Your Body Is Not Attacking You
I wanted to talk about autoimmune disease today, because it is becoming more and more prevalent – and because it’s personal for me.
Years ago I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. That diagnosis cracked something open. It sent me deeper and deeper into functional medicine, searching for real answers. It changed my practice. It changed my life.
And then when I reconnected with my teacher Vaidya Rama Kant Mishra in 2008 – I had first met him in the 90’s – my own healing reached a level I hadn’t thought possible.
That journey is a big part of why thyroid conditions, and autoimmune disease more broadly, show up so often in my practice. I’ve lived this. And I think about it differently because of that.
If you’ve been given an autoimmune diagnosis, you’ve probably been told that your body is attacking itself. I understand where that comes from. But I want to offer you something different, because I don’t think it tells the whole story.
The body doesn’t just turn against itself for no reason. What I see, again and again, are systems that are overloaded, overstimulated, or simply unable to process everything they’re being asked to handle.
In Shaka Vansya Ayurveda, we look at this very specifically.
The liver was designed to transform food. That’s what it was made for. But today it has to deal with far more than food – chemicals, medications, stress, environmental exposures, things the liver was never meant to handle.
For anything beyond food, the liver has to overwork.
And with that overwork… it heats up.
But here’s what matters: the liver is not an isolated organ. All blood passes through it. So when the liver is running hot, that heat transfers into the blood itself, and then that heated blood circulates through the entire system.
Now the immune system – which depends on precision and fine discrimination to do its job – is operating inside that heated environment.
And something begins to shift.
The immune system starts to lose its intelligence. Not because it’s failed you. Not because it’s working against you. But because it’s overwhelmed and operating under strain.
And when that happens, it can stop recognizing self as self.
I see this behind so many conditions – Hashimoto’s, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, psoriasis, and more. The names are different, but the upstream picture is often remarkably similar.
This is a very different way of understanding what’s happening in your body.
Not a system in chaos. Not a body that has turned against you. A system that has lost clarity because of what it’s been asked to carry.
Which means the answer isn’t to suppress the immune response.
It’s to restore the conditions that allow it to recognize clearly again.
If you want to look at your specific pattern more closely, I offer a 20-minute Clarity Call to explore whether this path fits what your body is asking for. $50, applied to your care if you move forward. No pressure, just listening.
Book a Clarity Call here:
We look at what’s actually going on, and whether there’s a different way forward.
I’m curious to hear your experience.
And, I’m glad you’re here.
—Dr. Lisa 💙
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