EDIT: Let’s cool it with the downvotes, dudes. We’re not out to cut funding to your black hole detection chamber or revoke the degrees of chiropractors just because a couple of us don’t believe in it, okay? Chill out, participate with the prompt and continue with having a nice day. I’m sure almost everybody has something to add.
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I think many of these classifications are caused simply by doctors refusing to say “I just don’t know” and patients refusing to accept that they really don’t and probably never will…
Take IBS. We are supposed to believe that there is a disease with no known cause, so many possible triggers and influencers that anyone can find some that fit and wildly varying symptoms… something similar could probably be said for many other “syndromes”. Of course all of those people have something else or a combination of something else but nobody wants to admit they just don’t know and everyone wants a diagnosis.
IBS is also a more generic condition with Crohns and Colitis being related conditions with identifiable physiology and treatments. The “cause” isn’t known but it’s similar with genetically susceptible individuals having environmental, bacterial, immune factors. Immunomodulators being frontline treatments.
Your take on this is interesting, I have Crohn’s disease so I’m always trying to learn as much about it and other autoimmune diseases as I can (I have zero background in medical science, everything I know is based off my pursuit of learning more). If I understand what you’re saying correctly, rather than say Lupus from your example just being “Lupus”, it should be more like diabetes where there is “Type 1” diabetes, “Type 2”, etc?
For myself, I know that my condition has a very strong physical component to it, but part of that is also influenced by psychological factors as well - when I’m more stressed, then my condition flares up even worse than it normally would for example (and is one reason I’ve been pushing heavily on trying to get things treated on the psychiatry side of things).
I don’t suppose there’s anywhere to read more up on what you’re referring to?
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Even Crohn’s has different subtypes that are suspected to explain why different Crohn’s patients respond differently to the same treatments. Much like the comment about lupus. Crohn’s also is much more complicated than the general public is aware.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1774386/
For example, it is well established that there is a subset of people with Crohn’s disease who go into remission while taking an antidepressant called bupropion and we have no idea why. No one believes this is because these people’s Crohn’s was caused by a psychological problem, but rather that the bupropion appears to have effects on the immune system that aren’t well understood. And this appears to only work in certain people. Do those people have a different “kind” of Crohn’s? Different underlying genetic response to bupropion? Those questions aren’t as easy to answer as you might think.
https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(03)01316-7/fulltext#:~:text=Another 2 patients with Crohn’s,factor-α (TNF).
Ah thank you! This gives me something to dig into tonight, I appreciate it.