Nutritional Tips For Autoimmune Diseases {Video}

Did you know that there are over 80 different types of known autoimmune diseases? And, according to the National Institute of Health (NIH) there are over 24 million people living with an autoimmune disease in the United States. Scientists don’t know what causes autoimmune diseases, but they do know it’s a combination of genetic susceptibility and environmental factors. And, while anyone can get an autoimmune diseases, women are more likely to develop them. If you are one of the 24 million living with an autoimmune disease, or you have a family history of autoimmune disease, here are some nutritional steps you can take.

Of course, you always want to discuss any supplement or dietary changes with your doctor first.

Transcript below

Check out this video on Vitamin D: Are You Low On Vitamin D?

Transcript:

Rachel Alvarado:
Hey guys. So today I want to talk about autoimmune disease. So unfortunately there's a ton of autoimmune disease. In fact, I was reading that there are over 80 different known autoimmune diseases. Researchers, they don't actually know what causes autoimmune disease, but they do know that it is a combination between genetic susceptibility and environmental factors. Obviously we can't change your genes, but we can do something better environment, including nutrition. And so that's what I want to do today. Give you some tips that you can do if you have an autoimmune disease or if you want to try to avoid an autoimmune disease. All right, tip number one. Get your vitamin D level tested. I know I talk about vitamin D like all the time, but that's because it's really important. Vitamin D does help regulate the immune system so it bolsters it, but it also keeps your immune system from going haywire. So get your vitamin D levels tested and supplement accordingly.

Rachel Alvarado:
All right, number two. So I recommend anyone with an autoimmune disease or a suspected autoimmune disease do this immediately and that's go on an elimination diet. So you're going to get rid of any potential food triggers, and you have to get rid of them for 21 days and then slowly re-introduce this. Now this includes gluten. A lot of times people with autoimmune diseases do have a gluten sensitivity, although not everyone, but it is very common amongst those with autoimmune disease. And so you have to completely remove it from the system as well as like dairy and soy. And sometimes you also have to remove nuts, knight shades, citrus, or other suspect foods. It kind of depends on you, on what all you need to eliminate. But those are the common ones. You have to remove it from your diet for 21 days and then you have to slowly reintroduce.

Rachel Alvarado:
The reintroduction process, you have to introduce one food every three to four days because it takes 48 to 72 hours to have a response, which makes it really hard to determine without an elimination diet what foods are causing symptoms. Any foods that you do have a response to, then eliminate from your diet altogether. All right, what else? You want to go ahead and lower inflammation? So obviously we hear about inflammation all the time, but inflammation is a normal process in the body. So let's say I was to cut my finger, there would be an inflammatory response to help it heal and protect it from any pathogens that could be entering through the cut. But what happens, inflammation is just going on chronically and systemically through our body. And so that's what can lead to disease, because we weren't designed to have chronic and systemic inflammation.

Rachel Alvarado:
So a lot of the foods we eat do contribute to the systemic inflammation. So we want to get rid of foods like sugar, alcohol, huge contributors to inflammation. Eliminating or reducing as much as you can those foods will help significantly. Also dairy, very inflammatory. Most animal products are very inflammatory and so you do want to limit or remove those. And then fruits, vegetables, those are going to be really great at being anti-inflammatory, and so you want to increase this. This is where like being on a plant based diet is really beneficial because it really helps remove any sort of like inflammatory foods and increase anti-inflammatory foods. In addition to this, processed foods, very inflammatory. Vegetable oils, very inflammatory, which are often found in processed foods. So removing those can be very, very helpful. And then of course increasing fruits, vegetables, beans, those are great, eat lots of those. And in addition, eating all of these like fruits, vegetables and beans, that's going to help your microbiomes. We want it to be good microbes. Sometimes bad microbes are in there and it can throw things off.

Rachel Alvarado:
So when we eat lots of fruits, vegetables, it helps increase the good microbes that are in the gut and that does wonders including lower inflammation and then help fight against autoimmune diseases. So really important to get those fruits and vegetables. And all right, what else? So you're also going to want to maybe add a DHA EPA, DHA EPA, they're an Omega three now a lot of times people need to supplement with this. Not always, but frequently. So work with someone to find out if you do need to supplement. Also, word of caution here. Make sure that you are working with medical professionals, like your doctor to see if you can supplement with DHA because if you're on blood thinners or other certain medications you don't want to because it makes your blood thinner and so you need to be cautious of that. However, for a lot of people you are going to want to look into supplementing this to help lower inflammation and most people just are not getting enough DHA, EPA and also helps with a bunch of other things. So definitely look into DHA, EPA.

Rachel Alvarado:
You can also find vegan forms of DHA to supplement with if you are vegan. I think Nordic Naturals has a great one and it is derived from seaweed so you can definitely look into that even if you are vegan. If you're not vegan, it is derived from fish. So those are going to be the big nutritional things to do. On top of that, you have to look at the stress in your life and reduce that. If you have an autoimmune disease, something is not working in your life. So you obviously want to approach to this from every single angle. You want to make sure that you're getting better sleep and you want to make sure that you're decreasing the stress. Because when we're stressed, our cortisol levels are very high and it throws everything off and it's really hard for our immune system when we have high stress. So do a lot of self examining on what is causing stress in your life and start figuring out plans on how to reduce that. Very important. All right, well, I hope this helps and I hope you have a wonderful day. Thanks so much guys.

Reference:

Autoimmune Diseases. (2020, January). Retrieved from https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/conditions/autoimmune/index.cfm