What It’s Really Like to Live with an Autoimmune Disease in Your 50s

What does life really look like when you’re living with a chronic autoimmune condition in your 50s?

In this deeply personal solo episode of Beyond My Diagnosis, Michele Weston opens up about her own journey living with multiple sclerosis for over 25 years—and what it actually means to navigate aging, identity, relationships, and health in midlife.

This isn’t a clinical explanation.

It’s real life.

Michele breaks down what autoimmune diseases are, how they impact the body, and why women are disproportionately affected—while also sharing the emotional and social realities that often go unspoken.

“Autoimmune diseases occur when the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells.”

But this episode goes far beyond definitions.

Michele talks about:

• The emotional impact of receiving a diagnosis and asking “why me?”
• How identity shifts over time, especially from your 30s into your 50s
• The reality of managing symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, and inflammation
• Why autoimmune conditions are not a “death sentence,” but require lifestyle changes
• The role of environmental triggers, stress, and hormones
• What happens when support systems change over time
• The loneliness and isolation that can come with invisible illness
• How relationships, dating, and life plans may shift unexpectedly
• Why self-care, advocacy, and building the right medical team matters
• The importance of adapting your lifestyle instead of resisting it

Michele also shares her own story—working intense 60+ hour weeks before her diagnosis, navigating uncertainty, and ultimately redefining her life, career, and priorities.

“Who am I now? What does my life look like at 50, 60, 70?”

This episode is about facing those questions honestly.

It’s about recognizing that living with a chronic condition means adapting—not giving up.

From navigating menopause and increased symptoms to managing flare-ups and redefining what’s possible, Michele offers both education and reassurance.

You are not alone.

And you are not your diagnosis.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello, this is Michelle Weston with Beyond My Diagnosis. I want to take an opportunity to talk to you solo without interviewing anyone. And let's talk about something that I always wondered about. Um, here I am doing a show about living with a chronic condition. And condition is conditions. There are many. Um, especially for women. It seems to hit us harder in regards to autoimmune diseases. Um, especially as you shift from your twenties, 30s, 40s into your 50s. So, what does life look like when you have a chronic autoimmune disease in your 50s? No, it's not a death sentence. I'm not even gonna go here with you. Um, yes, you will read things that say, we may live in a shorter terminology for mortality rate than others do, but I'm gonna have some conjecture on that. Um, if you live the best you can, have the best quality of life, remove as much stress as you can, make best choices for you, and really work on making those lifestyle choices and behavior changes after 25 years of MS and also obesity, even longer. I'm gonna say, I'm not gonna go with, well, maybe seven years shorter, you may die from this. Well, we're all gonna die from something. So I don't know how to go here, but I can say to you, I think it's a little easier to say autoimmune conditions are serious. Some of them are even more serious than others. And um I think that we should be able to talk about that. So, just in case anyone else is listening, because you have a friend or you're a caregiver, or you're a spouse, or a sibling, or any of those things, or you know, a sister or brother, best friend, I want to talk about what autoimmune diseases are. I say a lot of times chronic conditions, but let's talk about autoimmune diseases. Autoimmune diseases occur when the immune system sort of mistakenly attacks healthy cells. So with MS, uh, the B and the T cells sort of have a party. And one of them goes, Oh, you're not supposed to be here. I have to get rid of you right now. Well, no, it's not supposed to get rid of it, but the body does what the body does, and we all live with many viruses in our bodies, and sometimes they just get kicked off. I'm not gonna claim any one way that MS happens. Um, I have two good uh teams of doctors and neurologists and people that help me, and we don't quite know still what the cause is, so we can't give you a cure, but I do know that when you have um a system that sort of goes, no, this isn't working for me, so I'm gonna sort of change things, it could be driven by a combination of things. Um, could be genetics, so be susceptible. We're not sure with MS. There are other ones, yes, we know they're more genetic. It could be environmental, it could be a virus, could be a toxin. Uh, a lot of us who grew up in Southville, Michigan seem to in selfie gardens behind our elementary school at Adler, um, have developed a lot of neurological conditions. Um, those are those of us in our 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, on the schools built for kindergarten through sixth grade, but they put a public golf course behind. So when I speak about environmental triggers, I'm talking about Roundup. Yeah, Roundup, that glyphosate crap that should be just removed from the universe. And if anyone disagrees with me, don't listen because I feel very, very strongly, along with a lot of those of us in integrative healthcare and healthcare that study nutrition, that look at our environment and say, what is good for us, what is not good for us. I don't think that Roundup is good for us. I don't care that it makes plants grow faster and have less like bugs. I don't care. I just don't care. So if you need to wash your lettuce, then wash your darn lettuce. That's all. Just wash it. I don't want to wash off eight million chemicals. I would like to think that Roundup, which now belongs under the bear label. So, bear, if you want to yell at me, you can yell at me. I don't care. It's not a good thing. It's just not a good thing for the universe. And over time, we've seen it not just affect autoimmune conditions, but we're talking cancer, and people are now winning um lawsuits because people are getting cancer when these environmental triggers happen when these toxins are used. So that's my opinion. It's only my opinion. I'm gonna stand by that. It's my opinion. And I am gonna stand there at this point in my life. Um, it could be lifestyle choices that you make, it could be hormonal factors that you develop an autoimmune condition, but it's about mistakenly attacking healthy cells. And that could be muscles, that could be nerves, that could be a number of things in the body. But the key factors that happen is that we see um chronic stress happen, we see um gut stuff, because now we've become much more um in tune with that the gut is our second brain and things in the gut. We have a lot of autoimmune conditions that happen now in the gut. We also have something called molecular mimicry. Um, those are infections that prompt immune responses that also target self-tissue. So not just nervous system, not just your muscles, not just your blood. It could attack your self tissue. So this isn't set to scare you, and a lot of you already know this, but every once in a while I like to come back to the beginning and talk about some things that I want us to just understand. Can genetics and family history play a significant role? Yes. It can make more individuals more susceptible to developing autoimmune disease. Lupus. Do family members who've had lupus have family members who have lupus? Yes. Do all lupus patients have members of the family who have lupus in a family? No. Did I have any MS in my family? Not a bit, not a mite. But it's important to just understand and no, don't raise a red flag and say, this is happening to me, this may be happening to me. Sometimes when we're reading a line, which is a good thing and a bad thing, you know, AI is good to a point, but then there's the other side. You have to read knowing that everything is an opinion. And it's not just an opinion, even if it's empirical evidence, if it's studies, there's lots of studies. So there's lots of doctors, nurses, scientists. People are working on ways to find out what things are. How do we help? How do we cure? How do we um remove? How do we reduce? But there's so much going on that that's a good thing. With environmental triggers, I already talked about chemicals or toxins or drugs can trigger an onset, unfortunately. Um, one of the ones that uh is uh things like viral or or or uh bacterial infections, they still feel that perhaps Epstein bar virus, the kissing disease, streptococcus can cause the immune system to just sort of I don't know, um, malfunction, and then it just starts mistakenly attacking cells. Um with women, hormones, hormones can do this. Autoimmune diseases disproportionately affect women, particularly those are in childbearing years, and it may indicate that there's a strong hormonal influence. I got my MS in my 30s, so I don't know. Um, but I take this information in, I do not point it all at me. I digit information. So information is power, according to me in my universe. Um lifestyle factors, yes. Uh, poor nutrition and high stress jobs are absolutely potential contributors to an autoimmune condition. Um, smoking could be linked to several autoimmune conditions. Um sometimes they say rheumatoid arthritis can be caused by smoking. But I know people who have RA and they've never smoked a day in their lives, they have nobody in their family that smokes, they're not married to smokers. So, as I said to you, we take information in and we don't have to attach it to ourselves, but just treat it as information. Um when we look at things like immune checkpoints, there's something called dysfunction. So when the body's immune regulation fails, remember I was talking about T cells. T cells normally have a break. There are these T cells that are going through and they prevent things from attacking the body that become unleashed. So with multiple sclerosis patients, T cells are supposed to put on the brakes, but something goes awry and they start attacking B cells. And then we have something called demyelination, which is the very fancy word, but what it really means is you know how your stereo has rubber coating over the wires, or even your headphones have rubber coating over the wires. What happens is that the system uh T cells start to um attack the B cells and they sort of want to wear it away. They sort of want to just chip it away, so they start eating at it, which is not good because you need the protection of the coating on your on your uh nervous system on your wires. Um yeah, and women are generally more susceptible between ages of mid-teens to like mid-40s. But I know if you have one autoimmune disease, you're at a higher risk of developing another. And that sucks. But there's like at this point, sometimes you see 80 types exist in um different kinds of autoimmune conditions, such as lupris and RA and type 1 diabetes, that is also a an autoimmune condition. Um sometimes you'll see healthy cells get attacked, like people have chronic fatigue, they have a low-grade fever all the time, they have abdominal pain, gut pain, they have skin issues, their joints hurt. Um, I think it's up to almost a hundred autoimmune conditions now, as I've been reading. So between 80 and 100, somewhere between that. So that's a lot. We're finding more and more about this. But when you're managing chronic inflammation, when you're talking about an autoimmune condition, we're talking about the system's inflamed, so it's agitated. And that's really a pain in the butt. So it's a lot of things. When you hear somebody with RA, what happens to them is that their joints get affected and it causes swelling and pain and stiffness. And then there's something called Hashimoto's throidysis. Um, it's an immune system that attacks thyroid and it causes this hypothyroidism, and suddenly you gain weight and you're super fatigued. It could be type 1 diabetes, it can attack pancreas and it can destroy your insulin-producing cells. Most of the time, when we think of type 1 diabetes, we think of kids, more juvenile diabetes. But in my world, my brother in his 50s, early 50s, developed type 1 diabetes, which was pretty scary. So, you know, for every time we say one thing, there's another. Um, when you see all these ads for psoriasis for psoriatic arthritis, those are about skin cells that multiply too quickly. And again, what happens is that they get inflamed and then you get all that scaly patching and itch all the time. MS, which I talked about, MS infects the nervous cells and infects mobility, cognition, vision, a number of things, because that's a big part. Um, there's something called Shogun's syndrome, and that attacks the glands that produce the moisture. So shogun's affects um suddenly you have very dry eyes, very dry mouth. Um celiac disease. It's an immune reaction to gluten that damages the small intestines. Yes, your friends who say they have celiac like seriously, it's pretty serious. It really, really is. So um be a good friend and just be aware of that. Do some people have an intolerance to wheat and so forth? Yes. But we're talking um at another level. It's a much more serious level to gluten. And I'm not making fun of the ones that have a milder, my mother did, and it's really uncomfortable. And so if you want a better quality of life, then we just adjust our diet. And we do that for ourselves. We don't do that because, you know, oh, well, you know, so-and-so says that they feel better just eating that. Do you have a problem with it? And if you tried taking it out of your diet, did you feel better when you did? And be honest and work with the doctor, because that's what doctors are there for. So I'm staying in my lane. Um, Braves disease that causes a thyroid to produce too much hormone and it leads to weight loss and a really rapid heart rate. My sister had that when she was in college, pretty scary as well. They have to sometimes burn off that thyroid, and it's serious. But what you normally see is fatigue, joint pain, stiffness, skin rashes, muscle weakness, digestive issues, sometimes numbness, sometimes hair loss, sometimes tiggling. Sometimes many of us, um, I know fibromyalgia and MS talk about this a great deal. Uh, brain fog. We feel like we have brain fogged, our concentration has challenges. And as I said, it can target a lot of things. It could target the organs, it could be your blood, it could be your connective tissue, it could be your nervous system, it could be uh fatiglio, your skin, and then you lose the uh pigmentation in your skin. That is a chronic autoimmune condition. My mom developed multiple um myastenia gravas at 80. And so for me, I look and look at all of us from there and go, maybe there was an environmental factor to this because what happened to us with that golf course, with all that Roundup, making that grass gorgeously green. But now that we have more information, it can't be a woulda, coulda, shoulda, didn't. It's just what things are. So all I know, and probably most of you know this, is when you're given a diagnosis of an autoimmune disease, all I remember feeling is this flood of emotions of why me? What is it? What happens? Am I dying? How long is my life? What does my life look like? And it is kind of nice sometimes when there may be relief that there's something real to treat. And there are also maybe those feelings of how much do I lose of myself? So for me, I know that I had a job that I worked 68-hour work weeks because I loved to, not because I was forced to, but because I really, really loved working in magazines and I ran around and did fashion shows and fashion shoots and fashion vents and stores and out in the market. So I was a crazy person and my system just got exhausted from that. Um it's nice though to know there may be things that are going on. But sometimes you stop and you have to go, Who am I now? Like, I was 30. Like, who am I now? What am I gonna be like? What's gonna happen to me now? What will I look like at 50, 60, 70, 80? Um as the years go on, I learn more things. And as I said to you, information's power. Um but there's a lot of people living with an autoimmune condition. There's a between, was I reading in uh Liban Clinic? Uh, there's between 25 and 30, 32 million people living with an autoimmune condition. So you have lots of company, fortunately or unfortunately, but lots of people whose immune systems attack healthy tissue, etc. But what's really interesting and what I wanted to talk about was that approximately 80% of those women, and this was uh in an article I read, 80% of women are um this is according to the Global Autoimmune Institute and the and the NIH, the National Institute of Health. Um there are some of the more than 100 identified autoimmune diseases that we have. And women have a lot of these. Um so don't get scared at this either. These diseases are chronic. Something chronic is always happening. Something chronic sometimes they use and they will say to you, there is no cure. That normally is there is no cure because they may not know the cause. So people are working vociferously to find out what is happening. Um, do we have more information today? Sure. Uh, do we have something called DMTs, which are disease modifying therapies that have changed the face of MS? Um, I'm glad I was diagnosed when I was, so I could be on disease modifying therapies. So when you see those ads for um drugs for uh okrevis, for you see a new drug that's out there that's an infusion, Brium V, there is oral medication, there's still injections that you can do at home. Um, there's still a lot of ways to modify disease, which means sometimes, and this is for me, so I knock on wood as I say this to you, um, it can hold it where it is. So I've sort of held my chronic condition where it is for a long time. It doesn't mean that things don't get worse, and that's why I wanted to talk to you guys, because with women, what happens when you like hit 4550? Well, because it's scary. And it's how does that look like in a social and emotional context? Um many find that family and friends are available and supportive, but then they're there as things begin. And if there's serious things like hospitalizations and so on and so forth, a lot of times that support fades over the long run. That doesn't mean for everyone that people just disappear. It means that it's important to remember that your friends and your family, even your cohorts at work, your peers, have also experienced the loss of you as you were, your former self. And sometimes they may also become unsure how to be with you, some anxious, a little depressed that you are the way you are. So everyone is touched by an autoimmune condition. And as a woman, we touch a lot of lives. We're moms, we're sisters, you know, we're it's just so many hats that we wear that we have to realize that there are these needs. These there's always these conflicting needs of the patient to find and accept a new sense of self-identity. You know, I thought I was doing my career. I had to change my career. It took me a long time. Please don't think that I just like stepped into health and wellness coaching and patient advocacy. Took me like 10 years where I just sort of like hung out like sort of floating balloon and just sort of didn't know where I would land. Um, but I hung on. And I was very fortunate. I had friends who were behind me. I had family who supported me. And I persevered because I have I'm big, I'm tenacious and I'm pretty resilient. So I just keep going. Um, and I hope a lot of you do that too. But sometimes things happen. I met a woman um who got diagnosed with lupus in her 30s, and her fiance broke off their engagement. They knew each other like since high school, and he just flipped out. He couldn't handle it. Um also, people around you don't understand. There's just a lack of understanding about what's going on. What is it like? And some people don't want to learn, they just want to stay in their bubble and not really know, which is disappointing. Hopefully, you have friends or you find new friends that are more supportive who can step beyond that. And this can make you feel rejected. It can make you feel like, oh God, um, you feel more isolated, you feel more lonely. And that's why I say you have to sometimes switch gears. You have to look at a fork in the road and go, you know what? I've always gone this way, but I'm gonna have to go back to the fork and try the other way. Because it's about you and it's your life. So 50, many people go, 50 is the middle. I hope 50 is the middle. I would love the idea that I get to live to 100 like my grandmother did. I think it's fabulous. Um, there's also those feelings of who will want me now. You know, if you're single, I thought I would start really dating and thinking about kids and stuff in my 30s, late 30s. Well, that changed because now things happen. But sometimes you have to look at things different. Um when you have an autumn thinkition, you're so busy, in the right way, busy. You're struggling and you're trying to figure out how you survive physically, how you survive emotionally. How do you do that? How does that work? At these moments, you know, sometimes I would say to you as we get older, just remember that sometimes, as my grandmother always said, and I have to remember this all the time, everyone. We have two ears and one mouth, so listen twice as hard. Sometimes we just have to listen to somebody, and they could just want to be on a rant and just want to complain. And sometimes we just let them do that. You just uh need somebody to hear you to just be supportive. And that's what you need. And let somebody else know that you're fearful and what am I gonna do? Hopefully, you work with people. There's therapists, there's lots of people. Coaches are great, coaches are not therapists, coaches are not social workers, coaches are not psychologists, psychiatrists, but coaches can help coach when you're ready to look and go, I want to make lifestyle changes and I can see it, and I'm willing to look at my behaviors of change. They're amazing. Um, if you are a person who maybe has done a lot of work on yourself and know who you are and knows your foibles, coaches are terrific for that. Um, I really do think there's coaches that are psychologists, there's the doctors who are coaches. We have lots of different kinds of coaches. But what's important is that how do you live your life with a disease? At 50, look, I never thought I would get married. I really didn't. I got married in my 50s. I did not anticipate that. I did not think that was gonna happen. Um, I even told my neurologists, I'm never ever going to really date and get serious. He was like, Don't tell people who they should love. And I used to just poo-poo that for a number of years, and then I met someone and I had to rethink my composition on that. So sometimes you just need to know that there are others going through this. Um I think that we worry about physical dependency and reliance on others. We worry about, God, am I going to be hospitalized? Um I don't know. Maybe I just wasn't brought up that way. I just try not to even go to that space. I don't live there. Like I really don't. I mean, hospitals are sick people. So I have an autoimmune condition, but I don't feel that I am sick enough to have to be in a hospital. Yes. But I have certain things, yes, but I don't have to be there. Um, as we get older, also, we have to look at things like finances and how do you support oneself? And you just worry about your independence and your humanness. And that's why I keep saying to you, look around you and make sure that the people that are closest to you are there for support. And that may change over time, even over decades of you having a chronic condition. Those people may shift. And that's okay. If people come in and out of our lives, they may come back in. I have friends who I hadn't seen since like undergraduate school, and they showed up in my 40s, and we are picked up right where we were, and they accept me as I am, and I'm a little slower, so we don't do certain things. I have drop flips, so I'm not gonna run a marathon or go jogging with you. I am not gonna climb hills and go hiking with you. So find somebody else, have a good time. Um, but I can do a bunch of things. And if you'd like to like go swimming, or if you'd like to take a walk on a more flat ground that I don't have to worry about, cool. If you want to come to Pilates with me and we can hang out and enjoy Pilates for an hour and then go have a coffee or go shopping or go sit outside and talk in Central Park, great. But you have to sometimes start to look at things a little differently. Um your self-image changes, and when you're chronic diagnosed with a chronic illness, um you worry about the severity of how the disease is progressing. Um, again, I'm doing well. Um, I hope you are doing well. Um personality and emotional health change at certain times when things are more sucky, but they may go into another path. They don't always stay in one position. Um so if you're diagnosed as a young age, it's different than being diagnosed when you're retired. Like my mother at 80. Issues of social security disability you start to look at. You you formed all these intimate relationships, you've been married for a long time, you've had kids, and you were expecting, you know, to go travel, and suddenly your plans are altered, and you have to reconsider things in the base of what level ability do I have now? What can I do? Did I want to like climb um and walk the Chinese wall? Yeah, I would have liked to have done that. I really would have. But the heat, ugh, I suck in heat. So I'm gonna have to just take that off of my bucket list and do something else. That's all. Um, it's not a death sentence, it's just that we have to sometimes look at our priorities and think differently. And the most important thing is, I guess I'm saying is the quality of our relationships are really critical this time. I have a very dear friend who's going through her own stuff, and we've known each other 16, 17 years, and she didn't expect a childhood illness to sort of kanaka in her head and change her equilibrium and change the uh direction her life was going. But sometimes it does. Um we want to be more empowered, we want to find doctors and friendships and relationships that empower us to live with what we're living with. That'll never make it easy. And um the relationship with my mother changed. Um, it changed again when she developed myastenia gravis, and I had already had MS for 15 years. Um, because hers was more serious than mine, because with myasthenia gravis, she literally would have been chewing, and suddenly the muscles in your jaw stop working. So you could choke on food. You could go to take a breath, and your lungs, the muscles don't expand. How do you get a breath if your muscles aren't working? So thankfully, I have a neurologist who speaks in a way to say, your mother's is so much more serious than yours. That does not make it more important. It makes it very different. And so have more patience with her when she's feeling these new symptoms. Um, and it was a good thing for me to have someone in my corner who could explain it to me. Um living with an autoimmune disease um does a lot of things. You know what? We feel more confused, we're more anxious, we're more uncertain. But you're not alone in these feelings, nor in this journey. And there's lots of groups like the autoimmune association that you can look up. Um they have tools and they have resources, even for your caregivers. Because if you're caring for someone with an autoimmune disease, that affects those people around you too. Find out what to expect if you become a caregiver for someone with an autoimmune disease. Just as importantly, get tips to help you care for yourself. That's when self-care really has to step in. I mean, and here I'm talking about these things, but what about people? I met this woman who was in her 50s, and she sort of had had this uphill battle for a long time, I think for a decade or so. And they couldn't figure out what it was, and she was diagnosed with something called autoimmune gastritis. And that's when everyday foods like grains and starchy vegetables and and and even a small amount of sugar, they trigger these really uncomfortable gut symptoms. You get nauseous, you feel bloated, you feel constipated, you get this painful burning sensation. And you know what? As much as this one's tried to strict to a really strict diet, she still found herself waking up at night, sometimes so exhausted from battling it. It's like I used to say that sometimes I feel like I'm a gerbil on a wheel, you know, you can't get off. Imagine it wasn't just the physical symptoms that took a toll. Imagine the stress of constantly having to monitor your diet and dealing with unpredictability of things mentally and healthy and emotionally weighing on you. But you can. And I met her a couple of years ago, probably about five or six years ago, the first time that we had met, and she's doing much better. She's found a group of people who really help her. Um, she has a great dietitian. Sometimes you look for somebody in functional nutrition, they'll talk to you about leaky gut. That's another thing. Contact the autoimmuneinstitute.org. They're great about gastric stuff. It's important to know that living with a chronic autoimmune addition after 50 also means you have to manage worsened symptoms due to. I hate to say this to you guys, but are you going through menopause? So if you're going through menopause, suddenly you have increased joint pain. Suddenly you have more vaginal dryness, and you have this fatigue. And that is also compounded by the risk. And we're talking the risk of I'm told cardiovascular disease that runs in my family, osteoporosis. And your new normal frequently includes navigating unpredictable flares and dealing with chronic fatigue and having brain fog and managing comorbidities. Um, yes, in the world of MS, they say I will probably die seven years earlier than I could have. Now, think about this. My grandmother died at a hundred. So I don't know. Does that sound bad to me? No, it doesn't. So we all have to sort of look at what's on our plate and decide: is the glass half empty or half full? But health key aspects to think about over 50 with autoimmunity is menopause intersection, because you have this drop in your estrogen that can aggravate conditions like RA, like sugar's. Um uh sometimes it bothers MS, which it did for me. You may see reduced activity. Um, I take estrogen. Um, I take UVM, and it has helped me immensely when I went through, you know, when I've gone through, you know, in my 50s um menopause. And there's just physical changes because you have common issues. There are things, you're fatigued, you have hidden symptoms. There's always with autoimmune stuff and elevated risk for osteoporosis. Um, if you took a lot of steroids, um, that will possibly lead you towards osteoporosis, osteopenia, osteoarthritis. Those people face with lupus, these are really serious. Sometimes people have cardiovascular. So, what I'm saying is women are really good at staying on top of things for everyone else, but stay on top of things for you. So, postmenopausal women who have RA or lupus, sometimes they their challenge of nearly doubles for heart disease and stroke due to systemic inflammation. So, systemic, constant in your system, you get inflammation. See the doctors, make sure you have a good team. Mental and emotional tolls. I don't know. I still have anxiety and I do have depression at random my family, but I work with people on that. And it arrives from managing a lot of it also, even if you had depression or anxiety just at a low grade, when you're managing a chronic, invisible, and unpredictable illness, there may be more. So be aware that you're in the company of many others and raise the flag if you need some help. Don't sit there and suffer and say, I'm being a baby and never go away and let it get better. Nope. Ask for help. And as I said, late auto, you know, late onset autoimmune diseases can be harder to spot. You know, some people get fibromyalgia later, some people get RA later. Um, this myastine or gravis. Um, and make sure that you have bone density tests. Uh, they keep up on these things for me more than usual to make sure that I have people who are checking in, make sure that endocrinology sees you, rheumatology sees you, and adapt your life to work for you. If you're not a person who wants to ride a bike or go to a gym, which I'm so not interested in, why don't you consider getting in the pool, um, going to a stress management class to reduce flares, using a meditation that's simple. No, you don't have to do a formal one and cross your legs. Don't don't torture yourself. Don't do something that's so not like you. Find something that works for you. Because you're adapting to a new normal. Every decade, you're adapting to a new normal. And with an autoimmune condition that's chronic, you're adapting to a new normal. And you're having to think about daily life adjustments and navigating highs and lows and making long-term planning, you know, more challenging. You know, my parents made sure that I had long-term health care set up. And I was just like, Mom, I'll be fine. She was like, no, I want to make sure, God forbid. I said, Well, I'm not going to be that patient. She said, but I'd rather pay it and never use it than God forbid you need it and you didn't have it. So these are things to think about physical challenges, intense pain, stiffness. Be aware when you're tired, when you've done too much, when you need to, as I like to say, reboot. Sometimes 20 minutes is enough for me to just because what I don't want is the waves of flare-ups. Flare-ups normally come with a higher activity. And I certainly am not looking for remissions because it makes it difficult to plan activities. So there's that part where I want to plan to be able to do things. Be more flexible. Buy health. If you go on a trip, buy insurance for the plane that God forbid you had to cancel, you could cancel. Spend the 25 freaking dollars and don't make yourself crazy, okay? And all those mental and emotional tolls, we all are feeling them. So you're in a special group of women who are just monitoring to ourselves. We want to make sure that we're paying attention to our diet, to what we're taking medication-wise, to what our energy levels are like. We're adjusting our lifestyle. We're scheduling more tests, we're changing our exercise routines to manage energy. When you don't feel well this week, I have a cold. I will get to a Pilates class tomorrow. So I had four days off. That's what it is. And work closely with specialists because there's a lot of effective treatments. And lastly, make sure your support system is there for you and with you. Connect with others who have similar conditions. If you have MS, National MS Society, RA, find the groups there for you. Resources like Autoimmune Association or HSS.edu. I loved an article they had called Who Am I Now Living with an Autoimmune Disease? And I will post this up on my Michelle Weston Coach website. It was an article in the hospital for special surgery that some people may really hit on. The other thing is when people say, but you don't look sick, it's a really broad category. When your disease is hard to name and doesn't have visible symptoms, I don't look like I have MS. People always think that we have walkers with chairs that were with canes, always. I really don't live that way. So it gets frustrating. So find ways for you to be unstoppable, to live with your chronic condition, but to beat fatigue. Look at Harvard Health for fatigue and autoimmune disease articles. Harvard Health is great online. Um Cleveland Clinic is great for this. Mayo Clinic is great for this. They all really look at all these things to make sure that you can figure out how do you live with an autoimmune disease. You can do it. Being 50, think about what your hormones are like. Think about being a woman and you've got a big life. Think about wanting to make sure that you get to see the things you want to and don't limit yourself. And that doesn't mean overextend yourself. That means don't limit yourself. Find ways to enjoy and expand your life. And any questions, any thoughts, anything anyone else would like to talk about, I would love to hear from you. So just drop a line to me on Michelle Westoncoach.com, M-I-C-H-E-L-E-W-E-S-T-O-N coach.com. I love having you on weekly, Beyond My Diagnosis, because I am beyond my diagnosis. I am not my diagnosis. I have a diagnosis, but I am not going to live from there. And I hope that you are doing that as well. Have a wonderful, wonderful week. I will see you around the corner. And any questions, any thoughts, looking for ways to de stress, to take a walk. The opportunity to meditate is even right outside your door. You could take a walk outside in the trees. You could take a walk here in Central Park. Just separate yourself sometimes and be grateful for all you have and be grateful for all you could have. And make sure that you are taking care of you. Namaste. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Beyond the Diagnosis. If something we talked about today resonated with you, if you're craving deeper understanding, better support, or just want to know you're not alone on this journey, make sure to subscribe to my free Substack at Michelle Weston.substack.com. M-I-C-H-E-L-E-S-T-O-N.substack.com. That's where I share personal insights, expert takeaways, and extra resources to help you stay informed, empowered, and one step closer to the clarity you deserve. And if you found this episode helpful, leave a review or share it with someone who needs to hear it. Your voice helps this message go further. Until next time, keep asking questions, keep trusting yourself, and keep going beyond the diagnosis.