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In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

quantamagazine.org

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Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#221

Post by prepend »

epgui wrote: post #20
prepend wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Celiac is real, but very rare. I think GP was referring to gluten intolerance where there’s not much evidence to support it.

It's not that rare anymore. And while it's true that there's a ton of low-quality evidence for non-celiac gluten sensitivity, I think it's become clear that there's something important there (and more research is needed, as if that needed saying). Non-celiac gluten sensitivity is not believed to be fictional-- rather, experts disagree about the details of what it is, how it works, how it is identified, how we should…

Celiac is about 1% of the US population [0], so really rare.

[0] 1 out of 133 according to https://www.beyondceliac.org/celiac-disease/facts-and-figure...

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#222

Post by alienicecream »

Balgair wrote: post #181
belugacat wrote: post #136

This is why the reductionist argument of "your brain is reducible to a computer with inputs/outputs like any other, all we have to do is reimplement it" of AGI proponents always fell flat to me. It's now becoming clear that we can't just take the brain in isolation, treating the spinal nerve like a PCI-E lane - the gut has to come with it. And if the gut comes with it, all the other organs (skin top of the list) prob…

Neuroscientist here: There is no such thing as a mind-body duality. Your body is your mind and your mind is your body. Full stop. We are still in the very infancy of the study of the mind body and brain. We're finally uncovering some of the most basic tools that will serve us for millennia to come. Imagine trying to understand a 2022 Ford F-150 with only a 7/16ths wrench and a flat-head screwdriver: You can get prett…

> Neuroscientist here: There is no such thing as a mind-body duality. Your body is your mind and your mind is your body. Full stop.

Of course there is, if I lose a finger I don't lose part of my mind.

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#223

Post by alienicecream »

armada651 wrote: post #139
belugacat wrote: post #136

This is why the reductionist argument of "your brain is reducible to a computer with inputs/outputs like any other, all we have to do is reimplement it" of AGI proponents always fell flat to me. It's now becoming clear that we can't just take the brain in isolation, treating the spinal nerve like a PCI-E lane - the gut has to come with it. And if the gut comes with it, all the other organs (skin top of the list) prob…

"your brain is reducible to a computer with inputs/outputs like any other, all we have to do is reimplement it" It still is though, you will reach human intelligence by just modeling the brain. The problem is that you probably won't reach an emotionally stable human since you'll be missing all the emotional/hormonal signaling that comes from the rest of the body, but we can emulate that without having to model the fu…

> It still is though, you will reach human intelligence by just modeling the brain.

What is the basis of this claim?

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#224

Post by alienicecream »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #147
belugacat wrote: post #136

This is why the reductionist argument of "your brain is reducible to a computer with inputs/outputs like any other, all we have to do is reimplement it" of AGI proponents always fell flat to me. It's now becoming clear that we can't just take the brain in isolation, treating the spinal nerve like a PCI-E lane - the gut has to come with it. And if the gut comes with it, all the other organs (skin top of the list) prob…

The argument stays the same though. Your body is reducible to an input/output mechanism. In terms of complexity, since we haven't solved brain yet, it doesn't matter that much that there's also other parts of the body involved, as we don't even know the exact complexity of the brain, but the argument stays the same. In theory we are input/output mechanism, possible to emulate if there's enough capacity. But in additi…

> In theory we are input/output mechanism, possible to emulate if there's enough capacity.

People used to think that the universe was a deterministic clock-work mechanism, possible to model in theory down to atomic interactions. Now we have things like black holes to nowhere and correlations without causation. So this theory seems at best, a tentative first approximation that doesn't warrant the kind of confidence you declare it with.

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#225

Post by agumonkey »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #219
agumonkey wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all hinges on how we define comfort. A comfy villager 500 years ago, with fruits and meat nearby was probably never really hungry, but, I'd argue: - never the amount of processed calories at hand - had to consume these calories on a regular basis.. no vehicles, no powered tools except the occasional mill, most things required walking of lifting

Obesity in the US didn’t really start taking off until the 1970s. There are plenty of people still alive from the before times. I believe that studies have been done, and people aren’t generally less active now than they were then.

But the generations prior didn't necessarily have a car. And a lot of jobs were manual labour.

I know that since I dropped using a car I'm living very different days. Less fat, better cardio, more calm.

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#226

Post by simplify »

gehwartzen wrote: post #173
cal85 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of input/output are you talking about?

Isn't it like saying the human body is a PC which has inputs (ports) and outputs (display, sounds) and the brain is like a CPU which has its own inputs and outputs? and you can always go further i.e the transistors have their own inputs and outputs

The problem is we don't know all the inputs, and there is much hidden state that we can't observe. So it isn't very useful to try and model a human after how a computer works.

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#228

Post by rramadass »

wood-porch wrote: post #227

I took antibiotics more than 2 years ago and after about 4 days I was a wreck. I was anxiety riddled for a bit over a year. Thankfully, I feel normal again! But yea, scary stuff.

You might find this article interesting : https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200108-the-medications-...

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#229

Post by Kerbonut »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #211
porkbeer wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try fasting for a day or 2, after reading up on it. It will reset the 'need to eat' training. Humans eating more than once or t2ice a day os a rather recent phenomenon.

Caveat; fasting functions differently for women and men. Women may actually damage their hormones if they aren’t careful fasting in a way that doesn’t happen with men.

Source please? I have looked and nothing I have found suggests damage, and more research is needed.

Re: In the gut's 'second brain,' key agents of health emerge

#230

Post by theshrike79 »

vjk800 wrote: post #87
theshrike79 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vagus nerve is the weirdest thing. Had to dig into it a bit to figure out my acid reflux. Basically if I eat stuff that doesn't digest well, my stomach bloats and causes a mild hiatal hernia, which in turn presses on the vagus nerve that travels right next to it. This causes the _exact_ same symptoms as a panic attack. Cold hands and feet, the feeling of an increased heart rate etc. Not super fun when you have a…

> Basically if I eat stuff that doesn't digest well, my stomach bloats and causes a mild hiatal hernia, which in turn presses on the vagus nerve that travels right next to it. What do you base this claim on? I have been diagnosed with the reflux disease an a medium sized hiatal hernia. I survive with the proton pump inhibitors, but I have to take them constantly. As far as I know, a hiatal hernia can't be healed and…

Thus: "mild hiatal hernia". It doesn't full on push the stomach through the diaphragm like a proper hernia.

For understandable reasons I can't physically see what's happening in there, but the best guess I have so far is that extreme bloating pushes the stomach further into the diaphragm causing the "mild hernia" that goes away when the bloating goes away - which it can't because the whole stomach is blocked. If I end up in that situation I can't burp for example, during my worst times I was completely unable to burp for a good six months. Carbonated drinks caused physical pain.

This combined with the fact that my initial bout of reflux went away when I went in for a gastroscopy. My theory is that the camera they shoved into my stomach pushed in whatever was stuck and "fixed" it.

Nowadays I survive by avoiding any situations where I become extremely satiated and bloated at the same time.

The very few times I get severe symptoms I use Metamizole to forcibly relax the internal muscles and the symptoms go away.

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