I left the office with quite a sad feeling, the following days was dark, what was the point to continue with life when I already know my life was going to be a living hell? After having a complete break down for some days I slowly started to rise again. I started to think about the last year, all what had happened. Pretty much a year before my diagnose I left Sweden for a 12 months working holiday in New Zeeland. That year was a rough one, I was sleeping at backpackers for 6 of those 12 months, sharing room with 4-20 people. Young people ready to party their as of 7 days a week. There was people coming back 3, 4, 5 a clock at the morning lighting up the room, taking a shower and even talking loud to each other. For most of these folks it was all fine because they did this for 3-4 weeks but I was in the country for a year. I didn’t sleep a whole night for months and top of that I had to go up at 5.30 to go to my work as a builder. This was slowly taking a toll on me. And together with partying, alcohol and extremely bad diet my body really started to breaking down.
For a whole year I was eating mostly bread, pasta and noodles. Almost no meat and no greens at all. When my body was at the absolute weakest point I meet a Brazilian girlfriend that just loved to be a drama queen and fight about every single thing. This it is another story but to make it short I was feeling mentally beaten down to my shoes. Everything was my fault and I even had to ask her for apologize for having such an ugly girlfriend before her. For real, this is not a joke. If I had such an ugly girlfriend before her I was just not worth her love. For some strange reason I stayed in this relationship for a whole year. In the end of the year we did a stopover in Thailand – Koh phi phi. This is where hell on earth broke out, she forced me to tell her about former relationships. I didn’t, because I thought she will only be jealous but she kept forcing me to talk about it. If I refused she told me I have something to hide. So after she got to know that I had Asian girlfriend for a short period (3years before her) she got totally insane. She started to scream and behave like a five year old kid and the whole evening ended with she breaking up.
I was so stressed from all this mental terror and the day after this when I woke up I had high fever and felt really bad. One or two days after this we was supposed to take the flight to Bali and that couldn’t be rescheduled. So there was nothing to do I had to go there and the drama queen was going to come with me. The trip was awfully and I was on a half-awake state for the whole trip. Once there I just stayed sick in the hotel room for a whole week. My body was a total wreak and when everything was at its worst I got a full spectrum antibiotic that totally destroyed my gut flora. After this my stomach and my health never became the same again. For one week i was just in bed or at the toilet and i coulden´t leave the room. On pure Swedish I literally “Sket sönder röven” that week. I had to go to the toilet 10-15 times a day and by sound i never know if i was peeing or pooping and every time it was initiated by a gut pain and a strong sensation of urgent toilette need. If not in a few seconds I would literally make a big brown bear in my pants, not particularly anything to be proud about for a 23 year old guy. So that that's pretty much the whole story how I became a sick. So after going thru my life more than a couple of times I believe I have the whole picture how it all developed.
First of all, one is gene related since my mother had a neurologic autoimmune disease called multiple sclerosis. If one such a disease can be found in family the risk is greater that the offspring (ME) will develop some kind of abnormalities of the immune system. It does not have to be the same disease but another autoimmune one. But it’s not enough with this for a diseaase to break out, the body is amazing and just because you have some specific genes it doesn’t mean you are sentenced to illness. Scientific studies have shown that genes can be switched on and off by lifestyle and diet. In my case I challenged the whole situation by extremely bad food during the year abroad. Up on that I was feeling mentally stressed from the bad relationship, this together with antibiotics in Bali was just too much for my body to handle and disease was a fact.
On top of this I also understands now that I have been a type A personality my whole life. This personality pushes thru all things and are being very driven with many projects running at the same time. Time for relaxation always comes next, but since a projects is followed by another immediately after time for relaxation never comes. This affects the sleep and therefore the long term health and the body is constantly in an alert state and the healing effect of the Parasympathetic nervous system can never kick in to the heal cellular damage. Now when I have been doing quite a lot of research I can make a conclusion that this personality is a common one among people who develops autoimmune diseases, especially gut diseases.
By experience I can also make the conclusion that the state of your emotions is a very important factor for your physical wellbeing. If you continue pushing yourself and at the same time don’t listen to your emotions it will often turn bad after some time. For me personally I can say that there is a specific emotion that is extremely damaging to my health and that is the perception of being in a situation I heavily dislike, especially if it’s a situation I can’t affect or escape from.
Since my own experience was very clear on this I started to become interested in how feelings can affect the body. My story was not the only one. During life I had talked to so many individuals that had similar stories - onset of disease started after a longer period of mental stress. This led me into reading an article written by Dr Ryke Geerd Hamer. He was a German scientist who had been able to pinpoint certain emotions with some specific diseases. He is also the founder of Germanic New Medicine which is built up on five biological laws that describes how the body reacts to mental stress and how this can contribute to disease. Below is a copy-past of this 5 laws from Wikipedia.
1st law ("Iron Rule"): Severe diseases originate from a shock event which is experienced by the individual as very difficult, highly acute, dramatic and isolating. The shock’s psychological conflict content determines the location of the appearance of a focus of activity in the brain that can be seen in a CT scan as a set of concentric rings, called "Hamer foci", which correspond to the location of the disease in the body. The subsequent development of the conflict determines the development of both the brain focus and the disease.
2nd law (Two phased nature of disease): A patient who has not solved their conflict is in the first, active conflict phase, where the sympathetic nervous system predominates and which manifests as a "cold disease" accompanied by cold skin and extremities, stress, weight loss and sleep disorders. If they manage to resolve the conflict, they enter a second, post-resolution healing phase, in which the parasympathetic nervous system predominates, commonly diagnosed as a separate "warm" (rheumatic, infectious, allergic, etc.) disease. This second phase is the one which usually entails more risks, and a complete cure only comes upon its completion. In some circumstances, not solving the conflict but downgrading it to a reasonably livable level may be preferable than facing the second phase.
3rd law (Ontogenetic system of diseases): Hamer proposes that disease progression is primarily controlled by the brain, either by the "old brain" (brainstem and cerebellum) or the "new brain" (cerebrum). The old brain controls more primitive processes, having to do with basic survival, such as breathing, eating, and reproduction, whereas the new brain manages more advanced personal and social issues, such as territorial conflicts, separation conflicts and self-devaluation and identity conflicts. Hamer's research is tied to the science of embryology because he links the type of disease progression—whether involving tissue augmentation (tumor growth), tissue loss (necrosis or ulceration) or functional impairment—with the embryonic germ layer (endoderm, mesoderm or ectoderm) from which both the organ tissues and the corresponding brain regions originate. Conflicts which have their focus either in the brain stem (which controls body tissues that derive from the endoderm) or the cerebellum (which controls tissues that derive from the mesoderm) show cell multiplication in the conflict active phase, and destruction of the resulting tumors in the healing phase. Cerebrum directed conflicts (affecting the rest of mesoderm-derived tissues and all ectoderm-derived ones) show either cell decrease (necroses, ulcers) or function impairment or interruption in the active phase, and the replenishment of the damaged tissues in the healing phase (which can also be diagnosed as a tumor).
4th law (Ontogenetic system of microbes): Microbes do not cause diseases but are used by the body, coordinated by the brain, to optimize the healing phase, provided that the required microbes are available when needed. Fungi and mycobacteria work on tissues that originated in the endoderm, as well as on some of the tissues originating in the mesoderm. Bacteria work on all mesoderm derived tissues and viruses on ectoderm derived ones. Hamer maintains that these microbes, rather than being antagonistic to the body, actually perform a necessary role in healing, and that some of the interventions of conventional medicine are counterproductive, by interfering with these natural processes.
5th law ("Quintessence"): The conflict active phase and the healing phase of diseases, as described above, constitute "special meaningful programs of nature," developed during the evolution of the species, to allow organisms to override everyday functioning in order to deal with particular emergency situations. End of text from Wikipedia
Hamer more or less claims that all diseases come from long term mental stress and long term mental sadness, anger and sorrow etc. That might be to take it a little bit too far but I do think that Hamer is really up to something here. There is also other studies that point’s out the same direction. For example studies have shown how strongly connected the brain and the gut is via the Vagus nerve. What happens in the brain affects the gut and what happens in the gut affects the brain. Here is an interesting scientific study that proves how certain gut bacteria can affect the brain activity and the behavior of animals:
Vagal Pathways for Microbiome-Brain-Gut AxisCommunication
It has been proven that long term mental stress is damaging the gut lining, decreasing the enzyme production and increasing the intestinal permeability. The effects of this will be that undigested food particles reach the lower part of the intestines where pathogenic bacteria get a feast producing a lot of gas and metabolites not particular healthy for for the gut lining, nor for our wellbeing.
Another important thing to be aware of when talking about IBD and IBS is the fact that food we have inside the stomach and the gut still is outside of the body. It’s first inside the body after it’s broken down to small particles and passed through the intestinal mucosa. When we continue to stress our self’s and having harmful emotions while at the same time eating foods that trigger inflammation and gut permeability it’s a fact that the one cell thick gut lining will get damaged. When this happens undigested food particles and bacteria can enter the body. The medical term for this is increased intestinal permeability. This develops when the tight junction cells in the intestinal mucosa loses the grip of each other. The consequence of this might not at first sound so bad but I can tell you by experience, it is!
Each time this happens the immune system in the gut lining (GALT) Gut-associated lymphoid tissue secretes signal hormones (cytokines) that triggers inflammation. If this happens all the time we get a chronic inflammation not only in the gut but also in the whole body. If this inflammation will continue for a long time we get all kinds of autoimmun diseases. Often it starts with IBS, for some IBD and then the vicious cycle goes on to other autoimmune diseases like for example: lupus erythematosus, Sjogren syndrome, Hashimoto thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile (type 1) diabetes, polymyositis, scleroderma, Addison disease, vitiligo, and pernicious anemia, etc.
Studies have also shown that if we have an increased intestinal permeability we can start to produce antibodies against certain bacteria that comes in contact with GALT. This means that each time that specific bacteria penetrates the gut lining there will be an immune response in the Gut-associated lymphoid tissue. Another part of this we also need to mention is that the body can get a cross reactivity to that specific bacteria. The reason to this is that the protein structure of the bacteria can be very similar to the protein structure of other body parts, for example joins. Therefore the immune system can´t detect the difference between the proteins in the bacteria or its own protein in certain body parts. This means that the immune system will attack for example joints at the same time it attacks the bacteria itself.
For example studies have shown a link between the joint disease Ankylosing Spondylitis, Crohn’s Disease, Klebsiella, and Starch Consumption. A Briefly explanation: The body gets antibodies to the bacteria Klebsiella. This bacteria feeds on starch. So every time a person eats a lot of starch the amount of this bacteria increases dramatically. If this person at the same time have a increased gut permeability those bacteria can penetrate the gut lining and trigger an immune response that inflames other organs like joints. Here is a link to a report where this link is investigated:
Besides this one should also know that there is some things that is known for increasing gut permeability. One such thing is Zonulin in Gluten. It’s been proven by the Italian scientist Alessio Fasano that every time a person eats Gluten there will be a few hours of increased gut permeability. To read more about this I recommend this study:
Zonulin, regulation of tight junctions, and autoimmune diseases
Other things that is mentioned to increase gut permeability is, Glyphosate in Roundup which is what farmers use to keep weeds of the fields. Pathogenic bacterial overgrowth in the gut have also shown to increase the gut permeability, so have stress shown to do. Not that this is not all the things that contributes to intestional permability. To mention some things that can help to help heal a increased permability i will shortly mention L-glutamine powder and Zinc-carnosine.
In the next part of this series I’m going to tell you about how I cured myself from Ulcerative colitis for good with only diet and life style interventions. I’m now free from disease for 4 years and have stopped medicine since a year back. For now I just want to say: All disease has a reason and there is always something we can do about it. Don’t let yourself believe for 5 seconds that chronic autoimmune diseases just pops up for no reason and will continue on totally without our control.
Today there is plenty of people claiming that they are cured from autoimmune diseases but the school medicine shows no interest in their stories. Why is this? Medical society, pharmaceutical companies and doctors don’t want us to believe we have power over our own health. They want us to believe that there is nothing we can do about the condition except subscribing to strong harmful medicine for the rest of our lives. Admitting that the patient can do something about their own situation will reduce the former sovereign power the doctors had during the past century and this is something they never want to do.
Information is now free for everybody and we just need to filter what we can trust or not. There is a real truth about everything but it’s often hidden behind agendas for political, economic or authorial reasons.
Today there is plenty of people claiming that they are cured from autoimmune diseases but the school medicine shows no interest in their stories. Why is this? Medical society, pharmaceutical companies and doctors don’t want us to believe we have power over our own health. They want us to believe that there is nothing we can do about the condition except subscribing to strong harmful medicine for the rest of our lives. Admitting that the patient can do something about their own situation will reduce the former sovereign power the doctors had during the past century and this is something they never want to do.
Information is now free for everybody and we just need to filter what we can trust or not. There is a real truth about everything but it’s often hidden behind agendas for political, economic or authorial reasons.
