The Root of Autoimmunity That No One is Talking About

welcome everyone so we are here we are kicking off May and we are talking all about autoimmunity so I am here with all of you on the webinar today and I'm also here on Instagram live so so definitely trying to appeal to to both platforms but today specifically as we embark on the month of talking about autoimmunity today I'm more so trying to give you a foundation to understand the things that nobody is talking about when it comes to autoimmunity I think it's safe to say that many of us are being told that our body just turns on itself and autoimmunity is something that could be genetic or it could just be a faulty immune system and that there's really nothing that we can do about it other than take a medication when it gets bad enough or it gets extremely symptomatic so overall when we talk tonight we're really going to understand that that is definitely not a hundred percent accurate there is a lot of reasons why the immune system can be stressed and can be triggered to start an attack on the human tissue so we're going to really just uncover some of the things that people are not talking about and we're also going to understand some of the limitations with the testing that you may have had already and then of course I'm going to tell you some really awesome stories about people that we've worked with that have dealt with all different types of autoimmune conditions so I'm going to always use my powerpoints so I do not completely derail and go off the deep end but but again tonight I really want you guys to walk away understanding that you don't know what you don't know it's impossible for you to understand the origin of your autoimmune condition if you have not had the right test day we're also going to bust through some of the myths about autoimmunity just happens and it's genetic and there's nothing you can do about it so really being able to uncover you know really good quality information about how you can actually start taking charge of your autoimmune condition so just a little bit of background about myself I know some of you that are here know me then you know integrated wellness groups some of you that are here don't know us at all but over when it comes to integrated Wellness Group I am the co-owner with my husband dr. Nick and we really from day one have kind of went against the grain and what I mean by that is we felt like a lot of the things that we were taught when it came to holistic and conventional medicine didn't make a lot of sense and you know at the end of the day it all has relevance there's there's research you know there's there's a lot of information out there but when you get into a clinical setting and you see real-life people you find that some of the things that some of the things that were accurate in research are not always necessarily accurate in real life and that kept us asking questions learning more and evolving our own approach because we were always about how can we give people the best quality care and always about how can we create sustainable changes and what I mean by that is I think we get into this mindset and it's not any of our fault it's also just what we've been taught is it's all about just kind of palliating our symptoms to get over a hump but nobody is necessarily giving us a solution to say you can reverse your Crohn's disease or you can actually stabilize or reverse your Hashimoto's nobody's saying that everyone's just saying well let's do what we have to do to really just calm down your symptoms and that's kind of as good as it gets and I just didn't really want to settle for that as a physician I didn't want to settle for in my own house and that's what kept us digging learning and growing so for myself I know that when people look at my bio they're kind of like well how did she work with so many different things you know I classify myself as an integrative physician and I work with a lot of different types of people I work with autoimmunity but I work with Lyme disease and I also work with mold toxicity and I work with pot syndrome and I work with hormonal issues because at the end of the day for me it's not about the diagnosis it's actually about what is the root cause because as complicated as you may feel that you are because you have so many different symptoms going on you're tired you can't sleep you're fatigued your stomach hurts your thyroid is off you might assume that all of those things are separate and that's because that's the way we've been programmed to think about our bodies and our health but at the end of the day all of it is connected and there's going to be one major foundational problem that is creating that cascade effect of all those symptoms that you have so if we do the right testing and we ask better questions we can actually decipher what is that foundational problem and once we work on that we start to see so many symptoms dissipate and it's always interesting because people come to me and they're like okay well what are you doing for this what are you doing for my thyroid what are you doing for my weight loss and I'm just like that's just not how it works it works by figuring out what's the route and let's do what we need to do which might be a few things to fix that and then you're gonna see those changes that you're looking for so for myself on when I got into this field I know I remember thinking or kind of feeling guilty about the fact that I didn't have the story I didn't have the story that I was super sick and nobody could help me and that I had this miraculous experience with functional or integrative medicine I didn't really have that experience if anything I was the polar opposite I thought I was super healthy I was I was active I was athletic I tried to eat well I really tried to do what I knew best at that time and then when I did my testing as I started to get into this field I realized that I wasn't healthy at all and the bigger picture is that I realized that the symptoms that I had because they were mild and because they came and went and because a lot of other people around me had them they were my normal so being tired and needing coffee was my normal not always sleeping the best was my normal having a stomach ache asked after I ate too much or ate out was my normal having sinus seasonal allergies was my normal all of those things were my normal and most of you was sitting our public yeah that's my normal - what do you mean that's not normal but we have gotten to a place especially if your symptoms have come on gradually that we just settle for feeling mediocre and some of us really just settle for feeling like straight crappy and it's really just about understanding that you have to get better testing to really uncover what might be causing these symptoms if they're mild or not and once you know that it's not just about resolving those symptoms in the moment it's also about being proactive because I was honestly going down a really really slow spiral to potentially having a very serious cardiovascular issue and it's interesting because again normalized it I was having random fainting spells but I was like oh well it's close to my period so it must be hormonal like those things are not normal but it was something that nobody could tell me why so I just kind of settled for it so overall once you know what's going on it's not about being fearful of what's going on it's about knowing that there's always a solution to it so I know that it is late right now we are past seven o'clock and there are tons of things going on around us there are probably kids demanding food snacks there's showers and baths and all that stuff that need to happen but I want to give you guys the opportunity to kind of shut down your email browser and give yourself the next 20 minutes to really hone in on this webinar / integrative life because I'm going to be talking about things in relation to autoimmunity that you haven't heard before and once you hear it you're gonna be like holy crap that makes a lot of sense but I can guarantee you it's not gonna be information that anybody is talking about but I'm bringing you not my opinion I am bringing you real-life scenarios of clinical cases that I see every day and people that actually do get better okay so I want you to understand first and foremost that if you have an autoimmune condition and you've been on medications you've been on biologics you've had injections and you're not better maybe you're worse or you're like you know what I really want to do naturally you're gonna change my diet or I really want to get on a supplement regimen and you did it and it didn't work or maybe it made you feel worse I just want you understand it's not your fault it is not your fault that maybe you have felt flat with protocols you could try it's not your fault that you haven't had the best testing it's not your fault that you get paralyzed by trying to figure out on Google University what diet is for you because there is so much information out there there is so much conflicting information and it's very easy to just throw our hands up and be like I can't because this is just too much it's too overwhelming so this is why I do this because I want you guys to understand that everyone is personalised no diet should be a long term diet you do for years upon years your diet should be used as a strategy to achieve a goal no supplement regimen should be it for months upon months upon months let alone years it's always about knowing what your body needs and also knowing that your body's needs are going to change so setting the foundation for understanding autoimmunity and really understanding - why does integrative medicine functional medicine why does that even exist why are people talking about that why are people seeking it out so first and foremost my this is my personal opinion my personal opinion is that the specialties and subspecialties in medicine are one of the biggest detriments and I say this because we are assuming there's a lot of people drive around Asbury Park right no sorry about the noise so one of the biggest detriment is the fact that if you have a gastrointestinal issue you're going to be working with a gastroenterologist if you have depression you might be working with a psychologist or a psychiatrist but the best part about that is 95% of your serotonin which is your feel-good hormone is actually made in your gut so your IBS or your Crohn's or your all sort of colitis can easily be a huge culprit behind why you don't emotionally feel best so when we work with all these separate physicians and nobody talks to each other we often feel like we're falling apart we feel that we have all these issues we're on medications for all of these issues and we're not necessarily getting anywhere we're not necessarily getting better we're not always necessarily seeing the changes that we hope for so overall you know one of the biggest things is that if we can look at the body and look at physiology we can understand the bigger picture and that is what allows us to actually figure out what is the root cause and if we figure out the root cause we also move away from this idea that one pill is gonna fix us or one surgery is gonna fix us I really really wish it was that easy but unfortunately it's not and especially when it comes to autoimmunity when people talk to me about their Hashimoto's or Graves disease and they say that they're taking a medication especially with Hashimoto's they're taking a thyroid medication to you know stabilize their thyroid it's an immune system issue it is not necessarily just a thyroid issue so if you think you're just gonna take synthroid or some other synthetic form of thyroid hormone and you're gonna get anywhere you're not because you're not addressing the fact that there is an immune system issue so the foundation let's think about what does the immune system actually do because if we get back to the actual basics this is gonna make a lot of sense to you guys so I kind of took two definitions that I found about the immune system one is it recognizes the cells that make up your body and will rid anything unfamiliar it excuse me it destroys germs bacteria viruses and parasites another definition the immune system is the body's defense against infectious organisms and other invaders okay so if we have an infection in our body I don't care if your doctor found it or not all of us are petri dishes of infections and that's because of the food that we eat that is because of the things that we touch that's because our grimy cell phones you think toilets sieve his germs your cellphone has like quadruple probably more germs on it than a toilet seat so everything we do everything we touch everything we eat has bacteria viruses parasites on it it's more so important can your immune system handle these things which we're going to talk about but overall if the immune systems job is to fight off a foreign invader maybe that's a bacteria maybe that's a virus maybe it's a parasite maybe it's a toxin maybe it's mercury because you have a boatload of silver fillings in your house wouldn't it make sense that the immune system is potentially fighting the bad thing the the foreign invader that is hanging out in the tissue where you have an autoimmune condition so like sit with that for a minute and I'm gonna break this down a little bit further so think about your thyroid your thyroid is extremely close to your tonsils it's extremely close to your mouth your teeth your gums your sinuses also drained into your into your tonsils and then also into your throat there is so much opportunity for your thyroid to be compromised by different types of infections and toxins so what I mean by that is if you have a boatload of metal in your mouth maybe you have a bunch of implants maybe you have a bunch of fillings maybe you have a bridge whatever the case may be those metals leach into your tissues and get into your lymph nodes which then can affect your thyroid so your immune systems coming to the scene to clean everything up and unfortunately your thyroid is in the line of fire so now you start to have an inflamed thyroid inflammation autoimmune practically the same thing that's why when you take immunosuppressants like biologics to sabri metformin things like that and they shut down your immune system you feel better and you feel better because it shut down your inflammatory reaction but again we're not fixing the problem here if anything we're making it worse so this applies everywhere lupus one of the most common things that I find associated with lupus is Lyme disease you know why because lupus is an autoimmune attack on the connective tissue Lyme disease loves connective tissue it burrows itself in connective tissue it could be a knee it could be a it could be your muscles it could be an elbow it could be your lymph nodes it could be anywhere so there is a huge huge huge connection when it comes to as stressed out autoimmune reaction and infections or again toxins so think about it going back to the previous slide when we said everything is separate so who's the doctor that diagnoses infections infectious disease doctors the only time you go to an infectious disease doctor is if you have reoccurring fevers that nobody can figure out what's wrong with you or you have reoccurring diarrhea that nobody can figure out what's wrong with you that's the only time you really go to an infectious disease doctor otherwise you're working with some other type of physician in the area that you have pain symptoms or an ailment so you're working with your gastroenterologist who is diagnosing you with an autoimmune condition like ulcerative colitis or Crohn's but he's not necessarily looking do you have a parasite do you have bacteria do you have a virus do you have something else in your gut I will tell you every single time you eat produce I don't care if it's organic I don't care if you clean it 75 times with vinegar everything you eat has bacteria on it so it's very feasible that you have bad bacteria in your gut but if it gets completely overloaded and then you have a lack of the good bacteria that's when it becomes a bigger problem and one of the biggest reasons why we have a lack of the good bacteria right now is because there's tons of antibiotics in the food that we eat and there's also chlorine in the water that you drink chlorine will strip all of the good bacteria out of your system so there is a huge huge imbalance that's going on here we're overloaded with a bunch of bad organisms that are antibiotic resistant that are called superbugs and then we're lacking all of the good bacteria because we're constantly using hand sanitizer we're taking antibiotics for every little sniffle that we have so we're literally completely just imbalancing the system which is part of the reason why we have immune systems that are so triggered but in addition to that not only are we being exposed to these organisms we're also then being exposed to pesticides and herbicides and roundup that's what this whole GMO conversation is about so every single patient that we work with is toxic with something called glyphosate glyphosate is the primary constituent in roundup it is also sprayed on every single farm in the u.s. if it is not an organic farm so we are ridden with this specific neurotoxin which is completely throwing off our gastrointestinal system so most people that I work with that have celiac they don't really Celia they have they have a glyphosate poisoning so we have to think beyond what we're being told because I'm in my 30s and some of you might be younger some of you might be older but there those of you that are older did you have friends that had all these autoimmune conditions did you have friends that had allergies did you go to school in a school that they had peanut free rules classrooms like I didn't see any of that and I'm not even that old so there is a huge shift that's going on and we need to really start thinking about like what the heck is this like what is causing all of this and a huge part of the puzzle is industrial farming and how much toxicity we are being exposed to so let's break this down a little bit further when it comes to the immune system so we're talking about you know these different reasons why you can develop an autoimmune condition and that can be because you have toxins or infect and that your immune system is trying to fight but the bigger question is is will why is my immune system having such a negative reaction because technically if you think about it that's our immune systems job its job is to get rid of the bad stuff so why would it start to dysfunction or become overly stressed so for those of you that are on the webinar you can actually see the visual here but I'll break it down for those of you on Instagram when we talk about our immune system our new system is not just like our needs to stop we have like little like cells that are labeled immune system in our body but we have various organs that are immune organs so one of the main immune organ is our tonsils and our adenoids then we also have our lymph nodes which are everywhere everybody thinks of lymph nodes in the neck because you think like oh when I'm sick all this hurts so you have lymph nodes literally top of your head all the way down to your toes then on your left ribcage you have your spleen so people sometimes know of the spleen because if you ever had mono they'll monitor your spleen to make sure it doesn't get too big so again it would get big because it's in flames because you have a virus then you have your thymus gland which is in your chest attached to your heart you have a bunch of immune system cells going on in your gut and then you have your appendix so out of all those that I just described how many of you have had your tonsils removed how many have had your adenoids removed or both how many have had your appendix removed how many of you were told that you don't need tonsils you don't need an appendix they're not even important organs we don't even really know what they do it's crazy to me that doctors say this but is the reality of it all of those organs are immune organs so if they have become completely ridden with bacteria or toxicity that's when they become inflamed to the point that you potentially have to get them removed I'm not saying that people shouldn't get these things removed but I think we should be thinking beyond oh I removed it and my problem is solved because when I have this conversation with people in my clinic they say to me they're like but I got my tonsils removed and I felt a ton better and I go that's great but what's happening now is all that now goes right into your lymph nodes guess what you have lymph vessels they move so now via your lymph vessels you can get whatever was in your tonsils like strep now that's gonna get into other places of your body so it's not necessarily always about the symptoms it's about thinking about the bigger picture and just really thinking rationally about anatomy you know your sinuses if your tonsils are jacked up chances are you have something going on in your sinuses that's continuing leeching into your into your throat as well so these are all things to be considered opposed to just oh I got these organs removed and that's kind of the end of the story so some of the signs that your lymphatic system is congested so one of them is you have varicose veins another one is you have headaches you have water retention you have fibrocystic or dense breaths you constantly get swollen glands or lymph nodes most people don't even know that they have swollen glands but they say oh I have neck pain my neck hurts all the time off my neck my neck if you go to a chiropractor or get physical therapy and your neck continues to hurt it's probably not a structural issue it's actually probably related to your lymphatic system being compromised in addition you can have poor circulation because your veins and your lymph system they work hand-in-hand another thing is that you have you can't lose weight or you have cellulite or you're getting a lot of painful breasts around your period as a female these are all signs that your lymphatic system is not working optimally you can't get rings on and off some days is another one so you need to start thinking about these things because the most commonly overlooked system is the lymphatic system there is no specialist or the lymph maybe an immunologist but nobody is necessarily giving you recommendations on how to get your lymphatic working more optimally and this is a huge focus on our practice and it has been a game-changer for our patients getting that system to work is what primarily repairs the immune system so the other really interesting thing about those of you that are listening because you have an autoimmune condition related to say your thyroid when you talk about the thyroid and how the thyroid can be associated with maybe you have tonsil issues maybe you have clogged lymph nodes maybe you have things going on in your sinuses all of those structures are also connected to your brain so when we have a thyroid condition or we have jaw issues or dental issues or headaches or sinus issues we need to also start thinking what's going on in our neurological system because if things can't drain here and you're having all this lymphatic back up and you're having swelling and water retention and you're you're having the varicose veins chances are you're not getting proper blood flow and circulation and drainage from your head as well and this is one of the biggest culprits as to why there is so much neurological decline right now Alzheimer's and dementia those statistics are skyrocketing and everyone's sitting back saying well we don't know why and we're dumping all this money into research but nobody is actually looking at basic anatomy and we're not looking at the fact that what if there is a roadblock what if there is literally clogged lymphatic system and like tight muscles and neck issues and jaw issues structurally that are all affecting the brain's ability to drain toxins out yes your brain does get exposed to toxins and our we have a very very specific part of our immune system called our glymphatic system it is the the lymphatic system of the brain and the more research that they do on cadavers dead people they are finding that there is mass there's massive toxicity in the glymphatic system which for those of you that don't know we have a barrier around our brain called the blood-brain barrier that is supposed to protect our brains from all this bad stuff but we're all I don't to say all but a lot of us are struggling with something called a leaky blood-brain barrier and this is coming back to the massive amounts of toxicity that we're being exposed to and part of this can be what's in your mouth dental implants cavities fillings etc and a lot of this is the toxins on the food that we eat so we are being exposed to a massive amount of toxicity that is really compromising all of these immune cells and being a huge trigger for the autoimmune conditions so the other thing that I always explain to my patients to break this down even more is that when it comes to an autoimmune condition if you come to me and we're dealing with say a thyroid autoimmune condition I am NOT going to sit there and like go on this crazy protocol for your thyroid it's just not gonna happen because if it's an immune system issue then we need to look at the big grand picture of what is stressing your immune system and we need to make sure that we address all of those immune organs like the tonsils the appendix the gut the spleen if you're done or if you're missing them we we still obviously have support the others but we also need to make sure that the detox pathways are working and the detox pathways of the body the main ones liver which liver dumps into the gut and then everything leaves via about movement and then kidneys are a big filtration system so when we are dealing with an immune system overload we need to fix the foundation we need to make sure that you're actually eliminating your toxins out and you're not just holding everything some of the signs of this is that you have kidney stones or you're urinating or you're dealing with chronic UTI is bladder infections sometimes I can even conceive be confused with vaginal issues or you have a lot of right-sided rib cage pain or you're not pooping those are all signs that you're not detoxing so if I cough on you or I should say if somebody costs on me and costs on you I'll be fine because my pathways work you're not gonna be fine you're gonna acquire that virus so it's not always about you know what the abundance of these toxins or infections are it's moreso asking the question of why is your body struggling so much why is your immune system so fragile and compromised why are your detox pathways not working and all of these things are fixable you know don't get me wrong there are genetic predispositions like for me my weak point is my limp my lymphatic system so for me like instead of me thinking that I constantly need to be on a multivitamin or vitamin D I always make sure that I sweat like sweating is the best way for me to keep my lymphatic system healthy and I do that primarily by working out and I also do that by using an infrared sauna so there's other people that their liver is their weak point and the way that you can know this is if you're the person who drinks a cup of coffee and you're like wired for three days or you're the person that can barely take a half of a Tylenol because it affects you so much if you're very overly sensitive to medications alcohol coffee that means your liver is an under metabolizer so what that means is that you're going to meet to support that organ to make sure that it is detoxing efficiently so you might just take some liver supplements consistently or you might do a liver cleanse every few months there's all different ways to support these systems and this is one of the greatest things about the clients that we work with is they learn this about themselves and they know what to do to be proactive once they move on from working with us they know that okay if I'm feeling a little off I know that need to do a little like liver detox or I need to get on some liver supplements or whatever the case may be so it's very very interesting when you are when you're empowered because you know what your body actually needs so this was a patient that was presenting with migraines so I wanted to put this in here because when somebody comes to me with migraines I am not sitting there being like oh my grains must be genetic I start to think what's going on in their lymphatic system do they have improper blood flow to their brain do they have improper blood flow out of the brain do they have toxicity coming from dental work that could be affecting their brain do they have infections that are maybe in the tonsils or the sinuses that are affecting their brain do they have ear issues do they have clogged ears do they have infections in their ears did they have tubes in their ears which left scar tissue in there do they have unstable blood sugar r is a hypoglycemic are they eating too much sugar do they have gut issues those are all of the things that need to be considered with migraines your migraines are just not a head issue they could be involved with so many other things that are happening in your bodies so this patient specifically was a very interesting case because as she came into my office I was evaluating her just visually and I started to notice that she had a very blank stare on her face and I one of the things I I was asked questions I was like have you had Botox because sometimes the Botox can create a little bit of paralysis in the face which you know they you can't really tell if they're um you know smiling or upset or having different facial expressions so we ruled that out that wasn't part of the puzzle I'm I started to notice her eyes were tracking really improperly it's something called nystagmus and then after that I was just like okay I want to do a little bit further of a neurological exam on you and I literally just had her start walking and I noticed that she was walking with her legs very far apart and shuffling a bit and the other thing I noticed was she wasn't moving her arms so for those of you that maybe have dealt with this with a family member you might be you know kind of ding-ding-ding I know what that is but this was pretty much early onset of Parkinson's disease so for those of you again on the webinar maybe I can actually spin this around and show you guys on Instagram oh wait oh I don't know if you guys can see it maybe there but primarily what I'm showing everybody is I'm showing you guys the UM was a bio resonance scan that I did this is a really amazing technology that we have in our practice but I could get information quite fast through using this technology which analyzes down to the DNA level so what we found was that she was actually having massive occlusion to the vascular system in the brain and particularly she was having issues in something called the Circle of Willis which was causing her to not get proper blood supply specifically to her hippocampus which is where all of your dopamine is made it also plays a very big role in your memory so pretty much what was happening as this woman was very well on her way to Parkinson's disease because of a massive vascular issue that was happening in her brain so for this you might be thinking well how the heck do you work with that like is this person just doomed and no that is not the case a lot of this circulatory issue came back to the fact that she had massive sinus issues she had a lot of dental issues and she also had a very compromised lymphatic system so as we started to work together we started to lift that burden off of the body and she literally had her neurological system bouncing back it was completely amazing to see how much her neurological system improved just by getting the lymphatic system working which is then in turn helps her circulatory system tremendously so this is actually just a photo showing you where the the Circle of Willis is so you can really understand where the circulatory issue was in the brain but another really interesting factor too is that when we're dealing with autoimmune conditions we don't always understand the limitations with some of the testing and I'm going to go through a bunch of different limitations but number one which I found so fascinating what I learned this was you have to have more than 70% destruction of your myelin sheath before you'll ever see that on an MRI so the people that are having all these wacky neurological issues and they're trying to like figure out what the heck is going on and their doctors are trying to rule in or out is this multiple sclerosis or you've been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis is that you have to have more of a 70% loss of your myelin sheath before it will ever show up on an MRI so when your doctor doesn't MRI of your head for whatever reason and they say oh yeah there's a little bit of changes but it's no big deal don't worry about it it is a big deal you need to you need to dig deeper you need to figure out what's going on because the last thing you want is to be that person then all of a sudden you don't know where your car is anymore and you're getting lost because it happens fast for those of you that have had a family member with dementia or Alzheimer's I think it's safe to say that most of it is fast it's all of a sudden like a switch was flipped and you're just like how did this happen so fast so the most minor changes on an MRI or CT scan of the brain are significant the other really interesting thing too is when it comes to amyloid plaques mo8 plaques there's two parts of this puzzle emilie plaques are what often shows up on the brain that can determine if you have multiple sclerosis but a lot of times I'm only plaques can be confused with iron deposits and those iron deposits come from a hyperactive immune system the other thing too is that Emily plaques sometimes are the immune system trying to encapsulate an infection through calcium so you can have different calcium deposits this is not just the brain this could also be in the lungs that is literally trying to encapsulate an infection to protect you this is the most common reason why people have died rate nodules is because the immune system is coming to the scene to encapsulate the infection or toxin that your thyroid is being inflamed by so when it comes to thyroid conditions I know we've talked a lot about this tonight but I think one of the most fascinating cases that I ever worked with was a case of Hashimoto's and Graves this is one person that had both pretty rare so we did testing on this woman because she was having these crazy highs and lows if she was going through days of being wired heart palpitations not sleeping then shifting into massive fatigue couldn't get out of bed for a couple of days and she ended up literally having both Graves and Hashimoto's so when we really dug in to try to understand this um why how etc it turned out that she had she was actually in her early 70s by the way she had a lot of dental issues since she was a kid she had a lot of fillings over time tons of root canals she had a lot of foreign materials in her mouth essentially so she was on a great track she was working with a nutritionist you know she was trying to get healthy she was changing her diet and then she really wanted to make sure that she was covering all of her bases and she started to learn a little bit more about all the dental work and all the fillings in her mouth could potentially be pert or potentially be harming her so she went and she decided to get them removed so she went and got all of her silver fillings removed they removed I think ten in one sitting she went to a traditional dentist to do this and it was very shortly after that this thyroid issue kicked in or I should say the symptoms kicked in and then we finally were able to diagnose it so the thing you have to understand about this is that not all dentists are the same there are very specific I'm sorry specific dentist called biological dentists that know how to properly remove fillings and what's crazy about this is if you see a biological dentist that has removed fillings properly both he his assistant and the patient are practically in a hazmat suit so these materials that we just put into people's mouths are very very harmful they are neurotoxic and they are toxic in your mouth as well as even being removed improperly because as they pop them out they release vapor and that vapor goes into the lymphatic system and into the sinuses so this is what completely through this woman's thyroid into disarray and it was definitely a really difficult thing to stabilize but we were successfully able to stabilize it and I'm very fortunate that she came in to see me so soon because this is a person that potentially could have gone eight gone down a road of dementia or Alzheimer's because if she had that significant of an effect on the thyroid there's no possible way she didn't have an effect on her neurological system as well so at this point for those of you that have been listening the whole time it makes sense that there can be a piece of the puzzle that hasn't been acknowledged yet and that piece of the puzzle is is your autoimmune condition tied to an infection or is it tied to a toxicity because I have never worked with an autoimmune condition that wasn't and once we figure out the roots it is actually pretty simple to work with these patients and give them relief of course but also to be able to stabilize and even reverse their issues so at the end of the day you don't know what you don't know there's no possible way for you to know any of these things if you have never been out of my webinar before but also if you've never had better testing if they just tested your thyroid antibodies and said hey you have Hashimoto's end of story take this pill or hey we did a colonoscopy you have Crohn's disease and a story take this pill there's no way for you to know that maybe there's a toxicity or maybe there's an infection so really we want to stop accepting these things as our new normal we want to understand the bigger picture I put this slide in here I'm not gonna sit here and say that these are a hundred percent correlated because I personally find that anything can cause anything but some of the really interesting ties is that epstein-barr virus it has a huge link to multiple sclerosis rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis have a big connection to Lyme disease as well as mold toxicity I find that H pylori infections which is a bacterial infection of the stomach is extremely tied to reflux and autoimmune pernicious anemia thyroid conditions etc so there is huge ties that have been studied with autoimmune conditions and very very specific types of infections so some of the biggest biggest myths about autoimmune conditions is that they are genetic and that's the end of the story that you've had the best testing and that autoimmunity is completely irreversible so number one is that your autoimmune condition might you might have a genetic predisposition but that does not necessarily mean that you will get that condition number two with this is that myself I've done this as well as my mentor and what we found I think probably some of you have heard of 23andme 23andme is the really popular genetic test that a lot of people are doing you're doing it sometimes for ancestry and a lot of people are doing it to get their snips on for health purposes so what I found really interesting is I had a couple of families that did they all did the 23andme and everybody's talking about MTHFR MTHFR and how they need everybody needs to be on methylated folate and all these different things so what I've seen is that the children or child have a MTHFR mutation but the parents don't so if we're sitting here trying to say that genetics are always or our genetics are a hundred percent dictated by our parents that's not true anymore and this is what we call epigenetics mmm and epigenetics has revealed that all different types of environmental factors and stressors will change the expression of your genes and in this day and age with the amount of toxicity that we are exposed to from our personal products to the dental work to the roundup in our food to the other types of herbicides there is a lot a lot of room for our genes changing and our children's genes changing so if you've gone to your gastro and they did tsylia have genetic testing and that was the only thing they did and they said you have celiac that doesn't cut it in my opinion because there is a lot of other testing that needs to be done to really determine do you truly have celiac because you can easily have a gluten allergy or sensitivity with no celiac you could also have celiac without having any symptoms there is something called silent celiac disease which is unfortunately really common but I would say the most fascinating thing kind of tying in to everything we've already talked about is that I've never actually worked with somebody who came in with celiac or we did testing to solidify that they had celiac and they didn't have massive gut infections and massive glyphosate poisoning which is again the primary compound on the GMO foods so we're sitting here saying you have celiac don't ever eat gluten again end of story but there's so much more to the story there is so much more to be considered and these people that it starts with the gluten and then all of a sudden it gets more and more that they can't eat other foods I'm actually gonna go back I want to it's too far ahead but anyway I'll show you guys the slide but the the slide that I was gonna show you is that when people have seen true celiac there's actually a bunch of companies that are now offering these crock reactives panels because what they're finding is that if you have a bad enough allergy to gluten chances are you also have an allergy to corn and soy and and rice and all of the other things that are in your gluten-free products so it's not that people should be having all of these food allergies there is always going to be an underlying reason and that underlying reason is not always found by your traditional testing which is where we're gonna go next but before I do that I want to just give you a quick like tidbit on a 14 year old with celiac disease so one of the most common mistakes if this patient was specifically diagnosed through endoscope camera down the throat and they were looking around they found inflammation they did a biopsy and they said you have celiac disease but depending on where the biopsy is taken from they can easily confuse celiac with a different condition which is called autoimmune pernicious anemia so let me just make this as simple as possible you have your stomach which is on your left side of your rib cage that is the very very start of your gastrointestinal system your stomach then connects to your small intestine so in the very very start of your small intestine you have these cells called parietal cells these cells are help you absorb your nutrients especially your b12 so what happens is if you get some bacteria or toxins into your stomach usually this starts with some burping some indigestion some heartburn you know occasional tums will will knock it out so you start to have these symptoms there are little miles maybe they get worse with certain foods that you eat then it gets bad enough that you go in and you're like alright I got to get some testing because I'm really on Herbal at this point so then you pretty much go in and then they do the endoscope they find the inflammation they do the biopsy and they diagnosed with the celiac but if they biopsied in the area of the parietal cells they're easily telling you that you're celiac but it's not celiac at all it's actually this autoimmune pernicious anemia which is going to be the reason why you're constantly b12 deficient or if you take a b12 you're urinating fluorescent colors so it's very very very important to understand that there is a bigger picture here and this patient specifically was off of gluten and still feeling absolutely terrible so again it's not about just sitting back and saying well we don't really know just deal with it it's about doing better testing okay so as we get into the testing so first and foremost when in piggybacking off of the celiac conversation and this is applicable to so many tests but when you do blood testing for celiac and you do the testing through LabCorp request which for those of you on the webinar you can see to the left it is six different markers but if you do a true celiac panel a quality celiac panel that is looking at every single possible marker there is over 20 markers so if we're just doing six out of over twenty we can easily miss things so when we think that oh well the celiac panels through LabCorp well they told me that I'm fine but I still feel terrible and I don't have celiac you might have celiac you might have something a little different going on the point is is that you potentially have not had the best testing to really really figure out what's going on with you so this was the slide that I was talking about so the cross-reactivity so again you go gluten free and then you're eating all of the corn and the rice and the oats and then you find that slowly you're starting to feel worse and worse and then it actually turns out that you're having issues with all these other foods because your problem is not just about wheat it's about the fact that you have things in your gut that should not be there so speaking about things in your gut that should not be there is one of the biggest limitations with testing especially all this gut talk is the fact that it is extremely extremely difficult for you to find out if you have things in your gut that shouldn't be there like parasites or bacteria or fungus or yeast there is a lot of issues with the test there's a lot of issues with the blood test there's a lot of issues with colonoscopy which first of all colonoscopies do not look for infections it just looks for inflammation but even if your doctor is a little bit more advanced and he goes you know what let's do a stool sample let's see if there's something that comes up so a stool sample not the most glamorous process but you do you pretty much take a sample of your bowel movement and you just send it to a lab so the thing you have to understand and this took me a long time to learn as a practicing physician is that every time I did a stool sample with a patient bacteria would come up I would let see their probiotics I would sometimes see fungus but I would never really see parasites and I just kind of found that interesting because you know if you have pets dogs cats you eat seafood it's not uncommon to get exposed to parasites so what I found out and this was partly by default I had a patient who was young and his mom said we need to help him detox but he will not take any supplements orally because he had a lot of sensory issues he was actually on the spectrum so mom said I think the best thing that we can do is we can use a suppository to help him detox and I said if that's what you want to do we'll do that so she reached out to me and this was after doing a stool sample by the way she reached out to me and said I saw a worm so we did another stool sample nothing came up we did another school sample all three different companies nothing came up and she was well I've seen worms three times now so what are we gonna do about it so we started to treat him for pin which was buddy had and yes he very much had had a parasite issue so the point of me telling you this is that you may have gone to a great gastro that did a stool sample on you but if they only did a one-day sample that's an issue but also if they took that sample and sent it out to a lab that's an issue because 20 minutes after your bowel movement leaves your body all of your parasites will self-destruct and they are not going to be found in your sample so it's actually more important to either go to a facility that takes that sample and puts it under a microscope which unfortunately we don't really do here in the US or you use other types of advanced technologies our personal technologies that we use is we use something called a bio resonance we use a bio resonance we also back that up with blood work and then we also back that up with something else called autonomic response testing so we're looking at a ver a ver iya T of different ways or a variety of different tasks before we come to the confusion of what's going on and then we obviously will be able to structure how to work with that so the other thing too that has a lot of variables is autoimmune brain conditions so there are many many people that are dealing with an autoimmune brain condition that have no symptoms then there's a lot of people that have positive antibodies and have a lot of symptoms so there are many many variables when it comes to symptoms versus testing so I wanted to show you guys this because I wanted to show you how many types of brain autoimmunity there are because this test is something that I use in the practice it's called neurons neural Zoomer plus and it's crazy because there used to be neural Zoomer now there's neural Zoomer plus aka they've had to advance the test and add more markers because this epidemic of autoimmunity and autoimmune brain conditions is becoming more and more so there are so many different things that can get into the brain past the blood-brain barrier that you're immune the sum is being triggered by and then these are causing autism Asperger's dementia Alzheimer's etc so there are many many possibilities and you can see the list goes on here so the other thing to when it comes to the neurological system is when we are trying to figure out why does this person have ankylosing spondylitis hmm why does this person have multiple sclerosis why does this person have Parkinson's disease or ALS sometimes we work with physicians that consider the fact that there might be some type of lurk neurological infection because more and more physicians are acknowledging that neuro barillo --ss is a real thing which is pretty much when lyme disease gets into the neurological system so the interesting thing about this is they have been screwing up the testing for years and they're just recently coming out with research saying that if you look for the spirochete which I'll explain a little bit further which is this squiggly little worm looking thing if you're taking somebody's cerebral spinal fluid which is what they take out when they do the spinal tap so if you take that cerebral spinal fluid out and you put it under a microscope and if you're looking for the squiggly weird looking thing which is called a spirochete you're never gonna find it because when the Lyme disease is in or the Lyme bacteria is in the cerebral spinal fluid it actually looks like either a cyst or a bleb which is what you see on the left it looks like a little blob so if your technician or analyst was looking for the spirochete they pretty much will not find it because it's never gonna be in that form so there are so many people that are dealing with these debilitating neurological issues that are walking around with neurological Lyme disease and nobody's figuring it out and all they're doing is they're getting put on all of these medications that shut down their immune system which is causing the the condition to get worse because the infection is multiplying so this patient was interesting they came in they had really severe GERD irritable bowel syndrome severe hypoglycemia low blood sugar to the point that they were fainting so primarily like how this all connects together is that the patient came in she was dealing with like a weak she called it weak stomachs and she was young the GERD started to kick in it was pretty mild you know she's taking an occasional tums here and there then it started to get a little bit worse so then she got put on nexium then you know she was having these intermittent bouts of stomach pain and cramping that was like really really painful that she had actually had to have an as-needed antispasmodic medication to calm down the cramping eventually she started to lean more towards constipation and then it was the blood sugar that kicked him so the reason this is all connected is because your stomach being located I'm gonna give you so stomachs on your left side stomach is shaped like this pancreas is actually embedded to your stomach and connect it to your small intestine so the reason why this is important is because your pancreas regulates your blood sugar so the blood sugar is going to be compromised if the pancreas is not functioning at its best but the crazy thing about this is that the pancreas doesn't always become stressed because of your diet because oh you're eating too much sugar you haven't a poor diet you can easily start having blood sugar issues because that infection that was in your stomach causing your GERD and causing your stomach pain and your cramping cuz it ended up she had an infection called H pylori she also had a parasite called Giardia so those infections were in her system for so long that they moved from the stomach into the small intestine and started to then affect her pancreas and her pancreas was actually presenting with antibodies aka a she was having the early onset of autoimmune Anita I'm sorry diabetes she was having type 1 diabetes so she was in her I think she was in her late 20s so most of the time when you get an autoimmune or eye autoimmune diabetes you get it really really young but we've been hearing about more and more people getting it as an adult and part of the reason is how much stress our gut is under and if you do get exposed to some type of infection that starts to affect your pancreas your immune system is gonna do its job it's gonna go to that area it's gonna start to fight that infection and it is going to then cause damage to your gut as well as your pancreas and this on paper is what we call autoimmunity so last but not least is that autoimmunity is irreversible and when it comes down to understanding the root cause anything is possible and the other thing too is for those of you that are just jumping on here is if you go back to the beginning of the presentation it's all about what is causing the immune system to be so reactive is it because you have a ton of toxicity in your system is it because you have a boatload of infections in your system is it because your detox pathways don't work anymore because they're congested and they're overloaded is it because your lymphatic system is compromised so the easiest way for me to explain this to you guys is I think we can all relate to the the concept of how a vacuum works if you have a vacuum and you have this brand-new vacuum it has a filter in it you continue to use your vacuum and the filter gets more and more full and then it gets to the point that you either stop using the vacuum or you've dumped the filter so you can continue to use it the same thing is happening in our bodies because of all the things we're being exposed to if you know it or you don't on a day-to-day basis so your filters are at max capacity and if they're at max capacity you start to get puffy you get inflamed you get bloated you lose weight you start to have circulation issues you started up headaches you have migraines and then you have autoimmune conditions so if you can't tell by now very rarely do things look like the textbook so it's very very important for you guys to take away that if you don't look like the textbook then how's the textbook protocol going to fix you get you better or potentially stabilize your condition so for us to think that we're just going to put everybody on immune immunosuppressants or biologics to stabilize their autoimmunity we're not gonna get anywhere you might feel better you definitely feel better because like I said before if you shut down the immune system you shut down the inflammatory response you shut down the inflammatory response you're gonna feel better but you're not fixing the problem and then people are like you know I'm feeling better I think I'm gonna try to come off my medication and they try to come off their medication and they have a huge flare and again it's not because you need the medication or you need to be relying on it it's because you have just been on an immunosuppressant you never actually fixed the root cause you've never actually dealt with the infections you never dealt with the toxicity you've never dealt with the underlying problems so I don't want you to think that you're just doomed it's just about doing better testing so when it comes to better testing I want you guys to kind of understand the difference between conventional functional integrative because some of you that are new to this you might be looking at functional versus integrated medicine and be like I are those the same thing and I do this because there are some of you that have been down the road of functional medicine and maybe you feel like it didn't help you so the biggest thing is that when you deal with conventional methods we're dealing with that segregated system we're dealing with you go to the cardiologist for your heart you go to the gastroenterologist for your gut you go to the urologist for your urinary system like everything is super separated nobody's talking to each other and most of the solutions are pharmacological or surgery based then you get into functional medicine and functional medicine is going to be doing more testing really trying to decipher what is the root cause but my only reason why I went from functional to integrative is because in functional medicine I found my tools were really limited my tools were primarily focusing on diet and supplementation herbs remedies things like that and I found that it was very difficult for people to fix themselves just through diet because there's so many things working against us with the food that we eat even if we're being really disciplined with organic and everything else but also it's very hard to absorb nutrients if your gut is messed up or you're toxic so I knew that I needed more tools in my toolbox and one of my mentors who's dr. Klink Hart he said don't call yourself integrative if all you do is dive in supplements and my business is called integrated wellness Curt and it has been since day one and that really got me thinking and it got me expanding my mindset and involving my practice so we've moved into this integrative model which is really about yes doing really really amazing an elaborate testing to figuring out the root cause but it's also then customizing and personalizing the approach to each person to know what supplements does your body need what protocols does your body need what is your best diet right now not forever right now to help you get better do you need detox therapies do you need lymphatic therapies do you need neurological therapies because when you can customize that approach and make it integrative you can get better any fraction of the time so people always ask you know how does it all work like how do I work with you guys what is the tasks I want to understand more about this and I really really think that you know people asking better questions demanding more out of their health care is pushing us in a really good direction but at this point we choose to serve people and not insurance providers because I can't have someone on you know an insurance team that has no background dictate your care because there's no possible way for them to know what is best for my patients and to piece the puzzle together the way they do so what's great about it is out-of-network you know people get great reimbursement and we have the freedom to treat you the way that you deserve to be treated and give you the attention and give you the time that's a really really big part of the puzzle is most doctor and working through insurances you get 15 minutes max and I think people are just really tired of that so one thing I always say and it got a standing ovation the last time I spoke which was pretty amazing is if you if you value your health don't let anyone tell you that you can't invest in it everybody at the end of the day value something different and if you value a brand new iPhone every time it comes out then you go get that brand new iPhone you know you you do you but if you value your health and someone else doesn't that's okay but don't let that person make you feel guilty about that because that's just such a common thing that I hear when people are embarking on getting themselves better is that you know oh well you know people don't understand why I'm doing this or people think I'm selfish and I just find that to be super interesting because at the end of the day you know we can sit here and I can judge somebody for spending money on something that I don't value but Who am I to say that because if that's what they value they should be able to spend their money on it so it's really just a matter of a new value your health and being able to get your health back he's just so so significant and I think we forget that health care is supposed to be about answers and solutions and we usually just settle for well you have an autoimmune condition and we don't really know why but just take this medication and let's hope for the best and we're never actually demanding more more answers and worse settling for a protocol that's really just putting a bandaid on the symptoms and not actually giving us a solution so some of the ways that we get to the bottom of what is the root cause for our patients is we do some really really customized testing and when people come in we do an onboarding process and this onboarding process takes you through all of these different tests we test everything from food allergies heavy metal toxicity mineral deficiencies vitamin deficiencies we do very comprehensive bloodwork auto immune markers immune markers mold toxicity markers infectious markers your traditional thyroid markers we've run all of that but my favorite part is the autonomic response testing and some of you may have heard of this it was created by dr. Clem Hart but it takes all the guessing ouch so one of the biggest things that I always explain to people because they're like well how is all of this different is that there is no more guessing anything that we tell you that is good for you if we talk about diet if you talk about supplements if we talk about therapies everything has been tested against your body in your DNA and we do that through the autonomic response testing so we test every supplement to say is this good for this person's body so there is no guessing there is no wasting money and there is no wasting time so this is really really significant because you are doing the most tailored approach to get your body better in a short amount of time so one of the reasons we have customized this approach is partly because we were struggling to get quality information from all of the different labs that we were using we used to do everything from very expensive stool samples saliva tasks cortisol testing hormone testing and all of these were separate private labs and they racked up two three four thousand dollars sometimes and I really just didn't like the fact that someone has spent so much money before they actually even know what's wrong with them and I wanted to figure out a way that I can get better information with a smaller price point so people can spend money on the more important part which is getting better so we really try to customize our onboarding process to do that and it's been really really successful which is amazing at the end of the day - is for those of you that are listening that all you've been looking for is how can i stabilize this autoimmune condition how can I get my life back how can I figure out what I'm supposed to eat versus what am I not supposed to eat depending on your goals and what you can achieve with knowing your body and knowing what's going on is priceless it really is because there are so many people that are looking for answers that just don't know we're finding them but you know there's a lot of other people that just want to take a pill and call it a day which is totally fine as well it's really this is for the people that want to figure it out so our onboarding price for all of those tests that I described the bioresonance the DNA based testing the autonomic response testing the blood work all the good stuff is 14:25 so for those of you you that are new to this world might be like that's crazy I've never even spent that much money ever on my healthcare I will tell you this is when you go into other types of practices a lot of times you're gonna go in 300 400 500 bucks for your consultation you will walk out of there with a bunch of lab kits that are gonna cost you a couple thousand dollars so again this is gonna give you the most information under the cheapest price bracket so that you can obviously go in the right direction to get better so I always forget to do this I'm actually gonna put a link here if you guys want to touch base with our client services team because we do ask for you to apply and we do this because we want to make sure that we are a fit for you as you are a fit for us the health journey is definitely something that we love working with people to do but we also know that it's it's a 50/50 here we're working with you we're giving you so many tools and amazing resources but then at the end of the day it's also about applying them at home so there's a definitely we want to make sure that there's a synergistic relationship there also too for those of you listening that are long distance we can work with people from a distance what's great about it is you have DNA in your hair so by sending up a hair sample we can actually do a lot of our testing from a distance and then blood work is source to your local lab which will all go if your insurance so you can actually go to your lab Corp request and we'll get all of that processed so and when people work with us a lot of times they're like I really want to come see you guys and I want to do care with you but obviously I live far away so we actually offer something called immersion weeks which have been really amazing to have people come for anywhere between six to even 40 herbs sorry 12 days and they get immersed into our care and then they're able to sustain that after they go home with the different recommendations that we give them so I'm gonna pop in and see if there was any questions okay hi Marie so glad you're here so if you guys do have questions just know that you have the opportunity to ask a lot of these questions when you get on your strategy call with our client services team you guys can obviously use the link that I provided but you do have the opportunity to just head over to our website and you can find the links for the strategy calls all over the website as well and that will at least allow you to get a little bit more information so that you can learn how it all works you know what are these tests do and obviously just look at the website there's tons of information there um and if you're wanting to learn more about a specific autoimmune condition this is week one of the month so we are going to be talking about different autoimmune conditions for the rest of the month excuse me so we're gonna be talking about different autoimmune conditions that are neurological got related or my related etc and then we also have a ton of podcast so if you head over to our website or even go to integrated wealth radio and iTunes we have a ton of resources if you're looking to get that information now okay guys I really really appreciate you being here with me I just you to know that I do this because I love it this is just one of my biggest passions is educating you guys to give you information you have never heard before and I really do this to inspire you to take that first step I know for me like I said earlier is that you know there were a lot of things that I settled for being my normal when it came to my health but I'm just so grateful that I didn't necessarily just go blindly through my life because I could have been in really big trouble behind I say this because my testing revealed a lot of these issues that were problematic but again I kind of settled for my brain fog and my sleep issues and fainting and having heart palpitations and I settled for all of those things so it's very very interesting being able to uncover that and and get your body back and get your brain back and it's crazy because when I went through my healing process I literally remember being like wow I have been living in a fog and I had no freaking clue so um so I really hope that you you know are able to leverage this information because once you know what your body needs and you're able to take that first step to get better that's when this becomes a breakthrough experience so I appreciate you guys being here with me I hope you share this with others that are dealing with autoimmune conditions and I really hope this was helpful so here's our website if you want to check it out and I will see you guys next week for those of you that will continue to join me this month alright everyone have an amazing night I will see you soon