[00:00:29] I'm Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo, and I'm excited today to be talking to you about inflammation and autoimmune conditions and the connection between the single nucleotide polymorphisms, the genetic imbalances, the genetic variants that affect them, and the testing, and then some of the approaches that you can take to help people restore balance. So let's get started.

[00:01:06] We have a lot of great, great episodes in there to give you the background, but the single nucleotide polymorphism SNPs that are affecting the immune system and inflammation, there's lots of them, don't get me wrong. There's pages and pages of them, but I'm going to just give you about six of them. To help you to understand if these are present, what are some of the things you need to be testing and what are some of the things you need to be doing to help people to protect their immune systems?

[00:02:11] So HLADQA1 and DQA2 are very heavily associated with gluten intolerance, and the gluten intolerance leading people to have more tendency towards autoimmunity, especially things like thyroid autoimmunity, lupus, and other common autoimmune processes that are just rampant in our society. There's also associated with, those are HLADQ2, DQ2.2, and HLADQ8. So if you see somebody who has these SNPs. Right away you want to talk to them about their inflammation and their immune system, and likely you've done a history by now and you already know that they have some autoimmune conditions.

[00:03:29] So you want to just get a good history to find out do they have this tendency, toward's autoimmunity, There's so many people that have Hashimoto's, autoimmune thyroiditis in our society that the chances are good that you're going to see at least two or three of them every week in your practice. So we want to look at those.

[00:04:28] So I'm looking at what do I need to do to help support this person's gut? And one of the first things you need to do to support somebody with a leaky gut is get them off the gluten. So I have literally told patients, I've never worked with a person with an autoimmune condition that could get away with eating gluten because they all of course want to get away with eating gluten.

[00:05:19] Then what do you do? How do you know if this person's actually inflamed? Well, one, you take a good history and they're going to tell you, right? They're going to tell you about their gastritis, they're going to tell you about their Hashimoto's, they're going to tell you about a lot of different issues. And now you know there's some inflammation.

[00:06:04] And then other people who don't have autoimmune are going to have C-reactive protein. But C-reactive protein is a general marker for inflammation. And so if someone has a C-reactive protein elevated, it could be autoimmune, it could be an infection somewhere in the body. It could be as simple as they're just getting over a cold.

[00:06:45] So I said, okay, come back in six weeks, we're going to test this again. Meanwhile, I'll share some of the anti-inflammatory nutrition that I worked with him on. And He did come back in six weeks and it was back down to 0.3, right? So if somebody does all of a sudden have a high CRP, you want to find out why?

[00:07:36] The other one I like to test for is homocysteine. And homocysteine will give us some information about methylation because it's part of the methylation pathway. If you think about where the methylation pathways go it's right at the bottom of the folate cycle, and then we go into another cycle where the B 12 and methionine and all that are involved. At the very bottom of that is homocysteine. And if a person has a problem with methylation, they can't convert the homocysteine either downward into glutathione or up and around and into SAMe. So we want to look carefully at that. But homocysteine is a good marker for inflammation.

[00:08:59] Now Metametrics, which is now merged with Genova, used to have a test they called the Blood Spot Fatty Acid Test, and you just finger prick, send it in. And they gave you just the essential amino acids, the alpha oleic and linoleic acid, and we give you how those levels are, and then the downstream metabolites of those, and they don't call it the blood spot fatty acid, they just call it the fatty acid. They still have one where you can do the blood spot, but that's a more extensive test. Not that much more expensive, maybe $20 more expensive. And it gives you pathways, like saturated fats and trans fats and all that. So those are good tests to see because fats are so closely associated with inflammation and when the fats are outta balance, we get a lot more leukotrienes and cyclooxygenase and other inflammatory mediators.

[00:10:19] 20-to-1, 12-to-1. Should be no more than 4-to-1 okay? So I talk to people about avoiding the substances that lead to that imbalance. So trans fatty acids and margarine and hydrogenated fats will all contribute. Somebody who's drinking a lot of almond milk because they're allergic to dairy, but now they're drinking a ton of almond milk.

[00:11:07] And one thing that is not taken into account a lot is protein deficiency. And I know that there is not a lot of protein deficiency in our country where everybody's obsessed with protein and they're taking in probably more protein than they really need. But there are people who have stomach acid problems, they're not absorbing their protein.

[00:11:47] And then of course, we want to replenish a lot of nutrients that help us in balancing Omega six to three. And we want to be able to produce from the short chain fats that are in. Things like chia seeds and hemp seeds and walnuts and flax seeds have really good sources of short chain omega threes, but they don't always get converted downstream into the longer chains and to do that, we need a bunch of nutrients. And if we're low in these nutrients, then we're going to have an omega three to six imbalance. So biotin, vitamin E, vitamin C. B vitamins B 12, B 2, B 6. These are all part of this process, and guess what? Most of the people are, they're imbalanced here because they're eating the standard American diet and the food's deficient in these things.

[00:13:14] But there's a lot of anti-inflammatory herbs and foods. The most common and popular ones these days are ginger and turmeric, but licorice. Although you have to be careful if somebody has high blood pressure. Boswellia, I've found that to be super helpful for people with Crohn's and ulcerative colitis Purslane, which is a wild edible that you can get in a lot of farmers' markets and it's got preformed source of EPA, which can be anti-inflammatory.

[00:14:01] Cinnamon and cardamon go really well together, especially with ginger. You make a nice, teach them to make a nice chai tea, to help with their inflammation in their body. There's also some of the things that might be controversial for people who have nitrate imbalances, but capsaicin and peppers, right? Those are really strongly anti-inflammatory if people can tolerate them and onions have quercetin, a bio flavonoid, that's super anti-inflammatory.

[00:15:35] I want you to be really cognizant that when people have issues with inflammation, when they have autoimmune conditions, which I would say most people do these days, you can help them, you can support them, you can do some good analysis by asking the right questions, by looking at their genetics to see if they have specific SNPs because I find when, when you tell them they have those SNPs, they're more likely to listen to your recommendations. And then looking at their labs and then, designing diets and recipes and stuff that include all these amazing anti-inflammatory herbs. because you and I, we have the power to help these people truly get well.

[00:16:39] So you have the power to help people, and I want you to really educate them and use the power of lab testing and genetic testing to motivate and inspire them to make changes. So do your best out there. Let's change healthcare and until next time, shine on.