When I was in my mid 20’s I was diagnosed with Hashimotos, one of the most common autoimmune diseases, especially for women. I soon learned that my family was riddled with autoimmune diseases: diabetes, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and lots of Hashimotos. I was lucky to have been in naturopathic school at the time. I was encouraged to look at different avenues for treating the underlying autoimmunity, rather than just treating the symptom. However, even amongst the naturopaths I saw at the school clinic, there was contention on the best way to treat my disease. The more I learn about autoimmune disease, the less surprising I find this. Treating autoimmune disease if very hard, and it is very confusing.
I think it is for this reason that I never considered myself an expert in autoimmune disease for my first decade or so of practice. I helped hundreds of patients with these conditions, and continued to study autoimmunity through advanced training, but I never really felt like I had the answer to the puzzle.
I’m embarrassed to say that it wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized the obvious. There is no answer. At least not in the way I was searching for. I had been thinking about bodies with autoimmune diseases as puzzles that could be solved if I just found the missing piece. This is of course a very reductionist way of thinking about healing. We are not puzzles to be solved or machines to be fixed. Our bodies are gardens, or ecosystems, and health is cultivated by bringing the different components into balance.
This is a fundamental concept in traditional Chinese medicine as well as 5 element acupuncture. When the plants in your garden aren’t growing well, you rarely find a single simple answer. Instead, you bring balance to your garden. You look at the soil. You look the composition of plants. You look at the water, the drainage. You adjust it all to work in harmony. Next year when weather is different you do something new. A garden needs constant tending so that all the pieces can work together in service to the beauty that is there. In order to give a garden needs to be loved.
When I started viewing healing through this lens, everything fell into place. There is no one right way to treat an autoimmune condition. Two people with the same diagnosis may have vastly different ecosystems. Treatment approaches need to be tailored to the individual, or they are unlikely to work. For example, some people need to start by working on gut health. For others, detoxification or infections need to be addressed first. Some people will not begin to heal until they are sleeping better.
Besides a personal interest in autoimmunity, I like treating these conditions because integrative medicine can make a tremendous difference! Conventional medicine honestly doesn’t have a ton to offer the autoimmune patient. There are medications that can block parts of the immune response, but these come with steep side effects such as making you more susceptible to infections. These medications save lives and can prevent significant disfunction. However, they work best in conjunction with other therapies. If you catch the autoimmune disease early enough in the process, you may be able to avoid or delay needing them. Wherever you are in you autoimmune process, there is a place where integrative medicine can help.
I hope that this blog can provide you with some places to get started on your road to healing. In the upcoming entries (and some of the earlier ones as well) I am going to go over some of the basic strategies for treating autoimmunity, and ways that you can customize them to fit your individual situation. This is, of course, not meant to replace your medical care. If you have an autoimmune disease you should be under the care of a qualified medical practitioner, and discuss all treatment strategies with them.
