TOP FIVE FOODS TO AVOID IF YOU HAVE AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE SUCH AS MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS OR FIBROMYALGIA

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I talk about the top 5 most important foods to avoid if you have any autoimmune condition (psoriasis, IBS, Hashimotos, Lupus,, etc). I also give the science behind why you should be avoiding these foods and the affects they have your body. hope you enjoy and thanks for watching 🙂

Behçet’s disease – what are the signs and symptoms of Behcet’s syndrome?

Behçet's disease

Behçet’s disease

Behçet’s disease, or Behçet’s syndrome, is a rare and poorly understood condition that results in inflammation of the blood vessels and tissues.

Confirming a diagnosis of Behçet’s disease can be difficult because the symptoms are so wide-ranging and general (they can be shared with a number of other conditions).Symptoms of Behçet’s disease

The main symptoms of Behçet’s disease include:

genital and mouth ulcers

red, painful eyes and blurred vision

acne-like spots

headaches

painful, stiff and swollen joints

In severe cases, there’s also a risk of serious and potentially life-threatening problems, such as permanent vision loss and strokes.

Most people with the condition experience episodes where their symptoms are severe (flare-ups or relapses), followed by periods where the symptoms disappear (remission).

Over time, some of the symptoms can settle down and become less troublesome, although they may never resolve completely.

Read about the symptoms of Behçet’s disease.

Diagnosing Behçet’s disease

There’s no definitive test that can be used to diagnose Behçet’s disease.

Several tests may be necessary to check for signs of the condition, or to help rule out other causes, including:

blood tests

urine tests

scans, such as X-rays, a computerised tomography (CT) scan or a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan

a skin biopsy

a pathergy test – which involves pricking your skin with a needle to see if a particular red spot appears within the next day or two; people with Behçet’s disease often have particularly sensitive skin

Current guidelines state a diagnosis of Behçet’s disease can usually be confidently made if you’ve experienced at least three episodes of mouth ulcers over the past 12 months and you have at least two of the following symptoms:

genital ulcers

eye inflammation

skin lesions (any unusual growths or abnormalities that develop on the skin)

pathergy (hypersensitive skin)

Other potential causes also need to be ruled out before the diagnosis is made.

Causes of Behçet’s disease

The cause of Behçet’s disease is unknown, although most experts believe it’s an autoinflammatory condition.

An autoinflammatory condition is where the immune system – the body’s natural defence against infection and illness – mistakenly attacks healthy tissue.

In cases of Behçet’s disease, it’s thought the immune system mistakenly attacks the blood vessels.

It’s not clear what triggers this problem with the immune system, but two things are thought to play a role:

genes – Behçet’s disease tends to be much more common in certain ethnic groups where the genes that are linked to the condition may be more common

environmental factors – although a specific environmental factor hasn’t been identified, rates of Behçet’s disease are lower in people from an at-risk ethnic group who live outside their native country

Behçet’s disease is more common in the Far East, the Middle East and Mediterranean countries such as Turkey, Iran and Israel.

People of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Asian origin are thought to be most likely to develop the condition, although it can affect all ethnic groups.

Treating Behçet’s disease

There’s no cure for Behçet’s disease, but it’s often possible to control the symptoms with products that reduce inflammation in the affected parts of the body.

These include:

corticosteroids – powerful anti-inflammatory medications

immunosuppressants – medications that reduce the activity of the immune system

biological therapies – medications that target the biological processes involved in the process of inflammation

Your healthcare team will create a specific treatment plan for you depending on your symptoms.

Read about treating Behçet’s disease.

So what actually is an autoimmune condition?

There are more than eighty different autoimmune disorders that collectively impact roughly five percent of the human population. This infographic explains how our immune system works in the normal way and what goes wrong when it begins to work against our body.

The infographic explains in simple terms the process involved in immune system defense and how the process fails resulting in an autoimmune disorder.

Autoimmune Puzzle

 

What is Lupus? Causes, Risk Factors and Types of Lupus

Lupus is a chronic inflammatory disease that occurs when your body’s immune system attacks your own tissues and organs. Inflammation caused by lupus can affect many different body systems including your joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, brain, heart and lungs. Lupus can be difficult to diagnose because its signs and symptoms often mimic those of other ailments.

What is Lupus? Causes, Risk Factors and Types of Lupus

From Visually.

Time of day affects severity of autoimmune disease

Time of day affects severity of autoimmune disease

Time of day affects severity of autoimmune disease

Insights into how the body clock and time of day influence immune responses are revealed today in a study published in leading international journal Nature Communications. Understanding the effect of the interplay between 24-hour day-night cycles and the immune system may help inform drug-targeting strategies to alleviate autoimmune disease.

Circadian rhythms or 24-hour rhythms are generated by the body clock, allowing us to anticipate and respond to the 24-hour cycle of our planet. Maintaining a good body clock is generally believed to lead to good health for humans, and disrupting the circadian rhythm (for example, working night shifts) has been associated with immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis; however, the underlying molecular links have been unclear.

In the new study, Professor Kingston Mills and Dr Caroline Sutton of Trinity College Dublin, and Dr Annie Curtis of RCSI (Royal College of Surgeons Ireland), and colleagues show that immune responses and regulation of autoimmunity are affected by the time of the day when the immune response is activated.

Using mice as a model organism, they show that a master circadian gene, BMAL1, is responsible for sensing and acting on time-of-the-day cues to suppress inflammation. Loss of BMAL1, or induction of autoimmunity at midday instead of midnight, causes more severe experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, which is essentially an analogue of multiple sclerosis in mice.

Professor of Experimental Immunology at Trinity, Kingston Mills, said: “In the year that the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded for discoveries on the molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm, our exciting findings suggest that our immune system is programmed to respond better to infection and insults encountered at different times in the 24-hour clock. This has significant implications for the treatment of immune-mediated diseases and suggests there may be important differences in time of day response to drugs used to treat autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis.”

Although further investigations are needed to understand how to precisely modulate circadian rhythm or time-of-the-day cues for beneficial immunity, the findings in this article serve well to remind us the importance of ‘keeping the time’ when dealing with the immune system.

Research Lecturer in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Therapeutics at RCSI, Dr Annie Curtis, said: “Our study also shows how disruption of our body clocks, which is quite common now given our 24/7 lifestyle and erratic eating and sleeping patterns, may have an impact on autoimmune conditions.”

“We are really beginning to uncover exactly how important our body clocks are for health and wellbeing.”