Dr. Andersen explains how autoimmune disease develops when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body's own cells. Viral infections and toxins embedded in cell membranes trigger immune cells to mark self-components as foreign, leading to autoantibodies like those in Hashimoto's and rheumatoid arthritis. Membrane health and toxin exposure directly determine whether the immune system tolerates or attacks your own tissue.
Chapters
The chemical signature of a bad guy. How does a toxin or toxicant turn on chemical signature of a bad guy? Hey, I'm Dr. Andersen. This is my YouTube channel. I love answering your questions that come in. So the first thing is autoimmune disease. Autoimmune literally means my immune system has decided a piece of me is a bad guy and it wants to attack me. And so when we are looking at autoimmune diagnoses, we have signs and symptoms, but often in the laboratory testing, we are looking for antibodies, okay, that come from our own immune system, and they happen to be against our own body, right? So I could have anti-thyroid antibodies and have a Hashimoto's thyroiditis, for example. I could have anti-membrane, anti-joint membrane antibodies and have something like a rheumatoid arthritis or something in that spectrum. I could have anti— any other antibody, And I could have an autoimmunity against that part of my body. So the first thing is, before we get down to the cell membrane direct connection, is what's the most simplistic, quickest way to get to, okay, my immune system's job is supposed to keep the bad guys out. My thyroid is not a bad guy. Okay, my joint linings are not the bad guy. So why is my immune system so confused? Well, it gets confused Because often the immune system is triggered to go to an area and look chemically at what's going on in that area because there's chemistry coming out of that area that says something's wrong here. There must be a bad guy here. And so what will often happen is the immune cells will go and then they will say, well, we got the chemistry of a bad guy here. Let's Take a chunk out of that, and let's say that was my thyroid or something, because it's got bad guy components in it. And then let's go and let's present that to the rest of the immune system to say, we don't like this guy. Okay? That's exactly how it happens. Now, obviously there are longer words for all that, but basically that's what happens. Why might that happen? Well, one real common thing is you could have an infection that was inside of the cell, especially like viral infections like to do this. And the immune system Legitimately has to go and clean up that infection inside the cell. And it sort of inadvertently, accidentally remembers a chunk of the cell also as a problem. So good part, it got the bad virus in the cell. Bad part is it remembered part of your cell as a bad guy too. But where do the cell membranes fit into all of this? Well, so we've talked about this dynamic architecture of the cell membranes and how they got all this stuff going on and all the pieces. And it's not just simply like you know, the walls of a tent or the walls of a house or something like that. So, please go back and listen to the other ones if you want the deeper dive into that. But, what we want to keep in mind is the cell membrane is an extremely dynamic living organism. You would be dead without it. And, it controls what goes on in your cell and whatever your cell is supposed to do. So, if it's a brain cell or it's a heart cell, it's a gut cell or it's whatever, it makes sure it does the best job it can at that, right? And, part of the cell membrane's job is to keep the bad guys out. And, And to keep the good guys in. And if a nutrient is supposed to go in or a toxin is supposed to leave, it's supposed to help to, you know, do those exchanges. But the problem that occurs is if we go beyond the infectious trigger, which is a real common one for autoimmunity starting, that obviously involves the cell membrane. The other one that can be a big problem is actually the presence of a toxicant or toxin, something that shouldn't be in your body. And it sits on or in your cell membrane, and then that triggers an inflammatory reaction. Remember that the immune cells come to look at the area because they think a bad guy's there because of chemistry. Well, the toxicant can trigger the same chemistry as a bad guy, but now I don't even have a virus there that I can make some, you know, antibodies against or whatever. I just got a cell that's putting off chemistry like it's a bad guy. And so The cell then is putting off appropriate chemistry as if it is its bad guy. And the immune system says, matches up with our suspect list of chemicals, attaches itself to the cell, takes a piece, sends it out to the rest of the immune system and says, this is a bad guy. As we said earlier, that happens to be the synovial lining of your joints or your thyroid or any other part of your body. It's a big problem because now we have our own immune system in our own body saying, Every other part of you is cool except this one part of you, which we have now decided is an intruder, a bad guy. That's autoimmunity. The leap from toxicity to autoimmunity has been known for a fairly long time. I remember the first discussions I had with pathologists around this were at least 25 years ago, if not more. And they, back then, of course, they, you know, I'm not a pathologist. So they were talking to this, you know, general practitioner saying, well, just think of it this way. You take a toxin, you take a chemical that shouldn't be in your body. gets into the lipid bilayer of the cell membrane, what do you think that your immune system's gonna do with it? Well, it's gonna do an attack. It's gonna have memory against it. Exactly. Well, we have more investigations into that now and bigger words to go around it. Now, in the links below, there's generally always links down below with references and stuff like that, but I'm gonna put a really cool paper in. It's fairly recent that if you really like to look into things, it gets into how, what are the mechanics of how this could even happen. And this thing I'm telling you literally about the chemical signature of a bad guy, How does a toxin or toxicant turn on chemical signature of a bad guy? Well, this paper goes very elaborately into how it does that, but it does it through a few ways. One is it can go in and it can cause oxidative damage, and that can cause free radical damage, which can change the lipid structure. It can change the fluidity of the cell membrane, but it also can mess with the receptor sites on the outside or the channels or all of the above, basically.
