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When the body turns on itself: The rising auto-immune incidence in America

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When the body turns on itself: The rising auto-immune incidence in America By Dr. Sonja Fung The National Institutes of Health reports 23 million Americans suffer from auto-immune diseases. It lands on the top ten list for causes of death in female children and women under 64 years of age. Our immune system is like our protective army, diligently patrolling the body, looking for any molecular marker that does not belong.  When it finds something foreign such as bacteria, infected cells, or undigested food particles, it initiates a war on the unwanted foreign invader.  While the army is patrolling throughout the body, immune cells also frequently contact molecules that are your normal terrain like your blood cells, skin cells, or cartilage cells.  Just as immunological identification of invaders is important, recognizing that normal body cells are not invaders is equally crucial. When a person develops autoimmunity (AI), the loss of self-recognition occurs.  There