Welcome to All Things Autoimmunity
If you are an Autoimmune Disease patient, you have probably asked yourself the following questions:
What is happening inside my body?
What actually went wrong?…, and why?
What can I do about my immune system and my health?
You have come to the right place.
I have been a clinician for over 25 years with a focus on Autoimmune Disease.
I am an Autoimmune Patient and know how challenging and life-changing these conditions can be.
Every challenge changes us, for better or for worse.
Let’s focus on making things better!
Are you ready to begin a healing journey of rebuilding your Vitality, Metabolism, and repairing an Overwhelmed Immune System?
Then I encourage you to learn about the protocols and self-assessment tools found on this website.
I also recommend working with an Integrative or Functional Medicine practitioner or a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Mainstream medicine is great at managing your symptoms – the focus is on the ‘What.’
Integrative medicine is great at solving complex and chronic diseases – the focus is on the ‘Why.’
At the beginning of this journey, you may need both!
Welcome to All Things Autoimmunity
What is Autoimmunity?
Autoimmunity describes a class of chronic diseases that are initiated by an aggressive change of your immune system.
After a certain amount of dysfunction, which is different for everyone, your immune system becomes more reactive until it starts attacking your own tissues. This is clinically described as losing ‘Self-Tolerance.’
The Autoimmune process is extremely complicated. It has many ‘moving parts’ that determine where in your body, how rapidly and how destructively it will attack your connective tissues, your organs, your membranes, your glands, and/or your skin. This roulette wheel of moving parts, as well as how you respond to stress, and your chronic symptoms can determine how likely it is and how quickly you will get better.
The Autoimmune process is also based on common sense. Your body, your metabolism, your connective tissues, and your immune system are profoundly adaptable. They have evolved successfully enough to get your ancestors through every challenge our species has faced for all of human history.
Modern life has brought with it some new challenges. If any or all of your adaptive systems get to the point of overwhelm, your body has no other choice than to try something drastic.
And Autoimmunity is as drastic as it gets!
Functional Medicine and Autoimmunity
If you feel confused and unsure of what is happening and what to do, find the root cause. I always recommend finding a clinician who thinks like a detective. It is usually cheaper and much more efficient in the long term to do some comprehensive and correlative lab testing.
If both you and your clinician know why your immune system, stress hormones, and detox pathways are not working properly, you will both know what to do, why, and for how long.
Tap HERE to read more…
Chinese Medicine and Autoimmunity
Historically, Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) only has two descriptions of Autoimmunity. The 2,200 year-old classic text of internal medicine (Huang Di Nei Jing), describes Autoimmunity as, first, a dysfunctional marriage between two characteristics of chronic disease, acute reactive processes and chronic dysfunction and degeneration. Second, many Autoimmune conditions are thought to be due to pathogens that are hidden or latent in your body for many years that trigger your immune system when it is too weak to keep the pathogen at bay.
Tap HERE to read more…
Modern Medicine has Limits
Modern Allopathic or ‘mainstream medicine’ has saved my life at least four times. I am very comfortable saying that using ‘Immune Suppressant Drugs‘, pain medication, and other pharmaceutical medications when they are necessary. You want to get your metabolism and immune system into the best state possible as fast as possible. Unfortunately, that is usually as far as mainstream medicine can go. Most of my Allopathic colleagues agree, they are only trained for illness management and relief care.
Things are changing, and most medical doctors (Physicians) are catching up with the research behind the successes of Integrative medicine.
Seeing any clinician is a gamble. Just like seeing any other professional, every clinician has strengths and weaknesses. I have spoken of the strengths of mainstream medicine and pharmacological intervention – in the short term. (And thanks, again!)
The primary weakness of mainstream medicine is all of the Iatrogenic Death.
Iatrogenic Death means death due to medical error. Most of the ‘errors’ happen at home with patients on multiple medications – some of them just to alleviate side effects. I am not blaming any single group of people, I am just pointing out that Iatrogenic Death is the Number Three Killar in the developed world!
If you are looking for more help with your health, including your present need for symptom relief, gamble on common sense, ancestral wisdom, mind-body connections, create an environment and lifestyle that supports healing, and stimulating the function of your immune system, step-by-step, through the natural healing process.
We all need to hear this:
Yes, you will have to change your lifestyle in many ways – for months – for some of us, years.
Do not wait and see how bad your diagnosis will get.
What is Working?
Imagine sitting down and having a meaningful conversation about your health, lifestyle, relationships and past traumas. Imagine having that conversation with someone specifically trained to help you make some important decisions about your health and how you experience stress.
Integrative Medicine is in such demand because we look at the whole person.
We dig into your medical history and test for your greatest metabolic challenges.
We focus on the most up-to-date research and therapeutic protocols.
Integrative medicine is a long term relationship – the focus in on improving your health more than your diagnosis.
Changing your health usually means changing your lifestyle. A little – or a lot!
Changing your lifestyle is challenging, so it is best to have a guide with a lot of experience supporting people through the hard parts.
My Clinical Focus
As a clinician, I have over 25 years of experience researching and resolving some of the most complex and chronic conditions in medicine. That doesn’t give me magical powers, it just means I have seen a lot of fads come and go, and I have researched EVERY new discovery or protocol for Autoimmune patients and for PTSD patients.
Go Nerd Powers!
As a patient who has lived with Autoimmune Disease, I have a great deal of personal experience about living with and healing from these serious and life-changing medical conditions. I have a flare-up occasionally, ALWAYS after a stressful time in my life.
If humans are allergic to anything, it is stress!
This website is a reflection of what I have learned and now recommend to all of my patients. If you are a patient who has tried Diet A or Diet B and did not see much change, consider this. Your body heals itself well and completely, or as best as it can, given your lifestyle, your physiological adaptability, and your environment.
If you can create an optimal healing environment and lifestyle, you will heal optimally – as best your age, genes and adaptability possibly can. Your body also heals itself the best given certain kinds of stimulation. If you do puzzles often, your brain will last longer. If you have a chronic inflammatory condition with measurable tissue damage (almost everything chronic – and tissue covers everything), it only makes sense to start with a VERY focused period of time on an Antiinflammatory protocol.
After that, you have to stimulate and nourish your body very specifically, depending on the tissue you need to repair.
After all of that, you may want to spend a few months figuring out exactly what is making your immune system so aggressive.
Then you are well on your way to a life with a lot less medication and a lot less to worry about.
My Clinical focus is to guide, motivate, educate, and support my patients through each Phase, each Pillar, and each Stage of the Autoimmune Spectrum.
I once learned that the term ‘Doctor’, actually means a teacher of common sense. That is what I do!
Functional Medicine
“Functional Medicine is essentially Traditional Chinese Medicine with a microscope. The focus is on a ‘functional systems’ and ‘individual adaptability’ centred understanding of each person’s unique Root Cause.”
Acupuncture
Acupuncture is one of the oldest and most effective medical procedures still practiced on Earth!
For thousands of years, people have been stimulating circulation, relieving acute and chronic pain, stabilizing metabolic disorders, invigorating the immune system as well as improving sleep and digestion with Acupuncture.
Ancestral Nutrition
Ancestral or Evolutionary Nutrition has the understanding that human beings have adapted to, and thrive better on, a seasonal and natural diet than on a modern processed food diet. If your health is compromised with a chronic illness, Ancestral Nutrition suggests focusing on a pre-agriculture and Nutrient Dense diet.
Traditional Chinese Medicine
The vast wisdom and clinical experience of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has evolved for over 5000 years. Combining Herbal Medicine, Acupuncture, Massage (Tui Na), Nutrition, Lifestyle Counselling, and Qi Gong, Chinese Medicine has many ways to support people.
The Standard Autoimmune Protocol
In 2004, many people started eating more like Palaeolithic Hunter-Gatherers for almost every health condition and fitness goal. The people with autoimmunity that shifted to the Paleo Diet were thrilled. Their overall health and lab results improved even more rapidly. Over the last two decades, the amount of scientific research that has proven exactly why these dietary changes are so effective has changed our understanding of exactly how chronic inflammatory diseases work.
This combination of ancient tradition, modern research and literally millions of people experimenting on themselves has proven to be a much-needed opportunity for the ever-increasing number of Chronically ill people walking through their lives wounded, tired and hoping for a cure.
Tap HERE to learn more about the AIP
The Ancestral Autoimmune Protocol
The Ancestral Autoimmune Protocol has Four Phases and Six Pillars.
The Six Pillars of the
Ancestral Autoimmune Protocol
Healing from a complex and potentially life-long condition often requires a comprehensive shift in many aspects of your diet and lifestyle. Each of the Four Phases offers you guidance for each of your Six Pillars of Health.
You may need to change each of these aspects of your lifestyle a great deal, or you may not need to change them at all.
Although each and every decision is up to you, I will do my best to confine you to get the most from your time commitment and effort.
You can choose to do this on your own, but working with a skilled clinician may save you a lot of time and money.
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