How To Beat Automimmune Naturally And Win

Are you looking for a natural way to beat autoimmune diseases? If so, then listen in to this exciting new episode of The Hormone Prescription Podcast, where we're joined by Palmer Kippola - an expert on beating autoimmune conditions naturally.

Palmer is a certified Functional Medicine Health Coach and the author of the best-selling book, Beat Autoimmune. She has helped countless women overcome their autoimmune diseases and regain control over their health. In this episode, she shares her best tips and secrets for naturally healing from these chronic conditions and getting your life back on track. Palmer also reveals her story of how she became so passionate and such an expert at helping people reverse autoimmune disease.

 

In this episode, you will learn about:

• The key signs and symptoms of autoimmune diseases and how to recognize them.
• How does autoimmune relate to food toxins, gut health, and hormone balance 
• The importance of paying attention to your body's signals, and the techniques you can use to listen better.
• How a healthy diet, exercise, stress management, and other lifestyle habits play an important role in healing from these conditions.
• Palmer's holistic framework for complete autoimmune recovery called F.I.G.H.T.S.™

If you're struggling with an autoimmune disease, or know someone who is, then this episode is a must-listen! Tune in now and start your journey to wellness today.

 

[00:57]  Some of you may remember her from the stop, the menopause Manness summit. She was very popular, cuz she's talking about a popular women's health topic, autoimmune disease, and her name is Palmer Kippola. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about her, but she healed herself from multiple sclerosis, which is really unheard of in corporate medicine. If you ask corporate medical doctors, can you heal yourself from multiple sclerosis or autoimmune disease? They will flat out tell you that you're gonna have that for your, the rest of your life. And what I'm gonna tell you is I know far too many people who actually have reversed these diseases and are incomplete remission.

 

[01:53] Palmer is a certified functional medicine health coach and the author of the bestselling book beat autoimmune Palmer has helped thousands of people reverse autoimmune conditions after struggling to heal herself from multiple sclerosis and succeeding Palmer will share her holy framework for a complete autoimmune recovery called fights. The fights protocol offers transformational health recovery. For those with autoimmune conditions seeking to avoid the harms of immunosuppressant medications and optimize their health. Welcome Palmer. 

 

[02:43] Am delighted to be thank you so much for having me, Dr. Kyrin.

 

[02:46] Yes. I loved having you on the stop. The menopause madness summit, everyone loved your segments. And I thought we need to bring you out from the summit from behind the summit curtain and into the light of day so that you can share your information expertise, inspiration around autoimmune disease, huge problem for women at midlife and beyond which we'll get into. But first I want was wondering if you could share your story of how you became so passionate and such an expert at helping people reverse autoimmune disease.

 

[03:27] I would be delighted to, uh, I have to take you back in time a little bit to the pre-internet days because I was 19 years old and up until I turned 19 is a happy, healthy well-adjusted young woman. And this particular moment I was home from my freshman year of college and just work in a summer job. And one morning I woke up and the souls of my feet were all tingling. That feeling like you've slept on a limb all night and it just won't wake up. So I thought, oh, it'll just go away, but it didn't just go away. So I got to work by noon. It, the symptoms had really, really crept up my, my legs, like a vine. I called my mom and dad and who called the family doctor who said get her over to the neurologist at UCLA today. So that's what we did.

 

[04:19] I had a very quick exam. As in five minutes, she had me walk across the floor, do the heel toe heel toe, touch my fingers to my nose. And she pronounced I'm 99% certain that you have Ms. Multiple sclerosis. And if I'm right, there's nothing you can do except take medication. And later I actually learned that she had pulled my parents aside and told them to prepare for my life in a wheelchair because that's where I was heading. So we had never heard of Ms. This is now in the mid eighties. This was no one had heard of autoimmune conditions. 50 years ago. It was so rare to, you know, no of one that had anything like this. So we left, terrified, went home by nightfall. The tingling had crept under my neck. And by the time I went to sleep, I had gone completely numb neck down and I would stay completely numb for a full six weeks.

 

[05:17] So it was an absolutely terrifying and we had no hope we had no information on what you could do. There was no Dr. Google. And so all I could do was lay on the couch. And so that's what I did to wait. And I'm very fortunate that I had loving parents who were there. 

 

[06:04] So I pondered and puzzled and reflected. Why did I get the Ms. I wonder, I wonder. And it came to me as a flash of insight. And I need to just go back a little bit farther in time because I had been adopted as a baby by very loving parents, but my dad had been a fighter pilot whose way was the right way. And we butted heads quite a lot. And Dr. Kara, I have to tell you that my earliest childhood memory is actually of me somewhere between the ages of three and five. 

 

[06:58] I was hypervigilant. I was always on, and I don't have any idea how I knew at the time. And I just envisioned my immune system as PAC men that were going around and gobbling up the bad guys. Right. I, I didn't know anything further than that, but I had this insight that I had become hypervigilant and therefore my immune system was in overdrive. It too had become hypervigilant. And I learned years later, of course, that that is the autoimmune attack. It's an over vigilant immune system that starts attacking your body's own self tissues. 

 

[07:58] And again, there's nothing you can do except take medication. You're gonna go downhill. You'll be in a wheelchair, possibly have a shortened life. I never gave up searching for answers. And I finally found functional medicine in the year 2010. And that's when I found out that I had non celiac, gluten sensitivity, I removed the gluten, did a whole host of other things, but that was my biggest baddest root cause of all. And now we know that gluten creates a leaky gut in anyone who eats it and that's research from 2015. So that is my story.

 

[08:33] Yeah. It's such a powerful story. You know, I've known people, who've had Ms. I one friend who actually died from it at a very early age, it's a highly debilitating disease and certainly can shorten your lifespan. And there are lots of other autoimmune diseases that similarly cause disability and premature death. So it's a very serious problem. And the incidence is higher among women and particularly women at midlife and beyond. So I think it's a very serious topic and you're a Testament to the fact of what can happen. 

 

[09:37] And just telling it shut up and stop talking to me is never the answer you really wanna ask. I love that that woman asked you, why do you think you have this? And it took a long time, sounds like decades to unravel, but ultimately that became your life purpose. And so I'm gonna end invite everyone to lean into the symptoms you're having and ask, why do you have it instead of taking a drug to shut that symptom up? So Palmer, then you've got a protocol called F I G H T S that you use, it's a holistic framework for complete autoimmune. 

 

[10:35] Oh, I love it. It's a such a powerful invitation. And I wanna say to start with that auto immunity is now affecting children. This is not just women in midlife anymore. So there's a real opportunity to, to address this proactively as early as we can there, it's now, uh, juvenile, rheumatoid arthritis is a thing, right? So we must to get on this immediately. And so after I healed, I decided to study this full time auto immunity, why we develop auto immunity and what we can do to reverse it. And I quit my day job to study this full time. And I just lived on PubMed and anybody who has any curiosity about how to do this can find the same information it's all there. So I was just wanting to share the truth and what I found. And I also, at the same time decided to become a functional medicine, health coach.

 

[11:29] And so I studied auto immunity. I became a functional medicine, certified health coach, and I that time and time again, as we helped our clients heal, they got better as they addressed these factors. So I sat down after I was, it was suggested to me by a leading immunologist, Dr. Ariso VO Donny, that I consider writing a book about this because too many people are being affected by auto immunity. And not enough doctors are trained in actually how to treat people. I mean, to your point, it's all about immune suppression instead of addressing the root causes. 

 

[12:22] It stands for food infections, gut health, hormone, balance, toxins, and stress. And I lamented that it did not spell peace, but in fact, , it was more metaphorically appropriate. I have to go back to my dad because while he was, you know, one could say the villain of the piece, right? The person that was perpetrating the conflict in our home, you know, nothing is ever that simple. 

 

[13:20] Yes, I think it's such a great book. It really, it's kind of like the Bible on how to reverse autoimmune naturally. So I encourage anyone suffering with autoimmune to get it and read it. Don't have contemporary investigation. I actually get it and look at it. I love this other quote you shared with me from James Baldwin, not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed that is not faced. And I think part of the problem with our current corporate medical system is that we're not really facing our health challenges.

 

[14:20] What is wrong in my body? What are you showing me? And I love that, you know, it's telling you food. So fights food. Food is a problem. It's telling you, excuse me. Infections are a problem. Gut health is a problem. Hormone bounce is a problem. Toxins are a problem. Stress is a problem. And so then you have the opportunity. Uh, knowledge is power, cuz then once you have the knowledge, you can do something about it. 

 

[14:53] Absolutely. And before I delve into that, I just wanna say how much I agree with what you're saying, the symptoms I encourage clients to thank them. They are messengers from your body, letting you know that something is outta balance. And it's kind of like, you know, the engine light on your dashboard of your car. You get outta hammer and start smashing your dashboard. No, you'd go get it checked out to see what's wrong with your engine, but we don't treat our bodies this way. Right? We just shove it under the rug and this is an opportunity to really empower yourself. 

 

{15:37] Let's go into each one. And so food is really the highest leverage category. People heal 60 to 80% of the way and sometimes a hundred percent of the way just addressing foods. I got an email last week from someone who read my book. And she, you said, I just followed your food plan, which is the autoimmune paleo program. I just call it a 30 day food vacation. It's a positive spin on the classic elimination diet, take out the inflammatory foods. And she said, my symptoms 95% better just by addressing food. So number one, and that's why start with food is the first chapter in the book. We gotta start there.

 

[16:36] And that is how the whole autoimmune cascade starts. When you start creating holes in your gut, it allows, you know, good and bad things to get into your bloodstream. And that's when your immune system just takes off, starts attacking those things. And then you get the molecular mimicry, oh, by the way that gluten particle in your bloodstream looks a lot like your thyroid tissue, which is just absolutely crazy to me, but it's a thing. So you gotta stop eating gluten full stop.

 

[17:11] If you're listening to us now and you've been listening to my podcast and you are still eating gluten, you are not paying attention. so little cold water in your face. Stop it. Yeah. If, if your health is not picture perfect, if you have any symptoms, you need to stop eating gluten. Yeah.

 

[17:32] All right. All right. Shall we move on? Because I don't do fights in the book as it's spelled, because the next step is to look at your gut health and okay, this is a really important one, too. We treat our guts like garbage disposals. We are just throwing in food, you know, of any kind of variety and much of our food. The conventionally grown food is actually genetically modified to contain a product that is Roundup resistant. And glyphosate is one of the biggest batty chemicals that we're facing in our environment today. And if you're eating conventionally grown meat in particular, you gotta pay attention. And see if you can turn that around to be eating grass fed 100% wild meat. Why? Because we're not just what, whatever we eat. We're whatever we eat ate and you wanna be eating and that eat what they're supposed to be eating, which is cows graze on grass. 

 

[18:51] For everybody listening. So they might say, so what it's farmed, can you explain why that's a problem?

 

[18:57] Well, when it's farmed, there are going to be fed things that they're not supposed to be eating. So it is not in a fish's nature to, you know, wanna feast on soy and wheat, but that's what they're actually being fed. So oftentimes farmers and fish farmers, they want the best price and they wanna sell their stuff. And you know what? Corned meat tastes good, cuz it's really fatty, but it's not good for the cows and it's not good for the fish. So, you know, sometimes getting used to grass fed meat can be a little more challenging because it's not necessarily as fatty delicious as what you've been used to eating your smoked s

 

[19:51] That's a great point. There is no middle point. It's either making you healthier or making you sicker. There is no in between. So ask yourself before you lift your fork and stick it inside your mouth as this promoting health or promoting disease. So what would we look at with gut health? 

 

[20:13] Offender. It really is because it's, it's kind of like sidestream, you're not aware that you're doing it. And this, what we're doing here is to create awareness about everything that we can be doing so that we can be in control of our health outcomes. So it's just super important that every little thing you do at the end of your fork matters. And if organic is an issue in terms of cost for people, you know, consider, I'm sure you've talked about the environmental working group, they have their clean 15 and the dirty dozen, just make sure you know, that you're following those guidelines so that you at least are taking the best care. 

 

[21:07] So that's why I talk about it here. Super important to make sure that we're treating our guts. Well, the other thing that I'll add to gut health while we're on the topic is mm-hmm, antibiotics. Mm-hmm, , it's like a nuclear bomb for your gut. And because we need our microbiomes to help protect our health and help create our hormones and a everything that you talk about, we have to be really, really vigilant about what we are putting in our gut. And one of the things that's harming us as a species is the high level use of antibiotics. And by the way, glyphosate, which we've just talked about was patent is as an antibiotic. That was its first use. 

 

[22:06] Yeah, absolutely. That should be last resort. Yep. Okay, great. So gut health and then what would come next? So we've got food and gut health.

 

[22:15] Then we wanna move on to infections because this is super, super important. If you have already cleaned up your diet, you've addressed your food sensitivities and you're doing really well. You are, are, you know, taking care of your gut and you're still not getting better. It's time to consider infections. And this is something that we see in our practice. So I collaborate with a couple of natural paths and we help people who are not getting better after doing the diet changes. And we find time and time again, a collection of infection that include yeast and parasites and chronic Lyme and on and on. But there's so many things that people can do on their own in the infections category. And I would say overall to consider this category, it's not the bug, it's the terrain. So how you are treating yourself, your gut health, your life.

 

[23:11] We have to unburden our immune systems. And that is the best way I know of to help really make us Bulletproof against infections. The current one like coronavirus and these chronic infections that are in us that we may not know about because they're stealth and they're hidden. So what can you do to unburden your immune system? Step one, you gotta remove the sugar. You gotta remove the sugar. Another thing that I am super in favor of is moving. We were built to move. So move your body, stop eating the sugar and set a bedtime.

 

[24:16] Right. You know, it's such a, a great point and everybody knows probably people were going, yeah, I know Palmer. I'm supposed to go to bed at a certain time. And I know, I know these things, but the thing is that we don't do it. and I think it's important that you hear the fact that the terrain matters and that these chronic infections, I mean, most of us have chronic infections. And when you talk about terrain, the what popped into my head was a tree in the forest, one alive and dead.

 

[25:06] So if your terrain is kind of crappy, let's say, and you stay up late, you don't really tend to your gut health, you eat sugar, which feeds most of these ball. Then your terrain is terrible and you're like that dead tree in the forest. And you're gonna be riddled with these chronic infections that are hard to diagnose, right? Palmer oh, hard, hard to treat hard to get rid of and how you really get rid of them is you fix your terrain. Would you like to add anything about that?

 

[26:07] Oh, I, that was so beautifully said, I love the metaphor of the trees. I think that's perfect. I don't need to say anything else about it. It's um, beautiful.

 

[26:20] Then we gotta get to toxins and this is considered to be the biggest driver of autoimmune conditions are toxins. And Donna Jack is Jackson. NAZA's beautiful book. The autoimmune epidemic, which came out in the early two thousands was really a spotlight on the reason for the increase in auto immunity. Today, I already shared that when I was diagnosed at age 19, no one had heard of these autoimmune conditions. And today there are 150 known autoimmune conditions. And maybe one in three, one in five people are dealing with autoimmune symptoms, whether they have a formal diagnosis or not. So why is that? There are so many more chemicals in our environment is a huge driving factor. 

 

[27:45] But there's more to it than that because we are sometimes victims of the things that are in our environment. We are seeing more and more BPA in people that we're testing. We're seeing more and more glyphosate. We're seeing more and more of these pesticides and herbicides. And there's some things that are harder to get out than others. But this is where knowledge is power. Just learning about what you're putting on your face and your body and your self care and your home care and what you're cleaning with. It all matters. And we talked about, you know, you're either building health, creating health, or you're moving against it. It's, it's really binary in that way. And every little bit it matters. 

 

[28:42] It does. And I have a pet peeve in this category. I wondering if you could speak to it, which is the artificial scented candles and the plugins.

 

[28:52] So many people don't get that. Your, your scented laundry detergent, that they've got all these commercials with people smelling and they're so happy and the dryer sheets and the fabric softeners and the, the plugins and the centered candles and the air sprays. And can you talk a little bit about that?

 

[29:12] I can, it is a shared pet peeve and I haven't been in an Uber in a really long time, but without getting in an Uber with the guy, who's got four of those I'm tree,

 

[29:28] from the, the mirror it's maddening and people just don't know they don't. So I will say that the word fragrance and perfume or parfum, which is like the French word that you think is like, oh, it must be beautiful. It's French. It must be great for me. It's actually code for PHS and plastics. You don't want it in your body and sometimes, okay, this is going to get kind of gross people out, but it's sometimes what's in those fragrances is made from fever, anal gland. Did you know that?

 

[30:10] Yeah. It's a thing. It's a gross thing. Just know that your products and what you're eating and what you're drinking and any body care product, if it says fragrance or perfume or scent or anything like that, manufacturers are allowed to put whatever they want into that product or perfume or sent a dryer sheets. So that's part of the plan to remove the toxic load, to remove anything with those words.

 

[30:43] Yeah. So just stop using the sense y'all, , it's so bad for you and you don't even realize it. I mean, I have so many friends who use these things and they just don't get it. So of course I give them articles, which they love, but you know, they're also carcinogenic. So they cause cancer. Most people don't realize that, so, okay. We've got to get rid of the toxins. I'll get off my soapbox. And then what's next. After the toxins Palmer,

 

[31:10] Stress is the elephant in the room and stress is the elephant in the room because it is so insidious pervasive. We are all more stressed than we've ever been. We are just always on. And I know you talk a lot about high cortisol and the setting, the stage for any kind of health problem in your life. Auto immunity is usually triggered by some shocking event, some major stress in life, but it can be perpetuated by ongoing stress by chronic stress. Mm-hmm, , that's a piece of it. The other part of stress that is the bigger elephant that's hidden is the chronic childhood trauma, the developmental trauma.

 

[32:18] And there is proof and studies that point to the fact that if you've experienced neglect abuse had a family member imprisoned, or your parents were divorced, or the death of a loved one as a child, that there is a greater likelihood that you will experience auto immunity and other chronic disease later in life. It is, it's both shocking and empowering. And I love talking about this because there's so much that people can do. This is your childhood does not determine who you are, but this is going back to the James Baldwin quote of not everything is face can be changed, but nothing that is not faced or, you know what I'm saying,

 

[33:04] Face. Exactly. And if you're not facing the fact that you had trauma, if you're not addressing it, if you're not releasing the emotions that happened in childhood and taking responsibility for it, you may be perpetuating health issues.

 

[33:23] Right? And I think this is super important too. And I know we're getting short on time, but I think people are really getting it, that I had overwhelming experiences as a child, and it's affecting my health. They get that. Can you just name some of the things that people can start doing to start working through that? Cuz I think that's what P people are really hungry for. Well, what do I do about it? I get it. But what do I do about.

 

[33:47] I'm actually creating a course around this first and foremost is awareness. Just being really true to yourself that something hap or something may have happened is step one that self-awareness and sometimes to access that even the act of journaling of writing things down is super powerful and freeing. Get it on the page. If you don't like to write, draw, paint, whatever you can do to get it out of you and onto the page, you don't have to share it with anybody unless you want to, but get it out for you. 

 

[34:51] And he offers some excellent ways to do that. So get it on the page. Number two, learn how to breathe properly. He talks about soft belly breathing and some of this stuff sounds so simple and how can this really help? But actually what happens when we have trauma that we're just stuck in that overdrive in that chronic fight flight, we've got to regulate our nervous systems. And the biggest regulator that we have for our nervous system is right under our nose. In fact, it is our nose. So taking big, deep belly breaths into our belly all the way and letting it out, letting it all go doing that proactively, maybe 10 soft belly breaths a day can be so soothing and helpful and just getting us out of that fight flight and into that rest and digest. So that's another access point. And another thing that I'll mention is the concept of shaking and dancing.

 

[35:48] So if you've ever watched an animal like a dog, if you take a dog to a park and it gets into a thing with another dog and they start going at it, you'll notice it afterwards, the dog shakes mm-hmm, , it's shaking off the trauma and after it shakes off, it's fine. But what do we do? We experience whatever traumatic event and we ruminate about it. It gets stuck on a loop and we play it over and over again. And it's it's, we're not safe. We gotta shut down. We tuck it deep away. And what Dr. Gordon talks about in the transformation is you can do this at any time, decades after the trauma that you've experienced to help your body clear the trauma, because it's not enough just to do the cognitive therapy. We've got to get it out of our bodies because of the concept of the stay in the tissues. So do what you can to shake, to dance, to let it go draw, take those deep belly breaths. And that would be a found a fantastic foundation for addressing trauma.

 

[36:51] Oh, those are some great pointers Palmer. Thank you for those. And before we wrap up the name of the podcast is the hormone prescription because all roads lead to hormones and hormone balance is, uh, one of your fights components. So how does autoimmune relate to hormone balance? How what's the connection there for everybody listening?

 

[37:165]  I know you talk a lot about these on your podcast, low vitamin D. Number one is something that we can can control. It's the easiest hormone imbalance to correct. So know your levels and get your vitamin D levels up. This is vitamin D three, make sure you take it with K2. Another one that's low across the board is thyroid. This is a huge factor in the autoimmune equation. In fact, hypothyroid, most women in particular have an autoimmune thyroid condition Hashimotos which you know of. So low thyroid, we also have low D H E a, and that is quite common across the board in people with auto immunity.

 

[38:11] So again, know your numbers, get tested, do what you can do to, to raise those three. Then there are three that are excessively high across the board in people with autoimmune issues. One is estrogen dominance and that's not just estrogen being high. It's estrogen high in relation to progesterone, which I know you talk about a lot and that's super important and it doesn't just affect women. This is affecting men too. Another one that is high is cortisol. This is the dark Lord or you call queen cortisol. You gotta lower your cortisol and be in control of that. And finally, we have high insulin. 

 

[39:25] Thank you so much Palmer for sharing your journey and your expertise. I love it when people's pain become their purpose. And that certainly is true for you. And this other quote you shared from RS gray, she believes she could. So she did, you did right? You believed that you could. And I wanna give a shout out for everybody who's listening. Who's struggling maybe with autoimmune or some other health problem. 

 

[40:25]I do. I do. So the biggest question I get from people is what do I eat to beat an autoimmune condition? What do I eat? I hear different things from different people, and I believe that you're in the best position to figure that out for your yourself. So this is a little ebook that goes into all of the things that you need to consider taking out of your diet for about a month. I call this the 30 day food vacation and then tell you what you can eat so that you can eat to beat auto immunity. And you can find that@palmerkipp.com slash gift.

 

[41:04] If I can do it, you can do it. This is not just my story. This is the story of every single human being who takes the, the first step and then the next towards their optimal health. And so many people have recovered from auto immunity. And that's why in the book, I didn't just share my story. I tell the story of a dozen doctors who had been medically conventionally trained medical doctors. Mm-hmm who developed auto immunity and then had to find answers like you,

 

{41:47] It's so true. So don't give up, keep looking, finding answers. Hopefully you've got gotten some here. Thank you, Palmer so much for joining us today.

 

 

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