Autoimmune Disease has it’s inflamed little fingers into many pots

Today I read an article about Heart Disease and how there is a new line of thinking that links the process that causes most of the problems in patients with Autoimmune Disease to that of clogged arteries. Inflammation.

Read the article here: http://www.tunedbody.com/heart-surgeon-declares-really-causes-heart-illness/
If you feel that you need back-up on this line of thinking, here’s another article that isn’t as bold, but goes in the same direction and it’s from the American Heart Association: https://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/Inflammation-and-Heart-Disease_UCM_432150_Article.jsp

Another important connection that nobody seems to talk about is mental health. I don’t understand why we can understand that inflammatory responses can happen anywhere in the body, but completely take the brain, a vital organ, out of that equation. Why do we completely dismiss the brain as being susceptible to an inflammatory response that can run rampant in any other part of the body and cause one of the 140+ autoimmune diseases and disorders. How many lives can we save from endless suffering by connecting autoimmune disease with mental health disorders? Here’s a book that can bring this concept a little closer to home and might save your life if you’re a patient like me who likes to push and challenge the robotic responses that we often get from the overworked medical professionals. This is the story of a patient who almost lost everything until she landed in the care of the RIGHT doctor…. Brain on Fire

We also know that Cancer is very dependent on a faulty immune system in order to progress, and now there is a new line of Cancer research that uses Immunotherapy to try and get answers that continue to elude the cure for Cancer research. http://www.cancerresearch.org/cancer-immunotherapy/resources/cancer-and-the-immune-system

So if we go back to my earlier post looking at the stats and our current research trends (https://findthecommonthread.com/2012/02/06/so-blue-working-towards-equity/) you can see a serious crack in the system. The disease group where answers dwell for all the others (including ones that are not on the charts like AIDS, Infectious Disease, Transplantation) is the group of disease that has the least amount of attention and research funding.

I think this is wrong. So very, very wrong.

Back in my earlier post that I referred to above, my thought process leads me to a place where I wonder if the answer is just below the surface of a cache we haven’t yet searched.
I’ve been questioning myself lately in my stubborn and unyielding view that if we find the common thread we can find the answer/cure to ALL of the Autoimmune Diseases. I feel like a person with serious delusions of grandeur. Today, instead of checking my big dreams a bit like normal people would, I’ve taken it one step further. One giant, giant step further… what if we find the common thread and the answer leads us to not only find a cure for ALL AI Diseases, but also for Cancer, for Heart Disease, for AIDS, for all of the chronic illnesses.

Now wouldn’t that be something that would change things a bit or what?

We have gone for so long in our own little holes, our own silos, fighting for our own little diseases and not the whole, but the big picture is becoming more and more clear. It dictates that we work together: Be it within the disease group (autoimmune, cancer, mental health) but I believe it would be more positive by working in a multi-disciplinary, multi-disease way. That’s when we’ll get the answers we all so desperately work for in our own groups. Our answer lies in working together.

T-O-G-E-T-H-E-R.

Only together will we see a difference. We’ve tried the ‘solo’ approach for decades and it’s gotten us nowhere really. Yeah we have some crazy drugs that keep us alive, but at a huge cost not only to the patient and their families, but also to our health care system and society at large.

So snap out of it people, we must let the ego go, and let’s do this. Let’s do it together. Let’s change the world for the better.

You in?