Autoimmune Inflammation: The Silent Enemy Unveiled

Have you ever awoken in the morning with aches and pains so intense that it feels as though a donkey kicked you? The possibility of a severe illness is scary, so we choose to overlook symptoms and attribute them to aging instead.

Pause here for a moment, and ponder on whether pain in our twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, or even sixties is normal. Is aging causing the body to degenerate, or is there an external factor at play?

The war we wage daily is against a surge of inflammation. Think of the term inflammation, and it conjures up an image of a red, warm, swollen area caused by an infection.

Yes, that is true. Infection causes inflammation, but is not the only cause.

The silent enemy

Autoimmune inflammation is a silent enemy that goes unnoticed, making us feel its presence as it wreaks havoc on our bodies. Living with and managing an autoimmune disease is a constant war that needs to be fought. Identifying the enemy and understanding its nature are crucial first steps in preparing for this battle.

Let’s backtrack and examine autoimmune inflammation.

No one size fits all here. We are all unique individuals, and our bodies’ response to when being under attack will differ. Imagine three people with a brick, ready to cross the road and stack it. A car comes tearing around the bend and drives over their feet. One person might just stare in shocked horror, another might cry out in pain, crouching down to massage their injured feet, while the other person might hurl the brick at the car, swearing at the top of their voice.

Can you see the picture here? The same situation, the same trigger, but different responses - that is how the body in different people responds to autoimmune.

So what does autoimmune inflammation feel like? Symptoms can vary - you may experience one, many, or all at any time. The important factor is to identify when your body is under attack so that you can start fighting the silent enemy before it conquers and destroys your body.

Differentiating autoimmune from disease is necessary to grasp its complexity.

The battle

Imagine a trench dividing two armies. On one side of the trench, we have army A protecting its land. On the other side, we have army B ready to invade and conquer the land of army A. On a full moon night, army B (disease pathogens) crosses the trench, but army A (the body) sees them coming because of the bright moonlight and defends itself–that is infection and during this stage while our body is fighting this invasion we will have fever and pain and other unpleasant symptoms.

Now imagine as the battle erupts, a massive cloud covers the moon, plunging the landscape into darkness. Army B, armed with night vision, continues to fight army A. Army A does not own such equipment and fights on in the darkness. Because army A can’t see who it’s attacking, and who is attacking it, it ends up killing the members of its own army–that is autoimmune.

Autoimmune, like this metaphor, is when the body attacks its own cells.

How does this inflammation manifest in our body?

Symptoms of autoimmune

Do you ever wake up in the morning with aching hands, making you wonder if you might have arthritis? Or your muscles are so stiff it feels like you had an intense workout at the gym? How about a burning sensation under your feet or in the palm of your hands, tinnitus, pitting of thumb nails? Does your skin feel like it’s sunburned even though you haven’t been in the sun? The skin is so sensitive that labels on clothes are scratchy, bra straps feel like they are digging into your skin. How about extreme tiredness where you feel too exhausted to breathe? Unexplained rashes and mouth ulcers or blood blisters that form for no reason on the insides of your cheeks. Bloating, heartburn? You can add so many more symptoms to this list.

As a sufferer from an autoimmune disease we can understand that it’s not old age stealing our joy, but inflammation related to our autoimmune condition.

Now that we have a basic understanding of what an autoimmune disease is, it’s time to develop our night vision to spot the enemy lurking before us and take action against it.

**The next health blog will focus on the silent enemy, revealing its effects on our bodies and providing strategies to combat it.