AAC – Health & Wellness – Navigating Physical Health – Autoimmune Conditions – Q1 – Sylvie

What are autoimmune conditions and how do they affect the body?

Transcript

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What are autoimmune conditions and how do they affect the body? So autoimmune conditions are diseases that are caused by the immune system mistakenly attacking our body's own healthy cells and tissues. The immune system, when functioning properly, would be using cells and proteins to identify and attack foreign threats such as bacteria or viruses. So when this backfires and it all goes wrong, the immune system uses the cells and the proteins to target the body's own healthy cells, and this can trigger inflammation and tissue damage in affected areas. Here are some common autoimmune conditions that you may have heard of and what's happening in our body with each of them. So rheumatoid arthritis. The immune system attacks our joints, so affects our pain, swelling, and joint destruction. So type 1 diabetes. Our immune system attacks our the cells responsible for producing insulin. So the body is unable to produce sufficient insulin. Multiple sclerosis. The body attacks the nerve cells, so disrupted nerve signals, weakness and fatigue are what are experienced. And then we have lupus, which uh involves widespread inflammation, celiactase, where the bowels and intestines are targeted, so we don't absorb the nutrients from our food and we have digestive issues with that. And then psoriasis. So there's a rapid skin cell turnover. So people with psoriasis or with the condition suffer excessive skin production, and you can see sore and dry patches of dead skin accumulating, which can be really itchy. So there are no cures for most autoimmune conditions, but symptoms are treatable and with lifestyle changes, manageable. So inflammation is a commonly occurring symptom in all, in many, sorry, not all, so having a rich diet of anti-inflammatory foods is a good adjustment to make. So you can look up more about that on the internet. So if you think our gut houses 70% of our immune system, so eating the right foods is straight away going to tackle any inflammation. Evidence shows that inflammatory markers in the blood can be reduced with a low anti-inflammatory diet. Some individuals have reported less pain, fatigue, and joint swelling, especially in cases of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. So weight management is also very important and obviously can be indirectly positively impacted with an inflammatory anti-inflammatory diet, but excess fat drives inflammation. So again, another reason why weight reduction is eases some of the symptoms. But if you have any concerns around your health, as I'm not a medical expert, then please do speak to your GP in the first instance. You know, voice any concerns you have, write down any symptoms, patterns, go to your GP and get blood tests and a diagnosis, or at least test it. So I hope that this has been helpful to you. Thank you for listening.