#24: Amy Myers, MD -The Autoimmune Solution: prevent and reverse autoimmune inflammatory disease

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About Dr. Amy Myers

Amy Myers, MD is a renowned leader in Functional Medicine. She has helped thousands around the world recover from chronic illness through her dietary based program, The Myers Way. She has created multiple interactive eBooks and eCourses to guide readers through her revolutionary approach to health. Her blog serves as a beacon of hope to the many sufferers of chronic disease and autoimmune conditions. Her book, The Autoimmune Solution: Prevent and Reverse the Full Spectrum of Inflammatory Symptoms and Diseases, is scheduled to be released January 2015 by Harper One.

Contact Dr. Myers

www.amymyersmd.com

www.facebook.com/AmyMyersMD

www.twitter.com/AmyMyersMD

Learn about the Autoimmune Summit

Show Notes

03:54 Dr. Myers’ Motivation: Dr. Myers’ was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease as a second year medical student. Conventional medicine failed her. She helped herself and now thousands of others through functional medicine and her program, The Myers’ Way.

06:35 Why Turn To Functional Medicine? In conventional medicine, doctors are taught to name the disease and give pills for the symptoms, with no questioning why or getting to the root cause. Many drugs prescribed for autoimmunity shut down the entire immune system, making fighting infections problematic or sowing the seeds of cancer.

07:44 Factors That Contribute to Autoimmune Disease: Diets containing GMOs, gluten, dairy, and soy, leaky gut, toxins in our environment, infections like Epstein-Barr virus, the herpes virus and bacterial infections, as well as stress. Dr. Myers determines the most influential of these factors, but works to improve all of them. Patients can get off of medications, reverse symptoms and, sometimes, antibodies disappear.  She does not say that she can cure autoimmune disease, but she can reverse it.

09:31 Risk for Autoimmunity: It is a spectrum. Intermittent joint pain, acne, eczema, migraine headaches, hormonal imbalances or other inflammatory conditions begin to appear. Inflammation can convert into autoimmunity.

10:52 What Is an Autoimmune Disease? Our bodies view some part of it as foreign and attacks. Our immune system is there to protect us, but it becomes confused. Molecular mimicry can happen with Epstein-Barr, toxins heavy metals or foods, like gluten.  The gluten molecule, the mercury molecule or Epstein-Barr molecule look similar to the thyroid gland and the immune system can accidently attack thyroid tissues.

13:44 Step 1: Diet. Diet has the biggest impact. The first step is a standard elimination diet for Dr. Myers’ regular patients and a comprehensive one for her autoimmune disease patients. Both are 30 days. Gluten is the biggest culprit.

15:39 Step 2: Fixing the Gut. Leaky gut is where the tight junction of our gut lining becomes inflamed from toxins, stress, medications and the like. Eventually, the tight junctions break apart and large particles get through to our bloodstream. These could even be things like heavy metals, infections like Epstein-Barr, or gluten.  She uses a comprehensive stool test and offers e-courses on her website that are a guide to the gut, for those who do not have access to a functional medicine doctor.

16:51 Leaky Gut and Autoimmunity: Pioneering Harvard researcher, Alessio Fasano M.D., has found that you must have a leaky gut in order to develop an autoimmune disease.  The first step is to heal the gut: removing inflammatory foods and reducing inflammation, checking for infections, probiotics, and checking digestive enzymes.

17:34 Look Deeper: Check for levels of heavy metals. Elevated levels may require chelation.  Check for toxic mold. Check for exceptionally high stress levels. Check for infections. Some infections are related to certain autoimmune diseases. Autoimmune disease is the third leading cause of mortality.

19:21 Lectins: Lectins are in a high proportion in grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. These are not meant to be broken down in digestion. They are meant for propagation. Even with chewing and processing, it is still irritating to the gut and not well digested. Soaking and cooking for long periods is helpful.

21:59 There Is No One Right Diet:   By the time you have autoimmune disease, something serious has gone wrong. So wipe the slate clean, heal, and then see what can be tolerated. Gluten is horrible for everyone.  There seems to be a hand-in-hand correlation between gluten consumption and autoimmunity. Gluten and casein in dairy are absolute “no”s to those of us with autoimmunity.

25:37 Alcohol and Caffeine with Autoimmunity: Dr. Myers has her patients stay away from alcohol and caffeine until they are better. Beer contains gluten and is fermented. Wine is fermented. Fermented products are not recommended with yeast overgrowth, which Dr. Myers commonly sees in her patients. Alcohol is sugar, which feeds infections like yeast and SIBO. Alcohol is a direct irritant to the gut.  Caffeine can be irritating to the gut and impact adrenals. Most of Dr. Myers’ patients have adrenal issues.

29:65 Infectious Diseases and Mold:  Dr. Myers is finding that more of her new patients have Lyme disease than ever before.  Lyme is often misdiagnosed as autoimmunity. Lyme can also be the underlying factor for autoimmunity. Mold can also be an underlying factor in autoimmunity. Be sure to do an online search for Dr. Amy Myers and Mycotoxins for great depth on mold and autoimmunity. Mycotoxins are volatile compounds that toxic mold gives off. Traditional mold testing does not test for them.  Tradition mold testing will pick up a high mold spore count. An ERMI test is a dust test. Dr. Myers tests her patients for metabolites of mycotoxins in their urine. Only 25% of the population has the gene which makes them vulnerable to sensitivity.

36:18 Dr. Myers’ Favorite Nutrient: Glutathione is the biggest detoxifier in our body. Dr. Myers has difficulty producing glutathione and had been exposed to toxic mold. She uses a formulation from CitriSafe which is acetylated and uses nanotechnology. She has had great results with it  for herself and her patients. Until now, glutathione was not well absorbed orally. It is part of her autoimmune protocol and she uses it with all of her chronically ill patients and those suffering from mold exposure.  She always takes her glutathione.

38:00 One Health Tip for America:  Dr. Myers would like to see a ban on genetically modified foods. We don’t know enough about genetically modified foods.  GMOs are taking over our food supply and environment.  It is impacting our ecosystem, our bodies and our genetics. Diet either creates sickness or it creates health.

39:20 The Autoimmune Summit: Dr. Myers interviews world renowned experts about prevention and reversal of autoimmunity.  You can view it for free when it is released and/or purchase the summit for lifetime viewing.