To follow-up from the last video, there’s still a lot of expressed confusion about autoimmune disease. In this short video, you’ll discover some interesting facts about autoimmune diseases — facts that you likely may have never heard from your doctor. You’ll learn what medicine and scientists have discovered, as well as all of the unknowns that still surround this disease category.
Unusual Facts About Autoimmune Diseases
Because of the seriousness of the many diseases that comprise autoimmune disorders, researchers have accumulated an impressive base of scientific studies that looked at the different aspects of autoimmune diseases. The result of all of these efforts was a compilation of data which provided very intriguing and unusual facts about the demographics and occurrence of autoimmune disorders. For instance, more than 250 million people in the United States are diagnosed yearly with one of 40 different autoimmune disorders. Intriguingly, more women than men are afflicted and the difference is quite substantial, reaching almost 300%. Practically one in every 30 Americans will have an autoimmune disorder and, by the end of 2010, over 15 million suffer from autoimmune diseases.
What is even more unusual about autoimmune disorders is the fact that the cases increase substantially the farther you go from the equator. In fact, this phenomenon has led some researchers to theorize that autoimmune disorders had something to do with the magnetic poles. However, subsequent research has proven that this is not the case. This is not to mean that autoimmune diseases no longer increase as a result of the locations distance from the equator. On the contrary, past and present research have shown conclusively that an autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis is more than 100 times more prevalent near the North Pole as compared to places near the equator. The exact reason why this is true is not fully understood.
One of the most unusual and alarming facts that have been discovered about autoimmune disorders is that they tend to afflict a specific type of person. Researchers saw that in an overwhelming number of cases, a person with one type of autoimmune disease, was likely to have one or more of the other autoimmune disorders. Clearly, there were certain factors existing in that person which made them susceptible to autoimmune diseases.
After much research, scientists have now pinpointed sunlight exposure, or lack of it, as a predisposing factor in autoimmune disease. This link has led to both dairy consumption and saturated fat intake as factors in multiple sclerosis. This correlation becomes increasingly clear when viewed in the light of sunlight exposure being a prime factor in causing the disease. In the places farther from the equator, people receive little sunlight, which leads to a vitamin D deficiency. When studies showed that autoimmune disorders were less common in coastal areas, researchers realized that this may have been due to the several factors including: omega-3 consumption (from eating fish), relatively low dairy consumption and relatively low saturated fat consumption. The animal protein in milk and saturated fat is known to inhibit the activation of vitamin D. So, it is theorized that a diet higher in animal protein, milk and saturated fat – irregardless of how much sunlight exposure is present – may indeed lead to deficiency of vitamin D. This vitamin D deficiency is now known to be a primary causative factor in autoimmune disorders. So, the link of autoimmune disorders and diet has been confirmed.
With significant research underway, it is promising that the link of diet to autoimmune disorders can be explored much further. Early research has already demonstrated that optimal diets can indeed slow down the autoimmune diseases. My hope is that with further research, we can actually ‘crack the code’ and actually determine how to prevent autoimmune disease entirely!
