Thank you Becky for posting both of the articles. The AARP one I’m sending around to my friends who just find my autoimmune diseases weird. Which they are, but it’s a good easy read to shed some light. I’d heard the theories about the relationship to the numerous chemicals we use and to our diets before. Both of which to me seems plausible.

The diet theory also relates to another I’ve heard, that autoimmune diseases are on the rise due to our increasingly degenerating stomach biomes. In my youth I had issues with systemic candida and I’ve had giardiasis several times, which I’ve read can be a trigger to Primary Biliary Cholangitis. I only manifested Sjogren’s Syndrome, however, after my liver transplant. The hormonal relationship has been purported a lot, but the pregnancy theory I hadn’t heard. Interesting though.

I’m just hopeful that more doctors become aware of the rise in autoimmune diseases and start thinking out of the box when it comes to diagnosing symptoms that are persistent, but maybe not seemingly connected. And, then send patients to get labs which can identify common autoimmune disease markers. If my primary had done so I could have been easily diagnosed with PBC before I came down with stage 3 liver cirrhosis and had my happy life pretty much destroyed and forever changed for the worse.