Chronic and Mysterious Symptoms May Be Autoimmunity and can take years to diagnose

While heart disease and cancer dominate the media, millions more people suffer from a barrage of miserable and sometimes debilitating “mystery” symptoms. These symptoms can rob them of their energy, motivation, ability to function, livelihood, relationships, and even their hope.

It takes most patients many years of visiting multiple doctors before they finally find out that an autoimmune disease is causing their symptoms.

Until then, they’re told they’re “perfectly healthy,” accused of making up symptoms that “don’t exist,” or prescribed antidepressants. Never mind that they can’t get out of bed, they hurt all over, their brain barely functions, they have lost motivation to do anything, they can’t lose weight but are losing hair, or they have a myriad of other unexplainable health issues.

When these patients find their way to functional medicine, testing shows that many of them suffer from the early stages of autoimmune reactivity, a condition in which an imbalanced immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys a person’s own body tissue, usually slowly over many years. Autoimmunity can attack any tissue, enzyme, hormone, or cell in the body, depending on a person’s genetic predisposition and their unique inflammatory triggers.

Common examples of autoimmune diseases include Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, vitiligo, celiac disease, Graves’ disease, Type 1 diabetes, lupus, and some inflammatory bowel diseases.

Normally our immune system defends us against bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. However, immune imbalances and chronic inflammation can cause it to attack the body’s tissues, organs, and glands, too. This is called “autoimmunity” or “self-attack immunity.” In the early stages of autoimmunity, our immune system makes immune antibodies that erroneously stick to our own tissue instead of attaching to foreign invaders.

When these antibodies attach to our own tissue, this signals our immune system to send out destructive immune cells called natural killer cells to destroy the tissue just as it would destroy a pathogen.

Millions of people suffer for years or decades without treatment because insurance companies don’t approve screening for autoimmunity until the patient shows significant signs of organ or tissue destruction. At this point, the patient can be prescribed some type of immune-suppressing treatment.

However, a patient’s ever-worsening symptoms and declining function can go on for years before diagnosis. Until then, doctors continue to tell patients they’re perfectly healthy.

This is unfortunate, as early antibody testing allows patients to make dietary and lifestyle modifications to relieve symptoms and prevent the condition from progressing.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say a person starts to develop an autoimmune reaction against their joints. It could have been any tissue—skin, thyroid, brain—but in this case, let’s make it simple and say the autoimmune reaction is against their joints.

In the early stages, they may suffer from chronic joint pain with varying degrees of recurring pain. At first, their joints look normal; there’s no joint fusion, deformity, or arthritic nodules yet, just pain and inflammation. A doctor visit will likely result in nothing more than advice to take an over-the-counter drug for inflammation and pain.

Over the years, the autoimmune reaction progresses, and they develop joint fusion, deformity, and arthritic nodules. Now, finally, they receive a diagnosis of an autoimmune joint disease such as rheumatoid arthritis.

If their doctor had simply screened for joint antibodies in the early stages, the condition could have been identified and its progression either significantly slowed or completely halted through dietary and lifestyle applications.

Autoimmune antibodies are elevated for years before autoimmunity destroys tissue. Unfortunately, both conventional and alternative medicine models don’t routinely test for early markers of autoimmunity, nor do they implement dietary, nutritional, and lifestyle suggestions to affect the expression of the disease.

It’s unfortunate that millions of patients spend much of their lives suffering because of this disconnect, especially considering how clear the research is. Studies show autoantibodies appear in the early stages of autoimmunity and can be used as both diagnostic and predictive tools in clinical settings.

Yet, both conventional and alternative health care providers aren’t up to date with the research. Most medical schools still only teach how to identify late-stage autoimmune disease, not how to identify autoimmunity in its early stages and nor how to affect its progression through dietary, nutritional, pharmaceutical, or lifestyle applications.

A survey conducted by the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association found that the average patient diagnosed with a serious (late-stage and clinically obvious) autoimmune disease had seen more than four doctors over a four-year period before receiving a correct diagnosis. I know of patients who have seen as many as 20 different doctors looking for help.

Most patients aren’t aware that their symptoms are due to the early stages of autoimmune disease. They’ve seen numerous practitioners, both conventional and alternative, become a connoisseur of hundreds of supplements, tried multiple diets of every extreme, and taken to the internet to search, vent, and commiserate with the many other people in the same boat.

Every supplement and every therapy is a shot in the dark. Occasionally, they will stumble onto what seems to be a miracle cure. But for the most part, symptoms of undiagnosed autoimmunity turn into a life of endless searching and experimenting.

This is a misunderstood and neglected area of medicine that’s nevertheless epidemic. Most patients simply must become their own autoimmune experts to understand their condition and how to manage it. The good news is, we have plenty of research and resources available, though it takes quite a bit more work than going to the doctor and getting a prescription.

Autoimmune management requires a personalized approach of overhauling your diet so that it’s anti-inflammatory, removing other inflammatory triggers from your life (they’re different for everyone), getting daily physical activity but not overtraining, getting plenty of good quality sleep every night, and avoiding toxins, including toxic situations and people. 

About the Author: Datis Kharrazian, Ph.D., DHSc, DC, MS, MMSc, FACN, is a Harvard Medical School trained, award-winning clinical research scientist, academic professor, and world-renowned functional medicine healthcare provider. He develops patient and practitioner education and resources in the areas of autoimmune, neurological, and unidentified chronic diseases using non-pharmaceutical applications.

Republished from: https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/chronic-and-mysterious-symptoms-may-be-autoimmunity_4783183.html

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