When my grandma passed away unexpectedly a few years ago, it became even clearer to me how important it is to spend time with your loved ones while they are still here. This is why I make sure I visit my mum and my granddad in Poland as frequently as I can. My granddad is almost 95 years old and he is a lovely man. He lives with family, who have work and school commitments, so he is still quite independent and has to look after himself during the day.

My granddad was 16 years old when WWII started and he can still remember exactly where he was when he found out that Germany invaded Poland. Just like most people of his generation, my granddad has been through a lot. He has often talked about having to eat rotten potato peels and such like when there was nothing to eat for long periods of time during the war. He was lucky to survive a German concentration camp. I should add that he grew up in poverty and had to work as a child so I think we can safely say that his long and...

If you have read my article entitled: “Why should I optimise my mindset if I have an autoimmune disease?”, you already know that disruptive emotions, if they persist for long enough, can disturb the delicate chemical balance in our bodies producing physiological changes and symptoms. You also know that we CAN counteract the effects of the negative emotional states if we develop a nurturing, positive mindset.

Belief becomes biology

Just to follow up on that, at the end of 19th century an American psychologist William James said: “No mental modification ever occurs, which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change”. Later on Norman Cousins summarised this statement with three words: “belief becomes biology”. What they both meant was that the body’s physical reality can be altered by the more powerful reality of the mind, i.e. what is expected tends to be realised.

So if you have an autoimmune disorder, you should be asking yourself:...

Nowadays it is well-accepted that our psychological/emotional state affects our immune system, which of course has massive implications for autoimmunity. Negative emotional activation (stress response) can result in increased susceptibility to bacterial, viral and fungal infections, as well as parasite infestations.

Likewise, we can improve our immune function when we switch from stress response to the relaxation response, which is why meditation and other similar tools have been shown to have a profound positive effect not only on our mental health but our physical health as well. Even looking at a flower creates a physiological response involving millions of nerve cells that can in turn create a positive or negative change in our immune function (depending how we feel about the flower)!

Psycho what?

This phenomenon is a result of interactions between our hypothalamus, our pituitary gland and our adrenal glands (the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal or HPA axis). The science that aims...

It probably will not come as a surprise to you that autoimmune diseases share several clinical signs and symptoms, pathological mechanisms, and epigenetic and genetic factors. There is strong evidence supporting that, which indicates that autoimmune diseases have a common origin (called the autoimmune tautology).

What is the difference between polyautoimmunity and multiple autoimmune syndrome?

Just in case you are not sure what the difference is: polyautoimmunity is defined as the presence of more than one autoimmune disease in a single person. Whereas, multiple autoimmune syndrome (MAS) means that three or more autoimmune diseases exist simultaneously in a single individual. In MAS, people often have at least one dermatological condition, usually vitiligo or alopecia. Both polyautoimmunity and MAS are not uncommon. Three types of MAS has been described in the medical literature.

MAS type 1 includes: myasthenia gravis, thymoma, polymyositis (inflammatory myopathy) and giant cell...

It is hard to believe but there are still skeptics out there who consider detox protocols completely unnecessary. The reason they give is that apparently “our bodies can get rid of toxins naturally without any input from us”. It is true our bodies are equipped with some incredibly sophisticated detoxification mechanisms. The problem is that over the last century or so we have been introducing toxic chemicals into our lives at such a ridiculous rate that our bodies are now struggling to cope with the toxic overload.

The beautiful thing about the human body is that it is able to adapt to changes but adaptation takes time and, as I said, that change is happening too rapidly. As a result, we are getting clogged up with toxins as our bodies are working very hard trying to mitigate that. Toxic body means inflammation and that is bad news because inflammation is linked to every single chronic condition, including autoimmunity.

Toxins are omnipresent. They are in the air we...

I understand that not everyone is able to spend an hour each day meditating (although if you did, you would transform your health and your life!) but there is no excuse not to make a 10-minute per day commitment to breathing practice.

Breathing is one of these clever biological processes our body is programmed to do automatically, even when we are not aware of it. In fact, it is one of the primary functions of the body is to supply our cells with oxygen. It has to be automated (subconscious) because we would be in a lot of trouble if we had to think about it all the time. But we can also control our breathing if we choose to, and when we do it in the right way, we can influence our emotions, and of course our immune system and therefore our physical well-being.

You can control your nervous system response by controlling your breathing

I have many fantastic mind-transforming modalities at my disposal that I use for myself and working with clients but I always teach my clients...