Tom O’Bryan: The Autoimmune Fix
Most diseases that are genetic in nature need something to turn the gene on, and that’s the environment that we’re exposed to. That’s the critical picture here is this toxic world that we live in. I want to give you an example that was just published six weeks ago by the World Wildlife Fund in conjunction with two major universities. They published a paper that showed there has been on average a 57 percent reduction of all wildlife on the planet since 1970. I read that article in the newspaper, little summary, and I said, oh, that’s too bad, and then I went on to read something else. Just this morning in the paper, I saw that cheetahs are going extinct. So, it’s the toxic world we live in.
Miriam Knight: Tom O’Bryan, another statistic that people should take notice of is that, for the first time, life expectancy for the new generation is less than the parents’ generation. What is so astonishing is how both delicate the balance of nature is and yet how resilient if given a chance. Can you go into some of the effects of the toxins, the toxic load, I think something that you call the body burden is and how we can recognize it and deal with it?
Tom O’Bryan: Yes, It’s a critical concept. The New England Journal of Medicine that published the paper – for the first time in the history of the human species ever, children are gonna get sick at earlier ages than their parents, get diagnosed with diseases at earlier ages than their parents and die at an earlier age than when their parents died. These are chemicals that are not supposed to be in their bodies at all. And then we wonder why there are a million children a year now in the US diagnosed with autism. Because the brain is so sensitive, just so very sensitive, and these toxic exposures that are in the bloodstream 25 % of all the blood in the body are in the brain at any one time, and the brain cells are damaged by this.
We have to wake up to this because we’re killing the planet. We really must have a paradigm shift in how we think about this whole world that we live and how we take care of this world. As a doctor, when you read the science and you see what’s happening to our bodies and you wonder why your brother developed cancer at 28, or your father died at 54, or your mother has Alzheimer’s in her 60s, I mean, what’s going on here? It’s that our bodies are becoming so toxic, so full of these toxic chemicals.
Miriam Knight: Let’s get back to the question of wheat and gluten because that really is a core specialty of yours, and it’s something that there’s a lot of misunderstanding about. What does gluten do in our bodies, and particularly the shift in the development of wheat strains and so on? Don’t even want to go there.
Tom O’Bryan: The word gluten is that we think about when we say gluten sensitivity, but it’s really not gluten. It’s wheat. Gluten is not bad for you. Bad gluten is bad for you because there’s gluten in rice, and there’s gluten in corn, there’s gluten in quinoa. But, it’s the family of gluten proteins in wheat, rye, and barley that is the problem. But, we associate the word gluten as being a problem. It’s just wrong language, but that’s what we’ve got to work with now.
So, it’s really wheat that’s the problem, and there are many proteins in wheat, not just gluten. There are many, but gluten is a primary one. Dr. Hollon, at Harvard and his team that published the paper on this about a year and a half ago, and they showed that every human, all humans when they eat wheat, every time they eat wheat, they develop something called intestinal permeability. The slang term for it is the leaky gut.
Now, the fastest growing cells in the body are the inside lining of the intestines. Every three to seven days, you have a whole new lining to your intestines. So, if you think of the lining of the intestines like cheesecloth, when you eat wheat, you tear the cheesecloth, but it heals. You have a toast for breakfast. You tear the cheesecloth. It heals. You have a sandwich for lunch. You tear the cheesecloth. It heals. Pasta for dinner, you tear the cheesecloth. It heals. Day after day after week after month after year after year until one day you have waffles for breakfast, you tear the cheesecloth, it doesn’t heal. Now you get that intestinal permeability that doesn’t go away, and that is the gateway in the development of the autoimmune diseases from multiple sclerosis to rheumatoid arthritis to Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s, it’s the intestinal permeability that is the setup for these diseases to begin and to progress.
So, wheat is a mild toxin. It’s a mild toxin. But, because of the extreme amount of toxins we’re exposed to every day, we lose our threshold, and even the mild toxins become an irritant. Now you have a problem, and it doesn’t go away. And that’s the gateway into the development of Hashimoto’s disease or Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, any of the autoimmune diseases.
Miriam Knight: The gut really is the prime mover in our immune system. You talk about the cheesecloth syndrome. What exactly is going through the holes in the leaky gut?
Tom O’Bryan: Yes. When you eat food, proteins are like a pearl necklace. The hydrochloric acid that’s made in your stomach undoes the clasp of the pearl necklace. Now you’re holding a string of pearls. The other enzymes in your body that your body produces act like scissors to cut that pearl necklace into smaller clumps of pearls and then smaller clumps and smaller clumps and smaller clumps until you’re cutting the pearl necklace into each individual pearl. Those are called amino acids.
The amino acids can go right through the cheesecloth into the bloodstream, and then your body uses those amino acids to make new bone cells and brain cells and kidney cells and whatever you need. But, it’s those single amino acids that make the difference. But, what happens when you get tears in the cheesecloth is that clumps of the pearl necklace can get through the tears. They’re called macromolecules, big molecules. Those get into the bloodstream, and your body says, whoa, what’s this, this is not good for me. You, the immune system, you better fight this. And your immune system makes antibodies to protect you from this macromolecule.
So, if the macromolecule is chicken, you make antibodies to chicken. Now you’re allergic to chicken or bananas or rice or beef or carrots. And these are the people that do a 90-food panel, a blood test to see what they’re allergic to, and it comes back they’re allergic to 25 or 30 different foods. And it’s, oh, my God, that’s everything I eat. Well, of course, it is because your immune system’s trying to protect you. These macromolecules are getting into the bloodstream, and they shouldn’t get in there.
So, what do you do? Stop eating the foods, heal the gut, stop tearing the cheesecloth and heal the damage that’s there, wait six months, go back and check, and now you’re allergic to two foods or three instead of 20 or 25.
Miriam Knight: Hmm. Now, you have a reference to blood tests for the different antibodies.
Tom O’Bryan: Well, the blood test is easy to do, but sweet talking your doctor can be a real nuisance, can be a pain because so many doctors just don’t know about this, and they think, ah, what are you talking about, there’s no such thing. Of course, there is. Just read the studies. So, a blood test came out six years ago that looks at 24 different tissue antibodies. Where’s the weak link in your chain, where is it? And this blood test looks at six different antibodies to your brain, three to your heart, your lungs, your liver, your bones, your muscles, your kidneys, your stomach, your intestines to see where the weak link is right now. I mean, where is your chain being pulled.
Hopefully, you identify this before there’s been so much tissue damage from these elevated antibodies that you now start getting symptoms. Hopefully, you can identify early.
And the science is very clear on this. And what the scientists say is that you can arrest the development of autoimmune disease by healing the gut.
So, to your question about the gut, the gut is critically important in reversing whatever autoimmune mechanism is going on for you. And what we talk about a lot in the book is how do you evaluate the gut, how do you see what its functional capabilities are right now, what do you do if you have a problem, what kind of problems might you have and what do you do about it.
Miriam Knight: Now, you have a transition protocol that you recommend even before or if people can’t get to convince their doctor to order a blood test. Tell us about that.
Click HERE to read Page 3 of the Interview with Tom O’Bryan
