What is Autoimmune Disease and How Does Functional Medicine Help?

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani. Good day to everyone. I'm Joe Casciani, your host for the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Our conversations are all about aging well, and doing what it takes mentally and physically to live longer and healthier. Our guests share insights and recommendations about successful aging, stories of perseverance, and inspiration about our future. Our guest for today is a functional medicine certified health and wellness coach. Dixie Marins will be discussing functional medicine and how that contrasts with traditional medicine, and we'll also be talking about autoimmune disease. First, a little background. Dixie Marans is a functional medicine certified, national board certified, and an AIP certified health and wellness coach. Dixie overcame her own autoimmune diagnosis using food, faith, and functional medicine principles. She now shares her personal and professional expertise to help other women address the root causes of autoimmunity that are within their control. Dixie teaches them how to lower inflammation and calm the immune system so they can stop their symptoms and live a vibrant, active life again. Dixie was a featured speaker at the AIP Summit in 2021 and is a contributing writer to Health Means and is the founder of Refreshed Vision Health Coaching. Dixie, welcome to our program.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Great. Glad to have you with us. Tell us about the journey that brought you to where you are today. I always like to open our conversations with this question.

Oh, okay. Well, um, I always start at the beginning because I never set out to be a health coach. You know, back in my 20s, I earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and worked in corporate communications for 10 years. And then I stayed home and raised my kids. And after all these health issues came up, I ended up going back to school and becoming a health coach. And so I guess this is really kind of my third career. I'm also working on writing a book too. I really want to help autoimmune people with autoimmune disease take this information and really be able to apply it and just run with it and get to that place of healing. But we moved like 4 times in like 5 years, a very short period of time. And over that period of time, you know, that's a stressful thing in and of itself. And it was exciting times, but it was— it's still a stressor. And I kept having these symptoms that kept creeping up. You know, you go to the doctor for something and what do they do? They prescribe you a pill, right? First one was hypothyroidism. Later I discovered about 90% of that is autoimmune in nature. Another one, you know, it was lots of little things over the years, but A big one that, that came up was depression. And so, you know, you go to the OB-GYN, she prescribes you antidepressants, right? This should have been the key. This should have been a real wake-up call to me because I was a newlywed. I was happily married to a wonderful man. I had a new house, great friends, good church, good job. We weren't— we're going on these fabulous trips every month with work, and then we would take a couple extra days, and we didn't have really any financial worries. We were in good shape there. Life was good. And yet here I am struggling with depression. And so I really feel— and I see this a lot, but I really feel like it's one of the first symptoms of gut issues because in my mind, this was really unsubstantiated depression. And doctors just give you a pill and think it's going to solve our problem, and it's really masking a lot of the symptoms. And so I had a bunch of other issues too, and it finally led to a diagnosis of Crohn's, which was my big diagnosis. But I had all the symptoms that went with it. You know, you get the brain fog and the fatigue, and I'm a Type A, so I just— what do I do? I push through it. So ironically, I end up coaching a lot of Type A personalities because that's my tendency, you know. But the symptoms of Crohn's got to the point where I couldn't ignore them anymore. You know, they just— I had to go see a doctor. You'd have, you know, constipation and diarrhea, and it got to the point where I really didn't feel like I could leave the house. And so I had to address it. And so I was lucky in that I got a pretty quick diagnosis of autoimmunity. There's a lot of people that it takes them years and seeing many doctors. They'll see several different doctors and they can't really definitively nail it down what's really wrong with them. And so they end up, you know, doctors kind of think you're being a hypochondriac and here's an antidepressant and it just doesn't ever really solve the problem. I was lucky I got a pretty quick diagnosis, but I have celiac in my family. So when I left the GI doctor's office, I was in denial because she said I had Crohn's. And in the same breath, she hands me a brochure on a high fiber diet and then tells me diet has nothing to do with it. I'm like, what? What? And so I was in a lot of denial and I thought, oh, you know what? I just need to go gluten-free. She's wrong. She doesn't know what she's talking about. And I'm just going to do that. It didn't resolve all my problems, of course, but I think once I worked through some of those stages of grief, I realized that, okay, I've got to deal with this because, because going gluten-free wasn't enough. And so when you look at the prognosis for Crohn's, it's pretty grim. A lot of autoimmunities like that, it just gets worse and worse and progresses, right? And I was a very active person. I camping, biking, swimming, fishing. I've done a marathon. I've been skydiving. I go horseback riding and canoeing and fishing and snow skiing and mountain biking. And I'm a gardener and I'm the outdoor girl, right? And I had two little kids at the time and they're active. And this was not the prognosis I wanted. I did not want to go down this road. And so this, it got, I was pretty emotional about it because I felt like that was gone. I thought I couldn't do those things anymore. And I remember this is when the real depression kicked in. I remember getting to such a low point and thinking, you know, if my leg was cut off, somebody could see the pain that I was in and the struggle that I had with that. But with autoimmunity, nobody can see that. Nobody sees the struggle that you go through internally. It kind of gets discounted. And it's like, I think sometimes when people have cancer, I know people don't like to tell other people they have cancer, but sometimes they kind of let you off the hook and they say things like, you need to rest, and can I bring you a meal? And how can we help you? And they kind of rally around, right? But with autoimmunity, you don't really tell anybody. Sometimes the doctor doesn't even tell you it's autoimmunity. They just say, oh, you've got RA or something. So you don't realize it's autoimmunity. So you may tell someone and they'll go, oh, well, I have that too. And so it gets— anyway you slice it, it kind of gets discounted, right? Lots of people actually have autoimmunity. So you put on this brave face and you don't want to be Debbie Downer because you still want to get invited to things, but yet it's all you can do when you're there to just focus on being present in the moment because you're either in pain or in my case, I had digestive issues. And so I'm like scared every time I went anywhere. So in my quest and in research and everything that I did and the gluten-free thing not working out for me, I just was blessed to find an elimination diet. And I was reading about it, the process of implementing it. I went through that. I did the food reintroductions. And lo and behold, I discovered that I had a bunch of food sensitivities. And this was a— this was really the game changer for me because finally I feel a little bit empowered. I I think it literally stopped my symptoms and it let the inflammation go down and I could do the things I wanted to do that I love to do. And I had some control, I felt like. And that helped with probably 90% of the digestive issues. Wow. But I was still struggling a little bit. I still had a little bit of fatigue. I still needed some fine tuning. I wasn't quite myself. I didn't quite have the energy that I wanted to do all the things that I love to do. And so I sought out the help of functional medicine practitioner who really then dug into a lot of the other root causes. And later I discovered there's a lot more root causes to autoimmunity than just food. Food's a huge piece of it because we eat so much, you know, we eat 3 times a day. But, you know, I had to have a lot of other things treated in the underlying cause, and it was pretty extensive. Now, a lot of the people that I work with, they don't have quite that much to work on underneath the surface as I did.

Okay.

I had to be treated for SIBO twice, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, heavy metal toxicity, which just is amazing how many people actually have that, adrenal fatigue, which is actually called hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis dysfunction. But that's adrenal fatigue. It's easier to say that's just my type A stress overload, really, really hurts your health. I had to have an old root canal pulled because it was, uh, there was a bacterial infection there that was also inflaming my immune system. I had to treat some underlying viral things. You know how you get chickenpox when you're little and then you're at risk for shingles? It's the same thing with anything else that we've had in our system. So I had strep throat as a kid in high school, really bad case of it, and mono, and that remanifest later in life as EBV, Epstein-Barr virus. And so that was reactivating. And so you have all these things inflaming the immune system.

You've had your share. You've had a real roller coaster ride.

Yeah. And so those things also had to be focused on. It couldn't just be food. And so gene testing and detoxification. And then I hit premenopause and postmenopause. And so now we got hormone dysfunction. It's a journey, it's a process.

And so just let me jump in here. You, you became a health coach at some point. You wanted to train yourself and learn some of the principles of functional medicine. And from all that you experienced and all that you learned about yourself, you knew you could help others as well.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think, you know, it's— I finally started feeling better, and it's like The amazement of that just by addressing some of the root causes. And it was hard, don't get me wrong. You know, doing an elimination diet is really difficult. Persevering, doing all the functional medicine testing and everything, it takes time to get your health back. It's a process. There's no quick fixes, you know. And it was such a difficult process. I just wanted to make it easier for other people to go through.

So for you, it was largely the diet. Dietary changes?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that's, that's what was within my control.

Yeah.

You know, I had to get the fine tuning of a functional medicine practitioner for those underlying things because I can't treat that myself. I can't test for that. But the things that I had control over were food and how I manage stress and how I, you know, what was my sleep pattern like? What was my sleep hygiene like? Am I getting movement? People with autoimmunity, it's like too much movement or not enough movement is both bad. And so you're getting the right amount.

Yeah. Finding out what's under our control and making some changes, adapting to whatever we need.

Yeah.

So let's talk about functional medicine. I know you follow the functional medicine principles in your practice and you specialize in these principles. Help us understand kind of the difference between functional medicine and traditional medicine. What do we need to know?

Sure, sure, sure, sure. So, you know, if I am in a car accident or have a heart attack or stroke, please take me to the ER. Conventional medicine is wonderful in that area, but they are not so great at managing these chronic health conditions. We don't have an autoimmunologist to go to. And in conventional medicine, they've kind of compartmentalized our health. You know, you go to your GI doctor for GI, you go to your neurologist for neurology. They've just compartmentalized the body. But we are— it's all interconnected. It all affects and impacts each other. And so some of the— and so functional medicine really looks at the body as a whole. And says, okay, what led up to this point? They really take a patient-centered approach and take the time to really look at your whole story and say, what are all the dominoes that fell along the way? And what was the straw that broke the camel's back? So we can treat each of those things and see what, you know, they can just see what led up to the disease and then they can start focusing on those root causes like food and diet and lifestyle and and then some of those other things that we mentioned before. And I think with conventional medicine, really, they're spending very little time with us. They're very much driven by the pharmaceuticals. And it's not that functional medicine is against pharmaceuticals, but we just want to see what's supportive of the body, right? We don't want to just mask the symptoms. We want to really get to the, to the root cause, what— go upstream and figure out what caused it. And so conventional medicines are great at emergency medicine, but when it comes to these chronic things, I want somebody that's going to say, okay, this this is the cause for it. Because the GI doctor, I walked out of there and she's like, well, we don't really know why this happens. It just does. And here's a high fiber diet that I could never eat at the time. And food has nothing to do with it. And it's like, what? And so instead of having a 15-minute appointment, I had like a 2-hour appointment with my functional medicine practitioner. And he listened to my whole life history story and said, okay, these are the things we need to tackle in order to address the root cause. They just have the time to really Sure.

Yeah, that's, that's huge. That's huge. And I can see where traditional medicine, Western medicine, is going to focus on the presenting problems, the symptoms, the clinical signs, and we're going to treat those symptoms. The clinical condition, we'll treat that, and not necessarily looking at what contributed, especially with a kind of lifelong lifestyle process, right?

Right, right. And I think one of the other issues is that kind of shies people away from— we're kind of in that mentality. We just follow what our doctor tells us instead of really— you know, the doctor is not responsible for your health. You are. We really need to be empowered and say, okay, I need to take charge of my health. And a lot of our own diet and lifestyle habits have led to where we are today. And I think that's why functional medicine really looks at those pillars of health when it comes to food and movement and stress management and sleep. And are we connected with others? Do we have good, healthy relationships in our lives? Because those things build health and got us to where we are. But that means also we can dig back out of it. And so that's part of it. But then too, I think a lot of the functional medicine practitioners, they are cash pay, and that scares a lot of people off too because they don't take insurance.

Insurance, sure.

They have broken out of that broken healthcare system and are cash pay. And so people are like, well, but I have insurance. And I'm like, but you get 15 minutes with your doctor, or do you really want to solve the problem? And I'm like, I think about it in as investing in your health. You know, yes, it costs cash money to go see a functional medicine practitioner, but it's going to save you that hospital bill down the road and the medication that you're going to have to pay for down the road.

Are any of those procedures billable to Medicare? I mean, any procedures that— lab tests, or probably some of these workups have to be billable to insurance?

Some of them are, yes, some of them are, especially the labs. Some of the labs are.

Sure, sure. Yeah. Okay.

There are some specialty testing that They don't, you know, how, how that all works, but, um, it's still—

yeah, even when performed by a traditional MD, I'm sure that it's not covered. Sure. Yeah. So let me ask you about autoimmune disease. I mean, this is a huge, huge topic, huge umbrella term. So what is it? What are some of the examples of autoimmune disease?

Sure, sure, sure. Well, it's super pervasive and you'd be surprised. There's like 50 million Americans that have autoimmunity. It's like 1 in 5. 80% of those are women, and most of them have more than one autoimmune diagnosis because once you get one autoimmune disease, it begets another unless you address the root cause. And so it kind of like snowballs. And so basically, you know, there's like 100 different documented autoimmune diseases, and I think that number is just rising because they're discovering more and more autoimmune mechanisms happening in disease. Some of the most common ones are like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's, UC, ulcerative colitis, Hashimoto's and Graves'. Those are both thyroid-based. You've got psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, celiac, vasculitis, myositis, cytosis. I mean, there's just like cardiomyopathy is one, autoimmune hepatitis, pernicious anemia. I mean, the list is just It goes on and on. And so it's pretty pervasive.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a huge number, as you say, over 100. So what's going on in the body? Can— I mean, can we tease out any single process that's gone amiss?

Yep, absolutely. Okay. So first, okay, let me back up and say people with autoimmunity, I always tell them your body's not broken. It's doing exactly what it was created to do. It's protecting you. So what is the immune system's job? It's designed to protect you from invaders. So how are those invaders getting in the body? There, we are either breathing it in, we're absorbing it through the skin, we're injecting it, or we are eating it. And so we're exposed to all sorts of things, bacteria. You know, some of us have had food poisoning. Tick bites, Lyme disease is actually an autoimmune disease. There's viruses, toxins we're exposed to. Some of us have heavy metal in our body with mercury fillings we haven't had replaced. We're ingesting it even in our water. There's acceptable levels of things like lead and arsenic and mercury, not to mention the fluoride and chlorine. And then we're eating on top of that 3 times a day. And so the body just kind of has this inbox that can never get empty. So it has all this detoxification it needs to do. But my focus— and obviously I've said, you know, functional medicine really has to focus on those pieces of it— my focus is really on the food because, because we eat 3 times a day, and I feel like it had such a big impact for me. But the modern food supply, you know, it looks more like it was— it comes from a plant instead of from a plant grown in the ground. Our food supply has really changed in the last 70 years, right? We've got huge amounts of sugar in our diet. We've huge amounts of processed industrial oils. We're eating GMO foods. These are genetically modified foods, basically all these boxed and packaged foods. They're hybridized so they can withstand the herbicides that are sprayed on them, like Roundup. And so what happened when they genetically modify these foods is their protein structure changes, and our digestive enzymes can't really break those proteins apart. And to give your listeners an example of this, I always think of this as like a chain of pearls. So it's kind of a simplistic example, but it works if you think of a protein as a chain of pearls, and each pearl is an amino acid. And proteins are in meat, but they're also in grains and legumes and vegetables and dairy and nuts and seeds. And so we're eating proteins in all of our foods, right? So people sometimes think protein and they just think meat, but it's in all of our foods. So this protein is a chain of pearls. It is supposed to be broken down to the individual pearl to be absorbed through the gut lining. But because we don't have enough digestive enzymes or enough stomach acid or the foods have been modified, we're not breaking those down properly. They're interacting with our gut lining, damaging it and causing holes in it and causing what's called leaky gut, which a lot of people are familiar with leaky gut, but just on the other side of that gut wall is 80% of our immune system. It's designed to protect us. So it's evaluating everything that comes into the bloodstream, including our food. Well, those food particles, those partially digested proteins and any bacteria and pathogens that are in the gut lining are getting through into the bloodstream. The blood, the blood is seeing it and the immune system is seeing it and going, you're supposed to be an individual pearl and you're not. So I'm going to flag you as an invader and we're going to attack you. Plus we're going to attack anything that looks like you. Because it could be harmful. And therefore we get all of these different types of autoimmunity. And so it could be thyroid tissue or joint tissue or skin or nerve tissue or connective tissue or hair follicles. It could be anything, right? And so that's why you have all the variety of different types of autoimmunity. So even in families, you will see that people will say autoimmunity runs in my family, but each family member has a different autoimmune disease because different proteins have gotten through their gut lining or they've been exposed to different viruses and things. So, so we have these auto bodies, auto antibodies that kind of form, and they start attacking our tissues. And we continue to eat these foods, and we never get the gut healed back up, so we don't have that good barrier anymore. Does that help?

Yeah, I know, that's great, that's great. It's interesting when you talked about family members having different expressions. It's almost like a song with different choruses. I mean, yeah, for each different member of the family and experiencing it differently based on what's gone through their system. So it's really this, um, kind of the, the body attacking what it sees as these invaders. And, uh, because we're not used to those new forms of protein, the pearls, and that spills over then into our tissue, manifests in all different kinds of conditions.

Well, and I think another contributing factor to it a little bit is as we age we produce less digestive enzymes and less acid. And so we have a harder time— those proteins have a hard time breaking down anyway. And then we have less acid to help and less enzymes. And so what I see a lot of times with people is they're struggling with GERD or heartburn or something, and they're taking acid blockers, PPIs, proton pump inhibitors, or antacids or whatever to lower that. But they're doing the opposite of what they need to be doing. Because the esophagus has a flap that goes to the stomach, and then there's a lower flap on the stomach that goes to the intestines. If you don't have enough acid in there and the stomach senses that, it will not allow food to be released into the intestine to be absorbed. And so pressure builds in the stomach, and the upper flap on the stomach to the esophagus opens, and we get acid splashed up there, and we have the sensation of heartburn. So In reality, a lot of times we actually need more acid and digestive enzymes rather than suppressing it, and that's causing some problems for people too. It's definitely a contributing factor, I think.

Sure. Yeah. So the biggest challenges faced by those with an autoimmune disease— I mean, it's got to be, um, really critical, the diet, to start with, right?

I mean, diet is critical. Diet is obviously hard to change. It's hard to make those changes, but it's worth the effort. And I think part of it is that a lot of times doctors are dismissing that diet can really make that big of a difference. And so therefore, I think people also dismiss that it can really make that big of a difference. So we kind of do this half-hearted effort in making dietary changes. And so we kind of need a little hope that it's really going to make a difference. Food really can be medicine. It can really be poison for some people, and it can be medicine if you're eating the right foods. And so not hoping in a will, but having hope that if I make these changes, will it really make a difference? And it will, but we have to stick with it long enough in order to, to reap the benefits of it.

And that's where the elimination diet comes in. And how can you describe that? Is it just eliminating different types or categories of food to see the effects?

Sure, yes. Okay, so the gold standard for identifying food sensitivities really is doing an elimination diet. And basically what you do with that is you eliminate known problematic foods. And in AIP, Dr. Sarah Ballantyne, she's really done a lot of the research to validate the science behind that. So she's really helped us in the AIP community with that. And so the science behind that, that's how she defined these foods, how they interact for people with autoimmunity. And so the foods removed for a short period of time to allow those antibodies to calm down and the inflammation to go down, and then you reintroduce them after about 30 to 120 days. For some people, it could be longer. But the real key is not just removing the foods, it's adding in nutrients too, and it's also doing a methodical reintroduction. So it's really a whole process. It's not just about taking out foods. Those foods can be problematic, sure. We want to do a methodical reintroduction of them one at a time in a specific order so that you can really know what your body's trying to tell you, because you can't we're living with this low-grade inflammation all the time, and you don't even realize it until that food is removed. The inflammation calms down. Then when you reintroduce that food, you can hear what your body's telling you about it. Does it like it or not? Is it causing a problem? Because literally, people will have major symptoms sometimes when they reintroduce a food, and they go, I had no idea that food was causing me a problem. They've been eating it all these years and just living and feeling bad, and that was their normal. They just didn't know the difference.

So what are the typical culprits, you know? I mean, what, what are the groupings that cause the most problem?

Well, and AIP is considered one of the most strictest elimination diets because she wants to kind of do a fresh slate, you know, start fresh. And so those foods are gluten, grains, dairy, eggs, nuts, seeds, sugar— sugar is really inflammatory— the industrial seed oils, those food additives, all the junk, the legumes, nightshades— that includes peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes and their spices. And so it sounds a lot. People hear that and they go, wait a minute, what am I going to eat? And I'm like, you're going to eat meat and vegetables like you should. Meat and vegetables and healthy fats. And we have to remember that AIP is not— and these elimination diets are not a forever diet. They are not meant to be forever. They are a temporary way. They are a process, a temporary way of eating for you to figure out your optimal diet. And that is why there are so many diets out there. People get really overwhelmed and they have arguments about what is the best diet, what is the diet we should all be eating. And we can't give you that because you are unique to you. You are an individual. You've had different things that have washed over your genes causing disease to express. We have to find out what works for you. And this is your kind of way of doing that. So you take it out temporarily, and for the majority of people, they're able to add all this back in, or not all of it, but they're able to add in a whole lot more than what they thought they were going to be able to. And so they should have some hope there. I don't want people to be really discouraged during that list. The majority of people can introduce those, and they're fine with most of those foods. But the thing is, with the science behind those foods, taking them out. They have clinical studies showing the efficacy for AIP with Hashimoto's, RA, IBD, Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, and it has a 73% remission rate.

Yeah.

And, and the people in these clinical studies, there was like the average length of time they had the diagnosis was 19 years. Many of them have been on those immunosuppressants and steroids and medications and were not able to achieve remission anymore. But then they layered on AIP, 73% of them achieved clinical remission. And I have personally seen it with my clients with RA, the lifestyle change that they have afterwards, the things that they couldn't do and the things they can do now. And that study is just about ready to come out. And so I'm really excited to get those results.

That's huge. Sure. So do any of these symptoms include cognitive changes, confusion, disorientation? Memory problems.

There is a lot of brain fog is how we usually—

Yeah, brain fog.

Talk about it. Have a hard time grasping memories, staying organized, keeping a certain train of thought, a little bit of forgetfulness. You get some of the depression and a lot of that is the gut. We have all these beneficial microbes in the gut and when we're not eating the right foods, they don't have the raw materials to break it down and make the neurotransmitters for us, dopamine and serotonin and melatonin. So you see people that don't sleep, well, they're depressed, they're— and it's part of it, it goes back to diet. And it kind of is a vicious circle. You have to make the change long enough that you start to reap the benefits of it. Um, it takes time.

Yeah, that's fascinating. Are there some recommendations, uh, kind of general, general recommendations that we should all follow, or is it too hard to say this is something that will be good for 99% of the population? Is it so unique and individualized that we can't follow some good general recommendations? Because as you're talking about some of these foods that are problematic, I mean, those are healthy foods too. I mean, dairy and fruits and vegetables. I mean, sure. Yeah.

Well, and for healthy people, they are just fine. And for people that they're not affecting, they are healthy. And AIP aims to get you to add in at the end as many of those foods as you possibly— it's important that you eat as diverse a diet as your body will allow you to. Yeah, um, but each individual disease has an association with those different foods, and so you have to find out which ones work for you. Now, as a blanket statement, just from what I have seen, I would say pretty much everybody would benefit from taking out gluten, and the vast majority from dairy, because there's huge numbers of people that actually have intolerances and don't even realize it. There's no other mammal that drinks another mammal's milk. Let me just put it that way. And it, the protein itself in milk and dairy can cause a problem, but then also the lactose. There's a lot of intolerances there too. So there's levels within dairy, but in general, I would say those two are the, probably the most common.

Gluten and dairy. Um, it includes cheeses then too.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Well, good to know. This is a fascinating conversation. I'm learning a lot. I'm sure our audience is, uh, learning a lot as well. So can you share an example or two of some clients you've helped?

Sure, sure, sure. Um, so I have one, one client who, she was diagnosed with celiac and with, um, inflammatory arthritis. She was, she came to me because she could no longer get up the stairs. She was having to take the stairs one at a time and her bedroom was upstairs. This was the house she raised her kids in. So there was some, you know, some sadness going along with this. She was not wanting to have to sell the house. And she, she had a low-grade fever for like a year. She wasn't able to do dishes. She was taking naps. She just, you know, all the fatigue and that she just couldn't do normal things, you know. And that happens with autoimmunity. And we started working together and she figured out what she was eating that was causing inflammation. And for the first time in 7 years, she finally had normal inflammatory markers, which her rheumatologist didn't believe her at first. He thought it was just the medication, right? And so it took a couple of visits where she was still having really good numbers, and he's like, what are you doing? You're my best patient. What are you doing different? And she told him about AIP, and he was just amazed, and he just kept lowering her medication. And so he just didn't believe the diet can make that big of a difference, but it really does. So he lowered her medication, and now I've seen her do posts where she's gone to Disney and she's playing with the grandkids again, and she remodeled her bedroom and her master bathroom upstairs. Stairs. And one time she told me she was mowing, and I'm like, okay, just because you can, it doesn't mean you should. So she was feeling really good now. I mean, she thought she would just be on medication the rest of her life, so I was really happy for her.

Yeah, after 7 years, and that's a remarkable turnaround. What was the— what was the cause for her?

Oh, the— the one— the thing that we pin— well, she was obviously celiac, so you obviously have to take out gluten whenever you're diagnosed.

She hadn't— she hadn't removed gluten from her diet?

She had, but then she was still eating a lot of gluten-free foods that, and they can be inflammatory and really raise blood sugar. Whenever blood sugar goes up, inflammation goes up, immune system's activated. But for her, we've discovered it was dairy. Well, yeah. Yeah.

Simple solution to a complex problem. I mean, not an easy, not an easy process. The detective work is complicated, but sounds like it's effective. Yeah.

Well, And think about this, there's no money behind food. So the pharmaceutical companies are not making any money off of this. And so that's why you don't hear it. I don't think as much as you should in mainstream media, it really does make a difference. Food is medicine.

Yeah. So what are the medicines that the, that the physicians typically prescribe for something like this?

Uh, well, there's methotrexate and Plaquenil and steroids are huge. Steroids have tons of terrible side effects, weight gain and puffiness and Achilles tendon issues and a lot of immunosuppressants. And I think the thing that kills me with that is that I see commercials for all these immunosuppressants for all these different autoimmune diseases, right? And they are showing people out eating pizza and, you know, all that, eating junk. And what's happening when you do that is you are simultaneously— you're taking a medication to suppress the immune system while you're simultaneously ramping it up. And what you end up with is a very confused immune system. And what happens is over time, those medications stop working You gotta try to find something else that does work and you're getting worse and worse and you end up with another autoimmune disease. It just kills me to see those.

Oh, well, so what are the, you mentioned immunological markers, what are those?

How do you, well, see, CRP is a big one. Homocysteine is another one. I'm not necessarily a doctor. Sure. Functional medicine doctors do that. I help them more with the lifestyle change of it. Mm-hmm. So yeah, different diseases, they'll have different antibodies that they can check.

And you can measure improvement that way. You can measure improvement or regression.

And you can measure it that way, but you can also, you can feel the difference.

Yeah, yeah. You sense it too.

Sure.

Yeah, for sure. Great, great information, Dixie. Tell us about your program, Refreshed Vision Health Coaching. What do you offer? Sure. Clients.

Sure, sure, sure. Well, it's a little confusing because Refreshed Vision Health Coaching is my business name and then my program name is Reboot. But what's interesting about both of them and Subconsciously, I did this in the naming process. I didn't even realize it. But refreshed vision. I think about that refresh symbol on your computer when you refresh your browser so it populates with new information. I think a lot of times with autoimmunity especially, you just kind of have a bleak outlook. And I want to refresh the vision of what their future looks like. And so that's why I named my business that. What could that look like for you? If you really changed your habits and your health got better, what would that look like for you? Let's refresh that and live out our purpose and our dreams. But then I have an 8-week online group health coaching program called Reboot with AIP. And I always think about that as like a hard shutdown on your computer where when you bring it back online, it works properly. And I think of AIP very much like that. It's like doing a hard shutdown on your body where you get a chance to have a fresh start and see what supports my body and what hurts my body.

Wow. And you can do this online? It doesn't need to be in person?

Absolutely. So it's 8 weeks. We meet once a week for an hour online together. And then I have module video modules and handouts and things too.

Sounds great. Sounds great. So, you know, we're just about out of time, but let me ask you, what's one nugget you'd like to leave our audience with? What bit of information would you hope they take away from this program?

Well, part of it is don't give up and keep digging. Find that root cause, be your advocate, be your own advocate when it comes to your health. Don't think that You don't have to just follow the doctor's advice. I'm not telling you not to follow your doctor's advice, but I am also saying, you know, your doctor's not responsible for your health.

You are.

So you can't just take a pill and make the problems go away. We've got to make the diet and lifestyle changes. But the good news with that is that small changes, small changes, one at a time, it adds up over time and it does make a difference. So if you can't get your brain around doing an elimination diet and taking it all out, that's okay. Start where you are. If you just wanna try going gluten-free, or maybe you just wanna start adding in more vegetables, or, you know, maybe some of it's mindset shifts. Maybe you don't wanna cook for just yourself cuz you don't wanna put the effort in. Well, invite somebody over, you know, figure out what will work for you and make that one small change. And then, you know, stick with it long enough so you can see those results.

Yeah. Great advice. That's great advice. I like that. It's all about small steps. We're not looking for, milestones here. We're looking for tiny— I call them turtle steps. And when we see that little bit of progress, it gives us that reinforcement, that reward, and we can continue. It helps with that motivation and it builds that confidence that, like you say, that self-efficacy. We're doing something right. We're doing something. We're taking it on for ourselves.

Absolutely. A lot of people go cold turkey and then they fall off after 2 weeks and they just can't stick with it. And I think that's why in my 8-week program, every week we make incremental changes. So that way they can build that self-efficacy and that confidence and to, to keep going after we're done working together, because I want them to succeed.

Great, great information. Yeah, thanks for that. But it looks like we are out of time, and I just want to remind my listeners before we wrap up, I'd like to encourage you to visit my website livingto100.club to sign up for our email list and download a free copy of my 9 Tips to Make Living Longer Enjoyable. And be sure to visit our website for the library of blogs and podcasts. So, Zixi, thanks so much for being a guest on our show today. For those who might want to contact you, how can they do that?

Sure. Thank you for having me. Um, yes, so they'll find me at Refreshed, and it's with the E-D, refreshedvisionhealthcoaching.com. And if they go there, I have a free copy of the Ultimate AIP Jumpstart Guide. They can download that for free and help them do that on their own if they want. And I'm also on Facebook and Instagram at Refreshed Vision Health Coaching.

Great, great information. Thanks for sharing that with our program. I really appreciate it. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. Hope to see you next time.

Hey everybody, Jared Sebaste here, host of Retire Repurposed. This podcast is dedicated to help people transition into fulfilling and purposeful retirements. Retirement is a big life change. In fact, the two most dangerous years of a person's life are the year they were born and the year they retire. Few people could just flip the switch from working a career 30 or 40+ years, retiring on Friday, without methodical steps to living what we call a repurposed retirement. To listen now, search Retire Repurpose on your favorite podcast platform, Senior Resource, or Life Audio.