Generally, patients are presented with the perception of the autoimmune diseases as being “auto” in the sense that the body starts to attack itself without any cause and that the disease is also “auto” in the way that the disease continues and will not be controlled unless the patient is treated with anti-inflammatory drugs.

What if food proteins, both gluten and other food proteins, are identified by the body as unfamiliar to the body? Coeliac disease is often regarded as the “model disease” for autoimmune diseases. But as removal of gluten from the diet cures the patient the disease is not truly “auto” in any sense.

In this book the authors demonstrate the link between autoimmune diseases and food proteins by blood tests showing increased concentration of antibodies to specific food proteins and in parallel identifies parts of food proteins in urine samples. The authors propose a model where any food protein could elicit an immune response in a susceptible individual and thereby trigger an autoimmune disease.

The diet advice to patients in this book is based on this approach and the book contains the stories of patients with different autoimmune diseases.