Archive for the 'Immune Disorders' Category

——-Be Aware With Stress Associated Lupus!

Are you suffering with lupus? Do you think stress can initiate the symptoms of lupus? First of all, it is very essential for you to know that in some lupus patients, stress may not cause any direct or indirect effects.

However, it is believed that stress can affect any lupus patient in three main ways. These three ways can mainly include:

1. Stress can cause same reactions in you with lupus, which usually occurs in any person who doesn’t have lupus.
2. There is a chance for stress to be initiated with the early symptoms of lupus.
3. Stress can also be associated with any flare-ups of your already existing disease.

There are many signs of stress that are quite common in a lupus patient and in a normal individual. These symptoms can mainly include poor concentration levels, anxiety, skin inflammations, insomnia, muscle aches, depression, panic attacks and at times asthma attacks are also initiated due to extreme stress in your body.

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Graves’ disease, the most common form of hypothyroidism, mainly occurs when your body’s immune system erroneously attacks your thyroid gland and leads to over production of thyroxin hormone.

Once if the disorder is properly diagnosed, it becomes quite easy to treat the disease.

This abnormal immune response mainly affects the tissue present behind your eyes and also some other parts of your skin.

The higher levels of thyroxin hormone in Graves’ disease can significantly increase your body metabolism and makes your body a host for different health conditions.

In certain peculiar cases, Graves’ disease gradually decreases or it can completely disappear after several months. If the condition of Graves’ disease is left untreated, it becomes a great source for developing severe complications in your body and in certain rare cases, it can even cause death.

How does it affect on your pregnancy?

It is very important for a pregnant woman with this health condition to be euthyroid before planning to conceive.

In fact, you should plan for pregnancy only if your graves’ disease is considerably under control, as the rate of birth defects or miscarriages is highly significant in females who are left untreated with this kind of thyroid problem.

About one twenty thousand people in America are affected by myasthenia gravis (MG).

This disease happens when the antibodies produced by the immune system damage acetylcholine receptors, which play a key role in transmitting the electrical impulses that cause muscles to move.

The immune response at the heart of this abnormal process is called as complement cascade, which is a complex chain of chemical reaction where proteins bind together and attacks a cell by punching a hole in that cell. In this way, acetylcholine receptors will get damaged causing severely impaired muscle movement.

It is necessary to make a note that myasthenia gravis cannot be cured, but many therapies are there to reduce the symptoms.

Does Myasthenia Gravis Effects Ocular Muscles?

Myasthenia gravis affecting eye muscles is ocular myasthenia gravis. Ocular MG is a disease seen at the neuromuscular junction resulting in muscle weakness/fatigability of the eyelids and eye movement.

Ptosis (drooping of the upper eyelid) and diplopia are characteristic features of myasthenia gravis or other muscular dystrophies.

The patients with myasthenia gravis mostly complain about oral (swallowing disorders), throat (dysarthria), and voice (dysphonia) problems.

According to the research, including antibiotics to your standard conventional therapy may help to slow down the progression of multiple sclerosis.

When the patient took the antibiotic “doxycycline” along with MS drug “beta interferon”, he can experience fewer signs of tissue damages and fewer symptoms. Also, this antibiotic may obstruct the action of enzyme that destroys certain cells in the nervous system.

Researchers have conducted a study on some patients who had been taking interferon for six months. These patients were still experiencing the symptoms and developing new tissue damages in the brain.

When these patients took doxycycline along with interferon, tissue damage was reduced by at least 25%. The disability levels of the patient had also improved.

For more benefits of Doxycycline, visit:

http://news.bbc.co.uk

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is common in pregnant women than any other group.

Pregnant women diagnosed with multiple sclerosis are often confused and have doubts about the effects of the disease on their child.

Effects of multiple sclerosis on fertility:

Your ability to become pregnant is not affected by the disease.

There is no evidence that the disease impairs fertility or leads to increased number of stillbirths, spontaneous abortions and congenital malformations.

Effects of multiple sclerosis on pregnancy:

According to the studies, MS is on average less active during pregnancy. Pregnancy appears to have a protective effect on women with MS and relapses occur less frequently. MS exacerbations are reduced during pregnancy, especially in the second and third trimesters. Women with MS need no special care during labor and delivery and no special management is needed.

Women with MS who are considering pregnancy need to be aware of certain drugs that are used to treat MS and should be avoided during pregnancy and breastfeeding. These drugs can cause birth defects as they pass into the fetus through blood or into the infant through breast milk.

Lupus appears in women of childbearing age.

Women with lupus are advised to avoid pregnancy, as lupus symptoms may worsen or pregnancy may result in miscarriage.

If you are pregnant woman with lupus, it affects your kidneys and there is an increased risk to the unborn baby.

Fertility or the ability to conceive can be reduced during the periods of the disease. This can be due to hormonal changes caused by lupus or from side effects of medications that are used to treat the disease.

How lupus affects unborn baby?

You can develop symptoms similar to pre-eclampsia like swelling, protein in the urine, and raised blood pressure and the baby’s growth becomes slow.

Lupus in pregnant women causes premature birth, transient rash on baby’s head, and damage to the electrical conduction system in the heart of the baby, causing abnormal heart rhythms. Babies born to women with lupus have neonatal lupus. This type of lupus consists of temporary rash and abnormal blood count.

The baby develops swelling known as hydrops. This is the sign that the baby is having congestive heart failure problem and the baby must be watched closely in the hospital.

ME is a prolonged fatigue accompanied with many symptoms. It is also called as postviral syndrome. If you have severe chronic syndrome for more than six months, then only the condition can be identified. The symptoms can be sore throat, muscle pain, unrefreshing sleep, headaches, tender lymph nodes, and impairment in concentration.

There are other symptoms that can occur, which includes abdominal pain, dizziness, night sweats, irregular heart beat, nausea, tingling sensations, weight loss and bloating. Psychological symptoms include panic attacks, depression and irritability.

Are you affected with scleroderma? It is a rare chronic disease described by large amounts of collagen deposited in the skin or other organs.

Scleroderma is an autoimmune syndrome of the connective tissue. It is also called as “systemic sclerosis”.

Do you know what an autoimmune disease is? It is a disease which occurs when your body’s tissues are affected by its own immune system.

You can get scleroderma due to the development of scar tissue in your skin and organs of the body.

Scleroderma is a Greek word and it came from sklerosis which means hardness and derma means skin. So, scleroderma means “hard skin”.

Still, the exact cause of scleroderma is not known. But, there is a chance to get this with the genes and also due to some environment factors. It can be called as both rheumatic and connective tissue disease.

Rheumatic diseases can cause inflammation and pain in the muscles, joints, or fibrous tissue. A connective tissue disease affects your body’s tissues such as cartilage, skin and tendons.

If you are feeling excess fatigue then take care so that it may not lead to chronic fatigue syndrome.

This is a complicated syndrome that occurs due to excess fatigue. This will also occur as an infection such as cold or viral illness.

It does not get improved by bed rest and it can even get worse with mental or physical activity.

The chronic fatigue syndrome affects women more frequently than men. In past days the doctors tend to believe that this syndrome occurs due to depression.

But, later the experts have proved that this is a different disease with physical symptoms.

The causes for chronic fatigue syndrome are unknown. It is not a contagious disease. There is no particular infection or cause for this syndrome.

Symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome are

• You will have severe fatigue for long period of time.
• You will feel difficulty in concentrating something or forgetfulness.
• You will also have various physical disorders such as sore throat, muscle pain, joint pain, head ache and weakness.