Autoimmune diseases occur when the body’s immune system attacks its own cells and tissues. This class of diseases includes many familiar ones like multiple sclerosis (MS), inflammatory bowel disease, Lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and over 100 more. It’s become the most common type of disease, more common than heart disease and cancer, and rates are increasing each year.
And because autoimmune disease takes time to show up and often has diverse symptoms, it can be difficult to diagnose. Patients with vague complaints are sometimes told they are depressed or just imagining their symptoms when their doctor cannot identify an obvious cause. It takes a person an average of 5 years and 5 doctors before an autoimmune disease is finally identified, according to the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA).
This happened to my mom when she was admitted to hospital last year because of shortness of breath and low blood oxygen. She was diagnosed first with heart failure, then pneumonia but the treatments for these conditions didn’t help. When they finally diagnosed that the rheumatoid arthritis she’d had for 2 years had attacked her lungs, too much damage had occurred, and she died in hospital. Apparently, the lungs are the most common non-joint area affected by rheumatoid arthritis, so one might think it could have been detected earlier – before her lungs became irreversibly damaged. But this is the nature of autoimmune disease: it often mimics other more common illnesses and is missed.
Autoimmune disease occurrence sharply increased in the 1980’s and 90’s. An Israeli study that looked at 30 studies from the last 30 years found the following yearly global increases in autoimmune diseases:
Rheumatic (arthritis-related) disease – 7.1%
Endocrinological (hormone-related) disease – 6.3%
Gastrointestinal (digestive system) disease – 6.2%
Neurological (nervous system) disease – 3.7%
And that’s been average increases yearly, worldwide, for the past 30 years.
But what has caused these dramatic increases in autoimmune diseases? Researchers don’t know for sure, but there are several theories.
Environment
Our environment has changed drastically over the past 100 years. And, although we have better medicine, cleaner water and plenty of food, these may have some connection with the onset of autoimmunity.
For example, the overuse of antibiotics has changed the make up of the normal bacteria that live in our digestive systems. Scientists are now realizing that some of these bacteria control our immune system activity.
Advanced farming practices have meant that our food is raised differently. As one researcher put it: not only are we what we eat, we are what our food eats! Different food for animals and plants means different nutrients (and perhaps missing nutrients) in our food. As well, processing food changes what it contains. Even the simple process of creating white flour removes many nutrients from the food that is made with it. And chemicals, not normally found in food, have been added for various reasons including increasing shelf life. Some speculate that some of these changes may be involved in the onset of autoimmunity, interfering with our systems’ ability to distinguish self from non-self. We need more study particularly to determine what effects commercially used chemicals may be having on autoimmunity.
Genetics
If one family member is diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, others in the family are at higher risk of developing that disease or another related one. Since these diseases can tend to run in families, it is suspected that there may be genes that can be inherited, making a person more susceptible.
Also 75% of autoimmune diseases occur in women. Some researchers have suggested that a tiny part of the X chromosome, called microRNA, is involved in immune system function. Since women have two X chromosomes, while men have one X and one Y chromosome, this might explain why women live longer but have a greater chance of immune dysfunction.
However, autoimmune diseases are increasing much faster than genes can pass them on. Scientists feel that it must be a combination of genetics plus exposure to something in the environment that could cause such dramatic increases in these diseases.
Hygiene hypothesis
Because the occurrence of infectious diseases was decreasing at the same time as autoimmune disease has been increasing, researchers theorize that the absence of infection is affecting our immune systems. Scientists are saying that our systems need regular and early exposure to common harmless bacteria to learn how to react to threats.
We are exposed to bacteria first during natural birth and breastfeeding, but also by spending time outdoors in green spaces, and eating a varied diet (especially fermented foods). We even seem to pick up good bacteria from those we are close to. The greater the diversity of organisms in our digestive system, the healthier we tend to be.
Stress
A 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Society found that people with diagnosed stress-related conditions were significantly more likely to develop an autoimmune disease than those without. People with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) who received treatment had lower chances of developing an autoimmune disease.
The idea of grouping these autoimmune diseases together, as they do with cancers, is relatively new. They’ve been thought of and researched as independent illnesses. However, they may have common factors and similar processes triggering the immune system to malfunction in different ways, attacking different parts of the body, and creating a different disease. Researchers are asking for a central database where occurrences of autoimmune diseases would be reported, so they can gain a better understanding of how many are affected, where cases are occurring and how quickly diseases are increasing. More information can lead to better understanding and research on this poorly recognized and understood group of diseases.
So, if you have vague symptoms and you are sure something is wrong with your health, persevere… try the treatments your doctor is recommending but, if they don’t help, keep asking. It might just be that 5th doctor who figures it out!
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