Video: What Is Autoimmune Disease?

Hi, Dr. Minkoff here.

I want to talk to you about autoimmune disease or an autoimmune condition. If you look at the list of conditions that are prevalent in our current society, among the most noted are this category of autoimmune disease.

Now, what does that actually mean? So if you break down the word autoimmune.

Auto means self.

Immune is the system in the body which protects us from foreign organisms or materials.

So our immune system is set up such that our cells have a signal, or a receptor, or a protein, which is our ID tag, and all the cells in our body have that tag. Anybody else’s body will have slightly different tag. Our immune system, which is made up of white blood cells, and various kinds of chemical mediators. Its purpose is to be able to identify what is self, what is us, our tissues, as opposed to a foreign tissue.

So if a bacteria comes into our body, it doesn’t have the receptor ID tag that says it’s “us”. That triggers the immune system to go kill that bacteria, or go after that virus, or identify that chemical as foreign, and then protect us. So the immune system is very sophisticated because it’s got to be able to tell with kind of a radar system of are you friend or are you foe?

And if you’re friend, I leave you alone. If you’re foe, I attack you. If foreign materials get into our body, they may stress this immune system, and the one that’s the most common is that our biggest exposure to the outer world, besides our skin, is our intestine.

So if you took a balloon, if you tore out all the intestine from the mouth to the anus, and you took a balloon and you blew it up to see how big it would be, it would be a surface area of a couple of tennis courts. It’s enormous. That intestine has a lining group of cells. They’re the inner lining cells, which are only one cell thick. And the difference between the inside of the intestine and the inside of the body is only one cell thick.

Now, that lining is supposed to be rebuilt about every three or four days, because if the cells get stressed, and they get weird, and the connection between the two of them breaks down, then you could theoretically get things coming between those cells, they could enter our body unsurveyed and get inside of us.

Now, if you eat, let’s say you have a piece of steak, or a piece of cheese, or a tomato in the upper intestine, digestion takes place where each of those things is broken down into very small, tiny things. So individual amino acids, or individual fats, or individual vitamins, or minerals, or individual sugars, if it’s a carbohydrate, and the cells that are there will then take up those materials, pass them through into the bloodstream so that those things can then be carried to the cells and they can be used to manufacture our body or fix our body.

If you have breakdowns in this inner lining, then things, that aren’t completely digested could pass through. This is known as leaky gut. That means that if you have a piece of protein which isn’t broken down into the basic amino acids, it might be some part of a chicken muscle or a marrow, or an undigested soybean particle that comes across that lining without being screened first. Right below those cells is the major immune system in the body.

It’s called Gut-Associated Lymphoid Tissue. That’s there because if something comes through the immune system, then would be able to identify it as, hey, you don’t have the right receptors, you don’t have the right proteins, you’re not me, and get attacked. There are thousands or tens of thousands of things that cause breakdowns in this barrier. Every drug causes a breakdown in the barrier. Aspirin, Advil, steroids, blood pressure medicines cause breakdowns in the barrier.

Chemicals, pesticides, insecticides cause breakdowns in the barrier. So unless the body is able to fix it, fix it, fix it, fix it. Two tennis courts, big. You’re going to get leaks, and when you get leaks, you get foreign things coming into the body, foreign proteins. And the immune system identifies those foreign proteins. Hey, you’re not supposed to be here. And sometimes that system breaks down, and those foreign proteins get into the system, or the immune system makes a mistake.

It says, gee, that muscle looks foreign. I’m going to make a reaction to it. I’m going to make an antibody to it. Or that piece of cartilage I’m going to make a reaction to it It then enters the blood system, and now it’s looking for foreign cartilages. And that cartilage from a cow looks very close to the cartilage from us. And the immune system says; hey, that finger cartilage or that elbow cartilage or that hip cartilage, that looks kind of funny to me, and then you get an attack by your own immune system against your own tissues.

Now, it’s estimated now that about 0.5% of our bodies are plastic. Because who doesn’t eat things that are packaged in plastic? Well, nobody. What happens if on your thyroid gland, one of those circulating plastic particles sticks on the edge of one of those thyroid cells, and that immune system goes by there and says; hey, that doesn’t look like my thyroid cell, that’s got something on there that doesn’t look like me at all. Well, you shouldn’t be there, I’m gonna attack.

Put your hands up if someone diagnosed you with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, what is it? Well, it’s an immune attack on your thyroid. What if you have root canals, and those toxins go down into your neck into your thyroid, and it makes that tissue look foreign? Well, you get an attack.

Or mercury from your fillings or fluoride painted on your teeth. The potentials are endless. Why do we have an autoimmune epidemic? Because we got all this foreign stuff that’s tearing up our intestine, and exposing us to all these things, and these things get into our bodies, and our tissues look foreign, and then here you go. Now, the other thing that can happen is infections can do this. Viruses can do this.

And they alter the surface proteins of tissues, or they alter the internal structures of tissues. In Lupus, a very common autoimmune disease, the diagnostic lab test is an immune protein called ANA AntiNuclear Antibody.

It means that the body is producing a protein to attack the nucleus of the cell, the brains of the cell. Now, why is it doing that? Well, because it looks funny and the immune system is actually doing its job.

It’s just that the amount of toxins and infections that we’re exposed to now is just way too much. What can you do about it?

If you go to a rheumatologist, and you are diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, unless it’s very obvious what the cause of it is, you will be put on medications to suppress your immune system so that it doesn’t attack you, and it might be steroid medication, it might be a whole group of biologicals.

The best selling drugs now in the world are medicines like Enbrel and Humira. These are drugs which turn off your own immune system so that it won’t attack you. But guess what happens if you turn off your immune system? You get cancer, or tuberculosis, or you die from a food contaminant that your immune system should protect you from, but your immune system is suppressed. It won’t do it.

So when people come to us with autoimmune disease, which is very, very, very common, in fact, virtually everyone we see has some degree of autoimmune disease, we have to first say, what are the things that are causing this to happen. You have candida overgrowth in your gut or bad bacteria, or you are ingesting poisons which are tearing up your gut, or you are amino acid deficient, or vitamin deficient, and your gut can’t heal itself.

We have to fix that stuff so that your gut now has a good lining, and you’re not taking drugs, or other things that are going to break it up. If you have low grade underlying infections, we have to treat those infections, because they can trigger this autoimmune response. If you’re on other pharmaceutical drugs that are causing your intestine to be injured, we have to try to get other ways to do it so that without putting you in danger, reduce the liability of those medications.

And then we have to kind of reeducate your immune system so that it recognizes what your cells really look like, and then it stops attacking you. And so when someone we do levels of environmental toxins, and plastics, and chemicals, and pesticides, we have to get people switched over and detoxified, so the level goes way down. You don’t have to be perfect, but you have to get it to a point where the body can actually function, and not spend all its time attacking itself.

And it can keep the immune system directed to where it’s supposed to be, which is toward protecting you from the things that could really hurt you in the form of infection, viruses, parasites, things like that. So at LifeWorks, this is our approach to autoimmune conditions. It’s really not just treating the symptoms. It’s find and address what is the root cause of autoimmunity. You know, what are the triggers like toxins, infections, gut issues that are fueling, or causing, or prompting the immune system to attack the body.

And so as we go through these things, so we will do a very detailed analysis of your body of what are these things, handle those things, and then it’s kind of a miracle, the body is very, very efficient. It does not produce antinuclear antibodies, or rheumatoid factor antibodies against the body if it doesn’t have to. And if we find what the reason is why the body is doing this, and handle it, the body stops producing these chemicals that are virtually attacking the body.

And we have had case after case where the rheumatoid factor is positive, or the antinuclear factor is positive, and the person been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, which is like rheumatoid arthritis, or multiple sclerosis, or ulcerative colitis, and we fix the underlying problem, and guess what, six to nine months later, you measure the rheumatoid factor or the ANA, and they’re not there anymore. Because it’s not really a disease.

It is an attempt by the body to fix something, and if you fix the body, then the immune system doesn’t have to fix that problem, and it will stop attacking the body, and then the disease is gone.

And then you have someone who feels good, and they don’t have the problems caused by their own immune system attacking them. So if you want that, come see us.