Autoimmune disorders are on the rise and have exploded over the past 7-10 years, affecting everyone from babies to children, teens, young adults, older adults, and especially women, at a rate five times greater than men!

If you haven't been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease but you have some symptoms or you have a food sensitivity issue, then you may have the initial stages of a leaky gut.

Also, if you haven't been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease but the medications that you've been taking for your diabetes or other disease haven't really helped, or you find yourself feeling worse with each passing day, then get a complete physical exam.

Why? Most people who wait end up finding out when it's too late that the autoimmune dysfunction has destroyed part of the thyroid, pancreas, joints, skin tissue, nervous system, retina tissue, or some other part of the body.

On the other hand, if you have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder and you're taking steroids or some kind of immune-suppressant drug, you may want to reconsider given what these drugs do to your thyroid, immune system, and other organs and tissues.

Relying on drugs to control the symptoms or suppress your immune system only makes matters worse! In fact, suppressing your immune system can make you susceptible to frequent colds, allergies, and asthma attacks - and if it gets worse, infections, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and even cancer or some other systemic disease.

But the good news is that you can re-balance your immune system naturally to reduce the immune response and its overreaction of attacking your own healthy cells. Autoimmune disease refers to a group of more than 100 serious chronic illnesses including diseases of the nervous, gastrointestinal, and endocrine systems as well as the skin and other connective tissues, eyes, blood, and blood vessels.