Autoimmune
Disease, Part 1 The following two articles are from the book The Fungus Link 2, Tracking the Cause, by Doug A.
Kaufmann with David Holland, M.D. Used here with permission of the authors. Identifying the Cause by Doug Kaufmann Once while traveling via airplane, I read an advertisement in a science magazine that had been placed by the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. What I read defied comprehension. Not the data presented, which was accurate, but the fact that anyone would pay money to print incriminating information about themselves. After extolling the virtues of the academy in question, the ad made a bold statement. Around 1953, it read, the first autoimmune disease had been identified. Since that time, it continued, scientists had documented another 95 autoimmune diseases. By way of a punchline, the ad then admitted that the academy has no idea as to what causes any of the diseases, nor can it cure a single one! To give you an analogy, say you are a famous mechanic with a sheepskin from the best engineering college in America. You typically charge $2,000.00 for an engine rebuild. The only problem is, every engine you’ve ever rebuilt won’t run. And yet, people flock to your garage to the extent that you have a four-month backlog of business. At what point do you place an ad in Popular Mechanics in order to admit to your incompetence? Incompetence is hardly the issue here, however. Success despite such incompetence is. That people would continue to seek out someone with such a poor track record boggles the mind. Patients schedule appointments months in advance for allergy shots. They keep going back to their allergists for years and even decades. And yet, didn’t they make the original visit in hopes of a cure? Six years could pass, and unless such patients continue to get shots, their allergies may flair up almost immediately. Of course, were their allergists to actually cure them, someone might eventually be out of a job. I’m not here to slam allergists. I just want you to stop and think. Allergists, as well as endocrinologists, ophthalmologists or experts in any field, for that matter, believe that autoimmune diseases have more to do about DNA and less, if anything, to do with pathogenic fungi. And yet the evidence that fungi can cause such diseases is considerable. Let me give you some examples. Early in my career, I and the doctors working with me discovered that while using newer generation antifungal medications, symptoms we hadn’t intended to target also improved. Also a prominent ear, nose and throat specialist in Los Angeles I worked with saw hearing improve when one of our patients used nystatin for an unrelated problem. Finally, I’ll never forget an e-mail I received from a woman several years ago. She told me that the Diflucan her doctor prescribed for her vaginal yeast infection turned out to be the best anti-depressant she’d ever been on. That the list of such stories is endless virtually proves that they weren’t coincidences. We should take a closer look at autoimmune disorders. “Autoimmune disease,” reads Bantam’s Medical Dictionary, “is one of the growing number of unrelated disorders now suspected to be caused by inflammation and destruction of the body’s own tissues by antibodies. It is not known why the body should lose the ability to distinguish between substances that are ‘self’ and those that are ‘non-self.’” From this relatively simple explanation, we can see that the AAAAI’s ad referenced above is absolutely correct. The number of patients diagnosed with these bizarre diseases is growing and there remains no known cause. But let’s dig a little deeper than medical school allows. Claiming that the diseases are “unrelated” clarifies the medical position that one patient can have six different autoimmune diseases. There simply isn’t one thing wrong with such a patient. Rather, there are six things wrong, since medical reasoning dictates that human cells are not connected in any fashion and certainly do not communicate with one another. I believe that God never made one healthy cell that would fight and destroy another, yet autoimmune disease clearly occurs, according to the experts, when destruction of the body’s own tissues by its own antibodies occurs. Antibodies are proteins made by the B-Cell lymphocytes in response to a foreign presence in the bloodstream. In other words, the cells suddenly turn on one another and begin fighting. This theory supports the popular spontaneous disease theory that has somehow been accepted in science. It seems that diseases, like lumps in breast tissue, “just happen.” Blaming mom and dad seems okay because they dealt you a bad hand, genetically speaking. Antibiotics, mold-infested homes and mycotoxin-contaminated food didn’t cause your misery – your mother did. If we subscribe to the spontaneous disease theory, we also must believe that God really did deal bad DNA hands to some people. Geneticists have proposed as much for decades. For every disease, they say, there exists a corresponding genetic flaw. I contend that geneticists are correct in their information, but that their conclusions are convoluted. You see, even when they do ask what causes such genetic flaws, which is seldom, they fail to come up with the right answer. The answer to that question is, of course, fungi and their mycotoxins. Scientists called mycotoxicologists have studied the ability of these fungal toxins to alter DNA for more than 30 years. In support of this, notice that Bantam’s definition cites inflammation as playing a major role in autoimmune disease. Inflammation is swelling. We know that yeast also makes bread swell. Connect the dots, and it’s not hard to argue that yeast could be involved in all cases of inflammation. Dr. Rialdo Rinaldi, Ph.D., is a mycologist, or expert in fungal disease. He tells us that ten years ago, most doctors had no clue that fungi could even cause disease. In other words, the line of thought pursued in this book will be brand new to any physician, let alone those who graduated from medical school 11 or more years ago. Remember, the first autoimmune disease was identified almost 50 years ago. I believe it isn’t a coincidence that antibiotics were discovered about the same time. As we’ve said throughout this book, antibiotics are mycotoxins produced by fungi. Dr. Holland and I believe that mycotoxins cause several of the autoimmune disorders, including cancer. This means that one question is, in fact, the most powerful diagnostic tool physicians possess with regard to treating autoimmune disease --- “were you ever on antibiotics?” BINGO! If fungal mycotoxins have caused a given disease, then it stands to reason that an antifungal program like the one located toward the back of this book would be the best remedy. All in a Day’s Work by David Holland, M.D. In this chapter we tackle a difficult problem – precisely defining the role of the immune system in autoimmune disease. Mainstream science proposes that the immune system is the offender in such diseases. However, Doug and I believe that our systems are only doing their jobs, which is to protect us from would-be invaders. That means that invading microbes are to blame for the inflammation and damage seen in autoimmune conditions, and not the immune system itself. These are unpopular statements, because they open a can of worms the world of medicine would prefer remained shut. I should define the term I’m discussing. The immune system is literally our resistance system in that it is designed to protect us from birth to death against foreign invasion by microbes, other microscopic substances and trauma. The system deals with both primary protection and, should that be compromised, secondary repairs. Our immune systems, for the most part, do not recognize our own tissues as foreign – they are on our payroll, and, as such, are loyal to us. After all, should it fail to do its job, it, as well as the body entrusted to it, would be destroyed. This is called immune tolerance – the system cannot mount an attack upon the entity which gives rise to it in the first place. Autoimmunity appears to be a loss of this tolerance, a dissention in the ranks, so to speak, where what was once designed to protect us has now turned and begun to attack us. B cells, the producers of antibodies, begin to churn out antibodies directed at nuclear DNA, RNA and other proteins in our own cells. Amazingly, the question among leading researchers in this field remains, “what drives B cells to malfunction in this way?” The fact that immunology experts and rheumatology experts continue to investigate causes should quiet the denial that other factors besides loss of self-tolerance may be at work in causing autoimmune disease. In other words, something is going on here. Systemic lupus erythematosis (SLE) is one of the classis, autoimmune diseases. It is also one for which the cause remains unknown. Some scientists believe that viruses may cause it, yet others disagree. Still others believe that microbial “superantigens” exist that so closely resemble our own cellular proteins that they cause us to produce antibodies that also attack our own cells. Proposed superantigens include the group A, streptococcus enterotoxin and some staphylococcal enterotoxins, or products of the bacterial cellular wall. These same scientists fail to mention that our immune systems are also quite sensitive to fungi, because of the large number of antigenic determinants present in fungi’s cell walls.1 Not only can the fungus itself then be a scourge, often going undetected or unrecognized by physicians poorly trained in mycology. The by-products of these fungi, or mycotoxins, may also cause disease. Penicillamine, a fungal metabolite and drug used for treating heavy metal poisoning, is a suspect in drug-induced lupus. Although some of the antibodies detected in patients’ bloodstreams may differ in the drug-induced form, because the symptoms are the same, the distinction between it and the more mainstream variety of lupus is likely unimportant. Moreover, I suspect that SLE may also be a drug-induced disease. We have yet to identify what that drug might be, but I have an idea it just might be antibiotics. If the mycotoxin penicillamine can cause drug-induced lupus, I believe that nothing prevents another mycotoxin or fungus from causing the same disease. The above sounds a bit farfetched, even to me, but take a look at the chart on the following page. The autoimmune diseases in the chart are coupled with the antifungal treatments that have been shown to work against them, and with mycotoxins that some scientists believe may cause them in the first place.
Clearly, the chart shows that fungi and their mycotoxins possess the ability to invade our bodies. They do so practically undetected by the average scientist who is not trained to look for fungi or who is using a lab not fully adept at isolating the microbes. Some scientists tell us that fungi alter and subsequently mimic cells, and that their toxins can alter the DNA of their hosts. I believe that our immune systems sense that trouble is afoot and steps in for the cleanup. The result is inflammation, pain and more damage. In some cases, our immune systems are powerless to act effectively. All the while, the fungus or the mycotoxin continues its invasion via what we eat and breathe. Put another way, if people fail to change their diets, there is no hope that the source of the disease will ever be shut off. Meanwhile, on the medical end, doctors are taught to suppress autoimmune symptoms with glucocorticosteroids and immune modulators. This is similar to fighting a fire by trying to limit the amount of available oxygen, without ever removing the fuel. We need to persist in uncovering the cause of so many diseases for which, thus far, we have yet to determine a clear source. However, if a patient’s condition improves with an antifungal drug or antifungal diet, we might need to back up a few steps and consider how we should alter our approach. By observing the way these conditions respond to antifungal medications, we can conclusively begin to assign a cause to these diseases. The medical texts I buy are getting too expensive and too heavy to be lacking in more useful information, even if I do start buying CD-ROM versions instead. References:
Autoimmune
Disease, Part 2 (The following
quote is from VetInfo4Cats.com by Michael Richards, DVM) The flip side of this story is immune system disease that is triggered by parasites. There is almost no question that this can occur, especially with blood borne parasites. In this case, what usually happens is that a parasite has an affinity for a particular cell type (red blood cells) and invades them. The body’s defense mechanism identifies the invader but also identifies the red blood cell it is attached to as a problem – and begins to destroy red blood cells. Once this process is started it can be very hard to stop. It is likely that parasites that infect other cells or migrate through the body will occasionally cause similar problems. Isn’t it strange how the agricultural community and veterinarians
are aware of how these things work, but our own MDs don’t have a clue? Obviously,
this veterinarian believes that “parasites,” and he doesn’t specify which
ones, but we can assume fungus is a parasite, can trigger the immune system to attack
“self” cells because they have been compromised by an enemy invader. Better to
destroy the entire cell, if that’s the only way to get rid of the invader. However,
if you go in to your MD and complain of pains and aches and he comes up with a diagnosis
of some autoimmune disease such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, leukemia, Crohn’s, or
whatever, he can’t tell you what caused it in the first place, and the only treatment
he can offer is an immunosuppressive drug (so the immune system has no chance of winning
the battle), and pain medication. To me, this seems too much like “Gee, I don’t
have any idea what’s wrong or how to fix it, but here, take these pills and maybe you’ll
feel better for a little while.” Until you die from a massive fungal infection
(cancer) caused by taking the immunosuppressive drugs over a long period of time. Because
you will have to take them for a long time. The very act of taking them is causing the
root problem to get worse and worse, so chances are, your dosage will be increased, too,
after it “stops working” on the symptoms. Either that, or the doc will find a
stronger immunosuppressive drug to give you. What he SHOULD have done was advised you to change your diet so as to
reduce your exposure to the fungal mycotoxins that are causing the problem, and prescribed
an antifungal medication (either prescription or herbal) and probiotics to replenish your
immune system. But there’s no money in that method. If he were to actually cure your
problem, you wouldn’t need to keep coming back for check-ups and more prescriptions,
and (God forbid!) surgery to remove some part of your body because it’s now beyond
repair (at least in his opinion). The Fungus Link I – Book Reviews Lannie was surfing the web the other day and found some of Kaufmann’s
books for sale at Amazon.com, where they are often accompanied by reviews written by
people who have read that particular book. Just so you folks will know that we haven’t
made a personal crusade of blowing the trumpet for Kaufmann and Holland, here are some
other people’s opinions. I have made no attempt to change the writers’
punctuation, grammar, or spelling. These are “as is.” From T.M. in Los Angeles, CA: I have (or had) Lupus and this book changed my life. I went on the Phase I diet and all of my blood test went back to normal, no more joint pain, sun sensitivity etc. etc.. All my “symptoms” went away. Was my Dr. interested in how I did it, NO, she just said you don’t have to come back unless you have a flare, said she never had a patient “graduate” before! This book is a God send for anyone with an autoimmune disease and it helps lots of other health problems also. Search out this book it will change your life also! From S.L. in southwest Florida: The Fungus Link was an incredibly helpful and informational tool for me to deal with chronic candida. As a research fanatic, the explanation of just HOW fungal toxins disrupt and injure the body and how to eliminate them made all the difference for me. There’s a huge difference between knowing you have a condition and treating it and REALLY getting it and being empowered to deal with it in a holistic way – through nutrition, lifestyle, etc. Doug makes something complicated easy to understand and conquer! The Phase I diet really does work and isn’t difficult to achieve on a daily basis with some effort. Knowing what foods to avoid during a healing crisis helps a person to realize what foods to avoid in the long run, as going back to them may regenerate the problem. As a result of faithfully following the Phase I diet and continuing to abstain from sugar, cheese, most grains and white flour products, I have achieved and maintained a 52 pound weight loss, lower cholesterol, significantly lower triglycerides, blood pressure and much more energy! A definite MUST READ for anyone suffering from candida, cancer, obesity, diabetes and many other ailments – fungal overgrowth, toxicity and candida is far reaching!! From P.S. in Susanville, CA: I actually went on Doug Kaufmans initial phase, which in included in this book, diet then stayed on the long term diet for about a year. Stunning results! To me it was much more than just an interesting concept, idea, or theory .
From D.H. in Skokie, IL: I was given this book from my mother who believed I had a fungal condition after having to take several heavy treatments with antibiotics from infections I got from operations. After the antibiotic treatments were finished, I had unexplainable weight gains of almost 100lbs each time. My doctor was stunned and even put me into the University of Chicago Hospital for observation and even they had no idea. But one thing stuck out from reading the book that pertained to me. It mentioned high triglyceride’s and high cholesterol counts, which I had hi triglycerides for apparently no reason. I was just breaking the 350lb barrier and any diet or exercise program had no permanent effect. But when I started the diet in the book, it had an immediate effect on me. I always had acid reflux, this is now gone, I also had swelling of the feet legs and mid section, this has subsided, and I started dropping weight, by the way I am only 42 years old and I have been fighting this condition for over 15 years with out knowing I had it. The rest of the book is full of interesting information that may surprise you, I know it surprised me. From Anonymous: I found the book to be a real eye opener. It provides information that we can do ourselves to take control of our health. I felt much better after I tried the diet. Unnecessary
Surgeries Every year millions of Americans go under the knife, but many of them are enduring great pain and shelling out thousands of dollars for surgeries they don’t really need. In fact, the only people who seem to really benefit from these unnecessary medical procedures are the medical professionals who stand to make exorbitant amounts of money from performing them. An estimated 7.5 million unnecessary medical and surgical procedures are performed each year, writes Gary Null, PhD., in Death by Medicine. Rather than reverse the problems they purport to fix, these unwarranted procedures can often lead to greater health problems and even death. A 1995 report by Milliman & Robertson, Inc. concluded that nearly 60 percent of all surgeries performed are medically unnecessary, according to Under The Influence of Modern Medicine by Terry A. Rondberg. Some of the most major and frequently performed unnecessary surgeries include hysterectomies, Cesarean sections and coronary artery bypass surgeries. Full story at: http://www.newstarget.com/012291.html (A little side note: I was watching something on the Discovery Channel
some time back about people who had undergone bariatric surgery – stomach stapling
– in order to lose weight. A high percentage of them, and I don’t remember the
exact figure, later died from malnutrition! Their stomachs could only hold two tablespoons
and they couldn’t eat enough to keep themselves alive. Is that insane, or what?) A couple more drug humor item from Mike Adams at http://www.NewsTarget. Diseasification: The process of spreading the fictitious diseases through the population. This is how drug companies get rich: by manufacturing disease and convincing people they now suddenly suffer from it. See “Spontaneous Mass Diagnosis,” below. Diseasification is greatly aided by drug madvertising (mass propaganda) designed to change the way people think about health and disease. Fear of public speaking used to merely be a fear. Now it’s a disease, and there’s a drug to treat it. Menopause used to be menopause. Now it’s a disease, too. The former head of Merck, a man named Gadsden, once said he wished to expand the drug market to healthy people, so he wouldn’t be limited to selling drugs only to sick people. He wanted people to take drugs like they chew gum. What a visionary! (See Selling Sickness to learn more.)
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