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Comment by moneywoes | Hacker News Reader

As someone with an autoimmune disease, is there anything I can do to prevent getting more? Iirc having one is a risk factor for others

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I'm afraid this is out of my scope of understanding. Once the immune system determines something is non-self, the immune system can often self-propagate the response. It eventually enters a tolerance phase where it aims to just 'control' the threat.

There are some known modulators of the immune system, but the medical forms can be especially blunt tools (i.e. steroids). Locally directed treatment is better, and maybe in the future we'll have specially crafted cells that can inhibit a specific response for particular antigens.

There is a long and slightly-controversial link between stress (and lots of other environmental factors) affecting the immune system. I'm not familiar with the literature.

I recently learned (also from HN) that wild-type measles can often destroy your bodies pre-existing immunities to most past threats. I wonder if we will someday be able to trigger a similar effect with a synthetic virus, wiping the immune memory, then re-vaccinate to get back immunity afterwards. But it is practically just science fiction stuff now, as far as I know.

I had Ulcerative colitis for 20 years and managed to get rid of it by changing the diet. I used the carnivore diet, ie eat mostly meat, egg, fish (animal products). Cutting out processed foods, sugar (only 70% dark chocolate) and seed oils. I would recommend trying it for a couple of months and see if it helps, and if you do not notice any difference you have not lost anything. I lost 10% of my body weight without ever being hungry so that might be a nice side effect also.

To be absolutely fair to readers: Please speak to your doctor before deciding on a diet to "cure" an illness, especially since fatty foods can trigger attacks for some folks. Ulcerative colitis has no actual cure, and this is one way one person has managed it a bit better. It might not be recommended for you.

(Sorry, i'm in this thread because I have MS, and there are lots of scam diets claiming to cure it. They don't - at all. They mostly just make folks feel like they have control).

Crohn's sufferer here. I have lost track of the times people have said "I tried this diet, and then my Crohns / UC went away".. and then some time later their symptoms reappeared. My understanding (via own reading and discussion with my doctor) is that there is just as much evidence against as for a meat-based diet .... or any kind of diet.

As my specialist put it "if there was a common diet that cured people, we would know about it already". Anecdotally one never knows if their UC/Crohn's improves because of their diet or it's just part of the ups and downs of those diseases.

That said, I'm happy in general if I hear a fellow UC / Crohn's sufferer seems to have found something that works for them, especially something that is better for you than steroids and other treatments with severe side-effects.

Yeah, it's also my take that one should be careful correlating ups and downs to things eaten -- it might as well be stress or just bad luck.

That said, if I can get some placebo effect benefits from believing that reducing processed food helps, it might be worth doing -- if nothing else it reduces cancer risks :)

Well actually Dr. Borody discovered a treatment for Crohn that consists of long term abx. He says there are slow growing bacteria that causes it. https://youtu.be/crm4pKz6X2M

He is the inventor of the triple abx therapy for H.pilory so I would listen to what he says.

Carnivore diet seems like a perfect excuse for people who don't want to eat their veggies. If you could provide any proven benefits of this diet that other diets don't provide, I'll change my mind.

As someone with an autoimmune disease I can say that this book https://books.google.it/books/about/An_Epidemic_of_Absence.h... Really helped me understand the complexity of what we are talking about. By the way he mention epstein Barr too, it seems that When you are infected is very important.

The prevalence of autoimmune diseases went up during a particular period of time while hygiene increased while other factors went missing that seems important for the regulation of our immune system.

[this is not medical advice] Some things that may modulate the immune system are: vitamin D3, intestinal worms, exercise, diet / fasting, and gradual stimulation of the immune response ("desensitisation").

Propolis and Cinnamomum verum are great immunomodulators for autoimmune diseases. Echinacea is sold as an immune system booster, and it is a firm nope.

Off-topic: interesting that we often see IANAL, but very rarely IANAD (I am not a doctor) around here. Either there's a lot of doctors here, or people are more comfortable giving medical than legal advice, which is weird, as medical advice can have very serious consequences.

I think it's just default recognised that you're not getting a doctor's medical advice, particularly not for you, through an internet forum. So, someone would have to tell you they are a doctor, and you'd still not get their medical advice unless you had a consultation with them. That last bit being similar to lawyers reminding people "IAAL but I'm not your lawyer".

Nope. Since we aren't certain what causes most things, we can't really prevent them. (This research isn't saying they know what causes MS, to be clear).

Realistically, the best thing you can do is basic health stuff. Get activity, eat a variety of healthy foods, and so on. As you can, anyway. Mostly because this stuff improves your outcome if you happen to get another (and probably helps with the one you have - I have MS, and this basic stuff tends to help outcomes)

Helminth therapy is supposed to help moderate it. I did it to get a handle on my asthma and allergies and it worked quite well. There's various websites and support groups which detail the process and why it works etc.

There's a bit of squick factor to get over but it is worth it for the relief.

https://helminthictherapywiki.org/wiki/index.php/Helminthic_...

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