Autoimmune protocol diet

You may have noticed over the few months or years you’ve had a few symptoms such as headache, fatigue, joint pain, depression, and irritability. You have unexplained pain that won’t go away and dry skin as well as skin issues and digestive problems. You’ve been to multiple practitioners and doctors and no one‘s been able to give you a diagnosis. Or you could be in the situation that I was in and already had a full-blown autoimmune disease such as Hashimoto’s or celiac, lupus, psoriatic arthritis. You may actually have multiple autoimmune diseases at this point.

The Autoimmune Paleo protocol is a diet that is to support your body by removing the inflammation and give back those good nutrients to your body. You’re essentially allowing your body to heal, to reset itself. Just like the Paleo diet, the autoimmune protocol avoids processed foods and relies a ton on fruits and vegetables and healthy fats and proteins. Organic food is best, as they provide foods that have a higher nutrient content. The antioxidants in fruits and vegetables help control the harmful free radicals that are roaming around in our body creating havoc. This will help to support the immune system and increase detoxification to repair the cells which is essential for a body that has been damaged by chronic inflammation. Good fats, healthy fats will help support the nervous system.

The foods that you were allowed to eat in the autoimmune protocol diet are slightly different than the traditional Paleo diet. If you’re interested in learning more information about this, then contact me and I can help you! Like the Paleo diet, gluten, dairy and sugar will be avoided as these can be particularly irritating for those with autoimmune disease, especially the thyroid. In addition there are a few other key foods that you need to be aware of. One of them is eggs. For most people, pastured eggs can be good, to someone with high inflammation they can wreak havoc on the system. The eggs can contribute to molecular mimicry. Egg yolks are a common food sensitivity to those with leaky gut.

Food sensitivities are not the same as true food allergies. Sensitivities can often be addressed by healing the gut, while food allergies should always be avoided. Another category of foods are lectins. Lectins are found in grains such as peanuts and nightshade vegetables such as tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, peppers. Lectins can be too much stress for the gut and will keep your immune system in overdrive.

There’s no better time to start but now! We have the time to prepare and cook our food and spend time eating and digesting our food and not eating in a rushed or stressed environment. So start by purging your kitchen of anything that you won’t be eating, look at the food list which I can provide you. Take your food list to the store with you and buy everything that’s on the food list. Again if you’re dealing with blood sugar issues or candida it’s probably best to avoid any hard high carb fruits and vegetables. Try consuming a rainbow of fruits and vegetables to get all the different vitamins and minerals.

Other things that you can do to help eliminate inflammation in the body is by drinking enough water every day, getting enough sleep, modifying your stress, learning what triggers your stress and how to address it. Exercise, but not overly exhausting exercise, and being aware of other toxins in your life such as the types of pots and pans you use, the water that you drink, the air quality carpets, EMF, and blue light. Make sure to get adequate vitamin D from the sun. While there is no cure for an autoimmune disease, diet can be a huge part of putting that disease into remission and allow you to live a full and healthy normal lifestyle!