What Causes Rhumatoid Arthritis?

I have two friends that suffer from RA or rheumatoid arthritis. It is a scary and painful autoimmune disease where the body attacks the joints. Current treatments include immune suppressing drugs which slow the progression of the damage, but have some fairly intimidating side effects. The cause of RA is not known, but a supportable hypothesis is brewing. That hypothesis is that RA is caused by dysfunction in the digestive microbiome. Now this is not exactly a new theory. The following article dates back a few years and outlines nicely why this hypothesis is consistent with the history of the disease. It also points out the danger of trying to figure out which microbes are a problem by yourself, since oral immunization (eating) with a strain of salmonella seemed protective against RA whereas Lactobacillus bifidus (found in many probiotics) seemed to aggravate the immune systems of sterile mice. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3275101/ But they are working on figuring out which strains can help and which ones hurt http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24355439 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24192039 These studies linked gingivitis (I kid you not) with RA…again the issue is that the microbes somewhere in the digestive tract are out of balance and if the host is susceptible, problems ensue. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3668087/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24807405 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990988/ In the following studies they used mice with what is basically a mouse form of RA and found not only that the antibiotics were causing the mouse...

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Gluten-Free Egg-Free Soy-Free Curried Chicken Pasta Salad

It is July in Chicago which means it is hot. Hot weather means that I do not have any interest in cooking or even eating hot food. It means that I am planning more events and activities like picnics in the parks that require chilled portable foods. This means that I am looking to increase my portfolio of pasta salads. What I like about a salad like this one is that it can be a side dish on its own, or a main dish when put over lettuce. You can make it vegan by swapping chick peas for the...

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Does Celiac Disease Cause Large Foreheads or Gray Hair?

Every so often you see something in the popular press about celiac disease that seems goofy and unscientific. The whole idea that celiacs have bigger than normal foreheads seemed like one of those things. I mean really? What does forehead size have to do with celiac disease and how do we know that this is not another one of those correlations without causation. I thought it was fake. It appears that I was wrong. Now this correlation has a LOT of limitations. For example, it doesn’t always work on children because their heads are still growing. There are plenty of adults with big foreheads who do not have celiac disease. I am also pretty sure that if you get celiac disease as an adult, it probably would have not impact on forehead size since your head is done growing. For all of these reasons its kind of a lame diagnostic tool. That said, if you have canker sores, a rash and a large forehead…you might want to get tested even if your bowel habits seem fantastic. The articles on the research (there aren’t a lot of them) are available here http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15919249 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23325442 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23799417 Interestingly enough, there is practically no research on the link between premature gray hair and celiac disease. That said, the sheer volume of prematurely gray people at and gathering of celiacs will tell you that there...

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