3 Stages of Healing- Retrain the Immune System
Have you ever wondered what the one similarity is among all diseases? Well, I have the answer for you. It is inflammation. No matter what condition you are suffering from, inflammation is the cause. The most ironic part is that this inflammation is caused by your own immune system. That’s right, your own immune system is to blame for all of your symptoms.
In this article, I will go over my favorite topic of all, retraining the immune system. You will first learn how to identify any counterproductive behaviors which are aggravating your immune system, you will then learn about which supplements can support it, and finally, we will talk about how to retrain your limbic system. This will be a fun ride full of important material. As you will see, these concepts can be both intriguing and life-changing.
3 Stages of Healing the Immune System
Stage 1: Eliminate All Immune Irritants
Diet: If you are eating foods that are not being properly digested, proteins can leak into the blood and cause an immune response. This can take hours to develop after eating. For this reason, most people don’t associate the foods they are eating with the symptoms they are feeling. To overcome chronic illness, you must be fully aware of how the foods are eating are affecting the way you are feeling. This is one of many things I help people accomplish when I am coaching them.
To learn about how to accomplish this, read more about the plant-based elimination diet. With this, you first create a foundation of safe foods, and then you add back foods that are riskier one at a time to see how they affect your symptoms. If they cause you an issue, you stop eating them. Sounds simple right? Well it is, but it takes a lot of work and willpower. Nonetheless, the benefits are priceless.
Environment: If you have a chronic illness, you must rule out mold as a potential reason. Despite what most people think, indoor air quality is a major component of your health. If you are already dealing with a chronic illness that is caused by an overactive immune system, inhaling mold toxins can make things much worse. You can do various types of tests for mold in your home, but none of these test will tell you how sensitive your immune system is to it.
The reality is that testing has some value, but it’s not full proof at all. My favorite methods of mold testing are the petri dish test, ERMI, mycotoxin urinalysis, and the home mycotoxin swab test. To learn more about mold illness, search my website. There are plenty of articles on the topic.
Stress: There are various forms of stress. It can be physical, emotional, due to poor sleep, trauma related and more. The goal is to remain in balance at all times. With this in mind, you must observe how these various forms of stress affect your thoughts and how you feel. If something in your life is a persistent stressor, you must either remove it or change your story surrounding it.
To heal from chronic illness, persistent stressors must be eliminated unless you utilize healthy coping mechanisms like slow deep breathing. If you perform this before or after certain stressful activities, it can insulate you from the stress. I will discuss this in further detail later in this article.
Key Point to Remember: This step in your healing journey cannot be taken lightly. It is the foundation to your success. You cannot expect supplements to fix the immune dysfunction if you are still being consistently triggered. In my experience, the majority of progress comes from identifying these triggers, not from simply taking supplements. They both are important, but the supplements cannot be fully effective when the irritants are still present. Make the commitment to yourself to make the changes as you become aware of these things that are causing you problems. Don’t let your preferences or cravings dictate your decisions, let your body guide you back to normalcy.
Stage 2: Take Immune Modulating Supplements
Probiotics: You must be careful with probiotics when you have a chronic illness. Many of these strains actually increase histamine, which can make things worse. My favorites are bifidobacterium strains, lactobacillus rhamnosus, lactobacillus plantarum and bacillus subtilis. Though I do see benefit in taking these, I find that prebiotics are more helpful.
Prebiotics: The reason prebiotics are more important is because they feed a diverse range of species in the gut. My favorite prebiotics are inulin, acacia senegal, arabinogalactan, bee propolis, colostrum and apple pectin. If taken in a proper rotation, these can feed the immune-modulating bacterial communities, which are so important for reducing inflammation.
Binders: People with chronic illnesses often have a significant toxic burden. To improve symptoms, you have to increase elimination through the bowels and remove some of these toxic substances. The best way to accomplish this is by using binders. These can remove mycotoxins, heavy metals, and other synthetic irritants. My favorite binders are listed in this article: Best Mycotoxin Binders.
Phytonutrients: Certain plant-derived phytonutrients can modulate the immune system and improve gut health. My favorites are baicalin, apigenin, chlorogenic acid, resveratrol, and naringin.
Other: There are also a few superfoods I love. My favorites are raw colostrum, chlorella, cocoa powder, wild blueberries, broccoli sprouts, kefir, raw honey, and more. Your goal should be to fill yourself up with high-fiber, nutrient-dense foods to continue supporting your goal of reducing inflammation.
Key Point to Remember: All of the supplements you choose to take must be proven to calm the immune system down. Specifically, they need to have a balancing effect on the mast cells or regulatory T cells(Tregs). If they do not have this property, then it is likely to be a risk. In addition, be careful with any supplement that is not plant-derived. Though it may seem like it helps a lot initially, eventually your immune system realizes it’s not the real thing. At that point, it often creates a low-grade sensitivity to it.
Stage 3: Retrain Limbic System
Though this is listed as the third stage, you are welcome to start retraining your brain early on. My favorite method for retraining is performing an ultra slow deep breath while listening to bineural healing frequencies. This is the method I used to overcome my PTSD symptoms. It only took about 1 hour daily for two weeks to see incredible results. The longer I did it, the more the benefits compounded.
Within six months, the things which would typically cause me to have a PTSD episode were no longer triggering me. In my experience, this is the optimal way to retrain your brain, increase your stress resistance, and wipe out the cellular trauma from the past. Out of everything I’ve tried everything for over 20 years, nothing compares to it.
Once you get used to performing the slow breathing technique two times per day, then it’s time to use it in another productive way. Anytime you notice your body getting stressed, remind yourself to start performing the slow breathing technique until you feel better. This can be done while you’re at work, driving, listening to someone, watching television, walking in the park, or while doing nearly anything.
The key is to remain aware of your breath as often as possible throughout the day. When the thought comes to your awareness, take a few deep breaths until you feel the stress fully released. This will eventually recondition your body to expect a low-stress environment, which will reduce inflammation dramatically. In addition, it will increase your resistance to stressors.
Interested in learning how to perform this slow breathing technique? Take a look at the section below. It covers it all step-by-step. if you want even more information on it, read my article- Slow Deep Breathing – Healing through Breathwork.
Breathing Technique Instructions
So, how do you perform this life-changing breathwork exercise? It’s simple. You breathe in through your nose as slowly as you can until no air is left. This can take 10 seconds, or it can take as long as 25. You then hold anywhere from 2-5 seconds and slowly release the air through your nose. As you release out, you can envision stress leaving your body through your legs, one side of your body at a time. You can picture this stress as smoke or vapor and imagine it leaving your body as you exhale.
Once you are done with the breath, repeat it continuously for 25-30 minutes. This should be done twice daily, ideally first thing in the morning and last thing at night. If you have severe health issues, you may need as long as 40 minutes twice daily to gain full control of your stressors. Regardless, it’s a small price to pay for the relief you experience.
If you need some audio to stay focused, you can use binaural beats. These frequencies have been shown to have a positive effect on the brain. In my experience, combining these frequencies with a slow deep breathing practice can be immensely powerful. Refer below for one of my favorite healing frequencies:
Frequently Asked Questions – Healing Immune System
Which diet is best for healing the immune system?
The elimination diet is the best strategy for identifying which foods irritate your immune system. In this model, you start off with only the safest foods (green foods) from the hypoallergenic food list. Eventually, you move up to yellow and orange foods. The whole process may take only two months or so. If done correctly, you will have identified which foods are good for your immune system and which ones trigger you. This is the foundation for healing yourself from any chronic health issue. If you are still eating things your body is reacting to, good luck recovering.
How can you heal your immune system without supplements?
There are two schools of thought regarding healing the immune system. The traditional strategy is to try to manipulate the immune system with supplements or medication. Though this can provide temporary relief, it is not sustainable when someone has a chronic illness. The reason is, you are ignoring the things which are contributing to the dysfunction of the immune system. My approach focuses first on identifying what we are already doing that is irritating the immune system. This can be what we are eating, inhaling, or the stressors that surround us in our life. If we identify and eliminate these triggers, the immune system can stabilize without supplements or medication.
Why do you wait until stage two to take supplements?
If you focus strictly on dietary changes, then you will make the changes much quicker. In addition, you do NOT want supplements to manipulate your response to these foods. It is critical to identify which foods work for you and which ones do not. In addition, you must investigate your indoor living environment and make whatever improvements you can to air quality. Mold sensitivity is extremely common in people with chronic health issues. Once you do EVERYTHING possible in both of these areas, then you will finally be able to see how much these irritants are affecting your symptoms. If symptoms persist, you must be missing something. Trust me, immune flares don’t happen by accident.
Why is slow deep breathing so important?
Your breathing pattern signals the brain, telling it whether everything is OK or not. When your breathing pattern is shallow, your body is likely to be in a state of fight or flight. When you are breathing slow and deep, it is more likely to be relaxed. By performing slow deep breaths for an extended period of time, you are sending signals to your brain that there is nothing to worry about. If you do this often enough, you will reduce inflammation significantly in the brain. In addition, you will increase your resistance to external stressors. This reconditioning process is necessary to be able to completely heal.
How long does it take to see results?
Some people see results from changing their diet within the first couple of weeks. The more diligent you are about identifying and eliminating your irritants, the quicker you will progress. Make sure NOT to discount the environmental aspect of your recovery. I have seen plenty of cases where people were living in moldy houses, and unable to fully heal without addressing the problem.
Why do I use only plant-derived supplements?
Though synthetic vitamins and supplements may initially provide obvious benefits, they tend to aggravate the immune system over time. This is because the immune system eventually realizes they are not the real thing. This is why I prefer to use plant-derived supplements that have a proven capability to modulate immune response. They must be naturally derived, proven to calm the immune system down, nontoxic to the liver, and beneficial to the gut. If they do not check all those boxes, they are not worth taking.
Is it necessary to complete a daily symptom/dietary journal?
In my experience, yes, it is. You must be willing to observe how the things you are doing are affecting how you are feeling. Though it can be difficult to be successful without coaching from someone like myself, it is still a step in the right direction. The key is you must make sure you are keeping the ingredients minimized, assessing your environment at all times, and paying attention to any stressors that affect how you feel. If these things are documented correctly, you should be able to start to connect the dots and make progress.
Conclusion- Recondition Immune System to Win the War
Most of you have been fighting a battle with chronic illness that has lasted years. The reason your symptoms have remained is due to a dysfunctional immune response. If your immune system operated like it should, you would be experiencing far less symptoms.
With this in mind, your illness must be redefined. It is no longer a “disease”; it should be classified as an immune dysfunction. This will help you to approach things in the proper manner so you can’t continue to improve without risking setbacks. By eliminating the irritants, you allow the supplements to work, which then makes brain retraining even easier. This is not just a theory, it is something I have experienced myself and seen work in others. Give it a try, and put 100% of your effort into it. Trust me, you won’t regret it.
If you have any questions about your chronic illness or the information in this article, don’t hesitate to let me know.
Happy healing everyone!
Matt Nedin, B.S.
Certified Holistic Nutritionist
EndSickness, Founder
Phone: (734) 846-8619
WhatsApp: +17348468619
Email: endsickness@gmail.com
