Living with Autoimmune Disease. It finally happened and your Doctor finally put a name to your illness. After all the years of not feeling quite right, thinking it was all in your head, that your pain, your achiness, your brain fog, your feeling like something is wrong but you can’t figure it out and neither can anyone else. Well it finally has a name and it’s an Autoimmune Disease. Autoimmune diseases can be many things like: multiple sclerosis, celiac, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, narcolepsy, Raynaud’s, Hashimoto’s, or something else. That means a total of 75 million Americans have immune cells that are inflicting damage to their bodies. That's far more than are affected by cancer (approximately 25 million) or heart disease (also around 25 million). Scientists aren’t sure why, but the rates of autoimmune diagnoses have sharply climbed over the last two decades.
Whatever it is, you now have a name and wow maybe a treatment plan, a medication that blocks the immune cells or pathways to help slow the damage that is affecting your body. Now the problem is the medications come with additional side effects that may actually cause more damage. Currently, more than 140 diseases have officially been classified as autoimmune diseases, and the number is steadily rising with each passing year, as we learn more about autoimmunity and its ravaging effects on our bodies.
Your doctor might be able to give you a name for your disease. Many are categorized, but not all are autoimmune conditions. (Some are still call “Unspecified.”) Your doctor can also tell you that an autoimmune problem means that your immune cells are damaging your healthy cells and organs, in a mistaken attempt to rid the body of something it sees as other than itself. Scientists don’t know the precise reason why this happens, but they do know the result: progressive damage to vital organs (like the kidneys, heart, brain, and more) and tissues of the body (like the joints and skin).
There is more to know about autoimmune disease—much more. Now let’s talk about what doctors won’t tell you about your disease. What doctors usually don’t tell their patients (unless they are functional medicine doctors) is that hundreds, perhaps thousands of studies have demonstrated that all autoimmune conditions are a complex interaction of a person’s genes and the environment. Each individual gene known to increase the risk of an autoimmune condition increases that risk by only 1 to 2%. The rest of the risk comes from the interaction between the genes and the environment.
This is significant. It means that autoimmunity has a genetic component, as we have long suspected, but it's very small. It also means it has a major lifestyle component. Seventy to 95% of the risk for getting autoimmune conditions (as well as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer) is due to what you do: What you eat, how much you move, how you live your life, how much support you have, and what you're exposed to every day, from agricultural chemicals and industrial toxins to pollution. The potent drugs that are easily prescribed will not address the environmental issues or will they compensate for the diet that fails that is needed to keep our bodies healthy. They will usually cause additional damage to our bodies. They will not take care of the solvents, pesticides, mercury, lead, arsenic, or any other toxins that are stored in your fat that increase the reactivity of your immune cells. That is why there is now an Opioid addiction problem.
The Health that you long for requires a nutrient-dense diet that avoids food that react negatively. Foods that will reduce toxin exposures, control stress hormones and you need to be able to activate those muscles to maintain and build control. Remember that what we put into our bodies matters. What you put on your bodies is a factor as well. Think about the food you eat, the things that you use in your home – most everything we do has some form of toxin in it. So next time you buy something OTC, look at the ingredients, know your ingredients. When you are using the ‘what we think’ is the sweet smelling things, may actually be killing your body. Think about all the products you buy and check out the ingredients. There are many apps that you can download for free that will scan a product and tell you how “clean” or “dirty” it really is. Be proactive instead of reactive and let’s make our lives Healthier and Toxic Free.
#themoreyouknowthemoreyougrow
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