I’m Dr. Leyla Ali and I’d like to personally welcome you to my website. I am a pharmacist and author of Off Balance, The American Way of Health, A Pharmacist’s Perspective on Why Drugs Don’t Work.
My mission is to help people understand the limitations of doctors and drugs, and to inspire people to seek alternative and holistic healthcare solutions.
I want people to see—so they truly understand—that for most chronic conditions, doctors and drugs offer temporary relief at best. In fact, there are many chronic health conditions considered “incurable” in Western Medicine that can be better treated with natural or holistic healthcare solutions.
BACKGROUND
My father was a medical doctor, and my mother was a surgical technician who handled the instruments during surgeries. I grew up with doctors and drugs being the norm, the standard.
Growing up, our hall closet had an assortment of medications. When someone in my family was sick, there was always a medication available that my father would get from the closet that could help “fix” our problem. I always felt safe knowing we had special access to these medications.
When I decided to go to pharmacy school, I wanted to be a healthcare practitioner. I wanted to help people. It seemed like a perfect choice. I was happy to know that I would not only continue to have access to these amazing, life-saving medications, but I would also have a thorough understanding of how they work. I could help people and I would have a career that I’d be proud of.
I went to University of the Pacific School of Pharmacy in Stockton, California and graduated in 1998.
But my pharmacy career did not turn out how I expected.
MY FIRST EPIPHANY
When I went to pharmacy school, it’s a lot of memorization and technical words. With tests, papers, presentations, and several classes at once, they kept me very busy and there wasn’t much time to really think about what we were learning.
But I did pay special attention during the days when we learned about rheumatoid arthritis. Between my mother, her sister, and her brother, they’ve had 6 knee replacements. I worried that rheumatoid arthritis may be genetic and therefore part of my destiny.
I paid close attention when they taught about the treatments for the chronic and debilitating swelling in the joints.
In summary, for the standard treatment consists of:
- Reducing the swelling,
Then when the first line of medications stops working,
- Reduce the swelling with different, more toxic medications.
When the disease continues to progress, or the side effects become intolerable,
- Reduce the immune system function to reduce the swelling. (since the immune system creates swelling to protect the body and regain balance).
There was no talk of curing the condition, or what caused the swelling in the first place.
This was the first time I didn’t feel “safe” or comforted with medications. I felt unsettled, and disappointed.
But again, there’s not much time to really think about things in pharmacy school—since we’re too busy getting things done!
MY SECOND EPIPHANY
My second epiphany happened when I was learning about cleansing. I had been hearing about cleansing kits to get rid of toxins in the body, as they were popular and trendy, but I really didn’t know much about it. I didn’t learn anything about cleansing in pharmacy school. I asked a friend who was familiar with these to get me a cleanse. He brought me over a couple books that I planned to only skim through to get the information I needed just to cleanse. Instead I ended up reading these from cover to cover as I was fascinated by what I read. It was information I’ve never heard before.
These books claimed that 95% of diseases are caused by what we eat.
I thought, “That’s ridiculous! I have a Doctor of Pharmacy degree, and I am a health care professional. Therefore if that was true I would have already learned about it.”
I then took out my 1800-page therapeutics book that I used in school with all the diseases states and treatments, and I started looking for causes of common diseases. Here’s some of the causes that I found:
- Acne. “The causes of acne are multifactorial and are not completely understood,”
- Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (heartburn). “… is related to the complex balance between defense mechanisms and aggressive factors,”
- Asthma. “Although a single underlying cellular defect has not yet been discovered… hyper-reactivity of the airways to physical, chemical, and pharmacologic stimuli is the hallmark of asthma,”
The explanations were very vague with heavy medical terms. They were basically lots of jibber jabber that you learn and memorize for tests, but don’t mean anything at a practical level. For many disease the cause was considered to be unknown. But in fact, acne, asthma, and heartburn are all very much related to foods and diet.
After reading this, I felt disappointed, almost betrayed. I spent so much time and energy to learn to become a health care professional. But the truth is there are some basics of health that I did not learn:
- We didn’t learn about nutrition, or how our choices of food can heal or cause disease.
- We didn’t learn how negative emotions can lead to ill health.
- We didn’t learn how our own thoughts can empower us or make us sicker.
- We didn’t even learn about herbal remedies, which are natural and less toxic than most pharmaceuticals.
We only learned about drugs as a solution to every health condition and disease. We only learned about the most profitable yet toxic remedies.
Customers depend upon pharmacists and medical doctors for all their health care needs. But the truth is we are not trained in many of the simple basics of health; we are only trained in drugs as a solution to every health condition or disease. And when there’s side effects to the drugs, well we have another drug to help with that as well.
MY MISSION
I then went on a mission to learn about all the holistic healthcare options available. I read several books, but I also held a monthly mixer in my Long Beach, California where we would invite three holistic practitioners each month to give sample sessions to the community. From these I got to meet several practitioners in the area and the services they provide. I also learned about the various holistic healthcare options, and how they work to restore balance. And I was fascinated how they are able to cure and help people with health conditions where Western Medicine cannot.
My book, Off Balance, The American Way of Health, A Pharmacist’s Perspective on Why Drugs Don’t Work is an explanation of how drugs don’t work in very simple terms, so readers can truly see what drugs are doing, how they are making patients more comfortable instead of restoring health, or balance. I also have interviews with several people who have healed themselves from conditions their doctors couldn’t treat. Health conditions such as chronic fatigue, neuropathy, Tourette’s syndrome, addictions, chronic pain, and cancer.
I now aim to help people learn that there are holistic and alternative solutions for most chronic medical conditions, and I also hope to inspire people to empower themselves to take control of their health. I want to patients to understand the limitations of medical doctor and pharmaceutical drugs, and also know there are other options so they can find better solutions for their health.