A new study out of Brigham and Woman’s hospital in Boston and published in the Journal of Nature Medicine, relays exciting news that validates much of what I’ve been seeing in patients enrolled in the Fight MS with Food Project and our approach to managing autoimmune disorders like MS.
Manage Multiple Sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases through what you eat and how you digest your food.
Here is the link to a more detailed article about the study linking diet with MS, but below are some of what I find to be the most exciting points:
…the team found evidence that dietary changes and intestinal flora can influence astrocyte cell, a type of cerebral and consequently neurodegeneration.
Francisco Quintana, Spanish researcher who led the work, told SINC: “we have demonstrated for the first time that diet and intestinal bacteria collaborate to produce metabolites that travel through the circulation to the central nervous system to regulate inflammation and neurodegeneration.”
Or put another way, the food has some sort of role in the central nervous system through inflammation. “What we eat influences the ability of intestinal bacteria to produce small molecules, some of which are able to travel to the brain. This opens an unknown area so far. How the intestine controls inflammation of the brain,” he added.
According to the authors, dietary supplements and probiotics may be useful to control processes that contribute to the pathology of neurological diseases. “Our studies were initially focused on multiple sclerosis, but also have implications for other diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s,” said Quintana.
If you’re interested in learning more about tailoring your diet and colonizing your own intestinal bacteria to best manage your autoimmune issues, please contact me for a free initial phone consultation to see if you would be a good candidate for this approach.
Erin, a 32-year old mother of a toddler, was diagnosed with NMO in 2009. When she came to me she reported: “I have the torch feeling really bad in my feet. Pins and Needles all the time in my hands, legs, and feet. Fatigue is everyday. Headaches come and go. Nausea comes and goes. Banding around my rib cage. Tremors off and on.”
She was also very distressed that she had gained 100 lbs since her diagnosis. At only 5’2″, there was no way to hide it and she simply felt lousy most of the time.
We started her off on an herbal parasite cleanse to level the playing field, so to speak, before analyzing her blood for inflammatory triggers with the MRT (Mediator Release Test) and analyzing her urine for the state of her digestive tract.
Erin will tell you that the first two weeks of the dietary program weren’t easy, but after five months, her diet has greatly expanded and her dietary choices have become part of her lifestyle rather than a “diet”.
Even better, following the LEAP diet gave her the energy to start living her life again. Instead of feeling chronically fatigued, she now has energy to work out 4-5 times each week and has dropped almost 60 lbs. (Adding the workouts boosted her weight loss trend from 2 lbs per week with the diet alone to 3 lbs per week on average.)
As for her NMO symptoms, they have subsided significantly. She now only has the pins and needles feeling when she has accidentally ingested something she shouldn’t have, and it works as an early warning system alerting her to retreat to her original safe diet until the symptoms abate.
But you should hear about it in her own words. Erin keeps a blog at NMOdiaries.com where she and several others journal their lives with NMO. She has posted a video describing her dietary journey through The Fight MS with Food project protocols.
Give it a listen. Hearing her life-changing progress brought tears to my eyes. You may find it inspiring.
I am a firm believer that hidden parasitic infection is at the root of many if not most chronic ailments, and now a study has just been released showing a link between parasites and obesity.
Microscopic Toxoplasma gondii parasite in brain tissue.
That means that in any group of three people, at least one is likely infected with this particular parasite. If you suffer from a chronic condition that has inflammation at its base, this could be you.
Parasites and Obesity
The CDC calls T.gondii one of the top “Five Neglected Parasitic Infections” based on its high prevalence in the US, severity of illness, and potential for prevention (http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/npi.html; accessed 9-25-2013).
Latent T. gondii infection has been previously associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and personality disorder, and it causes significant activity of T-cells, the ones that are responsible for inflammation. Since obesity is a chronic stage of inflammation and irrational thought can be due to inflamed brain tissue (read Brain Rules to see how this works), all of this makes sense to me.
Even more, this new research has now proved a relationship between parasitic infection and obesity. What other conditions might a hidden parasitic infection affect? Plenty.
T-Cells and Parasites
Here’s what happens in your body when you have a parasitic infection regardless of if the parasite is active or already encapsulated into a cyst.
The T-cells, a subset of white blood cells that are responsible for determining the threat rating of foreign substances in the body, determine the parasite presence is a threat and prime the immune system to fight it off. The immune system releases mediators, or inflammatory activators, to start off the battle strategy. This works pretty well when fighting viral and bacterial invaders but not at all with parasites.
The T-cells notice that the threat is still there and continue their inflammatory assault, sometimes for decades. The body remains in a chronically inflamed state with no resolution until other interventions are taken to kill off the parasites. An inflamed state could manifest as anything from migraines to fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, sinusitis, or even autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis.
Chronic inflammation, as we are finally starting to realize, is bad, bad, bad.
Chronic inflammation damages tissues and disrupts systems, like the integrity of the myelin sheaths of the nervous system (resulting in MS), the elasticity of the veins and arteries (heart disease), and of course, our front line of defense, the digestive system.
When the digestive system is subjected to chronic inflammation, it no longer does its job well and new food sensitivities emerge, triggering more T-cell activity and bringing inflammation in the body on a constant basis.
The parasitic infection that is at the root must be addressed for complete healing to occur.
Should You Test for Parasites?
The problem with using Western medicine to test for parasites is that it doesn’t necessarily look for the critters in the right places. The standard is to look for parasites in a stool sample or two. Unfortunately, parasites like T.gondii, for example, take up residence in the brain and will not show up in a stool sample.
Even blood testing won’t tell us everything. Advanced blood testing for the parasite Chagas, which we know lives in the blood, involves surveying a blood sample using a high tech medium designed to illuminate this microscopic parasite, but the sophisticated test won’t show the presence of a liver fluke in the liver.
This is whyallparasite testing is notorious for false negatives. The danger is that the patient believes they don’t actually have a parasite based on the lab report so does not take steps to eradicate the parasite and continues to see his or her health deteriorate.
When I suspect parasites in a client (more than 75% of the time), I never recommend wasting money on testing but instead suggest starting an herbal parasite cleanse immediately.
How Do You Get Rid of Parasites?
The pharmaceutical drugs of choice for parasite eradication, Flagyl and Ivermectin among others, can be effective though they only kill off adults and do not affect the eggs or protected cysts. They are also brutal on the body. Using Flagyl to kill a parasite, as one G.I. doc told me, is like using a shotgun to kill a mosquito; there’s a lot of collateral damage in the process.
In my personal experience, Flagyl leaves your body feeling fragile, like an empty eggshell, because it is so toxic that it has killed off everything, both the good and the bad, in your body. As a result, the course of drugs leaves your digestive system in bad shape. Worse, because it leaves the eggs and cysts behind to repopulate, symptoms often return within months or years.
Better to use a gentle combination of anti-parasitic herbs for several weeks to address all of the stages of a parasite life cycle without destroying your body in the process. Most people don’t feel anything different while going through the herbal regimen I advocate, but eliminating the source of constant inflammation brings immeasurable relief from symptoms of all kinds.
Will Eradicating Parasites Cure My Ailments?
It depends on how much damage has already been done in your body as to how much healing needs to happen once the parasites are out of the way. It’s likely that digestive system damage has lowered your tolerance thresholds and you are now a hypersensitive person who needs to learn how to avoid personal inflammatory triggers during the post-parasite healing phase.
Healing can only happen in the absence of inflammation.
I work with my clients to design customized anti-inflammatory diets to quickly reduce inflammation and supplement with supportive digestive enzymes to speed healing.
The one thing I know for sure is that if you have a parasitic infection and you don’t address it, there is only so much better you will ever get. You can medically suppress T-cell activity and become immuno-compromised, but you can’t convince the T-cells to ignore the presence of a parasite for long.
Where Can I Find A Parasite Cleanse?
Contact me and I’d be happy to tell you all about the regimens to get rid of parasites and end your chronic inflammatory issues once and for all.
This week I was fortunate to be invited to speak at the Guthy-Jackson Foundation’s annual symposium on neuromyelitis optica (NMO). Originally known as Devic’s Disease, NMO is currently an incurable but treatable autoimmune disorder. The body’s immune system attacks its own healthy cells, most commonly in the optic nerves and spinal cord. It can cause temporary or permanent blindness and/or paralysis, and may have periods of remission and relapse.
Me with Victoria Jackson at the NMO Symposium.
Often mis-diagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis, far fewer people have been diagnosed with NMO. So few, in fact, that when Victoria Jackson and her husband Bill Guthy’s daughter was diagnosed with NMO five years ago, there was no information to be found anywhere on the internet about NMO. The Guthy-Jackson Foundation is dedicated to funding basic science research to find answers that will lead to the prevention, clinical treatment programs and a potential cure for Neuromyelitis Optica (NMO) Spectrum Disease. Each year, the foundation brings together doctors, scientists, and researchers to exchange information and knowledge about NMO. On the symposium’s final day, NMO sufferers fly in from all over the USA and from seven other countries to participate in educational sessions and be part of the NMO community.
As with any other disorder, eating healthily can only help the body have more resources with which deal with the effects of a disease process. My general advice for healthy eating is to focus on real, whole foods rather than processed foods, and to eschew chemical additives in any form. These days, my advice includes avoiding GMO foods whenever possible.
I tip my hat to these brave folks fighting this rare disease.
While we might suspect vaccinations are contributing to the alarming rise of autism in this country, Moises Velasquez-Manoff, the author of An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases, thinks autism might be related to immune responses stretching farther back into the womb. Perhaps even to the mother’s autoimmune disorder.
In a recent New York Times column on autoimmunity and autism, Velasquez-Manoff points out that Danish research studying over 700,000 births shows a mother’s immune dysfunction can raise the child’s risk of autism by 350%.
As a mom with an autoimmune disorder, multiple sclerosis, I am particularly interested in learning about this link. Although my kids have aged beyond the autism zone, both show food and chemical sensitivity reactions (inflammation) and I’m certain there is a connection.
Velasquez-Manoff says: “The theme here is maternal immune dysregulation. Earlier this year, scientists presented direct evidence of this prenatal imbalance. Amniotic fluid collected from Danish newborns who later developed autism looked mildly inflamed.”
It all comes down to inflammation.
It all comes down to inflammation, yet again, but this time it appears to be the mother’s inflammatory response during gestation that influences the amniotic fluid that sensitizes the developing child, who later manifests as autistic. Perhaps autism is what it looks like when unwelcome swelling interferes with brain development.
The Feingold Association has a lot of research showing that autistic kids manifest behavior changes from ingesting chemical additives like the petroleum-based, FDA-approved Food Dyes & Colors (FD&C) in so many of our food (or food-like) products.
My goal, in both my own life and in my clinical practice as a naturopath, always focuses on reducing and eliminating inflammation through customized dietary strategies. Autoimmune disorders, like multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, and rheumatoid arthritis, respond so well to personalized anti-inflammatory menus that I started the Fight MS with Food project to gather data about the efficacy of this approach.
Velasquez-Manoff might advocate intentional parasitic infection as a way to combat hypersensitivity that manifests as autoimmunity, but personally I’d rather change what I’m eating than choose to host a colony of parasitic hitchhikers. My theory reverses his: I think that sometimes parasitic infection can cause the inflammation that leads to autoimmune disorders, not cure them.
