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.