The Gut Microbiome and Autoimmune Connection

Did you know that there are more bacteria in us and on us that there are of our own human cells? Microbiomes are clusters of mainly bacteria as well as a few other organisms, which are found in our mouths, skin, nose, urogenitals and our gut. In recent years scientist have discovered that the gut microbiome, contains tens of trillions of microorganisms, including up to 1,000 different species of bacteria with over 3 million genes — that’s 150 times more genes than human genes! With 80% of our immune system in our gut, we must support and nurture our microbiome, because all of those good bacteria influence our immune system and determine if it will be healthy or if it will go rogue as with autoimmunity.

How Does Your Gut Microbiome Form?

So how do all of these beneficial bacteria get inside of us to form our microbiomes? The truth is that your microbiome starts developing at conception. We used to think the womb was sterile, but recent studies show that women who had a bladder infection during their first or second trimester had “microbial fingerprints” of this infection in their placenta. This means that if a mother gets antibiotics while she’s pregnant it can have a permanent impact on the gut microbiome of the fetus. In a sense, you inherit your mom’s microbiome, and if hers is not healthy yours will not be either. This is why I ask all of my patients if their mother got antibiotics while she was pregnant with them.

Another question I ask my patients is how they were born: vaginally or by C-section. If you’re born vaginally, you swallow a big dose of your mom’s microbiome as you pass through the birth canal. If you’re born via C-section, you miss being inoculated with those beneficial bacteria, and your first exposure tends to be to other types of bacteria that may actually contain bad bacteria, such as from the skin or mouth (from being held and kissed by adults). Latest research shows that babies born by C-section are more likely to have allergies and altered gut microbiomes. A recent study that involved ‘swabbing’ the newborn with mom’s microbiome from the birth canal immediately after birth shows that the babies microbiomes are as diverse and healthy as those who were born vaginally.

Breast feeding is another wonderful way to help insure a healthy gut microbiome because breast milk contains naturally-occurring probiotics and anti-inflammatory compounds to help the good bacteria to flourish. InThe Autoimmune Solution, I write about seeing many autoimmune patients in my practice who went through a pattern that is all too common:

Mom getting antibiotics for an infection such as Group B strep while pregnant => baby born via c-section => baby fed formula rather than breast milk => baby gets ear infections and requires antibiotics => altered microbiome

Missing out on friendly bacteria from the birth canal and breastmilk puts you at greater risk for ear infections and other recurring childhood infections. Also, there is an association between dairy allergies and infections in childhood. With every infection comes another round of antibiotics that wipe out even more of the good bacteria which can lead toyeast or Candida overgrowth and/or Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), as I explain below. All of these factors that start before you are even born can be linked to autoimmunity, even if you don’t develop a full-blown autoimmune disease for decades. Let’s talk about why that is.

How The Gut Microbiome Influences Autoimmunity

I like to think of the gut microbiome as a rainforest. In a rainforest, many types of plants live together in a symbiotic ecosystem but if the balance gets disrupted, the good or beneficial plants begin to die and the bad ones start to take over. This also happens in your gut– even just one dose of antibiotics can throw off the balance of the good bacteria that used to keep your immune system running optimally. The good gets killed or greatly reduced, and the bad bacteria (SIBO) and yeast (Candida) that used to be kept in check can take over and grow out of control.

Additionally, if you’re eating a diet high in refined carbohydrate, sugar and alcohol then you will feed the SIBO and yeast (Candida), letting them grow even more out of control and this is called dysbiosis. Certain medications such as antibiotics, acid blocking drugs, birth control pills and steroid can also cause further dysbiosis. As the dysbiosis gets more out of control it can cause a suppression in your immune system – remember 80% of your immune system is in the gut – which then can lead to being susceptible to other infections which may require more antibiotics and the cycle just keeps going.

Over time, having this dysbiosis in your gut microbiome will eventually lead a leaky gut. If your gut is leaky, food particles, toxins and infections can get through your intestinal lining and into your bloodstream where your immune system detects them as foreign invaders and goes on high alert, attacking them and creating inflammation. One main way inflammation occurs is that many of these food particles (especially gluten and casein, a protein found in dairy), toxins and infections look very similar to our own body’s cells and our immune system gets confused and accidentally attack our tissues which leads to autoimmunity. This process is called molecular mimicry. It’s a cycle that works like this: altered gut microbiome or dysbiosis => leaky gut => food, toxins and infections into bloodstream => immune system attacks body due to molecular mimicry => autoimmune disease.

How To Protect Your Microbiome and Heal A Leaky Gut

The first step in reversing the autoimmune process is to heal your leaky gut and restore your microbiome. I use functional medicine’s 4R Approach to heal a leaky gut. The process involves removing the bad bacteria and inflammatory foods, restoring key ingredients for digestion, re-inoculating with good bacteria, and repairing the gut lining. You can read all about it in this article, and I walk you through the whole process in my six-week Autoimmune Solution Program.

If you are pregnant or planning to become pregnant, now is the time to start thinking about your baby’s microbiome! I wrote a four-part series on setting up your newborn for lifelong health. I highly recommend reading it if you are planning on little ones anytime soon. Part one is all about supporting your microbiome during pre-pregnancy and pregnancy, andpart two is all about introducing plenty of good bacteria in your baby’s first year to build a strong microbiome.

Source: http://www.amymyersmd.com/2016/08/gut-microbiome-autoimmune-disease/

How to Treat Eczema from the Inside Out

Is your skin or your child’s so dry and itchy that you sometimes scratch it until it bleeds? Are you tired of applying messy creams and ointments that don’t offer much relief? Have you been so desperate to stop the itching that you’ve even considered taking a powerful immunosuppressant drug such as prednisone? If so, you and your child are not alone. An estimated 30 million people in the U.S. suffer from eczema.

I frequently see patients in my clinic, particularly children, who are suffering from eczema and other skin issues, and they have tried everything their doctor has to offer and still nothing seems to permanently heal the eczema. The reason you cannot fully heal and reverse eczema and other skin issues this way is because conventional medicine is only trying to superficially suppress the outside symptom with medications. In order to completely heal and reverse your symptoms, you must dig deeper and address the underlying cause or causes!

What is Eczema?

Eczema comes in many forms, but it is mainly recognized by its red, itchy rash, known as atopic dermatitis. According to conventional medicine, the cause of eczema is unknown; but functional medicine takes a different perspective. Functional medicine views eczema not as a “disease” in and of itself, but rather, as an external symptom of an internal problem. While conventional medicine treats only the symptoms, functional medicine practitioners work toward addressing the underlying cause of eczema – a malfunctioning immune system.

You see, eczema occurs when you experience inflammation, which is your body’s response to a perceived threat. I will cover what those threats are in the case of eczema in a minute, but the bottom line is that your immune system is so stressed by these threats that it goes into overdrive and ends up attacking your skin. Many people who have eczema also have asthma and seasonal allergies, which are also caused by inflammation and an overactive immune system. In fact, this is so common that doctors refer to this as the “atopic triad.” Not surprisingly, another thing all three of these conditions have in common is that by treating the inflammation that triggers them, you can reverse their symptoms.

Let’s talk about how you can do that. Here are the most helpful tips I give my patients who are struggling with chronic eczema.

1) Eat an Anti-Inflammatory Diet

If you are already eating a whole-foods diet based on organic fruits and vegetables and pasture-raised meats, but are still experiencing eczema, you may have underlying food sensitivities. In fact, in children with eczema, this is the most common underlying cause that I see.

Try eliminating inflammatory foods such as gluten, corn, soy, and dairy. Focus on adding foods high in antioxidants (found mostly in fruits and vegetables) and anti-inflammatory compounds (found in fatty fish, nuts, avocados, and turmeric, to name a few). Some cases I have seen are so extreme they even need to remove meats that have been fed a corn and soy diet. To avoid this, look for grass-fed, wild and pasture-raised meats and poultry. Several studies have shown that diets high in fruits, vegetables, and fatty fish are associated with a lower risk for developing eczema, whereas diets high in processed foods increase the risk. You can find tons of free, anti-inflammatory and Elimination Diet-compliant recipes in the recipes section of my website.

2) Eat a Low-Histamine Diet

If you or your child are already following an anti-inflammatory diet and are still struggling from eczema, the next foods to look at are high-histamine foods. You might already be familiar with histamine in terms of seasonal allergies because antihistamine medications like Zytrec, Allegra or Benedryl provide quick relief of your symptoms. This is because histamine’s role in the body is to cause an immediate inflammatory response. It serves as a red flag in your immune system, notifying your body of any potential attackers. Because it travels throughout your bloodstream, histamine can affect your gut, lungs, skin, brain, and entire cardiovascular system, contributing to a wide range of symptoms, including eczema.

A number of healthy foods that you may be regularly eating, including avocados, eggplant, spinach, tomatoes, bacon, and dried or citrus fruits, are high in histamine or release histamine in your body. I’ve seen many patients make a dramatic turnaround after removing these foods. To learn more about histamine intolerance, how to modify your diet to minimize your histamine levels, and supplements to relieve histamine exposure, check out this article.

3) Heal Your Gut

As you’ve seen by now, what’s going on in your gut has a huge effect on your immune system. In fact 80% of your immune system is housed in your gut. That’s why one of the major causes of autoimmune diseases, including eczema, is a poorly functioning intestinal tract.

A healthy GI tract serves as a barrier that prevents undigested food particles, microbes, toxins, and other undesirable substances from entering the body through the bloodstream. When the cells lining the intestinal wall become damaged, substances are able to “leak” into the body, where they are attacked by the immune system, which leads to inflammation. The inflammatory response triggered by an overactive immune system can be seen anywhere in the body. In the case of eczema, it is the skin that is affected. Gut inflammation caused by leaky gut can also impair the protective function of your skin, which can increase the severity of inflammation and worsen eczema symptoms.

Fortunately, leaky gut syndrome can be treated using functional medicine’s 4R program:

• Remove the bad: inflammatory foods, yeast and bacterial overgrowth,parasites, and other irritants.
• Replace the good: digestive enzymes, HCL, and other components for good digestion that may be deficient.
• Reinoculate by adding beneficial bacteria back into your system.
• Repair the gut lining by supplementing with nutrients to promote healing.

For a more detailed description of the 4R program, see my article here.

4) Restore Your Microbiome

There has been a lot of recent buzz in the medical community about how the gut microbiome (made up of the bacteria within your gut) can affect nearly every function in the body, from digestion to immunity to weight loss, and even mental health. We are learning more every day about the importance of keeping the gut bacteria in balance.

Tackle Small Bowel Bacterial Overgrowth
What we do know is that the trillions of bacteria in your gut operate in a delicate balance. When that balance is disrupted, Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) can occur, which is when your “bad” bacteria outnumber your “good” bacteria. Overrun by infection, your gut can no longer digest nutrients properly, and your inflammation rises, triggering eczema and other attacks on your own tissues.

Diets high in sugar, refined carbohydrates, and processed foods, and low in fermentable fibers (prebiotics) can contribute to this overgrowth. Avoiding these foods that feed the bad bacteria, and adding foods that feed the good bacteria can help restore the balance. Studies have shown that prebiotics and probiotics can effectively reduce the incidence of eczema. These can be found in fermented foods like sauerkraut, dairy-free yogurt (dairy is a common trigger for skin conditions), and water or coconut kefir, as well as in supplement form.

If you suspect that SIBO may be the underlying cause of your eczema, you can work with your functional medicine doctor to order testing. Or, if you don’t have access to a functional medicine doctor in your area, you can order an at-home breath test from the lab company Aerodiagnostics. To learn more about how you can treat SIBO naturally, check out this article.

Beat Yeast Overgrowth
A disruption in your gut bacteria can also allow yeast, commonly called Candida, to thrive. Candida colonizes your gut, causing it to become leaky, which in turn allows the yeast to escape via your bloodstream. Once escaped, this yeast can affect your mood, hair, nails, and you guessed it, skin. In fact, researchers have taken skin cultures of eczema patients and more often than not, yeast was found in the samples.

Because good gut bacteria and your immune system usually keep yeast in check, two of the most common causes of yeast overgrowth are antibiotics and immunosuppressant drugs, both of which are commonly prescribed to eczema patients.

If you think Candida may be the cause of your eczema, you can take this simple quiz to find out. Effectively treating Candida involves stopping the yeast overgrowth, restoring the good bacteria that usually keep them in check, and healing your gut so that Candida can no longer enter your bloodstream.

If you are interested in learning more about how to overcome Candida overgrowth, download my FREE Candida Control Bundle! You’ll receive a collection of free resources that will launch you in the direction of a healthy gut.

If you have been frustrated by your doctor’s approach to your or your child’s eczema, I hope this article gives you hope that there is another solution, and the motivation to take action. I do understand that identifying these root causes and making dietary and lifestyle changes to overcome them is a longer term solution. That’s why next week, I’ll be writing about how you can ease eczema symptoms in the immediacy and address the environmental factors that contribute to them in a follow-up article. Make sure you sign up for my free weekly newsletter so you don’t miss it!

To leave you with one more piece of hope and inspiration, check out this story of how one of my pediatric patients overcame severe eczema after suffering from it since he was only 15 months old. He made an amazing recovery, and has been symptom-free for years now!

Source: http://www.amymyersmd.com/2016/04/treat-eczema-inside/