The Lyme 360 Podcast: Heal+

EP 48: Biohacking Your Body with Allyssa LaScala aka Biohacking Bombshell

April 06, 2021 Mimi MacLean Episode 48
The Lyme 360 Podcast: Heal+
EP 48: Biohacking Your Body with Allyssa LaScala aka Biohacking Bombshell
Show Notes Transcript

Are you still struggling with Lyme? Do you have breast implants? Have you checked for parasites or mold?

This week we stepped into the trending world of biohacking with the Biohacking Bombshell herself, Allyssa LaScala. Allyssa is an integrative health practitioner and wellness blogger whose own experience with Lyme, breast implant illness, and hyperthyroidism inspired her to heal and help others detox their bodies. We talked about coaching clients through detoxing, draining the body of toxins, and her favorite biohacking practices.

Tune in to hear how Allyssa healed her body from parasites & mold, why fasting can help detox and the dangers of breast implants. To learn more about the podcast go to https://www.lyme360.com

I put together a Free Detox for Lyme Checklist for you. Click here to get your copy:

https://lyme360.com/podcast-checklist/

To learn more about our podcast guest, click here:

https://lyme360.com/biohacking-101-with-allyssa-lascala/

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 Mimi MacLean:
Welcome to the Heal Podcast, for all things related to Lyme disease and other chronic illnesses. I'm Mimi MacLean, mama five, founder of Lyme360 and a Lyme warrior. Tune in each week to hear from doctors, health, practitioners, and experts, to hear about their treatments, struggles and triumphs to help you on your healing journey. I'm here to heal with you.

Mimi MacLean:
This week's podcast is brought to you by Air Oasis. As a Lyme warrior, I know how important it is to have clean air in the home. I've been using a room air purifier but recently had to purchase an all home unit to combat our mold issues throughout our house. I did some research and found a great company called Air Oasis. Their air purifiers help fight bacteria, viruses, and mold. So if you've not put in an air purifier into your home, go to lyme360.com/airoasis. They carry room units as well as entire home units. 

Mimi MacLean:
Hi, welcome back to the Heal Podcast. This is Mimi MacLean from Lyme360. And today we have Allyssa LaScala. She's an integrative health practitioner and wellness blogger known as the Biohacking Bombshell. She focuses on helping people get to the root cause and kickstart their healing journey. She focuses on draining, detoxing and restoring the body through biohacking practices. She's personally dealt with Lyme disease, breast implant illness, and hyperthyroidism, and can speak on the ways that she has healed her body and now works with clients to help them heal as well. She offers one-on-one coaching as well as online guides. 

Mimi MacLean:
To get my detox for Lyme checklist, go to lyme360/com/detoxchecklist. Allyssa, thank you so much for coming today. I really appreciate it. And I've been following you on Instagram, you have a great Instagram account. So, it's been very informative and I love all your detoxing and biohacking tips. I would love to find out how you got into doing that. 

Allyssa LaScala:
It was really my own health journey, to be completely honest. I mean, when you feel like you're out of solutions and you've maxed every other potential solution that you have available to you, you start digging into your own thing, that's when I discovered functional and integrative medicine, and that's what's helped me to heal. So it really was me trying to find a solution for my own health journey. And now applying that to others. 

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, and did you have Lyme? 

Allyssa LaScala:
Yeah. I got diagnosed with Lyme when I was in college. 

Mimi MacLean:
Oh, wow. Okay. And so, how long do you think you had it for?

Allyssa LaScala:
I really wonder how long it was in my system and was dormant because I didn't start really getting the symptoms, fatigue was the biggest thing for me, until about six months after I got breast implants put in. So I'm wondering how long it was lingering there before that really just compromised my immune system and the Lyme was able to really go full force. 

Mimi MacLean:
Once you found out you had Lyme, did you try going down the typical medical conventional, and it didn't work. So you did the antibiotics, you did all that?

Allyssa LaScala:
Yeah. 

Mimi MacLean:
It didn't work. Which brought you kind of similar to my journey, and then it brought you to the integrative part. And so, you've been kind of self-teaching yourself or did you find an actually Lyme literate more integrative doctor that helped you along on the process?

Allyssa LaScala:
Well, I was always on the health and wellness journey. So I went to school for exercise and sports science. So I was always along that route. I was really more thinking about going for physical therapy than going into the functional medicine practitioner route. But of course, my own journey kind of led me that way. I did do conventional medicine, like you said, typical doxycyclin for three week antibiotics, blah, blah, blah. I did that for three different rounds. And then I was like, I need to find an LLMD, I want to find a doctor that is Lyme literate. So I had seen them for five and a half years and learned a lot there. But I later learned as I was going through further education myself as a practitioner, there was a lot that they even missed. So, it was a combination of experience and education.

Mimi MacLean:
And now, you are now, not only do you have a great Instagram, but you are also a health practitioner. Can you tell us about that? Where did you go get certified or how did that come to be?

Allyssa LaScala:
So I discovered Dr. Steven Cabral, and he has the Integrative Health Practitioner Institute. And I've been following him for a while and the course just seemed to be an incredible fit for me. I looked at Institute of Functional Medicine and a lot of other places out there and just how well-rounded it was. It was a total game changer. So that plus different events that I have been attending and just even rubbing shoulders with other practitioners is where the education came from.

Mimi MacLean:
That's great. How ultimately do you think, what led you to get better?

Allyssa LaScala:
Well, I'm still in the process. I think it's very important to state. Ultimately, a big part of me healing that was missed, even when working with an LLMD for five, five and a half years, was addressing drainage and addressing parasites that can hold on to Lyme and all the other toxicities such as mold. So those were big things where I was trying to hit Lyme as much as possible, trying to heal my gut. And I didn't know the other toxicities to address, to address drainage and especially in my liver. And those were big aspects that were missing, I just started addressing more comprehensively about eight or nine months ago.

Mimi MacLean:
Interesting. You were working with a Lyme literate doctor for five years. So, you weren't miraculously better once you started, right. So it's been like a long journey like the rest of us. I'm always impressed by your ability to work out, as much exercising as you do. Because for me, I'm like, I can't even touch my toes. I'm like every bone in my body hurts. I might look good, as far as, I look like I'm healthy, but every joint hurts. It's hard for me to even go for walks and it totally makes me tired and drained. So I'm impressed that you're able to do as much as you can do exercising. 

Allyssa LaScala:
So whether someone's dealing with just Lyme or they're dealing with the co-infections, whether they have, for me, parasites was a huge thing. Mold toxicity was a huge thing. And so that's what I often see, not just with myself, but with my clients, is that I do have some clients where they have Lyme and their joints are the biggest thing that took a hit. And for me, it was fatigue, which affected my workouts. But I think it's also knowing how to adjust those workouts to make it so it's still serving you and boosting your mitochondria versus taxing you. The specificity is very important.

Mimi MacLean:
I love how you brought up, because that's what I'm going through right now. I actually started a new doctor and my Lyme is gone after the IVs that I did for three weeks. But what's holding on is the parasites and the mold, which means I probably still have mold in my house even though I thought I got rid of it, because at this point, she said, you should've gotten rid of the mold from the treatments that we were doing. And the parasites, I did a full 10 day cleanse on medicine, and they're not gone. And she's like, everything that you're feeling now is not the Lyme because your Lyme is gone from your body. 

Allyssa LaScala:
That's what happened to me as well. 

Mimi MacLean:
What do you recommend typically for people to get rid of the parasites?

Allyssa LaScala:
So I love Cellcore. I use their line with my clients all the time. That is the most comprehensive thing, because I'll be totally honest with you, I did different parasite tests, never did I ever have one come back positive, ever. But I look at symptoms with my clients, and same thing with Lyme, because the Lyme testing is just so many false negatives. I never found a bite, I had no idea you could get it through mosquitoes and fleas and sexual transmission and different things like that. 

Allyssa LaScala:
So, I really am going off of symptoms when I'm looking at my progress and my client's progress. But for me, it was the same story as you where I got tested for Lyme and the co-infections. And it seems like, okay, I did have the more chronic, the antibodies and whatnot, but it wasn't active Lyme infection. If people are going and addressing the Lyme but they haven't completely eradicated or made a big improvement of eradication of parasites, it's going to hold on to Lyme, and the Lyme's going to come back. It's going to hold onto mold and heavy metals, and those are going to come back.

Allyssa LaScala:
I don't see 10 days really being, unless it was a really acute infection of you already have because you traveled to a third world country and it was in the water or whatnot. That may be a different story. But for most people, that is not enough. And so, I've actually been hitting parasites comprehensively for about eight months now and I'm still passing them daily.

Mimi MacLean:
And what are you using just like supplements at this point? So I think that's what I'm been doing too, but that was just the hit hard. So it's just herbals kind of supplements or?

Allyssa LaScala:
Yeah, they have like anti-parasitic herbs and things like that, but really a big part of it, you have the fulvic and humic acid. You need things that can cross that blood-brain barrier. That is huge. That is a big deal. So when you're looking at the fulvic acids, being able to cross that and the bioactive carbons, being able to cross that because you can have parasites in Lyme get to your brain. For me, brain fog and fatigue were some really huge things. If you're taking, there are certain anti-parasitics or even certain antibiotics that you can take, and it's not going to cross that. And it depends on the parasite. There are so many out there, many of them we don't even know of.

Allyssa LaScala:
And so, we're doing our best to be able to kind of one shot them without going at it comprehensively and being like, okay, I need to be really patient with this, I need to rotate and cycle different anti-parasitics. And so, using the right binders as well, to be able to mock those things up while supporting drainage, doing coffee enemas, doing specific products that help to open those pathways so that we can really exit them from the body, super imperative.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. I like my coffee enemas too. How often would you recommend doing those? 

Allyssa LaScala:
I know they can be a really big time suck for a lot of people. I know for me, I'm like, okay, I'm doing two back-to-back, I'm doing two 20 minutes back to back. I have to make time to prep it and then I have to clean the bucket and the hose and everything else. An hour and a half later, it takes some time. So I try and do one once a week if I can. Technically it's two because I do them back to back. If someone can do three to four a week, I really wouldn't say much more than that. And it can depend on the person, but you also risk depleting. So you really do have to make sure that you are replenishing afterwards as well. It does vary per person.

Mimi MacLean:
When you say depleting, you mean minerals. That was another one of my things that people didn't catch was minerals, the Lyme loves the minerals. Anybody who kind of has chronic Lyme is usually mineral deficient. So if you're not taking some sort of a mineral supplement, either in your water or something, you need to be doing that, I assume.

Allyssa LaScala:
Yeah, absolutely. But parasites really suck the nutrients and minerals and whatnot as well. I was double-dosing on some of my daily activated multivitamin products and whatnot. Eat extremely clean, supplementing up the wazoo. And I'm like, how am I still deficient in a lot of these things? And so, when it comes to parasites, they can deplete those, they can deplete neurotransmitters and whatnot, even more than Lyme can in many cases. So, I really like to look at them hand in hand.

Mimi MacLean:
You touched something in the beginning, and I also have read this on your website, that you had a breast implant and you became toxic from that. So can you talk to that, because I think that's really important to talk about because it's not really discussed a lot. And I think women who have breast implants and are getting sick and they don't realize that there's correlation to that. 

Allyssa LaScala:
Well, I got them literally six months before I got diagnosed with Lyme. Like I said, I don't know how long I had it beforehand, but I believe that that was literally the last and final straw in my toxic load bucket, if you will, to just let everything start to pour over and cause noticeable health issues that were much more weighing on my life and my lifestyle than before. 

Allyssa LaScala:
I know that for me, it was definitely more of like a vanity thing. When I talk to my surgeon, when I talk to my doctor, they didn't say that there was really any problem. There's always a risk of having this, but it's such a small percentage, it's not going to happen to you, that type of thing. But never were they ever going to discuss the chemicals and the toxins that made up the shell of those implants. Because I had saline. So I'm like, oh, as long as I'm not getting the silicone and whatnot, I'm okay. And that's not the case. And so, I went eight years until a friend brought to my attention that breast implant onus was a thing. Now, it's definitely a label for a constellation of symptoms there. But ultimately, it was just something that I knew I wanted to check off my list. I wanted to do everything I could to be able to eliminate anything that I know could be contributing to my symptoms, especially when I had my LLMD say, your Lyme is in remission. It's not active right now. So, there's other things going on. 

Allyssa LaScala:
So that was one of the things that I checked off my list. It'll be almost about two years coming up in May. I'm glad that I did. It definitely helped to improve things, but it was not the final straw.

Mimi MacLean:
It wasn't even leaking. It's just the fact that it was the chemicals that was made up on the outside of it.

Allyssa LaScala:
Well, and how they compromise your immune system for sure. And what I found to be really interesting because I got the tissue tested that was around my implants, I wanted to see if there was any, I knew I had mold in my body that had already come back positive. So I had thought about testing the solution on the inside. It's very expensive to continue doing those tests. So I'm like, oh, it's not that important. Within a couple of months after I got my implants out because I kept them many women do and hang onto them, I had mold start to grow in the implants. I wonder how long it would have taken, I posted that on my Instagram, but I wonder how long it would have taken for that to actually start within my body because I knew it was in there, it was just a matter of time. 

Mimi MacLean:
So there was mold inside the saline?

Allyssa LaScala:
Yeah.

Mimi MacLean:
How is that possible though because it's saline?

Allyssa LaScala:
Well, what I think is that those valves aren't as tight. That's my prediction is that those valves are not as one way as they say they are. And so, either way, whether they were in my body or outside of my body, you have a moist environment and you won't be able to get in.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. Yeah. And you know what's interesting, for me, this doctor I'm going to right now, I had all my blood work done, and she said to me, "Do you have breast implants?" And I said, "No." And she said, "It's interesting, your mitochondria is not working because of some plastic that's in your body. You have something in your body that's plastic is affecting your body." And I was like, that's really odd. And I come to find out I had a fake tooth because I had my, I cleaned out my whole dental for what I was going through. I pulled my root canal. So instead of putting in an implant, I didn't want surgery, I just wanted to figure out what was going on and get better. She's like that plastic is leeching into your body. So it's the same thing I think with yours, it's like it's plastic. So that plastic is leaching, the same reason why we shouldn't be drinking out of a plastic cup or microwaving with plastic. It's just leaching. 

Mimi MacLean:
And it changes your mitochondria she was saying. The answer is not making yourselves, like make ATP, you're not functioning, your body's not functioning because of that plastic. So, by getting the parasites and the mold, that's a big contributor. If someone came to you and said right now, what could I be doing from home, I have Lyme, what can I be doing right now? I don't have the money to go to a doctor. I'm a college student. I'm barely getting by. I get a lot of these stories where people are just at their wits end. It's a lonely, awful situation to be in with not a lot of money, and there's no answer and there's no insurance covering you. So is there anything that you would recommend besides following your Instagram page with daily tips? Anything else that you would recommend?

Allyssa LaScala:
I so relate to that question because I was in college. I was in my junior year when I got diagnosed. And I remember knowing that it wasn't covered by insurance. I just charged everything to a credit card. I'm not telling people to do that. That was literally my only choice. Either way, you're going to have to invest in something. And so, I don't want to also sit here and lie and say, you don't need to spend any money to get better. It's unfortunate. I wish all this stuff was free, but it's not.

Allyssa LaScala:
And so if I was to say, what's the smartest place to begin to delegate your dollars, I would say, honestly, looking at this awkward drainage protocol, hands down, I would, because either way, and I tell my clients this as well, or even people that just randomly message me on Instagram, if you're trying to figure out where to delegate your dollars, whether you're going to do hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of testing or this or that, either way, I know I'm going to tell you, we need to get your drainage pathways open, we need to address parasites and maybe we'll address Lyme. In the meantime, it depends on the person and how a consultation or whatnot goes. 

Allyssa LaScala:
But in the end, if you're addressing Lyme now and you did not address parasites, which almost always are going hand in hand, if you have a pulse, you have parasites, then we're going to have to circle back and do it anyway. So, I don't want somebody to do the right things in the wrong order, delay their healing, and spend a ton more money than they need to. So you can implement these protocols on your own. And I really would recommend going through the Cellcore comprehensive protocol without a doubt. 

Mimi MacLean:
That's great. And then what would you say for eating wise? Do you have a protocol that you recommend to people?

Allyssa LaScala:
In general, whole foods doing probably about 12 hours of fasting, depending on the person and the level of stress on their body. I don't like women doing 16, 18 hour fast. For a lot of people, it's just too much stress on their body. Their body's going to take them out of that fast anyway if their body's in a stress state. So, it depends. We can kind of play around with that. Sometimes people are doing bone broth fasting, or juice fasting, things like that. But ultimately looking at whole food sources, I really like to have somebody go dairy and gluten-free and as low sugar as possible. And we kind of adjust as we go depending on how their body responds. 

Allyssa LaScala:
Paleo is probably the closest to the type of style eating that I do, but it's not black and white like that. I mean, I'll still have quinoa and different grains and whatnot, but I'm not doing dairy. I'm doing wild caught fish, grass-fed meats, things like that. So it really does depend on the person, how their body responds and where their digestion is at as well. Some people don't have the ability to be able to digest some more complex foods in the beginning.

Mimi MacLean:
Is there anything else that you think that we haven't covered that you would like to tell people? 

Allyssa LaScala:
It really was whatever you felt your audience needed to hear, you know them better than I do. But addressing drainage, doing parasites and then starting to address Lyme, heavy metals, mold, mold is so, so common when it comes to Lyme, and you don't have to smell it.

Mimi MacLean:
I know, right? It's so hard. And it's usually, like for me, I smell it because I'm super hypersensitive but most of the people in my family don't smell it and we got a mold remediation and I can still smell it. I walked in, I'm like, I still smell it. It's so frustrating because it's how do you get rid of it? But yes, mold is a big, big one. And heavy metals too, I like that as well. And your Instagram, did you start that hand-in-hand with your medical practice? 

Allyssa LaScala:
No. I've had that since I was I think in high school or early on in college. Whenever Instagram came out. It was just personal. It was before I even got into this-

Mimi MacLean:
And so you always started like just doing like your workouts and stuff like that on there?

Allyssa LaScala:
Yeah. Yeah.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, that's great. I appreciate all your time. This has been amazing. And thank you so much. And I want everyone to check you out on your Instagram page. Biohacking Bombshell, for anybody else who wants to check it out there as well.

Mimi MacLean:
Each week, I'll bring you different voices from the wellness community so that they can share how they help their clients heal. You will come away with tips and strategies to help you get your life back. Thank you so much for coming on and I am so happy you were here. Subscribe now and tune in next week. If you want to learn how I detox and do you want to check out my detox for Lyme checklist, go to Lyme2360.com/detoxchecklist. You can also join our community at Lyme360 Warriors on Facebook, and let's heal together. Thank you.