When people think of an “autoimmune” condition, they might find it difficult to put their finger on the actual symptoms or problems caused. Autoimmune conditions are caused by the body attacking itself, and there are many examples: rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, leaky gut syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, to name a few.
And people with autoimmune conditions make up about 90% of our patient base.
When a person has an autoimmune disease, something has triggered the body to start attacking itself. And our medical model can’t do anything for autoimmune disease, except for two things. They can give patients immune suppressants, which shut down the immune system, or cortisone shots to decrease inflammation. Those are the only two ways they can treat autoimmune disease—it’s completely backwards!
We have an alternative model in clinical nutrition and functional neurology, and we do just the opposite of the medical model—we support the immune system. If you shut down the immune system, there’s no immune system to protect your body. If we boost the immune system, the patient will have a better overall life in the long run.
There are triggers for autoimmune disease.
It doesn’t just happen on its own. The trick is finding the triggers and stopping them.
Many people are unaware that 30% of our genes are hardwired, and won’t change. But the other 70% can influence the other 30%, which gives us possibilities. Think of it this way: the 30% is like the bullet in a gun, but the 70% is like pulling back the hammer and pulling the trigger.
We’ve seen common triggers such as the third trimester of pregnancy as the immune system shifts, food sensitivities and chronic infections or inflammation. So, just as we all have cancer cells but don’t all have cancer, the disease doesn’t occur until those cells are “turned on” or triggered.
Our alternative model is all about finding triggers and, therefore, we find what’s driving the autoimmune condition. If you have a fire and you pour gasoline on it, the fire is going to grow and destroy what’s in its path. It’s the same with an autoimmune disease: If you keep setting off the triggers, your condition is only going to continue to destroy the body’s tissue, and you will only get worse. You need to find out how to stop the gasoline from being poured on the fire!
Just because you already have an autoimmune condition, it doesn’t mean you won’t (or can’t) get more autoimmune diseases—or don’t already have more than one.
Autoimmunity is systemic—it’s global.
So, if you have multiple sclerosis, the first question is: “How many more autoimmune conditions do you want to have?” Multiple sclerosis doesn’t just attack the nerves, it attacks the body globally, and until the markers are high enough to show up on a doctor’s test, they’ll never recognize the symptoms or signs of an additional autoimmune condition until it’s too late—you’ll already have it.
Other triggers are anemia, liver issues, blood-sugar instability, adrenal gland dysfunction, gut or hormone dysfunction, and they all act as gasoline that can be poured on the fire.
So, we first we need to discover the triggers that are causing the autoimmune condition, then eliminate the triggers, and finally “patch up” the damage that’s been done.
For instance, with gut disorders or leaky gut syndrome, we would put them on an anti-inflammatory diet and supplementation to calm the gut lining while we do the brain-based therapy to tame the nerves that control the blood flow to the gut and boost evacuation of the colon.
It’s very important to discover the triggers before recommending any treatment—just because a food sensitivity causes one patient’s rheumatoid arthritis, the trigger will not be the same for every rheumatoid arthritis patient, and therefore neither will the treatment.
In the medical model, that’s where the insurance holds doctors back. Because there are only two treatments available to them, there’s no way they can dig deep enough into the patient’s condition to truly find the cause. It doesn’t matter to them whether the autoimmune disease is caused by an adrenal problem or food sensitivity, because their result is the same: cortisone or immune suppressants.
Real improvement will only happen when you start with the proper testing, which tells you where the triggers are. Of course, the medical model only reacts to test results that are outside of their “normal” range, give you one of their two prescriptions and make a follow-up appointment for three to six months in the future. That’s the extent of the medical model.
We, on the other hand, are holistic and are trained in clinical nutrition and functional neurology. If you tired of being palmed off with medication or surgery by the medical model, and are tired of living with your autoimmune symptoms, please contact us by using our schedule a consultation form or by calling (714) 731-7680 for a phone consultation.
