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The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

quantamagazine.org

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Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#71

Post by phonypc »

jerf wrote: post #61
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.

A lot of the bad aspects of the stress response come from prolonged periods of not being able to do anything about it. If your village is raided, and you escape unharmed, you will be very stressed for a short period of time, but generally return to your baseline quickly after that. That's normal. That's what "stress" is for. The modern world has the ability to stress you out over things you can do nothing about (or a…

You don't actually have to be in conditions of siege or famine for them to be stressful. They merely have to be a threat. And what would a common person (i.e. peasant) have been able to do about that threat?

If your village is raided and you escape harm (quite the assumption), why would you generally return to "baseline"? What if the raiders took all your food and you can't feed your family? What if your family was murdered or raped? What if your village was destroyed and you're now a vagrant?

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#72

Post by phonypc »

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.

Hence the "predators and inclement weather". You can't imagine experiencing "burnout" with regards to incessant cold and rain preventing your tribe from effectively hunting/foraging? Or a pack of starving wolves harassing your camp at night for weeks?

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#73

Post by jerf »

phonypc wrote: post #71
jerf wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the bad aspects of the stress response come from prolonged periods of not being able to do anything about it. If your village is raided, and you escape unharmed, you will be very stressed for a short period of time, but generally return to your baseline quickly after that. That's normal. That's what "stress" is for. The modern world has the ability to stress you out over things you can do nothing about (or a…

You don't actually have to be in conditions of siege or famine for them to be stressful. They merely have to be a threat. And what would a common person (i.e. peasant) have been able to do about that threat? If your village is raided and you escape harm (quite the assumption), why would you generally return to "baseline"? What if the raiders took all your food and you can't feed your family? What if your family was m…

You are making the cognitive mistake of seeing the exceptions as the default, because the exceptions are what come to mind.

As I said, when constant persistent stress was occurring, I'm sure it wasn't any better for them than for us. But those were the exceptions. History writes about the famines and the sieges precisely because they're the interesting exceptions. Most people, most of the time, were not in a siege or a famine or under any particular threat from a neighbor.

Today, millions upon millions experience this mid-level persistent stress all the time, for decades. In the 21st century first world, it is the norm, rather than the exception. I don't think that's how it used to be. It especially didn't used to be that way when the danger of famine or siege is as low as it is now, making the stress response even more mal-adaptive.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#74

Post by native_samples »

Kye wrote: post #51
native_samples wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%?

I don't know. But how can we really claim things are "proven" or the trials are "rigorous" when they literally assume some sort of magic in their fundamental design? I mean we should at the very least dial down our certainty in medical claims until scientists can satisfactorily explain why they think new age woo/homeopathy/etc is beyond the pale neanderthal stupidity, up until the moment it's relabelled "placebo" when suddenly it can work.

I mean we're in an environment where the US President is forcing an entire nation to take an experimental medical treatment on the back of (failed!) trials, simply because politician's faith in "science" and the medical establishment is 100% unshakeable. Largely because scientists themselves hardly seem to admit to the true levels of uncertainty in their own work (replication crisis etc). There's a huge mismatch between people's perception of study rigor and "sometimes people think themselves better lol magic innit", which is basically the state of our understanding of the placebo effect.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#75

Post by phonypc »

jerf wrote: post #73
phonypc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't actually have to be in conditions of siege or famine for them to be stressful. They merely have to be a threat. And what would a common person (i.e. peasant) have been able to do about that threat? If your village is raided and you escape harm (quite the assumption), why would you generally return to "baseline"? What if the raiders took all your food and you can't feed your family? What if your family was m…

You are making the cognitive mistake of seeing the exceptions as the default, because the exceptions are what come to mind. As I said, when constant persistent stress was occurring, I'm sure it wasn't any better for them than for us. But those were the exceptions. History writes about the famines and the sieges precisely because they're the interesting exceptions. Most people, most of the time, were not in a siege or…

I guess we just have different reads on history. I don't think it's a mistake to view hard times as the default for most of history in most places. They were of course not constant and there are accounts of exceptionally hard times. But I think the background level of hardship for the common person throughout the world >1000 years ago would probably drive most people currently living in the modern first-world to catatonia or suicide.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#76

Post by ASalazarMX »

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…

If I had been an essential worker during the pandemic apogee, I would have been much more stressed compared to working from home.

Hindsight is 20/20. Back then we didn't even know well how it transmitted, or the exact percent of deaths/long term effects if you got it.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#77

Post by ASalazarMX »

wellpast wrote: post #59
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…

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.

The bulk of that fear comes from ignorance about how vaccines work, and there's enough reputable sources to get educated for free, learn how they have worked in the past, and make an informed decision.

It's more stressful to be sick two weeks and struggling to breathe because you got COVID, and I'm saying that as an asthmatic who is not scared of mild difficulty to breathe.

There is no sensible posture to rationalize antivaxing, but every country has a percent of the population who hesitates about vaccination, and a percent that not only refuses it, but stubbornly refuses to practice hygienic measures. This should be taken into account when designing future health programs.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#78

Post by Kye »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #68
Kye wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%?

The problem is we currently tend to ignore certain biases in our process which are known to introduce errors. Once it becomes a recommended medical practice that medical professionals use, medical opinion often trumps common sense and patients have trouble defending themselves even when they, personally, are certain this is harming them. Doctors will outright suggest you are mentally ill and need to see a therapist i…

That western medicine is often full of itself, deeply [insert -ism or -phobia] in practice, and frequently misguided is all very true and reasonable criticism. The person I replied to was essentially writing off the entire foundation of western medicine because doctors and medical science people don't always fully understand why things work.

It would be like someone writing off Newtonian physics before quantum mechanics was a thing because a lot more of the how wasn't yet understood. The practice of medicine has moved past the "if she floats, she's made of wood, and that means she's a witch" phase even if it still sees anyone other than cishet white dudes as witches.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#79

Post by DoreenMichele »

Kye wrote: post #78
DoreenMichele wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is we currently tend to ignore certain biases in our process which are known to introduce errors. Once it becomes a recommended medical practice that medical professionals use, medical opinion often trumps common sense and patients have trouble defending themselves even when they, personally, are certain this is harming them. Doctors will outright suggest you are mentally ill and need to see a therapist i…

That western medicine is often full of itself, deeply [insert -ism or -phobia] in practice, and frequently misguided is all very true and reasonable criticism. The person I replied to was essentially writing off the entire foundation of western medicine because doctors and medical science people don't always fully understand why things work. It would be like someone writing off Newtonian physics before quantum mechan…

Well that's not what I heard.

I think my comment says essentially the same thing theirs did.

Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses

#80

Post by andy_ppp »

amelius wrote: post #35
andy_ppp wrote: post #27

Sometimes I think consciousness is an accidental side effect of a whole load of other processes that we don’t even notice happening.

Or perhaps the processes are an accidental side effect of consciousness.

I’ll get downvoted for this pseudoscience, but I sometimes wonder if free will is the feeling of the infinite number of universes splitting and your “choice” is merely which branch you ended up in…
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