Mystery Illness #3: Autoimmune

Mystery illnesses are on the rise. We're seeing more of these. Why? What are they? Let's talk about that today. We've already talked about the first mystery illness, chronic Lyme or post Lyme. The second one, chronic inflammatory response syndrome. The next one is in a category called autoimmune diseases. Now the idea of mystery illnesses is not a new topic. You know, in antiquity we knew about syphilis, latent syphilis, tertiary syphilis, something you could have for years and years and pop up and actually give you neurosyphilis or make you insane. We've known about tuberculosis being a mystery illness at one point in time called the great imitators because they could look like almost any disease under the earth. Today's world, we're seeing more of these other things. And today we're going to talk about autoimmune diseases. Now, autoimmune diseases, every year there's another one or two that's been identified. As of the time of me doing this right now, there's over 120 different autoimmune diseases identified in our body. And actually the very first severe autoimmune disease in the literature I remember learning about medical school was autoimmune horrificus, which was a strange name to call something, but basically they, in 1800s, early 1900s, saw people getting these really weird inflammatory conditions where the body just ate itself up. And that's what happens with the autoimmune issue. Your body attacks certain tissues. Thyroid for your Hashimoto's, joints for amatory. If you get inflammatory bowel disease, it affects your gut. But the reality is all autoimmune diseases are systemic and inflammatory. So people with rheumatoid arthritis also have increased risk for heart disease. People with lupus not only can have an increased risk for strokes, but also miscarriages and kidney problems. And so autoimmune diseases, they have their primary target organ, thyroid, brain for multiple sclerosis, mixed connective tissue disease, you know, dermatomyositis polymylondromatica, a whole host of these illnesses. But ultimately because they are inflammatory, they are systemic. And what we're seeing now with supposedly up to maybe 20% of the population over 50 having autoantibodies, you'll see people with positive auto antibodies. And this is being called predictive autoimmunity, where you can do labs, see if they're positive and predict if someone someone's risk for developing an autoimmune disease. We're seeing lots of individual visuals with just the multi system, multi Symptom picture before they develop an autoimmune disease that can look like someone having positive thyroid antibodies. And they have aches and pains, gut issues, headaches, brain fog, all their lab testing is normal. The thyroid testing is normal because it takes eight to 10 years for the thyroid to stop working. And when eventually the thyroid is discovered to be low functioning, the thyroid hormone is addressed. But the autoimmune process is not gut issues with I see many patients who have joint aches and pains, brain fog, arthritis type of stuff and they have a positive ana. They don't have lupus, but they do have this pre autoimmune inflammatory state. There's others peoples who have people who have IBS gut issues. And you'll do a anti sarcomyces cervici antibody testing or other antibody testing to rule out inflammatory bowel versus IBS and you'll see these positive autoantibodies, the colonoscopies, they're scopes normal but they have the systemic inflammation. And because there's over 120 of these literally autoimmune diseases can attack any organ in your body and look like almost anything. Now to have an autoimmune disease and this is where they get in the weeds with autoimmune that we'll probably talk a little more. Today you have to have four things. Genetic predisposition, chronic infection, leaky gut and a triggering event. And so knowing you have to have leaky gut, these people tend to have gut issues. They may be asymptomatic or symptomatic. And because you have chronic infection of some sort, again that could be chronic Lyme, Epstein Barr, hsv, it could be gut issues with dysbiosis and sibo. So now all of a sudden it makes sense why autoimmune illnesses can look like almost anything. That can be a great mystery on this kind of disease, especially if people aren't doing full spectrum autoimmune screening which helps identify these. So, so what can be done? Well if you have, you know, the first thing is if you're having a multi system part of the workup for these mystery illnesses, looking for infections, looking for mold, looking for autoimmune issues. And so if you do an autoimmune pain once positive, that's super helpful, then you have to start working on your gut. You have to start trying to find the underlying infection. You have to start working on if there's a trigger, if you know what something's happening. It could be a stress, it could be moving into that molding or building. It could be new job. It could be a difficult relationship. I tend not to do anything about the genetic predisposition because we can't change our genes. But all of a sudden. Hopefully this helps you understand how these mystery illnesses, these difficult to diagnosed, multi system, multi symptom entities can have a root cause and it can't be found. So if you've had an autoimmune disease that you've missed for years and someone hasn't diagnosed it, I'd be curious to know how they eventually found it for you. Share below I think also when you share with this information or even asking questions helps other people that are following this to learn about their own health condition. It also helps us to know how to address Future podcasts, information, etc. Because our goal is to educate, encourage, empower. Last but not least, well, we actually have two more mystery illnesses to talk about and we'll talk about that next. The last two are going to be dysautonomia and then mast cell activation syndrome, so we'll talk about those next in our series.