Why Autoimmune Disease Affects Your Career

Here is a useful clinical analogy that can have great impact on your professional and personal life.

Did you know that there are more people diagnosed with an autoimmune illness than cancer and heart disease combined? That is startling given the numbers of people with each of those ailments.

Unline cancer and heart disease, though, autoimmune disease tends to cause much more daily morbidity and distress. And unfortunately for all of us, autoimmune disease is rapidly on the rise with new cases diagnosed every single year.

To refresh your memory, autoimmune disease takes the shape in many forms: MS, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, Celiac, Type 1 Diabetes, Psoriasis, Lupus, Sjogrens, Scleroderma, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Crohn's Disease are just a few of the top autoimmune diseases. Each of these carry their own unique challenges for patients, but each is similar in what is the root cause.

In my view, autoimmune illness represents a disordered and misbehaving immune system--an immune system that is in haywire. Under normal conditions, our immune system identifies vialbe vs. dead tissue and removes the cell turnover from our bodies so that new cell growth can occur.

When a patient has an autoimmune illness, their immune system has misfired (for reasons we do not fully understand) and now starts its assault on viable tissue. In general, this cascade of events takes place due to a "perfect storm" that arises. Here is my simplistic model:

1. Over time there is mismanagement of cortisol due to

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