BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

LIVES DERAILED Excerpted from The Autoimmune Epidemic: Bodies Gone Haywire in a World Out of Balance -- and the Cutting-Edge Science that Promises Hope ~~~~~~~~ Most of us, at some juncture in our lives, have played out in our minds how devastating it would be to have our doctor hand down a cancer diagnosis or to warn us that we are at risk for a heart attack or stroke. Magazine articles, television dramas, and news headlines all bring such images home. But consider an equally devastating health crisis scenario, one that you rarely hear spoken about openly, one that receives almost no media attention. Imagine the slow, creeping escalation of seemingly amorphous symptoms: a tingling in the arms and fingers, the sudden appearance of a speckled rash across the face, the strange muscle weakness in the legs when climbing stairs, the fiery joints that emerge out of nowhere -- any and all of which can signal the onset of a wide range of life-altering and often debilitating autoimmu...

Repost by permission from the Author by Connie Did you ever catch yourself looking at an overweight person riding on a scooter and think to yourself, “Gesh, if she’d get off that scooter and walk she wouldn’t be so fat!” Of if you see a man who’s overweight using the elevator think to yourself, “ Goodness, someone should be using the stairs!” Most people do. The thing is, you’re assuming that overweight person is that way because he/she is LAZY, when in fact he/she may have a chronic but invisible illness. How do I know? Because I’m one of those people who’s been labeled many times as fat and lazy and I’m far from it. My family is overweight, so I know that genetically I’m predisposed to it. Put my family and my husband’s family in a room, all with their backs facing you, and you can sort them by family. The only exception is our youngest son. He fits my husband’s family’s body type – short and thin. My oldest looks like my family – overweight. I’ve always fought my weight because of ...