In this video, Dr. Osborne discusses the autoimmune revolution and how to overcome autoimmune diseases naturally. He emphasizes the importance of nutrition and suggests eliminating processed foods, choosing organic options, and consuming nutrient-dense foods. Dr. Osborne also highlights the impact of medications on gut health and nutritional deficiencies, recommending discussions with doctors to monitor and address these issues. He advises testing for nutritional deficiencies, assessing gut function and inflammation, and considering supplements if necessary. Additionally, Dr. Osborne encourages listening to the body’s reactions to certain foods and maintaining a healthy gut microbiome. He concludes by sharing a success story of a patient who recovered from autoimmune disease using his approach.
– Autoimmune diseases can be overcome with simple actionable steps
– Genes are a gift and need to be treated well to appropriately respond
– Chemical, emotional, spiritual, and physical inputs impact gene behavior
– Autoimmune diseases have triggers, including vitamin deficiencies, microbial imbalances, gluten sensitivity, chemical reactions, and gut integrity issues
– Medications can contribute to autoimmune disease and nutritional deficiencies
– Nutrition is important for immune system function and healing autoimmune disease
– Nutritional analysis, iodine loading test, iron panel, and other tests can assess nutritional status
– Gut integrity and dysbiosis play a role in autoimmune disease
– Leaky gut can lead to immune abnormalities and autoimmune assault on tissues
– Medications, chemical exposure, gluten, microbial imbalances, and food allergies can cause leaky gut
– Medications can hinder gastrointestinal function and should be addressed with healthcare providers
– Intermittent fasting, eliminating processed foods, deep breathing, and assessing nutrient deficiencies can support gut health
– Functional GI testing, assessing the microbiome, inflammation, and supporting gut healing can be helpful
– Assessing for biofilms, considering supplemental immunoglobulin, and monitoring nutrient status are additional steps for gut health
– Personalized diet changes, avoiding trigger foods, and addressing constipation can also support gut health and healing
– Being mindful of supplement ingredients is crucial
– The story of an autoimmune recovery highlights the importance of proper diagnosis, diet changes, and personalized treatment under a healthcare provider’s guidance.
Transcript
Welcome to Dr. Osborne Zone. If you struggle with an autoimmune diagnosis, whether it’s rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, celiac disease, Crohn’s, inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune hepatitis, Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism, whatever it is, if it’s autoimmune disease, you’re not going to want to miss the next three shows. Tonight is part one of „Gaming the System“. Remember, the system for treating autoimmune disease has miserably failed us all, and I’m going to teach you how to game the system back and overcome autoimmune disease with simple actionable steps you can start starting tonight. You unlock this door with the key of compassion. Beyond it is another world, a world of science, a world of common sense, a world of sanity. You’re moving into a land of both empathy and ethics of nutritional knowledge and empowerment. You’ve just crossed over into Dr. Osborne Zone.
So welcome to a special two-part series of the Dr. Osborne Zone. This is a series where we’re going to be discussing, which is an extension of the last three shows that we’ve done. If you haven’t watched „How the System has Failed You“ part one, two, and three, you might want to go back and watch those. It’ll get you better prepared to take on this information. This information we’re going to talk about today is what I call the autoimmune revolution. This is a step-by-step guide for you to take and implement, both on your own but also if you’re working with a functional medicine type doctor, to overcome autoimmune disease. So, it doesn’t matter what your autoimmune disease is, whether it’s multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto hypothyroidism, autoimmune hepatitis, fill in the blank. If you have an autoimmune condition and you’re fed up with standard of care, if you’re fed up with regular doctors wanting to mask your symptoms with medications, this is the series that you want to make sure you watch. So get your notepad ready. We’re going to dive into the depths of what you can actually implement starting tonight. You can start implementing this information to help your body naturally overcome autoimmunity. So, without further ado, let’s dive right in.
Again, if you’re overwhelmed with your diagnosis, this discussion is all about what you’re going to be able to do naturally to overcome your autoimmune issues. Now, you’ll see this little diagram here with the warrior and the Hydra. Anytime you see this diagram on a slide, this is just an indicator for you that these are action items that you can take at home, things that you want to take copious notes about, so that you can implement this strategy or these multiple strategies. At the end of this, I want you to have a blueprint that you can follow, again, to help restore your health.
So let’s talk about the origins of autoimmunity. Let’s look at this slide here. This is what we call the triangle of health. And you can see at the center of this slide, that’s your genetic code. Now everybody has their own unique DNA, but what I want you to take away and understand is that DNA is not a curse. DNA is a gift, and you don’t have bad genes. And I don’t care how many of you have DNA mutations MTHFR, CoMT, it doesn’t matter. Your genes are a gift. They’re not a curse, but genes need you to have good behavior for them to appropriately respond.
So, if you look at this diagram, you’ll see in this triangle, on the top you’ll see chemical, to the left bottom you’ll see emotional spiritual, and to the right, you’ll see physical. Now, you’re going to see this trend show up multiple times as we go through this presentation. Chemical, emotional, spiritual, and physical are the three worldly inputs and choices that you have on a daily basis that are going to impact each other, but they’re also going to impact the behavior of your genes.
Again, a lot of doctors try to blame genetics on disease, and nothing could be further from the truth. Your genes are a gift, but you have to approach how you treat your genes right. If your genes are a gift and you have to take good care of them by behaving appropriately. So that you can accommodate them to express in a manner that’s consistent with good health, as opposed to in a manner that’s consistent with disease.
Chemical, physical, and emotional inputs. If we go to this next slide, you’ll see what those inputs are. So, what you’re looking at here, the top is autoimmune disease. Okay? And like I said earlier, it doesn’t matter what your diagnosis is. People are so heavily set on trying to identify the type of autoimmune disease doctors are, as well. But if you understand anything, understand that autoimmune disease has triggers. There are four categorical triggers of autoimmunity, and that’s what is represented in this diagram. So, this diagram should be kind of your go-to to understanding the different triggers and how you can navigate them.
If you look on the far-left, you can see vitamin-mineral deficiencies, and then as we move to the right, microbial imbalances and then gluten sensitivity, as well as other food reactions, chemical reactions, chemicals like toxic metals, and then gut integrity and dysbiosis issues. And then there are physical and emotional issues. So, if you look at the first six boxes from left to right, those all are in reference to chemistry, chemistry is representative of chemical inputs. And then when we get to the latter two, the physical issues, physical has its triangle, and then emotional spiritual has its own triangle. So again, I want you to tie these things in so that you can understand them.
Now, moving through, where does failure occur? So, so many people come to see me in my practice, I’ve been practicing over 20 years, and a lot of the times, they have these pre-existing diagnoses, multiple forms of autoimmune disease. And what ends up happening is their approach is either drugs or has been drugs, meaning their doctors have tried to mitigate their symptoms by suppressing them, basically giving them an improved quality of life through artificial chemistry. And that doesn’t resolve the problem. The problem still exists, or people have tried a natural approach, but they’ve peacemailed that approach. It’s very important you understand that failure to achieve success occurs when people peacemail this approach.
Okay, let me give you some examples. You know, one of the chemical inputs is nutrition. If you’re eating a diet that’s devoid of vitamins and minerals, you’re going to be malnourished, your body’s not going to be able to heal. Even if you’re sleeping enough, even if you’re getting sunshine, drinking clean water, even if you’re spiritually sound, emotionally sound, and physically sound, it only takes one flaw in one of these categories to dismantle or to disrupt your progress.
It’s very, very important that these things that I’m showing you are what we call the non-negotiable components to restoring health. If you’re not working this system and these steps, then you’re peacemealing, and if you’re peacemealing, you’re going to be disappointed, your outcomes are not going to be great, and I don’t want that for you. Remember that, because so many of you that have come to see me, you’ve been peacemealed, literally to death. I mean, not literally, but figuratively to death and everything you’ve spent money on and time and effort in doing has not worked, and you’re frustrated. So, if you’re watching this, you can’t peacemail, you can’t take parts of this presentation and only apply the parts, you’ve got to apply it all, and you want to apply it all simultaneously.
Okay, so you see here, health happens when your genes are happy. Now, your genes are happy when you treat them well. And so then the next question is, well, what do I need to do to treat them well? And that’s again what this entire presentation is going to be about. So back to our diagram. Nutritional deficiencies are one of the primary drivers chemically of dysfunction in the body. What do we know about nutrition? Check out this quote from the „Gum Medical Textbook of Physiology,“ „Each of the 100 trillion cells in the human being is a living structure that can survive indefinitely and most instances can even reproduce itself provided its surrounding fluids contain appropriate nutrients.“
Keywords here: appropriate nutrients. Vitamins and minerals are an overlooked aspect in medicine. Doctors very rarely even consider them, and it’s like, it’s like pulling teeth to get a doctor to measure vitamin and mineral status, and this is unfortunate because nutrients play such a huge role in the immune system. If you look at this next image, you can see this was published years ago in the „American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.“ So, I can’t take credit for this diagram, but you see the way they describe nutrition as an umbrella, and so the nutrients play a role in skin and mucosal and lime and foci, immunoglobulin, and cell-mediated and complement-mediated and interferon-mediated immunity. So these are all, think of each little sliver of that umbrella as an arm of your immune forces, and all of those are influenced tremendously by vitamins and minerals.
So when you become deficient, your immune system starts to break down. We learned a lot of this early on in third world countries where people don’t have enough food to eat, and so they were severely malnourished, and so they’re more predisposed to certain types of infectious microorganisms. They’re more predisposed to their immune systems not reacting or responding appropriately, and this is one of the reasons why many of these countries where nutrition is poor, where they struggle with early mortality rates.
Now, in modern countries today, like the US and Great Britain and New Zealand, and the European Union, it’s not an absence of calories that we have. We have plenty of calories. Like this is probably the first time in history, the record recorded history where we’ve had ample calories for everyone. But here’s the, the ticket. We’re actually starving of nutrients. We have plenty of calories, but we’re starving of vitamins and minerals. So, when you eat calories that are highly processed foods, things that are, again, high caloric but low nutrition, low vitamins, low minerals, you start yourself slowly over time. You starve your immune system, and you inhibit your body’s capacity to heal and function normally. And so, this what I want to emphasize is nutrition is super important, and this slide again, referring to the immune system, and the reason we’re focusing on immune function is because autoimmune disease starts with immune systems going bad.
Now, here’s an example in this next slide of a nutrient deficiency that we know can contribute to autoimmune disease. And this example is vitamin D deficiency, and some argue that vitamin D deficiency is one of the most common deficiencies in modern times, right? And this is especially true in industrialized countries. It’s especially true in people that consume highly processed diets because vitamin D regulates inflammation. It regulates part of your immune system. So if you look here, this was published in again, another study published in the „American Journal of Clinical Nutrition“ by famed vitamin D researcher Dr. Michael Holick. You can see that most people think of vitamin D and they think of calcium, but you can also see that middle, if we blow up on that middle bottom-center box where you can see the immunomodulatory effects, meaning vitamin D helps to modulate the immune response, and look at all those autoimmune diseases that have been linked to vitamin D deficiency: multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and periodontal disease. And there’s more than that. This study again, if we look at the date, published in 2004, and we’ve learned of a lot more since 2004, but I’m showing you this for a fact, the effect of understanding that a nutrient deficiency can definitely contribute to an immune system that starts to behave inappropriately.
Now, essential nutrients from food, what are they? They’re the fundamental building blocks of the body. Think of vitamins, minerals, carbs, fats, proteins, nucleic acids, and water. These are the nutrients. These are the things that we must get in order to heal and repair and to maintain our health. Now, most of us get plenty of carbs, fats, and proteins. It’s the vitamins and the minerals, and sometimes the water and the nucleic acid specifically. This is especially true of many people who follow really strict vegan-based diets where they reduce their capacity to get adequate nucleic acids or adequate amino acids, which are the building blocks to protein.
So one deficiency can inhibit the healing process. The average autoimmune patient that I have seen, in 20 plus years of practice, is the average person has at least four. So one deficiency can cause a problem. The average person I see has at least four. Some of the more common ones: vitamin D, vitamin B12, zinc, water, as well as omega-3 fatty acids. These are, in my experience, some of the most common.
Now, for most nutrients, serum testing has limited value. And so, this is part of the conundrum or the problems even if your doctor’s willing to measure vitamin and mineral status, a lot of times they use serum laboratories, and serum labs are very misleading. They can give you false normals on a frequent basis. We don’t want to rely on serum lab testing if we’re trying to assess nutritional status effectively. We also want to understand that a lot of times, gut function has to be ruled in or out. If the gut’s broken, then how well is it going to absorb or digest vitamins and minerals from the food that you eat? So a lot of you have an autoimmune disease, an inflammatory disease of your GI tract, celiac disease, Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, etc. These types of gut dysfunctions can lead to malnutrition as well. So you have vitamin deficiencies that can contribute to autoimmune disease, and you have inflammatory bowel issues that can contribute to vitamin deficiency. So you can see how it’s easy to get stuck in a vicious cycle.
Now, let’s look at some of these other examples. Some of these are nutrients that are not often considered. Water, oxygen. Water is a nutrient, and a lot of you don’t drink enough of it. Or the type of water that you’re drinking is highly contaminated with different chemicals and things that you shouldn’t be getting exposed to. We’ll talk more about that shortly. Oxygen is a nutrient. Many of you live a very fast-paced life, and as you move through your life, you sometimes let that sympathetic or that part of your nervous system, that fight-or-flight part of your nervous system, kind of rules your day. That’s what we call the fight-or-flight or the sympathetic nervous system. And if you’re stuck in a state of sympathetic dominance, your breathing becomes shallow. So a lot of you forget to breathe, and again, we need oxygen. Oxygen is a nutrient. So harnessing your breathing and harnessing how you breathe can become a very important ally in your recovery process. So don’t forget oxygen. This is why so many very good alternative or integrative or functional doctors recommend treatments like hyperbaric oxygen chambers because they know that oxygen, works at the microscopic mitochondrial level to help the body naturally begin the healing process.
And then we also have the use of medications and the risks of those medications. We’ll talk more about that in just a minute. Now look at the image here. This is just an example of, again, one nutrition deficiency and how it can impact you. In this case, iron. You see, iron leads to reduced red blood cells. Well, that means your, when you have a low anemia or a low red count, you can’t deliver oxygen to your tissues as effectively. So you could be breathing plenty of oxygen from the environment, but if you’re anemic in any way, and you don’t have the ability to deliver that oxygen from your lungs to the rest of your tissues, then your body’s ability or your cell’s ability to generate energy through the process of oxidative phosphorylation, which is what we need oxygen to complete, then you end up tired, and your tissues end up slowing down. Their ability to heal and repair slows down. That chronic fatigue can also increase the risk for recurring infection. Remember, microbial imbalance is one of the issues that we see with autoimmune disease, and overall, it just slows down the body’s ability to heal.
So again, I’ve given you a couple of examples of simple nutrients and their deficiencies and the outcomes of those. But you know, there are 40 essential nutrients that you need every day. So don’t forget, it’s very important that if you want to recover your health, that you look at these and you have them objectively measured, if you really want to be successful, so many people try to take supplements, and sometimes, you know, it’s a good idea, but sometimes the supplements you’re taking aren’t necessarily the ones that you need. They’re the ones you think might be useful, but not necessarily the ones you absolutely need. And this is where testing can give you a huge advantage.
Now, there’s also drug-induced nutritional deficiency. So if you look at this next slide, just a picture of one of the textbooks that have been published on this topic, there are several texts, medical texts that are, basically, their whole premise is to help doctors understand that you don’t prescribe medicine without nutritional consequences. I used to teach this topic all over the world when I worked for a pharmaceutical company. It was over 15 years ago, I would traverse the world teaching this topic to doctors, and most of the time, I was met with open arms by a lot of doctors because when I would teach this class, there’s so much research on this that is just not being taught in medical school. A lot of doctors are blown away when they start to learn this information. So don’t, if you’re on meds, don’t forget to have this conversation with your doctor. Common drugs contribute to autoimmune disease, as I showed you in „The System Has Failed You“ part one, two, and three, but common drugs also cause vitamin and mineral deficiencies that can contribute even more to autoimmune disease. So here’s kind of an action step for you. Again, you see that little warrior with the Hydra in the upper right-hand corner. That’s your cue in to take notes, and that’s your cue in to take action. So if you’re on a medicine, this is where you have the conversation with your doctor. You want to talk with your doctor about how that medication might be interfering with certain vitamins and minerals. And this conversation should be, do, „Hey, I know you’ve got me on this blood pressure medication. I’m really worried, and I’m going to give you an example. Some blood pressure medications cause vitamin B1 and magnesium deficiency. So, doctor, I’m really worried about those nutrient deficiencies. Can you test me as I’m on this medicine? Can you monitor those nutrient levels to ensure that that medicine doesn’t create new problems for me? And also, can you maybe prescribe those vitamins and minerals for me to take as I’m on that medication to try to help offset the problems associated with that medication?“ And that’s what this diagram is all about.
Now, my recommendation to anybody who’s using meds consistently is to ask your doctor to measure your nutrients, if they do it right. Okay, and then you see here, it says „lymphocytic.“ And so getting your nutrition status checked, very, very smart idea. To get this checked twice a year, especially if you’re on medications. Some home-based action steps that you can take around nutrition, around improving your vitamin and mineral status, number one, eliminate processed foods. Processed foods are stripped down, a lot of the vitamins and minerals are destroyed from the original food as they go through processing. So what you’re left with is a shell, a nutritional shell. You’re left with calories with minimal vitamins and minerals, and that will cause you to become malnourished over time. You also want to choose organic, as much as possible. Pesticides don’t do you any favors. Your body has to detoxify those pesticides that you’re being exposed to. Well, guess what you use to do that? You use vitamins and minerals to detoxify those pesticides. Your liver uses vitamins and minerals, your kidney uses vitamins and minerals, your gut and your skin, all of your detoxification organs use those nutrients to properly detoxify you from those pesticides. So reduce your exposure, minimize your exposure.
You also ideally want to choose nutrient-dense foods that are easy to digest. This is especially true if you’re having GI problems. So if your autoimmune disease is relevant to your GI tract, and you’re struggling with digestion, really pay close attention to this tip. Nutrient-dense foods, what are some examples? Bone broth, organ meats. If you don’t like organ meats, you can do organ capsules. Some people don’t care for the way liver tastes but I do take organ meat in capsules. We have something called Warrior Organ Matrix for those of you who don’t like organ meats like me, and then things like berries, soups that are cooked down, soups could be pressure-cooked vegetables, pressure-cooked meats. Because when you pressure cook the foods, you soften them and make it easier mechanically for your body to digest. This again, is especially true of those of you who suffer with digestive problems.
And then fermented vegetables as well can be very, very nutritionally helpful because they also help restore and support healthy microbiomes. Remember, a lot of your vitamins and nutrients are made by the good bacteria. So eating healthy fermented foods can be very beneficial in that regard. Some other action steps, and these are action steps if you’re working with a doctor or a healthcare provider or a health coach, consider the following labs to assess your nutritional status. So you can take these notes. Number one, nutritional analysis using lymphocytic. Before any of you have been watching me for any length of time, know how adamant I am about appropriate testing for vitamin and mineral deficiencies. There’s also a test called iodine loading test. This is a test that helps to isolate and measure whether or not you have adequate iodine. An iron panel, a lot of doctors will not order an iron panel. They will measure what’s called a CBC, a complete blood count. And if those are normal, they’ll tell you, you have normal iron. Well, that’s an inaccurate way to assess iron. You also want your doctor to run an iron panel, and ask them to run ferritin with it. Again, written down on the slide for you, CBC, and chemistry panels are important. Most doctors will run those without any coaxing. A homocysteine test, homocysteine elevations can indicate B-vitamin deficiencies. B12, B6, folate, vitamin B2 deficiencies have all been linked to elevations in homocysteine. Hemoglobin A1C, which is an average measure of your blood sugar. If your blood sugar is too high, the likelihood that you’re over-consuming carbohydrates is very good, and not good, that you’re consuming an excess of carbohydrates, but the likelihood, and so you want to get that reined in. Again, my advice on carbs, fats and proteins is that you’re striving for equality between carbs, fats and proteins, a third, a third, and a third.
And then there’s a test called a CRP. That stands for C-reactive protein, the -HS, that stands for high sensitivity. This is a very sensitive marker for systemic inflammation. So if you are inflamed, this is a really good test to have your doctor measure, so that as you’re making these changes over time, if you’re hitting the right notes, your C-reactive protein should start to drop. It should start to come down. If it’s not coming down, you’re missing something that’s causing that inflammation. You could also add ESR, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, is another inflammatory marker that might be helpful here as well. And then insulin. So again, these are just some standard tests that you can have done that help to assess nutritional status.
Be cautious of serum lab tests for nutrients because of the inaccuracies and the misleading information, and sometimes even the doctor’s inability to properly interpret their results. So not recommended that you do serum lab testing and hang your hat out on that information. If necessary, implement diet change with premium-grade supplementation to accommodate deficiency. So if you come back and you have multiple deficiencies, it may be necessary, for a time at least, for you to supplement with those nutrients. And in my practice, it’s something I do on a regular basis. I enhance people’s nutrition through the use of premium-grade, pharmaceutical-grade supplements because I want to help them dig out of that nutritional hole faster. Remember, you need nutrients to heal autoimmune disease. If we really want to put it simply, it’s a repair deficit. Your body is breaking itself down faster than it’s capable of healing itself, and nutrients are part of what you need to heal. So sometimes we’ve got to dig out of that hole.
Now, let’s look at this next slide on drug-induced nutritional deficiencies. It’s just, if you want to pause this slide in your video and take a screenshot of it for later use, this is, I just wanted to be very clear, this is not a comprehensive slide. In other words, this doesn’t include all classes of medications. This is not intended to be the end-all, be-all list, but these are just some of the most common medications prescribed today. So, I just want you to have access to this information at your fingertips, knowing that many of these drugs or classes of drugs have known and profound effects on your nutritional status, and you want to be aware of that.
Okay, let’s move into the second category. So, we just covered vitamin deficiency, now let’s go into gut integrity and dysbiosis. The chemistry of the gut, a lot of people don’t realize this. Socially, we think of food as the time we all get together and have a good time and we share food as an expression of camaraderie, and love, and community, and that’s a good way to look at it. I’m not going to say we shouldn’t look at it that way, too, but let’s talk about what goes on in your gut. There’s a battle. There’s a war that happens in your gut every time you open your mouth and put food in. Remember, even the healthiest, most organic, pristine food contains toxins. All foods contain toxins. Your gut’s job is to separate toxins and poop them out and hold onto good things like vitamins and minerals, and carbs, and fats, and proteins, the things that we need to nourish ourselves. So, remember, the gut is really a staging zone. It’s a war zone where we quarantine the food so that we have enough time through the mechanical and the chemical actions of digestion to extrapolate the nutrients from the food while expelling the toxins that are in the food through our stool.
The function of the gut is digestion absorption, but we also do a lot of destruction and elimination of toxins in the gut. And this is especially true if you have a healthy microbiome. Your gut bacteria helps you detoxify. It’s why it’s so important. Remember, the gut is a war zone. It harbors that microbiome. It also regulates water and electrolyte flow. So, you know, a lot of people become dehydrated when their guts are inflamed, and we again, we need that gut to balance our water as I said earlier. Water is a key nutrient, and then it houses 70% to
