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When Our Bodies Betray Us

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve had a trigger-happy immune system, blasting away at benign interlopers, mistaking them for enemy invaders — and making me miserable in the process. So grade-school field trips to the family farm with all the hay and animal dander and grass pollens became a descent into hell; pretty plum blossoms in the spring were a warning sign of the itchy red eyes, blocked nasal passages, hives and asthma attacks to come.

Then this past year, when I had a scare with lupus (an initial test indicated I had lupus but many follow-up tests found no signs), a disease that can attack healthy body tissue and organs, I truly began to understand the nature of autoimmune disorders. My off-the-map allergies, like lupus, are the result of an out-of-control immune system, one that can’t tell the difference between the good guys and the bad. Normally the immune system’s army of white blood cells helps protect the body from harmful substances, called antigens: bacteria, viruses, toxins, cancer cells, and foreign blood or tissues from another person or species. But in people with an autoimmune disorder, the immune system mistakes healthy body tissue for antigens. The response is a hypersensitivity reaction. In allergies, the immune system reacts to pollens and other substances that would normally be harmless.

In this issue, Eileen Nicol explores the variety of autoimmune diseases and poses a key question: Why are women so much more prone to these dehabilitating and sometimes fatal diseases? Roughly 20 percent of Americans suffer from an autoimmune disorder, and three-quarters of them are women. For some of the diseases, women outnumber men 10 to 1. Autoimmune diseases are one of the 10 leading causes of death among U.S. women age 65 and younger. And here in the Northwest, women seem to be even more at risk, particularly for multiple sclerosis.

Because of the high incidence of autoimmune disease and the fact that symptoms can resemble those of other illnesses, making it difficult for doctors to diagnose, it’s important for women to be persistent with their health care providers in getting to the root of their problems. As author Mary J. Shomon says in Living Well with Autoimmune Disease: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Tell You . . . That You Need to Know, “…there are answers. You just aren’t likely to hear them from the typical HMO doctor, who may not even recognize or easily diagnose many autoimmune conditions, much less know how to treat them — particularly given the constraints of the typical HMO-mandated “15-minute-or-less appointment.”

As with health care in general, we have to be our own best advocates. We have to push for tests our doctors may not think are necessary, pester our insurance companies, try alternative practitioners . . . In short, we need to do whatever we can to truly understand what’s causing our severe pain or discomfort, our fatigue, our inability to deal with just the normal daily demands of our lives. How else can we work toward a cure or relieve the symptoms? For some of us, simply changing our diets can go a long way toward making us feel better. For others, it’s more complex. In my case, a combination of factors have made me feel a lot healthier: minor house remodeling (removing carpet and installing a good air filter and whole-house dehumidifier) and some amazing vitamin therapy and naturopathic remedies, along with regular exercise, a basically healthy diet, and the antihistamine I’ve always taken.

The answers are there; we just need to find them. And sharing what we learn with other women helps. That’s why this magazine is so important to me, and I’m honored to celebrate our third anniversary this October — thanks to our readers, advertisers and staff.

Here’s to your health,

Karen Matthee
Editor & Co-Founder

©October 2007 Caliope Publishing Company