Healing From Within: Chronic Illness & Autoimmunity, When the Protocols Stop Working

We were discussing why supplements stop working during one of our team meetings. I heard myself say: the person has not changed from inside.

For almost a decade, I have been working with clients who have to make difficult and sometimes complicated changes in their lives. This also includes less complicated changes such as following a supplement protocol as a part of addressing the root causes for a chronic condition.

I have noticed one thing about a woman for whom these supplements or other strategies stop improving her health outcomes. And it’s not due to her lack of effort or commitment.

It’s usually because she hasn’t really changed in one of the most important ways: her identity.

This may not be very obvious to many of us and that’s partly because we don’t take out the time to sit with these kinds of reflections very often.

Your identity is tied to your beliefs about yourself and the world you live in. It also affects the way that you respond to your environment and how you take care of yourself. And that includes the decisions you make about your health.

I remember one story about a man I heard about at a coaching training during a Functional Medicine conference, whose health finally turned around simply because he started seeing himself in a new light. He had several chronic health issues that were aggravated by his smoking habits that he couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard he tried.

It was only when he accepted his role as a parent to his two small children that his identity shifted to being a ‘good father’ to them. He realised just how important they were to him and how they were getting affected by his smoking and it gave him the incentive and also the purpose to finally quit.

For you, it may be that you are so used to taking care of everyone else in your life that you have no energy or bandwidth left for yourself. You may still be carrying the role of the ‘caregiver’ who prioritises everyone and everything over her own health and well being. And following a protocol and taking 20 supplements is rarely enough on its own.

What is often missing is a body that is in a position to digest and absorb what you are taking to help support the healing process.

There are three parts to this healing process.

Maximise - you ADD what’s important for your body’s healing. These include nutrient dense foods, fibre, antioxidants from plant foods, healthy proteins and fats as well as empowering beliefs.

Minimise- you REMOVE what’s harming you. These include toxins, managing stress and worry, negative thinking and infections.

Prioritise- you create an environment for healing that’s unique to YOU as a person. This includes getting proper rest and sleep, joy and practicing gratitude, self compassion, cultivating meaningful relationships.

The common thread running through it all is being aware of what you believe to be true about yourself as you are right now and seeing if anything is holding you back from living your life on your own terms.

The thing is, if you are carrying more responsibilities than your body can possibly handle, then it gets stuck in fight-flight-freeze mode. And when you try to support it by making healthier choices, it is not able to make the most of those changes.

However, when you begin to make a little room for yourself, your body gets a chance to receive what you are giving it.

Pick one thing you did for your health today. Did you do it because your body asked, or because the plan said so?

Either answer is fine. Noticing which one it was is the whole of it.

"If you are constantly fighting your body, all you will do is exhaust yourself."

I remember these words clearly. My client had been working with me for a while by then and knew what it means to connect with her body. To listen to it and accept what it needs and support it with compassion.

So when she said these words, I knew they came from a place of strength, not fear. She had already been taking more than 20 supplements when she came to me but her labs didn’t show much improvement from before. She had also tried following an anti inflammatory paleo diet for a while earlier but it hadn’t shown many results either.

One thing I made a note of during one of our initial conversations was her eating habits.

Years of juggling household responsibilities and children meant that she had become used to either eating at her desk in office while working or standing in her kitchen at home.

You see, there was nothing wrong in what she was doing in terms of following certain protocols. Anti inflammatory diets do help in lowering inflammation and supplements do help in seeing faster results.

However, since this had not happened in spite of her efforts, she had come to believe that either she was doing something wrong or her body was not responding.

What was happening in her case was that her body was simply not in a position to be able to make the most of what she was doing. For a body that is stuck in fight-or-flight mode, digestion, repair and healing is often at the bottom of the list.

So when she was eating at her desk while peering at a screen, her body prioritised increased focus and alertness to help her get her job done. But that also meant that it shifted away from making digestion and absorption a priority.

So no matter how healthy her meals were, she wasn’t getting the full benefit of the nutrients she was consuming.

And that’s why you can do everything right and still not see any real or sustainable improvements.

That’s what my client realised too. And over time she found ways, both big and small, to support what her body needed so that the diet, supplements and other changes finally made a difference.

Where were you the last time you ate?

Not what was on the plate: where you were, and what you were doing.

You may not remember. That is also perfectly fine.

She was exhausted.

Dealing with a newborn is hard enough. She had already been living with her skin condition for more than ten years by the time I met her. She had also tried a range of topical creams and other treatments without much improvement.

But once the baby was born the symptoms had worsened. And her body stopped responding to the treatments too.

She had already tried eliminating certain foods and followed a plant based diet and it had helped to some extent.

What she wanted now was to figure out a doable approach to supporting her body with the right kind of foods and lifestyle changes.

What she needed was someone to guide her to make changes at a pace she could keep up with. She had her family’s support but her two small children demanded most of her time and energy.

So it was not that she wasn’t ready to commit to her own self care and healing. Quite the opposite in fact.

Even though she was away from home, she made time to show up for our Zoom calls, which were weekly for the most part. She made sure that her family took care of her children and gave her the time she needed to focus on herself.

One thing was clear from the start. For this to work for her, it had to be something that didn’t add more to her already overflowing plate. We had to figure out what was a priority and what was not.

We started with anti-inflammatory foods, fresh fruits and vegetables in every colour, a "rainbow diet”. We also removed gluten and dairy for about 6 weeks to lower her body’s inflammation levels. This phase was called “Simplify your plate”.

But what really made a difference was something else entirely.

We put together a morning routine to help ground her. Small, simple rituals like gratitude journaling and taking a few deep breaths while she was still in bed were things she decided she could do with ease. Each practice built on the last and gave her the confidence she needed to keep going when she felt she couldn’t.

Midway through, and again at the end, we paused to look at how far she'd come. She felt that her awareness towards herself had improved. Small things changed, like taking her time getting ready instead of rushing through it. But like pretty much everyone else, she still felt guilty when she let things slide.

She was aiming for calm now, not perfection.

Here's what I want you to know.

When you have tried everything and not seen the results that you want, it may help to remove what is not working. Diets and supplements can help. But when your body is this exhausted and overwhelmed, it may not be able to respond to them.

In her case, when we focused on simple practices like a grounding morning routine, she was finally able to make them part of her day.

At the end of our three months, when she looked back at everything we'd tried, there was one thing she wanted to keep. Her morning ritual.

We couldn’t figure out why she was not sleeping well lately.

She had already been working with me for a while by then and was quite comfortable in sharing what was going on in her life. We had also ruled out coffee (she didn’t have any), her supplements were all on track and supporting her. On top of that, her labs had come back all normal.

Her therapist had also been unable to figure out what was going on.

We both realised that there was an underlying stress that was keeping her awake. But we just couldn’t figure out what had changed for her.

By that time we had already focused on her gut health and she was used to listening to what her body needed from her. And yet, here we were, unable to figure out what was keeping her awake at night.

This is not to say that investigation through lab markers are not effective. They help in understanding what’s missing and what needs to be a priority. So do intake forms, medical symptoms questionnaires and the conversations with our clients.

But once in a while, we encounter a situation like this where all the usual suspects don’t help. As I learned later, the problem was never the lack of investigation, it was something else entirely.

It was my client who solved this mystery, almost offhandedly, during our session.

She had noticed we were working on two parallel tracks, one being the diet, supplements, gut health, root causes and more and the second was the emotional side focusing on mind and thought, gratitude and compassion. So when she mentioned that she was sleeping much better now, I had to ask her what had changed.

Only one thing had changed.

Her daughter had finally settled down in her new role in a different city.

And that had made all the difference.

A mother’s body got the message that all was safe now. It could rest at night.

This is something that I have noticed repeatedly in my work: safety has to come before strategy. Without exception.

Like in her case, you can do everything right and still not see the results you want if your body doesn’t feel safe enough to heal and repair itself.

When you look back at a time in your life when you were struggling, but your labs looked fine and you had done everything you could, ask yourself:

When this started, what else was happening in your life that nobody thought to ask about?

You may not find it. Know that it is not a failure of looking.

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She was taking 30 supplements but wasn’t absorbing any of them, because she ate every meal in fight-or-flight.

Your body prioritizes survival over everything else. Digestion is one of the first things it lets go of under stress and the fact is staying alive matters much more, so absorbing a meal, or a supplement, can wait.

I remember her showing me her stash of supplements in the kitchen drawer. She was holding the phone so I could see it all. There were stacks of supplements in three neat rows and there was a certain sense of pride on her face.

As our session progressed, she told me she was used to eating on the go. It made sense since she was so busy, so most of her meals were eaten at her desk between tasks, or standing at the kitchen counter to save time.

What wasn’t clear to her at the beginning was how much this was affecting her, specifically the bloating, the fatigue that never really lifted, even though she was doing everything right.

As we worked together, I took her through a simple practice called mindful eating with a raisin.

It was really simple. I showed her how to savour one single raisin, focusing on its appearance, texture, smell and taste using all of her senses. And then, and only then she could start eating it by chewing very slowly so that she could appreciate the unmistakeable combination of tanginess and sweetness without having to try hard.

And there’s one more thing that we did. She had to take a five minutes pause before each meal to take a few breaths. That’s it.

Just five minutes to inhale and then gently exhale to help her body shift from fight-or-flight to the rest-and-digest mode. This simple pause made a huge difference.

By this time, she had also stopped taking most of her supplements. We’d agreed to add them back one at a time, later, based on what her body actually needed.

When she redid the symptoms questionnaire three weeks later, her bloating, belching and her occasional heartburn were all gone.

And this is what I want you to know. We didn’t add anything new. We took most of it away. That’s what let her body come out of fight-or-flight.

And we did it before each meal so that her body could focus on the most important task at the time: digestion.

Don’t get me wrong. The supplements were not the problem. Well, maybe she didn’t need all of them. But the issue was that her body wasn’t in a position to make the most of them.

Once that changed, her symptoms improved without putting in more effort.

Before one meal this week, notice what state you are in when you start eating.

Not to change it.

You may not be able to tell. That is the finding.

Thanks for reading Healing from within! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Six weeks, so hard… with so much of hard work, we have done that elimination, and now suddenly this…

My client looked dejected. I could make out that her shoulders were slumped even from across the screen. I had seen this same kind of tiredness before in others.

It’s a tiredness that comes with having tried everything and still feeling like you’ve failed. After all, she had followed the protocol to the letter.

No gluten and dairy. No processed foods, only home made curries and vegetables. And since she was vegetarian, her protein intake was being boosted carefully. She had added millet porridge, protein powder and sprouted moong beans to her daily list of foods. She was also off all nuts for the time being since they all tested high for food intolerance.

And then this.

All she had eaten was one piece of pistachio and her symptoms had come raging back. Her asthma got triggered after many weeks of being in control and she was prescribed an inhaler once again. And she was also put on antibiotics due to her other respiratory symptoms like bronchitis.

She blamed herself for making this simple mistake that anyone could have made under similar circumstances. This was in spite of all the improvements she has seen over the past several weeks.

In her words

“I tried my best to do the best”

and then

“I have enough of suffering.”

I could sense the pain behind her words and it made me pause before responding to her.

As a coach, I have heard this line countless times but it never failed to make me feel compassion for the person sitting in front of me. I gently explained to her that everyone makes mistakes like this and that single pistachio had simply added to the final tipping point for her body.

Her body had already been carrying a lot before she took that bite. The pistachio was the last drop, not the cause that made her bucket of symptoms overflow.

So even after you are doing everything right, your body may still adversely respond to a trigger. It doesn’t mean that the protocol you followed was wrong for you, it means that your body just wasn’t ready for it.

In any case, what is more important is that you realise that

you did not really fail the protocol, the protocol failed you

When my client felt she had failed somehow, she understood that the single piece of nut hadn’t caused it, it had simply been the last drop in a bucket that was already overflowing.

The next time you look back at a moment like this, pause before deciding what caused it.

What else was your body already carrying that week?

Honestly, you may not be able to name it, but that is also a valid answer.

When she came to me, she had already cut out most of the foods that people have every day.

She was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition and dealing with severe gut related symptoms for thirteen years. She was on rounds of antibiotics and oral steroids to manage her symptoms almost every other week. The constant, chronic diarrhea and stomach pain made it difficult for her to work.

She was stuck in what I call a “disease merry-go-round”.

But in spite of going off many of the foods that were once familiar to her, her symptoms persisted. In other words, she had already eliminated many of the foods that are recommended to be avoided for those with autoimmune conditions.

What stood out in that first session was that she was having the same breakfast, lunch and dinner for over ten months because she didn’t know what would trigger her symptoms. She was scared of how her body would react to foods that had once been in her daily diet.

While her lab markers were out of range, she wasn’t any closer to figuring out what was going wrong and why.

When we started working together, the first thing I did was not the usual elimination diet I begin with for someone with an autoimmune diagnosis. There really was not much else left to take out anyway. If anything, her body was actually malnourished at this point.

Instead, I focused on what we could add, gently and at a pace her body could handle.

When someone like her has been dealing with a chronic condition for a long time, and she has already tried everything, she often ends up blaming herself when she fails to see any improvements.

To get past this, I taught her how to listen to her body’s signals. As she started listening more, it became easier for her to know what was helping and what wasn’t.

For example, we started on a quarter of dose of B complex instead of a full capsule because the full dose didn’t suit her initially. Over a month, we increased it to a full capsule as a part of providing the necessary support her body needed to heal.

As for her diet, we added back cooked, easy to digest and nourishing foods like soups. Her digestion improved slowly and we increased the variety of foods. She also learned how to slow down while eating and pay attention to how she felt after each meal.

This gentle pace and awareness along with a temporary low-FODMAP diet helped her finally find the trigger for her main symptom: chronic diarrhea. It was something that she had been having since she was a child. Onions. Once she eliminated onions, her diarrhea stopped.

What years of medications and tests couldn’t achieve, her body guided her and showed her the way. Her trust and confidence in her body came back.

It became easier for her to figure out what her next step was.

Before long, her lab reports and reduction in symptoms helped us know we were on the right path.

Diet plans, medications and lab work are certainly important and useful for gathering necessary data. However, thirteen years of data never explained what was really going on.

She was finally able to get off both steroids and antibiotics and the diease merry-go-round she had been stuck on for thirteen years.

I see this all the time in women I work with. The perfect diet that includes organic, healthy foods. The weekly exercise schedule with weights, Pilates, and yoga. A kitchen drawer filled with supplements.

You know something is not right. But you are just not sure what to do anymore. Maybe it’s because your body is still bracing for impact.

“I've gotten so good at reporting my progress that I don't even know what I actually feel anymore.”

This comment was made by a client during one of our sessions. She looked and sounded hesitant as she said these words. I could make this out even through the screen during our first session.

It struck me as a bit odd that she would focus more on how she was showing up in front of her doctor rather than on how she was actually doing.

It was only later I realised why it bothered me so much.

Grading herself based on her performance and then reporting to others was precisely the thing that made her ask the question

“Why isn’t this working?”

Often, the conclusion she comes to is that the fault lies with her. That either she is not following the treatment plan or the protocol perfectly, or there’s something wrong with her that her labs are not showing right now.

From there she goes one of two ways.

She stops, because over time, she just runs out of reasons to try again.

Or, she can’t stop. She keeps looking for the next supplement, the next specialist, the next protocol that will finally make everything all right. Especially because trying feels better than accepting that she doesn't know what will work for her.

Either way, she is carrying the blame for a body she was never taught to listen to.

When reporting replaces the feeling

This kind of pressure to perform ends up hijacking her ability to pay attention to how she actually feels.

This is not true just for her. This is what most of us are taught to focus on when it comes to dealing with health issues.

We are told to always be prepared and put our best foot forward so that we don’t disappoint our doctors.

But not knowing how you are feeling in your body can create uncertainty and doubt about what your next step should be. Especially if you’ve pretty much tried everything at this point.

Here’s what I want you to know.

Your lack of results doesn’t reflect your level of effort, commitment or will power. Or a lack of them. There can be many other things going on underneath such as a missed diagnosis, wrong protocol or a simmering infection.

It can also be due to spending all your time and energy on convincing others that you are capable of taking all your supplements on time or following your diet to the T.

Somewhere in that first session I asked my client something different. Not how the protocol was going. Not what her numbers were doing. I wanted to know how she was feeling in her body.

That made her pause and notice, maybe even for the very first time, how disconnected she was from her own body. What I remember clearly is how lost and confused she looked right then.

So that is what we started with. What she felt, not what the protocol needed of her. And what I pointed out to her is something that may hold true for you too.

You aren’t failing in any way. You may simply be exhausted from being a good patient.

Before your next appointment, try answering one question before you write anything down: how do I feel in my body right now?

Not how the protocol is going. Not what your numbers did. Just that.

You may not have an answer. That’s the finding.

I work with a small number of women one to one. If any of this sounds like your life, you can reply to this email and tell me. I read every one.

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that getting enough sleep doesn’t fix.

You may be familiar with it.

It lives in your never-ending to-do list. It also lies underneath the next appointment, the next set of labs and the new diet you’re about to start on Monday.

It’s the tiredness of a woman who has been managing something for a very long time and has, strangely enough, become really good at it.

A woman said to me recently, almost in passing:

I’ve gotten so good at reporting my progress that I don’t even know what I actually feel anymore.

I want you to notice that she didn’t say “I don’t feel well.”

She said “I don't even know what I actually feel anymore.”

The reporting had replaced the feeling.

This is what constantly trying harder and performing wellness looks like.

Visiting one more specialist. Starting one more diet. Adding one more supplement, one more test, one more number to chase down and fix. From the outside it looks like diligence and it is, to some extent.

These actions run ahead of what your body actually needs to get well. And underneath them all is fear.

Fear keeps you moving not only because you hope the next thing will work, but because moving is easier than stopping.

Because stopping means seeing. And seeing means guilt.

If you stop, you might have to face that something is not right. That maybe you haven’t supported your body the way it needed you to. That you’ve put yourself last on your own list.

So you keep going. Not because you’re undisciplined or uninformed. You keep going because you’re afraid of what the stillness might show you.

For months, I was building something, a quiet companion meant to sit with women in difficult moments like these. And I kept designing it to apologise. To soften itself. To disclaim and to shrink.

I did feel something was off, but I treated it like a design problem. Change this, reword that.

And then one day, I realised that this wasn’t a design problem at all. I had built it the way I carry myself. I was building a thing that apologised for existing, because that is exactly what I had learned to do.

Make yourself smaller. Earn your place. Don’t rest until you’ve proven you deserve to.

The constant chasing and trying harder, it turned out, was never a task list.It was a actually belief. And you cannot outrun a belief.

You can stop. You can rest. And you don't need anyone's permission to do it.

And when you do, nothing terrible happens. The first thing that arrives, before any plan, before any insight, before any new beginning, is relief.

Relief from having to be perfect. Relief from having to show progress. Relief from having to produce a result to prove you are worth something.

In this work, we call it Allow: the quiet one in Connect, Allow, Release, Ease.

Before anything can be released, before ease is even possible, the nervous system has to be allowed to stop bracing.

You cannot heal in a body that is still running. Rest isn’t the reward you get once you have your health under control. Rest is the ground healing grows in.

From the outside, this doesn’t look like much. Your Monday comes with no new diet to start. No specialist to see and no lab markers to fix.

Maybe nothing to report in a very long time. And that is the part that will feel worst at first.

And stopping is not the same as standing still. You may well keep moving. Most of the women I work with choose to keep going. What changes is that you are not being chased any more.

So, I have a question for you.

Let yourself stop for one honest moment. Nothing to prove. No progress to show. What would you feel, underneath all the running?

You don’t have to answer today. You don’t have to answer at all. Some things only become clear once you have stopped running.

Where does what I say go?

That was the first thing a woman in my circle asked me. Not about the method. Not the schedule. Not whether it would work for her.

I believed what I said when I gave her an answer, but later, when I looked at it closely, I realised I was wrong. And I don’t want to dismiss it just because it’s uncomfortable.

I had initially claimed that no one saw her conversations with the AI Companion. And that she could delete her conversations if she wanted to. There were 2 claims made specifically.

The first: I could read her conversations. The Companion is built as an extension of my thoughts, my philosophy — a digital mind. I had access to the conversations to review how the Companion was responding and make sure that the responses were in alignment with what I had trained it to do.

The second: she could not delete her conversations herself and still can't. There are no deletion controls on her side. If she wants a conversation gone, I can remove it at my end.

In that onboarding call, I was wrong on both counts.

The next day I first brought this up in our team meeting. And then I wrote it down in an FAQ document that went out by email and into the community, and it covered something I should have led with: if you are ever uncomfortable with this, tell me and your conversations come out of any review. No questions asked.

It stopped being a one-time correction. On the calls after, I kept saying the same thing:

If you want something kept completely private, write it down in a journal. The maximum level of privacy will always be pen and paper. Nothing can beat that.

Not even AI with any number of safeguards.

Why you were right to ask

And that question she asked isn't only hers.

You have spent years on the trackers, the symptom loggers, the protocol apps, the wellness platforms that promised to help and then quietly benefited from your attention, your data, your late nights and your sense that you are not doing enough.

So you have every reason to be wary of one more screen that says trust me.

Here’s what I see.

Most technology built in the last decade is designed to optimise engagement. To pull you back, keep you scrolling, and measure its own success by how much of your life it has access to.

That is not a conspiracy; it is a business model.

And it is exactly the opposite of what a body in the middle of chronic overwhelm needs.

The Companion I built is measured by the opposite thing. Not how long you stay but whether you leave a bit lighter.

One word, two answers

Let me show you the difference now.

Type the single word anxious into an ordinary AI assistant and you’ll get, within a second, a competent five-point checklist of things you can do.

Breathe. Hydrate. Try journaling. Consider a walk. Reach out to someone. All these are perfectly reasonable options. But on a difficult day, they become one more set of instructions you’re now failing to complete.

Give that same word anxious to the Companion, and it doesn’t give you answers. Instead, it leads you back to your body and says something closer to:

notice where in your belly that unease is living right now. You don’t have to change it. Just see if you can let it be there.

No task. No fixing. Just an invitation to turn toward what’s already happening in your body, instead of away from it.

One of those makes you the manager of your symptoms.

The other lets you be the woman having them.

A new team member tried it recently and, at a certain point, closed the app feeling a little frustrated.

But this frustration is not a flaw, it’s the design.

Because at that moment the Companion had gently declined to hand over an answer. It had, in effect, said: I’m a mirror. And a mirror doesn’t talk back. The answer isn’t in here, it’s in you.

Frustrating, I know, if you came for instructions. But quietly revolutionary, if what you needed was the reminder that your body knows how to heal and that you are allowed to trust it again.

I wanted to build something that runs the other way from that business model.

The Companion doesn't grow by keeping you. Nothing in it is designed to make you stay longer, come back sooner, or feel behind. It isn’t a therapist, it isn’t a doctor, it isn’t a replacement for any healthy human relationship.

But the fear underneath the AI question is usually not about the technology. It's an older one: if I let something in, will it take from me, the way so much already has?

That’s a question that you can definitely ask. Ask it out loud, the way that first woman did, before anything else. The only answer worth giving is one I’ve built toward, not just promised.

So I’d rather answer it in a room than in a paragraph.

There’s a live session on Thursday 27 August at 5:30, about 45 minutes, free, recorded if you can’t be there. Nothing to prepare. Nothing is asked of you.

If something here landed, leave a comment and tell me. I read every one, and I answer every one.