Autoimmune Life Blog

Winter is coming, brace yourself. While for many this means singing carols and enjoying the holiday lights, for those living with autoimmune diseases including type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and lupus, it can mean a flurry of concerns.

Between accommodating visiting relatives, mountains of tempting food, and hours of time spent cooking and shopping, the holidays can be overwhelming for those living with an autoimmune disease.

Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) is proud to share a new project: “The Body Lives Its Undoing,” a reflection in poetry and visual art about autoimmune disease, the effects it reaps on the body and the lives of those living with it. 

In the past few years, Elisa Boden, MD, has seen more and more patients with celiac disease. The disease strikes when the immune system mistakes gluten—a mixture of proteins found in wheat and other grains—as an enemy and attacks the small intestine.

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an immensely complex disease, which means it’s going to take many minds—and many approaches—to conquer it. BRI plays a key role in this fight. Here are three ways we're using our expertise to improve research worldwide.

When Merry Malnar was 11 years old, her mom took her in for a routine physical and asked the doctor to test for type 1 diabetes (T1D). Merry seemed perfectly healthy, but T1D ran in the family and her mom feared Merry would inherit it too.

Halloween is meant to be spooky, but staying on top of your symptoms shouldn’t be scary. For those living with autoimmune diseases, trick-or-treating can feel more like a trick than a treat.

Recently diagnosed Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) patients often ask: did a certain food cause my disease, and can another food cure it?

Internal inflammation, frequent bathroom trips and abdominal pain: inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) can be extremely painful, inconvenient, and uncomfortable to talk about. Chances are, however, that you probably know someone living with IBD, as it affects 1.6 million—or one in 200—Americans.

Judi and Tracey first learned about autoimmune diseases when Tracey’s brother Pat was diagnosed first with Hodgkin’s disease, then with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), a rare autoimmune blood disease. Six weeks after his ITP diagnosis, Pat passed away.