Today I went for coffee with someone I have not seen in 25 years. I wondered if we might have anything in common now; have anything to talk about; if it might prove to be painfully awkward to carry on a conversation with her. We played field hockey together on the B.C. team 29 years ago. Now, she has knee problems and can’t play and I don’t play anymore due to a lack of interest and my own personal pride so we don’t share that sport in common at this time. I wanted to hear more about her life and I am a good listener so I inquired about the path she has taken and there were a lot of interesting things that she had done with her life that she told me about. She had traveled all over the world and used her education and training to get positions in other countries like Australia and the U.K.. She had worked in different hospital wards as a registered nurse in different types of wards- emergency, ICU, and others.

She had even gone the route at age 37, when faced with the reality of being single and wanting children, to sign on for artificial insemination from a ‘matched for her donor’, get subsequently pregnant and have a baby on her own. She figured that prince charming may not come around nor was he going to make her life complete so she followed her own inner promptings and created her own highly fulfilling life. I was sitting across from her and I realized she was beaming with happiness. She was simply radiant like the morning sun. Her daughter was now nine and she was very comfortable being a single parent. I came away from having coffee with her comparing my own life to hers and feeling somewhat empty in comparison. But what really struck me was that F., it appears, has been living in alignment in her life for a long time. I only talked to her for a few hours but that is what struck me most about her.

I have written a book about living in alignment. In fact, most of my conscious life has been spent figuring out, contemplating on, reflecting on, speaking on and even teaching workshops on this very question of living in alignment. I have taken numerous meditation classes, enrolled in spiritual workshops, have read many relevant spiritual books on reaching your personal potential, have gone in and out of flow in my own pursuit of alignment repeatedly and yet here she was, in seeming alignment without any conscious effort on her part or measured intention even. What I gathered was that F had trusted life, did not fear life, rather flowed with life. She may not have trusted that someone would come into her life and thus took matters into her own hands but she trusted life enough to realize that she could create the life she wanted to live and followed her own path of alignment in the process to get there. I found this to be simply remarkable and inspiring to be honest. I wish this for myself every minute of every day and for everyone who reads this post to thrive and find your own best life living in alignment with your own unique self- your happiness really depends on it!

I had the pleasure of going to the International Functional Medicine conference this year in Florida. The topic was ‘Solving the Puzzle of Autoimmunity: The Interplay of Gut, Genes and Environment’. All the top doctors that are treating autoimmune diseases successfully were at this conference and many were speaking. Dr. Fasano, MD gave the first lecture and it was fantastic. What follows are the notes I took that day.

There are over 100 autoimmune diseases now. 90% of chronic diseases are driven by the environment. Why is this and what is the root cause of this? The gut is a huge player in chronic disease as are allergens, toxins, infections, autogens. Autoimmune disease is highest in North America. We are not born with the destiny to develop chronic inflammatory diseases. We can change our destiny. Our genes, the environment, and increased gut permeability play a role. The immune response is involved; the microbiome is involved. Allergies can be turned on or off depending on the microbiome.

The cells play a role in immune homeostasis- epithelial cells, intestinal dc’s, B cells, T cells. The gut is a single layer of cells that interacts with our environment; the cells in the brush border have receptors that detect whether there are friends or enemies coming into the gut. These cells interact with our immune system and let the immune system know if we should be at war. The intestinal dc, B lymphocytes, immunoglobulins, secretory IgA shape the microbiota and function. T cells can create a lot of damage- can create chronic inflammation that goes to your joints, the brain, the thyroid, etc. If you have been exposed to the enemy before, you will have primed immune cells that are ready to go to war again.

When a situation of leaky gut is present, there is a loss of barrier function in the intestine. This can lead to inflammation/allergy and can initiate an immunoregulatory defect which can lead to proinflammatory allergic cytokines being released. This increased permeability can lead to a vicious circle of a breakdown in tolerance and create low grade inflammation.  1.Visc. hypersensitivity (IBS) 2. TH1 immune response chronic inflammation 3. TH2 response (food allergies)  4. TH17 immune response (autoimmunity).

The paracellular pathway-tight junctions which line the gut are not cement; rather they are dynamic levy bridges that are the dark horse implicated in a host of diseases ranging from acute injury to chronic inflammation. The zonulin gene is on chromosome 16 and is associated with diseases of the nervous system, cancer and autoimmune disease. Gluten causes zonulin release which opens up the tight junctions; causes an imbalance of the gut microbiome leading to dysbiosis which leads to bacterial overgrowth  which then triggers further zonulin release.

Good bacteria in our gut are our friends and support us. Taking antibiotics drops a bomb on our microbiome. We were so wrong. This ecosystem is symbiotic with us. Look at the popular journal titles -Scientific American -Your Inner Ecosystem; Nature -Fellow Travelers. Environmental factors, diet, stress, etc change our microbiome. Gut Dysbiosis- the first 1000 days of life are instrumental for our clinical destiny. This is why it is advantageous to have a vaginal birth- a baby born vaginally is exposed to the proper milieu when it travels through the birth canal…