Why Autoimmunity Is On The Rise with Dr. Aristo Vojdani
In today's episode, Haylie Pomroy sits down with Dr. Aristo Vojdani, one of the most cited immunologists in the world, with over 50 years of clinical research and more than 200 published studies. He opens with the data that most doctors have not talked openly about: anti-nuclear antibody positivity in the so-called healthy population has risen from roughly 1% in 1970 to an estimated 20% today. He explains why better testing is not the reason, and what environmental exposures, heavy metals, viral particles, toxic chemicals, and immune system dysregulation are actually driving that rise.
Dr. Vojdani also introduces a framework that is both practical and urgent: the four zones of autoimmunity, green, yellow, orange, and red, and explains why antibodies show up in the blood three to 19 years before symptoms of full autoimmune disease ever appear. That window is not just a warning. It is an opportunity. He walks through the specific lab panels available today that can tell you where you are in that spectrum, what cross-reactivity between viruses and human tissue means for conditions like MS, liver autoimmunity, and long COVID, and what actually keeps the immune system in balance at the cellular level.
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Dr. Aristo Vojdani is a leading immunologist and microbiologist specializing in environmental triggers of complex diseases. He has developed over 300 antibody assays, authored more than 170 scientific publications, and holds 15 U.S. patents related to immune disorders of the brain and gut. Dr. Vojdani serves as an adjunct professor at Loma Linda University and the National University of Health Sciences, and is the CEO of Immunosciences Lab and chief scientific advisor for Cyrex Labs. He has received numerous awards, including the Linus Pauling Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the F.R. Carrick Research Institute.
Learn more about the Immunosciences Lab:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/immunosciences.lab
Website: https://immunoscienceslab.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/immunsci/
Learn more about Cyrex Labs:
Website: https://www.cyrexlabs.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CyrexLaboratories
Haylie Pomroy, Founder and CEO of The Haylie Pomroy Group, is a leading health strategist specializing in metabolism, weight loss, and integrative wellness. With over 25 years of experience, she has worked with top medical institutions and high-profile clients, developing targeted programs and supplements rooted in the "Food is Medicine" philosophy. Inspired by her own autoimmune journey, she combines expertise in nutrition, biochemistry, and patient advocacy to help others reclaim their health. She is a New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet.
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EDITED TRANSCRIPT
Haylie Pomroy: I'm your host, Haylie Pomroy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet, a leading health and wellness expert. And that's right, guys, I am back in school again, getting my PhD in neuroimmunology. I will always be a fierce advocate for those in a little bit of need and help. As your advocate, I try to bring individuals that are just exceptional in the fields that can actually make a clinical difference in your life. Today I'm very excited. I'm going to fangirl out. I'm going to geek out a little bit here. We have Dr. Vojdani here with us today.
I have actually followed your work for many, many years, Dr. Vojdani, and I know that you have done over 50 years of clinical research in immunology, that you are at Loma Linda University teaching functional medicine. You've published over 200, probably not even up to date, well over 200 clinical research articles, but I don't want to keep going. Dr. Vojdani, thank you so much for being here. I really, really appreciate it.
Aristo Vojdani: It is my pleasure and honor to be here. And also, please share with the audience that you and I met at a very recent International Congress of Autoimmunity in beautiful Ljubljana, where both of us had presentations.
Haylie Pomroy: We did. And it was so amazing to be in Ljubljana and just incredible doctors, physicians like yourselves, that were just coming together. I think right now it's so important globally to talk about just what in the world is going on in autoimmunity.
Dr. Vojdani, I know that your postdoctoral work was at UCLA. I mean, I feel like I can tell you all about yourself, but I want to just jump in because our community is really concerned right now. I've shared with our community, and it's how I, why I did what I did in nutrition and in changing my metabolism and dealing with toxins. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that completely changed my life. I had gotten accepted as alternate vet school as a junior year, was going to start my senior year. And I had to take a medical leave of absence.
When I was diagnosed with my autoimmune disorder many moons ago, it was just so uncommon. People thought what could, what could be wrong, but it is rampant right now. And that's why I wanted to bring you to the table. What in the world is going on? Why are we seeing so much autoimmune disease? And again, I know we got to meet each other in person out of the country, but it's crazy here in the United States.
Aristo Vojdani: Yes. And I would like to interject something that the audience will not forget. That when we do not play the game by the rules and exposing our immune system to so many environmental factors, then the immune system is going to fight back. And that fight back is going to end up with inflammation and autoimmunity. As an immunologist, when I took my course of immunology in 1967, so you can see how old I am.
Haylie Pomroy: You look amazing.
Aristo Vojdani: The professor, first of all, told us that students, listen to me. The future is, the future of medicine is immunology. And today we see how much he was right about this. And then he started teaching us. And the first lesson in the immune system was the body's immune system can differentiate between self versus non-self. When that balance breaks down, the result is going to be autoimmunity.
Haylie Pomroy: I think what he said back then was exquisitely profound. I just think a large part of medicine didn't listen.
Aristo Vojdani: I agree.
Haylie Pomroy: I mean, I can't tell you how many people in our community have had to beg, steal, cheat, and borrow, and be gaslit and throw fits to finally get adequate labs run that can even give an indication that their body's struggling. When you tell me in 67, that's why I'm doing my PhD in neuroimmunology and not something else. Is because the immune system is being attacked and our bodies are fighting back. What is causing, what's the rise? Why now? What's happening now?
Aristo Vojdani: First of all, let's present the evidence that the autoimmunity is on the rise.
Haylie Pomroy: Yeah. I can't just keep saying my community, everybody I know, all of my neighbors, give me the science.
Aristo Vojdani: Because many doctors or some scientists also claim that we have improved our detection methodologies, which I disagree 100%. Why? Because the anti-nuclear antibody, which is a test developed more than probably 50 years ago, is an indication that you make antibodies against your cellular components, meaning something from the environment get into your cell and because of that, the body loses the differentiation between cell versus non-cell and then attacking your own cells.
And let me give you a good, good example. And this is proven, published many, many years ago in scientific journals. Heavy metals can bind to the cell membrane. Then, after binding to the cell membrane, managed to go inside the cell, binding to the nuclear components, RNA, DNA, and nucleoproteins. And that's why the cell goes through cell death. And then we make antibody against the component of the cell, which a heavy metal is bound to.
Haylie Pomroy: Can I break that down for our listeners for a second?
Aristo Vojdani: Please, please.
Haylie Pomroy: We know that autoimmunity is on the rise. There's the statistical data that proves that to us. And we're saying that it can't be because we have a better detection method, because the ANA titers that are anti-nuclear antibody titers have been around for over 50 years, right?
Aristo Vojdani: Yes.
Haylie Pomroy: So a lot of our community or the world probably accepts, even in culture, they say it's in your DNA. The DNA is what makes you up.
It's in my DNA. I behave that way because of my DNA. The DNA is, is a reflection of self. Like in science, there's, I'm going to make this for me, distill it down to a third grader. It's a reflection of self, and anti-nuclear antibody is a detection of something that's circulating in the blood. That's saying I am destroying self. Is that correct?
Aristo Vojdani: Yes.
Haylie Pomroy: Okay. And what you're telling me is that when we're exposed to things like heavy metal toxins, that those heavy metal toxins, not only bind to the cell, but they migrate in into the RNA and the DNA. They become part of self. Like we're wildly seeing this in the viral space, how the viruses come in? We're not talking about Star Trek science here. This is really a foundational virology that the toxins, that the viruses that they come and they lay in and, and become part of self, and then our bodies, like you said, fight back. And that's where we call it autoimmunity. Am I grasping that correctly? If it's not because there's a better test than the ANA titers, is it because there are more toxins?
Aristo Vojdani: In 2020, Dr. Miller from the Environmental Health Institute, he published a very important article about the rise of anti-nuclear antibodies. In that article, it showed in that in 1970, 1.2%, close to 1% of the so-called healthy population were positive for anti-nuclear antibody.
Haylie Pomroy: When I got diagnosed, I didn't know anybody else.
Aristo Vojdani: 1991. 21 years later, that percentage went up to 7%. Then in 2012, it went up to 12.5%. And I made some kind of calculation. This is my number. In 2024, most probably 20% of the so-called healthy population is positive for anti-nuclear antibodies.
Haylie Pomroy: That number doesn't even shock me because we're hearing people in our community tell us things like — we had a person in our community, and then I couldn't believe how many people chimed in, that ANA titers are so commonly detected as positive now, that there are rheumatologists that are saying, maybe that's not autoimmune. Maybe we're just, I don't know, the test became more sensitive, or we're starting to see it more. Heaven forbid, it means that more people are in a stage of autoimmunity.
I just can't imagine if we think that 20% of our healthy population has, and I don't know if we can call it an autoimmune disease with a positive ANA.
Aristo Vojdani: Correct. The way I look at this, first of all, I said “so-called,” because anti-nuclear antibodies detected in your patient, but you don't see symptoms, that doesn't mean the patient's immune system did not initiate autoimmune reactivity.
Please, Haylie, clarify this part. There is a difference between autoimmune reactivity versus autoimmune disease. And then I'll add more to this.
Haylie Pomroy: Perfect. I love that you are leading with that because for me, just like we are starting to do things like, although it makes me nervous because the drug of choice with autoimmune disorders, look, I'm going to be blunt. I was on 60 to 80 milligrams of prednisone and an anti-rejection drug, and it almost killed me.
I go like earlier detection, we can intervene because I believe in food as medicine. I believe in natural therapies. I believe in stress reduction. I believe in detoxing, getting rid of poisons, mobilizing toxins, and healing the pathways of detoxification. I'm like, let's run everybody and let's see if everybody has ANA so we can get that autoimmune reactivity and prevent it from turning into autoimmune disease. That's where my mind goes. But I sure as heck don't want to see it widely accepted with the American Medical Association. And so suddenly, just like with diabetes. They've lowered and lowered and lowered the hemoglobin A1Cs, and they've lowered and lowered and lowered your fasting blood sugar so they can get everybody on diabetic medication.
Prednisone is cheap. Why don't we just put everybody on prednisone? We could have a whole talk show on that.
But from what I understand, and you would be who would help me with this, the ANA titer means that the immune system is now angry at self. It doesn't mean it's fully developed into a disease state. Is that correct?
Aristo Vojdani: Absolutely correct. In 2018, in the Journal of Autoimmunity, where they looked at the presence of antibodies, we are now above anti-nuclear antibody, beyond anti-nuclear antibody, many antibodies.
Haylie Pomroy: Yeah, I got to meet the doctor that developed the antibodies for lupus when we were in Ljubljana together.
Aristo Vojdani: Anti-DSDNA antibodies. These antibodies, according to that report, depending on the type of autoimmune disease, are detected in the blood 3 to 19 years before the full presence of autoimmune disease.
Haylie Pomroy: Do we know, or do we think that in that 3 to 19 years, first of all, do we think we can stop the runaway train?
Aristo Vojdani: Definitely we'll get to that. Definitely.
Haylie Pomroy: Can we intervene? I have an interesting phenomenon that I want to run by you, and we can always clip it out, but I've got you here. I'm dying to ask you this question. Hopefully, we can keep it in. Cause I know other people in my community would love to hear it.
For me, I have positive ANA titers in less, we have in-house labs, so I can take blood every week if I want. When I go through a very focused nutrition-based detoxification program. Like I'll do a 10-day or a 30-day food and nutrient-based cleanse. My ANA titers disappear. Is that because I've mobilized and excreted toxins and my body's immune system doesn't have to focus on that? And I mean, consistently. Again, I'm not in the norm of, but I don't know. I consider myself my own lab experiment constantly, I've been doing this for 30 years on myself.
Can facilitating detoxification, binding to toxins, identifying, removing, and healing, can that lower an ANA titer?
Aristo Vojdani: The answer is yes, but we'll come back to that later on.
Haylie Pomroy: I love when the professor tells me yes.
Aristo Vojdani: For example, we said 3 to 19 years antibodies are detected in the blood. In the case of MS, myelin basic protein antibody, Myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG) antibodies, ganglioside, cerebellar, synapsin, there are at least 20 different biomarkers of neural autoimmunity, which probably some of those antibodies are going to be part of your PhD, hopefully.
These are detected 3 years. And then in a case of liver autoimmunity, anti-mitochondrial antibodies, anti-smooth muscle antibody detected 18 to 19 years before the onset of liver autoimmunity.
The message here is, ladies and gentlemen, there is 3 to 18 years of window of opportunity for intervention. Is that answering your question?
Haylie Pomroy: It is.
Aristo Vojdani: But what to do? We'll talk about almost towards the end of the conversation.
Haylie Pomroy: Yes. At any time, our community absolutely loves that. And with certain of the autoimmune disorders that you mentioned, like MS, there's a lot of science and research showing that there's a viral component to that as well. And there's even to layer it, some individuals talking about viral reactivation happening because of environmental toxins or toxicity. And with our current time, there's a lot of people in the chat rooms in the communities and in our community that are talking about this mycotoxin storm that's coming after the hurricanes in areas like North Carolina, that those toxins can cause the viruses to reactivate, can cause the immune system to attack the DNA, RNA, nuclear tissue, proteins, and things of that nature.
Are we in this perfect storm where you think that 20% is going to blow up on us?
Aristo Vojdani: Yes, again. But let me continue with a little bit of additional information. We'll come back to that soon.
In some of my presentations, I made this beautiful arrow. The first part of the arrow is green. Ladies and gentlemen, I want all of you to be in the green zone. But the next part is yellow. The next part is orange. And the next part of the arrow is red. In the yellow is when you have anti-nuclear antibody, anti-smooth muscle antibody, and anti-mitochondrial antibody; your rheumatologist will send you home. Will say nothing is wrong with you.
You don't have any symptoms. Yes, the antibodies are present. You don't have symptoms.
Haylie Pomroy: So is it like a ticking time bomb? It’s going to develop?
Aristo Vojdani: Yes. The next is if you don't do anything about that during probably 3 to 19 years, then you move to the orange phase. Meaning your antibodies are even more elevated, and you have some symptoms, but still your body is functioning. You have, for example, rheumatoid arthritis. You have pain, but still you can walk. Again, you don't do anything about it when you are in the orange zone. A few years later, you move to the red zone. Unfortunately, the red zone is when you have very high levels of antibodies or no antibodies, because when the cells get destroyed, they will not be able to make more antibodies. But you have symptomatology, and a dysfunctional part of your body is present, dysfunctional. Again, we would like to intervene when you are in the yellow zone or the latest in the orange zone based on some of these laboratory testing and symptomatology.
Yes, you can do a lot in order to reverse or stop the progression of autoimmunity from yellow to orange to red. If you have any comments, please go ahead, and then we'll continue about the role of viruses in neuroautoimmunity.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. How does someone know what zone they're in? What types of tests can be run, and how do they get their doctor to run those tests?
Aristo Vojdani: I think as part of your annual checkup, please consider screening for autoimmune diseases. There's a panel in our laboratory, which is Immunosciences Lab, and there is another panel at Cyrex Laboratories, which I developed that we measure antinuclear antibody, extractable nuclear antigen (ENA), double-stranded DNA, rheumatoid factor, actin antibody, mitochondrial antibodies, and the most important of all is total immune complexes.
Because everybody looks at CRP as a biomarker of inflammation. Not saying, don't do that, please do that. But look at your immune complexes because when you're bombarded by lots of antigens, and you make antibodies, antigen plus antibody bind together, activating the complement-forming complex called immune complexes. And these immune complexes, if they are very low, they get handled by copper cells in the liver and get rid of them. But when they are too much, and your liver is not functioning properly, then the immune complex is going to build up, and those immune complexes can go into your joints, enhancing symptomatology of arthritis, going into your kidney, and other part of the tissue, resulting in inflammation and autoimmunity.
Haylie Pomroy: I'm going to distill down what you said for our community. Just like you would go with your annual checkup, maybe you would have your blood sugar, your fasting blood sugar, and your hemoglobin A1c. And there was a big movement and a big push to look at patients that were pre-diabetic and do some sort of, I hope, nutrition and lifestyle intervention.
From a cardiovascular perspective, too. We look at total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, your CRP, and your C-reactive protein. But I think everybody, I'm going to really lean into women here for a second, especially women that are going through any kind of hormone change or fluctuation. And I have a question for you about that in my little notes over here.
But anytime that you've had tremendous stress, if you're not sleeping, if you're having any pain, any inflammation, any swelling of the joints, any symptom profile, and we have a Food Rx book that goes through the autoimmunity symptom profiles, anything that you can write for your doctor and ask them in your annual checkup to make sure that you have ANA, ENA, DSD, RF, total immune complex, and CRP also. I think I got that.
Aristo Vojdani: That is part of the humoral immune system. It is about $200. And that is the best $200 you can spend.
Haylie Pomroy: And just so you know, I've been doing this for a long time. It used to be about $2,400 back in the olden days when I first started practicing. It is phenomenal to also then give an indication of green, yellow, orange, and red.
I believe that the further you are, that there's the potential for more positive intervention and longer positive intervention. It's kind of, you can't walk 14 miles into the woods and expect to come back in three. The closer you are to green, the better. Hopefully, the less effort that you'll have. But how do people get these labs run? Do they ask their doctor to run these specific, we'll put it online so that my community will know. My community is going to be empowered, and they'll know how to do this. But do they just ask their doctor? They have to go to a specialty lab. How does that work?
Aristo Vojdani: Yeah. They go to the doctor and say, please draw an extra tube of blood and send it to this laboratory like Immunosciences Lab or Cyrex Laboratories, and ask for an autoimmune panel.
In addition, this was only about antibodies, but please remember, antibodies are produced by our white blood cells, by our lymphocytes. There is another unique panel of testing. They check your lymphocyte, whether or not you have a balanced immune system.
And let me simplify that. The immune system is like a thermostat in your room. If you turn up the temperature very high, let's say I like 70 degrees. If you turn it to 90 or 100, what will happen in that room? The analogy will be like, well, it's too hot. And then you will be inflammation in our body. And if we'll continue living in that environment of inflammation will result in autoimmunity in the future.
And the reverse of that is if you turn on the thermostat too low, put it at 50 degrees, 40 degrees. Also, your immune system, we call that immune suppression. One is hyperactivation of the immune system when the temperature is too high. When the temperature is too low, underactivation or hypoactivation of the immune system. We call that an immune deficiency.
Haylie Pomroy: Are autoimmune disorders always hyper or are they just misdisplaced? Is it just attacking the wrong thing?
Aristo Vojdani: In 80% of the cases, it's hyperactivation of the immune system. In 20% of the cases is underactivation of the immune system. Why? When the immune system turns off, what happens to viruses? Viruses are going to have a party in your body. And now, because the body cannot remove the viruses, and the viruses share homology with human tissue, including the brain, example, Epstein-Barr virus. It was published in several journals, including Nature Medicine last year, that the Epstein-Barr virus shares homology with brain tissue. Herpes type 6 shares homology with our brain.
Haylie Pomroy: Explain to us what homology means.
Aristo Vojdani: As you know, viruses have been in this world millions, maybe billions of years before us. Viruses, when they get into our body, because viruses cannot divide, cannot live on their own, they have to get inside our cells and feed from our tissue. But what is the job of the immune system? To go after them and destroy them.
But throughout the years, many years, the viruses became smart. They change their molecular structures. Their proteins would look like human proteins.
And because the immune system knows not to go after self-proteins, it will go after only non-self. They change themselves to look like humans, and that's how they try to survive. There is a fight between the human immune system and viruses.
Viruses fight back by causing mutation, changing their structure. Think about a necklace with like 30 different beads of different colors. That is, we call that the peptide, of different colors. And if we put those 30 beads of amino acids and take another 30 amino acids from myelin basic protein or myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein from the brain, put them side by side, if five of those will match with each other, the beads will be the same color, that is going to result in cross reactivity. And when we produce antibodies against the virus 30 beads, that antibody is going to attack our brain tissue because of similarity between these 30 beads from the brain versus Epstein-Barr virus or HHV-6.
Haylie Pomroy: So those viruses, they kind of camouflage themselves to look similar. And you had said before to brain tissue and what other types of tissue do they become similar to?
Aristo Vojdani: Let me give you an example of one of my own publications in Frontiers in Immunology that, as soon as, in middle 2020, as soon as antibodies, monoclonal antibodies became available against spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2, I applied that to 70 different human tissue antigens. That monoclonal antibody reacted with 25, including mitochondria, ANA, PSDNA, smooth muscle, myelin basic protein, and almost those 25 tissue antigens were representing almost every single tissue in our body. That's called cross-reactivity. That's the best way to show cross-reactivity between SARS-CoV-2 and human tissue antigen. But the brain always is number one reactive to viruses. It's not the tissue antigens.
Haylie Pomroy: I mean, it would be the correlation of why so many people that are dealing with long COVID are having neuroinflammatory disorders. I want to back up for a second, because what you said, I got chills, was just, I hadn't read that article yet. I will. But basically what you're saying, so we looked at monoclonal antibodies, which are the antibodies that were taken from a person that had SARS-CoV-19. We took these antibodies, and we applied them to tissues.
Now, they should only go after viral components. They shouldn't go after Haley's brain or Haley's mitochondria. They shouldn't go after a particular tissue unless SARS-CoV-19, that virus itself, became a chameleon that had peptides, or chains that looked similar to tissue. And that's why the antibodies bound to those. Am I saying that right? So I'm going to break it down. Basically, when your body went after COVID, when a body went after COVID, and we pulled that antibody, that thing, your fight, right, your immune system that fights the virus, as it was coded to fight this virus, it was also coded to fight your own tissue.
Can I ask a question just because it's just massive, you guys. That's huge. Yeah, mind blown over here. Add on top of that, do you have any concern with layering on top of that a synthetic adjuvant? People that had an adjuvant or something that whipped up the immune system, right, so now we were inoculated or vaccinated, whatever you want to call it, for this virus.
We had an adjuvant which whipped up our immune system, and then we got the virus. And the virus, when our body was going like gangbusters after the virus, because it was whipped up because of the adjuvant, we're now going even more aggressively after the tissue.
Aristo Vojdani: Excellent question. And I think you were at my lecture when I presented antibodies against polyethylene glycol (PEG) in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. We found anti-polyethylene glycol antibody in, not in the unvaccinated, because I had blood samples from before COVID. And also, we found high levels in the vaccinated.
Why did people who were from before COVID have? Because polyethylene glycol is used in many, many, many medications, including if you put any eye drops, use any eye drops, you are introducing lots of polyethylene glycol into your body. And this is just one example. Yes, the adjuvant can enhance antibody production.
And I came across this almost 30 years ago, when patients who had silicone breast implants, they presented lots of symptoms of autoimmunity. When they removed the implants, a few years later, their antibody disappeared. Yes, an adjuvant is something that's used, mixing different antigens to make the vaccine more efficient, meaning more antibodies are produced against the vaccine. But at the same time, also, you are going to make antibodies that will cross-react with human tissue that may result in autoimmunity.
Haylie Pomroy: And it's crazy because we're seeing people that after what we went through in the pandemic, a lot of people think eye drops are so benign. I a whole beef on eye drops, but I won't go there. I could go down so many tangents with you.
But post-vaccination, post-pandemic, so many people were reactive to their medications in weird ways. We have a lot of people that weren't any longer responsive to botulinum and Botox. I mean, there's been so many things that the immune system, which always is interesting because that's a neurotoxin. There are so many things that have happened in the immune system during this pandemic. Again, it's why I'm doing my PhD in neuroimmunology, that I think in 1967, when your professor said it's going to be the most important aspect of medicine, I don't think it could be more true than it is today.
Outside of doing, which I love, and I'm going to suggest this to everybody in our community, when you are having your annual physical, when you are having your, hopefully it's a preventative engagement with a healthcare practitioner that's going to be your massive cheerleader for the team that you're captain of, which is your health, that you're going to be doing this testing as part of your annual physical.
How often, once a person goes through and runs these labs, should they have them rerun, or does it matter? Is that dependent on what therapy is being put in place?
Aristo Vojdani: I would like to finish the subject of laboratory testing, but before that, I want to add a little bit to the issue of Botox and all of that. Ladies and gentlemen, please, if you have autoimmune reactivity or autoimmune disease, please stop using Botox. Please stop putting foreign material in your body, including silicone breast implants. I stopped there, but going back.
Haylie Pomroy: No, I appreciate that from an immunologist's perspective. I appreciate that from an immunology perspective, because we're told that it's safe and it's focalized and that breast implants don't leak. I mean, look at all of that that happened. It took patients getting really, really, really sick and dying before some of what we knew in medicine came out to be true.
I know I appreciate you saying that. We need more advocates for our health and wellness. And women and men now are told that it's just completely benign, and it has no systemic impact. And I'm cautious about anything you put in your body. Again, I like to identify, remove, and repair, eat real food, eat whole food, and detox often. Those are just basics that we're not able to sidestep or overstep those issues in foundational health, but the diagnostic is so important. Understanding whether you're on the green end or the red end of things. Dr. Vojdani, we only have a few more minutes because they cut us on time.
Aristo Vojdani: Let me answer this part. We said testing, ANA, ENA, and all of that at least once a year, but also, there are more sophisticated testing done at Cyrex Laboratories, cyrexlab.com, which they do measure antibodies against 25 tissue antigens, including seven of them are from the brain. Please consider that.
Now, I would like to take it to the next level.
Haylie Pomroy: Let me punctuate that. Let me punctuate that really quick. That is really important for those of you that are dealing with any type of neuroinflammatory, whether it's ME/CFS, whether it's POTS, whether it's you're having post-exertional malaise, definitely, if you're dealing with long COVID, any of the autoimmune things, it's really important to see how the body's responding, because if we can identify the where, we can send help faster. We can create targeted therapeutic approaches to support your unique body in the aspect of functional medicine, getting to the root cause, understanding why is the body struggling, but fact-finding. We're too dynamic and complex to do a shotgun approach of medicine anymore. It isn't working. I can't say it's not going to work, flat out, isn't working. We wouldn't be in the situation we're in.
Aristo Vojdani: The next level of testing, the next level of testing to look at cellular immunity, meaning your lymphocytes, there was a test also at Cyrex called lymphocyte map, mapping your immune system, should be part of your annual checkup. Please consider that. I think it's around $500.
What that test is going to look at, whether you have a balanced immune system, for example, if you want to explain that a little bit more, it's, we have T and B cells. There is a ratio between T and B cells. There is CD4, CD8, and their ratio. There is TH1 and TH2, and their ratio. There is T helper 17 and the regulatory T cell. The regulatory T cells are the ones that really are so important in the treatment of patients with autoimmune reactivity and prevention of autoimmunity in the future.
One more thing I would like to add, and then you continue. I would like to share with you a quote from an article published in 2020 by a scientist by the name of Khan, Professor Khan, that in published in Frontiers in Immunology. And this sentence is the most challenging aspect of autoimmunity is to identify the early events that trigger immune dysregulation and autoimmunity. The early events are the antibodies. The early events could be detected with the lymphocyte map. If they are abnormal, then you have to ask, is it the food that I'm eating causing some of these abnormal early events? Is it a toxic chemical? Is it pathogens such as viruses, oral pathogens, and other pathogens? Then we can investigate and test for, find whether it is really the food, is it the toxic chemical? Is it the virus causing autoimmunity? I really made my points, early detection and finding the early events, and what is responsible for the detection of some of these abnormal early events in the form of antibody and versus abnormal lymphocytes.
Haylie Pomroy: I love that. And I'll just share with our community. I got the pleasure of meeting you again. I had to go out of the country to meet you, but your labs, my doctor, and myself, we were working together in partnership. And your labs are how I was able to detect and kind of unravel myself being in the red and orange zone. I have ITP and we did specifically your immune mapping and the way that it was described to me, and I love the colorful charts and everything, but it was kind of like looking at a whole community and how they operate together, how the schools and the churches and the libraries and the roads and the infrastructure, how it all works together in, because the immune system is not just this one kind of a stationary thing. It's not a vase on a shelf. It's a living, breathing organism. We are a living, breathing organism, but the immune system itself has all of these intricate parts.
And what I was able to, when you talk about what was the early insult I had some genetic predispositions that put me maybe made me a great hostess to manifest an autoimmune disorder. But it was identifying the toxins. And I had a viral episode. I had cytomegalovirus, IgM, IgG, and ended up hospitalized with viral meningitis. But, prior to that, when we were using your labs, we were able to dissect that I had had insult of malathion, and then I remembered being sprayed with malathion. We were out goofing off past curfew. They were spraying in the state of California, and I got drenched with malathion. We were supposed to be in, and the cars were supposed to be covered. And of course we were not.
But it was fascinating for me, and I still work very hard on detoxification pathways. And obviously, I'm diligent with my foods because I don't want to be on the medications, and I want to be healthy, and I want to have amazing labs and feel incredible and pain-free and live an abundant life and be able to have children and all of these things.
Just from a patient perspective, it was diagnostics that helped me really to find my path back to wellness. And so I think that the takeaway for me is that this is such a full circle moment because you're the man behind all the labs that I looked at for years and years and years. I'm just going to make me teary.
Aristo Vojdani: But Haylie, you were lucky. Not because you were exposed to Malathion. You were lucky that you could identify the trigger. You removed the triggers and then you supported your body and you got rid of the antibodies.
Maybe for the closing, I would like to emphasize the importance of balanced immune system. What type of cell in our body keeping the immune system in complete balance? It's called regulatory T cell. I would like you to empower your regulatory T cell. How to do that? Vitamin D is one of the most, most important. Why? There is a receptor for vitamin D on T-rex cells. There is a receptor of vitamin A on T-rex cell. There is a receptor for indole-3-carbinol, all those cruciferous vegetables. Fish oil, probiotics. There is complete field of nutritional immunology, which probably will be a subject for our future discussion because we didn't cover much. We didn't cover the food. For example, did you know that 3% aluminum is in the cheese that you are eating every day?
Haylie Pomroy: No, I don't eat cheese.
Aristo Vojdani: We have to look, talk about the food. We have to talk about toxic chemicals and the pathogens and their role in auto-immunity. But please remember in the meantime, empower your regulatory T-cell.
Haylie Pomroy: I have my vitamin D right here. I go nowhere without it. I do a D3K2. Again, what I wanted to do in bringing you here, and I just heard you commit to coming back, which is what my next question was going to be, is please, please, please promise me you'll come back. It was such a long journey and so many bottlenecks, so many things that got in the way. Many doctor's doors that I had to kick down. So many people that I had to get, I don't care about validation, but I had to get to participate. I feel like I did a little bit of extortionism and all kinds of stuff to get on the path that I'm at.
What I wanted to start this conversation, and you've done so eloquently, is to understand that this is on the rise, that there are ways to look and detect, and that if you're ready to get on a path towards wellness, if you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, or you don't feel well, fact find. You deserve the information. There are places you can get access to the information. That's why I'm bringing to our community the things that I was able to take advantage of. I didn't get here by accident.
It is a very deliberate strategic plan that allows me to do what I can do. But what I don't want to do is have you have to have, all of you out there, have to have the long journey that I had. It's my life's work to shorten the gap, and that's to bring brilliant people to the table.
And let me tell you, if you can find out why and what's going on with your immune system, you are more than halfway there. We can develop a how, a why, a what to do, but it's got to be based on you. Do not take one step approach to health and wellness and swallow something that's going to make your world better. It doesn't happen. You are dynamic. What's happening to you is biodiverse. Your immune system, we heard it way back in 1967, Dr. Vojdani, he was right. Put your immune system front and center, just like you look about breast health and cardiovascular health, and your blood sugar health, inflammation, neuroinflammation, and immunomodulation is the way that you're going to be able to get yourself healthy.
I cannot thank you enough for being here. Everybody on our team was so pumped that I landed this interview. I can't even tell you, I don't think that they have any idea how honored I am. Thank you for being here.
I heard you already commit that you're coming back. Please say it's true.
Aristo Vojdani: Yes, yes.
Haylie Pomroy: Okay, great. I look forward to, we have so much to dissect. I want to dissect a nutraceuticals. I want to dissect food. I want to go deeper into viruses, but you guys post your questions. We've got them here for us. I brought to the table what has helped me and I want you to have access so it can help you too.
Dr. Vojdani, let's see each other in this country. I had to travel all the way to Ljubljana to land this interview guys. So I cannot thank you enough for being here. I really appreciate it.
Aristo Vojdani: Thank you for sharing with us your own experience, which is really, the message is detect that you did. Regroup and repair. Thank you.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. Thanks guys. Thank you.
Aristo Vojdani: My pleasure. Thank you.
In today's episode, Haylie Pomroy sits down with Dr. Aristo Vojdani, one of the most cited immunologists in the world, with over 50 years of clinical research and more than 200 published studies. He opens with the data that most doctors have not talked openly about: anti-nuclear antibody positivity in the so-called healthy population has risen from roughly 1% in 1970 to an estimated 20% today. He explains why better testing is not the reason, and what environmental exposures, heavy metals, viral particles, toxic chemicals, and immune system dysregulation are actually driving that rise.
Dr. Vojdani also introduces a framework that is both practical and urgent: the four zones of autoimmunity, green, yellow, orange, and red, and explains why antibodies show up in the blood three to 19 years before symptoms of full autoimmune disease ever appear. That window is not just a warning. It is an opportunity. He walks through the specific lab panels available today that can tell you where you are in that spectrum, what cross-reactivity between viruses and human tissue means for conditions like MS, liver autoimmunity, and long COVID, and what actually keeps the immune system in balance at the cellular level.
If your body feels like it's running on empty, overburdened, or just not responding the way it used to, Haylie's latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do. Download your free digital copy today and start understanding what your body is trying to tell you.
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Dr. Aristo Vojdani is a leading immunologist and microbiologist specializing in environmental triggers of complex diseases. He has developed over 300 antibody assays, authored more than 170 scientific publications, and holds 15 U.S. patents related to immune disorders of the brain and gut. Dr. Vojdani serves as an adjunct professor at Loma Linda University and the National University of Health Sciences, and is the CEO of Immunosciences Lab and chief scientific advisor for Cyrex Labs. He has received numerous awards, including the Linus Pauling Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the F.R. Carrick Research Institute.
Learn more about the Immunosciences Lab:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/immunosciences.lab
Website: https://immunoscienceslab.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/immunsci/
Learn more about Cyrex Labs:
Website: https://www.cyrexlabs.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CyrexLaboratories
Haylie Pomroy, Founder and CEO of The Haylie Pomroy Group, is a leading health strategist specializing in metabolism, weight loss, and integrative wellness. With over 25 years of experience, she has worked with top medical institutions and high-profile clients, developing targeted programs and supplements rooted in the "Food is Medicine" philosophy. Inspired by her own autoimmune journey, she combines expertise in nutrition, biochemistry, and patient advocacy to help others reclaim their health. She is a New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet.
Learn more about Haylie Pomroy's approach to wellness through her website: https://hayliepomroy.com
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EDITED TRANSCRIPT
Haylie Pomroy: I'm your host, Haylie Pomroy, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet, a leading health and wellness expert. And that's right, guys, I am back in school again, getting my PhD in neuroimmunology. I will always be a fierce advocate for those in a little bit of need and help. As your advocate, I try to bring individuals that are just exceptional in the fields that can actually make a clinical difference in your life. Today I'm very excited. I'm going to fangirl out. I'm going to geek out a little bit here. We have Dr. Vojdani here with us today.
I have actually followed your work for many, many years, Dr. Vojdani, and I know that you have done over 50 years of clinical research in immunology, that you are at Loma Linda University teaching functional medicine. You've published over 200, probably not even up to date, well over 200 clinical research articles, but I don't want to keep going. Dr. Vojdani, thank you so much for being here. I really, really appreciate it.
Aristo Vojdani: It is my pleasure and honor to be here. And also, please share with the audience that you and I met at a very recent International Congress of Autoimmunity in beautiful Ljubljana, where both of us had presentations.
Haylie Pomroy: We did. And it was so amazing to be in Ljubljana and just incredible doctors, physicians like yourselves, that were just coming together. I think right now it's so important globally to talk about just what in the world is going on in autoimmunity.
Dr. Vojdani, I know that your postdoctoral work was at UCLA. I mean, I feel like I can tell you all about yourself, but I want to just jump in because our community is really concerned right now. I've shared with our community, and it's how I, why I did what I did in nutrition and in changing my metabolism and dealing with toxins. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that completely changed my life. I had gotten accepted as alternate vet school as a junior year, was going to start my senior year. And I had to take a medical leave of absence.
When I was diagnosed with my autoimmune disorder many moons ago, it was just so uncommon. People thought what could, what could be wrong, but it is rampant right now. And that's why I wanted to bring you to the table. What in the world is going on? Why are we seeing so much autoimmune disease? And again, I know we got to meet each other in person out of the country, but it's crazy here in the United States.
Aristo Vojdani: Yes. And I would like to interject something that the audience will not forget. That when we do not play the game by the rules and exposing our immune system to so many environmental factors, then the immune system is going to fight back. And that fight back is going to end up with inflammation and autoimmunity. As an immunologist, when I took my course of immunology in 1967, so you can see how old I am.
Haylie Pomroy: You look amazing.
Aristo Vojdani: The professor, first of all, told us that students, listen to me. The future is, the future of medicine is immunology. And today we see how much he was right about this. And then he started teaching us. And the first lesson in the immune system was the body's immune system can differentiate between self versus non-self. When that balance breaks down, the result is going to be autoimmunity.
Haylie Pomroy: I think what he said back then was exquisitely profound. I just think a large part of medicine didn't listen.
Aristo Vojdani: I agree.
Haylie Pomroy: I mean, I can't tell you how many people in our community have had to beg, steal, cheat, and borrow, and be gaslit and throw fits to finally get adequate labs run that can even give an indication that their body's struggling. When you tell me in 67, that's why I'm doing my PhD in neuroimmunology and not something else. Is because the immune system is being attacked and our bodies are fighting back. What is causing, what's the rise? Why now? What's happening now?
Aristo Vojdani: First of all, let's present the evidence that the autoimmunity is on the rise.
Haylie Pomroy: Yeah. I can't just keep saying my community, everybody I know, all of my neighbors, give me the science.
Aristo Vojdani: Because many doctors or some scientists also claim that we have improved our detection methodologies, which I disagree 100%. Why? Because the anti-nuclear antibody, which is a test developed more than probably 50 years ago, is an indication that you make antibodies against your cellular components, meaning something from the environment get into your cell and because of that, the body loses the differentiation between cell versus non-cell and then attacking your own cells.
And let me give you a good, good example. And this is proven, published many, many years ago in scientific journals. Heavy metals can bind to the cell membrane. Then, after binding to the cell membrane, managed to go inside the cell, binding to the nuclear components, RNA, DNA, and nucleoproteins. And that's why the cell goes through cell death. And then we make antibody against the component of the cell, which a heavy metal is bound to.
Haylie Pomroy: Can I break that down for our listeners for a second?
Aristo Vojdani: Please, please.
Haylie Pomroy: We know that autoimmunity is on the rise. There's the statistical data that proves that to us. And we're saying that it can't be because we have a better detection method, because the ANA titers that are anti-nuclear antibody titers have been around for over 50 years, right?
Aristo Vojdani: Yes.
Haylie Pomroy: So a lot of our community or the world probably accepts, even in culture, they say it's in your DNA. The DNA is what makes you up.
It's in my DNA. I behave that way because of my DNA. The DNA is, is a reflection of self. Like in science, there's, I'm going to make this for me, distill it down to a third grader. It's a reflection of self, and anti-nuclear antibody is a detection of something that's circulating in the blood. That's saying I am destroying self. Is that correct?
Aristo Vojdani: Yes.
Haylie Pomroy: Okay. And what you're telling me is that when we're exposed to things like heavy metal toxins, that those heavy metal toxins, not only bind to the cell, but they migrate in into the RNA and the DNA. They become part of self. Like we're wildly seeing this in the viral space, how the viruses come in? We're not talking about Star Trek science here. This is really a foundational virology that the toxins, that the viruses that they come and they lay in and, and become part of self, and then our bodies, like you said, fight back. And that's where we call it autoimmunity. Am I grasping that correctly? If it's not because there's a better test than the ANA titers, is it because there are more toxins?
Aristo Vojdani: In 2020, Dr. Miller from the Environmental Health Institute, he published a very important article about the rise of anti-nuclear antibodies. In that article, it showed in that in 1970, 1.2%, close to 1% of the so-called healthy population were positive for anti-nuclear antibody.
Haylie Pomroy: When I got diagnosed, I didn't know anybody else.
Aristo Vojdani: 1991. 21 years later, that percentage went up to 7%. Then in 2012, it went up to 12.5%. And I made some kind of calculation. This is my number. In 2024, most probably 20% of the so-called healthy population is positive for anti-nuclear antibodies.
Haylie Pomroy: That number doesn't even shock me because we're hearing people in our community tell us things like — we had a person in our community, and then I couldn't believe how many people chimed in, that ANA titers are so commonly detected as positive now, that there are rheumatologists that are saying, maybe that's not autoimmune. Maybe we're just, I don't know, the test became more sensitive, or we're starting to see it more. Heaven forbid, it means that more people are in a stage of autoimmunity.
I just can't imagine if we think that 20% of our healthy population has, and I don't know if we can call it an autoimmune disease with a positive ANA.
Aristo Vojdani: Correct. The way I look at this, first of all, I said “so-called,” because anti-nuclear antibodies detected in your patient, but you don't see symptoms, that doesn't mean the patient's immune system did not initiate autoimmune reactivity.
Please, Haylie, clarify this part. There is a difference between autoimmune reactivity versus autoimmune disease. And then I'll add more to this.
Haylie Pomroy: Perfect. I love that you are leading with that because for me, just like we are starting to do things like, although it makes me nervous because the drug of choice with autoimmune disorders, look, I'm going to be blunt. I was on 60 to 80 milligrams of prednisone and an anti-rejection drug, and it almost killed me.
I go like earlier detection, we can intervene because I believe in food as medicine. I believe in natural therapies. I believe in stress reduction. I believe in detoxing, getting rid of poisons, mobilizing toxins, and healing the pathways of detoxification. I'm like, let's run everybody and let's see if everybody has ANA so we can get that autoimmune reactivity and prevent it from turning into autoimmune disease. That's where my mind goes. But I sure as heck don't want to see it widely accepted with the American Medical Association. And so suddenly, just like with diabetes. They've lowered and lowered and lowered the hemoglobin A1Cs, and they've lowered and lowered and lowered your fasting blood sugar so they can get everybody on diabetic medication.
Prednisone is cheap. Why don't we just put everybody on prednisone? We could have a whole talk show on that.
But from what I understand, and you would be who would help me with this, the ANA titer means that the immune system is now angry at self. It doesn't mean it's fully developed into a disease state. Is that correct?
Aristo Vojdani: Absolutely correct. In 2018, in the Journal of Autoimmunity, where they looked at the presence of antibodies, we are now above anti-nuclear antibody, beyond anti-nuclear antibody, many antibodies.
Haylie Pomroy: Yeah, I got to meet the doctor that developed the antibodies for lupus when we were in Ljubljana together.
Aristo Vojdani: Anti-DSDNA antibodies. These antibodies, according to that report, depending on the type of autoimmune disease, are detected in the blood 3 to 19 years before the full presence of autoimmune disease.
Haylie Pomroy: Do we know, or do we think that in that 3 to 19 years, first of all, do we think we can stop the runaway train?
Aristo Vojdani: Definitely we'll get to that. Definitely.
Haylie Pomroy: Can we intervene? I have an interesting phenomenon that I want to run by you, and we can always clip it out, but I've got you here. I'm dying to ask you this question. Hopefully, we can keep it in. Cause I know other people in my community would love to hear it.
For me, I have positive ANA titers in less, we have in-house labs, so I can take blood every week if I want. When I go through a very focused nutrition-based detoxification program. Like I'll do a 10-day or a 30-day food and nutrient-based cleanse. My ANA titers disappear. Is that because I've mobilized and excreted toxins and my body's immune system doesn't have to focus on that? And I mean, consistently. Again, I'm not in the norm of, but I don't know. I consider myself my own lab experiment constantly, I've been doing this for 30 years on myself.
Can facilitating detoxification, binding to toxins, identifying, removing, and healing, can that lower an ANA titer?
Aristo Vojdani: The answer is yes, but we'll come back to that later on.
Haylie Pomroy: I love when the professor tells me yes.
Aristo Vojdani: For example, we said 3 to 19 years antibodies are detected in the blood. In the case of MS, myelin basic protein antibody, Myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG) antibodies, ganglioside, cerebellar, synapsin, there are at least 20 different biomarkers of neural autoimmunity, which probably some of those antibodies are going to be part of your PhD, hopefully.
These are detected 3 years. And then in a case of liver autoimmunity, anti-mitochondrial antibodies, anti-smooth muscle antibody detected 18 to 19 years before the onset of liver autoimmunity.
The message here is, ladies and gentlemen, there is 3 to 18 years of window of opportunity for intervention. Is that answering your question?
Haylie Pomroy: It is.
Aristo Vojdani: But what to do? We'll talk about almost towards the end of the conversation.
Haylie Pomroy: Yes. At any time, our community absolutely loves that. And with certain of the autoimmune disorders that you mentioned, like MS, there's a lot of science and research showing that there's a viral component to that as well. And there's even to layer it, some individuals talking about viral reactivation happening because of environmental toxins or toxicity. And with our current time, there's a lot of people in the chat rooms in the communities and in our community that are talking about this mycotoxin storm that's coming after the hurricanes in areas like North Carolina, that those toxins can cause the viruses to reactivate, can cause the immune system to attack the DNA, RNA, nuclear tissue, proteins, and things of that nature.
Are we in this perfect storm where you think that 20% is going to blow up on us?
Aristo Vojdani: Yes, again. But let me continue with a little bit of additional information. We'll come back to that soon.
In some of my presentations, I made this beautiful arrow. The first part of the arrow is green. Ladies and gentlemen, I want all of you to be in the green zone. But the next part is yellow. The next part is orange. And the next part of the arrow is red. In the yellow is when you have anti-nuclear antibody, anti-smooth muscle antibody, and anti-mitochondrial antibody; your rheumatologist will send you home. Will say nothing is wrong with you.
You don't have any symptoms. Yes, the antibodies are present. You don't have symptoms.
Haylie Pomroy: So is it like a ticking time bomb? It’s going to develop?
Aristo Vojdani: Yes. The next is if you don't do anything about that during probably 3 to 19 years, then you move to the orange phase. Meaning your antibodies are even more elevated, and you have some symptoms, but still your body is functioning. You have, for example, rheumatoid arthritis. You have pain, but still you can walk. Again, you don't do anything about it when you are in the orange zone. A few years later, you move to the red zone. Unfortunately, the red zone is when you have very high levels of antibodies or no antibodies, because when the cells get destroyed, they will not be able to make more antibodies. But you have symptomatology, and a dysfunctional part of your body is present, dysfunctional. Again, we would like to intervene when you are in the yellow zone or the latest in the orange zone based on some of these laboratory testing and symptomatology.
Yes, you can do a lot in order to reverse or stop the progression of autoimmunity from yellow to orange to red. If you have any comments, please go ahead, and then we'll continue about the role of viruses in neuroautoimmunity.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. How does someone know what zone they're in? What types of tests can be run, and how do they get their doctor to run those tests?
Aristo Vojdani: I think as part of your annual checkup, please consider screening for autoimmune diseases. There's a panel in our laboratory, which is Immunosciences Lab, and there is another panel at Cyrex Laboratories, which I developed that we measure antinuclear antibody, extractable nuclear antigen (ENA), double-stranded DNA, rheumatoid factor, actin antibody, mitochondrial antibodies, and the most important of all is total immune complexes.
Because everybody looks at CRP as a biomarker of inflammation. Not saying, don't do that, please do that. But look at your immune complexes because when you're bombarded by lots of antigens, and you make antibodies, antigen plus antibody bind together, activating the complement-forming complex called immune complexes. And these immune complexes, if they are very low, they get handled by copper cells in the liver and get rid of them. But when they are too much, and your liver is not functioning properly, then the immune complex is going to build up, and those immune complexes can go into your joints, enhancing symptomatology of arthritis, going into your kidney, and other part of the tissue, resulting in inflammation and autoimmunity.
Haylie Pomroy: I'm going to distill down what you said for our community. Just like you would go with your annual checkup, maybe you would have your blood sugar, your fasting blood sugar, and your hemoglobin A1c. And there was a big movement and a big push to look at patients that were pre-diabetic and do some sort of, I hope, nutrition and lifestyle intervention.
From a cardiovascular perspective, too. We look at total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, your CRP, and your C-reactive protein. But I think everybody, I'm going to really lean into women here for a second, especially women that are going through any kind of hormone change or fluctuation. And I have a question for you about that in my little notes over here.
But anytime that you've had tremendous stress, if you're not sleeping, if you're having any pain, any inflammation, any swelling of the joints, any symptom profile, and we have a Food Rx book that goes through the autoimmunity symptom profiles, anything that you can write for your doctor and ask them in your annual checkup to make sure that you have ANA, ENA, DSD, RF, total immune complex, and CRP also. I think I got that.
Aristo Vojdani: That is part of the humoral immune system. It is about $200. And that is the best $200 you can spend.
Haylie Pomroy: And just so you know, I've been doing this for a long time. It used to be about $2,400 back in the olden days when I first started practicing. It is phenomenal to also then give an indication of green, yellow, orange, and red.
I believe that the further you are, that there's the potential for more positive intervention and longer positive intervention. It's kind of, you can't walk 14 miles into the woods and expect to come back in three. The closer you are to green, the better. Hopefully, the less effort that you'll have. But how do people get these labs run? Do they ask their doctor to run these specific, we'll put it online so that my community will know. My community is going to be empowered, and they'll know how to do this. But do they just ask their doctor? They have to go to a specialty lab. How does that work?
Aristo Vojdani: Yeah. They go to the doctor and say, please draw an extra tube of blood and send it to this laboratory like Immunosciences Lab or Cyrex Laboratories, and ask for an autoimmune panel.
In addition, this was only about antibodies, but please remember, antibodies are produced by our white blood cells, by our lymphocytes. There is another unique panel of testing. They check your lymphocyte, whether or not you have a balanced immune system.
And let me simplify that. The immune system is like a thermostat in your room. If you turn up the temperature very high, let's say I like 70 degrees. If you turn it to 90 or 100, what will happen in that room? The analogy will be like, well, it's too hot. And then you will be inflammation in our body. And if we'll continue living in that environment of inflammation will result in autoimmunity in the future.
And the reverse of that is if you turn on the thermostat too low, put it at 50 degrees, 40 degrees. Also, your immune system, we call that immune suppression. One is hyperactivation of the immune system when the temperature is too high. When the temperature is too low, underactivation or hypoactivation of the immune system. We call that an immune deficiency.
Haylie Pomroy: Are autoimmune disorders always hyper or are they just misdisplaced? Is it just attacking the wrong thing?
Aristo Vojdani: In 80% of the cases, it's hyperactivation of the immune system. In 20% of the cases is underactivation of the immune system. Why? When the immune system turns off, what happens to viruses? Viruses are going to have a party in your body. And now, because the body cannot remove the viruses, and the viruses share homology with human tissue, including the brain, example, Epstein-Barr virus. It was published in several journals, including Nature Medicine last year, that the Epstein-Barr virus shares homology with brain tissue. Herpes type 6 shares homology with our brain.
Haylie Pomroy: Explain to us what homology means.
Aristo Vojdani: As you know, viruses have been in this world millions, maybe billions of years before us. Viruses, when they get into our body, because viruses cannot divide, cannot live on their own, they have to get inside our cells and feed from our tissue. But what is the job of the immune system? To go after them and destroy them.
But throughout the years, many years, the viruses became smart. They change their molecular structures. Their proteins would look like human proteins.
And because the immune system knows not to go after self-proteins, it will go after only non-self. They change themselves to look like humans, and that's how they try to survive. There is a fight between the human immune system and viruses.
Viruses fight back by causing mutation, changing their structure. Think about a necklace with like 30 different beads of different colors. That is, we call that the peptide, of different colors. And if we put those 30 beads of amino acids and take another 30 amino acids from myelin basic protein or myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein from the brain, put them side by side, if five of those will match with each other, the beads will be the same color, that is going to result in cross reactivity. And when we produce antibodies against the virus 30 beads, that antibody is going to attack our brain tissue because of similarity between these 30 beads from the brain versus Epstein-Barr virus or HHV-6.
Haylie Pomroy: So those viruses, they kind of camouflage themselves to look similar. And you had said before to brain tissue and what other types of tissue do they become similar to?
Aristo Vojdani: Let me give you an example of one of my own publications in Frontiers in Immunology that, as soon as, in middle 2020, as soon as antibodies, monoclonal antibodies became available against spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2, I applied that to 70 different human tissue antigens. That monoclonal antibody reacted with 25, including mitochondria, ANA, PSDNA, smooth muscle, myelin basic protein, and almost those 25 tissue antigens were representing almost every single tissue in our body. That's called cross-reactivity. That's the best way to show cross-reactivity between SARS-CoV-2 and human tissue antigen. But the brain always is number one reactive to viruses. It's not the tissue antigens.
Haylie Pomroy: I mean, it would be the correlation of why so many people that are dealing with long COVID are having neuroinflammatory disorders. I want to back up for a second, because what you said, I got chills, was just, I hadn't read that article yet. I will. But basically what you're saying, so we looked at monoclonal antibodies, which are the antibodies that were taken from a person that had SARS-CoV-19. We took these antibodies, and we applied them to tissues.
Now, they should only go after viral components. They shouldn't go after Haley's brain or Haley's mitochondria. They shouldn't go after a particular tissue unless SARS-CoV-19, that virus itself, became a chameleon that had peptides, or chains that looked similar to tissue. And that's why the antibodies bound to those. Am I saying that right? So I'm going to break it down. Basically, when your body went after COVID, when a body went after COVID, and we pulled that antibody, that thing, your fight, right, your immune system that fights the virus, as it was coded to fight this virus, it was also coded to fight your own tissue.
Can I ask a question just because it's just massive, you guys. That's huge. Yeah, mind blown over here. Add on top of that, do you have any concern with layering on top of that a synthetic adjuvant? People that had an adjuvant or something that whipped up the immune system, right, so now we were inoculated or vaccinated, whatever you want to call it, for this virus.
We had an adjuvant which whipped up our immune system, and then we got the virus. And the virus, when our body was going like gangbusters after the virus, because it was whipped up because of the adjuvant, we're now going even more aggressively after the tissue.
Aristo Vojdani: Excellent question. And I think you were at my lecture when I presented antibodies against polyethylene glycol (PEG) in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. We found anti-polyethylene glycol antibody in, not in the unvaccinated, because I had blood samples from before COVID. And also, we found high levels in the vaccinated.
Why did people who were from before COVID have? Because polyethylene glycol is used in many, many, many medications, including if you put any eye drops, use any eye drops, you are introducing lots of polyethylene glycol into your body. And this is just one example. Yes, the adjuvant can enhance antibody production.
And I came across this almost 30 years ago, when patients who had silicone breast implants, they presented lots of symptoms of autoimmunity. When they removed the implants, a few years later, their antibody disappeared. Yes, an adjuvant is something that's used, mixing different antigens to make the vaccine more efficient, meaning more antibodies are produced against the vaccine. But at the same time, also, you are going to make antibodies that will cross-react with human tissue that may result in autoimmunity.
Haylie Pomroy: And it's crazy because we're seeing people that after what we went through in the pandemic, a lot of people think eye drops are so benign. I a whole beef on eye drops, but I won't go there. I could go down so many tangents with you.
But post-vaccination, post-pandemic, so many people were reactive to their medications in weird ways. We have a lot of people that weren't any longer responsive to botulinum and Botox. I mean, there's been so many things that the immune system, which always is interesting because that's a neurotoxin. There are so many things that have happened in the immune system during this pandemic. Again, it's why I'm doing my PhD in neuroimmunology, that I think in 1967, when your professor said it's going to be the most important aspect of medicine, I don't think it could be more true than it is today.
Outside of doing, which I love, and I'm going to suggest this to everybody in our community, when you are having your annual physical, when you are having your, hopefully it's a preventative engagement with a healthcare practitioner that's going to be your massive cheerleader for the team that you're captain of, which is your health, that you're going to be doing this testing as part of your annual physical.
How often, once a person goes through and runs these labs, should they have them rerun, or does it matter? Is that dependent on what therapy is being put in place?
Aristo Vojdani: I would like to finish the subject of laboratory testing, but before that, I want to add a little bit to the issue of Botox and all of that. Ladies and gentlemen, please, if you have autoimmune reactivity or autoimmune disease, please stop using Botox. Please stop putting foreign material in your body, including silicone breast implants. I stopped there, but going back.
Haylie Pomroy: No, I appreciate that from an immunologist's perspective. I appreciate that from an immunology perspective, because we're told that it's safe and it's focalized and that breast implants don't leak. I mean, look at all of that that happened. It took patients getting really, really, really sick and dying before some of what we knew in medicine came out to be true.
I know I appreciate you saying that. We need more advocates for our health and wellness. And women and men now are told that it's just completely benign, and it has no systemic impact. And I'm cautious about anything you put in your body. Again, I like to identify, remove, and repair, eat real food, eat whole food, and detox often. Those are just basics that we're not able to sidestep or overstep those issues in foundational health, but the diagnostic is so important. Understanding whether you're on the green end or the red end of things. Dr. Vojdani, we only have a few more minutes because they cut us on time.
Aristo Vojdani: Let me answer this part. We said testing, ANA, ENA, and all of that at least once a year, but also, there are more sophisticated testing done at Cyrex Laboratories, cyrexlab.com, which they do measure antibodies against 25 tissue antigens, including seven of them are from the brain. Please consider that.
Now, I would like to take it to the next level.
Haylie Pomroy: Let me punctuate that. Let me punctuate that really quick. That is really important for those of you that are dealing with any type of neuroinflammatory, whether it's ME/CFS, whether it's POTS, whether it's you're having post-exertional malaise, definitely, if you're dealing with long COVID, any of the autoimmune things, it's really important to see how the body's responding, because if we can identify the where, we can send help faster. We can create targeted therapeutic approaches to support your unique body in the aspect of functional medicine, getting to the root cause, understanding why is the body struggling, but fact-finding. We're too dynamic and complex to do a shotgun approach of medicine anymore. It isn't working. I can't say it's not going to work, flat out, isn't working. We wouldn't be in the situation we're in.
Aristo Vojdani: The next level of testing, the next level of testing to look at cellular immunity, meaning your lymphocytes, there was a test also at Cyrex called lymphocyte map, mapping your immune system, should be part of your annual checkup. Please consider that. I think it's around $500.
What that test is going to look at, whether you have a balanced immune system, for example, if you want to explain that a little bit more, it's, we have T and B cells. There is a ratio between T and B cells. There is CD4, CD8, and their ratio. There is TH1 and TH2, and their ratio. There is T helper 17 and the regulatory T cell. The regulatory T cells are the ones that really are so important in the treatment of patients with autoimmune reactivity and prevention of autoimmunity in the future.
One more thing I would like to add, and then you continue. I would like to share with you a quote from an article published in 2020 by a scientist by the name of Khan, Professor Khan, that in published in Frontiers in Immunology. And this sentence is the most challenging aspect of autoimmunity is to identify the early events that trigger immune dysregulation and autoimmunity. The early events are the antibodies. The early events could be detected with the lymphocyte map. If they are abnormal, then you have to ask, is it the food that I'm eating causing some of these abnormal early events? Is it a toxic chemical? Is it pathogens such as viruses, oral pathogens, and other pathogens? Then we can investigate and test for, find whether it is really the food, is it the toxic chemical? Is it the virus causing autoimmunity? I really made my points, early detection and finding the early events, and what is responsible for the detection of some of these abnormal early events in the form of antibody and versus abnormal lymphocytes.
Haylie Pomroy: I love that. And I'll just share with our community. I got the pleasure of meeting you again. I had to go out of the country to meet you, but your labs, my doctor, and myself, we were working together in partnership. And your labs are how I was able to detect and kind of unravel myself being in the red and orange zone. I have ITP and we did specifically your immune mapping and the way that it was described to me, and I love the colorful charts and everything, but it was kind of like looking at a whole community and how they operate together, how the schools and the churches and the libraries and the roads and the infrastructure, how it all works together in, because the immune system is not just this one kind of a stationary thing. It's not a vase on a shelf. It's a living, breathing organism. We are a living, breathing organism, but the immune system itself has all of these intricate parts.
And what I was able to, when you talk about what was the early insult I had some genetic predispositions that put me maybe made me a great hostess to manifest an autoimmune disorder. But it was identifying the toxins. And I had a viral episode. I had cytomegalovirus, IgM, IgG, and ended up hospitalized with viral meningitis. But, prior to that, when we were using your labs, we were able to dissect that I had had insult of malathion, and then I remembered being sprayed with malathion. We were out goofing off past curfew. They were spraying in the state of California, and I got drenched with malathion. We were supposed to be in, and the cars were supposed to be covered. And of course we were not.
But it was fascinating for me, and I still work very hard on detoxification pathways. And obviously, I'm diligent with my foods because I don't want to be on the medications, and I want to be healthy, and I want to have amazing labs and feel incredible and pain-free and live an abundant life and be able to have children and all of these things.
Just from a patient perspective, it was diagnostics that helped me really to find my path back to wellness. And so I think that the takeaway for me is that this is such a full circle moment because you're the man behind all the labs that I looked at for years and years and years. I'm just going to make me teary.
Aristo Vojdani: But Haylie, you were lucky. Not because you were exposed to Malathion. You were lucky that you could identify the trigger. You removed the triggers and then you supported your body and you got rid of the antibodies.
Maybe for the closing, I would like to emphasize the importance of balanced immune system. What type of cell in our body keeping the immune system in complete balance? It's called regulatory T cell. I would like you to empower your regulatory T cell. How to do that? Vitamin D is one of the most, most important. Why? There is a receptor for vitamin D on T-rex cells. There is a receptor of vitamin A on T-rex cell. There is a receptor for indole-3-carbinol, all those cruciferous vegetables. Fish oil, probiotics. There is complete field of nutritional immunology, which probably will be a subject for our future discussion because we didn't cover much. We didn't cover the food. For example, did you know that 3% aluminum is in the cheese that you are eating every day?
Haylie Pomroy: No, I don't eat cheese.
Aristo Vojdani: We have to look, talk about the food. We have to talk about toxic chemicals and the pathogens and their role in auto-immunity. But please remember in the meantime, empower your regulatory T-cell.
Haylie Pomroy: I have my vitamin D right here. I go nowhere without it. I do a D3K2. Again, what I wanted to do in bringing you here, and I just heard you commit to coming back, which is what my next question was going to be, is please, please, please promise me you'll come back. It was such a long journey and so many bottlenecks, so many things that got in the way. Many doctor's doors that I had to kick down. So many people that I had to get, I don't care about validation, but I had to get to participate. I feel like I did a little bit of extortionism and all kinds of stuff to get on the path that I'm at.
What I wanted to start this conversation, and you've done so eloquently, is to understand that this is on the rise, that there are ways to look and detect, and that if you're ready to get on a path towards wellness, if you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, or you don't feel well, fact find. You deserve the information. There are places you can get access to the information. That's why I'm bringing to our community the things that I was able to take advantage of. I didn't get here by accident.
It is a very deliberate strategic plan that allows me to do what I can do. But what I don't want to do is have you have to have, all of you out there, have to have the long journey that I had. It's my life's work to shorten the gap, and that's to bring brilliant people to the table.
And let me tell you, if you can find out why and what's going on with your immune system, you are more than halfway there. We can develop a how, a why, a what to do, but it's got to be based on you. Do not take one step approach to health and wellness and swallow something that's going to make your world better. It doesn't happen. You are dynamic. What's happening to you is biodiverse. Your immune system, we heard it way back in 1967, Dr. Vojdani, he was right. Put your immune system front and center, just like you look about breast health and cardiovascular health, and your blood sugar health, inflammation, neuroinflammation, and immunomodulation is the way that you're going to be able to get yourself healthy.
I cannot thank you enough for being here. Everybody on our team was so pumped that I landed this interview. I can't even tell you, I don't think that they have any idea how honored I am. Thank you for being here.
I heard you already commit that you're coming back. Please say it's true.
Aristo Vojdani: Yes, yes.
Haylie Pomroy: Okay, great. I look forward to, we have so much to dissect. I want to dissect a nutraceuticals. I want to dissect food. I want to go deeper into viruses, but you guys post your questions. We've got them here for us. I brought to the table what has helped me and I want you to have access so it can help you too.
Dr. Vojdani, let's see each other in this country. I had to travel all the way to Ljubljana to land this interview guys. So I cannot thank you enough for being here. I really appreciate it.
Aristo Vojdani: Thank you for sharing with us your own experience, which is really, the message is detect that you did. Regroup and repair. Thank you.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. Thanks guys. Thank you.
Aristo Vojdani: My pleasure. Thank you.
