One in 10 UK adults have a diagnosed autoimmune disease
The Lancet (2023) Autoimmune diseases affect approximately one in ten adults in the UK, the Lancet (2023) study revealed 63% of diagnosed adults were female. (The Lancet, 2023 - thelancet.com). If you have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease read on to see how Nutritional therapy can help.
Nutritional Therapy and autoimmune disease.
Autoimmune conditions are a result of our immune system losing the ability to control appropriate responses to “ourself”. This results in an immune reaction that is larger than the actual perceived “threat”. There is never one reason for developing autoimmunity; a multitude of events and triggers evolve and cause our immune system to adapt to its environment, which can result in the development of autoimmune disease. Our environment, genetics and innate immune health can play a role, but there is a lot we can to gain control of autoimmune disease beyond managing symptoms and often suppressing our immune system with prescribed medications, with their own risks and side effects to manage.
Autoimmune diseases are ongoing, multifactorial and complex. There is often no magic bullet / or medicine that will “fix” a condition, but with the right support you can gain control, maintain and move your body into a pattern of better health and improve your life.
Ready to Support Your Immune System from the Ground Up?
Every autoimmune journey is different. A personalised nutritional therapy approach looks at your whole picture — gut health, immune function, stress, detoxification, lifestyle factors. My auto immune support programme will enable us to work through and unravel your story and apply science based interventions that are safe within your current medical picture
Why work with me?
I have completed a two year professional development programme with Robyn Puglia, an expert and educator in autoimmunity for the past 20 years. Auto immunity is a complex area, where immune health, environment and infections create a complex area to navigate. I am actively engaged in a professional community of other practitioners and able to gain knowledge from each others experiences enabling us to support more clients with auto immune disease.
Supporting Your Immune System, Naturally: How Nutritional Therapy Can Help with Autoimmune Conditions
If you're living with an autoimmune condition, you already know it's rarely about just one thing. Your immune system is a complex, interconnected network — and nutritional therapy looks at all the areas that influence how it functions, not just the symptoms on the surface.
Here's how a personalised nutritional therapy approach can support the key areas of immune health.
1. Gut Barrier Health & Microbiome Diversity
Did you know your gut is home to approximately 70–80% of your body's immune cells? That makes it one of the most important places to focus on when supporting autoimmune conditions.
Your immune system's relationship with food actually begins before digestion even starts — through your mouth and nose. From there, a healthy gut plays several vital roles:
Defending against harmful pathogens
Identifying and reducing exposure to potential dietary triggers
Supporting a strong, healthy gut lining
Encouraging a rich, diverse microbiome
How nutritional therapy helps: through targeted dietary strategies, gut-supportive nutrients, and identifying foods or patterns that may be undermining your gut barrier.
2. Immune Cell Function
Your immune system relies on "helper" cells to coordinate its response — and these can be supported through nutrition.
For many people with autoimmune conditions, underlying viral activity (such as Epstein-Barr Virus or Long Covid) can also play a role in immune dysregulation. Nutritional therapy can help identify these potential contributing factors and use targeted, evidence-informed strategies to support your immune system's natural ability to regulate and manage viral load.
How nutritional therapy helps: through nutrients that support immune cell signalling, and personalised protocols where latent viral activity may be a contributing factor.
3. Stress & Nervous System Regulation
Your immune system and nervous system are in constant conversation. When the immune system is overactive, it can keep your nervous system stuck in a heightened "stress" state — and in turn, chronic stress can further dysregulate immune function. It's a two-way street, which is why calming this loop is so important for long-term balance.
How nutritional therapy helps: through nutrients that support nervous system regulation, blood sugar balance (a often-overlooked stress driver), and strategies that support the gut-brain-immune connection.
4. Healthy Detoxification & Oxidative Stress
Every day, your body deals with free radicals and toxins — and when these accumulate faster than your body can clear them, it can contribute to inflammation and oxidative stress in your tissues.
How nutritional therapy helps: by supporting your body's natural detoxification pathways with antioxidant-rich foods and key nutrient cofactors your liver relies on.
5. Managing Inflammation
Inflammation isn't the enemy — it's a vital part of your immune defences. But when it becomes chronic and uncontrolled, it can damage tissue and contribute to ongoing inflammatory disease.
Nutritional therapy takes a whole-picture approach to identifying why inflammation might be running high, including:
Environmental factors, like chronic stress
Underlying, untreated infections (including dental)
Visceral fat
Dietary triggers
Nutrient gaps that limit your body's natural detoxification capacity
How nutritional therapy helps: by uncovering your individual inflammatory triggers and building a plan to address them at the root.