Q:Dr., can u enlighten us about autoimmune diseases pls. A lot of people are good through dis condition and they don’t know what exactly is wrong because in Nigerian, they don’t really call patients attention to it unlike in America. Kindly help discuss about it.

A: Hi dear, thanks for writing in. You are correct. Many people do not know about auto-immune disorders. So what is an auto-immune disease? This condition refers to a situation in which the body .for some reason, turns on itself and starts to attack itself. It sees healthy cells and tissues as unhealthy and infected cells and starts to attack these healthy cells.

Some common examples of this condition include:

Graves’ Disease in which the body no longer recognizes the thyroid gland as part of it and produces antibodies to fight it. In response, the thyroid gland produces excessive amounts of thyroid hormones.

Rheumatoid arthritis…