Discovering What's Going on In There
Are Autoimmune Diseases Knocking at your Door?
According to the American Autoimmune Related Disease Association, more than 50 million people in the U.S. suffer from one or more autoimmune disease. That’s an alarming one out of every five people! Do you know five people? One of them has an autoimmune disease and that one person could be you! 50 million people with an autoimmune disease is an epidemic. That’s more people that have been diagnosed with cancer and heart disease put together!
30 years ago, I suffered from fibromyalgia for 13 years without knowing it was an autoimmune disease, see Diane’s Story. The term autoimmune didn’t exist 30 years ago, yet I had a serious case that was riddling my body.
Other examples of Autoimmune Disease symptoms and diagnosis include, but are not limited to, Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Hashimoto’s thyroid issues, constipation, chronic fatigue, joint pain, irritability, reoccurring headaches, skin issues, weight gain and more. In fact, there have been more than 150 confirmed autoimmune diseases people are coping with daily. Many are underdiagnosed and therefore not treated. They are just not aware that what they have is an autoimmune disease, like what I experienced over 30 years ago.
It’s a hard diagnosis because the symptoms affect many parts of the body. The symptoms are hard to pin down, and they can be very sporadic in nature.
Over the years we’ve been trained to seek out ‘quick fix’ solutions such as medication to manage symptoms when all the while the condition continues to grow and get worse right under our own skin causing internal inflammation as we age.
There are two hard facts to know.
- There is no cure for autoimmune disease.
- Once you have an autoimmune disease, you are prone for others to develop.
Although not curable, they can be managed through diet, lifestyle, and supplementation. However, left untreated, autoimmune diseases open the door to other serious health disease like Lupus, other cancers, skin, heart, and brain diseases.
I had fibromyalgia 30 years ago that went untreated as an autoimmune disease. Now I recently learned that I have two more conditions. One is called IBS and the other is called Leaky Gut.
I have learned to identify the symptoms and therefore live life in a state of management that works for me. If you have any symptoms or diagnosis stated above, you will want to get tested. Treating the symptom alone, as an example a skin condition with creams and pills, does not get to the root cause of the condition. All conditions have a root cause which normally is tied to gut health. You cannot address fatigue without addressing the gut. You cannot address weight gain without addressing the gut, you cannot address even a flitching eye without addressing the gut. All conditions start with a dysfunction in the gut.
Look at this this three-legged stool onto which the overactive immune gremlin that is autoimmunity can climb.
- One leg is your genetic predisposition
- One leg is the makeup of bacteria in your gut
- The middle leg is your compromised integrity or permeability of your gut lining. In other words, Leaky Gut! This is a Huge Deal!
Without one of those legs in place, there is no stool to stand upon. Think about this. Two, yes, two of those legs on the three-legged stool are related to the health of the gut. How can this critical system be so overlooked in conventional medicine approaches? Well, this is where Functional Nutrition comes in.
I work with my clients and teach them how to get to the root of their health concerns, and auto correct. We’re not just addressing how to remedy signs and symptoms, but we’re looking at why the signs and symptoms are there in the first place. If we simply alleviate symptoms without looking at the root cause, we are essentially putting a lid on a pot of boiling water. What happens when you do that? The pot eventually boils over, even though the lid’s on top, right? When instead we find the root cause, we then turn off the heat and the boiling will stop. The symptoms will not just be masked but will go away. That’s what this is all about.
Adapted by Diane Guillory, excerpts taken from Andrea Nakayama, Founder of the Functional Nutrition Alliance
Contact me, The Gutsy Lady, here on my web or through
Diane@TheGustyLady.com