Repair Your Immune System to Heal Lupus

What is Lupus?

What do Luisa May Alcott, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, Ferdinand Marcos, Tim Raines, and Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds have in common?  All are reported to have suffered with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, also known as “Lupus” or SLE.

SLE can affect the heart, joints, skin, lungs, blood vessels, liver, kidneys and nervous system. The autoimmune disease is variable and unpredictable, often having periods of illness called flares, alternating with remissions. It is nine times more common in women than in men, and especially affects women in child-bearing years between the ages 15 to 35.  Also, it is more common in people of non-European descent.

The disease is so variable because it is a condition of the immune system where antibodies are made against your own proteins, causing inflammation.  It most often affects the joints, causing a painful arthritis.  About half get skin problems, such as the characteristic “butterfly rash” on the face due to exposure to ultraviolet light.  Fatigue and muscle pains are also common.

The antibodies attack the cell nucleus, most often the fibroblasts that make connective tissue.  This is the tissue that holds the body together.  For this reason, lupus can strike anywhere in the body.

How is Lupus Diagnosed?

Lupus can be brought on by:

• Food sensitivities
• Drugs
• Antibiotics
• Infections
• Toxin exposures
• Other, unknown causes

The lupus diagnosis is very difficult because so many people suffer for years not knowing what they have.  The tests that best characterize the symptoms are not exclusive to Lupus.  The Lupus tests that should be done include:

1. ANA (anti-nuclear antibody)
2. Anti-DS DNA (antibodies against DNA)
3. Anti-Smith (antibodies against nuclear proteins)

These tests, along with the characteristic rash on the face will detect about 92% of cases.

Natural Lupus Treatment Program

Loren came to see me in her 40s.  She had suffered with rashes, all over pain , fatigue, mouth sores and arthritis for over ten years.  She was unable to take care of her children and required help in the home.  Worst of all, she was unable to predict when she would be functional.

She had been diagnosed with Lupus several years before, and had tried medications to suppress the immune system and relieve the pain.  These helped a little, but she was still fatigued much of the time.  She had difficulty sleeping, and was still in pain most of the time.

She was told she was incurable and could get kidney failure, psychosis, heart failure, restrictions of the lungs and many other manifestations.  Of course, with several young children she was always fearful of these things.

Systemic Lupus has been characterized as an incurable illness, as with all autoimmune diseases, but in the 21^st Century we have come a long way.  There are no medicines to cure Lupus, but there is a healing program that works well for most cases.

The foundation of this program requires repairing the digestive system.  Over three-fourths of our immune system comes from the intestines.  It is an extremely complex and fascinating system of our own cells, bacteria, yeast, parasites, food, hormones and tissues that help our immune system to be able to distinguish “self” from “not self.”

It seems simple, but all organisms use the same proteins to function on a cellular level, while these proteins all have to work the same, they all are different, and the immune system has to be able to know the difference!  When it doesn’t, we get diseases like Lupus.

How can we reprogram the immune system to work right?

The answer is in the bacteria of the intestines.  We need the right mix of bacteria that produce certain organic acids that allow the immune system to function properly.  In this case, “YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT!”

Every time you eat, you are feeding bacteria, the ones you feed the most are going to grow, whereas the ones you feed the least are going to diminish or die.

The healing program is simple:  Change your diet. Change your life.

Step 1: REMOVE all the offending foods.  

Some doctors do blood tests to determine food sensitivities. However, this is unnecessary.  The simplest method is the “elimination diet” where you remove those foods that tend to offend most often.  This works about 80% of the time.  I start with going:

1. Gluten-free (no grains, except brown rice and quinoa)
2. Dairy-free  (This means no milk products at all, including protein powders)
3. Sugar-free (this includes all processed sugars, starches, and artificial sweeteners, like stevia)

At the same time, I recommend only single-ingredient foods.  This means nothing from a restaurant, or prepared from a box, bag, bottle or can.  This healthy single-ingredient food list would include:

• Fruit
• Vegetables
• Beans, peas and lentils (prepare them yourself)
• Eggs
• Nuts and seeds (raw is best)
• Small amounts of meat, fish and poultry (like 2-3 servings per WEEK)
• Drink only water (no juices, sodas, flavored drinks or alcohol)

The elimination diet will become part of your life, so “Get used to it!”  It takes about a year to resolve all the problems associated with Lupus.  The power of the elimination diet is that it is designed to calm inflammation and balance the body. Once the body is calm and the disease symptoms diminish, your body can promote healing at the cellular level. After two weeks on the elimination diet, then you can move on to the next step:

Step 2: REPAIR the intestines.  

Most people diagnosed with Lupus have a “leaky gut,” which means the lining of the intestines is not complete and things that aren’t supposed to be in the body (like partially undigested food) can “leak” through into your bloodstream.  After two weeks on the elimination diet above, I use the following intestinal healing formula:

1. L-glutamine powder – 1 teaspoon twice per day in water on an empty stomach
2. DGL (Licorice) lozenges – use at least 3 per day
3. Aloe Vera juice – If you get the pure juice, then you can mix two tablespoons in the L-Glutamine drink.

You will stay on step 2 to repair the intestines for about 4 weeks, but after 2 weeks you will begin the next step.

Step 3: REPLACE the good bacteria.  

Now that you have filled your intestines with good prebiotics (the food for good bacteria) and repaired the lining of the intestines, you can start taking a good probiotic.  Probiotics are the good bacteria that normally inhabit our intestines.  They help us digest our food, make and absorb nutrients and vitamins, as well as develop our immune system.  The most important organisms are:

• L. acidophilus
• L. bifidus
• S. boulardii

Other organisms may be present.  Remember, not everyone needs the same organisms, so it may be better to use one type and then switch to another.  I recommend one that has billions of organisms, but don’t worry too much about whether to buy the “3-billion” or the “8-billion.”  Either one with content in the billions is fine.  It actually takes months to replace the bad bacteria with the good bacteria, so you will want to stay on the diet and probiotic supplement for about one year.

By the time people diagnosed with Lupus are only two weeks into step 3 they are feeling better.  The pain will go away and there will be no more rashes.

Return to Good Health

At this time, Loren was significantly better, and was able to function on her own and take care of her children without pain and fatigue.  However, she continued to have painful ulcers in her mouth so I sent her to our herbalist who gave her chamomile tea to drink.   After drinking the tea, she would hold the tea bag on the ulcer in her mouth for about 10 minutes.  The ulcers disappeared and she is well to this day.  (This is a neat trick for people with “aphthous ulcers” of the mouth!)

While Lupus is incurable with medications, it is curable  and healed with re-programming the immune system by changing the diet and repairing the intestines.

We have this program works just as well for most autoimmune diseases.

“But you don’t look sick” is often a well-meaning friend’s first response upon learning about the Lupus diagnosis. It may be meant as a compliment, but for those dealing with the extreme fatigue, the stress, and the plethora of emotions that come with that diagnosis, the comment falls short of the supportive validation they seek.  

Stories of recovery are not often from “spontaneous remission,” but are the result of a specific diet and lifestyle program. 

Once you read the personal stories of recovery below– and you will be inspired to create your own success story – with the details and resources that you need to make it happen.