I want to be really clear about what’s causing disease- your immune system. It is either too reactive or it’s simply not giving enough. Everything from cancer to osteoporosis is your immune system de-regulated. A podiatrist told my patient once you can have bones spurs in that foot forever and have no pain. The difference maker is how your immune system is responding to it.
What has made your immune system fail? Well, it gets turned on by viruses or bacteria or Candida. It can also get turned on by a distressed organ or gland, particularly the thyroid. The most typical glandular stress is a result of hormone changes, puberty, pregnancy, and perimenopause. Autoimmunity is more prevalent in women because of these changes.
So consider your joint pain, that back flare, and your irritability, as potentially the result of an immune system that is, simplistically, turned on too high. Long Covid is just the most popular example of this phenomenon, but it happens all the time.
Some fun facts:
–Autoimmunity is self-reactive components of the immune system, essentially, your system attacking you.
–It has been on the rise in the last few decades with exponential rises expected from pollution, toxins, food, and stressful lifestyles.
–It is most common in women, particularly in menopause. Hashimoto’s is the #1 autoimmune disease on the planet.
–And when it is turned on against us, it has the potential to be non-discreet, so if there is one autoimmune pathway, there are many.
How do we treat this? Well, modern medicine typically just suppresses immunity. And with that, as you might imagine, comes all kinds of big risks.
UCSF researchers last year announced a new strategy for eliminating the antibodies that drive the immune system to attack its own tissue. They call it an antigen specific immune decoy. There is already a name for this….it is called a Protomorphogen (PMG) and was developed by Dr. Royal Lee over 70 years ago. What’s the difference? Well, the PMG is oral and much cheaper, but because it is oral it is sensitive to stomach acid, so is best when taken away from meals. The fact is, we have been using this for decades, we have easy access to it, and it works amazingly well.
PMGs are some of my favorite tools. Just today someone came in and claimed a nearly-cured frozen shoulder after having been given a surgical prognosis. I have seen them put an end to chronic miscarriages due to a faulty thyroid, and reverse Hashimoto’s. But I use these antigen specific immune decoys (PMGs) for everything from concussions to long COVID.
And of course, there is the perfect complement to PMGs, acupuncture, used for centuries to help modulate immunity, driving the central nervous system to get us back on track.
