In today's episode, I'm going to share whether you can actually reverse an incurable disease, such as autoimmune condition and some little known facts around how this condition develops. That's all coming up next right here on embracing your healing journey. 4s I first remember reading the book The Autoimmune Solution by Dr. Amy Myers, and I specifically remember the chapter Myths and Facts about Autoimmunity because it simply blew my mind. I had just started implementing functional medicine in my own life to manage my daughter's severe health issues. The year was 2015, and at that time, hardly anyone in India had even heard about that term. And yes, I had seen some improvements with my own daughter's health. But it was early days yet, and when I came across the list of myths around autoimmunity, I realized just how low the awareness levels are around this condition. You see, by that time, I had already interacted with numerous doctors around the globe in the last few years, and not even one of them had come close to sharing any of these facts around why our immune system becomes dysregulated, how eczema occurs, or how even other chronic illnesses occur, and how autoimmune activity starts. More importantly, they were also not aware that many people across the world, including medical experts like themselves, or finding ways to reverse a condition that was considered incurable and almost like a life sentence. And in fact, one of the first people I actually came across when I was researching about Alternative Solution for my daughter's health issue was Dr. Danny Walsh, who I talk about a bit later in this show. And here I was coming across here to more evidence that this disease could be reversed if we took a step by step approach. However, this approach also required me to take into account that I needed to go beyond the traditional definition of what we are used to. We call being cured of a disease, and I needed to embrace what healing means as well. Let me explain. Chronic illnesses like autoimmune conditions arrived arise due to underlying dysfunctions. This means that this is in terms of how each person's body works in terms of cells, tissues, and organs, and these dysfunctions give rise to health issues that cannot be cured by any medications or removed by surgery. These may not be even diagnosed as any particular disease yet. 1s Healing, on the other hand, is a natural process and within the reach of everyone, no matter what stage of illness they are in. Even if somebody is dealing with a terminal illness. Because healing happens at not only a physical level, but also a spiritual and emotional level. So it is quite different from being cured of a health condition, right? Because being cured means that disease is not going to come back forever. And that's not the case for any kind of chronic illness. And also getting cured of a disease means that it's an external process that needs external treatment in the form of symptom management, surgeries and medications, whereas healing is above and beyond all of that. Unfortunately, chronic diseases are becoming more prevalent and increasing across the world at an increasing rate, and these are recurring illnesses that will not go away with time. In fact, they become progressively worse and severe illnesses like autoimmune disease, severe pain, exhaustion, discomfort, and limitations rob people of living a vibrant and happy life. 1s So living with a chronic illness like autoimmune condition means that you may be living with constant pain and being unable to sleep for more than two hours at a time. It may also mean that you're constantly worried that one day will end up being a burden to your family, as your symptoms keep getting worse and you are barely able to function, or that you're becoming more and more dependent on them. It may also mean that you had many dreams and goals that you wanted to accomplish, but your illness has talked to you from reaching all of that, right? It can mean this, and it can be much more. And the thing is that no one has told you that medications and treatments are not long term solutions for these kind of chronic illnesses, or any chronic illness for that matter. Because if they were, then everyone who took medications would have become better, wouldn't they? They would have not gone on to develop yet another autoimmune condition or other chronic illnesses. They would have felt energetic, free of pain and in control of their life once again. But that's not what usually happens. In fact, it's just the opposite. So what is really going on here? The issue is that we have not addressed the root cause. Immune dysregulation. Immune discrimination is at the heart of autoimmune disease activation. Don't get me wrong. Medications are necessary to bring symptoms under control and provide relief. So they are necessary, right. And you may need to be on medications and undergo certain treatments to deal with any kind of 1s condition. Medications are also necessary to prevent further tissue damage, but they are not the solution to bring your immune system and your body back into balance. First, these medications usually increase in quantity and dosage over a period of time as the chronic illness becomes worse and worse. As mentioned, chronic illness doesn't go away by itself because the underlying dysfunctions have not been addressed, so it actually becomes worse. Second, medications does do nothing to address the real reason why you have this disease. So the chronic illness continues to persist and record. And again, it actually gets worse with time. And third, this kind of polypharmacy, when you're taking multiple medications to deal with the side effect, you take one drug and then you take another one to deal with the side effect of the first one. It does not ensure a return to good health, but diminished quality of life. It would be safer and more effective to use fewer medications and the lowest dose possible, so that you can manage the symptoms and make it more bearable while you're trying to make changes in your diet and lifestyle and address the root cause of your health problem. 1s So it does not mean that you accept the inevitable? Absolutely not. You have a choice to take a different approach. And that's exactly what Dr. Terry Walsh did. 1s She reversed her incurable multiple sclerosis diagnosis and completely changed the future of multiple sclerosis research and treatment options. And you can read about her inspiring story and about her approach in the book The World's Protocol. The thing is, even though there is a genetic component to autoimmune disease, studies show that autoimmunity is only 25% heritable. The rest it is attributed to your environment, right when you actually living a field that is now known as epigenetics. And epigenetics tells us that you have a choice in terms of how you want to change your gene expression by changing your diet, lifestyle, and environment. This means, and this is a good news, that you can actually influence your gene expression and work towards turning off genes that are leading to autoimmune and other diseases. So it's like saying you have a lamp in your house and the lamp has a bulb and it's connected to a power source. But if you don't switch on flip on the switch, the light will not come on. That's that's gene expression. So it's in your hands whether you know, whether you want to move towards disease or move towards better health, you have a huge role to play in that because as we say, genes while the environment pulls the trigger. But what you need to keep in mind here is that our modern world is changing at such a rapid pace that a body is just not able to keep up with it. And this is actually, you know, sort of delve deep into by Piller Gerasimov in her excellent book, The Healthy Deviant. So if you want to dig deeper into this particular topic, you should, you know, take that book, read that book. In other words, if we were to condense 2.5 million years of human history to the equivalent of a single layer, the last 10,000 years would represent just 1.46 days out of 365 days, or about 25 years. That means that for most of our 2.5 million years that human beings have existed, we lived the life of hunter gatherers. We lived in small communities and tribes. We were dependent on seasonal produce, making our own tools, and we were physically active. But all that changed with the agricultural revolution that took place about 10,000 years ago. And that's very recent as far as evolution is concerned. And our bodies have simply not had the time to adapt to this exponential changes in our environment. As the author and social scientist, Dr. Robert Barrett has said, humans are running on outdated software. The software that's kept us alive for millions of years is done working in the current environment, and you can see this playing out in many different ways, including a rapid deterioration of physical and mental health, even amongst children. So most of us are not even aware that we are ill equipped to make the healthy choices necessary to cope with our modern environment, and even our children are suffering because of that. Do you see rising incidences of eczema, allergies, asthma, all kinds of skin ailments, you know, so all these are part of being dealing with the rapid changes in environment. So as you can probably see by now, the challenges that we face today go far beyond diet and exercise. 1s Let's come back to auto immune diseases, because in the case of autoimmune disease in particular, there is a specific loss of tolerance to self. In other words, your immune system is unable to distinguish your own tissues and real threat like microbes and toxins. It does have a number of inbuilt mechanisms that helps it to differentiate between host and foreign tissues. So it's not that your immune system has lost its mind and gone berserk. But what happens is that if over a long period of time there is hypervigilance, immune system gets activated. It can become dysregulated. It doesn't happen overnight. And your immune system, self regulatory system can be overridden in certain circumstances. This can happen if your immune system is continuously responding to a threat that is embedded in a particular tissue, like there's a microbe hiding in it, or it is responding to a threat that looks very similar to that tissue. So there are three main factors contributing to chronic activation. And these are collectively called the perfect storm. And I'm going to talk about this in more details in future episodes. But for now you need to know that these three factors are enhanced intestinal permeability or leaky gut. And I talk about in episode five also talk about gut health. Number two is genetic factors. Number three is a weak or imbalanced immune system. And then there's a trigger. Sometimes the trigger is a specific ongoing infection a specific food or a highly stressful or traumatic phase in life. And underneath all there is an imbalanced immune system which allows for this chronic or demon activation to occur. So in this sense, autoimmune diseases are actually a disease of the immune system. And if this disease is not addressed, then the immune system will go on to find another victim. This actually explains why many people with 1 or 2 human disease can go on to develop multiple autoimmune diseases over time. Right. But the road to healing from our human conditions, the road to reversing autoimmune conditions, lies in creating an environment in which your immune system feels safe enough to start calming down and coming back into balance. So in functional medicine, instead of asking what disease that this person has, we ask, what kind of person has this disease? What kind of environment is this person living in? And functional medicine is the stream of medicine that I practice in my health coaching practice. It focuses on the network of organ systems in our body. So immunity and inflammation toxins detoxify detoxification, digestion and absorption hormones energy using the systems based approach. Practitioners like myself dig into the roots and look for imbalances and deficiencies. And then we customize the health care plan. Right. So this is. How you can address your health issues. If you already have an autoimmune condition, you can prevent one in the future. So there are many things you can do, but here is where you need to focus on. You need to remove the obstacles that are coming in the way of your body's healing process, and provide it with all the nutrients that it needs. And it can mean vitamins, minerals, you know, positive thoughts. It's internal as well as the external environment. That way you give your body a fighting chance to heal itself. Because here's the thing your body is not a dump bucket. We have survived millions of years of evolution as a species, long before modern medicine came anywhere you know was even available. So our bodies know exactly what it needs to do in order to survive. As Dr. Christian Northrup says in her brilliant book Women's Bodies Women's Wisdom to become Healthy and Whole, you must have enough courage to be in touch with the wisdom of your female body and to follow the desires of your heart. Nothing is more exciting than knowing our bodies, and our feelings are a clear, open pathway to our destinies. In other words, if you learn how to support your body's wisdom and its remarkable ability to heal, you may be surprised at how much progress is possible, even in subtle ways before symptoms show. And yes, of course, it is possible to reverse severe chronic conditions such as disease by giving your body the support that it needs. If you are looking for guidance on how to do that, you can follow me on Instagram at the rate and in the room. To thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of Embrace Your Healing Journey. If you love this episode, do take a minute to write a five star review. It would help me to keep bringing more such content to you in the next episode. Unveil the exclusive framework my clients use to tap into their bodies innate wisdom. Take charge of the healing journey and navigate each twist and turn with unshakable resilience. Don't miss it. Your body knows how to heal. Are you ready to support it?
