Free guide

What the guide covers

Practical Strategies is the handout Dr. Luebker gives patients when she first meets them, and it covers the work she'd go through in clinic if visits ran long enough for it. It comes in three short sections rather than one long document, and the whole thing reaches six pages. It's written to be used rather than read once and filed away somewhere.

The idea behind that shape is that you don't have to do everything at once. Start with whichever of the three sections looks easiest to you, and the rest follows on from there in its own time. That's more realistic than a plan that asks you to change everything on a Monday.

The three sections

Clean up your food. This section covers which additives to drop first, and those are artificial dyes, some preservatives, synthetic sweeteners, and industrial seed oils. It also gives you what to choose instead, which is the part most advice leaves out. Dropping something with nothing to put in its place is how most food changes fail.

Balance blood sugar. This covers the daily habits that hold insulin more level through the day, which are eating protein first, walking after meals, leaving a few hours before bed, and rethinking breakfast. It also covers resistance training, and why muscle changes the way your body handles glucose. Nothing here asks you to track anything or weigh your food.

The third section deals with endocrine disrupting chemicals and the small swaps that reduce your exposure to them. Those run across the kitchen, personal care products, and the house itself, and the advice is deliberately unglamorous. Nothing here asks you to buy a costly replacement for something you already own, and most of the swaps happen when something ends rather than all at once.

The guide closes with a list of ingredients worth knowing on a label, and it's there to use while you're learning to read them. Getting it perfect isn't the expectation, and reading labels gets faster with practice. The list is there for the stretch before it does.

Who it's for

The guide is for people living with an autoimmune or rheumatic condition, and particularly for the ones who want to know what they can change themselves. It doesn't replace the treatment your rheumatologist prescribes, and it isn't offered instead of medication. What it covers is the ground that visits rarely have time for.

What you're agreeing to

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Getting a copy

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