FOHAC News What is Autoimmunity? #258

Published: Sun, 07/13/14

Fair Oaks Health News


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The office will be closed Thursday July 31st through Tuesday August 5th.

 
                                             July 13, 2014
 
 
What is Autoimmunity?



 Hi ,


We are hearing the word autoimmunity a lot these days.  More and more patients are coming in saying they have autoimmunity.  What does this mean exactly?  Is it some sort of government rating that makes your car immune from smog regulations, or some sort of protection program for illegal immigrants?  No, auto immunity means that your immune system is attacking you.  The white blood immune cells have become confused. Instead of protecting you from bad bacteria and viruses, they are attacking your healthy cells.

This is not as crazy as it sounds, because your immune cells do this even when you are completely healthy in certain ways.  Besides attacking the bad stuff entering your system to keep you healthy, another job of the immune cells is to destroy your old and dying cells that no longer work right.  They tag the dying cells and then send in the cell-muncher-killer cells to melt down and burn up the tagged cells.  This way you do not have a bunch of dead cells stuck in with all the healthy cells.  So attacking your own cells is not completely out of line for these killer immune cells.  The problem is when they start attacking healthy cells.

How do these cells know who to attack and who to leave alone?  Immune cells do everything by feel.  Even though we look at pictures of cells and think they are very nicely packaged little boxes and balls, in truth they are all covered with fuzz.  This fuzz acts like Braille identification tags like luggage tags.  Immune cells feel these tags and know who the good guys are.  Remember the old cells?  Their luggage tags got old and broken and consequently can't be read properly.  Anything that does not feel like a good guy is assumed to be a bad guy.  Here is where we open a big door to problems.

Sometimes what happens is sticky stuff gets stuck on the luggage tags and makes them feel like bad guys.  When that happens, the immune cells attack the healthy cells because they can't read the luggage tags properly.  The most common sticky stuff messing up the cells in the body these days is gluten and casein - the proteins from wheat and milk.  Both can be used to make glue commercially, and inside the body they act the same way.  It looks like lint collecting on a sweater, only here the sweater is the outer coating of the healthy cell.

When the immune cells attack healthy cells, this is called an autoimmune reaction.  If the healthy cells happen to be your thyroid cells, this reaction is called Hashimoto's Thyroiditis.  If it is the cells of your joints, it will be called rheumatoid arthritis.  In your brain it might be called dementia or Alzheimer's.  In your pancreas it is called late onset type 1 diabetes.  Virtually any cell type in the body can become a target, and some fancy disease name is given to it.  It is the same process everywhere, but they give it a different name for each different cell type attacked.

Some of you with a bit of physiology training have thought of the big "Hey wait a minute!" in this story.  What the heck are sticky things like gluten and casein doing floating around in the body in the first place?  They are supposed to be completely broken down in the gut, not sneaking into the blood stream.  Yes, you are completely right.  They are supposed to be broken down, but too often they aren't.  And the gut lining should keep these trouble makers out of the blood stream - but too often it doesn't.  Our digestive health has become seriously compromised because of our western diet.  We eat too much - more than we can digest properly.  We eat a boat load of toxic oils, chemicals, and poisons that have no place in a human digestive system.  Our GI tracts have become weak and punched full of holes so badly that foreign proteins like gluten and casein just float right in to the inside of our bodies.  This is called leaky gut syndrome.

This makes our immune system crazy.  It tries to attack all these foreign substances to make us safe.  This is called an allergic response to simple foods as these foods that are supposed to never make it past the gut wall start sliding across into the blood stream.  The immune system builds up and becomes a firestorm of attack troops trying to get rid of all the foods that don't belong in the system.  This firestorm is experienced by us as inflammation.  Anywhere these undigested food particles collect, a mess of really angry immune start a chemical warfare battle to destroy the food invaders.  Unfortunately there are a lot of healthy cells that get destroyed as collateral damage in this war.

Inside the gut itself another war is going on.  In a healthy gut there are about 500 different kinds of good guy bacteria that cling to the gut wall like a nicely maintained lawn.  When everything is healthy, the lawn is strong and dense and is able to keep weeds out.  The good guy bacteria keep bad guy bacteria out of the gut by giving them no place to attach and start growing a colony.  But in a leaky gut punched full of holes, the "lawn" becomes unhealthy and lots of "weeds" - bad bacteria, start growing.  White blood cells living around the gut lining start squeezing through the gut lining to attack the bad bacteria.  All this squeezing punches even more holes in the gut, allowing more bad things into the blood stream.

Everything mentioned so far can happen to a normal healthy person. The problem is that about 30% of the population is genetically sensitive to some component of wheat and other grains.  This is essentially a genetically programmed allergy.  This takes all the stuff we have talked about so far and makes it about 300% worse.  The grain protein literally causes the gut walls to tear apart microscopically.  So now we have a perfect storm.  Overeating, poor digestion, chemical poisons, bad bacteria, and for about a third of the people, a genetic susceptibility all work together to cause a flood of bad food proteins to enter our blood stream triggering an all out immune war.  All we know about it is our achy joints, memory problems, tiredness, and inflammation until we show up with an actual diagnosed autoimmune disease.

So what can we do about this horrible cascade of failing health?  I went to a weekend seminar on just this subject a few weeks ago.  Medicine has nothing but massively destructive drugs to suppress the symptoms, but absolutely nothing for the actual problems going on.  Health researchers have found a few substances that calm down the inflammation like Turmeric, Resveratrol, and Vitamin D3.  But the only thing really significantly impactful for autoimmune at this time is massive lifestyle changes.

I want to quote a line from the manual of the autoimmune seminar I took recently to demonstrate what I mean.  The quote deals with promoting special immune cells that dampen the autoimmune response called TH-3 which increase in response to opioids released in the brain contrasted with its opposite the TH-17 cells which make autoimmune reactions build up and get worse.

"A positive mental attitude, love, appreciation for life, and a positive mental reflection all increase opioids that make a person feel "high on life."  Conversely, a negative attitude, violence, poor relationships, internal mental stress, all promote increased production of interlukin-6 which activates the TH-17 pathway and promotes autoimmunity." - Kharrazian ©2014

Other major lifestyle factors are getting adequate sleep, getting the right kind of regular exercise (not over training), and maintaining a stable blood sugar response in the body.  Autoimmune individuals must also avoid consuming any wheat or other grains, dairy, or other foods they are reactive to.  Healing the leaky gut becomes a serious objective and may involve considerable work.  But I like how the author of the seminar understood the problem and had seen in his patients that the real game changer was all about the attitudes of each patient.

So what is the big lesson from today's article? If you want to heal from autoimmune or even to prevent autoimmune, get high on life.  Appreciate life.  Appreciate and love someone.  Get connected in positive relationships.  Enjoy what is, instead of obsessing on how you think things should be.  The first will make you healthy, while the second will kill you.

Autoimmune disease has been called The Disease of the 21st century.  Where do you want to stand with it?

Take care,


David  


I am always on the lookout for cool new gadgets that are actually useful for us all.  Here is one that is brilliant - a battery operated ozone generator for inside your fridge that greatly increases the lifespan of your fruits and vegetables.  It will double or even triple the lifespan of your produce by killing off the molds and other nasty critters that rot your produce.  If your fridge is anything like mine, you will be saving the cost of the Berry Breeze unit within a few weeks.  Check it out! 

Berry Breeze



Ultrasound Physical Therapy
Now available in the office
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H


On the Wire

Sleep to remember

It has been known for a long time that sleep is important for us to be able to remember things well, but no one knew why until now.  Researchers have found that when we go to sleep and reach the deep slow wave sleep phase our brain replays new things from the day and forms new neural connections to lock this new knowledge into our brain.  If we don't get the slow wave sleep our brain is not able to form these new connections and the memory fades. 
 
Sleep memory
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"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
 
- Abraham Lincoln 

 

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Malnutrition damages gut bacteria

Children who undergo acute episodes of severe malnutrition can have permanent effects such as stunted growth, brain problems, and immune system weakness even though they are able to get back on regular nutrition.  The episodes of malnutrition appear to damage the microflora in the children's gut making it more immature.  Normally as we age our gut microbe communities mature and get more complex.  The lack of nutrition seems to stop this maturation of the gut microbes and this directly affects children's ability to grow.  Our gut microbes are not just passengers - they help control our maturation.   


"The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time."

- Abraham Lincoln

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Pups Poop Along North-South Magnetic Lines

Magnesium and bone health

70 to 80% of Americans do not get the minimum necessary requirements of magnesium each day.  In fact magnesium is the single greatest deficiency in our diet in this country.  Magnesium is necessary for building strong bones, relaxing the smooth muscles of the body like the colon, and it supports the building of the relaxing neurotransmitter serotonin.  We need about 400 mg per day.  In our diet magnesium is what makes green plants green, so the darker green a plant is the more magnesium it has.  
 
 

"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle."

- Abraham Lincoln

 
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Our address is  9725 Fair Oaks Blvd.
Finding the new location is very easy.  Coming from highway 50 up Sunrise Blvd, you turn left and go up a block.  We are on the right hand side - the building just past the Subway Sandwich shop.  If you are coming down Sunrise from the Mall area then just turn right on Fair Oaks Blvd and up a block on the right.
 
If you are coming from the Roseville area you could come down Sunrise Blvd, but that is a long trek.  It is probably shorter time wise to come down Auburn Blvd - San Juan Ave like you have been for the Sunset office, but instead of turning left at Sunset, keep going straight 3 more lights to Fair Oaks Blvd and turn left.  Go down 2 lights to New York Ave, go through the intersection, and immediately turn into the turn lane once the center divider ends.  We are on the left.
 
   
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About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years.  He began experimenting with  medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis.  In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education.  Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic.  He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice. 
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health. 
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities. 
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth.  The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework.  Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.



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Fair Oaks Healing & Arts Center
9725 Fair Oaks Blvd. Suite A, Fair Oaks, CA 95628, USA
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