“Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.” – George Washington***
Your immune system constantly fights to protect you. From your gut, to the Kupffer cells in your liver, to the white blood cells in your bloodstream and to the glial cells in your brain, one way or another it seeks to protect and defend.
It has two basic strategies for defense: the innate immune system and the adaptive immune system.
Your innate immune system produces cytokines. These are your first responders in a crisis situation. They identify threats and attempt to destroy them.
If the threat is overwhelming or ongoing, your innate immune system calls for backup. It brings in the heavy artillery, which is your adaptive immune system. These guys don’t mess around. They say, “Enough is enough.” And they launch antibodies to attack.
Both are necessary in keeping you healthy and alive, but when antibodies attack, you can have collateral damage taking the good with the bad. So ideally, your first line of defense is to be strong enough to manage the threat.
So what are some ways you can support and ARMOR your troops?
- Avoid known toxins. Choose organic products. Buy local foods from farms you can visit personally, or to save some money on organic foods, consider ordering them from Thrive Market. If you know or suspect specific food sensitivities, avoid them. For an added precaution, take E3 Advanced Plus that breaks down these antigens before they hit the small intestines where they cause an autoimmune response. These are toxins to your body. Actively seek products with non-toxic ingredients.
- Remove toxins from your body. Flush your system by drinking plenty of water. Take a supplement like GS Dual Detox to support you during detoxification. When you exercise, quickly wash the sweat off of your body before your body reabsorbs the toxins it just eliminated.
- Move daily. Your body functions best when used. Keep your heart strong, your muscles flexible, your joints from stiffening up, and have fun doing things – ANYTHING. Just move. You can have a blast expanding your horizons through healthy living – parasail, jet ski, cliff dive, climb a mountain, do some yoga, kayak, golf… You get the picture.
- Ongoing maintenance. This includes periodic testing for antibodies, daily movement, making good food choices, and periodically detoxing from elements you come in contact with. Prioritize health and wellness. Consider GS Support Packets to promote healthy tissue in the skin, joints, digestive system and nearly every other organ system in the body. These daily dose packets offer daily support for the maintenance of a healthy immune system.
- Restore your gut. More than 70% of your immune system resides in your gut, making this a critical area requiring your attention. Build more diversity into your microbiome. Take a high quality probiotic like GS Flora Balance and prebiotics. Eat a variety of fermented foods – just a little each day is needed. Eat seasonal foods. And vary your diet, avoiding sugar (which bad bacteria feed off of and love.)
Is this something you need to do all at once? Certainly not. But you should look at what you can do today or this week. Next week, ask yourself what else can you do. Slow and steady wins the race. Make deliberate changes that are meaningful and impactful. Each week, pick one thing that you feel you can reasonably integrate into your life. By making these small, simple changes, you should notice an improvement in your health.
Autoimmune conditions begin in silence. Damage is incurred and often not felt until antibodies have repeatedly attacked to the point your own tissues are damaged, and your immune system is weakened and less effective.
Your body was eloquently designed to purge toxins naturally through a variety of methods. The problem is you are inundated on a daily basis with excessive amounts of toxins that your body is not prepared to handle. To support your immune system, you need to remove toxic burden as a key component, but if you neglect your gut health, even simple problems will become battles you don’t want to fight.
To learn more about autoimmunity, read my best-selling book The Autoimmune Fix. It includes my proven protocol for arresting and reversing autoimmunity.
