LivingFuelTV: Dr. Leonard Smith

KC: Welcome to LivingFuelTV. I’m KC Craichy and this is my special guest, Dr. Leonard Smith. Welcome, Leonard!

Dr. Smith: Thank you, KC. It’s a pleasure and honor to be here.

KC: Leonard is a dear friend he’s an Integrative Medicine expert.  He’s a medical advisor to the University of Miami on Integrative Medicine. He’s a former general surgeon for many years. How many years did you practice?

Dr. Smith: About 30.

KC: So, I’m interested to know the transition. You went from general surgery, and now you know a lot about a lot. People say, what is Leonard’s specialty, and I say… I tell people they know a little about a lot of things, well you know a lot about a lot of things. So, I’m always fascinated when we sit down. My wife always says I need a pad and paper because you come up with the coolest stuff because you’re in the literature. But before you didn’t read much of the journals during surgery because of your time commitments.

Dr. Smith: Right. Well, it started even before that. I got to thinking that one of my great blessings from God was just an innate curiosity about how things work. At one it was cars, but I quickly moved into animals. My dad would get upset with me because I would dissect fish instead of just clean them. I had this burning desire to learn more about anatomy. I really had no idea I was going into surgery and that was whole other set of events that got me to medical school. During my surgical career … I was very fortunate to be very well trained at the University of Miami … I was blessed that the majority of my patients did very well. I didn’t have time to study or read the way I’d like to. I actually decided to retire for mainly personal reasons with regard to family commitments and one thing and the other – to actually get time to spend with not only my children, but particularly my grandchildren – I started reading  and I was like the kid lost in the candy store. Being a medical advisor for the University, I get access to medical journals and I spend all kinds of hours. It’s very humbling because as soon as I think I understand some of these pathways of medicine, somebody’s just added on a couple of more pieces that may be supportive in that direction or going around in the opposite direction. It’s a fascinating time to be here on the planet and learning what we’re learning and finding new and better ways to help people. One of the comedies of it is so much of it goes back to basic, simple health.

KC: It’s always been that way, hasn’t it?

Dr. Smith: It’s always been that way.

KC: It’s interesting that you go back to 1950 and the standard of care, then you go to 1960 and in 1950 it was heresy, and then in 1970 you look at 1960 and it was heresy – no wonder they talk about “practicing” medicine.

Dr. Smith: (laughs)

KC: I once heard it said that a well-meaning doctor comes out of medical school and is absolutely committed to read 1 full long article and abstracts every single day, every single day no matter what. They say in 12 months he’s 400 years behind in the literature.

Dr. Smith: Exactly! That’s not going to be enough to get you very far.

KC: No doctor’s able to do that with their commitments because they have so many patients and so little time. That’s fascinating. So, what got you really interested in alternative medicine, because there are so many techniques that aren’t even taught anymore.

Dr. Smith: If I get around to writing a book on it someday…

KC: You will.

Dr. Smith: I would dedicate it to all the patients who passionately asked me, “what else can I do, doctor? Have you ever heard of vitamin C? Have you heard of eating more of a vegetable diet? Have you ever heard of macrobiotics?” This was back in the early 80s, and, so I said, well, didn’t learn anything about that, but I’ll look it up – and the more I looked up about vitamin C and heard about Linus Pauling and that, I said this is obviously something of value. There is no one little thing that has the magic bullet, but there are a lot of things, both in the whole area of nutrition, diet, lifestyle, detoxification, elimination, sleep, stress reduction, and that’s now – early in the 80s, with my cancer and cardiovascular patients, I was putting all of them on a program like that.

KC: A lot like our 7 Keys (Super Health).

Dr. Smith: Yeah, they either lived longer or they lived better or both. And some of them I had when I quit practice that still had practice, I’d say “well, you got to touch and you’re above it, so just keep doing it.” I do think that our basic physiological gift from God is enough to take care of most things, if we would just go back to the basics of pure water, pure organic food, mostly plant based, sleeping – that’s the one I really trashed during my surgery career. I thought people were really some sort of a wimp if they got more than 4 hours of sleep a night. So, it’s only by the grace of God that I’m still here after 20 or 30 years of that. I mean there’s data out there showing that 7 hours is required for most people minimum – 7 to 9 hours. If you want to have maximum hormonal balance and detoxification, and then the whole issue of elimination, what a problem that is. But these are the things I would share with patients after I finished the surgery, and I saw some remarkable results and became more and more convinced that we all need to look at foundational health. And that’s not taking away our need for doctors or internists or anybody because most people can only do that so well, and even if you do it impeccably then your genetic code and the environment you live in and time itself, it will all catch up with you. I just love to help people be healthier so they can enjoy their life.

KC: That’s awesome! So, how do you advise people – what is the main thing they need to be thinking about  where they can be making little changes right now that can really make an impact on their life? What’s missing? For instance, when someone has surgery - the difference in someone who has extremely good nutrition subsequent to surgery, and someone who has terrible nutrition subsequent to surgery, what’s the difference in healing time?

Dr. Smith: It’s remarkable. As a matter of fact, the times I had the greatest fear operating on people was when they were in a very depleted state – and as a matter of fact, if they are depleted enough you don’t operate. You either put them on central … you put an IV in their subclavian or now you can actually run them up from the arm, but you feed them intravenously if they can’t physically eat to make sure that – we even have parameters, like if your albumin level is less than 4 it means your protein nurturer is down low enough that you might not do well with healing anything. So, yeah, there’s no doubt about it, in terms of just back-to-foundational health you need to eat not just a plant-based diet - I think the plug today is for an organic diet. I think we really need to choose organic food and if more would demand it, more people would sell it. I’ve seen even places like Winn Dixie on Key Biscayne will keep a wide variety of organic foods because people demanded it. So, I used to jokingly say that people start having to buy a house next to Whole Foods, because they’re the ones who started it, but more and more I think with people eating more organic food and demanding it will get it because I don’t think we’re going to anytime in the real near future – I’d love to think we would - but I don’t think we’re going to be done with insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, genetically-modified food, all of which is having some sort of proven impact on our body that’s not – we’re gifted with pretty good detoxification systems, particularly when you’re younger,  but with every decade you live it becomes more critically important that you eat organic food.

KC: I just saw a study from Environmental Working Group that they tested the cord blood of ten American women …

Dr. Smith: Exactly.

KC: … and had 300 different chemicals in the cord blood. So, it’s passing directly from generation to generation.

Dr. Smith – Cord blood – the umbilical cord from the fetus you’re talking about, yes.

KC: Yes, BPA, all the ones you’d expect.

Dr. Smith: Exactly. We wonder why the kids have neurodevelopmental problems. I mean autism is a big one, but look at all the other things they have.

KC: Right. This is fascinating! We could go all day with it, but we’re going to cut it here and go on to another segment. Thank you, Leonard.

Dr. Smith: You are very welcome.

KC: Here’s to your Super Health and we hope you enjoyed it!