Autoimmune disease occurs when, for some reason, the body attacks its own healthy tissue, turning on the very thing it was supposed to protect.
Even the term "Autoimmune disease" may be imprecise: we don't know in every case whether autoimmune dysfunction is the cause of the disease, rather than, say, a consequence.
Thyroid patients tend to be preoccupied with antibodies, but Rose, who now runs the Center for Autoimmune Disease Research at Johns Hopkins, notes that one culprit in Hashimoto's might be the T-lymphocyte-you could have a low antibody count and still be quite sick, or a high antibody count and feel fine.
The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association estimates that as many as fifty million Americans suffer from autoimmunity, which makes it one of the most prevalent categories of disease, ahead of cancer.
A lot of people with autoimmune diseases would like to see the establishment of clinical autoimmune centers, where a single doctor would coördinate and oversee a patient's care, as at a cancer center.
A common symptom of autoimmune diseases is debilitating fatigue.
The real coming to terms with autoimmune disease is recognizing that you are sick, that the sickness will come and go, and that it is often not the kind of sick you can conquer.