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Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

harvardmagazine.com

141–150 of 240 posts

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#141
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bottom line: pharma sells pills to make money; they don't make money off of healthy people who don't take their pills. So long as we link the health industry to making profit, we are prioritizing profits over health.

Profits are what drives innovation in pharmaceuticals.

Profit didn't get us vaccine against rabies or acetylsalicylic acid. Researchers did, and we have universities for that.

So there are alternatives, and probably others we didn't think about.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#142

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

The Japanese Ibudilast pill is a super interesting anti inflammatory pill that has very interesting research behind it . I recommend taking a look at it if ur interested is this sort of thing

It's available for sale

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#143
post #124

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

Bottom line: pharma sells pills to make money; they don't make money off of healthy people who don't take their pills. So long as we link the health industry to making profit, we are prioritizing profits over health.

That's not entirely true, a lot of the research comes from passionate students trying to make the world a better place with no intention of keeping you sick.

Additionally almost every industry is profit motivated, we wouldn't have the brightest people going into medicine unless it paid well. Ironically it doesn't actually pay well enough

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#144
post #124

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

Bottom line: pharma sells pills to make money; they don't make money off of healthy people who don't take their pills. So long as we link the health industry to making profit, we are prioritizing profits over health.

Making a profit on pills is just one motivation in a very complex system of competing motivations, incentives and regulations that shape what "we" prioritise.

I think drawing conclusions from one specific motivation in isolation is too simplistic. Many other profit interests benefit greatly from a healthy population that doesn't spend all its money on useless pills.

And motivations other than profit, both personal and political, are very powerful as well.

I don't think there is much evidence that eliminating the profit motivation leads to better results in general -- on the contrary. But there is a lot of evidence from Europe that health systems with public buyer cartels can achieve the same or better health outcomes far cheaper than in the US.

Although some say that sky high US drug prices effectively subsidise those European outcomes.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#145
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bottom line: pharma sells pills to make money; they don't make money off of healthy people who don't take their pills. So long as we link the health industry to making profit, we are prioritizing profits over health.

Profits are what drives innovation in pharmaceuticals.

That is a truism, right? Currently in the US we have private pharmaceutical companies driven by a profit motive, so profits are what drives their innovation.

Setup a different system, and other motivations will drive their innovation, right?

Unless your claim is that innovation can only EVER be driven by profit?

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profits are what drives innovation in pharmaceuticals.

That is a truism, right? Currently in the US we have private pharmaceutical companies driven by a profit motive, so profits are what drives their innovation. Setup a different system, and other motivations will drive their innovation, right? Unless your claim is that innovation can only EVER be driven by profit?

I thing the argument is more along the lines of:

1. Observed value drives innovation.

2. Profit / profit-motive is one of the most straightforward / most efficient means we have to observe value.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#147
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

So what are the "right tools" to reverse diabetes in humans? These are probably different for the different types. (When young, non-obese kids get it, I doubt it's because of energy surplus)

Im pretty sure this is for type 2 diabetes. To reverse, you have to loose significant weight which is at least -20%, sleep well, exercise regularly, and eliminate stress

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#148
post #109
post #45

Inflammation ? Fasting. Just try it. It costs nothing.

Except major performance decrease. Some people cannot afford that.

Anecdotally I found my performance to - both in the gym and in the office - increase not decrease. From athletes and academics I follow on social media, they also say the same. I've read a few hypothesis as to why this may happen. In an evolutionary sense, when in a fasting state we would require more energy to go out and hunt/gather food to take us back out of that state. IIRC, metabolism increases while fasting. It wouldn't make sense for our body to reduce performance because that just makes starvation an even more likely possibility, as it suddenly becomes much harder to go out find a food source due to said >"major performance decrease".

There are a few studies knocking around about regarding it, but I've only got a minute so this is the best I could do for the moment-

"Findings indicated that pre-exercise feeding enhanced prolonged (P = .012), but not shorter duration aerobic exercise performance (P = .687). Fasted exercise increased post-exercise circulating FFAs (P = .023) compared to fed exercise."[1]

[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29315892

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#149
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Immune disorders like MS. The immune system attacks the persons own tissues. It’s the inflammation that causes the damage. Prevent inflammation and you stop the disease.

It seems that a faulty immune system is the cause in MS, and inflammation is the symptom... can you clarify your example?

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#150
post #102

> People already know what they should be doing—but for most, that knowledge doesn’t change behavior. Humans are hard-wired to conserve energy (see “Born to Rest,” September-October 2016, page 9), for example, and to prefer foods that are fatty, salty, and sugary. This suggests that pharmaceutical interventions that block inflammation may be necessary to check the global epidemic of non-communicable disease. Really?…

Your quote says "humans are hard-wired to conserve energy", not "humans are soft-wired to be stupid and can learn to be smart".

Where does "work on becoming smart" address anything you quoted?

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