A study of autoimmune diseases--including chronic fatigue syndrome, diabetes, lupus, and multiple sclerosis--draws on the latest research to shed new light on these conditions, how they affect women, and how to best treat them.

Women, Work, and Autoimmune Disease is a book for women who live with chronic illness, encouraging them to stay employed to preserve their independence and sense of self. Rich with information and inspiration, it is the voice of warmth, wisdom, understanding, and compassion. Filled with tips, tricks and first-person accounts from women who have made similar choices in their own lives, this unique book is a resounding call for self-reliance and resilience. The book identifies the factors that making working particularly difficult for women with autoimmune disease, and then offers practical suggestions to address them. The authors take a hard, yet inspirational look at what it takes be successful in a job, including developing strategies and tactics, evaluating communication skills, building a support team and considerations for self-employment. Women, Work, and Autoimmune Disease covers issues such as: The complex nature of autoimmune disease The correlation between disease, diagnosis, and career development How life-changing strategies and concrete tactics can allow you to discover the spirit within

From the Foreword: [An] astounding book . . . put simply, there is no doubt that autoimmune diseases are on the rise and increasing environmental exposures of toxins and chemicals is fueling this rise.--Dr. Douglas Kerr, Director, Johns Hopkins Transverse Myelitis Center.

There is a biological force within the body that wants you to live to old age. While conventionally this force is known in medicine as the immune system, Dr. Bob calls it: “The Biological Soul.” The Biological Soul is designed to protect you and allow you to live a healthy life. This force is tangible, measurable, lives within the physical body and determines our age and wellbeing through life. It is physical and complex and, in many ways, spiritual. It is affected by life’s stresses, by diets, and by overall health and though not immortal; it both shapes your life and your life shapes it. IMMUNITY STRONG walks readers through how the immune system works, what makes it implode or keeps it safe and what modern science reveals about how it connects to every part of the body to keep it alive—as the seat of our “Biological Soul.” Written in Dr. Bob’s trade-mark down-to earth style, the book explains that the normal immune system functions like a police department protecting the body from harm. While as a nation we have recently been focused on the effects of infections, the book reveals that it is important to note that disorders of immunity are at the root of most diseases that shorten or impact our lives. From chronic pain and fatigue syndromes, heart disease and clogged arteries and even the ability to recognize and destroy cancer, to multiple sclerosis, lupus, celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune disorders are all linked to one or another glitch in the immune system. The purpose of this book is to provide significant information on the incredible complexity of the immune system and how the integration of spiritual, scientific, and emotional values can enhance health. It is Dr. Bob’s hope that readers will find a new appreciation of the miracle that is the physical body and to understand the potential within our Biological Soul to promote longevity and overall happiness to life. IMMUNITY STRONG: Boost Your Body's Natural Healing Power and Live to 100 is a must-read for anyone wishing to nurture and enhance their health.

Editor of the award-winning site Feministing.com, Maya Dusenbery brings together scientific and sociological research, interviews with doctors and researchers, and personal stories from women across the country to provide the first comprehensive, accessible look at how sexism in medicine harms women today. In Doing Harm, Dusenbery explores the deep, systemic problems that underlie women’s experiences of feeling dismissed by the medical system. Women have been discharged from the emergency room mid-heart attack with a prescription for anti-anxiety meds, while others with autoimmune diseases have been labeled “chronic complainers” for years before being properly diagnosed. Women with endometriosis have been told they are just overreacting to “normal” menstrual cramps, while still others have “contested” illnesses like chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia that, dogged by psychosomatic suspicions, have yet to be fully accepted as “real” diseases by the whole of the profession. An eye-opening read for patients and health care providers alike, Doing Harm shows how women suffer because the medical community knows relatively less about their diseases and bodies and too often doesn’t trust their reports of their symptoms. The research community has neglected conditions that disproportionately affect women and paid little attention to biological differences between the sexes in everything from drug metabolism to the disease factors—even the symptoms of a heart attack. Meanwhile, a long history of viewing women as especially prone to “hysteria” reverberates to the present day, leaving women battling against a stereotype that they’re hypochondriacs whose ailments are likely to be “all in their heads.” Offering a clear-eyed explanation of the root causes of this insidious and entrenched bias and laying out its sometimes catastrophic consequences, Doing Harm is a rallying wake-up call that will change the way we look at health care for women.

It's obvious why only men develop prostate cancer and why only women get ovarian cancer. But it is not obvious why women are more likely to recover language ability after a stroke than men or why women are more apt to develop autoimmune diseases such as lupus. Sex differences in health throughout the lifespan have been documented. Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health begins to snap the pieces of the puzzle into place so that this knowledge can be used to improve health for both sexes. From behavior and cognition to metabolism and response to chemicals and infectious organisms, this book explores the health impact of sex (being male or female, according to reproductive organs and chromosomes) and gender (one's sense of self as male or female in society). Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health discusses basic biochemical differences in the cells of males and females and health variability between the sexes from conception throughout life. The book identifies key research needs and opportunities and addresses barriers to research. Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health will be important to health policy makers, basic, applied, and clinical researchers, educators, providers, and journalists-while being very accessible to interested lay readers.

On November 6, 1995, the Institute of Medicine's Vaccine Safety Forum convened a workshop on detecting and responding to adverse events following vaccination. Workshop speakers and participants discussed the difficulties in detecting adverse events, current adverse events detection and response methods and procedures, suggestions for improving the means of detecting and responding to adverse events following vaccination, and future areas of research. This document represents a summary of that workshop.

Do you have crud in the blood? Millions of people suffer from autoimmunity whether they know it or not. The root cause of most weight gain, brain and mood problems, and fatigue, autoimmunity can take years--or even decades--for symptoms and a clear diagnosis to arise. Through years of research, Dr. Tom O’Bryan has discovered that autoimmunity is actually a spectrum, and many people experiencing general malaise are already on it. And while autoimmune diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis, osteoporosis, diabetes, and lupus, have become the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer, many people affected are left in the dark. The good news is that many autoimmune conditions can be reversed through a targeted protocol designed to heal the autoimmune system, 70 percent of which is located in the gut. The Autoimmune Fix includes two comprehensive 3-week plans: In the first 3 weeks, you’ll follow a Paleo-inspired diet during which you cut out gluten, sweets, and dairy--the three primary culprits behind autoimmunity. Once the dietary changes have been addressed, The Autoimmune Fix focuses on the other causes of autoimmunity such as genetics, other dietary issues, and microbiome. The Autoimmune Fix provides a practical and much-needed guide to navigating these increasingly common conditions to help you feel better and develop a plan that works for you.

This book is a concise, easy to read professional text with a focus on practical aspects. All chapters include tables on sex/gender differences in symptoms and management and a series of suggestions to the novice in the field. Chapters are specialty-specific. The focus is not on women’s health, but the presentation of differences in clinical symptoms, management and outcomes in women and men. Gender Medicine strives to employ the knowledge about these differences to improve diagnosis, better understand pathogenesis and advance patient-oriented therapy.

The Digestive System in Systemic Autoimmune Diseases represents the state-of-the-art in the field of digestive disorders in the most common systemic autoimmune diseases.The volume consists of an introductory chapter on imaging techniques in digestive diseases, followed by eight chapters on digestive manifestations in specific systemic autoimmune diseases. The final five chapters deal with digestive diseases with an autoimmune pathogenesis and systemic manifestations.International in scope, the table of contents reads like a Who's who in clinical research on systemic autoimmune diseases. More than 20 contributors from the European Union, the United States, Mexico and South Africa share their knowledge in this detailed volume.*One book of leading international clinical and scientific experts on autoimmune and digestive diseases*A practical guide to the identification, diagnosis and treatment of digestive involvement in patients with autoimmune diseases that will be useful for all medical specialties*Several diseases and conditions not included in other text books are included, some of which are of recent emergence*Each chapter is designed to serve as a "Guide to Clinical Practice for each disease