What to do about Cell Danger Response if it’s holding you back?
In last month’s post, I shared how I suspected I was stuck in Cell Danger Response (CDR) even though I had addressed the root cause of my chronic disease– mold exposure.
Even after removing my major source of oxidative stress and toxic burden, mold, my body was having a hard time getting back to homeostasis. In other words, my body’s regulation of the healing cycle wasn’t completing.
I wasn’t feeling much better.
According to the Cell Danger Response theory, this is because my body was stuck in a loop of trying to conserve resources because of a perceived threat. Even though the mold was no longer real, my body still thought it was there.
And the same can happen for you if you are fighting an infection, viruses, or any other source of inflammation. This extended Cell Danger Response can masquerade as a variety of disorders.
I’m very grateful for the work of Robert Naviaux, PhD, MD, and his team. They have been studying the links between Cell Danger Response and chronic diseases like:
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
- Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)
- Lupus
- Asthma
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
- Bipolar Disorder
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Alzheimer’s
- Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
- Heart Disease
- Rheumatoid Arthritis
If you are battling autoimmune disorders, could Cell Danger Response be part of your picture?
Recap of Cell Danger Response in the Body
I go into more detail about what is Cell Danger Response in this post, but the big picture is that your body begins to hoard and conserve resources because it thinks a perceived threat is never going to go away.
It could be encounters with biological threats like bacteria or parasites or even prolonged stress. It’s not about the threat itself, but rather about the body’s exaggerated and continuing response.
For example, our cell membranes are primarily made up of phospholipids. But your body won’t release the important building blocks like protein for cell growth if it feels threatened.
It’s as if your internal alarms stay on even though the loudspeakers have said the fire drill is over. And this extended stress response can cause the body a lot of harm.
According to my labs, I had reversed multiple autoimmune diseases including pre-diabetes. But my normal function had not been restored.
I now suspect this is because my mitochondrial function was stuck in this survival mode of trying to conserve resources because it felt it had been under siege for so long from mold poisoning.
Related Post: Signs of Mold Poisoning I Missed
Now that we’ve taken a brief look at what happens when you’re stuck, here’s what to do about Cell Danger Response.
What to Do about Cell Danger Response
After remediating the mold, I realized my body was still stuck in patterns of energy conservation leading to my fatigue. This next section explains what helped me get out of Cell Danger Response and get some of my energy back.
I had to address both my nervous system and my immune system. The top 3 strategies that I’ve found effective so far have been establishing safety, reducing environmental toxins, and nourishing yourself.
Establishing Safety
Remember how after finishing mold remediations in our home (we definitely made some mistakes!), a few months later I was only feeling 5% better? I had reduced the toxic exposure, but what helped me gain back the next 10% was finding safety in my body.
When I felt sickest, I let go of good habits, like meditation, but slowly bringing them back on made a difference. Be careful not to pressure or shame yourself. I tried to approach it by asking my body what it was craving and then meeting that need.
The first time it ever clicked for me that I needed to give my body pockets of safety was when Katie established her stress mastery course.
I would give myself 10 seconds to look out the window instead of looking at my phone and go outside for thirty seconds while waiting for everyone to put their shoes on. I found myself longing for more pockets of peace in my life.
Stress mastery techniques led me down a whole trail of learning more about my nervous system and how I had been stuck in fight or flight mode. I needed tools to downshift like:
But it’s important to do this in baby steps. In the same way that your mitochondria only has so much that they can process, your nervous system has a window of tolerance.
Another important part of establishing safety in my body is not pushing too hard. I suspect that when I push myself a lot physically, my body interprets that as me having to get away from danger.
So I’ve gotten better at not pushing myself when my body starts to tell me to stop. It’s annoying to only get part way through my to do list, but I know if I hustle to finish I’m going to regret it later.
In addition to establishing safety, I needed to continue to reduce my environmental toxins.
Reduce Environmental Toxins
Before I realized I was suffering from mold, my issues with Histamine Sensitivity and autoimmunity led me down the path of reducing toxins. (I think this is how I originally found the Kitchen Stewardship® blog!). Before I started writing here, I was a longtime reader.
Katie has been sharing how to do this for years, but the top four categories of reducing toxins are food, skin, water, and air:
- Reducing Toxins in Your Food
- Reducing Toxins on Your Skin
- Reducing Toxins in Your Water
- Reducing Toxins in Your Air
When I was in the throes of mold poisoning, one of the best compliments a doctor gave me is that I was one of the sickest patients she had ever had whose kids weren’t chronically ill.
She implied that because I had worked so hard to reduce other toxins in our environment, my family wasn’t as vulnerable to the effects of mold.
I can’t help but wonder if part of the reason I was able to see some results after remediating the mold is because I had greatly reduced my toxic burden elsewhere.
While I’m grateful for all of the resilience that reducing environmental toxins gave me, I still needed more to restore my mitochondrial function.
Nourish Yourself
I highly recommend working with a practitioner for individualized nutrition based on your own blood work and needs.
Especially in moments where dealing with chronic illness feels overwhelming, like when you don’t understand the science, it’s essential to have doctors on your team who can read the data.
You may need to take bio individualized supplements to optimize your health. For example, I need to take vitamin D during the school year because here in the Midwest we don’t get as much sunlight.
At the same time, you may need to play with your diet. Don’t make the same mistake I did of being loyal to the grain free diet when I needed more carbs as building blocks. I wish I had challenged my presuppositions sooner.
I also figured out that anti nutrients in healthy foods like oxalates, were causing my chronic pain. And more importantly, that it would do more harm than good to abruptly eliminate them. I had to reduce my anti nutrient intake slowly to prevent further kidney damage.
Getting Out of Cell Danger Response
If you have mystery symptoms, find practitioners who are open to this new model of Cell Danger Response and can guide you towards regaining your health.
Don’t give up if you are struggling with a chronic illness that’s only been labeled as a syndrome or a cluster of symptoms.
I spent years suffering while trying to find answers. But I’ve finally made the most progress I ever had in the past decade after this multi faceted approach. In complex cases, you may need to address both your immune and your nervous systems.
Have you been able to turn around Cell Danger Response? Share your experience below!
More on Hope with Chronic Illness
- A Theology of Chronic Illness
- Mistakes I Made In My Health Journey (And How You Can Do Better!)
- How to Handle Food Loss
Sources
Li, K., Naviaux, J. C., Lingampelly, S. S., Wang, L., Monk, J. M., Taylor, C. M., Ostle, C., Batten, S., & Naviaux, R. K. (2023). Historical biomonitoring of pollution trends in the North Pacific using archived samples from the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey. The Science of the total environment, 865, 161222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.161222
Naviaux R. K. (2019). Incomplete Healing as a Cause of Aging: The Role of Mitochondria and the Cell Danger Response. Biology, 8(2), 27. https://doi.org/10.3390/biology8020027
Naviaux R. K. (2014). Metabolic features of the Cell Danger Response. Mitochondrion, 16, 7–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mito.2013.08.006
Naviaux, R. K., Naviaux, J. C., Li, K., Bright, A. T., Alaynick, W. A., Wang, L., Baxter, A., Nathan, N., Anderson, W., & Gordon, E. (2016). Metabolic features of chronic fatigue syndrome. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(37), E5472–E5480. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1607571113
Naviaux R. K. (2023). Mitochondrial and metabolic features of salugenesis and the healing cycle. Mitochondrion, 70, 131–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mito.2023.04.003
Naviaux R. K. (2020). Perspective: Cell Danger Response Biology-The new science that connects environmental health with mitochondria and the rising tide of chronic illness. Mitochondrion, 51, 40–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mito.2019.12.005
