Auto immune diseases increasing.

[SingingKettles]

I hear a lot more about this these days, and have a few friends who suffer from one or a combined set of issues.
I am in my early 50's, but can't recall hardly anyone I knew when young to have one, apart from an older man with MS. Probably just my own experience.

However, google tells me they have indeed increased over the years and it is suspected that genetics and environmental factors are responsible. I am not a scientist (!) but wonder how would they increase genetically so quickly?

Or is it similar to autism awareness: that it was there before but no one acknowledged it?
The prevalence in women is supposed to be over 78%!!

I am aware of only one older lady with RA (in her 70's now and fit as a fiddle), who has had it since her teens.

Any ideas why it might have become more common? And if so, since it largely impacts women, this is quite concerning.

My mother has 3 autoimmune diseases. In the old days she would have died in childbirth due to complications but survived due to modern medicine. Both my brother and I have autoimmune diseases - neither of us should be alive. Nature weeds out bad genes but modern medicine can interrupt this. Result is more people with autoimmune diseases. Also more conditions are recognised now for what they are.

They run in my family. Arthritis, IBD, Endometriosis, even Bechet's.

I'm sorry to hear that, that's one heck of a lot to deal with.

if people did die earlier in the past, what would it have been put down to?

Oh, forgot to add, MS. Mostly the women in my family. My DB has Behçet's.

I think there’s an element of better understanding/diagnosis methods and I think part of what you’re observing is simply that. Many autoimmune diseases are able to be managed much better these days and it’s recognised that early symptoms are a crucial part of that.

if you also take into account other illnesses/injuries that were more likely to kill you before an autoimmune disease was recognised that’ll be a factor.

there’s lots of factors but I suspect better diagnosis is a big one.

I have SLE. Caused by numerous blood transfusions during my first child’s birth.

I don’t think it’s as simple as “people with these conditions would have died & not had kids previously but now they survive and pass on the genes”.

My view (non science based) is there is something environmental triggering these conditions, combined perhaps with a genetic susceptibility. Allergies are also an autoimmune condition and they have increased hugely, including in families with no or little history.

Perhaps our world is too clean and our immune systems are looking for something to fight? Perhaps additives in diet or microplastics are triggering an immune response? Perhaps poor microbiome and leaky gut…? Who knows. Maybe we will know one day. I don’t think it’s a simple answer.

I see far more women online with AI issues, usually quite young. Perhaps it is far more noticeable due to the internet.
I even heard that kidney stones are becoming more and more common in younger people and kids.

Interesting, and yes, it is so complex, and a good deal of info overlaps, it's quite a dense web of stuff.

I suppose it feels more likely to be increasing (to my own mind) since of all the young and middle aged women I have known throughout my life, hardly any one of them had an auto immune illness. Now, it's different. I have at least 3 colleagues with several and all are under 40.

I wish there were more answers.

There is a lot of evidence linking auto immune diseases to increased intestinal permeability caused by a poor diet high in preservatives and emulsifiers (which kill off gut bacteria that protect the lining of the gut).

In addition the lack of fibre in modern diets means that the bacteria will feed off the gut lining rather than off the fibre which increases the likelihood of irritants passing through the barrier into the bloodstream. These increase inflammation and are linked to the increase in autoimmunity in the population.

Populations which do not eat the modern western diet do not generally suffer from autoimmune diseases.

Diet is something we can control to some extent, but environmental factors are much more worrying.

They run in my family too. I have AS. I also have POTs and EDS and there’s talk now that these have an autoimmune element.

and Dd has about 4, coeliac, endometriosis, fibromyalgia, EDs and PoTS. They are suspecting lupus with her too now.

my dad had Wegners.

Dh (obv not a blood relation) has bullous pemphigoid

SIL has coeliac disease and also hasimotos

Oh and to top it off my cat has bullous pemphigoid and is also on prednisone 🤣

Aren't there microplastics everywhere now? In water, on land, etc? That can't be helping.

That is fascinating. Is there a particular type of fibre to eat and can it be reversed?

Things like heart attacks, cardiomyopathy, strokes, kidney failure, failure to thrive, severe infection (cytokine storms), any number of diseases that can be vaccinated against now, cancers (esp multiple myeloma according to my rheumatologist) and by their own hand (inflammation affects mood completely independently of emotional effects of being in pain).

It's just that the autoimmune diseases are being recognised as being the underlying cause more often now.

I had an autoimmune disease diagnosed in the 1980s (Adult onset Stills disease) and my mum had Sjoegrens diagnosed a few years later. I think there were just a load of hoops to jump through to be diagnosed in that era and there is better understanding of the diseases today. I expect further back they wouldn’t be diagnosed as auto immune at all.