Autoimmune Diseases: What Happens When Your Body Attacks Itself

Still tired after sleeping eight hours? This doesn't always boil down to stress. Do your hands feel stiff and swollen without any good reason? Sometimes there is an underlying issue at play.

Aches, pains, and odd sensations are easy to write it off as getting older or having a bad week. But nearly one in 10 Americans experience these symptoms and more because of an autoimmune disease.

Millions of people deal with this stuff for months or years before anyone connects the dots. Symptoms show up, disappear, and even come back different. They look like a hundred other things while nothing screams emergency.

Autoimmune diseases lurk in the background until they can't anymore. Once they become obvious, "depending on the extent of the disease, it can affect a person's ability to do everyday activities such as working, eating certain foods or even caring for themself," says Dr. Stephanie Sasha De La Guarda, a family medicine physician at Baptist Health South Florida.

Your Immune System Turns on You

An autoimmune disease means "the immune system – which normally protects the body from infections and cancer – mistakenly targets and attacks the body's own healthy tissues," says Dr. Alexandra Reese, a rheumatologist at Cleveland Clinic.

Your immune cells stop recognizing your organs as part of you. They start treating joints, glands, or nerves like foreign invaders, launching chronic attacks. This "can lead to tissue damage and organ dysfunction," Reese says.

Between 80 and 150 different autoimmune diseases exist, which explains why they're everywhere and hard to pinpoint. Each one targets different body parts.

Rheumatoid arthritis attacks joints. Lupus can hit skin, kidneys, heart, and brain. Multiple sclerosis goes after nerve coverings. Type 1 diabetes destroys insulin-producing cells. Hashimoto's thyroiditis wrecks your thyroid. Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis tear up the digestive tract. The list goes on and on with too many symptoms to connect.

What you experience depends entirely on what's getting attacked. "Living with an autoimmune disease often means managing symptoms like fatigue, joint pain and organ dysfunction, which can significantly impact physical abilities, social interactions and work life," Reese says.

Muscle weakness, swelling, rashes, digestive chaos, and brain fog make working or getting through a normal day exhausting.

Some autoimmune diseases stay relatively mild throughout the course of a lifetime. Some can even go into remission with proper diagnosis and treatment. Others get progressively worse, or become life-threatening when vital organs like kidneys, lungs, heart or nervous system get involved.

What Causes It Remains Unclear

Genetics play a role but don't explain everything. Plenty of people carry genes linked to autoimmune disease without ever developing symptoms. Most people don’t even know what genes they carry.

Environmental triggers matter significantly. De La Guarda points to "smoking or chemical pollutants" as factors that can activate disease in genetically vulnerable people. Viral and bacterial infections are heavily researched as potential triggers too.

Hormones clearly influence risk. Women develop autoimmune diseases far more often than men. These conditions frequently appear during reproductive years or after pregnancy when hormones shift dramatically.

Usually, several factors combine to create a cascade of activation and symptom progression. "Some diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis, are thought to result from a 'two-hit phenomenon,'" Reese says, "where a person has a genetic predisposition and then encounters an environmental exposure."

Chronic stress contributes. Poor sleep contributes. Gut bacteria matter more than most people realize. Your gut houses a huge portion of your immune system and plays a critical role in regulation. When bacterial balance gets disrupted, immune function can spiral, inflammation ramps up, and autoimmune reactions become more likely.

Treatment Manages Symptoms, Doesn't Cure

No cure exists for autoimmune diseases. But a variety of treatment plans and self-care options are available to help control symptoms, with the ultimate goal of preserving and improving a patients' quality of life.

Treatment gets customized based on which disease, which organs are involved, and how severe symptoms are. The goal is to calm the overactive immune response, controlling inflammation, and preventing permanent damage.

Medication handles most of it. "Some of these medicines include insulin, thyroid hormone replacement drugs, anti-inflammatory medications, corticosteroids, immunosuppressants, biologics and disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs," De La Guarda says.

Severe flares sometimes require hospitalization to stabilize organs, manage pain, or treat infections. Long-term care involves regular monitoring through blood work, imaging, and specialist visits to track disease activity.

Lifestyle Adjustments Help

Medication alone isn't enough. Sleep, stress management, and regular low-impact exercise all reduce inflammation and preserve mobility.

Physical therapy, occupational therapy, and counseling also help people handle both physical limitations and the emotional toll of living with a chronic illness.

No specific diet cures autoimmune disease, but balanced nutrition supporting gut health while limiting ultra-processed foods improves overall well-being.

Reese says, "individuals with autoimmune diseases can live fulfilling lives by adhering to therapy, avoiding triggers, making healthy lifestyle changes and maintaining regular monitoring."

The Bottom Line

Diagnosis and treatment are significantly better than decades ago but still nowhere near where it should be.

Symptoms sometimes stay vague long enough that getting diagnosed takes forever. Once identified though, treatments exist that dramatically improve how you feel and function daily.

For the potential millions out there struggling to get a diagnosis, don’t lose hope. Lifestyle changes, regular specialist appointments, and advocating for yourself can mean the difference between suffering and taking back control of your wellbeing.

"Living with an autoimmune disease is not easy," Reese acknowledges, "but remember that you are never alone; there are millions of people around the world walking a similar path."

Did you find this information useful? Feel free to bookmark or to post to your timeline to share with your friends.