E068 | When Everything Feels Like a Trigger: The Hidden Key to Immune Calm

 6 Ways to Rebuild Immune Tolerance and Help Your Body Feel Safe Again 

Do you feel like your body is reacting to everything lately, even things that never used to bother you?

You’ve cut the gluten. Followed the protocols. Taken all the right supplements.
 But somehow, your list of triggers keeps growing.

This isn’t a sign that your body is broken.
 It’s a sign that your immune system is overwhelmed and no longer knows what’s safe and what’s not.

In this episode, we unpack what immune tolerance really is, why it breaks down, and what it takes to rebuild it.

So your body can move out of survival mode and into healing with clarity and trust.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING TO THIS PODCAST EPISODE, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• What it actually means when your body keeps reacting to everything (hint: it’s not just “sensitivity”)
• The six hidden systems your body relies on to maintain immune calm
• Why restoring immune tolerance—not just removing triggers—is the key to long-term relief

If you’re ready to shift out of fear and into trust, this episode will help you take the next right step.

OTHER LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Join our free Facebook group: Embrace Your Healing Journey
📚 Book:The Adrenal Thyroid Revolution by Dr. Aviva Romm
📚 Book: Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky
 

 Want clarity on your next step?

Book a 90-min Healing Roadmap Session to identify which of your immune systems need support and map a personalized plan—no guesswork, no overwhelm.

👉 Book your session here

💌 Write to me anytime at anindita@aninditarungta.com—I’d love to hear from you.

If this episode found you somewhere real, there's more.

I write every week at Healing From Within — about chronic illness, the nervous system, and what it costs to keep performing being okay.

 👉 Find me on Substack: healingfromwithin.substack.com

I've also built something for women who are tired of doing everything right and still not feeling better. It opens to a small group in September. 

There's nothing to sign up for. If you'd like to know when, write to me: anindita@aninditarungta.com

Keep listening. Your body already knows the way.

Transcript

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If your body is reacting to more and more foods, allergens, or stressors, you're not broken. Your body is stuck in survival mode, and calming your body is not about controlling it, it is about rebuilding the trust. And in this episode, I'm going to talk about the six systems of immune tolerance and how you can you know, how you can make sure that your body is able to restore the discernment of your immune system to distinguish between what is a danger and what is not. And this is where your healing shifts from just effort to clarity. That's what we're covering in today's episode. 

Welcome to Embrace Your Healing Journey, a podcast for women with autoimmune and other chronic conditions to help them navigate their illness without fear of isolation and uncertainty, and find relief from their symptoms. Your body is your guide and ally in healing. If you are ready to embrace this journey with compassion and awareness, then this show is for you. Tune in weekly as I, a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach, deliver tips and insights that demystify the healing process, guiding you towards the relief you deserve so that you can feel healthy and happy once more. 

So if your chronic symptoms are not a result of an immune system that's too strong or confused, but once that's simply lost its way. And in this episode, I'm talking about something that most wellness plans do not even cover. It's. And they miss this. It's about immune tolerance, right? It's about your immune system being able to figure out what is a friend and what is foe. And it's your. Which means your body's ability to discern between what is a threat and what is not a threat. But when the system breaks down, that's when your body or your immune system gets into hypervigilant. So there's food reactions, there's fatigue. There's stress. Right. All kinds of things. Flare ups. Like everyday stress can lead to flare ups. Not because your body is attacking you, but it no longer knows what to protect you from. So we will get into why this the real reason why this happens. We'll talk about the six systems that preserve immune calm. And we I'll show you how to rebuild this trust. So recently, actually, I was catching up with a friend and for dinner, and she had been. She has been facing health issues for a while, including severe migraines. And a lot of it is under control as she has figured out what are some of the triggers. But when I met her and when we were ordering the food, we realized that she had developed even more food sensitivity. So body sort of, you know, triggered by many more foods now. And this is after she's taken so many steps, right? So she's now allergic to. For example, a body reacts to peanuts, her body reacts to lemon and a few other foods which were not there before. So she has to be even more careful. And this is after removing so many foods and so many triggers like a coffee, etc. So this being out in the sun, that is to trigger her mind. So this is something unfortunately that is you know, that is really common in many, especially in many women. And this is the number of triggers seem to have increased. And this is a typical case of immune system that is no longer tolerant and is become hyper vigilant. But it's not you know, and then what happens is that, you know, uh, they like she continues to suffer Even though she's taken so many steps. So it was as if her system had become more vigilant over the years, and which is clearly what's happened. 

So, in fact, Dr Aviva Rome,  she has this brilliant book called The Adrenal Thyroid Revolution. And she talks about this because this is so common, especially in women. She says 

almost all my patients were perpetually overwhelmed with the relentless sense of stress and dread over their never ending To-Do list of personal, professional, and family responsibilities. Unable to carve out time for self-care or even to prepare and eat regular meals, my patients were seeking my care. What is now increasingly called the Western Cluster. A 21st century set of chronic symptoms and frighteningly common medical conditions that in the past decade, has become the new normal. Overall, my patients fell sick, tired, frazzled and foggy, and they didn't know why. Over and over I heard patients say, Doctor ROM, I just want to feel myself again.

 It's just like my friend and many other clients that I worked with, whom I worked with, who have no diagnosis, who have this random set of symptoms which keep coming and going on. The labs are completely normal. And Doctor ROM actually talks about evidence based on the field of psycho neuro immunology and the another amazing book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. If you haven't read that book. I'll share both the links for both these books below. I highly recommend that you read that. And this is by the neuro endocrinology professor Robert Sapolsky. He wrote this book way back in 1998, but it's been edited and updated and it's a brilliant book.

 And Doctor Sapolsky draws vastly on science, demonstrating not only the physiologic interconnectedness of what appears to be separate body systems and symptoms, but also the impact of a variety of forms of stress on the human body as a result of their triggering a primitive survival system called the HPA axis, which controls the stress response. This axis begins in your brain and extends throughout the body, connecting your nervous system, immune system, and digestive and circulatory systems via cascades of chemical and hormonal messengers. Disruption in any area can and does lead to any and all of these symptoms and conditions my patients were struggling with. 

This actually explains why my friend and so many others like her and doctor Aviva Romm's patients, men and women both,  are dealing with an increasingly, uh, you know, increasing set of symptoms, a chronic symptoms, symptoms which are unpredictable, which come and go, uh, which are related to the hypervigilant immune system, like the immune system that is in constant hypervigilance mode. So the body no longer feels safe. And that's exactly what I'm talking about today, because this leads to more triggers and more symptoms. 

And you are you can do pretty much everything right. And you can still see this this happening. So maybe you have started noticing foods that you used to tolerate, and now they leave you feeling bloated each year. Foggy. And maybe it's not just the usual culprits anymore. Maybe it's now lemon, or maybe it's cumin, and maybe it's even a herbal tea that you had the other day. Or maybe if you you sit through one stressful zoom meeting and then you're exhausted the next day and, you know, and when you get your labs done, they say that there's nothing wrong. 

So you actually have no idea what's really going on. And you've probably had moments when you thought, this is just in my head. I mean, is am I imagining these symptoms? So because how can my body be this reactive to everyday stress everyday, food items, it's just not possible. But this is what I want you to know. You're not being dramatic. You're not imagining your symptoms. It's just that your body is actually responding to something which is real. Like, this is what it looks like when your immune system slips out of regulation and into hypervigilance. Your body is, you know, just to. It's not that your body is too sensitive, it's your that your body feels no longer safe. And that's what we are talking about today. 

That's what is at the root of, um, immune intolerance and how and we're going to talk about in, in, in a while what, how you can preserve this immune tolerance. And it shows up in a different way for each of us. And everything starts to feel like a trigger. So you can have food flares that you can't predict or can't track anymore because there are too many to actually now deal with. You can have migraines that are triggered by small by strong smells, or even minor noise, or even sunlight or other things that, you know, used to be able to, uh, deal with, cope with. You can be dealing with skin breakouts or hives even after new supplements that are good quality, or maybe skincare products or hair care products, sleep disturbances, you know, maybe cropping up between 2 and 4 a.m.. And hormonal swings that can make the cycles more painful, unpredictable, irregular, or intense.

There can be any kind of, uh, any of these symptoms that are showing up now. What ties all of this together is not the symptom, is the inconsistency, is the unpredictability. It's the sense that no matter how careful you are, you still don't know when you know, these symptoms are suddenly going to show up. Right. And that's the problem. It's the loss of trust. And I this, I find, is the biggest threat, actually a bigger threat than the actual, uh, you know, health condition, because this happens in the sense that this actually affects the quality of your life directly. Right? It's not that your body is turning against you, it's that your body is trying to protect you. But with outdated instructions. 

It doesn't really know what is. You know, which, uh, which of the, uh, things that you're facing on a day to day basis is actually a threat and what is not. And that's what is a problem. And that's what you need to actually be able to address. And uh, it's about and that's what I'm talking about today. It's about preserving immune tolerance. So, you know, and I know that if you're like most women that I work with, that you're not been waiting around for, something to happen. 

You have been actually, uh, doing things you have been maybe following gut protocols. You have tried gut protocols. You have cut out gluten, dairy and soy and probably 15 other foods that you actually used to love at one point. Maybe you've wrote it, you know, you've tried different supplements, you have tried to address root causes, and you're trying basically to find that one thing that's going to make all this go away, or that one thing that's going to finally make. All of this fall into place. But you know, till now you are struggling to figure that out. And you've of course done all the allergy test, the stool test, the hormone test, the food sensitivity test, all that you've already done. But you still are not any closer to finding the answer than you were before. And the symptoms persist. The flares come and the triggers keep multiplying. There's so many people I know. I mean, I know personally and I, you know, read about in various forums. And like Doctor Romms said in her book, you know, she comes across. They continue to face these issues because here's what no one has told you before. It's not about what you remove. It's about what your body no longer recognizes as safe. And it needs to be able to reach a point where it's able to figure out what is safe, what is not. An immune system is able to, you know, distinguish between the two, right. And so once it is able to distinguish between the two, then it's going to stop flagging every bite, every trigger as a danger and as a threat. And that's what immune tolerance actually is. So I'm going to show you exactly how your body maintains trust in the, uh, the next part of this episode, because healing is not about only doing everything right. It's about helping your body feel that everything is, you know, safe. 

And that's what's going to make your immune system actually calm down. That I use this word a lot, helping your immune system calm down. And it's not going to happen by force. It's going to happen by, uh, making sure that your environment is such that your immune system comes out from or comes away from that hypervigilant mode, uh, which is typically the. Sympathetic mode, or the fight or flight mode, and into the parasympathetic nervous system mode, which is a rest and digest mode where the and the healing happens. So because what's not going to help is to shut your body down or suppress your immune system, your body needs to feel safe again. So and that's not going to happen by chasing symptoms. So let me just share a quick tip or a quick win with you right now which this you can start doing today itself before every meal to reduce or to, you know, start calming down immune system. Especially before many times I think we underestimate the importance of how you eat and the kind of, um, you know, the nervous system mode that your body is in while you're eating, because that will determine how much of the nutrients that you're going to actually absorb from your food. We focus so much on calories, so much on what we are eating, the proteins, the carbohydrate, etc. but we don't focus nearly enough on how we are eating. 

So this actually forms a part of my eating hygiene protocol that I share with my clients in the very first or second session itself. It's that important. So before this is, I'm going to call it the first bite check in ritual. So before your next meal, I want you to try this. I want you to put a hand on you. Put your hand on your belly. I want you to take a deep breath and just maybe close or half close your eyes and just breathe. That's it. That's all you need to do. Just breathe for, you know, several breaths or maybe up to 60s. And you can say this out loud or even silently in your mind. This food is safe. This food is nourishing, my body is safe, and I'm allowed to receive this. I'm allowed to are allowed to receive this food so that it can nourish me. So that's it. 

So you can just repeat an affirmation or a mantra like this. This food is safe. This food is nourishing. My body is safe. I'm allowed to receive it. Sounds simple, but what happens is that when you are doing this, when you are actually, you know, taking these deep breaths, you're activating your parasympathetic nervous system mode, which is the rest and digest mode, which is going to take you away. So you can't be in both. These nervous system modes are the same at the same time. So you will move away from the fight or flight or the sympathetic nervous system mode, and you will shift. Your body will shift, uh, to the parasympathetic nervous system mode, where you are able to actually, move out of the hypervigilance mode before you even take that first bite. And that's going to allow your body to start accepting, uh, you know, the foods and other things over a period of time.  You will see the difference if you are able to do this, uh, from today itself. And you can do this for a week, and you will see that some of your, symptoms related to food? Some of your symptoms maybe maybe even start to improve.

 So this is an immune training tool. It's not just a mindset hack. And this is how immune tolerance starts. Because without immune tolerance your body never gets to rest. It is in constant defense mode. It's constantly surveilling for triggers for threat. And that's the problem because there may be no real danger, but it's still going to react or it's going to still keep doing that. And every meal will might feel risky, or every symptom will keep feeling random. So you can't heal from that place. You need to shift out from that place and get into and you know where your body actually feels safe.

 So restoring immune tolerance is not just optional, it's actually foundational to long term and sustainable healing. It's a healing that feels effortless, healing that is sustainable, and healing that actually comes from within. So these are the six ways your body maintains tolerance. And I'm going to share that right now so that you have an you have a sense of what it looks like. Uh, this is what actually preserves immune tolerance. These are your body's built in peacekeeping systems.

 So number one is oral tolerance. That means teaching the gut to discern between friend and foe. This is where the immune system first learns to understand what's safe. And your gut bacteria have a big role to play in that. They teach our immune system how to discern between that. But when your gut lining or your gut bacteria or microbiome is compromised, that's when you lose that trust, 

Number two, it's the immune system. Calm. Immune calm starts with your body's built in brake system. So your body also has Treg cells, which is your kind of braking system where your immune system is designed to slow things down when it starts to overreact. It's like your body's internal peacekeeper. But what goes wrong is that when you're under constant stress, whether it's psychological, physical, environmental, that peacekeeping system gets drained and it doesn't work. Is effectively so that becomes a problem. So through nourishment, through rest, through emotional safety, and through stress management tools you can actually change this. 

Number three immune system needs to feel safe. We've been talking about it because the immune system is not just one thing it's about. It has these little teams like, uh, where TH1 and TH2 and these teams have specific things that it needs to do. So one team can get too loud, which can lead to flare up. Another team can take over which can lead to allergy style reactions. So you need to figure out ways to actually restore harmony by focusing on your environment so your immune system can move out of the the hypervigilant mode. 

Number four, the right nutrients can help you in your body start to feel safe again. Certain nutrients don't just boost immunity. They help your body to calm down things like vitamin D or sunshine, healthy fats like omega three, and even, uh, you know, fiber, which helps to restore your gut health. So all of these things are actually helpful, helpful. And sometimes they are needed in supplement form. But focus on foods because foods are going to help. You know by focus on getting these into your daily routine like daily foods. 

Number five reducing the burden, removing the triggers gently. This is not about cutting out 50 foods just because they've shown up in your immune, you know, IgG or intolerance. You know we know these food intolerance testing and maybe 120 out of 120, 50 foods have come up. It's not about removing everything. It's about removing immune overload. But without the fear. It's about understanding what's going on. So whether it's hidden infections, toxic load sensitivities, it's about being you know, it's about understanding what your body's unique requirements are. So we need to reduce the burden. But we need to do it in a very, very personalized and customized manner. 

And number six. Your body has boundaries and you need to help it to protect it. So whether it's your all your linings actually your gut lining, your skin, which is an external body or gut lining, which is the barrier between the outside world and your immune system, your, uh, you know, your nose, all the mucus in your nose, all of these are lining your liver, which actually does the the major, uh, lion's share of removing toxins in your body. So if any of your these systems get overloaded, then your body loses its sense of protection. So making sure that, you know, this is when this thing starts sleeping, slipping through the cracks, literally, an immune system starts to become, you know, starts to actually panic and become and becomes and can become hypervigilant over a period of time. This is actually the path to autoimmunity. In fact. I mean, one extreme, you have the, you know, the overreaction, which is your first step is allergies, eczema, asthma, and then can lead to our community. And the other extreme also can be under reaction. So we don't want either. So we can do this by. Repairing the gut through supplements like zinc, zinc, collagen and glutamine or sulfur rich foods to support the liver so they can be done in various ways. 

But these are the six ways, six systems that you know that your body uses to preserve immune tolerance, and you can do your bits to support it. 

So number one was oral tolerance, where you teach the gut how to discern between friend and foe. 

Number two, immune calm starts with your body's built in braking brake system where you can actually help to nourish, rest, uh, you know, uh, stress management and help your body and immune system to calm down.

 Number three, uh, immune system needs to feel safe. So this is, again, where you focus on restoring conditions that are, uh, you know, addressing the nervous system so that your different teams like th one, like th two different immune cells can actually sort of, you know, come back into harmony with each other. 

Number four, the right nutrients to help, help you feel your body's safe again. Uh, whether it's determined whether it's a healthy fats, etc.

Number five, reducing the burden. That means removing the trigger gently, and it has to be personalized according to your body's requirements. 

And number six, your body has boundaries. You need to help to protect it, because until your body feels safe, it will keep scanning for danger. Your immune system will keep, you know, remain hyper vigilant even if you are eating clean, even if you are taking supplements, even if you are doing the lab test. This missing piece can actually help you help your body, uh, you know, continue to react to various triggers or, you know, actually treat everything as a trigger or as a, as a danger. And, uh, so you need to find a way to move out of this survival mode, this chronic survival mode, and actually move into a mode where your body feels safe again, like that is the crux to immune tolerance. And that's what we're talking about today. So here's a quick body wise wrap up. 

Here's what we covered today. 

Number one, if everything feels like a trigger you're not broken. Immune system is overwhelmed right. You need to figure out what's going on and bring it and focus on preserving immune tolerance. 

Number two immune tolerance is the missing piece in most healing protocols. 

Number three, most women try to solve this with elimination, perfection, and testing. But as you can see, that's not quite enough. 

Number four focus on restoring the six systems that keep your immune system immune response calm and clear. 

Number five, your body cannot heal when it's bracing for impact or when it's in chronic survival mode. Number six this is what effortless healing looks like, which is not another strict protocol, but the return to your body's ability to discern, adapt, and thrive.

 So if this is making sense for you, you know, don't stop here. Make sure that you figure out what your next step should be. You can download the free Decode Your Symptoms guide. It will help you, you know understand what you are. Probably your triggers are. Uh, you can also book a healing roadmap session. You can understand what's really going on and which of these are systems that your body needs more. Right now your body is not the enemy, it's the messenger. And it's been asking for your attention. And this is how you start taking care of it. Thank you so much. I will see you next time.