Autoimmune is when the immune system turns on its healthy cells. In North America, 1 in 12 people will get autoimmune, and if you’re a woman, it’s 1 in 9. One thing that’s consistent with autoimmune is that all forms of it start in the gut.

Join Dr. Martin as he teaches on autoimmune and the gut in today’s episode. Every cell in your body has a barcode, and your immune system checks the barcode to see if the cell is friendly or not.

When it comes to your gut, you have trillions of bacteria that are part of your immune system. When the bacteria can’t read the barcode of something, it flags it as a foreign invader. Without enough good bacteria, your immune system can turn on its healthy cells.