Hi! I'm Stelios Pantazis.
I'm a doctor and I specialize in
medical nutrition and metabolic disorders.
Today, we're talking about a study
that suggests that stress
is associated with the appearance
of an autoimmune disease.
I'll also suggest solutions
to deal with stress,
either you suffer from
an autoimmune disease or not.
Autoimmune diseases are characterized
by the immunological attack of the body
against its own tissues.
The attack results
in the destruction of the tissues,
which may happen quickly,
so if significant tissues are destroyed,
such as the heart, it will lead
to death within a few hours.
Fortunately, this happens very rarely.
More often, the attack destroys
less significant tissues
and it results to the reduction
of the patient's quality of life
rather than death.
When I studied medicine,
the frequency of autoimmune diseases
used to be limited.
Namely, these were diseases
that we rarely heard of.
Later, we saw their frequency
increasing significantly.
There were various reasons
that led to the increase.
First of all, diseases the cause of which
was not known in the past
were later classified as autoimmune.
For example, when I studied medicine,
many people suffered from hypothyroidism,
but the cause of the thyroid's
destruction was not known.
In many of these cases, it was later proven
that there had been
an autoimmune destruction of the gland,
for example, due to Hashimoto's disease.
Similarly, when I studied medicine, psoriasis
was not considered an autoimmune disease.
Now, most experts believe that this disease
is largely autoimmune.
Another reason is that now most people
undergo regular examinations
and the results show
positive autoimmune antibodies.
Therefore, some forms of inconvenience
that we didn't use to examine further
are now known to be associated
with autoimmune processes.
It is estimated that a large part
of the population
suffers from some autoimmune disease,
although, in most cases, the symptoms
are non-existent, very few or insignificant,
fortunately.
Of course, it is believed that an important
reason why autoimmune diseases have increased
is our way of life,
namely diet and stress, which have changed
a lot in the last decades.
Today, we're talking about stress and
its association with autoimmune diseases.
A study has been recently published
that examined the possibility of being
diagnosed with an autoimmune disease
one year after some psychiatric diagnosis.
Over 330,000 people participated
in the study.
Approximately 1/3 of them had been
diagnosed with some mental illness,
1/3 of them were a random sample
of a similar population
that had not been diagnosed,
and the remaining 1/3 of them were
siblings of those that had been diagnosed.
The study has shown that the people
diagnosed with some mental illness
then suffered from an autoimmune disease
approximately 40-50% more often
than the two control groups.
The result is significant
and rather reliable,
because the study had a large number
of participants and two control groups,
which increases its reliability
and significance.
On the other hand, such studies
cannot established causality,
namely it doesn't prove that stress
causes autoimmune diseases.
For example, there may be something else
that better explains the results.
For example, people that undergo some stress
smoke more,
which increases the risk
of autoimmune diseases.
What would increase the possibility that
stress increases the risk
of autoimmune diseases
would be studies that show that the risk
of outbreaks of an autoimmune disease
reduces when the patients
takes some antidepressant.
For example, we would have to find
a group of people
suffering from some autoimmune disease,
for example multiple sclerosis,
we would give half of them antidepressants,
and a placebo to the rest of them,
and, after 12 months, we would see if
the participants that took antidepressants
had fewer outbreaks.
Fortunately, such studies
have been carried out
and they have shown that antidepressants
reduce the outbreaks
in some autoimmune diseases,
such as multiple sclerosis.
This is why multiple sclerosis patients
often take antidepressants.
Therefore, the association between stress
and autoimmune diseases is evident here too.
What can you do to reduce stress?
For example, if you have
a parent with an autoimmune disease
and you want to reduce the risk
of suffering from an autoimmune disease too,
by reducing stress, what can you do?
This is the great adventure of our lives.
Stress management.
There are a lot of ways to deal with stress,
because there are a lot of people.
There's no unique solution for everyone.
You can combine many things,
in order to control stress.
For example, exercise reduces stress.
Particularly the participation
in exercise groups
or dance classes. They help a lot.
Healthy diet also reduces stress.
This is one more reason
to follow a healthy diet.
Негізгі бет Autoimmune diseases: the effect of stress
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