Feeling tired, have brain fog, change mood often, losing wight ? You or your child may be one of the million persons in the world affected by some of the so called autoimmune disease.
In average a read a book per week. One of the recent book I red three month ago was a book by Dr Tom O’Brian entitled “The Autoimmune Fix – How to stop the hidden autoimmune damage that keeps you sick, fat and tired before it turns into disease”
The book has made a really significant impact upon me. Actually I was promoted to search more about the autoimmune diseases that appears in many forms nowadays and affect millions of people across the globe, small kids included. A friend’s kid was diagnosed with one of such a disease and was really clueless about it. Hence, If you are one of the many millions of people who know that they don’t feel quite right, but don’t know exactly why, this book is for you.
Hence, I warmly recommend to you this book whether you or any member of your family are healthy, or you think that something’s wrong. It will pay off your reading efforts. I guarantee you.
The cause of autoimmune diseases
Autoimmune diseases result from a dysfunction of the immune system which instead to protect you from disease and infection, frequently produces auto-antibodies that attack healthy cells, tissues, and organs. In principle autoimmune diseases can affect any part of the body. So far, more than 80 autoimmune diseases have been identified. Some are relatively well known, such as lupus, psoriasis, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Crohn disease, rheumatoid arthritis, Graves diseases, Hashimoto thyroiditis, Myasthenia gravis, and many others which are rare and difficult to diagnose.
The causes of autoimmune diseases remain largely unknown. There is growing consensus that autoimmune diseases likely result from interactions between genetic and environmental factors. Environmental factors means also what you eat and how do you nurture your body.
What have I learned from this book?
Some of the takeaways of this book are the following:
First, your health doesn’t happen in the doctor’s cabinet but it happens where you live, basically at home, in your kitchens where you cook and eat. I am well aware that cooking nowadays is becoming old-fashioned. People have no time to cook, but they do have time eating ready o eat meals elsewhere. The bottom line is that your spoon, fork and knife are actually the most powerful tool we have to transform our health.
Second lesson is that the food you eat can or is making you sick but you are clueless about it. I am talking about wheat products of GMO origin, dairy, commercially processed fats and the king of the food killer – sugar.
Third lesson is that the book taught me, no, I’d better say, it actually confirmed what I already knew about the big myth of these diseases that the lupus, diabetes, MS, or whatever of those disease do not happen overnight, or due to an age. The author nicely explains the underlying mechanisms of the most common illnesses we face today, and also shares with reader the so called Transition Protocol that can help us change our lifestyle and prevent or reverse the disease.
Fourth lesson – One must be aware of the fact that no one in this world gets degenerative or chronic diseases, be it MS, Parkinson, Lupus, Alzheimer, heart disease, in their sixties or seventies. No. When these disease appear it means that the damage has accumulated to the point where it’s obvious. Instead, these diseases are decades-long processes, which now can be identified before debilitating symptoms appear.
How does it manifest from outside?
Earliest symptoms of autoimmunity can be losing or gaining weight, joint pain, gut imbalances, depression, brain fog, fatigue, mood disorders,etc. When you see a doctor for all these issues, and nothing shows up on a blood test as a crisis, you usually get very generic advice such as ”rest more”, ”reduce level of stress’, ”get more sleep”, “lose weight,” “eat better” …
Unfortunately many might even leave the hospital with a prescription for anti-anxiety or blood pressure medication to help you “calm down.”
For inflammation to continue to a chronic state, have a life of its own, and cause autoimmunity, three distinct factors must be present: a genetic susceptibility, environmental triggers, and a loss of intestinal barrier function. All three have been shown to be necessary to develop the majority of autoimmune diseases. If you take just one of the three out of the picture, your body can begin to heal.
‘‘From a cellular standpoint, we have an entirely new body every 7 years, because every cell in our body reproduces itself. Some cells (like inside our intestine) reproduce every 3-7 days. Others take much longer. The process of regeneration is going on 24/7 in our bodies”.
No wonder a simple lifestyle change can bring such a difference to our health! Our body is so forgiving.
”My patients find that within about 3-6 months, other people start noticing how much better they look. Your friends or family members who may not have seen you in a few months say, “Wow, you look different. You look good.”…. The reason is that by this point in time, your internal environment is replicating healthier cells. Now you’re shifting from a catabolic state to an anabolic state, transitioning from the mechanism of getting older to one of youth, vibrancy, and better health”.
Last but not least, this great book is teaching us how to help ourselves, how to take care of our body and uncover the weak link in our body – and make sure we protect it so it doesn’t break. Dr O’Brian suggests that with simple lifestyle changes we can arrest and reverse the inflammation and damage causing disease.
In order to start healing, Dr O’Brian’s Transition Protocol claims we should remove from our diet:
1. Gluten
2. Sugar
3. Dairy
”We can affect our internal environment in many different ways. That includes increasing our exercise and overall physical activity, pursuing lifelong learning for optimal brain function, learning lifestyle habits that reduce excessive stress, avoiding exposures to unnecessary chemicals and toxins, and changing our diet. In fact, one of the most far-reaching, impactful changes we can make to our environment is to both avoid foods that harm us and introduce foods that help us. As you begin to eliminate the foods that your body is sensitive to, you stop fuelling the autoimmune fire. When this happens, the fire calms down. While it may not go down completely at first, when you stop throwing gasoline on the fire, you reduce the intensity of the inflammation and diminish inflammatory cascade’‘.
This book has also taught me to see the play of words such as “common” and “normal” when we talk about health. Just because many people have the same/similar symptoms ( e.g. weight gain, headache, depression, blessedness, tiredness), it doesn’t make it normal (for your age or environment). It just makes it common. But it is definitely not normal and we shouldn’t accept it as a norm. Furthermore, I now understand much better that genetics is important and useful navigation tool for us. If someone in your family suffer from diabetes, it gives you a clear indication of where you will end up if you consume foods that cause it. However, it does not mean you will get it for sure!
The bottom line is that contrary to what we were told and taught, the genes rarely cause disease. It is your environment and your life style my friends, whether you want to accept or not. This is the fact. So, think about your current lifestyle, your nutrition and see what could you improve. It is only up to you!
