Episode 294: Beat Autoimmune
with Palmer Kippola
Additional Information:
Palmer's ‘what to eat' autoimmunity guide
Beat Autoimmune Book
CytoDetox: total detoxification support where it matters most – at the cellular level.
HCF's Live it to Lead it event – Newport Beach – November 14-17, 2019
Pre-order Dr. Pompa's Beyond Fasting book!
Brain Fog? Lack of energy? 90-95% of us have autoimmune conditions and we just don't know it. Today we welcome Palmer Kippola, who is an author, speaker, and Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach who specializes in helping people reverse and prevent autoimmune conditions. Her new book is called “Beat Autoimmune” and contains the science, stories and strategies to help people heal and thrive. She developed a framework to help others heal from autoimmune conditions based on her 26-year battle to overcome multiple sclerosis. Her mantra is “From The Mess To The Message” and hopefully this episode will offer tools to help you better navigate autoimmune conditions.
More about Palmer Kippola:
Palmer is a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach (FMCHC) who has done coursework with the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM), the HeartMath ® Institute, and the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. In addition, she has studied under leading experts in nutrition, holistic health, energy, and Functional Medicine. She founded Transcend Autoimmune, a growing online community of people proactively seeking to reverse or prevent autoimmune conditions naturally.
Prior to her health transformation, Palmer worked in the corporate world for 25 years and held a variety of sales and marketing leadership roles in the high tech and telecommunications industries. She also founded a literacy program that continues to serve children in local, underserved communities called Reading is Freedom. Palmer is deeply grateful to have found her calling in empowering people to reverse and prevent autoimmune conditions and live their most vital lives.
Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
Perhaps you’ve heard me say that 90% to 95% of us in America have autoimmune, meaning our own bodies attacking itself, and we just don’t know it. You could be out there with brain fog and just lack of energy and it could be autoimmune. We examined that much further with my guest, Palmer, who wrote, Beat Autoimmune, great book. It’s a great strategy. She was diagnosed with MS at age 19. Wait until you hear her amazing story. You know how I say pain to purpose, hers is, from the mess to the message. In this case, she’s the messenger bringing an incredible message, so stay tuned for an amazing show. You need to share autoimmune, more people than you think.
Ashley:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith. Today we welcome, Palmer Kippola, who is an author, speaker, and Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach, who specializes in helping people reverse and prevent autoimmune conditions. She developed a framework to help others be autoimmune based on her 26-year battle to overcome multiple sclerosis. Her new book is called, Beat Autoimmune, and contains the science stories and strategies to help people heal and thrive. Hopefully, this episode will offer tools to help you better navigate autoimmune conditions. I’ll let you two take it from here. Let’s welcome Palmer Kippola and of course, Dr. Pompa. Welcome.
Palmer:
Yay. Thank you so much, Ashley. It’s an honor and privilege to be here.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. We’re glad to have you. Gosh, I love this topic. I say love not because I love autoimmune, but I love bringing people this information because so many people, Palmer, have autoimmune. They’re sick. They have symptoms. They don’t feel well. They just don’t know it because the testing for autoimmune is so primitive compared to how many people are actually being attacked by their own immune system.
Palmer:
That’s absolutely right. I’m so glad to be here to help shine a light on things that people can do for themselves.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Your story, I think we just have to start there. MS, maybe just a lot of people watching or listening don’t even realize that that’s autoimmune. I’ll tell you, it’s one of the horrible diagnosis. When someone gets that diagnosis, the doctors are basically, hey, this is a life disease. Ultimately, the prognosis is not good. Will you beat it? Which gives you the greatest authority of all in my book. The authority of from—well, I say from pain to purpose. You said from a mess to message which I absolutely love. You have authority because you were in the mess and no doubt speaking a great message also. Yeah, tell us the story, and it was a long one.
Palmer:
Yes. It’s a long journey and I need to take you back in time just a few years because I was 19 when I was diagnosed. Here we go. I was 19 years old and I was a happy, healthy, well-adjusted 19-year-old young woman. I just finished my freshman year of college and I was home for the summer with my parents working a summer job. One morning, I woke up and the balls of my feet were all tingling and I thought that I maybe had slept on my legs funny. You know that feeling when the blood flows back.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, yeah. Before that, not one symptom that you can think of.
Palmer:
Nothing.
Dr. Pompa:
Wow.
Palmer:
This is what makes this a little unusual because a lot of people are like, yeah, it just happened out of the clear blue. We know that these things take time. In fact, autoimmunity builds over 5, 10, 20 years. For me, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. I’m really clear that I might not have been tuned in enough to my body.
Dr. Pompa:
What teenagers are by the way. Anyway, another subject.
Palmer:
Yeah, totally, totally. I figured the tingling is just going to go away. I’m going to go off to work and it’s just going to go away. Over the course of the morning, the creepy tingling just crept up my leg like a vine. By the time it got to my knees, I knew something was really wrong. I called my parents who called the family doctor, who said, “Take her to the neurologist at UCLA.” That afternoon, we’re sitting in the neurologist’s office. This is a long time ago. It’s before the internet, so I just want to set the frame of reference. The neurologist does some cursory exam. She has me walk heel, toe, heel, toe, eyes closed, touching my finger to my nose, testing reflexes. Literally, within five or six minutes says, “I’m 99% certain you have multiple sclerosis, MS. If I’m right, there’s nothing you can do except take medication.”
I learned later that she had told my parents right before we left her office that they’d better get ready for me to be on a wheelchair because that was the prognosis. That it was just going to go downhill and that was going to be my life. We left her office with very little information, with very little hope, and by nightfall, the tingling had reached right under my collarbone and had turned to complete numbness. I couldn’t feel anything literally from the neck down for a full six weeks. It was an absolutely terrifying time. We just didn’t know what to expect. I was relegated to the couch that summer for those six weeks. I’m so grateful, I have to say, that my family was there for me and my mom was quick to empathize and even cry with me and plan for whatever future we could try to plan for. Could I switch schools and attend in a wheelchair?
My dad, you’ll appreciate this. He would say, “Honey, you can beat this thing. I know you can.” He would inspire my can-do attitude which was amazing, very motivational. I’m also grateful that there were friends that weren’t too scared off by this mysterious disease. We didn’t know what this was. Nobody had heard of this. There was no internet. This was pre-MRI. We used to call it the magnetic—excuse me, it was called an NMR for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance image. That’s the scary name for the precursor to the MRI. That’s what we’re talking about. This was in the ‘80s. Friends came by and brought gifts and the usual stuff like cookies and books and watch movies with me. This one friend, a family friend, who was into things metaphysical came and she had brought a gift that didn’t seem at all like a gift at the time. She asked me, “Palmer, why do you think you got the MS?” What do you mean why do I think I got the MS?
Dr. Pompa:
That was a great question though. What was in your head? What were you thinking? Whatever. Did I do something to cause it?
Palmer:
Right, right. First, I was completely offended, right?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Palmer:
How dare she. Then she left. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I’m lying on the couch for six weeks, and I started chewing on that question like a dog with a bone. All of the sudden, in a flash of insight, I had a sense of why I got the MS. I have to take you a little bit back in time farther because I had been adopted as a baby at three days old by very loving parents My dad had been a fighter pilot and his way was invariably the right way. We butted heads quite a bit. My earliest memory that came to me in that flash of insight lying on the couch was really the first thing that I can remember. My dad is yelling at my mom who’s locked herself in the bedroom, probably crying. He’s yelling at her because she’s gained a lot of weight and he doesn’t like the fact that she’s overweight.
I’m standing up in the hallway to my dad with my little fist up, my little dukes up. You call my mom names and I’m going to sock your lights out. I realized that I had become a child warrior. I had become hypervigilant. I was always on. I was scanning the horizon for safety. I became an insomniac. It was really something that—it was just an amazing flash of intuition. I thought, and I didn’t know anything about the immune system, but I imagined in that flash of insight that my immune system had somehow or other become a proxy for that hypervigilance. That if it didn’t have a real battle, a real virus or bacteria or whatever to fight, then it would result in friendly fire with me as the victim of that attack. That initial hypothesis of chronic stress being at the root cause of the MS was—it still rings true for me today even though I know there’s more to the story.
I’ll just put a bow on this by saying, the numbness thankfully retreated enough for me to go back to college for my sophomore year. It would take a full two years for the numbness to fully retreat, but I was well enough to go back to school. Thankfully, I had the type of MS called relapsing-remitting meaning symptoms come and symptoms go. Off I went on my 26-year journey of relapsing-remitting MS. Over the years, I did see six neurologists. Each of them took MRIs of my brain and agreed that that’s what it was. There was no question of whether or not I had the MS. That there was very much consensus that that’s what I was dealing with, but that there was nothing I could do and that there was really no hope.
Dr. Pompa:
With that diagnosis, okay, it comes, it goes, it comes, but eventually, it doesn’t leave. Was that what they were telling you?
Palmer:
For many people it doesn’t leave and that’s very scary. I think for those people that have MS, there’s just no telling what’s going to happen. I think people who see neurologists are often put in a greater state of fear because the neurologist is saying the only thing that you could do is take medication. If you don’t take medication, it might shorten your life and there’s a really good chance you’re going to wind up in a wheelchair. The unpredictability of something like MS is really scary. Now I have another whole layer of stress on top of the reasons you get the autoimmune conditions in the first place.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Just so people listening—I always say it’s a perfect storm. It’s a physical, chemical, and emotional stress are these nasty triggers that turn on a gene oftentimes that—then these autoimmune, we get one of our genetic weakness unfortunately. It’s a really weird thing. As you were telling the story, I remember back. This is early in my career. I didn’t really know much about autoimmune at that point in my life let alone MS. Except this woman came in and she was in a wheelchair, debilitating MS for many, many years. I had just got done reading an article about how NutraSweet, this artificial sweetener that was on the horizon at that time, can cause MS or at least at that point they said a false diagnosis of MS, right?
Palmer:
That’s right.
Dr. Pompa:
It can look like MS. Anyway, of course this woman was diagnosed, but I gave her the article. I said, “Hey, you should just look into this because the reason it triggered it is because she was this massive diet soda drinker. One after another.” I remember asking her, and she was like, 20 a day or some ridiculous number plus all these other things because she did it for weight loss. That was her sweetener of choice. I was like, “You need to read this article.” I don’t remember but I hadn’t seen her in a long, long time. As it turned out, she walked right up out of that wheelchair after getting rid of all of that sweetener in her life. Now I wish it were so simple for everybody. It’s not.
The point I’m making actually, is my gosh, when you get rid of the cause, the body has a miraculous way to heal itself. That emotional vision that you gave knowing that emotional charge was there. Your body attacking itself. Like you said, okay, we don’t have anything to attack, we’ll attack ourselves. Amazing. Looking back, did you have any other triggers that you could have thought about? You were adopted so you’re not sure even of your—health of your mom, I’m sure.
Palmer:
Right. Now, looking back in hindsight I know there are multiple triggers which we’ll get into, but that was the leading hypothesis as I laid in the couch. One thing to take away from this is to ask yourself that question, why do you think you’ve got this blank. The blank because that question became my North Star for the next three decades, right?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, right. I mean, you could see there’s multiple triggers, so to ask yourself the question—at least it says okay, I wasn’t just unlucky like the doctors make it sound, like oh you’re just not lucky. You’ve just got autoimmune or MS. Wait a minute, if I believe there’s a cause then I could believe there’s a cure. It gives you hope, I think.
Palmer:
Oh, it completely gives you hope, and it is multifactorial. We can go in any direction you like. Over those 26 years because there was no internet, I was left to my own devices to figure out this whole puzzle which doesn’t take people the amount of time that it took me. It’s far easier to address and remove these triggers and heal the gut. It was a process. I started doing stress reduction because if in fact, chronic stress was at the root of it, well then, I needed to figure out how to relax. We have this automatic stress response. That’s our primitive response to things. I wouldn’t even call it a response. It’s a reaction, but we have to train ourselves how to relax because that’s not automatic. That’s where practice is.
I started doing yoga in the late ‘80s. I started meditating in the early ‘90s. I found that the more I relaxed, the fewer exacerbations I had. Conversely, if I had stress at home, conflict with my dad, or school if I was overwhelmed and later in the workforce—and by the way, I didn’t tell anyone that I had the MS. I just soldiered through. My dad, the fighter pilot, told me, “Don’t let anybody know you have this.” When I needed to take time away from work with terrible optic neuritis that I spent two nights in the emergency room in pain and two weeks out of work. People thought I was on vacation because you just didn’t talk about this. The added stress of that was pretty huge. I found a really good cause and effect between relaxation practices and not having MS symptoms. That was a really clear cause and effect. That was a great experiment.
Dr. Pompa:
Actually, in your book, which is right here and just behind you. You can look behind you. I’m sure you can buy it on Amazon, correct? We came and put a link here. I know you have a gift for our viewers of some abbreviated version of this on what to eat for autoimmune, which is what everyone wants to know. What would I eat, right?
Palmer:
Absolutely. That’s a perfect lead into the next point that I wanted to make because there was no internet. There was no Dr. Terry Wahls. I didn’t know what to eat, and I figured that diet must have something to do with this, but all I had was my intuition and the public library. That’s where I went and the only book…
Dr. Pompa:
Microfiche. Microfiche.
Palmer:
Microfiche. Oh, my god. Now I’m really looking like a dinosaur.
Dr. Pompa:
I know, I used it too.
Palmer:
There was a book called, The Swank Diet Book or The MS Diet Book or something like that. He purported that the best diet for MS was low fat vegetarian. I already explained that my mom was overweight. We were already a margarine household. We were non-fat—do you remember ice milk, ice cream?
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, yeah.
Palmer:
We don’t [00:17:26] any lower fat. The only thing I could do is add in more healthy whole grains and I didn’t mention this before, but I also, for as long as I could remember had tummy trouble. Not like run the bathroom tummy trouble, but more like constipation. The neurologist told me that was just a symptom of MS and just to learn to live with it. When I started taking the meat and the fish and the chicken out and just adding more healthy whole grains, I noticed more tummy trouble. Not only did I not notice any improvement of MS symptoms, I noticed a worsening of tummy trouble, but I thought that was normal. I thought that everybody started having rumbling or whatever feelings after eating. I didn’t think anything of it because I thought it was normal. We know so much more now, but that was a fail for me that I did vegetarian, vegan, [00:18:17].
Dr. Pompa:
You actually start the book with your experiments, meaning the things that I did or the flaws. Obviously, that’s been one of them. I’m sure you might want to share some others because other people are going, well, I still believe that.
Palmer:
Right, right, absolutely. I’ll just touch on one more that was a flaw and then we’ll get straight to [00:18:37] in a moment. The next flaw for me and I’m not a doctor. I don’t pretend to be one, so I can only comment for myself, but I tried medication. Neurologists were so persistent that that was the only thing that was going to save me and keep me out of a wheelchair and extend my life maybe was to go on this injectable medication. The cost-benefit ratio was just out of whack. I ended up having way more problems as a result including a wound that didn’t heal for six months, including a heart attack, symptoms of a heart attack. Super scary. That just wasn’t for me.
I didn’t notice any improvement in symptoms. I was doing pretty well with the stress reduction as long as I stuck with it. This is something you have to do as a practice. It’s not something you just do yoga a few times and you’re done or you just do deep breathing exercises or neurofeedback once. It is something that you have to keep doing. Finally, the best experiment was right around the corner. In 2010, we had the internet by now. I knew enough about nutrition to know that maybe something that I’m eating is causing this tummy distress after eating. I found a functional medicine nutritionist, and everyone who listens to you knows about functional medicine. It gets to the root cause.
She did some tests and it came back that I had non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Not celiac disease, but non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Meaning I was highly sensitive to this inflammatory protein found in many grains. She educated me on what it was doing to my gut and how it was causing inflammation, leaking through, causing my immune system to react. She led me through this gut healing protocol where I removed things. People know it as an elimination diet. It’s the gold standard for holistic medicine, where we take the bad stuff out and we heal and seal our gut. After a week of removing the gluten, I stopped having tummy trouble after eating.
It’s no surprise because I have to tell you what my diet was at the time. I mean, I woke up and had cereal. As long as I can remember, I had Cheerios for breakfast. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day for lunch so I’m probably getting mold from the peanuts as well as the bread. I’m having pasta or pizza or maybe sometimes beer for dinner. This steady stream of gluten over time was just keeping the gut perpetually leaky. Didn’t know that. After removing it, one week, tummy trouble stops. Within one month, no exaggeration, I stopped having any and all MS symptoms ever again. That was November of 2010 and I’m standing here today in 2019 and I have not even had a tingling baby toe. I call that one my Eureka experiment.
I also want to be super quick to add that this is not a disclaimer that my results might be different from yours. We all know that these autoimmune conditions are multifactorial and had I not been spending the last 26 years really doing that deep emotional healing work and forgiveness work and things that normally people do after they start with food, I did that first. By the time I removed the gluten and healed and sealed up my gut, that became the linchpin trigger for me.
Dr. Pompa:
Right, yeah. It’s interesting because most of these conditions are a perfect storm. You have this going on where you—I’m sure as a teenager you were already becoming activated to gluten. Then you have the emotional component to it, boom. I think that’s the thing is we all have to examine our life and ask the question that the woman asked. What do you think caused it, right? It’s like, ah, wait a minute, maybe it was this. Maybe it was that. I mean, you have to evaluate the chemical exposures, the emotional exposures and the physical trauma that we’re all exposed to and emptying the bucket gives your body a chance to turn off that gene and heal itself.
Palmer:
Absolutely. I’m thrilled that you said that about the bucket because I think when I reflect on, well, how did I heal? I really emptied or did my best to empty the bucket. That’s what we do. It’s our job to constantly take stuff out of the bucket, but it didn’t mean I was finished. I want to be really clear about this. My big, as far as I can tell, my big root cause up until that point had been the chronic stress and layering on top of that, the gluten and maybe other foods I found out later that I’m sensitive to casein protein and dairy. After I healed, I still had things. There was still work to be done. We don’t just stop having an autoimmune condition and say, okay, I’m done.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no.
Palmer:
I mean, life happens, stresses occur. We have symptoms which are just messages from the body inviting us to dig deeper. I eventually found I had a mountain of mercury in my system. I did have mold. I have chronic Lyme, but we can live with some of these insults as long as our buckets are empty enough.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.
Palmer:
It’s not necessarily about eradicating the Lyme and getting rid of it forever. I don’t know that we can.
Dr. Pompa:
No. I still have it. When I was sick, I was positive Lyme. If I do an IgG test, it’s still there, but my immune system is [00:24:12]. I’m not IgM meaning I don’t have an active infection. Epstein–Barr, had it. Cytomegalovirus, had it, and still do. You’re right. Our bucket just filled up with emotional, physical, chemical stress, poured over and then these pathogens became problematic as well, right?
Palmer:
Right, that’s it. That’s it. You’ll appreciate this story, I think. After I healed in 2010, I was so excited that I didn’t feel like I was plugged into an electrical socket anymore. Literally, 24/7 I always felt this humming in my body. That when I stop having that autoimmune attack, it was really clear to me. What did I want to do? I wanted to go share the good news with my neurologist. Hey, doc. I don’t have MS anymore. He just patted me on the head and said, “Palmer, gluten sensitivity is a fad and I want you to keep taking the medication.” I left his office and went on my merry way.
In a couple of years, Cyrex Labs was open, and Cyrex Laboratories does autoimmune testing to help prevent—to try to get ahead of things. They have an Array called 7X which is against neurological tissue. I had that blood test done. All the antibodies to my neurological tissue like myelin basic protein are in the normal range meaning there’s no more autoimmune attack. I don’t have an MS attack going on in my body. Then fast forward to last year. I just kept on my merry way with lowering things out in my bucket and having the cavitation surgery. We could talk about all that stuff.
I decided to go back and visit the neurologist that I hadn’t seen in eight years. I really wanted to understand how his thinking had evolved, if it had evolved. I thought it would be a good time to get a follow-up MRI. The lesions on your brain don’t go away immediately. I don’t want people to think that the only way to know that you don’t have an MS thing is the lack of lesions. There are scars, and if you have scars on your body, they take a long time or maybe you’ll always have the presence of some scars. It’s really a combination of your symptoms, a neurological exam coupled with an MRI is really the best way of telling. I went back and he wondered why I was there. He was a little taken aback, and he said, with his tail between his legs slightly, “Palmer, we now know that gluten sensitivity is real.”
Dr. Pompa:
I’m surprised he even remembered staying that it was a fad, but I guess he did.
Palmer:
I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe it. He said, “I bet about a third or more of my MS patients are sensitive to gluten.” Then he said now—he knows I’m a Functional Medicine Health Coach. He said, “I can’t give you my patient list, but maybe we can—I can refer people to you.” I followed up with him about three times and he never took me up on that. I thought, why not? Why not do a one plus one equals three. I’m not going to convince them to get off their meds, but maybe with diet and lifestyle changes these people will actually do better, but that didn’t happen. What did happen is we had another MRI done, and I sat side by side with him and he showed me how with the new MRI, the legions had faded or had disappeared. He just looked at me and said, “This couldn’t be a better story.” We finally got him to admit some things which was a nice vindication.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s awesome. You take people in your book through what you call the acronym F.I.G.H.T.S. because as we’re talking about the bucket being filled, we mentioned a lot of these things. I think it puts it in a nice little way of remembering. Hey, these are triggers, so give our viewers and listeners an example of what F.I.G.H.T.S. is and how they can remember that.
Palmer:
Yeah. If you don’t mind my sharing a tiny bit of something that precedes this is, I had no intention of writing a book to begin with. This was just for my own edification. I had this [00:28:26]. I couldn’t understand how I had healed when so many people had told me I couldn’t. That’s when I did the research and dove in and looked at the science to see what in the world enabled me to heal. I found out about epigenetics which literally means above the gene and that really disproves this idea that our DNA is our destiny. I encourage people, I’m sure your audience knows about epigenetics.
Dr. Pompa:
We’ve had amazing experts on this, but to your point, this gets triggered, of our susceptibility to get triggered, but it’s not your destiny. We all have these genes. Every one of us do. I have them. We all do.
Palmer:
I’ll always have the genes for the MS. I can just control the genetic expression by dealing with those environmental factors. That’s what I’ll get into with F.I.G.H.T.S. The second thing I just wanted to point out is, I don’t know if your audience knows that there’s actually an autoimmune equation. Have you talked about that much?
Dr. Pompa:
Give me an example of what you mean?
Palmer:
Alessio Fasano in the early 2000s, he’s a researcher. Now he’s at Harvard Medical School. He did research because we’ve always known that genes play a part in autoimmune conditions, and now we know that it’s only up to 5% to 10% of your health outcomes is genetic, but 90% to 95% is lifestyle, those environmental factors. What we didn’t know what brought those two worlds together. Dr. Fasano and his team found out that it’s intestinal hyperpermeability which is a leaky gut.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I know, we’ve talked about that. In my article on autoimmune I talk about it as a three-legged stool.
Palmer:
Fantastic.
Dr. Pompa:
[00:30:09] part of it. Here’s the stressors, the triggers, and then the gene that gets turned on is my analogy.
Palmer:
Yes. What’s so super exciting about that is that if you flip the equation, you can potentially reverse the autoimmunity.
Dr. Pompa:
Those three things, that’s where the treatments are as well.
Palmer:
This was dumb luck for me because I didn’t know that epigenetically I turned off the MS by following the autoimmune equation which is to detect and remove your triggers and to heal your gut and that’s what I had done. After I healed and I found this science, I just thought, this has to be shared more widely. I thought I really liked words and I wanted to come up with something that was easy for people to remember. I came up with F.I.G.H.T.S. which stands for food, infections, gut health, hormone balance, toxins and stress which is most if not all of them, triggers that we can control minus the genes, but if we addressed them, we could change our epigenetic inheritance. That’s what F.I.G.H.T.S. is and we can go through them in order.
We’ve talked a bit about food because that’s really the place to start. Because gluten was my big linchpin. It turns out, of all of the studies that I’ve read and maybe you’ve seen, gluten seems to be biggest baddy when it comes to autoimmune conditions. In fact, in 2002, I think the New England Journal of Medicine story publication, highlighted 55 diseases that were attributed into eating gluten. That was back in 2002. There’s more recent science that shows that gluten creates a leaky gut in anyone who eats it. If you have the proclivities for autoimmunity, it runs in your family or you’re dealing with something, it’s a really good thing to experiment with is put on your own lab coat and give that a try.
Right up there with gluten is dairy. It seems to be very inflammatory for people and people often think it’s the lactose, but it’s actually the casein which is inflammatory that has the biggest issue for people. Then the third biggest baddy doesn’t get talked a lot in the context of autoimmune, but it should, and that’s sugar. If you eat sugar of any kind including fruit, it could block your immune system from working for up to five hours after eating it. What do we do? We snack and the foods that we eat turn to sugar really quickly in our bloodstreams. When that’s happening, our immune system isn’t operating at full capacity. Autoimmunity is an immune system problem. It’s not a body part problem.
The MS doesn’t mean that I have a problem with my brain, I have an immune system problem. My weak link happens to be for MS, but if you have rheumatoid arthritis, the weak link may be your joints. It’s really important that people understand that this is not a body part problem. It’s an immune system problem. Whatever you can do to unburden your immune system is paramount for healing.
Dr. Pompa:
Infections would be next which we talked a little bit about, but you can expand.
Palmer:
We did. We did. Infections in my book come third because the gut actually comes second and that’s because when you remove the bad food like the SAD foods and the other things that are harming your gut, maybe unnecessary medications or just grabbing an antibiotic for a cold or something, with gut healing you take the bad stuff out. That’s why it naturally just follows the food. What we’re going to do first is remove the bad stuff, and then if you’re over 40, you might want to consider adding digestive enzymes. We tend not to produce as much stomach acid, so to really support yourself that way and adding in those probiotic foods like sauerkraut if you’re able to, and the prebiotics which is really just fiber, colorful vegetables that the probiotics eat.
If you don’t heal the gut, you don’t reverse the autoimmune condition. If you keep doing the things that are inflaming your gut—I often talk about this. We treat our guts like garbage disposals. I mean, we’re really just shoveling things down there and it may not suit us evolutionarily speaking. If those protein fragments continue to go through the lining of our gut, we’re going to stay in that autoimmune cascade. We can’t stop that until we stop putting the things in that are adding fuel to the fire.
Dr. Pompa:
A big one that scientists are pointing out is the glyphosate that is known to open up and cause the leaky gut which many of them like Stephanie Seneff from MIT has shown that look, it’s driving the leaky gut and a lot of the gluten problems. When you go to other countries like Italy, people eat the gluten and go, what’s the difference. Twofold. Number one, glyphosate is outlawed so it’s not opening up the gut. Number two, they definitely have a more ancient grain. Have a different grain than we do. It’s always what man has done to it. I was in a very ancient culture. They ate a lot of dairy, but it wasn’t the dairy that we eat. The casein was a lot different. We have definitely really changed the playing field. Oftentimes, it’s hard to fix the gut when you have silver fillings and leaching mercury disrupting the microbiome. You have hidden infections in the jaw, living in moldy homes. You point out a lot of that stuff in your book actually.
Palmer:
Absolutely, positively. One thing that I learned fairly recently that stress creates a leaky gut. I had no idea. They say that even public speaking, so me getting on your show to talk with you, my gut may be a little permeable today. We need to just tend to—it’s almost a moment by moment basis that we’re changing our terrain. That’s why doing things proactively on a day-to-day basis is so important. It’s not just you’re one and done. Absolutely, infections is right up on the third level where if you’re not better, which most people aren’t, there’s a lot more work to do although practitioners I interviewed for my book and my own experience, people typically heal between 60% and 80% of the way just by addressing those toxic foods, taking them out of their diet. Some people 100% of the time. You start with the highest leverage category and then work your way up. Which is why hormones is last because it’s downstream from everything else. If we can change our diet and heal and seal our gut, a lot of things just end up taking care of themselves. Does that make sense?
Dr. Pompa:
I couldn’t agree more. When I was sick—chase my adrenals, my thyroid issues to no avail until I got upstream on it. Yeah. Obviously, the F.I.G.H.T.S. get you to all the letters, but not necessarily the right order, but hey, it’s a great…
Palmer:
That’s right. That’s right. It’s just a way for people to remembered it. By the way, they don’t have to go in this order. If you want to tackle chronic stress first like I did, have at it. If you have the energy to do it because emotional pain sometimes it’s hard to dig in to those dark places.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s true. Like you said, some people can’t even fix their gut until they deal with some of these other toxic exposures in their life and may not be able to fix their gut until they deal with the emotional exposures in their gut .They’ll spend a lot of time trying different dietary things and wonder why they’re failing. It’s because they need to address more the stressor whether it be chemical, physical or emotional.
Palmer:
That’s right. That’s right. I think the lowest hanging fruit seems to be the best place to do it because people’s energy level may not be up to the task of having for example cavitation surgery that you would do with some of the lower hanging fruit. Talking about toxins, I’ve heard Dr. Pizzorno, naturopathic doctor. He founded Bastyr University. He wrote The Toxin Solution. Talk about how 70% of the toxins in our body are non-persistent, meaning, if we switch to an organic diet, we can really bring the body burden of toxins down in a really pretty quick amount of time.
There have been studies that show that children who have gone from eating conventional foods to eating an organic diet have been able to lower their body burden about 50% only within a few days. That would be a really low hanging fruit for people to consider. What are you eating? In particular, animal products. When you talk about concentration often of toxins, and I heard that sometimes the concentration of those pesticides and herbicides can be 25 times greater in animal products that it is on [00:39:15].
Dr. Pompa:
Again, that’s what man has done to it. If you’re eating real grass-fed meat that’s not given any chemicals or eating chemical grain which animals aren’t supposed to be eating. Cows anyway. No doubt biological concentration, you’re taking in a lot of poison at once. That’s for sure. That’s why when people get rid of it, they feel better. Dairy is another one. Holds a lot of toxins. I always say, if you start with just eating real meat, grass-fed and real dairy grass-fed, my gosh, right away you can reduce a lot of symptoms.
Palmer:
Absolutely. It’s such a good point. These are behaviors we do every day. We eat every day, so every day maybe two or three times a day, and if you snack maybe it’s more often than that. We have a decision. Do I add to my toxin bucket or do I take things out of my toxin bucket? I just want people to know, every choice we make is highly consequential. Just having your coffee in a paper cup once isn’t going to do anything, but did you know that paper cup maybe lined with a plasticizer. You’re actually going to be ingesting some plastic or maybe people are still using microwaves in heating their food up.
If you’re microwaving something that’s in plastic, you’re going to ingesting that and that becomes something that your body doesn’t recognize. That is something that perpetuates the autoimmune attack. Just every little thing that you decide to do is highly consequential. I’ve heard that the air we breathe, indoor air can be up to 90 times more polluted than outdoor air.
Dr. Pompa:
Wow.
Palmer:
We spend 90% of our time indoors. Some really simple things that we can do are just—if you live in a place where you’re not next to a highway or some chemical plant, open your windows, get some fresh air.
Dr. Pompa:
We do and I always cross ventilate all the time. When I was in a very humid environment, I had something called an energy return ventilator that brings stale air out and fresh air in. It runs it through your HVAC system just to bring fresh air in. You’re right. Air is a big problem. When you’re indoors a lot, you really have to pay attention to that. Water is another one. I can’t believe how many people still drink tap water. It’s ridiculous the amount of hormones and drugs and of course chlorine and fluoride and all the other things they purposely put in the water, but it’s poisonous. Something you can so something about this week. Fix it.
Palmer:
Right. Today. Your choices can change today. Even the thoughts we think. What do they say? We have 60,000 thoughts and most of them are repetitive and negative. To challenge some of those thoughts and that rumination of worrying and so forth that’s just extra stress that we’re giving to ourselves.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. Today we’re surrounded by enough toxins unknowingly. Control the ones you can. I mean, we get it’s the low hanging fruit. We can control and put in our mouth at least. We could control for the most part in our home the water we drink and the air we breathe. Start there and then start evaluating. Do you have silver fillings that contain mercury? Do you have a root canal? These hidden infections in the jaw, cavitations. Work your way up to these big causative factors because they’re nasty and they turn genes on very quickly.
Palmer:
They do and as I’m listening to us, I’m just reflecting on the fact that this—it can seem overwhelming to people, but just putting one foot in front of the other, just taking one step, making one decision. Open a window. Maybe that’s all you can do today. If you don’t have the energy to exercise and get out there, just sit outside in the sun. Maybe barefoot to get some earthing in. You can make it much simpler. It doesn’t have to be all at once, and it doesn’t have to be quite so complicated. I have to touch on mercury because you mentioned it. There was a doctor in the UK named Patrick Kingsley. He was, I think an integrative physician. He saw 4,000 patients with MS over his career and he said of the 4,000 he only saw five that did not have mercury poisoning.
Dr. Pompa:
I believe it. It ruined my life for a period of time. That’s for sure. You made the comment and I agree with it. Just by changing your diet you can get out a certain percentage of the toxins whether it’s 50, 60, who knows. These big neurotoxic sources like heavy metals, they tend to accumulate in the brain where it turns to inorganic mercury. It’s stuck for life unless you do something really intentional about it. Aluminum, same way. There’s a lot of toxins that really, we have to be more purposeful about mercury being one of them. Just great stuff and I know you covered a lot in your book. Again, there’s the book behind you, but I’ll hold it up again. Remind them of the gift that you are blessing our audience with.
Palmer:
Yeah. This I spent a lot of time on because the biggest question I get from people is what do I eat if I have an autoimmune condition? I believe that you’re in the best position to figure that out. I created a little guide, an e-book if you will, to help you figure that out. It’s called the Optimal Food Guide, and go to palmerkippola.com/gift. Palmer Kippola, P-A-L-M-E-R, Kippola is K-I-P-P-O-L-A dot com, forward slash gift.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s great. Yeah, we appreciate that. Awesome. Do you have any other final thoughts or broader message that you want to tell my viewers?
Palmer:
Yeah, I do. I do. I think that autoimmune is really an invitation for us to wake up. I say that lovingly. That question of why do I think I got the MS is really a question that I really invite you to get quiet about, reflect on, and view it as an opportunity because often we folks with autoimmune conditions have adopted maybe a perfectionistic tendency or personality or we are big people pleasers. Those were all coping mechanisms. We have an invitation to become who we truly are. I think that is what this gift of MS has brought to me. That’s what I would invite people to do is to get really quiet and still and allow those hypothesis to come up for you.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s great. I’m going to leave it with this note. Many people watch our show. They’re health seekers just looking for why they don’t feel well. Simple. Autoimmune, it could be it. It’s estimated 90% to 95% of Americans have autoimmune. That means that just those of you just with some brain fog and energy issues, your body could be attacking itself. Don’t wait until you get the diagnosis because by then it’s been there a while. I would make these changes that we’ve discussed now. As if hey, my immune system is probably attacking itself. I want to stop it now because arguably the earlier you do the better. Palmer, thank you so much for your message and for your book and for your contribution no doubt from the mess to the message, and in this case, thank you that you’re the messenger. You’ve changed a lot of lives. You really have so we appreciate that.
Palmer:
I’m so grateful to you and you are just one of the most phenomenal health educators. We just must take control of our health. I think what you’re doing is fantastic. It’s just been an honor to be here and a privilege. Thank you so much.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Love to team up on it with you. Thanks for being here.
Ashley:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. This episode was brought to you by CytoDetox. Please check it out at buycytonow.com. We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10:00 AM Eastern. We truly appreciate your support. You can always find us at cellularhealing.tv and please remember to spread the love by liking, subscribing, giving an iTunes review and sharing the show with anyone you think may benefit from the information heard here. As always, thanks for listening.
