by Donna Jackson Nakazawa

Read an Excerpt | Praise & Reviews

* A groundbreaking and comprehensive look at a rapidly growing epidemic that affects one in every nine women

* Learn to protect your immune system while exploring possible causes and potential cures for nearly 100 autoimmune diseases including Multiple Sclero sis, Lupus, Crohn’s Disease, Type 1 Diabetes, Rheumatoid Arthritis — and autoimmune related diseases like Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

In THE AUTOIMMUNE EPIDEMIC: Bodies Gone Haywire in a World Out of Balance—and the Cutting Edge Science that Promises Hope, Donna Jackson Nakazawa lays forth the disturbing ways that “autogens” — a term Nakazawa coins to denote chemical, lifestyle, and other triggers of autoimmune disease — are wreaking havoc with the human immune system. She offers a clear course for hope, detailing the personal, political, and economic choices that can help curb this epidemic before it is too late.

THE AUTOIMMUNE EPIDEMIC combines up-to-the-minute research emerging out of dozens of today’s cutting-edge scientific labs with the frontline perspective of autoimmune sufferers. Nakazawa explores vital topics including:

• What role chemicals, heavy metals, viruses, diet, stress, lifestyle and genes play in developing autoimmune disease
• How our modern lifestyles and environmental contamination have created a “perfect storm” — the ripest possible conditions for today’s autoimmune epidemic to take hold
  The connection between autoimmune disease and allergies, the rates of which are likewise skyrocketing
• The disturbing fact that 75% of autoimmune sufferers are women — and one in nine women will be afflicted with these diseases
• The connection between autoimmune disease and Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue
  The fact that the average American woman is eight times more likely to have autoimmune disease than breast cancer
• How industrial byproducts interface with the immune systems of our bodies on a cellular level, sabotaging an extraordinarily fine-tuned blueprint for healthy cellular communication
  Ways in which readers can lessen the multitude of exposures that threaten their immune systems and their overall health
• The groundbreaking interventions from today’s top labs — from Harvard to Hopkins — that promise to help halt the disease process

As Nakazawa’s personal accounts show, anyone is susceptible to autoimmune disease—from an athletic doctor in her 40s to an entire neighborhood of teenage girls to small children. However, surveys reveal that nine out of ten people cannot specifically name an autoimmune disease. More disturbingly, many general practitioners lack in-depth knowledge of these diseases and their diagnoses, and the average autoimmune disease patient sees six doctors—over an average of four years—before being diagnosed and treated correctly.

THE AUTOIMMUNE EPIDEMIC calls for a halt in the proliferation of these debilitating, and often fatal, diseases—and provides the knowledge and the means to make a difference.

As Dr. Douglas Kerr, the director of the Johns Hopkins Transverse Myelitis Center states in the book’s foreword, “The Autoimmune Epidemic is astounding… It is the kind of book that will scare you. It will make you angry. Reading The Autoimmune Epidemic is a life-altering event. It needs to be.”