Last time we discussed the importance of barrier assessment and treatment in autoimmune conditions.
We are built with an intestinal and lung mucosal barrier, and a blood brain barrier, which is truly the first line of immune defense. Once compromised, via stress, chronic antigen exposure, alcohol, pain relievers, and even sugar, your immune system begins to react to simple processes like eating and breathing.
STEP 3
Adrenal stress physiology is often a part of autoimmune conditions. If you weren’t stressed out before the condition, the continuous immune attack will stress out your adrenals. So either way, it must be addressed.
The adrenal stress physiology affects nearly every tissue in your body, from digestion, joint repair, and immune balance. Chronic stress will imbalance your immune system even in the absence of a antigen.
The adrenal glands have a daily cycle, much like the ovaries have a 28 day cycle. As such, we must test adrenal output throughout the day in order to assess the rhythm.
We want to know your output levels of cortisol and DHEA, the two main hormones of the adrenals, and the rhythm of cortisol throughout the day.
Normally the cortisol output is high in the morning, partially as a result of awakening, and partially as a result of its blood sugar regulating effects overnight during a sleeping fast. The glands release cortisol to maintain blood sugar.
So, this has a great deal to do with your sleep cycles as well. If you can’t fall asleep or wake through the night, you most probably have an adrenal output or rhythm problem.
Taking this further, your diet during the day has an effect on the adrenals. If you skip meals, eat sugary or starchy foods, you will end up driving the adrenal stress physiology as a result of this secondary effect on blood sugar regulation.
If you eat high fiber carbohydrates, moderate protein, and regular meals, there is very little drive into the adrenals because you are regulating blood sugar the old fashioned way, by feeding your body with healthy foods.
Once the immune activation is eliminated by removal of antigens, and healing barrier compromises, the correction of adrenal physiology is a much easier process, and requires treating the output with phosphatidyl serine or licorice root, depending on whether it is a high output or low output. Then treating the rhythm with herbal adaptogens which work directly on the brain and hypothalamus to regulate or re-regulate the rhythm.
There are also nutritional components that need to be covered, such as B6, Pantothenic Acid, choline, and others that allow the adrenals to perform as well.
Next we will cover the final step of treating autoimmune conditions and restoring your health to near perfect once again.
STEP 4
Once the antigen, barriers, and adrenal physiology have been assessed and corrected, the immune system can be dealt with directly.
This is the exciting news for natural medicine, where only natural supplements, plants and antioxidants have proven to truly shift immune balance and stop the destructive effects on your own body parts.
The medical alternative, (and as I often say, "When did natural become the alternative") is full on immune suppression using chemo drugs or cortisone. Not ideal for a healthy return to life.
Restoring immune balance requires looking at all the immune cells and treating your specific version of imbalance. This gets into looking at T regulatory cells, T suppressor cells, Natural Killer cells, T helper cells, and T killer cells.
No, I don’t expect you to know your immune system to that detail, that’s my job right!?
The readers digest version is that we have to pull the immune attack back, and balance the T and B cells.
Vitamin D and Glutathione therapy are effective at pulling back the attack.
Powerful antioxidants such as resveratrol, pine bark, grape seed, and others are effective at shifting from T cell dominance to balanced T and B cell immunity.
Your traditional immune supporters, such as Echinacea, Astragalus, and immune enhancing mushrooms are effective at shifting from B cell dominance to balanced T and B cell immunity.
The key is knowing which way you want to go, as shifting into or toward a dominance will activate the immune attack on your own cells. You will realize it pretty quickly as you feel worse in a few days time.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
AutoImmune Conditions
What are we talking about?? What are autoimmune conditions?
Anything that has a destructive component originating from your own immune system.
In simpler terms, when your body attacks itself.
In some diabetics, the problem is not insulin resistance, but destruction of pancreas tissue by the immune system. In MS, there is often an immune attack on the myelin sheath of nerves. Some arthritis is an immune attack on joint cartilage. Some thyroid problems (possibly most) are immune attacks on the thyroid. Some dizziness and vertigo problems are actually immune attacks on the brain.
Over the past couple years, I have come to realize that Natural Medicine is the ONLY way to modify and treat autoimmune conditions. Seriously, if I don't teach you how to treat this, or where to look, you are terminal.
I have seen a growing number of autoimmune conditions presenting clinically.
I always request medical records to begin the detective work in helping my clients.
What I am recognizing is that if you are diagnosed as autoimmune, immediately thereafter, your immune system is forgotten. You are treated with anti-inflammatory meds or hormones, and once a serious life and health threatening episode occurs, your treatment moves (jumps dramatically) to immune suppressing drugs such as prednisone and chemotherapy drugs.
I also recognize that due to the lack of effective (medical) treatments for autoimmune conditions, lab tests for auto-antibodies are often not even tested. Why check if you can’t do anything about it?
That occurs most often with thyroid conditions in my experience. I will see patients who have been diagnosed with thyroid dysfunction years prior, and have never check for thyroid antibodies.
If you have thyroid problems, are being treated with thyroid medications, and STILL HAVE THYROID SYMPTOMS, it probably is the fault of your immune system and not the thyroid gland.
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
What can natural medicine do that allopathic medicine can not do?
STEP 1
First of all, the thought process is different. In natural medicine, we always look for the root cause. In the case of autoimmune, the root cause would be something that triggers an abnormal immune response. An immune irritant, termed by medicine an ANTIGEN.
An antigen is something that triggers an immune protective cascade. A bacterium is an antigen. An environmental chemical is an antigen. A true food allergy would make that food an antigen for that person.
To treat autoimmune conditions, you must find the antigen. If it is an infection…get rid of it. If it is an environmental chemical…eliminate it. (The only way to eliminate is through detoxification and elimination pathways). If it is a food allergen…stop eating it.
Medicine only looks at the most volatile parasites, and still uses culture technology. Culture technology is ancient and misses many infections. The most advanced technology is DNA testing for microbes. Even if the microbe dies in collection and testing, the DNA is present and detected.
Medicine barely recognizes that environmental chemicals can stress the body, unless acutely poisoned. You are either acutely poisoned or you are not. No stages of gray. No such thing as great detoxification versus poor detoxification.
Medicine barely recognizes food allergens, unless you show pathologic signs such as anaphylaxis, or intestinal villous atrophy (the lining of the intestines dies, as in celiac disease).
Yet, these all exist, and can trigger the autoimmune process!
STEP 2
After identifying and eliminating the ANTIGEN, the barrier system should be assessed. The barrier system is the intestinal mucosal barrier, the lung mucosal barrier, and the blood brain barrier.
These barrier systems are intended to minimize antigen exposure to the blood, brain, and immune system. With compromise, you react to everything with an immune attack. If you breathe perfume it might cross the blood brain barrier and initiate an immune attack. If you have mercury fillings, it will pass into the brain and initiate an immune attack. If you eat food, your intestinal barrier is permeable to undigested foods, resulting in an immune attack. Breathing pollen and dust will cause an immune attack.
Essentially eating and breathing will activate your immune system.
The intestinal barrier is assessed using two sugars, one a tiny molecule, the other a large (ordinarily unabsorbed) molecule. Once eaten, you collect urine samples to see what is passing, and the ratio of big to small determines how compromised your intestinal barrier is.
The blood brain barrier is tested via the GABA challenge. GABA is a protein molecule made in every cell of your body, but it doesn’t exchange from body to brain. Brain cells must make their own GABA, and body cells must make their own GABA.
If you ingest GABA and it alters your brain, you have a compromised blood brain barrier. You may notice a drunkenness, sedation, or even an excitability. Any change is positive for compromised blood brain barrier
The lung barrier does not have a lab test, but you can challenge the lung barrier by taking the most forceful breath (inhalation) you can possibly take, hard and deep. If the barrier is compromised, you will cough and or gag.
The barrier compromise is treated with proteins, immunoglobulins, antioxidants and ultimately treating the adrenal (stress) physiology, which we will cover next.
Anything that has a destructive component originating from your own immune system.
In simpler terms, when your body attacks itself.
In some diabetics, the problem is not insulin resistance, but destruction of pancreas tissue by the immune system. In MS, there is often an immune attack on the myelin sheath of nerves. Some arthritis is an immune attack on joint cartilage. Some thyroid problems (possibly most) are immune attacks on the thyroid. Some dizziness and vertigo problems are actually immune attacks on the brain.
Over the past couple years, I have come to realize that Natural Medicine is the ONLY way to modify and treat autoimmune conditions. Seriously, if I don't teach you how to treat this, or where to look, you are terminal.
I have seen a growing number of autoimmune conditions presenting clinically.
I always request medical records to begin the detective work in helping my clients.
What I am recognizing is that if you are diagnosed as autoimmune, immediately thereafter, your immune system is forgotten. You are treated with anti-inflammatory meds or hormones, and once a serious life and health threatening episode occurs, your treatment moves (jumps dramatically) to immune suppressing drugs such as prednisone and chemotherapy drugs.
I also recognize that due to the lack of effective (medical) treatments for autoimmune conditions, lab tests for auto-antibodies are often not even tested. Why check if you can’t do anything about it?
That occurs most often with thyroid conditions in my experience. I will see patients who have been diagnosed with thyroid dysfunction years prior, and have never check for thyroid antibodies.
If you have thyroid problems, are being treated with thyroid medications, and STILL HAVE THYROID SYMPTOMS, it probably is the fault of your immune system and not the thyroid gland.
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
What can natural medicine do that allopathic medicine can not do?
STEP 1
First of all, the thought process is different. In natural medicine, we always look for the root cause. In the case of autoimmune, the root cause would be something that triggers an abnormal immune response. An immune irritant, termed by medicine an ANTIGEN.
An antigen is something that triggers an immune protective cascade. A bacterium is an antigen. An environmental chemical is an antigen. A true food allergy would make that food an antigen for that person.
To treat autoimmune conditions, you must find the antigen. If it is an infection…get rid of it. If it is an environmental chemical…eliminate it. (The only way to eliminate is through detoxification and elimination pathways). If it is a food allergen…stop eating it.
Medicine only looks at the most volatile parasites, and still uses culture technology. Culture technology is ancient and misses many infections. The most advanced technology is DNA testing for microbes. Even if the microbe dies in collection and testing, the DNA is present and detected.
Medicine barely recognizes that environmental chemicals can stress the body, unless acutely poisoned. You are either acutely poisoned or you are not. No stages of gray. No such thing as great detoxification versus poor detoxification.
Medicine barely recognizes food allergens, unless you show pathologic signs such as anaphylaxis, or intestinal villous atrophy (the lining of the intestines dies, as in celiac disease).
Yet, these all exist, and can trigger the autoimmune process!
STEP 2
After identifying and eliminating the ANTIGEN, the barrier system should be assessed. The barrier system is the intestinal mucosal barrier, the lung mucosal barrier, and the blood brain barrier.
These barrier systems are intended to minimize antigen exposure to the blood, brain, and immune system. With compromise, you react to everything with an immune attack. If you breathe perfume it might cross the blood brain barrier and initiate an immune attack. If you have mercury fillings, it will pass into the brain and initiate an immune attack. If you eat food, your intestinal barrier is permeable to undigested foods, resulting in an immune attack. Breathing pollen and dust will cause an immune attack.
Essentially eating and breathing will activate your immune system.
The intestinal barrier is assessed using two sugars, one a tiny molecule, the other a large (ordinarily unabsorbed) molecule. Once eaten, you collect urine samples to see what is passing, and the ratio of big to small determines how compromised your intestinal barrier is.
The blood brain barrier is tested via the GABA challenge. GABA is a protein molecule made in every cell of your body, but it doesn’t exchange from body to brain. Brain cells must make their own GABA, and body cells must make their own GABA.
If you ingest GABA and it alters your brain, you have a compromised blood brain barrier. You may notice a drunkenness, sedation, or even an excitability. Any change is positive for compromised blood brain barrier
The lung barrier does not have a lab test, but you can challenge the lung barrier by taking the most forceful breath (inhalation) you can possibly take, hard and deep. If the barrier is compromised, you will cough and or gag.
The barrier compromise is treated with proteins, immunoglobulins, antioxidants and ultimately treating the adrenal (stress) physiology, which we will cover next.
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