the autoimmune professor

I get questions all the time from my family and friends that asking me what exactly an autoimmune disorder is and why do I not “look” sick?

If you research autoimmune disorders, you may find an overwhelming amount of information along with a lot of medical jargon that can be very hard to understand. There are more than 100 autoimmune diseases and they are becoming extremely common as they are affecting more than 23.5 million people in the United States alone.¹

Autoimmune diseases are really hard to understand because we have no idea what causes them. There are many theories depending on who you ask. Some believe that bacteria or viruses trigger a change and confuses the immune system, some believe that people have genes that make them more prone to autoimmune disorders. Therefore, it could be nature or nurture, biology or environment.

So, what is an autoimmune disease exactly… Basically, our immune system is there to help protect our bodies against harmful substances, including viruses, toxins, bacteria, blood, tissue, and even cancer cells. Our immune system produces antibodies that it then uses to destroy these harmful substances. When we have an autoimmune disease, our immune system cannot distinguish what is healthy tissue and what is a harmful substance; therefore, basically our body begins to attack itself. When this attack happens, it can happen to blood vessels, glands, joints, connective tissues, muscles, cells, organs, and the skin (basically anything in your body). For me personally, my body seems to attack my digestive system (specifically my stomach and intestines) and my skin. I tested positive for autoimmune diseases that attack the joints as well, but thankfully, I have not had those symptoms yet.

Symptoms are going to vary depending on the type of autoimmune disease that you have (again there are more than 100 of them), but the main common symptoms include fatigue, fever, a general ill feeling, joint pain, and rashes. This is why when I started the diagnosis series, I said to make sure that you listen to your body. While there are many things that can make you sick and have these symptoms, you know in your gut what is a normal sickness feeling and what is abnormal.

Unfortunately, autoimmune diseases are chronic. This means that you will have it forever; however, there are many positive prognoses when looking at treatments of autoimmune diseases. The entire goal of treatment when you are diagnosed with an autoimmune disease is to be able to control the autoimmune process and reduce the symptoms of the disease. The main problem with treatment is that when our immune system jumps into action it creates inflammation as a normal physiological defense against whatever the immune system is fighting and then goes back to normal when it is over. Because with an autoimmune disease our immune system is continuously fighting, it causes a major increase in the inflammation in different areas of our body and the inflammatory response continues which then can lead to significant tissue and organ damage.²

This inflammatory response makes it extremely difficult to control the autoimmune process and to reduce the symptoms. There are many treatments that are out there which include supplements and vitamins to replace whatever substance the body lacks (insulin for diabetics, thyroid hormones for reduced thyroid function), blood transfusions, physical therapy, immunosuppressive medicines, and corticosteroids. However, there is one treatment that is not discussed as often and that is functional medicine. Functional medicine is where a person uses diet, exercise, vitamins, and supplements (basically changing your way of living) to reduce the inflammation in the body. In theory (and in some research studies), it has been found that if we can reduce the inflammation in the body, we will have remarkably reduced symptoms which would then control the autoimmune process.

Coming up… What is functional medicine and why I changed my diet.

1. Carteron, N., & Klein, J. (2020). A list of autoimmune diseases and their symptoms. Medical News Today.
2. Duan, L., Rao, X., & Sigdel, K.R. (2019). Regulation of inflammation in autoimmune disease. Journal of Immunology Research, 2019(7403796).