Autoimmune Diseases

The major cause of chronic diseases



Dr. Dimitris Tsoukalas, MD
 
Autoimmune diseases are chronic inflammatory diseases that occur when the body attacks and destroys its cells and organs.
 
It is the leading cause of chronic diseases today. They comprise a group of more that 150 diseaseis that affect more people than heart disease and cancer combined(1)

Diseases such as:
  • Hashimoto's thyroiditis
     
  • Psoriasis
     
  • Rheumatoid arthritis
     
  • Ulcerative colitis
     
  • Crohn's disease
     
  • Lupus erythematosus
     
  • Atopic dermatitis
     
  • Myasthenia
     
  • Type I diabetes
     
  • Sjogren's Syndrome
     
  • Scleroderma
     
  • Alopecia areata
     
  • Thrombocytopenia
belong to the group of autoimmune diseases.
 
These are diseases that have hitherto required life-long medication. Until recently, treatments addressed only the symptoms of the diseases and aimed at reducing inflammation and suppressing the immune system from attacking self.
 
The symptomatic approach, however, is incomplete unless the causes of the disease are identified and addressed. As US physician Mark Hyman points out, it's like taking aspirin while sitting on a nail. The real cure would not be to give more aspirin but to remove the nail.
 
As doctors, we are trained to deal mainly with symptoms. It is a model that has given and still gives excellent results in acute and emergency health problems. Still, it does not work well in diseases lasting more than three months. Diseases and health problems that last more than three months are defined as chronic diseases and respond to a different approach.
 
Highly Advanced Analysis Accurately Identify the Causes of Autoimmune Diseases and lead to Causal Treatment
 
Modern diagnostic developments in medicine now allow for a causal treatment of chronic and autoimmune diseases(2).
 
Detection of the causes by specific analysis makes it possible to provide more effective, safer, and personalized treatments that address the underlying causes of the disease(3).
 
The Causes
Since the early days of medicine, the human body is viewed as a collection of separate and independent components. Thus, physicians typically treated disease by trying to identify the single abnormality related to a single cause. 
 
This model has now reached its limit and cannot offer solutions to the chronic health problems that are now the leading cause of morbidity today.
 
Modern medicine does not address the human body anymore as distinct organs that manifest symptoms. It views it as a single biological system that interacts with its environment(4).
 
The human body is a biological system that operates under very specific conditions. It consists of cells that aggregate to form organs and, finally, a human body. The operating condition of our cells reflects our general health state.
 
Factors such as the environment, nutrition, oxygen concentration, water, and micro-nutrients like vitamins, amino acids, proteins, and enzymes, the intake of fats and carbohydrates, are necessary in exact proportions for the healthy functioning of the cells, the building blocks of the body.
 
 
According to the World Health Organization, 80% of chronic diseases are due to lifestyle-related factors. Any effective therapeutic action must, therefore, take into account these factors(5).
 
Modern lifestyle is steadily moving away from the physiological (normal), and this is the primary cause of chronic and autoimmune diseases. Autoimmune conditions are the diseases of the modern era. They have increased by up to 400% over the last 50 years, and they are mainly afflicting the wealthiest countries(6). The higher the standard of living, the higher the incidence of autoimmune diseases.
 
Our Food has Changed 
Can today's food provide all the nutrients a healthy body needs to function correctly?
 
The answer is no. And that's because the food chain has been altered at its foundation.

Within just fifty years, the change that our diet has undergone is immense. The nutritional value of food has fallen sharply.
 
Let's take a vegetable such as spinach. In the past, one hundred spinaches could be grown in a plot of land. Today a thousand are produced in the same plot. The nutrients in the soil must now be shared between a thousand spinaches. 
 
The use of fertilizers in crops is, therefore, unavoidable in enriching the soil with the necessary elements. But fertilizers do not replenish all 92 minerals that should be present in the soil.
 
Conventional crops use fertilizers that enrich the soil with three essential minerals (nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus). Even the best organic crops reach up to sixteen minerals at best.




To get the nutrients provided by a portion of spinach fifty years ago, today, it is necessary to consume ten. The same is true of other foods, whether of vegetable or animal origin.
 
Therefore, the organism and its cells do not receive the elements necessary to function normally, and significant deficiencies arise.

Furthermore, toxic compounds like heavy metals, industrial chemicals, medicines, and other strange to life (xenobiotics) compounds burden the body and hinder normal function. The body diverges from its optimum operating state and inevitably develops disease.

Our Cells have Changed
The image of our cells is constantly distancing itself from its initial healthy condition.

Components that should be included are now absent and others, foreign to life, that should not be present, are.

Accumulated changes in the biochemical composition of the cells makes them unrecognizable by the body itself. Additionally, the immune system that is over-stimulated for the same reasons no longer recognizes its own cells as self and attacks them as if they were foreign. 

From the above, we can easily understand any treatment that solely suppresses the immune system to alleviate symptoms has limited effects in restoring health and reversing an autoimmune condition.  

Any causal treatment should aim at restoring the original optimum biochemical balance of the organism that was present before the appearance of the disease.

Metabolomic Analysis® & Autoimmune Diseases
The first step in a causal treatment is to detect the factors that lead to the disease.
Metabolomic Analysis® is a state-of-the-art medical tool. It provides accurate data on the treatment and prevention of autoimmune diseases such as lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, Hashimoto's disease, Crohn's disease, and other autoimmune diseases.

 

Detects factors related to:
  • deficiencies in minerals, amino acids, vitamins, and omega-3 fatty acids
     
  • the ability of the body to produce energy (mitochondrial function)
     
  • the functioning of the nervous system
     
  • the toxic burden on the body
     
  • the antioxidant capacity of the body
     
  • the microbiome
     
  • the metabolism of proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids, and
additional indicators of the organism's deviation from optimum function.
In addition, it provides insight into stressors that underlie the condition and are often overlooked when managing chronic diseases. Severe mood swings almost always accompany autoimmune diseases and worsen the overall picture.

The fundamental axiom of our approach is that the human body does not tend to develop disease. Instead, it is genetically programmed to be healthy. Thus the gradual rehabilitation of the above factors leads to a steady improvement in the functioning of the body.


Through our clinical experience with thousands of cases of autoimmune and chronic health problems, we have seen that improving health is possible by using the tools of precision medicine.

This is an approach that requires the active involvement of patients in their treatment. It's not based on the passive taking of a pill. It may not suit everyone but it sure works.


Take the first step today. 


 



References
  1. American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, statistics, AARDA. Accessed on Nov. 2018 
  2. World Economic Forum global report. 10 Emerging technologies 2018
  3. U.S. National Library of medicine. What is the Precision Medicine Initiative?
  4. Clinical Metabolomics: The New Metabolic Window for Inborn Errors of Metabolism Investigations in the Post-Genomic Era. Abdellah Tebani, et al. Int J Mol Sci. 2016 Jul.
  5. World aging population, chronic diseases and impact of modifiable-metabolic risk factors Dr. Dimitris Tsoukalas, MD (Greece). European Institute of Nutritional Medicine, E.I.Nu.M. 20th International Congress of Rural Medicine 2018. Tokyo - Japan.
  6. Metabolic pressure and the breach of immunological self-tolerance. De Rosa V, La Cava A, Matarese G. Nature Immunol. 2017 Oct. 
  7. The Akt pathway in oncology therapy and beyond (Review). Nitulescu GM, Van De Venter M, Nitulescu G, Ungurianu A, Juzenas P, Peng Q, Olaru OT, Grădinaru D, Tsatsakis A, Tsoukalas D, Spandidos DA, Margina D. Int J Oncol. 2018 Oct 16. doi: 10.3892/ijo.2018.4597.
  8. Identification of gene expression signatures in autoimmune disease without the influence of familial resemblance. Zheng Liu Kevin Maas Thomas M. Aune Human Molecular Genetics 2006.
  9. Autoimmune disease: why and where it occurs. Philippa Marrack, John Kappler & Brian L. Kotzin Nature Medicine volume 7, pages 899–905 (2001)
  10. Role of “Western Diet” in Inflammatory Autoimmune Diseases Arndt Manzel et. al. Curr Allergy Asthma Rep. 2014 Jan; 14(1): 404.
  11. Environment and Disease Risks Stephen M. Rappaport and Martyn T. Smith. SCIENCE, EPIDEMIOLOGY 22 OCTOBER 2010 VOL 330.
  12. Current Concepts in Autoimmunity and Chronic Inflammation. Andreas Radbruch, ‎Peter E. Lipsky - 2006 - ‎Medical.
  13. Hygiene Hypothesis and Autoimmune Diseases Clinical Reviews in Allergy & Immunology Graham A. W. Rook 2012.
  14. Metabolic pressure and the breach of immunological self-tolerance Veronica De Rosa et al. Nature Immunology (2017).
  15. Application of metabolomics in autoimmune diseases: Insight into biomarkers and pathology. J. Kang et al. / Journal of Neuroimmunology 279 (2015) 25–32
  16. Autoantigens in systemic autoimmunity: critical partner in pathogenesis A. Rosen and L. Casciola-Rosen J Intern Med. 2009 Jun; 265(6): 625–631.
  17. Metabolomic biomarkers: their role in the critical path Laura K. Schnackenberg, Richard D. Beger.US. Food and Drug Administration. Feb 2009.
  18. Dietary factors in rheumatic autoimmune diseases: a recipe for therapy? Shani Dahan, Yahel Segal1 and Yehuda Shoenfeld. NATURE REVIEWS | RHEUMATOLOGY. 13 Apr 2017.
  19. Eric F. Morand New evidence strengthens the hypothesis that exposure to trauma and the associated physiological responses contribute to the development of autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus. NATURE REVIEWS | RHEUMATOLOGY. Jan. 2018
 
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