How to Reverse #Autoimmunity and High-Risk #HPV: Addressing the Root Causes of Both

In this How Humans Heal episode Dr. Doni Wilson, a naturopathic doctor, midwife and HPV specialist, explains how autoimmunity and high‑risk human papillomavirus (HPV) often share a common root cause—chronic stress and its downstream effects on the immune system. She outlines the science of immune modulation, describing the Th1/Th2/Th17 balance and how stress, cortisol dysregulation, toxin exposure, and infections can shift the immune system from protective (Th1) to auto‑reactive (Th2/Th17) states, increasing susceptibility to both auto‑immune disease and persistent HPV. Dr. Wilson reviews diagnostic tools (ANA panels, specific auto‑antibodies, thyroid antibodies, HPV testing, pap smears, gut and vaginal microbiome PCR) and discusses how conventional immunosuppressive medications can worsen HPV risk. She then presents a multimodal, whole‑person protocol that includes: (1) dietary removal of inflammatory foods (gluten, dairy) and targeted food‑sensitivity testing; (2) gut and vaginal microbiome restoration using PCR‑guided herbal antimicrobials and probiotic support; (3) stress‑recovery strategies summarized by the CARE acronym (Clean eating, Adequate sleep, Recovery activities, Exercise) and cortisol/adrenal testing; (4) immune‑modulating agents such as medicinal mushroom extracts (shiitake, turkey‑tail), clinical‑dose vitamins/minerals, and low‑dose naltrexone; (5) individualized dosing and sequencing, with attention to medication interactions. Dr. Wilson promotes her HPV Kickstart program and her Master Stress Reset book as structured guides for patients, emphasizing that balancing the immune system—not simply “boosting” it—allows the body to clear HPV and resolve autoimmunity simultaneously. The episode ends with a call to action for one‑on‑one care and group programs.
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Hi and welcome to How Humans Heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson. In this episode, I'm going to be talking about autoimmunity and the connection with high-risk HPV virus or human papillomavirus. So any of you who might be dealing with either or both of those, either any form of autoimmunity and/or high-risk HPV virus and potentially an abnormal pap smear or abnormal cells on your cervix, then this video is going to be very helpful to you. I get asked questions about autoimmunity and HPV all the time because a lot of times women are struggling to figure out what to do, feeling like they're at odds with their self and thinking that their body is doing 2 different things. So in this video, I want to help you understand your immune system, what is immune boosting versus immune modulation, and how is it that you can actually help your body heal from both autoimmunity and high-risk HPV virus by by doing some of the same things that actually when we get to understanding the root cause, we can actually support your body to heal without making either autoimmunity or HPV worse. Sound good? So if you've been dealing with this and trying to understand and maybe getting a lot of confusing information, then you're in the right place. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and I am an HPV expert. I'm a naturopathic doctor and women's health expert and midwife. I specialize lies in helping all humans to recover from the effects of stress. And in particular, I help women to be able to fend off high-risk HPV virus, clear it to negative, and prevent it from ever coming back again. So in order to do that effectively, my whole protocol is about helping you to address your whole body. In fact, not just on a physical level, also on an emotional, mental-emotional level, and even on a spiritual energetic level. Because what I see in my practice of over 26 years and seeing thousands of patients, including thousands of women who are dealing with high-risk HPV— other thing that I help a lot with is all different types of autoimmunity. And so I have a lot of opportunity to see these patterns as well as to review the research and to see what's working. And so what I find is that actually it's not uncommon that women are dealing both with an autoimmune condition and HPV, and I'm going to help you understand the common denominator, which once we see that, then we can see clearly what we need to do to help you reverse it. This is the thing that I want you to know from the beginning of this video, is that it's possible to reverse and turn off autoimmunity, and it's also possible to Clear high-risk HPV virus and prevent abnormal cells or cancer caused by high-risk HPV virus. So I'm hoping that already helps you to know you're in the right place and to feel excited about the information I'm about to share. Now, the immune system— really, immunologists and researchers are learning still every month, every year more about the human immune system. There is so much complexity, so many details. It's like speaking another language when you go into learning about immunology. We don't need to get to that level of specificity to understand how our immune system works. I just want to let you know that it's still learning in progress. In fact, what I learned 25, 30 years ago is, is still there, but now we understand so much more. So that's why I continue to learn. And I am always every year going to conferences to learn more and more about the latest about the human immune system. And not only that, But how can we safely and effectively use natural approaches, whether that's diet, nutrients, herbs, and other natural products? How can we use these natural substances to help our bodies heal both from autoimmunity and HPV without making anything worse, right? And sometimes patients might be on a medication at the same time. So any of you who might be listening who might be needing to be on a medication for, let's say, an autoimmune condition, That's suppressing your immune system to suppress an autoimmune response, and then that's making you more susceptible to high-risk HPV virus. That's another scenario that we see often. And so what I do is I come in and help you to support your body to protect you from HPV while you might need to be on a medication, and how to do that without decreasing the effectiveness of the medication. And then how can we help your body to reduce the autoimmunity and inflammation so maybe you don't need as much of the medication? And that's only gonna decrease your risk with HPV. So there's— just so you have a sense of it, we— I work with all different severities and situations and all different autoimmune conditions. So some of you might be familiar with one of the most common that I see is Hashimoto's thyroiditis. In fact, 90% of low thyroid function is known to be caused by Hashimoto's, which is antibodies from the immune system that are protecting from your thyroid gland. Wow. There's 2 main antibodies that can cause that, ATA and TPO, antithyroglobulin and thyroid peroxidase. Those can be tested in blood work, and that can lead to damage to your thyroid gland that can lead to low thyroid function. Sometimes it's not diagnosed until you ultimately develop low thyroid symptoms. Better would be to diagnose it earlier so we can prevent it from causing damage to your thyroid. So you might now be on thyroid medication, thyroid hormone, like a T4 substance like levothyroxine, and/or you might be on a desiccated thyroid that contains T3, T4. Either way, we want to continue to support your thyroid function by replacing what your thyroid's no longer making, and we want to start helping your body to decrease those thyroid antibodies so more damage is not happening. Plus, in my view, if we know— as soon as I know that your immune system is making autoantibodies to your own tissue, that tells me right away that your system's under stress and out of balance, and we need to start helping it back into balance. So even if your thyroid dose is relatively stable, if we know you have thyroid antibodies, I would argue for helping you to heal. And I'm going to get to this in a minute about the ways I think about and the initial steps to help you to rebalance your immune function and rebalance your body in general. So, there's other kinds of autoimmunity that may be associated such as celiac disease. I've seen that as well with risk of high-risk HPV virus as well as other forms of autoimmune colitis like Crohn's disease. Also rheumatoid arthritis, SLE, which is known as lupus. There could be others. There's also MS. Mm-hmm. And there's hundreds actually of different autoimmune conditions, more and more being identified all the time. Those are some of the most common that we hear about. There's also scleroderma, there's Sjögren's, and, and, and mixed connective tissue disease, many other forms of autoimmunity. Because when you think about it, autoimmunity is when the immune system starts protecting our own healthy body tissue. And there's so many different types of cells in our body, and the immune system could create an autoimmune response to any of those types of cells in our body, including our nervous system and our brain. And so if, if the immune system can create autoantibodies, that means it's creating immune response to protect us from our own healthy tissue. That could be happening in any different kinds of cells in the body, and that's why there's so many different kinds of autoimmunity. And that can be tested if you're wondering if you might have an autoimmune condition. The general test you would do in blood work is called an ANA autoimmune. It's a yeah, so you could just order ask your doctor to order an ANA panel with reflex, and sometimes it'll show just slightly elevated. Like usually it's it's reported in a a one and then a colon and then the number next to it. So it'll be one. Let's say it's one to eighty. That's a really low level or. Or if it gets to 1 to 360, now we're starting to see that it's a little bit higher. Now normally, if it's a low level, even the standard medicine isn't gonna really do anything. They're gonna look at your symptoms. It's a lot based on your symptomology. If you're— if it's affecting your daily living, like if you're in pain from rheumatoid arthritis and your joints are swelling and you can't get through your normal day, then rheumatologists Rheumatologists specialize in addressing autoimmune conditions, would likely want to treat you with a medication that would turn off your autoimmunity. That could be starting with a steroid or like a prednisone or something similar to that, that if you go to a higher dose of a steroid or prednisone, it's going to suppress the immune response. The problem is you can't take those for very long, or if you do, there's a lot of side effects that are undesirable, like— bone loss and so on. So usually the goal is to be on an immunosuppressive corticosteroid they're referred to for as little time as possible. And then usually, if necessary, then the rheumatologist might move you over to what's called a biologic medication that is gonna, you know, can be turning off the immune system, sometimes specific to the area of your immune system that's being, that's depending on the type of autoimmunity that you have. So just so you have a sense of like if the severity of autoimmunity increases, that's when standard medicine might intervene with a medication. And so some of you might be taking a medication for autoimmunity that and then as I mentioned that could make you more susceptible to HPV. Especially there's one autoimmunity that affects the vulva outside of the vaginal area for women called lichen sclerosus and. If that's being treated with an immunosuppressive or corticosteroid, that can make women more susceptible to HPV. So this is where having an autoimmune condition and then treating it with an immunosuppressive can then make you more susceptible to a viral infection like HPV. So that's where you know we want to be able to help you navigate that and be able to reduce both the HPV and the autoimmune condition. So again, you could start by getting asking for the ANA blood test, which is anti-nuclear antibody test. That's a general blood test for looking for any kind of autoimmune antibody. It's not specific. So from there, if it's positive, then it's— we say with reflex, which is going to give you a little bit more specifics. Is it a type of antinuclear antibody that's associated more with lupus, for example, or other type of autoimmunity? Sometimes we can tell based on that specific ANA, the pattern that's showing. Or maybe they then will run other autoantibodies, like they might then run a rheumatoid factor, or they might run the antibodies associated with lupus, so for example. So once you see a positive ANA, then your doctor might run more tests to see if they can identify which type of autoimmunity that it is. So that gives you a sense of how you would be diagnosed with an autoimmune condition. And then in terms of HPV, the way you would usually get diagnosed with that is By going in for a gynec exam, that's the most common way that women are diagnosed with HPV at this point in time—is going for a gynec exam. Now, more and more gynecologists will start with a high-risk HPV test even before doing a pap smear, or they might do the pap smear, which is a general screening of the cells of the cervix and vagina, and then see if there's abnormal cells. And at the same time, they would likely test for high-risk HPV. If you have any reason to think that you might have HPV. Anally, they could also do an anal pap smear, or you might go to a specialist who can do an anal pap smear and check the cells anally and do an HPV test anally. That's not necessarily that everybody needs to do that. It would usually be if you're having symptoms, maybe blood in the stool, or if you have concerns. If you've already been dealing with HPV vaginally, that might be another area that you could get tested, and you can. It does exist. An anal pap smear and HPV test does exist, and that's another way that men and women sometimes get diagnosed with HPV. So now that we have a sense of how do you know that you're dealing with these conditions, now let's go into understanding the immune system a little bit better. Because, you know, we tend to think of the immune system as just one thing, you know, like either you have an immune system or you don't, or either your immune system is working or it's not. And, and a lot of times there's confusion about If we support the immune system, are we then going to increase autoimmunity? Right? Because autoimmunity is thought to be an overactivated or, you know, an immune system that's going too strongly. And so I want to help to understand— help you all to understand that with the latest information from immunologists, we have a much different way of looking at the immune system and understanding it, really how it's functioning. And the way that I tend to explain it, just to see, to just try to simplify it a bit, is that there's what's known as a Th1 immune system, and then there's the Th2 immune system. And it's about the balance, the balance within the Th1, balance within the Th2, and balance within the two of them together. And the Th1 immunity is also called cell-mediated immunity. It's known for helping to protect us from viruses and It involves the production of T cells and cytokines like interleukin-2, interferon gamma, TNF, CD8 cells, NK cells. You maybe have heard some of this, right? It's this immune activity, these mediators that help protect us from infections like viruses and bacteria, including high-risk HPV virus, which is a DNA virus. It's referred to as a DNA virus. Okay. So, Th1 immunity, when it's working optimally, is going to protect us from these different kinds of infections, right? It's going to make these cytokines and cells that are going to go out into our body, into our tissue, and help protect us from an infection. If the Th1 immunity is depleted for one reason or another, we'll get into that in a minute, then maybe you're going to be more susceptible to an infection. If it's overstimulated or if it's really dysregulated, then it could even go into autoimmunity patterns. But for the most part, what happens is the T— what can happen is that Th1 immunity, which is protecting us from infections, ends up— it's like a flip, a switch gets flipped, and our immune system leans more toward Th2 immunity. We'll talk about that in a second. So Th2 immunity is referred to as humoral immunity. It has also cytokines that are produced, but different ones usually, like interferon-2— or excuse me, interferon-4, interleukin-4— and is more associated with allergic-type responses. And here again, if the Th2 is out of balance, it can be more associated with autoimmunity, like those autoimmune conditions we were just talking about: rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, And so on. And so what can happen is we, we need both. We actually need Th2 also because it can protect us from things like parasites. So we need Th1 to protect us from viruses and bacteria. We need Th2 to protect us from parasites. It's just that when they get out of balance, then it can go into an autoimmune pattern. Right. Oftentimes what I find is when the immune system goes into an autoimmune pattern, at the same time we have reduced protection from infections. So the two go together. You have, you end up with lower ability to protect from infections and a higher likelihood of autoimmunity where the immune system's trying to protect you from your own tissue. And when we can correct both, when, and so it's not a matter of boosting the immune system. Actually, what it is a matter of is modulating. And so now in the immunology, the term that's used is modulation. We want to modulate the immune system, not, not just boost it randomly and raise the levels. We want to actually modulate, which means we want to shift the gear. We want to shift it from autoimmunity mode to protection mode, to protecting you from infections. What if you tested positive for high-risk HPV virus and you You don't want to wait around and see if it's going to go away on its own. For many women, high-risk HPV can linger for years, taking a toll on their health and their peace of mind. I'm Dr. Doni Wilson, HPV expert, and I've been helping women for over 24 years to clear HPV to negative. I created the HPV Kickstart Program as a simple, effective way to support your body's natural ability to clear HPV. This is not about waiting and hoping. This is about taking action. In fact, thousands of women have regained control of their health by following my protocol, and you can too. You deserve to take back control of your health. Join us today. So what is it that got it into autoimmunity mode in the first place? Well, the most common And in the research, they report this over and over again. It comes back to this. And if you know me well, it probably is not going to surprise you. It has to do with stress exposure. So, over and over and over again, what immunologists see is that when, as humans, we're exposed to high amounts of stress— now, that could be high amount of stress over time, like over years, or it could be a high amount of stress over a short period of time. Yeah. And it could be various different kinds of stresses. It could be an accumulation of daily stresses, even from, from high stress at work. It could be lack of sleep. It can also be stress in the form of toxin exposure, like mold toxins. And it could be stress in the form of another infection, like a COVID infection. So the more that our body is having to deal with other things in our external environment, Whether it's physical stress, emotional stress, a toxin as a stress, a virus or other infection as a stress, that's what then— that stress can shift our immune system from a protective, protecting us from external infections, into autoimmunity patterns where the immune system ends up producing antibodies to our own tissue. Now, at that same time, very often associated with is higher inflammatory states. So the immune system is not— we need inflammation all the time to protect us from injury, from infections. However, if autoimmunity goes too big and isn't calming itself back down, so if we have a hyper or pro-inflammatory state, then, which is also referred to as Th17, then that is often also associated with this having been exposed to stress of various forms, and then the immune system gets dysregulated and can go into not only autoimmunity but also and/or pro-inflammatory state. I hope that makes sense. So understanding that the common thread, the common trigger— yes, there can be genetic tendencies, there can be genetic tendency toward autoimmunity, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's You know, you know when it's going to begin or when it's going to turn on. It can you, and some people have autoimmunity and they don't have any genetic tendency. So you can have a genetic tendency, but that's not required. What is happening is that the accumulation of stress, and who knows if that's going to happen when you're 15 years old, 25, or 40, or 60. It can happen at any age. So there's no way to predict when. That stress load might shift into an autoimmunity pattern, or for that matter, into risk of HPV for any person. I see women who are dealing with high-risk HPV in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. And so it can happen at any time, you know. It's— it's— and it's also not more difficult to recover at any age. I have patients of all different ages and can help them to recover from both autoimmunity and HPV, whatever their age, because it's all about Figuring out how to help your body recover from the stress, recover from the toxins, recover from the infections, recover from whatever you've been through. Could be trauma, can be abuse patterns. These are the things that tend to trigger the immune system into this imbalance and to know that we can get it back into balance. Now, sometimes we may use herbs and nutrients or mushroom extracts to help to do this. Yeah. I want to clarify this because a lot of times people worry, well, you know, if we use a nutrient or herb that might be helping to protect from an infection, even from a cold virus, let alone HPV virus, if we're using things, let's say vitamin C or zinc or echinacea, might that stimulate— it may increase the autoimmunity. And there's a lot of back and forth about this, even in the research over the years. What I found as a practitioner is that it can be— I've found it to be very safe and effective to use clinical doses. I'm using clinical doses of, let's say, vitamin C, zinc, and maybe other herbs or mushroom extracts to support the body to clear high-risk HPV virus. And Without triggering autoimmunity. So I wanna reassure you that there are ways to safely and effectively support the immune system to protect you from a virus while, I would say, while you're working on helping to modulate your immune system so that your immune system can do it for you. You see, when your immune system's kind of stuck in this autoimmune and pro-inflammatory pattern, it's not as able to protect you from an infection. We're gonna work on shifting it back so that your immune system can protect you now going forward from HPV. Okay. That may take a few months or some time to implement. I'll talk about that in a second. So in the meantime, it can help to have something to help keep your immune system monitoring for HPV in the meantime, because that's the thing that happens is HPV virus can evade the immune system. HPV actually can get our immune system, it can hide from our immune system. So we need to make sure your immune system is, is not being HPV is not sneaking past it. You know, it's not being tricked by HPV in the meantime. So there's ways we can do that, safe and effective ways. So I want to reassure you on that. All the time I guide women with, with using natural substances to protect them from HPV and without triggering autoimmunity. So if you've been confused about that and concerned, then please, you know, reach out to me. I'm happy to guide you on how I'm helping women to use safe and effective doses to help you navigate this, including, for example, mushrooms, medicinal mushrooms like, let's say, shiitake mushroom, turkey tail mushroom, which is Coriolus mushroom. These mushroom extracts have been shown to help protect from high-risk HPV virus using compounds like beta-glucans and polysaccharides They actually help to, again, balance— we want to use the word balance the immune system. So it's not about stimulating or boosting or increasing the immune system. It's about balancing the immune system. And when the immune system's in a better balance, it's able to protect us from viruses and bacteria for that matter. When it's out of balance, that's when we're not able to protect from infections. And then we become susceptible to autoimmunity. So actually, when we can use medicinal mushrooms that actually help us to prevent HPV-related cancer, and at the same time, they can decrease inflammation and help to turn off autoimmunity. There's also research showing how mushroom extracts help prevent or turn off autoimmune conditions. So this is why I'm saying, like, it doesn't have to be a choice, one or the other. We can actually use substances that are shown to help all, but to help prevent infections and prevent autoimmunity. And it's, it's because they're supporting balance and they're immune modulating. There's now— we're learning so many substances that are immune modulating, including herbs and including many other substances. I could go into everything from peptides to also something That's known as LDN. Low-dose naltrexone, for example, is a prescription substance, low dose, that is known to be modulating the immune system, helping to bring it back to balance. So it might be used temporarily or for a period of time to help rebalance the immune system. So just know that there are options and you want to work with a practitioner who's familiar with this and can help figure out what's the right thing for you to try. And in the right sequence, at the right dose for you. All of this needs to be very, very individualized. Listen to your body, and it needs to be part of an overall strategic plan. So we wouldn't just do herbs, nutrients, and other natural substances. We need to look at your whole body, your whole system, because what we know that helps recover from— that helps balance the immune system and helps you recover from stress Right? Better than anything is getting back to the basics of stress recovery and taking care of you. That starts with diet. So in all of these cases, I would start by looking at your diet and saying, hey, are you eating foods that you didn't realize were inflammatory? First of all, inflammatory, right? There's the 2 most common inflammatory foods for humans is dairy and gluten. So if you're eating Dairy and gluten on a daily basis, let alone multiple times a day, we need to start there. And I would run a food sensitivity panel, the— my favorite one, to see exactly which foods are inflammatory to your body. We don't just stop there. We then know that we need to address leaky gut because inflammatory reactions to foods happens when your intestinal cells are not healthy, the food is not digested well, it's leaking through triggering inflammation. Yeah. That inflammatory response doesn't just stay in your gut. That inflammatory response can run throughout your whole body causing sinus inflammation, thyroid inflammation, joint inflammation, vaginal inflammation, anywhere in your body. And so we need to start by saying, hey, let's figure out which foods to remove from your diet, not just to restrict your diet, but to take away what's most inflammatory so we can help your body drop inflammation And help your immune system come back to balance. In the meantime, you're gonna have a lot of other foods you can choose from 'cause we do need you to get nutrients, protein, carbs, and healthy fats and nutrients. The other thing that's interesting is gluten. Gluten specifically, there's research connecting gluten to triggering many different types of autoimmunity, not just celiac disease, but also Hashimoto's and others. And so gluten specifically is known to be one of these Proteins in food that can trigger an immune response that then ricochets and triggers an autoimmune response where the immune system starts going after your healthy tissue because it's trying to protect you from gluten. And so when we remove gluten from your diet, just like with celiac disease, then the immune system stops doing that. It stops trying to protect you from gluten because there's no gluten. And so then your body can actually heal, the inflammation can come down. And so that's a— I mean, you could just start by doing that, but what I'm telling you this is so that you can work with a practitioner who can help you know if that's an issue for you. Let's look for, do you have autoimmunity to gluten, or do you have IgG inflammatory antibodies to gluten? Do you have leaky gut? Let's start healing that. Now from there, we also need to look at your digestion overall. Are you digesting food well? How's your gut microbiome? Yeah. It's well known that imbalanced gut microbiome also can make you susceptible to autoimmunity and to high-risk HPV virus. So if you know you've had to take antibiotics or you've had other kinds of gas and bloating or other digestive symptoms, then I would say it's worth it to have— what I would do with my patients is I run a PCR analysis of the gut microbiome. If you have vaginal infections, we also do a PCR analysis of the vaginal microbiome so we can see, are there overgrowing bacteria that we need to address or other microbes we need to address? And then we can address them, not with antibiotics. Most times I can address them using herbs that are antimicrobial. So we can address the overgrowing bacteria, support your good bacteria, get your microbiome back on balance. And if your microbiome's in balance in your gut and vaginally and everywhere else in your body, then your immune system's gonna be more likely to be in balance. Yeah. And then you're more likely to be able to fight off infections and to avoid autoimmunity. So this is another really key important thing. But remember, when you're under stress, then— and, and what happens is when you're under stress, it disrupts your cortisol levels and your adrenaline levels. So if cortisol gets disrupted, either too high or too low, it lowers your immune system. It imbalances the immune system. Now you're susceptible to infections. Now you're susceptible to autoimmunity because the cortisol is out of balance. So I also, in my practice, encourage patients to measure their cortisol levels. We need to know if your cortisol is out of balance. How has that stress impacted your cortisol levels? And that can be measured, yes, in blood, but really, ultimately, I would prefer to see it in a salivary test where you can spit in a tube at different times a day— morning, midday, evening, bedtime. We can see what is your cortisol doing throughout the day. Is it high in the morning, low in the morning, high in the afternoon, low? So we need to know, is it high or low at what time of day? And the reason why is because the treatment's different. If your cortisol is high, I'm going to recommend different— even different meditation, different exercise, as well as different herbs and nutrients to help bring it down. Again, it's all about balance. Just like we want to balance the immune system, we need to balance the cortisol. We don't want to turn it off. We just want to turn it down. We want to reset the signaling, and there are nutrients and herbs that have been shown to do that. If your cortisol is too low at certain times a day, now we need to help your adrenal glands to produce more cortisol. They've gotten depleted, and there's ways to do that with nutrients, herbs, and all kinds of lifestyle dietary changes. So I can guide. In fact, that's what I teach you to do in the Master Stress Reset Your Health book. So if you're wondering about how stress has affected your cortisol and adrenaline levels and How to rebalance your cortisol and adrenaline, as well as your neurotransmitters, then I recommend that you pick up my book Master Stress Reset Your Health, which you can get on Amazon, and you can get it as an ebook or audiobook. And this way, I'm guiding you through with a quiz. What's like? Are you likely to have high cortisol, low cortisol? If so, what do you do next? How do you heal and recover? How do you recover from the effects of the stress? How do you get your cortisol back in balance? As your cortisol comes back to balance and optimal, that's going to help your immune system come back to balance and optimal. Then that's like a— if it's— if the stress is a domino effect in the negative, then stress recovery is a domino effect in the positive. You know, you heat balance your cortisol, that's going to balance your immune system. And then from there, you can you can balance everything else and start protecting yourself from infections like HPV and preventing autoimmunity. Now there's other things that help too, like in terms of stress recovery, like getting good sleep. This comes back to what I refer to as CARE, the acronym CARE. C for clean eating. We talked about diet. A for adequate sleep. So working to get yourself into bed so you can get that like seven and a half to nine hours of sleep every night. If not, then We're going to come back to figuring out your cortisol and adrenaline because that's often what's disrupting your sleep, right? So we solve the cortisol, adrenaline, you can get better sleep. R for recovery activities, the things you do each and every day that helps your nervous system recover, your body recover from stress. Things like spending time in nature, even for 5 minutes, maybe taking a few deep breaths, meditation, mindfulness, music, connecting with others in a community, as well as quiet time. Sometimes quiet time is the best thing ever. So there's so things we can use to help ourselves recover from stress, including dance and more. So we want to help you to integrate this stress recovery into your day-to-day routine. And then A is for exercise or movement that matches for your body. You got to see where you're starting from. But this taking care of you and combining that with rebalancing your cortisol and adrenaline levels to help your body recover from stress, combined with Then healing your gut and your gut and vaginal microbiome, as well as, I would say, rebalancing your nervous system, your neurotransmitters, your vagus nerve function, then you start to break the cycle. You start— you're actually addressing your whole system on a level of what's referred to as psychoneuroendocrinology and immunology. It's all combined into one, right? So we can by working on the nervous system, the immune system, the hormones, and the gut and the microbiome all at once, we can actually have synchrony. We can, we can also have synergy, and we can speed up the healing because we're, we're not just trying to aim at one thing. We're not just trying to boost your immunity with a single substance. We're actually trying to rebalance your whole system, helping You recover from stress. And then as more stress happens, because stress is going to happen, that's just part of human existence, then you're more able to bounce back from it, to be resilient to stress that you're exposed to so that your body doesn't go right back into autoimmunity. You'll— now you'll know what you need to eat and what you need to do on a daily basis to help yourself stay in a healthy, balanced state versus— because before we didn't know, you know, we only know once we A lot of times it's only once we develop a health issue that we have the motivation to figure it out. But once you figure it out, you're more likely to be like, okay, I know now how to keep my body well. I'm gonna keep doing that. And then you can be preventing all different kinds of autoimmunity, and you can be protecting yourself from viruses like high-risk HPV virus going forward. Even if you get exposed again, then your immune system is working and your microbiome is protecting you and your hormones and your blood sugar and everything is balanced. So that's part of it too. We balance blood sugar, we get, you know, we get your methylation working, we help you detoxify. Anything that's disrupting your system can be addressed. So then your body has full speed ahead to, to do what it is intended to do, which is to give you energy to do the things you love and protect you from infections and protect you from stress along the way. So, all right. Well, I hope that helps you to understand the connection between autoimmunity and high-risk HPV and the fact that we can use some of the same thought process, the same protocol, my same stress recovery protocol and HPV protocol to help you solve both at once. I can't tell you how many patients I see where in the process of helping them to clear HPV to negative, They end up also clearing the autoimmunity to negative. So it's like, what's better than that? We can solve both things at once when we get down to the common root causes in your case. And when we address the common root causes, whether that's a toxin exposure, we can detoxify, or if it's a nutrient deficiency, we can solve that. A microbiome imbalance, we can solve that, and we can help rebalance your immune system. And rebalance your cortisol so that you're not so susceptible to that happening again. Well, thanks everyone for joining me for How Humans Heal. I welcome you to subscribe if you haven't already so you can join me for the next episode. You'll get a notification so that you don't miss it, and I look forward to connecting with you very soon, especially if you find that you would like my help with anything that we've just mentioned. I do offer one-on-one care and I offer group online program for high-risk HPV virus. So if you would like to learn more, just reach to my website and you can learn more or contact my team and they'd be happy to help you figure out how I can help you with however, whatever you're dealing with in your health. That's exactly what I love to help with. So thanks again, everyone, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
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