Do you feel exhausted, rundown, tired and just beat?  You’re not alone – lack of energy is the most common challenge with autoimmune disease and getting it back is usually my clients’ #1 priority.  Autoimmune disease can definitely leave us feeling like our batteries just won’t recharge, no matter what we do or how long we rest.  That’s no way to live, so I want to share with you the three most important areas to address to get your energy back when you’re living with autoimmunity.

#1:  Improve Your Diet

Yep, you knew it was going to be here and I’m not even apologizing for putting this in the #1 spot because hands down diet is the very first place to look to start to recoup energy, especially when autoimmunity is at play.  It’s usually where I start with my clients because cleaning up your diet is almost always the most impactful step you can take.

Whether it’s eliminating food sensitivities, adding in more nutrient-dense foods, tending to your microbiome, or even changing the composition and/or timing of your meals, your diet feeds (ha, see what I did there? Pun intended!) every single thing you do, or don’t do, in your day.  Diets full of processed foods, inflammatory ingredients and sugar zap your energy in many ways, literally starving your cells for the nutrients they need to carry out their functions.  I won’t go all in-depth into the Krebs Cycle here (who remembers Biology 101?) but your mitochondria, the powerhouse or engine inside every cell in your body, require a wide array of vitamins and minerals to function properly – to power the cell.  When the engine doesn’t get what it needs, it doesn’t pump out the power it should, and everything starts to suffer. 

Food sensitivities can be particularly aggravating when we’re dealing with autoimmune disease for a couple reasons.  When we eat something our body has deemed a foreign invader (and that’s what happens), we trigger a response from our immune system.  In autoimmunity, our immune systems are already confused and working overtime to attack our own tissue.  The last thing we want to do is encourage more of a response!  Additionally, continuing to eat these foods creates inflammation and we all know inflammation is the root of all evil.  Simply eliminating your trigger foods, even for a short period of time to allow for healing, often takes enough drag off of our energy to feel a noticeable difference.

Here’s another cool anecdote about starting with your diet – a better diet almost always helps the next two areas:  Stress and Sleep.

#2:  Manage Your Stress

Have you ever gone on vacation, enjoyed all of the delicious foods, skipped the gym the entire time you were there and came back a little lighter, mentally and physically?  Yeah, me too.  That’s the power of eliminating stress.  Or looking at it from the other side, fatigue and extra weight are just a couple of the effects stress has on us.    

It’s virtually impossible to live in the world today without stress.  In fact, it’s so prevalent that we don’t even recognize it anymore unless something truly catastrophic has happened and even then we have this tendency to minimize it, comparing it to something else even worse and then feeling guilty for feeling bad in the first place. 

“Stress” is defined as anything that sets off the “fight or flight” response in our bodies, where our adrenal glands release adrenaline which sets off a whole cascade of hormones preparing us to run from the tiger.  The system is pretty sophisticated in how it works to save us from imminent danger but in the last 160,000 years of evolution it hasn’t evolved quite enough to distinguish between an actual tiger and a traffic jam, a hard workout, or a breakup.  Mental, physical or emotional, the stress response is the same. 

Ok, great, so how does that zap our energy?  In the face of acute stress, like the tiger, we run or fight and then the threat is over.  But there aren’t many tigers in our lives today so our stress is more of the chronic nature, which leaves our adrenals glands continually pumping out adrenaline and cortisol and never getting a break.  After weeks or months, or years, of this the adrenal glands get tired and sometimes don’t have anything left to pump out.  This is when we start to feel like we’re dragging ourselves out of bed in the morning or crashing in the middle of the afternoon, yet feeling wired when it’s time to go to bed.  It’s imperative to give those adrenals a chance to rest by shutting the fight or flight response down. 

Simply recognizing we have stress and then identifying the sources can go a long way towards starting to better manage it.  Diet definitely plays a role – when you eliminate the stress of food sensitivities, blood sugar spikes and dips, and the jolt from caffeine, you’re taking big stressors off of your adrenals.  Getting enough sleep is also important (and my #3 priority, below).  Beyond improving diet and sleep, things like breathwork, meditation, tai chi or restorative yoga can be helpful to train our bodies to respond to stress better.  Putting less demand on the adrenals in the first place, giving them a chance to heal and repair, coupled with gaining some control over how we respond is a great strategy for lifelong stress management.  And less stress definitely means more energy!  What can you reduce, eliminate, avoid, or change? 

#3:  Get Your Zzzzz’s

Ah, sleep.  In our fast-paced, always on the go, overachieving lives sleep is the first thing we cut when we need more time to get more done.  We stay up a little later to finish the project, reply to those emails, or even just to have an hour to ourselves at the end of the day.  We get up a little earlier to get to the gym or get into the office early.  Often times other symptoms of autoimmune disease like anxiety or pain cause us to struggle with falling asleep or staying asleep.

You’ve probably heard the recommendation for adults to get 7-8 hours of sleep each night.  Babies, growing kids, and teenagers need even more and guess what – so do you!  Bodies dealing with autoimmunity, or any chronic illness for that matter, tend to have a lot more inflammation and daily repair that needs to be done.  In fact, studies have shown an association between getting fewer than 6 hours of sleep each night and chronic inflammation as well as insulin resistance, increased risk for obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cognitive decline.  Not only do our bodies repair themselves when we sleep, but our brains use that time to take out the trash and file and process the day’s events and learnings.  Sleep helps us to think clearer and handle stress better and it improves our immune system response, boosts our mood, and gives us energy.  Think about it this way:  When our brains have cleared the waste and reorganized and our bodies have repaired the damaged cells, we are starting the day strong and fresh. 

So there you have it.  Diet, Stress, and Sleep are the three most important foundational pieces to the Energy puzzle.  And the best part is that they all work together – when you start to improve one area, the others start to improve as well!

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