Snag The Immune System Recovery Plan: A Doctors 4-Step Program To Treat Autoimmune Disease By Susan Blum Accessible In Publication

is an immensely valuable book for those with an autoimmune disease I have several, The author, who is a doctor, herself developed Hashimotos thyroiditis, and this meant that she had to cure this autoimmune disease herself, since traditional medicine had no satisfactory answers.


She found out that the four steps to healing and preventing autoimmune disease are:

Using food as medicine
Understanding the stress connection
Healing your gut
Supporting your liver.


The ingestion of gluten is believed to cause autoimmune disease, and genetic modification of crops like corn, soy and wheat exacerbates the problem.
Modernday diets in general trigger the development of autoimmune disease,

Also, a diet high in animalbased foods such as dairy, eggs and beef can promote inflammation and throw off the balance of good bacteria that live in your gut.


Potential triggers are chronic stress, hormone imbalance and infections,

The author discusses gluten, celiac disease and gluten sensitivity and foods bad for your immune system, such as sugar and saturated animal fat and trans fats from processed foods.
She informs us about the benefits of an antiinflammatory diet, and other “good stuff”, including essential fatty acids, vitamin D, selenium, zinc and green tea.
Each part of the book includes a workbook for each theme and beneficial recipes,

We are informed of which foods to avoid and which to include,

There are three valuable chapters on stress, and tests to enable us to assess our degree of stress.


We are told about leaky gut syndrome and how to heal our gut, Important additions to our diet are coconut oil and probiotics,

The author includes three chapters on supporting your liver, and edifies us about toxins such as mercury, lead, plastics, pesticides, prescription medicines, heavy metals, vaccinations and xenoestrogens the latter being chemicals that mimic the effects of estrogen in the body.


We need to detoxify our body, and remove metals by means of glutathione, Heavymetal chelating agents include chlorella, cilantro and fibre,

This is an absolutely valuable, excellentlywritten book on healing autoimmune diseases, perhaps the only one of its kind.
I highly recommend that you purchase this book, It provides detailed information on what to eat, what not to eat, what to do and what not to do.
I started to have a bad feeling about this when she said more than once that humans have only been farming for ten generations.
Seriously Her doctorate definitely isn't in history, The recipes in this book alone make it worth the purchase price but it is so much more, I had discovered through trial and error much of what she recommends to be true, I wish I would have discovered the book earlier, It would have certainly helped me regain my health much sooner, It is a must read for anyone with autoimmune challenges or for those who have been told repeatedly by doctors that "nothing is wrong", yet you still feel like crap.
As a person who has gone through it, I can assure you, what she is sharing works, Abandoned. Some interesting stuff, but not enough verification/citation, The Functional Medicine crowd, with whom Susan Blum affiliates herself, might be on to something, but as long as they muddy the waters with selfserving sales of the proprietary lab tests and supplements they tout, I can't accept their perspective as anything but the shill's pitch that it is.
But, I'll keep the 'eat better food, move around more' tenets that they reminded me about, This book was recommended to my by a friend when she heard about some health problems I was dealing with.
I ordered it immediately and read it in a few days, I am just starting an elimination diet, but I was mostly impressed with the information it contained and the case it made.


One thing that was a huge sticking point for me was her repeated! claim that our ancestors “settled down to farming only ten generations ago”.
This is clearly not factual, If it was in there only one time, you think maybe the editors missed it and she meant ten thousand years ago but thought generations sounded good and didn't have a literal, numerical meaning.
But seriously, in a book that claims to be wellresearched, to claim that farming started around the time that the US became a country It made me wonder what other number could be wrong.


And if it wasn't an honest mistake, then did she really think her case was weak enough that she had to make some bizarrely erroneous claim to convince readers The obvious manipulation of that claim to support her theory just made me question the other facts she presented, which I find harder to verify.


Docking a full two for that mistake/lie, If the elimination diet works, I may restore a star You need to take control of your health and make changes now.
And my dears, this is a wonderful place to start or continue that journey, .

Just finished reading this booknd book since Jan,st!oh yeah and I gotta say, I think it just might have changed my life, I HAD to share it with you, It is so thorough and informative and practical and useful! What I learned here and implemented in the past five weeks, plus a bit of careful calorie counting to create a mild deficit and seriously, Ive never felt healthier in my life already and Im only starting! No longer chronically fatigued, got over a cold I caught in less thandays I usually become bed ridden for weeks, no longer feeling heavy and bloated, no more headaches, and I lostlb so far.
. . like seriously guys, if you read just one book this year, this might be a game changer,

NB. Although this book is directed at people with autoimmune diseases i, e. diabetes, MS, Graves disease, Hashimitos Thyroiditis, etc, it is equally useful just as much so if you ask me to anyone else who wants to improve their immune system and bodily health.
So you better not let that bit deter you from picking up this book, This book was recommended to me by both a nutritionist and a friend whom it helped with a collection of disparate health issues.
Basically, if you read the description and the free sample and think it seems promising, give it a shot, It's easy to follow, the author clearly knows the many medical and nutritional aspects of the subject, yet makes all her scientific info accessible and clear to the lay reader.
The questionaires are easy to use, and the phases are easy to customize for your own health and experiences, I am not a big foodbook/healthplanbook reader or recommender, but I am not even shitting you, this book has changed my life for the better.
If you're like me, the main reason you're looking at a review of a health book is to find out if it seems reliable/worth a try/useful vs.
if it's somewhat hippiedippy and not likely to help much,

Thankfully, this book is well written, cites its research thank you! so you can do your own critical appraisal if you wish, and does manage to pull together a lot of things that people with autoimmune or other overlapping conditions may know with additional/newer research and a practical protocol.


I'll admit that I'm still a little skeptical every time a health book refers generally to "toxins" what exactly do you mean by that! or talks about chelation, but there was really only one chapter that left me thinking "hmm.
. I don't know if I buy this, "

I like the idea of functional medicine, but occasionally some books that claim this term cross over into woowoohealingcrystalterritory, which frankly just isn't my bag no offense intended if that's yours.


However, as someone who has gained immense benefit from treatments that don't always have enough of an evidence base to completely explain for example, it's only relatively recently and acupuncture gained more legit status in mainstream medicine, and someone who's willing to try out various nutritional and lifestyle changes, I found this book clear and helpful, and its steps/protocol easy to follow.


The steps did help me identify some potential migraine triggers, and so although I haven't given up any food entirely, I'm much more aware of the things I should eat only small/less frequent portions of.
I'm not sure if I could embrace a wholehog abandonment of wheat and dairy without seeing a bit more research case studies are cool, but not as persuasive when you don't know the people personally, but I would strongly encourage people who have struggled with odd immune and autoimmune conditions, as well as pain conditions to give this book a chance.


Part: Why I read it,

I've reached a desperation point, I have Celiac disease and a secondary autoimmune disease, and after a good chunk of time doing well on a strict glutenfree diet, my body has decided that's not enough and has been attacking my joints.
Currently, six joints are effected, three of them severely limiting my mobility and daily activities,

As I waited and continue to wait for test results and specialists to figure things out my doctor believes there may be a third AI disease in the mix, I was put on NSAIDs that tore up my stomach until I couldn't handle them any longer.
I looked up antiinflammatory diets and fell down the rabbit hole into bloggerland full of every imaginable diet to reduce inflammation and reverse autoimmune disease.
It was overwhelming and generally not well supported by evidence just anecdotes, but I was desperate, so I wanted to try.
The problem was, most of the diets were contradictory in some way, and several of them were so extreme I wasn't sure how I could possibly feed my already malnourished body on them.
I checked out a bunch of books from the library, and I decided I'd follow Blum's guide,

Here's why: I already know food and stress affect my body in ways more extreme than they affect the bodies of those without AI diseases.
That's just a fact any Celiac sufferer will attest to, Nothing in Blum's book contradicted what I already know about AI, leaky gut, and other related details I've learned from several Celiac Disease Foundation workshops.
I am open to the idea that even more strict food choices might be good for me,

It's going to take quite a while to work through the entire book, and there are some things I'm dubious about: so many supplements! I can't possibly afford all of them.
And then there's the toxins chapter which is relatively reasonable compared to how the word detox is thrown around the internet she outright says a diet consisting only of green smoothies is not sufficient for health and you must have protein and balance, so that's a relief.
If she'd promoted starving as so many detox instructions do, I'd have not finished the book, Still, I'm notsold on that section, The good thing is, the book guides you through small steps, and detox is way at the end, so I'll either be totally sold by her method by then or have abandoned it.


Part: The first phase,

The first section requires cutting out gluten done, corn eek! It's in everything!, soy, and dairy cheese!, That's extreme enough for me for now, I'm to do that diligently for three weeks and then reintroduce each food one at a time, recording any reactions.
I actually suspect a dairy problem, so this will be a good exercise for me, Anything I don't react to, I can include back in my diet, Anything I do react to, I need to not try again at least for six months or until I've healed my gut.
I'm going to try this phase in two chunks due to travel, first starting Januaryth and reintroducing corn the most ubiquitous of the foods, then starting all over Marchst so I can reintroduce soy and dairy, in that order, at the end of the month/beginning of April.
I've chosen this order as I'm suspicious about dairy already, so hopefully by doing the other two first, I'll be able to add something back to my diet relatively early in the game.


I will update after this process is over,

Partcoming in several months:

The next step calls for addressing stress and stress reactions, I'm actually already working on that for reasons of insomnia and increasing pain, so this may go along with the first step then again, having such a strict diet for a while may cause new stress, and I'll have to start again.


Partcoming in about a year:

The next section is about healing my gut, Leaky gut is at the root of my diagnosed AI disease and is suspected by many to be at the root of others as well.
This section requires a much stricter diet think closer to the AIP protocol, but not quite as extreme and only requires the elimination of nightshades for people with rheumatoid arthritis one of my possible ailments.
The book gives me the option of starting here, but I think I'm going to need time to create meal plans, so I don't mind doing the easier elimination diet first.
As this section also recommends the most supplements, I may also need a second job,

Partcoming in aboutmonths:

By the time I get to the final phase, I should be, if the promises are true, walking and swimming and hiking.
Currently I get around longer distances in a scooter and my shoulder is shot, I'll settle for enough relief of pain that I can sleep through

the night, If either of these has happened, then I'll go along with step, the detox section, At least that section is called "Supporting Your Liver" instead of detoxing, I just hate the word detox,

Part:
Final thoughts,

Before going through the steps, I'm cautiously hopeful that I'll find some foods that are triggering my pain and can be removed and that I'll find some other foods that actively help relieve my pain.
I'm worried I'll have trouble sticking to the elimination diet, and I'm worried that the corn starch in my prescription medications that I cannot currently drop will make the corn elimination phase moot.
I already have a restricted diet, so I'm wellversed in how to navigate social situations, at least,

I worry that some of her references to certain sources made me roll my eyes quite a bit.
But, well desperation. For the most part, the diets require more veggies, fruits, healthy fats, and healthy meats, so it's not as though they will do me harm, and as my body continues to betray me, I need something to try and some reason to hope.
I will add more final thoughts after having gone through the steps or abandoning the program, and I will adjust my star rating accordingly.
.