This is a free, impartial information resource for people with autoimmune disorders.

After being diagnosed with Neuromyelitis optica in 2020, I have been curious to learn more about the mechanisms that the body has in order to restore balance, and what inputs those mechanisms require. Here I am publishing the information I find so that others can learn how their bodies work too.

As I expand my understanding of how the body works, I start to understand why I got sick and what might help my body work towards recovery. This way, I can be in charge of your own health, making active choices in which health products and services I use because I understand how they may benefit or harm me.

I stopped taking my immunosuppressant medication in 2022 and I live without any autoimmune symptoms.

What in-built mechanisms does the body have for regulating immune activity?

Find out more here about how the body works in health, how it goes wrong in autoimmune disease, what mechanisms it has to return to homeostasis, and what inputs those mechanisms require.

About Me

Hi, I'm Anna. I got diagnosed with Nuromyelitis optica (NMO) in 2020.

I live in northern Spain with my husband and our two little kids.

I am building this web page in my 'spare' time, putting together all the helpful information I have come across in my healing, in the hope that it will help others.

When I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in 2020, I heard my doctor tell me that I had a chronic, degenerative, incurable disease. She told me to take medication to suppress my immune system, else risk going blind and being wheelchair-bound before I turned 40.

Thankfully I had heard a story about someone recovering from what her doctor told her at the time would be a 'fatal' autoimmune disease, so I started digging. I found lots of information once I started looking - and lots of products and services that I could pay money for - but had no idea who to believe or what was worth trying. I wished there was somewhere impartial where I could get some good advice. I tried trawling through journal articles but between fatigue, brain fog, parenting young children, and dealing with back-to-back viral infections due to immunosuppressants, I had little capacity for critical thinking.

Five years of trial and error and a few great therapists later, I am healthy and alert and able to provide for others what I had longed for myself.

Project History

Logo

The Autoimmune Recovery Project logo is a stylized dendritic cell.

Dendritic cells are such a cool part of the immune system! And when I read about how they work, I wondered whether they could be allies in my recovery if I could harness their power for good.

Dendritic cells are covered in long tendrils that take samples from all over the body and then take that information to other immune cells to demonstrate who might be friend and who might be foe. They are key to understanding why 'reducing inflammation' is so important in recovery.

Read more about them in the story of the Immune System.