Autoimmune Disease: How to Stop Your Body From Attacking Its

What disease affects more women than heart disease and breast cancer combined? Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to my blog. Now what problem affects 24 million Americans but gets only 5% of the National Institute of Health budget for this problem to study the causes? and why is the NIH budget to study this condition only 8% of the budget for studying heart disease and cancer, even though this condition affects more women than breast cancer and heart disease? And why is the number of people with this disease tripled in the last few decades? What is this disease? It's autoimmune disease and it's an epidemic. And it mostly is off the radar because it comes in so many flavors and types and crosses so many medical specialties that we think of all these problems separately when they're really just one disease with many different colors depending on your age, sex, and genes. In fact, there are over 100 different autoimmune diseases and they're affecting more and more people. You know the most common ones, right? Rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, type 1 diabetes, hypothyroidism, psoriasis, but there are endless more that affect every part of our bodies. But all these are really only one disease because it's a disease where the body's immune system attacks your own tissues rather than a foreign molecule like a bacteria. Something confuses your immune system. And increasingly, that something appears to be the enormous load of environmental toxins we're all exposed to. The new groundbreaking book, the Autoimmune Epidemic by Donna Jackson Nakazawa, is a breathtaking piece of investigative journalism seeking the real causes for this epidemic. Her desire to find answers was fueled by her own struggle with autoimmune disease. And now she lays out a very, clearly a radical, but unfortunately very true picture of what's happening. But she also provides clear solutions for changes in diet and supplements in our environment that can really help people deal with and even reverse autoimmune disease. We have to realize we're poisoning ourselves with toxins, with metals and 80,000 other industrial chemicals that cause our immune systems to go haywire. We dump 2.9 billion pounds of these into the environment. We pump 6 million pounds of mercury into the environment. It's toxic at parts per million. So what happens? Well, mounting evidence shows that environmental toxins are responsible for a large majority of autoimmune disease. Donna calls these environmental toxins autogens or foreign compounds that create an auto reaction against the self. So there are a number of other causes besides toxins including hidden infections, allergens which are compounded by our poor diet, our processed diet and stress. But when these insults interact with certain genes that make us sitting ducks, we get sick. But the secret, the hidden secret is that toxins may be the most important cause setting the stage for the autoimmune epidemic. Now, it's amazing because the government has shut down all the national and regional EPA or Environmental Protection Agency libraries and has locked all of its papers in basements and blocked all access to electronic files. This is concerning, and access to public information about toxicity is a sign of democracy. What does it say about our government when it limits access to paper or electronic databases of research? what's being hidden? Now, most toxicity studies are really done on single chemicals and not on the interactions, but we're exposed to this enormous slew of compounds interacting with ourselves all the time. In fact, a recent government survey found that an average of 148 chemicals in our bodies, and those are the ones they tested. Now, even worse, the environmental working group examined the umbilical cord blood of children just as they emerged from the womb, and they found 200 and 87 industrial chemicals including pesticides, phthalates, dioxins, flame retardants, Teflon, toxic metals like mercury, and this was before these infants even entered the world. What is that doing to us and our children? Now, this is not to mention the toxins even found in our food, which are things like clean and pesticides and so forth, and cleaning agents and pest controls we use in our home, which all contribute to the toxic in our bodies. Okay, so our conventional approach to autoimmune disease is to shut down the immune response with powerful medications including anti-inflammatories, steroids like prednisone, anti-cancer drugs like methotrexate, new drugs like Enbrel and Remicade that block the effects of powerful inflammation molecules. But those new drugs slow down your immune system so powerfully that they increase your risk of cancer or life-threatening infections. And they all have frequent and serious side effects and give only partial relief. So these drugs may be life saving for some in the short run, but in the long run do nothing to deal with the causes. So in the forward to the book, Dr. Douglas Kerr, who's MD, PhD, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said, There is no doubt that autoimmune diseases are on the rise and our increasing environmental exposure to toxins and chemicals is fueling the risk. The research is sound. The conclusions unassailable. Now, I have treated hundreds of patients successfully with autoimmune diseases by addressing the causes, the underlying causes, including toxins, allergens, poor diet and stress. The roadmap of functional medicine and ultra wellness takes us right to the root of the problem. I have even seen this in myself and my wife when I suffered from chronic fatigue and had autoimmune problems that got better with getting rid of my mercury poisoning. I've seen my wife with debilitating arthritis and pain and fatigue who when she got rid of her heavy metals and toxins, it got completely better. And this has also been true of my patients. For each one, I have to find all the causes, right? Toxins, allergens, infections, and poor diet and stress, and deal with all of them while I add back things to the body to help them function properly. But one woman, for example, she had crippling psoriasis and related arthritis. She was 42 and she couldn't walk up and down the stairs or get in a bathtub by herself or properly care for her children. Nine months after we started treatment, including eliminating gluten and other food allergens and removing heavy metals and balancing her immune system and detoxifying her, she walked back into my office, not only 30 pounds lighter, remember, being inflamed makes you fat, but completely free of pain and psoriasis. Another man suffered for years with bloody diarrhea and the pain of ulcerative colitis. Dietary changes and various digestive support helped, but he never got better until we removed the toxins and the mercury from his body. A recent patient with debilitating fatigue and multiple sclerosis and little white scars on her brain got nearly completely relief of her symptoms after she had the dental fillings, the mercury fillings removed and went on a comprehensive detox program. And when she repeated her MRI, all the little white scars from the MS were gone. So what can you do if you or someone you love suffers from an autoimmune disease? Well first, I would buy the autoimmune epidemic. It will tell you why we have this problem and how to fix it. Second, I would find a functional medicine doctor who can help you address this. Or maybe come see us at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. A few other things to think about: get tested for mercury, get tested for celiac disease, look at taking some nutrients that help balance your immune system such as vitamin D and essential fatty acids and probiotics, learn to deeply relax which changes your immune response, and also practice the precautionary principle which says that we should avoid anything with the potential for harm. In the United States, if something has been proven to be harmful, then we take it off the market. In Europe, something has to be proven safe before it's even allowed on the market. This is also known as better safe than sorry. And I would also learn how to boost your body's own detox system, which I talk about in many of my blogs. So thank you for listening. This is Dr. Hyman.