Metabolic and Immune Health
Here’s How I Tamed Overactive Immune System and Lowered Arthritis Symptoms in 5 Steps.
I present a five-step holistic approach to sustainably eliminating arthritic pain with healthy lifestyle habits.
This article introduces rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune condition, and documents my tacit knowledge and experience in dealing with symptoms with takeaway points. My goal is to pass along my hard-learned lessons.
As I used both mainstream and alternative therapies coupled with lifestyle improvements, I’d like to share my experience to give perspectives to those who live with arthritis symptoms.
This piece is not health advice. Instead, it shows the possibilities, creates awareness for various approaches and provides valuable perspectives to those who want to prevent disease formation or address the symptoms holistically.
A Brief Introduction to Arthritis
Like many autoimmune diseases, arthritis is also believed to have no cure. However, it is possible to reduce symptoms by slowing down disease activity. It is even possible to obtain remission, which means minimal or no disease activity, as happened to me.
So we can experience a pain-free life with medical treatments and healthy lifestyle habits, improving our cellular, metabolic, immune, and endocrine health. I only focus on lifestyle changes in this article.
First, let me introduce what arthritis is. Arthritis Foundation informs that:
“More than 50 million adults and 300,000 children have some type of arthritis. It is widespread but is not well understood. Arthritis is not a single disease. It is an informal way of referring to joint pain or joint disease. There are 100+ types of arthritis and related conditions. People of all ages, sexes, and races can and do have arthritis, the leading cause of disability in America.”
Out of the 100, the most common ones are autoimmune inflammatory arthritis, osteoarthritis, infectious arthritis, and metabolic arthritis. My focus is autoimmune inflammatory arthritis as I experienced this condition.
The causes of autoimmune inflammatory arthritis are still unknown. For example, Mayo Clinic states that “Doctors don’t know what starts this process, although a genetic component appears likely. While your genes don’t actually cause rheumatoid arthritis, they can make you more likely to react to environmental factors — such as infection with certain viruses and bacteria — that may trigger the disease.
Health Direct, a government organization in Australia, also confirmed that “the causes of many types of arthritis are not fully known. Most forms of arthritis are thought to be caused by a fault in the immune system that causes the body to attack its own tissues in the joints. This may be inherited genetically.”
So the causes are only in the thoughts of scientists at this stage. Interestingly, when I mentioned there was no cure for arthritis in my earlier days, two of my wise mentors (Henry and Janine), who performed psychiatry for half a century and helped thousands of people heal, asked me: “if healthcare professionals don’t know the causes, how do they know it is not curable?”
His question prompted me and made me think holistically and out of the box. At least the scientists have ideas on some risk factors, as documented by Mayo Clinic, such as excess weight, smoking, family history, age, and sex.
Focusing on the Paradigm Shift In Healing
Some pessimistic scientists believe that our body is rigid. It constantly declines, so we cannot cure diseases. Another set of optimistic scientists believes that our body is fluid and flexible that can be improved with constant positive feedback, such as healthy lifestyle habits.
For valid reasons, I am part of the second group of thought leaders who are optimistic and proactive in taking personal responsibility for our health. This growth mindset helped me and millions of other people to improve their bodies and transform their lives. For example, I achieved neurogenesis and improved my mental health through optimism.
Current scientific knowledge is a drop in the ocean even though thousands of scientists diligently work and create breakthrough solutions. However, any solution outside of the box threatening the comfort zone of people is hardly criticized and even attempted to be sabotaged. We only find out the value of these precious ideas after they become mainstream after a massive battle.
Sadly, some scientists cannot even witness the victory of their ideas during their lifespan. Those once harshly criticized then turned to be heroes after they died. Therefore, I keep my open mind to any outside-of-box ideas and leverage their power to improve my health and well-being.
Learning from the insights of scientists is valuable. However, experimenting with those ideas sensibly and methodically can be invaluable. I see this approach as a paradigm shift in healing.
We have significant evidence that the body has healing abilities if we can find ways to activate them. Epigenetics taught us that we are not slaves of our genes anymore. We can turn on the serving ones and turn off the flawed ones.
We also know that every tissue and organ is made of cells. So changing the health of cells (smaller units) can change the bigger ones. Therefore, cellular health is critical. We can improve our conditions by giving the cells what they need and protecting them from what they don’t want, like toxins and pathogens.
By focusing on cellular health with healthy lifestyle habits, we can slow down disease activity and even experience remission meaning minimal or no disease activity in the body.
So realistically, we have two options. If we are on the pessimist bandwagon, we just wait for scientists to come up with tangible solutions that might take years. If we are in the optimist group, we take personal responsibility, learn from what we know so far, and experiment sensibly, gradually, and pragmatically.
Here’s How I Eliminated Arthritis Symptoms in 5 Steps.
Like millions of people, I suffered from arthritic pain in my younger years. By using these summarized steps at a high level, I eliminated symptoms and achieved remission for decades.
I used both mainstream and alternative therapies. A rheumatologist who looked after my case and helped me initially reduce pain, allowing me to mobilize, characterized my healing process as unusual.
People might think of my situation and achievement as an exception, but I heard of many similar cases. For example, I documented the healing process of a friend in an article titled After Defeating Arthritis Pain, Shane Lost Visceral Fat and Gained Lean Muscles in Five Steps.
Addressing arthritis systems also helped me improve my digestion (e.g., solving a leaky gut) and mental health by contributing to defeating chronic inflammation and brain fog.
After this brief background to healing, I’d like to share my approach to addressing my autoimmune conditions and eliminating the symptoms methodically and experimentally.
1 — Leveraging the Power of an Elimination Diet
One of the most valuable life hacks for my health and well-being was using an elimination diet. The concept is removing suspected foods from the diet one by one gradually. An elimination diet tamed my overactive immune system.
In my case, the culprits were specific vegetables that I overconsumed. My subjective feelings gave me a clue. For example, I felt terrible bloating after eating too much kale, celery, and spinach (especially in juice form).
According to an integrative medicine doctor who paved the way for me, the toxins in vegetables, such as lectins, oxalates, glucosinolates, phytates, saponins, and tannins, might have triggered autoimmune responses.
When I reduced several vegetables, especially cruciferous, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and nightshades, I felt some comfort. Then, I gradually removed all vegetables and adopted a solely well-formulized animal-based diet giving me all essential nutrients. Interestingly, these vegetables did not cause any problems for my siblings and other family members.
This radical change for me made the most significant impact in reducing the symptoms of arthritis pain. In addition, this new diet provided me with numerous other benefits, such as increasing my energy, making my body more insulin sensitive, lowering visceral fat, maintaining lean muscles, and boosting my mood.
Different people might be intolerant or allergic to different food groups. I know that some people cannot eat nuts, eggs, seafood, or dairy. We are all different. Thus, we need to search for and determine the offending food using a methodical elimination diet.
Leveraging the experience of qualified healthcare professionals, such as certified dieticians and nutritionists, can be invaluable for customizing our diet. Some dieticians specialize in autoimmune conditions and might guide the patients to have a supportive diet for their conditions.
The elimination diet helped me customize my diet and allowed me to have a supportive eating regimen. I documented my dietary experiences in several articles. I linked a few for interested readers.
Here’s What Happened When I Replaced Carbs with Healthy Fats for Two Decades.
When I Skipped Breakfasts for Two Decades, I Gained Copious Benefits.
Keto-Carnivore Diet 101: How to Benefit from Ketosis in Animal-Based Diets
Despite Its Poor Reputation, Beef Liver Became My favorite Food for Health Reasons.
As ketosis was invaluable in my healing process, I documented my findings and observations on entering ketosis in plant-based diets upon request from subscribers.
Keto-Vegan 101: How to Benefit from Ketosis in Plant-Based Diets
2 — Reducing Chronic Stress
Stress is known to be the root cause of many ailments. Stress affects us at a cellular level. Minor stressors, as they accumulate, can even affect our genes, creating harmful epigenetic effects.
Through trial and error, I adopted a holistic approach to stress management. My approach was identifying physical, mental, emotional, and social stressors. This approach enabled me to lower the risks and gradually melt my chronic stress.
When I lowered my chronic stress using various lifestyle habits such as restorative sleep, regular meditation, fasting, thermogenesis, joyful workouts (e.g., calisthenics and trampoline), timely recovery, self-talks, and scheduling joyful events, the arthritis symptoms such as back pain and joint pain disappeared.
Working in a flow state, regulating my emotions, and increasing my cognitive flexibility helped me lower my stress sustainably. The essential tools for lowering stress were meditation, focusing on my hobbies, and time-restricted eating.
3 — Lowering Chronic Inflammation
Inflammation is a byproduct of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. The body creates inflammation to protect our cells and tissues.
My body was chronically inflamed in my early 20s. In those days, I did not know about autoimmune conditions, which caused the body to create excessive inflammation to protect itself.
However, this situation is paradoxical. For example, while the body attempts to protect itself, too much and too long a release of inflammation can harm the body. This vital knowledge helped me redesign my lifestyle.
I documented my experience with chronic inflammation in an article titled Here Is How I Defeated Chronic Inflammation via 9 Lifestyle Habits.
As the article is comprehensive, I only provide the key points here for awareness. Interested readers can check the article for details.
1 — Cutting Refined Carbs and Increasing Healthy Fats
2 — Fixing Nutritional Deficiencies
3 — Reducing Frequent Eating
4 — Improving Sleep and Rest
5 — Re-Adjusting Workouts
6 — Slowing Down the Pace of Life
7 — Using the Power of Thermogenesis
8 — Leveraging the Power of Ketosis
9 — Initiating Autophagy and Mitophagy
4 — Creating Epigenetic Effects
Believing in cellular and mitochondrial health power, I invested significant time in learning about epigenetics from emerging literature. It has been invaluable knowledge for me.
Epigenetics is a new science branch that started in the mid-1940s. Conrad Waddington (an embryologist) coined the term in 1942.
The methylation of DNA can change gene expression via stress exposure. I explained this important matter in an article titled Here’s How Stress Impacts Us at a Genetic Level and How to Address It with Lifestyle Changes.
In addition to oxidative stress, what we eat, how we exercise, the quality of sleep, and exposure of the body to toxins, pathogens, colds, and heath can have epigenetic effects. In short, these activities can turn on or off some genes based on their effects on the body.
The key points to creating epigenetic effects for me were to manage my micro stressors, use the power of thermogenesis (cold/heat therapy), leverage sunlight, using time-restricted eating. These activities turned on and off the genes I targeted.
5 — Activating Self-Healing Abilities of the Body
Even though ancient wisdom knew the self-healing and self-protecting abilities of the body and mind for centuries, modern science only recently discovered this phenomenon.
Currently, scientists documented these self-healing abilities under the terms autophagy, mitophagy, and self-defense.
The body’s self-defense system is always on watching intruders and taking quick actions to eliminate them. However, the defense system might struggle if these intruders exceed the threshold. The body even attacks its own cells and tissues, confusing them with intruders. Essentially, this is what an autoimmune condition is.
However, the alternative mechanism to the defense system is the body's self-healing ability. For example, when we activate the autophagy process, the body starts eating pathogens, biological toxins, and damaged proteins to create cellular power when it senses energy deficiency in cells.
Unlike the defense system, the self-healing system needs to be consciously activated using lifestyle changes, medication, or various therapies. For example, I activate the autophagy process using long-term fasting from two to seven days.
As I wrote numerous articles about the body’s self-healing mechanism, I won’t repeat them. Interested readers might check the following articles for details.
Here Is What Happened When I Experimentally Initiated Autophagy.
Here’s How I Initiate Mitophagy and Make My Mitochondria Denser in 7 Steps
Conclusions and Takeaways
As arthritis is a highly complex health condition and its root causes are still unknown and debatable, we need to approach it holistically. We can include physical, mental, and emotional aspects more effectively with an integrative and proactive approach.
If we wait for scientists to come up with root causes and find proven solutions, we might wait for many years or even decades. My choice is to proactively address my health conditions by leveraging what we know so far, using my intellect and intuition, and experimenting sensibly and methodically.
Furthermore, just solving physical problems cannot be sufficient to address the symptoms of complex health situations, as the mind plays a critical role in bodily functions. Therefore, psychosomatic (body/mind connection) is a promising and rapidly growing concept in healthcare.
Customizable Takeaways
Based on my experience and learning from other people who successfully achieved remission, I offer the following takeaway points to add perspectives and give options to customize for your needs.
1 — Accept the situation by not resisting, denying, or catastrophizing it.
2 — Optimize Vitamin D levels, calcium, magnesium, Vitamin K2, and co-factors.
3 — Improve digestive and gut health by leveraging an elimination diet.
4 — Consume nutrient-dense food, including essential amino acids, minerals, vitamins, and healthy fats.
5 — Add omega-3 fatty acids to your diet, including EPA and DHA, with guidance from qualified healthcare professionals.
6 — Detoxify the body by perspiring via dry saunas and activating the lymphatic system via trampoline or other joyful workouts.
7 — Make the body fat adapted by entering ketosis via time-restricted eating, ketogenic diets, fast-mimicking diet, and intense workouts.
8 — Enhance sleep quality.
9 — Keep the body moving regularly and refrain from a sedentary life.
10 — Lower chronic stress and inflammation.
I hope you find these tips that tamed my immune system and eliminated the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis valuable.
Some of them might not apply to everyone, but even if one item can contribute to the well-being of some people, I will feel grateful.
Some of us might have chronic conditions and might be experiencing severe pain immobilizing us. In this case, it is necessary to obtain guidance and support from qualified healthcare professionals who can ease the pain and treat the condition with medication, surgery, or other therapies.
We never know where the solutions come from to our problems. Therefore, I always keep an open mind and gain insights from the experiences of others and the support of professionals. Knowledge is power, but action is critical to solving our problems and achieving our goals in life.
How I Reversed 7 Health Conditions by Modifying My Food and Eating Regimen
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
Here’s How I Defeated Brain Fog with Six Lifestyle Habits Decades Ago.
I firmly believe that a leaky gut contributes to brain fog. I documented my perspectives on the leaky gut and shared my experience in the attached story.
Six Tips to Heal a Leaky Gut via Lifestyle Choices and Support from Professionals.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
If you are a new reader and find this article valuable, you might check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting my reviews, observations, and decades of sensible experiments.
Sample Health Improvement Articles for New Readers
I write about various hormones and neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, GABA, acetylcholine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, glutamate, and histamine.
One of my goals as a writer is to raise awareness about the causes and risk factors of prevalent diseases that can lead to suffering and death for a large portion of the population.
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Sample Humorous Stories
Finally, After Burning Her House, Georgia Found Enlightenment
Hilarious Tips to Prevent Brain Atrophy and Keep the Gray Matter Giggling
8 Psychological Points I Had to Unlearn and Relearn the Opposite
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