YOU & YOUR HEALTH
Auto-immune
Autoimmune
SPOTLIGHT: HASHIMOTO’S THYROIDITIS
Jordi Mascio of Goldman Laboratories looks at the role Vitamin D plays in helping those with Hashimoto’s Disease…
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HE immune system is just like an army; it protects the body by fighting off foreign invaders and pathogens. If these defence forces malfunction and start attacking the body, an autoimmune disease may result. Normally, the immune system has the ability to distinguish between foreign cells and the body’s own cells. An autoimmune disease refers to a condition when the body’s immune system wrongly attacks its own healthy tissues by releasing auto-antibodies, making the body more vulnerable to infections and pathogens. Some autoimmune diseases are ‘organspecific,’ meaning that they only target a specific organ. At the same time, other
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HOLISTIC THERAPIST 2021
disorders can be ‘non-organ-specific,’ that target the whole body.
experience weakness, weight loss, and extreme thirst. Diarrhoea, bloating, and abdominal pain are the symptoms of IBD.
General symptoms of autoimmune diseases
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis
Many autoimmune diseases share similar symptoms at early stages. These symptoms often include rashes on the skin, tingling and numbness of hands and feet (pins and needles), weakness, pain, fatigue, fever, achy muscles, redness and swelling and difficulty concentrating. Of course these symptoms may not all occur, and they are common to many other illnesses too. Symptoms can also be different for individual diseases. For example, if a person has type 1 diabetes, they may
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis is an autoimmune disorder that attacks the thyroid gland, located at the front of the neck. The thyroid produces hormones which control how the body uses energy, so almost every organ suffers a knock-on effect. Typically Hashimoto’s leads to an underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism), but sometimes hyperthyroidism can result. There are fewer than 20,000 new cases in the UK each year, normally starting between 30-50 years and being significantly more common in women.
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