Also relevant, the Behavioral Immune System and it's many vexing consequences.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_immune_system
The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
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Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#42Sometimes I think consciousness is an accidental side effect of a whole load of other processes that we don’t even notice happening.
"Side effect" is perhaps not the right term, since the effect loops back into the processes; evidence for that is that we are talking about consciousness.
Do we know this is true? Could the loop back also be an illusion? From a cursory glance it seems like "free will" is massively exaggerated. However, the belief of free will seems to be healthy.
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
yes and perhaps some placebo effects activate stored immunological responses.
Placebo is such an interesting phenomenon. I had a certain physical pain difficult to describe that I could’ve sworn to have felt, but after addressing my perspective I’ve no longer had any such symptoms. Not sure if related, but I still don’t understand it.
I find it a rather disturbing phenomenon, to be honest. Governments, scientists and media insist that we place enormous faith in the outputs of medical trials and studies. Anyone who expresses doubt about these is ostracised and forced to comply regardess. Yet every single one of them has to control for this entirely mysterious, inexplicable force that magically heals people with no actual medicine. This effect is so real, large and standard that it's mandated by law to take it into account yet we understand basically nothing about it (often even what the placebo was chosen to be is opaque), it's barely researched and the total lack of ability to explain it doesn't seem to bother anyone. Least of all regulators, who are meant to ensure the effect size of trials are correctly interpreted.
It feels like there's this enormous, sophisticated scientific edifice that can draw pictures of proteins and explain how they interact, and in the centre of it all is a giant rotating question mark that everyone by convention ignores and pretends isn't there.
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Placebo is such an interesting phenomenon. I had a certain physical pain difficult to describe that I could’ve sworn to have felt, but after addressing my perspective I’ve no longer had any such symptoms. Not sure if related, but I still don’t understand it.
> after addressing my perspective Could you please elaborate on that?
(don't want to put words in GP's mouth, this is my interpretation of it, and my experience)
I do skateboarding and had multiple ankle sprains. What happens every single time is that the wound heals, physiotherapy proceeds and strengthens the whole joint system, and then I'm left with an ankle that is still in pain when it should not physically be anymore since it has fully recovered.
That is, until I literally "decide" the remaining pain is a construct of my mind, and then the pain vanishes overnight, and the ankle that I felt brittle and was scared to use to its full extend suddenly feels as strong and stable as ever, if not more.
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#45I've heard it phrased "Stress wrecks the body in strange ways." It is one of the best aphorisms I've been given. A physiologist friend told me this years ago when I was remarking how it seems like psychological stress seems to cause every subsystem of the body to freak out, yet there's no obvious connection between these things - why should the brain, which is evolutionarily "late", affect such deep subsystems? This…
I dont know if the brain should be considered so late. These subsystem would never have existed if not for the command center helping them to survive and evolve, even if you argue there was a soup of mono cellular machines for very very long.
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#46I've heard it phrased "Stress wrecks the body in strange ways." It is one of the best aphorisms I've been given. A physiologist friend told me this years ago when I was remarking how it seems like psychological stress seems to cause every subsystem of the body to freak out, yet there's no obvious connection between these things - why should the brain, which is evolutionarily "late", affect such deep subsystems? This…
This is also the reason why a lock-down against a virus is not always the best option for healthy people. A lock-down causes stress and this weakens the immune system. Personally I think it is obvious why the connection between stress and 'subsystems' is there. Stress puts the body into survival mode. Heavy breathing is an example. But when the stress holds on for too long it exhausts your body causing all kinds of t…
I think modern-day type of sustained, prolonged stress is just not something we've experienced much of prior to x,000 years ago, so there are simply no failure modes evolved yet.
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> after addressing my perspective Could you please elaborate on that?
(don't want to put words in GP's mouth, this is my interpretation of it, and my experience) I do skateboarding and had multiple ankle sprains. What happens every single time is that the wound heals, physiotherapy proceeds and strengthens the whole joint system, and then I'm left with an ankle that is still in pain when it should not physically be anymore since it has fully recovered. That is, until I literally "decid…
In the (power)lifting scene, I have really enjoyed the articles by Austin Baraki et al. from Barbell Medicine on pains and aches in the context of physical activities. See for example https://startingstrength.com/article/aches-and-pains or https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/the-barbell-medicine-gu...
In a nutshell, the idea that there's a straightforward causal link between something being physically broken in your body and you feeling pain is simply wrong. Sometimes people feel pain in various body parts without any detectable physical changes and sometimes classical training injuries, like herniated spinal disks, can be found by medical imaging without the person feeling any pain at all. Also the common advice to rest until the pain subsides is often - but no always - wrong; there are plenty of anecdotes of people with completely fucked up knees or ankles or back starting heavy powerlifting program and suddenly healing from their injuries or at least learning to use their body in such a way that the injuries don't bother them anymore.
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#48this gives a tiny sliver of credibility to stories about people focusing really hard for really long on imagining tumors being eaten by their immune system and this actually happening. used to sound like total crap, now... just crap? it'd be amazing if it wasn't.
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#49So a rheumatic disease, could basically be something aching to a immunological ptsd?
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#50I've heard it phrased "Stress wrecks the body in strange ways." It is one of the best aphorisms I've been given. A physiologist friend told me this years ago when I was remarking how it seems like psychological stress seems to cause every subsystem of the body to freak out, yet there's no obvious connection between these things - why should the brain, which is evolutionarily "late", affect such deep subsystems? This…
> Immuno-psychiatry might be the next big thing
Is that similar to psychoneuroimmunology, or did you imagine a different thing?