Hi there,
I hope this blog finds you well. I was just thinking about auto-immune conditions and their origin after a client asked ‘Are you saying the steroid I take for my rheumatoid arthritis is a stress hormone?’ The answer is plain and simple ‘YES’.
Firstly, an auto-immune condition is a condition whereby the body ‘attacks/turns’ against itself. It sounds pretty harsh but it’s what it is. Auto-immune conditions include conditions such as ….
Psoriasis
Multiple Sclerosis
Rheumatoid Arthritis
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
Grave’s Disease
Diabetes Type I
Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Generally, auto-immune conditions are ‘treated’ with steroids. I put the word ‘treated’ in quotes as steroids do not treat the condition, but they ‘manage’ the condition. What happens if you stop the steroids? The condition comes back and in some cases with a vengeance. So steroids do not cure the auto-immune condition.
Did you know that your body makes it’s own steroid hormones every day? One of these specific steroid hormones produced by your body is called cortisol which is our own stress hormone. YES, this steroid hormone is not only made by your body, but it is also ‘copy-cat-ed’ by the drug industry to manage the above conditions and many others such as asthma.
So the question arises? ‘WHAT STRESS DID YOU or DO YOU HAVE for your body to produce a condition that is relieved by administering a stress hormone?’ What happened before the condition occurred? Was there some kind of trauma, such as a physical accident or a shock of some sort? Are you living under constant stress? Do you feel you are in ‘fight or flight’ mode? Do you feel safe? Was there a time in your life where you did not feel safe?
As well as looking at nutrition and supporting the body so it can make enough of it’s own stress hormone, as a practitioner of homeopathy I also look at the mental-emotional history.
I had a case of a gentleman that was diagnosed with IBS. He was literally homebound and had to leave his job in the City and find a job that he could do from home due to the erratic behaviour of his bowels. He would go from being constipated and in agony to having to run to the restroom to evacuate his bowels. His symptoms would vary daily. He had lost weight, had tried many DIEts as well as various tests. He did feel much better for removing gluten from his diet but he still would have bad days. He did not want to take the steroids as they were making him slightly ‘edgy’ (his words) and nervous.
Covering his health history and 4 sessions later his IBS went completely. He is not on any medications or synthetic supplements. He does take a few homeobotannicals as well as some food-based supplements but that is it.
How did this happen? His IBS started a year after his father passed away. He was very close to his father and he decided to ‘just put his head down and get on with it’ (his words). He did not really know how to feel the grief, his body was in a state of ‘fight or flight’ thinking there is imminent danger. When your body is in ‘fight or flight’ your natural cortisol steroid hormone can go completely out of balance, this can result in the immune system going ‘off track’ and resulting in any manner of illnesses. In this case, it was IBS. I addressed his ‘whole person’ with homeopathy and nutrition (covered aspects of leaky gut, toxin overload, liver stress etc). The homeopathy was absolutely key in his healing process as it was two specific remedies that cleared the IBS considerably and they were Nat Mur and Morgan Gertner (which is what one may call a homeopathic probiotic).
If you have an auto-immune condition, there is definitely an aspect of stress involved, so ask yourself what is the stress, how is it making you feel, how can you address this? Of course looking at nutrition and the health of the various organs such as the adrenals (your ‘stress’ glands) is just as important, but majority of the time, one cannot achieve health by only looking at the physical, after all, we are mental, emotional, physical and spiritual beings.
To Health!
Khush