Here are a few Squidoo Lenses that I created which may help you:

fibromyalgia is an unnecessary pain

Knowledge is power! What you don’t know about fibromyalgia, it’s causes, and treatments could be preventing you from taking control of your health and living a fuller life.

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Learn about Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and self-help techniques.

List of Autoimmune Diseases

There are over 100 different autoimmune diseases.

Learn to recognize their symptoms and educate yourself about them. (You can click on the name of each disease in the lists to learn about them.)

Also, learn the cause of autoimmunity.

Foods that Make Autoimmune Symptoms Worse

Do you know which common foods and food additives will aggravate your autoimmune condition and leave you feeling even more miserable?

If you don’t know the answers to this question, you’re not alone. What’s important is that you take the time to find out the answers.

Lupus Brain Fog

Learn the cause of Lupus Brain Fog and what you can do about it.

Fibromyalgia Diet

With little exception, everything that you put into your mouth is either making your fibro symptoms better or worse.

Lupus Symptoms

Lupus is an autoimmune disease. Listed are some of the almost limitless symptoms that can be caused by lupus.  (includes pictures of lupus rashes)

“If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat–diseased tissues–rather than causing disease.”
–Rudolf Virchow

We have been led to believe that in this big bad world, it is us against disease-causing microbes that we can’t even see. We think that besides washing our hands and being immunized, we are pretty much at the mercy of Mother Nature. This simply is not true. The environment inside your body determines what creatures want to share that terrain with you. Germs in and of themselves do not cause disease. They show up in parts of the body, which are already sick – like ants following a trail of popcorn. Only instead of popcorn, the trail is made of acid waste. An acidic and nutritionally deficient terrain invites the germs, which easily multiply and destroy the already suffering and diseased cells in that environment.

When we build a fire, there is an ash left behind by the burned fuel. The same is true of our body when it burns food for fuel. The food leaves an ash. That ash will either be alkaline or acidic, depending on the food.

Acidity and alkalinity are measured on what is called the pH scale.  How acidic a food is on our plates is often the opposite of how acidic the ash residue will be.  For example, acidic fruits and vegetables tend to leave an alkaline ash, while alkaline meats and cheeses tend to be acid-forming in the body. Our bodies also produce acid as a by-product of normal metabolism. Because our bodies are designed to be alkaline, this acid must be buffered with alkaline substances. However, our bodies cannot manufacture acid buffers. Food and supplementation are the only means of replenishing alkalinity in the body.

Due to the Standard American Diet (SAD), most people suffer from an unbalanced pH that is too acidic. In other words, their bodies are full of acid waste.

As soon as there is life there is danger.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the throat of a “healthy person” various forms of strep bacteria, yeasts, and the bacteria that causes staph infections reside. In addition to that, every hour, we breathe in an average of 14,000 germs and bacteria. If germs initiate disease, how do we make it past our first week of life? The fact is that those 14,000 germs may get their “foot in the door”, but they can’t do damage in an alkaline and oxygenated terrain.

“Like everybody else, when I don’t know what else to do, I seem to go in for catching colds.”
-George Jean Nathan
The cold-causing rhinoviruses, as well as many other viruses, infect cells by fusing with the cell in an acid pH. An acidic environment is necessary for these viruses to take hold in the body. (Read more at http://www.meridianinstitute.com/ceu/ceu21ph.html.) Interestingly, data shows that up to 80% of asthma exacerbations are associated with viruses, usually the same virus responsible for the common cold.

“Human beings, the potentially highest form of life expression on this planet have built the vast pharmaceutical industry for the central purpose of poisoning the lowest form of life on the planet–germs! One of the biggest tragedies of human civilization is the precedence of chemicals over nutrition.”
-Dr. Richard Murray
One symptom of a terrain pH imbalance is lack of oxygen.  An anaerobic (low oxygen) internal terrain encourages germs to multiply.  Scientists can watch live blood and see bacteria, yeast, fungus feeding and growing as the blood loses its nutrition and oxygen. Amazingly, these germs disorganize in the presence of oxygen.
Since the Standard American Diet consists of foods that make the terrain more acidic and less oxygenated, we are left to operate on our backup system: the immune system. This doesn’t seem to be working out very well either. Scientific evidence shows a significant decline in Th1 cells that go after viruses and cancer. Between 1981 and 1997, these cell numbers declined by 29% in the U.S. This Th1 decline implies that, as a nation, America is becoming more and more Th2 dominant. This rise in Th2 dominance will in turn cause an increase in allergies, autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, and cancer.

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It’s pretty obvious that the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) is behind Chronic Epstein-Barr Syndrome, however the role that germs play in other autoimmune disorders is varied and more ambiguous. Professor Garth L. Nicolson has found that in about half the individuals with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, Sjögren’s, Hashimoto’s, Graves’, Reiter’s, and Crohn’s Diseases, these disorders are associated with infections.

Tricky Creatures

“It’s not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.”
- Hans Selye

Other researchers have reported signs of latent (“sleeping”) Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, or human herpes virus 6 in CFS patients. These viruses can remain latent in the body for long periods of time. Stress and depression can partially reactivate (“awaken”) these viruses. Stress and depression also decrease the body’s immune response, so that the individual experiences a “low grade” infection. However, the infection is still enough to stimulate the production of certain cytokines linked to CFS symptoms.

Cytokines cause many fibromyalgia symptoms. In the brain, cytokines can cause behavioral changes. They can either prompt or worsen depression, anxiety, or anorexia. They may cause a person to become withdrawn. Cytokines create fatigue and interfere with sleep patterns. They are one thing responsible for what has been termed “brain fog.”

Germs can also make a protein that tricks the body into turning off the Th1 cells and activating Th2 cells. The Th1/Th2 imbalance leaves the body open to infection from other germs. This form of immune suppression is often the case in most autoimmune disorders.

Unsaturated oils suppress Th1 cells. The same is true of sleep deprivation. Losing even one night’s sleep can depress Th1 production for over a month. Furthermore, according to German researchers, vegetarians have more than twice the Th1 cells as meat-eaters.

Certain germs are capable of creating a cell identity crisis by “molecular mimicry.” Putting it very simply, these germs have a nametag similar to certain parts of the body. This causes the immune system to attack both the disease organism and the body tissue.
To the immune system, the bacteria Chlamydia pneumoniae looks like the heart muscle. A virus called adenovirus type 2 and Candida yeast mimic myelin sheaths. Similarly, it may also be possible for viruses carrying genetic material from one person to another to cause the immune system to attack the corresponding tissue much like what happens after an organ transplant.

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In my book, Conquering Autoimmunity, I called soda pop “The Food so Terrible, It Deserves Its Own Chapter”.  Soda pop in any form – sugar-free, full of sugar, caffeine-free, or full of caffeine – is a poison you need to flush down your toilet. Cola makes an excellent toilet cleaner, so you would be saving yourself and cleaning your toilet at the same time. If your toilet is already clean, you can spray your plants with cola because it makes a great bug killer too.

You might as well be drinking battery acid. Sodas are EXTREMELY acid forming and rob your body of vital minerals.1According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, “If you routinely drink soda–regular or diet–eliminating it from your diet is one of the simplest and most profound health improvements you can make.”

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Let Them Laugh

 “Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.”
-Mohandas Gandhi

The concept of acid/alkaline imbalance is not new. In 1933, Dr.William Howard Hay published his groundbreaking book, A New Health Era. In his book, Dr. Hay put forth the idea that all disease is caused by acid accumulation in the body. Toxicity due to acid may not be a new idea, but it is still not accepted by mainstream medicine. Because it is the most controversial and unconventional of all of the concepts covered in this book, I am going to stop and defend it now.

You can visit websites like quackwatch.com and read that the acid/alkaline body theory is “nonsense.”  Critics claim that you cannot control the alkalinity of your blood through diet. The problem with this argument is that practitioners who advocate an alkaline diet are not claiming that they can manipulate the pH of blood with food and nutritional supplements.  The pH level of blood must stay within a very narrow range. It would mean death for it to become too acidic. What can be made more alkaline by diet is the nutrient-filled fluid that bathes the trillions of cells in the body.

Naysayers can argue until they are blue in the face, but they can’t argue with the results experienced by people eating an alkaline diet. Remedy.com is a website that allows users to rate treatments for various diseases. On a scale of 1-10, users rated the effectiveness of an alkaline diet at a hugely successful 9.8.

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 “It’s bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children’s health than the pediatrician.”
-Meryl Streep

According to Edgar Cayce, a medical intuitive credited in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) editorial article as a primary influence in the development of modern holistic medicine, meals should be comprised of 80% alkaline forming foods and 20% acid-forming ones.  This can be accomplished with four vegetables plus two fruits to one starchy food and one protein food.

Foods that Form an Alkaline Ash

Alfalfa
Almonds
Apples
Apricots
Avocados
Bananas
Beets
Berries
Broccoli
Cabbage
Cantaloupe
Carrots
Cauliflower
Celery
Chestnuts
Cucumbers
Currants
Dates
Garlic
Grapefruit
Green Beans
Honeydew Melon
Lemons
Lettuce
Limes
Mushrooms
Nectarine
Onions
Oranges
Peaches
Pears
Peas
Peppers
Pineapple
Pumpkin
Raisins
Spinach
Sprouts
Stevia
Sweet Potatoes
Tomatoes
Watercress
Watermelon
Whey Protein Powder

Foods that Form an Acidic Ash

SODA POP and ASPARTAME!
Alcohol
All Meat, Including Most Fish
Barley
Beet
Bread
Buckwheat
Butter
Caffeine
Carob
Cashews
Cheese
Coffee
Corn
Corn Syrup
Cream
Custards
Dried Coconut
Drugs
Dried Peas
Eggs
Filberts
Flour
Grains, Most
Honey
Ice Cream
Lard
Lentils
Margarine
Pasta
Pasteurized Milk Products
Peanut Butter
Peanuts
Pecans
Plums
Rice
Sorghum
Soy
Sugar
Tobacco
Tofu
Walnuts
Water chestnuts

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Kidney and Bladder

Acid, not calcium supplementation, is the real cause behind kidney stones. The largest study ever published on calcium and kidney stones, concluded that high calcium intake is associated with a decreased risk of stones. Moreover, the study found that those who consumed less than 850 mg of calcium per day were at an increased risk for kidney
stones. (New England Journal of Medicine, 1993)  Another study showed that acid-forming foods are a risk factor for developing kidney stones.

Acid ash aggravates the kidney and bladder and worsens all forms of cystitis. One two-year study showed that the use of alkalizing salts reduced bladder pain by 43% and urgency by 35%. By the end of the two-year period, some study subjects had 100% relief.

An acidic pH can cause weight gain and diabetes. It strains the enzyme-producing pancreas, which is highly dependent upon an alkaline pH to function properly. In this sense, an acidic body contributes to an autoimmune sufferer’s lack of vital enzymes and ability to distinguish self from a foreign invader. Acid causes fungal overgrowth, weakened immunity and disease resistance, fatigue, and joint pain. A recent study has linked acid waste in the body to chronic back pain.  This toxic waste in the body also causes hormonal imbalances and decreased HGH production.  Lower HGH levels will worsen your fibromyalgia symptoms.

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The countless names of illnesses do not really matter. What does matter is that they all come from the same root cause…too much tissue acid waste in the body!
-Theodore A. Baroody, N.D., D.C., Ph.D.

When we build a fire, there is an ash left behind by the burned fuel. The same is true of our body when it burns food for fuel. The food leaves an ash. That ash will either be alkaline or acidic, depending on the food.

Acidity and alkalinity are measured on what is called the pH scale.  How acidic a food is on our plates is often the opposite of how acidic the ash residue will be.  For example, acidic fruits and vegetables tend to leave an alkaline ash, while alkaline meats and cheeses tend to be acid-forming in the body. Our bodies also produce acid as a by-product of normal metabolism. Because our bodies are designed to be alkaline, this acid must be buffered with alkaline substances. However, our bodies cannot manufacture acid buffers. Food and supplementation are the only means of replenishing alkalinity in the body.

Due to the Standard American Diet (SAD), most people suffer from an unbalanced pH that is too acidic. In other words, their bodies are full of acid waste. Because the body was meant to be alkaline, this condition forces the body to borrow minerals, like calcium, from the body’s organs, ligaments, muscles, and bones to neutralize the acid in an attempt to safely remove it from the body.

Note: The hydrochloric acid produced by the stomach is an exception to this rule. A healthy stomach should be acidic.

Because calcium is being drawn from the bones to buffer acid, this waste product causes osteoporosis. Dr. Susan Brown of the Osteoporosis Education Project considers acid waste a major hidden cause of osteoporosis.

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“Diet is the essential key to all successful healing. Without a proper balanced diet, the effectiveness of herbal treatment is very limited. With the appropriate eliminative or balanced diet, herbal treatment will prove itself to be effective where no medicine will work and will often be faster than the quick but temporary relief of Western drugs.”
-Michael Tierra, C.A., N.D.

Does taking high quality supplements and concentrated food complexes mean that you can eat whatever you want, avoid exercising, and be symptom free? No. I will admit that some people get away with it. They eat terribly. They smoke two packs a day and think that aerobic exercise is running to the bathroom during a commercial break. We all know someone like this, who seems as healthy as a horse.  However, by virtue of the fact that you need this blog series, it stands to reason that you are not one of those genetically blessed people.

I have been approached by individuals who were as sick as I once was.  They wanted to know since they were taking the exact supplements as me why they weren’t 100% symptom-free also. The right supplements should make you feel much better, but you can’t expect supplements to totally compensate for poisoning yourself with the Standard American Diet. (You also need to give supplements time to do their job.)  I wish it weren’t true, but there is no such thing as a magic pill or potion. That said, I would be miserable without my pills and potions.  However, without eating right, my pills and potions would be less effective.

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If you believe that rinsing conventionally grown produce somehow magically washes off the pesticides, think again. Testing done by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) found pesticides in the blood and urine of 100% of the people who had participated in a study. The average person in this group tested positive for 13 of the 23 pesticides for which they checked.

To reduce exposure to pesticides, peel all non-organically grown fruits and vegetables after washing them with a non-toxic soap. You can also significantly reduce your exposure by avoiding the twelve most contaminated non-organically grown foods. Eating foods from these lists exposes a person to an average of twenty pesticides and toxins.

Commercially Grown Fruits Most Contaminated by Pesticides

#1 Peaches
#2 Strawberries
#3 Apples
#4 Nectarines
#5 Pears
#6 Cherries
#7 Red Raspberries
#8 Imported Grapes

Commercially Grown Vegetables Most Contaminated By Pesticides

#1 Celery
#2 Spinach
#3 Potatoes
#4 Bell Peppers

Commercially Grown Fruit Least Contaminated by Pesticides

Pineapple
Mangoes
Kiwi
Bananas
Papaya

Commercially Grown Vegetables Least Contaminated by Pesticides

Avocados
Cauliflower
Asparagus
Onions
Peas
Broccoli

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