Top Causes of Inflammation with Celiac Disease Ep. 207

Just because you’re gluten free doesn’t mean you’re symptom free. Many women with celiac disease still struggle with gut issues, joint pain, skin flare-ups, low energy, or mood swings—long after they’ve ditched gluten.

In this episode, I break down what inflammation is, how it shows up in the body, and what actually causes it (hint: it’s not just about food). You’ll learn the real-life triggers of chronic inflammation—from stress and sleep to toxins and blood sugar spikes—and get practical steps to lower it naturally.

If you’re sick of feeling sick and ready to finally feel better in your body, this episode is your next step.

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Music Credit bensound.com 

Chapters

• 0:48 Understanding Chronic Inflammation After Celiac
• 3:37 Common Causes of Chronic Inflammation
• 9:36 Reducing Inflammation Through Diet & Exercise
• 11:27 Lowering Toxic Load & Managing Stress
• 13:32 Healthy Celiac Collective Program Introduction

Transcript

Belinda Whelan: 0:24

Once you get a celiac disease diagnosis, you go gluten-free and most of your problems tend to disappear, but a lot of women tell me that they still suffer with ongoing health problems. So, whether that be things like gut issues or skin issues or pains in their joints different things like that but what it comes down to is many of these women are actually suffering from a level of inflammation, and on today's episode, I want to talk to you about what inflammation is, what causes it and what you can do to lower that inflammation, which, in turn, can help fix many of those problems that a lot of us seem to be facing. Okay, so, first up, I think we need to talk about what inflammation is and when it can be good and when it can be not so good. So, first of all, we do need a level of inflammation. So, for example, let's just say you cut yourself or you graze your skin, something like that your body will get inflamed, will get inflamed, so your body will fight to fix that in that problem by creating inflammation and healing that graze or that cut or whatever, and same if you get a bite. So if you get a bite, say a mosquito bite, and you get, like an inflamed lump, that inflammation is fine because it's your body trying to heal that and fix that problem.

Belinda Whelan: 1:56

It's when you have chronic inflammation, that's where the problem is. So when you have chronic inflammation, what that means is it's something that's not short-term, it's more of a long-term problem. So most people that have chronic inflammation have been suffering for months, some people for years. And when we talk about chronic inflammation been suffering for months, some people for years and when we talk about chronic inflammation, we're talking about things that I mentioned a little bit earlier, things like pain in the joints, gut inflammation. So whether that can be diarrhea, that could even be constipation, it can be pain in the gut constantly. It can be skin problems. So when your body reacts and you have skin issues, that can be from inflammation. You can have fatigue, you can be depressed, you can have anxiety. There's so many different things. There's also weight gain can be from inflammation. And also, if you frequently get sick with colds and flus, this can be from your body being in a constant state of inflammation. So we don't want these things in our life, do we? We don't want to feel this way. We don't want to have these problems and be dealing with inflammation. So let's talk about what causes that inflammation, and then we'll talk about how to reduce the inflammation. Inflammation, and then we'll talk about how to reduce the inflammation.

Belinda Whelan: 3:12

So, unfortunately, many, many people are causing their own inflammation, and many of these things can be reversed simply by changing what you are doing in your day-to-day life. So, you know, you might have got a celiac disease diagnosis, you might have gone gluten-free and thought, well, okay, I feel better. You know, I'm not getting the diarrhea anymore, I've started to feel better in my head, I'm starting to have a little bit more energy, but you're still suffering with, maybe, aches and pains or, you know, your gut still aches things like that. It could be because you have chronic inflammation from other factors, not just from the gluten. You could be doing things to your body that have nothing to do with the gluten. So I want to talk about those so that you can start to make some changes. And this may be very overwhelming depending on your lifestyle, but, like anything that I teach my clients, it's about taking one step after another and implementing one thing first and adding a little bit more into your life.

Belinda Whelan: 4:18

So let's talk about some of the things that cause inflammation Now. The first one is, unfortunately, your diet. So it's all very well to go gluten-free, your diet so it's all very well to go gluten-free. But, as you probably know by now if you've listened to the show before, what you eat doing everything for you. It's either nourishing you and giving you vibrancy and making you feel alive and amazing, or it's depleting you of your glow, it's making you feel lethargic, it's making you feel down, it's making you gain weight, it's making you feel less than what you should be. If you have simply replaced all of the foods you were eating before with just gluten-free processed foods, this is inflaming and this can be causing issues for your health. So it's about, you know, focusing on that diet and making sure that you aren't just eating inflammatory foods. So we'll talk about that further in a moment.

Belinda Whelan: 5:19

The next one is too much exercise. So too much exercise, believe it or not, can cause inflammation in your body. So you, you know you would hear people that say they work out and then they have a rest day, and then they work out and then they have a rest day. Or they work out one day and then the next day they work out on something else. So one day they might do arms and the next day they might do legs. This is really important because if you're not resting, your body is constantly inflamed and not having a chance to heal and feel better. So, yes, too much exercise certainly can cause inflammation, unfortunately.

Belinda Whelan: 5:53

The next one is stress. So when we are constantly stressed, it causes chronic inflammation. So many, many different things cause stress for many of us. We all have different levels of tolerable stress, but we all, you know, we all have different stresses in our lives, depending on our stage of life, depending on our jobs, depending on whether we have children, depending on our financial situations. But stress can certainly cause inflammation. So that's one to be aware of and think about. The next one is sleep. So if you are having a poor night's sleep, even one night of bad sleep can cause chronic inflammation and it can take a while for the body to get over. But if you are constantly in this state of having bad night's sleep, then you will have a level of chronic inflammation within your body. So that is one that affects many, many people and is very important to think about and be aware of as well.

Belinda Whelan: 6:57

Environmental toxins this this is the next one. So if you are quite a toxic person as far as you know the products that you use on your skin, the products that you use in your home to clean your home, whether you're burning, you know fragrance centered candles, whether you spray aerosols in your home there's so many different factors that can add up to your toxic load. So obviously you would have heard that the more toxins you have in your body, the worse it is, and we need to avoid toxins, but some people are not doing enough when it comes to these areas. So you know, if you're washing your clothes in washing powder or washing liquid and it has, you know, chemicals in it that are not good for your body, you're wearing those clothes, that clothing. If you are wearing a lot of synthetic clothing, you are. You are introducing toxins into your body.

Belinda Whelan: 7:52

So it depends, you know you might even be wearing a perfume that's toxic and you are getting this constant bombardment of a toxic load, day in and day out, that can cause massive chronic inflammation within the body and, like I said, the chronic inflammation is causing so many issues. So, as you're listening to this, you might be like, yes, I eat well, yes, I exercise, yes, I could get good sleep, but oh, actually I haven't really thought about the chemicals that I'm exposing my body to, so they could be causing this chronic inflammation in your body, and it can be as simple as looking at that area in your life. Another cause of chronic inflammation can be exposing your body to massive blood sugar spikes, and this does tie back to our first topic of the diet and what you eat. But if you're constantly spiking your blood sugar and it's crashing, and spiking your blood sugar and it's crashing I talked about this recently on another episode where it's important to help our blood sugar be stable throughout the day, and again, this always ties back to how we eat, what we're drinking, what sugar intake we have, all of those things. So think about all these different areas, what I've talked about that can be causing inflammation for you within your body.

Belinda Whelan: 9:12

Now let's talk about how we can help ourselves with lowering our inflammation. Now, the first one, of course, is diet and focusing on really eating well. So focusing on eating lots of fresh food, eating lots of fruit and vegetables, really cutting out as much as possible of the refined foods, the packaged foods, the things that are man-made, the things that are not made in nature. The more you can cut those out, the more you will lower your inflammation. There's curcumin, which is fantastic. So turmeric, which is fantastic for lowering inflammation. There's so much information about this now. You can add it to cooking. You can make shots with it as far as like a health shot. I have made like ginger and turmeric shots for the winter. They are fabulous. So things like that can help lower inflammation in your diet.

Belinda Whelan: 10:09

Getting exercise is absolutely going to help lower your inflammation. So if you are quite stagnant and you do a lot of sitting around, or you've got an office job and you'd like to be a couch potato, you probably are not getting enough exercise. So even if you just start with 20 minutes a day you know, just getting your body moving, going for a walk, doing some sort of gentle exercise, and you might be sitting there going, my body is aching and hurting then you might need to start small. You might need to build up to that 20 minutes. But it's about just taking action. It's no point listening to this and thinking yeah, yeah, yeah, that all sounds great. It's about putting some steps into place to make sure that this information is being utilized in a way to help you and support you.

Belinda Whelan: 11:00

Another thing to focus on is lowering your toxins. Now, if you don't know much about toxins and you don't really know where to start, I would definitely start with your home and what you can control within your own home. It might be to start small and start with your body care products and I'm not saying go throw everything away that you've been using for 30, 40 years and start from scratch, if that is unachievable financially for you, but it could be just replacing things as you use them. So you've run out of one product, you're going to replace it with something that's, you know, fragrance free, paraben free, there's no nasties in it and then you continue to use a product that's safer for your body. Same again with your cleaning products using cleaning products that are not loaded with, you know, fake fragrances and chemicals and things that you're putting within your house, that you're breathing in and you're being exposed to. Same with your washing powders, things like that. So replacing them as you go. If you can afford it, go the whole hog and replace everything and use, you know, things that are not toxic to your body and your home, because it makes such a huge difference to your ongoing health and for lowering that toxic load within your body.

Belinda Whelan: 12:19

And then, of course, stress, which I've talked about so many times on the show because it's so, so important. How can you lower your stress? What can you change within your life to lower your stress levels? Or, if it's a matter of you can't actually lower the things that are causing you this stress, what could you add into your life in place of those stresses? So let's just say you know you're stressed out in your work life. Could you take five minutes for yourself and do some breathing exercises at work? Could you take your lunch break and go stand in some grass with your bare feet and ground yourself and get some fresh air and move away from the people that are causing you stress. Sometimes, just doing these activities so that our body knows that we are safe and we're not constantly in fight or flight mode these can help us to lower our stress levels as well.

Belinda Whelan: 13:08

Now, if everything that we talked about on today's episode is something that you need guidance and support with and you know that episode is something that you need guidance and support with, and you know that this is something that will help you achieve that next level of wellness and health and vibrancy and feeling great and maybe even losing some weight. If that's something on your radar, then I invite you to check out the Healthy Celiac Collective. It is my group coaching program and the wait list is available right now and doors will be opening very, very soon. So this round is going to be very intimate, very small, so that I can tweak the program to suit you and make it exactly what you need to thrive as a woman with celiac disease. So we are starting at the end of this month.

Belinda Whelan: 13:56

So if you are listening to this in real time, please go to www. belindawhelan. com/collective make find out more so that you don't miss out on a spot.

Belinda Whelan: 14:07

But if you're listening to this or watching this on YouTube at a later date, you can still go to that website and jump on the wait list so that you don't miss out on the next round, because this program is going to be for a small group of women, so that it's intimate, so I can give you the most guidance and support that you possibly need, because I don't want this to be something where you just consume a whole heap of information and do nothing about it.

Belinda Whelan: 14:33

I'm going to be there holding your hand every step of the way, so be sure to go to that website, belindawheelancom forward slash collective and find out more, but otherwise back to it. So thank you so much for listening to this episode and checking it out on YouTube. If you're watching on YouTube and I really hope that, like I said, you take this information on board but if you're watching on YouTube and I really hope that, like I said, you take this information on board but if you do need further support, please go check out the Collective and I look forward to supporting you within that program if that is for you. So thanks for checking out the episode. I look forward to talking with you again on next week's show and have a fantastic week. Take care bye.