Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

quantamagazine.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 93 posts

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#51

Post by Kye »

native_samples wrote: post #43
crehn wrote: post #24

Earlier 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.

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…

It's not like they don't try to figure it out. But as you said:

>> "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"

What would you prefer doctors do? Not use life-saving and life-improving treatments that are proven more effective than placebo after rigorous trials just because they don't understand it 100%?

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#52

Post by phonypc »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #46
tdrdt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Like x000 years ago when war and famine were always looming threats? Or further back when predators and inclement weather were?

I can't imagine life in the distant past being less stressful.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#53

Post by lloydatkinson »

phonypc wrote: post #52
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Like x000 years ago when war and famine were always looming threats? Or further back when predators and inclement weather were? I can't imagine life in the distant past being less stressful.

That's an oversimplification. The threat of war was not an everyday occurrence and really only became a thing when tribes evolved into nations and countries. Burnout is an example of the types of stress that are not like anything experienced in those thousands of years prior.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#54

Post by r0b05 »

pengstrom wrote: post #42
amelius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Please elaborate on why you think free will is exaggerated and how it could be healthy. I'm really interested in this being a meditator.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#55

Post by benmarks »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #46
tdrdt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a fantastic book which addresses this - "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" - https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805073690

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#56

Post by csee »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #53
phonypc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like x000 years ago when war and famine were always looming threats? Or further back when predators and inclement weather were? I can't imagine life in the distant past being less stressful.

That's an oversimplification. The threat of war was not an everyday occurrence and really only became a thing when tribes evolved into nations and countries. Burnout is an example of the types of stress that are not like anything experienced in those thousands of years prior.

The threat of violence in the form of intra-tribal and inter-tribal violence was commonplace, even though nation states weren't a thing. I can't imagine that being less stressful than today where we have very close to zero chance of being murdered.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#57

Post by freeest-will »

r0b05 wrote: post #54
pengstrom wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please elaborate on why you think free will is exaggerated and how it could be healthy. I'm really interested in this being a meditator.

Our current understanding of physics leaves no place for free will. Of course, many disagree with this.

https://physicsworld.com/a/why-free-will-is-beyond-physics/

https://aeon.co/essays/heres-why-so-many-physicists-are-wron...

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#58

Post by freeest-will »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #9
cpncrunch wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Placebos generally aren't sugar pills, unless there is sugar in the medication itself (which I don't think is generally the case). They are designed to be impossible to tell apart from the active medication. The pain-killing effect has nothing to do with sugar.

A placebo is a substance or treatment which is designed to have no therapeutic value. Common placebos include inert tablets (like sugar pills)... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo Not to say Wikipedia is infallible. I'm sure it's not. Just checking how clueless I am and the internet suggests my understanding is "common knowledge." Perhaps you can share more of your knowledge about what placebo pills typically c…

> For example, in the COVID-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, the control group receives a meningitis and septicaemia vaccine as a placebo.

> The benefit of using an actual vaccine as the placebo control is that it will cause a similar reaction at the site of the injection as the COVID-19 vaccine, such as muscle pain and soreness. This prevents patients from knowing whether they are getting the placebo or the real treatment.

https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-vaccine-why-its-impo...

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#59

Post by wellpast »

tdrdt wrote: post #40
kortex wrote: post #36

I'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…

Take this a step further and consider vaccine mandates.

However flawed or not the antivaxxer's reasoning, imagine the stress of having to choose between yours and your children's livelihood or being forced to inject a substance you consider risky into yours or your child's body.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#60

Post by cpncrunch »

inter_netuser wrote: post #32
cpncrunch wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more technically it is nocebo effects which cause the (bad) immune response, whereas the placebo effect cancels or at least ameliorates it. Paul Garner has described how worry about covid helped to maintain his long-covid / ME/CFS symptoms, and he was finally able to recover after addressing those fears: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/25/paul-garner-on-his-reco... I managed to fully recover from ME/CFS mys…

How did you do to recover exactly?

Happy to discuss further in private. See my profile.
Post reply on HN