Dhru Purohit Show - How to Prevent and Treat Autoimmune Conditions Using The Power of Food with Dr. Elroy Vojdani

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Pendulum. Autoimmune diseases are an increasing issue in our country, with over 80 million Americans dealing with some form or another. Type 1 diabetes, Hashimoto’s, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, colitis, and Crohn’s disease are just some of the more than 70 identified forms of autoimmunity that leave people feeling sick, lost, and powerless.    Conventional treatment for autoimmune conditions gives little hope to those who are suffering because conventional medicine treats these diseases as lifelong illnesses that often require medication to manage symptoms. Through the lens of Functional Medicine, though, we’re able to see things differently; we’re able to see there are many underlying factors that contribute to autoimmune disease that can vary from person to person even for the same disease. Food, of course, plays a huge role in how our immune system functions. I’m not talking about “immune-boosting” foods to avoid a cold; I’m talking about the molecular makeup of foods that can exacerbate your condition due to the immune response they elicit. I’m also talking about anti-inflammatory foods that provide the right nutritional ingredients for healing. On today’s mini-episode, Dhru has a fascinating talk with Dr. Elroy Vojdani about leveraging food choices on an extremely personalized level to treat autoimmunity.  Dr. Vojdani is the founder of Regenera Medical, a boutique Functional Medicine practice in Los Angeles, California. He has coauthored over 20 articles in the scientific literature and continues to play an integral role in research related to autoimmune, neurodegenerative, and autoinflammatory conditions. He is also the author of When Food Bites Back: Taking Control of Autoimmune Disease. In this episode we dive into:   -Why there is an explosion of autoimmune disease -The connection between food and autoimmune diseases -Foods that damage the gut lining -Modern wheat vs. native wheat -The three stages of autoimmunity -How to prevent and treat autoimmune conditions   Listen to the full episode here. For more on Dr. Vojdani, visit his website, regeneramedical.com, and get his book, When Food Bites Back, here.  This episode is brought to you by InsideTracker and Pendulum. InsideTracker provides detailed nutrition and lifestyle guidance based on your individual needs. Right now, they’re offering my podcast community 20% off. Just go to insidetracker.com/DHRU to get your discount and try it out for yourself. Pendulum is the first company to figure out how to harness the amazing benefits of Akkermansia in a probiotic capsule. To receive 20% off your first purchase of Pendulum’s Akkermansia probiotic supplement, go to Pendulumlife.com and use code DHRU20. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Prode here. For our Monday mini episode today, we're talking all things autoimmune and especially why the heck is there an explosion of autoimmune diseases that the world is facing today, which by the way, 80% of all autoimmune conditions impact women. Did you know that? Well, on the podcast today, we have Dr. Elroy Vigdani, a dear friend of mine, to explore this conversation of autoimmune. And we're going to be chatting about a few things.

Number one, the connection between food and autoimmune conditions and diseases. You know, mainstream medicine, well-intention. of course, but they do not talk about the connection between food and autoimmune conditions. Why is that? And what is the connection that Dr. Elroy Vigdani has seen from his work and his father's work, who's a pioneer in this space? We're also going to be talking about foods that can potentially damage the gut lining, increasing leakiness of the gut, otherwise known as intestinal permeability. We're going to be talking about the difference of modern wheat versus native wheat. Modern wheat, meaning the modern glyphosate sort of soaked wheat that we grow primarily in America

versus native wheat, which they grow in many other countries. And in Europe, that seems to be one of the reasons why people feel better when they have gluten and wheat in other countries that are not the United States. Lastly, we'll be talking about the three stages of autoimmunity and how to prevent and treat autoimmune conditions. If you've missed this episode in the past, this mini episode is a fantastic review of the top highlights with our conversation with Dr. Elroy Vigdani. It's a fantastic listen. Stay tuned. Now, the big question is always why. You know, if you look up, there's so

many different autoimmune conditions that are out there, Hashimoto's, Graze disease, you know, MS, all sorts of different ones that are there. They're all under this umbrella of autoimmune. And when you look them up or you check out the Wikipedia or the WebMD, largely the answer is we don't know why this occurs. So let's talk about it. Why does this happen? Why is an error happening? Our body is so intelligent. So what is causing, especially over the history of humanity, that we're having an explosion with these conditions? The reason that Wikipedia doesn't have an answer for you is because for every individual with an autoimmune disease, there is a different set of whys, meaning that person's life to the point that the error happened is what resulted. in the error happening. And you have to map out that personal journey to be able to understand their why. So when we look at why there's this explosion of autoimmune disease, you know,

if you want to consider them all as a disease entity, being the predominant disease entity we're facing here in the United States, which is true, it's because so many things in those path, the path of life for us are changing, right? Our food industry has gone through dramatic change in the last 30, 40 years. We're exposed to more chemicals on a daily basis than we were before. Martin Blazer, who is an incredibly brilliant scientist discovered H. Pylori has this key term also, which is the loss of our ancestral microbiome being a very big player. That means that as each generation passes for us in the last 100, 150 years because of the advent of antibiotics and the birth via cesarean section, we are losing chunks of our gut bacteria that shouldn't normally be

passed on to us just like our genes are passed on to us. You put all those things together and you end up with an immune system that doesn't have the same kind of neutral input. It is set up for attack because it sees change and difference from what it was in terms. tended to see, let's say, 200 years ago. It's almost in a way, through the COVID pandemic, so many people who had never really even thought about an immune system were now all of a sudden thinking about an immune system. And especially if you were paying attention to health and wellness and looking for different things that you could do to support your immune system, a term that got thrown around a lot

was, you know, boosting your immune system. And in a way, we don't want our immune system so boosted because autoimmune is an example of that. We don't want it underactive. We don't want it overreactive. We want it right there in a neutral place. Correct. This is one of the big misconceptions with the immune system, autoimmunity, and this general term inflammation that gets thrown around. Everything is an inflammatory disorder. The truth is that autoimmune disease comes in numerous flavors. You can have an inflamed overactive immune system. You can have an underactive immune system and still end up with autoimmunity. So having anti-inflammatories on board really are dependent on the specific individual nature of that person's

autoimmune disease. Not only are there different autoimmune conditions, but really what you're talking about here and what other individuals have shared on the podcast is that let's take, for instance, you know, Hashimoto's, which primarily impacts women, but also some men too. It is this thyroid condition that's there. But every single person that has Hashimoto's, if you had a thousand patients with Hashimoto's, they all have their unique combination that led to that. Yeah. So while traditional medicine, well-intentioned, is looking for the one pill and there's a place for prescription, right? Especially as you can see, anybody who's listening here that has something like Hashimoto's, you know, drugs can be incredibly beneficial that's there. But I think what

the lens is that you're bringing in is that it's not one thing that causes it. So it's not going to be one thing that fixes it. This episode is brought to you by Inside Tracker. You know, I'm turning 40 this year, and I can honestly say I've never felt better. So many people have this fear about getting older because they think it has to come with chronic disease and a deteriorating mental and physical health. If that were the case, I'd be worried about getting older too. But it doesn't have to be that way.

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So, you know, you list out some of these buckets. We talked about environmental toxins. We talked about viruses. You mentioned microbiome and food. There might be some other ones that are inside of there. But let's start with food because that's always a big question. And it was one of the first things you mentioned in terms of the soup, the complex soup, that has created the right conditions for an explosion of autoimmune. So talk to us big picture about food.

You know, you have a book coming out in September. And it's called When Food Bites Back. So tell us a little about food. And how is it that it's now, we're not just, you know, for hundreds of years, humanity primarily dealt with are people getting enough food? Yeah. We were dealing with famine. We still are a little bit.

But now, you know, more people die of obesity than die from famine worldwide. It's, you know, famine is still horrific. It's challenging. And it's primarily been that we went from, is there enough food for everybody to now? we're really asking ourselves, what food should people be eating? So how is food and autoimmune connected? Yeah. So incredible point and such a really important foundation for us to have this conversation about autoimmune disease. Food is absolutely shifting the table on us and is starting to hurt us instead of help us anymore, which is why these diets are becoming so common.

The reason for that is twofold, in my opinion. Number one is the biggest driver of of the tone of the immune system is the environment of the gut. Now, the environment of the gut is a big thing. You know, it includes what kind of bacteria are in there. What's the state of the lining? What's the state of the mucosal immune system? But that internal environment is probably the most important thing for our health in general and also specifically autoimmune disease.

and when there are errors in that environment, that's a ripe mechanism for a loss of tolerance. Loss of tolerance always occurs in relationship to proteins. The immune system recognizes proteins, antibodies are directed at portions of proteins called peptides. So if there is an influx of a protein or peptide to an imbalanced microenvironment, That will set somebody up for autoimmunity because that protein itself will be the thing that the immune system sees as potentially problematic when the internal environment is broken. To get to that broken place, we've done lots of things to ourselves, right? We have changed the nature of some of the staple grains that we consume. We have changed the nature of the way that we grow and consume protein, animal protein.

By that I mean the actual protein compositions in these foods themselves today are different than they were 100 years ago because of the industrial food revolution. And then we use tremendous amounts of pesticides with some of those grains that further creates a set of signals to the immune system that something's not right. We use antibiotics tremendously. And there's some good to that. but I feel like we've stepped into the realm of using them too much. Those antibiotics also change the internal microenvironment.

And I think our lifestyle these days is that other thing. You know, we work a lot. We're stressed as Americans. I think we carry a lot of emotional stress. We tend to maybe drink a little bit more than we should. And you put all of those things together in the big pot and you get an unhappy internal environment that wants to figure out,

it's unhappy and it only knows how to recognize proteins. So the protein that it sees the most often that's tagged with maybe a pesticide is the one it's going to choose as the target. Wheat being the primary example, gluten being the primary food that we try to eliminate. And whatever is the similar protein to that in the body is going to be the one that we unintentionally attack because they look like. That's molecular mimicry. in a nutshell. Which is one of the, you know, just zooming out, molecular mimicry is one of the pathways to creating the conditions for autoimmune disease to flourish.

Yeah. Probably the most important one when it comes to gut health itself, right? So we're basically talking about there's a border in your body and many people have heard us do episodes and other people do episodes about a term leaky gut or intestinal permeability. But actually it'd be good to just revisit it. sort of describe it, you know, using some kind of analogy so that people can picture this, this sort of border inside the body. Absolutely. So one of the most fundamental concepts

in functional personalized medicine, autoimmune disease is the state of what's happening at the lining of the small intestine, right? Under normal circumstances, we have in, I would say a wall with a peephole in it where the immune system sitting on the inside of that wall can open up the hole, take a peek at what's on the other side, and say, do I like that or not like that? Do I open the door and let these guys in, or do I keep it closed? And I'm sorry, you can't come in right now. Exactly. And that door is onylin, right? So that's a protein that basically allows this otherwise concrete wall to have an opening in it so that the immune system can send some scouts to the other side to say, hey, what's here? The scouts then run back. And

in through that door, tell all the other parts of the immune system, hey, you'll never believe what I saw, right? I saw a gluten with some roundup attached to it. Right. Well, I saw that, you know, I mean, think about a border between like US and Canada. Right. You know, if there was a hostile environment, all of a sudden with our neighbors, we got into a fight.

You'll never believe what they're putting on their French fries over there, right? Right. You know, and come back and tell everybody what the state of the other side is. And really this wall for people to understand how significant it is, it's really the first time that the outside world is meeting the inside world, right? Because as you chew food, as you swallow it, it goes through your stomach, your digestive acids, it goes through your large intestines into the small intestines that are there. It's still, the body kind of considers that the outside world. It is the outside without question, right? I mean, it's mixed with stomach

acid and bacteria and a bunch of other things. But when you put things in your mouth and chew it, you are putting the outside world into your inside, right? And it's the job of that wall and the immune system on the other side of it to say, hey, what part of this do we want? What part of this do we not want? And it's actually leaky gut intestinal permeability is a breakdown both in the wall and with the immune system on the other side of it. So the door is now in an open position. Anything can come in and out. It's not just open for a brief amount of time, see what's there and run back. The gates of the castle are broken. Exactly. They can't distinguish who's friendly and who's foe. Exactly. And now foe starts to come in. Exactly. And then the fundamental actual issue there

is what the immune system sees on the other end and the signaling that it sends to the rest of the body. That is where autoimmunity actually takes place, right? This can go on for a couple of days and the immune system can handle it, right? We have 60% of our immune system on the other end of this for a reason. Something goes on, we need to be able to have a secondary wall, a secondary defense. If it goes on for months or years and you don't know about it because most people with intestinal permeability are asymptomatic or they don't know that they're symptomatic, then all of a sudden the immune system says, hey, what's going on here? This is not something I was intended to deal with for months. I am running out of recruits. I can't keep making these guys.

and then it sends out signals to the rest of the body, the systemic immune system, and says, you've got to help me here. Something is happening, right? And it's where that next step occurs, where that systemic immune system says, okay, we're having an issue here. We're sending everything we can to the other side of that wall, and we're going to try to eradicate them. And that's where you start producing antibodies to proteins.

What are some of the biggest culprits that are leading, specifically in this category of food, because other aspects can damage this wall too. Other things can damage the body and we'll get into those other classifications. But what is it on the food side, top culprits that are causing a lot of this damage that it's not just guessing you guys can actually, and you test for this on a pretty regular basis? Yeah, I mean, you know, no surprise for those of us that are seasoned in the functional and personalized medicine. in the world. Gluten is the number one culprit. There's several reasons for that, you know, likely it has a lot to do with, again, the combination of the protein molecule itself with a pesticide commonly attached to it, which is Roundup, along with the large nature of this protein, it's a very, very big food protein that doesn't get fully broken down by the time it gets the

small intestine, so it's more prone to be attacked because we're used to seeing very small portions of it, not large portions of it. And it also has a lot of protein sequences that look similar to other parts of our body. So for example, thyroid tissue, brain tissue. I'd say, you know, the central nervous system and the thyroid are the two biggest places where gluten reactivity seems to occur, but it can cross-react with our cell membrane. So all the cells in your body can be attacked. That would happen in fossil lipid syndrome.

You know, it really is pretty ubiquitous. It looks very similar to synovial and joint tissue, so you can attack your joints. There are many parts of the body that are attacked by gluten. And then you move on down to what are the other common things that we consume in modern America and it's processed grains outside of, let's say, even wheat. So those tend to be the next on the list. So corn would be next up. Again, you know, something that has been modified by the food industry, a great deal in the last 30, 40 years.

So maybe our immune system isn't programmed to see it in its current state. And it tends to carry a lot of pesticide. Soy is another example of something like that as well. So, you know, people hear this and especially if they're new. And I appreciate all the new listeners that are coming into the podcast. And there's a sense of, wait, so you're saying wheat, this ancient food that we've been eating for so many thousands of years or corn, you know, this vegetable that has, you know, some cases, you know, so many beneficial properties or soy that certain regions have been

having. What all of a sudden has happened that these now are causing an issue because, are you sure? Because humanity has been eating them for a while. Maybe not long, as long as people think, they're actually still pretty relatively new. Correct. But what has happened with these items? Because you're not, you haven't actually been eating these foods for a long time, right? You're thinking of ancient, by ancient, I'll say 200 years old versions of these grains, which were similar to the ones that we consumed, let's say a thousand years ago. But those are not what you're consuming today, right? Like my family is from the Middle East, right? The wheat that we would have consumed has nothing to do with the wheat that we consume here in the United States. Their

proteins are not similar. Same with corn, right? The corn that we consume here in the U.S. and in other Western parts of the world is nothing like the traditionally grown natural agriculture product in, let's say, Latin America or in East Africa. They're not similar to each other at all. You're not consuming what people consumed a couple hundred years ago. And that's such an important point because I was watching a documentary and I saw that actually sourdough bread, which was some of the first levitated bread, originated from, you know, Iran in that region.

And they were, it was a completely different. process. And molecularly, those, that wheat, that's part of the process actually looks, looks different. So there's modern wheat and there's native wheat. And actually you and some of your colleagues were have, I don't know, I believe you were involved in this. We had Dr. Karazin on the podcast and he was talking about how he actually has looked at the impact of native wheat versus more modernized. I don't know if it's the appropriate terms hybridized. I'm not sort of well versed in that category. and how they actually have a different response in the body. Yeah, that's my father's research.

So he's actually the one who did those studies. Can you talk about them for a second? Came out with that idea. Absolutely, you know, like it's anecdotally we'll hear in the clinic that, you know, originally people will say I lived in Germany for 30 years of my life, I moved here to LA, and then all hell broke loose and we do testing for them and they have tremendous non-celiac gluten sensitivity. we pull them off of gluten here.

They do great. They'll come back to me and they'll say, Dr. V, I'm going home to see my parents. I can't not have this local bread product around the corner from my parents' house. I have to have it. Can I have it? And I'll say, well, we'll find something out about your body by you having it. So go have it. Let's go run that experiment.

There's no blood test that tells me more information than what is about to happen when you go home and have that bread, right? in your home environment with a different set of emotional circumstances and a different, likely very different grain than the one you were consuming here. And nine times out of ten, they'll be absolutely fine. And then they'll come back to L.A. and they'll say, what the hell? You know, like, how do I explain this to them? Right? And it's like, well, you weren't consuming the same grain and you were in a different set of circumstances. So that holds very true, I think, for people between Europe and the U.S.

And the question that always came to us scientifically, you know, I'll take my white coat off in the clinic and then go into the lab with my dad and we'll say, what makes those differences, right? It has to be protein composition. So we'll pull an ancient wheat product like Einkorn and we'll pull a modern commercial wheat product from the U.S. We will extract the peptides, both water and alcohol-soluble peptides, are present in those products. And then we'll take a person's blood who has reacted to the North American version

and see if they react to, let's say, an ancient Middle Eastern version and there are dramatic differences. And it makes absolute sense. The peptides and proteins are different. They are not the same product. They are given the same name globally, but they are not the same product. Now, a big part of your work and your father's work is, look, let's help people who are diagnosed, for sure, we want to help people who have autoimmune, but even if you're listening and you don't have an autoimmune disease yet, you want to start thinking in the direction of, do you have pre-pre-re autoimmune? So help explain what those might be, and I'm not even sure if that's the language that you use, but it's the concept. Yeah, so autoimmune disease, like many chronic

diseases, take any number of years to decades to develop from the time the error in the immune system occurs, right? And there are three stages of quote-unquote auto-immunity. stage one would be the error occurring and you're starting to develop the antibodies in your blood to your own tissue. Stage two is those antibodies are actually binding to the tissue, which is an important kind of progression in that space and causing some type of inflammatory damage, but the tissue itself is not irreversibly damaged yet. And stage three is where the vast majority of people get diagnosed. That's where the antibodies have been present for, let's say, three to 15 years. it's been binding to tissue causing inflammation, those vague symptoms of brain fog, joint pain,

digestive issues, hair loss have been going on. No one's been able to pinpoint what's happening. And then boom, oh, guess what? You have RA, right? And at that point, you know, you can still do something about it, but it's not the ideal point to intervene. So actually, this idea came about in a very big paper, I think published in science or nature in 2014, was the idea of how do we pick up people in stage one or even stage two? That's far better than picking them up in stage three.

And we have autoimmune antibodies mapped out for virtually every autoimmune disease that we know of so far. So why don't we create screening tests or tools to be able to screen for at least the most common ones that people suffer from? And then if you find them, then you've got to do the work to say, why are these forming? How do I stop them from forming? what can I do to help that person? And that's where the personalized functional medicine algorithm and kind of way of thinking really helps. But you start with, does the person have autoimmune antibodies circulating in their bloodstream? Are they stage one or stage two?

From there, all of us as physicians and all the practitioners that are out there need to put on the Sherlock Holmes hat and dig down and say, my job is to now figure out why. Why are these antibodies developing? and what can I do about it? And granted, this is not something we learn in medical school. That's okay. We still have the ability of the rest of our lives to learn something that we didn't learn in medical school and actually continue to help people and progress as a practitioner or physician.

So the next step there is to say, okay, let me get an idea of what's happening with this person's immune system. I know these antibodies are present and they're problematic for autoimmune disease. But what is actually happening with the immune system itself? And that's where immunotyping comes in. Aminotyping gives you the ability to say specifically, is there a problem with B cells? Is the problem with T cells? If the problem is with T cells,

where is the problem happening? Is it too much of this? Not enough of that. Where's the imbalance? TH1, TH2? And from there, you get a tremendous look. at what the potential road to that place might have been, and your Sherlock Holmes ability becomes easier.

So let's now talk about practical things that everybody can start thinking about, whether they have an autoimmune condition or whether they're worried that they might be on their way. So let's even start on a base level. When you are doing patient education, when you're talking to people that are out there because you give lectures and stuff,

or you're doing podcasts or YouTube videos, when somebody is thinking, you know, am I on my way to getting an autoimmune disease and how would I even know? What are some stuff that are widely available that a test that they can get from their doctor or just symptoms or things that they might be going through that could be an indication that something is going on and there's a battle happening internally? Yeah, there are really readily available basic screening tests that any physician can order. physicians will be more than happy to, if you come to them and say, listen, I'm, I'm experiencing these vague symptoms. I'm concerned that there's something happening with my immune system. You don't necessarily have to say autoimmune disease because you, I think, trigger an idea in the head that may be difficult to entirely understand for the physician, you know, because

autoimmune diseases are very, very detailed and challenged and they go to different subspecialties. So let's say you're going to your primary care doc. like I've got joint pain, something's up with my brain, my memory is going, I'm too young for this, I just don't feel right. You know, can we check on my immune system? And an anti-nuclear antigen, a rheumatoid factor, and basic just white blood cell count, looking at whether your white blood cell counts are normal, and then basic inflammatory markers, which is ESR, erythrocyte sedimentation.

rate and a CRPC reactive protein. Believe it or not, would that basic set, you can get a yes, no, that for the majority of people out there will give you some semblance of whether something is happening with the immune system in a negative way and kind of confirmed for you that, hey, I've got to find somebody to join my team to continue this investigation. Or, you know, Maybe I should continue reading wonderful resources from Mark and other people out there that teach people the basics of executing anti-inflammatory lifestyles that can therefore start combating what's happening with the immune system at that point. So now let's talk to the people who have a diagnosis already, right?

They've walked away with one of the type of diagnosis that are out there. How many total autoimmune conditions are there? More than 70. It's growing every day. I mean, you know, like there's some argument that Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are autoimmune diseases at this point. Strong argument, actually, if you're going to use a monoclonal antibody against a protein produced by an immune defense in the brain for Alzheimer's, I think it's a pretty strong case for it

being some type of autoimmune condition. So 70 plus diagnosable conditions that are out there, diseases that are in the category of autoimmune, you know, take us through, you know, you walked us through the original buckets in the beginning that were the primary vehicles for creating the conditions. Yeah. And it's not just that it's going to be one of them. It's usually a combination of them that are going to create the root causes and conditions for autoimmune to express itself at a level where especially it has a diagnosis.

You know, we're talking, this podcast is really about two parts. It's catching it early, maybe before it has a name so that you don't end up in a position, which was your story, you know, knock on wood, that there's people that are out there that are listening that can do that. And then there's also, okay, you have a diagnosis. What do we want to be looking at? So let's go through some of these pillars. And I'd like to revisit again food one more time before we go on to the next ones.

And in the book that's out, you know, or that's coming out shortly when food bites back, what are some of the key principles? We talked about intestinal permeability. We talked about how food actually connects into it. And we talked about the two biggest culprits, at least right now, with them being, you know, dairy and people reacting to the casein protein that's inside of there. And then, you know, the gluten protein, which is going to be inside of wheat. Right? So we have those. What are other things that you want to tell people about food, both things that can be harming them and things that can be helpful in the process of recovery? I think the most important thing to take home from this is that it should be a little bit of a precise decision what lifestyle intervention you should execute.

And that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be something decided. by testing. We know enough about specific autoimmune conditions to know the common triggers for each individual autoimmune disease. So something you'll see in the book is that we go over large autoimmune categories by organ system. And at the end of the chapter, we'll say, hey, if you're suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, these are the common trigger foods, right? Gluten, lectins, dairy, corn, right? And the reason for it is covered in the first portion of the book, why specific categories of foods, gluten, lectins, corn, dairy, you know, food additives, gums, everything under the sun, salt, why they specifically

trigger autoimmune conditions. And then each chapter subsequent is the brain chapter, the thyroid chapter, the bone chapter, the gut chapter, et cetera. And each one has a specific set of foods that should be eliminated if that is the condition that the person is suffering from, based on mapping the different similar peptides between the autoimmune target and the foods themselves. And this is all the accumulation, I think, of 40 years worth of work that my dad has done in this space and me applying it clinically every day in the practice and saying, we've got to get this out there for people. Let's do an example. First of all, that's incredible.

I haven't seen the book yet, but I can't wait to dive into it. Yep. And that's an incredible resource. And please, if you're listening and you're dealing with autoimmune, like you got to go out there and get it. And we have the link inside of the show notes. But let's give, let's give an example. So let's use something like rheumatoid arthritis, right? And, you know, you were mentioning a few of them. You talk about gluten, which we've talked about before, lectins. Yeah. Some, you know, a lot of Dr. Gundry's work, who's been on the podcast before, he's kind of been the lectin guy that a lot of people know of. Some would argue sensationally. some would argue not sensationally enough. But, you know, tell us, like, how is it that,

just a reminder, what are lectins, but how could that be related to, I don't know if that was an actual example that you were giving with rheumatoid arthritis or if you were just making that up, but how could lectins be connected to, you know, a particular autoimmune disease more than another? Yeah. So to answer the question first of, is it too sensational or not enough? The answer again is it needs to be a personal decision. Lectins are problematic for some autoimmune conditions and some people and not problematic for other autoimmune conditions and people. Rumatoid arthritis is a very good example in which lectins are often problematic.

The reason for that is very straightforward. In research that my dad did, he found that the reason lectins are an issue is because they cause something called agglutination, which means that proteins will stick to each other. They'll allow different proteins to stick to each other, specifically antibodies. They'll form complexes where they will just bind to each other. And in rheumatoid arthritis, one of the big antibodies is something called rheumatoid factor, which is, in fact, an agglutination of two of our own antibodies circulating in the blood

and sticking to the joints, right? That's literally what a rheumatoid factor is. So if you're consuming a food that causes agglutination, you are going to be. going to increase the amount of rheumatoid factor you produce because you're allowing an environment that allows antibodies to stick to each other. By removing the agglutinin in food category, you are reducing the body's desire to have antibodies stick to each other and therefore reducing symptoms and the propensity for rheumatoid arthritis. It's very specific, right? So the foods that create agglutination, gluten is number one. That's why it's gluten, right? Soy,

beans contain something called soybean agglutinin in them. So soy is number two. Beans, so black beans, brown beans, lima beans, pinto beans. That's number three on the list, right? So we've covered three foods, some of them specifically in the lectin family, but we're talking about the ones that have the most dramatic impact on rheumatoid arthritis itself in order. And then you move down the list of lectin foods, which have the least, you keep going as to how commonly they create a glutenation. So it's true that the lectin group is this huge group that does have foods in it that are very commonly problematic for people with rheumatoid arthritis. The truth is also more specific than that. There are foods in that list that cause more problems than others.

And typically the way we go about it is you say start with gluten, move on to soy, then beans, see how you're doing. If you need to go further, then you know, then you'd go down the rabbit hole of a lectin-free diet, you know, no cucumbers, no tomatoes, no peppers, you know, you keep on going in that list. But there's specific characteristics of foods that cross-react with autoimmunity, and you need to understand those things when you're telling somebody to follow a diet. So that's what I really tried to do in the book. You know, and this is the beauty of functional medicine. And again, you and your dad have been a big part of sort of establishing what those interactions are. And it's all about personal

So when somebody says that it's all about lectins, and then somebody says, you know, we had, and all these people are my friends and I know them and I love the different conversations and the debates that are there. But like a lot of things, it's somewhere in the middle. Yeah. And in personalized medicine, it's always what's related to that person that's there. I've actually known way before I even knew what a lectin was that I was very sensitive to a lot of the foods that are in the family of being higher amounts of lectins that are there. Nightshades. I knew that I would eat a bowl of tomato soup.

My entire face would turn red. I'd have almost this sort of like inflammatory response. I didn't know what it was. I just knew that it happened. That was there. And, you know, we've had people very incredibly, you know, strong individuals that, like Dr. William Lee, who's been on the podcast from the Angiogenesis Foundation,

brilliant guy, eat-to-beat disease. You know, his part that he's been bringing out there is that, look, I think a lot of what's out there with lectins is over. blown and our body actually even makes lectins. I don't know enough about that to really comment on it, but I've heard him say it. And then there's other people that are like, it's all about lectins. And then there's people like yourself that in the middle of saying, look, if you have an autoimmune condition, this might be an area, especially if you have particular types of autoimmune condition that you have to pay attention to a little bit more. And the beautiful thing is you could do

like a challenge. Absolutely. You could try to see. And in some cases, you can test. You can actually test for it. Yeah. I mean, that's where you get into the space of having somebody who knows how to interpret the testing for you, which should always be, I think, a prerequisite, you know, doing these tests at home on your own is probably not a great idea. But let's say you've got a skilled person who knows how to interpret food sensitivity testing. You can actually identify what specific things that are covered by the broad spectrum of inflammatory foods are actually unique to you as a problem. and then more importantly, take the specific immune issues that that person is facing and look for the crossover between the two. It's not right to just remove every food that somebody is sensitive to from their diet.

You need to do it with purpose, and the purpose should be the uniqueness of their autoimmune or immune condition. So that can be true for, let's say, all the different things in the lectins. You may find somebody with rheumatoid arthritis has a problem with tomatoes, cucumber, and eggplant, and soybeans and gluten, but they don't have an issue with, you know, lentils. They don't have an issue with, you know, Navy beans, right? So that's a very, very long list of things to try to trial and eliminate. Sometimes you can get away with it, and sometimes you can't. And so that's why testing exists for some people.

You know, going back to the idea when food bites back, we've been primed. primarily talking about foods in, I'm just going to use this as a general term, that negatively sort of impact the body because of how they've been changed, maybe in some cases genetically modified, which, by the way, part of genetic modification, the way that it works is to actually maybe increase the natural lectins that are in certain foods to then pest defense mechanism. So some of those foods that, again, weren't as problematic, are more problematic because they're designed to literally make the stomachs of insects explode. Yes.

Well, they're going to probably do something to us. They're not going to have no effect that's there. And there's some people that do well with these foods, just like we were talking about the difference between me and you. There's some people that can eat certain things again or can have limited amounts. So there's some people going to have tons of it. And it's all based on our history. What about foods that are actually deeply healing, especially when it comes to autoimmune?

And particularly foods that don't. often get the credit that they deserve in our sort of mainstream standardized American diet. What have you seen as themes over the years? Are there a few that you could call out that really you want to give the attention and spotlight on? It's actually very challenging to find themes or groups of things that people commonly consume that helps them because there's so much of a personal tendency to react negatively to things. But the things that I've seen, I think that people who follow very, very,

clean plant focused, maybe with Mediterranean-leaning-style diets, do the best. I think that that's an incredible challenge because you've got to do an anti-inflammatory version of it. But let's say you're having large amounts of crucifers and greens and you're eating organic and there's a lot of avocado and olive oil and you happen to find, you know, some fair, caught clean seafood products to consume every once in a while, maybe throw a muscle in there, you know, as Dr. Gundry suggests. They tend to do incredibly well, I think, in the long run. The problem with that is that's a very difficult execution, I think, for most people.

So what tends to work as an algorithm is, okay, show me what you're eating. Let me pull the bad stuff out and let me tell you good stuff to replace it with, right? So in my world, the things that I've seen that really help as far as replacements for the majority of people are fiber products. Talk a little bit more about that. You know, most people think of fiber as sort of the classic brand cereals that are there and metamusole and other things like that. But what type of fiber are you talking about and how is that supportive in the process of autoimmune? So I think that it's actually fiber plus omegas. if you can deliver them together.

Interesting. Or a tremendous beneficial soup for the bacteria. Going back to one of our earlier points in our conversation was it's all about the intestinal microenvironment, which is a very complicated thing. But if you can put fertilizer in for that three to five pound biomass that lives inside of us, overall your intestinal microenvironment will be better. The fertilizer is clean fibers and omega's. So I think the best way to get that is a blend of organic.

cillium, some chia seeds, and some ground flax, all of it organic. And are you imagining this goes into a smoothie? How are you imagining somebody taking it? I put mine in the smoothie. But there's another Dr. Boudjani out there who does it in a different way, so I'll give you the senior's version of it. He will actually make a cereal out of it. Okay.

He'll put in some clean almond milk. He'll put a tablespoon of each one of those three. Let it congeal until it kind of turns into an overnight oat. gelatinous and that's his breakfast and he's 76 and looks like he's 60 so I think it's working for him that's great any way that is comfortable for you is an okay way to do it yeah and so the cillium husk you know as people are looking at like fiber options and then they're looking at also now that we're having the blood sugar conversation which we've been big you know dr. hyman is you know wrote sort of like one of the big sort of magnum opus sort of books on it the blood sugar solution

When people are looking at the best fibers, you know, so cillium is there. What other ones are our favorites? Do you like acacia fiber? Do you like, you know, any of the resistant starches that are out there as fibers? Actually, for me to be able to tolerate a fiber is a very big deal. And when we're talking about gut environments that are not necessarily in the best place, at least in my demographic, because of the autoimmune disease, there's a lot of propensity for people to not tolerate some of those more advanced fibers. like sun fiber, acacia fiber, inulin, right, Jerusalem artichoke fibers, though on paper, if I were to pick, those need to be in there. The problem is not everybody can tolerate them. Not everybody can handle it. I think cillium, flax, and chia are a good combination of soluble and insoluble and insoluble and flax and chia carry omega's with them specifically. So I think that it's a good foundation. But if somebody can handle some Jerusalem artichoke fiber, more power to them. Now, this is where it gets really interesting and naturally, you know, because we've all moved

from where we grew up from. And food was just kind of like you see what's out there and you eat it, right? Yep. Now we're sort of dealing with control environment it's grown in. Is it helpful? Did our ancestry and our gut microbiome grow up eating that? So in the case of cheas, again, I don't know the details on this, but I've heard that they can be high in lectins. Yeah, and not everybody tolerates them. That's true. Great. So that's where we just need to add in a little bit of sophisticated Right? So it's not that we want to go crazy for the sake of going crazy, but we're putting in our own personalized layers, depending on what we're dealing with. And part of that is just, you know, you got to roll up your sleeves and listen to some podcast, dig in. You have a ton of YouTube videos that are out there. Still many of them that are very relevant, even if they're four or five years old, conversations with you and your father. We'll link to those as well, the book, reading it and trying it. Because, again, what's the alternative? Suffering with this condition for the rest of your life? Right? That's, That is, you know, unfortunately what so many people are doing, it's bankrupting them. Bankruptcy for medical bills is one of the highest, is the number one reason for bankruptcy in the United States.

Yep. You know, we don't have universal health care over here. It's affecting their mental health. So many people that go through autoimmune conditions are much more likely to develop other mental health conditions in some cases, full-blown diseases. So there, this does take work. And maybe one day we'll have a smart computer. that can figure it all for you and tell you exactly what to do and maybe even spit out a pill or a meal that you can consume Jetson style were not there yet.

So there is legwork that needs to be done. You're absolutely right. You have to, this movement began, I think, from a human perspective as a counter movement to the increasing illness and chronic suffering that we unfortunately go through these days. So part of our evolution is to continue to understand next levels about ourselves. People fortunately, like Dr. Hyman and others, give out material for us to learn from collective experience. And absolutely, you need to educate yourself with these new generations of information in

combating what's happening to us. Make changes to the way that you're living and see how you feel. When I went back and, although I had the fortune of testing with my dad, it wasn't until I removed the gluten in dairy and I felt like a different person that I was really, you know, convinced that I kind of understood how by making some change to my lifestyle, I am changing myself in my life. So that's what everyone needs to do.