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.
This video is an overview of autoimmune disease. Autoimmune disease causes your immune system to attack healthy tissue and cells instead of harmful substances. Harmful substances contain antigens that allow the immune system to recognize these substances and destroy them. Sometimes these substances can confuse the immune system, as the immune system may not be able to distinguish between healthy tissue and antigens. This video was created by high-school students Hamza Khan (Hillfield Strathallan College), Kate Kim and Chris Chois (Notre Dame High School) in collaboration with the McMaster Demystifying Medicine Program and Khatija Anum.
There is an estimated 50 million people diagnosed with autoimmune disease in the United States. Seventy-five percent of those 50 million are women, according to researchers. Despite so many people affected by autoimmune disease, sufferers are still misunderstood.
Frankly, many people just don’t know what autoimmune disease is.
The American Autoimmune Diseases Association (AARDA) reported that there are between 80 and 100 autoimmune diseases known to them at this time. These chronic diseases can be life-threatening and affect many different parts of the body.
What classifies an autoimmune disease is when your immune system malfunctions. Your immune system’s job is to attack foreign agents that may enter your body, destroying them before they can make you sick.
However, sometimes your immune system is triggered into attacking your own perfectly healthy cells — this is autoimmunity.
If you have lupus, your immune system attacks your healthy tissues, including your skin, joints and organs. Lupus affects many parts of the body, and results in a lot of pain and sensitivity.
The process of diagnosis for any autoimmune disease can be quite long and difficult. So many have similar symptoms, and oftentimes people suffer from more than one at once.
Some common symptoms many autoimmune diseases share are fever, fatigue and malaise. Flare-ups occur when your symptoms worsen for a period of time, which can be days, weeks or even months.
These flare-ups are exhausting and painful for sufferers. When they have finally subsided, it is known as being in remission.
Autoimmune disease’s cause is unknown — as is the cure. Symptoms can be managed to a degree, but until a cure is found, they will have autoimmune disease for life.
In the United States alone, there is an estimated 50 million people living with autoimmune disease. Of those 50 million, researchers believe 75 percent of them are women. With so many people affected,there is still a lack of understanding about what an autoimmune disease actually is.
From Visually.
As you may know this month is Autoimmune Disease Awareness Month 2014.
To help raise awareness of the over 100 different types of autoimmune conditions we would ask you to do the following two things;-
a) Tell us which autoimmune condition you have been diagnosed with in the comments box below.
b) Please like and share the image we have created for Autoimmune Disease Awareness Month below.
You can find out more about the month by going to the web site http://www.aarda.org/ which belongs to American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association.
Autoimmune Diseases Awareness Month