Illness doesn’t just happen; illness has causes, so to resolve illness, find and resolve the causes.
-W. Lee Cowden, Integrative MD, cardiologist and health educator
If you’re plagued with frustrating or debilitating autoimmune symptoms, like profound fatigue, aches and pains, numbness and tingling, or brain fog, and believe there must be some way to heal, you’ve come to the right place. Despite what you may have been told, you don’t have to live like this.
While it took me 26 years of trial and error to finally reverse my MS, and another 5 years to study how that was possible, it can be far quicker, more straightforward, and less costly to reverse or prevent any one of the known autoimmune conditions today.
You may be thinking all this sounds a little too good to be true. And who can blame you? You probably haven’t heard many people say, “I used to have MS,” and most likely, your doctor hasn’t mentioned anything beyond the use of prescription medication to “manage” your condition. Although millions of Americans suffer from at least one of 150+ autoimmune diseases, the best the current medical establishment can provide is little more than medications, which may in an ironic twist, trigger additional autoimmune conditions, and even cancer. That’s because most conventional doctors have never learned how to effectively treat chronic disease, like autoimmune disorders, type 2 diabetes, and dementia.
In other words, what your doctor doesn’t know can hurt you. Thankfully, despite Western medicine’s current limitations, groundbreaking studies in the last decade have given us the science we need to prevent, and yes, even reverse autoimmune disorders.
Lifestyle Matters More Than You Think
For decades, we believed that our DNA controlled our health destiny with “bad” genes getting blamed for just about every malady possible. But recent research turns that thinking entirely on its head. Let’s look at how the latest scientific developments have transformed our understanding of autoimmune conditions:
Epigenetics trounces genetics 90 to 10
The relatively new and very empowering science of epigenetics — the study of how genes are expressed — proves that lifestyle factors determine which genes are turned on or turned off. Those so-called “bad” genes only account for 10 percent of your health outcomes, while factors mostly in your control — specifically, what you think, eat, and do —have the biggest impact.1 The role of epigenetic mechanisms and processes in autoimmune disorders; Greer, J., et al.; Biologics. 2012; 6: 307–327; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3459549
An autoimmune equation gives us a formula for healing
In addition to genetics and lifestyle factors, there is a third factor in the onset of autoimmune disease: increased intestinal permeability. Commonly known as a “leaky gut,” intestinal hyper-permeability quite literally refers to a condition in which large holes in the intestinal wall allow harmful bacteria and food particles to enter the bloodstream, causing systemic inflammation and initiating the autoimmune cascade. Now that we know the autoimmune equation, we also have its solution! 2Mechanisms of disease: the role of intestinal barrier function in the pathogenesis of gastrointestinal autoimmune diseases; A. Fasano, et al., Nat Clin Pract Gastroenterol Hepatol.; 2005 Sep;2(9):416-22; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16265432
Autoimmune Equation:
Autoimmune Reversal Equation:
Enter F.I.G.H.T.S.™
We’ve just learned that lifestyle matters way more than genes when it comes to our health and wellbeing, but certain environmental factors (aka root causes) are more significant than others. I call these F.I.G.H.T.S.™, for food, infections, gut, hormones, toxins, and stress; and as a reminder that you have the power to control your health outcomes and beat autoimmune.
The Good F.I.G.H.T.S.™
At the root of all autoimmune conditions, these six F.I.G.H.T.S.™ factors are the big categories you can control. And, when you address them, they are also the solution. No matter what lifestyle factors may have contributed to your condition, you must address all F.I.G.H.T.S.™ categories to return to health. To truly get what that means, we need to consider each category on its own. Once you see how each factor contributes to the onset and progression of autoimmunity, you’ll understand why each category needs to be addressed in order to heal and reach full vitality.
Start with Food
We know we need it to survive, and yet, most of us take for granted food’s effects on our bodies. Depending on what we choose to eat, food can be poison, burdening our body with harmful inflammation and toxins, or food can be medicine, nourishing us from the inside out. Sound dramatic? It’s not. In fact, food is the number one root cause category of autoimmune conditions. On the flip side, people with autoimmune issues often heal 60% to 100% just by changing what they eat!
I know this firsthand: When I gave up gluten back in 2010, my MS symptoms vanished for good. That’s not to say gluten was my only root cause culprit (I had spent years whittling down a load of chronic stress and emotional pain), but it may have been my lynchpin trigger.
A Standard American Diet (SAD) of man-made oils, high sugar, and chemical additives, inflames the lining of your intestines, harms the balance of bacteria, and eventually, leads to intestinal hyper-permeability — aka, a leaky gut. Once your lining has been breached by food particles and bad bacteria, your immune system, doing what it’s meant to do, steps into action and attacks the invaders. But when these foreign particles resemble cells in your body, your immune system can’t always tell the difference and may mistakenly turn on your own tissues. That is the autoimmune cascade.
All of this takes time, sometimes more than a decade, which means you can go years without realizing that what you’re consuming is actually the trigger for your autoimmune condition. After my MS diagnosis at 19, I continued to eat gluten for decades without knowing how much harm it was causing. It wasn’t until I gave up gluten as part of a 30-day elimination diet that I finally realized just how devastating its effects had been. After just weeks of removing gluten from my diet and healing my gut, my MS symptoms were gone for good.
What Can You Do?
The number one thing you can do to determine any possible food triggers is an elimination diet, or as I prefer to think of it, a 30-Day Food Vacation. During a 30-day period, you’ll ditch all toxic SAD foods, like gluten, grains, dairy, and sugar, and common suspect foods, like eggs, soy and nightshade vegetables for nourishing alternatives, like leafy greens, healthful fats, and 100% grass-fed meats.
After 30 days, you’ll start to reintroduce each food one by one over two-day periods, monitoring how you feel as you go. If a new addition brings on a concerning symptom, you’ve just discovered one of your triggers. Plan to avoid it for at least three months before trying again.
To learn more about which top autoimmune trigger foods you’ll need to remove and which particularly nourishing food options and supplements to add, download the FREE Eat to Beat Autoimmune ~ Your Optimal Food Guide.
Heal Your Gut
If a leaky gut is a central component of the autoimmune equation, it stands to reason that healing your gut must be a mandatory part of the solution. But how? Let’s start with the basics.
When people refer to the “gut” in terms of health and disease, they typically mean the intestines, both small (20 feet long, but only 1 inch in diameter) and large (5 feet long, but 4 inches in diameter). The lining of the small intestines — just one cell thick! — absorbs the nutrients from your food and houses the vast majority of your immune system. The large intestine, meanwhile, hosts the microbiome, an ecosystem that includes beneficial bacteria, fungi, and parasites, which actually help to aid digestion, eliminate toxins, regulate gene expression, and most significantly for our purposes, maintain the gut lining.
The lining of the gut can be both the first line of defense against unwanted invaders, and also, the gateway to disease if the microbiome becomes imbalanced, which is influenced not just by what you eat but also other environmental elements included in F.I.G.H.T.S.™, such as the overuse of antibiotics, toxicants, and even toxic stress. Repeated irritation leads to inflammation; inflammation leads to a leaky gut; and a leaky gut is the pathway to autoimmune issues. And by the way, you don’t need to have gastrointestinal issues to have an inflamed gut. If you have any symptoms at all, anywhere in your body, chances are good you also need to heal your gut.
What Can You Do?
Even the leakiest guts have a great capacity for healing with a little TLC. If you’ve guessed that requires removing and replacing your trigger foods, you’re correct. But there are other steps to help improve your gut health, including the “5R” restoration program to replenish your healthy gut bacteria. Click HERE for a more in-depth look at how to heal and seal your gut.
Clear Infections
In recent years, many autoimmune experts, immunologists, and holistic practitioners have noted a strong connection between infections and autoimmune conditions. Any number of infections can trigger autoimmune conditions; and having an autoimmune condition makes you more susceptible to further infections, especially if you’re taking immunosuppressive medications.
We come into contact with infectious microbes every day. When our immune system functions correctly, we’re able to avoid catching most of these. If we do end up with a common cold or other acute virus, our bodies typically fight it off with minor discomfort and a little time.
But what happens when our immune system malfunctions? Excess inflammation — caused by F.I.G.H.T.S.™ factors or an existing autoimmune condition — puts your immune system in overdrive, which actually weakens immunity. If you already have an autoimmune condition, you probably have a sluggish metabolism, which also makes you more vulnerable to infection. And just because you don’t have any symptoms of infections doesn’t mean you don’t have one: Dormant or stealthy infections (like herpesvirus or Epstein-barr virus [EBV]) can hide in your body only to reemerge when your defenses are down.
What Can You Do?
You can’t avoid all microbes, so instead, you’ll want to work on making yourself less hospitable to them. Start by learning more about the autoimmune-infection connection HERE. You’ll ideally want to work with an experienced root cause practitioner for the best way to treat infections naturally. In the meantime, get your immune system in good fighting shape with these simple lifestyle strategies:
Stop eating sugar
Sugar blocks the immune system from functioning for up to 5 hours after eating it.3Sanchez, A., et al.; Role of Sugars in Human Neutrophilic Phagocytosis; American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; Nov 1973; 261:1180-1184; http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/26/11/1180.abstract Stop eating sugar and processed carbs — which turn to sugar quickly in your bloodstream — to unburden your immune system.
Take Vitamin C
Vitamin C, a safe and cost-effective nutrient has been shown in numerous studies to play a role in preventing, shortening, and alleviating diverse infections.4Vitamin C and Infections; Nutrients. 2017 Apr; 9(4): 339.
Published online 2017 Mar 29. doi: 10.3390/nu9040339 For a daily maintenance dose, take 1 – 2 grams of vitamin C (as ascorbic acid) per day in divided doses of 1,000 mg; and to help fight acute infections, take 3 – 6 grams of Vitamin C in divided doses. Note that most vitamin C is derived from corn, so to avoid corn types, the bottle has to say “corn-free,” or “non-corn source,” like Ecological Formulas.
Get your vitamin D levels UP!
Vitamin D deficiency is common in people with autoimmune conditions; and low vitamin D may hamper your immune system’s ability to attack and destroy bacteria and viruses. 5VITAMIN D: A D-LIGHTFUL SOLUTION FOR HEALTH, J Investig Med. 2011 Aug; 59(6): 872–880. doi: 10.231/JIM.0b013e318214ea2d Get your vitamin D levels between 70–100 ng/ml, ideally with sun exposure, but also with supplemental D3 and K2 when you don’t get enough sun. Don’t forget to check your D levels a few times per year.
Minimize Toxins
Have you heard of the term “total body burden”? It’s the total amount of toxins a body can accumulate before health takes a hit. Here’s one way to visualize it: Each of us carries a “toxin bucket” into which go all the potential inflammatory factors (think F.I.G.H.T.S.™) that enter or are created as byproducts within our bodies. The bucket fills with each new addition. A constant stream of toxins leads to a rapidly filling bucket, which can overwhelm the body’s innate detoxification system. (For those with genetic glitches, like MTHFR or GSTM1, which make detoxification more challenging, the process happens even faster.) When the bucket overflows, our bodies buckle under the burden. In other words, symptoms emerge and the path to autoimmunity has accelerated.
What’s worse, toxicants in our modern-day environment are causing our buckets to spill over at a rate we’ve never seen before. Less than a hundred years ago, before mass-scale manufacturing, there were almost no man-made chemicals in the environment. Today, there are estimated to be over 84,000 synthetic chemicals in commerce in the U.S.6 GAO (U.S. Government Accountability Office) Toxic Substances: EPA has increased efforts to assess and control chemicals but could strengthen its approach. Washington D.C., GAO 2013 — and a tiny fraction (as in only 0.6%) — have been tested for safety before being released on the market.7 The Great Chemical Unknown: A Graphical View of Limited Lab Testing, Scientific American, November 1, 2010, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-great-chemical-unknown/ Little wonder autoimmunity has become epidemic!
What Can You Do?
The best thing you can do right is to embrace the “precautionary principle,” which means avoiding unnecessary synthetic chemicals as much as possible. You can’t control all environmental factors, like, for instance, the air outside your home, but there are many manageable ways most of us can improve what goes on and in our bodies just by starting small with simple swaps.
For extra advice about minimizing toxins and detoxifying, click HERE. Otherwise, consider these baby steps below:
Go organic
Organic produce has up to 60% more antioxidants—protection against autoimmune disease and cancer—and up to 100 times lower pesticide residue than conventionally farmed produce.819. Baranski, M., et. al., Higher antioxidant and lower cadmium concentrations and lower incidence of pesticide residues in organically grown crops: a systematic literature review and meta-analyses, British Journal of Nutrition, Volume 112, Issue 5 14 September 2014, pp. 794-811; https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/higher-antioxidant-and-lower-cadmium-concentrations-and-lower-incidence-of-pesticide-residues-in-organically-grown-crops-a-systematic-literature-review-and-metaanalyses/33F09637EAE6C4ED119E0C4BFFE2D5B1 Chose organic produce and 100% grass-fed or wild food whenever possible.
Minimize medications
Ironically, medications can trigger autoimmune conditions. For example, more than 90 medications, including antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and medications used to treat heart disease, rheumatic diseases, thyroid disease, hypertension, and neuropsychiatric disorders are known to induce lupus. There’s even a name for it: Drug Induced Lupus (DIL)!9Drug-Induced Autoimmune Diseases, Pharmacy Times, 2016, https://www.pharmacytimes.com/publications/issue/2016/january2016/drug-induced-autoimmune-diseases
Go chemical-free with home and body-care products
On an average day, a woman uses 12 personal care products containing 168 unique ingredients, possibly exposing herself to all of the top seven carcinogens (cancer-causing chemicals) common to personal care product ingredients.10Personal care product use survey, 2003, Environmental Working Group (EWG); http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/2004/06/15/exposures-add-up-survey-results/
Address Stress
Like taxes and teeth cleaning, stress is an unavoidable part of life that invariably comes with some measure of discomfort. But there’s a big difference between acute stress—the burst of adrenaline you feel when avoiding a near-miss on the road or the temporary exhaustion that comes with a looming work deadline—and chronic stress, a constant state of anxiety, worry, or panic.
Chronic stress often comes when dealing with a barrage of challenging circumstances (including ill health) or traumatic events (including a childhood of abuse or neglect), and while it messes with your state of mind, chronic stress can also be disastrous for your physical health. Ongoing stress is toxic and causes mega inflammation throughout the body, and, as you know, inflammation is where chronic disease begins. For more on the science linking stress with autoimmune conditions and relaxation with healing, click HERE.
The good news? Stress isn’t something that happens to you. It’s how you react or respond to stress that makes all the difference; this means you can learn to improve your coping skills and lessen your stress response even if you can’t readily reduce the stressors in your life.
What Can You Do?
You must prioritize your emotional wellbeing, and that means embracing self-care. For many people, especially women, who’ve been taught to believe that self-care is synonymous with selfishness, such a suggestion may seem too indulgent to consider. If that’s true for you, I’m here to give you permission to take ten minutes a day to care for yourself. I promise those few minutes will only make you a better partner, parent, friend, or colleague, and they’ll certainly help you better cope with the stress in your life.
So what does 10 minutes of real self-care actually look like? Give the suggestions below a go, and while you’re at it, take a few minutes to consider any areas of your like where you can eliminate stress. Even reducing a few demands on you can go a long way towards improving your mental health, which is a big step towards improving your physical health too:
Breathe More
You can quickly and easily activate the relaxation response by breathing consciously, deeply and slowly. When you hold your in-breath for a comfortable period and then exhale slowly and deeply, you stimulate the vagus nerve, which helps you move out of the stress response and into the relaxation response. 11 Cleveland Clinc Wellness; “What Happens in Vagus” http://www.clevelandclinicwellness.com/programs/NewSFN/pages/default.aspx?Lesson=1&Topic=5&UserId=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000705 Pick strategic times during the day to breathe consciously; and consider a deep breathing app or find cues to remind you to breathe throughout the day.
Sleep more
If you have an autoimmune condition, you need more sleep than most. According to former American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) president, Dr. Badr, 8 – 9 hours is critical, not indulgent. Research is clear that < 6 hours a night negatively impacts gene expression. 12 Effects of insufficient sleep on circadian rhythmicity and expression amplitude of the human blood transcriptome; Möller-Levet, Carla S., et al.; www.pnas.org/content/110/12/E1132
Move more
Move daily and work up a sweat. Exercise produces an enzyme in muscles that purges the body of harmful substances. This may explain why aerobic exercise elevates mood and reduces stress. 13 Skeletal Muscle PGC-1a1 Modulates Kynurenine Metabolism and Mediates Resilience to Stress-Induced Depression. Agudelo, L.Z., et. al.; Cell, September 2014; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25259918
Balance Your Hormones
Hormones might be too small to see by the naked eye, but they have a huge impact on your health. These microscopic chemical messengers of the endocrine system instruct cells across various other systems to perform major functions, like developing at puberty, stabilizing your mood, and regulating your blood sugar, to name only a few. A single imbalance — too much or too little of one hormone — can prevent these important instructions from being received as they should. And it’s not uncommon for one hormonal imbalance to lead to another.
Fortunately, in most cases, balancing your hormones, aka “hormonal homeostasis,” will naturally occur as you address the other F.I.G.H.T.S.™ categories. As you optimize your diet, heal your gut, clear infections, minimize toxins, and address stress, your hormones should fall into line.
What Can You Do?
If you’ve addressed all the other F.I.G.H.T.S.™ categories and still have reasons to believe your hormones are out of whack, you’ll need to go a little further. Start with the list below, and if that’s not enough, consider bioidentical hormones (not to be confused with conventional hormone replacement therapy aka “HRT”). To try bioidentical hormones you’ll need to work with a skilled root cause practitioner.
Get your vitamin D level tested
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: get your D levels tested twice a year and optimize your level to 70 – 100 ng/ml, ideally with sun exposure, but also with supplemental D3 with K2.
Get a comprehensive thyroid panel
There are six key blood tests that can assess your thyroid function, and you may need to insist on getting a “comprehensive thyroid panel,” instead of the typical TSH-only test, or order the full panel on your own. These are the markers and optimal ranges: TSH (.4–1.5 mIU/L); Free T3 (2.3–4.2 pg/mL); Free T4 (0.8–1.8 ng/dL); Reverse T3 (rT3) (<15 ng/dl, also expressed as <150); Free T3/rT3 ratio (>2); TPO antibodies (< 2 IU/m); TG antibodies (< 2 IU/m).
Consider keto
Periodically following a ketogenic diet that emphasizes vegetables and healthy fats, some meat, poultry, and fish, and restricts carbohydrates to less than 30 grams per day can be especially helpful in balancing hormones for peri- and menopausal women.
Beat Autoimmune with F.I.G.H.T.S.™
Congrats! You’ve taken the time to learn about the major autoimmune root causes and solutions, which is a huge step on your healing journey. With this primer, you can now start the oh-so-rewarding work of addressing F.I.G.H.T.S.™ head on. All at once, one at a time, or incorporating a single action-item from each category, it doesn’t matter how you begin, only that you do. As you see positive results, you’ll find the motivation to try more, until you’re living the life you deserve, one of vibrant health and wellbeing.
Still need help getting started? Try these six tips, which summarize my top, most impactful recommendations:
Remove Gluten
Remove gluten (better still remove ALL grains), dairy, and sugar, for good.
Eat Organic and Grass Fed
Buy organic and 100% grass-fed food—at least meat, poultry, and eggs, and avoid the “dirty dozen” fruits and vegetables which is updated yearly by EWG.
Choose Colorful & Fiber Rich Veggies
Eat a variety of colorful and fiber-rich vegetables every day. Leafy greens (e.g., dandelion root, kale, Swiss chard, spinach, arugula), cruciferous vegetables (e.g., broccoli cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts) and sulfur-rich vegetables (onions and garlic) promote healthy liver function and help clear harmful estrogen metabolites.
Set a Bedtime
Set a bedtime for yourself, ideally by 10 p.m., and do what you can to get restorative sleep. Follow sleep-hygiene guidelines, like total darkness, avoidance of blue light in the evening, and using red light at night and early morning.
Go Green
Replace chemically-based cleaners and cosmetics with “green,” eco- and body-friendly choices. Need help? Refer to EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning; and use EWG’s Skin Deep® app or the Think Dirty® app to scan your cosmetics and determine which to keep and which to toss.
Reduce Stress
Reduce stress however you can. Think you don’t have the time. Just practice deep belly breathing a few times a day with one hand on your heart and one on your belly. Give yourself the gift of getting quiet for just five minutes, or even one! And, spend a few minutes learning about EFT (tapping) as a means to help you engage the relaxation response quickly and easily.
It’s Time for a Root Cause Revolution!
I wrote a book to help people who seek to reverse and prevent autoimmune conditions. I simply couldn’t sit idly by while doctors tell people there’s nothing you can do except take medication. I am honored that Mark Hyman, MD, Functional Medicine pioneer and thirteen-time New York Times bestselling author, wrote the foreword. Beat Autoimmune, The 6 Keys to Reverse Your Condition and Reclaim Your Health is available in five languages today: English, German, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, and Czech on Amazon.com in paperback, Kindle, and audio formats.
Take good care!
P.S. Want my personal help? If you live in the continental U.S. and are ready, willing, and able to invest in your best health, I offer Functional Medicine Total Health Transformation Programs over Zoom. I collaborate with skilled naturopaths who are expert in resolving root causes like gut imbalances, chronic infections, and toxic burdens which are almost always part of the autoimmune puzzle. Together we provide comprehensive, customized treatment plans, and collaborative, caring support. If you are ready to beat autoimmune and reclaim your best life please book a 30–minute consultation with me to gain clarity, confidence, and explore the possibility of working together. You can do it. We can help.
Image credit: Sarah Cervantes
