Thank you for this piece. I believe the fact that autoimmune, chronic health conditions tend to be misunderstood, questioned as to their veracity, and generally met with skepticism and band-aid treatment approaches in Western medicine shows how flawed our medical system is. Women tend to suffer from autoimmune conditions more than men because our bodies are more complex systems, so yes, we are more “sensitive.” But a chronic illness is not “all in your head,” as so many doctors insist, particularly toward women. We live in a toxic culture where a lot of the food is highly processed/chemically treated, mental and physical health tolls from living in this competitive, isolating society are very real, and the medical system treats symptoms rather than looking systematically at triggers like stress, nutrition, and prior traumas. Rather than admit that they don’t fully understand a condition or why it might be happening, there is a tendency to treat any kind of inflammation with prednisone, and to treat other health conditions with similar whack-a-mole approaches. I think Western medicine needs to take a more holistic/integrative approach, taking the guidance of Chinese medicine and other so-called “alternative” healing modalities that more fully understand the interconnectedness of a person’s health and their systems.