Immunosuppressant Drugs Are NOT the Answer
If you want to cool off inflammation in the body, you must find the source.
So the doctor says you have an autoimmune disease. Not surprising since the American Autoimmune Related Disease Association
(AARDA), states one in five Americans suffer from an autoimmune disease [1]. The doctor gives you a pamphlet about your condition and a prescription for an immunosuppressant drug, also known as anti-inflammatory drug, and pain medication like vicodin. This will lower your immune system’s ability to fight off infection and disease, and therefore it will hopefully stop attacking itself. Or will it?
To date, there is no medical cure for an autoimmune disease because no one knows exactly what causes an autoimmune disease to occur. Currently, autoimmune disorders such as Lupus, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease (a chronic inflammation of the digestive tract), multiple sclerosis, and alopecia areata (patchy hair loss) are commonly treated with immunosuppressant drugs [2].
Given that so many people have been diagnosed with autoimmune, it’s no wonder that 27 major pharmaceutical companies are racing to develop the next prescription drug to be administered to people suffering with symptoms [3]. While we are not privy to the research and development, one can assume these well-meaning scientists will develop a drug to address only symptoms-- they do not eliminate the root cause of your disease, nor cure you, and the side effects may worsen your condition.
These immune suppressing drugs decrease the production of white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets [4]. And they are pretty dang good at their job. However, as they work to suppress the immune system from attacking its own healthy tissue, these drugs also weaken the immune system from attacking and fighting any other foreign invaders, such as viruses, parasites, and bacteria [5]. Thus, your immune system is less effective in protecting you from serious illnesses and diseases, such as viral infections and some cancers. These drugs also increase the chance of uncontrolled bleeding and liver damage [5]. The contribution of these adverse byproducts, without a cure, contributes to the potential for more disease states.
Remedies must work synergistically with each body function. No one should ever prescribe a medication or treatment that will harm other unintended aspects of the body’s function and integrity.
Your body has wisdom that needs to be respected and it can heal, if given the opportunity. I will partner with you to discover where your system is imbalanced. We will put together an actual autoimmune disease treatment: a unique, personalized roadmap to focus on your better health.
See my page on Autoimmune Diseases
or Services
for more information regarding the steps that are taken to help you recapture your health.
1. https://www.aarda.org/knowledge-base/many-americans-autoimmune-disease/
2. Immunosuppressive medications. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hopkinslupus.org/lupus-treatment/lupus-medications/immunosuppressive-medications/
3. Aarda facts. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.aarda.org/about-aarda/aarda-facts/
4. Halloran, P. (2004). Immunosuppressive drugs for kidney transplantation. In (351 ed., pp. 2715-29). New York, NY: New England Journal of Medicine.
5. Stucker , F., & Ackermann , D. (2011). Immunosuppressive drugs - how they work, their side effects and interactions. Ther Umsch, (68), 679-86. doi: 10.1024/0040-5930/a000230
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Heidi Toy Functional Medicine Blog
Did you know most people didn’t have refrigerators in their homes until well into the 1900’s? It wasn’t even invented for large scale commercial use until the mid 1800’s [1]. So how did people keep their milk cold and make their food last longer? Fermentation. It sounds like a gross concept, because we often associate fermentation with a bad odor, but foods like cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut and pickles are all fermented foods. And those aren’t gross, are they? Well, some might disagree with me about sauerkraut, but that’s beside the point. Fermented foods are digestive aids. Microscopic living organisms in fermented foods help extend the food’s shelf life, enhance flavor, and help the body absorb minerals. These organisms pre-digest the food, getting rid of harmful components, and create more vitamins and enzymes than the food began with. Enzyme-rich foods have many benefits including [2]: Increase digestibility of food we eat Boost immune system Increase alkalinity; neutralizing pH levels Provide a healthy balance of friendly flora in the gut (Learn more about your microbiome in my other blog posts ) Tone the colon and help with elimination Control cravings for unhealthier foods Eliminate toxins and undigested wastes in the body In the “old days,” people use to ferment all kinds of foods through pickling, canning, pasteurization and added salt. Nowadays, however, large scale fermentation has lost many of its nutritious benefits due to the need for speed to get the product on the shelf as fast as possible and as cheap as possible. The only true fermented foods you will find are sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt and kefir, beans, wine and beer, some meats (such as salami and pastrami), legumes and nuts (such as tofu, soy sauce and miso), sourdough bread, and various kinds of vegetables [3]. Fun facts about sauerkraut: The Germans “stole” it from the Chinese! Sauerkraut (probably not labeled as such for the Chinese, but the same recipe) was one of the main foods for those who built the Great Wall of China. Genghis Khan brought it to Eastern Europe during an invasion. It also contains high levels of vitamin C, and sailors often took it on long journeys to prevent scurvy.
How can we best keep blood sugar stable? Do what our body is designed to do – use fat for energy. Our species did not survive the Ice Age because of vanilla coffee lattes and cheesecake. Throughout most of our history, we ate a diet that was likely 50-70 percent fat. Look at the old family photo albums, specifically pictures of people in the first half of the 1900s, before we had so many processed foods. You won’t see many fat people--in fact, most look darn skinny. If they lived on the farm, they ate lots of eggs, meat, milk, and vegetables out of their own backyards. “Diet foods” were non-existent. Heart disease was almost non-existent. Our metabolism is designed to work much better with fats better than with sugar. Fats provide the slow and steady fuel our body likes to use for energy. Think of fats as a slow-burning log on the fire. One log (i.e. one meal containing fats) lasts for hours. Starchy carbs, on the flip side, are like kindling. You constantly have to throw more twigs (chips, pasta, bagels) to keep the fire burning. The first step is to know your sugars by reading the labels, and then avoid said sugars as much as possible.
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Omega-3 and Omega-6 are considered “essential” fatty acids because they cannot be produced by the body--we get them from the food we eat. They are biologically active upon ingestion, which means the body utilizes them right away and cannot store them up for later. They are essential because they help with both inflammatory and anti-inflammatory responses.
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