The Autoimmune Protocol

What is the Autoimmune Protocol?

The Autoimmune Protocol is a diet and lifestyle intervention for autoimmune disease. It’s based on scientific studies into autoimmune disease and what helps or hinders it.

The Autoimmune Protocol, also known as AIP, focuses on:

removing factors known to cause and promote autoimmune disease
adding nutrient density with a healing diet so that our bodies can start to recover
addressing lifestyle factors which contribute to autoimmune disease, such as sleep problems, stress and physical activity.

How can AIP help?

AIP gives us a system to:

Avoid food and other triggers known to aggravate autoimmune disease
Change aspects of our lifestyle which can help us heal
Stop overstimulating our immune system
Reduce inflammation
Encourage normal gut microflora to grow, so that we have a healthier gut microbiome (crucial to our immune system)
Regulate our hormones

Why does AIP include changing what we eat?

In order to heal, we need to provide the right building blocks for our body. Every cell in the body is built from the raw materials that we provide i.e. what we put in our mouths. If we provide the right raw materials, our system will find it easier to calm down, stop attacking our own cells, and heal damaged tissues. We are looking to flood our body with helpful nutrients, and avoid those known to be unhelpful.

It’s like if you stopped wrongly putting diesel in a petrol car, took some time to fix the engine, then gave it the finest quality, smoothest petrol to run on instead.

Dr Sarah Ballantyne, who created AIP, describes it this way:

“The goal of the AIP is to flood the body with nutrients while avoiding any food that might be contributing to disease (or at the very least interfering with efforts to heal).”

What we eat and how we live are key to helping our bodies recover. AIP enables you to identify and then avoid the triggers for your autoimmune disease, and give your body what it needs to fix existing damage in the gut, which has been found to be key in autoimmune disease.

What about the non-food aspects?

Managing stress, improving sleep, exercising in the right way and the right amount, and addressing unhelpful beliefs and feelings about our health and ourselves, are also really important ingredients in our healing.

With my cognitive hypnotherapy techniques, I bring a further, helpful dimension to the AIP experience by easing your way to habit and lifestyle change, helping the changes feel more manageable.

We often have emotions bound up with what we eat, without realising it until we need to change things. I can help you deal with any difficult feelings that come up, so instead of these getting in the way of the changes you want to make, you experience more positive emotions to keep you going.

Want to know more?

My AIP coaching programme is for adults living with autoimmune disease who want to learn the facts and techniques for themselves, so they can take action and help their bodies recover from autoimmune disease.

If this sounds like you, and you’d like to know more, just leave your email in the box below so we can arrange a time to chat.

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