Toxins Bring on Auto-Immunity Diseases?

I read this article and felt I needed to forward it.  It makes so much sense.  I can go on, but I figure I’ll let you read it and see what you think.

by Dr. Mark Sircus AC., OMD, DM (P)

The prevailing medical view of autoimmune diseases is that the immune system attacks healthy cells and organs for no good reason. This attack results in local or generalized inflammations that cause the most damage. Therefore, the usual medical treatment aims to suppress inflammations and the immune system. Commonly, corticosteroids are prescribed in addition to other anti-inflammatory drugs, none of which are beneficial or get to the root of the problem.

The key phrase above is for no good reason. There is always a good reason, and the basic one is when supposedly healthy cells are no longer recognized as healthy cells because they are altered, polluted, or contaminated by one or more of thousands of toxins flooding our biosphere (worldwide sum of all ecosystems) and, thus, our bodies.

The World Health Organization has said millions die each year from air pollution, but they do not talk much about what that pollution does short of killing people. Research suggests increases in autoimmune diseases are related to remarkable changes in our environment and lifestyles, including alterations in diet and upsurges in obesity, sleep deprivation, stress, air pollution, exposure to toxic chemicals, and infections.

Our immune systems are turning against us in a growing tide of internal rebellion. Instead of attacking cancerous cells, viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens, our immune systems are increasingly attacking our bodies, which are no longer healthy. It is challenging to stay healthy when our air, water, and food are contaminated and highly processed. And doctors and pharmaceutical companies do not make it easier.

Though modern medicine is scratching its head about the why of autoimmune diseases, it is easy to understand that poisoned cells are not recognized as us anymore, as our cells. They have been altered by heavy metals, forever chemicals, plastics, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and radiation.

More than a hundred different types of autoimmune diseases—from Type 1 diabetes to psoriasis—afflict millions of people. Around 50 million Americans suffer an autoimmune condition, and 1 in 5 will be afflicted at some point, according to the Autoimmune Association.

Organ damage, pain, and years—sometimes decades—of misdiagnosis haunt the growing number of the afflicted because we are not focused on the fundamental causes. Research published in Arthritis & Rheumatology in 2022 found antinuclear antibodies, the most common biomarker of autoimmunity, have increased nearly 50 percent in the United States in less than 30 years, and it will continue to accelerate as we continue to pollute the biosphere.

“Many of these children might not ever achieve their full potential because battling chronic illness will alter their lives,” wrote one of the researchers, leading autoimmunity scientist Frederick Miller, in a 2020 Scientific American article co-authored by Olivia Casey, a senior director at the Autoimmune Association.

What happens when your body tries to create all its cells and various proteins and molecules out of denatured materials, like genetically modified foods, synthesized molecules, industrial processed ingredients, and so on? There is no chance these cells will look normal to the immune system, which will try to get rid of them.

Most therapies for these conditions work by suppressing the immune system, explains the Autoimmune Association. The problem with these treatments is they require a trade-off that leaves people more vulnerable to various infections. Long-term use of immunosuppressant drugs may also lead to an increased risk of cancer, a problem of particular concern for transplant recipients who take these drugs to prevent organ rejection.

It seems likely that autoimmunity is like most other chronic conditions afflicting people today: a consequence of civilization that has lost its inherent harmony with this world and our basic biology.

Baking Soda to the Rescue

Most types of air, water, and food pollutants are accumulative. They continue to build up and concentrate on the environment and our tissues. We can delay and push back against the inevitable with the most straightforward substances like sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and edible clay, which, when used regularly, help remove foreign substances from the body.

The Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University says, “A daily dose of baking soda may help reduce the destructive inflammation of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.” Scientists report that they have some of the first evidence of how the cheap, over-the-counter antacid can encourage our spleen to promote instead an anti-inflammatory environment that could be therapeutic in the face of inflammatory disease. This was reported in the Journal of Immunology.

These scientists have shown that when rats or healthy people drink a solution of baking soda or sodium bicarbonate, it becomes a trigger for the stomach to make more acid to digest the next meal and for little-studied mesothelial cells sitting on the spleen to tell the fist-sized organ that there’s no need to mount a protective immune response.

Dr. Paul O’Connor, renal physiologist in the MCG Department of Physiology at Augusta University, says drinking baking soda tells the spleen to go easy on the immune response. Drinking water with baking soda for two weeks shifted the population of immune cells called macrophages, from primarily those that promote inflammation, called M1, to those that reduce it, called M2.

One of the many functions of the kidneys is balancing important compounds like acid, potassium, and sodium. With kidney disease, there is impaired kidney function, and one of the resulting problems can be that the blood becomes too acidic, O’Connor says. “It sets the whole system up to fail,” O’Connor says. But what is often the first organ to fail? The pancreas is the most vulnerable.

The average American diet, which is high in junk foods and low in vegetables, makes your body overly acidic. Balanced body pH is essential for good health. We must maintain an optimal pH for proper cellular function. If you are too acidic, you are more prone to disease and inflammation. Being overly acidic makes you more prone to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, chronic pain, inflammation, autoimmune diseases such as Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism, and other chronic diseases and problems.

Magnesium is a great help because it is needed in the detoxification process. Same with iodine, selenium, and sulfur. Most oxygen therapies help, as oxygen is also required in detoxification.

(Note: There are many videos and instructions on the internet on how to take baking soda).

The Connection Between Autoimmune Disease and Inflammation

When exposed to environmental toxins, our immune system is activated to initiate an inflammatory response, sending out pro-inflammatory cells (e.g., natural killer cells) and proteins (e.g., cytokines and chemokines) to package up and remove these toxins from our body as best as possible.

The problem occurs when the immune system doesn’t receive the signal that the threat has been neutralized so that it can turn itself off. With toxins, the threats are constant. They do not go away. So, instead of stopping the recruitment of pro-inflammatory cells and proteins, the immune system continues to fire the “Go” signal, and the inflammatory response continues, leading to more and more inflammation. As a result, the body itself becomes subject to collateral damage, manifesting into chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Antinuclear Antibodies

Antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) attack our cells, and researchers found that teenagers experienced a nearly 300 percent increase in ANAs between 1988 and 2012. The young are more vulnerable to the rising tide of pollution of all types, and they suffer from it on all levels, including mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, so no wonder they suffer from depression and poor sleep.

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