The Nutritional Institute

I’ve had a lot of auto-immune patients coming to my clinic lately. Likely it’s a sign that the number of people succumbing to this health disorder is on the increase, although I do hope that it is also a sign that more of these individuals are not satisfied with standard medical treatment.

Consider this for a moment - what would be the state of somebody's health in 10 years time if they have been on weekly intakes of chemotherapy (standard rheumatology practice), which suppresses their immune system to the point that it is just not reacting to anything anymore? Do you think that person will get better, or will they suffer from a slow, degenerate decline in health and possible early death?

I’ve already written on autoimmunity (click here), so you can see that there are lots of possible causes of this immune disorder. But, something that I’ve been researching much more thoroughly lately has been the concept of microbial infection. We have a lot of bacteria in our body - estimated at about 10 times the number of cells in our body. According to the Gut Microbiota for Health website, our gut microbiota contains tens of trillions of microorganisms, including at least 1000 different species of known bacteria with more than three million genes, and weighing up to 2 kg. That’s a lot of bugs…

If the ‘good’ microorganisms outnumber the ‘bad’ ones, our health tends to be in tip top shape because our immunity is synergistically linked to our bugs. However, a recent study (which I shared this week on Facebook), suggests that the average Westerner has half the bacterial diversity of an African bushman. Therefore, because there are fewer members of our patrolling police force (our good bugs), it means that there is more opportunity for potentially infectious organisms (such as bacteria, viruses, yeasts, parasites, moulds) to take hold in our body.

I’ve been reading up on Bilharzia, Borrelia (linked to Lyme's Disease), Ricketsia, H Pylori, Epstein Barr, Coxsackie, HPV, plus gut-specific microorganisms, and each one has the ability to deplete and severely imbalance our immune system. Often though, because the immune system was weakened when it let the infection past its defences, there are ‘co-inflections’, meaning that one person may have two or more of these infections at one time. They are unfortunately not on the radar of modern rheumatologists, and the few practitioners who dare work within this complex field, are often seen as outlaws of modern medicine, but these are very often the doctors who are able to get you better.

In line with my increasing work in the auto-immunity space and my awareness of gut and intracellular infections, a new super-duper stool test has just been released by Nordic Laboratories in Denmark. Because of the out-of-the-box thinking that is possible via their functional tests, Nordic has been my preferred lab for the past few years. This new test is aptly called GI-Map and it is absolutely loaded with microbial information - much more than the previous stool test that I used to rely on. I feel that this new test (which I’ve already ordered for a Rheumatoid arthritis patient yesterday) will greatly increase my ability to work with these very complex auto-immune cases.

Auto-immunity is massively on the rise at the moment and it is due to our modern living, modern stresses, modern toxicity and I was about to say modern bugs. But, these bugs have been around as long as us - it is our tired out and imbalanced immune systems that are letting the infections take hold in our bodies due to our busy, stressed and polluted lives. I’m finding that auto-immunity is very common in A-type personalities, sports people and people who don’t nourish themselves well or handle stress - just like the picture for chronic fatigue syndrome - and ‘yes’, the two are very overlapping ‘syndromes’.

If you’re worried about auto-immunity, I would welcome a chat with you. Just pop me an email.