Autoimmunity. A holistic approach to healing.
I don’t really think of myself as a person with Crohn’s disease, even though it’s over 20 years since I was diagnosed, because I don’t really hear from it much. I’m symptom and medication free and have been for a long time now. But I do know that my body has a tendency towards immune dysregulation and inflammation and so I am aware that I need to work a bit harder to maintain balance.
For me this means avoiding processed foods and getting in as many fruits and vegetables as possible. Broadly speaking I eat a whole foods plant based diet with some fish. I add in anti-inflammatory foods such as turmeric, green tea and berries where I can and supplement with vitamin D, a sublingual multi and sometimes add extra support with ashwaghanga, zinc, and a quercetin complex around hay fever season. Sleep, self care and exercise are really important. Stress management and good mental health are vital pieces of the puzzle. I definitely deviate at times but I now know how far I can push it and how to bring things back.
I’m grateful. It's a truly horrible disease. Imagine you have the worst food poisoning you’ve ever had, imagine you have it all of the time, imagine how tired that makes you feel, how miserable. How it affects your social life and your travel plans, the weight you lose and people telling you how very skinny you look. Not being able to eat ANYTHING. And then there’s the medications with their terrible side effects, the moon face and swollen legs and ankles, susceptibility to every infection going. That was the first 3 years for me.
While a diagnosis is a relief for many people (it certainly was for me) it can also be too reductionist, the end of the investigation into what’s going on and why. For me it should be the start! It assigns a label, a narrative. You have a chronic illness, for which there is no cure and you’ll be living with it for the rest of your life. That can be terrifying and the fear and stress associated can in themselves be very damaging to the body.
After my recovery, 20 years of researching and tweaking and then re-training to be a Nutritional Therapist, I’ve come to think of autoimmunity in terms of a malfunctioning for which there are reasons which need to be identified and then addressed. The immune system no longer recognises what is and isn’t self. And is it any wonder? We’ve moved so far away from living in sync with nature and we wonder why our bodies are protesting. Of course, there’s the western diet, made up of alien chemical ingredients, high levels of sugar and inflammatory saturated fats, but think of all the other stuff we do. The toxins we spray our food with, the polluted air we breathe, the hijacking of our dopamine pathways by social media. We use chemicals on our skin and to clean our houses. We stress more and sleep less. Our bodies are amazing but we are asking too much of them. No wonder they’re not sure what’s what.
Autoimmunity generally begins with a genetic component which pre-disposes the person to immune dysregulation, in my family we have MS, Psoriasis, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Crohn’s Disease, so you might say I didn’t stand a chance. But this predisposition doesn’t necessarily result in autoimmunity, there needs to be immune dysregulation and a cause (or causes) or trigger(s). In other words, it’s dependant on our environment and we can do something about that. Identifying an individual’s causes or triggers and addressing them can be the first step towards better disease outcomes, but there is a bigger picture.
Each autoimmune disease is generally treated by its related medical department, Inflammatory Bowel disease by the gastro team, MS by the neurologists, Hashimoto’s by the endocrine department and so on, which seems strange to me because it’s about immunity, and the immune system malfunctioning. For me supporting the body in order to promote regulated immune function needs to be comprehensive and holistic.
Key elements to healing are:
Regaining intestinal integrity and cultivating a healthy microbiome
Reduction and resolution of inflammation
Reducing stress chemistry
Prioritising sleep, rest and relaxation
Identifying and removing causes, triggers and drivers
Rebalancing any nutrient deficiencies
Rebalancing immunity
Conventional medicine tends to focus on suppressing the immune system, whilst neglecting underlying causes, drivers and the overall health of the individual. For me it’s important to use every tool we have to ‘push’ the individual back towards true homeostasis or wellness. Sometimes this may mean taking the meds, at least to begin with, but side effects can be harsh long term and, if the last couple of years have taught us anything, it’s that life is much easier with a well functioning immune system.
Not everybody is the same. This is why there isn’t one diet or protocol to suit everyone and why each client needs an individual plan based on thorough case taking and perhaps also functional testing. My approach is to put together the pieces of the puzzle for each client in order to formulate a personalised strategy for getting the body back to a state of balance and regain health.
Whether you like it or not, with autoimmunity, you are in it for the long haul, but that doesn’t have to mean a life of chronic illness. It does mean time to explore and find what works best for you, and being patient until you get there.
If you’d like to have a chat about how I can help you contact me here
