113 | Why So Much Autoimmunity?

Welcome back to another episode of the Real Health Podcast. We are jumping in. We're talking through today: the topic is immune tolerance, but I really want you to frame this out in the sense of like autoimmunity, how that really develops in the body. And so as we kind of explore this topic of immune tolerance, let's talk about what it is.

Last couple episodes, we've been talking about the immune system, but what immune tolerance is, is the immune system's ability to recognize your body as self. In essence, like your immune system says, "hey, this is my heart or this is my brain." And it doesn't obviously attack it. It also recognizes like pollen and allergies and viruses as non self. So when it sees a virus, it's going to attack, it's going to kill it, it's going to kind of put it in its corner and then be done with it.

The loss of immune tolerance is when those things can get switched and the immune system no longer can recognize the human body as self, and it can actually form what we would call autoimmunity. So let's talk about the seven ways that immune tolerance is lost, and then we're gonna talk about eight different strategies to reverse, sorry, six different strategies to reverse immune tolerance, and then we're gonna talk about some very specific viruses that are associated with very specific autoimmune conditions. Okay? So let's frame out these first seven first. How do we lose immune tolerance?

Some of this is gonna be review from the previous episodes. And so just kind of stick with me here. Side note, if you want to dive deeper and get a global overview of the immune system and then dive deep into how to heal it and reverse autoimmunity, reverse childhood disorders like eczema and allergies and food reactions, make sure that you are signed up for our immune system masterclass. This immune system masterclass is gonna be held on the 25th, March 25th, and it's at 06:30PM Eastern Standard Time. This is gonna be a Zoom based webinar that you can receive a login link to join our masterclass.

It'll be an hour long with Dr. Reed and myself as we dive in and talk about how to heal this immune system. It is free. You do not have to pay for it and you can sign up on our website. You can also sign up through a link on our Instagram. So make sure you go to RealHealthCo and go to our Instagram and find that link in our bio.

Alright, number one, how do we lose immune tolerance? We lose it through leaky gut. When the gut is inflamed for an extended period of time and we lose our intestinal barrier, then it can trigger immune overreactions. As the immune system becomes more permeable, it actually leaks food reactions into the digestive system. It can also release toxins and infections and pathogens that the immune system becomes over reactive to.

So the central to immune tolerance is having a healthy intestinal barrier. Number two, we call this immune priming. Really what it means is chronic infections. If you have chronic unrelenting infections, bacterial infections, viral infections, parasitic infections, most of time you are not aware of it. It does not spike a fever.

It can intermittently cause a fever randomly. It can cause symptoms like brain fog, low energy. It can cause digestive disorders. But for the most part, most of us don't know that there are infections in our body that are priming the immune system. This is a chronic low grade inflammatory state that leads to an overactive immune system.

And this is how we can lose our immune tolerance. We'll come back to that in a second, but chronic infections, especially parasitic infections kind of help, really primes the immune system to become over reactive. Number three, the more toxins you consume, the more detrimental the effects are on the immune system. Heavy metals like mercury, right? Pesticides, environmental toxins like plastics and petroleum, they can trigger immune dysregulation.

They can create an over reactive TH2 immune system. We talked about this in previous episodes, and cause this chronic inflammatory process. Living a pure life is so important. Reducing toxic exposure is so important to the immune system overreaction. Number four, nutritional deficiencies.

So things like vitamin D, omega-three fatty acids, zinc, vitamin C are so important at regulating the immune system. They actually directly affect what's called the T regulatory cells. And this helps balance, create balance within the immune system. Making sure you're getting sunlight and quality fats, omega-three fatty acids are so important at creating immune system regulation. Number five, chronic stress.

Chronic stress will absolutely impair the immune system. It will put the immune system in this too high, then too low shift, and this creates a lot of dysregulated cortisol. Dysregulated cortisol will hinder immune system function. And actually to support that number six is blood glucose dysregulation. So when we look at high stress levels and cortisol spikes, blood sugar, when it spikes, when it goes high and low, can create the same immune fatigue that cortisol can.

Chronic blood sugar dysregulation is massive at fixing to heal the immune system. That's why when you're sick, do not drink a bunch of orange juice. Do not eat a bunch of fruit. Right? Consume bone broth and nourishing foods that aren't gonna spike your blood sugar.

And then the last one we talked about last week was over sterilization. Get rid of the hand sanitizers. Over sanitizing your environment is going to absolutely affect how your immune system reacts to its environment. This is called the hygiene hypothesis. And the more hygienic the environment becomes, the less our immune system has to work, which therefore doesn't allow to be primed and practiced and developed over time.

Get rid of those hand sanitizers. Let your kids play in dirt. It'll help their immune system significantly. Let's talk about how to heal it now, right? So we talked about the causes, how do we heal it?

Well, first we got to heal the gut. We got to remove gut reactive foods like gluten and dairy. We got to support the digestive lining. Glutamine is great for that, zinc is great for collagen is great for that. We gotta eat pre and probiotic rich foods like kimchi and yogurts and sauerkrauts, and we gotta increase our fiber.

Chia seeds are one of my favorite things to help with our digestive lining. They're called mucilaginous foods. And so one of my favorite mucilaginous food is chia seed. So number one, heal the gut. Number two, support the regulation of your T cells, the T cell regulation.

How do we do that? We go back to the vitamins. Right? So vitamin D. Check your vitamin D levels.

Most of the time we need five thousand IUs of vitamin D a day because of how deficient we are in sunlight. Omega three fatty acids. Eat sardines, eat wild Alaskan fish, eat grass fed beef. Plant based antioxidants. So a lot of fruits, vegetables, and fiber here.

And then supplementation to support the regulation of your T cells. Some of my favorite immune support products is glutathione. Glutathione. Specifically, there's a product called Trisomal Glutathione. It's one of my favorite oral based liposomal glutathione's on the market.

Number three, detox the body by reducing your toxin exposure. Okay? Get rid of the plastics and petroleum's. Get rid of heavy metals. Get the amalgams out of your mouth.

Support the liver through cruciferous vegetables. Sauna is amazing for detoxification support. And then obviously use really glass and stainless steel as much as you can. Lastly, get rid of your chlorinated water, your Brita water filter, get a reverse osmosis water filter, start reducing that toxic exposure. Number four, reduce your chronic stress and balance your cortisol levels.

So things like sleep and no caffeine past 2:00pm and optimizing your sleep to seven to eight hours a night, these are essential at helping balance your stress levels. Cut off blue light exposure at a certain time and focus on meditative breathing. Box breathing is one of my favorite stress reduction techniques I do every morning. Even just training, you got to exercise, you got to move your body, get steps in every single day. Movement is life to the body.

And so the more we move, the better we are, the faster we'll heal. Number five, balance your blood sugar. We've got a blood sugar balancing guide on our website. Go to realhealthco.com, download the blood sugar Balancing Guide that Dr. Reed put together, and it will be absolutely transformational to help you balance your blood sugar.

I don't even need to talk about anything else. Go to the guide on our website and get that. Number six, increase microbial exposure, right? Spend time in nature. Eat dirt, play with dirt, dig dirt, okay?

Avoid over sterilization. Get rid of your alcohol based hyper toxic hand sanitizers. If you want something because you just, that's the way your brain is, you're low OCD, I get it, okay. There's some people out there like that. There's a silver, a colloidal silver gel that's fantastic, has a little glutathione in it.

It's from a company called Results RNA. We got it in the office. You can find it online. That would be a great hand sanitizer. But get out, expose your body to microbials and the environment, and build some resilience.

The last thing is build resilience, heat and cold. Did you know that heat, high heat environments, heat shock protein activation is directly related to killing viruses, directly related to killing viruses. So think about it. When your body has a virus, it increases body temperature, it kills viral loads. To keep your viral load down and infectious load down, high heat, high heat.

Now cold water exposure, so five minutes and 50 degree water or three to five minutes in that temperature, is great at just helping the immune system develop. But if you wanna actually knock out some viral loads, let's look at high heat exposure. As we think about this idea of oral tolerance loss autoimmunity, we'll talk way more in-depth at our master class that we're doing on March 25 at 6:30pm Eastern Standard Time, make sure you register for that. Let's talk about, this is amazing. This is what most people understand about autoimmunity.

Longstanding infections lead to immune oral tolerance lost, and therefore your body then starts to attack self. But there are very specific infections that are linked to very specific conditions. You didn't just develop autoimmunity out of the blue. For instance, there is a condition that most I'll start with the easy one. That most people are associated that most people know called rheumatic fever.

Rheumatic fever is from a strep based bacteria, and it can- this bacteria can- your body can attack the bacteria, the strep pyogenes of bacteria, but then it cross reacts with joint and heart, which actually can cause cardiovascular disease, endocarditis, and rheumatoid arthritis from this bacteria. There's something called Hashimoto's or thyroid related Hashimoto's and Graves' disease, thyroid related issues. This is linked to Epstein Barr. When we look at other autoimmune conditions like type one diabetes, there's a very specific C virus that's associated with type one diabetes. When we look at multiple sclerosis, MS, and a neurological autoimmune condition, Epstein Barr.

When we look at Guillain Barre syndrome, which is a nervous system disorder, Campylobacter, jejuni, which is a bacterial infection in the gut. It's usually caused by food poisoning. When we look at ankylosing spondylitis, it's caused by klebsiella pneumonia. When we look at celiac disease, Epstein Barr and adenoviruses, and even conditions like lupus associated with Epstein Barr and cytomegalovirus. So when we look at these conditions of autoimmunity, we have to know that, hey, there's a cause.

And if we know the cause, we know the cure. If we know the cause, we know the cure. If you need help with autoimmunity, if you need with reversing autoimmunity, if you need help with helping your child reverse eczema, reverse food reactions, and build oral tolerance again, make sure you sign up for a master class next week. If you listen to this on Friday, next week, next Tuesday night, March 25th at 06:30pm.

It is free. Log in with our Zoom based webinar, and we will teach you everything you need to know about the immune system. Well, there it is. Immune system, oral tolerance, how it's lost, how to regain it, and how, in essence, to start the journey at reversing autoimmunity. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Real Health Podcast.

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