Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease • Hacker News Board

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#81

Post by sunshinerag » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #58

Someone1234 wrote: post #2

I found this area interesting: > “A fat cell is almost like a primitive immune cell,” says Hotamisligil. “It can request the assistance of immune cells when in trouble, but if the stress continues, and the immune cells remain, they start changing their character and behavior from helpful to harmful.” ... > When overloaded with stored lipid, fat cells begin to lose their functional and structural integrity and may sta…

the fat -> immune response is reminiscent of cardiovascular diseases too

In what ways? Can you be specific?

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#82

Post by all_blue_chucks » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 4:28 AM UTC

andai wrote: post #5

Someone1234 wrote: post #2

I found this area interesting: > “A fat cell is almost like a primitive immune cell,” says Hotamisligil. “It can request the assistance of immune cells when in trouble, but if the stress continues, and the immune cells remain, they start changing their character and behavior from helpful to harmful.” ... > When overloaded with stored lipid, fat cells begin to lose their functional and structural integrity and may sta…

> Critics might suggest that inflammation is just a symptom in these diseases, rather than a cause. But Hotamisligil says, unequivocally, “Chronic inflammation is uniformly damaging and is absolutely causal to the process, because if you interfere with it, you can reverse the pathology.” And this ability to control such diseases simply by reversing inflammation is a biological response, dating far back to the time of…

Getting off-topic, but how do biologists define the "highness" of an organism?

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#83

Post by m3nu » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 4:34 AM UTC

atomical wrote: post #69

m3nu wrote: post #57

More reason to keep an eye on hsCRP and take steps if it gets too high. (Most labs use The article brings together different issues, like fasting, fat tissue, exercise, diet, sugar and chronic disease. Reposted with a summary here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/comments/bh2s9a/could_i...

This sounds like pseudoscience. Our lives are becoming dominated by fads and gurus just like our forebears.

Agree with what you say in general, but not here. hsCRP is fairly well studied.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#84

Post by cik2e » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 4:35 AM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #62

refurb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflammation is not just a symptom, but also an underlying process. Lots of things can cause inflammation, but the underlying process can be similar. And it can have good and bad effects.

Can you provide an example where inflammation _is_ the problem and isn't a symptom caused by something else (ie, disease, damage, toxicity, etc...)?

I don't get why you're so resistant to the idea that sytstemic inflammation (not gingivitis) can simultaneously be a symptom of one condition and the primary causal factor in many others. The article gives plenty of examples of conditions where inflammation does seem to be the root cause. It feels like you haven't read it, in which case I highly recommend doing so. It's quite educational and not not at all biased towards a big-pharma solution.

The article also gives sound reasoning for why metabolic stress, i.e., overeating, eating crap and not exercising, could be the most common cause of chronic inflammation. I would guess that psychological stress is another big factor given it's known ability to exacerbate autoimmune and inflammatory conditions. So the cure for most cases of chronic inflammation is going to be the usual mix of diet, exercise, sleep and stress management. We already know that these are the most effective preventative measures against age-related diseases and this research gives us a better understanding of the underlying mechanics.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#85

Post by gnoppa » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 4:47 AM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #63

My prediction: 1) reducing chronic inflammation by, for example, exercise or eating better food, is proven to have good health effects 2) pharmaceutical companies try to make that into a pill 3) dang, the benefits of the pill are not nearly as big as if you exercise and eat better food, and not nearly as big as our early trials of the drug indicated they would be 4) we must need a different kind of pill

I'd predict the pharmaceutical pill will be damaging! Our body is very smart and heals most things by itself, given the right nutrition.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#86

Post by retreatguru » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 4:53 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #72

ixtli wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup! I would also predict this. You simply can’t engineer your way out of needing better living conditions.

Sometimes you’re in the conditions you’re in because of mental or emotional issues, and require the assistance of a mental health professional to get back on track (for example, overeating from emotional trauma leading to obesity and inactivity).

I predict the pill that may help with these issues is something like psilocybin along with a well trained therapist guide.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#87

Post by atomical » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 4:53 AM UTC

m3nu wrote: post #83

atomical wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like pseudoscience. Our lives are becoming dominated by fads and gurus just like our forebears.

Agree with what you say in general, but not here. hsCRP is fairly well studied.

What are you disagreeing with? Do you believe people should have hsCRP tested?

A cursory search reveals it's associated with heart disease. But for most people heart disease can be diagnosed with other blood work.

There was a blog posted to HN about a man whose Apple watch told him he had an irregular heartbeat. His resting heart rate is 120. He doesn't need an Apple watch to tell him something is wrong!

I'm wondering if hsCRP is more pointless data gathering.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#88

Post by jeffdavis » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 5:01 AM UTC

andai wrote: post #5

Someone1234 wrote: post #2

I found this area interesting: > “A fat cell is almost like a primitive immune cell,” says Hotamisligil. “It can request the assistance of immune cells when in trouble, but if the stress continues, and the immune cells remain, they start changing their character and behavior from helpful to harmful.” ... > When overloaded with stored lipid, fat cells begin to lose their functional and structural integrity and may sta…

> Critics might suggest that inflammation is just a symptom in these diseases, rather than a cause. But Hotamisligil says, unequivocally, “Chronic inflammation is uniformly damaging and is absolutely causal to the process, because if you interfere with it, you can reverse the pathology.” And this ability to control such diseases simply by reversing inflammation is a biological response, dating far back to the time of…

If you interfere with the inflammation, doesn't that still leave the problem of lipids leaking?

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#89

Post by User23 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 5:04 AM UTC

goldenkey wrote: post #55

blotter_paper wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The biggest key as to whether a molecule is considered inflammatory is what type of biologist discovered it first. I'm super ignorant of this field. Do you have examples of molecules that would be classified differently if found by different researchers?

I think what they are referring to is molecules like Cytokines [1] which are found in responses to [infection, immune responses, inflammation, trauma, sepsis, cancer, and reproduction] (from Wikipedia) Inflammation and immune response seem entirely connected. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine

Don't forget exercise in that list.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#90

Post by User23 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 5:08 AM UTC

atomical wrote: post #71

redwards510 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keto is the absence of carbs. So the same diet that maintains keto at 250 will keep you in keto at 190, since it is what you eat, not how much you are eating. But you are absolutely correct that one must change their caloric intake as they lose weight if they want to keep losing weight.

Are you saying someone on keto can eat 4,000 calories of butter and not gain weight?

You can drink 4000 calories of ethanol and not gain weight though! It's the only macronutrient with no storage form. From this was derived the infamous lean chicken breast and tequila diet. Biologically impossible to gain fat on that diet. Dietary protein is used as such, very little is converted into glucose and of that virtually none becomes lipids[1].

Never said it's healthy, but you will lose fat. If you're not keen on the ethanol poisoning aspect of the diet, you can substitute complex fibrous carbs like broccoli or some such and get similar results.

Of course if you really don't care about health you could poison yourself with Dinitrophenol. It's the fat burning drug. Literally. Users routinely die from their bodies cooking them to death.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3636601/