A healthy immune system is one that can self regulate and have an appropriate and balanced immune response. So it’s not really about how to boost your immune system. Having a healthy immune system is about balance.
Symptoms are our body’s way of sending us messages and letting us know that something is wrong. There is something amiss, some kind of imbalance that needs to be dealt with. It is telling us that we need to take action now so that things don’t become progressively worse.
Functional Medicine helps us understand the connection between our environment, lifestyle and behaviour and address them at a root level
The good news is that you do not need to be at “war” with your body.
Having an autoimmune condition doesn’t mean your body has given up on you! Living with a chronic illness means that your body is trying its best to adapt to the environment you are asking it to live in.
Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms when it comes to autoimmune diseases. Some common underlying reasons are lack of proper sleep, low iron levels and poor nutrition. However, there may be other causes that are less common and hence remain unaddressed.
Dealing with any such conditions requires us to make changes in terms of our lifestyle, our diet and our mindset. As a result, the steps that my clients have to take can become really overwhelming. To avoid this, I take my clients through a step-by-step process that consists of 6 stages. By going through this process, they become much more aware of their own bodies, feel more energetic and confident as they finally start addressing the root causes of their disease.
In autoimmune diseases, chronic pain is often the first sign of an underlying imbalance. At other times it is a byproduct of the tissue damage that accompanies many autoimmune conditions. Either way, there is a lot of evidence that links chronic stress to pain that accompanies any chronic illness.
The most important aspect of immune function is about tolerance. A healthy and balanced immune system should be constantly surveillance and choosing not to respond a majority of the time.
When diagnosed with an autoimmune (or any other such severe chronic condition), we often feel helpless. In fact, conventional wisdom tells us that that there is not much that we can really do in terms of getting better apart from taking the necessary medications that have been prescribed. This further fuels this feeling of helplessness and leaves us feeling disempowered.
Our immune system is responsible for both accelerating and applying brakes on itself. This way we can have an appropriate, measured, and balanced response to a threat. Otherwise, we have chronic runaway inflammation which comes at a heavy price as it is being constantly fueled by an overreactive immune system.