How to Protect Your Brain from Neuroinflammation the Natural Way

Neurodegenerative diseases are on the rise, and unfortunately, most are progressive and can only be managed, not cured. Although they are age-related diseases, some can strike at a relatively young age and get progressively worse over time, leaving the sufferer hopeless and family members with a huge burden of care. At the root of these issues lies neuroinflammation.

When neuroinflammation is addressed, it can delay the progression of a neurodegenerative disease and possibly restore functions that were thought to be lost. In this article, instead of outlining the newest pharmacological advances in the treatment and management of neurodegeneration, we’ll focus on how you can address neuroinflammation and nip it in the bud.

Neuroinflammation, like any inflammation in the body, is not necessarily a bad thing. Inflammation is one of your body’s greatest allies when fighting off pathogens, toxins, and any other harmful substances that have invaded your body. It’s also what helps get rid of the dead and damaged cells and tissues that resulted from the original insult. Mild neuroinflammation is exactly the same; it helps protect against harm and gets rid of dead and damaged neurons and brain tissues.

Inflammation is also one of the main defense mechanisms of your NeuroEndoMetabolic (NEM) Stress Response, your body’s global response to stress. Your NEM is composed of six circuits of organs and systems that work together to fight off stress, whether physical or psychological in nature. These circuits are the Hormone, the Bioenergetics, the Cardionomic, the Neuroaffect, the Inflammation, and the Detoxification circuits.

Each of these circuits has three main components that work together when this circuit is activated. Since we will be focusing on neuroinflammation in this article, the most pertinent of the NEM circuits for us to understand is the Neuroaffect, followed closely by the Inflammation circuit.

The three main components of the Neuroaffect circuit are the microbiome, the brain, and the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which is the part of your nervous system that you don’t consciously direct, such as digestion, breathing, and circulation. The three main components of the Inflammation circuit are the gut, the microbiome, and the immune system. As you can see, some components overlap between circuits, and all circuits are connected in some way.

In both of these circuits, and in the body overall, inflammation only becomes problematic when it passes a certain point of intensity or is prolonged. In such cases, instead of inflammation being a defense against a stressor your body is exposed to, it becomes the stressor itself, sometimes surpassing the danger of the stressor that triggered the inflammation in the first place.

Chronic inflammation can be considered one of the major contributors to chronic diseases of all kinds, from autoimmune conditions to neurodegeneration. And because some kind of stressor is what triggers inflammation, the adrenal glands are also closely involved when it comes to neuroinflammation and the neurodegeneration that can result from it.

Adrenal Fatigue and Inflammation

Stress is at the root of adrenal fatigue as well as the trigger for inflammation. But stress is not just mental/emotional stress – it’s anything that puts your system into “fight or flight” mode and causes your body to release stress hormones, such as cortisol from your adrenal glands.

That means a stressor can be anything physical, such as eating foods you are sensitive to or being exposed to a virus, or anything psychological, such as having a mental health issue or going through a break-up.

Although your body is made to handle stress once in a while, it is not equipped to handle chronic stress. And with all the comforts that modern life provides, it comes with the price tag of higher stress levels. As we live more fast-paced lives, eat fast food out of convenience, and take a cocktail of medications instead of addressing the root causes of our illnesses, we wear down our NEM stress responses, and the adrenal glands are the first to bear the onslaught.

Your adrenals, which are two small glands that sit atop your kidneys, are part of your NEM’s Hormone circuit, and they are your first line of defense against stress. They operate through the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, with the hypothalamus and pituitary gland in the brain acting as the control centers that signal to the adrenal glands when to secrete cortisol and when to stop secreting it.

If everything is normal, your cortisol levels rise and fall naturally within a certain range, and that keeps your body and mind healthy. But when you’re exposed to chronic stress, your HPA is constantly being activated, and your adrenals have to work more than they were designed to. Eventually this leads to Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome (AFS).

Symptoms of AFS include fatigue, weight gain, insomnia, hair loss, PMS, loss of libido, infertility, an inability to handle stress, heart palpitations, lowered immunity, food and drug sensitivities, and dry, itchy skin. Some other symptoms of AFS are actually partly due to the increased state of inflammation in the body that comes with AFS, such as brain fog, hypoglycemia, anxiety, mild depression, aches and pains in the body, and digestive issues.

Although one of the jobs of cortisol is to neutralize inflammation, when its levels increase, which is what happens in the beginning stages of AFS, it actually increases inflammation in the body. Then, when the adrenals are exhausted and their cortisol output drops, inflammation can run unchecked, which is what can happen in the more advanced stages of AFS.

It’s only when cortisol levels are in the normal, healthy range that inflammation remains part of a healthy immune defense. And that goes for any type of inflammation, including neuroinflammation. There are cortisol receptors in several parts of the brain, including the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, locus coeruleus, and the amygdala, with the hippocampus having the most.

Causes of Chronic Inflammation

Some examples of the types of stressors that can trigger and maintain inflammation in the body are:

• Eating an unhealthy diet. The Standard American Diet, for example, is high in unhealthy fats, low in fiber, full of processed foods and refined carbohydrates, and lacking in essential vitamins and minerals.
• Eating foods that are known to cause inflammation, such as gluten, sugar, and dairy.
• Overconsumption of alcohol, smoking, or taking recreational drugs.
• Overusing certain types of medications, such as antibiotics, NSAIDs, and opioids.
• Exposure to toxins, such as eating foods full of pesticides, artificial flavors, and artificial colors, or using home and beauty products that contain toxic chemicals, or living in a polluted city, or being exposed to a toxic environment.
• Exposure to certain viruses, bacteria, and fungi, especially stealth infections that remain in the body long-term and need constant immune surveillance in order to be kept in a latent state.
• Mental health issues that are left unaddressed.
• The presence of a chronic condition, especially one that is not managed properly.
• Enduring prolonged psychological stress, such as being in a tense work environment or an abusive relationship.

You’ll notice that many of the above stressors have to do with what you put in your mouth, and that’s for a very important reason. What you put in your mouth travels down to your gut, where it encounters your microbiome, and these two have a major impact on your health. If you remember the Neuroaffect circuit and the Inflammation circuit, the microbiome and the gut are components of the former and latter. The relationship between the gut, the brain, and the microbiome is actually at the heart of the problem of neuroinflammation.

You’ll also notice that the presence of toxins, pathogens, or any health issue that doesn’t get resolved in a timely fashion is also a big problem, since it becomes a chronic physical stressor that requires the body to constantly fight it off.

The Gut and the Brain

Your body has about 10 times more microbe cells than human cells, and the microbiome – the ecosystem of different microbes, such as bacteria, fungi, and viruses that lives in your body – has a genome that’s around 100 times larger than your own human genome. To think that this doesn’t influence how you feel, think, and behave would be naïve.

Although the microbiome can be found in most areas of the body, such as the mouth, the skin, and the vagina, the biggest one is the one in the gut. Your gut’s microbiome is made up of different gut flora, some you can consider as beneficial and some you can consider as harmful. The balance between the two is what’s important, as the beneficial gut flora are needed to keep the harmful gut flora in check. And the symbiotic relationship between you and the microbes you’re hosting goes both ways.

Your gut’s microbes need you in order to survive; you are their host. They, in turn, help you with digestion, protect you from harmful pathogens, and even assist in the creation of vitamins and neurotransmitters. In fact, three-quarters of your neurotransmitters are made in your gut. As you can imagine, an imbalance in your gut’s microbiome – a state called dysbiosis – can have a powerful influence on your brain and nervous system.

Your gastrointestinal (GI) tract also has its own nervous system, the enteric nervous system (ENS), which helps send signals back and forth from the GI tract and the brain. The ENS is actually the largest component of the ANS, and it has its own intrinsic microcircuits that allow it to regulate GI functions independently from the central nervous system (CNS).

Because the ENS and the CNS share many neurotransmitters and signaling pathways, pathology in one can actually manifest in the other. And because of this microbiome-gut-brain axis, when any of them experiences a disturbance, the rest may eventually experience the consequences of that disturbance as well. Those with irritable bowel syndrome will attest to how anxiety and psychological stress will almost always be followed by a flare-up in GI symptoms.

Dysbiosis of the enteric microbiome can create leaks in the gut’s lining, allowing substances into the bloodstream that shouldn’t be there. As soon as the immune system becomes aware of this breach, it mounts an attack, creating inflammation that, at first, is localized to where the leaks are.

But if the dysbiosis is not addressed, allowing the leaks to remain and progressively worsen, the immune system is constantly triggered, and this inflammation that began in the gut will eventually spread to other parts of the body. This is common for those with food sensitivities they are not aware of, as they keep eating the foods that trigger these issues unknowingly.

Understanding this relationship between the gut, the microbiome, and the brain is the key that will unlock the secret to fighting neuroinflammation through diet and lifestyle changes, and to protecting your brain and nervous system from neurodegeneration.

Gluten Sensitivity and Leaky Gut

When you think about food sensitivities and intolerances, you probably imagine GI symptoms such as gas, bloating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and acid reflux. And you’d be right in many cases. But the truth is that many food sensitivities don’t manifest gastrointestinal symptoms at all, or ones so faint that there’s barely noticeable. A lot of times, symptoms will skip the GI tract and show up in other places, such as on the skin, or in the nervous system, or as neuroinflammation.

Frequently, the culprit is gluten. Non-GI related symptoms of celiac disease include:

• Brain fog
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Headaches
• Tingling in the extremities
• Numbness in the extremities
• ADHD-like behavior
• Joint pain
• Arthritis
• Bone loss
• Bone pain
• Anemia
• Skin rashes
• Sores
• Irregular menstruation
• Fertility problems
• Liver problems

So if you’ve been having some of these symptoms, and you can’t seem to pinpoint the cause, you may need to look at your diet, even if your digestion is fine. If you don’t have celiac disease, gluten sensitivity still has a lot of influence on your system, and it can cause neurotoxicity and neuroinflammation.

When you eat gluten, the tissue transglutaminase (tTG) enzyme is released to break it down to its protein components. Once it’s broken down, the resulting proteins have to be assessed by your gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT), which is basically your gut’s immune system.

If you have gluten sensitivity, which more and more people are starting to have due to the fact that gluten products nowadays barely resemble the wheat our ancestors ate, your GALT will release antibodies that attack the gluten proteins, and if you have gluten intolerance or celiac disease, these antibodies will also attack your tTG.

Because one of the roles of tTG is to hold your gut lining’s junctions together, if it’s attacked, these junctions are compromised and begin to widen. On top of that, the gut lining itself will start to release a protein called zonulin, which also widens these junctions in the gut’s lining. That’s how you start to get a leaky gut from gluten.

If your gut lining begins to allow substances such as pathogens, toxins, and food particles into the bloodstream, the immune system has to attack those too. And if the gluten antibodies also leak into the bloodstream, they can travel to other parts of the body and attack them, such as the brain, skin, and joints.

Of course, with all of this immune and antibody activity, you get a lot of inflammation. This autoimmunity and inflammation in different parts of the body will obviously create symptoms there, such as neuroinflammation in the CNS, and because the symptoms can be so difficult to relate to food, it can take some time before the diet is addressed and the gut leaks are sealed.

Sugar and Neuroinflammation

There are a lot more people with food sensitivity and intolerance than those with an official diagnosis precisely because the symptoms are manifesting in other parts of the body rather than in the GI tract. Plus, even if they did present symptoms in the GI tract, they tend to resemble other GI tract disorders and so the sensitivities are thought to be those other disorders. The same goes with neuroinflammation and neurological symptoms, which can then be ascribed to some neurological condition.

Other than gluten, sugar is the second major inflammatory food that can manifest neurological symptoms. In fact, in the parts of the world where sugar consumption has not climbed as high as in Western countries, the rate of multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases is not as high. There seems to be a strong correlation between sugar consumption and neuroinflammation. Sugar is also a major issue when it comes to adrenal fatigue and nearly every metabolic condition.

It’s important to understand that when we talk about sugar, we mean refined sugar and also refined carbohydrates that are quickly digested and so spike blood sugar levels quickly. Some foods, like white bread, have both sugar and gluten in it, so it’s doubly problematic.

Fruits and non-gluten whole grains are much better options, as they contain a lot of fiber and release sugar into the bloodstream at a more gradual pace. Still, there are some precautions to take with those too, especially in the case of adrenal fatigue.

Sugar has two very big impacts on health. The first is that it feeds the “bad bacteria” in the gut, and therefore it can create a state of dysbiosis, and an overgrowth of bad bacteria can have serious effects for the gut.

The second is that sugar spikes blood sugar levels, which then prompt the pancreas to release a lot of insulin. Too much insulin will eventually lead to a crash in blood sugar levels, creating cravings for more sugar. This cycle of spikes and crashes is extremely stressful on the body and so overworks the adrenals.

Both of these situations create or worsen inflammation in the body and neuroinflammation in the brain, which also overworks the adrenal glands.

Animal studies have shown that excess sugar is linked to premature aging, memory decline, and a decline in cognitive functions. In adults that have lived with long-term diabetes, whether type 1 or type 2, high blood sugar has been found to affect the brain, and especially the connections that link different regions in the brain. It also has been found to shrink and atrophy the brain and constrict small blood vessels that can limit blood flow to the brain. This can lead to a decline in cognitive function and even dementia.

On the other hand, too many episodes of low blood sugar can also lead to loss in brain function, as glucose is the main fuel for the brain, and unless one is intentionally switching to using ketones for fuel instead of glucose, a lack of glucose in the brain can be quite dangerous.

This is why blood sugar regulation is one of the most important steps in any health recovery program, and it is especially so when dealing with neuroinflammation and adrenal fatigue.

Dairy and Eggs

Dairy, especially cow milk, is another culprit that has been highly correlated with the prevalence of multiple sclerosis. The milk protein A1 casein, as well as other proteins found in milk, are strong allergens and a source of bioactive peptides. A1 casein metabolizes into beta-casomorphin-7 (BCM7), which is similar to morphine and can be considered a naturally-occurring opioid. BCM7 can affect the nervous system, the immune system, and the GI tract through the body’s opioid receptors.

BCM7 seems to cause a chain reaction in gut cells that leads to a shortage of antioxidants, especially glutathione, in neurons. Antioxidants are the molecules that fight free radicals in the system, thereby lessening oxidative stress and damage. Oxidative stress and damage are another big factor in neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration, as well as other chronic conditions, such as cancer.

A1 casein has been associated with more symptoms in the gut as well as cognitive issues, and it cross-reacts with gluten, raising the risk of conditions such as multiple sclerosis, autism, and schizophrenia. Milk in general has been associated with higher risks of neurodegeneration and worsening Parkinson’s disease, for example.

A1 casein has also been linked with inflammation in the gut and leaky gut syndrome, as the immune system is triggered when BCM7 enters the system. And although being sensitive to A1 casein and being intolerant to it are two different things, even being a little sensitive to it can cause an accumulation of oxidative stress and inflammation, which can create problems down the line.

Symptoms of A1 casein intolerance include:

• Brain fog
• Constipation
• Bloating
• Abdominal pain
• Diarrhea
• Fatigue
• Acne
• Eczema
• Arthritis
• Weight gain
• Pain in the joints
• Other allergies

Although A1 casein is not directly linked to adrenal fatigue, the above issues it causes can contribute to the stress on the body, adding more load on the adrenal glands. Also, because BCM7 is a naturally-occurring opioid, it can inhibit cortisol production. This is a secondary adrenal insufficiency, which can lead to lowered immunity and more inflammation.

A2 casein seems to lack all of these negative effects, yet because most milk these days contains a mixture of both types of casein, when dealing with neuroinflammation and any kind of inflammation, it may be best to cut it out altogether and then see how you feel after a few months.

You may also want to supplement with extra glutathione if you’ve been a consistent milk-drinker so that you can replenish its stores in your system and fight off any accumulated oxidative stress. But you must first make sure that your physician is aware of these changes, since neurological conditions can be quite complicated to deal with alone.

As for eggs, though we generally feel they are a healthy food, as they contain choline, DHA, biotin, lutein, and vitamins A, B3, B6, B9, B12, D, and K2, in the case of inflammatory diseases, there are cons that seem to outweigh the benefits. For example, they have been found to be an allergen in over 70% of cases of irritable bowel disease.

Eating an Anti-Inflammatory Diet

Now that you’ve seen how gluten, sugar, dairy (especially cow’s milk) and eggs can negatively impact your health, especially when it comes to neuroinflammation, you probably want to know what to eat instead. Taking into account that low micronutrient intake can accelerate neurodegeneration and the aging process, you will want to eat nutrient-dense foods and then supplement where there are any gaps.

The most nutrient-dense foods you can eat are fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, and organ meats. And to break that down even further, there are three groups of fruits and vegetables that you should be eating every single day: dark greens, deeply-colored fruits and vegetables, and sulfur-rich foods.

Examples of dark greens are:

• Kale
• Mustard greens
• Collard greens
• Spinach
• Swiss chard
• Arugula
• Dark romaine lettuce
• Broccoli

Examples of deeply-colored fruits and vegetables are:

• Beetroot
• Paprika
• Purple cabbage
• Blueberries
• Blackberries
• Purple grapes
• Grapefruit
• Raspberries

Example of sulfur-rich foods are:

• Mushrooms
• Onions
• Garlic
• Chives
• Leeks
• Purple cabbage
• Turnips
• Bok-choy
• Cauliflower

You should try to aim for two to three cups of each per day.

With regards to fruits, we do recommend avoiding high-sugar fruits, such as melons, as much as possible, and avoid fruit juice and dried fruits altogether, especially if you have adrenal fatigue. That’s because they can spike your blood sugar levels, leading to a crash afterward, which stresses the system and the adrenals out.

Also, fruits high in potassium can aggravate an imbalance of sodium and potassium, which is a common imbalance in AFS, so it’s best to avoid bananas, cantaloupe, oranges, and apricots for a while until your AFS has improved.

Animal protein is recommended, but if you can gradually make the switch to getting your animal protein mainly from organ meats, that would be one of the most beneficial changes to your diet you can make. They are a good source of minerals, fat-soluble and water-soluble vitamins, essential fatty acids, and ubiquinone.

As part of an anti-inflammatory diet protocol, it is also really important that you feed the “good bacteria” in your gut, and you can do that by consuming fermented products, such as kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, and kefir. Sealing up the leaks in the gut lining is another crucial step, and although removing inflammatory foods will allow that to happen naturally, you can support that process by adding bone broth to your diet.

As we will see now, the adrenal fatigue diet is an anti-inflammatory and nutrient-dense diet that includes the above principles but has a few more tweaks that will help you balance out your blood sugar levels and strengthen your adrenals even more.

The Adrenal Fatigue Diet for Neuroinflammation

With adrenal fatigue, as with many other chronic conditions, like neuroinflammation, the body is depleted of energy and nutrients, is overloaded with toxins and free radicals, and is in dire need of a consistent and long-term approach that deals with all these issues in a safe and gentle manner.

In order to combat the blood sugar spikes and crashes, and to fuel the body on a consistent basis in order to replenish its energy and nutrient stores, one of the cornerstones of the adrenal fatigue diet is the timing of meals. Meals should have the right combination of nutrients given at the right time.

We recommend not going more than two to three hours without eating when you have AFS. Eating at random intervals when your adrenals are weak adds more stress onto them, and they don’t get the break they need to recover and get stronger.

The schedule we recommend to most of our clients looks something like this:

• Eat breakfast shortly after waking, between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m., and not later than 10:00 a.m. Avoid fruits and any foods that are high in sugar for breakfast and opt for protein instead. That way you start the day with stable blood sugar levels.
• Have a small snack of nuts or lean protein around 10:00 a.m. to keep blood sugar levels stable.
• Eat lunch around 12:00 p.m. This is when you can have a bit more carbohydrates, but always choose whole grains that release their glucose slowly, and avoid all gluten-based grains.
• Eat another snack between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.
• Have your dinner between 5:00 p.m. and 6 p.m.
• If you have a tendency towards hypoglycemia at night, you can have another snack of nuts, seeds or lean protein before bed to keep your blood sugar levels stable throughout the night.

As for the meals, we advise that you divide them up this way:

• 20-30% of your diet should come from lean protein. Although we usually recommend free-range eggs as part of the adrenal fatigue diet, if you suffer from neuroinflammation or a neurodegenerative disease, you may want to cut them out, at least for three months, to see if your symptoms will improve. Also, as stated before, try to eat more organic meats. Dairy should be avoided altogether, at least for three months to see how you feel. If you wish to reintroduce dairy back into your diet, choose raw, organic dairy products and milk that contains A2 casein only, rather than A1 casein or a combination of the two.
• 20-30% of your diet should come from healthy fats, such as soaked nuts and seeds. Avoid all trans fats, and don’t cook with polyunsaturated fats such as sunflower, safflower, corn, or peanut oil as they do not do well with heat. You can add oil to your food after if you wish.
• Try to increase your intake of fruits and vegetables to six to nine servings a day, especially those we outlined earlier. Seaweed, sea vegetables, baby vegetables, and sprouted vegetables are a great source of many important essential trace nutrients and they are easy to digest.
• Legumes are a good source of protein and other nutrients, so try to incorporate some into your diet. You can start small and increase as you go if your GI tract is not used to digesting them.
• Try to limit your intake of grains to two to three times a week, and choose non-gluten whole grains.

The Effects of Fasting on Neuroinflammation

We do not recommend any form of fasting for those recovering from adrenal fatigue, precisely because recovery entails getting the right amount of fuel on a consistent basis until the body is strong again. But it is important to take it into consideration if you have inflammation, neuroinflammation, and neurodegeneration, as it has been shown to have very promising effects on health.

Unlike the conventional ketogenic diet, which relies heavily on dairy and eggs to get the body into a state of ketosis, where it shifts from using glucose as its primary source of fuel to ketones instead, intermittent fasting and periodic longer fasts get the body into ketosis without the use of inflammatory foods.

Our ancestors had periods of hours and days where they could not get enough food – perhaps the hunt didn’t go well, or there was need to travel to another area to gather fruits and nuts. That’s why the human body was made to run on two types of fuel, glucose and ketones. And it’s very healthy to shift the body into a state of ketosis once in a while and give it a break from the stress of digestion and glucose metabolism.

Intermittent fasting has an impact on almost all the body’s systems. Within the brain and nervous system, it can help with synaptic plasticity, enhanced neurogenesis, improved cognition, reduced neuroinflammation, and enhanced autophagy. It also increases parasympathetic tone.

In the liver and pancreas, it increases ketone body production and helps the body regain insulin sensitivity. In the heart, it increases heart rate variability, decreases resting heart rate, and stabilizes blood pressure. And overall, it reduces inflammation, increases the number and efficiency of mitochondria (which are the energy producers of the cells), and helps with fatty acid metabolism.

With all these benefits, it’s worth considering doing some kind of fasting to help reduce neuroinflammation and other types of inflammation in the body. But you must do so under supervision of a professional, and not while recovering from AFS. You should also avoid the conventional ketogenic diet’s heavy reliance on dairy, oil, and eggs, and instead apply more paleo principles, at least until further studies into the effects of ketogenic diets on neurodegeneration have been done.

What About Supplements?

Supplements can be a wonderful addition to dietary changes, and they can give your brain the boost it needs. Generally-speaking, you can use supplements in two ways. The first is to use them to fill in nutritional gaps left over by your diet. This means that you do your best to get as many vitamins and minerals through your food, and then supplement for what you couldn’t get enough of.

In some cases, if you eat really well, you may only need a multivitamin once a day or once every two days. But it’s quite rare for an individual to eat enough of everything s/he needs every single day. Most people will need to supplement magnesium, vitamin B12, vitamin D, and omega-3 fatty acids in some way.

The second way supplements can be used is for therapeutic purposes, which usually means in a higher dose and for shorter periods of time. An example of this is vitamin C dosage for AFS. If you have AFS, you need a lot more vitamin C than the average person, and so instead of getting the usual 75-90 mg a day, you may need anywhere from 200 mg to 2000 mg a day.

For those with neuroinflammation, the most frequently recommended supplements are methyl B12, fish oil, methyl folate, and vitamin D, but again, the dosage will depend on each person’s specific condition and needs.

One thing we do want to warn you about, though, is supplementing when you have advanced AFS. With AFS, there is a high risk for paradoxical reactions, where instead of the result you’d expect from a supplement, you get the opposite, which is usually an aggravation of AFS symptoms, such as constipation and anxiety.

That’s why it’s really important that you use supplements with caution and under the guidance of a health professional with experience in AFS, nutrition, and supplementation. The quality and form of the supplements matter as well, so you have to ensure you’re getting the best.

It may seem a little overwhelming right now, but if you take it one step at a time, making sure that you get your diet right first, you will eventually find the exact combination of supplements that works for you.

Other Considerations

Although diet is possibly the biggest influence on health, neuroinflammation and chronic disease, there are other factors that must be considered when taking a holistic approach to well-being.

Because stress is a root cause for many issues, dealing with it is essential. Physical stressors can range from bad diets, to bad sleeping habits, to exposure to toxins, to chronic infections, to a sedentary lifestyle. We’ve already covered diet, but the rest also needs to be discussed.

Sleep is crucial for hormone and neurotransmitter balance, almost on par with diet. And, unfortunately, insomnia is a common complaint in AFS as well as in general. Sleep hygiene is something you can begin to implement immediately with good effect. You should ensure your room is cool and dark. Do not use electronic devices two hours before bed, and if it’s absolutely necessary to do so, use blue-light blocking glasses or screen filters.

Eat a light snack before bed so you don’t wake up from a hypoglycemic episode. And although you should drink a lot of filtered water throughout the day to hydrate and to flush out toxins from your body, stop drinking water a little while before bed. If you do get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, don’t turn on the lights; use a night light instead.

If your body is overloaded with toxins, which happens often with people who have AFS and with people who live in polluted areas, you may consider doing a detox at some point. But do not do a detox if your AFS is advanced and your body is very weak, as that could lead to a crash. You should only do a detox under supervision and it should be personalized to your specific condition and needs.

Almost everyone has some kind of stealth infection that lies latent in the body for years and decades. There’s not much you can do to avoid them. What you can do, however, is keep your immune system strong and your body healthy so that these infections don’t have the chance to awaken and attack your body. A healthy diet and lifestyle are enough to do that. Of course, if you have a condition that you know about and can be treated for, such as Lyme disease, don’t hesitate to see what your options are.

As for physical activity, it’s vital for health, but you should only engage in it at the level that works for your specific state right now. If you have more advanced AFS, exercising may not be possible or a good idea for the moment, and so doing adrenal breathing and adrenal yoga exercises that are gentle enough for your state of health is your best bet, and later on, when you’re stronger, you can increase the intensity, length, and frequency of your physical activity.

Finally, if your stress is psychological in nature, you should take a two-pronged approach. First, when you are in stressful situations that you can disengage from, do so. If you can find a less stressful job or living arrangement, your health is worth it. Secondly, you can get support and learn stress management techniques. Go to therapy, meditate, journal, and confide in trustworthy people.

All of these methods combined will surely improve not only neuroinflammation and adrenal fatigue, but they will improve also your quality of life and productivity as well. The team at Lam Clinic can help. Contact Lam Clinic so we can privately and confidentially discuss your concerns and what support may be appropriate for you.