Space Coast Advanced Health - Treating The Root Cause

Do you have Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Hashimoto’s, Multiple Sclerosis, or any other autoimmune disease? If so, I can say without a doubt that gluten sparked the flame of your disease, and continuing to eat it is simply adding fuel to the fire. Gluten, a protein naturally found in certain grains, is now found nearly everywhere in our modern world. It’s of course in flour-based foods such as pasta and bread, but it is also used as a filler in medications and supplements, it’s the glue that holds meat substitutes together, it’s in body products such as shampoo and toothpaste, and, thanks to cross-contamination, it’s even in grains that are marked gluten-free. I want to point out that our modern-day gluten is not the same gluten that your grandparents ate. In order to create ever fluffier pastries and hardier wheat, scientists developed new hybrid strains of wheat that contain entirely new forms of gluten not found in any of the original plants, and this is ...

We are facing an epidemic of allergic (60 million people), asthmatic (30 million people), and autoimmune disorders  (24 million people).  Autoimmune diseases include rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, celiac disease, thyroid disease, and the many other hard-to-classify syndromes in the 21st century. These are all autoimmune conditions, and at their root they are connected by one central biochemical process: A runaway immune response also known as systemic inflammation that results in your body attacking its own tissues. Your immune system is your defense against invaders. It is your internal army and has to clearly distinguish friend from foe — to know you from others. Autoimmunity occurs when your immune system gets confused and your own tissues get caught in friendly cross-fire. Your body is fighting something — an infection, a toxin, an allergen, a food or the stress response — and somehow it redirects its hostile attack on...

The gut is the gateway to health. If your gut is healthy, chances are that you are in good health. However, there’s a condition called leaky gut that can lead to a host of health problems. What is a leaky gut? The gut is naturally permeable to very small molecules in order to absorb these vital nutrients. In fact, regulating intestinal permeability is one of the basic functions of the cells that line the intestinal wall. In sensitive people, gluten can cause the gut cells to release zonulin, a protein that can break apart tight junctions in the intestinal lining. Other factors — such as infections, toxins, stress, and age — can also cause these tight junctions to break apart. Once these tight junctions get broken apart, you have a leaky gut. When your gut is leaky, things like toxins, microbes, undigested food particles, and more can escape from your intestines and travel throughout your body via your bloodstream. Your immune system marks these “foreign invaders” as pathogen...

Your immune system is a complex machine, and just like a car, it can’t function properly without the right fuel. Here are six key nutrients that one functional medicine doctor considers to be the premium fuel. If your body is deficient in any or all of these key nutrients, your immune system is at risk of going haywire and attacking the body’s own tissues, which could lead to autoimmune disease. Restoring optimal levels of these nutrients can help prevent autoimmune disease, and even help  reverse autoimmune disease. Six Common Nutrient Deficiencies in autoimmune patients Here are the six n utrient deficiencies that research has linked to autoimmune disease, and that I most commonly see in my autoimmune patients. Make sure you’re getting enough of each of them to help prevent  autoimmune disease  from onsetting. 1. Vitamin D Even if you live in a warm climate and get plenty of sunlight, your vitamin D levels could still be below optimal levels. This is particular...

Preventing disease in our future starts now. We’re talking to a cancer specialist and learning about a few small efforts that add up in big ways to strengthen our systems daily… PREVENTING DISEASE ISN’T  a perfect science (yet), but there’s no denying the importance of those efforts.  Functional medicine doctor and registered dietitian,  Dr. Elizabeth Boham , wants us to understand that when it comes to cancer, pre-emptive screening isn’t the same thing as active prevention — a process that looks a lot like the healthy lifestyle we’re already working towards. Take note of the simple yet substantial elements of holistic cancer prevention, and explore more with Dr. Boham’s tips for breast cancer prevention  here . Screening for cancer is not the same thing as preventing cancer. Many of us go for our yearly mammograms and our regular colonoscopies, thinking that we are being proactive and preventing cancer. Although these screening exams and t...