E156 | Autoimmune Is Not Random

“Autoimmune” gets tossed around like a mystery label, but the biology is surprisingly explainable once you stop oversimplifying it. I’m sharing a deep, non-surface-level look at what it really means when immune tolerance breaks down, why inflammatory cytokines can stay stuck on, and why the popular idea of “boosting your immune system” is often the wrong move for Hashimoto’s, positive ANA patterns, gut-driven flares, and chronic inflammation symptoms like fatigue and brain fog. 

Today, Lindsey zooms in on the gut-immune connection, including why so much immune activity lives in the gut, how zonulin and leaky gut can amplify immune activation, and how triggers like chronic infections (think EBV), food reactions, stress, blood sugar swings, and environmental toxins can push the system toward constant reactivity. I also walk through the functional medicine labs I use most often, from hs-CRP and ferritin to thyroid antibodies, metabolic markers like fasting insulin, and gut testing when symptoms point that direction. 

Then we talk about what actually moves the needle: implementation. I share patient stories that show the difference between having a protocol and living it, plus the hormone-immune link that makes perimenopause a major flare window. We cover foundations that support autoimmune healing and symptom improvement, including anti-inflammatory nutrition, blood sugar stability, nervous system regulation, sleep, moderate movement, targeted supplements, and when medications are helpful tools rather than cures. 

If this helps you think differently about your symptoms, share it with someone who needs a clearer path forward, and please subscribe and leave a five-star review so more people can find the show. 

What’s one trigger you suspect is driving your inflammation right now?

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Transcript

Medical Disclaimer And Welcome

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed on the Rejuvenating Health podcast are solely those of the speakers and are intended as such. Please consult your trusted healthcare practitioner for medical advice. Let's go, girls. Hey, welcome back to the Rejuvenating Health Podcast. I'm Lindy, you're a nurse practitioner and founder of Rejuvenating Health. And today we're doing a solo cast because I was on vacation last week for my 40th birthday. And so Lakin and I didn't really have a good time to connect. So we're gonna do a deep science, non-surface level type of combo about autoimmune. Um and we're gonna dig really deep into lots of things about autoimmune conditions. So if you've been told your immune system is attacking itself, which essentially you probably haven't been told that because no one really explains autoimmune conditions, but if you have something like Hashimoto's or any type of gut health issues or positive ANA or positive thyroid antibodies, essentially what that is is your immune system attacking itself. And a lot of times in conventional med, we're told that, you know, there's nothing you can do to manage it. And we really need to rewrite that narrative because yes, autoimmune diseases are very complex, but they're not random at all and they're not unchangeable. And so today we're gonna break it down. So we're gonna break it down by talking about some advanced immune system science, like what causes autoimmune conditions, some functional lab markers that I use in practice, the real kind of root drivers that I see clinically, some lifestyle and behavior changes that really help, because lifestyle matters a lot with this. Um, some targeted supplements you can use when medications are necessary, and really also dive into that hormone immune connection because a lot of times we'll see autoimmune conditions pop up starting in late 30s when those hormones are starting to decline. So you can have the best protocol in the world, but if you don't change some of these daily behaviors that can trigger autoimmune system issues, like your nervous system and your consistency, your health is really gonna stay stuck. And so that's why, you know, having someone to help navigate you through these autoimmune conditions can be really, really, really important. So diving in first, we're just really gonna talk about what is autoimmunity. So I have an autoimmune condition, so this hits my heart good. I have autoimmune lymphatic colitis, and I got diagnosed with this when I was 16. And autoimmune disease essentially is loss of immune tolerance. So your immune system is supposed to recognize self versus non-self, essentially. And that tolerance is maintained by certain cells. So T regulatory cells, anti-inflammatory cytokines like IL10, TGF beta. And when that tolerance is lost, your immune system becomes reactive to your own tissues. So essentially, your immune system is that's where your immune system is tacking itself comes from. So those T cells, when that happens, you have a loss of immune breaks. And it's not random, it's usually driven by a signaling imbalance. So what happens is that signaling is disrupted. So you get some pro-inflammatory cytokines released. So you can get elevated TNL alpha, elevated IL6, elevated IL-17, and these drive essentially tissue destruction, chronic inflammation, pain, fatigue, and brain fog. And to counter those, you normally have anti-inflammatory cytokines. So you'll have some IL-10, TGF beta, and these normally help regulate and calm this inflammation. So when you have an autoimmune condition, these cells are out of balance. It's an imbalance of the cytokine signaling. Okay. And it can happen via a lot of shifts, right? You can have intracellular pathogens, you can have allergic pathways, you can have high inflammatory pathways linked to gut dysfunction. And most autoimmune condition patients kind of have this high inflammatory, um, intracellular pathogen process dominant state, which is why simply beasting your immune system is the wrong approach. It's not gonna work. You have to modulate your immune system, okay? And you have to turn on this pathway called an NFKB activation, which I'm getting real sciencey here, but this is really important for your inflammatory pathways. And what this does is it turns on genes for cytokines, adhesion molecules, inflammatory coenzymes, and things like stress, blood sugar spikes, infections, toxins, those kind of chronically activate those. And so when those are chronically activated, that system's chronically activated, you get chronic inflammation and you get autoimmune progression. And 70% of your immune system lives in your gut. So this is why gut health is so, so important when we talk to patients about Hashimoto's disease or any type of autoimmune condition. Your immune system lives in your gut. And so your gut has lots of key structures. It has these tight junctions that are zonulin regulated. You also have a gut-associated lymphoid tissue. And so when this zonulin increases, those tight junctions open and you can get what's called leaky gut. And when that happens, these LPSs or lipopolysaccharides start entering your bloodstream. Food antigens start entering your bloodstream. So then you have this chronic immune activation, cytokine cascade. And when that happens, these things attack your cause your body to attack your own immune system. So here's kind of examples. Say you've had chronic EBV, that triggers your inflammatory pathways to target your thyroid tissue and you get Hashimoto's. If you have a gluten allergy, that triggers your um cellular tissues to target Hashimoto's as well. And then your immune system is attacking both. So when we deal with patients, we deal with autoimmune a lot, especially Hashimoto's, and it hashimoto's with EBV a lot. So let me give you a real life example here. So I had a 42-year-old patient come in with brain fog, fatigue, weight gain despite dieting, hair loss, and she'd recently been diagnosed with Hashimoto's. And her doctor essentially says your TSH is slightly elevated. Here's some thyroid medication. But no one looked at her thyroid antibodies. No one dig deeper to ask why this was happening. No one did any of that. And so when we dug in deeper, we found that she had elevated TPO antibodies, so Hashimoto's, a really low vitamin D, like in the 20s, some elevated ferritin, which is an inflammatory pattern, and she had some like positive markers that indicated chronic autoimmune activation, essentially. So when that happens, that thyroid tissue gets targeted, those antibodies get produced. So instead of just throwing on thyroid medication, we addressed immune triggers, inflammation, like anti-inflammatory nutrition, getting vitamin D optimization, getting nutrient optimization, nervous system regulation. And here's where like coaching came in key for her because she was doing all the right things and consistently. So once we implemented structure, accountability, repeatable habits, her antibodies were able to drop, her energy improved, her thyroid function improved, and we were no longer like destroying that thyroid function. There's a huge difference in knowing stuff and actually executing what you know. So if you're one of those people that's been told your labs are normal, you're kind of missing the full picture because you're probably not getting all the labs drawn. And we've discussed this before. So if you want to look at autoimmunity, you really need to be looking at a high-sensitive CRP, sometimes an ESR, a ferritin, sometimes immune markers like ANA. You want to be looking at specific antibodies like thyroid antibodies, doing a gut health test and looking at zonulin, calprectin, stool testing. You want to look at metabolic markers like fasting insulin, A1C, glucose variability. You want to be looking at your nutrients like vitamin D, B, stuff like that. In really advanced situations, you can do more advanced testing, but those are kind of really good things to start with. Another example here, if we're kind of looking at the whole picture, is we had a 35-year-old patient who came in with joint pain, bloating, skin flares, psoriasis issues, and her labs showed CRP, her gut health showed an elevated or showed dysbiosis and elevated zonulin. And so she had this really clear gut immune access involvement. So we gave her this protocol to do gut repair. So glutamine, probiotics, some anti-inflammatory nutrition, some blood sugar stabilization. And after like four weeks, she did amazing. Then life gets busy. Then you have sick kids, you're traveling, you have stress, and you go right back to those old habits. And guess what happened? Her symptoms came right back, right? And so that's where having a coach really helps because I can give you the best protocol on how to fix these things that I found. But you need help executing it when life gets busy. We don't just say like try harder. We help you build travel strategies and simple meal frameworks and non-negotiables. And, you know, once you have these symptoms in place, systems in place, you're not relying on motivation. You're relying on just like a system that works. And so her inflammatory markers dropped, her symptoms stabilized long term. And autoimmune, it really does require consistency and long-term perfection. I can tell you, we traveled last week, and so I tried to eat really good. I know what stuff triggers my gut in my autoimmune condition, but when you're out of the country, sometimes you have a limited availability. And so, you know, I had seed oils and I had some gluten and I had some dairy and I am inflamed and my gut was ticked off. And I knew this going into vacation, but once you've removed some of that stuff and you know what feeling good feels like, you don't really want to go back to that. So I didn't want to leave vacation. I could not wait to get back to my regular food. Because autoimmune disease, like it causes a lot of stress on your body. And I can tell you, like, my whoop and HRV was not happy that whole entire trip. And it was because my gut was messed up. And that gut dysfunction causes that zonulin to have that leaky gut and that immune activation. You know, chronic infections can cause issues, and blood sugar dysregulation can really cause issues. Like insulin spikes cause a lot of inflammation, which can cause autoimmune conditions. Toxins in your environment can cause a lot of mitochondrial dysfunction, which can cause immune dysregulation. People underestimate how their nervous system affects autoimmune conditions, but nervous system affects it so much. Your nervous system, if you have nervous system dysregulation, you can get chronic sympathetic dominance, cortisol disruption, and an immune imbalance. And so autoimmune is really complex. And a lot of patients have tried a lot of different things and they get stuck. And it's not because they don't have a plan, it's more because they don't follow through consistently. Maybe don't change behaviors, stay in a stress cycle. And this is really where knowing and doing are not the same, right? Doing is what actually changes your physiology. And practicing lifestyle medicine is where really the healing matters the most, right? So the last case I want to share with you, because this is so, so common, is a 48-year-old female came to us in perimenopause, having a ton of joint pain, anxiety, poor sleep, weight gain, elevated autoimmune markers. And what the heck happened? Her hormones changed. She's in perimenopause. So her labs showed low progesterone, estrogen dominance, elevated cortisol at night. And remember what we've talked about before, estrogen is immune stimulating. Progesterone is calming, anti-inflammatory. So when that progesterone drops, inflammation rises. So for her, we worked on sleep optimization, which is critical for that cortisol plus cytokines. We worked on nervous system regulation, we worked on nutrition and blood sugar balance, and we worked on targeted hormone support. And she literally was not failing because she didn't care. She was exhausted and overwhelmed. So instead of giving her this crazy massive plan, we simplified it and did three meals a day, whole food meals, 10-minute walks, consistent bedtimes. And this really allowed her body to calm down, right? So autoimmune improvement isn't always about doing more. It's sometimes about doing less, but doing it consistently. And the treatment for autoimmune conditioning is not optional when it comes to lifestyle changes. You have to have foundational lifestyle changes if you're going to treat autoimmune conditions. You have to have foundational nutrition. And the goal of autoimmune, you could follow an AIP diet, an autoimmune protocol diet. I think that's a little extreme. Really, you just need to focus on reducing immune triggers and stabilizing your blood sugar. So eating whole foods, if it has a mother, if you can pull it from the ground, if you can pick it from a tree, eating high protein, eating anti-inflammatory fats. Immediately, you're gonna hate me for this, but removing gluten, processed foods, seed oils. And again, we're not aiming for perfection, we're aiming for repeatable, repeatable systems. We really have to balance your blood sugar because every blood sugar spike you have causes an inflammatory signal. So you need to be eating balanced meals with protein first, fiber, and fats. You have to regulate your nervous system. Like your body cannot heal if you're in fight or flight. So if you're in constant cortisol, chronic stress, cortisol dysregulation, you're gonna have that cytokine imbalance. So getting in, walking outside in the sunshine, doing breath work, setting boundaries, reducing overcommitment, that's where you can really calm down that nervous system. And make sure you're getting adequate sleep because sleep regulates your cytokines, your hormones, and your immune system. So if you're sleeping less than six hours a night, you're gonna have tons of increased inflammation. And movement when you have an autoimmune condition is really important. I don't want you doing overtraining that increases inflammation. You want to do moderate movement, walking, and weightlifting to really help your body fight off any type of triggers that it's having, right? And when you do supplements, you really want to work on targeted supplements, right? So vitamin D is essential. It helps with immune regulation. Omega-3s help decrease anti-inflammatory markers. Curcumin is a great one. Magnesium glycinate helps with nervous system. And then zinc and selenium help with your immune balance and thyroid support. And then if you really want to get into like advanced supplementation, you can do some NAC, which helps with glutathione, and glutathione helps with oxidative stress reduction. And then you could add in some L-glutamine for gut repair. When you're looking at medications, a lot of times if you go to your doctor, they're gonna do like steroids and biologics and immune suppressants. And these reduce cytokines, and I've been on immune suppressants and they work, but there's a lot of dangers that go with them. And those are tools, not cures, right? Like you're not curing anything when you go on there. So for me, I don't take any of that stuff and I've cured it all with my diet and lifestyle and also a little bit of hormones. Because women are 40% more likely to get an autoimmune condition because of their drop in estrogen or the stimulating effects of estrogen. So that estrogen, especially if you become estrogen dominant and perimenopause is gonna amplify that immune response. And that drop in progesterone, which was anti-inflammatory, is gonna cause some issues as well. So perimenopause is just this huge major trigger window where if you're starting to have those symptoms, HRT can be really, really beneficial to you. So autoimmune is complex. Your PCP is probably just gonna stick you on a med instead of trying to cure it. I think if you take anything from this episode, I want you to realize that autoimmune disease is not just about your immune system. It's about your gut, your metabolism, your stress, your daily behaviors. And the difference between like staying stuck and actually healing is not just information, it's implementation. And so that's where you combine clinical care with health coaching, that creates kind of that real lasting change. So if you're ready to actually address your root cause and not just manage your symptoms, we would love to work with you. Um, if we are working with you, I hope you got some great advice from this and share it with someone who's maybe struggling with this. Maybe you didn't even know you were struggling with it, and this was super eye-opening to you. But as always, share away, give us a five star review, we appreciate it, and we'll see you next time.