@rvickert I wanted to share a book by an author who recovered from autoimmune disease. I have not read this book, but I have one of her other books about overcoming life's adversity and how your biography of experience and stressful events relates to disease later in life. She's an excellent medical writer and has been recognized in her field. Here's the book. https://donnajacksonnakazawa.com/autoimmune-epidemic/ From what I have read from her, there can be many factors that together add up to creating a disease in the body, and you have to be a detective and unravel the clues one by one. I did have some similar things in my blood work years ago, and was told I had incurable arthritis and fibromyalgia. I wasn't willing to accept that there couldn't be a way to prevent this problem, so I looked at food allergies that were contributing to my pain and did an elimination diet. I had developed a problem with wheat and gluten which caused inflammation and a leaky gut. That caused me to develop a lot of food allergies because I was exposed to partially digested foods being absorbed into my blood stream before I figured out this connection. That was a first step to feeling better. Another possibility is immune responses to hardware and implants from surgery. There is a lab in Chicago that tests blood for this and it probably is not covered by insurance. I did that test and it was around $500. The lab is https://www.orthopedicanalysis.com/. If there is an immune response from a surgical implant, you might want to consult the Environmental Health Center in Dallas as they have developed some treatment protocols. Here is their website. https://www.ehcd.com/

I know that my health was affected over many years because of old silver amalgam dental fillings that leached mercury, and old root canals done when I was young that failed after many years. Root canals contain cadmium, a heavy metal. After these were removed from my body my health improved. I saw a biological dentist who replaced the old fillings with safer materials, and after that the autoimmune thyroid condition that I have (Hashimotos) improved immediately. I recently had all the teeth with bad root canals removed in preparation for dental implants, and my lung function improved a lot. I do have allergies and asthma, but it is so much better and I'm not struggling to breath all the time due to excess phlegm which had been my norm for a few years. Sometimes treatments that have been an accepted practice are not completely safe, have side effects or they fail after a number of years.

My doctor is a functional medicine and environmental medicine doctor and this specialty looks for the causes of disease instead of treating the symptoms. There is a provider finder link for them at https://www.aaemonline.org/find.php