Autoimmune

Why Some People Are More Prone Autoimmune Disease?

Why do only some people get autoimmune disease and not the others? I mean, if we have a look in America for example, I think it’s around 24 million people currently living now in the United States, which is I think, what, 7%, 8%, of the population, have autoimmunity.

If you look in Australia and New Zealand, it’s quite similar sort of statistics. So, but globally there’s a rise in autoimmunity. They’re noticing a certain shift. If you have a look at research done by John Hopkins, Mayo, many other major institutions, they’ll all tell that autoimmune disease is going up and up and up. But why the hell is it happening? Why just some people getting it and not the bulk?

Well, that’s a really interesting question. But we do know that women tend to get whacked more with autoimmunity than men do. So, is it a hormonal thing? Experts disagree on that too. But what a lot of people agree on, a couple of things. One is the hygiene hypothesis, because everyone’s so anally clean these days that it’s really hard for our own bacteria to thrive in a condition where we keep wiping our faces and hands down every five minutes with these wet wipes and spray chemicals all around the house. So, that’s one hypothesis.

But the other one, which to me is more plausible, is people are traveling around the globe a lot more. There’s many more people, there are many more chemicals, many more foods. So we’re getting an increasing exposure to an increasing population base.

Other Related Questions

But, still, not everyone is copping autoimmune disease. And I believe it’s got a lot to do with the microbiome with our gut and with our stress. Those are the two key things I’ll talk about, which I believe are the two main drivers behind autoimmunity, is a weak microbiome and high cortisol levels.

And I believe, in my opinion, from where I’m sitting, why some people get it and others don’t, is because some people are far more prone to the effects of stress and also have a much easily upset gut because they have a more narrowly defined band of bacteria in their gut, so their resilient is not so good. So they can flip into an autoimmune state much faster than other people can.

When you have a very diverse microbiome, many more species, you have a greater chance, I believe, of a stronger gut immune health, less ability for things to be pushed around in there, less ability to develop larger biofilms of bad bacteria and yeasts.

So if you keep the bad guys at bay, keep the good ones humming along nicely, and keep the balance well, really established, and as we know, the chunk of the immune system resides in the small intestine. So if we keep the gut in great shape, it reduces our ability to have, to develop autoimmune disease.

Because many people who develop autoimmune disease, from my experience, from my clinical experience, were high-stress people, poor lifestyles, not so good food. And we see that with women of childbearing age. We particularly see that a lot, high stress.

We’ll talk more about that later, but this is why I believe some people cop it more than others. It’s the stress angle and the poor microbiome angle.