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Most of the greatest victories happen by beating all odds, just when everyone has given up. Today’s guest is someone who is quite familiar with this story. Suffering from Fibromyalgia upwards of 30 plus systems, Dr. Faith Leuschen has had many professionals telling her she might never recover. Thriving against everything, Dr. Leuschen found herself thriving. In this episode, she shares with us her great story of healing from Fibromyalgia and how she is helping people with the same conditions and symptoms get their lives back. Dr. Leuschen is a coach, speaker, entrepreneur, and chiropractor with more than 20 years of experience. She brings her age-old wisdom and knowledge with us as she sheds light on fibromyalgia, treating patients, and practicing her profession.
Listen To The Episode Here
Healing From Fibromyalgia With Dr. Faith Leuschen
In this episode, we have Dr. Faith Leuschen. She has one of the most incredible life stories you will ever hear. She was involved in a very bad car accident that flipped her world completely upside down. She suffered from fibromyalgia afterwards. She is a thriving chiropractor. She had a beautiful abundant practice in California and she suffered from this accident. After that, it was almost impossible for her to get up and go to work because she was suffering from upwards of 30 plus neurological issues after the accident. She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. She went to other doctors. They don’t know if she was ever going to be able to get better. She had to go back to work and found out that some of the doctors that were working for her were stealing from her. Her life was spiraling out of control.
This is one of my favorite stories. I love having these stories on the show because Dr. Faith found the light at the end of the tunnel and made her life beautiful again. Her story is inspiring. She beat the odds of a disease that people say it’s not possible to heal from, when it is completely possible to heal from fibromyalgia and other neurological issues. You just have to find something that works for you. Also, what I love about this story is she is helping others heal from fibromyalgia. Her patients are getting better and it’s all coming from the hearth. She suffered from it too and she wants the best for her patients and she is seeing miracles in her office and that’s what it’s all about. I hope you enjoy this. Please welcome, Dr. Faith.
Dr. Faith, how are you?
I am doing fantastic.
I’m very excited to have you on the show because your story is one of a kind. You suffered from fibromyalgia upwards of 30 plus systems. I’m sure you ran into many professionals, doctors that might’ve said you might never recover. It’s impossible to heal from a disease like this. You beat all the odds and you are thriving. My favorite part of your story is you’re helping people with the same conditions and symptoms get their lives back. That’s the most important thing. I heard a little bit of your story and I was inspired. Thank you so much for coming. I’m excited to hear the story in its entirety.
I’m ready to rock and roll and give some great information out there that people haven’t heard.
You go on Google and the internet. You might type in healing from fibromyalgia and a lot of scary things pop up. Some people say that there’s no cure. You’re going to have to live with it for the rest of your life. Usually, the worst-case scenarios pop up and it can be scary for somebody doing their initial research. It can be disheartening. You have a story that completely beat it. I had a similar story with post-concussion syndrome. I was told the same thing. It’s pretty brutal and it can be disheartening when you’re trying to heal from a disease like that.
Especially when you’re usually high energy, feeling fantastic and you’re helping thousands of people as a chiropractor and then all of a sudden you get hit. My whole scenario completely changed. I don’t think it’s good that people have pain and they get hit and they go through these disasters. There’s always got to be some rainbow at the end. It’s usually to help more people that don’t know what to do. Through our living experiences, we’re able to help more people and get them on the road of health. Also, the mindset that goes with it. I know when you’re not feeling good, it all goes down. As you go down, you’re not feeling good and it’s going to generally go throughout your body and become a part of you. I don’t want that to happen to anybody.
Dr. Faith, where does your story begin?
My story begins back in 2005. I was going to Bali and build villas there. I took my lunch break off at my office that was in Manhattan Beach, California in that time to go to Walmart and get cases of Crayola Crayons for the orphanage out there in Bali and I never made it. What ended up happening was as I was driving towards Walmart, I remember Gwen Stefani was on the radio at that time, Hollaback Girl. I remember the sunny day, the green trees, the green grass, and the traffic was okay. I was approaching a green light. Everything should have been clear. An 84-year-old man came into oncoming traffic. It wasn’t an illegal left-hand turn and it was a frontal and broadside impact that took me out. I ended up with face contusions, chest contusion, broken teeth, the left elbow broke backwards, traumatic brain injury and multiple spine injuries. I was taken away to the hospital on a stretcher. That was it. I was in the hospital. I came back home and had to recuperate. That’s the beginning of the story. I had to think about as I was getting better, “When am I going to go back to work?” I ended up going back to work too soon. I worked for a year and a half in severe debilitating pain and that’s when the fibro kicked in.
What were you dealing with immediately and the following months after the accident?
I was having problems with memory. I wasn’t walking well because I felt dizzy. I mostly stayed in bed, which gave me anxiety and depression because I know my inner core and myself, just how much I love life and being out there. I’m animated and I’m great at being a chiropractor and getting other people better. Also, my daughter was only three years old at the time. I had a nanny every single day taking care of her. I had that in practice anyways because she was a part of the practice. Now, I had a full-time nanny that was helping me and my daughter at that time until I was well enough to go back to practice. Going back to practice wasn’t good for me. It brought me more anxiety and crazy pain throughout my body, riddling through my head all the way down to my toes. That was my journey at the time. I was blessed enough to go to a seminar where there were professionals that knew all about this. There was a test out there for fibromyalgia.
On top of it, when you did come back to work, it wasn’t all roses. You found out that people were stealing from you during the time that you were off. That must have added to the additional stressors of your life.
The story goes and my practice in Manhattan Beach was highly successful. I had doctors working for me. I had three doctors, five massage therapists and things were going good. I was doing all the marketing at that time, going into the corporations and El Segundo, like Mattel, Raytheon, Hughes, those were my clients, all those corporate patients. While I did all the marketing, I had two doctors that were siphoning patients into another practice and it was no good. It was awful to find out. I didn’t do it directly. I wanted to be smart, so I hired a PI to do it. I had a Private Investigator act as a receptionist within the office. I wasn’t thinking clearly. My fibro was blown out in full blast. I had to do things that I had to rely on other people to do the thinking for me because I was in the depths of fibro.
Dr. Faith, what is fibromyalgia for all the people wondering?
Fibromyalgia is a neurologic condition that you can get it from maybe a car accident, being stressed in life, having anxiety and depression that goes deeper and deeper to where that depression goes in deep. People are staying in bed all of the time because they don’t feel good. When I take these intakes, I start with, “What’s your worst pain,” and I scale it from 1 to 10. Most of them are 10/10, 8/10. These are high-level pain patients that aren’t functioning well. They don’t see well and they don’t hear well. They’re confused at times. I felt all of that. Not only that, I had a practice that was over my head. I needed to get well is what it was. I had to search the earth to find somebody that had some answers for me.
What was one of your first steps? What did you do to take a step in that right direction?
You Google fibromyalgia docs and then you go through the community. Being a chiropractor is amazing because we have a lot of chiropractors to lean on because we all specialize in something. I found a doctor up in Lake Tahoe that was getting fibromyalgia patients well. I went and talked to my staff and I said, “I got to go up to Lake Tahoe and meet this doctor. I need somebody to get me better.” Sure enough, it was the blessing that changed my whole life.
Walk us through that visit up to Lake Tahoe. What was it like? What was this doctor doing? How did it get you better?
Lake Tahoe was cool. I bought into Marriott Vacation Clubs in the year 2000. I flew up to Lake Tahoe. I stayed at the Marriott right there in South Lake Tahoe. His office was only about two blocks away. His house was even closer, so I ended up getting treatment within his house. His whole concept is something that the medical field knows nothing about. I still watch shows on fibromyalgias and what the MDs are doing. Most of the MDs think that it’s a problem with the brain or hormones and that they can keep tackling this with medicine but it doesn’t work. People might feel a little bit better. They may get foggy for medicine or whatever their side effects are.
It’s only masking the symptoms.
This is all-natural, where we take the pressure off what we call the meninges. For those out there that don’t know what the meninges are, the meninges go around the brainstem all the way down the spinal cord. It hooks up into every single nerve root. If you have compression of the meninges up in the back of the skull and your back of your skull is going to be super tight. You’re not going to be feeling good. You’re going to have fibro fog. When I get in there with a patient that’s mild, medium or severe, I first go in with the meninges. This is after I’ve taken a history and exam. I’ve got all the pain levels and every part of their body that hurts. There’s a way of decompressing the meninges. What we do is we go in, I have the patient while they’re lying flat, I have them jut their jaw forward. There are some points in there that you’ll be able to feel. It’s going to be tender to the patient.
We’re able to go in there and hold pressure in a certain degree of angle, which is a 45-degree angle. You hold it for about 10 to 15 minutes. At about eight minutes, you feel the structure underneath soften and you’re able to go in a little bit deeper into that. As we do this technique, what happens is everything starts opening up all the way down to the spine. I always have an assistant taking my notes. We start with the patient with every single symptom and area of the body. We mark that, rating with pain, tension, burning or whatever it is. As we do the decompression, the pain starts releasing on these patients. Their eyes become clear instead of red, their ears will pop. They feel better. It goes all the way down to the spine to the big toe.
That’s where the control center is. That’s all the nerves go through you. You loosen up that area, you see a lot of miracles happen.
I see this almost every single day in my practice because I own a neurologic relief center. In my marketing, my company name is Total Body Balance & the Neurologic Relief Center. When people see that word neurologic when they’re Googling or talking to a friend, they’re able to see me and because it pops up all over. I get most of my patients through internet marketing.
Was it a heavy healing process for you? Did it take some time for everything to dissipate?
It’s not that bad. It takes about 2.5 to 3 months for an average fibro patient to get better. I’ve treated other patients that are much more severe that took thirteen months. These are trippy diagnoses, fibro, MS, post-stroke and lupus. I had one patient come in and she walked, she was tall, a college student and she couldn’t go to college because she couldn’t bend. The whole posterior of her body was like wood. That’s the patient that took about thirteen months, but we hung in there. I did all the treatment. My hands were about to fall off and then she got better.
How many times a week? How often do you recommend the treatment for this?
These patients are seen three times a day, five days a week. It’s intensive. There are times when these patients are sick. I have multiple rooms in my practice. People can lay down if they don’t feel good without being bothered. I have that practice that caters to that because I know how sick they are. Being a doctor that I’ve had probably the worst of the worst, that compassion and that knowledge it’s wound into me and a part of my whole being. It’s always there. It’s huge, empathy, the compassion and I can explain to them what they’re going to go through. It happens every time exactly how I say it’s going to happen.
When I say somebody is going to get better in 2.5 to 3 months, I’ve had patients right in the two and a half months, say, “We’re done.” I’m like, “I’m not done with you.” I emotionally have not disconnected from that patient yet. It’s crazy when they make their own decisions saying they’re feeling good and they bail. They are good. I haven’t seen these patients back because they’ve done well. I see them on social media. I talk to their parents. I had a round of four teenagers. If you go to my YouTube, you’ll see four of the videos and they’re moms with their teenagers. To see the teens get back into school and being able to walk and get out of wheelchairs, that fills me. I like regular chiropractic patients.
The fibro gets you up and gets you going.
I want 1,000 fibro patients.
What is the name of this technique, Dr. Faith?
It’s called the Neurologic Relief Center Technique, NRCT. As doctors, you can go to their website NRC.md. You can read all about it. It has the symptoms and everything that goes on with fibro, but most importantly being trained as one of those practitioners, it’s been golden. I’m a master trainer. I can train doctors in the technique. It’s been wonderful as far as being able to have that tool that goes in deep on such a level of intense pain and dysfunction.
You see fibro patients that they can’t go to work anymore. They can’t live their life. They are in so much pain, fibromyalgia, trigeminal neuralgia and chewing. They can’t even chew. If wind hits their face, they can’t take it. Many people are suffering from these diseases. It sounds like you work mostly in the upper cervical area, which is exactly like I do. We see a lot of the same things. If you correctly are working in that area precisely, making the right adjustments and the meninges are huge. You start releasing that and you see the miracles happen. We got to get more practitioners working safely in that area because that’s where you see all of these crazy neurological disorders.
It’s the most gratifying thing in the whole wide world. I’m blown away when these people come to me when they’re sick. I’m excited and elated inside. I’ll do anything for them. I don’t care how long it takes. The patient that took thirteen months, she couldn’t drive. She was eighteen years old and couldn’t drive a car because she was probably six feet and she walked like a giraffe. She had zero flexibility in the posterior muscle. In my head, when I get patients like that, the number one I do is a prayer, “God, help me, help them. Show me who I can serve and let them be ready.” I’ve said that prayer, “Lord, show me who I can serve.” I’ve prayed that and not gotten any results. As soon as I get that backend, “Let them be ready,” all of a sudden, the floodgates opened up again and people were ready to get care.
You said something interesting that most of the time you see these people are involved in some type of accident and head injury. Also, you see some people wake up with this. With my experience of it, symptoms usually don’t show up right away. It could take a while. These people could have had a traumatic accident years ago and they say, “I woke up with this one day.” You didn’t wake up with it one day. It’s been in your system for long and the body is well at adapting and healing. It gives out one day. It’s tough for people to connect the dots to figure out what’s happening because it happened long ago. Do you see that a lot too?
Yes, I see that a lot. I see patients telling me, “I’ve been tight for a long time or this isn’t going to go away.” I said, “Let me tell you a little bit about the nervous system. The nervous system has memory and it’s strong. Your muscular system has memory and it’s strong.” Our jobs here is to open that up little by little at whatever they can handle so that we can get the patient better in the long run. Sometimes it’s the short run that patients they’re done and you’re like, “Yes.” These other patients that they’ve been sick ten, twenty years, disordered or however you want to call it. Those are the ones that you got to stand by those patients and be their logical coach. We know how to get the nervous system better.
We know how to get people high functioning, but sometimes they don’t have that. They don’t feel that. We need to take the steps in educating them in what the steps are, but also where their mindset needs to be on healing. If they’re in the wrong mindset, you don’t have that patient. It’s always about history, exams, getting all these things down, but also coaching the patients so that they can do the best for what they need. Also, eat the healthiest that they can be and what’s good for their blood type or however they utilize or think about what their nutrition should be. We got to have every single angle. That’s what holistic healthcare is. We’re the most holistic. We can bring every aspect of it and it’s good.
You get those patients that do well right from the get-go. You have the other ones where it’s a little bit of a roller coaster ride for months on in. It’s going well and then it plateaus. It could be a little discouraging for them, but you are dealing with the nervous system. Sometimes it takes up to 120 days for the nerves to regenerate and heal. Coaching them through that because it also could be mentally draining on the patient and it’s probably much easier for them to stick with it knowing that you, their doctor has been in the same position. It helps people hold on a little longer.
It also puts them in the mindset that, “This doctor cares for me. They’re explaining exactly how this is going to go,” and then they have more faith in the treatment, more faith in the doctor. It puts them at ease. There’s a comfort zone that goes on that you’re comfortable with your doctor. You know they’re going to do the good thing and the good things that they need. I feel blessed being a chiropractor. I was going to go to medical school. My counselor, because I was a competitive bodybuilder back in my teens and twenties, he says, “You got to be a chiropractor. You know every tendon, ligament, the nerve in the body.” I’m glad way back then that I detoured from med school and I went into Los Angeles College of Chiropractic and I enjoyed it.
Reflecting on your experience with this fibro, I’m sure as you were going through it, it must’ve been how and you were thinking, “Why on earth did this happen to me?” What’s it like looking back on that life experience you had coming out the other end of the tunnel?
To take it back to that one step, when I was in an accident, I couldn’t walk and I couldn’t think properly, I was pissed off with God. “Why me, God? I only do good things.” That was my thought process back then. When I came out clean on the other side, there’s nothing better than that. The feeling, the joy, the education I got from being smacked super hard, it woke me up and I thought, “I was in that accident for a reason.” Here’s the thing, I realized I was being complacent. It’s a great chiropractor. I had all these patients and doctors and doing the right stuff with marketing. I was traveling and I was living my life. I didn’t have to go to work most of the days because I had it set upright. It gave me a newfound birth. I could help others. How huge is to help more people with all your injuries and being able to get through them and to be able to learn that technique and bring it out into public.
Dr. Faith, can other people do this, can physical therapists or was it just chiropractors?
Only chiros because we knew the nervous system well. We know every single vertebra in the spine. We know what’s going on with the back of the skull. You don’t have another profession that’s going to be as detailed as chiropractors are, especially with the adjustments. We have specific vectors that we’re hitting in at certain angles to make everything smooth and perfect so that patients get better. You can’t have a physical therapist do that. You can’t have a naturopath do anything like that.
They are respected, they’re good practitioners, but you can’t learn that information on a weekend seminar. It takes years to perfect that.
If you’d go through chiropractic school and then you train at seminars. We are seminar lovers. We want to learn from the best of the best like Gonstead and Thompson and whoever it was. We were excited as students going, “What else can I have in my arsenal?” That’s the cool thing about being a chiropractor and we’ve got a lot of cool colleagues out there.
Dr. Faith, where are your practices located?
I was able to retire in 2015. I moved down to Dana Point in a beautiful home. I got bored. I went crazy one day and I screamed at my family. I’m like, “I can’t do this anymore.” I live in this beautiful big, gigantic house that I love and I went nuts. I’m like, “I have to start another practice.” My practice is in Laguna Niguel, California. It’s rocking. It’s one of my favorite practices because I still feel like I’m in retirement. I feel blessed that way. A lot of people can’t retire until they’re 50, 60, 70. I was able to take that time and do that and I have an appreciation that it gets boring in retirement.
It sounds like you’re in that sweet spot where you don’t have to see patients to where you’re doing it out from your heart. That’s a beautiful place to heal from.
It’s a beautiful place to work from and it is from my heart. Everything that I do when I walk in this practice, honestly this is the love of my life. I wouldn’t say it’s a slower practice. If I want to book the patient out for an hour, I do that. I don’t have to go patient to patient. I don’t ruin my spine. It feels good. There are no aches, pains and I’m moving forward. I could take my vacations when I want to take it. Although, I’ve always taken vacations. When I started as a chiropractor, I made a goal for myself that I would go on vacation once every quarter. It’s healthy for chiropractors to set that goal go once every quarter because then you’re not breaking your back exhausting yourself mentally. You got to leave.
I feel the same way. Once I reached that 3 or 4 months mark straight, my brain starts to shut down. I’m not in that healing space I need to be in. That little trip, even if it’s a week, it’s a refresher and it gets you back on track. You’re much better when you do come back. How many chiropractors have you heard maybe at seminars, like, “I didn’t take a vacation for four or five years, I just worked?” That doesn’t sound fun at all. I don’t want to do that. I’m taking a vacation.
That’s a bust in the hump. I don’t want to do that. That’s one of the biggest pearls of wisdom, especially for any of the new docs. Once you get going and you feel settled in your office and you’re doing well, you got to work in the vacations. Otherwise, it’s not fun. You do get aches and pains. You can hurt yourself and you burn out. I always go to Maui. I like being on the West Coast because it takes me five hours to fly over to Maui and chill out for a week and then get home totally refreshed and better for everybody who sees me, even my family. Otherwise, I might throttle them.
Dr. Faith at the end of each episode, I like to ask all my guests, what is one piece of advice that has resonated with you over the years that you would like to give the audience? It could be absolutely anything.
A gift and a pearl-of-wisdom are you have to take care of yourself first. You’re no good unless you’re taking care of yourself. You got to pay attention and not wear yourself down because that’s when your head’s not in the right space for longevity.
Sometimes we don’t even realize that we’re out of that space and you got to find that reset.
You always have to have a reset. We’re human beings. We got to keep being and if you want to be run down, you’re not going to take any of that wisdom. If you want to be the best performer that you can be, you have to do all the right things. You have to eat healthily. You have to have a great mindset that you’re excited about life. That you’re going to change people’s lives, that you have things to look forward to. Without that mindset, people get burned out and then they’re upset. They get pissed off.
Dr. Faith, where can people find you online, social media and all your platforms?
I’m on Facebook, Faith Leuschen, with my private. There’s a business page I have and Instagram. You can have my email address, which is MyDrFaith@Gmail.com. That’s easy to send me questions or if you want to chat. I’m open and free to help, whether it’s new patients or new students with chiropractic or chiropractors that are burned out and they want to have a little more spice in their life. Anybody that wants to do some work together or be on a stage or podcast, I love that too.
Dr. Faith, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. It’s beautiful to know somebody to be in that whirlwind of a situation and come back the other side healthy and back healing other people and giving it back to the world.
Thanks for having me on. I enjoyed this.
I’ll talk to you soon.
Take care.
Important Links
- Total Body Balance and The Neurologic Relief Center
- YouTube - Dr. Faith Leuschen
- NRC.md
- Faith Leuschen – Facebook
- Business page – Faith Leuschen Facebook
- Instagram – Faith Leuschen
- MyDrFaith@Gmail.com
- https://www.Facebook.com/kpecca/videos/10156539352431573/
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