A First Step in Healing
If you have been suffering for a while with chronic symptoms, I understand how you want to do everything you can to get rid of them as quickly as possible.
I see this a lot in my practice with clients that have gut infections, they have been suffering from painful digestion, the inability to travel or take part in social events, all they want is to feel better fast. And I totally get that! However, when they get results back identifying a bacterial infection they want to go straight into getting rid of it without addressing the first step.
Others such as women suffering from PCOS want to stack herb upon herb, and try all sorts of different supplements to try to “correct” the problem, but often this doesn’t work.
What is it that they are not considering?
Inflammation.
Getting a hold on inflammation in your body is the first step you must take to heal.
If you skip this step you can run yourself in circles or not get the results quickly enough for you to stay motivated. If you try to eradicate a gut infection without at first working to tame inflammation, than you can suffer from horrible die-off reactions. If you do not work to reduce inflammation while when trying to lose weight, your efforts will often stall.
If you pile supplements on top of each other without looking into the inflammation in your body than they will likely be less effective and the detriments of the inflammation outweigh the good of the supplements.
Healing is not always a quick road, but doing it right the first time will save you from feeling like you are running against the wind.
How do you tame inflammation in your body?
1) First you need to address your diet.
The food you eat is either helping you or hurting you. It can either be healing or adding stress into your body. I normally always start my clients on a whole foods inflammation reducing diet. Eliminating inflammatory foods, discovering any sensitivities you have and making sustainable habits of eating organic, whole foods may be half the battle.
If you are trying to heal but have not put a real effort into anti-inflammatory diet than this would be the place to start.
You can start with this by following my foundations of healthy eating.
2) Move your body
Movement, such as walking and moderate exercise is important for reducing exercise. It pulls in oxygen, pumps your blood and moves your lymphatic and digestive systems, all vital in clearing your body of toxins and reducing inflammation.
Be aware however too much exercise can work in the opposite way. If you are dragging yourself to the gym, not feeling like you are recovering from exercise, or feeling worn out after a workout, you may need to back off. Exercise can be good stress on your body or detrimental stress if you do not have a happy balance.
3) Sleep
Sleep is the time for you to rejuvenate and recover. Without proper sleep your body is not able to rest from the previous day, that means you are starting the next day not having been able to deal with the day before, this can build up and build up. Sleep lowers inflammation and allows for all your efforts to take effect.
Studies have proven sleep is essential to healthy weight loss, mind set, and hormone balance in your body. Do your best to stick to a schedule and create a healthy bed time routine before lying down.
4) Find your body’s unique inflammatory response
It made a lot of sense when I found out my body’s inflammatory potential. It is easy for me to overact to stressors, like physical trauma, toxins, allergic responses, but even worse is that I am not build with very efficient “OFF” switches. So I am pre-disposed to turn on inflammation pretty quickly and then have a hard time ever switching it off which can lead to chronic inflammation.
I found this out through my inflammatory genetic markers. We have several different sections of code in our DNA that influence the way our immune and inflammatory system function. By discovering what your specific genetic make up is you can target areas of weakness you may have, provide your body with nutrients that are specifically helpful, and finally pull yourself out of the hole.
My main philosophy is that you must get to know your body as the unique individual that it is. Not everyone that has psoriasis has the same triggers or responds from the same treatments, not everyone with IBS can eat the same diet, we all must discover what is best for our body.
So before blindly trying another supplement or treatment ask if you are first taking these basic steps to decrease inflammation in your body, I promise you that you will have a much higher chance of success.