany and Switzerland and France. They were way low in heart disease and we were rising fast. So I knew I was learning a lie and it turned out years and years later in 2016, you might

43:55be interested in looking this up, 2016 years and years later, like decades later, I read an article in the New York Times by an investigative journalist. And he waited because if you wrote about these things too early, you get killed or ruin your career or stuff. So here's what he discovered. Why the saturated fat, where we got this bullshit from about saturated fats, is in the quote, the hippie days, the sugar company was really frightened because the quote, they called them hippies. There were just people who were thinking and he said that so the sugar industry got frightened that because these people were telling them that sugar is bad and it caused heart disease and all these other ailments, which is true, which is true. And but they didn't want to lose business.

44:55So they did something very evil. They hired three Harvard scientists. This so disgusting makes me sick. Three Harvard scientists to create fake results showing that it wasn't sugar, that it was fat caused heart disease. Well it turns out that when you have one fake study, you can create more and more and not think you're doing anything wrong. So it's so easy, like that's why I say they're science and they're science. And so this was fake science. And so it just kept building and building until people were sure that it was fat. But then they got a little bit sophisticated. They broke the fats down. There is a type of fat that does cause heart disease. And that's the hydrogenated fats like chrisco and stuff.

45:56That causes heart disease and that's what they were telling the people to eat margarine and chrisco and that causes heart disease. And then there's the good fats that make you healthy. Like butter, olive oil, coconut oil, the tallow from animals. All that is good for you. And then the seed oils are also bad because they're extracted by hexane, which is petroleum product. That's how they don't extract it like the old days like that. They do it with chemicals. So you're eating chemicals and it's already oxidized. So the sunflower, sunflower, corn, soy, canola, which they use in restaurants is all cause heart disease. So the public is so mixed up thanks to these liars. And so you can read it yourself. No, no, no, yeah, I definitely have read that stuff.

46:56You know, they call you the medical detective because you can figure out what's wrong when nobody else can figure it out. Well, what was your most challenging diagnosis you made? My own. My own because when I was hit by the snowboarder. Yeah. And my leg was totally shattered and had to be rebuilt. And they put a stainless steel plate in there. But at that point, they knew that stainless steel causes problems in 15% of the population. And if I was with it, I was out of it. I didn't ask what are you putting in there. I was so sedated. I was pain-mouse. How was I going to say what are you putting in there? So I just, you know, and then six months later, I got massive autoimmune, many autoimmune diseases all at once. It usually takes about six months when you're going to get autoimmune reaction from something that your body doesn't want.

47:58And it took, it took major detective work that no doctor could help me. No doctor could help me. I had to help myself. This is the hardest time finding the underlying cause. But I did figure it out because I did what I do with my patients. I say, okay, you are very healthy. And then you weren't. What's different? Okay, you had an accident. That's not going to make you, you know, a wreck. And you've never had autoimmune disease in your life before. So it must be the plate. And I went to him and I said, I think the plate's killing me and he brushed me off. He said, no, no, it's some other reason that stainless steel doesn't do that. I said, why did you put stainless steel in there? You're not supposed to. And he more, they're phasing it out because 15% of the population is reactive to it. Why didn't you do titanium? And he said, we were out of it at the time.

48:59And I took off all my clothes and I was covered with guttate psoriasis, my whole body. I said, look at me. This is from the plate. And he kept saying he was going to take it out. So finally, I sent my blood to Germany and I said, I think the stainless steel is killing me and they didn't have this test in the US. But in Germany, they were more advanced. And so they had test tubes, like four test tubes with all the components of stainless steel, iron, chromium, nickel, and something else. And then they put my blood into each of those tubes and let it settle for a while. Then they looked under the microscope and when it came to the vial with the nickel, the lymphocytes, those are the immune cells that are overreacting. They were going crazy. They actually called me on the phone to tell me that this is what's killing me.

50:01And by the time the plate was taken out, I already had damage in my head. I had brain damage and I had to have brain surgery and stuff. So this is the hardest problem to figure out. Everybody else's problems that I've helped were easy compared to this. They were easy because I knew how to ask the right questions and because I cared about the patient and because I wanted to see them get well and I used common sense. When did this happen? What made you better? What made you worse? What's different and stuff? And those questions were never asked. They've just given pills for the headache, pills for the migraine, pills for the sleep problems, pills for the rashes. You don't get well that way. No. And thank God that you did it. Do that deep dive yourself and you're here to tell us about it because think of all

51:03the people who wouldn't have that ability. I think I'd be dead long ago if I hadn't had that ability. I would have died. Yeah, absolutely. If you could change one thing about the healthcare system, what would that be? One thing that I would just get corporate, get the corporate out of there. All they care about is money. Go back to the old ways. And how can doctors begin to reconnect with the human side of medicine? I'm sorry to say this, but it's leaving corporate medicine so they can practice in a way that's more human. Okay. Now, you're working on a new book. What is it about? Okay. The title says everything. It's called them. It's not a memoir. It's called the medical detective and the subtitle is called simple underlying, simple solutions for solving medical mysteries. And basically I'm going to do 30 case histories and I'm never going to say one bad word about

52:09mainstream medicine because I don't want to lose my license. When the reader reads how these people have been to 15 doctors and they can't get well and then they come to me and I can figure out what's wrong in 10 minutes. So I'm indirectly doing an expose of them, but I never say that. I never say that. I just let the reader figure it out. Like, why? How come the other doctors didn't figure it out? Yeah, what's going on here? What's wrong? Yeah, and I'll tell you readers one little case history is a wealthy businessman contacted me. His mother had referred him to me. She had heard about me through the grapevine. It's all word of mouth. I've never advertised once and I have patients from all over the country. And so he was from San Francisco and he said, when he contacted me, he said he was really scared because he's getting sicker and sicker and sicker.

53:10So he can't really run a business anymore. And so I said, okay, I'll see you. So when I saw him, it was, it took me 10 minutes and business what I did. I first asked him to write up a history, very succinct. So he's prepared and it saves him money and time and it helps me. So he wrote a pass medical history. He was very healthy. It wasn't much of a passman. He was a healthy guy and he wasn't on any meds. So it was very short what he wrote up. And then he wrote more details about his symptoms and he handed it to me at the appointment. And so I said, when did you start feeling bad? And he said, well, I'm not sure, but I think it was 2016 or something like that. And I said, okay, now we're going to operate under the principle that everything happens for a reason. What was different in 2016? And they all say the same thing. They say nothing. And I said, okay, we're going to sit here and I'm going to keep asking you what was different.

54:13Did you travel abroad and get some kind of parasitres that know? Did you have emotional problems like with girlfriend or money or that know? And then I kept thinking and then I said, well, did you ever have a time where you felt okay? First he said no. And then I said, well, just think about it. He said, oh, yeah, there was a time when I felt much better. I said, when was that? He said, I was camping in Alaska. And I said, oh, oh, really? And then what happened when you came home? He said, I felt terrible. I said, you just figured it out for me. It's where your townhouse, where you're renting is what's harming you. He said, how do you know? I said, well, you just told me you were fine. And then you came home and you felt terrible. And there's three main things in a home that can destroy your health. One is mold, one is gas leaks, and one is, you bring lots of toxic things into your home.

55:15Let's start with mold. Has there been any water damage in this place you're renting? And he said, well, how would I know that? And I said, well, because there'd be stains on the wall, some buckling paint, maybe some warped wood, some black around the window, or some. He said, oh, yeah, that's everywhere. I said, why you have to get out now. And you can't bring your books, because mold lives on cellulose. And I just going to give you a real quick course in mold. Most doctors understand one kind of mold thing. It's allergies. They understand that. And that it gives you sneezing and coughing and asthma and so forth. They understand that. They don't understand the real problem with mold is this spores that the mold has. The spores give off lethal chemicals called mycotoxins in order to fight competition for food and water, fight other fungi and fight bacteria.

56:16And so I said, your mycotoxin poisoned is you're not just a simple allergy case and go to allergies. You have been damaged from mycotoxin and I'm going to design a protocol to help you get better, but it's not going to be overnight because you've been sick for a long time. But the protocol is a drastic change in diet. It's sauna every day. Certain supplements to support your liver. And you need to get some sunshine and exercise every single day. And you'll gradually get better. And you'll get worried because you'll do five steps forward, three steps back. But that's the way it is. It's not a straight shot like that. And I'm here to encourage you and it will take quite a long time till you feel good. At the end of the year, he said he's never felt so good in his whole life. And then he wanted to devote his life to businesses that were health related.

57:18Like he's the one who started something called Vive. I don't know if it's hit Florida, but all over the West Coast, it's this drink. And he hired me as to be a consultant. And now he's working on some big water thing to help people more healthy with their water. I mean, it changed his whole life. And so that's one case history. And then I write about mold. So it's about each chapter is probably about five pages and something like that, four pages. And it's going to be very easy to read and it's going to help people empower them. So they're not so helpless and susceptible to being harmed by mainstream medicine. Yeah. Now, Eric, how can people contact you and get your books? Okay. So my books are all on Amazon. And if you want to go on my website to read about the books, it's www.erica.

58:25Elliott MD. That's E R I C A E L L I O T T M D dot com. And I have a blog, a blog site that they might be interested in. Right now, it's a mixture of medicine, memoir, travel, so forth. Right now I'm writing about my grandkids, but you can click on medicine and you'll learn all sorts of things that you'll never learn from mainstream medicine about how to heal this and that and so forth. And so that's really helpful. But you don't have to look through all my grandkids picture. Just click under medicine and then it's only medical blog posts. Okay. And the name of that blog is musings with an s musings memoir and medicine, all one word, all one word. All right. We're going to put that in the podcast notes so people can can find it. And I want to thank you so much, Dr. Elliott for sharing your incredible journey and wisdom

59:30with us to me. Your work reminds us that healing is not just about treating illness, but it's about embracing the whole person mind, body and spirit. Now for our listeners, be sure to check out her books titled from Dr. Tahiela, the Mountain Lions gift, medicine and miracles in the high desert. And my life among the Navajo people and the last book in the trilogy might be the first book. I don't know what the word it was. It's the last, it's the third one is from Dr. Tahiela. And by the way, I want to tell your listeners that these books are available in paperback, digital and audio and I'm the narrator in the audio. And then I'd like to ask a big favor of your readers. If they like the book, if they're reading, if they'd be willing to write a review on Amazon, because the more reviews, the more visible Amazon makes the book. In other words, if you have less than 100 written reviews and somebody's scrolling for

1:00:34like a healing book or something, my book will never appear until I get at least 100 written reviews. I have lots of ratings, but they only pay attention to written reviews. And it could just be a sentence. It doesn't have to be much. Okay. And you can look up these books on my website. It's a wrap with wrap.com. We have Dr. Elliott's books on there and we're also been advertising it on a lot of groups in Facebook and X and all the social media sites. So once again, there on my website, so you can find it there. And once again, thank you for being on. It was been on or a pleasure. And I hope to get you back when that when that comes out. Oh, yeah, I'd love to talk about that. So comments and suggestions for the podcast. You can email me at it's a wrap with wrap at gmail.com Instagram.

1:01:38It's a wrap with wrap podcast. We're on X at rapper WREP PER130. Our Facebook group, it's a private group. It's a wrap with wrap. We have a couple thousand numbers in there. If you want to join, just email me. Our website is it's a wrap with wrap.com. We are on YouTube. All the episodes are on YouTube titled It's a Wrap with Wrap the Podcast. I'm cut. I want to thank everyone again for listening or viewing. And I want everybody to please stay safe. And for now, it's a wrap. The podcast is so happy and proud to have Blue Sky CBD as one of our sponsors and supporters. For Blue Sky CBD, they know that the highest quality CBD starts from the seed. Blue Sky partners with sustainable, responsible farms for superior hemp plants to extract their CBD and other healthful phytonutrients. Each of Blue Sky's products contain high concentrations of CBD for maximum impact.

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