Your Diet & Autoimmune Disease

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It’s hard to believe, but autoimmune diseases (ADs) are an even bigger problem than cancer in the USA, with over 50 million cases of ADs compared to nine million cases of cancer. Typically, an AD is a condition where the immune system attacks the healthy cells of the body, and though it’s not fully known what causes this, a healthy lifestyle with good food can very often reverse it. There are over 80 different ADs, including the more commonly known ones such as Hashimoto’s disease, Graves’ disease, multiple sclerosis, lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, coeliac disease, scleroderma, psoriasis and type 1 diabetes.

While there is often a genetic component, the problem almost always begins in the gut with dysbiosis (disruption of the colon ecology) of some sort, most commonly leaky gut syndrome. However, even if you are genetically predisposed to an AD, epigenetics shows us that we are able to change the expression of our genes so we don’t automatically have to manifest the disease – it is possible, through diet and lifestyle, to ‘reprogramme’ your genes and live a disease-free life.