How to Act Differently and Stop Chronic Inflammation, the Root Cause of Autoimmune Diseases?
Inflammation or the inflammatory state is a sensitive topic in medicine. Indeed, inflammation seems to be connected to almost all known chronic diseases, from heart diseases to cancers, from diabetes to obesity, from autism to dementia, and even to depression. Other inflammatory diseases such as allergies, asthma, arthritis, and autoimmune diseases are also increasing alarmingly.
Doctors are trained to stop inflammation with aspirin, anti-inflammatory drugs, steroids, and increasingly with even more powerful drugs like immunosuppressants, which have numerous and sometimes poorly understood side effects. Unfortunately, they are not trained to find and treat the underlying causes of inflammation in chronic diseases. Hidden allergens, infections, environmental toxins, inflammatory diets, and stress are the real causes of these inflammatory conditions.
Autoimmune diseases affect 8% of the French population and include rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, thyroid disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and more. They are often treated with powerful drugs that weaken the immune response and do not treat the cause. It's like taking a lot of aspirin when you stepped on a nail! The treatment should be about removing the nail rather than taking aspirin for pain or anti-inflammatory drugs for inflammation.
To relieve inflammation, you need to find its source. This is how functional medicine works, a discipline of the future, which seeks to treat the cause, not just the symptoms. Functional medicine involves a different way of thinking about disease that helps doctors understand and treat the real causes of inflammation rather than finding the smartest ways to stop it. Medicine as it is practiced today still involves removing the batteries from a smoke detector while a fire is burning your house down.
Autoimmunity: What is it and How Does it Occur?
We are facing an epidemic of allergic, asthmatic, and autoimmune disorders. Autoimmune diseases include rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, celiac disease, thyroid disease, and many other syndromes of the 21st century. These diseases are all autoimmune in nature and they are connected at the root by a central biochemical process: an uncontrolled immune response also known as systemic inflammation. Your immune system is your defense against invaders. It's your internal army that needs to clearly distinguish between your friends and your enemies. Autoimmunity occurs when your immune system gets confused and starts shooting friendly crossfire at your own tissues. Your body is fighting something, whether it's an infection, a toxin, an allergen, a food, or a stress response, and somehow it redirects its hostile attack on your joints, your brain, your thyroid, your gut, your skin, or sometimes your whole body.
This immune confusion results from what's called molecular mimicry. Conventional approaches don't have methods for finding the offending cause. Functional medicine provides a map, a plan, to find the molecule the cells are mimicking.
Interestingly, autoimmune diseases develop almost exclusively in developed countries. Populations in poorer countries, without modern infrastructure like running water, toilets, washing machines, suffer much less from these diseases. If you grew up on a farm with animals, you're also less likely to suffer from these inflammatory disorders. Playing in the dirt, getting dirty, and being exposed to microbes and infections trains your immune system to recognize what's hostile from what's not.
In Western countries, autoimmune diseases, taken together, represent a huge health burden. They are the eighth leading cause of death in women, reducing average life expectancy for patients by eight years. Unfortunately, many conventional treatments available can worsen the situation. Anti-inflammatory drugs, steroids, immunosuppressants, and new TNF-alpha inhibitors can lead to intestinal bleeding, kidney failure, depression, psychosis, osteoporosis, muscle loss, and diabetes, not to mention infections and cancers.
Through selective use, these drugs can help people regain normal lives. But they are not a long-term solution. They should not be the end of treatment, but a bridge to soothe inflammation while we treat the source of the disease.
Taking Action Against Autoimmune Diseases
- Check for hidden infections (yeast, viruses, bacteria, Lyme, etc.) with the help of a doctor and treat them.
- Check for hidden food allergies with an IgE food test prescribed by your doctor and take necessary action if needed.
- Take a celiac disease diagnostic test consisting of a blood test that any doctor can prescribe.
- Check for heavy metal poisoning: mercury and other metals and pollutants can lead to autoimmunity.
- Take care of your intestines. Due to their role in regulating the immune system, the intestines are at the core of your immune defense system. That's why the main goal of nutrition therapy is to ensure a good balance of the digestive system. Learn more about the consequences of a deficient digestive sphere.
- Use nutrients like fish oil, vitamin C, vitamin D, and probiotics to help soothe your immune response naturally.
- Exercise regularly, it's a natural anti-inflammatory.
- Practice deep relaxation like yoga, deep breathing, or massages, as stress exacerbates the immune response.
- Strengthen your daily intake of magnesium and B vitamins by adjusting your diet with foods rich in these nutrients (legumes, whole grains, chocolate, fruits and vegetables, fish and shellfish) and take a dietary supplement specifically formulated to reduce stress like D-Stress, D-Stress Booster or Mag Boost.
You can also try the Seignalet diet, which is a real alternative to conventional medicine if you suffer from autoimmune diseases. In summary, the Seignalet diet is a gluten-free and dairy-free diet, it includes eliminating coffee and alcohol and preferring low-temperature cooking methods.
Sur la base d’un article rédigé le Dr Mark Hyman.
References: (1) Siegel, C.A., Marden, S.M., Persing, S.M., et al. (2009). Risk of lymphoma associated with combination anti-tumor necrosis factor and immunomodulator therapy for the treatment of Crohn’s disease: a meta-analysis. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 7(8): 874-81. (2) Dr. Jean Seignalet Ancestral Diet.