Autoimmune 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

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U.S. National Library of medicine. What is the Precision Medicine Initiative?
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