I Have Multiple Autoimmune Diseases. What Can I Do to Improve My Immune Function?

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I have Multiple Autoimmune diseases. What can I do to improve my immune function? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Julie from one of my recent masterclass asked I have lifelong low white blood cells and I've had multiple autoimmune diseases, including Hashimoto's, besides diet and lifestyle. And I've removed all seven foods from the Virgin Diet four years ago and no turning back. What else can I do to improve my immune function? Hey, it's JJ and today I've got autoimmune expert Dr. Terri Walls with me. She has over 3 million views and counting on her TEDx talk where she shares her personal Ms. Story of how she ditched the wheelchair and and got back her life through diet and exercise. A former international Taekwondo competitor from an Iowa farm family, she now spends her time as a clinical professor at the University of Iowa researching the impact of therapeutic lifestyle interventions on Ms. Symptoms. Stay with me. We'll be right back with the answer.

Hey JJ Virgin here. Okay, Real Talk. So often the holidays sneak up on me, travel, gifts, hosting, you know, all the things, and suddenly it's like, wait, who spent what and where? And I know I'm not the only one who's looked at a bill in January and thought, wow, that escalated quickly. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop or on your phone. Monarch lets you link everything and gives you real time visibility so you're not shocked later. Right now, I've been checking the holiday spending category so I don't accidentally start the new year with that dreaded debt hangover. And honestly, just seeing everything laid out is already helping me stay more aware. This season, Monarch does the heavy lifting. It links your accounts in minutes, gives you smart categorization and super clear visuals. Yes, that end of year reset could be a real goal. This time, don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use the code virginonarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code Virgin.

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So as I'm thinking about this, I'm running through my mind, what are the causes of low white blood cell counts? And this will depend on which of the white blood cells are suppressed. I'm thinking that this may be the lymphocytes, and commonly when people are having a lower white blood cell count, I'm thinking about is there an autoimmune process? This person has multiple autoimmune diseases. Likely autoimmune processes are part of that. In addition, low white blood cell counts may be a sign of having had Epstein Barr virus or other viral infections that are part of that person's immune makeup. And that would suggest that there's some level of either viral activity or perhaps some of these chronic indolent bacterial infections, such as Lyme's disease Chlamydophila, that might still have some residual activity. And then there's a third area that I'd be wondering about, and that has to do with toxin loads. Depending on the individual, there may be a higher body burden of things like lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic are the common heavy metals. Certainly plastics, perfumes, solvents can also be a problem as well as so now thinking about what can you do to improve your immune cell function? Really, this comes down to improving your detox strategies. So if you can sweat more, pee more, poop more, and having a really clean diet, the kind of diet that I teach my folks in my tribe to use, which is, you know, plenty of greens, plenty of the cabbage family, onion family, mushroom family, vegetables, deeply pigmented vegetables and berries, carrots, beets, berries, and then having plenty of fermented foods such as sauerkraut and kimchi and sufficient fiber so you're passing bowel movement easily and comfortably every day, that would be helpful. Improving urine output. So having plenty of water every day if you can, and if you tolerate heat, having some saunas so that you have more sweat, that would be excellent. Another thing that can be really helpful for immune cell function is sleep. We know that if we are sleep compromised, this raises a number of key inflammatory cytokines or inflammation molecules that suppress immune cell function and that in fact a lot of our killing of the viruses and the microbes is most effective at night. So again, my strategies for people who are trying to improve their immune cell health overall is I put them on the Wahls diet. We talk about what we can do to improve detox with sweating, peeing and pooping more. And I also really want to be sure that they are sleeping well so I get them outside so they can get some sunlight, help get their circadian rhythm that is Their day night cycle appropriately aligned and have a good nighttime sleep routine.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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