Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 134 // Autoimmune Disease and Your Cold & Flu Risk

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134 // Autoimmune Disease and Your Cold & Flu Risk · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

• 0:00
  It seems like everybody around us is getting sick right now.
• 0:03
  I don't know about you, but whenever I go out, I'm talking to people and they're
• 0:08
  like, yep, my family's sick.
• 0:09
  Or, you know, at church, I help lead Sunday school and Wednesday nights,
• 0:13
  our attendance is way down because families are sick.
• 0:16
  At school, when I go to the school board, I hear about kids being sick. So many people are sick.
• 0:22
  And I was thinking about this, especially since I started to get a cold.
• 0:26
  And my question was, do people with autoimmune conditions get sick easier than
• 0:34
  other people? That was my question.
• 0:37
  That was what I went to the research to figure out.
• 0:40
  Because my hypothesis was, if my immune system is under attack,
• 0:46
  and it's getting confused, and it's attacking myself,
• 0:48
  does that mean that it is less able to attack viruses and other things that,
• 0:55
  you know, that I encounter?
• 0:57
  What do you think? Like before we go on to the rest of the episode,
• 1:01
  if you had to say yes or no based on your experience, based on what you know
• 1:06
  about autoimmune problems and the immune system in general, what would you say?
• 1:10
  Do you feel like people with autoimmune conditions get sick easier than everybody
• 1:16
  else? Or do you think that we're about the same?
• 1:19
  Welcome back to another episode of the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
• 1:23
  I am so grateful that you are here.
• 1:25
  Thank you for letting me use my passion for learning about health and digging
• 1:32
  into holistic stuff and looking at root causes and reading research and then sharing that with you.
• 1:38
  I love that I get to do something that I love, that I truly enjoy doing,
• 1:44
  and that I can share that with others and help you with your health.
• 1:48
  Thank you also if you, after the last episode, if you left a rating and review
• 1:53
  or if you shared this podcast with a friend.
• 1:56
  It really does make a difference.
• 1:58
  So thank you very, very much if you did that.
• 2:02
  All right, so what do you think? Do you think that people with autoimmune problems
• 2:05
  get sick easier or do you think it does not make a difference in how easily
• 2:11
  we succumb to any viruses or bacteria or getting sick in general.
• 2:17
  I went to research this, and it was kind of hard to figure out an answer.
• 2:21
  One of the very first things I clicked on was an article that
• 2:26
  it was health topics from a clinic in Barcelona.
• 2:30
  It just, you know, popped up. It was like the top three, top third article,
• 2:35
  I think, when I searched.
• 2:36
  And the article is, does having an autoimmune disease make you more susceptible to catching COVID-19?
• 2:44
  Now, this is from May of 2020. So, you know, a couple years ago.
• 2:48
  And the very first sentence is, people with autoimmune disorders have been described
• 2:54
  as the population at the most risk of catching diseases.
• 2:58
  Not just COVID, but diseases in general. And I thought that was very interesting.
• 3:03
  And I wanted to know what their source was. And they did not know the source.
• 3:09
  There was no research linked to that sentence.
• 3:13
  And so I looked and I looked and I looked and I couldn't find anything.
• 3:19
  Now, if you have more like PubMed and Google Scholar skills than I knew.
• 3:26
  Maybe you can find something. But I could not find supporting evidence for this sentence.
• 3:31
  I could not find anywhere in credible research that people with autoimmune disorders
• 3:37
  have been described as the population at the most risk of catching diseases.
• 3:42
  We are not immune compromised.
• 3:45
  Our immune system is attacking something in our own body.
• 3:50
  That's what an autoimmune condition is. But it does not mean that the immune
• 3:55
  system is not attacking things that it's supposed to, like, you know,
• 4:00
  viruses, bacteria, things that we're exposed to.
• 4:03
  Having an autoimmune problem does not mean that our immune system quits working
• 4:08
  the way it's supposed to.
• 4:10
  It just adds on another thing and starts attacking us, which is not cool.
• 4:14
  Personally, I think the biggest risk factor is on the medications you're on.
• 4:19
  And this does apply to people with autoimmune problems.
• 4:23
  With some autoimmune problems, especially like the rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
• 4:30
  They, being the medical establishment, many times will prescribe immune suppressant
• 4:38
  medications, thinking your immune system is doing too much.
• 4:42
  So we need to suppress it. We need to stop it from working.
• 4:46
  And in that case, yes, you are going to be more at risk of getting whatever
• 4:52
  is going around because your immune system cannot fight it off.
• 4:56
  So in that case, yes, but it is not because of the autoimmune problem.
• 5:01
  It's because of the medication that they put you on for the autoimmune problem.
• 5:07
  So I could not find any research saying that people with autoimmune problems get sick easier.
• 5:14
  However, here's the catch. We do have root causes that are causing the autoimmune problem.
• 5:21
  And some of those root causes put us at more risk for getting sick.
• 5:26
  So it's not the autoimmune problem that's giving us an increased risk. It's something else.
• 5:31
  If you have gone through the Hashimoto's decoded root causes,
• 5:35
  then you know what some of the root causes are. You probably know some of your root causes.
• 5:40
  The whole thing is less than an hour.
• 5:42
  Head over to school.com, S-K-O-O-L.com, join our Health with Hashimoto's community
• 5:48
  and go to the classroom tab and take that course.
• 5:52
  It'll take you about an hour, less than an hour, and you will be able to figure
• 5:56
  out, okay, these are probably some of my root causes, and then I'll help you
• 5:59
  figure out what to do with him.
• 6:01
  One of those root causes, one of the common ones, is a low vitamin D level.
• 6:07
  Now, vitamin D is very important for your immune system. It's important for
• 6:11
  keeping you healthy. It's important, obviously, for autoimmune problems because
• 6:16
  it's a root cause. So we know it's important.
• 6:18
  Have you had your vitamin D level checked? Did you go through Hashimoto's Decoded
• 6:22
  and then say, I want to know what my vitamin D level is? It's super easy to check.
• 6:26
  I think you can even get tests on Amazon. I know you can get them through Fullscript.
• 6:29
  You can get them through a couple other places.
• 6:32
  Episodes 9 and 62 are all about vitamin D, and I tell you how to get it checked
• 6:35
  there. But I think the tests are usually about $40.
• 6:38
  You get a little card in the mail with a little lancet, and you poke your finger,
• 6:43
  put a couple drops of the blood on the card, send it in, and they email you your results.
• 6:48
  The recommended level varies. The most credible,
• 6:53
  up-to-date research that I have seen recommends between 80 and 100 as an ideal,
• 7:00
  also as the top. You don't want to go over 100.
• 7:04
  If you're over 100, then they say side effects problems are going to start around 150.
• 7:10
  So between 80 and 100 is what I have seen that is the recommended.
• 7:15
  When we started testing in the hospitals, I would talk to nurses,
• 7:19
  especially in the ICU where they were doing a lot of the testing and people
• 7:23
  were in the single digits.
• 7:25
  You want to be up in around 80.
• 7:27
  So if you've gotten your vitamin D tested, I would love to know what it is.
• 7:31
  And then of course you want to get it up.
• 7:33
  So back to, you know, that root cause. We know that low vitamin D level can
• 7:39
  be a root cause for autoimmune problems.
• 7:42
  I first learned about vitamin D back in the early 2000s,
• 7:47
  and I learned about it because I was looking into the influenza vaccine,
• 7:53
  and I was doing research on what can actually protect us from influenza better
• 7:59
  or as well as the vaccine.
• 8:02
  Because working in the ER, I can't tell you how many people come through and,
• 8:06
  you know, you swab them and you tell them, okay, you have all the symptoms for
• 8:11
  influenza. They're pretty classic.
• 8:13
  And so many of them, but I got vaccinated this year.
• 8:18
  And so I became disillusioned with that influenza vaccine very long ago.
• 8:24
  And so I wanted to know what can I do to actually protect myself other than
• 8:28
  the government deciding that they're going to put four strains that might hit
• 8:35
  this year and then inject them into us.
• 8:37
  I was like, what can I do to protect myself? What can I do to help my immune
• 8:41
  system no matter what strains come through? Because this is ridiculous.
• 8:46
  So I learned about vitamin D and I learned that it is one of the things you
• 8:50
  can do to help your body fight off respiratory viruses like influenza.
• 8:54
  So I started taking vitamin D at that time.
• 8:57
  So very early 2000s.
• 9:00
  I also started telling all of my nurse friends about it.
• 9:03
  If they ever asked me about the flu shot, I was like, you know,
• 9:06
  and I would go into if they were interested,
• 9:08
  sometimes even if they weren't interested, I would tell them about vitamin D
• 9:12
  and probiotics and what I was came through.
• 9:23
  But back to tying this together with vitamin D and autoimmunity and getting sick easier.
• 9:31
  So low vitamin D level is a root cause of autoimmune problems, right? Yes, check.
• 9:37
  At the same time, having a low vitamin D level does not give you the protection
• 9:45
  from respiratory viruses that an adequate vitamin D level would give you according
• 9:52
  to the research that I have read.
• 9:55
  So you put those two things together and a lot of people with autoimmune issues
• 9:59
  have low vitamin D and low vitamin D, well, that doesn't help your body protect
• 10:06
  you against respiratory issues.
• 10:08
  So when I'm thinking about this, my thought, my hypothesis is that you are going to get sick easier,
• 10:15
  not because you have an autoimmune condition, but because the same thing that
• 10:21
  is a root cause of your autoimmune issue can also not be,
• 10:26
  it's not a root cause of a respiratory virus.
• 10:29
  The root cause of the respiratory virus is the virus itself.
• 10:32
  But if your levels are low, then you can't fight it off as well.
• 10:35
  And I'm trying to phrase this really well because I don't want to get into any
• 10:40
  like claims or anything.
• 10:42
  I want to make sure that I'm staying compliant with the FTC because nothing is guaranteed in life.
• 10:48
  I'm absolutely not saying increase your vitamin D and you're never going to get sick.
• 10:52
  In fact, I have a cold right now. I just started getting it yesterday.
• 10:56
  And I've been doing all the things. I'm going to tell you all the things.
• 10:59
  And I have amazing vitamin D levels. And I have a cold. I don't know if it's anything special.
• 11:05
  I don't think it is. I don't have a fever. I don't have any other symptoms except for a stuffy nose.
• 11:10
  And that's it. Just a stuffy nose.
• 11:13
  So I have a high vitamin D level right now. It's awesome.
• 11:18
  I am between that 80 and 100. I might even be a little titch over 100.
• 11:23
  And so obviously, you can still get sick. All right, so does this make sense so far?
• 11:29
  Having an autoimmune condition does not make you more likely to get sick.
• 11:33
  Sometimes the medications they put you on for an autoimmune condition can make
• 11:39
  you more susceptible for getting sick.
• 11:41
  And then also, some of the root causes of autoimmunity can also be things that
• 11:48
  cause your immune system to not be awesome at protecting you.
• 11:52
  All right, are we on the same page right now? I hope so.
• 11:55
  So here is what you can do if and when you start to feel sick,
• 11:59
  like you're getting a respiratory cold.
• 12:01
  And these are things that I do.
• 12:04
  A couple of weeks ago, I'm guessing COVID went through our house because my
• 12:08
  husband and one of our kids lost their sense of smell.
• 12:13
  And I think I was the third to get sick.
• 12:17
  And when my husband started to get sick, he's like, okay, what did you do?
• 12:21
  What are all of the things? And I told him, I'm like, I did all of the things.
• 12:25
  And he wanted to know what they all were. So I'm going to tell you all of the
• 12:28
  things and then you can decide what to do from these.
• 12:33
  I did not want, I'd seen this go through my kids and I did not want the bad cold.
• 12:38
  Again, at the time, I did not know it was COVID, not until my husband lost his
• 12:42
  smell. So this is what I did. I started with a vitamin D, of course.
• 12:46
  There is a study that has been done that if you take extra vitamin D at the
• 12:50
  onset of symptoms, you decrease the duration of the illness and you decrease the symptoms.
• 12:57
  So I do that first. And all of these are applicable to respiratory symptoms, not anything else.
• 13:04
  And then, so I did vitamin D. I increase my supplements. I always take protandim
• 13:10
  NRF2 and protandim NRF1 every single morning.
• 13:13
  If you've listened to my past episodes, you know how crucial I believe those are for everybody.
• 13:18
  I do not increase my protandim NRF1.
• 13:22
  I'm fine on that. However, the protandum NRF2, I do increase when I am feeling
• 13:29
  sick because the protandum NRF2 is the one that tells your body to make more antioxidants.
• 13:34
  And why would you want more vitamins in your body, more antioxidants, more things to fight?
• 13:40
  Well, it's because there's more stuff that needs fighting.
• 13:43
  Of course, I mean, you've heard of taking vitamin C and zinc when you're getting sick, right?
• 13:48
  It's because you need more things fighting off the bad guys when you're sick.
• 13:53
  So yes, absolutely. I take more per tandem NRF2 when I am feeling under the
• 13:58
  weather. I do not take it together.
• 14:00
  So it's kind of like if you've ever jumped a car. I live in Minnesota.
• 14:04
  We have to jump cars sometimes. You put the jumper cables on and you leave them
• 14:08
  on for just enough time to charge the other battery and get the car going,
• 14:12
  and then you take off the jumper cables.
• 14:14
  You do not leave them on, that would damage the car.
• 14:17
  Same thing with the NRF2, it's just to jumpstart that production.
• 14:22
  So I take my NRF2 in the morning, and then depending on how sick I'm feeling,
• 14:27
  four hours later I might take another, and then at supper time I'll also take
• 14:32
  another, or maybe bedtime.
• 14:33
  You can take it, it kind of depends on your budget, but I will try to do two
• 14:39
  to three times a day if I am feeling sick because I want my body to produce more glutathione.
• 14:46
  Glutathione is one of your most powerful antioxidants in your body.
• 14:50
  It's going to like sticky flypaper. It's going to stick to all the bad stuff and take it out.
• 14:54
  So that's one of the things I do. I was also having my garlic fermented honey.
• 15:00
  It's super easy. You put a whole bunch of cloves of garlic in a bottle,
• 15:04
  in a jar, and then you pour some raw honey into that jar, and then you let it ferment. That's it.
• 15:11
  So I always have some of that in the cupboard. I started doing that.
• 15:14
  And you get the goodness of the garlic, goodness of the honey,
• 15:17
  you get the cough suppressant and the throat soothing of all of that.
• 15:21
  Plus, both garlic and honey are antiviral and I think antibacterial.
• 15:25
  Another thing I was doing was using my rebounder. It's a fancy name for a small
• 15:29
  trampoline. Just up and down bouncing.
• 15:32
  And that is so that it moves your lymphatic system. It moves your lymph around your body.
• 15:38
  Your lymphatic system is like the garbage disposal system of your body.
• 15:41
  And of course, if you're sick, you want to get all of the trash out.
• 15:45
  So a little bit of rebounding, just like I said, it's fancy name for gentle
• 15:50
  up and down bouncing on that trampoline.
• 15:51
  You know five to ten minutes in the morning five to
• 15:54
  ten minutes in the evening i try to do that of course
• 15:57
  hot steam in the bathtub i did
• 16:00
  that i also was using the x clear spray it's literally with an x and l-e-a-r
• 16:08
  it has xylitol in it and it's a nasal spray because the xylitol helps prevent
• 16:14
  i i can't remember if it's preventing the replication of the virus or if it
• 16:19
  prevents it from sticking.
• 16:20
  Either way, it's something good that helps your body fight.
• 16:24
  And so I use that when I am feeling like I'm getting respiratory stuff.
• 16:28
  I also bring it with me if I'm ever going to fly in a plane or be in a crowded place.
• 16:33
  I just want to make sure that there's something that I can use to squirt up
• 16:37
  my nose to stop any viruses from all of the other passengers. I don't want them.
• 16:44
  I don't want other people to share those with me.
• 16:46
  All right, a couple more things. Of course, essential oils, if you have a diffuser,
• 16:50
  then you probably have your favorite respiratory blends.
• 16:53
  And I have those going, you know, with in the room with me, whatever respiratory blend.
• 16:59
  I use Eden's Garden. They are my favorite essential oil company.
• 17:03
  I love them. I trust them. Their prices are amazing. Their quality is amazing.
• 17:09
  It's top-notch. It was proven like they had the GCMS scores,
• 17:14
  the third-party testing before the other big companies did.
• 17:18
  So Eden's Garden is my favorite company and I have a couple of different respiratory blends.
• 17:23
  And then the neti pot. Have you ever used a neti pot?
• 17:26
  It's basically just saline in a little pot and you squirt it up one side of
• 17:32
  your nose and then you put your tongue in the back of your mouth,
• 17:37
  like say a K sound and where your tongue hits the back of the roof of your mouth,
• 17:42
  keep it there in that K sound.
• 17:45
  And that's how you kind of plug your mouth from letting the saline go into your mouth.
• 17:51
  But ideally the nutty pot, you're going to put the saline up one side of the nose.
• 17:55
  It's going to kind of wash things around and then it's going to come out the
• 17:59
  other side of your nose and it's going to bring snot and germs and viruses out
• 18:04
  with it. So I was using the Nutty Pot.
• 18:07
  I can't think of those. Oh, I was also doing teas. So I have a couple different
• 18:12
  teas, wellness blends that have turmeric in them or echinacea,
• 18:17
  not echinacea, elderberry.
• 18:19
  So I have a couple of those. Now here's a FYI,
• 18:23
  if you are taking the protandum NRF2, You cannot take turmeric or ashwagandha
• 18:29
  or anything that's in the NRF2 with it because it'll break the recipe.
• 18:35
  And the power from that protandim NRF2 comes from the synergy.
• 18:40
  It comes from the exact precise ratio of those ingredients.
• 18:44
  And you don't want to break that. So when I was doing the wellness teas,
• 18:47
  I was always making sure that they were at a different time separated by two
• 18:51
  hours from my protandim.
• 18:54
  And then trying to think if there's anything else oh i
• 18:57
  also did extra melatonin not extra i
• 19:00
  actually took melatonin at night because melatonin has
• 19:03
  been shown to help the immune system and so while i was sick
• 19:06
  i was doing that also of course when you have a cold or something you can't
• 19:10
  breathe as well so then you don't sleep as well so i was doing the melatonin
• 19:13
  in the evening i think that's all i was doing it's a lot of stuff like i said
• 19:18
  i did all the things all the things and then my husband after I went through this list, he was like,
• 19:24
  okay, what is the most important thing?
• 19:26
  And I was like, okay, simplest, most important thing, take the ProTandem NRF2
• 19:30
  and take extra vitamins. He's like, okay, I'm going to do that.
• 19:34
  And that's the thing about your health. You get to decide what you have bandwidth for.
• 19:39
  I happen to know all of the things and I've learned about each one of those
• 19:45
  things and I know why they work.
• 19:47
  I know how they work and I can decide if I want to implement them.
• 19:50
  My husband did not have the bandwidth for all that.
• 19:52
  So he's like, give me the most simple thing. And that's what he implemented.
• 19:55
  And that's what you get to do. You get to figure out what works in your life,
• 19:59
  what works here and now, and then implement.
• 20:03
  So I would love to know, what do you do when you start to feel sick?
• 20:06
  Come on over to the school community and let's chat about it.
• 20:09
  I would love to hear your remedies and what you do.
• 20:13
  Do you do the onion in the sock or the cold wet socks? I've heard of that online.
• 20:18
  Do you do colloidal silver?
• 20:20
  What do you do that I didn't mention? Or even of the things that I did mention,
• 20:25
  come on over to school.com, join our Health with Hashimoto's community and let's
• 20:29
  talk about different remedies that people use.
• 20:32
  And I hope that you have a very healthy rest of your winter.
• 20:36
  I'll see you next week. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
• 20:41
  Please discuss any concerns and plans with your trusted healthcare professional.
• 20:45
  If you found this episode helpful, will you please share it with a friend?
• 20:48
  I'll see you next week on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
• 20:51
  Music.