Your immune system is your body’s main line of defense. If you have an autoimmune disease, it attacks your healthy tissues and causes inflammatory symptoms. Roger Billica, MD, William Billica, MD, and the team at Tri-Life Health in Fort Collins, Colorado, take a functional approach to helping you manage your symptoms and address the underlying cause of the autoimmune process in order to achieve remission. For more information about autoimmune diseases and treatments, call Tri-Life Health for an appointment today.

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What is an autoimmune disease?

Autoimmune diseases are conditions that cause your immune system to mistakenly attack healthy cells and tissues. Normally, your immune system is responsible for attacking and ridding you of bacteria, viruses, and other things that can cause harm to your health.

In healthy individuals, the immune system can differentiate between parts of your body and invaders. However, genetic predispositions, infections, environmental and toxic exposures, and other factors can all lead to triggering autoimmune diseases. If the underlying trigger can be identified and removed then the immune system can be returned to its normal state, and the autoimmune process can be stopped.

What are some common autoimmune diseases?

There are over 80 known autoimmune diseases in existence. Tri-Life Health can teach you about your condition and how it might affect your life. A few common autoimmune diseases are:

Multiple sclerosis

If you have multiple sclerosis, your immune system attacks and damages the coating around your nerves called the myelin sheath. It causes your nerves to communicate more slowly with your brain, resulting in symptoms like shakiness, weakness, and balance issues.

Rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis causes your immune system to attack and damage your joints, making them inflamed. Symptoms include stiffness, soreness, and redness around your joints.

Celiac disease

Celiac is a disease that causes your immune system to attack your small intestine when you eat food with gluten in it, like bread or pasta. Symptoms include diarrhea, bloating, and fatigue.

Psoriasis

Psoriasis causes your skin cells to multiply rapidly. The result is inflamed patches of scaly skin. Around 30% of patients with psoriasis also get psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain and stiffness.

How are autoimmune diseases treated?

Tri-Life Health takes a functional and integrative approach to treat your autoimmune disease. Your practitioner can create a personalized treatment plan to help discover the underlying cause for the disease process, remove the triggers, reverse the process, and restore optimal tissue health and function. The goal of treatment is to put you into long term remission.

For your autoimmune treatment, Tri-Life Health can help you:

  • Identify the underlying cause of your autoimmune disease
  • Identify genetic and other risk factors that might be affecting your health
  • Address and remove or neutralize the factors causing the disease
  • Return your immune system to a healthy and balanced states
  • Reduce inflammation
  • Support sleep, stress management, nutrition, digestion and other factors as needed

They might also encourage you to make regular appointments for monitoring your condition and adjusting your treatment plan.

To find out more about autoimmune diseases and treatment strategies for them, call Tri-Life Health for an appointment.