Top 5 Autoimmune Triggers You Didn't Know Were Holding Back Your Health

In this insightful episode of Limitless Health, Kate discuss five commonly overlooked triggers for autoimmune flare-ups that may be preventing your body from healing. Many people with autoimmune conditions feel frustrated, trying various approaches without results. This episode breaks down how environmental toxins, food sensitivities, mold exposure, chronic stress, and radiation could be the culprits holding you back and offers practical steps you can take today to start your healing journey.

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

•📅 Free Webinar: “How to Take Control of Autoimmune Health Naturally” on October 23rd at 7 PM EDT

Reserve Your Spot

•🌐 Website: Aligned Natural Health

•📲 Follow Kate on Instagram: @alignednaturalhealth

Key Takeaways:

1.Environmental Toxins: Everyday items like cleaning products, air fresheners, and personal care products often contain harmful chemicals (e.g., phthalates, parabens, synthetic fragrances) that can disrupt hormones and trigger immune responses.

•Tip: Switch to non-toxic, fragrance-free alternatives and start eliminating harmful products from your environment.

2.Hidden Food Sensitivities: Foods like gluten, dairy, and even “healthy” options like certain vegetables can trigger inflammation.

•Tip: Consider starting an elimination diet to identify your specific triggers or consult with a practitioner for root cause testing.

3.Mold Exposure: Mold can be a major contributor to autoimmune conditions and is often found in homes, workplaces, and even some foods.

•Tip: Get professional mold testing for your home and use binders and liver-supporting herbs to detoxify your system.

4.Chronic Stress: Long-term stress elevates cortisol, weakening the immune system and worsening autoimmune symptoms.

•Tip: Implement stress-reducing activities such as yoga, meditation, walks in nature, or EFT tapping to help manage stress levels.

5.Radiation Exposure: Devices like cell phones, Wi-Fi, laptops, and wearables emit low-level radiation that can affect your immune function over time.

•Tip: Reduce exposure by turning off Wi-Fi at night, using wired headphones, and keeping electronic devices away from your body.

Upcoming Event:

Don’t miss our Free Webinar: “How to Take Control of Autoimmune Health Naturally”. Amanda and Kate will guide you through these triggers in more detail, providing actionable steps to help you take control of your health and start feeling better. Click here to register.

Call to Action:

If you or someone you know is struggling with autoimmune symptoms and looking for answers, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in to discover hidden triggers and practical solutions to take back your health. Don’t forget to share this episode, subscribe, and leave a review!

*** This podcast is for information purposes only. By providing the information contained herein, we are not diagnosing, treating, curing, mitigating, or preventing any disease or medical condition. Before beginning any type of natural regimen, it is advisable to seek

*** This podcast is for information purposes only. By providing the information contained herein, we are not diagnosing, treating, curing, mitigating, or preventing any disease or medical condition. Before beginning any type of natural regimen, it is advisable to seek the advice of a licensed healthcare professional.

Transcript

  If you've been struggling with autoimmune symptoms and feel like you've tried everything without any results, today's episode is for you. We're going to talk about five common, but often overlooked, autoimmune triggers that might be getting in the way of your health and how you can start addressing them today. 

Most people don't realize that triggers for autoimmune conditions can actually be hidden in plain sight. By identifying and removing these triggers, you can help your body finally start to heal. And at the end of this episode, I'm going to share with you how you can join our free webinar, How to Take Control of Autoimmune Health Naturally, where we dive even deeper into these topics and share actionable steps that you can start taking today to start feeling better. 

One of the biggest hidden culprits for autoimmune flare ups is environmental toxins. And this is something that I didn't realize for the first more than 10 years of my MS journey. I thought that I was just, my immune system was broken. I thought my body was attacking itself. I thought there was nothing I could do about it.

I thought I just had to accept this. It was going to continue to get worse.  And when I realized what was actually going on, it made a really big difference. So when we're talking about the flare ups. And we're talking about kind of the triggers that your body is responding to. Something I heard a couple of years ago that I thought was really an interesting perspective is we look at it as the body is fighting you.

The body is broken. The body is doing what it's not supposed to do. But what if we switched that perspective and recognize that the body actually is doing exactly what it was designed to do.  What if your body is actually trying to keep you safe? It's trying to protect you from things that don't belong there. 

And in the meantime, your tissues are getting in the way. Parts of your body is getting attacked because it's trying to keep you safe from other things, rather than just viewing it as my body is attacking itself, my body is destroying its tissue.  And this is what we're talking about today in terms of triggers in an environmental toxins perspective that many people don't even think about that can cause the body to go into this hyperreactive immune response,  but it's actually doing exactly what it was designed to do.

It's trying to keep you safe. And when we're talking about environmental toxins that can lead to autoimmune flares, these are found in animals. This could be in your household cleaning products, your air fresheners, personal care products, lotions, shampoos. We interact with so many things on a daily basis that really are toxic.

Really, the body doesn't like it and eventually the body just can't tolerate it. I shared an analogy this morning at a BNI meeting just talking about the barrel effect. And if you think about when you're born, there's already some toxicity in the body, but the body can handle it.  And then we layer on all the other things in our environment, in our daily life,  and eventually it gets to the point where  the body just can't sustain it anymore.

The barrel overflows,  and that's when symptoms show up.  So if you have things in your daily environment, and many women do, especially men do as well, but women come in contact with like hundreds of toxins.  Before their first cup of coffee in the morning.  So this could be in cleaning products, as I mentioned.

It could be air fresheners, personal care products. Toxins like phthalates, parabens, synthetic fragrances. All can disrupt your hormones  and stress out your immune system. When hormones are disrupted, cortisol, our stress hormone, is driven up and the immune system is very sensitive to cortisol. So, if you've got lots of toxins and your body is trying to deal with them and is stressed out as a result of it, that can definitely be connected to immune challenges. 

So what's something that you can do to help reverse this from a starting point? We had a client, Tree. We have a client, Tree, who was dealing with osteoarthritis in her hands. And when we tested her, we found that actually chemicals was a big part of it.  And she had Glade plug ins all over our house.

She had a dog, she didn't want her house to smell like dog, so there were Glade plug ins everywhere.  And when we cleaned that out, we removed that, switched her to essential oils, which is a more natural version,  the stiffness, the tingling in her hands went away.  When the body is trying to do what it is designed to do best, and you've got these stressors getting in the way, it makes it harder for your body to heal.

And that's when symptoms can start to show up. That's when the barrel overflows.  So if we're looking at toxins, from this perspective, chemicals, you can start by switching to non toxic products, as I mentioned, fragrance, you can switch for essential oils, you can look for labels that say fragrance free,  paraben free, and phthalate free.

I'll put phthalates  in the show notes for this one because phthalates are spelled kind of weird. It's P H T H A L A T E. That's phthalates.  And I'm pretty sure this one is actually designed and it's put into products because it makes soap sud.  So if you're using shampoo that's phthalate free, you're not going to get that big froth that you're used to, but you're also not going to be exposing your body to the, the chemicals and the toxins that it's used to. 

Number two is hidden food sensitivities.  This is definitely something that I had in the past.  Many people with autoimmune issues are unknowingly eating foods that trigger inflammation.  Common culprits here are gluten, dairy, soy, but it could be anything, even foods that you think are healthy. I went through a phase of my journey where I work with a muscle testing practitioner as well, and she said, you can't eat brussel sprouts.

And I was like, are you kidding me? Most people hate brussel sprouts. I'm someone who actually likes them and think I'm doing really good things for my body by eating them. But if your body is triggered by it, even if it's considered a, I'm air quoting, healthy food,  It's not going to be a good response for you.

It's not going to be a big, good situation for you. And when we take a look at foods, we're testing people. I'm not the food police. I'm not coming in here and saying you can't eat any fun. All you can eat is cardboard for the rest of your life. It's going to be boring and bland and  that's tough because you have autoimmune.

That's not the solution here. We're testing people to see what are the foods that are triggers for you? What are the foods that are preventing your body from healing? What's getting in the way of you being able to progress and move forward with your health?  And when you give the body the chance to do what it's trying to do and heal from the inside out,  you often will become less reactive, less sensitive to foods.

But for a time,  getting rid of them can be the best solution. When your body reacts to foods, it can create a cascade of inflammation. And inflammation is going to worsen autoimmune symptoms.  So, in terms of actionable tip for this one, for food sensitivities, consider doing an elimination diet. As I mentioned, we do root cause testing with people and can find out what are the specific foods for you, but this is something you can do on your own. 

I started reversing my MS symptoms in 2011, and this was a time before I knew about root cause testing before I knew that there were options to find out specifics for yourself. And so I cut out a lot of stuff. If you're doing it on your own, you are going to have to cut out a lot of stuff. Because it's going to,  if you pull everything out, the body will have a chance to heal.

You can also pull out specific things, but without working with a practitioner, You're going to have to kind of trial and error your way through, however, it is possible. I've been symptom free for eight years and until  five years ago, I didn't even know anything about root cause testing. So it is possible to do it on your own.

You are going to have to cut out some common triggers and again, common triggers for people. Gluten is a really big one. And the thing here is that gluten isn't what it originally was. Was in North America, the grains have been processed to death and they have, they don't provide what they were initially designed to provide in terms of health and in terms of digestibility and fiber, everything around there.

It's been changed, but also gluten is one of the most heavily sprayed.  Food products in existence, coffee is also really bad, but gluten, when it comes to glyphosate or Roundup, and this is a big trigger, especially people with celiac, like often people will find they can eat gluten if they're in Europe.

Then they come here and they react to it. If that's the case, it's not necessarily the gluten. It may be the glyphosate that you're reacting to.  And so, with an elimination diet, those are things to pull out for sure.  Gluten, dairy legumes. Our best to go. Seed oils need to go. Anything that causes inflammation in your body. And yeah, I mean, my recommendation for people when I first started, it's a paleo diet, is what I was doing, and I committed for 30 days.

I said to myself, it's just 30 days. Anyone can do this for 30 days. And when I get to the 30 days, I'll make the decision where I go from here. And I stuck with the paleo diet for years. So it is something that is sustainable because you still are eating really good quality food. But that's the whole point, you're eating really good quality food.

You're cutting out the inflammatory  triggers for your system, and you're getting the nutrients that are going to help your body get back to where it's supposed to be.  Trigger number three is mold exposure. I grew up in a house that was over a hundred years old. My dad lived in basement apartments for a lot of my childhood.

If you are someone,  that has ever lived in a basement apartment, or if you lived in residence when you were going through school, I can like 99 percent  promise you that you've been exposed to mold exposure. And the hard thing with mold exposure is it's something that's very hard for the body to clear. 

Often when we start working with someone, even if there's parasites that need to be removed, we often have to start with mold because if you don't deal with it, it just becomes more of a problem. Mold, mold exposure is. Another pretty big, but often overlooked trigger for autoimmune conditions. It can be found in your home, your workplace or even in foods.

Like grains can be moldy coffee can be moldy as well, and if you're someone who drinks water from the fridge filter, or even reverse osmosis, those systems can mold.  And so mold is a really big one. This is a problem because mold produces mycotoxins, which disrupt your immune system and lead to chronic inflammation again.

Talked about inflammation quite a few times here. Inflammation is a really big driver. In my opinion of autoimmune and it makes it harder for your body to function properly if there's mycotoxins in your system  So actionable actionable tip for this one if you suspect mold consider getting your home tested from this regard you have to make sure that you get a quality testing I'll drop some in the show notes for you to take a look at or to have some options but often if you get  Kind of insurance to do it for you. 

They won't do the best job. So make sure that you're getting quality, a quality service to test your home for mold. And you can also support your body's detox pathways. So this is where we use binders often. Supplements for people to be able to. What a binder does is like a magnet. And it goes in and it grabs whatever's in your system that doesn't belong there.

And helps your body move it out. Rather than sometimes when you stir stuff up in the system and you don't have a binder, it just goes and deposits itself in other organs, glands, tissues, and cause causes problems. So binders and liver supporting herbs are things that we definitely. Like to test to see if it's a good fit for you, if we're doing any kind of detox for the body. 

Trigger number four is chronic stress.  And most of the ones that we've talked about today are not necessarily things that are commonly discussed. Especially if you're going to your MS specialist, if you're going to your neurologist. I remember my neurologist never said anything about chronic stress being a problem, never talked about mold.

He didn't even talk about food sensitivities. Because when I started to see positive improvements for myself because I changed my diet and I went in and said to my doctor I don't want to take the medication anymore. He said, what are you going to do instead?  And I said, well, I changed my diet and I'm feeling better.

And his response was, it doesn't make a difference. I, I don't know anything about that.  And so there are a lot of things you can do for yourself, but unfortunately at this point, and hopefully we get to the point where it's not the case,  a lot of responsibility and research and investigative work needs to be done by the person living with the illness.

Because medicine is there to do its job, but medicine doesn't know anything outside of its job. And nutrition and holistic support and treating the human as a whole being is something that medicine lacks in. And so when it comes to chronic stress, chronic stress is one of the most underestimated triggers for autoimmune conditions.

When you're stressed, your body produces stress hormones, again like cortisol, and cortisol weakens your immune system.  If you're someone who's living in a chronic state of fight or flight, which is your stress response, if you're chronically stressed all of the time, your body's not going to be able to heal.

This makes the cells not able to function properly. And so stress is a problem because prolonged stress, again, puts your body in that fight or flight state, and that makes it harder for your body to heal and more prone to autoimmune flare ups. I, the worst time I had going through my MS experience, I was at the end of,  A relationship that hadn't gone well for a couple of years had a really terrible breakup and things did not go well through that time.

And it's like, were there other things that I was doing that weren't helping? I'm sure there were at the time, but the stress I'm sure was  a big contributor to the negative shift in health issues that I had through at that time. So in terms of actionable tips when it comes to the stress management side of things. 

Stress management techniques can be really helpful. And this doesn't have to be often when it comes to health stuff, when it comes to natural health stuff, it's a lot of, you need to do this, you need to do that, you need to do this. And sometimes when it comes to stress,  It's less about doing and more about being  and so even just going for a walk  Even spending time with someone you care about  even spending time with your pets  Sitting out in a quiet place in the morning and have a cup of coffee by yourself  or with your dog That's kind of my favorite  but just look for things that you can do or be  that help to bring down that parasympathetic mood a parasympathetic state And something I'd like to recommend to people, and we bring it up in the, in the webinar as well, is  before you pick up your phone in the morning,  what can you do for 5 minutes?

What can you do for 10 minutes  that allows you to ground yourself,  allows you to calm down, allows you to get out of that chronic fight or flight state?  So that your nervous system can take a breath  and start functioning properly again.  Number five for our triggers. This is the last one, and this one's radiation.

Speaking of cell phones, I just mentioned those. You're probably exposed to more radiation than you realize. And many people hear radiation and they think of like, Nuclear plants. That's not what I'm talking about. Radiation comes from our laptops, our computers, our phones, our Wi Fi, our wearable techniques, our Apple watches, our AirPods.

AirPods, I, this one makes me laugh because I remember being a kid and my mom saying to me, like, don't stand in front of the microwave. You're going to radiate yourself. And I probably rolled my eyes and laughed. But to look at it now, if you're wearing AirPods, you're basically, you have like a microwave on either side of your head. 

You're radiating your body, and we are radiating our bodies all of the time. I live in a townhouse, and when I look on my phone and look at the Wi Fi connections available, there's like  12, I think? So it's not just about your Wi Fi, your signal, it's about everyone around you as well.  And this is a problem, because constant low level radiation exposure can weaken your cells. 

an immune system over time. So that makes it harder for your body to heal from autoimmune conditions. Your body is always trying to heal. Today's episode is all about five things that are getting in your way of your body being able to do what it's trying to do, what it's trying to help you with.  And so the actionable tip for radiation is reduce exposure by turning off your Wi Fi at night if you can.

If you're going to wear headphones,  use wired connection as much as possible if you're going to speak on your phone. I'll speak on my phone using my wired, my old school, everyone laughs at me, wired headphones or on speakerphone. Avoid having electronics close to your body.  I hate that laptop is called laptop because it shouldn't be on your lap.

Put it on a desk when you're using your laptop. Don't put your phone in your pocket. Put it somewhere far away from your body because the farther it is, it's going to have less of an impact.  And give your body the ability that it's, that it is trying to do to help you heal from your autoimmune stuff. So,  just a quick recap of what I covered today.

Today we talked about five autoimmune triggers that you might be overlooking. So those are environmental toxins, hidden food sensitivities, mold exposure, chronic stress, and radiation. And by addressing these triggers, you can start seeing improvements in your health. So for today's episode, if it resonated with you and you're ready to take control of your health, I invite you to join our free webinar, how to take control of your autoimmune health naturally.

In this webinar, we're going to dive deep into these triggers and show you exact steps you can take to start feeling better. So don't miss out, head on over to Webinar dot aligned natural health.com. I'll put the link in the show notes as well to make it easier for you and reserve your spot today.   Hope you enjoy this episode. If you know anyone who's also struggling and would like some support, please share it with them, and otherwise, I'll catch you on the next one.