Gaining Lupus Resilience
Resilience is a great trait that helped humans and other species survive during hard times. Many lupus sufferers acquire this trait when learning how to cope with this condition, suggests an Australian research paper that summarizes the findings of 46 studies involving nearly 1,400 people.
This study reveals that lupus patients adopt two positive responses once they learn the diagnosis and start living with the awareness that they have this condition. One is treatment adherence, and the second is gaining lupus resilience.
How to Gain Lupus Resilience
The authors assessed the ability to gain resilience based on four concepts: how patients developed optimism, control and empowerment, how they started to get informed and involved, and value mutual understanding. Let’s see how patients just like you had been described with these qualities.
Optimism
When it comes to optimism, this is what a Lupus patient said: “If you allow it to bean you, it will. Try to be as normal as possible.
Don’t feel sorry for yourself" while another person found SLE as a blessing in disguise “I believe every experience offers fortitude, endurance, and strength of character if I am willing to learn from it. Today I will welcome this teacher into my life, looking for what I can learn rather than fighting or fearing it."
Control and Empowerment
“You never want to push yourself. I was very active, and there’s a limit now as far as pushing myself physically. Even emotionally, I’ve got to think that could cause a flare-up. Basic control, I guess," says one patient.
Other patients found certain actions they learned that combating fatigue to be empowering: “I take care, because I think that getting upset can cause flares, I try to keep calm and worry less."
Being Informed and Involved
On patient describes this concept as the following: “I would not have coped nearly as well had I not had that resource of knowing what other patients are going through, the latest research is, what books have been written, and what doctors are working on the illness."
“My rheumatologist has a meeting about lupus and even if it's once a year, I always learn something that helps me understand what I'm going through," says another Lupus sufferer.
Valuing Mutual Understanding
“It seems the people I've met that have lupus are very strong people. I haven't met anyone who wasn't; I don't know if the lupus causes it or vice versa. I feel they have strong constitutions and are very determined, not going to let things keep them down long. I think I'm a survivor," explains one patient. Another one says the following: “There is a big difference when you meet someone who is just like you, feels like you."
More Reasons to Be Optimistic
Medical News Today reports two recent discoveries: the development of a nanogel-based delivery system that targets mycophenolic acid directly to those tissues linked with immune cells and this discovery may be used in the future for the treatment of Lupus, according to Yale University scientists.
The second discovery comes from researchers from the University of Alabama who found an immune protein that influences autoimmune conditions such as lupus. By using a variation of this immune protein, doctors may be able to offer in the future individualized treatments for patients with autoimmune conditions.
Staying up to date with developments in the medical community will greatly help with lupus resilience.