You are here

Autoimmune

Diseases of Modern Civilization: Autoimmune and Nutritional

Unraveling The Modern Diseases: Autoimmune

In autoimmune disease a person's own immune system turns on itself.  Antibodies within our immune system are normally our defenses against injury (healing a cut) or intruders (viruses or bacteria) or chaos (growing cancers), but sometimes a body will make antibodies set out to attack the actual tissues of the body itself. We can identify autoimmune antibodies to tissues on simple blood tests

Do you know anyone with an autoimmune illness? I imagine you do: Hashimoto’s or Graves Diseases of the thyroid, lupus (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, and many diseases of the heart and cardiovascular system are autoimmune in origin. Our intestinal tract is another target of autoimmune: Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis are well-known; lesser known is the entity of microscopic or lymphocytic colitis. It has even been questioned whether diverticulitis might have an autoimmune component.

Autoimmune Disease

Next time you have dinner with a group of friends, look around the table: if there are twelve of you, one or two of those present has some form of autoimmune disease. Perhaps three of them, if carefully studied, would have autoimmune antibodies, but not yet have an illness.