The 5 Biggest Challenges I See for Patients with Autoimmunity in Clinic.
The biggest challenge I see in clinic for people with Autoimmunity, or unexplained Chronic Illness or symptoms are:
They aren’t getting answers from conventional medicine.
They lack a true understanding of autoimmunity and the mechanisms that underpin that.
Lack of understanding of the main triggers of autoimmunity.
They don’t understand that an autoimmune diet plan you read on the internet is not personalised to you and autoimmune disease is different in everyone, or that doing one thing is never going to be enough to get the results you want.
They lack knowledge of how to effectively deal with flare ups, relapses or periods of remission.
NO. 1
Not getting the answer from conventional medicine It’s important to understand the role of conventional medicine in your care and when it’s necessary to access that. It’s equally important to understand the limitations that the healthcare system faces. There may be times such as if you are having a relapse when it’s important to see your consultant again and get any necessary tests or scans to see what is going on. Or to follow up on medication and monitor its progress. We also need to understand the limitations though. Autoimmunity is not being identified quickly enough, primarily because we don’t have specialists in autoimmune disease. There are for example no autoimmunologists. You will see a doctor specialised in a body part instead i.e. a rheumatologist, neurologist or gastroenterologist. But in terms of finding out what is wrong you can’t visit an autoimmunologist. There is also a lack of doctors who have specialist training in autoimmune diseases. So, we need to advocate for ourselves, manage our own healthcare.
NO. 2
Lack of understanding around autoimmunity and immunology. Even people with autoimmune disease still often describe autoimmunity to me as ‘my body is attacking itself’. Whilst this isn’t wrong it is also only part of the picture and generally the other parts go by unknown. If you don’t have an understanding of basic immunology or autoimmunity it’s impossible for you to play an active part in your healthcare. You need to have an understanding of the inflammatory processes that occur, this systemic inflammatory reaction that we see causes changes to the immune system which you also need to understand. It’s why I take the time to teach this at the beginning of the chronically well course before we deep dive into making changes.
NO.3
This follows on to not knowing all the main triggers of autoimmunity. Working with autoimmunity or unexplained symptoms is like being a detective. You have to know all the different things that are going on in order to be able to piece together the full puzzle. You can’t just look at one part of the puzzle, this will only get you so far and will never get you the answers you are looking for. Removing gluten from the diet may be one part of the puzzle (it may not) but it certainly isn’t the whole picture. There is no one change you can do to fix everything. You need to understand all the different triggers from diet to sleep, movement, stress, infection, chemical sensitivity and how all of these relate to your case individually. We work through the different triggers on the chronically well course.
NO. 4
Which leads me to non personalised diet plans for autoimmunity. I’m sure you have read online about various diet plans that work for autoimmunity, whether it is by a particular person or is something like the paleo or keto diet. What I can tell you now is that any way you work with me in the future will never be an off the shelf diet plan. Why? Because what we need to understand about diet and autoimmunity is that it must be personalised, we are all different, there are more than 100 autoimmune diseases, how can you deal with all of that the same way? Take just one disease and within that people will have all different underlying imbalances needing different management. Of course, some things overlap and will apply to most people, but the fact is personalisation is the key.
NO. 5
Finally, we need to have plans in place not just for day-to-day life, but for the different stages you go through with autoimmunity, for example you may completely change your plan when you go from remission to a flare up and this may change again if you were in a relapse. Autoimmunity is not curable, but we can manage it, the goal is to keep you in remission periods for longer. Understanding this process and how you will change your actions are vital to success.
Which number or numbers can you relate to?
If you can see yourself in this, if you feel that enough is enough and you are ready to eat for health and live optimally well then book your Functional Health Assessment now!