Nick NorwitzMD PhD, Oxford-Harvard | Metabolic Health Educator | “Stay Curious”

Are All Autoimmune Diseases Linked to One Cause?

17 Jun 2025 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:40

In this YouTube video, narrator Nick Norwitz discusses a recent Nature paper that proposes a unifying hypothesis for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases: the breakdown of the ancient endosymbiotic relationship between host cells and mitochondria. The paper argues that mitochondrial components become exposed or leak due to modern environmental stressors—obesity, processed foods, sedentary lifestyle, circadian and sleep disruption, and pollutants—triggering chronic inflammation that can manifest as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, among others. Norwitz outlines the central figure of the paper, agrees with the authors' hypothesis, and emphasizes that these lifestyle and environmental factors may be the primary drivers of mitochondrial dysfunction leading to autoimmunity.

Chapters

What if all autoimmune diseases were stemming from the same source? From a seed planted 2 billion years ago that is just beginning to flower? That might sound wild, but it's actually the central thesis of a new paper published in Nature, which proposes that many autoimmune diseases, if not all of them, may be driven by the failure of a relationship that began 2 billion years ago, the one between your body and your mitochondria. The core idea of this paper is that inflammatory and autoimmune diseases derive from the breakdown of this endosymbiotic relationship. In other words, mitochondria and their components are exposed and/or leak more than they should triggering an inflammatory reaction in the body. This could be the real cause of autoimmune diseases. Now, as you can see here, clearly illustrated in the central figure of this paper, the authors hypothesize, and I agree quite honestly, that environmental factors common to modern living, including prevalent obesity, processed food intake, lack of exercise, disrupted circadian rhythm, disrupted sleep, and environmental pollutants, are what trigger the breakdown in endosymbiosis, which triggers downstream inflammation and autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, and so on.