[powerpress]
What causes autoimmune disease?
I am frequently asked - "so, Audrey, what causes autoimmune disease?"
My response is almost always - "it is a tree with many roots."
Let me paint a picture for you - This is what I mean by that, picture a tree where rheumatoid arthritis is the trunk, and the branches are all the different symptoms that come with it - joint pain, swelling, redness, reduced ability to move around - anything else that you experience... it is the outward appearance to you the person suffering from rheumatoid in this example OR to others who see you suffering.
Then under the ground - what people can’t see are the roots of the tree, there may be a few that poke through and are obvious from the above-ground but the majority of the roots aren’t obvious. It’s how we land at rheumatoid arthritis is not a disease of the joints - just like psoriasis isn’t a disease of the skin. It is much more than that. The joints, the skin, those are symptoms - branches if you will.
And it's those roots - those are what cause autoimmune disease. That is where you find the issue that is causing the problem and that is where you will find the cure, relief, remission. That is where you start your revolution.
RESOURCES AND LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Transcript: https://audreychristie.com/119
Consequences of Common Medications Part 1 Episode 82
Consequences of Common Medications Part 2 Episode 83
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What Causes Autoimmune Disease
Rough Transcript (listening is best)
What Causes Autoimmune Disease?
I am frequently asked - "so, Audrey, what causes autoimmune disease?"
My response is almost always - "it is a tree with many roots."
Let me paint a picture for you to help you understand...Picture a tree where rheumatoid arthritis (or psoriasis or insert your autoimmune condition) is the trunk, and the branches are all the different symptoms that come with it - joint pain, swelling, redness, reduced ability to move around - anything else that you experience... it is the outward appearance to you the person suffering from rheumatoid in this example OR to others who see you suffering.
Then under the ground - what people can’t see are the roots of the tree, there may be a few that poke through and are obvious from the above-ground but the majority of the roots aren’t obvious. It’s how we land at rheumatoid arthritis is not a disease of the joints - just like psoriasis isn’t a disease of the skin. It is much more than that. The joints, the skin, those are symptoms - branches if you will.
And it's those roots - those are what causes autoimmune disease. That is where you find the issue that is causing the problem and that is where you will find the cure, relief, remission. That is where you start your revolution.
Are you making your autoimmune condition worse?
Raise your hand - answer me out loud - what comes up when I say your autoimmune disease is not a disease of the outward symptoms? And what if I told you that treating it as such - actually makes your condition worse and causes additional autoimmune diseases to start. Something referred to as poly-autoimmunity.
So what that means is that the medications and treatments that you are using are maybe bringing you short-term relief but are ultimately causing you more harm - particularly if that is the only thing you are doing to help your autoimmune disease or chronic illness and if you are taking the long term.
Even over the counter medications like Advil, Aleve, ibuprofen, antacids, etc. AND this is going to be an unpopular opinion - but even if you are taking fist fulls of supplements - that can be a form of masking symptoms instead of finding and treating the root causes so you can be an autoimmune conqueror.
What causes an autoimmune disease recipe?
So what causes autoimmune disease? Well as I mentioned - it is in fact a tree with many roots. Although there isn't a singular root cause for autoimmune and whole or a specific autoimmune disease. There is a really particular recipe for autoimmune disease, its a combination of three things. Three ingredients to the autoimmune recipe: genetic predisposition, loosey-goosey intestinal permeability, and an environmental trigger.
Let's talk about each one of those things just a little bit.
Your Genes
Not the ones that we all avoid wearing, but that fancy genetic code that makes you what you are today.
It's a common misconception that the reason we snag an autoimmune disease is that we were gifted a particular set of genes from our parents.
Now, while it can be true that there is a genetic component it’s now well proven that its just one small piece of the puzzle. Thanks to the study of genes and gene expression called epigenetics - not only does it tell us that DNA is one small piece of the puzzle but the study of epigenetics shows us that there's no specific pattern that can be identified or at least has been identified yet that predisposes a person to autoimmune disease.
Instead what we do know is that we have particular genes that can be present or missing, turned on or off, that can help us to understand the problems that lead to the autoimmune disease.
We also know that no matter which genes our parents gave us we know that we can make particular choices in lifestyle that will turn these genes on and off, and cause certain health issues like an autoimmune disease to pop up or to remain dormant. Even if every woman in your family has fibromyalgia or rheumatoid or psoriasis or any other autoimmune or chronic illness.
Environmental Trigger
Genetic predisposition is just one ingredient in what causes autoimmune disease recipe. Part two is an environmental trigger. This could be something like sleep, stress is a biggie, energetic wellness, environmental toxins, nutrient deficiencies, medications and more.
Sleep
Let’s start with sleep. High quality sleep is vital to every human being's well being and healing. For so many people sleep is elusive.
I want you to think about how many times you said or you hear somebody you love say things like "I'm tired" or "I'm exhausted" or "I didn't sleep well." And even if you did sleep well, how many people wake up and respond to that question publically - "I feel freakin' GREAT!" because it is so abnormal, right?
Part of that issue is just the over glorification of busy, we wear busy-ness like a badge of honor. On the other side of that, there certainly is a problem for people that they're not getting enough quality time between their head and the pillow.
We currently have this epidemic of sleep disorders anything from trouble falling asleep to staying asleep to actual insomnia. And guys, sleep is something that's so easy to fix. So if you're having trouble sleeping, please PLEASE jump on a mini case review. They're complimentary.
Whenever a client is struggling with sleep or in a bigger healing program, it's always one of the first priorities that we have to address. Sleep is one of the first steps on the Autoimmune Revolution's success path - its step 1 on the way back to wellness, relief, and remission when we're talking about autoimmune disease and chronic illness.
Stress
The second biggest environmental trigger I see is stress.
We are living our lives in a constant fight or flight state, where our body is convinced we might die at any moment.
Being chronically stressed and being in this depleted state, it activates a very similar cascade of internal messages and pathways to not having any sleep. It is a similar process, although the ingredients are different, and that chronic stress mode that that overall depleted state is much different than the state of a nourished and ease body that is secure right or in nourished and ease secure feeling.
Energetic Wellness
A third environmental trigger for autoimmune conditions (and flare-ups) is energetic wellness. Energetically autoimmune conditions share a lot of similar patterns, one of which is the energy or the vibe of taking on the world's problems. Think of someone, maybe even yourself that suffers from an autoimmune disease. Often, these are those empathic people that take on the burden of the world or the family or the finances or work or something and they feel it rests completely on their shoulders.
Dis-ease starts way out as an energetic disturbance, and then if it's not dealt with if it's not managed if there's not good energetic hygiene practice, then it comes closer and closer and closer and it eventually manifests itself into a physical issue. Sometimes this is an acute illness like strep throat or an ear infection or some sort of cardiac event or a gallbladder.
All of these things can and do happen, start out as energetic frequency and when you dig into your own history or when I dig into clients' history or your history, I can often pinpoint exactly where that vibration ignited where it started, where that disruption occurred.
Nutrient Deficiencies
Another environmental aspect that I want to touch on is nutrient deficiencies.
Your immune system is a complex machine and it cannot function properly without the proper ingredients the proper nutrients for fuel. If you are deficient your immune system can go haywire and begin the process of attacking itself.
Generally, I see omega 3, vitamin d, b vitamins, selenium, zinc, and magnesium rounding out the top deficiencies. But don’t worry, I don’t want you to go buy those supplements - that only masks the problem it doesn’t fix it.
Environmental Toxins
Also when we think in terms of environmental triggers you also have to think about the actual environmental toxins. We are putting chemicals, all over our house in the name of cleanliness and we slather them all over our skin in the name of beauty.
When's the last time you flipped over your moisturizer or sunscreen, for example, to see what damaging chemicals that you are putting in your body from it? There are lots of little apps that you can use to scan the barcodes on products and make sure that you're buying stuff that is safe for you and your family. My favorite is an app called Think Dirty. You can also do a little research and find that almost all of the ingredients in commercial sunscreen has been deemed unsafe by the FDA - finally (But companies have years to fix it).
Environmental toxins are one of the many reasons why I use all-natural plant-based cleaners and create a lot of my own cleaners and potions and mixes from essential oils. Our bodies haven't genetically and biologically evolved to manage the onslaught everything that's thrown at us chemically. Much of what you are exposed to is out of our control, especially if you leave the house. But what happens in your home - in our direct control.
Medication Triggers
Other environmental triggers would be medication triggers. I have covered that information in previous episodes and will be doing a deeper dive into each of these triggers in upcoming podcasts. find that info here and here.
Your Gut Health
This leads us straight to the third part of the recipe, leaky gut, or intestinal permeability. So the interesting part of all these autoimmune triggers is really what they all lead to is the third part of the recipe - they lead to a leaky gut. In big fancy words, they cause an immune dysregulation in the lining of the gut, specifically in something called the gut-associated lymphatic tissue or GALT.
This chaos is in the area of what's allowed to pass through the gut lining and when things that pass through. Or when things that shouldn't pass through make it through that gut lining because the cells, those tight junctions aren't tight anymore they're loosey-goosy, it sets the body up for system-wide inflammation.
So rather than a trigger for autoimmune disease really you can think of the gut as a gateway for autoimmune disease right after the triggers is the key site that allows our immune system to be overexposed to this excessive level of insult, and it causes our immune system to go into the hyper-alert state of vigilance. And then once it's in that hyper-alert state, the immune system goes from triggering the type of inflammation that causes healing to trigger or prolonging systemic or total body inflammation, or even aggressive inflammation. And so, again, this happens because of that selective ability to determine what goes into our bloodstream, it's gone.
It makes chaos and that selective ability right and our immune system is getting exposed to microbes dead ones live ones to breeze toxins semi digested foods, all the chemicals on a regular basis from our foods and otherwise. THAT is what causes autoimmune disease.
If you are suffering from an autoimmune disease, you're tired of fighting - you don’t want to be an autoimmune warrior anymore and your ready to stop treating the branches instead of the roots, let’s get you started on your Autoimmune Revolution™.
I created a free resource for you, its called 5 Steps to You can Start TODAY to begin healing from Your Autoimmune Disease And its specifically simple steps you can take right now - including changing your mindset, adding nutritious foods and help you shift to a healing path. You can download it on the show notes page or your podcast player, at audreychristie.com/autoimmune.
To wrap this up -
Let's touch on how to mitigate some of this stuff right. I'll dive into this more with each upcoming episode because some of it has to be really specific to the particular autoimmune disease but I want to give you some ways to start right now right.
Sleep. Head here to get all the info on sleep fixes.
Stress mitigation. You can work on stress yourself. If you need suggestions reach out to the wellness circle energy work is a beautiful practice you can also do it to yourself, these are things that I teach my clients and I teach them and things like fall into health.
Start reading labels. Use apps on your phone like Think Dirty to check the products that are around your house check your dishes, check your laundry detergent, check your dishwasher so check your hands so your shampoos, conditioners all of your cosmetics, you can find the information it's at your fingertips.
Leaky gut. I'm not going to go into a whole host of things a whole host of supplements and foods and things that you can do to help heal your body from leaky gut because it's different for everyone. Eat mostly plants, fermented foods, and drink plenty of water is a good start.
Thank you so much for tuning in, if you have a second it would mean the world to me if you could leave a rating or review! That helps me help more people get clear of autoimmune disease. I’d be oh so grateful.
I hope you have the most magical and restful day friends, and I challenge you to leave your world, however you can, a little better than how you found it when you got up this morning.
Be well.