The next show is November 9th, so mark your schedule and connect up. The topic of conversation is Gluten-Free and Celiac Disease! http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Thrive-In-Balance Please send me any suggestions of topics and I will be sure and share them with Jordan for her consideraton.

Listen to the previous show in which she interviewed me on a variety of topics and suggested tips to balancing life: http://www.thrivebalance.com/members/tib/cal/VIEW+2009+Oct+12+11:00AM#11:00AM

REMEMBER!
November 9th, EST 12 noon: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Thrive-In-Balance …let’s discuss celiac disease, gluten-free issues and foods and let’s get the word out and better inform the public at large.

Thank you! Tina Turbin

Sometimes our immune system breaks down and does not operate as it should do to a variety of reasons and the body starts attacking itself, or attacking normally beneficial substances in the body. Our immune system is to ensure that harmful substances are cleared from the body while the ‘good’ necessary tissues and organs are left alone. Let me share an Article I feel we all may benefit from: enzymesstuff.com

“The idea behind using enzyme therapy to correct the autoimmune function is that you are not just treating symptoms, you are helping to re-establish the correct regulation and support of the immune system. “

No one is completely sure what causes particular autoimmune diseases although a mixture of genetics, environment, and maybe pathogens is involved. Which symptoms actually appear may depend on a combination of the individual’s environment, experiences, and biochemistry, and which major organs or parts of the body are affected.

Currently, no cures for most autoimmune diseases exist. However, many good treatments are available that allow you to live around the condition, have a good life, and prevent the situation from worsening. A two-sided approach includes adding supplements to keep the immune system strong and avoiding things that stress it. Digestive enzymes, particularly proteases, may be quite helpful in improving auto-immune system related conditions.

A key source of problems with autoimmune conditions is inflammation, which causes much of the associated pain. If inflammation persists, tissue is destroyed. Managing and controlling inflammation goes a long way towards limiting the damage caused by an autoimmune condition. Proteases are very effective for controlling inflammation.

One of the problems with medications commonly used for autoimmune conditions is they often suppress the immune system. The thinking is that since the immune system is waging the attack on the body, then suppressing the immune system reduces the problem. However, slowing or suppressing the immune system will also prevent the body from its natural ability to protect itself from invaders. Now you are left open to developing other illnesses. This is one of the major blessings of using a natural substance such as digestive enzymes.

Enzymes are very effective at building up the immune system while at the same time decreasing inflammation, all with none of the side-effects of many medications. Enzyme therapy has an excellent track record in the treatment of many types of autoimmune diseases.

A substantial amount of research has found that there are compounds called circulating immune complexes which build up in auto-immune conditions. Under normal healthy conditions, these complexes are eliminated from the body immediately. Where there system isn’t working properly, these complexes persist and may settle in different parts of the body. Where they settle may be different in different conditions. For example, in arthritis, these complexes tend to settle in the joints. Or in fibromyalgia it may be the tissue surrounding the joints. In Multiple Sclerosis, it may be the muscle or nerve tissue. When this happens, the complexes can cause inflammation and tissue damage. These complexes can also contribute to cancers. Testing shows many people with autoimmune diseases have a much higher number of these immune complexes, either lodged in tissue, in circulation, or both.

Research since the 1970s has shown that eliminating these immune complexes improves many conditions including the ones listed here. Enzymes are one way to eliminate these all-important immune complexes. Certain mixtures of hydrolytic enzymes, including proteases, lipases, and amylases have reduced the number of circulating immune complexes in past studies (Stauder 1990; Stauder et al 1989; Ransberger et al 1988; Targoni, Tary-Lehmann, and Lehmann 1999). Enzymes work by breaking up the harmful complexes and activating the macrophages, which gobble up and destroy the intruders. This ends the vicious cycle that leads to deterioration and many chronic disorders.

Some German clinical studies that immune complex dysfunctions might be effectively relieved with enzymes which target the formation of the immune complexes. There are very encouraging results with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis. This is very good because such conditions have been hard to treat with known medicines. It is believed that the chronic inflammation involved in these conditions is triggered by immune complexes being deposited in the intestinal tissue. http://www.enzymestuff.com

Fiasse, R., Lurhuma, A.Z., Cambiaso, C.L., Masson, P.L., and Dive, C. (1978) ‘Circulating immune complexes and disease activity in Crohn’s disease.’ Gut 19:611–617.

Hodgson, H.J.F., Potter, B.J., and Jewell, D.P. (1977) ‘Immune complexes in ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.’ Clinical and Experimental Immunology 29:187–196.

Kre, I., Kojecky, Z., Matouskova, I., and Benysek, L. (1980) ‘Crohn’s disease, serum immunodepressive factors, and circulating immune complexes.’ Bollettino Dell’Istituto Sieroterapico Milanese 59:619–624.

Key Concepts

• Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune disorder triggered by ingestion of gluten, a major protein in wheat, or of related proteins in other grains.
• Research into the root causes indicates that the disorder develops when a person exposed to gluten also has a genetic susceptibility to CD and an unusually permeable intestinal wall.
• Surprisingly, essentially the same trio—an environmental trigger, a genetic susceptibility and a “leaky gut”—seems to underlie other autoimmune disorders as well. This finding raises the possibility that new treatments for CD may also ameliorate other conditions.

My vote for the most important scientific revolution of all time would trace back 10,000 years ago to the Middle East, when people first noticed that new plants arise from seeds falling to the ground from other plants—a realization that led to the birth of agriculture. Before that observation, the human race had based its diet on fruits, nuts, tubers and occasional meats. People had to move to where their food happened to be, putting them at the mercy of events and making long-term settlements impossible.

Once humans uncovered the secret of seeds, they quickly learned to domesticate crops, ultimately crossbreeding different grass plants to create such staple grains as wheat, rye and barley, which were nutritious, versatile, storable, and valuable for trade. For the first time, people were able to abandon the nomadic life and build cities. It is no coincidence that the first agricultural areas also became “cradles of civilization.”

This advancement, however, came at a dear price: the emergence of an illness now known as celiac disease (CD), which is triggered by ingesting a protein in wheat called gluten or eating similar proteins in rye and barley. Gluten and its relatives had previously been absent from the human diet. But once grains began fueling the growth of stable communities, the proteins undoubtedly began killing people (often children) whose bodies reacted abnormally to them. Eating such proteins repeatedly would have eventually rendered sensitive individuals unable to properly absorb nutrients from food. Victims would also have come to suffer from recurrent abdominal pain and diarrhea and to display the emaciated bodies and swollen bellies of starving people. Impaired nutrition and a spectrum of other complications would have made their lives relatively short and miserable.

If these deaths were noticed at the time, the cause would have been a mystery. Over the past 20 years, however, scientists have pieced together a detailed understanding of CD. They now know that it is an autoimmune disorder, in which the immune system attacks the body’s own tissues. And they know that the disease arises not only from exposure to gluten and its ilk but from a combination of factors, including predisposing genes and abnormalities in the structure of the small intestine.

What is more, CD provides an illuminating example of the way such a triad—an environmental trigger, susceptibility genes and a gut abnormality—may play a role in many autoimmune disorders. Research into CD has thus suggested new types of treatment not only for the disease itself but also for various other autoimmune conditions, such as type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.

Early Insights
After the advent of agriculture, thousands of years passed before instances of seemingly well-fed but undernourished children were documented. CD acquired a name in the first century A.D., when Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a Greek physician, reported the first scientific description, calling it koiliakos, after the Greek word for “abdomen,” koelia. British physician Samuel Gee is credited as the modern father of CD. In a 1887 lecture he described it as “a kind of chronic indigestion which is met with in persons of all ages, yet is especially apt to affect children between one and five years old.” He even correctly surmised that “errors in diet may perhaps be a cause.” As clever as Gee obviously was, the true nature of the disease escaped even him, as was clear from his dietary prescription: he suggested feeding these children thinly sliced bread, toasted on both sides.

Identification of gluten as the trigger occurred after World War II, when Dutch pediatrician Willem-Karel Dicke noticed that a war-related shortage of bread in the Netherlands led to a significant drop in the death rate among children affected by CD—from greater than 35 percent to essentially zero. He also reported that once wheat was again available after the conflict, the mortality rate soared to previous levels. Following up on Dicke’s observation, other scientists looked at the different components of wheat, discovering that the major protein in that grain, gluten, was the culprit. From the August 2009 Scientific American Magazine

By Alessio Fasano