In this YouTube presentation, Dr. A outlines three primary categories that contribute to the development of autoimmune diseases. The first category covers genetic and genomic factors, emphasizing both direct pathways (such as HLA/MHC gene variations) and indirect, polygenic influences that can weaken immune regulation. The second category addresses epigenetic and environmental triggers, including toxins, irritants, chronic allergies, and other stressors that can modify gene expression and precipitate autoimmunity. The third category encompasses broader immune‑deregulating agents—heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, biotoxins like mycotoxins, and a range of infections (viral, bacterial, parasitic) such as long COVID, Lyme disease, Epstein‑Barr virus, and CMV—that can directly disrupt immune homeostasis or act as epigenetic stressors. Dr. A explains how these factors interact, noting that genetics alone rarely cause disease without epigenetic activation, and that the timing of disease onset often reflects the cumulative impact of environmental and infectious exposures. The video concludes by suggesting that treatment would involve reverse‑engineering these contributors, a topic reserved for a future video, and ends with a standard YouTube call‑to‑action.
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You ever wonder why people develop autoimmunity or autoimmune diseases? Today we're going to break down 3 major cause areas for autoimmune conditions. Let's get into it. Number 1, and these don't go in any particular order, but we had to number them because there are 3. So number 1 would be anything related to genetic or genomic factors. Now, you might say, if you've looked into this, well, there are very few direct autoimmune genes in humans, which is true. So when we think of genetic factors, we have to think of kind of 2 layers of genetic issues. One would be the more direct family of genes that may lead to the onset of autoimmunity, and that would be the HLA, major histocompatibility complex gene family. And so you may have heard of HLA testing, human lymphocytic antigen testing. That's sort of the more more direct pathways. So you could have the MHC HLA family, and you could have some genes that are aberrant there, and you might have more of a propensity to develop autoimmunity without a whole lot of other help. But then there's all the indirect pathways in genetics and genomics that could be triggering. This could be all manner of the other tens and tens and tens of thousands of gene sets that you have colluding together to not necessarily cause an autoimmune disease, but to make your immune system unregulated or poorly regulated enough so that an autoimmune process can be triggered and go on. So in this sense, these are predicate genes, but they might be different mixtures for each person. And if you stack enough of them up, they become weaknesses in your defense against autoimmunity. And those weaknesses then, if you stack enough of them up, become holes in which the autoimmune process can kind of break through your defense against autoimmunity. So you could have 10 people that had some gene troubles in gene group A and B and C, and then you could have one person where they have the same troubles and they develop autoimmunity and the other 10 don't, or vice versa even. And it's because of all of the other sensitivities and other collateral problems with that person's health that are going on, some of which we'll talk about in the other 2 areas. Now, while we're talking about the genomic part, and we've got our more direct pathway through the HLA-MHC types of genes and indirect through all the other ones that might just weaken our defenses against autoimmunity, autoimmunity proper is what it says, autoimmune. Your body's immune system has decided that Part of you is the enemy, an invader. Your immune system is set up, and it's not supposed to do this. It's supposed to recognize non-self, so stuff outside of us, as the invader. So your immune system should be recognizing a viral infection or a bacteria parasite, something like that as an invader. In autoimmunity, it gets a misdirected set of signals, and it says, "Oh, your thyroid is an invader." Well, no, your thyroid's been there your whole life. Now you have autoimmune thyroid. Of some type, or it says, "Oh, the synovial lining in your joints is the invader." Well, though they've been there your whole life, now you have rheumatoid arthritis, for example, or on and on and on and on. So this is what we mean by that. Now, are genetics the primary driver? Well, yes and no. Genetics largely don't do anything on their own because they are the roadmap or the code. It's the epigenetic signaling that turns on or turns off your. genetics that can lead to dysfunction. This is why a lot of times genetically triggered things, say in autoimmunity, may not present until you're 20, 30, 40, even older years old. There are pediatric rheumatologic and autoimmune problems that occur at birth or shortly after, certainly. And those are similar. There's a genetic component. There's epigenetic component as well. But the longer it takes you from birth until the diagnosis of your disease to know that you have an autoimmune disease, the longer the epigenetic factors. So the things that are, you know, around the genome, not the genome itself, are symbolically beating on the genes and either turning off the protective ones or turning on the pro-inflammatory, pro-autoimmune ones. So that's the role of genetics becomes kind of rich and textured in that way. So you may have almost no or no genetic reasons and you get autoimmunity and you may have a lot of genetic reasons and you get autoimmunity. The end product is still autoimmunity. Number 2 is in this category of the epigenome and epigenetics, and that would be environmental factors. So when we're thinking about environmental factors, we think about things like toxins or toxicants, irritants that may be in the environment or even our food or other things. And all of these things that are environmental factors can trigger as epigenetic stressors the genetics to turn on. And remember, even if it's not the primary, HLAMHC type genetics, you have thousands and thousands literally of other genetics that might get turned on in these combinations that then would lead you to an inappropriate immune response that becomes an autoimmune attack. So again, immune system has been fine with your thyroid until now, and now it's attacking your thyroid. You have an autoimmune thyroiditis. Immune system's been fine with your joint linings your whole life. Now it's attacking them. You have rheumatoid arthritis and on and on and on. So Environmental factors are huge. Now, what could be some things in the— I said irritants along with toxins, toxicants, and stuff. Irritants could be a really broad group of things that could include things such as chronic allergic phenomenon. That's an irritant. It doesn't— allergy does not directly cause other autoimmunity, but it can get in there and create other problems right now. So we have potential genetic weaknesses, tendencies, et cetera, et cetera. We have environmental factors that may work with the genetics or work alone to confuse your immune system. And then we have the rest of the entire potential for autoimmunity, which is anything else that can deregulate or dysregulate your immune system. So if we look at, by definition, autoimmunity is me attacking myself. And I'm not supposed to do that. I'm supposed to know in my immune system, self is off limits, non-self, the bad things. Yes, we want to attack those, right? Autoimmunity is where we lose our way and we deregulate the immune response so that that self, some of self gets pulled into non-self. And it's very confusing. And now we have the immune system beating up part of us. That's autoimmunity. So what would be other things that could deregulate the immune system? Now, these could also turn into epigenetic triggers, or they could just be deregulating immune system. on their own. And so they could be literally just about anything, including the deregulation of toxins and toxicants. So environmental factors can cause deregulation. Metal, heavy metals can do this. Some chemicals, especially persistent organic pollutants, can do this, but also some in the category that we call biotoxins can do this. That means that something, a biotoxin, a subtype would be like a mycotoxin from mold. So you have some mold, And then it's giving off this mycotoxin. Well, most mycotoxins very heavily disorder our immune system, and they may not directly cause the autoimmunity, but if we've already got a weakness in that direction, we're leading up to it, the mycotoxin exposure may push us over the edge. Infections can cause this. Lots of infections can cause autoimmunity. Viral infections are one of the more well-known and more common things. But parasites and bacteria, other infections can trigger autoimmunity as well. So one of the things we've seen in recent years would be in, in and through the pandemic, we get people with long COVID, for example, who never had autoimmunity. And now during the long COVID struggle, it's discovered that they now have autoimmunity. Now, did the viral infection cause the autoimmunity or did the viral infection deregulate the immune system enough that it pushed you into autoimmunity? Yeah. You're probably going to get at some point anyway. Well, maybe a little bit of both, and probably knowing the answer to that may take a very long time. But it could do either one. But it's not just that virus; it's other viruses and other infections as well. We see more autoimmunity in people that have complex chronic infectious illnesses with long-term infections, like the Lyme disease family, for example, or the HHV viral family, like Epstein-Barr and CMV, and those sort of things that go chronic. Those can all push you into. This as well. So when we're thinking about autoimmunity, and then there's of course, you know, 100 other things we could talk about, but we have the concept that our immune system that normally does this very elegant thing of protecting us from non-self and protecting self against the immune system gets confused somehow. And that confusion can be partly genetic. It can be partly epigenetic. It can be toxic. It can be infectious. It can be anything that causes stress and challenge to the immune system as we're moving forward, and we can develop autoimmunity either very early or later in life. And that really is the basic big 3 ways we develop autoimmunity. Now, if we then want to turn that around or turn it on its head and say, how would we help treat autoimmunity? It's really reverse engineering those things. And that'll be a topic for another video. So thanks for watching, guys. Thanks for all you subscribers. Please do subscribe if you're not. Like, share, comment, do all the stuff, do the notifications, and I'll see you guys on the next video. Thanks.
