Resources

Knowledge is power.  The best thing you can do for your health is educate yourself.  Here you will find links to articles on a number of important subjects that will help you live your best life possible.

Topics

Nutrition
If you read the stories on this site, you will notice that in every case, dietary changes were a core part of their healing.  What we put into our bodies has serious implications to our health.  Dee Dee didn’t start healing until we significantly changed her diet.  But what diet?  Go to any bookstore, and you will see an entire wall of books on diet and nutrition, often with wildly conflicting information.  After reading hundreds of articles and books, we were convinced that a Whole Food Plant Based (WFPB) diet made the most sense, supported by decades of research.  Read and decide for yourselves.

Stress
Have you ever experienced a headache, neck tension, stomach problems or fatigue due to a stressful situation?  Those are examples of the real physical effects stress has on your body.  Stress is also a well-known trigger for lupus flares.  When you’re body is already under attack from an autoimmune disease, adding stress to the equation just makes it worse.  Stress ages you.  Stress makes you sick.  Stress kills.

We believe Dee Dee’s journey started because of stress, and over the years her “flares” were always in conjunction with stressful times in her life.  Understanding this, and effectively managing her stress were a huge part of her healing process.  Today, knowing the damage that stress can cause, we employ many techniques to reduce stress in her life.  We are both healthier and happier as a result.

Brain/Beliefs
Have you ever heard the phrase “You are what you believe”?  It really is true.  Our beliefs have a tremendous affect on our health.  It’s important that we understand this connection and learn how to maximize our health by adjusting our beliefs and expectations.

Relationships
More research is showing that our relationships have a profound impact on our health and longevity.  It’s not just the quantity of relationships (sorry social media), it’s the quality and depth of our relationships that makes the difference.

Sleep
Sleep plays an important role in our physical health.  Sleep is the time when our bodies heal and repair themselves.  Sleep deficiency is linked to many health conditions and diseases, yet millions of people don’t get enough.  In 1942, less than 8% of the population was getting less than 6 hours of sleep a night.  In 2017, that number was almost 50%.  Sleep quality is an important as quantity.  Sleep needs to be recognized for its critical role in our health, and prioritized in our lives.

Gut Health / Leaky Gut
Over 70% of the body’s immune system is located in the gut.  More research is showing that gut health has a tremendous impact on our overall health and could be the root cause of many chronic and autoimmune diseases.  Leaky Gut is a condition where long-term gut health issues (often caused by medications) have caused “intestinal permeability”, meaning there is damage to the lining of the intestines that is allowing food and other toxins into our bodies and bloodstream.  The body reacts to these foreign invaders with an immune response and starts attacking.  Sound familiar?  How do we know if there is a problem with our gut, and how do we keep it healthy?

Functional Medicine
One of the problems with healthcare today is the propensity to treat symptoms rather than identifying and treating the root-cause of disease.  The first approach often leads to a lifetime of chronic illness and medications to “manage” it.  The second approach often leads to actual healing.  Functional Medicine is an alternative approach to traditional medical practices that looks at the health of the whole body, not just one symptom.  It focuses on finding the actual cause of an illness and then addresses it with natural solutions, rather than just prescribing powerful (and dangerous) medications to manage the symptoms.  This is the approach we took to finally heal Dee Dee from decades of disease and damage from her medications.

Blue Zones
Blue Zones are areas throughout the world whose populations have some of the healthiest and longest-living people.  Not only do they live longer than normal (often past 100), their health and quality of life in their later years is also greater, and usually without chronic disease (including autoimmune diseases).  What can we learn from them to get the same benefits?

Medications
The drugs you put in your body have a major, often negative, impact on your health and well-being.  Make sure you understand what you are taking, why you are taking it, and the potential side-effects it may cause.

Lupus Support Forums
There are many good support forums online where you can share your experiences and challenges with others in the Lupus community.

Misc./Research
These are great websites to do research on your own.

  • Clinical Trials.gov – Clinical Trials is a database of privately and publicly-funded clinical studies conducted around the world.  Just search for Lupus.
  • Open Payments Data – Here you can search for your doctors and see how much they have been paid by pharmaceutical companies.