This is a free, impartial information resource for people with autoimmune disorders. I was diagnosed with Neuromyelitis optica in 2020 and this is the resource I wish had existed back then. Now I have recovered and it still didn't exist, so here I am building it.

You're here because you've been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease (or two, or more!) and now you're being faced with your doctor telling you that you've got it for life and some people on the internet saying that you can cure yourself with seaweed pills or a detox protocol, and you are confused. I've been there. You want to hope that you can get well but you don't want to be duped into wasting your time, energy and money. And you don't want to try something that might turn out to make you worse!

I wanted to share some information that explains how and why you got sick and what your body might need in order to work towards recovery. This way, you can be in charge of your own health, making active choices in which health products and services you would like to use because you will understand how they may benefit or harm you.

If you want to get stuck right in, Start Here.

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.