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How To Calm Autoimmunity Through Diet and Lifestyle With Mickey Trescott · Non-Toxic Living

0:00
Gluten is low-hanging fruit for autoimmune conditions.
0:02
Extremely.
0:03
It is the lowest.
0:04
It's like on the ground, basically.
0:06
There is a lot of research showing how gluten really disrupts that gut barrier and is problematic.
0:13
Clinically, I have seen most people be sensitive to gluten.
0:17
So I recommend for anybody with an autoimmune disease.
0:20
Can you heal autoimmune diseases without eliminating foods?
0:23
So I will tell you, I've been doing this for a long time, and I have seen many paths to healing.
0:28
And I will say that some of them do include...
0:31
I've dealt with a lot of sick people over the years.
0:34
They get to a place with an autoimmune condition.
0:36
They're down to one, two, maybe three foods, and they're living in fear.
0:41
Should they be living in fear?
0:43
So there is a time when you have a very disrupted gut, and things are really out of control, and you are really inflamed.
0:50
You're going to react to a lot of foods.
0:52
This is because...
0:56
Mickey Trescott, welcome to the Non-Toxic Living Podcast.
1:00
This is going to be so much fun because so many people are suffering, whether they know it or not, with an autoimmune condition.
1:06
It's affecting millions and millions of lives.
1:09
You think, and I think, it could be almost everyone, and you have some solutions that for many of us, we could reverse this autoimmunity epidemic that we're facing today.
1:22
Thank you for being here.
1:23
Absolutely.
1:24
Thank you so much, Warren.
1:26
You know, 50 million Americans are known at this time to have autoimmune disease, and that's compared to 30 million that we know with cancer and 18 million with heart disease.
1:35
So if you think of all your friends and your contacts and maybe personally are affected by those other two conditions, autoimmune disease is more than both of them and is growing 5 to 13 percent every year.
1:48
So I really appreciate you having me on today to talk about it because I love talking about solutions for people who want to get better.
1:55
Yeah.
1:55
And that's what we're going to get into today.
1:57
We have some real solutions, some real science on and give you real hope on reversing autoimmunity.
2:03
And one of my heartbeats, obviously, is toxicity.
2:06
And the literature is through and through talking about how toxins not only can trigger the genes and the epigenetics, but just in themselves cause that inflammatory response.
2:18
That might be one of the main reasons you could disagree or agree.
2:22
We haven't talked about this, that the epidemic is growing because of we're not getting rid of the things that trigger it.
2:31
Absolutely.
2:32
Yeah.
2:32
So the causes of autoimmune disease are multifactorial, and it is really an immune system that has gone awry.
2:39
And so, yes, there is a genetic component.
2:42
And when we look at specific conditions, there is more or less genetic background.
2:47
But more and more research is pointing to that epigenetic expression.
2:51
Our environment has changed.
2:53
Our genes have not changed, right?
2:55
So why are we seeing that 5% to 13% year-over-year increase, which that is just blowing out of the water all of these other chronic health and conditions, which are major, major problems.
3:08
But autoimmune disease is rising incredibly quickly.
3:11
Yeah.
3:12
And it's because of that genetic expression due to the environment.
3:16
This is, you know, what we're exposed to in our food, in our air, in our water, the microbial species, you know, the viruses.
3:26
And really, the microbiome is the mediator of all of that.
3:29
So I'm excited to get into it and chat with you about that today.
3:33
Can you heal autoimmune diseases without eliminating foods?
3:36
So I will tell you, I've been doing this for a long time, and I have seen many paths to healing.
3:42
And I will say that some of them do include things that don't involve diet and food.
3:48
So I'm not here to tell anyone that this is specifically the thing that they need to do to heal.
3:53
There are so many aspects to healing.
3:55
There is food.
3:56
There is lifestyle.
3:57
There is medicine.
3:58
There is natural medicine.
4:00
There is...
4:02
spiritual, you know, their connection, you know, our environment, there are so many things.
4:06
And what lever is going to be important to each person?
4:11
You know, I have a background in sound engineering.
4:13
So I think of like the soundboard with all the little levers, it's going to be different for each person.
4:18
Is gluten evil when it comes to autoimmune conditions?
4:21
You know, I think we're ready to say, yeah, it's a problem.
4:25
And, you know, a lot of foods, I would say all the other foods is up to the individual for their tolerance.
4:33
So some people have a lot of food sensitivities.
4:35
Some people have food sensitivities.
4:36
few food sensitivities.
4:37
But I think people with autoimmune disease, there is a lot of research showing how gluten really disrupts that gut barrier and is problematic.
4:46
Clinically, I have seen most people be sensitive to gluten.
4:50
So I recommend for anybody with an autoimmune disease, that's my baseline food elimination.
4:55
When they start reintroducing foods, they can try reintroducing other stuff.
4:59
But gluten is one that for autoimmune disease, I pretty much recommend not trying.
5:03
Follow-up question.
5:04
I go to Italy.
5:05
I have an autoimmune condition.
5:07
I start eating emmer wheat, non-glyphosate sprayed bread, and my autoimmune condition is gone.
5:13
Yeah.
5:14
I mean, here's the thing, Warren, you're living your life.
5:16
And if that works for you, I'm not going to judge you.
5:19
I'm happy for you.
5:20
As a celiac, I can't have any gluten.
5:22
Celiacs can't even have 10 parts per million of gluten is going to trigger a reaction in our intestines, whether or not we have symptoms.
5:31
But I would strongly encourage people with autoimmune conditions to just kind of not dabble because I think it can lead to problems.
5:38
So the Italian bread theory where you go to Italy and you eat the wheat and grains over there and they feel great, they feel amazing.
5:47
And then they come back to the United States.
5:50
Why do you think that is?
5:51
You know, I think some people, you know, they're relaxed.
5:56
They're not working.
5:57
They're less stressed.
5:57
We know that this impacts our immune system and our ability to tolerate triggers.
6:02
Some foods are a problem on a, you know, spectrum.
6:07
So some people, you know, maybe when they are managing their health in a certain way, things work for them, which might be the case with people who go to Italy and are able to eat gluten.
6:17
But I think for people with autoimmune disease, avoiding gluten is kind of one of those primary things that you can do to support your wellness.
6:24
Although I'm not going to judge anyone who decides to do what they do because they're living their life.
6:29
Everyone's living their best life.
6:30
Yeah.
6:31
But gluten is low hanging fruit for autoimmune conditions.
6:35
Extremely.
6:36
It is the lowest.
6:37
It's like on the ground, basically.
6:39
We all live stressful lives.
6:42
And our parents said to me, you know, when I was sick, it was just stress.
6:46
Can stress trigger an autoimmune condition?
6:49
Absolutely.
6:49
And actually, a lot of the incidents, so that is the rapid onset of an autoimmune condition.
6:55
There is research showing that that can happen after a traumatic or really stressful event.
7:00
So when we look at the factors that affect people with autoimmune disease, it's not just diet.
7:06
It's not just lifestyle.
7:08
It's also, you know, what is going on in our life.
7:10
And absolutely, stress can be a trigger.
7:12
Stress can also make autoimmune disease worse.
7:15
And managing our stress can actually help improve symptoms of autoimmune conditions.
7:20
I've dealt with a lot of sick people over the years.
7:23
And what I find a lot of my friends, families, doctors we work with, their patients, clients I've seen in the past, they get to a place with an autoimmune condition.
7:34
They're down to one, two, maybe three foods, and they're living in fear.
7:39
Should they be living in fear?
7:41
So there is a time when you have a very disrupted gut and things are really out of control and you are really inflamed.
7:48
You're going to react to a lot of foods.
7:50
This is because going back to the microbiome is mediating the immune reactivity there.
7:56
But over time, as somebody heals, as somebody recovers their gut lining and heals that gut,
8:02
and improves that microbiome diversity, they are able to consistently include more foods.
8:08
And, you know, how much time, that's very individual.
8:10
But over time, I definitely see people expanding their diets and tolerating more foods instead of needing to live in fear or live in highly restricted diets for a long period of time.
8:21
Can chronic headaches, brain fog be linked to an autoimmune condition?
8:24
Yeah.
8:25
Absolutely.
8:25
And actually, the most common autoimmune condition is Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which affects the thyroid and it reduces the output of thyroid hormone.
8:34
And every cell in your body needs thyroid hormone.
8:37
And so when you don't get enough of that, you can't think straight, you get tired, you get headaches.
8:43
And so many conditions come with a symptom of brain fog,
8:48
fatigue, headaches.
8:49
These are actually some of the most common symptoms.
8:52
But for somebody specifically like that, I would think of Hashimoto's.
8:56
And Clue, anybody who has been diagnosed with hypothyroidism takes thyroid medicine and they don't know if it's autoimmune.
9:04
Here is your trigger to go ask your doctor to get tested for antibodies because most providers miss this.
9:11
Yeah.
9:11
And then there's another thing is like, if you don't have those antibodies, can you still have Hashimoto's?
9:18
Absolutely.
9:18
It is can be verified by a thyroid ultrasound where they actually look at the thyroid gland and they look for the cells infiltrating the thyroid tissue and they can tell if you have Hashimoto's.
9:29
It's called seronegative Hashimoto's.
9:31
You know, one of the things that I like talking about and some of the doctors I've trained and coached over the years is talking about how something like glyphosate and how it wrecks the microbiome.
9:43
Or, you know, you could name a...
9:46
There is...
9:47
so many different chemicals that can destroy the microbiome.
9:49
You can have mercury amalgam fillings.
9:51
You could be drinking alcohol.
9:52
Like all these things destroy your microbiome, and that really does regulate your immune system.
9:58
70% of your immune system is in your gut, and when you affect these guys, everything changes.
10:05
Yeah, and actually one thing that is a hypothesis right now about just the driver of chronic disease is called the disappearing microbiota theory.
10:14
And it's not just what we are exposed to in our lifetime.
10:18
So all of the things you mentioned, you know, also antibiotics.
10:22
but how we are inheriting less diverse microbiomes from generation to generation because of all of the things that each subsequent generation is exposed to.
10:34
So this includes things like C-sections, less breastfeeding, and when people get less diabetes.
10:41
of a diverse microbiome, this is, like you said, where the immune system lives.
10:46
And this microbiome is what's actually modulating all of the immune activity in the body, and it's really the root of chronic illness.
10:54
So over time, it's really important not to just think of the things that we personally have a choice in how we manage.
11:02
But thinking that over time, over generations, we have actually been inheriting a less diverse microbial ecosystem in our bodies just by default, just because of, you know, modern living, sanitation, you know, all of the pesticides that we use to grow our food.
11:19
These things are not only toxins, but like you said, they go through and they affect those beneficial microbes.
11:25
We actually need these microbes to train our immune systems when we're young.
11:31
We need exposure to dirt, to animals.
11:34
You know, this is not to say that hygiene is bad, of course.
11:38
You know, we need a level of hygiene to keep us healthy and safe.
11:41
But sometimes, you know, we've gone too far in one direction and kind of decimated the populations in our gut that...
11:48
And now we have microbiomes that are very unhealthy.
11:52
And when the microbiome is a core mediator of illness and health, that is problematic and really why a lot of researchers think that we are having this epidemic of chronic illness, specifically this epidemic of autoimmune disease, because of all that immune activity that happens in the gut.
12:14
autoimmune disease is a condition where the body attacks itself instead of an outside pathogen.
12:21
So your immune system is supposed to be triggered by a virus or a bacteria or a foreign body or something that's not supposed to be in your body that's bad.
12:30
But with autoimmune disease, it actually targets your own tissue, whether that's your thyroid or your gut tissue or your skin tissue or your brain tissue.
12:39
Yeah.
12:40
There are over 100 autoimmune diseases.
12:42
Five years ago, the official number was 80.
12:45
And five years, I think, we'll be at 150.
12:48
Just because we are not limited to the amount of understanding or we're starting to see just the amount of...
12:59
ways in which the immune system can attack just various parts of the body.
13:04
And so the collection just keeps growing.
13:07
But every autoimmune disease is linked by gut dysfunction.
13:11
And this is established by researchers like Alessio Fasano, who is a famous celiac disease researcher.
13:18
He has identified leaky gut or intestinal permeability in every single autoimmune disease that was studied.
13:24
And what that means is that intestinal barrier, these are epithelial cells, they are one cell layer thick.
13:31
Your gut is actually outside your body.
13:34
And so this one cell layer thick that is aligning your digestive tract, that is the barrier between the outside and the inside.
13:42
And on the other side is that immune system.
13:44
So what we put in our bodies, what we drink in our water, all of the medications we take, all of these things have the potential to either disrupt that barrier and cause problems and activate the immune system.
13:56
Or on the other side, always like to mention this, they have the power to heal and provide benefit and nutrient and support and soothe.
14:05
So that's really the foundation of kind of what I do and why I'm so passionate about teaching people about diet and lifestyle and autoimmune disease.
14:13
I mean, you nailed it.
14:14
Like, like after doing this for so long, a lot of things you're saying is like light bulb, light bulb, light bulb and the missing microbiome syndrome.
14:23
Like that makes so much sense because mom passes it on the baby.
14:27
We said, hey, let's schedule a C-section.
14:30
Hey, let's we'll talk about this.
14:32
Let's vaccinate right away when they're a little tiny infant, when they haven't even developed their immune system.
14:37
Let's vaccinate.
14:38
do it this way.
14:39
And it's this system that is driving an epidemic of autoimmune conditions.
14:44
And it's so sad because then so many people, some of you watching this be like, oh, nothing I can do.
14:51
I have an autoimmune condition.
14:52
And my doctor told me, now I have to be on this drug the rest of my life to knock down the inflammation or what's going on.
14:59
And I've seen it, not a let alone,
15:02
your book, your protocol, which has real science behind it.
15:05
But we've done things like bone broth fasting with people who had autoimmune conditions that were just destroying their skin.
15:11
They were inflamed and red.
15:12
And we just put them on a bone broth fast and all their symptoms go away.
15:16
But then they couldn't survive on that.
15:18
And then they start eating again.
15:20
They're just heck with it.
15:20
I'm just going to live my life and take my drugs.
15:23
And I get it.
15:23
That's your choice.
15:24
But it's
15:26
comes back down to the gut, the gut lining.
15:28
You said something.
15:30
Did you say that your gut lining is the outside?
15:34
So what is inside your gut is actually outside your body.
15:38
So the gut is actually the barrier.
15:40
It's like skin.
15:41
So whatever we put inside, it passes through.
15:44
And that gut barrier is the deciding component on if something goes inside or if it stays on the outside, which is where your microbiome lives.
15:53
So if you think of your microbiome as this community of helpers.
15:57
Right.
15:58
This healthy microbiome, it is training your immune system.
16:01
It is creating nutrients.
16:03
It is moderating and making you be a healthy person, but is technically not inside your body.
16:09
It is technically outside your body, which is just incredible.
16:13
So all of these things that we are taking in, it is exposed to.
16:16
It's kind of like having a patch of ground outside your house.
16:20
You get to decide what you put on that patch of ground.
16:23
You want to dump some toxic water and, you know, the things that all the weeds like.
16:27
Nothing's going to grow or something bad's going to grow there, right?
16:30
But if you give it just the right things, all the friends, you know, different companion planting.
16:35
So, you know, you've got some good bugs that, you know, eat up all the critters.
16:39
You've got this flourishing, diverse community of plants that all get along.
16:44
Nothing is outgrowing each other, right?
16:46
We have that on the inside and it does that for us and really helps manage so many facets of human health.
16:52
Like we could do a whole podcast on what that microbiome does.
16:56
But really the important thing to understand here is just everything that we put in our body and even, you know, the air, everything is just affecting this microbiome that isn't just in our gut.
17:07
It is, you know, on the skin.
17:09
It is in all the tissues and, you know, surfaces of our body because it's really helping us maintain.
17:15
moderate that barrier from outside and inside.
17:19
Oh man, that is two big mind blowing things with the microbiome disappearance syndrome, right?
17:27
What did you call that?
17:28
Yeah, it's really the disappearing microbiota hypothesis.
17:32
And there's a couple of researchers, I can link you the paper.
17:36
It came out around 2009, I believe.
17:39
And I learned a lot about it when I was in my grad school program and just thought it was so fascinating.
17:44
To learn about all of these theories about what all of these researchers are really understanding is not just specific things like antibiotics are the easiest one.
17:54
We all know why antibiotics are bad for the gut, right?
17:57
But just sanitizing water and drinking that water even through generations, how that can affect the internal system and how we are passing that on to another generation.
18:08
I thought that was mind-blowing when I learned it.
18:11
It is mind blowing and it makes so much sense because like my dad who was raised on a farm, you know, lived outside and there wasn't pesticides and herbicides.
18:22
He was so strong, so healthy.
18:24
And today everyone's so sensitive to everything.
18:27
I'm so sensitive to everything because it was during, I'm 51.
18:31
So we were in the germ theory.
18:32
This is when we were throwing Triclosan everywhere, all the soaps, all the lotions.
18:36
We were using Clorox like it was our daytime job, right?
18:39
Everything got Clorox.
18:40
The bathtub, the toilet bowls, everything got Clorox.
18:44
And it just weakened our community.
18:47
And I love what you said.
18:49
Because I'm a gardener and I know that you can't have healthy plants without a healthy microbiome.
18:55
And if you don't have a healthy microbiome, you actually can't get the minerals into the plants.
18:59
That's the same thing that the garden inside of us.
19:02
And it's so simple.
19:03
And you think about that garden...
19:05
As a protective boundary for your health, the air that we're breathing, the food that we're eating, the water that we're drinking.
19:13
And if we're killing off our community and allowing bad guys or weeds, the weeds that don't belong, or things that would have normally been in symbiotic relationship, a few weeds is good.
19:24
Dandelions are great because they help with this and they have this.
19:28
It's companions.
19:29
They work together.
19:30
But if that's out of balance, your life can get really, really messed up.
19:35
Absolutely.
19:36
Yeah.
19:37
So let's we won't go there.
19:39
We want this podcast to go viral, right?
19:41
Because this is really important.
19:42
We want to get to some of the solutions next.
19:45
But let's talk about whether you believe in vaccines or not.
19:49
A lot of people do.
19:50
I don't want to.
19:51
I personally not not a believer.
19:54
Right.
19:55
There's very few vaccines that show a ton of benefit.
19:59
And there's plenty of research that can combat that.
20:02
And we're finding that.
20:03
But I think most people can agree that.
20:05
that we shouldn't be, and science would agree, that we shouldn't be over-vaccinating our children at birth.
20:10
And what does that do to the microbiome?
20:13
What does that do to, because it's stimulating a different immune system than the one that trains our immune system to respond properly to foreign invaders versus this fight-or-flight type that I think it's a Th2 response.
20:29
Is that true, Th2, Th1?
20:30
Yeah, yeah.
20:31
I mean, TH1 and TH2 is a little simplistic, I think, of how the immune system reacts.
20:37
Because, you know, if you want to get an immunology lesson, like there is a whole host of 20, 30 players that all have their own job and interact with each other.
20:46
And so it's hard to just talk about a couple in isolation.
20:51
But to the topic of vaccines, you know, with autoimmune disease, it's very interesting because vaccines can be a trigger and vaccines can also be preventative because actually having a chronic virus can be a trigger for an autoimmune disease.
21:05
And so an example of this is multiple sclerosis.
21:09
They recently did a blood bank study where patients who were in the army had their blood taken when they were young, maybe in their 20s or 30s.
21:17
And then they followed up 20 or 30 years later and saw who developed multiple sclerosis.
21:22
And what they found was that almost every single patient that ended up having MS had an Epstein-Barr seroconversion, which is an active infection.
21:33
Yeah.
21:33
And none of the patients that ended up with MS had experience with Epstein-Barr.
21:39
And so it begs the question, if we vaccinated against Epstein-Barr, would there be MS?
21:45
That is something that is not established yet in the research.
21:48
You know, of course, there's lots of discourse about things like COVID, but I think we just don't know.
21:55
And I'm a big believer in nuance specifically.
21:57
And, you know, I'm a big believer in not using something that isn't clinically shown to be appropriate and effective.
22:04
And I think that that spectrum is really large when we talk about just the concept of vaccines.
22:11
So, you know, I'm kind of neither here nor there.
22:15
You know, I'm in the middle.
22:16
I'm a big fan of nuance.
22:17
So, you know, that's what I have to say about that.
22:21
That's great.
22:21
You know, I don't want this.
22:22
This is not going to be one of those podcasts, but it does play a role in autoimmune conditions.
22:26
It can trigger it and it potentially can also help by eliminating some of the things triggering your immune system to affect the virus.
22:34
And I think both things are true.
22:36
So there are people who have reported developing autoimmune conditions after vaccines.
22:40
There are also people who have reported developing autoimmune diseases after a viral.
22:46
transmission, it actually part of the dysfunction of the immune system that leads to autoimmune disease actually involves a viral pathogen.
22:55
So the direct mechanism is really heady, and I'm going to like skip that.
23:00
But really, you need to be infected with something in order for your immune system to make the mistake that then leads it to attack your own tissue.
23:08
So especially a chronic infection, something like long COVID or Epstein-Barr, these are infections that are really more likely to cause an autoimmune condition just because the time, I mean, people go years having Epstein-Barr or, you know, there are theories even mold illness can do this, where their immune system is constantly in overdrive trying to deal with this pathogen.
23:32
And that is the perfect condition for...
23:34
Also, with all of these environmental toxins and all of this other stuff that can also play, you get this perfect storm where then the autoimmunity starts and it can be really challenging to get that under control.
23:49
So if you had a strong microbiome, would that help your immune system if we were feeding it properly?
23:55
If we had a really good garden, we were eating properly, feeding our microbiome and creating that diversity.
24:01
Would that be protection against virus and some of the things that trigger as a preventative?
24:08
So, you know, the direct link between prevention and autoimmune disease, I don't think we know that specifically in the research.
24:15
But we do know that people that have a healthy microbiome tend to get sick less often.
24:20
And, you know, everybody gets sick.
24:22
Everybody gets a cold and a flu once in a while, you know.
24:25
But, you know, when you get sick chronically.
24:28
So before I was diagnosed with my autoimmune diseases, I was somebody who got every single cold.
24:33
And then I would get sick for two weeks and then I'd walk by someone with lots of room who was sneezing and then two days later I'd be sick again and I'd be like, why is this happening to me?
24:43
Well, my body was really in a state of dysfunction.
24:47
I'm sure my microbiome, I had undiagnosed celiac disease.
24:50
I had lots of nutrient deficiencies.
24:52
I'd been eating lots of processed food.
24:54
Even though I was 26 years old, I had a history of lots of antibiotic use.
24:58
You know, I kind of checked a lot of those boxes and I was sick all the time.
25:02
And I think that is definitely the condition with which an autoimmune disease can crop up.
25:08
And one last question, because this is a trending topic, but I've always believed this to be true.
25:14
Because glyphosate wrecks your gut bacteria.
25:17
It wrecks the soil bacteria.
25:19
I actually have a tick hypothesis that I'll share with you maybe after this.
25:23
But since the use of glyphosate, right, which can definitely lead to leaky gut, and it's doing the same thing to our soils, it's doing it to the soil, outside soil inside of our colon.
25:35
What do you think that link could be?
25:38
Yeah, I think it's hard to research.
25:42
And I know you're probably much more of an expert on this than I am.
25:45
I think that the cumulative effect of all of these things about our environment, that is really what's implicated in the rise of autoimmune disease.
25:52
And so it's really hard to know person to person, like how much exposure they're having, because I know from reading books.
25:59
The work that you've done in different food products, a lot of times it's really surprising what carries a lot of this, right?
26:07
And the exposure.
26:07
And so it's really going to be hard to tease out on like a population level, I think, exactly how that is affecting people.
26:14
It's true.
26:15
Like there's definitely link to clothing.
26:17
Yeah.
26:17
That's.
26:18
causing hormone dysfunction and even leading to cancer and things like that.
26:22
But you can't take it back to clothing because there's so many different clothes.
26:26
There's no evidence of it, right?
26:27
We know that it's toxic, but is it truly causing all this stuff?
26:32
Well, it's hard to tell because you can't study it properly.
26:35
Exactly.
26:36
Exactly.
26:36
But we do know from the literature, healthy microbiome, healthy human.
26:40
Yes.
26:41
This specific fingerprint of a microbiome likely linked to autoimmune condition.
26:49
Because when they study it, diabetic,
26:52
You know, pro athlete, it really is this similar fingerprint of missing certain bacteria, these keystone species that downregulate inflammation, these keystone species that keep our genes working together well.
27:06
And it is, in my opinion, various chemicals, as you know, various chemicals from various chemical families.
27:12
That's right in the literature that wreck the...
27:15
the strength of our microbiome, the diversity of our microbiome, and the health of the bugs.
27:19
No one talks about that.
27:21
But these bugs need to be healthy as well.
27:22
You can have a bug and he's missing half a leg.
27:24
You know, kind of a, you're not, they're not, they're metabolic activity, how well they function, how much energy they have.
27:32
It's not just whether you have them, but how healthy are they?
27:34
Yeah.
27:35
So I have this study in a lot of the slides that I share, and I wanted to ask someone who knows more about this than I do.
27:41
And this is from Journal of Autoimmune Diseases, Environmental Triggers, and Autoimmunity.
27:45
It says, currently, studies have shown genetic predisposition accounts for approximately 30% of all autoimmune diseases.
27:51
The rest, 70%, are due to environmental factors, including toxic chemicals, dietary components, gut dysbiosis, and infections.
27:59
And we've talked about a lot of this.
28:02
And you can even see the little circles and it meets in the middle with autoimmune conditions.
28:06
Let's wrap up kind of a problem with your analysis of this study.
28:11
I know that you said there's a lot of them.
28:13
And then let's get into some of the solutions because this is what people really need.
28:17
Yeah.
28:17
Yeah, yeah.
28:18
I mean, I think that that summary really shows where the research is at, and we're less thinking of autoimmune disease as genetic consequences.
28:28
So it's not just the genes.
28:30
Actually, research has failed to identify single genes that are responsible for specific autoimmune conditions.
28:36
That's why autoimmune conditions are such a nebulous category of over 100 conditions, and why people who have autoimmune conditions in their family...
28:46
They tend to have different conditions.
28:48
So it's not like, you know, dad has rheumatoid arthritis and then the child has lupus or, you know, the daughter has Hashimoto's like that.
28:55
That is those are all very different conditions.
29:00
But that family unit is all going to have a similar environmental exposure.
29:05
And really, it's all about the genetic expression.
29:08
Yeah.
29:08
which is really what you're talking about with that article, where research is at in terms of the causes of autoimmune disease.
29:16
So the things that change our genetic expression are things like diet.
29:21
They are things that, like lifestyle, the way that we live our life, how much sleep we get, how we manage our stress, the water that we drink, the quality of the food that we eat, whether or not we were delivered with C-section, whether or not we were breastfed.
29:38
even if somebody has a lot of these factors and they have developed an autoimmune disease, that we have evidence that dietary protocols such as the autoimmune protocol can actually shift genetic expression in as quickly as a month or two.
29:52
And one amazing study that was done at Scripps University in San Diego, they took four patients with...
30:00
ulcerative colitis who did an AIP study.
30:02
So they did six weeks transition phase, which we can get into the details later, and eight week elimination phase.
30:09
And they actually did colonoscopies.
30:11
So they went in, they actually took tissue samples of that single cell layer intestinal tissue.
30:18
epithelial layer and before and after the diet, and then they analyzed it for RNA expression.
30:24
So DNA is your hard-coded genes.
30:27
Can't change them, right?
30:28
RNA is basically that paper trail of what your cells are doing.
30:33
And so what they did is they took all the genes, they, you know, coded them, you know, there were like 324 that were differentially expressed, meaning before the intervention, they were expressed one way, but then after the intervention, they were expressed a different way.
30:49
And what they found, the changes were less inflammation, more mediation.
30:55
So the part of the immune system that is kind of like,
30:58
you know, the moderator, the one that's kind of like, hey, you're too loud, quiet down.
31:02
Oh, you're not loud enough.
31:03
Come back up.
31:04
Those parts were extremely active.
31:07
And that tissue repair, DNA repair, was actually upregulated.
31:12
And then the actual visual changes, so what these patients actually achieved clinical remission, which is when you have ulcerative colitis, you have ulcers along that intestinal tissue.
31:23
which is the main site of the autoimmune activity in that condition, they actually had those go away.
31:29
So they reached clinical remission, which we hear about people who do dietary changes.
31:33
They feel better.
31:33
They have less symptoms.
31:35
But at the tissue level, this was such an interesting study because it really showed that the genetic expression changed with something as simple as eating differently for a couple of months.
31:45
That's amazing.
31:45
Let food be thy medicine.
31:47
It hasn't changed.
31:49
Working with our bodies, giving it what it needs to properly heal and express itself.
31:56
It makes so much sense.
31:57
It's interesting.
31:57
My mom had colitis.
31:58
My mother had.
31:59
I said, my mom, I've placed myself into the Pittsburgh slang, which I love.
32:04
No problems.
32:05
that my mother had colitis, ulcerative colitis, and it wreaked havoc on her, right?
32:11
And she was, she eventually went away.
32:16
And I know that, and I worked with a lot of people who, when I was sitting knee to knee back in the day, 15 years ago, that would have inflammatory gut conditions.
32:27
Little girls that need to, they said they come to us last week,
32:30
You know, last-ditch effort.
32:31
They're going to put a bag on my daughter.
32:33
And it's interesting.
32:34
So I put them on a low-inflammatory diet.
32:37
And then I would put them...
32:39
I worked with a medical doctor, and we'd put them on butyrate enemas.
32:42
And we'd get them on, you know, get a script at a compounding pharmacist so it wasn't no toxins in it.
32:49
And literally, with that diet and that reversed, the fissures, everything closed, fixed...
32:56
But the medical system couldn't just give them a diet.
33:00
And it's not even a study diet.
33:02
It's just a low inflammatory diet.
33:03
Probably wasn't even perfect.
33:05
But using butyrate and what makes butyrate?
33:09
Your microbiome.
33:09
Yeah, absolutely.
33:10
I mean, I'm absolutely not surprised that that worked.
33:14
And I'm just really excited now that there is actual research.
33:17
Like this study that I was talking about at Scripps, Dr. Gori Kanageti is the investigator on that study.
33:24
And we can share the link there.
33:26
But what was so incredible about that is that it was the very first study ever in ulcerative colitis using any dietary therapy showing a before and after change in intestinal genetic expression.
33:38
And that is really important because people are thought or told and think that genes are their destiny, right?
33:45
This is just what's going to happen to me because it happened to my mom or my cousin.
33:48
And that's actually not true.
33:51
You know, we can actually shift this in as quickly as six weeks.
33:55
We have pretty good evidence in real humans with real autoimmune conditions showing that this works.
34:00
And that is just so hopeful for people who, you know, think that maybe this is their genetic destiny, that there is actually something that they can do to feel meaningfully better.
34:09
Yeah, it's amazing.
34:09
I mean, I've seen it over and over again, and it's still like, no, it can't happen.
34:14
Like, you change someone's diet, just their diet and their MS goes away.
34:18
You change someone's diet, their autoimmune condition goes away.
34:21
You change someone's diet, their diabetes gone in two weeks.
34:26
And we, I don't want to get into it, but dieticians that are following the medical model, a lot of their dietary...
34:33
Examples and they talk on Instagram, don't don't talk about diet.
34:35
I'm a dietician and they raise their hand and only listen to me and they're OK with Diet Coke and all this stuff.
34:41
I'm like, you're really OK with that.
34:43
Like just the acid alone.
34:45
I mean, let's not, you know, in the ingredients and people are still diabetic.
34:50
They still have autoimmune conditions.
34:52
They're still dying of cancer.
34:54
They still have heart disease.
34:56
And these solutions, which had been suppressed, are now coming to the forefront.
35:01
And it's so, they can't stop this wave of science and information, especially right now, because people deserve answers.
35:08
They deserve not another medication.
35:10
They deserve why.
35:10
When I got sick, and now I'm getting mad, I walked into the doctor.
35:14
He said...
35:16
I had fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue.
35:17
That was a crazy person's disease, by the way.
35:19
Here's a pain med and here's a fixer, which made me constipated, which made me feel like crap.
35:25
I didn't feel any better.
35:27
Literally, I said to him, he came back for my updated visit a month later.
35:31
How do you feel?
35:33
5% better because I felt bad, right?
35:35
At 25 years old, sick.
35:37
He said, so I'm like, so should I stay on it?
35:40
He said, yeah, just stay on it.
35:41
If it's helping, it's helping.
35:43
Most people are on three or four meds.
35:45
You'd be on one.
35:45
I'm like, I'm 25 years old.
35:48
I walked out of there so hopeless, so beat down that at 25 years old, and when I asked him questions, what's the cause for...
35:57
I don't know.
35:58
I'm like, is this what you're being trained to do?
36:01
And then someone like me, someone like you, who I have a master's degree in science, you have a master's degree.
36:07
We're bright people.
36:09
You know, we can think, we can read.
36:11
I don't need...
36:13
a label like dietician, medical doctor, registered nurse, whatever.
36:17
I don't care.
36:18
Some of the moms watching this know more about health and healing and microbiome and fermenting foods, the ancient ways of doing things, and see massive results way better
36:30
for reversing some of these conditions than any dietician.
36:34
And there's great dieticians that are on the same page as we are.
36:37
So we have your book and everyone can get this, the new autoimmune protocol.
36:41
And I suggest everyone do get this book.
36:44
It's not even just for autoimmune conditions, but it's a lifestyle and it's a great diet.
36:49
And there's lots of different diets out there.
36:51
I had an anti-inflammatory diet, but this is a beautiful diet.
36:54
It comes back to some of the ancient ways
36:57
But can you discuss some of those strategies that are in this book that people could apply today?
37:03
Yeah.
37:03
So the autoimmune protocol is not new.
37:05
It's been around for 15 years.
37:07
People like myself, I got sick at 26.
37:09
So I can relate a lot to your story of being sick at 25 and kind of being offered, you know, not much in terms of the medical system.
37:17
That was, we definitely share that story.
37:20
I was diagnosed with celiac and Hashimoto's and I was bedridden in debilitating pain, lost my job, was kind of like, what am I going to do with my life?
37:29
And I dedicated it to researching ways that I could get better.
37:33
And so that's how I found the autoimmune protocol, which at the time was just this very loose set of guidelines for people like me who were trying to get well using an elimination diet.
37:44
So elimination diets have been around since the 60s.
37:47
They are absolutely not new.
37:48
They've been used in functional medicine circles for various issues to help people restore health.
37:54
But at that time, this is like 2010, 2011.
37:57
A lot of research was coming out showing the specific impact of foods on people with autoimmune disease.
38:03
And of course, this interested me a lot because I had just been diagnosed with two autoimmune diseases, despite the fact that I didn't even know what the word autoimmune went until I actually got this diagnosis and that I was offered absolutely zero treatment besides go on a gluten-free diet because one of my conditions is celiac disease, which, you know,
38:20
Doctors know enough that, you know, you're not supposed to eat gluten when you have celiac disease.
38:24
But what they didn't tell me was that this autoimmune disease was much more than just avoiding one food trigger.
38:31
It affected my entire body, right?
38:34
So I found AIP.
38:36
The autoimmune protocol.
38:38
At the time, it was just an elimination diet, list of foods, grains, legumes, eggs, nuts, seeds, and nightshade family vegetables.
38:46
I decided to do it.
38:47
I felt so much better.
38:48
I started a blog.
38:49
I connected with other people who were doing it.
38:51
They all had different autoimmune conditions, including IBD, MS, endometriosis, psoriasis.
38:59
And all of us were getting better.
39:01
And so we kind of banded together.
39:03
We formed a private Facebook group, which at the time was kind of like a group chat you have now with your buds.
39:09
And we all started writing about our experiences.
39:12
And that's kind of where the AIP community came from.
39:15
And today...
39:16
The autoimmune protocol has actually been studied in nine different settings in traditional research settings.
39:23
So like I mentioned, Scripps, they've done four studies.
39:27
This is a traditional gastroenterology team.
39:29
And really, their research focused on IBD.
39:32
And they found that 73% of patients reached clinical remission using the autoimmune protocol in as quickly as six weeks.
39:40
And the people that they enrolled in the study, it was 17 people with Crohn's or ulcerative colitis.
39:46
I love to mention this because these were not people who were newly diagnosed.
39:49
They had a mean disease duration of 19 years.
39:53
They had failed all the standard conventional treatments, which include biologic therapies, which for anybody that doesn't know, are like $80,000 a year, very hard on your system.
40:02
They were all, despite everything, in active flare, had been sick for a very long time, and they transitioned to the AIP.
40:09
And 73% of them were in clinical remission at week six of a 10-week intervention, and they maintained it throughout the duration.
40:18
And this was verified not just by a survey, you know, how do you feel?
40:22
They actually did colonoscopies.
40:23
They did blood work.
40:24
They did clinician assessment.
40:25
So this followed all of the standard protocols that like a drug study would follow.
40:30
And so Scripps did a few other studies related.
40:33
We have studies in Hashimoto's, which is a thyroid disorder, which is actually very challenging to study because there is no definition of clinical remission in this condition.
40:42
So when you have Hashimoto's, you're managed with thyroid hormone.
40:46
That is the only treatment.
40:47
You're treated until your thyroid hormone levels are low.
40:50
And there are conventional ranges, there are functional ranges.
40:53
But even when people are in the functional range, 60% of them experience fatigue and symptoms that interfere with their daily life.
41:01
So the treatment just doesn't cut it for a majority of Hashimoto's patients.
41:05
And I know this myself because I have Hashimoto's.
41:08
But there have been two beautiful studies, one done by a functional medicine team, one done by a team in Poland.
41:15
One of them was eight weeks.
41:17
The other one was 12 weeks implementing AIP.
41:20
It drastically improves symptoms in patients who have normal thyroid levels.
41:25
So it begs the question, are the hormones really the target?
41:29
When we're treating people with Hashimoto's, no, it is a whole system.
41:32
It is a whole body disease with symptoms that actually need to be managed with a holistic anti-inflammatory approach.
41:40
And then the third disease that has been studied is rheumatoid arthritis.
41:45
And rheumatoid arthritis is a connective tissue, a joint autoimmune condition, very, very prevalent among autoimmune diseases.
41:52
It's one of the top five conditions.
41:54
It's debilitating because it causes permanent joint damage and loss.
41:59
And once you get that permanent damage, there's no reversing it.
42:02
So a lot of people have to have joint replacements.
42:06
There have been two studies out of New Zealand using AIP.
42:09
Actually, the most recent was just published a couple of weeks ago.
42:13
Oh, wow.
42:13
Showing that 77% of a group of nine.
42:18
So again, these are all pilot trials.
42:19
We have to do pilot trials.
42:20
They don't let you do like multi-center, 100 patients, randomized clinical, like blind.
42:27
Like they don't let you do that unless you do a small group and you show that it's safe and effective and everything.
42:32
So that's the phase that we're in with AIP research.
42:34
But this group was nine patients.
42:37
77% of them saw clinical improvements in a 10-week trial.
42:42
elimination.
42:43
And three of them, which is 33%, reached clinical remission, which meant that they had no disease activity.
42:51
So all of this together, the autoimmune protocol today, I mean, Warren, 15 years ago, I had no idea that this is what I was stumbling across.
43:00
But I used it first for myself.
43:03
And then I became a part of this incredible community.
43:05
I started writing books.
43:07
The research has happened.
43:08
And now we have all of that information.
43:11
And it's not just, you know, the research.
43:13
You know, research is challenging.
43:15
It's limited in so many ways.
43:17
But we also have 1,000 practitioners who are trained to use it with, you know, if you think of 1,000 providers who think like we think, who are functional medicine, holistic-minded, how many patients they're working with and all of that they have learned.
43:30
Yeah.
43:31
And then the wider community of literally millions of people who are doing this, that is just a well of information.
43:38
And that is the information that I used to refine the protocol and develop the program as it is now in this book.
43:46
I love it because it's not someone sitting at the top of this thing telling you what to do, top of a hospital, a president, buying new equipment, making sure that equipment's being used.
43:58
It's a community.
44:00
Yeah.
44:00
And those communities serving people.
44:02
And then you're getting feedback from millions of people that are going into remission with autoimmune conditions all over the world.
44:08
And a lot of this information...
44:11
What's beautiful about it is not only is providing hope, but a lot of people can start this stuff, you know, for a book that's 40, 40, 50 bucks.
44:18
I don't even know, but you can start feeling better right now today, getting involved with the community, um, you know, utilizing the autoimmune protocol and getting to feel better at night.
44:29
Um,
44:30
From my experience, you know, 20 plus years doing this diet, a lot of the times, depending, unless someone was super toxic, but first detox, you know me, I have this theory, you know, that I always say detoxification is more important than nutrition for your microbiome.
44:47
Detoxification is more important than nutrition for...
44:50
autoimmune conditions.
44:51
But with this information, that you might have just won the day for me because I think changing a diet.
44:57
Now, toxicity obviously involves some people that maybe don't get well, have a toxic load that they can't remove.
45:05
But what I love- So there's that one out of four.
45:08
Yeah, there's that one out of four.
45:10
Why doesn't it work for them?
45:11
Well, I think you highlighted one of the big reasons, you know, and that's what I see and what the researchers see is that there's something, you know, mold toxicity, environmental toxins.
45:24
It could be a stress, like a lifestyle, you know, a toxic relationship.
45:29
There's so many things.
45:30
But for that one out of four, it really is coming down to what is that root cause for them?
45:36
But three out of four, I mean, the chances are great.
45:39
If you try this, you're going to get some benefit.
45:42
And that is a great starting place, even if you don't get 100% to navigating the next phase, which might be detox.
45:51
It might be worrying about your water.
45:53
It might be managing your stress.
45:55
It might be working with a functional medicine doctor to see if you have a verified pathogen, dysbiosis, something that needs to be treated and handled.
46:03
Yeah.
46:04
This is beautiful.
46:05
I mean, I think this is providing so much hope for people with a condition that they were told that you're going to live with the rest of your life.
46:11
Kind of like how I felt, you know, same thing.
46:14
Couldn't work anymore.
46:14
Mm-hmm.
46:15
And we feel like we're being a burden to, I had to live in my parents' home or you get on disability because this is life-altering stuff.
46:26
Mm-hmm.
46:26
And I see it all the time in detoxification.
46:28
53% of the people, 53% improvement in their symptoms.
46:35
We do our little internal stuff that we do.
46:37
And because I want proof, I want evidence.
46:39
If I'm going to be passionate about something, I want some evidence, you know, and I love that what you're doing is evidence based.
46:47
It's providing hope.
46:49
How can people find you, Nikki Treskov?
46:52
Yeah, yeah.
46:52
So one thing that I'm really clear about is that I always think about my 26-year-old self, and I'm doing this for her.
46:59
Like, I was just so sad and scared and alone, and there were no resources, and I just felt so weird as a young person being sick.
47:07
And when I went searching on the internet and I looked for stories of people like me, I found nothing.
47:11
And so that's what really got me starting to write.
47:14
But it brings me to my website, theautomineprotocol.com.
47:18
It's available for free for anyone, and it has all the protocol instructions.
47:21
So there's no paywall.
47:23
I don't gatekeep this.
47:24
I want everybody to have the information.
47:26
There's actually a translate tab on my website.
47:28
So international people, you want to send it to your family, you know, somewhere overseas and they speak a different language.
47:33
They can translate it and use it because I really believe in the mission of helping people get better.
47:38
Of course, if you want to support me by buying the book, The New Autoimmune Protocol is out, you know, wherever books are sold.
47:44
And it's, you know, hopefully this beautiful package of protocol instructions, summary of the research, and collection of recipes for the entire AIP that people can use to get started.
47:56
And even if they don't need the specific elimination diet, which I know, you know, the specific foods to avoid can be challenging, the recipes are just good, clean recipes.
48:06
eating.
48:06
You know what I mean?
48:07
Like there's no fussy recreations of anything.
48:11
It's just going to be like a very nutrient dense, powerful whole food way of eating that I think a lot of people would enjoy.
48:20
Very microbiome friendly because as we started this discussion, you know, the microbiome is really the root of the illness and it is also the root of feeling better and managing long-term.
48:31
So you're going to see lots of
48:33
broths and fermented foods and like wild caught small fatty fish and all of the things that we talk about for longevity and for optimal nutrition and that are anti-inflammatory.
48:46
So yeah.
48:47
Just baseline stuff that we all should be doing.
48:49
And it also works to downregulate, support your body's natural ability to downregulate autoimmune conditions into clinical remission, which is, it's beautiful.
49:00
And what I love about you is you can tell, I mean, just from your energy that you actually care about helping people.
49:07
And you're the sort of guest that I want to highlight.
49:11
I want more, send me more people that you know.
49:15
Thank you, Lauren.
49:16
And I have a lot of wonderful guests, but you don't give a rip.
49:19
You're not out here to make money or to create some residual income protocol system.
49:26
You actually give a rip.
49:28
And you want to see people healthy and whole.
49:30
And you've been through it, the 26-year-old.
49:33
Same thing.
49:35
I cry almost every single time I give a talk when I think about the hopelessness, everything that I ever wanted in life was taken from me.
49:43
Family, my job, my work.
49:45
I was an All-American athlete.
49:46
All these things.
49:47
I couldn't even walk.
49:49
I didn't have the energy.
49:49
My cellular energy was wrecked.
49:52
And you get, I can guarantee you, I had some level of autoimmunity going on.
49:59
And your book, these are your recipes.
50:01
These are your pictures.
50:03
This isn't, I mean, it's that I'm sure there's collective recipes people have, have given, you know, have worked together, but these are things that you actually make.
50:10
and take pictures of.
50:12
You put your heart into this thing and you shared your heart today.
50:16
Clinical research, you know, saying things correctly with compassion.
50:22
Man, thank you for seeing that.
50:24
I appreciate you.
50:25
I appreciate you.
50:26
Get the book, go to the website and get your life back.
50:30
Thank you so much.