10 Easy Ways to Calm an Autoimmune Flare-Up Naturally

 

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When your immune system gets triggered, a miserable flare-up can ensue. Here are 13 things you can do right now to calm your system back into remission.

Autoimmune diseases impact 50 million Americans, and nearly a quarter of those suffer from more than just one. Whether you have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, or one of the other 80 autoimmune disorders, symptoms typically wax and wane depending on where you are in remission or immune activity.

Fortunately, there are methods that can help to provide relief and encourage your body to get back into a normal balance.

What Autoimmune Flares Look Like?

An autoimmune flare can feel different depending on the type of disease you have, but research shows that most follow a pattern that alternates between flares and dormancy. Still, it’s not conclusive as to what exactly can prevent flares, since there seem to be a number of triggers for them.

Some of the most common autoimmune flare triggers include:

• Viral or bacterial infections
• Stress
• Hormone changes
• Pregnancy
• Vaccines
• Smoking
• Vitamin D deficiency

Besides avoiding obvious flare triggers like smoking, there are other lifestyle factors that can help to prevent or decrease the number of flares and help to ease your body out of one that has started.

13 Ways to Calm the Immune System

1. Use Astragalus to Support Natural Immunity

Supporting immune function when you have an autoimmune disease is tricky. Since your immune system is already in overdrive against your own body, you don’t exactly want to bolster its energy to continue attacking you with increased fervor.

What you do want to do is modulate the immune system, which means help re-educate it about what it is supposed to be doing: sparing your own body tissues and attacking foreign invaders like viral and bacterial infections.

You can naturally modulate your immune system with certain herbs like astragalus, which activates only specific aspects of the immune system. It provides a balancing effect on the immune system instead of just a stimulating effect like echinacea or goldenseal, herbs which should be avoided in cases of autoimmunity.

You can find astragalus supplements online or at your local health food store. Most health practitioners suggest taking them for only a set amount of time (usually three to six months), so ask your doctor for the time period that might work best for you.

2. Reduce Stress

Stress can trigger autoimmune flares, but saying “just avoid stress” is about as easy as saying “just avoid breathing.” When you have an autoimmune disease, it can even make you more prone to stress and anxiety. So what can you do?

There is no one-size-fits-all way to cut stress from your life, but research shows that ashwagandha, an adaptogenic herb, can help to reduce stress and anxiety.

Ashwagandha, when taken daily for a few months, can reduce perceived stress by as much as 44 percent and can decrease cortisol (the stress hormone) levels by as much as 28 percent. When it comes to anxiety, ashwagandha can lower levels in as little as 12 weeks.

Stress can also lead to weight gain, which can worsen autoimmunity symptoms.

Ashwagandha can help to manage body weight in people battling chronic stress.

Ashwagandha can be taken daily in capsule form, typically with breakfast, in doses ranging from 50 to 500 milligrams.

3. Boost Your Vitamin D Levels

Vitamin D functions as both a hormone and vitamin within the body, and low or deficient levels can cause both disease development and flare-ups.

Note: Boosting levels with supplementation should only be done under the guidance of a practitioner, since toxicity is possible. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin and is stored in fat, so when excess is consumed via supplements, the body can’t simply eliminate it. While vitamin D toxicity is rare, it can have serious side effects, so it’s essential to have your levels tested and supplement dosage managed by a qualified practitioner.

4. Stay Hydrated and Balance Electrolytes

The cells in the body require proper fluid levels to perform their many tasks. They also require electrolytes like magnesium, potassium, and sodium to transfer fluids in and out of cells.

Simply drinking enough water and taking in electrolytes can be helpful for cutting down on flares. Electrolytes are naturally found in coconut water, Himalayan sea salt, and citrus fruits, so pairing these with daily water intake can provide that needed balance.

Tip: Infused-water recipes are an easy and tasty way to stay hydrated.

5. Eat More Fatty Fish

When flare-ups happen in autoimmunity, nerve endings can get more sensitive, which is often what results in greater pain. Omega-3 fatty acids are needed to support the myelin sheath that coats nerves as well as to provide anti-inflammatory support.

Omega-3 fats are found in fatty fish like salmon, anchovies, and sardines. They’re also found in walnuts and chia seeds, although seafood sources provide fats that are more easily utilized by the body.

Fish oil supplements can also be beneficial, as they commonly contain two important forms of fatty acids: EPA and DHA. Both are needed for anti-inflammatory benefits and neurological health, but specific doses should be monitored and recommended by your practitioner.

6. Eat Green Veggies to Help Detox

Having an autoimmune disease can mean that many organ systems are slower to respond than others, since the body’s priorities are out of balance.

Detox is driven by the liver, but the liver also performs many other vital tasks like metabolizing hormones, aiding in digestion, and even making vitamin D. While flares aren’t always caused by a sudden influx of chemicals that need to be detoxed, focusing on nutrients that support organ function during a flare can help to restore balance in the body, even if you can’t target your flare to one specific organ.

The liver requires certain nutrients and antioxidants found in leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables. Eating regular daily servings of broccoli, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, spinach, kale, and watercress can calm autoimmunity and promote healthy levels of inflammation.

7. Completely Quit Sugar

Sugar offers no nutritional benefits and when you’re experiencing a flare, it’s the worst thing you can eat. Not only does it promote inflammation, but it takes away from the nutrient-dense foods that you should be eating. Even natural sweeteners like maple syrup and raw honey can lead to inflammatory issues.

While you might be tempted to comfort binge on ice cream or soda during a flare, you’ll only be prolonging your symptoms. Eating a sugarless diet that is still packed with antioxidants from natural fruit and vegetable sources is the best way to decrease inflammation and nourish your body during a flare-up.

8. Gentle Movement

Yoga and other forms of natural, gentle movement can be effective ways to manage chronic pain. Whether you join a studio or focus on your own basic practice at home, the benefits of yoga are documented well, and can help fight ailments such as:

• Stress
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Chronic pain
• Poor mental health
• High inflammation levels
• Fatigue

These benefits aren’t limited to autoimmunity, but can certainly help the body to better cope and recover from an active autoimmune flare.

9. Get a Massage or Try Physical Therapy

For people with pain-driven autoimmunity, the natural instinct is to lie down or sit more. However, gentle physical therapy, foam rolling, or therapeutic massage can help to stimulate blood flow to tissues, which can lead to decreased inflammation and nerve function.

When you regularly engage in massage or physical therapy, it can even lead to reduced flares.

10. Meditate with Deep Breathing

Meditation can help to improve mental health and decrease physical pain. Even just a few minutes each day of focusing on your breathing can help to nourish your tissues and overall body with increased oxygen.

Meditation can also help to decrease inflammation, manage anxiety, promote cognitive alertness, and can help fight insomnia and sleep issues.

More Tips

Planning for future autoimmune flares can go a long way. Try these preventative wellness tips when you’re feeling better to get a better handle on your next episode.

1. Anticipate Hormonal Changes

Since pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause are three big triggers for autoimmune disease development, they also remain triggers for flare-ups.

If you have a known autoimmune disease and expect an upcoming hormone shift, take extra steps to support your body. This can mean eliminating foods that aren’t helpful for healing, resting more, focusing on self-care, and pre-emptively cutting down on stressful aspects of life wherever possible.

It could also mean seeking medical help from your doctor to prevent sudden hormone shifts. While nothing can prevent menopause, some types of natural hormone therapy may be able to take the edge off of sudden transitions, but only your doctor can determine when hormone management may be right for you.

2. Ask for Help

Autoimmunity is humbling because, in many cases, when a flare is strong, it’s not possible to continue life in a business-as-usual mode. Whether you are single or married, parenting or working, busy or retired, flares take you out of the norm and require more just for basic tasks like showering, sleeping, and eating. For some, it’s not possible to get out of bed, while others will find it impossible to be on their feet for food prep.

Asking for help might be difficult, but having a plan in place for when a flare strikes can reduce the energy it takes to ask for help. Maintain a document or written plan, and communicating these with others before the next flare strikes can be hugely beneficial. It might even reduce the stress that causes autoimmune flare-ups in the first place!

3. Focus on the Future

When you’re in the middle of a flare, it can feel all-encompassing. It’s important to remember that flares don’t last forever to help preserve your mental health during an episode.

Find online support groups that can offer perspective and companionship so that you don’t feel isolated. That way, you don’t even need to leave the house when your flare is at its worst.

Alternately, if leaving the house and getting out around people is helpful, find a group therapy or support group where you can interact with people who understand what you’re going through. A little empathy goes a long way to reduce the mental burden of autoimmunity.

Watch this video for ways to calm an autoimmune flare-up – Avi Kupfer | Curbing Overactive Immune Systems

Written by Aimee McNew

Author Bio:

Aimee McNew is a Certified Nutritionist who specializes in women’s health, thyroid problems, infertility, and digestive wellness. She ate her way back to health using a Paleo diet, lost 80 pounds, and had a healthy baby after numerous miscarriages. She focuses on simple nutrition practices that promote long-lasting results.

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How to Completely Reverse Your Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease?

 

Click on Here to Find Out How You Can Melt Away Your Liver Fat & Restore Your Liver to Its Full Health & Vitality

Completely Reverse Your Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease – Fatty Liver Is Reduced 34% With This Simple Change

NAFL has become one of the greatest health challenges in the world. The traditional medical system has absolutely no solution.

But a new study published in JAMA Network Open reveals a simple diet change that can reduce the amount of fat in the liver by a whopping 34%.

It all happens in a few weeks.

Scientists in Washington D.C. recruited 244 participants, all with a body mass index between 28 and 40—in other words, overweight or obese. Eighty-seven percent were female and 48% were white. They had an average age of 54.4 years.

The participants were divided into two groups. One group was told to continue their current dietary habits while the other group was placed on a low-fat vegan diet, eating only whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and legumes.

Both groups were told to leave their exercise habits unchanged.

Over the 16 weeks of the study, both groups ate slightly less and exercised slightly more, but because both groups changed similarly, this did not affect the study results.

After the 16 weeks, the vegan participants had lost an average of 13 pounds (5.9 kilograms) and they were burning 14.1% more fat than their animal-eating counterparts.

Even better, the amount of fat stored in their livers had decreased by 34.4%—a spectacular result, considering that they maintained this diet for only 16 weeks.

Compared with the animal-consumers, their muscles also stored 10.4% less fat and they were significantly more sensitive to insulin, and therefore less vulnerable to type-2 diabetes.

None of these health measures improved in the group whose diets remained the same.

These results are impressive. But if you really want to cure your NAFL (and maybe don’t want to go all vegan), follow the simple steps explained here to completely reverse your non-alcoholic fatty liver disease…

Completely Reverse Your Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease – Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Caused by This Everyday Household Product

Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego have just published an alarming study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It reveals that a common additive in many household products and toiletries causes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

You must avoid this additive at all costs if you already suffer NAFLD.

Triclosan is an antibacterial additive found in many bar and liquid soaps, hand sanitizers, shampoos, deodorants, mouthwashes, toothpastes, house cleaning products, pesticides, kitchen utensils, ice makers, toys, bedding, clothes, and even surgical sutures.

Wherever there is a possibility of bacteria, there is a good chance that you will find triclosan in products to combat them.

This means that you have it all over your body, both on the inside and outside.

Because of its use in pesticides, it is in some of your food too.

In the new study, scientists fed mice with type 1 diabetes a high-fat diet that, as we could expect from past research, put them at risk of developing NAFLD.

In addition, they fed one group of the mice triclosan to the point where they had the same amount of it in their blood as previous studies had found in humans.

They then examined the livers and digestive tracts of all the mice to see whether those fed triclosan differed from the others.

While there were signs of the development of NAFLD in all of the mice, it was substantially accelerated in the mice who were fed the triclosan.

When they examined the mice in detail, they even found out why this was the case.

Your body uses a substance called fibroblast growth factor 21 to protect your liver from damage, so when you eat a high-fat diet, your body tells its cells to produce more of this.

But triclosan inhibits two molecules that your cells need to produce this growth factor. In addition, triclosan also disrupts some genes that help with metabolism, including the metabolism of fat.

Lastly, the mice fed the triclosan had a much smaller variety of bacteria in their intestines than the others did, and the medical literature is replete with studies that show that people and other animals with a large variety of intestinal bacteria are much healthier.

If you want to try to avoid triclosan, you will have to buy personal hygiene and house cleaning products that are completely natural. Buying organic fruits and vegetables may also help to reduce the amount with which you come into contact.

But triclosan is only one out of three factors that causes NAFLD. By avoiding this and the other two factors, you can completely reverse your non-alcoholic  fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in weeks, as I explain here…

Completely Reverse Your Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease – How Mild Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Kills

Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) is a pretty new concept. Twenty or thirty years ago, nobody was really talking about it.

Until now, most doctors have not been too worried about it unless it progressed to the more serious stages of fibrosis and cirrhosis.

But that will all change with a new study from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and Massachusetts General Hospital, published in the journal Gut.

They found that even the mildest cases of NAFLD could drastically increase your chance of dying early.

From previous studies, scientists already knew that NAFLD increases our risk of early death, but they wanted to know whether the stages of NAFLD differ in their death risk, and by how much.

To find out, they consulted Sweden’s national health registers to identify 10,568 people with NAFLD and matched each of them with five controls without NAFLD from the same registers. They were matched by age, sex, year of birth, and county.

All of the NAFLD cases had been confirmed via liver biopsies at Swedish hospitals, with the liver samples categorized from least to most serious as steatosis, non-fibrotic steatohepatitis, non-cirrhotic fibrosis, and cirrhosis.

Past studies had linked only the more serious stages—fibrosis and cirrhosis—with an increased risk of death, but this study was by far the largest and most comprehensive of its kind.

In general, the researchers found that people with NAFLD were 93% more likely to die early than those without it: 28.6 versus 16.9 per 1,000 person-years.

Regarding the stages of NAFLD, they found that all levels of severity increased the subjects’ risk of dying early.

1. Compared to those without NAFLD, those with simple steatosis had a 71% higher risk of death. Simple steatosis is the abnormal retention of fat in the liver.

2. Compared to those without NAFLD, those with non-fibrotic steatohepatitis had a 214% higher risk of death. Non-fibrotic steatohepatitis is inflammation of the liver that is accompanied by fat accumulation.

3. Compared to those without NAFLD, those with non-cirrhotic fibrosis had a 244% higher risk of death. Non-cirrhotic fibrosis is the thickening and scarring of liver tissue that occurs every time your liver tries to repair its cells after injury (such as injury caused by fat).

4. Compared to those without NAFLD, those with cirrhosis had a 379% higher risk of death. Cirrhosis is the stage in which the liver has been so overrun by scar tissue that it can no longer function or repair itself. The liver is unable to regenerate or recover.

The deaths were eventually caused by complete liver impairment (cirrhosis), liver cancer, other cancers, or cardiovascular disease.

The fact that the mildest form of NAFLD can increase the risk of early death by 71% should concern us all.

Even more concerning is that for most people, mild NAFLD will eventually progress to stage four.

Watch this video to learn how to completely reverse your non-alcoholic fatty liver disease – How to Treat & Reverse A Fatty Liver | Exercise & Diet Methods for Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

So if you already have NAFLD, you absolutely must click here to learn the simple lifestyle changes that melt away liver fat in days…

This post is from the Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Strategy created by Julissa Clay. She is well renowned within the natural health industry and has produced many effective strategies for people looking for healthier ways to improve their health. 

The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Strategy is your guide to detoxifying and repairing your liver in four weeks. It’s a 100% safe and natural system that focuses on detoxing your liver, correcting your diet and exercises to burn more fat to begin treating non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

The Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Strategy is designed for the everyday person – the person who doesn’t have the time to spend hours at the gym or cooking up elaborate meals. It’s practical and reasonable, offering a natural treatment plan that you can continue with moving forward so you can maintain your new liver health.

To find out more about this program, go to Completely Reverse Your Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease