Autoimmune conditions and social media narriative

[chirpybird87]

I’m a tiktok and instagram user, and autoimmune content come up for me sometimes, probably due to having rheumatoid arthritis myself. I’m seeing more and more content saying things like “I have 5 friends with autoimmune conditions, and the one thing they have in common is that they’ve experienced trauma”. I’m getting really concerned that this type of narriative is developing, because conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis has nothing to do with childhood trauma and mental health illnesses…! Has anyone else seen these videos?!

I have graves disease and flare ups are often caused by stress. Prolonged stress increases cortisol and weakens the immune systems ability to regulate itself.

Adverse childhood experiences are linked with several negative health outcomes in adulthood including autoimmunity. I searched for ‘childhood adversity and autoimmunity’ and found lots of articles including this https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3318917/

I got MS 6 months after losing a pregnancy. I was so so devastated and tearful about the pregnancy. Struggled to sleep and then I got severe MS.

Several autoimmune diseases here as well as Ank Spond and especially Fibromyalgia. The latter being a firm belief my Rheumy thinking is a knock-on effect due to my Complex-PTSD of 50+ years of financial, emotional and physiological and physical abuse.

I absolutely cannot argue against the link between autoimmune conditions and trauma.