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The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

sciencedaily.com

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Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#71

Post by smallnamespace »

losteric wrote: post #69
m_fayer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A millennia of trial and error vs a century or so of methodical science. Certainly the science is much more effective, but there must be some gems in that great big pile of trial and error too. Also we shouldn't underestimate the healing power of careful attention, empathy, and placebo effects.

Yes... that's what I said... finding new treatments is like finding needles in a haystack, and science is the magnet. When it comes to traditional medicine, most of the haystack is really just hay. Historical trial and error told people what not to do, but it did not distinguish between ineffective and successful treatment due to generally high mortality rates and lack of rigorous testing. If you have time, browse th…

> most of the haystack is really just hay

Citation needed? You can't blindly assert that something doesn't work by appealing to scientific methodology and its heavy reliance on proof without actually bringing that proof to the table.

Otherwise you're just arguing from your own heuristics and prior beliefs—just like other non-scientific traditions. You might be right, or you might be wrong; but cloaking that claim with the mantle of science is the exact opposite of careful scientific scrutiny.

> but it did not distinguish between ineffective and successful treatment due to generally high mortality rates and lack of rigorous testing.

And we're sure this is true for all cultures over all times how, exactly?

> ancient western medicine

This might be much more likely to be true since modern Western medicine developed from pre-modern Western medicine, so early modern doctors were intimately familiar with how effective (or not) those approaches were.

How likely is it that Western medicine has rigorously and thoroughly investigated non-Western medical traditions though?

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#72

Post by etiam »

paulie_a wrote: post #50
etiam wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Ayurveda medicine is considered pseudoscientific” [1]. I'm sure it is. By whom and why? And more to the point, is it right in this case, regardless of its scientific status.

By actual science. Ayurveda isn't even pseudoscience. It's complete bullshit and nothing more.

That's nonsensical. "Actual science" isn't even a well-defined thing and it's certainly not an entity that holds opinions. Your assertion is nothing more than name-calling.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#73

Post by krageon »

aviv wrote: post #52
asdf1234tx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...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.

Regardless of whether or not this is true (and really it seems to me to be a bit more malicious than large groups of people are consistently capable of), this isn't a super useful way of looking at it. Rather than speculate on why things are the way they are (especially if in this case it's pretty much unsolvable without really big changes), shouldn't we look to solve the problems this is causing (which by and large involves "merely" collecting large amounts of data, which is much less difficult and much more attainable in the short term)?

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#74

Post by JoshMnem »

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.

A "more holistic approach" doesn't necessarily mean "naturopathic medicine" or not seeking proper medical care.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#75

Post by Double_a_92 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15
aviv wrote: post #12

Another reason why water fasting is highly effective at curing many diseases.

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

Didn't you see all those posts on facebook? Middle-aged women appearently are really heavy medical researcher.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#76

Post by chiefalchemist »

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 did not say naturopathic medicine. What I said was, things that were "scientifically" dismissed are rventuallt redemed. Acupuncture comes to mind. As do other approaches that help strengthen the gut. Etc.

That said, how many people have died, suffered or lived otherwise uncured from the tunnel vision of traditional medicine? I wish I had $20 for every time I heard "...the doctors aren't sure what it is..."

Your point is a good one. Let's just be fair to apply it evenly to all those who offer cures.

Oh! And let's not forget the "opioid crisis." Not only is that driven by the misunderstanding of pain, but the so called cure kills time and time again.

Let's be fair. Please.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#77

Post by chiefalchemist »

JoshMnem wrote: post #74
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.

A "more holistic approach" doesn't necessarily mean "naturopathic medicine" or not seeking proper medical care.

Exactly. Thank you.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#78

Post by zilian »

JoshMnem wrote: post #46
zilian wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a matter of fact, I do know what you're talking about (AS). And I can't downvote, but I would ! ;) Promising mountains with "diets" is as bad or worse than doctors not really considering what's it like to live with autoimmune diseases / having trouble establishing diagnosis. Please link to peer-reviewed, serious papers showing results in double-blind studies if you wish to convince fellow hackers.

You're reading too much into what I'm saying. I didn't promise mountains with "diets". I said that "Researchers should be paying more attention to those areas." I'm definitely not saying that the answer is going to be "just stop eating" or curing yourself with woo like homeopathy and goji berries. I don't think that something like water fasting will cure the autoimmune conditions of most people, but it's something th…

Thanks for the clarification. I will look into it !

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#79

Post by throwaway5752 »

mrfusion wrote: post #57
throwaway5752 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hashimoto's is awful, but it can also be treated with an oral form of the thyroid hormones to restore appropriate levels (levothyroxine as the original poster mentioned earlier). I believe this is completely effective (I don't know if the underlying condition still causes an uncomfortable/visible goiter).

It's generally not fatal when treated. I'm sure you know that bacteria don't have to do traditional reproduction to exchange genetic material so they can pass along traits like antibiotic resistance very rapidly. It can also spread between different species of bacteria (see plasmids, bacterial conjugation/transformation).

So this is why I'm against using antibiotics for non-life saving applications, generally. You have widely drug resistant staph (eg, MRSA), e. coli, chlamydia, tuberculosis (XDR TB), et al. causing massive problems in healthcare systems across the world and killing quite a few people.

I am not sure if you know this, but given the absence of the selection pressure, bacterial populations can lose drug resistance. It has higher ongoing metabolic requirements to have that trait, and is a evolutionary disadvantage. Also, I don't know if you appreciate the difficulty to find new antibiotics (particularly wide-spectrum and low side-effects/toxicity). I would encourage you to research that topic carefully because it's a subject with a lot of poor information written about it.

Finally, I will underscore that I took my own advice, and found multiple papers hosted by the NIH about emergence of drug resistance in patients using very low dose doxy (not in Hashimoto's, but rosacea, where its non-antibiotic properties are also useful, though I'm not sure it's the same mechanism). So I was wrong, it seems. I learned something new in the process of researching my response.

Re: The enemy within: Gut bacteria drive autoimmune disease

#80

Post by paulie_a »

etiam wrote: post #72
paulie_a wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By actual science. Ayurveda isn't even pseudoscience. It's complete bullshit and nothing more.

That's nonsensical. "Actual science" isn't even a well-defined thing and it's certainly not an entity that holds opinions. Your assertion is nothing more than name-calling.

Let me simplify it there is medicine and actual doctors...then their is ayaveuda
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