Episode 76
Table of Contents:
Table of Contents:
In this episode:
In this episode:
In today's episode, Dr. Alison Danby explores autoimmune fatigue. We discuss this symptom that 90% of people with autoimmunity experience, and find a challenge.
After working to heal her own autoimmune symptoms, Alison noticed many of her clients were showing up after being told that there was nothing they could do about their autoimmune symptoms, and that's not true! That led Alison to specialize in autoimmunity, and make her contribution to folks in this community.
Fatigue is often one of the first symptoms we experience with autoimmunity.
It is NOT tired mommy syndrome
or
depression!
There is overlap with depression such as smaller social life, withdrawal, and change in mood.
And what Alison refers to as "mall eyes" a burning tiredness.
HEAVINESS!
Bone tired!
Rule outs:
iron deficiency
thyroid condition
dehydration!!!
B12
RX interactions
hormones
Cell Danger Response
Mitochondria - plays a role in essentially every chronic illness
When our body senses danger...mitochondria spends energy signaling danger instead of producing energy..toxins, inflammation, etc. can trigger cell danger response.
Leads to big changes in nutrient absorption, etc.
Stress Response - Blunted HPA Axis Function
Hypothalmus-Pituitary-Adrenal
Blunted Cortisol
Hyper Responsive Nervous System
running without hitting the brakes
Inflammation
Inflammation creates oxidative stress, which increases inflammation!
Both are tied to fatigue.
Aging us quicker.
ACES - Advanced Childhood Events TRAUMA changes immunity and increases chance of autoimmunity.
What we can do:
Why is the the body in cell danger response...Identify cause
Dental is very common! It can be smoldering infection without symptoms.
Infection
Toxins
Identify and remove trigger...clean it up!
Stress.
Lack of sleep
Diet
Measuring heart rate variability HRV...measure it to help identify stressors you are. not aware of.
You don't have to FEEL stressed out to be experiencing chronic stress.
Learned behavior to take on whatever we can handle.
Track, track, track!!
Alison likes to look back 10 years at labs and look at trends of changes in white blood cells that are indicative of changes leading to autoimmunity.
Living a full live is my goal.
What is your why...is the goal of being medication free is often unrealistic, stressful, and dangerous.
Live your BEST, BIGGEST, FULLEST life!!
Research is starting to slowly catch up with what we know.
Check your HRV, HRV, HRV to see how your environment is affecting you.
After working to heal her own autoimmune symptoms, Alison noticed many of her clients were showing up after being told that there was nothing they could do about their autoimmune symptoms, and that's not true! That led Alison to specialize in autoimmunity, and make her contribution to folks in this community.
Fatigue is often one of the first symptoms we experience with autoimmunity.
It is NOT tired mommy syndrome
or
depression!
There is overlap with depression such as smaller social life, withdrawal, and change in mood.
And what Alison refers to as "mall eyes" a burning tiredness.
HEAVINESS!
Bone tired!
Rule outs:
iron deficiency
thyroid condition
dehydration!!!
B12
RX interactions
hormones
Cell Danger Response
Mitochondria - plays a role in essentially every chronic illness
When our body senses danger...mitochondria spends energy signaling danger instead of producing energy..toxins, inflammation, etc. can trigger cell danger response.
Leads to big changes in nutrient absorption, etc.
Stress Response - Blunted HPA Axis Function
Hypothalmus-Pituitary-Adrenal
Blunted Cortisol
Hyper Responsive Nervous System
running without hitting the brakes
Inflammation
Inflammation creates oxidative stress, which increases inflammation!
Both are tied to fatigue.
Aging us quicker.
ACES - Advanced Childhood Events TRAUMA changes immunity and increases chance of autoimmunity.
What we can do:
Why is the the body in cell danger response...Identify cause
Dental is very common! It can be smoldering infection without symptoms.
Infection
Toxins
Identify and remove trigger...clean it up!
Stress.
Lack of sleep
Diet
Measuring heart rate variability HRV...measure it to help identify stressors you are. not aware of.
You don't have to FEEL stressed out to be experiencing chronic stress.
Learned behavior to take on whatever we can handle.
Track, track, track!!
Alison likes to look back 10 years at labs and look at trends of changes in white blood cells that are indicative of changes leading to autoimmunity.
Living a full live is my goal.
What is your why...is the goal of being medication free is often unrealistic, stressful, and dangerous.
Live your BEST, BIGGEST, FULLEST life!!
Research is starting to slowly catch up with what we know.
Check your HRV, HRV, HRV to see how your environment is affecting you.
Other Resources:
Other Resources:
Connect with Alison Danby
Connect with Alison Danby
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Julie Michelson: Welcome back to the inspired living with autoimmunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Michaelson. And today I'm joined by Dr. Allison Danby. And we're talking about a topic that I think everyone can relate to: autoimmune fatigue. Our conversation dives deep into the main drivers of this symptom, that 90% of those with autoimmune conditions experience.
[00:00:55] We all know that most with autoimmune experience fatigue, Dr. Allison [00:01:00] explains the why for us from labs to causes to action steps. You don't wanna miss this episode.
[00:01:07] Alison welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited for our conversation today.
[00:01:13] Alison Danby: Oh, thank you. I'm excited to be here.
[00:01:16] Julie Michelson: I always love to ask, you know, how did you get to be the autoimmune guru, right? Because , I'm guessing that wasn't your intention when you were younger. I know most of us I'd say 98% of people I talk to on the podcast have our own health journey or that of a loved one that, that brought us into this world.
[00:01:38] So I would love for you to share a little bit of your journey with.
[00:01:42] Alison Danby: Absolutely. Yeah, no, I was, I was a high school math teacher before this aspect of my life. And I really missed health. I really missed interacting with people from a health perspective. And so I went back to school and became a naturopath and it wasn't until my last year of. School that my health took a turn for the [00:02:00] worst.
[00:02:00] And I was diagnosed over, over a course of a year to two years with repeated, requesting of testing and information and wanting more answers and not getting them. I finally got a Hashimoto's diagnosis. And that was very scary to me. One, because I was in healthcare. So I knew the consequences of having an autoimmune condition.
[00:02:21] And that's kind of like your introductory, like if something's gonna go wrong first, a lot of times it's Hashimotos, which then leads to more severe autoimmune conditions. And so I was doing everything within my power to. Just control it. It took me about 18 months to get it under control and knock on wood.
[00:02:38] I've been in remission since, and that's been about 15 years.
[00:02:42] Julie Michelson: Woohoo.
[00:02:43] Alison Danby: But that's not what really got me into autoimmune. Funny enough, cuz I was kind of ashamed and embarrassed that here I'm naturopathic doctor and I've got my own health condition and don't tell anyone, because this is like you shouldn't be sick and all these stories that I had going on in my head, but what actually got me really into autoimmune.
[00:02:59] Cause I used to work with [00:03:00] people with pain and physio clinics and educate on pain and all. Was I had a couple clients come to me and they were very frustrated. Overwhelmed had just been diagnosed with autoimmune conditions and their doctors were telling them there's nothing they can do. Absolutely nothing they can do.
[00:03:16] And I'm like, that's, that's not true. And so I share my journey with them and the more that I shared, the more one that inspired people and two, it allowed me to dive in to be like, okay, well, what is, what, what can I do? Like here? I'm telling people that I was able to do all this with mine. So what are the, what are we able to do with all these other autoimmune conditions?
[00:03:35] And that kind of is what opened the door was just hearing my client struggle and just being told there's nothing like here, just take this in that's. Let's just hope it controls it. And, and nothing gets medication, but there's so much more that we can do to make medication more effective and to reduce side effects and all these other things.
[00:03:52] And so that was about 10 years ago. And then that just, I've just really jumped into autoimmune and loved every single moment of it helping and [00:04:00] working people through this and just optimizing how they feel to improve their quality of life.
[00:04:06] Julie Michelson: Well, as one of those people, I say, thank you. Because I was told there was nothing I could do. And, and I believed it for over a decade. And. So I just love that. That was your inspiration, not, not even just your personal journey and I'm so excited for literally everybody with autoimmunity, no matter what it is can relate to fatigue.
[00:04:33] Alison Danby: Yeah.
[00:04:34] Julie Michelson: And so I am, I'm always excited to talk with you, but I'm extra excited about the topic of conversation today because it's such a, I, I feel like it's often the first symptom and it's, it's something that doctors. Tend to discount, especially if you're that classic woman who comes in and I can't tell you how many clients of mine were [00:05:00] told, well, of course you're tired, you have kids, or, you know, and, and so I, I'm grateful that we get to talk about it today and I, I wanna start there.
[00:05:10] What is the difference between I'm tired and I am experiencing ongoing fatigue.
[00:05:17] Alison Danby: Well, I, there is a big difference. A lot has to do with the mental capacity too. So what their, what their research shows is that 90% of people diagnosed with autoimmune actually experience fatigue. And it's some of the earliest signs that they're experiencing. So it's. And so many people, myself included.
[00:05:36] And I probably, I bet you hear this all the time is, well, it's just, it's just this, or it's this, I got this going on. I've got this, I've got three kids. I just had pregnancy. I'm going through menopause, whatever it is, it's just this. And so we keep chalking it off. And then what will happen is a lot of doctors supposed to then start running labs.
[00:05:52] Okay, well, let's check your iron, let's check your thyroid those seem. Okay. So then it's nothing it's stress. Or we get diagnosed with depress. [00:06:00] So fatigue and so fatigue and tiredness, they do have an overlap, but for a lot of autoimmune people, what they're noticing is that there's a change in mood associated with it, lack of motivation.
[00:06:11] And that's one of the big triggers that are associated with depression. That's why a lot of people are getting diagnosed with depression when it's not depression. It's, it, it and depression does have a lot of similar characteristics, like an increase in inflammation anyway, so there is an overlap but we're seeing a, a change in mood.
[00:06:27] Change in motivation change in social activities. That's one of the big markers is people are not going out as much people and, you know, we had COVID here. So all of us were kind of forced to stay in inability to perform activities due to the level of exhaustion. One of the ways that I always describe there's two things that I remember from when I was in a flare.
[00:06:48] One was mall eyes and I call it mall eyes because your eyes get so tired. Like, you know, when you're walking through the mall after a day and your eyes are just burning tired. So that to [00:07:00] me is one of the signs that I know for my fatigue when things are getting outta control. And the other thing is just this heaviness.
[00:07:07] It's not just tired, like yawning a lot, but it's just this heaviness that we experience. And that's one of the key characteristics of early stage autoimmune. Now, if you have the heaviness, it doesn't necessarily mean, oh, you're gonna get autoimmune, but that's what a lot of people describe it as is this muscle heaviness.
[00:07:23] No energy to actually do things. And when you're doing them, you're even feeling more depleted and so limited physical activity in ability to work. And it just, it is a little bit different for everyone, but it's more of the energy aspect. Like you can't even get energy. So for people that for people that don't have kind of that autoimmune fatigue, what they'll find is when they go out for a walk, they feel energized.
[00:07:45] They feel great.
[00:07:46] Julie Michelson: Right.
[00:07:47] Alison Danby: For those of us that are experienced or that are in that autoimmune fatigue or in that state, a walk doesn't necessarily energize us. It actually is hard work. Now there's a lot of other reasons for that. Yeah.
[00:07:59] Julie Michelson: [00:08:00] Yeah. That's I, I, those are amazing, you know, indicators And you're right. For me, that was the fatigue is what drove me to find answers because my son had come to me. I think he was about six at the time. And, and he came to me in the middle of the night. It was a single mom, you know, and his throat hurt.
[00:08:23] And I literally couldn't get up. Like I sent, I sent him to the kitchen to get water and, and told him to come back in. But that was that moment of like, something's really wrong. Like that's not how I parent something's wrong because it wasn't like, oh, I'm tired. And I wish he hadn't woke me up. I mean, it was like, my body was like Uhuh.
[00:08:48] And so. That's that I call it the bone tire, you know, just deep, deep. And you're right. That is part of what leads to life getting smaller and smaller [00:09:00] because and I went through the same thing. I remember saying to, to my best friend, several years into my autoimmune journey. And my decline and, and that I remember saying to her, well, I wonder if I have depression.
[00:09:12] Like if you look at the checklist,
[00:09:14] Alison Danby: Yeah,
[00:09:15] Julie Michelson: You know it, I have all these symptoms and she said, okay, but do you feel depressed? And I was like, no,
[00:09:21] Alison Danby: but a lot of people will start to feel
[00:09:23] Julie Michelson: well, and it, cause it can't be, of course, of course. So, so I love that you hit on all of that. It's it's amazing. It really? So then what what do we do?
[00:09:38] Alison Danby: so that's a great question. So if you are experiencing this, so for a lot of people that are probably listening to it, they, they already know they have
[00:09:46] Julie Michelson: They're like, yeah.
[00:09:47] Alison Danby: Right, but, but also too, there might be some people that are, that aren't necessarily caused by autoimmune. So we wanna start ruling out and making sure that it's that autoimmune fatigue, or is it more like [00:10:00] iron deficiency?
[00:10:00] Cause if you're iron deficient now, and let's be honest here, there's some really interesting research that comes out on iron deficiency of like, so I'm up on Canada and our Farin level range. Shocking shocking. It's now five to 200 and something five to 200. Now the, a menstruating woman should be in and around 75, but Farin can also be really high if you have a lot of inflammation.
[00:10:28] So we wanna take a look at the whole iron picture, because if your iron's low, guess what it feels like you're walking on a mountain,
[00:10:35] Julie Michelson: Yeah. Well, you don't have oxygen in your blood so it makes it a little tough.
[00:10:40] Alison Danby: It feels like you're, you're hiking on the top of a mountain. And if anyone's done that, that's exhausting. So you're so we wanna make sure like iron is good.
[00:10:48] B12 is good. Thyroid levels are great. Optimal, you know, around one or two, looking at the T3 and T4 to make sure your T3 is going and you're converting well. We wanna look at [00:11:00] dehydration. That is one that is so overlooked. Your muscles need to be juicy, juicy, juicy, not beef jerky. So if you're dehydrated, guess what?
[00:11:09] You're running around with beef jerky now, not to quite that extent, but if that's where you store all your hydration. So we need to make sure that we're hydrated. We need to look at pharmaceutical interactions as well. Cuz that could be a big one for a lot of people's fatigue, certain pharmaceuticals, deplete, a lot of nutrients.
[00:11:26] So that's something and that's something that they're gonna be hitting on social media more coming up. Is some of the nutrient deficiencies in with a lot of medications, because if those are depleted, you need to restore those. And it's not about coming off the medication. So it's just making sure that you're getting adequate amounts.
[00:11:41] So those are some of the big ones. Hormones are gonna be a factor in this as well. Hormones will play a big factor on your energy. A lot of women, especially if they're cycling. We'll notice a decrease in the second half of their cycle. So we just have to keep all of those things in mind. But if those are all coming back fairly normal, like check, check, check, check, [00:12:00] check.
[00:12:00] If they're not optimize them, fix them and then keep going. Then we have to dive into, okay, well, why are we having this autoimmune fatigue? And there's three kind of main core concepts to that. So one of the very first ones, actually, you and I were talking about this before we haven't started, this is cell D response mitochondria. So the mitochondria is, this is essentially impacting every, almost every chronic disease out there. An autoimmune being one of them, what happens is the mitochondria are in every single one of our cells, especially the muscle cells that produce the energy to give us that fire and go, and they're constantly producing energy.
[00:12:38] And one of the things that happens is when our body senses danger. So an increased inflammation, tissue damage. Pollution infection. What that mitochondria does is says, well, I can't, I'm not gonna produce energy. I'm going to use that ATP to now signal to the body danger, danger, danger. So when it's using that ATP, instead of [00:13:00] producing energy for a signal molecule, I guess it's gonna happen.
[00:13:03] We're gonna start to see changes in our energy levels. And that's the very first thing that happens with autoimmune. It's one of the consequences of the cell danger response. We see changes in energy. We see the blood getting thicker, so hypercoagulation, so guess what's gonna happen. Ray node, like symptoms.
[00:13:20] So you're not getting proper circulation to your toes, to your fingers, to your brain, to your nose. All of that's getting compromised. So a lot of people, when they first have autoimmune diagnosis, they start to notice, okay, energy levels are low. Oh, now I've been given Ray node syndrome or Ray nodes of some sort circulation issues.
[00:13:38] We start to see changes in cholesterol. We see changes in how we absorb and. Vitamin D B6 methylation. So we see some big, big changes that are happening as a consequence of that danger response.
[00:13:53] Julie Michelson: Wow.
[00:13:54] Alison Danby: we, so we need, so we can talk a little bit later about how do we fix that, cuz there's, [00:14:00] there's a couple of other things that happen through this as well.
[00:14:02] So the cell danger response is one. The other one that we look at is how we respond to stress, which is linked kind of to the cell danger.
[00:14:12] Julie Michelson: sure.
[00:14:12] Alison Danby: So we have this system called HPA, which is our hypo Val pituitary adrenal system. And we all know that as cortisol. So everyone's like, Ooh, stress, cortisol. And now I have adrenal fatigue or adrenal, whatever, whatever we wanna use.
[00:14:27] Julie Michelson: Whatever term you wanna.
[00:14:28] Alison Danby: Yeah, exactly. It's kind of, it's not really adrenal fatigue, but it just, it, your body is tired. What they find with autoimmune is that the adrenal cortisol output is actually blunted. So meaning when you have a stressful event, what happens is you don't produce a lot of cortisol. So stress being the number one trigger for autoimmune that cortisol essentially is what creates inflammation and puts the fire out.
[00:14:55] So the cortisol helps to put that fire out, stop the inflammation. [00:15:00] So it has pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory effects to it, but it has more of a fire. It's almost like a break to the autoimmune, but if we have a blunted HPA access or blunted response to stress, we're not getting that break. So that's why a lot of people, that's why steroids are one of the first course of treatment is because it's putting that break to a much higher level.
[00:15:20] Now, the other component to that is that, so you have your adrenals, but you also have your central nervous system. And that is a different pathway. That is a lot quicker than the adrenals. And what they're finding that people with autoimmune actually have a hyper responsive. So stress comes and we respond over the top.
[00:15:42] So instead of going from zero to 10, we go from zero to a hundred with our nervous system. And what we don't know is, or what, I haven't seen the research and maybe it's out there. I just haven't. I have there's so much out there. not hours of the day. Maybe what we, don't what we don't know, or what I [00:16:00] haven't seen is where are people starting?
[00:16:02] Are they actually starting at 50 or are they starting at one? Is their nervous system already heightened? And that's why they're getting that heightened response. So we see a blunted SP stress as a hormone response, but the nervous system is just up there ready to jump like agitated.
[00:16:20] Julie Michelson: Well, which makes so much sense because that's that we were talking about hitting the brakes before. That's how I would, I would love to see the research too, but that's how I would think of it is we're running, running, running we're so we're already up here, nervous system wise, and just then we explode. So what would the third core reason be?
[00:16:45] Alison Danby: So the third one is I one I think we all know is inflammation. So when we have inflammation, we create more oxidative stress. Now we all know what oxidative stress is because we see it in the other, like in the real world. It's rusting. [00:17:00] It's aging of fruit. It's why our avocados go brown. It's rusting up cars and we have that internally.
[00:17:05] So it's just aging us quicker. So increase inflammation, increases oxidative stress, oxidative, stress increases, inflammation and inflammation, and oxidative stress are both tied to fatigue. It's exhausting. It's our bodies working so hard to create all of these things. It can deplete us very quickly. And it, and it's.
[00:17:27] It's aging us from a genetic standpoint from so many different factors is aging us quicker than we need to be. So that's the third one which I think for a lot of people's no surprise. However, the research that came out in 2021, and I can't remember the author. He was saying that is actually where a lot of the autoimmune research is starting to go is looking at some of the biomarkers for oxidative stress, which we, there are a couple that we can measure.
[00:17:52] One of them that they're starting to investigate is LDL cholesterol. And like I said, remember with this cell danger response, cholesterol changes [00:18:00] happen. So we're seeing that right at the very beginning. And maybe that's a marker that we can use potentially. I don't know the research is coming out on that, but that's where they're starting to go with some of the research for pharmaceuticals
[00:18:11] Julie Michelson: which makes sense because cholesterol, you know, people, we think of cholesterol as this bad thing. But it's a healing molecule. And so if you're inflamed, you are going to produce more LDL cholesterol. Mine was through the roof forever and I thought it was genetic. And, you know, my, I remember my physician back in the day when I started my recovery journey, my healing journey she, after years of being, you know, so worried and wanted me on statins and this and that, and, and she was like, oh my gosh, you cholesterol's way down.
[00:18:45] I, I was like, yeah, well, I'm not as inflamed anymore. So it makes, it does make perfect sense that that that would be. You know, a, a place to, to be looking for
[00:18:57] Alison Danby: Yeah, it's, it's really interesting when you start to put the [00:19:00] pieces together and especially, and I think you and I are in a very privileged place where we get to see many clients. And see the trends. Like if I got a dollar, every time someone came in and said, I have Ray notes, that was the first thing that I had when, before I got diagnosed with autoimmune.
[00:19:14] I'd be like, yeah, that makes complete sense. Now that I've put the puzzle together. So yeah, the more and more that we dive into it, research is really fascinating with where it's starting to go. One other thing too, that was really interesting is People with advanced childhood events. So trauma and the trauma doesn't have to be like anything that we think of like, oh my goodness.
[00:19:34] That's like big tea, trauma, you know, sexual abuse or something along those lines, it could be divorced parents living with an alcoholic. Having a family member incarcerated, that's where they're showing changes, autoimmune. So the more ACEs, advanced childhood events you have, the higher risk you have of developing autoimmune, which also is really kind of, well, what, why?
[00:19:55] Like it changes the way we respond to stress. It, it creates it, it [00:20:00] almost creates a perception of a scarier world which is then gonna be more stress on the body. So I, and I, I always, I hate using the word stress because I feel like so many people roll their eyes when they
[00:20:10] Julie Michelson: I know. So overused,
[00:20:12] Alison Danby: but it's true.
[00:20:13] It's so true.
[00:20:15] Julie Michelson: It is. It's it's just incredible. So how do you help people determine. You know, like what's driving this fatigue or does it matter? Is it,
[00:20:24] Alison Danby: Well, there's nothing we can do.
[00:20:25] Julie Michelson: steps? No stop. That's
[00:20:27] Alison Danby: No, I'm totally kidding. This is, there is so much that we can do with this. So the very first thing is let's go back to that cell danger response. We wanna see why is the body yelling danger, danger, danger. There may be ways that we can correct this. For some people, it just, it, it may not be something that we can identify yet, but this is for functional testing is so fabulous is because we can dive in to see, well, what is irritating the body.
[00:20:53] So looking for infections, looking at toxic loads, toxins, binding to receptors and make the [00:21:00] organ look different. So then the body's like, or also change the way that organ functions. And so these are all things that are triggering that cell danger response. So the more that we can identify what is causing it and the amount of dental things that I've seen.
[00:21:17] Cause this absces tooth absces oh yeah. I had an infection for like three years. That is like a, that is a little fire that's going on in affecting your entire body
[00:21:28] Julie Michelson: And I
[00:21:29] Alison Danby: sinus issues.
[00:21:30] Julie Michelson: jump in with, with that too. Because a lot of people have cavitation issues and they, they haven't had pain. They're not aware of they're like, well, yeah, I had a root canal 12 years ago, but it's fine. You know, never bothered me. It's fine. And it's like, oh, okay. Let's get it checked
[00:21:46] Alison Danby: But also too, like that could have been the very initial point. That's exactly it like, even then, if it was bothering you then. So the interesting thing about research is showing that antibiotics are not a full eradication. So [00:22:00] antibiotics are they're helpful if you have an infection. So if you've got a tooth infection that root canal, which I'm sure they probably gave you antibiotics for, it's not a full eradication.
[00:22:08] So the research on the HPI triple threat is a 30% eradication. When you add certain things in, you can get 60. That's still not a hundred percent. So the infection's still there, but if you allow it to have the environment to grow and flourish, it's gonna grow and flourish. But if you don't allow that environment and that's where we're doing all these lifestyle changes, that's where working with you and myself are extremely valuable because we're preventing that growth of that bacteria.
[00:22:35] So that infection 12 years ago, doesn't have to flare up again.
[00:22:39] Julie Michelson: Right. But I have a client who never was aware there was an infection. And she, you know, we had looked under all the other rocks and she finally went to a biological dentist and she called me on her way home. She goes, oh my gosh. She said, I had like, literally, sorry, everyone. Plus in like huge, you know, and, and, but she had no [00:23:00] symptoms in that.
[00:23:02] Just years of autoimmune challenges and extreme fatigue. And so, but her mouth felt fine. And so, you know, don't discount guys. If you've had procedures, dental procedures done, and you don't think there was ever a problem doesn't mean there's not an infections smoldering in there for
[00:23:21] Alison Danby: Absolutely. Especially low grade. And that's the other thing too about autoimmune is depending on how your immune shift, it may never manifest to something massive. It just may be smoldering little infection. That's just like poking the bear, poking the bear. So, yeah, so we wanna identify those. We wanna, we wanna clear that up.
[00:23:39] We move that clean up as much as possible because that's gonna take us outta that cell danger response or at. Quieten it down some then also too. And as a , as much as everyone's like, oh, here comes the stress conversation. So we wanna deal with stress. You can't. Yeah. It's the number one cause of flares.
[00:23:57] It's the number one cause of a diagnosis. You have to deal with it [00:24:00] and stress can come in forms of lack of sleep. Right food. You choose to eat traffic that you may be driving in. There are so many different forms of how stress impacts you. One of the ways that I absolutely love, because I find for a lot of people, they don't understand how much stress is impacting them until we start measuring it.
[00:24:19] And that's the heart rate variability. So, you know, when we talked about that nervous system being spiked in autoimmune people. So there are so many devices out there that measure your heart rate variability. They also measure how you're recovering at night. There's watches there's rings. You can actually go to heart math and buy a little little pulse Soter.
[00:24:37] And what is measuring is the beats between, or the time between your beats. So that's your central nervous. That's giving a really good idea of how calm or how erratic and how you're responding to your environment. So for example, every day you're driving home. If your central nervous system is spiking so high and you start to see it on a measure of what, however, you're measuring it, your heart rate's going up, or your heart [00:25:00] rate's changing.
[00:25:01] It may not be anything that you've physically notice, but it will be picked up on a monitor. Then you need to deal with that. So maybe tra maybe you've gotta find something to work from home because every time you get in that car and you drive into traffic, it's spiking. One of the big ones I find is lack of recovery at night.
[00:25:16] So, and I'm, I'm guilty of this as well. If I stay up too late or if I haven't actually exercised. So for me, exercise isn't is not anything past 80% of my heart rate. It will send me into a flare every time. So, but going for walks, going for slow, like weight lifting, keeping my heart rate within a certain zone.
[00:25:34] If I haven't done that, I don't recover the next day.
[00:25:37] Julie Michelson: Amazing that you know, that I love, you know, we, I was laughing when you were like, yeah, we were talking about mitochondria earlier. We were cuz you know, I, we. Out on this stuff. I got into functional medicine through biohacking. That was how I found functional medicine. And I love tracking. I, I even on vacation , you know, I, [00:26:00] it is, it, it really is.
[00:26:02] And it, but I, but I love, I wanna highlight the one thing that, that. It doesn't matter if you feel stressed out, you don't have to be walking around feeling like you're at the end of your rope to have stress, be negatively impacting your health. And I see this over and over and over again, people will say to me, well, no, I'm not stressed.
[00:26:23] And then they tell me like, You know, what's going on in their life. And I'm like, well, I'm stressed. Like, come on. You know, the best is you can relate to this, somebody, you know, on her big list of, and, and, and was her home was under construction and she was living in it and I'm like, and you're not stressed.
[00:26:42] Sure. Okay.
[00:26:44] Alison Danby: are.
[00:26:44] Julie Michelson: Yeah.
[00:26:45] Alison Danby: I think as like, especially women, this is what I always say is mentally we can handle it physically. We can't. Like we can handle more mentally than we can physically, or at least we think we do. And it's also a lot of learned behavior. Like, I look at what I was [00:27:00] taught and how I learned from my mother is this is what you need to do to be a successful woman.
[00:27:04] And so I did it and sure I'm a successful woman, but at what cost. Right. So that's where I've really had to take a look at my lifestyle and scale back. And yeah, to your point, we don't, I don't feel it. I don't feel stressed cause I love it. I thrive off it. So I actually need my devices to say, whoa, Time to take a chill.
[00:27:24] You need a weekend off or a day off, or you need to change, make some changes.
[00:27:29] Julie Michelson: Yeah. I love that. I think that's, that's I, of course, to me, there's so much gold in this conversation, but if this is the one piece everybody hears of like, you know, some track it, look at it. Really. Yeah.
[00:27:44] Alison Danby: Track your
[00:27:45] Julie Michelson: And some people, again, that's the thing, you know, labs are, I use, you know, I love functional medicine labs and, and the amount of labs I do want myself is insane, cuz I can.
[00:27:58] And so why wouldn't I, [00:28:00] but so many, especially with auto immunity, especially if they're not doing full functional panels and deep dive panels. Oh, your labs are great. Oh, your labs are great. And it's like, well, I know. That's one of the reasons I love doing toxin panels, cuz at least then they can see
[00:28:17] Alison Danby: your
[00:28:18] Julie Michelson: oh my gosh,
[00:28:19] Alison Danby: Yeah.
[00:28:20] Julie Michelson: wait.
[00:28:20] They're not great.
[00:28:22] Alison Danby: I always find this is what I see trending. So I, I like to go back as far as I can on people's labs. So they're like, oh, you want like 10 year? I want like, as far back as we can get. And I love watching the white blood cells. Because the white blood cells tell a really interesting story and, and medication will alter some of them, but white blood cells and red blood cells kind of give us an idea of what's been happening to the body over a period of time.
[00:28:47] You can see when they started medication, you can see, like, it's just amazing how many people have white cells, different trends in white blood cells. And there's, there's a lot of research to back this up in the autoimmune world, but it's just ignored a lot of the [00:29:00] time because, oh, well, it's autumn.
[00:29:01] Julie Michelson: it's discounted. Yeah.
[00:29:02] Alison Danby: but what is it telling us? It's either telling us you're extremely fatigued. Your body's trying to fight something like there's a really cool story that can happen with white blood cells. So I love that's one of my favorite and the cheapest labs to
[00:29:13] Julie Michelson: Yeah, but you're not a geeky either.
[00:29:17] Alison Danby: no, I spent my morning reading research, so I do, I do love it,
[00:29:20] Julie Michelson: It's it's fantastic. And again, it's such a contribution you're making, and we were discussing this before we hit record as well. This, you know, there's this lag in what we know and what we see that works and scientific research and, and it's coming is getting there really slowly. And, and so this is why we have these conversations because.
[00:29:45] That? No, I, I really, my main purpose in life is for no, to get to a point where nobody is told, there's nothing you can do.
[00:29:55] Alison Danby: Yes.
[00:29:56] Julie Michelson: I call BS. That's not true. And so, and we [00:30:00] share the same outlook. It's people come to me cuz they'll hear my story. And they're like, well you got off 10 medications. I, I wanna get off my medications and I'm.
[00:30:08] No, let's get you feel it. Like my goal was never to get off my medications. It just happens as you know, happens. At least for me, I, I take thyroid hormone. I work with people that feel like that's a failure. I feel amazing. And my life is full and great and fantastic. And I'm okay with that. That's I, I don't.
[00:30:29] Alison Danby: There's there's a point too. And I think this is where we need to change the definition of remission, because I find that the people that are striving to be medicine free sometimes are creating so much stress. That it's actually a disservice. Whereas if we just work on quality of life and how do I feel and see where we can get, you're probably gonna feel a lot better, a lot quicker.
[00:30:53] And then who knows, maybe that is an option. But I think if we're creating this much stress, like, and same, [00:31:00] I, I do love the autoimmune paleo diet. It's one of the ones that I work with a lot, but there's
[00:31:04] Julie Michelson: do I?
[00:31:06] Alison Danby: that I'm like, this is too much stress for you because, and, and them into that opposite direction.
[00:31:12] So I think we need to really, and this is where it's not one, one thing fits everyone is looking at what is, what are your outcome? is it to, like, what is your purpose? What is your, why? Why do you want to achieve this and does going medication free? Get you there maybe, but probably not. And, and the amount of destruction.
[00:31:30] I have a lot of clients that come into my practice and they're like, oh, I took myself off medication. I'm like, oh, we need to have a talk.
[00:31:36] Julie Michelson: do that, please.
[00:31:38] Alison Danby: because sometimes too. And actually it was, this was just on a podcast interview that I just did. Sometimes it actually makes us the medication isn't effective again.
[00:31:47] So there's a time and place for it. And for a lot of us, as we just have to wrap our heads around and just change the way we look at it, if you're getting great quality of life with minimal side effects, if any, so for a lot of people, like [00:32:00] I know when I was on desk kid, I actually had no side effects. It was just, I didn't need it anymore.
[00:32:04] My body kept telling I was going into hyper, hyper, hyper. So, but it depends on how much damage has been done, how long the inflammation's been going on for there's so many variables, but yeah, we
[00:32:14] Julie Michelson: And I was, I was somebody that for years. four years, I would go to the rheumatologist and say, I think I have a thyroid problem. I think I have a thyroid problem. I think I have a thyroid problem. And then finally, several years in, you know, my, my TSH was off enough that she was like, okay, here, you can have some Levo, you know, You should be happy with that, you know, medication number, God knows what it was at the time.
[00:32:45] but, and of course it didn't work. I don't convert. So
[00:32:49] Alison Danby: Yeah.
[00:32:49] Julie Michelson: I for then, for years was taking something that, that wasn't, you know, the right thing. And so it it's, but I, so I love that you said that, cuz I am all [00:33:00] about having lived the life, getting smaller and smaller and smaller. My whole, you know, goal number one is eventually to, to keep this conversation going so that we get to a point where nobody ever hears that incorrect, that lie, you know, that, that they can't heal.
[00:33:18] And then also just my daily day to day, I, I want people to have the best, biggest fullest lives they can and who, who cares what you need to be doing to get there. Really? You know, if that's, if that's what they want. So
[00:33:36] Alison Danby: It's funny. So I think some is hitting mainstream medicine, which is fabulous. Cuz I'll get referrals being like, go see this girl,
[00:33:45] Julie Michelson: I don't know what she does.
[00:33:46] Alison Danby: who does something with leaky gut or she does diet stuff. Like it's just funny how I'm getting the referrals now from. Specialists that it, it, it, it's great.
[00:33:55] It is great. Even specialists are saying, you know, why don't you try going gluten free for a little while? And [00:34:00] so it is starting to break through, which is exactly what we need. So we are gonna see changes, I think, in the next 10 years with healthcare, which is fabulous.
[00:34:08] Julie Michelson: I totally agree. And this is why we do this. So it's, it has to, and, and again, the efficacy is there of our approaches. It's just that research is lagging
[00:34:22] Alison Danby: Slowly. Yeah. Yeah. It's coming. We're starting to identify that this is what's wrong. So then we need to start looking at, okay, now that this, we know that this is what's wrong, how can we then make the changes? And that's where the research is gonna start coming. We're already starting to see it come out.
[00:34:37] Julie Michelson: Yeah. And we have, I mean, if you even just look at the AIP studies that have been done, you know, it's so exciting and I, I I'm with you, you know, I'm, I'm AIP coach as well. I don't, I, I, it's a framework. I don't use one thing with everybody. And so. But, but the research is starting to, to come out and, [00:35:00] and starting to come up.
[00:35:01] So for me, I wanna like tie a bow on the biggest takeaway, if you will, in the conversation that I want people to hear is it's not in your head. Like if you have fatigue, whether it's autoimmune fatigue or not. One of the first things I ask people is like, do you wake up energized in the morning? Because that whole, I was listening to, to studies about people that sleep 12 hours or more, you know, the, the, as a, a factor, you know, that, that that's bad for your health.
[00:35:34] And I'm like, no, but why are they sleeping 12 hours or more? It's not the sleep that's bad. It's the, that whatever's driving that fatigue under there.
[00:35:44] Alison Danby: And how many of them have been tested for sleep apnea? That's a conversation we didn't even
[00:35:48] Julie Michelson: I well, and I, I had the thought when we were talking about, about iron and oxygen and, you know, the brain, we, we, we need oxygen when we sleep also.
[00:35:58] And everybody that [00:36:00] we've sent to, to be tested when we get to that, Point and, and it's like, okay, well, you haven't explored this. We should look everyone's. Yes. They all have. And, and all feel so much shockingly so much better when they have oxygen throughout the night. It's incredible.
[00:36:17] Alison Danby: Yeah, it's true. Yeah. There's and there's a lot of things to rule out before you get to that point of like, well, what do we do? But also one of the things that you had mentioned is the a I P diet, like that's the quickest way. I, this is why I love it. It's the quickest way to reduce inflammation. And so then you can see what other areas.
[00:36:36] Still need some attention. Once you've kind of successfully got on the AIP for, you know, 30 to 90 days, so you can then take a whole inventory. Did your sleep improve? Did this improve, did that improve and just really see what else is kind of missing? Is there underlying infections, hormone balancing
[00:36:53] Julie Michelson: That's the thing. If you may, if you're coming from kind of a standard diet and you go as far [00:37:00] as AIP or even down, I mean, really, but even less than that, but if you're doing a full AIP and your needle's not really moving.
[00:37:10] Alison Danby: Yeah,
[00:37:10] Julie Michelson: You, you really need to do some digging for sure. And I, and that's that same thing.
[00:37:16] We start there as well, because, you know, I, I would love to say to my clients, you know, I wanna order all the tests and let's just look under every rock right now. But most of us don't have the thousands and thousands of dollars that that would cost.
[00:37:34] Alison Danby: And even they don't give you all the answers, right? Like they're still, they're looking at a select number of things. Like if you've traveled and picked up a bug, you know, somewhere around the world, that's not a common one. It's not gonna be picked up. So, yeah.
[00:37:48] Julie Michelson: So this may be a difficult thing to answer.
[00:37:52] Alison Danby: Okay. I'm ready.
[00:37:54] Julie Michelson: what is one step? There's the difficult part that listeners can take today to start [00:38:00] to improve their health?
[00:38:01] Alison Danby: I think start, start understanding how your body's responding to your environment. I think that's probably the biggest one. Just because we know that that the, the central nervous system is such a big part, it controls the vagus nerve, it controls, and the vagus nerve is actually one of the biggest, we didn't even touch on that.
[00:38:18] That's another whole aspect of this big puzzle of,
[00:38:22] Julie Michelson: But working on your HRV, we'll
[00:38:24] Alison Danby: Yeah. It so understanding your HRV, your heart rate variability. So whether you need to buy a device, whether you just start incorporating some deep breathing, some nature walks, all of those things that bringing your whole central nervous system down throughout the day.
[00:38:38] Not just once, but throughout the day. So you do it in the morning and then you go ramp yourself right back up for the next 12 hours. It's not gonna be helpful. So doing it, I like to do it at the beginning at the end of your day, bring your body down. Throughout the day is even better, but that, I think that's the biggest takeaway is just seeing how your body's responding to your environment.
[00:38:58] Julie Michelson: I love that. That [00:39:00] is definitely worthy advice and you handled it better. A lot of, I was like, oh, what is she gonna pick? There's so many things. So
[00:39:08] Alison Danby: so many things.
[00:39:10] Julie Michelson: before we wrap up, where's the best place for listeners to find you if they listen like I do, which is on the go, you know,
[00:39:18] Alison Danby: So, yeah, I've been doing a few more Instagram live, so you can catch me at Dr. Allison Danby or you can catch my podcast auto me and simplified. So I've got a couple different series on there through, and we're gonna have you on there at some point very soon. And so, yeah. Oh, I can't wait to our conversation, but yeah, those are the two best ways probably to catch me and to learn more.
[00:39:37] Julie Michelson: Alison, thank you so much. You have shared amazing gold with us today.
[00:39:43] Alison Danby: Oh, so thank you for having me. I love sharing this kind of stuff.
[00:39:47] Julie Michelson: Yay for everyone listening. Remember you can get the show notes and transcripts by visiting inspired living.show. I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I will see you all [00:40:00] next week.
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Alison Danby
Dr. Alison Danby is a Naturopathic Doctor & Functional Medicine Practitioner who has focused on immune function and autoimmune conditions for the last 15 years. She is the founder of The Autoimmune Institute, The Autoimmune Integrative Clinic, and owner of The Root of Health, Integrative Health Clinic.
After working to put her own autoimmune conditions into remission, she realized that there is so much more we can do for our clients to support them through this journey. Dr. Danby's passion and mission is to change the paradigm of how we medically treat autoimmune. She works with clients to find out why the immune system is overreacting and piece together their health puzzle. When we can remove the triggers, we allow the body to start the healing process. Without this step, it can be a lifelong challenge of chasing symptoms with medication.
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