In this episode, I’m getting real about what actually causes autoimmunity, and spoiler alert: it’s not just your unresolved trauma.
While trauma is correlated with autoimmune disease, I’m calling out the dangerous trend of blaming women’s emotions and past experiences for complex immune dysfunction. When 80% of autoimmune patients are women, and the message is “you got sick because you didn’t process your childhood properly,” we’ve got a problem.
I break down the scientifically documented root causes of autoimmunity, including:
Genetics and environmental triggers
Viruses like Epstein-Barr and COVID
Mold exposure and mycotoxins
Lyme and co-infections
Pregnancy and microchimerism
Birth control and prolactin
Superfund sites and toxic environmental exposure
This isn’t about dismissing the mind-body connection. As a shamanic practitioner and reiki master, I work with energetics daily. But we need to stop victim-blaming and start acknowledging the real biological, viral, genetic, and environmental factors making people sick.
If you’re tired of being told your illness is your fault, this episode is for you.
Resources mentioned: Find me at littleblackbagmedicine.com for functional medicine support that combines root cause testing with energetic healing, without the judgment.
Listen here:
Transcript:
All right, hello and welcome back to Functional Wellness with Dr. Alison. I’m so glad that you’re here today. We are going to be talking about root causes of autoimmunity and not only my personal beliefs, but also the root causes that are scientifically researched, where we’re seeing correlations and where we’re seeing direct effects as well.
The Problem with Trauma-Based Explanations
So last week I shared my story about my personal journey with autoimmunity and it’s such a popular topic in the health and wellness industry right now. I think mainly because people are on social media, it’s becoming more and more widespread and women who’ve been struggling with these issues and symptoms and have been told nothing’s wrong with you, that’s really random, that’s normal for your age or you’re just making it up or really you just need to lose weight and all of that will disappear.
These women are talking to each other and they’re finding out that some women had been diagnosed with autoimmunity or these really rare zebra diseases like Ehlers Danlos or MCAS or POTS even as well. And they’re finally seeing that, wow, I could have lupus too, or I really need to get checked out for these issues and have testing done where they had no idea that this was an option before. So more people are getting diagnosed earlier, which is great because they’re getting treated, hopefully earlier with better supports as well. And so we’re finding this community, we’re finding this validation, we’re able to advocate for ourselves in doctor’s offices. Whereas before we were going in without this knowledge, without the support, without going, hey, this correlates directly to this disease, can I have this testing? I really need to know, or can we look at my genetics? Can I get a referral even?
And hearing someone else’s story and saying, yes, this is me, it’s not rare, sounds exactly like me where we need to be. So here’s where I get tripped up personally is that we know that trauma, stress, abuse and ACE scores, so ACEs which stands for Adverse Childhood Event scores are strongly correlated with all types of illness later in life from obesity to heart disease to autoimmunity. And for the past few years, maybe the past five or six years, I’ve seen this huge jump into this pool that all autoimmunity is caused by trauma. And even when I met a new group of people a few years ago, they were like, you’re sick because of trauma. You really need to go to therapy, do that, you know, like.
They have all kinds of suggestions that were not helpful or necessary because that’s not where it’s coming from. And to me, this blaming of trauma is bullshit. It’s unfair. It’s victim blaming. And while I see the correlation and I’m not denying the correlation, in the end, I always ask, well, what are they selling? What are they selling to you with all of this to resolve your trauma?
To heal your body. They’re probably selling their latest course or their latest book or the thing that I saw this week, their $15,000 coaching program, blaming you for not using your voice when you were four years old to stand up to a family member or your childhood bully. And now you’re all blocked. And with this magical course, you can heal your autoimmunity or their tour or their book or their, you know, you know what I’m talking about. I’m sure you’ve seen it, right?
So if we know that autoimmunity is correlated and occurs because of history of trauma, and we know that women are 80% of the patient population of autoimmune patients, it almost harkens back to women are just so emotional and they can’t handle themselves. And let’s just give them a hysterectomy to deal with their hysteria, so that way they will be less emotional and we can heal them through managing their emotions. And it makes me feel angry, angry. It makes me angry that we’re just victim blaming, we’re patient blaming and saying, if you had just been better, you wouldn’t be sick right now. Or if you had just gotten out of that abuse cycle, or if you just hadn’t lived in poverty as a child, you wouldn’t be so sick right now instead of actually getting to true root causes, which is what we’re gonna talk about here in a minute, and supporting people. Because how are you going to leave your childhood? How are you going to fix your family dynamics or your heritage or what you’ve been exposed to? It’s not fair. And all humans suffer from trauma in one way or another.
So why are men less likely to develop autoimmunity? Are we suggesting that men experience autoimmunity differently or trauma differently? That’s a possibility. There may be some hormonal differences, which we’ll talk about in a minute here, but it doesn’t seem right to blame women’s emotions and history for their illness because it’s not.
And you know what, I’m a shamanic reiki practitioner. I am an energetic practitioner. I work with people every day on their energetics and clearing blockages and doing journey and doing this deep soul work. And I would never tell anybody that they got sick because of their past or something stuck in their body or a chakra. And that’s the problem. Now it’s not helping, right? But it’s not the root cause. It’s not why someone gets sick. And we can’t just place all the blame on someone for being sick and their suffering. That’s not medicine. That’s not healing. That’s judgment disguised as medicine. And it helps no one. And it really only helps the person who is doing the judging because there’s such a fear around illness. Understandably, no one wants to get sick.
No one wants to experience cancer or surgery or loss of organs or being left with a disability for the rest of their lives. And so it’s easier for us on the outside to say, you got sick because you’re just so crazy. Instead of going, you got sick because you live in a specific area and you were exposed to some really crappy things and now your DNA is permanently altered and it’s expressing that. We’re gonna talk about that too.
The Real Root Causes of Autoimmunity
So we have some very well documented answers and we also have some really interesting theories.
1. Genetics
The number one thing here is genetics. And before you say genetics are fine, it’s the environment that pulls the trigger. Our whole environment today is a trigger. You could eat, sleep, drink, move perfectly and still be exposed to a million triggers because of our food, because of our environment, because of our breath, because of our air. You’re probably listening to this with AirPods in, right? You’re being exposed to things that humans have never been exposed to before. The genetic component is very real, whether it was always going to happen or it got triggered because of an event, whether that event was a trauma, a car accident, the rest of the triggers we’re gonna talk about here today, it makes us more susceptible. We have genes that are more directly linked to autoimmune conditions and that’s not about blame or weakness, it’s biology. And so we need to, once again, we’re trying to remove that blame from you or someone you love in this arena, okay?
2. Viruses
Number two, viruses. They are so common and they are such a common cause and they are directly scientifically researched cause and mostly Epstein-Barr is correlated and now we also have COVID as well, which has been found to be triggering many illnesses as well. And this is where I see mostly thyroid autoimmunity. And if you listen to my story, you know that I’ve had Epstein-Barr since high school and also multiple reactivations of it as well. So when I have a patient who has a thyroid flare, especially of their autoimmunity, we usually go right to viral clearing and it readjust their TSH almost within a few months. Someone who’s newly diagnosed, it can take up to a year of support with medication and herbs and homeopathics and viral clearing, everything all at once. It’s not like, I took a supplement for two days and now the virus is gone and now we’re all better. It does take a long time.
Now, when we’re looking at reactivation, so if you’ve already been through that first clearing, you’re stable, sometimes even people are able to get off their medication with their endocrinologist and their labs are being checked, we’re monitoring very closely, and then we see that huge change in TSH. like, there it is. I usually run an Epstein-Barr PCR to see if the virus is active, and boom, it’s almost always there. I’d say probably close to, I wrote 75% of my notes, but I probably inched more towards 90% of my patients when they have a thyroid reactivation of autoimmunity is coming somewhere viral.
So we also know that viruses like to travel together. They like to be reactivated. So you can have Epstein-Barr as a youth, like teenage years, college years, shares drink with somebody. Oops, we got mono, it’s okay. But that doesn’t show up for years later as autoimmunity. And then they get triggered with another illness, say maybe COVID or Lyme or mold and boom, everything just explodes because the immune system wasn’t really prepared to fight that. And it triggers what we call molecular mimicry, where the immune system gets confused is the best way to say it, but our cells of our organs are all tagged as proteins and these proteins can look a lot like viruses. So the immune system will come to the thyroid and be like, what are you? They’re tasting, they’re testing, they’re making sure everything’s fine. And they see the tags on the thyroid and go, my gosh, this is Epstein-Barr. We better get rid of it. But it’s not, it’s a thyroid. And then we have this reaction. So again, we’re not talking about emotional processing. We’re talking about how your body responds to viruses, okay?
3. Mold
Now mold is another very common root cause that’s talked about in functional medicine. And I would say it’s not as well documented because there’s so many different types of mold from seasonal allergies to mold that is occurring in your workplace or your home, especially new builds. And then we go especially old builds, depending on where you live and relationship to water, whether it’s a river or a stream or a lake, all of these things will take into consideration with you. And mold produces mycotoxins, which directly impacts the immune system, can create inflammation. And if you’re already susceptible, whether it’s genetics or viral load or your gut health, how that’s functioning, you may be more susceptible to autoimmunity. And that could be the trigger that tips you over. And the tricky part is you might not even know you’re being exposed to these things.
So this is why you read all the books by anybody struggling with chronic illness or autoimmunity, and they all move to the Southwest US where there’s no humidity, there’s no mold. We’ve even read of people just moving into tents because homes and HVAC systems will make them so sick and everybody feels better. And especially living in St. Louis, I see this all the time. And this is why I like to work with my patients on a weekly or every other weekly basis because I get to see these patterns over weeks and the months and go, hey, we’re having this really weird January where it’s really warm. You went outside for a walk and now you’re horribly sick and all of your symptoms came back and all of your autoimmune symptoms are back. Why? Probably because of the mold, the environmental toxins, all these weather changes, bringing everything back out. I even saw a honeybee on my car the other day. It was that warm. The bees are confused. Your body is confused, it’s triggered, okay?
4. Lyme and Other Infections
Speaking of triggers, Lyme and other co-infections like Bartonella, tick-borne illnesses are recognized as autoimmune triggers, mainly because of the chronic inflammatory response, the diversion of the immune system to fight these things leave the rest of the immune system to itself. And it can also, again, once again, recognize our organs as an invader instead of ourselves causing this dysregulation. And sometimes even after the infection is treated, whether it’s with antibiotics or a holistic route, it’s something that if you’re having an autoimmune flare, these are the things that you need to look for. What could be triggering this? It might not just be your food. It might be overtraining is a really big one. You went to the gym, you worked out really hard, you feel really good, your immune system got triggered and now you’re in an autoimmune flare. Or you went for a really long drive and the stress on your body was too much and there’s so many triggers, right? So we’re talking about root causes though.
5. Pregnancy
So another favorite one of mine to talk about, which is not my favorite, is pregnancy because so many women do experience pregnancy and or breastfeeding and they’re left with autoimmunity a few years later. So there’s a couple mechanisms here that may be causing these things. One, this is commonly taught, I’m not sure how close we are to it, but it’s a thought where the immune system down regulates to avoid attacking the baby. So we don’t think that the baby is an invader, we know that it’s part of us and it’s safe.
So the immune system does have to change or modulate in order to keep the baby safe and protected. And some will hypothesize that the immune system just never fully returns to its normal state and it ends up in this triggered part and can cause or correlate to autoimmunity. Secondly, there’s this idea of microchimerism. And if you know what a chimera is, it’s a amalgamation of an animal usually, whether we maybe think of like a Griffin, something that has an animal head of one type, a body type of another, maybe foots of another different animal. And what happens naturally during pregnancy is parts of the baby’s DNA will be taken up into the mother’s body because it helps the immune system recognize that the baby is not an invader, it’s supposed to be there. But these parts of the DNA can get caught in different organs, especially the brain, the liver, the GI tract. And we have found fetal DNA and stem cells in women’s cesarean section scars because the baby does go to help us heal. How amazing is that? But if that DNA gets stuck or it’s not processed correctly, our body will see it as an attack and then come to that organ that is lodged in and attack that part of our body.
So pregnancy is very, very high risk right now. And it could be that pregnancy trips genetics as well, but there’s so many factors here. And that’s why, once again, I’m going to say it again, autoimmunity is not just a trauma response. It is not an energetic response. It is a biological process that is affecting us as humans and is only growing in root causes. And we need to step away from blaming women for being sick.
And something I didn’t talk about at the beginning, but I want to touch on right now. And this really bothers me is that the majority of medical doctors talking about this right now are men. Men in primary care practice who are thinking that their women are just too emotional, too traumatized, and they hear these stories and they go, women, they just need to get their shit together. And then they wrote a book about it and now they’re major speakers and all these women are like, yes, I had trauma and I’m sick and makes so much sense. Instead of these men going, well, what about all these other things that are causing this? Right? What about, you know, we read these books about women who have breast cancer and their partners are abusive and then they leave their partners and they’re cured, but they’re not talking about the chemo and the radiation and the treatments these women have been through that have helped them on this path. So that’s my little stand right there. I’m sorry. You can tell that I’m very passionate about not blaming women’s emotions for their illnesses. Okay.
All right. So we talked about microchimerism. And then hormonally, coming back to hormones, there’s many hormones at play with pregnancy, nursing, and in women’s lives in general, they’re in constant flux. But the main one that I am researching right now and working on is called prolactin. This is a hormone that does modulate the immune system, that does increase inflammation, but it’s a pregnancy hormone that promotes lactation. So pro meaning promoting and lactin, meaning lactation. So it helps our body get ready for breastfeeding. So it can change the immune system and how it affects how we perceive threats. So many women develop autoimmunity postpartum or within a few years of having children, not because they have unresolved trauma or they aren’t bonding with their baby, it’s because pregnancy fundamentally changes the immune system and the landscape in which it exists in and we might just not recalibrate properly.
6. Birth Control
And the other thing, number six, is birth control. And this correlates into our pregnancy conversation because we have the correlation. We don’t have as much as the science yet, but we do know that prolactin is affected by birth control. It will increase it because birth control’s main theorized mechanism is that it helps your body think that it’s pregnant. So that way all of the hormones that arrive during pregnancy like prolactin are boosted. So prolactin has been linked to almost every autoimmune condition from lupus to neuropathy, as well as chronic pain and birth control increasing prolactin is mainly for breastfeeding, but we’re not breastfeeding. So we have these hormones that aren’t playing their natural role and maybe it could be linked as well. So we also see this impact from birth control on the gut microbiome, nutrient depletion, especially B vitamins, and then how the body processes inflammation as well.
7. Superfund Sites
And then one of my hot topics is number seven for autoimmunity is superfund sites. So super F-U-N-D, superfund sites. These are designated areas by the EPA that are highly contaminated with hazardous waste, often from industrial activity, military operations, or improper disposal of toxic materials. So we’re talking about heavy metals, radioactive materials, industrial chemicals, carcinogens that have seeped into the soil, the water, and the air. There are over 1,300 Superfund sites across the United States, and you can look it up by going to the EPA website.
And here’s the thing that people don’t want to talk about when it comes to autoimmunity is that your proximity to these sites are directly correlated to disease, including autoimmunity, cancer, and chronic illness. So we come back to if trauma is the root of everything, but you’re living in St. Louis or you’re living in a major city, you’re being directly exposed to hazardous waste in your water, in your air, in your soil, in your food. Everything is touched by this. So you can eat the perfect diet. Let’s call it, you can eat vegetarian and drink your filtered water and work out and be perfect. But yet you’re still living in this horribly toxic environment that you have absolutely no control over. So this is how our DNA changes. This is how we pass down DNA that is significantly altered because we’re growing up in places like this.
Moving Beyond Blame
And we can add so many things onto this list as well from glyphosate exposure, PFAS chemicals in our water, probably microplastics, knowingly microplastic, heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, but today’s purpose is really to get you away from that mindset that trauma is the root of everything. Your emotional irregulation is that the root of everything. And it’s probably more of a symptom, right? Of how your body is reacting. Because when we’re sick, we don’t feel good. It’s frustrating and it’s scary. And it’s really detrimental to how we function in the world.
And I know that when I got sick in 2020, I was shocked. How could I get sick? I’m a functional medicine physician. I live a healthy lifestyle. I do almost everything right. I’m not a perfect human being, but my goal is always at 80% on point, right? I’m in therapy. I’m doing all the things. Why am I sick? And yes, people still judge me. People still told me I was doing things wrong. I was told that, you know, and if you’re sick, you’ve heard this too. My friend had, name your illness. So for me, it was colitis. My friend had colitis and she cured it when she had this water filter. Well, babe, I have the same water filter. That’s not it. My friend had colitis and she did name the diet, carnivore, keto, vegan, pescatarian, fasting. Fasting’s a big one. And she cured her colitis. Well, then it probably wasn’t colitis, right? Or my friend took name of the herb or, and honestly, the essential oil, right? And they cured their problems, well, if it was that simply fixed, it probably wasn’t a deep seated disease like mine was, this end stage issue, this horrific issue.
And that’s wonderful. If someone was able to heal themselves naturally with a water filter, rock on. I’m all for trying everything, everything you possibly can at your health. And if it’s not working, one, you didn’t get to the root cause. Two, the root cause isn’t attainable like Alison being on birth control for part of her life. I can’t go back and undo that. So root cause therapy is not necessarily root cause therapy in my opinion, right? It would be wonderful if everybody just had one root cause and it was the cause of everything and then we can fix it. But if your root cause is the fact that you were exposed to mold because of your elementary school was disgusting. We can fix some of the mold, but we can’t necessarily fix the damage that has occurred through a lifetime. We have to just mediate it the best we can, okay?
So we also, you know, like I talked about this a little bit, but as humans, we wanna avoid illness. We’re afraid of illness and that’s okay. I am too, I am too. And it’s a shocking reminder when we see someone fall ill to something we didn’t expect. And so let’s stop thinking that positive thinking and trauma work alone will cure these complex immune dysfunctions. Let’s acknowledge the real physical, environmental, viral, genetic factors at play. Let’s demand better research and better understanding and better testing and better treatment instead of just another coach or a course or something that’s just going to tell you that it was your trauma, you’re too emotional and you need to get your shit together to feel better when we need that work but we also need the real work, the real mechanisms, physiology, the path of physiology to be corrected and supported. So we can take all of this. We want all of it working together, not isolated.
Ready for Real Support?
So if you’re ready for that type of care, you can find me at littleblackbagmedicine.com, whether you’re looking for functional medicine support, testing, shamanic work, combining the energetics of everything to help you get to your root cause and start to feel better as best you can. Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next time.