Category Archives: Autoimmune

Autoimmune

Why Do Most People With Autoimmune Conditions Get Nowhere With Drugs?

We’re still talking about autoimmune conditions. Why do people who have an autoimmune condition get nowhere when they rely just solely on pharmaceutical medications every day? Now, a lot of these people are still old school. They’re still baby boomers like me. They’re all dinosaurs, slowly dying out. Younger people are starting to think differently about their health. But if I look at my parents, for example, I mean God and the doctor were basically the same thing, you know? It was almost like you might as well call the doctor Jesus, because that’s what they thought of the doctor. So everything that came from the knocked his lips was like pure gold, you know? So if patient got put on a drug, the patient stayed on the drug. That’s how it was, because God has spoken and God lays down that law. It’s finale, okay?

Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t think that the doctor is God, okay? But that’s not to say he’s devil, either. I mean, the doctor is just a guy like me, okay, just a normal bloke, a normal guy, right? He doesn’t know everything. He’s not God. God knows a lot. I don’t think the doctor knows everything. You should not take … I’ve done a video on this previous, you should not be on antibiotics, for example, with autoimmune conditions. But relying on pharmaceutical drugs to cure your autoimmune disease, honestly, it’s just insanity. It’s not going to work, because you’re really taking your eye off the ball. You’re not looking at the inflammatory condition of the body. You’re masking it with pharmaceutical drugs. You’re not looking in the right direction. You’re not looking at causes of autoimmunity, because still says that there are no known likely causes for autoimmune diseases.

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What a load of bologna. We’ve known now for years that people with autoimmune disease need to fix this thing up. The gut, okay? If they fix their gut up, they’re likely going to reduce that inflammatory response and come off those pharmaceutical medications. I’ve spent half my life getting people off pharmaceutical drugs and I’ve found that when I did that, we were all better off. It’s interesting when I read online, not that long ago, one of the top pharmaceutical drug bosses in the states, one of the top guys, I won’t mention his name, on a multi-million or billion dollar salary or whatever it was, he actually said that if we threw all the pharmaceutical drugs in the ocean, the world will be a lot better off, but we’d probably kill half the fish.

So yeah, so just be careful. I’m not here bagging and slamming the pharmaceutical industry. We need pharmaceutical medications. They’re life savers, okay? But for you to go on a drug for years and years and years and years and years, when you’re in an autoimmune condition, is stupidity. It’s getting you nowhere. My strong recommendation, if you’ve got an autoimmune condition, is to get the gut assessed and to fix that gut up and fix it up properly with help through a doctor or a naturopathic doctor or a nutritionist, but somebody who has an interest in the human microbiome. If you just do that one thing, assess the gut, and take every step you can to improve that gut, to get the health of that gut back, you won’t need pharmaceutical medications, okay? I haven’t taken pharmaceutical medication for over 40 years and I’m not dead yet, all right? So just remember that taking pharmaceutical medications, multiple, with autoimmune conditions, is swimming against the tide, okay?

It’s like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. You’re going to hurt yourself. It’s going to hurt bad one day, maybe a real bad, okay? Because we all know what happens if you jump out of a plane without a parachute. It’s not looking good is it? The same thing could happen, you know, if you stay on those drugs long-term. And remember this, I like this saying, all right, that minds of people are like parachutes. They work best when they’re open, all right? Parachutes don’t work when they’re closed. You usually hit the ground pretty hard, but when it’s open, we go down slowly. Keep your mind open. Don’t think that the doctor is Jesus, okay? But the doctor is not Satan, either.

The doctor is a normal man or female like you or me. They make mistakes. They’re hurried, they’re busy, they’re worried about their wife, their kids, everything or their husband, whatever. But that’s the point I’m making. Keep an open mind. Keep an inquiring mind. Talk to other people, but try and get off these medications as much as you can with autoimmune disease and repair that gut, and you’ll find that lots of things will start slowly coming back into shape and you won’t need those drugs anymore. I’m just saying. Thanks for tuning in.

Autoimmune

What Environmental Triggers Are Associated With Autoimmune Diseases?

We’re going to talk still about autoimmunity. I’ve had so many people interested in this topic, so let’s just keep on talking about it for a while. What environmental triggers are associated with autoimmune diseases? I’ve got a person here in the States who’s been asking this question. In fact, I’ve had several people asking me, what causes autoimmune disease? Is it any particular type of a trigger or cause that I can identify and nail so I don’t get this disease? I’ve just looked at quite a few studies and in fact, studies from 2015, ’16, ’17, right up to recent ones. And 30% of autoimmune disease, roughly 30%, is genetic. So the other 70% is environmental. But what are some of the key things that actually cause autoimmune disease? Do we know any of these things?

Have we got any defined causes? Autoimmune disease is a leading killer among women. Particularly I think from 40 to about 60, so many people get auto immune disease these days. Something must start it. Something does start it. There’s lots of things you need to consider when it comes to autoimmunity. Here’s a nice little picture which I downloaded from the internet. I wonder if you can see this here. My apologies, it’s only in black and white. I don’t really have color printers. But you can see here the trigger, breakdown in the tolerance. Like I said, the immune system starts playing up here. Hang on, I’m dropping pins everywhere. Try this pin. So we’ve got this breakdown in oral tolerance. So your immune system starts to play up. You start getting changes in the bacteria in your gut.

This is a big, big problem. In my personal opinion, this is one of the key drivers behind autoimmune disease is the change in the gut microbiota. Okay? And then of course we start getting leaky gut. You can see here enhanced gut permeability to larger molecules. So things actually start slipping through the gut and challenge the immune system that should have stayed in the small intestine. So leaky gut is almost always there with autoimmunity. And then of course we get a major immune reaction, where the body can’t recognize self anymore and it starts attacking its own cells. And then we develop autoimmunity or neuro autoimmunity. We can get diseases like multiple sclerosis, even ALS or motor neuron disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease. A lot of these diseases now are linked with some type of chemical, or some type of a poison or something.

I’ll tell you what really scares me is this glyphosate, or we call it Roundup in New Zealand. We still use it like candy down here. All the farmers just pour it on the fields everywhere. In the European Union, it’s being banned. So when we keep using chemicals that actually actively kill weeds, and then pour gallons of it on soil, and then actually grow crops in the soil and eat it, how stupid can we be? Now you can understand why I like to grow some of my own food. In fact, I only grow all my own food in the garden. And these are the reasons why. So what are some of the environmental triggers, do you think? Toxic chemicals, heavy metals have been associated. I read interesting studies on arsenic, for example. Some populations of tribes, American Indian tribes have been hit with very severe autoimmune disease. And they discovered that they were drinking water out of lakes that were full of arsenic. And why did the arsenic get in the lake?

Arsenic’s a byproduct, unfortunately of gold mining. So asbestos is another one. One other one, which I found in multiple research papers on, is poor dental health. Now this is the tip of the iceberg. Okay? Poor dental health now is associated with a lot of autoimmune disease. This is a priority in your life. If you’ve got poor dental health, rotten teeth or bad gums, you’ve got to get it sorted. It’s bad. It’s like having a house, a foundation full of termites or pests, and you’re basically ignoring it until the whole thing starts caving in, right? You’ve got to get onto things. Now, this is the big problem with autoimmune diseases, because the symptoms, the onset is so vague and nonspecific. People report to the doctor with conditions like tiredness, malaise, can’t sleep. Maybe a little bit of fever or something. So they get told to go home and take a paracetamol and come back in a week after they’ve paid their bill.

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And then they keep coming back, until they start knocking harder and harder on the doctor’s door. And they may actually do a bit of testing, autoimmune testing. We’ve spoken in a previous video in this series on testing for autoimmunity, some of the blood markers. But this one’s about the triggers. The key thing I see would be chemicals. Okay. Now that could be glyphosate, that could be any chemical you’re using around the house. And of course we’re getting more chemicals coming out every day. The second one of course is diet. Okay. Crappy diets give you crappy health. I don’t have to keep beating this drum every day. So do you think going keto is going to stop you getting autoimmune disease? Not really. Do you think going paleo or keto or cutting out all gluten or something like that, is that necessarily going to stop autoimmune disease?

I don’t see it that way. You need to try and work out what your potential triggers are before you get sick. And the best way to do that is to eat clean and avoid as many chemicals as you can in your life. Especially personal care products that you rub on your skin, your face, your hair, all over. Try and use certified organic products. There are many companies now that make really nice clean certified products. I’ve used organic stuff in my hair and scalp and skin for 20 plus years. So just be careful. If you can’t stick it in your mouth, don’t rub it on your skin. That’s how I think. So gut dysbiosis is a big one. Gut dysbiosis comes again through the poor diet, but it’s the chemical angle I’m interested in. Once you start eating regularly take away foods, crappy fats and oils, lots of candy, lots of weird artificial colors and flavorings, all sorts of chemicals and crap that they put in food these days.

And then you throw it in the microwave for a few minutes and roast it on high in a plastic dish and then take it out and eat it. Is it any wonder why we’re getting autoimmune disease? What about just a plain china plate with a bit of steamed broccoli on it and a piece of fish? Basic stuff. If you keep eating like this, fresh, healthy and clean, avoid the chemicals, get the dental health sorted, keep your weight down, because excess body fat’s another trigger. You’re going to be in a much better position to avoid these triggers in your life, which could eventually mean autoimmunity. It’s not fun having autoimmune disease. Try every way you can to get rid of the chemicals out of your life, the stress out of your life. It’s not that difficult to do. Because I’ll tell you now, I’ve seen many people suffer seriously bad with autoimmune disease.

Lots of men and women younger than me, horrible lives, and I’ve seen the triggers. I’ve seen the causes in these people’s lives, and unfortunately it was too late for them. In multiple cases, I’ve seen people with very poor dental health go on to develop lupus or scleroderma or a condition like that. I rarely see people with outstanding dental health, with great diets and low stress, get autoimmune disease. Food for thought. Think about it. Clean up your act, clean up the place you live in, clean up your diet. You’ll be surprised. And it’s one good step in the right direction in terms of preventing autoimmunity.

Autoimmune

Could Gut Bacteria Explain the Link Between Stress and Autoimmune Disease?

Let’s talk about autoimmune disease and particularly with its relevance to stress and bacteria in the gut with even microbiota.

As you know, I like reading studies, lots of different types of studies and it’s exciting to see now, finally, some connections linking stress with autoimmunity through the gut. What they did is they got a hold of two groups of mice. One group, the control group, they were okay. But the other group, what they did is they exposed that group, all right, over a 10 day period to multiple births throughout that time to dominant aggressive mice. But the control group, they didn’t do that. They were left basically on their own. And they found the difference in the gut composition to be quite profound.

The stressed group had two types of bacteria in much higher amounts than the other group, for example, and these particular bacteria have also been found to be higher in multiple sclerosis. So what’s happened is the stress, basically, has altered the gene expression and even the composition of the bacteria in the gut and also improved the ability for translocation for these bacteria to move outside of the gut and then into lymph nodes around the digestive system. In these mice, they found elevated T-cells, okay, and even damaged genes with very high stress as a consequence of this sort of bullying kind of thing.

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So you can imagine if you’re a lady working in an office and you’re, say 45 or 50, and you’ve got a terrible boss or a bully, you’ve got coworkers that are no good, and you’ve got a husband who’s sort of okay, but not really that good, and you’ve got not much support, and you’re stressed and stressed. Is it any wonder? You might be like that mouse in that cage, being bullied, and this could be one of the reasons.

I’ve always said for many years now that stress is one of the biggest killers, silent killers. And in time, in many years from now, it will be seen that stress kills more people than all bombs, and guns, and drugs, and poisons on earth. And people do to themselves, they don’t even know it. They get stressed out. Their gut slowly starts going down. The gene expression changes. The bacteria change. Inflammation goes up. Wham! Autoimmune disease. One day it’ll all come out.

Autoimmune

Which Autoimmune Diseases Affect the Nervous System?

Let’s talk about a couple of different autoimmune diseases that specifically affect the nervous system.

There’s probably close to 100 autoimmune diseases now. I think there are about 70 currently known, but I would say there’s easily 100. There are a lot of complicated names with these conditions. One that you probably commonly know or have heard of is called MS or multiple sclerosis. That’s not an uncommon disease, but it’s not that common either. It seems to affect women probably twice as much as men. I’d say age between 40 to 60, especially white females from Northern European descent. There’s some type of genetic link somehow and it causes what we call a progressive demyelination.

So just imagine, I’ve got a cord here. Let me just show you this. Oh, look at that. I’ve got a little nervous system nerve here. Well, in fact, it’s a little hard drive, but let’s just say that’s a nerve. Now you can see that that’s got insulation on it, that black stuff around it. There’s a couple of wires inside there. Now with the myelination disease, that starts breaking down. So the installation starts breaking down, particularly in the central nervous system like in the brain and in the spinal cord. The white matter on the white nervous tissue, the insulation starts busting up in different places. And it can be really hard to pick a conditions like MS, multiple sclerosis initially. But yeah, the symptoms often can be things like numbness, tingling, fatigue, all kinds of rare and not really straight forward symptoms. So people often go for years before they get properly diagnosed.

MS isn’t really the death sentence it used to be a long, long time ago, people would often end up in wheelchairs and things like that. But now it’s a little bit different. There’s a very interesting book written by a guy regarding the dietary protocol of MS. I was just trying to think of his name now, he’s got a quite a strange name. And it involves basically taking crappy fats out of the diet. Fats are one of the worst things. The bad fats are one of the worst things you can have with central nervous system disorders because it just ups the inflammation.

But yeah, MS now there are four types. Some are what we call relapsing-remitting. They’ll get worse, they’ll get better. Others, the rarer type is not, it just keeps on progresses until the person passes away. But most people can lead a fairly normal life with MS these days. Although they may need a walking stick or have some issues, but it’s generally not a killer.

However, if we look at another condition, like Lou Gehrig’s disease. Lou Gehrig, the famous baseball player that died at 37 years of age of, I think it’s called ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. So this again involves the nervous system, the central nervous system. So muscles get weak, they get attacked, and the person will start getting all types of problems as a result of that. One of my friends passed away of motor neurone disease, or ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s. It’s all the same thing. In America, they call it Lou Gehrig’s disease because of a famous baseball player.

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But yeah, it’s a terrible disease. In fact, one of my friends did pass away and she was not even 50. She was 49 when she passed away last year, in fact. Quite a rare condition, not that common. I have read some reports where ALS is more associated, motor neurone disease is more associated with contact sports like rugby or when people clang/crash into each other. I’ve read other reports where it’s linked to certain chemicals.

This is not a nice condition. My friend started to develop a slight slurred speech initially, and I kept telling my wife that I thought she’d been drinking during the day. And it basically progressed, and then I thought this is MS, multiple sclerosis. But then it turned out it was, I think it was a ALS. ALS is terrible. There’s no cure, persons normally who get it won’t going to live usually not beyond five years. But I believe that Steve Hawking had motor neurone disease and lasted a long, long time with it. So extremely rare case, because nearly all people with ALS pass away around about the five to seven year mark, if they make it that long. So it’s a gradual, just slow down and paralysis of the muscles. The muscles get effected and eventually the person can’t breathe anymore. It’s a horrible condition, but it’s not common. It’s reasonably rare.

But there are many other types of neurodegenerative diseases created as a result of this toxicity. Guillain-Barré syndrome, GBS for example, that affects more of the peripheral nervous system. And 30% of that, for example, a cause we know is Campylobacter jejuni, it’s our bacteria that lives in the small bowel. So food poisoning can trigger Guillain-Barré. I seen that with two patients actually. In fact in the last several years before I stopped practice, I had two patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome.

So there are various viruses and bacteria that are linked with that particular condition. And again, leaky gut, stress, poor diets, things affecting the integrity of the gut. And then as soon as you get that permeability where the gut start absorbing macromolecules and toxins in from the diet and the environment, you’re setting up an autoimmune response. And that can go many ways because many different tissues can get affected or triggered to actually be attacked by the body’s own immune system. That’s why it’s so good always to try and eat the right food and understand the link of stress, because stress often pushes us eating crappy food too. But rest, good food, and minimizing chemicals will put you in a better position hopefully to avoid these types of conditions.

So that’s just three of probably 20 or 30 different types of autoimmune diseases that can affect the nervous system. Couple of tips for you with autoimmunity, especially if you’ve got fatigue early on in the piece, get your vitamin B12 checked early on and make sure your vitamin D is between 70 to 90 or even 100 in a blood test. Okay? That’s NM slash, I think DL or whatever the reference range is in your country. So make sure your vitamin D’s up, because many papers I’ve read show a big link between low vitamin D, for example, and higher rates of multiple sclerosis. Also, B12, check it out.

Autoimmune

How to Achieve Perfect Hormonal Balance?

I’ve been asked this question a few times now, so I’m going to make a little video regarding it. How do I achieve the perfect hormonal balance? How can I get my hormones floating along nicely all my life, and have them functioning really well? Well, you might be shocked to know that so far, they’ve discovered almost 200 different hormones in the human body. Even vitamin D is considered a hormone now, so to achieve the perfect balance is impossible. You’ve got to show me the perfect human first. There is no such thing as perfect human. Because we’re human, we’re not perfect. That’s the thing. So, we live in times that are constantly changing. We live in temperatures that are constantly changing. We live with foods that are constantly changing. We live in lifestyles with relationships.

Everything about us is constantly in a state of change, so it’s hard to try and get perfection when there’s so much change going on. I’ve written a few points down though, that will make it easy for me to communicate to you what I think of some of the key things to achieve a nice level of hormones throughout your life, and that will mean that the moods are more stable, the cognition will work better, your sex drive will be good, you won’t age too fast. So remember, everything about you is hormonally controlled, these are chemical messengers that can evoke incredible responses in our body. Now these hormones themselves are actually produced from various things that we need to consume in our body. So having, for example, a good level of Omega-3, or fish fats in your diet, very smart move. Having sufficient proteins in your diet, which also help to make up hormones, smart move, eating fish, eating eggs, or eating legumes, eating nuts and beans and grains, many different foods are going to really help you to build and balance a good hormone level.

I think one of the most important ones though is stress. I’ve beaten this drum so many times on this channel, but the stress is the big one. If you can’t get a handle on stress, if you can’t understand that connection between stress and hormones, you need to switch off this channel now, because you won’t really understand most of the stuff I’m trying to say. I haven’t even begun to talk about adrenal health, and about pituitary health, and about how other glands are really affected by eating, and by living, and that’s part of what I want to do this year, as well as go more into the stress angle, but stress screws people up. It kills people, and it does it very, very slowly, and over a prolonged period of time. It’s the key thing I’ve seen in my clinic that undermines people’s health, more so than crappy food is crappy lifestyle, and high stress lifestyles.

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I don’t care how much money people have got, or how well they eat, or how good they look if they’re living a shitty, crappy, stressful lifestyle. That’s what I don’t like. So stress, basically it crosses all borders, all genders, all ages, all types of income levels, education levels, everything. We’re all subject to it, but that’s the key thing to control, if you want the hormonal balance good. The key thing is to work out where the stresses are coming from. It’s got to be managed. If you can’t manage that, then the hormones are going to manage you in a really horrible way, and you won’t like it. You won’t like it. Especially if you’re my age, and you’re female. You could be like early to mid-50s, late-50s, and you may be going through hell on earth if your hormones aren’t balanced properly. I’ve seen the same with males.

The second point is sleep, getting plenty, plenty, plenty of sleep. Very important for building good hormonal levels is good sleep patterns. You will never ever get good hormonal pattern if the sleep is hit and miss. If you’re sleeping two hours a night, or sleeping terribly. And of course, when the hormonal patterns become imbalanced, you start getting weight issues, appetite issues, mood issues, libido issues. You can’t think properly. You start getting all sorts of issues. So the sleep is number two. Number three is exercise. So by moving your body more, it’ll allow your body more easily, particularly with high estrogen, to modulate that estrogen or effectively. Break it down, and then re-utilize some of those components and excrete the waste more effectively. So exercise always improves females, I find. It’s the key thing I found in the clinic for women 40s, 50s who want to look sexy, feel sexy, and look fantastic, especially as they get older is exercise. It’s not creams on your face. It’s not bigger boobs, or bigger fish lips, or stuff like that. It’s exercise. It’s sleep. It’s low stress.

This is going to make you beautiful, when you get to your 60s and 70s, you’ll still look great. I’ve seen some patients undergo massive stress, and age 10 years in six months, just on their face. Some people are truly shocked. My wife and I, when they came into our clinic, we hadn’t seen them for six or 12 months. Then they went and divorced, or a stress, and in some of these cases, you didn’t even recognize that person, they’d aged so much. So just be careful, all right? Protein, number four, lots of protein. So good quality proteins in you, like fish proteins, chicken proteins, egg proteins. I like soy. I still think soy is a valid food for a 50, 60-year-old person. A very valid food, especially for males for good prostate health. So fatty fish, Omega-3, low inflammation, hormones also need Omega-3, or fats, you will function better. Hormones are made from fats.

Sugar and carbs need to go. Okay for young people maybe, who are more energetic, but then you get older, especially when you want to get the hormones balanced really well. You need to get rid of the sugar as much out of the diet as you can. Now for a younger girl who’s got hormonal problem, she very much needs to look at sugar and alcohol and also stress. So I hope you get a few of these ideas that I’m talking about regarding the hormonal balance, but remember, stress is a big one. You really got to get on top of that. That’s the key thing. If you find yourself, say 40, or 50 years old, fallen flat, you’ve just got no get up and go. Someone’s let all the air out of your tires, they’re flat. Think about it. Think about what happened, get your hormones checked. You may need to get also some salivary testing done. A very good test to get done. Let me write it on paper for you, have I got some scrap paper laying around? Here, I’m going to write this test down for hormone testing.

Now, it’s simple. You just have to think about Holland. It’s called the DUTCH test, okay? The DUTCH test. Dried Urine Test Comprehensive Hormones. That’s what it means. DUTCH test. Now your naturopathic physician should be able to do that for you, or your doctor who has an understanding of hormonal testing, but that test is the rolls Royce of hormone tests. Okay? It’s a urine test. You can also do a salivary, part salivary, part urine, but that, in my opinion, is one of the best tests ever designed for checking a full spectrum of hormones out in both male or female. But particularly if you’re female, in your say 40s, or 50s, it’s really worth doing the DUTCH test. All right? That’ll give you an idea what’s going wrong. It checks all the stress hormones out, and all the sex hormones out, even melatonin, so it’s worth doing. Get onto it.