The Dr. Hyman Show - Healing Autoimmunity from the Inside Out, What Most Doctors Miss

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Autoimmune disease is explored as a complex and rising health challenge driven largely by lifestyle and environmental factors rather than genetics alone. Conventional treatments often rely on immune-suppressing medications that manage symptoms but fail to address underlying causes like gut dysfunction, chronic infections, toxins, and stress. A functional medicine approach instead emphasizes identifying and treating these root causes—such as gluten sensitivity, dysbiosis, and nutrient deficiencies—through personalized diagnostics and anti-inflammatory diets. Case studies illustrate dramatic improvements in patients' symptoms and lab results when switching from conventional to root-cause-based care. Ultimately, this integrative model empowers individuals to reclaim health by addressing what triggers immune system dysfunction in the first place. In this episode, I discuss, along with Dr. Sunjya Schweig, Dr. Cindy Geyer, and Dr. Todd LePine the root cause approach to healing autoimmune conditions. Dr. Sunjya K. Schweig is dedicated to advancing data-driven approaches to prevent and reverse chronic illness. He is the Founder and President of the California Center for Functional Medicine (CCFM), where he and his team deliver personalized, precision care using innovative technology and a comprehensive team-based model. Since 2016, CCFM has also supported first responders through specialized wellness programs. In 2021, Dr. Schweig launched the Functional Medicine Research and Technology Center to further research, education, and innovation in chronic disease prevention. A graduate of UC Berkeley, he earned his MD from UC Irvine and completed his residency at UCSF Santa Rosa. He is board-certified in family practice and integrative and holistic medicine. Dr. Cindy Geyer received her bachelor of science and her doctor of medicine degrees, with honors, from the Ohio State University. She completed residency in internal medicine at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y. and is triple board certified in internal medicine, integrative medicine and lifestyle medicine. Dr. Todd LePine graduated from Dartmouth Medical School and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, specializing in Integrative Functional Medicine. He is an Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner. Prior to joining The UltraWellness Center, he worked as a physician at Canyon Ranch in Lenox, MA, for 10 years. Dr. LePine’s focus at The UltraWellness Center is to help his patients achieve optimal health and vitality by restoring the natural balance to both the mind and the body. His areas of interest include optimal aging, bio-detoxification, functional gastrointestinal health, systemic inflammation, autoimmune disorders, and the neurobiology of mood and cognitive disorders. Dr. LePine enjoys skiing, kayaking, hiking, camping, and golfing in the beautiful Berkshires, and is a fitness enthusiast. This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN10 to save 10%. Full-length episodes can be found here: Healing Autoimmune Disease Using A Functional Medicine ApproachIs An Autoimmune Condition Driving Your Raynaud's Syndrome?What Really Causes Autoimmune Disease

Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman show. The biggest lever that we have to pull that can affect how our body is receiving information from the outside world is through the diet. I'm all about food first, but some nutrients like magnesium are nearly impossible to get enough of through diet alone. Our soils are depleted and things like sugar, caffeine, and stress drain our levels. Magnesium supports over 300 functions in the body. Think metabolism, sleep, energy, pain, and more. That's why I recommend magnesium breakthrough by BioPtimizers. It's the only supplement with all seven forms of magnesium for full body support.

Get 10% off at BioPtimizers.com slash Hymen with code HYMAN10. Now, before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real-time lab insights. And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, the Hymen Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your health

journey, visit my website at drhymen.com, or my website store for a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. Yeah. So autoimmune disease is really this idea of, I think it was like the immune system gone haywire, right? And you mentioned the word inflammation. Inflammation is really one of the core concepts, right? And so we think about, you know, several main factors, you know, genetics, of course, are important, right? But really that's a minority. We think of, you know, genetics in the contribution

that they have to autoimmune disease is maybe only a third of really what's going on. And the other factors are, again, diet, lifestyle, environmental triggers, infections. You know, genetic factors, again, can cause a creative predisposition, almost like this fuel, but then that spark or also more fuel can get stacked on there from the environment, from chronic infections, from these lifestyle factors to then activate these processes and make the autoimmune disease more clinically apparent. There's probably over 100 different autoimmune diseases. Yeah.

Ten most common, or you mentioned some of them, but rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto's, autoimmune thyroiditis, celiac disease, Graves' disease type 1 diabetes, you know, those two lists goes on, the ligar, rheumatic fever, and producing. Oh, the colitis is, yeah. Yeah, so, you know, and, you know, the cost to us, you know, personally is huge for the individual, but also to society, you know, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease estimates that the

cost of treating autoimmune disease in the U.S. is more than $100 billion annually. And we think that that's probably actually a vast understatement, you know, because estimates around just seven of these 100 plus known autoimmune diseases, you know, estimates of cost annually ranges from $ to 70 billion dollars. Whoa Well, that's a lot of money and I think I think the the costs are so staggering for the drugs that we're using their Immunosuppressant drugs increase risk of cancer and infection and they do help a lot of people I'm not gonna say they don't but you know, the the average cost is about 50 grand for a year per patient and

And I know I've seen so many people be able to get off these compounds when they actually are changing their underlying root causes and you mentioned all the different things toxins, allergens, you know the gut, diet, infection, stress and so forth sleep. These are often one thing that's causing it in a single person but it may be multiple things. So you have to kind of deal with all the factors. So as traditional doctors, what was our sort of a basic approach? What is the sort of the basic approach? We sort of touched on a little bit, but I think it's worth sort of talking about it. And then the disconnect between

like that and how we deal with it with functional medicine. Yeah. So you mentioned these very, very expensive drugs, the monoclonal antibodies of which the pharmaceutical companies have a lot of incentive to develop because they make a lot of money on drugs, right? And your point is good, which is they can help people, but really it comes down to this central divide of what is conventional medicine trying to do. And I don't want to make it seem like doctors are bad people.

I have incredible respect. There's just some incredibly smart people and most doctors are so, so dedicated to taking care of their patients and trying to find them help. It's really just from the top down of how we trained in this idea, this conventional approach to autoimmune really is kind of like this codifying of a lot of how Western medicine works, which is suppress, which is make it stop, control the immune response, turn these insulinic-coeliculatory pathways off. And the problem is that it's not asking why. It's not asking why is the inflammation there in the first place? Why is the immune system being triggered in the first place? Right. So the main things that doctors reach for are steroids, you know, corticosteroids like

prednisolone, methyl, prednisolone, dexamethasone, you know, these work quickly and they work well. They turn off the inflammation, they shut down the immune system, but huge side effects, really, really staggering side effects, increased type 2 diabetes risk, weight gain, infections, osteoporosis, et cetera. Other medications, other immune suppressants are used like methotrexate, also shut down the body's immune response, but a lot of toxicity, liver toxicity, increased risk to infections, cancers, leukemia, et cetera. And then we've talked about these monoclonal antibodies, some of the biological response

modifiers. Again, they can be helpful in the short term, but they're really just targeting one pathway. They're not taking care of why that pathway is inflamed in the first place. And so it makes sense that they might help in the beginning, but a lot of times there's this escape from all that happens where they stop working. And so it's really like a short-term kind of very myopic approach, which if we stack in all these other lifestyle factors that we know about how to intervene within functional medicine, the potential for true healing is much, much greater.

Yeah, it's pretty quite amazing. It's one of the most satisfying things for me as a functional medicine doctor to treat because I can just tell you patient after patient with all kinds of weird autoimmune diseases, some of which I've never even seen before. If you follow the basic principles, it works. And you know, I say functional medicine is more about creating health than it is treating disease. And so when you create the conditions or health

and you take away the impediments for health, it's quite amazing. So let's talk about a case and let's talk about how we diagnostically approach these patients and what we do therapeutically that makes the most difference. So maybe share a case, I can think one I'll share one too. But I'd love to hear a case from you about how

someone presented what you did to them, what you tested for, what you found, how you treated them and what the outcomes were and what this sort of objective results were that you got. Yeah, so as I was getting ready for our talk today, you know, look through our work and cases and this one case came to my mind. And so a 43 year old woman, we'll call Sarah. And when we first met Sarah, she was experiencing some joint pain, mild to moderate joint pain,

brain fog, trouble thinking clearly. She's having some mood swings, intermittent anxiety and a lot of fatigue. And she also had some gut symptoms, some bloating and gas, occasionally some loose stools, disrupted sleep, especially in the week leading up to her period. Some hormonal fluctuations happening there. Usually would fall asleep okay, but would wake up in the middle of the night, some trouble falling back asleep. And like many of us, she was successful.

She was very busy. She was working as a pharmacist with long shifts, three kids, very involved in their activities. And historically always been able to manage her busy schedule, but she's kind of feeling like she's having more and more difficulty keeping up, more fatigue, decreased resilience, not waking up feeling rested, et cetera. Interestingly, when we talked about her family history, though, it's definitely a strong decreased resilience, not waking up feeling rested, et cetera. Wow. Yeah.

Interestingly, when we talked about our family history though, it's definitely a strong family history of hypothyroidism. So that was kind of cluing us in the beginning. Yeah. She was also on track with that. She was wondering about that. So she had been tested a bunch of times, but always only with the TSH, the thyroid stimulating hormone, which is kind of like the go-to test for a lot of

the primary doctors and internal medicine doctors. And it always had been normal. It was in the normal range, but for TSH had been trending up, right? So remembering that TSH is inversely associated with thyroid function. So a lower TSH is higher thyroid function and a higher TSH means lower thyroid function. Yeah. Her numbers were, you know, 1.2, then 2.3, then 3.6, you know, but she was always told that this was quote normal, right? And so, you know, her, you know, backstory, you know, during childhood, you did have some frequent ear infections, needed antibiotics, you know,

not infrequently, several at a time. So I was concerned about some early gut disruption there. She also had a history of some stomach ache episodes, but never diagnosed with a problem. Was traveling abroad at one point, got food poisoning, some increased gut symptoms after that, et cetera. Really was just trying to watch her diet. And she said, I drink a lot of kombucha, I try to eat a healthy, balanced diet.

But there was some disruption there, too, because of how busy she was. She would skip breakfast. She frequently get home late from work and not have time for dinner until 8 or 9 o'clock, and maybe just have a bowl of cereal, et cetera. So in her words, she came in and she was trying to improve her energy.

She wanted to be able to exercise without being sore for days afterwards. You want to feel like an athlete again. She wanted to improve her moods and lessen her brain fog so that she could, she could work more efficiently. You know, so we started off at the start gate with our patients. We, we tend to do a pretty deep dive. We cast this really wide net and I know that you guys do this too. Yeah.

What would you look for? When you think about these patients, what are the kinds of things that come up for you as, I got to find out what the root cause is? How do you start to think about those? Yeah. So we did a comprehensive blood panel looking at the thyroid again, but also adding on the three hormones for T3, T4. We looked at reverse T3.

We looked at thyroid antibodies. We looked at markers of inflammation, markers of blood sugar dysregulation, and insulin. We also tested for celiac, for celiac genetics and a celiac panel, given the history of abdominal pain and the strong family history of low thyroid. We did gut testing. We did a stool test, a comprehensive stool test, as well as a SIBO breath test, a small intestinal bacterial overgrowth test. And this was correlated with that history of food poisoning, of the GI complaints, and also the cognitive, the brain.

The gut-brain access is so, so critical to consider and to look at. And then we also did a deeper dive on the hormone, looking at her adrenal function, looking at your sex hormones, et cetera. We know that a lot of times, high functioning people, high achievers tend to maybe have higher cortisol. They're pushing that envelope early on in their lives,

but then that can drop and they can then have low cortisol, which can manifest with increased susceptibility to illnesses, fatigue, brain fog, trouble getting out of bed in the morning, et cetera. So you take a good look at the gut, you look at kind of hormones. I often think about looking at other things that are sleepers, like heavy metals

or environmental toxins, food sensitivities, gluten, obviously you mentioned that, but that's a huge one. I check for anybody who's got any autoimmune disease, I check for gluten in any body that is, it doesn't have to be full celiac, you can have just low level elevations in these antibodies that can cause significant problems without actually being true celiac. And I think this is often a problem with traditional medicine, it's on or off. You either have it or you don't.

You have diabetes or you don't. It's not a gradient, it's on or off. You either have it or you don't. You have diabetes or you don't. It's not a gradient. It's not a continuum. So in truth, the body is just a continuum of function or dysfunction. And that's the general function of medicine. And so it's kind of arbitrated instead of a number. Like diabetes is 126.

Well, wow, it's 124. Are you OK? No. Right, yeah. So the same thing with everything in terms of all the numbers we look at. And I think the ability to kind of find these things are quite impressive. So what did you find when you started to dig in and you looked at the gut and you looked

at the hormones, you looked at what else was going on nutritionally with her and how those play a role? Yeah, so this is kind of one of my favorite parts of the work that we do when when you have these folks who've been struggling, they've been doing a bunch of doctors, and they, you know, have been kind of told that everything's normal, and maybe they've absorbed that. And they said, Okay, you know, I guess it's just I'm getting older, you know, you know, I'm maybe a little bit depressed, you know, and so but,

you know, we got all the labs back and we dug in with Sarah and there was a lot of things that we found that were, you know, levers, I think it says leverage, potential levers that we can pull to, to help her get better. So, you know, her TSH was 3.8, which on the lab test shows as normal, but you and I and I'll be, you know, most functional medicine doctors know that that is not optimal from our functional range. You like to see that at around two or less. So I was definitely concerned around low thyroid function. And in fact, her free T three of the most active thyroid hormone was in the low

normal range, like her reverse T three was elevated, you know, signaling inflammation and immune activation. And then she did have elevated antibodies. So her TPO antibodies to her thyroid were high and the thyroblobulin antibodies were also a little bit high. And importantly, she had an antibody against gluten. She had a positive anti-deamidated gliadin peptide, you know, mildly elevated, but certainly very, very significant, in my opinion.

In the US, that's not necessarily diagnostic of celiac, but in Europe it is. And so there's a little bit of a difference of opinions on how we interpret these. But for me, that's a highly significant marker. For those of you out there who might want to look at testing this on yourself, LabCorp can do this. So can Quest, but the LabCorp test code

for the comprehensive celiac pen, I'll just throw it out there for folks is 165126. So look that up. If you wanna get tested for, you know, just through your insurance, through LabCorp, it's a great test to look at. She also had low vitamin D, low vitamin B12, and low ferritin, which is the storage form of iron.

So all three of those together are telling us that she's not absorbing very well, right? She's having trouble on the level of the gut and that there's inflammation there. And in addition to just needing to get those levels up, it's sort of a proxy marker, right, for this bigger problem going on. Her stool test showed dysbiosis in balanced bacteria. There was some dropout of the good bacteria. We call that an insufficiency dysbiosis. She had positive H. pylori, you can go back to pylori. Yeah, and so H. pylori is super, super interesting bug.

It's sort of a model for persistence and for chronic inflammation. And it has been linked in the research literature to autoimmune thyroid. So right there I got really excited. I was like, okay, cool. Here is something which we can treat, we can eradicate. It could explain your local gut symptoms, but it could also explain some of the bigger picture autoimmune activation that we're seeing in your body.

Incredible. So with her, how would you go about starting to treat her? Because there's so many different things. She's got nutritional deficiencies, she's got gut issues, baccalaureate growth, gluten issues. I mean, we didn't even really check for heavy metals or other things that could be-

Yeah, I didn't do that. Yeah, yeah, because it was sort of like, it's a little bit down the road for me. I love just jumping in with all these things and see if we get the traction. But yeah, you're right. It's a very important factor. Yeah, and you know, she had all these different things. Yeah, so we had Sarah start an anti-inflammatory Whole30 Paleo Reset Diet. And in particular, you're really focused with her on, you know, you have to get rid of gluten 100%

for at least 30 days. I like to go for longer, but sometimes I break it up into bite-sized pieces for folks. We wanted her to minimize sugar. We wanted her to avoid dairy, limit alcohol, you know, and just with that one change, within a couple of weeks, she reported that her energy was better by about 40 or 50 percent. Her brain was better by about 40 percent and her joint pain is better by about 60 percent. And yes, this is one of the things I love about that is just not only like, okay, she's feeling better, but this is really, really good reinforcement for her that she has control over her health and that she can put things into place that are going to possibly affect her. You know, we're going to stack in supplements. We're gonna stack in some prescriptions potentially

but she immediately has a sense that you know her health is in her own hands and she can she could be an active participant which what we love. So great and so you know the dot let's talk about the diets and autoimmune disease because I think there's so much controversy What should eat? I shouldn't you be lactin free? Should you be gluten free? Should you be paleo? Should you be vegan? Should you like what what are we learning about in terms of food? And autoimmune disease, what are the biggest drivers in our diet of autoimmune disease from the dietary perspective? What can people do therapeutically and like how do we sort of stack up against choosing what to do for which person? And like, how do we sort of stack up against choosing what to do for which person?

Yeah. So there is no one size fits all approach, but I think there are some basic tenants that we can really factor in. And I think this idea of, you know, we talk about the expo zone, right? So there's the genetics, there's the epigenetics. So genetics are hardwired. The epigenetics is how are your genetics read out and that can be turned on and off based on environmental factors.

And there's this idea of the exposome. These words sound complicated, but they're not. The exposome is basically- I call it the exposome because it sounds better. Yeah, exposome. Everything that you've ever been exposed to from the time you were in your mom's belly until now. And actually, if you want to go deep, it goes back before you were in your mom's belly until now. And actually, if you want to go deep,

it goes back before you were in your mom's belly. It's sort of this methylation and way that epigenetics affect offspring. But really, for simplicity, everything that you've ever been exposed to for the time you were in your mom's belly until now, and we can modify that, we can take charge. And so the diet is you think about the amount of information that your immune system is being exposed to on a daily, monthly, yearly basis.

The food and drink that we take in by our mouth is by far the biggest factor of information that is hitting that immune system in the gut. You know, the next would be air and skin. But again, the biggest lever that we have to pull that can affect how our body is receiving information from the outside world is through the diet. So you wanna take out all of the things

that are going to be triggering aberrant inflammatory activation, right? And so the biggest culprits are the processed foods, the sugar grains are freaking good sugar for people. And then eating organic grass fed is really critical because otherwise you're getting chemicals, you're getting pesticides, you're getting hormones, you're getting antibiotics, all of these are disruptors, right? And so the really easiest way to start with an anti-inflammatory diet or a Whole30 or a Paleo Reset is just to take out all of the junk and eat real food, right?

You'll eat real clean nutrient-dense food and do that for a period of time. You're downstream from that. We sometimes have to specialize. We have to go into more like what's called an autoimmune paleo diet or a low lectin diet or something like the walls protocol. These are all variations. We don't usually go there first with people, but it's kind of like this is very individualized and based on the response that somebody has. Amazing. So talk about some of the things that are controversial, like lectants.

Is that something people should focus on, or is that just a marginal thing? I think it's been helpful for a lot of people. But I don't think it's everybody. And so what we do is we kind of go step by step down the list. If people are doing a paleo or a Whole30 and they're just feeling great, I don't necessarily feel the need to go down into the next steps. If they're not feeling well, we go into an autoimmune paleo. But it's also the case, the foundational

intervention of anti-inflammatory diet in naturopathic medicine, in functional medicine, is get rid of things that might be triggering you and then add them back in one at a time in a systemic way and see what your body tells us, right? The food sensitivity testing that you mentioned, you know, that's helpful. I definitely use that and we like it, but it's not this imperfect for a lot of reasons, right? But what does your body tell you?

What is your body reading out to you in terms of symptoms and reactions? You can't argue with that. When I was just starting my medical journey as an emergency room physician, magnesium was a critical element of our care. We used it to treat all kinds of conditions from arrhythmia to constipation to preeclampsia.

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Bioptimizers is offering my community 10% off. Just head over to bioptimizers.com slash Hyman with code HYMAN10. That's bioptimizers.com slash Hyman with code Hyman 10 at checkout. So what, what, what is the approach thing from a functional medicine perspective for, for, um, uh, Raynaud syndrome? Yeah. So from a diagnostic standpoint, as I mentioned before, we want to look at all those cardio metabolic risk factors. We want to look for the underlying tax that your upbringing in your system, whether it's gluten or food sensitivities

or something going on in the gut microbiome or an infection. And then from a treatment standpoint, a lot of the same lifestyle things that we normally want to do specifically help those arteries be more resilient, less reactive. So we know for example, that studies on meditation, yoga, biofeedback can show improvements

in rhinos and artery elasticity after six weeks of a regular consistent practice. Oh, this yoga is touching me. Right. That's great. So you can basically meditate your blood vessels healthier, right? That's good. What was that story years ago of somebody meditating and they could change the temperature in one hand versus the other?

Oh yeah, I guess. Five degrees or something incredible. Yeah. So we have more control over that autonomic nervous system than what we thought. I've often found, you find any other things when you're around diet or supplements helpful for these patients. Yeah, there's a lot. So again, specific food components, omega three fatty acids have benefits

on artery elasticity, whether that's fish, fish oil, nuts and seeds. You know, arginine is an interesting amino acid. It's used by the arteries to make their own version of nitroglycerin. So it's a precursor of nitroglycerin, which of course dilates blood vessels. Nitric oxide. Nitric oxide, yes thank you, nitric oxide. So we're getting nuts and seeds or maybe even supplementing arginine. The deeply pigmented foods that are rich in bioflavonoids, a lot of those polyphenolic foods also relax the arteries. So things like resveratrol for example.

Yeah. Folate rich foods, dark leafy grains, another powerhouse for the arteries. So if we think of that extrovertin olive oil, another food that has natural benefits on relaxing the arteries. So yeah. That's really a lot of what I use, Cindy, and I often know all supplement with arginine. They're very symptomatic if they're going out and often even ginkgo, which is another product. But I think the nitric oxide is interesting. You can increase that nitric oxide by your breathing too.

Just really practices. We had a Louis Gnarot on our podcast who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of nitric oxide and its role in improving overall health, reducing inflammation. And it's incredibly important for lung health as well. And with COVID, they're finding nitric oxide being very effective in feeding COVID patients. And he talks a lot about that on the podcast.

But the nitric oxide can also be increased by Viagra or Cialis or any of those drugs that are used for sexual enhancement. But they actually work by increasing blood flow and circulation, so that's a good thing. So, you know, maybe if you have Raynaud's, that might help as well. So, arginine you can take, or you can do those drugs, or you can actually inko and other things,

bioflavonoids I used to use quite a bit. And combining that with the root cause, the medical detective piece, because you can't just give those, so they're like, oh, give them argin you know, well, why have to have rainbows? Like what is the cause? What is the root? And I think that's what often people miss

even in integrative medicine. They'll say, Oh, well, you have rainbows use Arjun. I'm like, no, no, no. Why do you have rainbows? Like what is the root cause? And this is the part that we're often missing medicine. And that's why the ultra wellness center, we really have such a robust practice

cause we are the medical detectives looking for the root cause. I just tell you, I just like an anecdote of a patient I just had this week that was just, you know, it's one of those stories. He's a really awesome guy and he developed a ticket ticks when he was, not tick bites, but he developed like motor ticks, you know, when he was eight and I started asking him about his story that doctor was nothing you can do take these drugs whatever so I said well what was it like what was happening you know did you get infections did you have this you have that so I started digging into a story

we had tons of infections and so what happened all kinds of things and you know we know there's a syndrome called pandas which is the after caught immune disease of neurologic bubble vinyl presently stands for but so long and and and that is associated with strep infections that cause behavior issues OCD ticks and When I checked his labs, he had super high antibodies to strep and on the cutting-in panel He had really high antibodies against somep, and on the cutting end panel, he had really high antibodies against some of the components of his brain related to strep. And yet no one had even thought to ask the question of why. And so now it's tickin' disorders or whether it's Raynaud's or whatever. If you get into the habit of thinking, which is what I love about

functional medicine, because it makes you think, as opposed to just sort of rote memorization and knee jerk reaction. That's sort of what we get in medicine, which is we make the diagnosis, then we don't have to think anymore. We just basically say, here's the cookbook protocol that is in 2021 for XYZ disease. And functional medicine is different. We have to start thinking, we call it thinking and linking. You know, like, oh, we know why your, we go, we know why your fingers get cold and turn white and you have no circulation, it's because you have Raynaud's.

Like, no, that's just the name of what it looks like. That's not the name of the problem. It's not the cause of the problem. All right, so lupus actually comes from the Latin word meaning wolf. And typically people with classic lupus have, we'll get a facial rash, it's called a malar rash. It's like a butterfly rash.

And over time they can actually, they sort of, they say that they develop like a wolf-like appearance. Their cheeks get all red. All red, yeah, exactly. Exactly, and that's due to photosensitivity. And so lupus is one of those conditions which we see a lot.

Interestingly, it's about nine times more prevalent in women, so that raises the question, well, what's the difference between women and men, and why are women? I'm still trying to figure that out. Oh, I actually think I have an insight into that. It's really quite interesting. How many women are different?

Yeah, how many women are different, right, right. And then the other thing that is also interesting is that we traditionally treat it with medications like steroids, methotrexate, Plaquenil, those kinds of things. We tell them all have their significant side effects. And in my opinion, one of the- These are powerful immune suppressing drugs.

Oh yeah. And they even use biological agents. Biologics. Which really shut off your immune system. And they can work, but they're often fraught with danger, including the risk of cancer and overwhelming infection if you get a bad infection. So they're not, they're very expensive,

up to 50 grand a year per person. And then also, one of the things that I always used to, it was intriguing to me when I was doing my training, was drug-induced lupus. Because we were taught that lupus is an autoimmune condition. But there is a condition called drug-induced lupus. And I always raised my question, well how is a drug causing lupus?

And what we see is that in, I think one of the major drugs was an older drug called prokainomide. I don't know if I remember using that. It was an antiarrhythmic. And in certain patients who got prokainomide, they would develop lupus. Looks just like what we call lupus, SLE, systemic lupus erythematosus.

And that always fascinated me that a drug would be triggering this. And when I actually went down that sort of rabbit hole, what we find out is that prokainomide can actually damage DNA. And it's probably theorized that some types of things, like drugs or stealth infections, like viruses, may trigger the body and cause some damage in the DNA.

And when we test for lupus, I mean, some of the tests that are, are double-stranded DNA antibodies. The traditional blood tests look at, you know, what are the autoimmune antibodies? Yeah, and it's interesting, because there's a whole bunch of different markers that are used in the diagnosis of autoimmune conditions. You have autoimmune panels, like the traditional one is ANA, the anti-nuclear antigen. Typically in patients

who have lupus, that's positive. And then you can look for other biomarkers like double stranded DNA and such. And the ANA can be positive in many, many people, even if they don't have lupus. And there's this whole phenomenon of pre-autoimmune disease where you're starting to have these autoimmune antibodies, but you don't really have a lot of symptoms yet, right? Diabetes like pre autoimmune disease exactly and I always tell my patients That's like when the check engine like comes on in your car You ignore that you're gonna get you know smoke coming out of the hood soon

So which which traditional medicine ignores it totally if you don't meet these five criteria for this diagnosis Then you don't have it and we can't treat you. Right. It's like the patient I had who came with blood sugar 120, I said, Jesus, doctor, check that out. He's like, oh yeah. I said, what's happening? What do you recommend? He says, well, he said I should watch it until it's 126

and then he'll give me treatment for diabetes. Is that crazy? Yeah, it's just, we'll wait till the horse's out of the barn then we'll try to corral it. Yeah. Yeah, it's unfortunate but I guess, when you look at how many people do have conditions that are even subclinical hypothyroidism,

there's a lot of things that if you look early enough, it's a lot easier to treat them when you catch them early. If you're starting to have early cognitive decline, Alzheimer's is a lot easier to treat when you catch it early Diabetes is a lot easier heart disease autoimmune conditions. So preemptive Personalized medicine is the way to go. That's what we do at the ultra wellness center here functional medicine So so this patient had had this condition that was treated by traditional medicine. We shot a bunch of drugs She actually came in

had done courses of primarily Plaquenil and Prednisone. She was actually pretty proactive in her self-care. Plaquenil, by the way, for those listening, is the same as hydroxychloroquine that they're using for COVID-19. Right, and we also realize that Plaquenil is actually an antimicrobial.

Yeah, it's used for malaria. That's the original use for it. But somebody must have had malaria and then developed lupus. And they said, hey, this is working. So that's sort of like how they sort of discover other uses for medications. So, but this particular,

she was actually involved in the health care field. I think she was a therapist, if I recall properly, and so she had done a lot of stuff on her own. The big thing with her is that, and she told me this, that she felt that her lupus was actually triggered by stress. She had a son who had some medical issues and was having issues both with dealing with a teenager who had some illness and that sort of chipped it over. And oftentimes, if I take the history of patients who develop an autoimmune condition,

it's oftentimes followed by a period of chronic stress that's unrelenting. It's a very, very common thing. Well, let's talk about stress for a minute because my thinking about stress is it sort of sets the table for other things to sort of take over. So, not in and of itself, it may cause some illness for some people, but for the most part,

it exacerbates whatever's going on. So, if you're stressed, your immune system's suppressed, you're gonna get more inflammation, and then if you have underlying issues like this woman did, they're gonna come out. So tell us how you approach this from a functional medicine perspective. How do we think about autoimmune disease in general

from a functional medicine perspective and lupus? When I see a patient who has lupus, and I go down sort of the checklist, so I look at, okay, do they have sensitivity to gluten? The other thing which I find in a lot of lupus patients is Epstein-Barr virus. So Epstein-Barr virus is the virus that causes mono. And mono stands for mononucleosis

because the virus infects your white blood cells. And the thing about Epstein-Barr virus is it's very common, about 70 70 80 percent of the population has it and most of the time the immune system will clear it and it's a herpes class virus just like a cold sore and Once you get a herpes cold sore that virus stays in your body all the time Most of the time the immune system keeps it in check But there are certain individuals where the virus will it in check but there are certain individuals where the virus will reactivate and the herpes virus will come out or the mono can actually reactivate.

So a cold sore in your lip is basically a herpes virus and it doesn't come out all the time, it comes out under stress. Under stress. Cold weather, emotional stress. Too much sunlight. Getting a cold, sunlight. So it's sort of a latent virus. We all live with hundreds of viruses in us.

When we're stressed, it allows those viruses to emerge. And so this is what happened with this patient. Yeah, and so I always like to go down and ask the question, so why is this? Why do women have lupus more than men? Well, that's functional medicine, why, why, why? And then interestingly, when you go into the medical literature in autoimmunity related to lupus,

the Epstein-Barr virus is associated with seven different autoimmune conditions, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, type 1 diabetes, ulcerative colitis. So what happens is the virus, in some cases, patients will reactivate and it causes a stimulation of the immune system, and the immune system will then start reacting to it. And then interestingly, I've always been curious about photosensitivity, like why does photosensitivity happen in patients who have lupus? What's going on there? Why is it when they get sunlight, is it affecting them?

And what I found out in the literature is that the virus causes the body to produce more interferon gamma. And interferon gamma is our bodies, one of the cytokines that help our bodies to fight off viruses. And when we have high levels of this interferon gamma, it sensitizes the body to sunlight. So that's why you get that sort of lupus-like

photosensitivity, especially with exposure to sunlight. And interferon is one of the treatments we're looking at for fighting COVID-19. So what they do is they have an overabundance, and it may be a genetic predisposition, there may be some single nucleoid polymorphisms that certain lupus patients have and they produce lots of interferon gamma and that actually gets involved in the skin cells and can make them more photosensitive so it's an interesting

phenomenon. And then the other thing about you know when I've seen this with a lot of regular mainstream doctors they'll say well you can't really check for Epstein-Barr virus because everybody's you know If the antibodies are positive, it just means that you've been exposed to well, that's true. But if you actually do specific testing for Epstein-Barr virus so there's a panel that we do which checks for antibodies to the nuclear antigen and the and the cytoplasmic antigen, and then also the early antigen. And then I'll also throw in the Epstein-Barr virus by PCR.

So PCR is checking for the DNA of the virus. You're actually seeing if there's live virus around circulating in your blood, not just your immune response. Exactly, so typically in the panel that we use, if you have the three out of four antibodies that are positive, especially with the early antigen and or with the PCR or the Epstein-Barr virus,

you know, prove positive that the Epstein-Barr virus is reactive, exactly reactive. And that's where, then you have to ask yourself, well, what do I do to calm down that particular virus? So there's a lot of things that you have to look at. Yeah, I mean, I true, function medicine really has a different perspective and that's why we see so many patients here at the Ultra Wellness Center who've tried so many things and then they get better because we look at all the factors.

So when I think of an autoimmune patient or just any disease in general, there are really only five main triggers. It's a toxin. So I've had patients with lupus have autoimmune disease triggered by heavy metals, for example. Could be an infection like lupus, could be the microbiome changes,

could be an allergen, something they're eating, like gluten, and it could be poor diet, which is inflammatory and has, for example, a lot of the emulsifiers in our food, like curagenin and all these gums, they cause leaky gut, for example, a lot of the emulsifiers in our food, like carrageenan and all these gums. Yes. They cause leaky gut, driving inflammation, and it also can be stress, like you said, and often it's many of those things together. Exactly. Yeah. So for her it was a few of those things. For her it was stress and the virus, and also her gut was a mess too. Yes, her gut was a

mess. Yeah. So the other thing that she noticed is that if she ate foods that were high in lectins, things like the nightshade family, then her symptoms actually got worse. And there's interesting, some of the work by Peter Dodamo, who was the author of the blood type diet, he's the guru of lectins. And what we find is that in certain individuals

when you have high lectins in your diet, and these are compounds that are found in plants, which actually act as a defense mechanism for the plants so that animals and insects are less likely to eat them. Lectins, there's a, in the medical literature, a case study of a hospital that thought they would have a healthy eating day, so they served everybody red kidney beans in some type of a casserole or a soup, and then everybody got sick from

it because it was very high in lectins, and it actually caused transient leaky gut. They had a new response to the lectins in the plants. And I've had a number of patients, it's not everybody will have that response to lectins. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of promotion out there of lectin-free diets as the cure for everything. Or low lectins, low lectins. Yeah. It's impossible to get. A low lectin diet and I think it can be helpful for some specific patients.

Exactly. I think the thing is that everybody finds the latest fad and think it's the cure for everything. Exactly. It's really not and when you're in functional medicine you get humbled by understanding how complex things are. Absolutely. How everybody's really different. How one person may tolerate gluten,

another person may not. One person may have B5 with lectins, another person may not. But if you have an autoimmune or inflammatory condition, it's something worth trying. Absolutely. It is. And I'll interject here because this is an interesting finding.

I stumbled upon this. And again, this was actually by Peter Dodamo who got me down this rabbit hole. Because I just recently had a patient who had five autoimmune conditions, including lupus. And I checked for a lab test called mannose binding lectin. You ever checked for it?

Actually no, but I know about it. Right, it's one of those things, and he's the one who got me to understand this. So mannose binding lectin is a compound that our body makes to bind mannose. And a lot of- It's a sugar. It's a sugar, it's a mannose is a sugar.

And what you find out is that people who have mannose binding lectin deficiency are at a higher risk for lupus. And hers was undetected. Yeah, I think the other thing I wanna just point out is that you're talking about this patient with lupus and she had gluten she had gut issues she has stress she had this virus she had electin sensitivity but

that was her. You take ten other patients with lupus they're all different they're all different. The problem with traditional thinking is that everybody with lupus gets the same treatment. Once you make the diagnosis you stop thinking and in functional medicine when you have the diagnosis that's when you start thinking. It's just the first step on solving the problem. It's like okay. This is what your picture looks like Okay, what are the potential factors that we need to think about? To get to the root cause and then we have to treat the cause not the symptom. Let's talk about what is auto immunity What causes it?

And you know, why should we be so concerned? Well autoimmune disease diseases like I mentioned, things like rheumatoid arthritis, thoracic arthritis, lupus, type 1 diabetes, Graves disease, high tumor disease, monstrosis, Crohn's disease, colitis, I mean the list goes on, are all diseases where the body is attacking itself. The immune system is out of control. It creates systemic inflammation and depending on your genetic and the various issues you have It attacks different parts of the body, but essentially the process is the same or we create auto antibodies We create antibodies which are normally designed to fight infection

or even to kill cancer We create antibodies to then attack our own tissues and that's when we get into trouble. So basically we have this run of inflammation, we have an immune system that's confused and our immune system is supposed to empty up when we have foreign invaders like an infection or we have cancer or cancer and that's good and when we're maybe try to deal with our gut and creating antibodies and different food things that are in there, although that usually is because of a leaking gut.

And so, basically, your immune system is your first line of defense but when it goes awry, it causes widespread destruction in the body and your own cells and tissues and organs get caught in the crossfire and it's not a good thing. It's just not a good thing. It's just not a good thing. It's good when it comes to the cancer, when it comes to infections. We want that. What we see now is a total epidemic about immune disease that is being completely misunderstood. In fact, not even a conversation about pre-auto immune disease that a lot of people are seeing positive levels of

ANA antibodies which we test for at functionhealth.com which is a testing platform where you can order your own tests essentially and get the results and have an interpretation and figure out what's going on. So we're picking up a lot of people probably 30% of the people that we see just young various healthy people not really sick people generally are Shown up with an elevated level of an antibody called any nuclear antibody which is that early sign of autoimmune disease So this is really scary to me as a doctor. So the question is, you know, why is the body doing this? What is the root cause, you know most doctors when they think of a patient will essentially go well, here's the symptoms Here's the lab test,

okay, you have these tests, you have these symptoms that are off, it means you have this or that disease. We name the disease and then we blame the disease for the problem. Now this young girl, Isabel, I was talking about before, she came to see me when she was 10 years old and she had a severe autoimmune disease called dermatomyositis. Dermatomyositis is nobody's best friend. Essentially, it's one of the worst autoimmune diseases. You can have it with everything. Your joints, your skin, your liver, your blood vessels, your muscles. I mean, pretty much

everything gets affected and so you have widespread destruction throughout your body. Now, the doctors didn't say, gee, why is her immune system so pissed off? Instead, they gave her a pile of drugs, steroids, cancer drugs to suppress her immune system. They're about to put her on an immune blocker called enatalpa, which is an antagonist which is basically blocking the inflammation marker in the blood that's responsible for a lot of our immune disease, which can be helpful. But again, nobody was asking a very simple question is why is she so inflamed in the blood that's responsible for a lot of autoimmune disease which can be helpful but again, nobody was asking a very simple question is why is she so inflamed in the first place? Why is her immune system so pissed off? Now, as I mentioned, Isabella was one of the most severe cases of autoimmune disease I've ever seen at 10 years old. She had severe skin rashes, that's the dermatitis. It's pretty much, itis means inflammation.

She had every kind of itis. She had vasculitis which is inflammation of your blood vessels causing rain outs. She had gastritis causing inflammation of her esophageal tract and causing trouble with her slugs. She had hepatitis protecting her liver. She had inflammation of her blood cells. I don't know what to call that but She had low white count and low red cells. She had severe muscle damage. So she had myositis and very severely elevated mucous enzymes. She had also severe arthritis and joint swelling. So basically everything was under attack. This cute little girl, Isabelle, was 10 years old.

She was from Texas. She loved riding horses. She couldn't do the most basic things anymore. She couldn't squeeze her hand or make a fist, her tips of her fingers and her toes were totally numb all the time from Raynose disease which is the damage of the blood vessels, autoimmune condition. She had rashes all over her body that were irritated. She was exhausted. She felt miserable. Her hair was falling out and she was being treated by doctors who were doing the best they could but were using the old paradigm. They were saying, okay, well she's got inflammation.

Let's get that under control. So they gave her a huge dose of steroids, something called Stalumedrol, which is essentially a horse dose of 1,200 milligrams intravenously. She had to go to the hospital and get intravenous steroids Every three weeks just to sort of be able to function She was on methotrexate, which is a chemo drug Because that suppresses inflammation she was on also aspirin to thin her blood because of Inflammation cause her blood to clot. She was on acid blockers because the reflux from her stomach. She was on

Calcium channel blockers to help open up her blood vessels because of her ray nodes. I mean, later on, she was on more drugs than I was even an 80-year-old to be on. And despite these mega-dust medications, she wasn't better. I mean, she was managed to call it managing her disease. Her labs were all abnormal. Her skin was still in pain. Her joints were still in pain. She just wasn't in the hospital, basically. And her doctors wanted to add another drug called the TNF Alpha Blocker, things like Remicade or Mera, you might have heard about it, you probably saw the ads on TV because there are tons of ads for these drugs on TV, which is a whole other topic because farmers

should not be advertising on TV. But anyway, basically this drug can be helpful, but if you don't have anything else to do to fix the problem. But it increases the risk of cancer and also infections because it suppresses the immune system, right? So it turns off the inflammation. And we need inflammation from cancer and infection but not for autoimmune disease or allergy, right? So that's the problem. Now, her mom was not happy with this plan. The she brought her to see me and we did a pretty simple program. It wasn't that hard but I asked a very different set of questions. I asked not, you know, what's the inflammation but what's the cause?

Not what's the name of her disease but what's the cause of her problem? What's pissing off her immune system? And so, that's the job of a functional medicine doctor, to be a detective, to look deeply into the root causes and to try to understand why. And I always say functional medicine is the medicine of why, conventional medicine is the medicine of what. What disease do you have and what drug do I give? Not why.

In fact, I always say just because you know the name of your disease, it doesn't mean you know what's wrong with you. Say it again, just because you know the name of your disease, let's say dermatomyositis, it doesn't mean you know what's wrong or what's causing it, right? Dermatomyositis just means skin and muscle inflammation because those are the two most prominent symptoms. It doesn't mean anything. It's just a fancy medical word describing the symptoms, nothing to do with the cause. So functional medicine gives us a map to help understand why, to understand inflammation. I often call myself an inflammationologist and that's what we should be, an inflammationologist.

In fact, inflammation in autoimmune disease is a real issue and obviously in allergy and asthma, but also in heart disease and cancer and diabetes and obesity and dementia, pretty much all the age-related diseases are all disease of inflammation. In my book, Young Forever, I did talk a lot about how one of the hallmarks of aging is inflammation, or what we call inflammation. So, when we look at the causes, how do we start to think about causes systematically? How do we have an organized approach to diagnosis about what is causing the body to react to something? Now, what we really know is that the body is not really

attacking itself on purpose. It's trying to do the job that it's supposed to do which is fight bad things, right? Bad things. What are the bad things? allergens bugs Microbes and mostly imbalances in your gut or your microbiome. We'll talk about that toxins On and you know also stress and poor diet also drive inflammation Psychological stress physical stresses, but but basically there are really five causes of almost all disease. Allergens, that can be a food sensitivity, it can be a true allergen, phenology, it can

be microbes, it can be something like Lyme disease or hepatitis or anything like that. Plus, it can be just dysbiosis and balances in the floor and they got they can be toxins petrochemical toxins and metal toxins from pesticides herbicides plastics as well as heavy metal toxins flame retardants I mean the list goes on so in fact there's a whole school of research now on what we call autogens. Autogens are environmental toxins that trigger an autoimmune response. So all these factors need to be investigated. We need to look at each person's okay, do they have any allergy stuff? Is there gluten sensitivity? Are they harboring latent infections that might be confusing the immune system? Do they have a toxin like

heavy metals, or pesticides? What's their diet like? Are they eating an inflammatory diet? How much stress do they have? All these things need to be considered and need to be investigated. And that's really what a fluctuation medicine does, it helps you investigate the root cause. It's really a diagnostic model to think about an operating system, to think about the body as a system, to think about root causes and to help the body restore balance. That's the goal. So basically, you got to figure out the cause if you want to fix You want to fix autoimmune disease you got to get to the cause and you know

Unfortunately medicine you don't do a good job at that. We get a little bit of that but not much right if you have pneumonia It's caused by scriptococcal infection. Okay, you get penicillin. That's fine. But most diseases are chronic diseases to sell and that's fine. But most diseases, chronic diseases, 6 out of 10 Americans have, which are accountable for over 85% of our healthcare costs, so which are now $4.3 trillion dollars, yes, caused by an infection like skeptical pneumonia or hepatitis C. I mean those are real, they need to be treated, but that's not really the majority of problems people are seeing. So functional medicine docs really understand the body of the system. It's an ecosystem and we seek the cause, we understand the basic interactions between them, we know when things go wrong, how to fix it and understanding interconnections between

symptoms and organs and systems rather than all these specialties. You know, I always say I don't really need to know anything about the fine points of a particular autoimmune disease. There'll be a specialist in that area. But I need to understand exclamation. I need to see the root causes. And I can treat. I'd never seen a case of dermatomyotitis in my life other than, you know, with a traditional

medicine when I was in residency in early practice. But as a functional medicine doctor, I never treated one before. But I knew exactly what to do because I followed the methodology of functional medicine. To provide the fundamental different, fundamentally different way of solving medical problems gets to the root of the illness and understand the disturbances that really are going on. So, let's talk about Isabel a little bit more. So, she, you know, I was seeing good doctors and their response was to shut down this kids immune system. You know, let's this kids suffering, let's just throw the whole kitchen sink, the whole bar and everything.

And that would have been okay. She might have been on improvements in her symptoms, but she didn't have had a risk for cancer infection, osteoporosis, muscle weight, things like gastric illnesses and by the way, would have cost a huge amount of money forever, right? This is a 10-year-old girl, she's gonna be on a drug that costs 50 grand a year for the next 60 years. You do the math, that's one person. So, we're talking about an untenable thing. So, I asked really a simple question with this, why?

I didn't focus on what the name of the disease was, I wanted to know why she's infected. When inflammation started, how we can really find the root causes and how we get to restore balance in her immune system. So, it's not finding the cause. It's also understanding how to get the immune system working better, taking out the bad stuff, putting in the good stuff. So, some insults usually are triggering some confusion. We call it molecular mimicry.

This is a theory about it. We just call it molecular mimicry. This is a theory about musical molecular mimicry that the for example Some food you're eating or gluten, you know somehow Confuses your immune system and it thinks your your thyroid is you know some foreign object But it's just cross-reacting with the gluten antibodies and that's why you end up pulled with a disease So we were looking for toxins, your allergens, bugs, or dysbiosis and by the way, lots of autoimmune disease starts from the gut and a lot of it starts from what we call leaky gut which clearly she had. So when I kind of did her history, I very detailed

history is really important. She had to find out what the story is, you know, not just how here's your disease but like what is your background, right? She had exposure to severe toxic mold and that can be a trigger. That's a toxin. Stacobotrys black mold and that was in her house and her mother also worked in limestone pits when she was pregnant and she was exposed to a lot of toxins and fluoride, even heavy metals and she also had her immunizations before 1999 and before 1999. And before 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC had not removed the NMRSol from the vaccines for childhood vaccines.

So, they're getting a lot of like 167 times the amount of mercury in the vaccines until they go, oh, wait a minute, we haven't had that in a long time. It's a lot of mercury. So, they did remove it except for flu shots. And so if you're getting a multi-dose file flu shot, which is what most people get, single dose doesn't have to have Marisol, but it's a preservative.

So when you stick the oil in over and over, you got a multi-dose file, you use it. But it's in the flu shot. So she was getting flu shots every year. And she also loved to eat sushi. So she had large amount of tuna, sushi which she had regularly, adding more mercury. She also died of very high in sugar, lots of dairy. She also had many infections over her life, ear infections, sore throats and had, because she was on a lot of immune suppressant

from stew and steroids also caused problems. She had lots of antibiotics. So, lots of antibiotics, lots of steroids which causes real damage to the gut. So, mold, mercury, antibiotics, sugar, dairy, gluten, junk food, all were potential irritants. So, when I dug in, I looked at her lab test pretty carefully and you know, in the conventional labs, they were amassed, right? So, they were you know, high levels of muscle enzymes called CBK or liver function tests were off the chart. She had many autoimmune antibodies that were just right behind her and off the chart high like high as I've ever seen, anti-nuclear antibodies, rheumatoid factor, anti-SSA or

showers antibodies, anti-double-stranded DNA, anti-RNP, lupus, skin, and chrysoline, a lot of big mumbo-jumbo medical terms but basically the whole stoop of autoimmune antibodies were just off the chart with her. And by the way, most autoimmune specialists do not check antibodies after the initial check because they go, oh, they don't ever go back to normal. Like, no, they don't if you don't get rid of the cause. They do if you get rid of the cause and we saw that with Isabel. So she had also a lot of problems, lots of elevations and other markers of inflammation like she had active protein. Her white count was really low. Her red cells were low. Her vitamin D

was really low. She had really high antibodies to gluten which by the way is a common cause of autoimmune disease, probably the most common and can trigger a significant inflammation and leaking gut. Her mercury level, we did a challenge test, was off the chart. And the only way to really check is to actually give people a drug that pulls out the metals like MSA and she had a level 33, normal is less than 3. So it's very high. And then the first visit I simply didn't do too much. I just put her on an anti-inflammatory elimination diet.

So no gluten, no dairy, no sugar, no processed foods. Got rid of the most common allergens. I gave her multivitamin. I got her vitamin D, and meat fall, but folate. Because of the acid blockers, blocking that. I gave her fish oil, which is anti-inflammatory, evening primrose oil, which is anti-inflammatory. So I gave her some basic nutritional support and I also gave her an anti-fungal. Nice stat, it's not absorbed but it's used to treat yeast overgrowth and I suspect that she had that due to the multiple course of antibiotics with the serotonin taking. I also gave her liver support, you know, endocentral cysteine, support liver and boost for the thion. And I told her parents probably over time she's fine. She's paper off her acid blocker, the calcium channel

blocker, the reynaud's and the steroids if she could. Two months later, she comes back and you know, I didn't know what to expect. Two months later, she came back and she said her symptoms were completely gone. Her rash was gone, her joint pain was gone, her hair was growing back, her muscles weren't hurting. It was an op or medication. Her autoimmune markers were much, much better. Her muscle enzymes, her liver function, her C-reactive protein, all normal. Now, this is just two months. Then I added probiotics to help her digestive system

heal a little bit and reduce the bed inflammation. I got her an accruing drug called DMSA, combine the metal from her tissues and operate to treat it and help get off the prednisone. I gave her some herbs to help her adrenal glands because she was on a lot of steroids and she tapered those down. Some of them months later everything was normal. All of her lab tests were normal including her white count, her later function, her muscle enzymes, the autoimmune antibodies

except for one called RMP but every other autoimmune antibody that we mentioned that were off the chart, ANA, factor all that stuff completely normal and never see that right. Her mercury came down from 33 to 16 after 11 months her mercury came down 11. Her gut inflammation was gone. Oh yeah she had a lot of gut inflammation. You know she had digestive symptoms. She had a test that we look at stool testing. Why would I look at stool testing for an autoimmune patient but basically every autoimmune patient should have a stool test, right? We use GIFX by Genova. Essentially, look at Calprotectin, which is a marker you can actually get at a regular lab like Quest or LabCorp. And Calprotectin is a marker of gut inflammation

that is super important because it's used for colitis or Crohn's disease, but if you have just slight elevations, it all indicates a low level of inflammation. So really really important. Now after a year, she was off all her medications, her labs were normal, she felt great. She was able to ride her horse again to show and she was just so excited. And you know, I checked in with her like many years later and he was great and she was still fine And we fixed the problem so you get rid of the cause it's not like stuff keeps coming back Now I've treated on immune disease for decades this way and I've seen patient after patient. We've got resolved not everybody 100% But the majority get better if not cured Now her case really is aware and I take a similar approach

Pretty much with all on me this is you have to be detective and be an informologist and what's going on now if not cured. Now, her case really is rare. And I take a similar approach pretty much with all autoimmune diseases. You have to be detective and be an informologist and what's going on. Now, if what I'm saying is true, like I said before, this should be a major effort from the NIH and the US government and private donations to actually fund research to look at this in a different way. But everybody's in their silos. Everybody's got their specialty and nobody's thinking of the body as a whole system. That really when you went to the clinic, when we did research looking at psoriatic arthritis

and psoriatic arthritis, comparing top rheumatologists there to our clinic, the functional medicine doctor, our patients did better in terms of all the objective metrics and the scoring systems for rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. So I think this is really possible. So what are the 10 steps to think about your reverse autoimmune disease? Well, it's really, really easy.

First take out the bad stuff and you have to find it all. And so for Isabelle it was a lot. It was mold, it was mercury, it was yeast in her gut, it was gluten, it was three metals, you know, it was all this stuff. And we have to add back the good stuff. We add back the good stuff, all the ingredients for good health, right? Whole foods, right? Levels of nutrients, the balance of hormones, light, air, water, movement, connection, meaning, love, purpose.

All these things are really essential ingredients for health. So if you have an autoimmune disease, I really encourage you to find a functional medicine doctor and work with them. We see patients at the Ultra Wellness Center. Check your labs out. Try functionhealth.com. Get your panel done. You can see if you have pre-automy disease or other markers. And I think, you know, you'll be able to really move forward. So what do you need to do? First, get tested for head infections. Now, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. When I say infections, it can also be dysbiosis, which is imbalances in the gut flora that cause gut and cause damage where by the way 70% of immune system is in your gut.

So if there's a damaged gut lining and you're getting food and bugs leaking in, your immune system is seeing that, it's like ah, with an immune response and that's essentially what happens. But that's probably the most common cause. Gluten is a big factor in causing leaky gut. It's probably one of the biggest factors because it increases something called xylene which disturbs the tight junctions in the cells and hold them together and bacterial proteins and things that leak in. But other things can be factors too. You can have a parasite. For example, parasites are

associated with rheumatoid arthritis. It can be Lyme disease which has been linked to autoimmune disease, other tick infections. You need to be a detective and be able to figure that out. Check for heavy metals, check for environmental chemicals, really important, like mercury. Fix your leaky gut, really important. That's so important. I think we just talked about leaky gut,

but get rid of the bad bug, the cheese, parasites, bad bacteria. Provide the program that you need to actually heal your gut. We call it 5R program, Menopausal Medicine, which is removing the bad stuff like bad foods and inflammatory foods and the allergens, bad bugs and then replacing things that are missing like digestive enzymes, prebiotic, reinoculated healthy bacteria, probiotics, repair, which is by the nutrients for gut lining healing, for example, glutamine, zinc, and fish oil, and even trimosol, many other compounds are really important, vitamin A for healing gut.

And then the fifth R is restore, which is to reset your nervous system and be dealing with stress differently. So it's super important. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. and dealing with stress differently. It's super important. at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer.

This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine

practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public.

So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.