I wonder if allergies can eventually be fixed somehow as well. There has to be an immune or autoimmune reason why some people have tons of allergies and other people are perfectly fine.
Allergies are caused by an overactive immune system. The way to overcome them is to train the immune system by exposing yourself to low doses of the allergen. Doctors do this and it’s called allergen immunotherapy. Interestingly this has been done since 1911.
I used to be allergic to 100s (I could not even walk 1 meter of certain weeds and I would get blisters etc) of things until I moved away from my country 20+ years ago. I suddenly was allergic (as far as I know still now) to nothing; I accidentally came in contact with some of the worst allergens of old (as I live in nature since then) and they did nothing to our surprised. My wife who was allergic to seafood (passing out to needing epi levels) and that’s gone too, shortly after the move. I don’t know why; our doctor then didn’t know, but we chalked it up to stress; we went from depressing commute ratrace city jobs to sitting in a forest in nature doing whatever we liked. I work more hours now but they are stressless. Don’t know whatever is true, but one mistake I made was not moving earlier.
I've had some sort of autoimmune thing hitting me almost every decade of my life (and then clearing up): eczema, asthma, vitiligo and most recently psoriasis. Usually quite mild, but I worry that the next one in the progression will be arthritis. Most doctors' explanations can be summarised into a shrug. Would be a relief to know what's going on in there.
Hey: do you have any stomach problems? Because that was me (up to and including the arthritis part) and then my "IBS" turned out to be Crohn's disease and once I started treating that 90% of my other shit vanished. Things were so bad back then that I was seriously considering a hip replacement to make the pain stop, but today I just hopped off the exercise bike and feel totally fine.
Oh dear, I hope not. I do tend to have the occasional need to visit the mens room several times a day (but only at a level where it's just the mildest of inconveniences). I'd be really worried if it was IBS. The prospect of that getting "upgraded" to Crohn's is downright terrifying. Maybe I'll ask my GP next time.
It could very well not be that, but I always feel compelled to mention it just in case I can spare someone else the same "three years of confusion to figure out what was wrong" fate that I suffeed :P
And even more broadly speaking, if your immune stuff does progress, the good news is that treating the biggest baddest one (in my case, the Crohn's) usually treats the myriad smaller ones with it. So if you ever end up arthritic enough to get treated for that, the treatment should knock down your psoriasis and other stuff too!
^ Likewise if certain foods set you off and those foods are actually "good for you". If you feel like crap after eating a ball of grease, that's one thing, but it turns out leafy greens aren't supposed to give you a nuclear-level stomachache.
At first, a mix of mesalamine and oral steroids; then I graduated to Remicade and a low dose of methotrexate to stop my immune system from creating antibodies against the Remicade. And that's basically it.
I should also note that even when I was only taking mesalamine (a drug that works in your GI tract and basically nowhere else), my arthritis pain improved drastically, so it wasn't just the result of steroids having a general anti-inflammatory effect. Treating my intestines alone was enough for me to stop walking with a cane.
Autoimmune disorders all have a common root of gut dysfunction. I suffered from chronic inflammation for five years, the ultimate solution was a double capsule probiotic and eating more fiber. Most probiotics have a single capsule that opens in the stomach and all those CFUs are killed by stomach acid.
There is a study that claims that genes associated with autoimmune diseases increased survival during the black death epidemic by 40% and frequency of these genes increased a lot in the 14th century Europe [1]. I haven't yet seen independent confirmations but I can imagine that paranoid immune system can be beneficial depending on circumstances. If we eradicate autoimmune diseases then there's a chance we won't survive the next big pandemic.
> If we eradicate autoimmune diseases then there's a chance we won't survive the next big pandemic.
IMO it seems more likely that we'd find effective treatment which mitigates symptoms of autoimmune disease than a treatment that irreversibly eradicates the disease (including from subsequent generations, even?).
