Educate Your Immune System • Hacker News Board

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#91

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:36 AM UTC

o_____________o wrote: post #40

LionessLover wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sarcasm is a valuable tool in the human communication arsenal. If you want to do without it, be my guest, but don't try to dictate your subjective preferences to others who have what I would claim is a more mature and more healthy attitude towards the beauty and variety in human language. And the "petty" is all in your head . There are too many people who blame others for what's in their own head.

Sarcasm can be very valuable. It can also be used to contemptuously insult someone when a simple rebuttal would suffice. The latter is an immature, weak intellectual position (see Appeal to Ridicule and Question Begging Epithet) that says nothing more than "you are so wrong as to look asinine". This only fosters more emotional, insult-riddled dialogue, which is why the user above quoted HN guidelines, which you are n…

[deleted]

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#92

Post by bonobo3000 » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 2:39 AM UTC

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…

Consuming "probiotics" is a very similar idea to this. It promotes exactly this kind of food - yogurts, kefir etc.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#93

Post by Dr_tldr » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 3:28 AM UTC

ngrilly wrote: post #68

kome wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It's placing blame for a general problem on the decisions and values of certain people and societies.

In terms of logical structure, taking an anecdote and universalizing it without a falsifiable explanatory mechanism is indistinguishable from blaming faraway natural disasters on other people sinning against the gods.

In both cases, people and society are held to be at least partially culpable for something bad that happened to them without presenting any evidence other than that they don't do all the same things that you do, and you're doing fine.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#94

Post by HillaryBriss » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 3:47 AM UTC

hrc2 wrote: post #88

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…

Thanks for your reply. (Yeah, it's not clear to me why some of my comments get downvoted. Maybe in this case it's because I seemed insincere, as if I were promoting someone's pre-existing business or something? Or maybe they figured I should just research this for myself. Or maybe they thought I was trying to just put a low-information comment, cheap-shot, for more karma points. Or something. Not sure.)

Anyway, it's interesting to hear about the hookworms and your direct experience with them. I'd be curious to hear more about your experience with that therapy, if you are willing/interested to share it.

Basically, I wonder in what circumstances would you recommend that therapy to others who have an autoimmune condition? (e.g. for all cases, just some cases, cases that did not respond to drugs, diet, etc.) Is it a first resort, or a last resort or something in the middle, etc. ?

Again, thanks.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#95

Post by the_watcher » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 4:13 AM UTC

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?

Name one mammal besides humans who regularly cooks food before eating it.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#96

Post by refurb » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 4:21 AM UTC

hrc2 wrote: post #88

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…

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).

Coronado Biosciences was running clinical trials using pig whipworm ova to see if it had an impact on inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn's and ulcerative colitis). Turns out there was no observable effect.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#97

Post by PantaloonFlames » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 5:22 AM UTC

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…

> Sometimes you're lucky. And sometimes your luck suddenly runs out.

Sorry to hear about your ...urticaria. But... I don't think it's "luck".

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#98

Post by PantaloonFlames » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 5:26 AM UTC

arjie wrote: post #51

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 did all that except the milking by hand and the rare showering (grew up in 36-40 °C place), in addition to being barefoot in the mud everywhere, and all I got for all that is a propensity for catching the flu every year. My brother grew up when we started moving out of this sort of environment (so he had 4 years less of this) and he falls sick much less than I do. My guess is that other factors dominate.

> a propensity for catching the flu every year.

I don't think that a faraway childhood affects resistance to the flu, right now, significantly. Maybe to some of the maladies mentioned in the article. The fact is the immune system is an engine, just like everything else in the human body. People who exercise more get sick less often. People who exercise more get sick less severely. People who have sex more often have more immunoglobulin A. People who sleep more, get sick less often.

If you get the flu more often than you'd like, start exercising more, having more sex, or sleeping better. Ideally all three.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#99

Post by wsc981 » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 5:39 AM UTC

  These findings are very preliminary, but they support a decades-old 
  (and unfortunately named) idea called the hygiene hypothesis. In 
  order to develop properly, the hypothesis holds — to avoid the 
  hyper-reactive tendencies that underlie autoimmune and allergic 
  disease — the immune system needs a certain type of stimulation 
  early in life. It needs an education.

George Carlin (RIP) also had a nice little piece on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnmMNdiCz_s

I think it's funny that we Western people get so quickly sick from street-food in Asian countries (e.g. Thailand), while most locals have no problem eating the food.

Re: Educate Your Immune System

#100

Post by dang » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 5:41 AM UTC

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…

> not scientifically useful

There's no need for comments here to be scientifically useful. HN threads are simply conversation. Anecdotes are not only welcome, they're conversation's life blood.

(ellyagg already made this point, and was right.)