Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Educate Your Immune System

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 113 posts

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#81

Post by etangent »

dTal wrote: post #54
etangent wrote: post #50

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…

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?

> 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?

1) Considering that the original article is about autoimmune disease, it's possible that there is a critical time period during early age (<3-4 years) when it is important to consume a particular substance, and beyond which the substance is completely ineffective---i.e. marketing to middle-aged ladies is great because they have money to spend, but the fact that this marketing exists is besides the point. 2) It wasn't my goal to present a finding for which there is lots of available evidence, but rather the opposite---to suggest a possibly under-explored area.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#82

Post by etangent »

baldfat wrote: post #57
dTal wrote: 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.

> Name one mammal besides humans who drink milk as adults?

I'm sorry, but your comment is completely irrelevant to the discussion. The original article is about autoimmune disease that develops at an early age. Whether you drink milk as an adult or not would have had no impact on the development of the disease. If you like your non-milk diet, you can keep your non-milk diet.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#83

Post by etangent »

rosser wrote: post #66
baldfat wrote: 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…

What I find interesting is that the health benefit (or non-benefit) of milk for adult humans is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Autoimmune disease (the topic of the original article) develops at a very early age.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#84

Post by Lxr »

reitanqild wrote: post #73
Dr_tldr wrote: 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…

Don't know exactly where to leave this comment but: could it be that some of the cases we see are linked to the nocebo (I think this is the word, opposite of placebo) effect? People who are used to dirt knows that they'll handle this alright because they always have lived in these conditions? While people who grew up in cleaner conditions get tricket into a bad feedback loop where any sign of anything wrong gets ampl…

Maybe for minor ailments but absolutely no way for real hardcore autoimmune disease. Usually there are several objective abnormalities in blood results, on x-rays, colonoscopy, MRI etc. Have a look at some images of the hands of someone with rheumatoid arthritis - there's a lot more going on than placebo/nocebo/anxiety.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#85

Post by dvtv75 »

underwater wrote: post #49
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…

I am the same. Always outside, lived on a farm for a few years, lived in the city. No problems with any allergies, and then, about 15 years ago, I worked in a store with photochemistry, but no ventilation. I was diagnosed with asthma some months later. I was pre-disposed to it, though.

Recently, I developed a new allergy to certain types of grass. Now I end up with white dots in my eyes, and a lot of pain.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#86

Post by dvtv75 »

jonlucc wrote: post #19

Interesting parallel study I saw recently: Autoimmune disease rodent models don't translate well to the clinic, so an academic group tried to look for reasons. They found that normal, healthy humans have far more memory B cells than lab mice, which may be a major factor. So they looked at wild mice and pet store mice. Wild mice had a lot of memory B cells, but pet store mice had the most. They found you can house pet…

Do you lose 20% of the lab mice, or the pet store mice, or the B cells?

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#87

Post by aaronbrethorst »

wonkaWonka wrote: post #39
Dr_tldr wrote: 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…

Claims of humblebraggadocio is the HN counterpart to calling out an " edgelord " elsewhere. As a word, humblebrag is irritating to see in use, even if you are not its target.

In case this was the first time anyone else encountered this term: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=edgelord

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#88

Post by hrc2 »

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

I like your thinking, kinda surprised you got downvoted on HN for it.

One angle is the use of parasites to treat autoimmune diseases. It wasn't mentioned in the article, but hookworms are being studied for their ability to secrete a wide range of immune-modulating molecules. Companies are trying to determine which molecules are especially useful, and in what combination, so they can synthesize them and sell them.

But, you can get their beneficial effect right now, which is very appealing to people with major autoimmune diseases. Some companies are selling parasite eggs by mail to people who otherwise can't get them. I have MS, I take them.

It's not a lucrative business, and there are a lot of regulatory hurdles, but the treatment is quite safe.

Most people are disgusted by the idea of infecting their self with parasites. The reality is that humans evolved with parasites constantly inside of their bodies. It's only in the last 100 years that widespread anti-parasitic medication has wiped them out.

That did a lot of good for society in general, but we took it too far, essentially, by wiping out parasites entirely. There are a lot of benign "parasites", which should be thought of as symbiotes.

The way that big pharma is dealing with this is as mentioned above: they're trying to synthesize the right stew of immune-modulating chemicals to deal with this. But the immediate solution is to educate people, and sell them clean, safe parasites (or their eggs).

It's also nice if they live a long time in their host, and don't reproduce inside of the host. This is why Necator Americanus is mostly used; it fits all of these characteristics.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#90

Post by teslabox »

ry_ry wrote: post #42
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…

I've read speculation that chickenpox is a seasonal disease, and that one difference between severe cases and mild cases is the child's vitamin D level.

It is unfortunate that children are now commonly vaccinated against chickenpox. This is a weakling virus that barely kills anyone, and more good could be done by figuring out factors that help children have a mild case.

Post reply on HN