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Transcript
- 02:23 Mickey Trescott and Angie Alt
- 09:52 Conventional medicine and autoimmune disease
- 15:34 Toxicity and autoimmune disease
- 16:39 Metal toxicity and autoimmune disease
- 17:16 The Autoimmune Wellness Handbook
- 18:54 Inform yourself
- 21:24 Dietary approaches to autoimmune diseases
- 23:10 Lifestyle approaches to autoimmune diseases
- 25:06 Collaborating and avoiding overwhelm
- 27:21 Connecting with other people
- 30:53 The most pressing health issue in the world today
- 32:00 Remission
- 33:18 Recipes and cookbooks
- 34:10 Autoimmune diet
- 35:41 Contacting Mickey and Angie
- 38:57 Closing
Wendy Myers: You are listening to the Live to 110 Podcast. My name is Wendy Myers. You can learn more about me at myersdetox.com, and check out my detox program, MineralPower.com. That’s a program where I help you to get your life back by detoxing toxic metals and chemicals. And I give you freedom from fatigue and brain fog that I know so many of you are seeking to improve.
And there are so many toxic metals and chemicals that interfere in your body’s ability to produce energy, that interfere in your brain’s ability to function properly. And I help you to discover what the underlying root causes of your health issues and fatigue are, and get rid of it—get to the bottom of it, and take care of it, so that you can enjoy your life.
Today, we have a very special podcast. I have Mickey Trescott and Angie Alt on the show to talk about the autoimmune protocol.
A lot of you guys have autoimmune disease, or it could be diagnosed in the future. And they have written a new book that goes over all the different steps you should take if you have a diagnosis of autoimmune disease. Autoimmune disease is the fastest subset of growing diseases in the planet. So chances are that you are or a loved one are affected by an autoimmune disease.
They give you this outline, all the steps you need to take, including diet and lifestyle, stress reduction, and what to do when you get a diagnosis.
It’s all laid out in their new book, and we’re going to talk about that today on the podcast.
Please keep in mind that this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice.
Please keep in mind that this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Please do not attempt anything that we
discuss today on the podcast without first consulting your healthcare practitioner.
Wendy Myers: Our guests today are Mickey Trescott and Angela Alt. Mickey Trescott, NTP, nutritional therapy practitioner, prides herself in finding creative solutions to preparing, cooking and succeeding on allergen-free diets. She’s a certified nutritional therapy practitioner, bestselling author of the “Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook,” creator of the AIP Batch Cook, and founder of Autoimmune-Paleo.com, a website serving two-million readers annually with recipes and resources.
She lives in Willamette Valley, Oregon.
Angie Alt, she is an NTC, and certified holistic health coach, is a certified nutritional therapy consultant, author of the “Alternative Autoimmune Cookbook,” and the creator of SAD to AIP in SIX, an online coaching program that has taught thousands of members how to transition their diets and lifestyle over a six-week period.
Angie Alt leads these group-coaching practices, as well as works one-on-one with a small number of highly-motivated clients through TMP Consulting.
She is the award-winning author of the Alternative Autoimmune Cookbook, co-author of the Autoimmune Wellness Handbook, and you can visit their website at Autoimmune-Paleo.com
Thank you so much, guys, for joining the podcast.
Mickey Trescott: Thanks for having us.
Angie Alt: Thank you so much for having us.
Wendy Myers: We’re going to be talking about autoimmune disease. Why don’t you tell me what your journeys with autoimmune disease were like?
Mickey Trescott: My journey with autoimmune disease, I think I shared a little bit with you the last time I was on the podcast, Wendy. But I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and celiac disease at the age of 26. So I’ve been struggling for about a year with some random health symptoms.
I had never really had any health symptoms until that point. I was very healthy. I was very active.
And then that diagnosis, it was a long time coming. I had suspect a thyroid problem. I had one to many doctors. They all gave me the same story that I was healthy because my lab tests were normal, and the whole hypothyroid story that I think a lot of us are really used to, it’s a very frustrating reality.
But that sixth doctor was a naturopath. He was more open-minded. He is the one who also had the foresight to test for celiac antibodies when I got that Hashimoto’s antibodies test.
So I got both those diagnoses, and actually didn’t feel better because he then said, “Your thyroid labs aren’t bad enough to treat.”
So I went all that way. I got the diagnosis that I knew in my heart when I found the description of Hashimoto’s disease. I had that sinking feeling this is me. And then I was also denied the treatment.
So the three months following my diagnosis, I got really sick, and I lost my job. I was bedridden, I was in a lot of pain, I was having a lot of neurological symptoms. And really, what drove me to researching the connection between food and autoimmune disease, and ultimately, lifestyle and autoimmune disease, was really that rock bottom, that low place, that wondering, “Am I going to be 26 years old and completely supported by my husband, my family and my community, and unable to be a normal human being again?”
And it was a very long, slow road upward.
But I got online. I started writing about my experience. That’s how I met Angie. She was one of the few people that I connected with that was actually taking a chance in doing this fringe protocol, which at the time, there were only five other women that I could find on the internet.
And let me tell you, I’m really good at the internet, so if there’s anyone out there, I would have known about them.
And so, we started this little community. Some of them, you guys might know. Dr. Sarah Valentine was one of them.
So we all really connected, we all shared our experiences, and ultimately, it led to a blog, and the cookbook, and now, this partnership that Angie and I have, and a new career, and really helping people, mostly women, find wellness with their autoimmune disease, and figuring out all of the diet and lifestyle pieces that they can really manage to live well with these conditions.
Wendy Myers: And Angie, what was your story?
Angie Alt: It was really similar to Mickey’s. We share a celiac diagnosis. The difference for me is I represent the very typical thing that happens to a lot of autoimmune folks in that it was a very, very long path to diagnosis.
So my first symptoms popped up after my daughter was born in my early 20s. Eventually, I was diagnosed with [inaudible 00:07:27] and endometriosis. But my primary autoimmune celiac disease, I continue to suffer with—seeing doctor after doctor, getting progressively sicker and sicker.
And I was finally diagnosed in my early 30s, 11 years later.
So yes, it was this very long process. Probably the last three years before finally being diagnosed, I was at my sickest point, and we were living actually overseas, in West Africa. My husband works in international development.
That was a real combination for disaster because the medical care is very limited there, but the complications I was having from getting progressively sicker and sicker with undiagnosed celiac meant I ended up with three medical evacuations, which were extremely stressful.
But finally, I came back home to the United States, and I just, in earnest, started looking for doctors to try to help me. And finally, I was referred to a GI doctor, who recognized the symptoms, and tested me, and eventually, diagnosed me with celiac.
I started to work on the gluten-free diet, just a traditional gluten-free diet like they were telling me to do. And in the three months following my diagnosis, much like Mickey, I actually got sicker. My antibody numbers event went up even though I was doing what they were telling me.
And I just recognized that the conventional system had offered me as much as it could at that point. And it was going to be on me to figure out how to heal. And I started just doing all this research, and I came across, what at the time, were the beginning threads of the Autoimmune Protocol being written about by Dr. Sarah Valentine.
I said, “Oh, yes. That’s me. That protocol is for me. I better go for it.”
And I jumped in there, and some of the worst symptoms I was experiencing at that point were anxiety and panic, just some real struggles with mental health by that point because I was just so malnourished.
And within, probably, three days of starting the protocol, that melted. I didn’t have to take medication anymore. It was just gone. And I thought, “Oh, this works.” And I just really went for it, and eventually, I met Mickey, and changed my whole life, including my career, to help other people learn about this, and teamed up with her, and here we are.
Wendy Myers: Yes, it’s so important because I’m just appalled when I hear story after story after story of people going to doctor after doctor, and not getting diagnosed, and not giving any advice on diet, supplements, nutrition, or alternative care.
Maybe that’s not the doctor’s job. Their job is to do conventional medicine. But it’s just really sad to me that the level of care that people get, and how they’re not really given really good options for addressing the underlying root cause of their health conditions. Can you talk about?
And how autoimmune disease is viewed, treated undergoing and change?
Mickey Trescott: The thing about autoimmune disease is that often the symptoms of early autoimmunity are really silent, and they’re very non-specific.
So there are things like, maybe some hair-shedding, or maybe some rashes, or fatigue, not feeling rested when you wake up in the morning, or through the afternoon.
And so these things, you go to your doctor, you tell them about that. They’re like, “Oh, you’re getting older. You’re fine. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
But really, you could be developing an autoimmune disease.
And when I really look back, and I look back at some of the issues that I had, stemming all the way from my teenage years, I didn’t menstruate until I was 16. I think that that’s a really big red flag. But when I went into my pediatrician, my mom took me, he said, “If she’s 16 and it hasn’t happened yet, that’s a problem.”
Do you know when I got it? The day I was 16, and no one ever looked into it.
And one of the hallmark symptoms of Hashimoto’s is hormonal imbalance. We know that it definitely can affect there.
So I think the biggest problem is that some of these early symptoms are really not something that’s on the radar of the medical profession because they really need to wait until you’re very, very sick before they can make a diagnosis because then it’s staring them in the face. Then it’s obvious.
But often, at that point, it’s too late. The only treatments are medications that have horrible side effects.
There’s less chance that you’re able to reverse your illness.
And so we really want to catch people before they get that point. And that’s where prevention is just so valuable.
And really, the public, being more aware of this, and being able to recognize some of those symptoms in themselves, and also, making some of the diet and lifestyle changes that when you’re healthy and your life doesn’t depend on it, it’s a lot easier to be flexible and make those changes.
But when you’re severely sick, it’s a lot to dig yourself out from that place. So that’s definitely our goal.
Wendy Myers: And it’s shocking when I was looking at some information today on autoimmunity. And of the top 10 medications, the top 10 that are prescribed in the United States, half of them are for autoimmune disease. So obviously, it’s this huge, huge growing problem.
Mickey Trescott: And they’re just mass symptoms. So there is no cure. There is no drug that just makes your autoimmune symptoms go away. Many of them, like steroids or immunosuppressants, they’re meant to mess with the body’s way of dealing with inflammation, or dealing with the autoimmune attack.
But they offset other things, so they cause a lot of side effects. Some of them are as bad as getting a chronic infection, or even cancer. And you have to keep taking it for the rest of your life, and your disease usually progress.
That’s the prognosis. Even with the medications, it’s expected that you’ll get worse, and that you’ll just be taking different cocktail or more drugs as you get older.
So really, people need to know that there is something that they can do, and if they catch it soon, when they’re hopefully not in a disease state that’s so far gone that they can’t really reverse that. I think there’s a lot of power in that.
Wendy Myers: And are patients with autoimmune disease usually told that there is no cure?
Angie Alt: Yes. I don’t know, Mickey, if you’ve ever had any different experience, or had any clients or anything that have had a different experience, but I’ve never been told that there is a cure. And I’ve never had an experience with any of my clients, or they’ve been told there is a cure.
You’re usually told, “Here’s the pill. And you’re probably going to continue to feel worse.”
Mickey Trescott: Yes, I think the only mention of cure I ever hear is snake oil salesman, people online that they say they found a cure for rheumatoid arthritis do this program. If you see that in the marketing, it’s usually just a tactic to try to get people to tune in.
The autoimmune disease is a dysfunction of the immune system. It’s not a disease, in the sense that a lot of other diseases are able to be reversed and cured. And even Angie and I where we feel we are at our best health, we are vibrantly healthy, and we’ve overcome a lot of our challenges, I wouldn’t even use that word to describe the physical state that I’m in because I feel like it gives people false hope.
I don’t it’s a depressing reality. I think it’s exciting to know that you can change the outcome of your life.
At one point, I thought I was dying, and that I would be bedridden for the rest of my life. To be able to do what I do now, and have energy, and feel healthy is great, but I think that being realistic with all that is really just very important for the community, both the medical community, both the patients. Everyone needs to be on the same page about that.
Wendy Myers: Do you factor in toxicity at all to the development of autoimmune disease?
Mickey Trescott: Yes, definitely. Obviously, your genetics are at play. But that’s actually a relatively small portion of your risk for developing autoimmune disease. The environmental inputs are a big factor, whether that’s from the diet you’re eating, or the chemicals you’re exposed to, at your workplace, or the chemicals you’re exposed to, putting them on your body, the things you’re cleaning your home with, the things that are in our air.
And it’s easy to maybe go a little bit nuts, and try to have a bubble life maybe, but it’s everywhere in our modern world. It’s not avoidable.
So you just have to work on the things that are within your control, to reduce your toxic load, and support your body, to be able to do its detoxifying processes, and try to reduce it as much as you can there.
Wendy Myers: I have a client that was diagnosed with sarcoidosis where she gets welts on her skin, cysts and things like that. And I came to find out that her building has beryllium and other metals. It’s an old building, and it comes with vents.
And there are numerous other cases of the exact same autoimmune disease in this small community of people that work in this building.
It’s really, really sad. I deal with a lot of clients with autoimmune disease, and look at their metal toxicities, and it’s just fascinating the toxicities are an underlying cause of autoimmune disease.
Wendy Myers: But let’s talk about your new book. Tell us about what it’s about, and why you guys decided to write it.
Mickey Trescott: The new book is called The Autoimmune Wellness Handbook. And it’s meant to just be a guide from start to finish for anyone that’s diagnosed with autoimmune disease—a really safe approachable starting place.
So it’s a book that has a lot of information, but that information is meant to be organized in a way that is not super overwhelming and very actionable.
We organized it in seven verbs, seven chapters. And all of the verbs represent actions that everyone can take to achieve wellness with autoimmune disease.
So they are inform, collaborate, nourish, rest, breathe, move and connect.
They don’t have to be taken in order. Angie and I, our journeys, when you look at the book, we think it makes beautiful sense to go from start to finish, but our journeys were very disorganized. They had lots of ups and downs. Healing is definitely not always linear.
But we’ve organized it in a way that you start with informing yourself, and connecting with those really good practitioners. Then you move onto the most important diet and lifestyle piece, so diet, nutrient density, nourishing your body.
And then you weave in, working on the sleep, getting good movement, managing your stress.
And then a really often overlooked component is connection. You can just put that all together because it’s not just about food.
Wendy Myers: Can you talk more about your step, inform?
Angie Alt: This for people who, maybe don’t have a diagnosis yet, or possibly do. Either side can be working on this stuff. It’s working to inform yourself about your diagnosis if you do have it, learning everything you can about your disease, including the prognosis, the common treatments for that disease, the success rates or failure rates of that common treatment, the alternative treatments available for that disease.
And autoimmune disease in general, understanding what exactly autoimmune disease is.
With all the goal of that basically being that the next time you meet with your doctor, you are as informed, if not more informed, than he or she is, so that you can really advocate for yourself.
Unfortunately, autoimmune disease patients have a lot on their shoulders to try to guide their care. And being a well-informed patient helps you be an empowered patient.
Wendy Myers: I think, in my philosophy that you’re the only person that’s really going to care about your own health. You have to take responsibility.
And a lot of physicians, the physician you’re going to, may not know a lot about autoimmune disease or how to heal it naturally, and you really have to take your power back, and not leave it up to someone else, even though they went to medical school and seem like they know a lot. There’s a lot that they don’t know.
Doctors don’t know everything.
Angie Alt: Yes, Mickey and I are, with that step, and also with our second step, collaborate, really advocating for a lot of personal responsibility on the side of the patient. And I know when you’re at your sickest and quite debilitated with autoimmune disease, that might feel really overwhelming, and also maybe unfair.
But there’s a lot of power in personal responsibility, and taking it upon yourself to learn all of that is going to make the most of your health care experience.
Wendy Myers: I think it’s sad if you go to a physician and they say, “Oh, there’s no cure. You’re just going to take medicine, and it’s going to progress and get worse.” Because if you believe that, that’s true.
And if you don’t believe that, and you believe that you have the power to take your health back, that’s also true.
And really, your mindset, I think, is really, really important.
Wendy Myers: So what dietary approach do you advocate for those with autoimmune disease?
Mickey Trescott: What we’ve outlined in the book is a hierarchy of diets. We realized that everyone has a different starting place, both nutritionally, where they’re at, and with what they’re eating, their background, their autoimmune disease.
And so for some people, gluten-free is the minimum that we recommend. For someone who’s on the standard American diet and really doesn’t have a lot of skills in the kitchen, doesn’t really have a lot of understanding about what’s in their food, maybe they eat a lot of junk food or fast food, and they don’t cook for themselves, they have a big family, going gluten-free might be a pretty steep learning curve for them.
So that’s one thing about our book is we really accept that everyone comes from a unique starting place, and we meet them there.
So starting from gluten-free, that’s our minimum. And we move down the line to gluten-free, dairy-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, a Paleo diet, and then the Autoimmune Protocol.
And so if you go gluten-free, dairy-free, and you feel amazing, and all your symptoms go away, great, you’re one of the lucky ones.
Angie Alt: Stop there.
Mickey Trescott: I know many people that have had that experience. I have a couple of friends.
Actually, one of my best friends, when I was suffering from Hashimoto’s, I just got my diagnosis, she was the same age. She got the same diagnosis. And I told her, “You need to do this elimination diet.” And I think I really freaked her out because she went gluten-free, and all of her symptoms went away.
And I remember feeling really jealous and upset that I had to do this crazy elimination diet.
But we’re all on our own journey, and that’s really a moment that really had me learn that concept.
So the Autoimmune Protocol is the strictest approach, and for anyone who is very sick or very motivated to get to the root of their food-driven symptoms, that’s the best place to start.
Wendy Myers: Are there any other lifestyle approaches that people can hone in on when learning how to manage their autoimmune disease?
Angie Alt: Yes, once you’ve got that foundational step of learning to nourish yourself in a new way, you can move onto focusing in on some of the other lifestyle factors. That’s sleep, really dialing in your sleep, and making sure that you’re getting the most out of rest. That’s the part of our cycle, our daily cycle, where our bodies repair themselves.
And obviously, if you’re trying to recover from autoimmune disease and maximize your wellness, you need to take big advantage of sleeping.
All of the best food in the world won’t be good if you’re not getting good sleep.
Then there is stress management. You were asking about toxicity earlier, the stress management piece is like that. It’s really ubiquitous in our culture, and it’s probably not going away. You can’t live in a bubble protected from it, unfortunately.
So learning to manage it in the best way possible, so that you maximize your wellness is really important.
Next is getting in the right movement, getting in an exercise routine that keeps your fitness at a good level, which can be a really fine balance for people with autoimmune disease. Doing too much activity can be just as bad as doing too little for those with autoimmune disease, so finding that right center is an important lifestyle aspect to dial in.
And then, like Mickey was saying, our final lifestyle factor to consider is connection—working on your relationships, your support network, and also your connection with nature.
Mickey did a lot of research for that section of the book about connection with nature, and it has a huge impact in our immune system. And obviously, for those of us with autoimmune disease, we want to modulate that to a less overdrive place.
Wendy Myers: How can people avoid overwhelm when setting out to make these big changes? I know when a lot of people may not have their health on their radar, and then when they get a diagnosis, now they have this whole seemingly overwhelming amount of information. And they have to change their entire lifestyle and diet, etcetera.
So how do you help people avoid those feelings of being overwhelmed?
Mickey Trescott: Specifically, in our book, Angie and I had the personal experience of being extremely overwhelmed ourselves in our journey. And so we really spent a lot of time refining our approach, and trying to make it really simple and approachable for people.
But one of the things that we did is add a lot of self-assessments and checklists, and different things to help people personalize and figure out where their trouble spots are.
So of course, if you go in saying, “Okay, I have to learn everything I need to know about my autoimmune disease. I have to find the best doctor in the world. I have to do the elimination diet. I have to, all of a sudden, fix all my sleep, my stress management, my movement problems, and find the time to just hang out in nature and build this great support system,” they might be like, “My brain is exploding. I’m done.”
And so the way that we’ve organized it, in the beginning of the book, the inform and collaborate steps are absolutely essential. And after those two chapters, we have a prioritizing action infographic.
So people can go through, “Do I have a diagnosis? Do I have a doctor? Are they someone who is willing and collaborative and check all those things often?”
If they get to the bottom and they have that inform/collaborate steps in place, they can then move onto the diet, the lifestyle, those chapters. And each of those chapters have assessments that help figure out which area is of highest priority.
So for some people, that might be the diet, which is what people usually gravitate towards first.
But it could be connection. It could be more of the movement.
Maybe someone is doing CrossFit five days a week, and that’s why their body is unable to heal.
So really pinpointing that area, and getting them started, and then letting all of the other things fall into place, not doing everything at once.
Wendy Myers: What are some of your recommendations for connecting with other people that have autoimmune disease, where they can get help, tips and connection with other people?
Angie Alt: This is a big part of our mission at Autoimmune-Paleo. Our tagline is building community and seeking wellness.
So this is a big focus of our work personally.
I would suggest that they start by looking online for some connections, but then branching out into real life networks.
For instance, on our site, there is a community update every month that includes links to Facebook groups all over the country and the world that are focused specifically on the Autoimmune Protocol, and learning to live well despite having an autoimmune disease. And those groups are then meeting up in real life in those places.
So for instance, I live in the DC area, and we have a mid-Atlantic group. A couple of times a year, we get together, and we spend time enjoying foods together, and socializing, and venting, obviously.
But also, it’s a great chance to meet people that you can celebrate your wins with, and who really get it, who really understand from this really basic level what you’re going through with autoimmune disease.
It’s also a really great place to share information because it can be so hard to get plugged into healthcare providers that really understand autoimmune disease, and are doing a great job with it, or food sourcing, or things like that, or finding partners to enact some of the lifestyle recommendations. This is a really good place to find all of that.
They are literally all over the world. I think just today on our Facebook page, I saw somebody saying that they just started a group in Turkey.
Wendy Myers: I was reading the other day that there is some new research out about Celiac disease and how researchers found that it was caused by a fungus. I’m sure some people don’t have that as a cause, but what are your thoughts on that?
Mickey Trescott: One of the underlying factors in autoimmune disease is dysbiosis, so that balance of flora in our gut. I’m not surprised that we will be finding out more about that impact on the different quantities of flora.
I think the temptation is to say, “Oh, it’s this fungus or this bacteria.” They have linked some specific autoimmune diseases to specific pathogens. But I think the general rule that if something is imbalanced in there, if something is off, there is a higher chance that you’re going to be developing an autoimmune disease.
So the way that you can combat that is just to make sure that you get lots of great, beneficial bacteria, lots of probiotics, eat your vegetables. Those pre-biotic foods are really great for feeding all of that good stuff.
And if you’ve got maybe something going on in your gut, you know that you’re getting bloated, or you have some symptoms of dysbiosis and bowel issues, or constipation, or burping, gas, that kind of stuff, get checked up by a functional medicine practitioner who can do a test, and figure out exactly what’s going on in there, and treat it because that is a root underlying issue that a lot of people feel better when they figure out what’s going on.
Wendy Myers: I’m sorry. I did the research. It said that they found that Crohn’s had an underlying fungus. So I was incorrect on that sorry.
So I have a question I like to ask all of my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Angie Alt: Definitely autoimmune disease. Obviously, Mickey and I are going to say that. But it’s true. There is an estimate by the AARD, which is an autoimmune advocacy organization, that there are 50 to 55-million people with autoimmune disease. 75% of those people are women. It really disproportionately affects the female population.
And it’s growing. These diagnoses are occurring more and more. It’s a much bigger diagnosis than, for instance, cancer. Many, many times more people are affected by autoimmune disease.
That’s not to downplay the seriousness of a cancer diagnosis at all, but just that this is really an epidemic in our society. And it needs attention.
I think those of us with autoimmune disease are basically canaries in a coal mine.
Wendy Myers: Yes, and I’ve read that it’s the fastest-growing subset of diseases in the world, and that ther are more and more cases of it, and it’s sad. But it can go into remission, like you and Mickey are both shining examples of that.
You can take back control, and you can regain your health, and get it into remission, so to speak.
Mickey Trescott: Remission is a big word, I think, a lot of people really attach. It’s almost getting in cure territories.
I don’t usually say that. I personally have really low antibodies for my Hashimoto’s. But you can live well with autoimmune disease, and that’s really what we’re all working with some sort of predisposition towards ill health.
So for some people, it might be autoimmune disease. For some people, it might be cancer. Other people, it my heart disease, or diabetes, or something, but living in this toxic world, we’re all going to be faced with something at some time or another.
It’s not a death sentence to be diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, but it does mean that we need to take care of our health maybe more vigilantly at a younger age than other people do. But it totally is possible to live well with it.
Wendy Myers: Can you guys tell the listeners more about the book that you have, your older book that was published a couple of years ago? Can you talk a little about that?
Mickey Trescott: Yes, so Angie and I both have self-published cookbooks. So the Autoimmune Wellness Handbook, this new book, is more of an overall picture, but it does have some recipes, meal plan and a lifestyle guide in it. So there are AIP, which is Autoimmune Protocol-compliant recipes.
But if you guys are interested in more recipes, I’m the author of The Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook, which has 120 AIP recipes. Angie is the author of the Alternative Autoimmune Cookbook, which incorporates AIP recipes for the elimination diet and for the re-introduction protocol.
And so both of those are available on Amazon and through our website as e-books. They’re great resources for people that are looking for more recipes, in addition to what we offer in our new book and on our website.
Wendy Myers: Can you go into detail a little bit more about the autoimmune diet, and the foods that people typically be eliminating when they’re attempting an elimination diet?
Angie Alt: We eliminate all grains, including the gluten grains, wheat, barley and rye. We eliminate all legumes, all dairy, eggs, nuts and seeds, which does include coffee and chocolate, and nightshade vegetables.
So for folks that are unfamiliar, that’s tomatoes, eggplants, white potatoes, bell peppers and the hot peppers.
So this seems like a lot of food, and really overwhelming. We understand that folks feel that way but it’s actually really manageable. And what you’re left with is basically the cream of the crop, in terms of nutrient-dense healthy foods to eat.
We focus on a lot of vegetables. Probably for most of us, that’s a daily intake anywhere between 9 and 12 cups a day of vegetables, more vegetables than a vegetarian, as we like to say.
Obviously, lots of proteins, and we focus on really high quality proteins. So it’s not just only eating meat. The meat isn’t covering your whole plate, some gigantic steak or something. But really high quality meat, high quality fats, fermented foods, broth.
Those are the staples of the healing approach there.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit more about you and where they can find you guys?
Mickey Trescott: We are online at Autoimmune-Paleo.com. It’s our homepage. If you guys are looking for recipes, articles, we have a bunch of great contributors. We write about the Autoimmune Protocol and Living Well with Autoimmune Disease.
So basically, what we’ve been talking about here today.
We also offer a lot of free resources through our website, so if you sign up for our newsletter, we have lists of food to avoid on the Autoimmune Protocol. We have meal plans, videos, batch cooking videos, that kind of thing.
We’re also connected to all the social media channels. We’re very active on Instagram, at AutoimmunePaleo, Facebook at AutoimmunePaleo, and we actually have a podcast now, The Autoimmune Wellness Podcast, so people can connect with us that way too. It’s been super fun to launch that project out into the world.
Wendy Myers: Do you guys just want to add anything else that you think is relevant to our discussion about autoimmune disease?
Angie Alt: I think we would just reiterate some of what we said earlier that it is possible to live well with autoimmune disease, even if the disease is not cured, that you magically go into remission, whatever.
You can live a really excellent life with good health despite an autoimmune diagnosis. And even though it might seem like a huge undertaking to restore your health, obviously, the benefits are well worth it. It’s very empowering.
Mickey Trescott: I love that. And I would add too, part of this process is accepting that you are doing something for yourself, and that you need to sometimes take a step back and be gentle on yourself.
I know a lot of us really want to change everything, and do everything, and be perfectly compliant, but really, perfection doesn’t have any role in this. There are a lot of boxes to check and a lot of possibilities to do.
But really, just take your time, take it slow. If you have a setback or your frustrating moment, don’t throw in the towel and quit. Just take a moment to re-evaluate, and re-examine that mindset.
Wendy, you’re talking about earlier just access that place of why you’re doing what you’re doing, and being open-minded to discovering things about yourself and your body, and trying to be empowered by that new discovery.
Wendy Myers: Yes, exactly. And I think that once you get that diagnosis, you have to get into high gear about actually addressing your health that you may have been ignoring before, or unaware of, or just wasn’t on your radar.
And this is what you’d have to be doing anyway to take care of your health, eating a healthy diet, and 9 to 12 cups of vegetables a day. This is stuff you have to do anyway, if you want to be a healthy person and live a long, disease-free life, and have energy, and have a normal life.
Angie Alt: Our handbook is directed at folks with autoimmune disease, or who are experiencing chronic illness. But the truth is, these are the basic foundational things that everyone should do to maintain their health and live long, happy lives.
Wendy Myers: You guys, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Autoimmune disease is on the rise, and even if someone doesn’t have an autoimmune disease, listening to this will help them get an education if in the future they ever do, god forbid, get that diagnosis. So they can just hit the ground running.
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it.
Angie Alt: Thank you for having us, Wendy.
Mickey Trescott: Thanks.
Wendy Myers: And everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Wendy Myers. You can find me at myersdetox.com. You can check out my healing and detox program. MineralPower.com where I help to detox your body from metals and toxic chemicals that are the underlying root causes of so many diseases and health conditions today.
Again, thanks so much for tuning in.
