Holistic Treatment for Autoimmune Disease

January 29, 2024

Are you struggling with the symptoms of an autoimmune disease? Autoimmune diseases can result in a wide range of debilitating symptoms, from chronic pain and fatigue to inflammation, skin and digestive issues and more. Discover underlying causes and holistic treatments for autoimmune disease.

Podcast Highlights:

0:35: It’s a disorder by which your immune system attacks the very cells your body has in it, and you’re attacking yourself.

0:58: It can cause arthritis, it can cause cardiovascular problems, it can cause thyroiditis and thyroid problems.

2:56: But the underlying reason for this can really be thought of, which is in somewhat of a triad, where there’s some genetic predisposition, a gut that’s not healthy, and a trigger.

3:56: But the ideal treatment would be to improve this process, to improve the communication, and to allow the body’s fundamental problems to be addressed. Now, generally, the genes, you’re not going to change those.

4:09: But you can improve gut health and you can avoid the triggers, and that’s been shown to make a world of difference. It does take time and commitment to make these changes, but we’ve seen dramatic changes when people have been willing to do this.

4:45: So in the case of autoimmune disease, you may have an underlying genetic predisposition to making antibodies to your own cells. You may have that predisposition, but if there’s no trigger or if your gut’s healthy, you just aren’t going to manifest the problem.

5:30: So if it’s rheumatoid arthritis, mainly the joints. If it’s the thyroid, it might Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or autoimmune thyroiditis. Or you might have an issue with your skin with psoriasis or with systemic lupus, which involves skin, and all of these things tend to be whole body.

9:21: But it’s hard to grow up and not receive a lot of antibiotics in this country and really, around the world. So most of us develop an unhealthy gut for that reason.

10:23: And that’s why we, at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, really recommend a program that really eliminates or dramatically decreases the amount of sugar or simple carbohydrate products. Remember, bread, wheat, corn, milk, whole milk, rice and potatoes all get converted to sugar. Those are sugar molecules hooked together, that’s what a carbohydrate is. And yeast grows on sugar.

12:38: And there’s some great tools for healing a leaky gut, just avoiding the foods that the issues that are bothering it, like getting rid of yeast, that’s one way to heal leaky gut.

12:49: But gluten, which is largely wheat, but also barley and rye, tends to be particularly problematic.

13:11: But it went from 14 chromosomes to 42 chromosomes, and it’s much more irritating to the gut. And you can actually show an increase in autoimmune problems like celiac disease since we made this changes in the wheat. So wheat, generally, is a good thing to stay off of if you have an autoimmune problem.

14:09: Another fascinating tool is low-dose naltrexone. We’ve been using low-dose naltrexone coming up on 20 years or so…and they found that instead of the full dose, you take a small fraction of that, maybe a 10th of that…a lot of times autoimmune conditions would go into remission when they were taking naltrexone.

15:15: So one of the tools that we can use to calm down both airborne allergies, food allergies, chemical allergies is immunotherapy. And we make drops for that, and we’ve had good results. And that being a contributing factor to calm down reactions when people are having some issues with food.

16:35: And there are six foods that are the primary contributing factors to food allergies and your overall allergic disorders. That would be wheat, and corn, and egg, and milk, and yeast, and soybean. These are in all the processed foods.

17:59: But I did want to add about the hormonal aspect. I mentioned during pregnancy, how often autoimmune conditions go into remission.

18:09: And it’s interesting that progesterone can be tremendously useful, even testosterone is useful with autoimmune conditions. In some cases, estrogen can be the key thing, DHEA…so hormones are often a missing part of this equation.

19:09: That is not uncommon for women that had arthritis. They get on progesterone because of the anti-inflammatory effect that it has and calming down the immune system, their arthritis tends to ameliorate.

21:39: And one of the most common foods that cause inflammation is the food that most everybody enjoys, and that’s sugar. Sugar is highly inflammatory.

Podcast Transcription:

Dr. Steven Hotze: Hello, I’m Dr. Steve Hotze, and welcome to today’s program. I’m visiting with Dr. Don Ellsworth, who is a colleague here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center of mine. And we’ve been working together for well over 20 years, and we’re going to discuss with you a common problem that we see here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, and it’s called autoimmune disease.

It’s a disorder by which your immune system attacks the very cells your body has in it, and you’re attacking yourself. It’s auto, self-immune, so you’re basically allergic to your own self, is what basically happens. So your immune system attacks cells, and this can happen in a host of different disorders in the body. It can cause arthritis, it can cause cardiovascular problems, it can cause thyroiditis and thyroid problems. And so Dr. Ellsworth, tell us the underlying causes of autoimmune disorders and what can we do to treat those?

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Well, if you want to read something that’s incredibly complex, pick up an immunology textbook and you’ll see how complex this whole process is. But what we’re talking about is actually a simple idea, and that’s the cells of our body will often interact with different things and it’s always asking the question, “Is this supposed to be here?” And it looks for certain markers that help it to identify itself. And over time, because some of those markers might start being less, maybe a lack of nutrition or another common issue that can occur is if junk from the environment is sticking or attaching itself to ourselves. So it looks different. It starts looking like a foe and rather than a friend. So it’s akin to when you’ve maybe played football with…you’ve done a sport, a team sport and the jerseys are similar colors. And maybe the lighting isn’t all that good, you can sometimes throw the ball to the wrong person or tackle the wrong person.

And in warfare, it’s essential to be able to communicate and make sure which tank or plane is yours and which is the enemy’s. And so this complex process involves very clear communication – you need to be able to connect well. And because of that, it’s prone to there being problems and a little bit of an issue where you develop a little antibody to some tissues.

Thankfully, the body has tolerance, doesn’t typically cause a problem. But when you start developing significant issues, you get a label of it. And it’s usually based on whatever part of the body is affected the most. But the underlying reason for this can really be thought of, which is in somewhat of a triad, where there’s some genetic predisposition, a gut that’s not healthy, and a trigger. And you have to have all three to see the problem. For example, identical twins don’t have identical autoimmune problems. Particularly, if they have different lifestyles, one may never manifest an autoimmune disease and another one could have significant autoimmune problems.

So that’s a very good thing because the impression that I had for my training, and I still believe is the common thought process, is that it’s genes. And if you get an autoimmune problem, it’s largely thought of as bad luck. And the treatment is doing things that fairly, strongly, harshly manipulate the immune system by often suppressing it so that the damage of this communication is less.

But the ideal treatment would be to improve this process, to improve the communication, and to allow the body’s fundamental problems to be addressed. Now, generally, the genes, you’re not going to change those. But you can improve gut health and you can avoid the triggers, and that’s been shown to make a world of difference. It does take time and commitment to make these changes, but we’ve seen dramatic changes when people have been willing to do this.

Dr. Steven Hotze: This is really known as epigenetics.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Right.

Dr. Steven Hotze: So we have certain genes in our body but they may not manifest themselves either in a positive or negative way unless something external to it. Maybe the food that we eat, maybe the stress, or the lifestyle that we’re living affects that gene and causes it to turn off or turn on. So in the case of autoimmune disease, you may have an underlying genetic predisposition to making antibodies to your own cells. You may have that predisposition, but if there’s no trigger or if your gut’s healthy, you just aren’t going to manifest the problem. But if you do have those additional problems as Dr. Ellsworth said, they work together in a triad. And then you’ll have the manifestation of the autoimmune disease, you’ll get the joint pains…maybe people have chronic arthritis, juvenile arthritis, they get…

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: The autoimmune issues are often labeled based on the worst joints.

Dr. Steven Hotze: Right.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: So if it’s rheumatoid arthritis, mainly the joints. If it’s the thyroid, it might Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or autoimmune thyroiditis. Or you might have an issue with your skin with psoriasis or with systemic lupus, which involves skin, and all of these things tend to be whole body. So the areas that you can see with your eyes when a person has a problem is actually just the superficial issues, there’s issues going on inside of the body. But thankfully, a lot can be done other than what you’ve often seen used by your friends and family members, which involve taking things that will suppress the immune system.

Dr. Steven Hotze: And those would be steroidal medications. Prednisone, primarily is used very commonly…

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Right.

Dr. Steven Hotze: …or steroid shots, you help suppress the inflammation. But it doesn’t get rid of the underlying cause of the problem.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: And there’s a lot of side effects with steroids. And so they’ve developed these biologic products that are quite expensive and you can, maybe a monthly injection or weekly injection or sometimes they’re oral. But you’ll notice that when they talk about these, they always say, “Do not take them if you have tuberculosis and other chronic infections,” because you’ve weakened the immune system. And if you weaken the immune system, it’s going to flare. And of course, certain cancers can flare too when you weaken the immune system. So, so much better to go to the root cause. How do you do that? Well, one very, very important thing is to work on the gut and that’s something that we’ve done at Hotze Health & Wellness Center forever.

Dr. Steven Hotze: And when we talk about the gut, we’re talking primarily about your large colon. That’s where bacteria exist from your esophagus through the small intestine, there’s enough acid and all that. You don’t routinely have bacteria living there in massive numbers. In the large colon, of course, it’s full of bacteria. And the problem comes when you take antibiotics.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Right.

Dr. Steven Hotze: You say you get a sinus infection, or bronchitis, or you get a sore throat. Or you just kind of feel bad, you go to the doctor, he says, “Well, let me just give you some antibiotics to cover you.”

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Right.

Dr. Steven Hotze: And so those antibiotics are meant to kill bad bacteria. But your body has healthy autochthonous, commensal bacteria that live in your gut and that’s in the colon. And help you digest your food, help produce enzymes, produce neurotransmitters as well. And if you take an antibiotic, you can kill off some of those bacteria and you get a yeast overgrowth.

Women understand this. Clearly, when they take antibiotics, it’s not uncommon for women to get yeast vaginitis, to get a yeast vaginal infection, which can be cleared up with suppositories and creams and those sort of things. But if a woman has a problem, you can be sure she’s got a problem in her colon, as well. And so when we get yeast buildup in the colon…talk about that and how that can cause autoimmune problems.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Well, when we take an antibiotic…and also steroids will often promote the overgrowth of yeast, or birth control pills. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of things that allow…something that’s everywhere in the environment, yeast to overgrow. All it has to have is an open door and we all know that if you leave something moist laying around, it’ll often become moldy. Something in the fridge too long, it’ll become moldy. So molds don’t need a lot of encouragement, all they have to have is an open door. And once yeast or molds in general overgrow, they don’t just go away in their own after you stop taking the antibiotic or the steroid. It stays there and the next round of antibiotics will build on it. So most of us have developed a significant issue because doctors want to do what can help people. And when they see a kid who’s sick, they typically, when in doubt, give an antibiotic.

Now, it’s a little bit better now. Pediatricians are slower to use antibiotics than they were in the past. But it’s hard to grow up and not receive a lot of antibiotics in this country and really, around the world. So most of us develop an unhealthy gut for that reason.

Dr. Steven Hotze: And when you have an unhealthy gut, the gut becomes inflamed. And then when you eat certain foods, those foods may not be digested in the proper manner.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Right.

Dr. Steven Hotze: And the molecules of the food may pass in larger portions into the bloodstream. And those foods, not uncommonly, can lead to the autoimmune response because the body is going to respond to these foods…

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Right.

Dr. Steven Hotze: …that are larger molecules than you would normally have, and it’s going to attack them. And if those foods have any sites on them that correspond to certain sites on cells in your body, you can make antibodies to a certain food. But then also, that may cause you to make antibodies to a certain cells in your body, thyroid would be one example. So that’s the reason you want to clean up your gut.

And that’s why we, at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center really recommend a program that really eliminates or dramatically decreases the amount of sugar or simple carbohydrate products. Remember, bread, wheat, corn, milk, whole milk, rice and potatoes all get converted to sugar. Those are sugar molecules hooked together, that’s what a carbohydrate is. And yeast grows on sugar.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Exactly. We’ve historically used some antifungals like Nystatin.

Dr. Steven Hotze: Right.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: And maybe fluconazole and colostrum along with probiotics. And those go a long way towards restoring normal gut health, and we have additional tools.

Dr. Steven Hotze: Plus, we give probiotics along with that.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Of course. And the Paleo approach is basically what we’re talking about with their eating plan. When one has an autoimmune issue, you want to take it another level and the so-called autoimmune protocol for the diet that’s recommended is a stricter version of that. You’re cutting out things, particularly for about a month that goes beyond that. All the nightshades, eggs…

Dr. Steven Hotze: Nightshades would be tomatoes or potatoes.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Potatoes, right? It’s a much more extensive list of things to avoid. But you can eat some healthy foods. Certainly, meats are fine, a lot of vegetables are fine as long as they’re not in that nightshade category. But by doing this and then adding things back one at a time so that you can see what you tolerate, that’s called an elimination diet. You can determine how your body is responding, and then you want to stay off the foods that are giving you the most trouble.

That’s a huge issue, reducing the triggers, and you also want to eat more of the healthy healing foods. And actually, some of the organ meats that we don’t tend to eat as much of, I’m not a fan of liver, but it is incredibly healthful in terms of the health benefits. And other organ meats actually have a lot of benefit, as well.

And historically, in our country, we ate a lot more of the animal than we do today, and I think we’ve lost some nutrients because we’ve moved away from that approach, but to eating really nutritionally dense foods. And there’s some great tools for healing a leaky gut, just avoiding the foods that the issues that are bothering it, like getting rid of yeast, that’s one way to heal leaky gut.

But gluten, which is largely wheat, but also barley and rye, tends to be particularly problematic. By the way, we changed wheat about 60 years ago when some of the AG schools, including Texas A&M, led the way, we hybridized wheat. So it grows faster, needs less water, more disease resistant. It actually tastes better because it has more gluten in it. But it went from 14 chromosomes to 42 chromosomes, and it’s much more irritating to the gut. And you can actually show an increase in autoimmune problems like celiac disease since we made this changes in the wheat.

So wheat, generally, is a good thing to stay off of if you have an autoimmune problem. But to heal the gut, in addition to getting rid of yeast, we have some great tools. We have a repair peptide, the body protection compound 157, BPC-157 is wonderful at healing the gut. We have a KPV tripeptide, which also is very useful at healing the gut. Of course, we use a lot of other tools, but the immune peptide would be a significant tool for calming the immune system down. That’s from the thymus gland, thymosin alpha 1 is its full name.

So by healing the gut and calming down the injuries, we can really see some great things happen there. Another fascinating tool is low-dose naltrexone. We’ve been using low-dose naltrexone coming up on 20 years or so. It’s something that is new to some doctors. But naltrexone was used for people who were addicted to alcohol or opioids. And they found that instead of the full dose, you take a small fraction of that, maybe a 10th of that…alot of times autoimmune conditions would go into remission when they were taking naltrexone.

And then they found out they actually didn’t need that full dose, they just needed a fraction of it. And so it was very well tolerated, and we find that as a tremendously useful tool at calming down an overactive immune system.

And we use low dose immunotherapy. Low dose immunotherapy is basically a way to have some of the things going on in the background. So if the body sees something around a lot, it’ll typically respond by starting to treat it as an ordinary, mundane issue. Whereas if it only episodically sees something, it tends to react more vigorously. So one of the tools that we can use to calm down both airborne allergies, food allergies, chemical allergies is immunotherapy. And we make drops for that, and we’ve had good results. And that being a contributing factor to calm down reactions when people are having some issues with food.

Dr. Steven Hotze: That’s key and important. That really plays into the whole allergy aspect of autoimmune disease because an allergy is an abnormal reaction by your body’s immune system to normal occurring substances in the environment. Things you breathe in the air like weed pollens, tree pollens, grass pollens, dust mites, mold spores, animal danders. All these are very common, and they’re airborne, and they’re seasonal. So people will react if they have a genetic predisposition towards allergies.

They’re exposed to these, and they’ll get coughing, sneezing, sinus problems, ear infection, sore throats, chest congestion, asthma, skin disorders. And foods contribute to that, we call it concomitant food allergies. Concomitant means they occur. You think of your immune system, let’s say it’s like a glass of water. And as it fills up with allergens, it doesn’t react until you finally reach the top and it overflows. Then that’s when you have your symptoms, and foods can contribute to that.

 And there are six foods that are the primary contributing factors to food allergies and your overall allergic disorders. That would be wheat, and corn, and egg, and milk, and yeast, and soybean. These are in all the processed foods. And if you have an allergic disorder and you eat these foods on a regular basis, and you’re allergic to them at all, you begin to fill up your immune system. And then when we get into ragweed season, or we get into tree pollen season, or you have molds all year round, it begins to fill up the bucket. So one way to help eliminate allergies and eliminate the stress on the immune system is to eliminate those foods to which you react. And we can talk very briefly about how we do an elimination rotation eating program. You want to explain that?

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Well, for 30 days you avoid all the foods and then you add them back one at a time. And then once…

Dr. Steven Hotze: We say all the foods, we’re talking about maybe the big six. Wheat, corn, egg, milk, yeast and soybean.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: With autoimmune issues…

Dr. Steven Hotze: And it could be other way. It could be a…

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: …even with longer list. Yes.

Dr. Steven Hotze: Sure.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: But you add one thing back at a time. But then it’s a good idea to keep rotating it rather than eating the same thing because the body does tend to develop a negative response to foods that it eats constantly. And it’s like an exercise routine, the best results you’re seen when you rotate things up. But I did want to add about the hormonal aspect. I mentioned during pregnancy, how often autoimmune conditions go into remission.

Dr. Steven Hotze: Right.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: And in another conversation. And it’s interesting that progesterone can be tremendously useful, even testosterone is useful with autoimmune conditions. In some cases, estrogen can be the key thing, DHEA…so hormones are often a missing part of this equation.

Dr. Steven Hotze: And I’ve noticed too, since we started our practice initially as an allergy practice, I would have women coming in with allergies and said, “I never had allergy problems until I had my baby, my first baby or second baby.” Well, I knew that the allergy problems were related some way to hormonal changes. At that time, I didn’t understand the relationship or how to treat it. But it was when we started to use progesterone on women that had other problems that we began to address with progesterone, that we found that we could calm down the immune system and quell allergic disorders. It has a real positive effect and it can have a positive effect on autoimmune problems, too.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: That’s right.

Dr. Steven Hotze: Particularly, we see it with arthritis. That is not uncommon for women that had arthritis. They get on progesterone because of the anti-inflammatory effect that it has and calming down the immune system, their arthritis tends to ameliorate.

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: And pregnenolone can also be useful in that regard. But yes, we have a lot of wonderful tools in the hormonal world that help with autoimmune disease. The lifestyle changes can be very important, too. Sometimes we live in a high stress environment and, let’s face it, hardworking people sometimes actually almost are proud of the fact that they’re not getting enough sleep, that they’re putting so much activity into their life, that they’re barely able to see straight.

And if you have an autoimmune condition, you really want to back away from some of that craziness. You want to say, “these are my priorities” and let’s stick to the priorities, let’s consider all the optional things, optional to be only done occasionally. And you want to get enough sleep, it’s amazing that just getting adequate amounts of sleep can be tremendously healing. I mean, it’s an obvious statement, but our body heals during sleep.

If you’re compromising that, your gut health is being compromised, your immune function is compromised. And if the body’s in more of the fight, flight mode, it’s not in the, “Hey, let’s take care of the body mode.” And so we want to make sure we’re doing some relaxing things, turning off news, doing some of those things, connecting with our friends, connecting with God, doing the spiritual things we need to be doing to be, all that we need to be, being grounded. And these basics are so important with autoimmune problems because if you don’t have a daily routine of getting the sleep, eating nutritious foods, keeping a positive mental attitude, even if you’re doing everything else right, you can still have flares.

Dr. Steven Hotze: And autoimmune diseases, basically, the underlying problem that they cause is inflammation in the system. That’s why when the joints get inflamed, they hurt. When the thyroid gland gets inflamed, it doesn’t work as well. As a matter of fact, it gets so inflamed that it gives too much thyroid, and people can get hyperthyroid. That’s called Graves disease. But autoimmune disease is an inflammatory problem, and so you want to make sure you stay away from foods that cause inflammation. And one of the most common foods that cause inflammation is the food that most everybody enjoys, and that’s sugar. Sugar is highly inflammatory.

Most Americans tend to eat an unhealthy diet that comes from fast food, and packages, and boxes. They get a lot of chemicals in that. As a matter of fact, I was looking…we drove by a place and bought some kolaches. And my son had brought them over, we were out in the country, out at our place. And we looked at that. And I looked on the side of it, there must’ve been 50 different additives in the kolaches. I said, “There’s no way I’m going to eat that.”

But the big thing is that you have, not only do you have chemicals in the food, all the packaged food, but you have high amounts of sugar and sugar could be highly inflammatory. So you want to eliminate that. Well, that’s our program today on autoimmune disease. We thank you for joining us. Thank you, Dr. Ellsworth for your…

Dr. Donald Ellsworth: Absolutely. My pleasure.

Dr. Steven Hotze: …interesting and insightful comments. And thank you for joining us today. If you want to be evaluated and treated for any autoimmune problems, don’t hesitate to call us here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center. I’m Dr. Hotze saying have a great day.

Categories: autoimmune disease, autoimmune disease, Blog, Blog English, Immune System

Tags: holistic treatment for autoimmune disease, natural treatment for autoimmune disease

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