In spite of what most doctors in the standard American model of medicine say, having an autoimmune diagnosis doesn’t mean you have to “manage your symptoms” with medications and “come back when you get worse” to get yet another class of meds. This is what my doctor said 26 years ago, and it’s still being said in doctor’s offices across the country. You do not need to be sentenced to years of a debilitating disease that just progressively worsens and creates more and more misery.
Remember that your autoimmune disease took anywhere from ten to thirty years to fully develop. There are four corners of your puzzle that need to be solved if you are going to reverse your autoimmunity. Each of us is a unique puzzle, but these four corners anchor the puzzle in so it can be solved. Those four corners are: 1) genetics, 2) gut health, 3) toxic burden, and 4) past trauma and current stress. Like me, you might have a genetic predisposition for your autoimmune disease. However, it’s the other three corner pieces that determine how those genetics express themselves. As an integrative medicine specialist, I work on all four of these corner pieces at the same time. When you are putting a puzzle together you don’t just use one corner piece, you put all four in place. That’s how we reverse autoimmunity and help you get off of harsh medications and restore balance to all of your systems too.
- Test Don’t Guess (and test those genetics)
I do genetic testing on all my patients. If I am going to help them reverse their disease process, I need to know which snps (single nucleotide polymorphisms) are potential pathways for inflammation, poor liver detoxification, proper dietary recommendations, mitochondrial health, methylation, oxygenation, histamine removal, estrogen metabolism, poor stress responses, and so much more.
- Gut Health
If you have an autoimmune diagnosis you have intestinal permeability or leaky gut. Your gut contains over 65% of your immune system, over 100 trillion microbes, and is responsible for most of your health and well-being. Leaky gut is a primary reason for immune system reactivity against food, infections, toxins, and stress. The good news is, you can heal your gut if you know who is living in there, how well they are getting along, and what they are doing in response to what you are eating, thinking and breathing.
- Toxic Burden
You have likely heard about the many tons of toxins you are being exposed to every single minute of every single day of your life on this planet. We have not been very good guests on Mother Earth and she’s struggling with keeping our air, water and soil clean of the contaminants we keep polluting her with. The Environmental Working Group is a wonderful resource to peruse if you want to know more about the chemicals being stored in your body each day.
The Autoimmune Detox Summit is April 12-16, 2021. You will hear experts talking about the various toxicants that influence our genetic expression and help to create autoimmune disease such as EMFs, chemicals, hormone disruptors, viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, and our toxic thoughts and beliefs. Join me as I talk to some of the world’s experts on detoxification of home, office, world and body, mind and spirit.
- Heal Your Past Trauma
The last piece of the puzzle needing to be clicked into place to reverse your autoimmune disease is one that is very much under-recognized and probably the most challenging to heal. Past childhood trauma and current day stress are serving to create nervous system reactivity pathways that inform your immune system reactivity pathways.
You were not designed to remain in a perpetual “zebra being chased by lion” state. We are meant to have short episodic stretches of fight, flight, freeze, or faint. When they become chronic habituated patterns of nervous system reactivity, many of our body systems begin to fail, from hormones to brain function to gut health to immunity. When your own systems are combative, there is no winner. Our goal is to create a collaborative environment within your body, heart, mind, and spirit so autoimmunity is no longer your habit. This means healing the meanings and beliefs that occurred in the child mind that was you in response to events you could not understand so many years ago. This doesn’t need to be capital “T” trauma…it can be chronic overwhelm and lower case “t” trauma.
My mission in this life is to support those of you who are struggling with autoimmunity by teaching you how to solve the puzzle that is you. This happens on all levels of you…your physical body, your energetic body, your emotional body, your mental body, and your spiritual body. Walking the path of transforming this challenge into wisdom and well-being is a journey I am always honored to take with my patients.