I’ve had several students with anxiety + migraines, autism + asthma, and food allergies + learning disabilities. Why is it that these conditions seem to go together, and what is it about having one that makes it more likely to have/develop others?
In: Biology
It depends!
Sometimes one system causing problems can have many different symptoms- for instance, immune disregulation can cause asthma, eczema, and food allergies. They *seem* pretty different, but there’s one underlying cause.
Similarly, having one autoimmune condition (defined by symptom set a) often increases the likelihood of a different autoimmune condition (any of many, defined by symptom sets b-z) in other contexts.
Sometimes, a problem in one system can directly damage another- like high blood pressure weakening blood vessels in the brain, and causing a stroke. This can be chronic as well- high sugar in poorly controlled diabetes slowly damages eyes, nerves, and kidneys.
There are many conditions that are correlated, but we don’t yet understand the underlying mechanism. We may have a better understanding for some of them soon! Just a note- with increased ability to analyze microbiomes, more correlations have been found between complex conditions (e.g. autism, anxiety/depression, etc.) and altered microbiomes. Almost all of these are observational studies, or conducted in non-human animals. I think that some people have gotten a zealous with their claims of microbiome abilities.
(You’re simply not gonna convince me that the reason depressed/anxious people have different microbiomes is because they’re less likely to eat salad. Not without MUCH better experimental evidence.)
Latest Answers