Depression As Auto-immune Disease

There are a certain number of patients who come to me suffering from autoimmune disease. Yes, more than one.

Sometimes Lupus or Celiac disease or rheumatoid arthritis or such.

Often they get through life dragging along with them unidentified articular pains, which are themselves probably an unidentified autoimmune illness.

Although these patients are somewhat anxious, depression is stronger and more severe.

Nobody knows the real cause of auto-immune disease. When a bacteria or a virus invades your body, it seems to make some sort of cosmic sense that the body “reacts” to it. But, although there are many theories as to why the body stops “recognizing” part of itself and starts reacting to it as if it were foreign to the body.

What the insurance companies seem to be doing, according to my dear patients, is sending people who seem to have autoimmune diseases to rheumatologists. I think this is because there are some drugs that work on rheumatoid arthritis, and they dish them out.

I have nothing against rheumatologists. I just don’t think they have excessive in-depth training in the function of the immune system. One thing I can say for sure. None of the people I have seen with autoimmune problems have reported getting significantly better under the care of rheumatologists. I do not know (as far as I can tell) the female physician who wrote this article. I did, however follow the lectures needed to qualify as a “functional medicine” doctor. I even have the certificate to hang on my wall

The basic idea is to go back to the science, find out what is wrong with the body that causes the illness, and to fix it as best you can. I am talking about things like removing exposure to external toxins, nutrition, and the like. NOTE WELL: It is not always a prescription drug.

I hear myself say very often, on days that I see patients, “There is no difference between regular or mainstream medicine and what they call “alternative” medicine. There is just medicine that works and medicine that does not.

The therapies suggested in the article linked to at the beginning of this one, there are a number of possible measures that may indeed be helpful in situations where an autoimmune illness involved.

Sometimes, when I give people suggestions for ways they can improve their life and health they find reasons not to follow my instructions.

My treatments involve “change,” and change is hard, or may be perceived as expensive/ Whatever. I am always perfectly honest about the advantages and risks of any treatment I offer, and I let my patients make their own decisions. I have had positive results (and no bad side effects) using low dose naltrexone on patients with multiple immune problems.

The story of its development and increasing use for increasing diagnoses. In other countries, of course.

I have a feeling one of these days I will tell you more about this.

So much is happening around us that can impact on human well-being. I tell you as much as I can as fast as I can.

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You are precious to me.

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