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I felt waves of feelings (concern, aid, validation) earlier than anger set in. My years-long mysterious situation was a full-fledged epidemic affecting 1 in 5 People, and I wished to shout it from the rooftops so others wouldn’t must undergo this, too.
New to TikTok, I posted a video concerning the signs I used to be instructed had been “regular” that turned out to be indicators of autoimmune illness. To my shock, it racked up hundreds of thousands of views in a matter of hours, and hundreds of feedback from girls reaching out with eerily related experiences.
Search #autoimmunedisease on TikTok and also you’ll get a really actual and terrifying snapshot of this epidemic’s stronghold on girls in America: over 1.1B video views, and numerous thumbnails that includes the faces of twenty- and thirty-somethings identical to me. We’re turning to TikTok for the autoimmune assist our medical system isn’t giving us.
The autoimmune epidemic disproportionately wreaks havoc on girls – 80% of patients are women1, and sure situations are 16 times more common1 in girls. They’re one of many top 10 causes of death for women under 64. Regardless of all of this, autoimmune illness stays largely neglected and misdiagnosed by healthcare professionals. On common, we’ve got to see 5 completely different docs and wait almost half a decade earlier than receiving the right analysis. Nearly half of us are instructed our signs are all in our head in some unspecified time in the future alongside the best way.
It was no coincidence when my sister, Claire, was recognized with autoimmune illness months later. She had related, hard-to-pinpoint signs, regular labs, and dismissals from varied docs.
Getting wholesome once more shortly turned a full-time job for each of us. We threw ourselves into studying every little thing there was to find out about these illnesses, and what evidence-based interventions would convey us probably the most aid. As we dove into the analysis, it turned abundantly clear how underserved our neighborhood was and the way desperately we would have liked higher assist and instruments. So we determined to staff up and left our full-time jobs to fill the key systemic gaps that exist in right this moment’s customary of care.
Final yr, we launched a digital care platform known as WellTheory to assist girls shortcut, and finally enhance, the present path to an autoimmune analysis and receiving care. Our purpose is to extend entry to high-quality autoimmune care – making it reasonably priced, empathetic, empowering, efficient, and what we so desperately wanted from the start.
However WellTheory is only one piece of the equation to reversing autoimmune illness. Extra broadly, it takes arming girls with the sources to navigate the underneath researched and neglected well being points that have an effect on us probably the most – from fertility and menopause to autoimmune illness and past.
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