At Nutrition Therapy by Jenny Carrea, I take my clients on a journey to explore how a whole-body and mind approach to nutrition can help prevent and ease autoimmune symptoms. So I was overjoyed when I found out that there was a verse in the Bible that narrows down what I have in my heart and the purpose God has given me:

“Beloved Friend, I pray that you are prospering in every way and that you continually enjoy good health, just as your soul is prospering.”

3 John 1:2

God not only wants us to build and nourish our souls, he wants the same outcome for our physical health. Therefore, it is essential to prioritize our nutrition to ensure that our bodies function at their best.

Through this blog, I want to give you hope, encouragement, and tools to help you understand your body’s behavior; I want to help you start your journey to create health. I’ve learned that healing in a natural way is possible……True healing. There is a way but we must start from the symptom and trace it all the way back to the root like an investigator! Just managing symptoms does not create health. Symptoms are our body's language, so our body is speaking to us and asking for help. True healing comes when you find the root cause. Why did this happen? How did this start? This is where it all began for me. I developed Rheumathoid Arthritis (RA) at the age of 37. It was the tiniest discomfort on my left-hand pinky joint. I actually thought it was sore from holding my new and much bigger iphone. That was wishful thinking!

After being diagnosed I knew that I wanted to tackle RA with a natural approach. This was my starting point. At about the same time I had registered for school at the Nutrition Therapy Associating to become an NTP. (Nutrition Therapy Practitioner) I was able to become my first client as I learned all about nutrition.

What is an autoimmune disease?

Autoimmune disease happens when the body’s natural defense system can’t tell the difference between your own cells and foreign cells, causing the body to mistakenly attack normal cells (www.hopkinsmedicine.org). I call it a confused immune system. There are many symptoms of an autoimmune disease such as allergies, headaches, yeast infections, digestive issues, extreme fatigue, depression, joint pain, rashes, etc. They aren’t the easiest to diagnose since the symptoms can be vague, but there are blood tests that will show you if you have inflammation and auto- antibodies. That’s how I was diagnosed.

What causes autoimmune disease?

Well, it’s epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work (www.cdc.gov). “Epi” means above…..so “above genetics.” That means that it is not set that we will get a certain disease just because the genes were passed along. We can get the disease if we set the scene for those genes to be expressed. For example, your mother may have an autoimmune disease but that doesn’t mean that you will get it. You determine whether or not that gene will express itself by your lifestyle, environment, stress level, diet, exercise pattern or lack of. One important thing to note is that there are triggers for an autoimmune disease as well such as bacterias, fungus, viruses, chemicals, pollutants, toxins, food sensitivities, pharmaceuticals and more (The Paleo Approach by Sarah Ballantyne).

What does the catchy phrase “leaky gut” have to do with autoimmunity? It has everything to do with autoimmunity. Leaky gut or intestinal permeability is caused by diet and lifestyle and if you can heal your gut you can make a massive change in your autoimmune disease. Tight junctions in your intestines determine what is allowed to go into your bloodstream from your digestive tract. If the tight junctions are damaged due to a terrible diet and stressful lifestyle then toxins will be allowed into the bloodstream and autoimmunity can occur. This is that confused immune system I talked about earlier.

So how do you get started?

With me of course!! I will make your life so much easier as your guide, help, friend and educator! The diet plays a massive role in how we all feel. We need to wrap our brains around food as a medicine too. Many people make the choice to start with a pharmaceutical and that is totally ok. My choice was to start with diet and lifestyle first. For someone with an autoimmune disease some of the perceived nutrient dense foods are not good for us…they will actually encourage auto-antibodies. You need an experienced NTP to help you maneuver this process.

A healthy mindset

We need to focus on this first thing so we can set you up for success.

How we think and what we believe about ourselves can significantly impact our physical health. Research from Penn State University found that negative mood measured multiple times a day over time is associated with higher levels of inflammatory biomarkers. On the contrary, expert Lisa R. Yanek, M.P.H., found that people with a history of heart disease who had a positive outlook were one-third less likely to have a heart attack than those with a negative outlook. Most importantly -and on a higher note-the Bible says in Romans 12:2 that by changing the way we think, we will learn to know God’s will for us, which is pleasing and perfect. Aligning our thoughts in the right direction can open the doors to healing in every area of our lives.

The 6 Foundations to Creating Health

In order to build on something you must have a proper foundation. That’s why we always address a nutrient dense diet, digestion, blood sugar regulation, fatty acids, mineral balance, and hydration. Through proper work in those areas we can get the body more balanced. Let’s get started on explaining the foundations to optimal health so you will have an idea of where we go on this journey. Think of it like I am your vacation specialist and we will just sail on over t 6 ports that will really improve your life! All the foundations work together so I’m not talking about them in order of importance. I’m just building on the next one.

Nutrient Dense Diet

A properly prepared, whole food, Nutrient Dense Diet is foundational because that is where all of our nutrients, vitamins and minerals come from. For the most part if we don’t eat it…we don’t get it. That makes food quality very important because we want the foods we eat to actually have all the nutrients in them that are supposed to be there. There are also things we want to try and avoid as much as possible such as pesticides. Pesticides do a real number on the lining of our stomachs. We will also strive for a balanced plate of fats, carbs, and proteins because that will provide the fuel essential for the building blocks our body needs to maintain health and balance.

Carbs provide us with a quick source of fuel for the body. Fats get a terrible name but they are crucial! The fats in our food helps us to absorb some vitamins. I don’t even want to think about what my food would taste like without having some fat….it makes everything more flavorful! It also makes you feel full…Bonus! Proteins are the building blocks for tissues, nerves, organs, etc. Did you know that hemoglobin is a special protein found in red blood cells that transports oxygen around the body? Wow. I’ll be eating my protein thank you, because I do not look good in blue! Let’s move on to digestion. You will see how it ties into a nutrient dense diet.

Digestion

If we are choosing high quality, nutrient dense foods we want to be able to digest them properly and absorb the nutrients that our bodies need to stay in balance. Digestion is a North to South process that means it begins in the brain, not the mouth. With that stated, we need to eat mindfully (undistracted). When we take a moment and think about our food our PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System) activates. This is our rest and digest mode. So, once we are there we smell the food and our mouths start to salivate. A whole cascade of things happen from this point. The saliva breaks down the starchy carbs and proteins so that it can move onto the stomach and be further broken down. I like to think of it like a pinball machine. So many things are “pinging” off of one another. The protein and fats in our food trigger other digestive juices so that we can properly digest and absorb all the nutrients. You see why we need that first foundation of a nutrient dense diet? We must have the fat to trigger some digestive juices in order to have optimal digestion. There are so many things that can go wrong in this foundation due to lifestyle and a poor diet. Some terrible side effects of poor digestion are binge eating, gas, acid reflux, mineral deficiencies, and even as far as autoimmune diseases. As we work through this foundation together we will discover where you need to improve and you will see the benefits like I did. Let’s move onto Blood Sugar Regulation and see how it ties into a nutrient dense diet and proper digestion.

Blood Sugar Regulation

A small amount of glucose is found in the bloodstream at all times. If glucose levels move out of the desired range, the brain immediately triggers the release of hormones for optimal Blood Sugar Regulation. This is where we talk about insulin and the problem that happens in diets that are carb heavy or sugary. When we eat a carb heavy/sugary meal our body produces insulin to carry that extra glucose off to be stored in the liver (as glycogen), skeletal muscles and fat tissue. Since this was a carb heavy meal with no protein, etc. in a few hours you will be hungry again and then your liver will need to convert the glycogen to glucose for some much-needed fuel for the body. If you eat another carb heavy meal or carb heavy snack that whole process will happen all over again. Insulin is a hormone and it’s made of minerals. This constant process can deplete our body of precious minerals when it’s happening too much.

Our goal is to eat a balanced plate of fat, protein, and carbs to keep our blood sugar regulated. When our blood sugar is optimal then we know we are eating a nutrient dense diet, therefore our digestion should be optimal provided we are eating mindfully. Stress can also play into blood sugar issues. As your NTP I will help you navigate this area as well so you can obtain your goal of feeling good.

Fatty Acids

Next up to support your wellness journey is fatty acids and how they help to regulate inflammation in your body. Inflammation can be managed with nutritional therapy and with proper Fatty Acid intake. Certain fatty acids induce inflammation and some help to bring down inflammation. We need both to happen! For example, if we get a splinter in our finger we want the site to get red and swell because that helps with healing, but once the splinter is out we need that area to un-inflame to continue healing. You see how they both work together? There are many food sources of fatty acids that induce inflammation such as sunflower oil, corn oil and peanut oil. Most of these oils are in all of our processed food. We get a lot of these with a processed diet. Food sources that help fight inflammation are walnuts, flaxseed oil, and fatty fish. In our normal diet we don’t get a lot of this. So, can you see how eating large amounts of inflammation inducing foods can cause our body to have widespread inflammation? Fats also do many other wonderful things like provide energy, make things taste yummy and act as building blocks for our cells and hormones. In order to be able to properly use our fatty acids our digestion must be in good working order. What good are they to us if we can’t properly absorb them? Speaking of absorption, let’s move on to another foundation…..Mineral Balance.

Mineral Balance

Minerals are necessary and we only get them from eating them in foods for the most part. Therefore, you must eat a good nutrient dense diet to set yourself up for success. Proper Mineral Balance helps with tissue growth, muscle contractions, they transfer nutrients across cell membranes, and so much more! Did you know that calcium is the most abundant mineral in our body and around 99% of it is stored in our skeleton? The body uses calcium to maintain proper PH in our blood, it’s necessary for bone calcification and it’s essential to blood coagulation.

Calcium is abundant but most of us can’t even effectively absorb it due to poor digestion, processed diets, stress, and being chronically dehydrated as a society.

Hydration

That brings me to our last foundation of being properly hydrated. Water is the most important nutrient in the body and makes up 55-60% of our total body mass. Sadly, many Americans live in a constant state of dehydration which causes problems like joint pain, fatigue, heartburn, constipation, migraines, anxiety and many other undesirable issues. Water is “key” people! Just drink it. Ok, that was the bossy side of me. Realistically, if you don’t like the taste we can work together and come up with a solution that is suitable to you. Proper Hydration Is also necessary for kidney function. Your kidneys help to remove waste from the blood as well as regulate blood pressure. When you think of water you don’t really think about all those important jobs it’s involved in. Water is so important! Water recommendations are always made based on gender, age, disease, lifestyle, activity level, processed food intake, etc. This concludes the foundations but there are many other areas to work in to create optimal health.

Bonus: The 3 Main Add-Ons to Immune Therapy

The Elimination Diet

This area is massive when it comes to creating health with someone with an autoimmune disease. It’s where the majority of the work is done and when we start to feel out best. We do this portion of the work alongside working in the 6 foundations of health. This requires support and knowledge of what foods and spices are inflammatory. The main culprits are gluten, dairy, legumes, nightshades, and nuts. Once we determine what foods are causing the problems we slowly reintroduce the other foods back into our diet. This may sound taxing but with me, as your guide I make this transition as smooth as possible and help you take the thinking out of it. All the meals that I plan are satisfying and extremely nourishing! You will feel full and satiated because this is not about deprivation….it’s about giving your body what it needs.

The Autophagy

What exactly is autophagy??? A process by which a cell breaks down and destroys old, damaged, or abnormal proteins and other substances in its cytoplasm (the fluid inside a cell). The breakdown products are then recycled for important cell functions, especially during periods of stress or starvation.(www.cancer.gov) In layman's terms when you fast for an prolonged period (48-72 hrs) , your body has the chance to rest since it is not busy digesting food or defending against inflammatory agents in food. (www.amymyersmd.com)

Fasting

Prolonged fasting helps repair the gut by “sealing the leaks” that are known with leaky gut. Once those tight junctions are sealed you can lower your autoimmune symptoms. Fasting also prompts your body’s “clean up crew” to get rid of damaged cells and make healthy new ones. Once the autophagy process has started it reduces systemic inflammation in the body, therefore lowering auto-immune symptoms

This one may sound like a “doozy” but this portion of the work is only done after the client has experienced breakthrough with their symptoms. This means that they have a massive decrease in symptoms before we start this process.

Fasting is a powerful tool in creating health but it is not for everyone. Make sure you always do this with an experienced practitioner.

Your reward? -A new lifestyle!

Sticking with this lifestyle becomes your new norm. You will be motivated to continue because you will actually feel good….when you are motivated “you wanna do stuff”and when you aren’t motivated “you don’t wanna do anything.” You will even be able to find a new way to cook those old comfort foods, but in a way that serves your body….not takes away from it.

change your eating lifestyle — New Lifestyle

Your new lifestyle is healthcare.

In health,

Autoimmune Disease: The 6 Foundations of Creating Health