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Educate Your Immune System

nytimes.com

61–70 of 113 posts

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#61
post #57
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that eating dairy at all is a relatively modern invention (post-agriculture), I suspect not. Is there any evidence at all for the beneficial effect of bioactive dairy products on the gut microbiome, beyond yoghurt commercials for middle-aged women?

Name one mammal besides humans who drink milk as adults? P.S. I love cheese and will forever eat it but I don't drink milk.

When presented with milk, many adult mammals (including some humans) will drink it. Humans are simply better than most at getting their way with other species -- this is the primary difference, is it not?

For example, I have seen apparently healthy and non-starving adult black bears, some dogs, and cats happily consume cow milk if it is available. There are pros and cons to it, for sure, but there is clearly nutrition present.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#62
post #57
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that eating dairy at all is a relatively modern invention (post-agriculture), I suspect not. Is there any evidence at all for the beneficial effect of bioactive dairy products on the gut microbiome, beyond yoghurt commercials for middle-aged women?

Name one mammal besides humans who drink milk as adults? P.S. I love cheese and will forever eat it but I don't drink milk.

That's because they don't get it isn't it? Many of them will happily drink if they get. Like cats as has already been mentioned, or our horse when we were young, who would sneak upon our dairy cows to steal milk.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#63
post #37
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But beyond being a humblebrag, it's also bordering on a just-world view of the universe that's basically superstition. Without reference to a larger dataset, the inference "I"m never sick because I played in the woods and ate weird stuff. If you get sick a lot, it's partially your fault because you didn't do that." could easily be replaced with "I'm never sick because I prayed to the right god every day. If you get s…

> it's partially your fault because you didn't do that I never implied that. If something, I said that too much pressure by society is making parents work harder, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

[deleted]

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#64
post #59

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…

I lived most of my life in St.Petersburg and was spending each summer vacation in the country side near Karelia. Homemade soured milk is nowhere as popular as kefir from stores. Also all the shelf milk is pasteurized, you need to know a cow owner to get raw milk.

Had similar experience.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#65
>The newborns were equally divided among Finland, Russia and Estonia, where the prevalence of Type 1 diabetes is on the rise, but still well below Finland’s.

very telling giving the history of Estonia during last 25 years.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#66
post #57
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that eating dairy at all is a relatively modern invention (post-agriculture), I suspect not. Is there any evidence at all for the beneficial effect of bioactive dairy products on the gut microbiome, beyond yoghurt commercials for middle-aged women?

Name one mammal besides humans who drink milk as adults? P.S. I love cheese and will forever eat it but I don't drink milk.

I find it really interesting that all of the replies to this comment take the fact that animals will consume dairy if it's available as an argument in favor of human consumption of it. Humans are the only animals, that as adults, take the milk of another mammal for their own consumption.

For that matter, other than the isolated, exceptional cases of a lactating mammal adopting the orphans of another mammal and nursing them, humans are the only mammals that consume the milk of a different species.

Cats drinking from a saucer of milk put on the floor in front of them is nothing like milking a cow — except, I suppose, at the level of digesting lactose.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#67
post #5
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget that the reason people get sick is because they are infected. Increasing population density will clearly lead to more transmissions, especially in cities.

Actually, TFA makes the case that people living in developed societies are not infected early enough in life, which makes their immune systems vulnerable in the long run.

Well, it used to be that infant mortality was a lot bigger, some of which was probably infants dying to things they were exposed to. So we can't just ignore survivorship bias in considering these things.

In general, we're probably better off with controlled, safe exposures (e.g. vaccines) than uncontrolled exposure and simply hoping we'll survive anything we catch.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#68
post #37
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But beyond being a humblebrag, it's also bordering on a just-world view of the universe that's basically superstition. Without reference to a larger dataset, the inference "I"m never sick because I played in the woods and ate weird stuff. If you get sick a lot, it's partially your fault because you didn't do that." could easily be replaced with "I'm never sick because I prayed to the right god every day. If you get s…

> it's partially your fault because you didn't do that I never implied that. If something, I said that too much pressure by society is making parents work harder, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

I'm wondering why you are downvoted for this comment?

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#69
post #66
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name one mammal besides humans who drink milk as adults? P.S. I love cheese and will forever eat it but I don't drink milk.

I find it really interesting that all of the replies to this comment take the fact that animals will consume dairy if it's available as an argument in favor of human consumption of it. Humans are the only animals, that as adults , take the milk of another mammal for their own consumption. For that matter, other than the isolated, exceptional cases of a lactating mammal adopting the orphans of another mammal and nursi…

Again, our mare happily stole milk from dairy cows.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#70
Few known facts (About Finnish children);

- In Finland 80% of 3-year olds have had ear infection.

- 53% of 2-year olds are in daycare. Due to various reasons group sizes are getting bigger and bigger, new normal can be around 30 kids in a single daycare group (=constant infections...)

- Half of the kids have private health insurances (public outpatient care has some issues..)

- Typical treatment for ear infection(although many times unnecessary) is antibiotics.(=to keep parents happy / easier for the doctor)

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