From Inflammation To Repair: Rethinking Autoimmunity With Dr. Leland Stillman

What if autoimmunity isn’t simply the body attacking itself, but the body struggling to repair itself? Dr. Leland Stillman, author of The End of Autoimmunity, offers a different way of understanding chronic illness, one that looks beyond a diagnosis to the diet, lifestyle, toxins, stressors, and environmental exposures that may be contributing to what he calls a “repair deficit.”

Dr. Stillman explains his five-part framework for healing, shares practical habits that can help restore the body, and discusses why sunlight, real food, movement, clean water, darkness at night and human connection matter more than we may realize. He also shares challenging patient cases and explains why identifying and removing what is harming the body can be just as important as adding therapies. He also describes his vision of a healthier future built around real food, local communities, less technology and a return to the rhythms our bodies were designed for.

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Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Kendall Nelson and the regular text is Dr. Leland Stillman.

Welcome to the show. What if autoimmunity isn’t simply the body turning against itself, but a sign that the body is struggling to repair damage created by our diet, lifestyle, and environment? This is episode 603, and our guest is Dr. Leland Stillman. Dr. Stillman is an integrative physician and the author of The End of Autoimmunity: Cutting-Edge Tactics for Energy, Vitality, and Longevity.

In his practice, he works with people who are often tired, foggy, inflamed, and frustrated after trying countless approaches without getting well. He believes that beneath many different diagnoses are common factors, including nutritional deficiencies, toxic exposures, poor sleep, artificial light, EMFs, and other environmental stressors.

In this first part of our conversation, Dr. Stillman challenges the conventional way we think about autoimmune disease. Rather than seeing the immune system simply as something that mistakenly attacks the body, he asks us to consider its role in renewal and repair. We discuss inflammation, toxins, and stress in what he calls a repair deficit.

When the body’s need to repair exceeds its ability to keep up. We also get practical. Dr. Stillman shares simple habits from his fourteen-day reset, including morning sunlight, spring water, short walks throughout the day, nutrient-dense whole foods, darkness at night, and meaningful connection with others. He explains why diet, lifestyle, environment, and even mindset need to be addressed before relying on complicated testing and supplement protocols.

This is just part one. In part two, Dr. Stillman and I will focus specifically on sick building syndrome and the way our homes and workplaces may be affecting our health. Before we get into the conversation, did you miss the conference? We’re sorry about that. There is a way you can still enjoy all of the amazing speakers and presentations. Get all past recordings at Fleetwood Onsite and benefit from the likes of Drs. Mark and Samantha Bailey, Adam and Josh Biggelson, Dr. Bill Schneider, Sally Fallon-Morrell, Dr. Tom Cowan, Dr. Drew Kaufman, and more. Go to Fleetwood Onsite for more information. Now let’s welcome Dr. Leland Stillman.

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Dr. Stillman. Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

I’m really happy you’re here, and I’m happy we’re here to discuss your new book, The End of Autoimmunity: Cutting-Edge Tactics for Energy, Vitality, and Longevity. I know you have a slightly different take on autoimmunity than what I’ve heard before. Can you explain to us what exactly autoimmunity is?

Rethinking Your Body’s Defense System

I want to start by explaining how this book came about because I think that’s probably the best way to answer that question. When I started my practice, the way that people found me was that I posted on social media about things like sunlight and water quality and hormone-disrupting chemicals and EMF and all kinds of things that your listeners are very familiar with, and the people who sought me out were people who had, and now I simplify this into saying that they were tired, foggy, and inflamed.

They were fatigued, they had brain fog, and they had some inflammation. They had gut issues, they had skin issues, they had pain, they had swelling, and they were having difficulty losing weight. They had headaches, they had joint pain, they had all these combinations of different things. Even though two patients, one might present with a headache. Another might present with joint pain. One might present with abdominal pain and diarrhea. Another might present with reflux and bloating. There were all these common patterns in how they presented in terms of what was happening in their diet, their lifestyle, and their environment.

I became very convinced, reading the literature on this, that all of these diseases and illnesses that they were being told they had fundamentally had to do with the environment, their diet, their lifestyle. Their homes, their buildings, their cars, chemicals in the environment, air pollution, water pollution, all these things. Of course, their diet, if I did not mention that, I have to mention that on this podcast in particular, right? The diagnoses they were all labeled with generally fell under the category of autoimmune. Now, what is autoimmunity?

If you look at the textbook definition, it is a disease where the body is attacking itself. I really think this is, and I make this point in the book, I think in chapter one or two. If you look at a natural disaster, if you look at the response to it afterwards, aid convoys rolling in, sometimes the military gets involved, the National Guard, police. How does that look if you’re, like, in outer space? You’re looking down on it. How does that look different from, say, some military operation or invasion? It’s not that they’re the same.

They’re very similar, right? When you look at autoimmunity, I really think people have been told this is your body attacking itself. It’s really your body trying to repair itself. The body can get confused. The immune system can get confused. I also think it’s important to point out Tom Cowan, who I really appreciate and who has often been a guest on this show and a speaker at Weston A. Price Foundation events.

He, at a conference that I attended, and I think it was 2022, said something like, he objected to the whole categorization of the immune system as an immune system. He said something like, “It’s really the body’s renewal and regeneration system.” That’s absolutely correct. Most of what the immune system does day to day is not what I think people are told that it does, which is that it runs around eliminating threats. It does run around eliminating threats. If you look at, for example, the amount of time the NYPD spends eliminating threats, like actually putting bullets downrange at bad guys, it’s a tiny fraction of what they do.

If you look at the whole municipality of a city like New York, there’s so much more activity for waste disposal and water treatment and just picking up trash on the sidewalks or the meter maids or whatever. My point is your body has all these different things that it has to do every single day just to remain a nice place to live. People forget that. There are a lot of industries that benefit from people not understanding what it’s like to take care of their bodies because their products, their services are fundamentally injurious to the body. When people wake up and they say, “I have this autoimmune disease. My body’s attacking itself.”

Your immune system isn’t attacking you. It’s working overtime trying to repair cellular damage.

Yes, but little did you know or realize that your diet, your lifestyle, your environment were tearing your body down, and now your immune system is just confused. It might be attacking your thyroid or your adrenal glands and so on. I’m not saying we shouldn’t suppress the immune system in some cases because that can be lifesaving. The whole lens that people view this through, what is autoimmunity?

Is it your body attacking itself? Yes. You’ll also find there are a lot of diseases like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, which are two of the most common we treat, where even the experts will debate, is this autoimmune, or is it not? It has all these hallmarks of autoimmunity.

Ultimately, in the end, all of these diseases come back to repair the deficit, which is a concept I got from my friend, Russell Jaffe, who’s featured in the first quote in the book and whose work I love.

We’re going to get to repairing the deficit for sure. First of all, you made me think of the cholesterol myth. When the cholesterol is sent to our arteries, it’s a Band-Aid, right? It’s something that is going there to protect. I almost hear what you’re saying with these rescue crews as being like, this autoimmunity, it’s its way of trying to protect itself. An attempt to rescue these damaged cells and tissues and to resolve the inflammation. Can you talk a little bit more about that, about the inflammation itself?

Almost no one gets into that level of detail with me. It’s hard to give you a specific answer because the inflammatory response can vary widely based on the disease. For example, the immunological features of something like multiple sclerosis will vary from something like, say, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. If you’re asking me, like, what happens? Damage occurs. What is damage? If we had to define the damage, what would it be?

Uncovering The Hidden Drivers Of Cellular Damage

When I think about cellular damage, I really go back to two things that are part of our framework, toxins and stress. I really view toxins and stress as actually being very much the same thing because the mechanism is the same or very much the same. I look at toxins as things that can come into the body and remain in the body. Generally speaking, they disrupt normal cellular metabolism. Stress does the same thing depending on the stressor, because most stress can either be too much or the right amount.

For example, you can create and worsen autoimmunity with exercise, but you also need exercise to have a healthy immune system. The dose makes the poison. Paracelsus comes to mind. It’s a very important concept for people to appreciate. When I look overall at the inflammatory response or the inflammatory process, I think about these toxins that have gotten into the cell that are poisoning it. About stress that is interacting with the cell in some way and usually in excess, but sometimes, for example, microwave, radio wave radiation, ultraviolet type.

I guess C is technically, your cells technically emit ultraviolet light type C in order to reproduce or divide, but you could be exposed to UV light in an environment that would be too much for your skin, if that makes sense. Stress can be out of its dose where it’s healthy and optimal, and it can then create the same effects as the toxin. If there’s any one cause of all these illnesses today, I really think the burden is mostly the toxins and the stress.

That I find to be particularly true amongst health-literate people, the people who tune in to this show, because while they may still have nutritional deficiencies that haven’t been addressed, that may be complex. They have an exceptional requirement for a nutrient. They’ve got a toxic exposure requiring them to have more of a nutrient than they might otherwise. The toxins are insidious. They’re throughout the environment. When they get into cells, they will disrupt normal cellular metabolism. Generally speaking, the end result of that is increased free radical generation.

Which is part of why there’s such enthusiasm and so much benefit that people see from taking antioxidants like vitamin C, like quercetin, insert antioxidant here. There are so many of these products on the market, and there’s more and more coming. This isn’t just frankly good marketing. This is just the reality that people’s bodies are being torn down by these toxins and stresses, and they need more and more in order to keep up with this burden. They get into cells and tissues. They create this inflammatory response, or they create free radical damage.

Wise Traditions - Kendall Nelson | Dr. Leland Stillman | Autoimmunity — Autoimmunity: When toxins and stress overload your system, your tissues pay the price. Real healing starts when you clear the burden.

This then triggers the inflammatory response and the immune system and all components of it, the T cells, the B cells, the immunoglobulins, the whole immune response. Will deliver a response that’s in proportion to the inflammation, the inflammatory signal, and do whatever it can in order to remove the toxins from the injured tissue, supply nutrients and cells and stem cells, for example, to heal the injured tissue and clear anything there that needs to be destroyed, infections, cancers, etc. That’s how I think about it.

Leland, can you also describe what the condition of people is today? How many people are affected by autoimmune conditions? How many of these conditions are there, and what types are there? Can you just give us a little picture of what’s going on?

We see probably two dozen different discrete autoimmune diagnoses a year in the practice. We mostly see. If I had to pick two diagnoses we see more than anything, they are fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. Some people would debate that those are autoimmune in nature, but I couldn’t make it the end of autoimmunity and chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. I just kept the title short. We’ll get one or two cases, and we do not work with that many people. We take on about 20 to 50 cases a year, and we have about 190 patients right now.

We’ll get one or two cases a year of more obscure diagnoses, myasthenia gravis, Sjogren’s syndrome, and these are not obscure. They’re well described, they’re well known, but as far as how many people in the populace have them, 1 in 1000, 1 in 500, these are not particularly prevalent. What I think is more the reason behind why I wrote the book and why this became my practice is how much more prevalent these diseases are now than they were before.

Rebuilding Nutrient Density In A Toxic World

I do not have the exact quote or statistic off the top of my head, but these diseases are increasing in prevalence so quickly that pretty much everyone will have one of these diagnoses in the next 50 years. I do not want that to happen. Why is this happening? It’s a combination of poorly nourishing food, so big, industrially produced, chemically fertilized, herbicide, toxin-laden food that does not properly nourish the body. We see this in people’s hair all the time.

We do a lot of hair testing. Chapter five heavily discusses the hair testing that we do. People just do not have the same density of minerals in their bodies that they should and that they used to, and we look at this all the time when we take dietary histories from patients because we can see it in the data. A great read for people is Joel Salatin’s book, The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs. He’s got an incredible graph in there where he compares the nutrients in a Polyface Farms pasture-raised egg and the nutrients in a store-bought egg. Now, if you go to a fitness tracker, a meal tracker as we use in our practice, and you say, “I ate one egg,” they’ll give you the factory-farmed version.

It totally misses this gap, this massive gap. There can be hundreds of fold differences between one product and another in terms like folate, for example. The one that occurs to me is like, I think the store-bought egg had like 70 micrograms of folate and Joel’s had something like 1200. That’s an enormous difference. Anyway, our food’s been depleted of its nutrients because of how it’s being raised and because of how our soils are being abused. You add the toxins from the environment that are, in many respects, insidious.

When I say that, what I mean is I often have people coming in there like, I eat organic, I live clean, I have an air purifier, I drink filtered water. How do I have all this mercury? Did you know 100 tons of mercury drop every year on the East Coast from industrial and agricultural activity in Africa? Your water filter can remove most of it, but I tested my water filter the other day. We have an on-counter reverse osmosis system. It removes 90% of the total dissolved solids. Is 90% good? Yes. Is 90% 100%? No, it is not.

If you just do some basic math, and I lay this out in the book, I lay it out in the companion resources online, particularly my post on minerals, metals, and autoimmunity, just a can of tuna fish every week, just a single night out with sushi in the tuna roll a month. Can you do it? Can you get away with it? Yes. Does it accumulate over time if you’re not careful with the rest of your lifestyle and your environment to get those toxins out, either through the gut or your urine or your sweat glands? A lot of people come into my practice. They’ve seen everyone.

They’ve tried everything. They are confused. They think I cannot possibly have toxins on board. I just had a great case last week. This guy’s been with us for almost a year. He 10X’d, I think it was, his aluminum level in his hair this last quarter. I said, “Look, did you start using aluminum-based deodorant? No. Did you start taking aluminum-based antacids? No. Did you start cooking in aluminum cookware? No. Did you start cooking your food in tinfoil? No. Did you start using aluminum-based sodium bicarbonate baking soda?

Pastured food delivers hundreds of times more nutrients than factory eggs. Soil health directly dictates your vitality.

You have no aluminum exposure right now at all whatsoever? No. None of that.” Lives with his wife. She’s a nurse. They’ve got a very healthy, organic, outdoorsy lifestyle. What are we seeing in his hair? His body is finally getting rid of it and is ready to let go of this aluminum that’s been stored in his cells and tissues for who knows how long. The toxins and stresses are a big piece. The other piece that I think is increasing rapidly, and that is very important for us to get a handle on, is the EMF. Because you mentioned cholesterol earlier, I now wonder to what degree everyone is developing a little bit of arterial damage just because we cannot stop other people’s EMF.

We can mitigate in our homes. We can drop the radiation significantly, but who wants to live in their house all day after they’ve mitigated it, even if they have been able to. What do you do if you rent? These are important things for us to tackle. The EMF thing is going to become so much more important as they get into, like 6G, which is, 5G was bad enough. I point out that the rollout of 5G coincided with something else that we were all told was something else. Anyway, we’ll leave it at that.

Let’s get into some of the principles of your book, some of the things that make your book truly unique. Earlier, you mentioned the term repair deficit. I’d like you to tell us why you coined that term and what it means.

Shifting From Chronic Inflammation To Active Repair

It’s very important. I did not coin this term. I got this term from my friend Russell Jaffe. Inflammation, huge buzzword. Everyone talks about inflammation. What’s interesting about inflammation is that inflammation is a little bit like saying debt or credit. What is it really? It’s when household expenses and expenditures outpace income. When you have inflammation, why do you have inflammation? Now you get inflammation from stepping on a nail, banging your head on a low-hanging ceiling, being bitten by a wasp, whatever.

Inflammation is your body saying, “There’s damage here. We need to repair it.” Your immune system and your body create pain. The pain gets you to stop doing what you are doing, pull your hand away from the hot stove, run away from the wasp’s nest, duck your head the next time you’re walking through the low-hanging ceiling area. The pain is a signal for you to change your behavior. The swelling immobilizes the location. People are like, “I want to reduce the swelling in my injured knee.” Do you? It’s because it’s preventing you from moving it, and you need to move it in order for it to recover. Just let it be swollen and let it sort itself out.

Redness is blood flow moving into the area. These are the four. What I’m covering here are the four cardinal symptoms of inflammation. There’s an increase in temperature. An increase in temperature is due to increased blood flow and the metabolic activity in the tissue. Those four things are the cardinal signs of inflammation they teach us in medical school, which for me was now a decade ago. Hard to believe that, but here it is those four things are the immune system and the body in general marshaling resources in order to repair the damage.

Once it’s paid down the repair deficit, the inflammation goes away. When you think about inflammation as damage, it’s just like, “I’m damaged. I have this damage. I’m broken. I need to fix myself.” Yes, and you have a lack of repair relative to damage. Now what do we need to do? We need to add the things that your body doesn’t have, nutrients, rest, darkness at night, lack of or low EMF environments. We also need to reduce the things that are going to fuel that inflammation.

We need to turn off the cell phone. We need to turn out the lights at night, the artificial lights at night. We need to get rid of the sometimes toxic relationships, toxic people. I get into that in the book, at least a little bit. Obviously, all the environmental toxins, the processed food, all the things that are creating that inflammation. When you do that, then you see wellness appear.

These deposits that you’re talking about, you’re talking about eliminating things in order to not have this chronic inflammation, but you’re also talking about making these healthy deposits. What would some of these healthy deposits be if you were just to list a few of them?

That’s a great question. It’s funny because my first thought is our fourteen-day reset. I included in the book some of the little things that I share with patients quickly so that they can just get started. The first of these is the fourteen-day reset. If you want more, buy the book because there’s also a fourteen-day detox, which I have to admit, I wrote it, and then Amy, my health coach, was like, “You wrote your fourteen-day detox, but you really shouldn’t remove these things for fourteen days.

Resetting Your Biology With Foundational Habits

You should remove them forever.” I’m like, “Yes, I know.” You start with fourteen days and then make it a habit. Anyway, there’s the fourteen-day detox. I packed a bunch of this stuff into something that I hope is out by the time this airs, called our 30-day immune wellness roadmap, which, if you want access to it, you can get access to by booking an evaluation with a member of my team. We can walk you through what that looks like for you. The fourteen-day reset is just a few simple habits, but they’re the ones that I found get people the biggest wins and are also the most practical.

The first is to get into natural light as soon as you possibly can in the morning. Get your coffee, take it outside, walk around the block, sit in a sunny breakfast nook. I went to a coffee shop and had my coffee right in direct sunlight. The second habit is to drink two, and this is out of order, potentially from the book, but that’s just a minor detail, two liters of spring water a day. Take three ten-minute walks, and then we have a little fourteen-day reset diet meal plan, which is one serving of protein.

A serving is about a cup. I tell people, if you do not have a cup measure or it just doesn’t make sense, look at your fist. That is a serving size for you. You want a protein, and a protein is not yogurt or milk. Protein is like steak, chicken, fish, etc. Some fish or meat, or shellfish, technically. A handful of nuts and seeds, one serving of greens, and one serving of root vegetables. That is where I start everyone. Now, some people need a simpler diet than that, more cooked, no carbs, lower carb.

It varies. We tailor that to patients and cases. Get the lights out at night. Make your environment as dark as possible at 7:00 PM. Get to bed by 10:00 PM. Those are the top things that I see moving the needle for people. When people break those rules, they stay up late, they do not get the lights out, they do not get three ten-minute walks, they eat way off that meal plan, they do not get morning light, they do not get proper hydration. That’s when I see people often failing.

You had one more thing in that fourteen-day plan, and that was to send three things to people.

How could I forget? My favorite habit of all. Take a few minutes to encourage, compliment, thank, or inspire someone else. It’s my favorite habit, and I have to confess it’s the easiest one for me to forget.

You do it every day, right?

Of course. I might occasionally forget or get distracted. Maybe getting distracted is a better way of putting it.

What I appreciate about this is that these are relatively easy things to do. In your book, you make the point that solving autoimmune conditions is not easy. It’s going to take work. This is a pretty basic, pretty easy thing. If I have a problem, I can go out and I can walk for ten minutes a day after each meal, or I can send something nice to three different friends a day. Try to fix my diet. I really appreciate that these things are doable and practical. Let’s talk a little bit about the framework in your practice. I know you’ve touched on these little aspects of it, but can you just list the different aspects of the framework? Let’s talk a little bit about each one.

Building A Sustainable Roadmap For Lasting Recovery

We have a five-part framework. The five parts correspond to five of the chapters of the book. We start with principles, then we get into essentials, hazards, diagnostics, and then therapeutics. When I was training in medical school, residency, and then when I went out to apprentice with other doctors who practiced integrative and functional medicine, there’s a natural tendency to focus on therapeutics and diagnostics only. This is a very reductionistic way of looking at people.

What I found in practice was that there was so much more that determined whether they got well or did not get well than just what tests we ran, how we interpreted them, and what supplements we gave them. We ran, I do not think I can call it an experiment, but we tried for a little while. A program where patients got a hair test for their minerals, they got a supplement protocol that we designed based on the data, and we checked in with them in a few months to see how they were doing. Very light touch, low to no touch, I would say.

Can’t fix chronic fatigue? Step outside in the morning sun, drink spring water, and turn off harsh screens at night.

Protocol-driven, no coaching, no history taking, and they did not get, at least anecdotally, anywhere near the level of results as people who we were able to actually sit down with, talk to, and coach through the process. That’s because, really, your diet and lifestyle will make or break your success. They are the foundation. When I set out to write this book, the more I thought about how to split it up and what to write about, the more I thought, I cannot just make it about diagnostics and therapeutics like most books I’ve read in this space.

I have to talk about the rest of it. One thing that really impressed me, and this is why it starts with this, we start with principles. What I found was the patients who had, and in writing this book, I think there’s a case study probably every couple of pages. I did a case study for every single point or protocol or therapy or diagnostic test that I share in the book. I did that to show we really do see patients. This is what the real numbers look like. It’s not tidy. It’s not simple. There’s noise. There’s chaos sometimes in your labs. There are inconsistencies.

What I overwhelmingly noticed when I went back over the cases to select what case studies to include in the book, one thing really jumped out at me, which was that the people who got great results had a very positive attitude. They were all principled people. These things I did not really appreciate then. I appreciate them more as I get older. Little things I actually think matter more and more these people did not swear. They would show up on time. They would do what they said they were going to do.

If they said, “I’ll eat that diet,” they would eat that diet. This ended up. Also, we ended up attracting, or I should say, how do I put this? I actually noticed that some of our best outcomes were Christians and conservatives because of their principles, I believe anyway. That’s where we start, principles, because you need to have the right attitude, the right mindset, the right beliefs in order to get well in the first place. People who have a really toxic attitude and mindset do not have a good moral code.

I just saw them not getting great results or being frustrated or upset or in some way unhappy with the process. That’s principles. The essentials are the things that are really essential to us. I thought about calling them foundations or fundamentals, but when I thought about what they are, they are like the essence of what something is at its most basic or fundamental. Essentials are things that we have to do that we’re wired into nature to be doing basic exercise, 3 to 10-minute walks, drinking spring water, getting sunlight, going to bed at night when it’s dark.

These are essential to who and what we are. We can cheat, and we can pretend, but there are no night owls. There are no people who thrive on processed food. At the end of the day, you just have to honor these essential components of your biology, or they’re going to come back and haunt you. We move on to hazards. Hazards are the things that make us sick, toxins and stress. Mitigating those is chapter four. Which ones, particularly, are the most damaging? I was a bit surprised getting into practice what I saw actually mattering and moving the needle the most.

I actually think the metals are much more injurious than pretty much any other toxin on planet Earth. I will say that artificial light, particularly if it’s much abused at night, and then EMF, particularly if someone’s sleeping next to a smart meter, will give heavy metals a run for their money. I give case after case in the book, and I have more cases online if people want to go look there, where minerals and metals really had just such a critical element or role in the case. This just makes sense. The heavy metals are the most toxic things on planet Earth on a weight basis.

There’s nothing more toxic than mercury. The thing that comes closest, by the way, is trichothecene toxin, T2 toxin, but that’s a purified derivative of black mold. That’s a black mold toxin. It’s actually a bioweapon, by the way. After hazards, we get to diagnostics, and then we get to therapeutics. I set it up that way because I really found that the people who did not fix the hazards and the essentials and did not have good principles, it did not matter what we did with diagnostics and therapeutics.

I want everyone to start there, go through it, and that was part of the ambition to write the book. I know that if people read this book and then join the practice, they’re going to get better results. The people in the practice, I do not know about everybody tuning in to this, but I find that with the number of online courses and podcasts, I’m just drowning in information. There’s something about a real book that I can pick up, hold, underline.

I still read hard copy books, and I underline them, and I write in the margins, and I go back and look at notes. I just thought I wanted this to be the manual. I also wanted it to be something because I’m big on eliminating technology and distraction, or minimizing them, I should say. I wanted something people could take in their hand without their phone, without their laptop, and just take it out and sit under a tree and read it. That’s how the book’s structured.

I too appreciate having a book in my hands and using it as a manual. If you were to come here and inspect, you would see that my book is underlined throughout. We’re two of a kind here. I did appreciate in your book how you gave personal case histories and the stories of your patients. Could you just pick one and just tell us something? I do not know. Pick one that was maybe hard to solve or something and that had a great outcome at the end, and let us know what you did to help that person.

What a great question, because it’s really hard. I picked all of them because they were my favorite cases. If you’re asking me, that was tough. There’s a case study in the therapeutics chapter where I write about bioidentical hormones, where we did everything. Finally, bioidentical hormones helped move the needle on her autoimmune skin disorder, lichen sclerosis. Now, what’s interesting is I got this update from her recently, so it’s not in the book. She found out that one of her medications, a beta blocker, has been implicated in the literature as causing her autoimmune skin condition.

The association is very, it’s underreported. We’re not sure how strong the association is, but I’ve got to tell you, I specialize in this. I see these cases all day. I did not hear about this except from her. She found this information and relayed it to me. That’s part of why this hasn’t been documented. This is because the beta blockers are an extremely common drug class. They’re used for everything from generalized anxiety disorder to high blood pressure to arrhythmias to stage fright.

The beta blockers have so many people on them, and they’re on so many other things that it wouldn’t surprise me if there is a link, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we’ve been 40 or 50 years late in figuring it out because I kept looking at this case. I kept thinking she’s doing all the right things and she’s not getting better. Why is she not getting better? If you’ve got a drug in the picture that’s driving the autoimmunity, that can be the problem.

Now, as a result of that and other experiences, we’re much more proactive about screening for drugs that patients are on and getting them off of them. I will say we do not have a lot of patients on drugs. Most of our patients come to us on few, if any, medications. They are on a really wide range of supplements. Some of them are on none. Some of them are on an enormous number. The supplements, they’re not implicated in autoimmunity, whereas the drugs frequently are.

In reading your book, one of the things that I really appreciated was that you did give these case studies, and there were lots of different stories. Some of them were easier to solve than others. One of the points that you make in the book is that you do not really care so much about the definition of the condition. You do not really care so much that they have this particular autoimmune condition. You see it more just as an umbrella of, like, okay, the person is ill. We do not have to wait for a diagnosis. We do not have to wait until it gets so far down the road that they get diagnosed with a label of an autoimmune condition. I found that really refreshing and really smart.

Thank you.

As we begin to wrap up, can you tell me what a future without autoimmunity looks like to you?

Creating Spaces For True Human Connection

Do you know what’s funny is, I cannot help but think about Weston A. Price Foundation events that I’ve been to because that’s what it looks like when I go to a Weston A. Price Foundation event, no one is on their phone. Everyone is talking to other people. You walk by the products, the expo, the people’s tables. There are paperback and hardcover books everywhere. There’s real food everywhere. Technology is great, but there aren’t a lot of apps or software. It’s very old-fashioned.

It’s really going to be interesting to see how this plays out. I’m very sure that there are people like me who view this future as invaluable. That means that, when you really get down to it, what is making us sick? It’s the EMF. It’s artificial light. It’s the toxins in food. It’s processed food. People are probably going to come together and create communities where there is on-site agriculture. That way it doesn’t need to travel very far. Even if there are not discrete communities, I think there will be much more local agriculture where you can talk to your farmer.

A healthy future means local food, hard copy books, and turning off Wi-Fi devices in our homes.

You can shake their hand. They ship things in glass, maybe wax paper, other very durable things like steel, not aluminum containers, to your home. Your food’s very fresh. The world has to be connected by fiber-optic cable. We have to get rid of all these wireless devices. They have no place in a healthy world. I am sure they will always be used for that. People will always use them. Why? There’s going to be military search and rescue. Should your ambulance have a GPS so they do not get lost? Probably. There’s a limited use case for these.

In your home, a totally connected Wi-Fi home is a total disaster for your health. Increasingly, I think it’s also a security concern. If people can hear, watch, know exactly where you are in your home, when you are in your home, that’s like a thief’s, I do not know, perfect scenario when you can know when everybody’s home and where all the valuables are, right? People are going to need to get back to how things were before. We had privacy. We weren’t constantly connected. We had a local community. We had a local connection. We’re going to need to go back to that. It’s going to be great.

It’s going to be way less cheap. I look at this stuff like buying furniture. It’s all just cheap, fast-produced, quickly produced, poor quality, going to fall apart, doesn’t look good. At the same time, because of the way our consumer culture has gone, it’s very expensive to buy real quality stuff. You’re either looking at a $200 prefab, poorly made bookshelf on Amazon, or you’re looking at a $2,000 custom-made Amish wood bookshelf, for example. People will move back, and then the craft, handmade stuff will get more affordable, and we’ll just abandon all the cheap stuff that we never should have made in the first place.

I can tell you that I want to live in that world. I’m so glad that you talked about the house and things like EMFs and lighting, because this is just part one of our interview with you. We’re going to do a part two that people will be able to tune into next week. That’s going to be sick building syndrome. We’re going to get to that. Before we say goodbye, I want to just ask you one last question. That’s, if you could just pick one thing, if the audience could do one thing to better their health, what would you choose?

Number one, you should become a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation and attend your local events and your local chapter events. Number two is it shameless self-promotion for me to say, ” Read my book?

No, I think everybody should read your book.

I guess that’s implied. The tough thing about that because I often get that question, like, what’s one thing I can do? I’m just like, “Boy, I get one thing.” I do not know if I can do it in one thing. If you ask me what’s the single most important thing, I guess I’ll put it to you this way. If you told me I had to give up all my healthy habits, but I could only keep one, I would get out of this house in the morning every day to see the sun. It has such a powerful effect on your brain. In that regard, it has a powerful effect on your sleep, your mood, and your creativity. For a long time, every morning I’ve gotten up, and just me, my laptop, writing, thinking. I couldn’t go without it. That would be it. It’s the first habit in the fourteen-day reset.

Perfect. Dr. Stillman, thank you so much for being with us here. I really appreciate your time. I hope everybody goes and buys your book, The End of Autoimmunity. It’s a must.

Thank you.

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Our guest was Dr. Leland Stillman. To learn more about his work and his new book, The End of Autoimmunity: Cutting-Edge Tactics for Energy, Vitality, and Longevity, visit Leland Stillman, MD. This conversation challenged us to look beyond the diagnosis. Dr. Stillman’s approach is built around a five-part framework, principles, essentials, hazards, diagnostics, and therapeutics.

He believes we often jump straight to testing and treatments without first addressing the foundation, our mindsets and habits, the essentials our bodies need to thrive, and the hazards in our environment that may be making us sick. His experience has taught him that if those first pieces are not addressed, even the best diagnostics and therapies may fall short.

Dr. Stillman says some of his best outcomes have been among patients with strong values. People who show up, follow through on their commitments, and have the desire to put those principles into practice. For him, the right attitude, mindset, and beliefs are an important part of creating the foundation for healing. Dr. Stillman offered a compelling picture of what a healthier future could look like.

Fresh food produced close to our home, relationships with our farmers, stronger local communities, less dependence on wireless technology, more face-to-face connection, and a return to simpler ways of living. It’s a vision that shares much in common with the principles of the Weston A. Price Foundation. Remember, this is only part one of our conversation with Dr. Stillman.

Next week, he’ll be back to talk about sick building syndrome and the ways our homes and workplaces may be contributing to poor health. I’m Kendall Nelson, the host and producer of the show on behalf of the Weston A. Price Foundation. For a full transcript of this episode, visit Weston A. Price and click on the Podcast Page. If you’re enjoying the show, we’d be grateful if you’d take a moment to leave a rating or review wherever you tune in. Your feedback helps others discover the show and become part of this growing community. Thank you for spending this time with us. Be well, be nourished, and be free.

About Dr. Leland Stillman

Dr. Leland Stillman is a board-certified internal medicine physician, author, and practitioner of natural and functional medicine. His work focuses on helping patients uncover the root causes of chronic illness through personalized, holistic care, with particular attention to autoimmunity, fatigue, environmental illness, and other complex health conditions. Rather than simply managing symptoms, Dr. Stillman helps patients identify the underlying factors affecting their health and build a path toward lasting wellness. He is the author of The End of Autoimmunity (2026) and Dying to Be Free (2023).