Currently the treatments used to treat autoimmune diseases are worse than what little relief they can offer. They are drugs that become increasingly aggressive as they are used, and they do not work to alleviate the root problem and instead just to patch the symptoms. Know what today is called the Autoimmune Protocol, and that more and more people are turning to it for its high efficacy without the need to resort to any aggressive medication from conventional medicine.
Autoimmune disease is an epidemic in our society that currently affects a large percentage of the population and the number is increasing more and more.
But, although genetic predisposition accounts for about a third of the risk of developing an autoimmune disease, the other two thirds come from environment, diet and lifestyle.
In fact, experts are increasingly recognizing that certain diet factors are key contributors to autoimmune disease, placing these autoimmune conditions in the same class of diet and lifestyle-related diseases as type 2 diabetes., cardiovascular disease and obesity.
Autoimmune disease linked to our diet and lifestyle
This means that autoimmune disease is directly related to our food choices and the way we decide to live life.
It also means that we can control and reverse autoimmune diseases simply by changing the way we eat and making more informed decisions about sleep, activity, and stress - and that's some good news!
There are more than 100 confirmed autoimmune diseases and many more diseases that are suspected of having autoimmune origins.
The root cause of all autoimmune diseases is the same: our immune system, which is supposed to protect us from invading microorganisms, turns against us and attacks our proteins, cells and tissues.
Attacked proteins, cells and tissues determine the autoimmune disease and its symptoms.
In Hashimoto's thyroiditis, the thyroid gland is attacked. For rheumatoid arthritis, the joint tissues are attacked. In psoriasis, the proteins within the layers of cells that make up the skin are attacked.
Autoimmunity attacks our own tissues
How is the immune system so confused that it starts attacking our own bodies? It turns out that autoimmunity, the ability of the immune system to attack native tissues, is a relatively common accident.
In fact, about 30% of people will have measurable levels of autoantibodies (antibodies that bind to some protein in our body instead of, or in addition to, a foreign protein, called an antigen) in their blood at any given time.
In fact, this accident is so common that our immune system has several failures to identify autoimmunity and suppress it.
What happens in autoimmune diseases is not only the accident of autoimmunity, but also the failure of the immune system, the stimulation of the immune system to attack and the accumulation of enough damage in the cells or tissues of the body to manifest as symptoms of a disease.
This confluence of events that culminates in an autoimmune disease is the result of interactions between your genes and your environment, a perfect storm of factors that make the immune system unable to distinguish between you and a true invader foreign to your body.
What is the Autoimmune Protocol?
The Paleo Autoimmune Protocol, generally abbreviated as AIP, is a powerful strategy that uses diet and lifestyle to regulate the immune system, ending these attacks and giving the body a chance to heal itself.
It is a complementary approach to the treatment of chronic diseases focused on providing the body with the nutritional resources necessary for immune regulation, gut health, hormonal regulation and tissue healing, while eliminating inflammatory stimuli from diet and style. of life.
Nutrition is balanced in the autoimmune diet
The Autoimmune Protocol Diet provides complete and balanced nutrition while avoiding processed and refined foods and empty calories.
The AIP lifestyle encourages sleep, stress management, and activity, as these are important immune modulators.
Food can be considered to have two types of components: those that promote health, such as nutrients; and those that undermine health, such as inflammatory compounds.
While there are constituents that do not promote or impair health, they are not used to assess the worthiness of an individual food.
Some foods are obvious gains to a health-promoting diet because they have tons of beneficial constituents and little to no health-undermining constituents.
Good examples of these superfoods are high-quality, free-range animal protein, good-quality seafood, and most vegetables.
Other foods have a relative lack of health-promoting components and are full of troublesome compounds. A good example is grains that contain gluten, sugar, and most soy products.
But many foods fall into the amorphous world of gray between these two extremes. Solanaceae, for example. Tomatoes have some exciting nutrients, but they also contain several compounds that are so effective in boosting the immune system that they have been investigated for use in vaccines as adjuvants.
Nutrient-rich foods are the foundation of the Autoimmune Protocol
The biggest difference between the Autoimmune Protocol and other such diets is where we draw the line between allowed foods and prohibited foods to get more health-promoting compounds and fewer harmful effects.
As such, the Paleo Autoimmune Protocol places greater emphasis on the most nutrient-dense foods in our food supply, including organ meats, seafood, and vegetables.
And the Autoimmune Protocol eliminates foods supported by other healthy diets that have compounds that can boost the immune system or damage the gut environment, including nightshades, as we mentioned (such as tomatoes and peppers), eggs, walnuts, the seeds and alcohol.
The goal of the Autoimmune Protocol is to flood the body with nutrients while avoiding any foods that may contribute to illness or at least interfere with our efforts to heal.
The diet or autoimmune protocol is an elimination strategy
AIP is an elimination diet strategy, which eliminates the foods that are most likely to retain our health.
After a period of time, many of the excluded foods, especially those that have nutritional merit, even though they also contain some potentially harmful compounds (but not too much), can be reintroduced.
The AIP is not a life sentence, but rather a toolbox full of strategies to understand how your body reacts to food, lifestyle and environment, and methodologies for healing, given individual health challenges.
A holistic and functional framework is the Autoimmune Protocol
The Autoimmune Protocol is also a holistic approach to health, including not only a dietary framework but also a focus on lifestyle factors that are known to be important modulators of immune function, gut health, and hormonal health.
This includes a strong focus on getting enough sleep, managing stress, and leading an active lifestyle, while avoiding overtraining.
Each of these three lifestyle factors is essential for gut health as they directly influence the gut microbiome: getting enough sleep, managing stress levels, and staying active are essential for a healthy and diverse gut microbial community. to support the growth of key probiotic strains.
Chronic stress and overtraining also increase intestinal permeability. Sleep, stress, and activity are essential hormonal modulators; for example, insulin sensitivity is more influenced by these lifestyle factors than by diet.
And, most importantly, immune function is directly related to lifestyle. Inflammation is triggered by having poor sleep, feeling stressed, being sedentary, and overtraining.
In addition, the regulatory aspects of the immune system are more active while we sleep, and the quality of sleep is related to stress.
Additionally, there is emerging evidence of a strong sense of connection and community when spending time in natural settings, that also contributes to a healthier immune system.
Studies that prove the efficacy of the Autoimmune Protocol
Building on insights from more than 1,200 scientific studies, the Autoimmune Protocol diet is now supported by clinical trial evidence.
In a 2017 study, fifteen patients with active inflammatory bowel disease were assigned to the Autoimmune Protocol through a gradual transition over 6 weeks, followed by a 5-week maintenance phase.
The patients were closely monitored and given access to health training. They also received relevant relevant literature as a resource for the protocol. Clinical remission was achieved at week 6 in eleven of the fifteen participants upon completion of the AIP transition, 73%.
And they remained in remission during the 5-week maintenance phase of the study. All patients, including those who did not achieve clinical remission, experienced a measurable improvement in disease activity throughout the course of the study.
Study of the protocol with patients with Hashimoto's thyroiditis
In a 2019 study of similar design, seventeen women with Hashimoto's thyroiditis were placed on the Autoimmune Protocol by gradual transition over 6 weeks, followed by a 4-week maintenance phase.
Patients experienced a statistically significant improvement in health-related quality of life scores as measured by the 36-item Short-Form Health Survey and the Cleveland Clinical Center for Functional Medicine (MSQ) Medical Symptom Questionnaire.
In fact, the burden of clinical symptoms, as measured by the MSQ, decreased from an average of 92 at the start of the study to 29 after 10 weeks.
This was accompanied by statistically significant reductions in C-reactive protein (a measure of systemic inflammation) and in white blood cell counts.
Wahls Protocol for Multiple Sclerosis
Clinical research studies conducted using the Wahls Protocol in Multiple Sclerosis provide additional validation for the Autoimmune Protocol.
While there are a handful of foods included in the Wahls Protocol (mostly Solanaceae) that are excluded in the Autoimmune Protocol, the two protocols are remarkably similar despite the different philosophies that went into their formulation.
The Wahls Protocol framework was developed with mitochondrial health as its primary goal, while the Autoimmune Protocol framework was developed with immune regulation and gut health as its primary goals.
It happens that the nutrients necessary for mitochondrial health are almost identical to those required for immune and intestinal health, hence the high degree of overlap between the two approaches.
A growing number of clinicians, especially specialists in functional and integrative medicine, are recommending AIP to their patients, adding to the large body of anecdotal evidence supporting the efficacy of the Autoimmune Protocol.
Most exciting is the ongoing clinical research to quantify improvement in specific autoimmune diseases with short-term intervention with AIP, including research in Hashimoto's thyroiditis.
As the results of more and more clinical trials are published, more and more attention are being paid to diet and lifestyle, not as a complementary approach to the management of autoimmune diseases, but as a first-line treatment.
How the autoimmune protocol works