Intriguing characters, puzzling investigations, absorbing memories and some surprising turns of events or resolutions are at the centre of these fourteen short stories recommended to everybody interested in health literacy as well clinical practices and research into the many wicked issues posed by autoimmune diseases.
"The Blind Spot" aims at science communication, connecting adverse childhood experiences to autoimmune diseases and inborn errors of immunity. There is no pulling or pushing of theories, products, disciplines, brands or campaigns: each story offers instead several layers the reader can engage with, emphasising the positivity of deeply personal journeys into self-care, conveying the need to preserve trust in conventional, functional and lifestyle medicine and to welcome and support research and advances in life sciences.
"We are born with some innate, polygenic predisposition to autoimmune diseases, also called genetic susceptibility" Brunella Longo explains in the Postface "but we actually develop an active disease only if we go through highly variable, subjective experiences of injury, loss, trauma, abuse, infections, stress or other damage to the body and the mind. In a nutshell, the accidents we survive in our life may, hopefully, with time, fade away but traces of their legacy very likely remains on our immune system, causing impairments, chronic diseases or disabilities, particularly if they occur in childhood or other vulnerable periods in life". Hence the opportunity to immerse ourselves in a narrative fabric, to learn and understand more about the aetiology and the development of autoimmune diseases.
The imaginative yet instructional tales of science, hope and self-care offered by these stories are always accompanied by trustworthy, reliable information and medical references, carefully selected and reviewed from the author, an informed patient with four decades of experience as an information consultant across several industries.
