by Sean Croxton

I love living in downtown San Diego.

I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

I’ve been here for almost three years. The people are nice, crime is low, and Padres season never fails to liven things up during the spring and summer months.

But if there is one thing I haven’t gotten used to in all my time here it’s the one-way streets. Those things come out of nowhere! There have been plenty of days when I’d come to my senses at just the last moment before going against traffic down 7th Avenue.

I prefer walking to driving anyway. At least once a week I catch myself waving my arms frantically from the sidewalk in an attempt to get an errant driver’s attention.

No one wants to see an accident.

But imagine a place where no one called out to that driver, a place where oncoming traffic preferred not to flash their lights and slow down, where bystanders just stopped, watched, and waited for a head-on collision.

That would be crazy.

Such is the state of conventional medicine’s approach to autoimmunity. Allow me to explain.

Right now, approximately 50 million Americans, or one in five people reading this blog right now, suffer from autoimmune disease. According to our good friend-in-gluten Dr. Tom O’Bryan, autoimmunity is the number three cause of morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death) in the industrialized world. Unfortunately, many people with autoimmune conditions are either misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all.

Autoimmunity is what happens when your body’s immune system goes haywire and confuses your own tissues as foreign invaders. The immune system produces antibodies against these tissues, causing their progressive destruction.

The keyword here is progressive. It doesn’t happen overnight.

For example, your immune system may be currently producing antibodies to your thyroid. You may not feel any effects today, however five years from now you may experience symptoms of hypothyroidism.

Your doc may ignore the antibodies (they usually never test for them anyway) and prescribe some form of thyroid medication. Yet the problem does not reside in the thyroid itself. Rather, the root cause is the autoimmune reaction being perpetrated by the thyroid antibodies produced by your immune system! Medication won’t stop these antibodies from flaring up and chewing away at your thyroid tissue. The destruction continues.

So you’re in and out of the doc’s office for years with the same recurring symptoms that only seem to be getting worse. Eventually, you are diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune condition for which severe conditions are commonly treated with steroid medications. Not good.

Here’s my beef. In order for an autoimmune condition to be officially diagnosed, there must be severe tissue destruction. But again, this destruction does not happen overnight. It is progressive. What absolutely boggles my mind is that the current medical approach to autoimmunity is to be the bystander watching the car drive against traffic without warning until an accident happens!

Maybe it’s just me, but I would assume that early detection of these antibodies (we’ll discuss this tomorrow) as well as addressing the faulty immune system would be a much more effective approach in controlling autoimmunity.

Notice that I used the phrase “controlling autoimmunity”. Once the autoimmune genes have flipped on, they stay on. The best we can do is contain them. This may be discouraging for some, but containment is certainly preferable to severe tissue destruction.

Think of it this way. You can turn your car around and drive with traffic instead of against it.

Understanding the cast of characters playing a role in autoimmunity is paramount to containing it. The key players we will discuss today are the mucosal/intestinal barrier, the TH-1 and TH-2 immune systems, the regulatory T-cells, and TH-17 system.

You’re Letting the Flies In!
A healthy mucosal barrier acts like the screens that cover your windows, letting the good guys in and keeping the bad guys out. This protective mucosal layer lines your airways, lungs, intestines, and reproductive tract.

Your intestines are where 80% of your immune system resides. When the intestinal barrier is compromised, it is like a kid coming around and poking holes in your window screens on a hot day with no air conditioning. Next thing you know, you’ve got a house full of flies, gnats, and mosquitoes. Ugh!

When your intestinal barrier is compromised due to inflammation, bacterial and/or fungal overgrowth, parasites, stress, medications, and/or food sensitivities, you’re in the same predicament as you were with the holey window screens. But this time undigested food particles and various gut bugs can cross over into your bloodstream where they’re not welcome. When this happens, your immune system recognizes these antigens as invaders and mounts an immune response to fight them off. In other words, it acts just like you when you have a room full of flies. Your immune system grabs a magazine and starts whacking away!

Of course, you can’t spend your whole summer swatting flies. If you’re smart, you’ll go to the hardware store and buy yourself some new window screens. And maybe give that crazy kid a spanking. We’ll get back to this. The new screens. Not the kid.

Playing Seesaw with the Fat Kid
The design of your immune system is something to behold. It makes nerds like me get all excited and stuff!

The two pathways of primary importance to those with autoimmune reactions (antibodies only, no diagnosis) and autoimmune disease (severe tissue destruction, diagnosed) are the TH-1 and TH-2 systems.

The TH-1 system goes on the attack when it encounters an invader (antigen). You can think of it as the FBI chasing after the bad guys.

The only problem with this FBI squad is that they got hit hard by federal budget cuts and lost their vision coverage, making them dependent on the TH-2 system to properly identify intruders for them in the case of future antigenic invasions. The TH-2 system does this by tagging intruders and entering them into a criminal database. That way, the next time the intruders attack, the TH-1 system will be ready to pounce all over them.

An imbalance between these two systems is where the immune system goes wrong and autoimmunity begins. If the two sat on opposite sides of a seesaw, they should both have their feet off the ground. However, when the systems become polarized with one side of the seesaw on the ground and the other way up in the air, you should start looking for oncoming traffic.

An overactive TH-1 system is an immune system in “shock and awe” attack mode just looking for something to go after, including your own harmless tissues, glands, and organs.

An overactive TH-2 system is one that gets tag-happy, sticking tags on everything it can, including innocent bystanders like perfectly healthy foods you consume every day. Consequently, mistaken identity goes on the rise with your immune system committing frequent acts of friendly fire.

Autoimmune conditions tend to be TH-1 or TH-2 dominant. While there are certainly exceptions to the rule, TH-1 dominant conditions include Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, multiple sclerosis, and Type 1 diabetes. TH-2 dominant conditions include lupus and dermatitis.

Regulators! Mount up.
If the dominance of one side of the immune system is keeping the seesaw from moving, you need the help of the T-regulatory (T-3) cells to even them out. Think of them as seesaw-balancing specialists. When these cells are asleep on the job, imbalance occurs and one side of the seesaw hits the dirt.

Quite interestingly, opioids stimulate T-regulatory cell activity. This is why many autoimmune conditions go into remission while spending time laughing with loved ones.

Crazy, huh?

There’s Always a Villain
The final character in this immunological movie is TH-17. He’s all about drama. The severity of autoimmune flare-ups depends on the activity of TH-17. When activity is high due to increased stress, lack of sleep, or depleted glutathione, bad things happen.

Did someone say “glutathione”?

(((the crowd goes wild)))

Sorry, guys! I’m out of time. Gotta wait until tomorrow when you’ll learn how raising your glutathione levels repairs the intestinal barrier, balances TH-1 and TH-2 via activation of T-regulatory cells, turns down that big meanie TH-17, and much more!

Same underground time! Same underground channel!

Out!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2!

Sean
www.undergroundwellness.com

Mathematics was never my favorite subject, especially when calculators were not permitted during tests. I dreaded the phrase “solve the following problems long-hand”. Ugh!

Math is an all-or-none discipline. The answer is either right or wrong. There is no gray area. No in-between. A single misstep can undermine the entire outcome. I think we can all relate to spending an hour on a problem, only to later learn that we miffed on the second step. As above, so below.

Such is the case with fat loss. While diet and exercise are so loudly espoused as the sole elements of the fat loss equation, they rarely solve the problem.

Dr. Bryan Walsh, ND, goes beyond diet and exercise in his outstanding e-book Fat is Not Your Fault. Don’t let the title fool you. In no way is Dr. Walsh suggesting that one day you slipped, fell, and landed on fat. Taking personal responsibility for your health is still the first step to attaining it. Instead, he details those physiological dysfunctions so often overlooked in our modern fat loss dialogue.

My social media inboxes overflow daily with questions from frustrated individuals whose fat loss plans (typically diet and exercise alone) have either stalled or never worked in the first place. Each wishes to know why the fat refuses to budge despite two hours of daily exercise and a low-calorie diet. The answer is simple:

I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine.

My answer may surprise many of you, but it’s simply the truth. Any practitioner, nutritionist, or trainer who knows exactly why your fat loss has stalled without gathering an immense amount of information from you, conducting a Health History Review, and/or recommending and interpreting necessary lab testing has no idea what he or she is talking about. Run from this person!

Your war with fat will likely rage on without end if you have no concept of who the enemy is.

Is your fat a matter of blood sugar imbalances that leave insulin levels elevated, keeping fat locked inside of your cells?

Is stress (mental/emotional, overexercise, smoldering infections, etc.) elevating cortisol levels thus increasing blood sugar, resulting in MORE insulin release and MORE insulin resistance, and MORE fat storage?

Or is your gut flora so imbalanced that you are unable to activate 20% of your thyroid hormone. Losing one-fifth of your metabolism can’t be good for fat loss.

Maybe you can’t lose fat because your testosterone is low. How’s your libido been lately? Will you be happy being thin but still having no sex drive?

Is your fat a product of an autoimmune disease destroying your thyroid gland? Is your consumption of gluten exacerbating this process?

Could your fat be a dopamine or serotonin deficiency in your brain causing loss of motivation, depression/anxiety, and sugar cravings?

How about a toxic liver with the inability to clear excess hormones from your body? High estrogen in men causes fat gain. High testosterone in women does the same.

Is your ongoing struggle with constipation making you fat? Poor elimination is yet another path to hormonal imbalance as hormones intended for removal are reabsorbed.

Is your stressful lifestyle causing a breakdown of your digestive lining, allowing undigested food particles to go places where they shouldn’t be? These undigested proteins floating around in your bloodstream generate an immune response thus causing inflammation, stress, cortisol and blood sugar release, high insulin levels, insulin resistance, and fat storage. And more fat creates more inflammation! Talk about a vicious cycle!

I can go on and on.

Last question: How many of the above can be solved by diet and exercise alone?

Hopefully, the imaginary light bulb above your head just turned on full blast. You can STOP banging your head against the wall out of fat loss frustration. You likely don’t have a diet and exercise problem. Actually, you may not be eating enough and are exercising too much!

Fat is Not Your Fault is your missing fat loss manual. Not only does Dr. Walsh describe physiological fat-storing dysfunctions with such clever simplicity, he also provides you with solutions. His book ranks up there with Paul Chek’s How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy for its conciseness, readability, and overall practicality. It brings the missing puzzle pieces to the table, showing you how one piece affects the others and how the optimal function of each is the key to effective fat loss and most importantly overall health and well-being.

Fat loss is not the simple math problem it has been made out to be. It goes well beyond calories in and calories out. In fact, if it were a math problem, for some it would be impossible to solve “long-hand”. To find the correct solution, a little technology (bloodwork, stool testing, adrenal stress indexes) may be in order. Without this empowering health information, you are likely looking to solve your fat loss problem with most of the buttons missing from your calculator. You’re going to get the answer wrong every time.

Knowing what you know now and continuing to walk the beaten path of diet and exercise alone is a certain exercise in futility. In that case, your fat is your fault.

Grade: A
Comments: Loved it so much, I read it twice! Good work, Dr. Walsh!

Buy Your Copy of Dr. Walsh’s Fat is Not Your Fault HERE!

Sean Croxton, CMTA, FDN
sean@undergroundwellness.com
http://www.undergroundwellness.com