Ospa, immune suppression and molecular mimicry, autoimmune diseases

-psilociraptor

Wow, thanks for breaking that down.

So in a person who has both infections and autoimmune diseases would it be your opinion that if the infection aspect was dealt with then autoimmunity would stop also? Or would it continue regardless because self tolerance has already been broken?

Kaitlan said...
-psilociraptor

Wow, thanks for breaking that down.

So in a person who has both infections and autoimmune diseases would it be your opinion that if the infection aspect was dealt with then autoimmunity would stop also? Or would it continue regardless because self tolerance has already been broken?

My opinion would be that both would resolve. Just like a zit wouldn't keep boiling up after you've knocked it out with a sufficient amount of antibiotics. In fact I hate saying "both" because I don't consider them separate issues at all. Now i'm not saying damage might not persist, but I highly highly highly doubt that autoimmunity would remain active in absence of the disease. Again, the body has redundant means to avoid that. PAMP is what throws this all off. Without microorganisms there is no PAMP. Without PAMP there is no chronic inflammation.

Lol sorry, i defined it already in my last post. Acronyms look like chinese at first but dear lord is it easier to not spell that out all the time. PAMPs are not receptors however. PAMPs are what bind the receptors (PRRs). PAMPs are the molecular patterns. PRRs are the pattern detectors. Basically the immune systems way of going "It has fur (PAMP), must be mammal." "It has opposable thumb (PAMP), must be primate".

Not at all. Totally backwards explanation. Infections as a cause of autoimmunity is hardly even controversial in conventional research/medicine. Why would our bodies be killing itself? Where else in nature do we observe that kind of poo-brain behavior? Nowhere. Everything is in response to a living need. Autoimmunity is a part of the bodies attempt to rid itself of pathogens. Tissue damage can be a prime site for colonization of other microorganisms but then you're getting into talking about coinfections. One microorganism making you susceptible to another. Not autoimmunity making you susceptible. Autoimmunity is just a symptom the same way a zit or boil or fever is

Another thing to ponder.

Why is it that there are those few who CLEARLY (per testing) have lyme bacteria (BB) in their blood, yet experience NO lyme disease symptoms.

This is true. I know of someone from the Wisconsin timer industry like this. Positive every time for ten or so years. Not sick. Not at all.

This supports the theory that symptoms and even autoimmune are not from the actual present bacteria, but how your immune system reacts to it.

In that case , its not "one size fits all", lyme illness then occurs on a per individual basis and only from immune response, as the bacteria itself does nothing to these people, not even autoimmune reactions.

1) This is something I'm not totally clear on but a lot of it probably comes down to how your immune system develops in early life and the relative abundances of bacteria. The immune system can choose not to respond to certain bacteria so there may be some concentration dependent tolerance. Healthy ecosystems are often characterized by diversity and smaller population sizes due to interspecies competition. Whereas unhealthy ones (think humans in relation to planet earth) are characterized by species specific overgrowth and dwindling diversity. This disrupts the normal checks and balances. But this is probably oversimplistic.

2) I don't honestly buy this. Actually I know it's not true because mitochondria are bacteria and don't live in the gut. But i suspect we have natural microbiota all throughout us that range from mutualistic, to benign symbionts, to parasitic. It doesn't make much sense for a niche to be completely uninhabited. It's like trying to leave a vacuum in space. Something is going to try and rush in and fill it.

"This supports the theory that symptoms and even autoimmune are not from the actual present bacteria, but how your immune system reacts to it. "

I never denied this. This is often probably the case. Lyme isn't really known to cause serious illness in its natural reservoir host. It just kind of hangs out. Genetic sensitivity can explain part of that. In fact it's well established that certain HLA variants predispose to autoimmune Lyme arthritis. So just like the reservoir host have naturally evolved to tolerate it some people are going to be less sensitive to it genetically. Another aspect of it is that as modern day humans we have done all kinds of nonsense to disrupt our immune system so perhaps we've lost some of the equilibrium we would normally have with the bacteria and that obviously exists on a gradient on a case by case basis. Over sterilization may play in to how our body tolerates foreign bacteria. Lots of possibilities of why some get symptoms and others don't. If we're being serious establishing "causality" is impossible. It's chicken or egg. But for all practical purposes the flow is from bacteria->autoimmunity. Even if some immune disruption may precede the bacteria, it is distinct from autoimmunity which is a consequence of infection, not a cause.

- psilociraptor

I just read your most recent post. I agree with you that it's the infections causing the autoimmunity. Now I want to know what's causing the infections lol.

The body has always dealt with stealth bacteria. Intracellular parasites have been a thing since before multicellular organisms even existed. Again mitochondria are actually a perfect example of this. The reasons for the increase in disease however are numerous. For one global travel is disrupting normal ecological relationships. Pathogens from one end of the world are spreading to the other where resistance is low. Dietary and lifestyle habits are affecting both the immune system and the composition of microbiota. So in the first scenario you are less likely to fend it off, in the second scenario certain species are being overrepresented and others are being underrepresented. Habitat fragmentation damages normal ecological balance and can lead to enhanced encounter of diseases that are normally present in low levels. So for example if an animal that preys on a mosquito or tick is reduced because of human activities, then the number of tick or mosquito bites may increase. And then human population dynamics also impact how dangerous diseases are. When diseases can spread more rapidly they are more likely to harm their host because there is no selective pressure to preserve them. By the time the host dies they have already hitched a ride onto a dozen new hosts. When diseases are spread at a much slower rate they tend to cause less illness because they require their host to live for longer periods in order to transmit. For example compare malaria to syphilis. Malaria can hop from one person to the next in a matter of minutes in a mosquito infested area whereas most people don't have enough sex to give syphilis that advantage. Aggressive variants of syphilis are naturally going to die out very quickly. So just as the incidence of tick bites and mosquito bites may increase, the increased transmission also has a tendency to naturally select the more aggressive pathogens.

The whole thing is very yin/yang. It was always here. But sometimes it expands. Then nature must find a way to contract it again.

Some things are always going to be more significant that others, but there's always an element of perfect storm as well. Actually i wouldn't even call it that. It's not that the stars are aligning, it's more that human behavior is disturbing everything that is familiar in the world. All these issues are inseparable. There's no reversing this trend. Just mitigating it. 7 billion humans and counting. We're like mold on a piece of toast. There's no stopping our growth until the toast is gone. It's our unsustainable growth that keeps leading us to reengineer our lives and all of this stuff is degrading our old ways of being. But it's also just a natural process. It's not good or bad and you can't really fight it. Just be aware. Make choices when you can to eat well. If you can grow some of your own food or medicine sustainably great. If you can surround yourself with healthier relationships and healthier lifestyle patterns and career choices great. But you're swimming against the grain. You can do your best for yourself and the world but you will never really reverse it. It will correct itself though. All you can bring to it is your best, understand it, and be as prepared as possible for when that correction happens.

Another thing, I don't personally at this moment believe it but honestly I don't blame the people who have more conspiracy type ideas, like biological warfare. I think it's pretty evident that what happened with the lymerix vaccine and Dearborn and all of that is true. I also think that there is a lot of very sneaky misguiding that is going on with the public. People get sick, go to the doctor, get told they have some genetically determined non-curable autoimmune disease. Then they are given "maintenance medications" to make life bearable before they even have a chance to question things, like hmm maybe I should be tested for this bacterial infection that has basically the exact same symptoms. The difference with the people who have Lyme who are here asking questions and discovering truths is that many of us don't get maintenance medications to make life bearable, because this type of Lyme disease isn't "real". And it isn't "real" because of the slip up with lymerix. And you can't prescribe life long maintenance medication to people who don't have a "real" disease without admitting that it is REAL and that you lied. So they've kind of cornered themselves, whoever they are.

Post Edited (Kaitlan) : 10/5/2017 6:17:55 PM (GMT-6)

- astroman

I'm 24, started getting sick at 13. I know so many people my age who are sick with the same symptoms as me, they all just have different labels for there symptoms. My entire family are sick.

In the U.S.
150 million living with chronic diseases.
50 million living with autoimmune diseases.
3 million new cases of chronic pain in general each year.
3 million new cases of fibromyalgia each year.

And how many of these actually have infections that are causing these reactions in their bodies?

Only 300 thousand cases of Lyme each year?

And I'm not saying all of these people are sick from infections, but I think a good majority are. It's not like they had thorough testing to rule out infections before they were diagnosed.

What would happen if they knew the truth. There would be outrage and panic. Also more people might actually get better. And that wouldn't be good for the pharmaceutical companies who profit from people needing maintenance medications for the rest of there lives. All seem like good reasons to keep misleading the public.

Post Edited (Kaitlan) : 10/5/2017 8:41:05 PM (GMT-6)

- astroman

You're right that a lot of these illnesses we're dealing have been killing people for a long time. But just based on the amount of people I know personally who suffer from similar illnesses, I still feel like they're on the rise. I guess it's impossible to know for sure though since we don't have a long history of documenting everyone's health to reflect on yet.

Regardless of whether or not these infections are becoming more prevalent or not, what I'm so heartbroken over is all of the people who are alive and sick now who don't get accurate information about what could be causing their health problems. They think they have an inherited disease and that there's not much they can do about it so they take the pills to make it by. It's such a common thing and the doctors are so matter of fact about it that most people never even question it. Honestly I think most average doctors believe what they're selling to be true. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's for years before I found out I had Lyme. At the time I did some learning online about it but the information I was seeing when I typed Hashimoto's into Google confirmed what my doctor said "runs in families, stop eating gluten, eventually your thyroid will stop working anyway". So I lived with it until my symptoms got unbearable and thought I would get one more opinion and wasn't expecting anything new, found out I have Lyme. I had never heard from any source or doctor that infections trigger autoimmune diseases, until I was diagnosed with a chronic infection. I was lucky, most people never find out because they're never tested and never informed.

I agree that humans have done and continue to do lots of stupid things that affect our short term health, long term health, and the health of future generations. I have to hope that we can find a turning point and do things differently eventually. If I can get well I would like to put in my efforts to work towards that happening. But for now I guess I'll focus on getting myself and hopefully my family members headed in the right direction toward health.

- psilociraptor

I know reversing everything that humans have done and still do that contribute to this problem may not be realistic. And I understand you're talking about the big picture.

All I really care about are all of the people that are being misled at the present time, some people aren't taught to question everything. Our healthcare system is supposed to be there to know more than the average person and provide us with accurate information about our health, and most people don't question what doctors tell them. I didn't when I first started getting sick, but now I dissect every bit of info doctors tell me to find out if it's true and it's ridiculous how much of the time it's not.

Anyway you said there shouldn't be autoimmunity without infection. And from everything I've read so far that seems to be true. Why aren't we testing these 50 million living with autoimmune diseases for infections or at least informing them that infection could be the cause before sending them home with a life long diagnoses? It's not that hard of a concept for people to understand, it should be more common knowledge. I tried to tell someone with several autoimmune immune diseases that they should consider getting tested for Lyme and got "oh, for me it just runs in the family" because that's been beat into everyone's head. I don't think many general doctors know that infections cause autoimmunity. It's like the whole health care system is being misled about this from the top.

Post Edited (Kaitlan) : 10/6/2017 11:45:23 AM (GMT-6)