World Lupus Day 2024: Lupus is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system attacks its healthy blood cells. Given the seriousness of this disease, it becomes essential to understand how it can affect various body parts, such as the kidneys, blood cells, lungs, skin, and joints, and lead to frequent headaches, behaviour changes, and dizziness.
What Triggers Lupus?
The common triggers of lupus can come from using birth control pills because they have excess estrogen in them and low vitamin D levels. Additionally, consuming a lot of antibiotics and other medicinal drug uses causes cortisol imbalances, and a lot of unneeded UV light can also lead to lupus. Joint pain, fever, rash, and fatigue are the symptoms we usually see. Some people have swollen lymph nodes on their faces, ulcers in the mouth, sensitivity to light, shortness of breath, dry eyes, and a few more. Generally, 9 out of 10 adults who get lupus are women. A standard treatment for lupus is corticosteroids, an anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant that prevents the immune system from being as active.
Three Natural Ways To Reduce Inflammation
Functional Medicine and Health Expert Shivani Bajwa recommends other natural ways to reduce inflammation because corticosteroids have many side effects on the gut:
- Vitamin D levels: We immediately bump your vitamin D levels to 5000 IU and ensure you have K2 with D3. You also must ensure you regularly check your multivitamin levels; they usually have 600 IU and do not have K2. Even if you only get that, don’t have the 60000 IU once a week; you’d rather have at least 3 to 4 pills of the 600 IU daily.
- Anti-inflammatory: Vitamin D works not just as an anti-inflammatory; it helps give you flow in the white blood cells, which are needed. It helps modulate your immune system. Hence, Vitamin D levels should be at 60-70ng/ml throughout the year, and a test is advised every six months until you can reverse most of the lupus symptoms.
- Intermittent fasting: We also recommend intermittent fasting, but done very safely initially between 12 to 14 hours only, as this will increase the T cells, which are the body’s immune cells. It will also restore your stem cells and decrease leptin, an inflammatory hormone.
Summary: Overall, it is advised to eliminate dairy and gluten from your meals, which can aid and speed up the process of at least joint pains, energy, and all the other related symptoms showing up frequently.