Well, perhaps not quite in the way that you think they may exist.

What exists without question is the reaction YOU are experiencing; your physical, psychological & emotional reactions to a stimulus of some kind. Your physical, psychological & emotional pain is real, although the stimulus or trigger may vary, according to your diagnosed condition.

For some, the autoimmune condition may have been diagnosed as fibromyalgia, celiac disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, reactive arthritis, myopathies. Insert your autoimmune condition here ........... basically.

But what if I told you that your autoimmune condition only exists in name alone. As a word attached to your pain, a string of letters given to your group of symptoms. And having your diagnosis (name given to your group of symptoms) isn’t going to change your outcome alone? What if I told you that you didn’t need a name for your symptoms because the name actually means nothing?

You’d say "Dee that's crazy", right?

Idiopathic means what?

What if I told you that no one actually knows (not even your GP, not your geneticist) what an autoimmune condition is? Which is true because autoimmune conditions are idiopathic conditions.

“Idio-what, Dee??”

They're Idiopathic, which literally means,

So just to confirm, for those of you who have been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition of any variety, what you’ve ACTUALLY been diagnosed with is:

'A bunch of symptoms to which we have no idea the cause of & have no idea what triggered it’

You've been diagnosed with 'I don't know'.

So, when you’ve been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, you’ve actually been diagnosed with “We’ve idea hecking idea why her muscles hurt."

When you were diagnosed with a reactive arthritis, you were really diagnosed with “We’ve no hecking idea why his joints are causing pain & stiffness."

And when you were diagnosed with a myopathy, what they really meant was “We’ve no hecking idea why your muscles are degenerating.”

And to further exacerbate my point, did they give you something to cure you & you went on your merry way, or did they give you medication to manage your condition, which likely includes a combination of anti-inflammatories, corticosteroids for pain & possibly some antidepressant medication?
And to be fair, how can you cure something for which you have no idea of what is causing it or what triggered it to arise in the first place.

What DO we know about autoimmune conditions?

From the John Hopkins Medical site,

“In autoimmune disease, the body attacks normal, healthy tissue. The cause is unknown (we’ve already established that). It is probably a combination of a person’s genes & something in the environment that triggers these genes.”

Something in the environment that triggers the gene...

We now KNOW with certainty that SYMPTOMS of celiac disease are triggered by your immune reaction to ingesting gluten. We KNOW with certainty that if you don’t eat gluten (as a celiac) you won’t have that reaction (that bunch of symptoms for which they gave you the special name, celiac).

So, the ‘something in the environment’ in the case of celiac has been identified as dietary gluten.

YOU are the environment; your body. GLUTEN is what you put inside the environment (your body) to cause the reaction (set of symptoms/inflammatory reaction/healthy tissue being attacked).
It’s very simple cause & effect.

YOU ARE, without realizing it, causing these symptoms within yourself by ingesting something, some food, some chemical compound which your body is reacting to, reacting by attacking your muscles, or joints, or gut, or brain chemistry.

So WTF Now?

I propose to you this, that if you want to live a healthy, active life. If you WANT to manage your condition (whichever diagnosis you were given, means nothing ground breaking), what you need to do is to identify what it is in your environment that is triggering your symptoms & eliminate this trigger

I propose that you instead focus on WHAT makes YOU feel good when YOU eat it, do it, think it.
But more importantly, WHAT makes YOU feel bad, feel sick, feel anxious, feel depressed, feel pain after YOU eat it, drink it, do it & eliminate those from your environment.

Biological compass

Use your biological compass, it has two directions, either 'I feel good' or 'I feel crap'.

This will lead you to health, regardless of a string of letters bundled together by a physician that you paid probably thousands of dollars to determine that you’re suffering from 'We’ve got no hecking idea’ syndrome.
Because at this stage, that is all you have, a fancy name for your symptoms that you paid top dollar for. And you’re still sick, aren’t you?

As long as you keep popping pain meds & antidepressants, yet do absolutely nothing else for yourself to identify WHAT it is that you’re putting into your body that is causing a reaction & ELIMINATE it from your environment (stop eating/drinking it), you will remain sick & disabled & you will continue to physically deteriorate. Full stop.

It's about YOU & it's up to YOU to take control of your health.

To put it straight, as long as you keep eating gluten as a celiac, you’ll remain sick & disabled, you SILLY YAK.

Dee

xx