AutoImmune

Autoimmune disease symptoms often take years to develop and often initially appear as occasional joint or muscle aches.

“Leaky Gut Syndrome” a condition in which your intestinal lining is so irritated or inflamed that the cells walls that are actually normally tightly held together, split apart allowing intestinal material directly into the body and into circulation. Since the symptoms are initially so vague and often come in episodes it may take years before these symptoms are more formally investigated properly and an Autoimmune diagnosis is made.

So, what now? What can you do?

Look at These Symptoms to Relate to What you are Feeling. These are Frequent Autoimmune Disease Symptoms:

• Allergies
• Frequent colds
• Asthma
• Anxiety
• Brain fog
• Attention deficit or Hyper-Activity problems
• Poorly functioning Thyroid, possibly Hashimoto’s
• disease (underactive thyroid) or Graves disease (overactive thyroid)
• Fatigue, Exhaustion, hyperactivity
• Weight gain or loss
• Digestive disorder symptoms/Stomach cramping after eating specific foods, Gas/Bloated stomach, Diarrhea, Constipation

If you find that you have any of these symptoms, please take action to further investigate why…

Autoimmunity Facts:

• The symptoms of an autoimmune disease affect brain, skin, mouth, lungs, sinus, thyroid, joints, muscles, adrenals and GI tract functions.
• It often takes up to five years for an official autoimmune diagnosis.
• It takes 6 to 10 doctor consult visits before a person is formally diagnosed with an Autoimmune condition.
• Almost one is six people in the U.S. — 50 million overall — live with autoimmune disease symptoms.
• You can, in most cases, REVERSE autoimmune symptoms/conditions by evaluating your possible “leaky gut”, “gut dysbiosis” condition by removing foods and lifestyle factors that damage the intestinal lining, replacing them with healing foods, immunoglobulin repairing supplementation/proteins, repairing with specific nutrition supplements to make up for what you are not getting in your diet and rebalancing your natural intestinal “biome” (correct healthy intestinal bacteria with medicinal strength EFFECTIVE probiotics.

The overall Plan:
1. Remove – Triggering Foods/Toxins
2. Restore – Healthy Nutrients/Vitamins/Mineral
3. Repair – Intestinal lining with specific healing immune enhancing repair proteins, probiotics.
4. Re-Establish your mental, physical and spiritual balance by modifying your lifestyle to reduce stress, eat correctly and regularly, work on healthy and positive personal and work-based connections.

Stress & AutoImmunity

When cortisol gets kicked into high gear over a long period of time, it has all sorts of negative effects.

• High levels of cortisol in your bloodstream can dampen the effects of your immune system.
• It also the health and function of your gut lining and digestion/stomach lining.
• Cortisol can also increase the number of cytokines (proteins that cause inflammation) in your bloodstream, potentially increasing inflammation in the body.
• Cortisol even shrinks your prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for your decision making in the present and the future. Meaning, extreme stress can affect the way you process decisions!
• Cortisol also affects your hippocampus, which is responsible for your short-term memory.

Many people experiencing prolonged stress or previous traumatic events experience gaps in their memory, as this change in the brain prevents the forming of new memories. So, there are often gaps in your childhood memories if you have had an experience of abuse. Unfortunately, this affect to your hippocampus results in even more cortisol being produced and released by your body – a self–fulfilling cycle.

Current or past childhood stress, that may even be present when a child has to share two homes may also take a toll and cause Autoimmune symptoms.

​These physiological changes coupled with undiagnosed food allergies and triggers in a child or teens brain may be responsible for them developing ADD/ ADHD

High levels of cortisol in your bloodstream can be either a precedent to autoimmune disease or a full blown trigger. Read my article on autoimmune triggers to learn about the difference between triggers and precedents.
In a study of sleep-deprived firefighters, high levels of cortisol induced increased levels of cytokines, an autoimmune signal chemical responsible for inciting inflammation. Elevated cytokines have been found in adults who experienced trauma as children. Many Iraq veterans with PTSD face autoimmune disease as a result of the great stress they were under during their service.

High levels of cortisol can increase your chances of getting the following autoimmune diseases:

• Cardiovascular disease
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Lupus
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)

and many more. There are over 140 diseases that are categorized as autoimmune, and that number is set to rise!

HOW Past Trauma May create MY AUTOIMMUNITY TODAY?
If you experienced great trauma or periods of stress, you may have had high levels of cortisol as a child, or it may now be rising as you begin to process the events of your childhood. Thoughts and feelings you may have tucked away many years ago may be manifesting as your autoimmune disease.

Your current stress can also reactivate old infections – causing your immune system to fight the infection, provoking inflammation and triggering a further stress response from your immune system. Cortisol and autoimmune disease are intrinsically linked.

Obviously, not everyone who develops an autoimmune disease has suffered trauma. But the experience of childhood stress has the potential to make a large impact on your autoimmune system, because as a child, you did not have a fully developed prefrontal cortex.

Your prefrontal cortex is responsible for:

• Expressing personality
• Decision making
• Complex cognitive tasks
• Social behavior

When an adverse event happens or prolonged stressful situations, a child/teen can have great difficulty coping with it and the lasting physiological changes to the body and brain can cause pre-autoimmunity, autoimmunity and/or ADD/ADHD changes to the brain.

In the case of prolonged stress/trauma can hinder the child’s development physiologically and psychologically. Ultimately, whatever beliefs you form in childhood can be carried forward into adulthood and believed to the same intensity.

These beliefs, along with the changes to your prefrontal cortex have an effect on your body’s functioning, brain chemistry affecting neurotransmitter balance, Immunity, and in the end, your adult relationships, the way you relate to society, and the way you handle stress throughout your life.

Your earlier exposure to and ability to handle and reactions to stress from a very early age carries forward, potentially making your autoimmune symptoms worse in the process.