THE IMMUNE SYSTEM RECOVERY PLAN

Still Life 2, With Grocery Store Veggies                 Photo ©by Ruth Zachary

Auto Immune Diseases – New Approach Promises Recovery Part 3 of a book review.

Dr. Susan Blum outlines four steps in her program; 1 Using food as medicine, 2 Understanding the stress connection, 3 Healing your gut, and 4 Supporting your liver.

Chapter one explains how the immune system works on a physiological level, and on a cellular level. This is complicated by the many uniquely individual hereditary factors we each have been born with. The first step is identifying exactly what triggers in each person’s diet, life or environment must be accommodated, and probably avoided. Many triggers may not produce immediate or direct symptoms, but weakens a healthy immune system for years before an individual succumbs to disease.

Dr. Susan Blum M.D., M.P.H. is described by Dr. Mark Hymen M.D, as a visionary who has improved the lives of thousands of people, and as being at the cutting edge of a new approach, Functional medicine, which is helping tens of thousands of patients world wide.

Dr. Blum advocates a dietary approach, offering a three-week plan that has removed the most common trigger foods entirely for that period of time. One might get a jump up on her plan by also removing all other trigger foods if known – anything one is allergic to, or that the person has previously reacted to in some way… including gas, constipation or diarrhea, rashes, or other symptoms, such as dizziness, headaches or more.

Eating foods that reduce, and do not produce inflammation are emphasized, because inflammation and auto immune diseases so often occur together. The diet is high on vegetables containing phytonutrients and fruits with antioxidants. It also advocates the best essential fatty acids. Vitamins and certain minerals are encouraged as supplements.

Once a person has followed the diet for three weeks, they are then instructed to add one food at a time back into their diet. If the food causes no reaction, it is thought to be safe, and if not, it is probably  a trigger. If there is a reaction, the person may stop eating that food forever, or reintroduce it much later in small quantities after the immune system is thought to have healed and the whole metabolism seems healthy again.

After one has followed the program for five or six months, blood tests and other tests for various parts of the physical system would be taken to see if aspects of damage still exist in the body. From this point on, there are more steps for reversing those ill effects, to bring the person closer to a complete state of good health.

Some people may have only to settle upon a diet that does not offend their own immune system, to find their way out of chronic disease. Personally, I have been following the first steps in the plan for almost two months with a great improvement in symptoms of RA at present. (R.Z)

Others may want and need to take extra steps to further improve healthy functioning. Those people may need to find a Functional Medicine Practitioner to achieve that.

Book Review © by Ruth Zachary

AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE RECOVERY PLAN - Part 2

Autoimmune  Disease Basics Part 2 

Dr. Susan Blum explains the way the immune system works, summarized as follows: When you are exposed to infections and illness, molds, parasites, or foreign food proteins, etc, Lymphocytes, a type of white blood cells normally help protect you.

If they don’t work right, they can also cause autoimmune diseases if they mistake some of your own cells as invader cells that will cause an illness. They can then attack your own tissues.

            There are two lymphocyte types; killer T cells,  and another B cell that produces antibodies that attack anything seen as foreign and dangerous. If this happens, your immune system responds with an inflammation. An inflammation can spread throughout the body. These T and B cells need to be in balance so the response is balanced as well.

            If you get the flu, you may have a high temperature while your lymphocytes fight off the virus, but in a healthy system all returns to normal after a period of time. In a healthy system, the chemical DNA in these cells should be fine tuned to be able to distinguish between foreign cells and your own cells, and attack  only invader cells. 

            When there are more T cells than B cells, and the system is not balanced,  the lynphocytes fail to turn off, so immune cells attack your own bodily tissues when they should only be attacking outside invaders.

            Autoimmune diseases or conditions number in the hundreds, often distinguished by the part of the body that is affected. The numbers of people affected increase every year. Some conditions are systemic (over the whole body) and others are organ or area specific. Blum says the underlying problems in all these diseases are similar. They all involve inflammation. An affected person may have several different autoimmune conditions.

            Common causes or triggers of autoimmune diseases are dietary: gluten, food allergies due to overuse, wheat flour, grains, soy, dairy products, meats, poultry and fish, eggs, and corn. Fiber, vegetables and fruits are critical elements to balance the digestive system where the greatest part of the immune system acts and flourishes in the body. A good balance of healthy organisms in the gut is essential.

            Stress and hormone imbalance are the second group of triggers for autoimmune disease. Chronic stress means your levels of cortisol are constantly elevated, which  damages the immune system, and can lead to adrenal fatigue. Inadequate rest and sleep is a major factor, as well.

            Toxins in the food and in the environment are another trigger. Mercury is perhaps the highest damaging of 212 toxins, an is in the top six most damaging to the immune system. The liver must clear the body of toxins, but if too overloaded, cannot function.

            Infections are another trigger. Viruses and bacteria often reside in the body, waiting to rise when the body is weakened by another trigger.

           A trigger is the cause. A trigger is anything that begins an unhealthy immune response. Blum says in her book, “Fixing the foundational systems, which are your diet, stress hormones, gut health and the body’s toxic load– will heal the immune system and help them all.”  

           Functional Medicine focuses on the primary cause of the immune dysfunction, rather than treating only the symptoms of the problem. 

           The next blog post will finish this discussion of Auto Immune Diseases, in Part 3.

Reviewed by Ruth Zachary©

THE IMMUNE SYSTEM RECOVERY PLAN

Fruit Bowl,                                                            Photo © by Ruth Zachary

Part 1- Do You have an Auto Immune Disease?

Auto-immune diseases are among the most prevalent forms of chronic illness in our country. This affects an estimated 23.5 million people. This is a larger number than those who have cancer or heart disease. Many suffer chronic pain, disability and even death.

Dr. Susan Blum, M.D., MPH says in her book, with the above title,  The Immune System Recovery Plan, conventional medicine rarely gets to the root of the problem. Dr. Blum, practicing in a new field of medicine, known as Functional Medicine, differs in that her emphasis focuses on reversing chronic conditions, and if possible, seeks to find cures, rather than to treat only the symptoms.

Most of these illnesses are listed under Auto Immune conditions, (which are listed on one of the pages of this blog.)  Blum says “these diseases are reversible and curable if caught early, before progressing to worse states of illness, or death.

A number of causes for Auto Immune conditions may be boiled down to a few. Causes include sensitivity to certain foods such as gluten, grains, mercury in fillings, heavy metals, toxins in our foods and in our environment, and more. Genetically modified organisms or foods, which have been developed within the last seventy years or so, may be very difficult for many people to utilize or tolerate. Up to 70 percent of the foods we eat may be genetically modified.

The foods that have been fount to have the greatest negative impact are corn, wheat, gluten, dairy products, soy, sugar and maybe peanuts, because so many product derivatives  from these main food sources, appear in different aspects in almost all processed foods. Toxins and disease pathogens can also play a role, because our immune systems can be additionally damaged by these factors.

A person who has a compromised immune system can be treated, to reverse chronic disease, she believes, and says it takes time and effort, but it can be done. Knowing there are few doctors available to treat everyone, she wrote her book to reach the ordinary citizen who might follow the program and eventually reverse their own chronic illness or symptoms. The plan as described in her book is complex, technical and requires discipline, but if you suffer from an auto-immune disease, you may well find it worth while.

Check the Blog Page titled List -Auto Immune Diseases to see if you have or someone you know has one or more of these diseases. The next Post will explain the basic steps of Blum’s program.

DO YOU WANT GMO LABELS ON YOUR FOOD? Part 2.

Valentine Summer Squash, Tomato and Pepper from My Backyard Garden.

Environmental Action volunteers demonstrated at the JM Smucker headquarters in Orville Ohio this month. Smucker’s apparently knew of the plan beforehand and met the team at the door, delivering their petition  signatures telling the food manufacturer to lable the GMOs in their products, and to stop blocking GMO labeling laws. At the same time, Environmental Action members showed up at their local supermarkets and told the managers to relay our demand to Smucker's that they label GMOs in their products. 

Within seconds of showing up at Smucker's headquarters, six security guards asked that volunteers hand over the petition signatures at the entrance and not enter the premises. But  the activists saw this as good news because, those security guards knew they were coming, which means they know about the campaign - and were worried enough about what we might say and do to send a detail of security to deal with us.

Protestors were too concerned about Smucker's concealing GMOs in their products to be thwarted. 

The following quotation was published by the Environmental Action Team, a group protesting GMOs.  “GMOs put our entire planet's future at risk and every single student at Wooster College (or anywhere) who eats Smucker's products is unwittingly supporting an enormous threat posed by GMO foods.” Rita Frost and the rest of the Environmental Action team were planning additional actions at Smucker’s in the coming weeks.

Reasons to genetically modify foods is to increase yields, to alter foods to taste more pleasant and to make some kinds of foods more resistant to cold or other weather conditions. Tomatoes for instance might be more immune to cold if genes from other organisms are put into the reproduction cells, such as genes from, a strain of fish that is cold resistant.

Dr.Oz also said on Thursday that crops are altered so they will be able to tolerate stronger insecticides. Then the spray volume can be increased. Pesticide use has escalated to millions of pounds per year, and the side effect is that pesticides may affect our food as well as the animals we also end up eating as meat. We just don’t know the full effects of insecticide use, of genetic modification on human or animal digestion. And ironically, a side effect of this practice has resulted in more resistant bugs and insects. 

© by Ruth Zachary

DO YOU WANT YOUR FOOD TO BE GENETICALLY MODIFIED?

Three months ago, I wouldn’t have had an answer. I wasn’t sure what effect genetic modifications might have on a person’s health, but now I know I want to know what I am eating. Like most of the people who are asked, I want to be able to choose. And there is a lot in the news recently about GMOs.

At present  the FDA says that foods labeled “Natural” are not to have any artificial or synthetic ingredients. One way to know a food does not have GMOs is if it is labeled as “Organic.”

Agriculture has taken an extra step to accelerate the changes in foods in order to increase productivity. It was not enough to simply cross-pollenate plants to modify them in a biological way, as people had done for hundreds of years.

According to Jo Robinson in Eating on the Wild Side, pg 81,Corn was one of the first genetically modified foods. Seeds that had been exposed to radiation in a nuclear bomb test were grown after 1946, and the corn produced was far more sweet than corn strains grown prior to the 1950s. Other mutant forms of corn were also added to the genetic pool to produce a corn that is ten times more sweet than that produced in the 1940s.

Almost all the corn in the US is descended from that and other strains of ultra sweet corn. Corn is a food that dozens of other products are made from, including corn syrup, corn starch, corn oil. It is found in nearly all pre-processed foods. Wheat, Soy, Dairy and other crops are widely genetically modified even in their simplest form.

Any crops grown for sale are likely to be genetically modified because the agricultural industry is motivated to produce more for greater profit. Often the nutritional benefit of foods we consume has been sacrificed in the process.

           

Meanwhile more information just today was reviewed on the Dr. Oz show about Genetically Modified Organisms. Dr. Oz claimed as much of 70 percent of our foods may be genetically modified. Some companies are willing to label ingredients that contain GMOs, but not many. The agricultural and Food industries have generally been opposed to labeling their products as having GMO ingredients. Since labels are changed about once a year anyway, cost is probably not the major reason for opposition of disclosure to customers. 

See More in the next blog about GMOs. 

©  by Ruth Zachary

SHOULD YOU BE TAKING HIS MEDICINE?

This morning on CBS - Dr. Larry Kato (Spelling?) announced that studies confirmed women need half the dosage of the sleeping medicine Ambien than that men are prescribed. Women's blood levels were  about 45 percent higher than is safe for them to drive several hours after taking the medicine.

Dr Kato said this discovery has far reaching implications. It means men and women do not metabolize medicines in the same ways. Pharmaceutical companies will need to do studies on each of the genders to determine what patients need. It is not yet known if all drugs will require different amounts for men and for women, but this cannot be accurately determined until there is more research for each medicine.

Interestingly, in the 1990's some Doctors were making the point about different dosages needed for each sex, and raised questions about studies that included only male subjects, or male animals. Some studies were adjusted to include both male and female subjects, but even still the dosages were based on the average, rather than on each of the genders researched separately.

Dr. Kato said this means that the actual metabolization processes on even a cellular level is most likely,  vastly different, between males and females.

A side point to this is that when you are discarding medicines, they should not be flushed down the toilet. Ultimately these chemicals get into the water supply, and many of us get small quantities of drugs that are not healthy for us to ingest. I am not sure if pharmacies take drug discards for safe disposal.

© by Ruth Zachary.

EATING ON THE WILD SIDE

Nature's Bounty, Photograph                                        © by Ruth Zachary

 

  The above photograph depicts the apples from the trees in back of my home in the city. They were not sprayed, but having been raised as a country girl, I had no trouble making delicious applesauce from their sometimes fruitful harvest. 

A Book Review of  Eating On The Wild Side by Jo Robinson.

            More has been learned about the actual nutritional values of foods we eat since the year 2000 than in the previous 75 years during the 20^th Century. This, among other recent books should be important reading on anybody’s list.

            Ms. Robinson explains the history of human diet in an overview covering the previous 10,000 years. The diet of early ancestral hunters and gatherers included fruits, vegetables and proteins that provided the original low glycemic diet our species thrived upon. Mankind has created foods we currently eat, selecting for sweet, starchy and high fatty content, and by planting and cultivating favorite varieties in locales close to home.

            The natural diet of hunters and gatherers included a great many wild foods no longer eaten by urban populations. Most were from three to ten times better for human health than the modified species we eat today.

            No other species has created foods for consumption and other animals are limited by available varieties and habitat, to eat certain foods that encourage their survival (except for domestic animals we have also modified by our selection)

            No other species has created foods for consumption and other animals are limited by available varieties and habitat, to eat certain foods that encourage their survival (except for domestic animals we have also modified by our selection).

            Recent patterns of food production and distribution have decreased nutritional value even more than choices for limited food species in the human diet. Species that produce more volume or flavor are encouraged, without selection for high quality nutrition. Methods of early harvest and distribution over great distances decrease the nutritional value further, as compared to products grown close to home. Our agricultural grand parents at least harvested and ate many of their fruits and vegetables a day or so later. Today, U-pick foods offer the best nutrition. Some foods are surprisingly higher in nutrition than others. It requires being educated about varieties of fruits and vegetables to manage to get the best food values in terms of both nutrition and cost.

            Knowledge of best methods of preservation, storage and cooking is also important. The idea that raw is always better than cooked is sometimes false. Berries, for instance, offer increased anti-oxidants by cooking. Re-introducing edible wild species into our diet offers new opportunities. Returning to species of weed plants, such as comfrey, purslane, dandelion, and lambs quarters, generally neglected as food,  might well improve the overall human diet. Who knew that Quinoa is actually the seed of lambs quarters, a common weed at the edges of gardens? Herbs known only as occasional cures for health problems seem to be coming back, used as staples for health. It is possible that foods will increasingly be seen in the same way as our ancestors saw them.

            This book reviews the healthiest fruits and vegetables available to human consumption. It offers charts for comparison, methods of growing, harvesting and best preservation of each food, so that the very best nutritional value is achieved. Recipes are included.

            I am convinced that anyone who follows this avenue of nutrition could avoid most diseases, including cancer, and live to a healthy and active old age.

            This book is organized with an overview and in two basic parts, the first dealing with Vegetables, and part two with Fruits.  Reviewed  © by Ruth Zachary


         

                                                                      

WHY SO MANY HEALTH PROBLEMS?

            Because largely we are not eating the kind of foods natural for the human species to eat. As a species, we have changed our diet on a worldwide scale, over the 10,000 years since the beginning of agriculture. And in the last 150 years the changes to our diet have been introduced at an exponential rate.

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            Natural Selection in our case may not have been good for us because unlike any other species we have the ability to change what would be a natural diet for our species to eat, to one that is not. We selected in favor of high energy foods, more sweet, starchy, oily or fat, and for larger yields of crops without selecting for more healthy nutrition at the same time. This kind of market biased selection inadvertently has reduced the valuable phytonutrients, the beneficial antioxidant qualities plants once contained, and the medicinal ingredients once provided in our diet that could make us more resistant to biological pathogens in our environment.

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            In addition we have fed our domestic animals antibiotics, hormones and put them into feed lots, sometimes confined where they cannot exercise, and out of the sun. We have genetically modified corn, wheat and soybeans, in the past 70 years, and on top of this, these GMO foods are ingredients in many of the processed foods we buy in the stores. We feed these GMO products to chickens, pigs and cattle. We feed them artificial substances like oreo cookies,* surplus foods, animal proteins, and don’t understand why animals are unhealthy and that they are also not healthy for us to eat.

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            Interestingly corn, wheat, soy and dairy products are used as supplemental elements in hundreds of other processed foods, since they have been made more abundant by selecting for higher yields. Many of these same foods are genetically modified.

Read the labels of your favorite salad dressing. It is hard to find even one without one or more of the above four foods in it. (Yum.) Without GMO Free on the label you don’t know what is in your food, disguised so that it tastes delicious.

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            There are strong indications that genetic modifications are not processed well by the human intestine, which weakens or causes havoc in the process of digestion. It is said that 90% of our immune system occurs in the intestines. Immune systems for many people have gone awry, and indirectly cause auto-immune diseases, which take years to identify. To make matters worse doctors often treat symptoms rather than trying to rebuild the health of the immune system by identifying the causes. Check it out on the internet. There are hundreds of autoimmune conditions or diseases, some of them deadly.

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            There are also all these many pathogens and toxic chemicals in our environment, that we are exposed to each day, and which get into our diet as well.

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            But in spite of this, I am very hopeful about our future, because I have read several books in the past few weeks that offer cutting edge research, both about health, and about the beneficial nutrients in our diets. I believe this will enable people to inform themselves and to have an impact upon the market place. With this kind of information we can control what we eat, and can improve the health over the coming years.

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(*As a reporter,  In 2001 I visited a model farm that fed dairy cattle ground up oreo cookies –a certain percentage of their diet, approved by the FDA.)

© by Ruth Zachary