Donna’s Blog

The more I learn about diet and the immune system –and hear from thousands of patients — the more I’m convinced that food really is medicine. More and more studies are linking a healthy diet to a better chance of doing well with autoimmune disease. Recent studies show that when immigrants from South Asian countries move to Western countries and begin to eat processed food diets, they show an increase of autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis. Likewise, research has shown that when people with diseases like Crohn’s and rheumatoid arthritis switch to what experts call an anti-inflammatory diet — largely a diet based on whole, natural foods — their symptoms improve. And yet more research shows that boys and girls on a similar whole foods diet were at a lower risk for developing Crohn’s disease, while those on a highly processed Western diet were at a higher risk.

Such an Anti-Autoimmune Diet focuses on lamb, chicken and turkey; fish with low mercury content such as flounder or tilapia; hormone-free eggs; vegetables; fresh fruits; and gluten free grains.  What have your experiences been with diet and recovery?  I’d love to hear.

Hi all. Welcome to my website readers and to my Amazon readers, who are now able to access my blog on Amazon.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Since The Autoimmune Epidemic came out I’ve heard from key scientists from around the country who wanted to make me aware of additional groundbreaking studies on the effects of environmental chemicals and pollutants on the immune system (in addition to the dozens I discuss in my book).

As with global warming, the evidence continues to steadily, quietly mount that as we toxify our environment we are toxifying ourselves. As we leave a carbon imprint on the world around us we leave an indelible chemical imprint within. Here are some recent findings on what top scientists are uncovering about the toll that chemical imprint is taking on our human health:

John Peterson Myers, Ph.D., chief scientist at Environmental Health Sciences, and co-author of the classic book Our Stolen Future , has a fascinating — and disturbing — paper on low dose exposures and their effect on the human immune system:

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/sciencebackground/2007/2007-0415nmdrc.html

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Meanwhile, a recent international meeting of the Japanese Society of Allerology also focused on low level exposures to chemicals heightening immune system sensitivity and responses. Several papers — both of which describe heightened immune system reactivity far beneath levels of contaminants currently considered toxic — attracted a lot of attention:

http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/oncompounds/phthalates/2006/2006-1010takanoetal.html

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/newscience/2007/2007-0401naritaetal.html

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Dr. Joachim Mutter, MD, wrote to tell me about studies on mercury triggering autoimmune disease and writes:

“(a) In animal studies, mercury was found to trigger, accelerate, and exacerbate autoimmune diseases such as lupus-like syndromes (Via 2003)
(b) Higher incidence of diabetes among mercury poisoned individuals (Uchino 1995)
(c) Autoimmune development of Multiple Sclerosis can be provoked by mercury and other metals (Stejskal 1999b)

Constant low-dose mercury exposure, as is typical with amalgam bearers, has been considered as a cause for certain autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, or systemic lupus erythematosis (SLE), by many authors (Bartova et al., 2003; Berlin, 2003; Hultmann et al., 1994, 1998; Pollard et al., 2001; Prochazkova et al., 2004; Stejskal and Stejskal, 1999; Stejskal et al., 1999; Sterzl et al., 1999; Via et al., 2003; Sterzl et al., 2006).”

…and he says,

“These effects can occur with exposure below acceptable safety limits (Kazantzis, 2002)”

Here’s a trick on how to quickly read the above studies for yourself — and do your own research. You can look at these studies by going to Pubmed — via the U.S. National Library of Medicine at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ – and input the author + date + mercury in the following format (for example):

Bartova[Author] AND 2003[Publication Date] + Mercury

The study will appear if it’s still in the databanks (older studies may not be). This way, you can do a bit of your own research and read the original abstracts of many of these papers on mercury and the immune system and see what you think.
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Meanwhile, Dr. Arlene Blum, MD, is working on helping the public to better understand the health consequences of flame retardants. You can learn more at:

http://greensciencepolicy.org

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And one upcoming study, not yet published by a group of researchers from around the country, shows what may turn out to be the most startling news of all. While current tests to determine levels of chemicals and pollutants are done by analyzing blood, urine and hair, scientists are finding that the levels of toxins are significantly higher when they test for these toxins in our fat.

This isn’t really surprising since it’s in our fat that we store toxins. What is surprising is the tests these scientists have done which show that levels of PCBs and chlorinated pesticides found in our fat are, on average, one hundred times higher than what shows up in our bloodstreams and urine.

Blood chilling indeed.

Please also check out my website at donnajacksonnakazawa.com for more information about the factors that are combining in our 21st Century life and causing our immune systems to be overtaxed.

Let me know what you think of the gathering evidence that we’re outpacing our evolutionary ability to keep adapting to so many chemicals and pollutants in our world.

If you’re reading this blog on Amazon.com, welcome! I hope you enjoy reading my postings about the latest news from The Autoimmune Epidemic — which include some of the most recent findings on the causes and cures for this growing health crisis. Take a moment and let me hear from you!

I’ve just been reading a fascinating new book called The MS Recovery Diet by Ann Sawyer and Judith Bachrach. In their book, Ann and Judith talk about a specific diet that has helped many patients with MS to recover. To find out more about the diet and how it works, I asked Ann to answer a few questions for us.Q. What is the MS Diet?
A. The main principle of the diet is that food (also illness, stress, fatigue) activates the immune cells that start the cascade of events that lead to MS symptoms. Food doesn’t cause the disease as such, but fuels the disease process after it manifests. This can be stopped by not eating those foods which overactivate the immune system and, just as important, by eating foods that help the body repair, restore and recover.

The first step is to stop eating the trigger foods that activate the disease process. Reduce intake of saturated fats, most importantly animal and dairy fats. Keep to less than 15 grams per day- and sugar in great quantities. There are five food groups to which people with MS are found to be most often sensitive. These are gluten containing grains and wheat, dairy, eggs, legumes and yeast. Each person has a unique food sensitivity profile, which can include foods not among the usual suspects. Digestive tract health is crucial so use caution or cease to use: tobacco, caffeine, NSAIDS (aspirin, Tylenol), antibiotics, antacids and alcohol as they can be damaging to the digestive system.

It is very important to be well nourished with nutrient dense foods. The following will help to heal the digestive system (leaky gut) and speed recovery: lean protein, vegetables/fruits, foods rich in antioxidants, raw foods for enzyme support and probiotics. Drink plenty of water; get sunshine (vitamin D) and exercise. As time goes on you can reclaim movement, sensations, your cognitive abilities, and full energy.

Q. What would a typical day’s food choices look like for breakfast, lunch and dinner?
A. Dinner can be a chicken or fish, steamed vegetables, a salad and potatoes. Lunch might be a salad with some protein and roasted root vegetables such as turnips, parsnips or rutabaga, or other fillers (sweet potato, taro root or celery root). Breakfast reflects the greatest change from the usual diet. Breakfast can be soup, leftovers from dinner, baked sweet potato, along with some protein like turkey bacon.

Q. How can the diet be implemented simply?
A. The fastest and most effective way, for the first several months, is to stop eating the five usual suspects as well as limit saturated fat and sugars as described above.

The initial healing will have its ups and downs. The return of your ability to do more will happen step by step at first and setbacks happen easily due to stress and fatigue, or if you come down with a virus. Don’t be discouraged. Keep following the diet. When subtle changes in symptoms can be discerned and you feel better, you can begin testing foods to see if they are triggers for you. As you continue to progress, you will refine and individualize the diet for your healing. Begin to exercise more as your healing becomes more solid and permanent.

For the best healing make sure you eat enough nutrient dense foods with an emphasis on protein and vegetables. Keep stress to a minimum. Remember that sleep and rest are treatments. When you have a return of energy or abilities, don’t overdo it. You still need to use your body’s energy to continue to heal.

Q. For whom will it work?
A. A good research study has never been funded to explore all the aspects of this dietary treatment, so we don’t know for sure. However the recovery diet seems to work for everyone who really follows and works with it. How quickly improvements are seen is highly variable. The road is bumpy, but if you stick with it and listen to your body, you will heal and recover. It takes time, persistence, patience and determination.

When I set out to write THE AUTOIMMUNE EPIDEMIC I had — as many of you know — deep personal reasons for doing so. Like the hundreds of you who have written to me since THE AUTOIMMUNE EPIDEMIC came out, I suffer from a range of autoimmune diseases, including Guillain Barre Syndrome (GBS), small fiber sensory neuropathy, thyroiditis and others.

In 2005, when I found myself paralyzed for a second time from GBS — unable to move much more than my head, unable to reach out and hold my young son or daughter, I had many long months to think. I was struck by the fact that I was lying just a few floors away from where my own father had died in 1972 — 33 years earlier — from what would certainly now be diagnosed as autoimmune disease. My dad checked into the hospital to have part of his intestines removed — for an inflammatory bowel disorder. He was also on heavy doses of steroids for what was very likely rheumatoid arthritis (though we wouldn’t have known to call it that at the time). A few hours after his surgery, his surgeons realized that the steroids were causing the surgical sutures to dissolve. There was nothing to be done. He never came home.

There one day, playing checkers and taking us out for a sail, then ripped away from us, a young father of four — at the age of 42.

Thirty-three years later there I was — paralyzed by a neurological autoimmune disease — with my own two children at home, and told I might never walk again. Every fiber of my being wanted to get up and walk out the door of that hospital, raise my young son and daughter the way any other mother might, love them, tie their shoes, smooth back their hair, dry their tears, play checkers and chess, toss the football, go for a jog beside my kids on their bikes, or even just stand at the sidelines of a lacrosse game and cheer – all the things my dad just didn’t get a chance to do for very long with me.

I’m walking well now, after a long haul. Like many of you, I have good days and bed days; a kind of mercurial up and down that most autoimmune disease patients know all too well. And even on the best of days it’s a little like having the flu by seven p.m. I know, from the hundreds and hundreds of letters and emails that you’ve sent me, that you know how that feels, too. Like all of you, I am continually searching out — and implementing — ways to become as healthy as I possibly can.

And that’s what THE AUTOIMMUNE EPIDEMIC has really been about: helping you, the patients, to understand both what goes into your “barrel” to play a role in triggering autoimmune disease – and what you can take out of that barrel to help ameliorate disease and move toward your optimum level of health and well-being.

There are so many of us out there searching for these answers. Rates of autoimmune diseases have tripled in the last four decades and 1 in 9 women (and 1 in 12 Americans) can now expect to have an autoimmune disease. Indeed, a woman today is 8 times more likely to have an autoimmune disease than breast cancer.

In listening to your “Letters from the Autoimmune Epidemic” you seem to be particularly interested in sharing your ideas and insights about what works and what doesn’t in terms of helping you move toward wellness.

It is my deepest hope that this site will become a place where we can all support, educate and help each other.

I urge each of you to post your story — your “Letters From the Autoimmune Epidemic” — below.

What has given you hope? What helps you on the road to health and what do you need to avoid? We can all learn from your observations.

The registration process allows you to maintain as much privacy as you need.

Working together, perhaps we can make sure that we all get to be the active, vibrant parents and spouses and friends — or kids-growing-up-to-have-normal-lives — that we long to be. Isn’t it time we raised our voices in unison to make change happen? Let’s raise our collective voices — now.

My father would have loved to have had that chance. Let’s not waste it.

Even though the number of those who suffer from autoimmune diseases has more than tripled in the three decades since my father died, this still remains a silent epidemic. Consider these facts:                 1) Ninety percent of people still say they can’t name a single autoimmune disease.

2) Autoimmune disease research still gets one-tenth the funding of cancer (despite the fact that autoimmunity afflicts close to three times the number of people).

3) Autoimmune disease is still not a reportable disease (doctors don’t have to report data to any national registry when a patient is diagnosed with autoimmune disease — the way they must when a patient is diagnosed with cancer) so we still don’t really know how many people really have these diseases. Indeed, our ballpark number of 24 million may be much lower than the reality.

For decades, not much happened in terms of our progress in diagnosing and treating these diseases, either. But we’re now entering a new era of understanding as to how these diseases attack the body and how to treat them – not just with emerging drugs but with a whole new range of approaches that are often driven by patients searching for a road to wellness.

We can share that knowledge today as never before and help change the course of these diseases.
What do you think needs to happen — on a national level?

There is almost universal agreement among leading experts at top medical institutions –Johns Hopkins, Harvard Medical School, the National Institutes of Health, Scripps and others –that our day-to-day exposure to environmental toxins — through the air we breathe and the chemicals we absorb through our skin — is a major trigger of autoimmune disease.

However, because most toxins are found in trace amounts, it has been difficult to gauge what effect they might be having on our health. Yet both lab animal and occupational studies of human beings provide us with disturbing insights into how even low exposures to chemicals can cause our immune systems to go haywire. For example, mice exposed to common pesticides – at levels four-fold lower than the level set as acceptable for humans by the EPA – are more susceptible to getting lupus than control mice.  Mice that absorb low doses of trichloroethylene (TCE) – a chemical used in industrial degreasers, and that can be found in your dry-cleaning, household paint thinners, paint strippers, glues and adhesives – at levels deemed safe by the EPA, and equal to what a factory worker today might encounter, quickly develop autoimmune hepatitis.  And low doses of PFOA, a breakdown chemical of Teflon – which can be found in nonstick cookware, car parts, flooring, computer chips, phone cables, Stainmaster carpet guard, upholstery, new clothing (particularly kids’ clothing), grease-resistant French fry boxes, the disposable cup of soup that you warm up in the microwave, and disposable coffee cups like the ones you get at your local coffee shop) — can be found in 96 percent of humans tested for it.  In recent studies, immunotoxicologists have been unable to find a dose that didn’t alter the function of immune cells at each major step that the immune system takes in trying to protect us against foreign invaders.

Even tiny doses of BPA, a plastics building block used in everything from safety helmets, dental sealants, baby bottles, and eyeglass lenses to every-day processed food packaging, has been shown to change basic cellular function at levels currently present in blood samples taken from people as well as animals.

Proving an absolute link between chemicals and autoimmune disorders in humans is hardly easy.  Researchers can expose rodents to low doses of chemicals and look for signs of autoimmune disease roughly six weeks to three months later.  But in humans, a comparable time span between exposure and disease might be forty years.  Indeed, lab work in longitudinal studies of people shows us that autoimmune diseases are often long, slow-brewing conditions that can quietly smolder in the body for a decade or more before actual symptoms of disease appear. Moreover, it may be that a combination of exposures rather than any acute single dose at a single time increases one’s risk of autoimmunity, conditions that are hard to replicate in animal studies.

I suspect that on some level we don’t want to face what all this research is telling us. We don’t want proof, because even if we agree that the soup of chemicals we’re all carrying around within us is harmful, what do we do about it?  Talking about the autoimmune epidemic is a bit like talking about global warming before the movie An Inconvenient Truth was released. For the longest time, we couldn’t see, or didn’t want to see, that the smallest rise in temperature would melt the polar ice caps.  Likewise, we don’t want to know that the ways we’re polluting our environment are also harming our bodies and causing our immune cells to go haywire.  In the international medical world, the scientists who study autoimmune disease now call this epidemic “the global warming of women’s health.”  Yet the reality that the environment plays a major role in triggering these diseases hasn’t yet trickled down to the rest of the population.

Is there anything we can do as individuals and as a nation to halt this epidemic – or at least lower the stakes for future generations?  One step I’d propose is to take a page from European environmental policy, which uses the precautionary principle — an approach to public health that underscores preventing harm to human health before it happens.  In June 2007, the European Union implemented legislation known as REACH (the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical Substances).  REACH requires chemical and industrial companies to develop safety data on 30,000 chemicals over the next decade, and places responsibility on the chemical industry to demonstrate the safety of their products.  By contrast, in the U.S., chemical companies are not required to do any testing to ensure chemicals do not harm the immune system.  Chemicals are presumed innocent – unless scientists can prove otherwise, which can take decades and can only be done if there is a source for funding.

It would also be helpful to raise more public awareness about the problem by giving the environmental triggers of autoimmune disease a name.  Despite all this mounting evidence, there still exists no word comparable to “carcinogens” in our cultural lexicon to describe the notion that environmental chemicals might be linked to autoimmunity. The term “autogen,” I believe, would prove useful to refer to the toxins, viruses, and every day chemicals we know can play a role in triggering autoimmune disease.

The National Institutes of Health recently stated that investigations of exposures to chemicals as triggers for autoimmune disease are now of “considerable research interest.”  That may be true, but they have yet to show researchers the money.  With 24 million Americans  – and one in nine women – suffering from autoimmunity, the NIH allocates only $591 million dollars for autoimmune disease research each year.  Contrast that with the $5 billion annual budget for cancer, which afflicts 9 million Americans.  The NIH budget for cardiovascular disease – which affects 22 million Americans – is four times that of autoimmune diseases.  We have waited too long for Congress to allocate funding to find out what toxic exposures, or combination of exposures, can cause our immune systems to turn against us.  Congress needs to do better.

Some people believe that the sole cause of rising rates of immune-mediated disorders is due to what is called “the hygiene hypothesis.”  The hygiene hypothesis holds that the root cause of rising rates of immune related diseases stems not from the fact that we are living in too dirty a world, but, rather, from the fact that we are living too clean.  In other words, our lack of exposure to certain viruses and the swill of bacteria that most of our ancestors were exposed to living without vaccines or modern hygiene means children’s immune systems are no longer forced to build up the necessary immune defenses they need.  In a world of well-vacuumed homes, scrubbed bathrooms and more time spent in minivans than mucking about through the woods and farmland, coupled with massive vaccination programs that prevent full-fledged infection from many childhood diseases, our immune systems are, in a sense, overprotected.  They have so little to react to that they may be overreacting to anything – kind of like a bored teenager who is likely to get in more trouble when they don’t have enough to do.

However, immunotoxicologists at our research institutions agree almost universally that the hygiene hypothesis is hardly enough to fully explain today’s autoimmune epidemic.  At the same time that we are living with fewer exposures to natural pathogens, we are coming into contact with many times more artificial invaders in our day-to-day lives.  So that at the same time our immune systems may be confronting less natural dirt and muck and deadly outbreaks of disease, we’re encountering an endless slew of artificial toxins that confuse and overtax the immune system.  Interestingly, immigrants from other countries who are exposed to numerous infections and have few vaccines as young children develop allergies and autoimmune disease at rates similar to those of Americans soon after they immigrate to this country.

Today, 80,000 chemicals are registered for use in the U.S. and the EPA approves 1,700 more a year – an average of five a day – without any testing as to whether or not they pose a challenge to the immune system.  This may well prove to be our next environmental disaster in the making – only this time the frightening changes taking place degree by steady degree are within the invisible, interior landscape of our bodies and not the global climate.  As one Johns Hopkins’ researcher put it, we’ve outpaced our evolutionary ability to keep up with the number of toxins we come into contact with everyday.  It takes the human body thousands of years to adapt to new environmental stresses – yet in less than a hundred years we’ve dumped so many toxic substances into our environment that our immune system is being asked to differentiate between our own body and unrecognizable foreign invaders non-stop.  Which makes our body so much more likely to make mistakes and turn on itself.

Today’s children are the high stakes pawns in this game: pound for pound they eat more food, drink more water, and breathe more air than we adults do, and their immune systems are still developing and vulnerable.   It’s as if we are all unwitting participants in an uncontrolled human health experiment as we document how the rising levels of toxins and pollutants in our blood are resulting in climbing rates of autoimmune disease.

There is mounting evidence from occupational studies of the link between environmental toxins and autoimmune disease. In 2007, scientists from the National Institutes of Health announced a new report on exposures to chemicals and death from autoimmune disease.  After studying 300,000 death certificates in 26 states over a 14-year period, researchers found that people who worked with pesticides, textiles, hand painting, solvents (such as TCE), benzene, asbestos, and other compounds were significantly more likely to die from an autoimmune disease than people who were not exposed.  Other recent studies likewise show links between working with pesticides, TCE solvents, silica, asbestos, PCBs and vinyl chloride and a greater likelihood of developing autoimmune disease.

Ironically, during the decades from 1940 to 1980 — when the medical community believed that autoimmune disease was impossible – the United States was simultaneously engaged in the greatest industrial growth spurt of all time. All across America, production plants were starting to spring up in town after town, as corporations ramped up production of thousands of novel products manufactured through efficient new chemical processes. New pesticides were being introduced to boost crop yields, prolong the shelf life of produce, keep lice, fleas, roaches, and termites out of the home, and zap dandelions from the lawn. Ingenious new chemicals were being used to help manufacture everything we Americans wanted to make our lives easier, simpler and more luxurious – from plastics to hair shampoo, detergents, foam cushions, carpeting, cosmetics, paint strippers, dry cleaning fluids, household cleansers and bleaches, and bigger, grander cars. Almost overnight, Americans began to find themselves inundated with and clamoring for the suburban home products, packaged goods, and manufactured foods churned out by mega-industry. Fleets of trucks transported these newly manufactured goods from coast to coast, and the ChemLawn truck began to circle the cul-de-sacs in neighborhood after neighborhood.
But this coincidence in timing – between a medical community not yet educated about a mysterious, growing set of diseases with an unknown set of triggers and a society’s swell in production of everything from SUVs to Teflon pans to furniture and mattresses that have been stuffed with flame-retardant foam – would turn out to be an ominous one.