First 3 Things to Do to Squash Autoimmunity

In the last post, I talked about why you should get your autoimmune disease into remission, instead of simply managing symptoms while the autoimmune process runs amuck. Here we dive into 3 steps to take today to start driving your autoimmune disease into remission. And yes, this is doable!

autoimmunity, functional medicine, stress, food intolerance, food sensitivity, dysglycemia, insulin resistance, hypglycemia, immune, immunity

The top three autoimmune triggers

In most cases, there is something (or things) in your environment that flipped the switch of your autoimmune process. The path to turning off that switch involves identifying and resolving these very same environmental triggers. This is possible to do, and the sooner the better!

What about the idea that autoimmune diseases are incurable? It is true that once your immune system creates antibodies against your own tissue (an autoimmune process), the memory cells that signal these antibodies remain. However, you can direct those cells into dormancy, and halt the process of tissue destruction.

Think of triggers as things that cause inflammation and confuse your immune system. Rooting out inflammatory triggers is first and foremost in quelling the autoimmune process. The top 3 triggers to identify and resolve right away are dysglycemia, food intolerance, and stress. After these we move to gut dysbiosos and leaky gut.

1. Dysglycemia

This is when your blood sugar is either too high or too low. It turns out that both low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) and high blood sugar (insulin resistance) cause inflammation.

HOW TO ASSESS?

  • Labs: Fasting glucose, insulin, hemoglobin A1c, and C-peptide. You can also do a glucose plus insulin tolerance test.
  • DIY: Purchase a glucometer and test your blood sugar before and after meals. Here are the instructions.

WHAT TO DO?

  • Follow a carb-appropriate eating plan. Nail it down with these guidelines.
  • With insulin resistance, eat only three times during a 12-hour window, and don’t eat for 12 hours.
  • With hypoglycemia, eat a breakfast that is protein and fat driven, also include fat and a little protein with each meal or snack, and have a snack before bed.
  • Building muscle mass improves insulin resistance!

2. Food Intolerance

This is when your adaptive immune system tags food particles as antigens and mounts an attack against them. Truth be told this can happen with any food, but the three most common are arguably gluten, dairy, and eggs. For some people, it can be most or all grains.

There are various “AIP” autoimmune diets out there, however, these diets make broad assumptions about what you are intolerant of as an individual. They may restrict foods that are fine for you, or include foods that are not fine for you! Often they are more restrictive than you might need. I recommend you identify which foods you don’t tolerate instead of following a one-size-fits-all diet.

HOW TO ASSESS?

  • Labs: Use a reputable blood test that measures immune responses to common foods, like the KBMO Food Inflammation Test.
  • DIY: Do an elimination and provocation diet. This method has been used by allergists since the early 1900s. Check out the e-book I wrote about this.

3. Stress

You make stress hormones as a “fight or flight” response, which is natural. However, this response should settle down when you’re out of danger. When a stressor is prolonged, so is your stress response, which dysregulates your adrenal hormones and causes inflammation.

HOW TO ASSESS?

WHAT TO DO?

  • Work towards reducing the stress that is in your control. Here are ideas.
  • Pick up a stress management practice. Here are ideas.
  • Take adrenal adaptogen herbs. These help you become more resilient to the effects of stress.

Check out 5 Steps to Drive Autoimmune Disease into Remission, and The Autoimmue – Gut Connection. Do you want some help squashing your autoimmune disease? Please reach out, I have a lot of experience with this.

paris healing arts, doctor laura paris, dr. laura paris, dr laura paris

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