Addressing Autoimmunity | Dr. Doni Wilson

Hey, it's Dr. Donny. I wanted to do a session today where I could talk through with you all about autoimmunity. What is it, what causes it and what can we do about it? It's such an important topic to me. It's something that I work on and think about for myself every day because there's autoimmunity in my family, in my genetic predispositions, and it's something that I'm constantly thinking about for patients. I work with so many patients with various kinds of autoimmun, everything from rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease to psoriasis and even more rare types of autoimmunity like Behet syndrome and types of alopecia that cause hair loss. Every different kind of autoimmunity, including one of the big ones, is Hashimoto's, which can cause low thyroid function. These are all in the realm of autoimmune conditions. And as a naturopathic doctor, I look at them really as from the same perspective in terms of how we're going to why is it that your immune system has started becoming autoimmune? And by understanding what caused it, then we can reverse engineer that to know how to stop it, how to turn it back off again. The thing is that in the conventional medical system, you really don't hear about the ability to reverse or turn off autoimmunity. Usually the strategy from a rheumatologist, which is a specialist in autoimmunity, the strategy is how to manage it, how to try to turn off the immune system, or how to prevent the symptoms and side effects from autoimmunity. And those are important things. Don't get me wrong. Certainly a lot of times by the time a person realizes they have autoimmunity, it's causing a lot of inflammation and potentially damage to tissues in their body. And so sometimes medications are necessary, anti inflammatories, immunosuppressants, sometimes something called biologic medications that essentially turn off immune system, the immune system so that it doesn't have the opportunity to attack your own cells. See, that's the thing. Let's start at the beginning here. Autoimmunity means that your immune system is attacking yourself. So it's like an auto, meaning a self immunity. Normally our immune system is intended for protecting us from foreign things, right? From outside invaders, safe to viruses or overgrowing bacteria or fungus. Or.

Is our immune system trying to protect us from something else? But what can happen is, and this is one of the main theories Presiding theories now about autoimmunity is that is that the immune system gets overwhelmed and confused. If we have a lot of inflammation going on in the body and the immune system is trying to protect us, say, from foods and viruses, there's a lot of work that's being done by the immune system. Then what can happen is the immune system can get confused and start attacking nearby tissue. So say, for example, in the case of celiac disease, which is an autoimmune condition, where first the body is trying to protect you from gluten, and then it starts to attack the nearby cells and tissue near the gluten in the small intestine, and so it starts attacking the body's own cells and own tissue in the intestines. And that's when celiac disease becomes autoimmune. In the case of Hashimoto's and also Graves disease, which are autoimmunity in the thyroid gland, it's that the immune system gets confused and sees. We think, anyway, we think the thyroid cells look like gluten, for example. If the immune system sees a cell in your body that looks like gluten and is trying to protect you from gluten, then it starts trying to attack your thyroid cells. It's just a confusion. A lot of it is a confusion by an overwhelmed immune system.

What we want to do to help calm back down that immune system is take away the confusion. We need to. We can do diet changes. So if gluten is one of the triggers, we take gluten out of the diet so the immune system isn't busy trying to attack gluten, then it's not going to be getting confused and attacking your own tissue. Or we can look for other food sensitivities which can become involved as well. We're going to look for viruses such as Epstein Barr virus or overgrowing bacteria in the digestive tract that also can overwhelm the immune system and cause it to start trying to protect you from your own cells in your body. This is true, by the way, for even lupus and you name it other, even type 1 diabetes. We see connections with food and viral infections and stress exposure. When you read the research on autoimmunity, stress is right there. When they say, what triggered autoimmunity? Stress. Now, stress, to me, stress comes in various forms. Stress can come in the form of a food that your body is trying to protect you from. Stress comes in the form of an infection. Like, say, a classic with autoimmunity is Epstein Barr virus infection, which is the Same as a monovirus. That virus is known to stress the system and turn on autoimmunity, also emotional, psychological, or physical stress. So if you've had a lot of stress in your life, either maybe you moved or you changed your relationship, or you changed jobs, or you have a lot on your to do list, or you've been through a lot, that can trigger autoimmunity to start. Autoimmunity can also happen with hormone changes, sometimes before pregnancy, after pregnancy, when the hormones are flexing. So any kind of change or stress on your system has the ability to turn on that genetic predisposition to autoimmunity, Just like we know that stress turns on genetic predispositions to other things too. But if you have genetic predisposition to autoimmunity, that can get turned on when you're under stress. So I'm hoping that gives you a sense of just how to think about autoimmunity from this totally different perspective of what got it triggered to begin with. And so if you have an autoimmune condition, I encourage you to think back and go, what was going on in your life.

Right before the autoimmunity got triggered? And if you currently have an autoimmune condition, you can also ask yourself if there's times when it flares. Like sometimes with autoimmunity, what happens is there'll be periods of time where it kind of flares up and maybe you have increase in symptoms, whether that's joint pain or skin rash or fatigue, depending on which area of your body the autoimmunity is affecting. And when you're having a flare, oftentimes those flares are associated with stressful times in your life. So you start to see patterns, right? You have to kind of stand back and look for the patterns for your body. What is it that starts to trigger? And then when working together with patients, what we do is we do testing to see, to look for what are the stresses. We can do a food sensitivity panel to see, are there foods you're reacting to? And most importantly to me, is there leaky gut or really how severe is the leaky gut? Because I would say that most everybody with autoimmunity is going to have some degree of leaky gut. But, but the key is, is it mild, moderate, or severe? Because then we can really make a plan and take action to heal the leaky gut. We take out the foods that continue to cause leaky gut or that are inflammatory for your body, and we meanwhile help start working on healing leaky gut. We can do stool tests to analyze the gut bacteria and find out is there imbalanced bacteria or maybe overgrowing yeast. Or we can do blood tests to identify is Epstein Barr virus active. These are tests that are usually run in a regular doctor's appointment. So these are more specialty tests. You're going to need to work with a practitioner who can help you order them and then review them and understand what do they mean. And then we're going to need to put it in a step by step protocol because if we do too much at once to try to solve it, that can also be stressful. So we need to look at everything and do it in a systematic way. Which is why I've developed what I call a stress recovery protocol that shows us the step by step process for recovery.

Also we can do testing for toxins because a lot of times I find that toxins are a stress that triggers autoimmunity. Whether that's environmental toxins, say from insecticides, pesticides, solvents, flame retardants.

Or something in your water for example, or metals. Could be from lead or mercury. It can also be from mold toxins. When we're exposed to mold and we have mold toxins then into our system that can trigger autoimmunity. So we need to look again for what was the stress or toxin that triggered the autoimmunity so that we can manage that stress or toxin. And so then it can allow your immune system to come back on track again.

Something a lot of people don't know is that too much stress can actually create an abundance of health problems like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, anxiety, migraines, insomnia, insomnia, even fertility issues. This is because high stress puts your adrenal glands on overload. They release cortisol and adrenaline which controls your digestion, hormones, immune system, energy focus and even your emotional response. So how can you beat stress when you don't know where to start? That's why we have a free seven day Stress Reset program. It's designed to help support weight loss, digestive healing and hormone balancing. It includes support for integrating self care. Daily tips come to you by email and video. Gluten free dairy free meal plans as well as grocery shopping lists, journal pages and more. This free program will help you beat stress and put you on the path to wholeness in your body. Get your plan now for free@drdonnie.com we.

Also need to in terms of stress, we need to know how has stress affected your cortisol levels, your adrenaline levels and your neurotransmitter levels because if those are out of balance, it's going to be really hard for your body to fully recover. Right? Like cortisol, adrenaline and neurotransmitters are what keep everything kind of at a foundational baseline balance all the time. And if those are out of balance, then even if we try to fix this or this and this, it's still going to be in an imbalanced foundation. So we need to look at the cortisol and see, hey, is it too high or too low? And now sometimes if you've needed to take corticosteroids, say like prednisone, because of the autoimmunity, that can also further disrupt your adrenal function and your cortisol levels. So even more important for us to help your adrenals and your cortisol to get back to healthy levels and to address adrenaline too and your nervous system. So now you've got this nice balanced messengers in your system. If there's estrogen, progesterone or testosterone imbalances, we need to handle that. If there's thyroid imbalances, we need to handle that. Blood sugar and insulin imbalances, we just want to get everything working smoothly and in sync and work on removing whether it's a virus or toxin or whatever that stress was that triggers it. We need to get rid of that stress. We need to shift your life and your lifestyle so that you have stress recovery on a day to day basis. So your body gets a completely different signal, right? Like the situation in your life that created autoimmunity has to change. We have to completely shift your diet, your lifestyle, make sure you're getting enough sleep and some movement or exercise as soon as you're ready and get your hormones and all the messengers back in balance and get your digestion working well, your gut bacteria on track, then autoimmunity has no reason to be there anymore. Your genes expression can shift. Turn off that gene expression and you can go back to having healthy immunity. So it's really exciting. I always love to get to work with cases of autoimmunity. And another piece that I find that is really useful for autoimmunity is the use of helminth therapy. So I'm not sure if some of you have heard of that or not, and I can cover that more in another session. But essentially helmind therapy is another way to help balance the environment of who's living in your gut, right? We think of the bacteria, that's why we're swallowing probiotics like crazy. Because we want this good bacteria. But to me, it's less about pouring in more good bacteria because then we're just putting in more lacto and bifido. And we know there's trillions of bacteria living in our gut. But not only are there bacteria that live in the human digestion, but there's other microbes too. These helminths are one of the microbes that can live in the human digestion. When we look back in history, actually the healthiest humans had these helminths, but we in developed countries don't tend to get exposed to them. We're actually more susceptible to autoimmunity, the studies show in a developed country, you're more susceptible to autoimmunity because we don't have exposure to the same microbes in our gut. And actually the guys who live in our digestion are the ones who have so much to do with managing communication in our immune system. So that's why it's important to do testing for the gut bacteria and address them if they're out of balance. I help address them using herbal approaches and specific therapies that help get the gut healthy and get the bacteria back in balance. But part of that is to also consider helminth therapy, because helminths we can introduce and into the human body, and they start to then signal to the immune system to turn off autoimmunity. There's many studies on Helman therapy from, for Celia, Celiac disease, Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, you name it, many other types of autoimmunity. I've seen it help as well with reducing Hashimoto's antibodies and other types of autoantibodies. In fact, a lot of times when I work with patients with fertility, a lot of times behind the scenes is autoimmunity as well as toxin exposure. But when we work on the autoimmunity, then pregnancy can happen successfully. We can use Helman therapy in all of these situations, even for fertility, to help rebalance the gut bacteria, get the immune system to get out of autoimmunity mode and get your body back to a healthier state. These are all these different tools we have available to us, us to help to get your body back to healthy. And most of all, I really want to make sure you know that this is just possible. Now. Sometimes we're working on reversing autoimmunity at the same time as you might need to be on a medication to manage the symptoms or manage the inflammation. But the goal is to be able to help your body improve so that you're less and less in need of any medications because you just have less inflammation and less autoimmunity. So there's many other possible approaches. But I just really wanted to emphasize to you what I've seen work in the couple decades that I've been helping people with autoimmunity. I've seen so much and people are the cases are just so inspiring, from children to adults, people who've recently been diagnosed to people who've had autoimmunity for many years. Everyone has the potential to improve is what I've seen. But it really does take, first of all, knowing that it's possible, believing it's possible, believing in yourself, and then the commitment to say, hey, I'm willing to make the diet changes, do the testing to find out what's out of balance and what my body needs, and then to take the steps to whether that's supplements or helminth therapy or the other approaches that we determine are going to help your body to get back to a healthier you. Because that's ultimately the case is the healthier you are, the less likely that your body's going to turn on autoimmunity and the more likely it can turn off autoimmunity. I hope that's a really helpful just introduction and quick thoughts. My quick thoughts on autoimmunity I'm going to be covering autoimmunity more in my blog, so if this is of interest to you, please follow along@drdani.com on the blog. And I'm going to cover a whole series on understanding the epigenetic factors that turn on autoimmunity and then the fact that ways that we can help to turn autoimmunity back off again. And also, let's see. You can join me for future episodes on the podcast where I'll be talking with and interviewing other practitioners who also help with autoimmunity so you can really get a sense of how we think about it and what's possible. Because then I feel like you could be inspired for what's possible for your health too. Thanks for joining me and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

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