The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease • Hacker News Board

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#51

Post by Xeoncross » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 11:43 PM UTC

chroem- wrote: post #45

chiefalchemist wrote: post #14

The gut is the new "great unknown." Understanding it takes a more holistic approach. Western medicine / science is typically not very holistic-centric. It's not going to surprise me if many of the cures / remedies offered by "non traditional medicine" (read: lessons from human history) little by litte get more credit for their worthiness.

This is a very dangerous way of thinking. I can think of at least five people in my social network who have died as a direct result of seeking naturopathic medicine for their serious illnesses instead of proper medical care. Please do not encourage more people to do this.

I can think of 250,000 people in the United States alone who died last year because they sought proper medical care but died because of medical mistakes and bad prescriptions. In addition there were those that were harmed, but not fatally (of whom I know several).

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su...

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#52

Post by aviv » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 11:49 PM UTC

asdf1234tx wrote: post #40

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> water fasting is highly effective at curing many diseases Has this been demonstrated?

"...it can be argued that caloric restriction ... has the potential to accelerate the healing process..." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25881054 "...fasting ... has the potential to differentially protect normal and cancer cells against chemotherapy..." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815756/ "...Autophagy is sometimes referred to as cellular “cleansing”, and our observations provide an attractive…

The day Big Pharma finds a way to profit from patients not consuming anything but water for 10 to 40 days and getting rid of diseases that used to require lifelong drug regimen, the research flood gates will open. But ain't gonna happen in my lifetime. There's no money in fasting, and no one can patent it.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#53

Post by rosegold » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 11:50 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #3

DataWorker wrote: post #2

Is the suggestion that this particular bacteria is behind all forms of systemic lupus or merely that this bacteria can cause such a response? Thats an important difference.

Similarly, this headline makes it sound like all autoimmune diseases stem from gut bacteria. That sounds unlikely.

This is not the only research regarding microbiome and autoimmune disease. While this article states that their findings seem most promising for Lupus Nephritis, there are recent articles that point to other microbes which are relevant to rheumatoid arthritis: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160711151315.h... and https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gut-mic... among many others with the search "rheumatoid arthritis and gut microbes". See this for MS https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-germs-appear-... This is my all time favorite that just came out in Nature which shows that anti-inflammatories may contribute to slow growth of beneficial gut microbes. I have identified at least two first line DMARD's used in rheumatoid arthritis that are mentioned in this article. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02780-x?utm_sourc... So, while autoimmune diseases amy not stem from gut bacteria, there is definitely some relationship about which we need to learn more.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#54

Post by dang » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 11:58 PM UTC

paulie_a wrote: post #49

dang wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't, just because someone mentioned something like that. It only leads to predictable places.

I don't mind being downed for an unpopular opinion, but calling out fake doctors should not be a reason to get flagged... And yes they are fake doctors.

Maybe so, but these discussions are all the same and always turn uncivil, so they're off topic here. There are lots of other places on the internet to argue about them.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#55

Post by mrfusion » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 12:04 AM UTC

cyrusshepard wrote: post #18

If anyone is interested in a way to treat E. gallinarum—and other potentially pathogens—without antibiotics, you should look into phage therapy. Phages are viruses that attack specific bacteria, have been used for decades, are commercially available (even on Amazon) and are generally considered safe for human consumption. Granted, phage therapy typically targets gut pathogens, and in this study the E. gallinarum had…

I think gum disease could be a really powerful application for phage therapy. As I understand it there’s really just one or a few species causing the inflammation. Most bacteria in your mouth is good and just wants to mind it’s own business.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#56

Post by eloff » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 12:04 AM UTC

throwaway5752 wrote: post #27

smallnamespace wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted actually. Yes, this treatment can probably help some people, but it's probably also true that deploying this en masse would not be a great idea from a long-term ecological perspective. Low-dose antibiotics are already widely used today in farm animals because it lets them gain weight more quickly ( = more profit for the farmer). And now the bacteria have spread out of farms and i…

I found a few NIH papers after posting, and it appears the available data shows it doesn't result in drug resistance at these dosages. There are a few studies that tracked resistance among patient populations for several years and saw fewer changes than periodic high doses. I don't know.

This is my understanding as well.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#57

Post by mrfusion » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 12:07 AM UTC

throwaway5752 wrote: post #13

eloff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, she and my dad just did their own research online and gave it a try. Seems to have worked out really well for her. Her goiter shrank and she had to reduce her thyroid meds. Low dose doxycycline seems who tolerated, and has an interesting side effect of reducing inflammation to near zero in the body (CRP levels of actually zero). Given the role of inflammation in heart disease, that might be helpful for longevity…

This is why we have drug resistant bacteria, in a nutshell. Glad your mother's health is better, but if even a small number of people started following this regimen, it would be come useless in a relatively small number of years. edit: I would love it if just one person could tell me how I'm wrong instead of downvoting. Long term low dose antibiotic treatment (doxy is a tetracycline) is how this happens. If you look…

I Was going to downvote but I’ll respond instead.

These people have legimate medical needs for this antibiotic so this isn’t a case where we’d want to withhold it.

We’re better off spending our resources discovering new antibiotics instead of neggling who’s deserving of what.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#58

Post by wiredone » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 12:18 AM UTC

asdf1234tx wrote: post #39

I'm no expert, but here's the sequence (in reverse order) as I see it (for now): bad-things-happening Anything that treats "bad things happening", or "crazed immune system", or "crazed gut bacteria", will be a bandaid. I think our first world lifestyles create a perfect storm of bad living that undermines the foundations of a healthy human being from a multitude of vectors. Not enough sunlight, not enough unprocessed…

Your comment is incredibly ignorant, and positions opinion as fact.

It sounds like this friend of yours was taking a biologic like Remicade. People take these medications (Humira, Remicade Embrel etc) because they have immune system issues - to make a statement that these things are all caused by "bad living" makes it clear how uninformed you are on the topic.

Immune system conditions are also renowned for coming in waves - people can go into remission for years without a strong link to causation, making changes in diet and lifestyle often appear as if "it was definitely eating hamburgers that gave me eczema/arthritis/crohns disease.

The truth is, the medical community doesn't know the cause of these diseases yet, other than potentially linking these diseases to a reduction in "things for your immune system to do" due to our overly clean and sterile living conditions compared to past centuries.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#59

Post by electriclove » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 1:03 AM UTC

chroem- wrote: post #45

chiefalchemist wrote: post #14

The gut is the new "great unknown." Understanding it takes a more holistic approach. Western medicine / science is typically not very holistic-centric. It's not going to surprise me if many of the cures / remedies offered by "non traditional medicine" (read: lessons from human history) little by litte get more credit for their worthiness.

This is a very dangerous way of thinking. I can think of at least five people in my social network who have died as a direct result of seeking naturopathic medicine for their serious illnesses instead of proper medical care. Please do not encourage more people to do this.

Any particular naturopathic medicine in common?

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#60

Post by Retric » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 1:22 AM UTC

Xeoncross wrote: post #51

chroem- wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very dangerous way of thinking. I can think of at least five people in my social network who have died as a direct result of seeking naturopathic medicine for their serious illnesses instead of proper medical care. Please do not encourage more people to do this.

I can think of 250,000 people in the United States alone who died last year because they sought proper medical care but died because of medical mistakes and bad prescriptions. In addition there were those that were harmed, but not fatally (of whom I know several). https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su...

That's a very misleading statistic, many of these people might have lived with the best possible care but would have still died without treatment. Heathy people rarely seek major surgery for example.