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Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

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Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#71
post #68
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that the appendix is now understood to be a store for gut flora so that the microbiome can regrow after an infection or bad episode of diarrhoea etc.

Fully anecdotal, but I got my appendix removed at 19. After 2-3 years i started to have problems and found out that I can no longer process milk(protein), not allergy but intolerance and I started to have issues with "quality". I get bloated and my stomach hurts. Before that I had no issues and had perfect movement. So yeah I didn't "needed it" but quality of my life went down.

In your case I would really doubt if apendix was the cause. As a teen I also loved milk, pancakes, pasta, etc, but around early 20s started to notice that they are bad for me. Now if I eat a lot of milk and glutamine I get digestive issues, skin rashes, etc. My apendix (afaik) is intact.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#72
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully anecdotal, but I got my appendix removed at 19. After 2-3 years i started to have problems and found out that I can no longer process milk(protein), not allergy but intolerance and I started to have issues with "quality". I get bloated and my stomach hurts. Before that I had no issues and had perfect movement. So yeah I didn't "needed it" but quality of my life went down.

Possibly related, but that's a pretty common age to develop lactose intolerance in the general population.

Not lactose

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#73
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully anecdotal, but I got my appendix removed at 19. After 2-3 years i started to have problems and found out that I can no longer process milk(protein), not allergy but intolerance and I started to have issues with "quality". I get bloated and my stomach hurts. Before that I had no issues and had perfect movement. So yeah I didn't "needed it" but quality of my life went down.

Possibly related, but that's a pretty common age to develop lactose intolerance in the general population.

Milk allergies are different from being lactose intolerant. I developed a mild allergy to dairy in my 30 or so - or so it was discovered then. With lactose intolerance, you can at least take a pill - not so much for an actual allergy. My one child has a much more severe dairy allergy and will get a very upset stomach even with a little dairy.

We both have our appendix.

Though to your point, whether you can develop a milk allergy later in life I am not sure.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#74

I haven't dug deep into it but the TRIIM trial ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6826138/ ) seemed to show promising results with a combination of rHGH, metformin, and DHEA on thymus regrowth.

Peter Thiel just needs to add in the metformin and DHEA and his thymus rejuvenation will be complete.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#75
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some medical reasons (I know from experience) post-puberty, just not for doing it at birth.

Pre-puberty here, and as someone that was about 4 years old when my circumcision was done I can absolutely understand how ancient peoples would decide just to do every baby boy on the off chance they’d need it later.

True, during the healing process I had the same thought! Would have been rather more convenient to have just had it done as a baby even if I hadn’t needed it!

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 30% is because people do not change their diet so they'll once again be susceptible.

Let me guess, whole organic foods and no red meat

Haha no, of course, not. Just real food like the middle and upper classes in everywhere except probably the Anglo world do.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#77
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 30% is because people do not change their diet so they'll once again be susceptible.

No it’s not, you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. There isn’t an ‘appendicitis’ diet

Who said that there is an appendicitis diet? The fact is they eat a certain way, and got appendicitis.

Are we to pretend all diets are the same?

Am I to pretend it is a religious mystery/miracle and no ones knows? Or genetics? Please, enlighten us...

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#78

I haven't dug deep into it but the TRIIM trial ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6826138/ ) seemed to show promising results with a combination of rHGH, metformin, and DHEA on thymus regrowth.

I've been doing this for some time but I replaced metformin requires RX with Berberine that is safer based on my research. less risk of lactic acidosis of the liver. I found that it's hard to find a sweet spot with DHEA. Too much leads to easy bruising.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#79
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s not, you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. There isn’t an ‘appendicitis’ diet

Who said that there is an appendicitis diet? The fact is they eat a certain way, and got appendicitis. Are we to pretend all diets are the same? Am I to pretend it is a religious mystery/miracle and no ones knows? Or genetics? Please, enlighten us...

You literally imply there is one and describe it in the sibling comment reply.

Interestingly you present the possibility of a falsifiable hypothesis. Unfortunately due to the highly variable accuracy of diagnosis and propensity to treat (source: I was on The path to surgical training and now routinely diagnose appendicitis in my role as an emergency doctor) depending on health system capacity and availability to acute care the existing retrospective data doesn’t provide a satisfying result - what it does suggest is illuminating however; with a suggestion of a decrease in rate of incidence over the second half of the 20th century in industrialised countries, and a suggestion of increase in some developing countries. This would be more in keeping with an improvement in diagnostic capacity in both industrialised (less false positives) and developing (more false negatives) countries.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9945388/

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#80
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-puberty here, and as someone that was about 4 years old when my circumcision was done I can absolutely understand how ancient peoples would decide just to do every baby boy on the off chance they’d need it later.

True, during the healing process I had the same thought! Would have been rather more convenient to have just had it done as a baby even if I hadn’t needed it!

That assumes they don't screw up and completely mangle it. That happens from time to time.
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