In the last article we covered what the microbiome is, a colony of trillions of bacteria in our colon, and how it affects every aspect of our health, our hormones, our longevity and the ability to build muscle and stay fit.

These bacteria also produce or help to produce neurotransmitters in our body, such as Serotonin and GABA, which calm and relax us, de-stress us and allow us to fall asleep.

In this article we’re going to cover how the number of toxins coming into our body, which increases every year, affects these bacteria.

This is the second article in the Autoimmune Series.

In the last article we covered what autoimmune conditions are and what they’re actually doing in the body. But in this article we’re going to cover how they come about.

What actually causes them.

And it starts in the gut, our first defense against illness.

About 1 in 10 people in the US now suffer from some sort of autoimmune disease. And this level has been rising fast over the last couple of decades.

It’s rising fastest amongst adolescents, where the number has tripled in the last 3 decades.

In 1988-1991 an estimated 22 million people between 12 and 19 years old had an autoimmune disease, and in 2011-2012 it rose to 41 million.

But it affects adults as well, generally manifesting somewhere between the ages of 15-45. And about 75% of those affected are female.

These are conditions such as Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Crohn's disease, Fibromyalgia, Hashimoto’s, Ulcerative Colitis and a host of some 80 others.

And other conditions, such as Lyme disease, can trigger autoimmune conditions.

These can cause low thyroid, muscle pain or fatigue, stiff or painful joints, and exhaustion and lethargy. Or they can attack specific organs or nerve cells, and even the skin.

But what is an autoimmune disease? What's happening in the body when someone has one?

There are key things causing hormonal disruptions in men and women today, even in our children, affecting their overall growth.

Testosterone levels have been dropping for decades while estrogen levels have risen sharply.

Levels of growth hormone and progesterone are lower and cortisol levels are too high.

And hormonal imbalances are now much more than just being deficient in one or another hormone.

There are exact chemicals in the environment today which block hormones from being created, block them from being used, disrupt their normal action, or impersonate them entirely.

And they're increasing each year.

While this affects muscle-building and fat loss significantly, its effect goes far beyond this to our sleep, stress levels, overall health and how fast we age.

In this article we cover what's happening and what you can do about it.

While insulin is in the bloodstream, almost no fat burning can take place.

But something can happen here when our diet is quite high in sugar over a long period of time, keeping our Insulin levels high for longer each day.

The cells build up a resistance to the Insulin. Meaning, when Insulin comes knocking, trying to give the sugar to the cell so it can make energy, the cell says “no” and closes its doors.

Did you know low levels of thyroid can bring on not only low energy and weight gain, but also contribute to depression and brain fog?

This can make thinking, problem-solving, and just coping with the everyday stresses of life much harder.

With the rise in hormone-blocking toxins in our environment, processed foods and processed sugars, and the low amount of protein most of us consume, low thyroid is affecting more and more people, especially among women and the elderly.

But there’s one more thing affecting this — low magnesium. Magnesium is necessary for thyroid to be produced inside the body. Yet it’s being processed out of our foods more and more every year, until more than half the people in the US are now magnesium deficient.

In this article we dive into what thyroid is, how low thyroid occurs, how it affects our mood, energy levels, mental alertness, and our ability to think and cope with the problems of everyday life and what we can do to raise it.

Electrolytes are necessary for hydration, energy, recovery, and mental clarity.

They power our nervous system, regulate our water levels, allow our cells to function, and are key to protein synthesis, recovery, and even brain function.

And they're vital for fat loss.

Lack of electrolytes can cause dizziness, cramps, headaches, exhaustion, mental confusion, and even affect our heartbeat.

But they are exact minerals and they're needed by the body in exact ratios.

Too much of one and not enough of another can actually exacerbate the problems they're supposed to address.

In fact, the wrong ratio can even cause dehydration and bloating, not to mention weight gain and slower recoveries.

When we look at the fact of aging, or getting older, we often measure it in two ways:

The number of years we’ve been on this earth, chronologically.

And the amount of decay that’s set in: fatigue, lower energy, poor fitness levels, poor sleep, loss of muscle, worsening vision and hearing, digestive problems, memory loss, etc.

But, while we’ve come to see the second as the inevitable result of the first, it’s actually not. It’s the result of getting biologically older, accelerated aging before our time.

We don’t realize this because our view is obviously based on what we’ve seen for decades now. And what we’ve seen is not good.

But this isn’t a natural situation. It’s a created situation.

Today, 90 percent of the money spent on health care in the US, almost $4.1 trillion, is spent on preventable chronic disease.

And a 2018 study found that 88 percent of Americans are in poor metabolic health—meaning they are on the road to the above diseases.

That’s not 88% of the elderly, that’s 88% of the population of the US.

This is despite the US spending nearly double the amount on healthcare and medicine as any other country.

But in the Blue Zones of the world, where they don’t have access to either our medicine or our toxins and very poor foods, they live quite healthily to 100 or more.

This is accelerated aging. And we don't need it.

So sit tight, because we’re about to get sciencey.

Did you know that factors such as diet, exercise, toxins, sleep, stress and more can affect how able our DNA are to make new, healthy cells?

This is a huge factor in aging.

If our DNA can't make new cells properly, but instead makes "faulty" cells, then, as our body is nothing but cells, over time our body begins to slowly degrade.

We see it in our skin, our strength, our energy levels and our overall health.

This is half of what we call "aging."

But it doesn't have to be this way. This is a created situation.

And we can reverse it.

If we want to actually increase longevity, increase lifespan and increase overall health and ability during the entirety of that lifespan, then we need to define what we’re talking about. 

Even more, we need to compare the current “norm” we’ve become accustomed to… to what not only can exist, but does exist in other places today.

A person should be able to live past 100 years old, with high energy levels, strength and mental ability, doing what they want without the need of twenty different drugs to keep them going, and then pass away peacefully.

And not only should that be the case, but in places outside of our “modern world” — called Blue Zones — it is the case. Quite routinely.

Let's dive in.

Did you know that when Estrogen levels rise too high, it can unbalance other hormones? And this significantly impacts body fat gain and loss?

We've covered several hormones now, from Insulin and Cortisol causing fat gain and preventing fat loss, to Growth Hormone and IGF, the hormones that come out while we sleep and which are largely responsible for fat loss.

We cover all of these because they all work together, each influencing the other, and if we want sustainable fat loss, we need to address each one.

But high Estrogen also plays a large role in all of this in both women and men, building excess body fat and lowering testosterone and growth hormone.

It also lowers thyroid, a hormone that regulates our metabolism, which in turn regulates body fat and energy levels.

And it lowers progesterone in women and men, a calming, fat-burning, testosterone-building hormone.

All of this leads to excess body fat, decreased muscle mass, worsened mood, higher stress levels, slower recoveries, and lower energy.

So let's see what's actually happening here, what causes this, and what we can do about it.

In this article we cover how PerfectAmino has a near zero caloric impact on our body, and this is important.

When we work out and take 20 or 30 grams of whey or pea protein, or collagen powder, we think our bodies are getting 20-30 grams of protein or collagen.

But that's not true.

This is because protein and collagen aren't used by our bodies in the forms they arrive in.

Instead, they're broken down into their building blocks — the amino acids.

Amino acids are what our body actually needs, and are the only things of value in protein from our body's point of view.

But the ratio of amino acids present in different proteins determines how much actual useable protein we get from them and how much calories.

And this has a larger impact on our fitness goals than most people think.