Dr. Tom O'Bryan: The Autoimmune Fix

Welcome to Episode #16 of the Healing Pain Podcast with Dr. Tom O’Bryan!

The Autoimmune Fix: Intestinal Permeability, The Development of Autoimmune Disease, and a Comprehensive Approach to Healing the Gut

Today we are joined by Dr. Tom O’Bryan, DC.

Autoimmune diseases are a primary cause of morbidity and mortality in the industrialized world. The number of people diagnosed with an autoimmune disease is increasing exponentially in our country. Estimates are that anywhere from 3 to 7 out of every 10 new patients coming into your office are suffering from an autoimmune mechanism (whether it has been recognized and diagnosed or not). The volume of information now of the underlying mechanisms that set the stage and contribute to the development of autoimmune disease is overwhelming.

Without recognizing and addressing the underlying mechanisms triggering the presenting complaints, the Practitioner may be proverbially ‘chasing the tail’ of the pathology with temporary symptom relief. The Practitioner who has a deep understanding as to when to suspect an immune reaction to an environmental trigger, has access to thorough testing tools, and who also understands and supplies comprehensive treatment protocols, that Practitioner will see results in their Practice like never before.

In This Episode You Will Learn:

A revolutionary approach to healing autoimmune disease.
How to prevent and treat autoimmunity from a functional perspective.
What are the triggers for autoimmunity.
How traditional medicine primarily treats symptoms of autoimmunity.
A comprehensive approach to healing the gut.

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Welcome to the Healing Pain Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Joe Tatta. It’s great to be here with you today. Thank you for joining me once again to talk about how we can heal chronic pain naturally without the use of drugs or surgery.

My guest today is Dr. Tom O’Bryan. He’s an expert in the gluten world, as well as an expert in autoimmune disease. He is the founder of theDr.com. That’s www.theDr.com as well as the Gluten Summit. He has a 2016 book that’s about to be released. It’s called “The Autoimmune Fix”, which outlines a step by step development of generative diseases and gives us the tools to identify our disease process years before the symptoms occur and how to heal it naturally. So sit back, and enjoy this podcast, and make sure if you like it to share it out with you friends and family on all social media sites, and make sure to stay connected each week to www.drjoetadda.com.

Dr. Tom O’Brien, welcome to The Healing Pain podcast. It’s a really pleasure to have you here.

Oh thank you, thank you. It’s an honor to be here with you. Thank you.

So it’s great to talk to you because my whole platform is around ways that we can help people heal their pain naturally without drugs or surgery. And I know that talking about a lot of the tools and strategies you have are really going to be important. I know we’re going to talk about autoimmunity today, so we’ll start kind of basic. We are both clinicians as well as people in search of pain relief on this podcast. Tell us first how many autoimmune diseases are there and are they increasing in numbers, or are we seeing them kind of level out?

No, it’s not leveling out, and the number, it depends on who you talk to, and that’s because of when do they call something an autoimmune disease. If you talk to the University of Chicago, they say there’s over 350 autoimmune mechanisms. But then if you talk to the American Association of Rheumatic Diseases, they’ll say there are just over 80 autoimmune diseases. So it depends on what group you’re talking to.

If we think for a moment, go back to what is an autoimmune mechanism, it’s when our immune system’s attacking our own tissue, and when that happens you damage the cell. I used to say this on stage, “Why would we ever have a normal level of antibodies to thyroid? When is it normal to have antibodies to your own tissue, to your brain, to your thyroid, to your heart?” Well we have them every day because when cells get old or cells get damaged they have to be gotten rid of kind of like the street sweepers. They get rid of them so that there’s room for new cells to be regenerated.

When you have elevated levels of antibodies to your thyroid, meaning you’re outside “the normal range”, when you have elevated levels you’re killing off more tissue than you’re making. Now you got a problem. And most doctors when they see a blood test, if they see an elevated level of antibodies, but there’s not severe symptoms, they’ll say, “Well let’s just watch this. It’s probably a normal variant.” No it’s not. It’s the earlier period of killing of tissue.

Here’s a really good example of this, and this is what got me so into this world. In 2003, Melissa Arbuckle, an M.D. PhD, I believe she was out of Johns Hopkins at the time, she went to the VA and she looked for people with lupus, the autoimmune disease lupus. That creates a lot of pain for people. She found 130 patients with lupus in this VA system. Now, if they’re in the VA system, they’re veterans. If they’re veterans they were in the armed forces. If they were in the armed forces, they had their blood drawn many times over the years when they were healthy in the Navy, or the Air force. What most people don’t know is that the government’s been saving and freezing all of that blood since 1978. They’ve got tens of millions of samples of our service people’s blood.

So Arbuckle went and asked for permission to look at the blood of the people currently diagnosed with lupus when they were healthy in the Navy or the Army or the armed force or the Marines, and she got permission. And what did she find? There are seven antibodies that can cause lupus. Every patient had every antibody elevated years before they ever had a symptom. The average was five years and went as much as nine years before they ever had a symptom, they had antibodies killing off more tissue than they were regenerating. So the question is, when did they get lupus?

Well what we propose is they got lupus back here as soon as the antibodies were elevated, killing off tissue, and you just have to kill off enough tissue so that the tissue can’t function properly anymore. Now you start getting dysfunction, which will be pain for some people depending on which system is being attacked. Then you get your symptoms, and it takes six month to a year and a half to get the diagnosis. And then your doctor says, “Well looks like you just got lupus.” No, you got it nine years ago. So, when we understand that concept, now you have a window of opportunity to check and see, “Do I have elevated antibodies to my own body right now? I feel fine,” and it gives you that window of opportunity to do something about it if you find it.

And the big example is myself. When I was in my mid 40s, I was doing triathlons regularly, and I was competing at the 30 to 35 age group, you know, so I felt kind of good about that. I’m in good shape. And I did this blood test in 1997. It was a research only test at the time. I looked at 24 different tissue antibodies to my own body. I had three antibodies elevated to my brain – myelin basic protein, that’s what causes MS; serbeler peptides, that’s what causes old people to not be able to walk gracefully up and down stairs, they don’t feel confident on the earth anymore, you know in how they walk; and gangliisis, which causes the brain to shrink and you get dementia. I had three elevated, and I called the lab. I said, “What’s this? This is a mistake.” They said, “No it’s not.” I said, “Do it again.” They said, “We did. We know it’s you. We did it again. It was accurate.”

That was my wake up call. Wait a minute, I feel fine. Physically I’m the peak of my life. I’m doing really well. My business is good. My family is good. I love my work. How can I be killing off my brain? And then Arbuckle’s article came out a number of years later, and that really helped us to dial in the whole mechanism. And other immunologists around the world read her article, and they said, “That’s brilliant. What a great thing to do. I’ll go back to blood banks. I’ll look for people with psoriasis,” or “I’ll go back. I’ll look for people with rheumatoid. I’ll go back to blood banks and I’ll look for people with scleroderma or vitiligo.”

And so now we know. There is, it’s called a positive predictive value, the PPV. If you have elevated antibodies to your thyroid, especially post partum, you have a 92 percent likelihood you’re getting Hashimoto’s thyroid disease within seven years. That means 9 out of 10 people. If you have elevated ASCA antibodies, that’s saccharomyces cerevisiae. That’s a yeast that’s normal in the gut as part of the microbiome of the gut. But if you elevated antibodies to that yeast, you have close to 100 percent, you’re getting Crohn’s in three years, within the next three years.

If it’s transglutaminase for celiac disease, especially it’s about 50 percent you’re getting celiac if you have elevated transglutaminase, but if you also have the gene, it’s 100 percent. Seven years you’re going to have celiac.

And you mention myelin basic protein, which is the antibody that’s tested for MS, what’s the predictive value on that?

For myelin basic protein, it’s 92 percent 11 years.

Wow.

You’re getting MS because you’re killing off the saran wrap around your nerves. That’s what myelin is. It’s a saran wrap. It covers your nerves, and if you put more potholes in the saran wrap, it’s kind of like if you take the wire that goes from the battery to the headlight of your car, and if you just take the insulation off part of that wire so that the wire’s not damaged. It still carries the juice, but now that exposed part of the wire hits the frame of the car, the lights flicker on and off. What’s wrong with your lights? There’s nothing wrong with your lights. The juice isn’t getting there. That’s what happens with MS, and it’s myelin basic protein antibodies that’s the primary mechanism that causes that damage to the myelin.

Yeah, I refer my patients for most of the time for Cyrex labs. And they should come back with a positive score and a negative score or an equivocal score. So obviously positive is you have the antibodies and negative is you don’t have any. And then there’s the group that’s equivocal kind of in the center, in the middle. Can you explain to us what that means, and how should look at that both as clinicians and as patients?

Yes, of course. I don’t think you know this. I’m responsible for that term on that test, that I was a consultant to Cyrex. I’m not anymore because I need to stand on stage and say unequivocally everyone should do this test. So I have no financial interest whatsoever anymore. I wish I did, but I helped found Cyrex, and I fought for two days to get that word in there, equivocal. So to understand and to get that category in there, to understand what that means I have to give you the history of that.

In order for a laboratory to come up with a new test, the CLEO guidelines are that you have to have 40 samples that demonstrate the value of the test. Well, at Cyrex, they tripled that. They bought 120 samples, and it’s very expensive to buy that blood because you have to buy it from blood banks. So they had to buy the blood of celiac patients. And then they test your test, whatever the test is you’re seeing, does it work or not? Does it identify that these are celiac patients, and then you have to buy the same number of blood samples of people that are not celiac, certified by the lab they’re not celiacs. And so you check both. So Cyrex did triple what was required just to make sure.

So, it came back, and the tests are right on the money. They’re very, very accurate, for yes or no, they’re very, very accurate. And I said, “Wait a minute. We can’t do that. We can’t do that.” Why is that, because at that time I had been the lecture circuit with my full day celiac 8 hour course for physicians to teach them about gluten sensitivity, with or without celiac disease, for those three years at that point I’d been teaching that course. So I was quite up on the data, the research on this. So when you look at the test transglutaminase, which is the biomaker for celiac disease in a blood test, the studies say 97 percent sensitivity and specificity, 99 percent, 100 percent, depending on the study. Now all the studies are right on the money. Nine and a half out of 10 times, you got it.

It’s great, but how do the researchers do that? How do they demonstrate the effectiveness? Well the buy samples of blood of people with celiac and they run their transglutaminase test to see if it works or not. Transglutaminase identifies it in 97 percent of the people. It’s a great test. But, wait a minute, the blood that they’re checking are people diagnosed with celiac from the blood banks. You only get a diagnosis of celiac and your blood then qualifies to go to the blood banks if you have an endoscopy and you have total villous atrophy. That means that the microvilli in your intestines are worn down completely.

So I wrote to many of those authors in 2007, 2008, 2006, “Dear Doctor. Great article. Thanks so much. Test looks great. Did you also include people that had partial villous atrophy, or just the inflammation, and the shags, the microvilli had not worn down yet?” And everyone one of them wrote back and said, “No. Celiac disease is total villous atrophy.” So that meant that the blood that the laboratories were buying from the blood banks to test their tests against were the blood of people at the end stage of celiac disease, not any of the other stages. And the end stage is when the microvilli are worn down completely. Well we all know that the wearing down process can take years, but in the meantime you don’t have to have the microvilli worn down in order to have symptoms. You could have brain symptoms, kidney symptoms, heart symptoms, congestive heart failure, arthritics, migraines, miscarriages, and not yet have your shags worn down completely. But you may have the inflammation causing the antibodies in the blood stream and the molecular mimicry and all of that can go on before the shags are worn down completely.

So the test was extremely accurate for those that have total villous atrophy, ’cause that’s what we were looking for. I said, “Wait a minute, if we’re going to be different than other lab here at Cyrex, we have to be able to identify the earlier stages that is not normal, people that are not normal.” So those people that have the inflammation, they may have partial wearing down, but they don’t have total villous atrophy yet, or they may have total villous atrophy and the transglutaminase is not that high yet. So we have to find a way to identify the earlier stages.

According to CLEO guidelines, to be out of range, you have to be two standard deviations outside what is normal. Well the equivocal is one standard deviation outside of normal. So if you’re equivocal, you got a problem. It’s not like maybe you have a problem, or it’s not too bad of a problem. No, you’ve got a problem.

Right.

That mechanism is going on like Arbuckle’s article is showing the earlier stages killing off your cells before you had so much tissue damage that you have your symptoms. It’s obviously gonna take six months to a year and a half to get the diagnosis. So that’s the equivocal category on the Cyrex test.

Which I think is brilliant because if you take an analogy, I think we can look at type 2 diabetes. For years we were waiting for blood glucose levels to go up really, really high, but we were not catching the patients that were pre diabetic. As far as I’m concerned, we should really catch the ones that are insulin resistant, which start upwards of ten years before diabetes starts. So the Cyrex lab, and this is not a plug for Cyrex, I just happen to know their test. I have used them on myself, my personal friends. I love their test. They have kind of the green, yellow, and red, which kind of tell you where you are. And obviously if you’re in that yellow border, it is that sign that, “Hey, there’s something wrong here.” You may not have full blown symptoms yet, but you’re starting to go down that path of the autoimmune spectrum.

Let me be very clear for the doctors who are listening to this. If you’re in the equivocal category, you got a problem, Mrs. Patient, and it’s not like maybe you have a problem, or it’s not too bad. No, you are outside the reference range. You got a problem, and you’re in what’s called the prodromal period. You have not worn the villi down to total villous atrophy yet, but you have a problem going on. There is damage. This is an inflammatory cascade, and wherever the weak link is in your genetics, Mrs. Patient, that’s where you’re symptoms are going to show.

Yeah. So we’re already talking about this a little bit because we’re talking about some function of medicine test, but how, and this is really for the patients out there, how does traditional medicine look at and identify and treat autoimmune disease, and how is that different than functional medicine?

That’s a really good question. You know, I happen to have it here. So here’s a plug. My new book comes out in eight days actually from today. I’m not sure when this will air, but it comes out soon. It’s now out for you people. And it’s all about autoimmunity. It’s all about the mechanisms that cause autoimmunity. Traditional medicine is changing on this. We’re just a few years ahead of the curve in what we’re talking about here.

The Institute for Functional Medicine now has an autoimmune research committee. I’m on that committee, and we’re putting together the protocols right now so that for all the doctors out there, and this will be available for everyone in the future. Here are the tests that will identify if someone is on the autoimmune cascade on the spectrum. Here are the treatment protocols that we clinically do in practice. You may do something else. It could be of great value. We’re not saying these are the only things to do, but this is what we do. And here’s the kind of results that we are getting as functional medicine practitioners. And all this is going to be implemented in a major, major medical center within this next year. So a year and a half, two years from now, we’ll have papers coming out showing what I’m about to tell you.

Traditional medicine looks at autoimmunity as you’ve got a problem with your immune system, and let’s suppress the immune system. That’s where steroids come in and some of the biologic drugs that are used that cause thousands of dollars a month to the patient, the copay that they have to pay at times, and do not arrest the development of the disease or the continuation of the disease. But the best we’ve known to do is shut down the immune system, suppress it as much as possible, give the anti inflammatories, very powerful anti inflammatory steroids, and help the patients survive.

The new line of thought is you’re immune system’s not gone haywire. It’s actually protecting you. It’s doing its very best to protect you. What is it trying to protect you from? It’s trying to protect you. Currently, currently the average is 250 pounds of toxic chemicals per day per person are being dumped in the U.S. It’s a few trillion pounds for year, and when you work it out to the population, it’s 250 pounds per person per day in the U.S. Of all these toxic chemicals we’re exposed to, the phthalates, you may have seen last week that the Center for Disease Control has recommended don’t use antibacterial soups because they’re so dangerous for your body.

What they do, what these chemicals do is they bind on to your tissue, maybe they bind on to a heart cell, and that cell is no longer a heart cell. It’s called a neoepitope. It’s a new substance, a new cell. Your immune system looks at that and says that’s not part of me. That’s not part of my body. I better fight this thing, whatever it is. And now you attack the neoepitope. When you attack the neoepitope you damage that new cell that’s been formed, which includes the heart cell. So now you make antibodies. You increase your antibody load to your heart to get rid of this damaged heart neoepitope cell.

And you wash your hands in antibacterial soap tomorrow and you get more, and you get more neoepitopes. You get more antibodies against the neoepitope, and then you get more antibodies against your heart until the antibodies against your heart become a self perpetuating system. And now you develop the auto immune disease of the heart, cardiomyopathy. And your system is stuck in this mode, and then you go the doctor because you have all these symptoms, and what they try to do is shut down your immune system. But you can’t shut down the immune system because it’s trying to protect you from the neoepitope from the chemicals you’re being exposed to in your environment.

That’s the new line of thinking that has many, many studies behind it. I talk about that in detail in the book, and I give the studies and the interpretation of the studies so that the general public – this is not a geek book – but is for geeks because the studies are there. But it’s interpreted into everyday language also.

When we understand this, and this is a foundational problem in our culture today. This is the number one problem we have, not diabetes, not obesity because they are just an end stage result of this problem of toxicity that we’re being exposed to. When you see the magnitude of this, when you understand the magnitude of this, you start asking questions all the time. “Now honey should we buy that new carpet for the living room? Well, wait a minute what’s it made of? What kind of chemicals are in it that we’re going to have our children breathing everyday?” “Well honey, should we use that new dry cleaner down the street? It’s so much more convenient than that green one that’s two miles away. Wait a minute, what do they use? What’s in the shirts that I’m going to be wearing everyday? What am I going to be breathing?”

We have to start thinking that way, not to be crazy about it unless you have a disease right now, then you need to be fanatical about your exposures to everything. But if we start thinking this way, if we start asking questions this way, six months to a year from now your family is much more protected. You are realizing that some of the things you are doing unconsciously because they tell you it’s good for you weren’t really that good for you, but they may be good with one way of thinking about it.

But the bigger picture, the composition, like plastics, like my mentor and friend Dr. [inaudible 00:22:54] Gorshdani. His pet peeve is people go to the coffee shop, the Starbucks or whatever coffee shop, and you put that plastic lid on top of the coffee. The heat from the liquid steams up. The steam condenses on the other side of the lid. The lid is loaded with [inaudible 00:23:17] which drops back down into the beverage. Then you’re drinking the beverage, and when you drink the beverage you’re hitting the entire underside of the lid with that hot stuff, and [inaudible 00:23:28] is flowing right down into your mouth. [inaudible 00:23:31] binds to your estrogen receptors in your body, and now your body thinks it’s got more estrogen, and you also see these neoepitopes with estrogen cells, and [inaudible 00:23:48] on ’em. You attack that, and her comes another mechanism for dementia.

These papers are published. The mechanisms are identified, but we’re living in a never never land where we just don’t, we have our heads buried to all of this. We have to start asking those questions and that is the benefit of getting this kind of information is that we’ll start looking at everything we do for ourselves and our families. “Well is my food wrapped in plastic? No I don’t want it wrapped in plastic. I want to use glass,” or “I’m not going to use the plastic water bottle anymore. I’m going to use the glass water bottle or stainless steel coffee mug to get my coffee. I’ll go into Starbucks with my stainless steel, and say ‘Fill her up, premium’.” You know something like that.

Or we want more organic foods that’s sprayed with less chemicals, which is another cause we could talk about. But really what you’re saying with your book and your message is that, for patients out there, autoimmune is not just a genetic problem, so to speak. You don’t just have to have a genetic gene.

Oh no, oh no. No, not anymore. If you pull a chain, a chain breaks at the weakest link. It could be one end, the middle, the other end, your heart, your brain, your liver, your kidneys. Wherever your genetic weak link is, that’s where the chain’s gonna break. When [inaudible 00:25:05] gets in your system, it doesn’t bind just to the estrogen receptors in your brain. It binds to the estrogen receptors in your heart, and in your ovaries, and in your breasts, and wherever else your estrogen receptors are. Or if it’s chlorine, it binds on your thyroid receptors. There are thyroid receptors on every cell of your body. There are only two substances for which there are receptors on every cell of your body, and that’s your thyroid and vitamin D. Those are the only two substances for which every cell of your body has a receptor.

So when you get chlorine exposure, you’ll see in the back. I talk about chlorine shower filters ’cause that’s where you get exposed to more chlorine than anywhere else is in the shower. The steam, you breath the steam, and it goes right into your lungs. And so you get just inundated with chlorine, which binds on any cell of your body because there are thyroid receptors on every cell of your body. And then wherever the weak link is, that’s where the immune system’s gonna go after it because that’s the weaker tissue. And now you may have musculoskeletal problems, or you can have brain problems, or you can have hearing problems, or you can have vision problems, or you can have gallbladder problems on any cell.

But it’s this mechanism. This is the underlying foundational mechanism, as far as I know so far in all of my reading, every degenerative disease. This is the underlying mechanism. Cardiovascular disease is autoimmune and it’s initiating phases. Read the studies. There are many of them. Cancer is autoimmune. Talk to Dr. Borshdani. He’ll show you all the studies that identify that. So it’s this immune mechanism where our body is trying to protect us, but it looks like our immune system has gone haywire. No it hasn’t. It’s trying to protect us from all the chemicals what we’re being exposed to.

So if there’s someone who has an autoimmune disease right now, and they want to take one solid step forward to help themselves, what would it be?

No questions, hands down, slam dunk, nothing but net, no question, heal your gut. Heal your gut. Nothing is more important. Develop a healthy microbiome. Heal the intestinal permeability.

You know, I was on stage just two days ago in Chicago with Dr. Terry Walls. And for those of you who don’t know Terry’s story, she was a brain researcher and she developed MS. And so she ignored it for a couple of years, symptoms were mild, and then finally she couldn’t ignore it anymore. And so she applied all the current cutting edge state of the art medical procedures, and she kept going downhill. And she kept trying the new procedures, and went to new specialists. She’s a brain researcher. And finally she realized, “This isn’t working. I need to research this myself.”

By that point she was in wheelchair. She couldn’t walk, and she saw a study of rats. And they gave MS to rats, and they found that certain vitamins seemed to arrest the development of it. And that got her interested into looking into how could that be. And she talked to those researchers and she applied a protocol. She put a protocol together, and she started getting better right away. And one year later, she went from in a wheelchair unable to walk at all, she rode a bicycle 20 miles. And she told me the other day, “You know, Tom, I had to stop every five miles and just rest a little bit, but my family was with me. We were so excited. We were just celebrating life,” and she started to tear a little bit right? And on stage, and she said the one thing more than anything else, and I fully agree with it, I said something similar, and then when she came on she went into more detail, “Heal the gut.”

And the people that she works with, she’s at the VA in Iowa, and she’s getting dramatic results with severe chronic pain, immobilizing pain, on our veterans coming home from the way. She said they’re all on disability. They don’t have any money for fancy tests, or they don’t have any money for expensive supplements, so it’s food, it’s food. So she teaches them how to eat food, and just regular food, and get mostly a paleo orientation, not many carbohydrates at all, occasionally a few maybe if they need it. But as much as possible, just good healthy meats and vegetables.

So I say, we’re on stage, “Dr. Walls, so you’ve got these special forces guys that have been in bomb situations and they’re damaged and they’re really hurting, and no one to help them, and you’re talking to them about bone broth?” And she said, “They take so much pride. They go hunting, and they harvest an animal, and they make their own bone broth.” And I said, “How much bone broth do you give them? How much do you want them to eat or drink?” And she said, “At least a quart a day, at least a quart because it’s so good at healing the gut.”

And that’s the primary thing you want to do with any type of autoimmune mechanism. The first thing you do is, well excuse me, the first thing you do is identify the exposures you’re getting and get rid of those as much as you can. But the action step to heal is to heal the gut.

And so you mentioned Dr. Terry Walls. She’s a friend of mine. She’s been on The Healing Pain summit, the summit I have that runs twice. Is that a similar diet to what you write about in your book, “The Autoimmune Fix”?

It is. It is. What I recommend in the book is just try it for three weeks. It’s all you have to do is for three weeks. Avoid wheat, dairy, and sugar for three weeks. If that doesn’t get you solid on the right track, then for the next three weeks take all grains out also. And what people find when they do that is, oh gosh 9 and half out of 10 people, the feel great. So it’s a very, very similar protocol.

And so you mentioned three weeks. Is three weeks enough to heal your gut, to make people feel better, or do they need to be on for a little bit longer period of time?

Yeah, three weeks is not enough. But in my practice, in my entire career in my practice, I’ve always had the same approach. Give me three weeks. Within three weeks you should know you’re on the right track. It may take you two years to heal depending on how much damage there is, but you should know within three weeks. If you don’t know within three weeks, and you’re really following the guidelines, then we’ve missed something. I don’t care if you have cancer. I don’t care whatever it is. You should know within three weeks that you’re feeling better, you’re sleeping better, your brain’s functioning better. Whatever the symptoms are, you should notice a change for the better within three weeks.

Interesting. So Dr. Tom, you’ve done a gluten summit, which is wildly popular. You have a gluten training program. You have the book called “The Autoimmune Fix” that’s recently out. What else do you have going on in your life?

Woah.

[inaudible 00:32:02] question, right?

No, since last October I’ve been traveling the world interviewing world experts, and we have a docuseries coming out in November called “Betrayal”. You know, your immune system is supposed to be, it’s your armed forces. It’s there to protect you, Army, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard. For all the docs out there, IGA, IGG, IGE, IGM. They’re different branches of the armed forces. Why are you being betrayed by your immune system?

So I’ve gone to Leipzig, Germany. And Yehuda Schoenfeld, the godfather of predictive autoimmunity, the guy, well you just get a sense of this guy is that 28, at my last count, 28 of the PhD students who have studied under him, and they’re are many more than that, but 28 of them now chair departments of immunology in med schools or hospitals around the world.

Wow, that’s huge.

They’re his students.

Yeah.

Right? So I interviewed him three times, and we talked about the autoimmunity that develops with vaccinations, and autoimmune diseases that develop with vaccinations. Professor Allen Ebringer at King’s College, who was the guy that told us way back when I went through my education, 1978 this paper came out on the association between the gene HLAB 27 and a bacteria, klebsiella pneumoniae, most common bacterial infection people get in hospitals, and the development of ankylosing spondylitis. So that if you have that gene and you get an infection, you’re at higher risk of getting ankylosing spondylitis. That was Professor Ebringer. In 1977 he published that paper and he was thought to be a nut case because no one was talking about bacteria and things like that.

And later he published on rheumatoid arthritis and the bacteria proteis. And now it’s common knowledge, if you have a rheumatoid patient, you always check for bacterial infection to proteis because it’s so very common. If you have the bacteria, you make antibodies of the bacteria, and the bacteria kind of looks like your joints. You make antibodies to your joints, the bacteria binds onto the joints, forms that neoepitope, and you attack that neoepitope, and then you damage the joint surfaces, and now you make the antibodies to your joint. Here comes rheumatoid arthritis.

So, Professor Ebringer, 78 experts, and is coming out in November. It’s a seven day series. It’s a docuseries audio and visual, and then we have patients who tell their story of what happened to them, whatever their autoimmune diagnosis was, and what they went through and how they reversed it. So that will be coming out in November of this year.

Excellent. Just tell us what the name of that is.

“Betrayal”.

And how can people learn more about it?

You can go to betrayaltheseries.com.

Okay.

Betrayaltheseries.com.

Right. And if people want to pick up your book called “The Autoimmune Fix”, where can they find that?

Amazon, Barnes and Noble, any of the major outlets.

Great. I’m sure it’s also available on your website probably.

I hope so. It’s supposed to be. I actually don’t think it is. I think the website, if you click they will just take you right to Amazon.

Excellent. Okay. So I want to thank Dr. Tom O’Bryan for being with us on The Healing Pains podcast. It’s been great talking to him about autoimmune disease. Last time we talked to him about gluten, but this time we spoke more about autoimmune disease in general. So check out his book, “The Autoimmune Fix” and check out his docuseries that will be out in, what’s the launch date for that?

November 14.

November 14. And he also has a free gift. That’s going to be available on the podcast. Basically you can go there. You can click on the link. And just tell us about that free gift, Tom.

I’m afraid I can’t.

Okay.

Whatever my staff put together, I’m sure it’s good. It’s our information, so there will be something there for you.

There will be a blue hyperlink there. You’ll see. We’re gonna have some clear information that says, “Free Gift from Dr. Tom O’Bryan” and a good call to action for us, so please check it out there. In addition, if you like [inaudible 00:36:26], make sure to hit the share button so he can share it out on Facebook and on Twitter, whatever social media that you use. It’s really important that you help both Tom and I get this message out there.

Yeah, please do. Just the other day, Dr. Walls and I did a live cast for The Functional Forum. There were 14,000 doctors on that night, and I looked in the camera and said, “Every one of you, please help us get this message out. Please tell all of your patients about ‘Betrayal’ the series. They’re gonna learn so much. They’re gonna understand this big picture overview. It doesn’t matter what the diseases they had, they’ll understand one of the primary mechanisms that sets it out.”

Excellent. So like we said, please make sure to share it out so you can spread the message for Tom. And stay connected each week to The Healing Pain podcast at www.drjoetatta.com. And we’ll see you next time.

About Dr. Tom O’Bryan

Dr. O’Bryan is a world expert on gluten and it’s impact on your health. He is an internationally recognized and sought after speaker and workshop leader specializing in the complications of Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity, Celiac Disease, and the development of Autoimmune Diseases as they occur inside and outside of the intestines. He is the founder of www.theDr.com and the visionary behind ‘The Gluten Summit – A Grain of Truth’, bringing together 29 of the world’s experts on the Gluten connection to diseases, disorders, and a wide-range of symptoms and ages. You can find this info at www.theglutensummit.com.

His 2016 critically acclaimed ground-breaking book, ‘The Autoimmune Fix’ outlines the step-by-step development of degenerative diseases and gives us the tools to identify our dis-ease process years before the symptoms are obvious. You can purchase the book on Amazon: Buy Now

Dr. O’Bryan is considered the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ for chronic disease and metabolic disorders. He is a clinician par excellence in treating chronic disease and metabolic disorders from a Functional Medicine Perspective. He holds teaching Faculty positions with the Institute for Functional Medicine and the National University of Health Sciences. He has trained thousands of practitioners around the world in advanced understanding of the impact of food related disorders and the development of individual autoimmune diseases.

Don’t miss the next episode of the Healing Pain Podcast!

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A community for both practitioners and seekers of health.
A free resource describing the least invasive, non-pharmacologic methods to heal pain.
A resource for safe alternatives to long-term opioid use and addiction.
A catalyst to broaden the conversation around chronic pain emphasizing biopsychosocial treatments.
A platform to discuss pain treatment, research and advocacy.

If you would like to appear in an episode of The Healing Pain Podcast or know someone with an incredible story of overcoming pain contact Dr. Joe Tatta at [email protected]. Experts from the fields of medicine, physical therapy, chiropractic, nutrition, psychology, spirituality, personal development and more are welcome.

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