MODULE #6 - Lesson 3 … · the entire immune system. So if it’s hay fever season and you want to reduce the symptoms or just kind of help your immune system out. One of the things

Allergies and Auto-Immune Conditions

MODULE #6 - Lesson 3

2Super Nutrition Academy – MODULE 6 - Lesson 3

© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

Allergies and Auto Immune Conditions

Module 6 - Lesson 3

Welcome to Lesson 3, Module 6. Today we will continue our talk on allergies, inflammation, and autoimmune disease.

I hope you some breakthroughs in the last lesson and that you watched my IgG food-sensitivity video. If it didn’t make sense to you I’ve included it below this lesson as well.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

4 Key Concepts About Food Allergies

In this lesson we’re talking more specifically about food-specific allergies and sensitivities. Last lesson we talked more on the general understanding of allergies like eczema, asthma, and the general immune response. Today we will look specifically at the impact of food within the body and with respect to allergies.

There are 4 key concepts to understand. Any symptom can be allergy, symptoms do appear when the allergic load is reached, and no allergy has one single cause.

1. BalanceSymptoms of disease or allergy are an indication that something inside is not right. Disease, means that there’s something going on that’s not supposed to be happening. If we have a fever, that’s the body’s way of telling us but also of increasing body temperature to get rid of the bacterial or viral infection. This is important because fever is necessary to really kind of “melt away” those bad microorganisms. If the fever’s not too high, that’s the body’s natural way of dealing with things.

It’s important to understand that allergy, although it’s not a disease, the runny nose, itchy eyes, sensitive to specific foods are indicators that something is not responding well to whatever’s going on from the outside. Essentially, the body’s out of balance.

A body that is in homeostasis, which means balance, cannot exhibit allergy. If you have a healthy body and immune system, you should not be exhibiting any allergy. Most people are not in perfect homeostasis because things get us out of balance, so we exhibit symptoms. Examples are eczema, which worsens with stress, breathing difficulties upon eating wheat or any kind of food sensitivities; arthritic flare-ups after eating nightshades; those may be tomatoes, eggplant, peppers family. It’s all about this thing about balance. When we’re not in balance, we start exhibiting symptoms.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

2. Any Symptom Can Be AllergyAny symptom can be allergy. We’ve seen that allergies are an abnormal reaction to something benign, so something that’s not necessarily dangerous. We start reacting to some kind of food protein that is not going to kill us, but for some reason, our immune system mounts a response to it.

It’s important to understand that anything can upset your body’s immune system and cause a either an immediate reaction, a full-blown allergic response, denoted by the IgE antibodies, or a delayed reaction, which is the hypersensitivity. , The delayed food-sensitivity type are tough to diagnose because we don’t get a full-blown reaction. It might present itself several hours or several days after its introduction.

PMS, epilepsy, diarrhea, backaches, headaches, swollen joints, and fatigue can all be caused by everyday foods. So, if you know individuals with PMS or any of these symptoms, really anything at all, there could be a food allergy or sensitivity as the root cause of it. Fatigue is the number one symptom of a food allergy or sensitivity. I am kind of like the go-to guy when it comes to energy nutrition, and when people ask me, “What’s the number one food I can eat to have more energy?” I don’t give them a specific food because there is no single food that’s going to give you more energy than your overall diet. The easiest way to improve your energy is by removing those foods that you’re sensitive to.

Reacting to food or to a specific food decreases your body’s ability to absorb its nutrients. When you eat the same foods over and over again, these tend to be the foods that we develop sensitivities to, and, therefore, you’re not actually extracting maximum nutrition from that food.

If you go to your doctor and you talk to them about food allergy, they’ll understand that term, food allergy, but they believe that IgG, delayed food sensitivities, are pretty much fantasy, because they haven’t been taught this stuff. If you say, “I think I have a sensitivity to wheat,” and then they have you do an allergy test and it comes up negative, they’ll tell you that you don’t have a food allergy, but you do know you have an issue with wheat; it just didn’t show up on the IgE allergy test.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

Ironically, your allergist or immunologist would have the same approach to dealing with food allergies as most natural practitioners like naturopaths and holistic nutritionists, which is essentially an elimination diet. You’re sensitive to certain foods or allergic to certain foods, well, you avoid them initially, but it’s not just about avoiding the foods because, realistically, there’re a lot of foods that you probably are sensitive to. But you need to be able to work these things in over time. You want to avoid them for a certain amount of time, but if your favorite foods, if you can’t enjoy those, well, what’s the point of living, right? That’s pretty extreme but you know what I’m talking about.

3. Symptoms Appear When Allergy Load is ReachedThe third and, I believe the most important concept with respect to allergies and health in general is that symptoms appear when you reach your allergic load which is a total of all chemicals, toxins, and pollutants your body accumulates before symptoms appear. Each of our cells has this kind of bucket, this innate bucket that we’re born with. If we are exposed to a lot of different pesticides and chemicals and bad food and stress, that bucket fills up pretty quickly. However, if we live a healthy life we reduce the amount of chemicals and toxins in our bucket.

The other thing is that everyone has a different size bucket. I would assume I have a smaller bucket because I’m a little bit more hypersensitive than others. They can handle more stuff than my body can handle. I might exhibit symptoms before they would, and that’s just based on genetic disposition for that, but there’re also a lot of environmental things that have happened over the course of our lives.

When the bucket starts to overflow, that’s when we start to exhibit symptoms because the immune system is programmed to defend us against foreign invaders, allergies and sensitivities are one of the first responses to an overloaded body. After years in a hyper excited state, the immune system becomes exhausted, leaving you with lower defenses and susceptible to chronic degenerative inflammatory diseases.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

If you’re hypersensitive and have a lot of allergies they can be improved over time. The thing is that if your body is always exhibiting symptoms of allergy, that’s your immune system at work in overtime. If your immune system is constantly fighting these foreign invaders, it will wear it down, and that’s why you end up becoming a little bit more susceptible to issues in the future because. Allergies are an inflammatory response, and having this kind of chronic systemic inflammation is not a good thing for your health.

Reducing the intake of allergens from one source can ease the burden on the entire immune system. So if it’s hay fever season and you want to reduce the symptoms or just kind of help your immune system out. One of the things you can do is you can reduce the toxicity or allergic sensitivity load coming from foods. If you’re sensitive to wheat, avoid bread for a while. That will alleviate the stress on your immune system for it to be able to handle the other environmental allergens that it’s working on.

And, as I mentioned before, the allergic load is different for everyone. We all have different kind of genetic and environmental predispositions. Now, here’s another thing: The overconsumption of the same foods or toxins will exhaust specific enzyme pathways that are built to deal with those specific items, making it tougher for the body to handle them appropriately. I remember looking over a food journal for a client and I noticed he was having 4 bananas at a time several times a day. That’s one of the easiest ways to start developing food sensitivity, because you’re exhausting those specific enzyme metabolic pathways specifically built for that banana. So, it’s really important to rotate your foods and not over consume them.

It’s important to alleviate the allergic load inside your body. It’s important to decrease the volume inside that bucket and that’s why things like cleansing are really important, because it helps remove a lot of these allergens and toxins out of your body.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

4. Allergy Has No Single CauseNumber four: Allergy has no single cause. Allergy is the cumulative effect of many things which, over time, overwhelm our protective mechanisms. Overtime we’ve assaulted our immune system with so many different demands it becomes compromised and more hyperactive to different potential allergens in the future.

Again, it’s not the pollen or the dust or the pectin or the foods that are problem. The problem is something within. It started with the digestive system, the anti pathways, and gut flora. So, if you’re allergic to cats like I was when I was, I can deal with cats now, and that’s because I kind of worked on the inside and improved the whole digestive side of things. It alleviates the problem if you can deal with the inside stuff first. It’s not about taking Claritin or Reactin or an antihistamine, just a Band-Aid solution.

If you want to be symptom-free, well, you need to do things from the inside out that will produce a symptom-free life, and we’ll look at how to do that.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

Most Allergenic Foods

What are the most allergenic foods? This is coming from the medical side of things. These foods comprise 90 to 95% of all allergies and most sensitivities. They are: wheat, dairy, eggs, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, and shellfish. Those are the big ones.

Allergy TestingA skin prick test only reads the presence of IgE and IgE at the skin. If you do a skin-prick test on your forearm, what does that have to do with the gut? This test will pick up positive readings, but a lot of things that it will miss. Then you can have specific IgE testing. When they do this test they scratch or inoculate the skin with allergens. If a skin reaction appears that tells you that you have an allergy to it based on IgE.

Then you’ve got serum-specific IgE testing, which is a blood test so it’s more accurate then you have IgG food-sensitivity testing, which I firmly believe is really important for everyone to do because it gives you so much more detail. If you don’t come up with a positive IgE allergy test for a hundred foods, it doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have issues with those foods, and that’s why with the IgG food-sensitivity test, it gives you a lot more understanding of some of the susceptibilities you might have to different foods.

Food ChallengesFood challenges are really the only real way of identifying a true allergy, which is essentially by consuming the foods. If you think you have an allergy to strawberries, well, the only real way to define that is by eating a strawberry and seeing if you have a reaction. This is the gold standard for identifying food allergies, but it’s laborious, time-intensive, and there’re safety concerns. If you don’t know if you have an allergy to peanuts and you have peanuts, well, you’d better have an EpiPen on hand, if you go into anaphylactic shock. Unfortunately, for 99.99% of the population, we’re not doing that, so that’s why


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

doing an IgG test is really important. The IgE stuff is fine, but, again, if you do an IgG test, a lot of the stuff you’re going to find on the results there is going to show up on your medically induced IgE skin-prick test or blood test anyways.

How Long do Food Allergies Last?So, how long do food allergies last? It depends on the food. There’s an 80% chance of outgrowing food allergies to eggs, milk, soy, and wheat, and a 20% chance of outgrowing fish, shellfish, peanuts, and tree nuts. Most of this outgrowing generally occurs from 5 to 15 years of age. So, by the time you’re in your late teens, you should have outgrown a lot of these different allergies.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

What About Food Sensitivities?

Now, what about food sensitivities? Again, it depends. Each set of antibodies built up against specific foods will take a certain amount of time to dissipate. If you have a lot of antibodies built up against dairy, you’re going to need to avoid dairy for a certain amount of time for those antibodies to kind of disappear. It really depends on the food; it depends on how long you’ve eaten the food for and the quantities.

My naturopath he used to eat one kg of dairy, one kg of yogurt every single day, and he developed an intolerance, which means that he could no longer digest it. It took him two years of full avoidance of all dairy, and he reduced his IgG levels response by about 40%.

Again, avoiding problematic foods is important to allow this to occur because you need to avoid the stimulant that is going to cause those antibodies to continue proliferating.

Common SymptomsCommon allergies for histamine related stuff are: anxiety; agitation; fast heartbeat; headaches; increased hydrochloric acid secretion; itching, burning, and flushing of the skin and nose; swelling; congestion; sneezing; asthma.

While those are most common really it could be anything. It’s important to understand all of these are vasoactive, meaning that they act on the blood vessels by either constricting or dilating them. If it’s asthma, wheezing attack, the bronchials, are constricted. If you have an inflammatory response in the arteries, they’re swelling and dilating. With inflammation we’ve got swelling, heat, and pain in most cases. Not excruciating pain. In a lot of cases, the pain is almost undetectable.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

The Danger of Chronic InflammationThe foods that contain the most histamine are the 8 we mentioned previously: fish, shellfish, tomatoes, pork, and eggs. Inflammation is really mediated by this histamine and other cytokine mediators. The problem is there’s a dilation of the blood vessels; the blood vessels increase in size, then Fluid leaves the blood vessels and moves itself into the tissue, and when this happens proteins follow as the blood vessels become more permeable. This leads to an ultra-concentration gradient, where we have more protein inside the blood vessels than outside; so protein is pulled out through diffusion.

The proteins leave the blood vessel, following the fluid, and they congregate outside the blood vessels, in the tissues. As this happens, protein pulls more water out of the blood circulation, and that attracts sodium, because sodium tends to be attracted by water, and this leads to swelling, also known as edema. So, if you ever have swelling as a result of inflammation, this is what’s happening. The blood vessels are becoming more permeable, they’re becoming leakier. Protein leaves, water leaves, sodium leaves the blood vessels, and this obviously starts to build up in the tissues.

Excess fluid and sodium deprive oxygen delivery to the cells, this means that the cells will become injured and eventually die. Chronic inflammation doesn’t seem like a big deal but if it happens day in and day out it becomes problematic.

Addiction and AllergiesAllergies and sensitivities are very similar to addiction. So cocaine and alcohol addiction are very similar to having an allergy or sensitivity because you crave what’s in your blood. If you eat bread, you’re going to crave it. Bread is my downfall having lived in France surrounded by amazing bakeries; you have a lot of willpower to avoid it. If you eat bread all the time you will crave it because it is in your blood.

Physiologically, there are substances or receptor sites on the cells which need to be taken up by specific molecules on these foods. If you don’t have the foods in your blood, you’re not going to crave them. I’ve never had okra so I don’t really crave it. My body doesn’t know what it is. It just so happens that the foods you crave most are probably the same ones your body is sensitive to.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

When an addictive food is removed from the diet withdrawal symptoms can occur for about four to five days. This happens a lot with people doing our Total Wellness cleanse. They’re used to drinking coffee, or a lot alcohol or any other food. We remove a lot of those problematic foods for about 14 days. The first couple days, are not the best because you’re removing those foods resulting in withdrawal symptoms.

If you’re used to drinking caffeine every single day, there are specific caffeine receptors throughout your body which are now void. There’s no caffeine coming in to stimulate them, then there’s other neurotransmitters and other hormones that are not being secreted and you don’t feel great. In extreme cases it takes about four to five days to go away but for most it’s two to three days.

In some cases the reintroduction after four to five days causes an increased allergic response depending on the state of your health. There’re a lot of different variables, but sometimes reintroducing the food after just a short amount of time off can increase its immune response. That’s why it’s important to avoid these foods for a little bit longer than four to five days, so your body has time to really cleanse itself and rid itself of any antibodies or any kind of stuff that’s going on with respect to those specific foods.

4 Signs of Addiction/AllergyFour signs of addiction/allergy are also the four signs of a drug problem. One: Obsession: You obsess about the food; you obsess about the drug; you’re thinking about it all the time. Two: When you eat it or consume it, it leads to negative consequences. It makes you feel tired; it gives you a headache; it makes you feel bloated but still, you want it, so three is lack of control and four is denial.

In my case, I’m not actually denying that I have an addiction to wheat, because I do my best to avoid it because I know I’m going to eat it. I tell Amy if she goes shopping, do not bring bread into the house. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen all the time. But we don’t have the same amount of wheat or grains that I used to when I was growing up.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

When I was growing up as a kid and teenager, all I ate was bread, pasta, and cereal; that’s pretty much it. Obviously, dairy, cheese, and that stuff, because it goes hand in hand. Milk and cereal; cheese and toast; grilled cheese, stuff like that. That was my diet. Now, thankfully, obviously, there’s a lot of conditioning and habituation involved in moving away from those kinds of food choices and kind of the way you ate when you were young, so the easiest way to avoid that is to not bring it into the house, because if you have those foods in your house, they will be eaten. So, that is that.

The Boomerang EffectThe boomerang effect is something that happens in the immune system. So, even though it will initially respond with a heightened reaction when an allergen is contacted, the white blood cell count becomes depressed and remains lower than normal as long as the exposure continues. The first time I eat bread; there’s a heightened immune response, so I might get some type of symptom. I remember when I was young, I used to get these horrific stomachaches but I don’t know if it was a combination of the wheat or the dairy.

If I continue to feed my body these foods, which I did, over time it lowers my immune system to a degree. That’s why when I was young, I would get sick easily three or four times a year. When I started to change my diet completely, I didn’t get sick for probably seven years. Even now I only get sick once a year at most because I’ve taken care of things internally as well as corrected things with my diet, and you could do the same.

It’s important to avoid those foods which are suppressing your immune system. The immune system is our defense; it’s our army. It’s our defense against the evildoers, as Bush would say. We need to avoid these foods initially but that’s not all. We need to take things a step further.

The 5 Main Culprits of Food SensitivitiesFive main culprits of food sensitivities: The sheer bulk of food. Again, this example of the guy with bananas, four at a time, several times a day, several times a week, that’s a huge amount of food, of the same food. This will exhaust enzyme pathways to digest that food and that’s not good, because


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

if we exhaust those enzymes, then we’re not able to digest the food properly, and we know that poor digestion leads to issues with leaky gut and all that good stuff.

The frequency of food consumption. Again, the more often you eat the same food, it will exhaust those enzyme pathways.

Intimacy or duration of the exposure. This basically means how long the food is sitting in your GI tract. That’s why it’s really important to be able to pass regular bowel movements, because if you have food molecules sitting in your colon, in your digestive system, they’re just sitting there, they become irritants, they start causing inflammation and, they obviously start creating immune responses against them. So, we need to move stuff out of the body.

Overgrowth of yeast or parasite. This is a big contributor to food allergies and sensitivities because they increase the toxic accumulation, so we reach that allergic load sooner. And they also compromise gut health because they can actually irritate and cause a widening of those pores in the gut, leading to leaky gut. They can actually leave the gut and get into the bloodstream and cause all sorts of issues as well.

Leaky gut syndrome. This is perhaps the most important thing to rectify. We’ve seen this several times now, when we have big food particles which get past the mucosal barrier and they get into the blood and then the immune system says, “Hey, I don’t recognize this. It’s an allergen; let’s create antibodies or let’s mount an immune response to it,” and there we have the development of food sensitivities or allergies.

So, we need to correct the gut. We need to fortify the walls around the castle, if you will. If you think about it this way, if you think about medieval times and the castle and this big brick wall around the castle. If that brick wall starts to deteriorate, well, bad guys are getting inside, into the castle, and it’s the same thing with the need to build up that wall so we keep the bad guys out. And bad guys, in some cases, can be germs, they can also be foods which don’t need to be inside the blood in large sizes.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

Leaky GutWhy Avoidance Isn’t The Only Answer

I’m going to read you the last sentence of a passage from a 2011 editorial commentary in Physiology Reviews, the journal. The last part says “This new paradigm subverts traditional theories underlying the development of these diseases and suggests that these processes can be arrested if the interplay between genes and environmental triggers is prevented by reestablishing the zonulin-dependent intestinal barrier function.”

What they’re saying here, zonulin dependence, the proteins within the tight junctions in the gut, those small cells between the epithelial cells and the gut. We need to reestablish the intestinal barrier in order for all this stuff to kind of dissipate. In order for a lot of disease, reactions to foods and allergies, all of that stuff can be alleviated if we repair the gut, if we could increase the barrier function in our intestines. That’s essentially what this is saying.

It’s kind of throwing it into the face of traditional medical reviews about this type of stuff. This has become, this whole leaky gut thing was very, was kind of like snake oil way back in the day—I’m talking way back in the day, maybe like ten years ago—in the medical community. Now your doctor probably still doesn’t know what it is, but there’s a lot more research and it’s being a lot more accepted in medical circles. Hopefully, it becomes common knowledge in a short amount of time.

It’s funny because the difference between science and magic is that magic, we just can’t explain magic scientifically yet. It doesn’t mean that magic is not—everything that happens has a scientific basis for it; we just don’t know how to explain it, and it’s only a matter of time for these things to unfold and be uncovered. Leaky gut is kind of like one of those things where it’s just like, “Oh, it doesn’t exist. Well, now, actually, it does exist. Well, that’s funny.” So, it’s all about improving the intestinal function, improving that barrier.

This picture shows how food particles can get into the bloodstream, and then from there, the immune system mounts a response.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

A food complex basically is when you have antibodies that combine with allergens. The allergen can be these food substances or these protein molecules, and they’re attached to these antibodies. I’ve talked about using enzyme therapy on an empty stomach. One of the reasons we use enzymes between meals is because they help break down these immune complexes in the blood, which is obviously a good thing.

TreatmentThe treatment if you have a full-blown allergy is rarely a nutritional consequence. If you have an allergy to peanuts or strawberries, it’s not the end of the world if you can’t eat those anymore. Avoidance is the key, because if you eat them, you might die.

Delayed hypersensitivity an elimination diet’s really important. You eliminate the problematic foods, and you go for about two weeks. And then what you do is you reintroduce one food at a time over a four-day interval.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

Let’s say you remove the eight common allergenic foods and after a minimum of two weeks you reintroduce one food but keep everything else the same. The elimination diet protocol is very clean eating. Two weeks, introduce the wheat; keep that for four day, and see how your body responds. If you have no reactions, no kind of symptoms, nothing, and then you can either keep the wheat out, which is really the best case or, you know, keep it in moderation.

Four days later, after the initial introduction, you introduce something else. It might be eggs if you have sensitivity to eggs, for instance. At that period, if you have eggs, let’s say—again, you want to keep it somewhat scientific in terms of how you’re doing this little experiment on yourself. If you’re having eggs, try to keep them in the same form. So, it might hard-boiled eggs, soft-boiled eggs, scrambled eggs; whatever way you’re eating them, try to keep it consistent.

So, you introduce eggs and for four days, you introduce nothing else. See if there’re any responses. If you have a response, you have symptoms, you take it back out.

Basically you eliminate those foods, you reintroduce them by testing over a four-day interval period, and whichever foods don’t produce symptoms are generally okay to eat. But the ones that do exhibit or cause symptoms, you want to avoid those.

And it’s important to improve digestion and gut health, as we talked about. We have to fortify that intestinal barrier so no food particles that should not be getting into the blood are getting into the blood. Large food particles do not belong in the blood. They need to be broken down in the digestive process, and then only the small, small nutrients can get absorbed into the bloodstream and then delivered.

Cleansing is really important as well. It doesn’t have to be a full-blown 30-day cleanse. It could just be a couple days. It could be a one-day water fast. It could be an intermittent fast, where you don’t eat anything for one day. One of the easiest and best ways to improve your health and improve your ability to burn fat and improve all sorts of hormone levels, just doing a one-day fast and drink nothing but water, eat nothing but water. This will alleviate the allergic load, reducing the toxic burden in your body. This is one of the very simple things you can do to remedy this issue.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

8 Steps to Overcoming Allergies & SensitivitiesIf you follow these eight steps, I guarantee in a couple of weeks or a couple of months, you will notice tremendous improvements in your symptoms.

First, if you do nothing else follow steps to good digestion to improve your digestive vitality and repair your gut lining. If you just did this alone, you would find tremendous improvements in all aspects of your health, not just with allergies and sensitivities.

Secondly ensure proper elimination and to cleanse your body. This kind of goes hand in hand here. We need to be passing a healthy bowel movement at least once a day. Get that crap out of your body; otherwise, lead all sorts of toxins back to the blood.

Rotate your foods and add more variety. We’ve seen the same amount of food in high volumes is going to exhaust enzyme pathways, and that’s going to lead to faulty digestion and eventual problems. So, rotate your foods; try something new, have a selection of foods. If you have the Super Nutrition Academy recipes, just follow those and rotate them on a daily basis. Add more variety; try more fruits and vegetables; try different recipes you haven’t tried before. That’s really important. You’ll actually get more nutrition that way as well; you’re not always getting the same nutrients.

Eat more raw foods. A simple way to improve all aspects of your health. If you eat more raw foods, you’re getting more water, more enzymes, more fiber, and better overall nutrition because you have not lost a lot of those nutrients in the cooking process. It’s not so you have to become a raw foodist, but if you just eat more fruits and vegetables, more salads, more smoothies, that’s what we’re talking about.

Supplement with digestive enzymes before, during, and after meals will help actually digest the food and between meals can help break down those immune complexes.

Supplement with a high dose of probiotics. We’ve seen that the probiotics help improve the production of regulatory T cells, which is very important to regulate your immune system, so it’s really important. Or eat some more fermented foods, like sauerkraut.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

Increase your intake of omega-3 fatty acids because anti-inflammatory, and identify problematic foods. Get tested if you can, and avoid them for a couple weeks.

Where do you go to get an IgG test? Well, if you go to your local naturopath and they most likely can run it for you. Otherwise, there’re probably some labs online. Obviously, some are better than others; you’ll have to do a little bit of legwork. Nonetheless, if you can do an IgG test, it would help you identify which foods are causing problems for you.

If you can’t do that I can give you some right off the bat. Glutinous grains like wheat, barley, rye. Milk, soy, corn, peanuts, eggs, and the top eight allergenic foods. If you can avoid those for a while, and then reintroduce them, just keep them at a minimum.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

Auto-Immunity

Autoimmunity is when the immune system identifies your own cells as foreign invaders and attacks them. At least 5% of the American population suffers from more than 80 illnesses caused by autoimmunity. They are a special threat to women. About 75% of autoimmune patients are women. For some reason there’s a genetic tendency there. Part of the reason, as well, is that they appear to generally mount larger inflammatory responses than men when their immune systems are triggered.

Any time your immune system hyper-reacts it’s creating symptoms, like allergies, over time, in my case that’s why I am hypersensitive and allergy-prone. I constantly assaulted my body with poor food choices. In my case, it attacked my hair follicles. Thankfully, it only did that; it did not attack my nerves or muscle cells. That would be, obviously, if you have MS or fibromyalgia, that’s not a lot of fun.

The most common autoimmune diseases are: Grave’s disease; rheumatoid arthritis; Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, a common cause of underactive thyroid, and there could be an autoimmune condition associated with it; type 1 diabetes; pernicious anemia; multiple sclerosis; and so forth.

Autoimmune diseases are among the ten leading causes of death among women in all age groups up to 65 years old.

How Does it Develop?There are many different scientific mechanisms and some genetic tendencies. I developed alopecia when I was 17, my allergist asked me if I had any family members who had it. I did not but specific alopecia condition doesn’t have a genetic so my kids should not develop alopecia.

Certain conditions have genetic predispositions; others don’t. In some cases autoimmune disorders are the manifestation of allergies gone wild. Remember the Th1 and Th2 pathways? If we have too much stimulation of Th1, we’re


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

going to get too high, there’s going to be too much inflammation. That kind of arm of the helper T cell side of things is going to be related with autoimmune diseases and chronic inflammation. On the flip side we have the Th2 side, which is more the antibody response, which leads us to allergies and can also be associated with autoimmunity.

Physiological MechanismsPhysiological mechanisms. Here we have Th17, which is a specific type of helper T cell or kind of a modulator. We have high levels of Th17 and the overstimulation of Th1 pathways. That’s one mechanism. There’s a loss or lack of regulator T cells; those regulatory T cells cannot keep the Th1 and Th2 arms in balance. We can develop antibodies to peroxiredoxin. I’ll tell you what that is in a second. There’s molecular mimicry.

Th17 cells, what these are a type of helper T cell. Once again, that’s…we have the Th1 up here. We have the Th1, Th2, and Th17; there’s a bunch of other helper T cells. In this case and this is associated with alopecia and a number of autoimmune conditions. There is an elevated number of Th17 cells, and they give off a lot of different interleukins. You’ll see these IL-17, IL-21;


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

that’s interleukin, which is a type of cytokine, inflammatory things. If we have too high of a level of these Th17s, well, that’s associated with autoimmunity for some reason.

Peroxiredoxin-5Peroxiredoxin-5 (PRDX5) is a gene that encodes a member of the peroxiredoxin family of antioxidant enzymes. It plays an important antioxidant protective role in different tissues under normal conditions and during inflammatory processes. We need this enzyme to function properly for anti-inflammation. They are normally produced in response to oxidative stress sites of inflammation. So, it triggers like gluten, for instance, that compromise the gut-associated immune system, GALT.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

It triggers that compromise the gut-associated immune system that provides regulatory T cells to restrict autoimmunity are problematic in its pathway. This means that gluten, for instance, can compromise the ability of these enzymes to express themselves, and they will have an impact with the regulatory T cells, which, obviously, will restrict its kind of balancing act on the immune response in terms of those Th1, Th2 cells and so forth.

What’s happening is the body is creating antibodies to specific amino acids on this enzyme, peroxiredoxin, so it’s not able to function properly because the body is attacking this enzyme, which we need in its role of preventing oxidative stress so we’re not able to fight this inflammation that’s occurring as a result of oxidative stress.

Milk and Molecular MimicryAnother way is molecular mimicry. Cow’s milk has been associated with 33 of the autoimmune diseases. Specifically, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes. This is coming out of the proceedings of the Nutrition Society, the role of causation is still debated, but there are a few things that we know. Type 1 diabetes, with those with type 1 diabetes, the early introduction of cow’s milk exposes the child to casein protein and specifically the beta casein which has many immunomodulatory properties, which means that it can modulate the immune system.

There’s a correlation of consumption of milk and type 1 diabetes because of this. It weakens the body’s natural tolerance to antigens. It weakens your immune system’s response to allergens and its ability to deal with them, and the immune system makes antibodies to 17 amino acids in cow’s milk. Similar amino acids are also present on the surface of beta cells of the pancreas. The beta cells are the ones that produce insulin. This is where molecular mimicry comes in.

You drink cow’s milk as a young kid your body identifies 17 amino acids in cow’s milk. Unfortunately, those 17 amino acids are also very similar or are the same as the ones found on the beta cells of the pancreas. There’s kind of this mimicry there; the same almost and that’s why the immune system can now, it searches out, the antibodies will search out, “Where are these amino


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

acids? We’ve gotta bind to them, create antibodies to them.” Unfortunately, it does that to the pancreas too. That’s one of the mechanisms in which type 1 diabetes can occur.

Cow vs. Breast MilkThere’s another interesting argument which says that it’s not the cow’s milk necessarily, but it’s the lack of breast milk, which may be more important in genetically susceptible people. Because the lack of breast milk, if you have a baby and you do not feed them breast milk, well, there are some issues with that because, first of all, breast milk provides cytokines and growth factors needed for the maturation of the gut-associated lymphoid tissue that are not present in cow’s milk or really any kind of formula.

Delayed introduction of cow’s milk after several months has been shown to decrease autoimmunity against pancreatic B cells, beta cells. There are many other factors determining this, including autoimmune disease, colonization of gut with bacteria. If we don’t have the right amount or enough diversity of the gut flora, then we’re more susceptible to infections and sickness. The same thing here. If we have a good colonization of gut flora, it helps us prevent some of these autoimmune diseases.

For instance Celiac disease is linked to type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases. If you eat wheat, if you have a predisposition to developing Celiac disease, well, that’s also linked to type 1 diabetes. The longer you breastfeed the better, a minimum of six months of breastfeeding exclusively and then slowly introducing solid foods while continuing to breastfeed for as long as possible is ideal. Obviously, there’s a genetic predisposition in certain diseases but I believe that in the vast majority of cases, it’s really lifestyle stuff. We need to be informed about this, and that’s why Super Nutrition Academy’s here.

This is just another diagram basically showing the factors controlling gut maturation and normal function of the gut immune system. Just reading what it says down here: “It is suggested that in type 1 diabetes mellitus, a deficient oral tolerance to dietary components, including those of cow’s milk, promotes islet inflammation—islet cells are part of the beta cells in the pancreas—islet inflammation and disease development.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

The beta casein in cow’s milk is impacting the immune tissue in and around the gut. We’ve got different antigens, viral infections, growth hormones, and cytokines from breast milk, which are positively influencing it, colonization of bacteria, which are positively influencing it. These three up here would have more of a negative impact on the gut-associated lymphoid tissue, which is again just essentially the immune system that’s closest to the gut, so it’s really kind of responding to the immediate food.

All of this will lead to disturbance of oral tolerance which is an important concept in immunity. Essentially, it is your immune system’s ability to tell the difference between a foreign antigen and an auto antigen. It tells the difference between what is outside and bad versus what your own cell is, your own body is, so it doesn’t attack your own body.

All of these factors will play a role at the gut in terms of the lymphoid tissue there in the immune cells in and around the gut, which will have an impact on tolerance and will obviously have an impact on increased gut permeability can lead to autoimmunity or have an impact in and around that. There’re a lot of different variables at play here. It’s about knowing what you can control.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

Take Home MessageThe take-home message is this: Ensuring health of your gut and gut-associated lymphoid tissue is of critical importance. That’s the big thing.

How? Well, we get dirty, especially when young. Play in the dirt, allow your kids to play outside. Populate your gut with good bacteria. Take a probiotic, eat fermented foods. Eliminate refined sugar will help keep that good balance of gut flora, because, remember, sugar feeds Candida, it feeds yeast, it feeds all those bad bacteria.

Identify and avoid food allergies and sensitivities. Very important because we don’t want these things to irritate the colon, irritate the gut lining, and obviously facilitate or exacerbate leaky gut and the right diet.

We need to improve digestion as well, because if we’re not digesting properly it will further feed the bad bacteria in our colon leading to gas and bloating.

The RIGHT DietSo, what is the right diet? Well, it will vary from person to person. Again, everyone has different metabolic types. We live in different areas of the world; we’re exposed to different environmental factors; we’re brought up with different foods. That’s why there’s no one specific diet for everyone. But, in general, if we’re looking to prevent allergies and autoimmunity, we have to be eating a diet that is anti-inflammatory. It’s an anti-inflammatory diet, which means lots of fresh, whole foods high in omega-3s, limited animal products, and void of gluten.

Lots of fruits and vegetables, high amounts of omega-3s, whether from chia, hemp, or flaxseeds or fatty fish. Animal products do have their place in the diet just make sure they’re free-run, grass-fed, organic, no garbage, no hormones, none of that stuff in there. We know that animal products are highly acidic and inflammatory so don’t go crazy with them. Two to three to four times a week is fine; you don’t want to be having animal products at every single meal, just because they’re pro-inflammatory.

We want to avoid glutinous grains as much as possible. We’ll see this in the next lesson that they can problems with respect to leaky gut and all sorts of other events.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

High in antioxidants. If you eat an anti-inflammatory diet, lots of fresh, whole foods, you’ll also be getting high amounts of antioxidants. We need to support the immune system and reduce further oxidative stress. So lots of fruits and vegetables, berries.

Probiotic-rich. We need to populate the gut with good bacteria. So, fermented foods or direct supplementation. Again, fermented foods, sauerkraut, kefir, miso, tempeh, kombucha, or direct supplementation with probiotics itself.

Enzyme-rich. We need to be able to break down immune complexes and ensure optimal digestion. If you’re eating more raw foods, that’s great. Even if you are, even if you aren’t, supplement with a digestive enzyme with hydrochloric acid to improve protein breakdown in the stomach. It’s really going to be powerful.

If you follow these four things right here: a diet that is anti-inflammatory, high in antioxidants, probiotic-rich, enzyme-rich, you’ll be much better off and if you follow the recipes in the Super Nutrition Academy cookbook, you will meet all of these criteria.

A Note on Chronic InflammationHere’s a note on chronic inflammation. Inflammation can affect any part of the body and lead to any disease, including cardiovascular disease, arthritis, autoimmune disease, dementia, and more. Inflammation is the body’s way of protecting itself from damage; in so doing, it creates disease. It’s not inflammation that’s the problem; it’s what’s causing the inflammation that’s causing the problem.

Drugs are not the solution. You must eliminate the source of the problem. The processed oils, the sugar, the allergenic foods, and the poor gut health, these are the big vices of what we’re dealing with nowadays with respect to our health. That’s it; it’s not rocket science. Remember, inflammation and allergy go hand in hand. If you have allergies and food sensitivities and you’re not aware of them you’ll have chronic inflammation. Any symptom can be allergy it’s important that you take this seriously and look into getting tested for IgG stuff. Avoiding the foods you are sensitive to, getting more anti-inflammatory foods into your body and taking the steps in the right direction.


© S

uper

Nut

rition

Acad

emy.

com

Coming in Lesson 4In Lesson 4, we will spend more time learning about antinutrients and their impact on the immune system and human health. We’re going to talk about gluten and Celiac disease, lectins, oxalates and phytates, and we’ll look a little bit more at dairy as well.

That’s coming in Lesson 4. It’s going to be a great lesson. I hope you’ve enjoyed this lesson. I hope you’ve enjoyed this module. This module’s really important it’s the foundation of our health. Everything works together in the body. Nothing works in isolation, so it’s really important that you have a good understanding of this, how it all interplays, and that way you can make the best decisions for you and your family.

See you in Lesson 4.

Documents

MODULE #6 - Lesson 3 … · the entire immune system. So if it’s hay fever season and you want to reduce the symptoms or just kind of help your immune system out. One of the things