Graves' Disease Caused by a Tummy Ache?

If you are like most people (and even most doctors), you may have a hard time wrapping your mind around the fact that a problem in your gut can cause a problem in your thyroid (which is way up in your neck). There is strong evidence that proves that this just might be the underlying issue in many cases of Graves' disease.

Graves thyroiditis, also known as Graves' disease, is an autoimmune disorder that attacks the thyroid gland. While there can be acute attacks of thyroiditis, Graves' disease is usually a more slow acting autoimmune disorder.

There is evidence that a specific strand of pathogen (though there can be many different kinds not as well documented) called Yersinia enterocolitica that has been shown to cause Graves thyroiditis.

A common medical treatment for Graves thyroiditis is radiation or surgical removal of the thyroid gland. The thought is that if you remove the overactive thyroid gland, then you remove the problem. This line of thinking ignores the fact that there is still the underlying problem of the Yersinia enterocolitica.

If the treatment was aimed in addressing the pathogen Yersinia enterocolitica instead of the thyroid, you may have been able to forgo the ablating of the thyroid gland.

So how did Yersinia enterocolitica even get into the bloodstream to cause Graves' disease?

Most likely in cases of dysbiosis (or overgrowth of unhealthy bugs within your gut lining), there is an overgrowth of Yersinia enterocolitica within the gut. When this pathogen is allowed to flourish in the gut lining, changes to the gut lining may enable Yersinia enterocolitica to pass through when it should not.

Once Yersinia enterocolitica is in the bloodstream, your immune system recognizes it, tags it is a foreign invader, and then attacks it.

It is believed that the protein makeup of Yersinia enterocolitica is similar to that of the protein structures on the thyroid. What happens is your immune system gets "tag happy" and tags your thyroid gland as well. Now your body cannot decipher a difference between Yersinia enterocolitica and your thyroid gland. You now have what is known as an autoimmune disease.

There are many natural treatments that will help rid the body of Yersinia enterocolitica overgrowth, such as: probiotics, oil of oregano, tree tea oil, garlic, olive oil, aloe, glutamine, high fiber diet, exclusion of trans fats, avoidance of chronic use of antibiotics, etc.

So I hope that now you can see how treating a tummy ache can prevent an autoimmune disease and save you from cutting out or destroying a gland essential to life.

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