All About Autoimmune Diseases, Part 3: Movement and Stress

So far in our series on autoimmune diseases, we’ve covered what autoimmune diseases are and how you can improve them through lifestyle changes in diet and sleep. Today, we’ll take it a step further with how adding regular movement and stress management strategies can reduce your inflammation and make your autoimmune disease easier to live with.

Movement and autoimmune disease

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It might seem counterintuitive to use exercise to reduce your inflammation. After all, exercise does cause acute inflammation when healing and building muscles as they change. However, it’s a good inflammation: a hard workout creates microtears in your muscles, and blood rushes to that area, making inflammation a crucial part of the healing process. This can be a great thing when your body is in a state where it can adapt to this stress in a healthy way.

However, chronic inflammation should be treated more delicately. Less is more when your body is in an inflamed state. With that in mind, your fitness plan should prioritize daily, low-intensity movement instead of rigorous, high-impact exercise.

For example, you might try taking daily morning walks for a low-intensity way to start your day with movement. As a bonus, you’ll get the added benefits to your circadian rhythm, and if you pair the walk with an educational podcast or a phone call with a friend, you’ll enjoy some intellectual benefits too.

Resistance training can also be helpful for your autoimmune disease – but don’t worry, you don’t have to load up the barbell with a ton of weight to see benefits. In fact, lowered weights or even bodyweight exercises can be effective enough to reduce inflammation. One study found that in patients with Crohn’s disease, resistance training helped improve symptoms by modulating immune function. Pilates, yoga, and barre are low-intensity ways to start resistance training, and you don’t need any equipment besides your body and a mat.

In fact, yoga can be extra beneficial to people with autoimmune disease because of the immense support it offers to the vagus nerve (the cranial nerve that relays messages between the brain and the respiratory, digestive, and nervous systems). Yoga also increases your heart rate variability, a measure of the time in between heartbeats that are used as an indication of cardiovascular fitness. Plus, yoga calms the nervous system and promotes effective lymphatic flow. While these benefits are helpful to anyone, they’re especially useful to combat the stress and inflammation of living with autoimmune disease.  

Finally, as you discover what movement feels good and how you can incorporate movement into your regular life, make sure to listen to your body along the way. Some days, your autoimmune disease might flare up, and it’s up to you to decide whether movement would help or hurt your symptoms. Partner with your doctor on finding the right plan for you. Work on listening to your body and developing a sense of intuition about what it needs on any given day.

You can also use a connected fitness device (like WHOOP! or the Oura ring) to ensure that you’re getting adequate recovery in between workouts. If your device indicates that you’re not fully recovered, swap out your exercise for a rest day or active recovery. On the other hand, if significant metabolic dysfunction or insulin resistance is present, movement may become more important since increased body fat and a hyperinsulin state lead to higher levels of inflammation. This can be improved with appropriate feeding windows, daily movement, and reduction of simple sugars.

Stress reduction and inflammation

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Let’s face it: stress affects much more than just your mental state. More and more often, research is showing that stress impacts your physical health as well (for example, through a heightened heart rate, difficulty sleeping, or muscle tension). However, there are several things you can do to manage and ultimately reduce your stress.

For example, certain supplements or herbs can help reduce stress. Magnesium can reduce anxiety and improve brain function. Adaptogens, like holy basil, ashwagandha, reishi, and more, decrease sensitivity to stressors. Since caffeine and other stimulants can increase cortisol levels, avoiding those can help reduce stress. Finally, the gut has been called “the second brain,” and improving your gut health can be a catalyst to improving your mental health, too.

To reduce stress on a genetic level, work with a genomics expert to support the COMT (catechol-O-methyltransferase) gene. This single-nucleotide polymorphism (or SNP) can offer guidance to your own individual response to stress, especially if you live with depression.

Finally, it’s important to recognize when you need extra support. Consider therapy and other forms of psychological support to talk with an expert about what stress reduction techniques might work best for you.

On a daily basis, adding a few regular practices to your routine can train your brain to slow any racing thoughts and find peace in the present moment. For example, mindfulness practices can initiate a “top down” nervous system regulation, a cognition-focused view of emotional processing (or, put another way, if you think you’re okay, you’ll feel okay).

Or, maybe a “bottom up” method for nervous system regulation would work for you, in which you take a polyvagal approach to bodywork (that is, if your body feels good, your mind will feel calm). With this approach, practices like tapping, breathwork, yoga, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) psychotherapy with a certified therapist.

You can also take active steps to simplify your life and remove the “busy factor” as much as possible. Schedule “you time” for self care to make sure you’re a priority in your own life. Most people with autoimmune disease are in a chronic state of heightened activity in the sympathetic nervous system, so it’s important to set aside time specifically for self-care. Whether that’s a promise to turn off your cell phone at night or scheduling yoga twice a week, identify what helps you unwind and make a point of working that into your life.

How can precision medicine help your autoimmune disease

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While you can make some changes to your movement and stress management strategies on your own, a precision medicine doctor can help you identify practices to specifically reduce your inflammation. For example, a precision medicine doctor can offer suggestions for exercise based on your medical history and your favorite hobbies. Or, they can break down the science behind a certain gene that affects your mental health and offer you individualized recommendations for how to use that information for stress release.

However your autoimmune disease manifests in your life, precision medicine can offer actionable ways to improve your symptoms. Click here to learn more about how Wild Health can help you reduce your inflammation and live life on your terms.