Believe it. When it was at its worst, Crohn's was like a permanent flu, with nausea, joint and muscle pain, and random and extreme gut pain. Prednisone wasn't the only drug that was used or tried, but it was one of the more effective.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

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Well then, is there any way to prevent myself from getting those nasty autoimmune disorders that require doctors to pull out the big (and dangerous) guns?

- Maha Vailo

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When you get down to it, Science answers how. Religion answers why. - hippietrekx

Erm... positive thinking? Tarot? Astrology? HeadOn?

Oh. Right.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

I developed diverticulitis last year and almost waited to long getting it diagnosed. Thus, I came closer than I'd like to admit to dying. I had two emergency surgeries in five days. The first to prevent bowel rupture, the second because the first one "fell apart" (doctors words). When my brother asked for a prognosis, he was told 30-70 (live or die)! Later, when I asked what I could have done to prevent it (diverticulitis) he said "a high fiber diet starting 50 years ago!"

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

I meant seriously. Is there anything I can do now to prevent or minimize the risks of getting a nasty autoimmune disease years down the road? I'm really scared of these things.

- Maha Vailo

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When you get down to it, Science answers how. Religion answers why. - hippietrekx

Unfortunately, the big risk factors for autoimmune disease are outside your control: female sex, family history, certain genetic subgroups.
Frequent infections and a parasite load in childhood and early adulthood may reduce your likelihood of autoimmune disease in later life, but the epidemiology isn't worked out on that one yet, as far as I know.

Grant Hutchison

Maha: what grant said. Just about everything you try will be as effective as HeadOn.

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

So, how can I get these frequent infections and a parasite load without going to some gods-forsaken Third World country? You've never come up with a very good answer for that, and I don't want to wait until it's too late.

- Maha Vailo

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When you get down to it, Science answers how. Religion answers why. - hippietrekx

Please remember what I said about risks and benefits. There isn't remotely enough evidence of a causal link to justify your trotting out to randomly expose yourself to infections and parasites, on the off-chance that suffering some debilitating infestation now will later prevent the development of an auto-immune condition.
It was part of my list of things that are beyond your control.

Grant Hutchison

I wasn't exposed to parasites common in the Third World, but growing up, I had more colds, flus, and more serious things than most kids, to the point that some kids would call me a hypochondriac (which wasn't much fun after you got back to school after another bad flu). Oddly, by the time I reached high school, I was one of the healthiest kids around. I almost never seemed to get sick, and got a bit of revenge on some of those other kids by telling them that they should have gotten everything when they were younger, like me.

From high school on, I almost never went to the doctor and didn't get Crohn's symptoms until my late 30s. There wasn't any obvious and specific start to the symptoms. Rather, there were increasing symptoms that finally sent to me to the doctor.

There are all sorts of ideas in general about autoimmune diseases, and there have been small studies done trying various things for some of the specific diseases (for example, deliberate parasite infections for IBD), but it's still mostly dealing with unknowns.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser