If you have an autoimmune-related condition, I want you to rethink your diagnosis.

You don’t have to fire your doctor or stop taking medication, but until you understand this, it will be impossible to overcome autoimmune diseases.

50 million Americans deal with autoimmune diseases.

My mother had thyroid problems and Hashimoto’s.

My father had an autoimmune-related condition, which was a severe inflammatory condition called Cogan Syndrome.

It attacks the sensory organs, and it made my father deaf by knocking out his hearing.

It started to affect his eyes, so he had to get steroid injections in his eyes.

I’m going to show you exactly what caused that extremely rare condition, and why it could be causing your autoimmune condition.

These all stem back to one primary problem. As soon as I understood it, I was able to get my father off of 15 medications, he was no longer seeing the rheumatologist and he was experiencing real health.

This doesn’t mean stopping taking your medications, but we’re going to try and control your autoimmune disease so that it doesn’t get worse.

Autoimmune Conditions & The Gut

Your digestive tract takes in lots of different things on a daily basis.

The digestive system barrier has to determine if those things should be absorbed or gotten rid of.

The gut is called the second brain for a reason—it has to decipher millions of molecules of nutrients, energy, chemicals, and vitamins, and decide which ones should go into the bloodstream.

Our blood carries nutrients to the areas of the body that need them.

But let’s focus on the things that we take in that aren’t nutrients, like medications.

A lot of people, especially those with an autoimmune condition, are taking antibiotics and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like aspirin and ibuprofen, which are the worst medications for the gut.

They inhibit the normal process of the gut and can cause microbes and candida overgrowth, which are a major cause of autoimmune-related conditions.

Before my dad had Cogan Syndrome, he had a form of a virus that caused massive inflammation in his body.

Other things like gluten, the pesticides and herbicides that are in grain-based products, sugars, and carbohydrates are also causing major issues.

We’re overconsuming too much of the wrong foods and medicines.

Our digestive system is trying to deal with all this, and it breaks down.

These things start creating holes in the barrier that is supposed to protect us.

This creates a leakiness where things that aren’t supposed to get into your bloodstream are floating around your system.

This means you end up having viruses inside your bloodstream. Then the NSAIDs put chemicals inside your bloodstream.

The antibiotics start to destroy the gut lining and good bacteria, and you have an overgrowth of bad bacteria happening in your gut.

That’s what destroys kidneys, and that’s what sets people into different autoimmune-related conditions.

You have toxins, pesticides, and heavy metals in your bloodstream, creating inflammation.

Then, the absorption of proper nutrients gets blocked and toxic nutrients get in.

This can happen in different organs, or it can be systemic, like my dad, for example.

Viruses oftentimes will settle in the thyroid, which creates the assumption of a thyroid problem.

In reality, it’s just your body’s inflammation attacking the virus that sits on the thyroid.

This can happen inside your digestive tract, or even travel to your heart and create inflammation there.

Gut Reset

Now, instead of first focusing on how we can clean up the blood, let’s focus on how we can clean up what’s going into the body and repair our body’s defenses.

A lot of people throw probiotics, cleanses, or a special diet at this problem.

None of those are wrong, but if you don’t do them in the proper order, you’re not repairing the entire system.

There’s a six-step process to repair the whole system, and it’s called a gut reset.

When these steps are done in the proper order, your digestive system experiences proper healing mechanisms to fix the whole problem, instead of just patching a hole.

1. Reconnect

First, we have to focus on healing.

I know the autoimmune condition exists, but that’s not who you are.

We let it define us—my dad let his condition define him for two years.

You have to work mentally to fix your focus and say, “It’s what I have right now, but it’s not who I am.”

We have to work on reconnecting to where true health and true healing comes from, and that’s inside of you.

2. Removal

The removal step involves low-carbohydrate juicing for 3 days, which puts your body in autophagy.

I have videos that explain fasting and autophagy if you want to learn more about them.

This will start cleaning up those viruses and microbes, and balancing out gut health.

It will remove some of the chemicals and heavy metals inside of your system.

Research shows that if we go through at least a 3-day removal process, it’s going to start flushing the body, cleaning up the blood, and removing the damage that’s inside of the gut.

3. Repair

Collagen helps build up the barrier that’s between blood and your digestive tract, and L-glutamine helps repair the mucosal lining.

There are also herbs that can help as well.

These will cause the barrier to tighten and decrease the gut’s permeability.

Now the invaders that we’ve minimized are not getting in the blood, and the inflammation involved with autoimmune conditions will be reduced.

The repair step should be done for at least 3 days.

We want to focus on smoothies, bone broth, and other foods that have higher doses of collagen and L-glutamine that will help repair the gut.

4. Replace

The main focus of the ‘Replace’ step is putting foods back in after this 6-day period of time where we’ll replenish but not irritate the gut.

We don’t want glutens or carbohydrates, and even nightshade vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant) and nuts can create irritation in the gut.

We want the whole gut to continue to be repaired.

Then we want to replace our diet with an anti-inflammatory, antihistamine approach.

Our Make Food Simple book has meal plans and recipes for this, which would be a great start.

Just don’t put foods in that create irritation, because they’ll create inflammation.

We want to avoid irritations for a period of time, and this can be anywhere from 14-60 days.

5. Repopulation

In this stage, we’re rebuilding all of the friendly bacteria to help defend against invaders, keep things balanced, and help absorb nutrients.

These are called probiotics.

They eat prebiotic food and they produce postbiotics, and all 3 of those are required to repopulate the gut and protect the digestive tract.

During this phase, you’ll also need digestive enzymes. The liver tends to get very bogged down and can’t process or dump bile in your body.

You need a different enzyme for carbohydrates and proteins, so we want to restore enzymes, bile salts, and bile to fix our liver function.

During your ‘replace’ stage of eating properly for 14-60 days, I suggest you put in pre- pro- and post-biotics, as well as digestive enzymes.

That way as you’re putting foods back in, you’ll digest them properly and rebuild the gut.

6. Reintroduce

Maybe you want some kind of pasta containing gluten, nuts, eggs, or dairy. This step is the time to reintroduce those foods.

You can reintroduce foods individually to see if they cause irritation to your system.

Summary

The process of a gut reset can be repeated quarterly, four times a year, to reset the digestive system.

Following this 6-step process will restore your gut balance and make a massive difference in autoimmune-related conditions.

There are times when we’ll need to go deeper with certain conditions, and there’s actually an advanced version of this.

If you want to know more about how to instantly lower the inflammation inside of your system and go deeper into the subject of restoring your gut, check out that video here.