Autoimmunity - What is it?

Hey, it's Dr. A. I got a great question that I wanted to answer. I've been going through a whole bunch of these questions today and doing these short videos to answer them. This one came from a few people, but it was basically the same question, and that is, what is autoimmunity? So, you know, one of them said, I've heard about immunity, I know what that is, Well, what is autoimmunity? Is that a good thing, a bad thing? What's going on there? Well, autoimmunity is somewhat self-descriptive but a little bit confusing sometimes. So we have our immune system, and you can go back and look at some of the other ones we've done on, you know, T and B cell immunity or post-COVID immunity, we explain this stuff. Autoimmunity, although it has different types technically speaking, The easiest way to lay it out is that you have normal immune function, and that involves nonspecific immunity and then specific immunity, which involves T-cell or cell-mediated immunity and B-cell or antibody-mediated immunity. And so those things are supposed to go and fight invaders, right? So bad bugs, infections. things. It's why you're not dead. It's why you have your immune system, is why you didn't die the first day you were alive and why you've lived so long, pretty much. Now, if you have autoimmunity, what's happening is one of those 2 sides of the specific immune system, normally the antibody side, but there can be other types, is confused. And it decides that a piece of you is an invader. So there's this idea in immunology about self versus non-self. So non-self would be like some bacteria that you want to kill. That's great, that's non-self, let's kill it. Self is you, and your immune system normally leaves you alone, right? Well, how can the immune system become confused? There's a lot of different triggers, but some examples— so these aren't going in any particular order because this is not an immunology class, it's just Someone asking you a question. So we'll do some great, you know, the best examples. One thing that can happen is virus and a few bacteria, different kinds, are normally inside your cell infecting you. Most bacteria are outside, some go inside. All viruses work inside your cell pretty much. If you have something inside your cell, and that self, you're, you're the cell, right? and it's infecting you, your immune system has to come and clean it up. So it might inadvertently pick up on a piece of your cell, and that could be in the outer part of the cell, in the organelles inside of the cell, whatever. But your immune system may pick up on a piece of your cell while it's also trying to beat up and, and make memory cells against the virus, let's say. Well, that's one easy way to confuse the immune system. So then what's going to happen is your immune system now not only has antibodies against the virus, but it has some against this piece of your cell that it saw, and it didn't pick it up as part of self. So then what happens is these antibodies start floating around, and they can start to attack other parts of your body because they've got this memory against the you, the self part, right? Other things that can happen— toxic substances can do this where they get into your cell membranes or the cell immune system recognizes they shouldn't be there, goes to try and clean the cell up, and you get a little self-antibody created. So in autoimmunity, what happens is you build up enough of these antibodies that a piece of you gets attacked. Now in the Thyroid antibodies video that we did, we talked about different, you know, there's 3 major thyroid antibodies we check for. One of them has 2 subsets, but in like Hashimoto's disease, most common reason for low thyroid, what's happening is 1 or 2 places in your thyroid that make thyroid hormone are now thought of as the enemy by the immune system. They're being attacked. Yeah. So then you make less and less thyroid over time. So that's, you know, not what we want. It's not original equipment activity, but your body is doing it, right? So then what happens is it affects function. Well, what if you had antibodies that attacked, you know, the lining of your joints, the inside lining of your joints? Well, that happens in diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. What if you had antibodies that attack certain parts of your nervous system, central nervous system? That happens in diseases like multiple sclerosis, and we can go on and on and on with autoimmune types of creations. Now you might say, well, so the B cells, the antibody side, I get that we can create, you know, some immune response. We get an antibody confused in its production, and now I have memory antibodies against a piece of me. Can that happen on the T cell side, on the cell-mediated side? It's a little bit more rare, but it does happen, and in particular ways over there. The bottom line is when you have autoimmunity, your body now is making antibodies against invaders and making antibodies against you. So one of the things that we look at with autoimmune problems, and sometimes, you know, you have an autoimmune condition, it may go on for the rest of your life. These are very difficult to deal with if you think of the diseases I mentioned and many others. But sometimes what we'll do is we'll look at, well, are there things that we can do to modulate the immune system, help to calm it down a little bit so it's not so hyperreactive? If there are triggers such as an infection going on that may be, you know, kind of one of those silent infections we talk about where it's brewing under the surface, can we look for those, maybe remove them? What about the toxic idea? You know, is there anything we could look at and test for there and maybe remove some of those? Those sort of things can be done. But often with autoimmunity, it's a very tall order to try and lower the antibodies because your body is now kind of on autopilot making them. So it often takes a lot of work, a lot of investigation, and really a lot of aiming at these different targets that might be triggering the antibody formation. Formation. So in sum, autoimmunity is your immune system becoming confused and deciding that part of you, a specific part usually, is the enemy, and producing usually antibodies against a piece of you. And then over time, as those antibodies are produced, you become the target, and you can develop something like low thyroid High thyroid. You can have attack on the organ system like your joints, or an attack on, say, your digestive tract, or attack on your brain, pieces of your brain, etc. Almost anything can happen with autoimmunity. So I hope that answers the question, Dr. A. Thank you again for the questions. Thank you for liking, sharing, subscribing. Especially share with your friends if they're interested, and we really appreciate the support that the channel is getting. So like, share, subscribe, and I will see you all on the next one.