I posted a potentially controversial quote this week on social media. Here it is…

I was expecting a lot more feedback on this, to be honest. Perhaps most of the fabulous people that follow me are already of a similar mindset and so it’s not really a ‘thing’.

I’ve perhaps been noted as being a little skeptical of allopathic medicine’s approach to autoimmune conditions.

The fact is that allopathic medicine is pretty awesome when it comes to life saving surgeries and repairing serious injuries so their patients can live a normal life.

I’m not talking about that really, but something that’s a bit more of a grey area for medicine. There are over 80 million Americans (over 160 million worldwide) who have an autoimmune condition. 75% of these are women. Seems a bit high doesn’t it?

Right now there are over 200 autoimmune conditions. I call them “conditions” because the word “disease” sounds so permanent.  I, along with plenty of functional medicine and naturopathic doctors, know that autoimmune conditions don’t have to be permanent, they can be either greatly reversed or completely reversed.

So, what’s up with my social media quote? When we get a diagnosis and are given a pill, more often than not, we’re giving our power away. It’s given away to the doctor and to the pharmaceutical company.

I felt this when I was diagnosed with my first autoimmune condition – Hashimotos (hypothyroidism). The endocrinologist I met with (who was very nice and well intentioned) said this is what I have, there’s no way to reverse it. Just take these pills for ever – until the day I die. Oh he didn’t use those words exactly but I went home feeling at first like it was all hopeless and that my body was falling apart for no reason.

But I couldn’t shake the red flag that popped up in the back of my mind. Perhaps it was this feeling that I had given away my power and that something he said didn’t sound quite right to me.

“What do you mean  nobody knows why our body just randomly attacks itself? What do you mean that I can’t reverse it even if I ate better? ”

These are the questions I wanted to ask but I knew my 10 minutes were up.

It’s important to note that I got the same sort of talk when I was diagnosed with alopecia areata.

I chose not to give my power away (ok, after I cried a bit). How did I do this? I changed tactics. I asked friends for recommendations for naturopathic or functional medicine doctors and got to work. I made sure they knew I was serious about reversing this, I just needed some guidance. My health practitioner became my partner, not my boss.

Now the great thing is, because I didn’t give my power away, I started on this new path of awareness, education, research and self experimentation. I know, through my training, that a diagnosis is just a description of the symptoms and that all autoimmune conditions are systemic conditions (just presenting themselves in different ways). The great thing is that even though every one of us is completely unique, there are some common approaches we can all take in order to get us back on the right track.

And here’s the big tip for the day…

When we remove the things that block our health, then we can thrive. 

Toxins are a huge part of why we aren’t thriving.

I’m so excited to share my upcoming FB live series starting this Thursday at noon Pacific Time. Detoxing for Autoimmunity!  I’ll be posting the videos afterwards so no worries if you miss out! Please be sure to go to my page and follow/like me so you see updates there and are alerted when I start the live video.

Looking forward to seeing you there!