What is an Autoimmune Disease?
Most people don’t realize that the food that they are coming in contact every single day can be contributing to a lot of their health issues, more specifically autoimmune diseases. An autoimmune disorder is characterized by our immune’s systems inability to tell which parts of our body are not foreign pathogens. Instead of the immune system focusing on killing off the actual pathogens that enter our body, it focuses on our own body’s tissues and attacks those. This can leave a person feeling fatigued, drowsy, cloudy in the head, and many other symptoms. A person can live with an autoimmune disease and it can remain dormant till three factors come into play and activate it. The first and foremost is that it has to be in our genes. This factor remains out of our hands, for we can’t control what genes are passed down to us and what aren’t. Therefore we focus on the two other factors. The second factor is that our immune system has to be compromised. Lastly, there are environmental factors that also come into play when activating an autoimmune disease.
How is Gluten Related to Autoimmunity?
Gluten causes what is called a leaky gut. When you eat gluten and it travels to our small intestine there are chemicals released that cause our small intestine to be more permeable allowing an increase of nutrients to exit and enter into the bloodstream. This is what we mean when we say gluten causes a leaky gut, it is essentially causing your gut to leak more things than it normally would. Our small intestine functions as the place where most of our nutrients are absorbed back because they are essential nutrients that we need. When those nutrients leak into the bloodstream, our body doesn’t recognize these nutrients as their place is in the gut and not in the bloodstream. Your body starts attacking its own issues in an effort to get these molecules out, which causes our gut to become inflamed.
What Kind of Treatments Do We Offer Those That Have an Autoimmune Disease?
There are many different treatments that we give those that suffer with an autoimmune disease. Depending on the autoimmune disease and the symptoms, here at NorCal Brain Center we can offer a variety of treatments. Hyperbaric Oxygen Chambers can be used to treat those with autoimmune issues to help increase the amount of oxygen that your body’s tissues are receiving in order to help bring down any inflammation that is present. A change in diet with the appropriate supplements can also be something that your doctor will find beneficial for you. Testing someone’s blood and getting those results back can help us figure out what your body needs to help it go back to functioning optimally. Cutting gluten if your doctor suspects that it is a cause for your symptoms might also be another potential treatment plan. Call us at (408) 585-5275 if you have any questions and let us tell you what we can do for you!
