Dr. Giulia Enders

good medical research.

And there are these studies with relaxation techniques, stress influencing the course of autoimmune diseases.

So it is one factor that we can influence, but there's also other factors.

Like, as I said, maybe a viral disease has tipped it off in the beginning, or you're genetically more likely to develop autoimmunity because you lack certain signals or structures or have a little less of cells that

calm the immune system down usually.

So there's always multiple factors, but one of them is also your body being in a good state and your immune system noticing that.

I think that's fascinating because I feel like I was brought up thinking that is all crazy Californian woo-woo to think that your mental attitude could have any impact on your body.

I was definitely brought up with a very big divide between the mind and the rest of your body.

I think most of us were.

And this is just what happens when research has the luxury of being more differentiated.

Lots of research that I look at now is, you know, suddenly there's a gut-liver axis, there's a liver-brain axis, there's immune system-brain axis, there's, you know, all these axes that are now being called that.

They're basically just saying, oh, now we have the luxury to see all these finer connections and influences as well.

It's also a paradigm shift because we've had this time of, you know, separating everything in science.

And we had to because everything was so, you know, before that medieval times and everything being a bit more like a story time or, you know, mystical.

And then we said, no, let's separate it and be very rational.

And in order to research it, we have to really divide it up and look at the singular pieces.

And I think now we're actually doing an interesting step.

We're now connecting those pieces that we were so eager of separating in the first place.

I find this an interesting time in medicine.

My wife says I'm a terrible patient.