The Autoimmune Solution

Amy Myers, M.D.

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780062347497
• Topic: Médecine
• Subtopic: Maladies et allergies

Over 90 percent of the population suffers from inflammation or an autoimmune disorder. Until now, conventional medicine has said there is no cure. Minor irritations like rashes and runny noses are ignored, while chronic and debilitating diseases like Crohn's and rheumatoid arthritis are handled with a cocktail of toxic treatments that fail to address their root cause. But it doesn't have to be this way.

In The Autoimmune Solution, Dr. Amy Myers, a renowned leader in functional medicine, offers her medically proven approach to prevent a wide range of inflammatory-related symptoms and diseases, including allergies, obesity, asthma, cardiovascular disease, fibromyalgia, lupus, IBS, chronic headaches, and Hashimoto's thyroiditis.

Part One

The Autoimmune Epidemic

CHAPTER 1

My Autoimmune Journey—and Yours

ABOUT TEN YEARS AGO I developed an autoimmune condition—and conventional medicine failed me. I don’t want it to fail you too.

If you’re one of the fifty million Americans suffering from an autoimmune disease, this book is for you. If you’re one of the hundreds of millions of people struggling with an inflammatory condition that puts you at risk for developing an autoimmune disease—disorders like arthritis, asthma, eczema, or cardiovascular disease—this book is for you. And if you’re one of the millions of people whose parent, spouse, sibling, friend, or child is currently coping with an autoimmune condition, this book is for you too. Whether you want to reverse your autoimmune disorder, keep from getting an autoimmune disorder, or support someone who has an autoimmune disorder, this book can change your life.

I’m an M.D. myself, so I don’t like to criticize other doctors, let alone their standard protocols, but the truth must be told: When it comes to the treatment of autoimmune conditions, conventional medicine has failed miserably. The typical weapons of choice are medications that might or might not ease your symptoms; that might disrupt your life with harsh side effects; that often keep you permanently anxious about the possibility of developing an infection; and that might stop working after a few years, causing you to take even more powerful medications. The accepted philosophy is that autoimmune disorders are inevitable, that they can be managed but neither prevented nor reversed. The result is that patients are reduced to complete dependence on their doctors and their prescribed medications, unable to live their lives without constant fear and often without pain.

In these pages, I’ll show you how to use a healthy diet, lifestyle, and high-quality supplements to eliminate symptoms, get off your medications, and enjoy the kind of vibrant, total health you’ve always wanted. I’ll show you why changing your diet and healing your gut can make a world of difference, along with freeing your body of its toxic burden, healing your infections, and reducing your load of stress. I’ll help you take charge of your health, making the choices that support your body and keep you glowing, fit, and full of energy.

Why do I sound so confident? Because over the years I’ve treated thousands of patients with this approach—and I’ve also treated myself. Like I said, conventional medicine failed me, so I had to develop an autoimmune solution, one that would help me overcome the staggering side effects of conventional treatments and enable me to live a busy, healthy life.

If you give me just thirty days, I can help you take back your life too. If you suffer from autoimmunity, I can show you how to reverse your disorder, eliminate your symptoms, and even get off your medications. If you suffer from an inflammatory condition, I can help you heal that condition and keep it from turning into a full-blown autoimmune disorder. If you know someone who is struggling with autoimmunity, I can teach you how to offer your loved one the kind of support and guidance that could make a life-changing difference.

Sound good? Then let’s get started. I can’t wait for you to find your own autoimmune solution.

THE FAILURE OF CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE

Before we look at the much-needed alternative, let’s take a quick tour of what most of you or your loved ones are dealing with, or of what you might be dealing with if your inflammatory condition turns into autoimmunity. You might start out bouncing from doctor to doctor because nobody can figure out what’s wrong with you. There are more than one hundred recognized autoimmune conditions and many are not well understood by conventional medicine.

As a result, most doctors and care providers are at a loss if you come in with a collection of autoimmune-like symptoms that don’t quite match a diagnosis they recognize. This problem is compounded by the way conventional medicine has been fractured into so many discrete specialties. If you are diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, you don’t go see an “immune specialist” (unless you come to see me!). You are more likely shuttled off to a specialist who focuses on the system that is being attacked: a rheumatologist for rheumatoid arthritis; a gastroenterologist for celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis; an endocrinologist for Graves’ disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and diabetes; and so on. And if you have two autoimmune conditions, as many people do, you are likely to see two separate specialists; for three conditions, three specialists; and so on.

This fragmentation suggests that your problem is a disease of a particular organ, but in fact, it is a disease of the immune system as a whole. All these diseases—despite affecting different organ systems—stem from the same common cause: an immune system gone rogue. My approach is based on getting to the root of the problem: removing the elements that derailed your immune system in the first place and strengthening your immune system rather than suppressing it. That’s why using this approach enables you to reverse and prevent many different autoimmune conditions at once.

Because there is a genetic component to autoimmune disorders, your doctor might be especially concerned if you have a family history of autoimmunity that includes at least one parent, sibling, aunt, uncle, or grandparent. You might have begun searching for answers when you realized that one or more people in your family had a condition like rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, lupus, or Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

Whether or not you have a family history, you are likely to hear that your genes hold the key to whether or not you will develop autoimmunity, that there is nothing you can do to prevent it and no way to reverse it once it strikes. This can make the search for a diagnosis rather ominous, since at the end of the road is not a promise of health but only the prospect of an ever-worsening disease.

How an Autoimmune Disease Progresses

In most cases, your primary care doctor will send you to a specialist, either with or without a diagnosis—perhaps a rheumatologist, endocrinologist, gastroenterologist, or neurologist. If you have been diagnosed with a painful, debilitating condition such as rheumatoid arthritis—an inflammation of the joints—the specialist will likely tell you that this disorder, like all autoimmune diseases, is irreversible. The joint pain that sent you to the doctor in the first place? Well, that was just the beginning. Eventually it will become so severe, so disabling, that you’ll be in more or less constant pain, and you’ll find it very difficult to move. Forget about enjoying a romantic walk along the beach or taking your grandkids to the amusement park. You’ll be lucky if you can climb a flight of stairs or take a quick drive to the mall.

The specialist will offer you an array of powerful medications to combat your symptoms and ease your pain.

“What about side effects?” you ask.

“Well, yes, these drugs have significant side effects,” she replies. “They are something you are going to have to learn to live with.”

Or perhaps your diagnosis is a milder one, such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, a condition in which your immune system attacks your thyroid and keeps it from producing enough thyroid hormone. Now your specialist has far more cheerful news to share: You just have to take a thyroid hormone supplement every day for the rest of your life. But the medication is inexpensive, you won’t notice any side effects, and even though your dosage will probably keep increasing, life will basically go on as before.

You don’t really like the idea of your thyroid slowly, steadily being destroyed by your own body. Still, the doctor’s suggestions don’t sound so bad—until you go home and do your own research. You soon discover a fact that most doctors don’t share with their patients: Having even one autoimmune condition makes you three times more likely to develop another. What if the next one is something really debilitating, like lupus or multiple sclerosis?

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WARNING SIGNS

An autoimmune condition is one in which a disordered immune system begins attacking the body’s own tissue. The following symptoms and/or diagnoses could signal either a full-blown autoimmune disease or an inflamed immune system that is at risk of becoming autoimmune:

• acid reflux

• acne

• ADD/ADHD

• allergies

• Alzheimer’s

• anxiety

• arthritis

• asthma

• B12 deficiency

• blood clots

• brain fog (difficulty focusing or just not feeling “sharp”)

• cardiovascular disease

• depression

• digestive issues (gas, bloating, indigestion, constipation, diarrhea, reflux/heartburn)

• dry eyes

• eczema

• fatigue

• fibrocystic breasts

• gallstones

• hair loss

• headaches

• infertility

• joint pain

• muscle pain

• obesity or excess weight, especially around the middle

• pancreatitis

• sleep problems (trouble falling or staying asleep)

• swollen, reddened, or painful joints

• uterine fibroids

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You ask your doctor about this frightening prospect at your next visit, and she confirms that your research was correct: Having one autoimmune condition triples your risk of developing others. But she also tells you there’s nothing you can do to prevent that from happening. As far as conventional medicine is concerned...