An autoimmune flare up is a temporary worsening and intensification of symptoms. There is usually something that triggers a flare. I would say the most common ones are a period of stress - an emotional event, a significant trauma, or a period of being overworked and/or under-rested.

Symptoms can get severe and intense — fatigue, pain, difficulty getting out of bed, brain fog & difficulty thinking, difficulty doing daily tasks are all common. Today I’m going to discuss what to do if you’re experiencing a flare.

So you’ve got an autoimmune disease. Now what?

Getting answers to our health concerns isn’t easy. It can take years, many physicians, many dismissals and many misdiagnoses before we end up with an autoimmune diagnosis. If you are one of the “lucky ones” to actually get a diagnosis, it can feel like validation. Unfortunately, the diagnosis itself doesn’t actually provide any answers. It’s really just the beginning. The next step is to figure out what caused the immune system to over-respond in the first place.

I recently released What the Gut: Eating and Living for a Healthy Gut (and Why it Matters), my 2.5 hour gut workshop as an online self study video. I taught this same lecture about a dozen times over the fall and winter, and saw an interesting thing in some of my live audiences.

In talking about the gut, you have to talk about some of the stuff the gut does. What I noticed is that when I started talking about certain topics like poop or constipation or vaginas, people get noticeably uncomfortable - they tense up, break eye contact, fidget, or even pick up their phone. Talking about this stuff makes us comfortable.