What’s Behind the Fearsome Tide of Autoimmunity
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/wha...PozVoFjPvQ51XOn
By Matthew Little
5/24/2024
Updated: 5/24/2024


Our immune systems are turning against us in a growing tide of internal rebellion.

Instead of attacking cancerous cells, viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens, our immune systems are increasingly attacking our own bodies. More than a hundred different types of autoimmune diseases—from Type 1 diabetes to psoriasis—afflict millions of people. Around 50 million Americans suffer an autoimmune condition and 1 in 5 will be afflicted at some point, according to the Autoimmune Association (formerly the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association.)

Organ damage, pain, and years—sometimes decades—of misdiagnosis haunt the growing number of the afflicted.

This rise in autoimmunity should raise an alarm like a few other health concerns. Why? For the same reason a nation quakes when its military turns on its own people; it’s one thing to be attacked by foreign forces, but what can we do when attacked by our own defenses?

Research published in Arthritis & Rheumatology in 2022 found antinuclear antibodies, the most common biomarker of autoimmunity, have increased nearly 50 percent in the United States in less than 30 years.

Normal antibodies help the immune system identify and neutralize invaders like bacteria and viruses but antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) attack our own cells.

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The researchers found that teenagers have experienced a nearly 300 percent increase in ANAs between 1988 and 2012.

“Many of these children might not ever achieve their full potential, because battling chronic illness will alter their lives,” wrote one of the researchers, leading autoimmunity scientist Frederick Miller, in a 2020 Scientific American article co-authored by Olivia Casey, a senior director at the Autoimmune Association.

“Research suggests these increases in autoimmune diseases are related to remarkable changes in our environment and lifestyles, including alterations in diet and upsurges in obesity, sleep deprivation, stress, air pollution, exposure to toxic chemicals, and infections,” they wrote.

While there is no smoking gun on the causes of autoimmunity, its links to these changes make me wonder.-- excerpt, rest at link above --