Lyle Hurd: Well, it’s exciting to welcome back Dr. Gloria Gilbère
Dr. Gloria Gilbère: Thank you. Nice to be back.
Lyle Hurd: When we spoke before you were talking about something you went through in your life which helped you become a better doctor because you really were able to understand and walk in the shoes of your patients. And that led to your writing the book called, I Was Poisoned by My Body.
Dr. Gloria Gilbère: What a name, huh?
Lyle Hurd: That’s right, and actually, that was ten years ago?
Dr. Gloria Gilbère: That was ten years ago. The original one was ten years ago.
Lyle Hurd: I wonder if you would describe that experience to our listeners please?
Dr. Gloria Gilbère: Well, it’s interesting because I see it repeated Lyle, over and over and over. What happened to me was after this life threatening accident that I was involved in, falling on concrete. I developed a blood clot and went into intensive care without any symptoms. I traveled all over the world. I was very careful what I ate but I never had any allergies other than one or two things like MSG when I was younger. And all of a sudden I came out of intensive care seven days later, which is what happens to most of the people I work with, it’s some type of a traumatic incident in their lives, not necessarily an accident but even an emotional trauma. And when I came out I just wasn’t getting better. I had such fatigue, and you know what my energy level is normally like; we’ve worked together many years. Couldn’t recover, just couldn’t get that oomph back. This is what I hear over and over. And the pain in my muscles, in the soft connective tissue was just unbelievable. It was like somebody had bruised you all over, or the nerve endings were right at the top of the skin. And if anybody even touched you, it’s like—don’t touch me! And that’s what we describe as fibromyalgia. So then a diagnosis came from the conventional medical physicians as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. So that started a cycle of medications. as I always say, I didn’t have a Prozac deficiency. That started a cycle of… making sure that I continued to take—that I did take some anti-depressants, muscle relaxers, pain killers, and anti-inflammatories, can you imagine?! This is everything I am against.
Lyle Hurd: Certainly atypical to anything you’d want in your life.
Dr. Gloria Gilbère: I’m not against conventional medicine. It saves lives. It saves money. But in the case where it’s being used for symptom-therapy, which then becomes drug-management, that’s what I’m opposed to. I’ve dedicated my life to finding natural solutions so that doesn’t occur. And of course when drugs are necessary we use them. So little by little I started realizing I was in the same cycle that my patients get into, and all these bells went off. Then all of a sudden you have all these side effects. I wasn’t sleeping. I had total insomnia for almost six months. So then they wanted me on sleeping pills, but what happened was I went off of everything else except the anti inflammatories. The inflammation was so acute that there was no way I could have functioned without it. So then, I ended up, little by little, becoming allergic to everything. And I was eating a sandwich one day in my health center and my throat closed. I went into total antiphylatic reaction. Same little sandwich shop that had always prepared my sandwiches, organic turkey, you know, whole wheat bread, nothing unusual in it. I ended up in the ER, of course. Then it started happening more frequently. And this is what people don’t understand, when they develop an autoimmune disorder that is based from the gut, that means its autointoxication. When we were younger it used to be called toxemia. It’s all the same thing, whether it’s leaky gut syndrome, toxemia or autointoxication. So what happened was my body was poisoning itself. That’s how I came up with the title with my publisher, I Was Poisoned by My Body. Eventually I was homebound for a year and a half. I literally wrapped my mattresses. I did everything I told my patients to do all those years. Wrapped my mattresses, they were only about a year old, wrapped them in foil. You know that barrier cloth that they use to wrap buildings?
Lyle Hurd: That’s right.
Dr. Gloria Gilbère: Had to wrap them in that because if you have the scotch guarding and the flame retardant and all the synthetic chemicals in the mattress and you’re laying on it at night you go into an allergic response. Many people don’t realize that the bedroom must be the safest room in the house, because that’s where the body’s able to recover, not just rest, but it’s the time for the immune system to recover, for us to have the strength to be able to repair the body. And so everything went out. I had a beautiful old home I had restored; I put some carpet in it, some were hardwood floors. Ripped everything out. Had to take off the draperies so there’d be no dust. Everything had to be totally safe, safe from chemicals and generic as it could be. I ended up putting my mattresses on the floor, took out even the bed frame, and wrapped them, and all of a sudden I started sleeping. So people don’t understand that all of those chemicals, when the immune system has already been attacked, add to what we call the total toxic load of the body.
Lyle Hurd: So you’re saying that there are people who may not even understand why they’re really at 50% of their energy level because of the fact of what’s going on in their house; it’s so toxic that it’s drawing all of that from them, but it’s something because it’s insidious and grows and grows and grows. They have no idea of what’s going on.
Dr. Gloria Gilbère: Exactly. And that’s why we call them Invisible Illnesses. So I always say this to a client, or when I’m lecturing and teaching. If you go to bed at night even if you don’t have any serious disorders, any immune system disorder— if you go to bed at night and you don’t have a headache, and you don’t have muscle aches and pains—I’m not talking about someone with a saggy old mattress—and you get up with a headache, or with a sore throat, or with any type of a severe, what we could call an allergic response, not necessarily an allergy but a response to something that’s a chemical in that environment, then you better start looking at the bedroom because if that’s not totally non-toxic the body is not going to be able to repair.
Lyle Hurd: Would I be able to learn about that in your book?
Dr. Gloria Gilbère: Absolutely. The book is literally my story, all the way from when it happened, how I repaired my body, what I learned from my patients as much as they learned from me,… what happened ten years later and how I’m able to live a normal life, living what I teach. Not that I don’t have to take precautions, but I live a normal life.
Lyle Hurd: Well, we appreciate it. And I hope we can come back and talk a little bit more about this. It’s a pretty important subject.
Dr. Gloria Gilbère: It’s a very important subject. Thank you for bringing it up.
Lyle Hurd: Thank you.
Dr. Gloria Gilbère: You’re welcome.
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