91 Comments

Great post, thank you!

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Thank you 🙏 about 20 years ago I cured ulcerative colitis (also designated autoimmune condition) - I had refused to believe that I would need meds “for the rest of my life” and looked to changing diet primarily but also considered other aspects of wellness (exercise, mindfulness etc). I started with a 10 day fast and and removed processed foods - I have never looked back.

The gastroenterologist I saw some 8 years later for a check up (no inflammatory found) told me that “diet would have nothing to do with it and that I had probably ‘grown out of it’ which struck me as odd from a few points - how could a gastroenterologist believe food had nothing to do with a gastro system condition? And how could one go from needing meds for rest of one’s life to ‘growing out of it’? Then he proceeded to suggest I take the meds anyway as a precaution. I asked why I would take meds when I had no symptoms but did not get a satisfactory answer. I did have a flare up a few years later (probably due to extreme stress) but resolved it with the same protocols. I am still symptom free.

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I have had severe RA and Hashimotos for over 20 years and while I have found some relief from diet and lifestyle changes, my antibody levels are still elevated and there is no way I can titer down meds. Thyroid hormones are required for life. I am often in unbearable pain. I have tried everything over the years. Currently I am very low histamine AIP, taking supplements, making sure vitamins and minerals are top of the range, and still my disease rages on. I was already gluten free with a vitamin d level in the 80s when I was diagnosed. I have done intermittent fasting for years and I have tried longer fasting periods, but these are very hard on my struggling adrenals. So not so simple for all of us.

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Are you familiar with the Minnesota Starvation Experiment?

I’m personally curious how many of our disease - all of which are just different manifestations of impaired metabolism - are related not just to the change in our diets (more seed oils, heavily processed foods, pesticides) but in the dramatic change in the number of calories we consume as a whole. I know it would seem that because we have an obesity epidemic that people are eating on the whole more than our ancestors did. That appears to not be true. Most people I know, especially women, are eating way less calories than our grandparents consumed a few generations ago. Add in all kinds of dieting fads like the low fat craze in the 80’s/90’s, veganism, and now paleo and carnivore and it would seem our collective metabolic rate has fallen dramatically. You can see this in the idea that the average body temperature has fallen. Well when body temp falls (low metabolic rate) you have a reduction in enzymatic function and things start to fall apart.

I have a hypothesis that the current state of ill health across the west is predominantly related to bodies in a state of constant stress due to lifestyle and diet but most importantly - not eating enough!

What are your thoughts on this?

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Good post. I’ve worked on research on “autoimmune” disease for years. First off, females are far more impacted by these diseases than males which is always a strong clue of where we should look (X chr inactivation, dosage compensation); autoAbs and no response to antiTNF is so darn common. I have a parent that has been tortured by this disease for almost a decade. The docs just toss around different infusions and make BANK on these drugs…regardless of response. There are lots of markers that are associated by nothing is understood as a “root cause.” But perhaps just like all other diseases…root causes are not the priority.

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“Autoimmune” has become a dumping ground for the medical establishment when they can’t identify a root cause. They use an arbitrary and bewildering cross section of symptoms to “diagnose” a condition without actually being able to identify a mechanism - neurological symptoms, fatigue, joint pain, and cognitive issues can have multiple potential causes, including environmental toxicity like heavy metal exposure. Some patients diagnosed with autoimmune conditions have later discovered their symptoms were actually caused by things like:

- Heavy metal exposure

- Chronic infections

- Mold exposure

- Chemical sensitivities

- Nutritional deficiencies

- Endocrine disruption

The medical system's tendency to compartmentalize symptoms into disease categories can lead to missing these underlying environmental or toxic causes that require different treatments. This means

patients get autoimmune diagnoses and immunosuppressive treatments when they actually need detoxification or environmental medicine approaches. These interventions have a host of adverse side effects which will almost certainly make things worse in the case of a misdiagnosis - which I’d hazard to say likely happens far more often than any one would care to admit, precisely because of the diagnostic criteria.

The resulting circular logic is dangerous (or if your you are Machiavellian advantageous): Patient has symptoms -> Label it autoimmune -> Prescribe immunosuppressants -> New symptoms appear from the medications -> Must be the "autoimmune condition" progressing -> Increase medications... and so on.

These immunosuppressive drugs are serious business , they can cause:

-Increased infection risk

-Liver damage

- Cancer risk

- Bone density loss

- Digestive issues

- Depression

- Fatigue

If the root cause was actually heavy metal poisoning or environmental toxicity, suppressing the immune system while leaving the actual toxicity untreated is like disabling the fire alarm while the house is still burning. Not only does the underlying problem continue damaging the body, but now its natural defense systems are handicapped too.

The loose diagnostic criteria only exacerbates the situation - it's too easy to sweep complex cases under the autoimmune rug without proper investigation. And once that label is applied, many doctors stop looking for other causes.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

It’s also much more lucrative to label someone with an "idiopathic" condition requiring lifetime management than to identify corporate pollution, toxic products, or industrial exposure as the actual cause. The diagnostic vagueness thus serves multiple interests - except the patient's.

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What have you found out with gout?

Why does the immune system attack the MSU crystals in some people and not others?

Why does something such as a virus trigger the immune response and in others its "random".

I don't believe things are random, just unknown.

(I'm not asking why uric acid is high in the first place)

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One would question if we even have an immune system… 😎

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My wife and I were just discussing how some people are so deeply indoctrinated, especially Doctors, that they are likely to never see past what they are told to believe. You Sir are a rarity. Keep speaking the unpopular TRUTH

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If the immune system was that imprecise and confused, there wouldn't be a human being alive today.

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Really nice and well explained. Thank you!

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Auto immune conditions are not diagnosed based on the presence of auto-antibodies. The presence of auto antibodies simply supports a diagnosis. A lot of patients with Rheumatoid arthritis do not have a positive Rheumatoid factor for instance.

Blood tests will support a picture of inflammation however as will ultrasounds and other scans. You conveniently ignore biopsies however. Biopsies show clear tissue damage in keeping with an auto-immune basis. For example with auto-immune vasculitis, a biopsy of the involved organ will show inflammatory destruction of the blood vessels, with eosinophilic infiltrates and granuloma formation and this is vital for diagnosis.

Your refutation is very weak and skewed highlighting the unimportant. It seems to me that you must spend a lot of time with yes people who have little to no medical training nor knowledge and nod along to all the points you make.

I would concede that the aetiology of what triggers auto-immunity is not known and that there is a lot of research that needs to go into this. I also concede that Western medicine knows very little about what triggers this. However, triggered it certainly is by something leading to the auto-immunity and to deny the disease process which is well established in all scientific modalities is very disingenuous.

If you want to have a serious chat re the above be my guest but I guess you don't which is why you have not engaged in dialogue with me directly thus far and only used my dialogue selectively to promote your own page and viewpoints.

When you cure a case of Type 1 Diabetes please do get in touch with me. As the quintessential auto-immune condition, which comes on in childhood and has a strong genetic basis, it would be interesting to see how you ignore this one.

Anyway your behaviour thus far of not engaging and then printing a piece using my arguments to your followers goes against the spirit of substack and says a lot about you it has to be said. I won't be engaging with you anymore as you are not interested in genuine exchange and discussion but seemingly you are selling something.

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It seems like you are so entrenched in what you’ve been taught that it’s difficult to imagine the model may be incorrect.

Have you listened to Georgi Dinkov at all? He has some interesting things to say about both cancer and type 1 diabetes. He’s been running experiments on treating cancers with a combination of B vitamins and aspirin. It would appear type 1 diabetes and cancer share a similar cellular derangement. These are diseases of metabolic dysfunction. These are cells who cannot properly use glucose for fuel.

I’m not alone in my frustration with the narrow thinking of doctors and researchers who are unwilling to speak to outsiders, outliers and anyone else out there willing to question orthodoxy.

Why not admit the current model is limited and the medications not working? I get what the pharma-industrial complex has to lose, but what do you, personally, have to lose? It seems like as a doctor you only stand to gain insight and a greater potential for success with patients.

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Oh, a biopsy with inflammatory infiltrates?

Well, that changes everything!

I had no idea the biopsied tissue held up a sign saying "I'm attacking my own body."

Brilliant.

Thank you for confirming everyone's suspicions.

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You know that pathologists and immunologists exist. Chat to them with your unique findings.

As for Diabetes type 1, the classic auto-immune condition affecting B cells. This has been thoroughly studied and the mechanism is clear " In the insulitis lesion in type 1 diabetes, invading immune cells produce cytokines, such as IL-1β, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, and interferon (IFN)-γ. IL-1β and/or TNF-α plus IFN-γ induce β-cell apoptosis via the activation of β-cell gene networks under the control of the transcription factors NF-κB and STAT-1. NF-κB activation leads to production of nitric oxide (NO) and chemokines and depletion of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) calcium. "

You do not seem interested in a serious discussion so good luck with that.

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Boy, those are a lot of words for "we found inflammation."

Congratulations to all the pathologists, and immunologists who have brilliantly deduced that organ tissue that is diseased demonstrates inflammation at the level of abstraction they have deemed to be ground truth.

Be a real lad now and stick to your comment above:

"I won't be engaging with you anymore..."

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The brainwashing is so strong, they can't think anymore!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ3_wvUtgic

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Thanks for sharing your story Doc. There is hope for everyone. I wanted to mention that Dr. Royal Lee in the early 1940s talked about two types of antibodies, natural tissue antibodies (auto antibodies) and antibodies to foreign protein. He came up with a method of manufacturing oral antigens to be used as decoys against autoantibodies. Here is link to an newsletter article from Dr. Royal Lee entitled Natural Tissue Antibody, Aging, and Cancer https://www.seleneriverpress.com/historical/applied-trophology-vol-2-no-1-january-1958/. Standard Process, Inc. still manufactures and sells these oral antigens to health care practitioners in the US. They are now called protomorphogens, PMGs for short.

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Have you read the work of Grant Generaux on vitamin A? You might find it interesting re. Autoinmune diseases.

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so what is happening with anaphylaxis?

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I suspect most allergies are on the spectrum of misdiagnosed "autoimmune", but regarding anaphylaxis I haven't explored how it ties into this framing.

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