Autoimmune Conditions: When Your Body Becomes Its Own Enemy
Autoimmune disorders are widespread and becoming more common. They include allergies and asthma as well as conditions like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, SLE (lupus), inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s and Ulcerative collitis, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and eczema, along with a wide range of others.
Whilst different diseases, what they do have in common is they are all a result of your immune system’s misguided attack on your own tissues. Early symptoms are often fatigue and unrefreshing sleep, sound familiar?
Whilst family history can predict the type of autoimmune disease someone might experience, sometimes conditions arise seemingly ‘out of the blue’. And once you have one autoimmune disease you are at risk of getting more of them. This is because the underlying dysfunction is sadly seldom addressed - at the root of these conditions there is always leaky gut and systemic inflammation. This causes a destructive cross fire between invading pathogens and a person’s own cells.
The typical treatments available offer immune system suppression without addressing the inflammatory triggers. With side effects such as increased infections and elevated cancer risk sometimes the medication is worse than the disease it has been prescribed to treat.
The Hidden Triggers Behind Autoimmune Flares
Hashimoto’s: More Than a Thyroid Issue
Hashimoto’s isn’t just about an underactive thyroid—it’s a gradual progressive disease process fueled by gut permeability and often triggered by wheat or mold exposures.
Conventional medical management completely ignores the reversible early disease course when the thyroid gland starts being attacked and damaged. Instead most doctors wait for this organ to be permanently destroyed before taking any action, at which point the solution offered is prescription synthetic thyroid hormone replacement. Patients may experience fatigue, weight gain, inability to warm up as well as other debilitating symptoms for years before treatment is considered and by then it is often too late to restore thyroid gland function and health. Furthermore some patient’s struggle on T4 hormone replacement and are never offered an alternative.
Stay in control of your health by learning how to get accurate early testing and discover how environmental, nutritional and dietary factors are contributing to your symptoms today.
Psoriasis & Eczema: Skin Deep, But Rooted Within
Bothersome dermatitis, rashes, acne and itchy skin are often outward signs of internal chaos. Psoriasis and eczema frequently stem from a hyperactive immune response to gut dysbiosis and leaky gut. Common medications and food items disrupt the tight junctions of the intestinal epithelium and allow fragments of food, microbes and bits of dead bacteria to invade the body and accumulate in fine capillary beds such as those in the skin. The usual immune function identifies these non-self items as potentially dangerous invaders and goes to work destroying them as well as your healthy tissue.
Simple effective strategies that fix this underlying dysfunction have favorable effects on all autoimmune diseases, visible on the skin or less obvious and within.
The Gut-Immune Axis: Where Healing Begins
Patient’s often wonder if they should have testing for leaky gut however a less expensive and more practical solution is to do a short term trial of an elimination diet specifically avoiding the types of foods that cause intestinal permeability (wheat, black pepper etc) and items like medications (ibuprofen, oral contraceptive pill etc) which are known to cause intestinal permeability issues. This can be bolstered by adding in supportive supplements such as glutamine and butyrate or even peptides like BPC-157, or immune system calming substances such as low-dose naltrexone. Dramatic improvements often occur within weeks and challenging symptoms such as fatigue and brain fog are often the first to lift, sometimes after just a week. For antibody mediated autoimmune diseases it is actually possible to see antibody levels drop as well as inflammation. Improvements may lead to immune suppressing medication no longer being required or in dose reduction of those agents.
Dr. Casey’s Strategies for Sustainable Healing
As a practitioner who used functional medicine to reverse her own autoimmune diseases, Dr. Casey provides actionable empowering insights into these disease processes. Restore your health and learn about strategies suited to your unique biology and lifestyle, focusing on:
- Leaky Gut Repair: Customized gut-healing and elimination diets, supplementation, and gut-lining nutrients to restore barrier function.
- Inflammation Cooling: Supportive supplementation and prescription options for rebalancing an immune system that is out of control.
- Nutritional Support: Learn about options to identify nutritional deficiencies and imbalances that predispose you to autoimmune disease.
- Toxicity treatment: Address underlying toxic exposures and immune dysregulation triggers and avoid these in future.
Why Patients Trust Dr. Catherine Casey
- Experience: She overcame autoimmune disease; asthma, allergic rhinitis, inflammatory arthritis and early hashimoto’s disease.
- Expertise: A medical doctor who goes above and beyond to incorporate functional medicine approaches to solving patient problems.
- Empathy: Solutions adapt to your pace, cultural preferences, and daily life—no rigid rules.
- Proven Outcomes: Join the growing community of patients who have put their autoimmune disease in remission and restored health.