By: Leslie Lupsius
Venessa C.: What do you do to keep your kidneys well. My Rheumi told me at my last appointment that it looks like my kidneys are starting to be affected. Is there an herb or supplement I can take to make it better?
The best thing you can do to help your kidneys is to decrease inflammation by incorporating lots of vegetables of different colors, eat organic to limit the toxin exposure, and heal your gut by eating fermented foods like sauerkraut, bone broth, or kombucha drinks, which give your gut probiotics and prebiotics.
Reduce your stress levels and limit your intake of sodium and protein, as these can be too taxing for your kidneys.
As for the supplements, I would highly recommend considering LDN (low dose Naltrexone therapy), 1mg- 4.5mg. You can ask your primary care or your Rheumatologist about this.
It’s not a supplement, but it’s a low does Naltrexone therapy which has a highly potent anti-inflammatory effect.
You can also eat lots of vegetables with variety of colors to get the anti-oxidant effect in your body which will not only be anti-inflammatory, but also be protective for your cells.
Victoria B.: What are your thoughts on paleo diet to help with inflammation?
I think that paleo diets are great for inflammation.
However, I think what may be even more beneficial is to incorporate ketogenic diet into the paleo.
There’s lots of research on the benefits of ketogentic diets, including anti-inflammatory effects and I’ve personally had lots of success with it as well as with my patients.
Carie M.: How can I increase my energy? I feel most days like I’m only half alive…. then on days when I wake up and I’m myself, within a few hours I spike a fever and I’m down again soooo much to do and no energy or focus to do it. I’d really like to stop eating candy and soda just to make it through the day.
Autoimmune conditions like Lupus cause mitochondrial dysfunction. Mitochondria is where we produce energy for our body.
Our immune system requires so much energy to function normally, but with autoimmune conditions, all meds cause mitochondrial insufficiency, which means it actually creates sick cells which in turn creates extreme fatigue.
Eating high sugary foods adds acidity to the body. Rather than supplying the cells with more energy, it has the opposite effect of spiking up the blood sugar level causing a surge of insulin to be released from our pancreas, which is highly inflammatory so it’s not what you want to do.
If you want to increase energy, decrease the toxic load through diet, environment and stress.
Then you’ll need additional supplemental support for your gut like glutamine, probiotics, mitochondrial support, omegas, coQ10 and vitamin D to name a few to ensure that your cells are able to produce sufficient amount of energy as well as for your immune system to function normally because for us lupus and autoimmune patients, our immune system is considered broken so we must work to support and fix it.
