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Educate Your Immune System

nytimes.com

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Re: Educate Your Immune System

#41

Post by xenadu02 »

Lxr wrote: post #26
kome wrote: post #2

Nice little article! And it confirms my anecdotal evidence, so it feels good. ;) I had a wild childhood: it happened to me to eat hamster food from his cage, eating dirt, eating sand, raw tomatoes directly from the plant, drinking waters from random streams; drinking raw milk without boiling it few minutes after milking it by hand, eating raw eggs, and when I wasn't in school, like during the summer, I had one shower…

I promise there are plenty of patients with autoimmune disease who had childhoods just like yours. I don’t want to sound hostile but “I am not sick, because I do/did X” is a) not scientifically useful and b) somewhat insulting to patients who suffer from chronic illness. The truth is everyone has risk factors for most diseases and there is still an incredibly large probabilistic element involved - some people are jus…

Indeed; when John Leal added chlorine to water in the early 1900s infant mortality was cut in half. After chlorination spread to most US cities this effect was replicated everywhere else too. Typhus outbreaks went from a sea-saw pattern to almost zero within a few years.

Yes we need some exposure to germs. Vaccines are an excellent way to do that without the risk of catching the disease.

Yes we shouldn't go overboard with antibiotics or stop kids from playing in the dirt. But there are plenty of health measures that are clearly beneficial despite lowering our exposure to germs.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#42

Post by ry_ry »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #27

> Preventing autoimmune disorders may require emulating aspects of that “dirtier” world: safely bottling the kinds of microbes that protect the Russian kids, so we can give them to everyone Ok, so where's the productization? Where's the startup? Surely this product/service already exists in some form or other, somewhere

It already exists as an informal social arrangement!

When I was a small child and caught chickenpox several of my friends were brought round to play so they could 'safely' catch it as children, rather than waiting to catch the altogether nastier grown-up version later in life.

I suspect my mother didn't charge for the product/service , although that may be because she couldn't get a node.js stack up and running.

Also it was in 1983.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#44

Post by PuffinBlue »

makmanalp wrote: post #32
PuffinBlue wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't always work though. I grew up in the countryside and similar to you I ate dirt, wild fruit (best ever was a egg plum tree we found, though the natural laxative effect was unwelcome), drank from streams etc etc. Unfortunately, I developed an allergy to dogs, despite living with one for nearly 10 years! I left for literally 3 months and upon my return I was allergic. Also I still get colds and illnesses like mo…

I'm trying to find the source, but I remember reading something about allergies appearing in people later in life, and overexposure in that case was also a factor, IIRC

And possibly something to do with antibiotics too? I had just finished a very heavy course when I was reintroduced to the dog, apparently there is some suspicion that such a scenario could have something to do with it?

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#45

Post by op00to »

kome wrote: post #2

Nice little article! And it confirms my anecdotal evidence, so it feels good. ;) I had a wild childhood: it happened to me to eat hamster food from his cage, eating dirt, eating sand, raw tomatoes directly from the plant, drinking waters from random streams; drinking raw milk without boiling it few minutes after milking it by hand, eating raw eggs, and when I wasn't in school, like during the summer, I had one shower…

Do you have children now? I had a similar upbringing and similarly didn't get sick very much. However, once we had a kid, I have been sick way more and more severely. Generally immediately after my child. Do I want to protect my child from getting sick so I can stay productive, or do I want to allow him to exercise his immune system more but reduce my own health and productivity?

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#46

Post by hodwik »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #27

> Preventing autoimmune disorders may require emulating aspects of that “dirtier” world: safely bottling the kinds of microbes that protect the Russian kids, so we can give them to everyone Ok, so where's the productization? Where's the startup? Surely this product/service already exists in some form or other, somewhere

One, FDA. Two, litigation/risk.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#47

Post by op00to »

iak8god wrote: post #18
LionessLover wrote: post #17

Thank's for your valuable anecdote. We can now safely ignore all the people who did get a disease or toxins doing the same.

Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.

I would totally say this face to face, then back away slowly from the person who is quite possibly an E. coli carrier from eating raw meat. :)

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#49

Post by underwater »

kome wrote: post #2

Nice little article! And it confirms my anecdotal evidence, so it feels good. ;) I had a wild childhood: it happened to me to eat hamster food from his cage, eating dirt, eating sand, raw tomatoes directly from the plant, drinking waters from random streams; drinking raw milk without boiling it few minutes after milking it by hand, eating raw eggs, and when I wasn't in school, like during the summer, I had one shower…

I, too, spent my childhood playing outside. And I was never on antibiotics.

At 30 I would have told you I was in perfect health. No allergies or asthma or anything remotely like that. Then one day my immune system got out of whack and develop chronic urticaria. (Thankfully modern medicine makes it a minor issue).

My childhood didn't retroactively change during that interval. Sometimes you're lucky. And sometimes your luck suddenly runs out.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#50

Post by etangent »

A wild hypothesis here. One thing I noticed in "pre-Western" diets that's absent from modern ones is unpasteurized dairy. All milk sold in Western countries is pasteurized (treated thermally to kill most of its bacteria). If you leave on a shelf, it will remain unspoiled for quite a long time compared to unpasteurized, but when it does spoil, it becomes completely undrinkable, with foul smell. Unpasteurized milk, on the other hand, has a much shorter shelf life, however the spoiled product is acidic and yogurt-like, has no foul smell, and is (mostly) safe to consume, even by people with some degree of lactose intolerance (it has had most of its lactose converted to lactic acid, hence the sour taste). This so-called Soured milk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soured_milk) is extremely commonly consumed in many Eastern European countries that don't have Western food safety standards.

While there may be other beneficial (to the immune system) things happening in Russian Karelia, I can't help but wonder if the absence of unpasteurized dairy is the single massive thing that causes failure of gut microbiomes in the modern world.

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