There are many auto-immune conditions, and whilst they all share the defining feature that the immune system has become dysfunctional, they also all have different important features, so it’s not easy to summarize a plan to deal with every feature of every auto-immune condition. That said, there are some general things that you can still focus on.
Controlling inflammation
One of the main enemies to people with auto-immune conditions is inflammation. A vital process that is supposed to help the body heal by leading more resources to trauma sites, but overstays its welcome when auto-immune dysfunction occurs.
Inflammation is a vital solution that lifeforms have developed to deal with injury and infection. It’s characterized by increased blood flow, immune cell activation, and the release of inflammatory mediators to remove harmful stimuli and initiate tissue repair. But chronic inflammation can lead to tissue damage, exacerbate autoimmune conditions and impair overall health.
Reducing chronic inflammation whether it’s low level or high level is an important step to take with auto immune conditions, and it’s also a difficult step to balance, because after all you still need inflammation to work when it’s supposed to.
Gut inflammation is a common place to focus on, because the gut is somewhere that chronic inflammation commonly takes root in.
Chronic intestinal inflammation can impair nutrient absorption by disrupting the integrity of the intestinal lining, reducing the surface area available for absorption, interfering with the function of digestive enzymes and transporters, and promoting malabsorption due to increased intestinal permeability (leaky gut), ultimately leading to deficiencies in essential nutrients.
Doing something to respond this problem is highly important. Some of the supplements that can help are :
- Probiotics
- Prebiotics
- Digestive enzymes
- Omega-3 fatty acids
- Glutamine
- Zinc
- Vitamin D
- Turmeric/Curcumin
- Ginger
- Quercetin
Dietary modification is key to solving some of the gut inflammation issues, because so much of our diet can exacerbate inflammation, especially grains, which much of the modern diet is filled with.
Trying the Auto Immune Protocol Diet (AIP Diet)
The AIP diet is for some incredibly useful and might be worth trying out to see if it helps control your symptoms.
It focuses on eliminating potentially inflammatory foods like grains, legumes, dairy, processed oils, sugar, eggs, nuts, seeds, nightshade vegetables, and certain spices. Instead, it emphasizes nutrient-dense foods such as vegetables, fruits, quality meats, fish, healthy fats, and fermented foods. The diet aims to heal the gut, regulate the immune system, and reduce autoimmune flare-ups. It often involves phases of elimination followed by systematic reintroduction of foods to identify triggers. Additionally, lifestyle factors like stress management and sleep are considered integral to its success.
The downside is that the diet is quite restrictive and it can feel like quite a defeat to switch to it. With some diets, it can be preferential to slowly move into them instead of suddenly just changing up your whole diet to suit the new one. The importance of a diet is to enjoy healthy food and to make changes that you will stick to long term, not to just disrupt your whole system of consuming food for a brief failed period.
That’s why there’s some controversy with this diet, because it generally requires you to eliminate the majority of what you eat and then reintroduce things one at a time. This can be incredibly disruptive and difficult to do. You suffer enough with daily symptoms let alone having to uproot your whole diet and eat very basic, simple meals.
Managing stress
Stress has been found to a major component in nearly every human illness. It’s a double edged sword when it comes to survival. Yes we need stress to help us in times of danger, but when we get stuck almost permanently stressed it becomes a huge liability to our overall health.
Managing stress therefore has to be in the forefront of your health plan. There are many ways to manage stress, but they can be somewhat individualistic, not everything works on everyone.
But generally breathing is a good place to start, since learning to do different breathing exercises is beneficial to everyone.
Mindfulness and meditation have their places in a stress management routine, but they can often introduce stress too. It can sometimes be frustrating trying to meditate and not finding it helps. Meditation is a bit like sleep, you can’t necessarily force. The trick is to create the best conditions for it to happen.
Trying the Low FODMAP diet
If you can’t handle the AIP diet, the low FODMAP diet is another alternative to try. It’s more of an advisory diet, in that the advise is to eat more of these foods and less of those foods. There can be very long lists of good and bad foods to take note of, and it can be quite exhausting to go over it all. It is quite restrictive to some people because of the nature of how most people’s diets in the modern era are simply full of all the food you’re supposed to avoid on this diet.
In essence, a low FODMAP diet restricts fermentable carbohydrates, known as FODMAPs, found in various foods, including grains, certain fruits, and vegetables. While primarily used to manage symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), it can also benefit individuals with autoimmune conditions. By reducing gut inflammation and alleviating digestive distress, it may help mitigate autoimmune flare-ups and symptoms. Since gut health plays a crucial role in immune function and autoimmune diseases often involve gut inflammation, adopting a low FODMAP diet may support overall wellness by promoting a healthier gut environment, potentially aiding in the management of autoimmune conditions.
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