Note: The text below is a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
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So the topic is are Hashimoto’s and other autoimmune issues genetic? The answer appears to be yes. It’s funny. We just got this and I was just reading about this earlier this week just coincidentally. In a time that the data that I was reading was published there are still a little gray area, I think, going on here, but in the end, it’s pretty much become accepted that you have to have the genetics to get it.
I give you an example for me. Okay. So I have Hashimoto’s. For those of you may not know I have Hashimoto’s, I have celiac autoimmune gastritis and two other positive antibodies. Interestingly enough, Hashimoto’s thyroid disease, my mother had her thyroid taken out. Her sister had her thyroid taken out. My aunt had a goiter and their brother had MS, had multiple sclerosis.
So I got triggered when I was under a lot of stress and then I got pneumonia. Boom, everything blew up. That seems to be the mechanism. I think it’s going that way. I think it’s going to end up that way. That yes, it’s genetic. Another anecdote that is maybe a little bit better than going into the science of it. When we were first starting to treat chronic fatigue, immunodeficiency disease/fibromyalgia, figuring out that gluten was a problem, and figuring out that maybe thyroid was involved and those types of things. Once we started to realize that thyroid was involved, particularly the possibility that most of it was Hashimoto’s, at that point in time, this was 15 years ago or more. 15 years, I think. So when we started to realize that, one of the ways we started to establish whether the person probably had Hashimoto’s and that was the way we wanted to attack the case was by looking at their family history. If we saw a family history like the one I just talked about on me…
It doesn’t have to be even the same autoimmune disease, there’s multiple… In other words, I didn’t have to get Hashimoto’s or MS, because it was in my family. There’s an understanding that once you’ve developed autoimmune antibodies to tissues as you keep not knowing you have it, and you keep exposing yourself to triggers that you’ll start getting immune antibodies to other triggers, to other aspects of your DNA that are weaker or that in your lineage somewhere is there.
So your DNA, what they say in the classes that I’ve attended is the DNA is the gun and then the environmental, or the lifestyle, or the dietary, or the pathogenic triggers pull the trigger. Pull the trigger. So the DNA is the gun and the trigger’s environment, food, pull the trigger. Then that’s what creates the autoimmune response.
So I think the answer right now is 90% in the literature towards that. My experience from having looked literally from day one when I got into this for the family history as to okay, your antibodies are normal and you don’t have a swelling in here in your thyroid, but you have all the symptoms and you have family history. I mean, that’s honestly still enough for me to attack that case as an autoimmune case. Whether it’s autoimmune thyroid, or whether it’s lupus, or whether it’s Sjogren’s, or whether it’s MS or whatever it is.
So the answer to that is I think, going to come out to be definitively yes. Right now it’s a very strong probability yes, but I like to try to be accurate on these things and give you the latest data. So I’m giving it a yes that the genetics are the big player as far as perpetuating this through the generations and a reason as to why we’re seeing more and more and more and more of it, because it’s being passed on.
