Your immune system is one of the key contributors to your Endometriosis. If you’ve been reading my posts for a while, you’ll know that I approach Endometriosis as an inflammatory disease, not a hormonal disease. I focus on your digestive and immune systems to reduce the severity of your symptoms.

So, what is the biggest challenge with your immune system?

Well, there are two parts to this. Firstly, it is too easily triggered, and secondly, when it is triggered, it doesn’t work very well.

Too easily triggered

Your immune system’s job is to spring into action when a foreign invader has entered the body (like a virus) or is threatening to enter the body (like bacteria around a wound).

Unfortunately, it gets triggered more than it should.

You’re likely to have food intolerances that cause leaky gut (or gut hyper-permeability), allowing undigested food particles to enter the bloodstream ... where they’re not supposed to be. This triggers an immune response.

You also have a gut microbiome that is out of balance: too many of the bad gut bacteria and not enough of the good gut bacteria. The bad bacteria produce chemicals called endotoxins which trigger the immune system.

Not very effective

When the immune system is triggered, it produces a number of immune cells to deal with the situation. And when you have Endometriosis, you’ll have a few issues there.

One of the key immune cells are pro-inflammatory cytokines, and you produce too many of them. As the name indicates, these cells create inflammation, which is at the heart of your Endometriosis and most of your symptoms.

You also produce large amounts of lymphocytes, whose role it is to determine what type of immune response is needed to deal with what triggered the immune system, but those lymphocytes are not very effective.

Your immune system also produces natural killer cells and macrophages. Natural killer cells’ job is to kill cells that have been infected by a virus. Macrophages’ role is to eliminate cells that are damaged or diseased. Your immune system produces both but they are not very effective.

And the final issue is that in women with Endometriosis auto antibodies are found. Antibodies are memory cells that store information about dangerous pathogens and the way the immune system needs respond. Auto-antibodies trigger your immune system to react against your own body’s cells and tissues. One particular type of auto-antibody here are anti-endometrial antibodies, which tell it to fight against your Endometriosis.

What can you do to fix your immune system?

The most important thing is to stop it from being triggered unnecessarily. The best way to do this is to avoid foods you’re intolerant to and to improve your microbiome.

You can also eat foods that support your immune system:

• Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, in particular carrots, broccoli, red capsicum, sweet potatoes, berries, avocados, mushrooms, asparagus, lentils, beans, legumes, and green leafy vegetables. Make sure that each meal consists of at least 50% plant matter and covers the colours of the rainbow.
• Eat foods that contain the B-vitamins: beef, chicken, eggs, lamb, fish, nuts and seeds, and legumes
• Get out into the sun to increase your vitamin D. Sunlight is the most effective way for your body to process vitamin D. Cod liver oil can also help. You can read more about the importance of Vitamin D here.

You may be wondering your Endometriosis symptoms are influenced by your immune system and diet. I’ve created a free 3-part video series that looks at how diet affects 15 Endometriosis symptoms. You can register for it here.