The Long Haul: Part 6

Covid and Autoimmune Disease

Autoimmune disease following Covid is not out of the norm. However, autoimmune disease following ANY viral infection is not out of the norm.

For the sake of this post, we will focus on Covid induced autoimmune disease.

But first we must define what autoimmune disease is: When our immune systems get confused and attack our own tissues, that’s autoimmune disease.

Autoimmune disease is not necessarily the immunocompromised state that so many who struggle with it try to claim it is. Sure, it makes your immune system act “weird” and can even burn it out a little, but that doesn’t mean your fate is to live as an immunocompromised individual. I certainly don’t and I’ve got a variety of AI conditions I could claim. Much of HOW autoimmune disease behaves in the body is up to the individual’s diet and lifestyle.

AI disease can happen for a variety of reasons such as hormonal fluxes, leaky gut, trauma, poor nutrition, infections and more.

Bottom line: once the genes are turned on that induce the autoimmune state, they are ON. We can’t turn them off like a light switch. But we CAN definitely modulate our immune responses through lifestyle, nutrition and exercise behaviors.

And if you find yourself with autoimmune disease, welcome to the club! It’s increasingly becoming more and more common in this highly polluted and nutritionally void world of ours. In fact, in 2017 the NIH predicted that up to 23.5 million Americans (more than seven percent of the population) suffer from an autoimmune disease, and rising.

What’s Covid’s role in all of this?

SARS COV2 can seemingly mess up immune “self-tolerance” as well as trigger autoimmune responses through cross-reactivity with host cells.

SARS COV2 is known to perpetuate potentially strong immune responses in the body, which is part of how it may cause damage in so many organ systems. I’ve covered many of these in prior posts, please check them all out under The Long Haul Series.