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

The Gut Microbes of African Hunter-Gatherers

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 40 posts

Re: The Gut Microbes of African Hunter-Gatherers

#31

Post by logfromblammo »

daemin wrote: post #29
logfromblammo wrote: post #2

I am now curious to see what happens when you switch some of the Hazda group to an Italian diet, and some of the Italians to a Hazdan diet.

I'm sure if you had to survive in a different environment your gut flora and fauna would adapt to the new conditions given enough time. But unless you were forced to adapt with your survival at stake you'd just revert to eating whatever didn't cause you to become ill. This does remind me of an Anthony Bourdain No Reservations episode where they ate with the bushmen, and they gave Tony the "best" part of the hog - the…

And that reminds me of a This American Life, where the show's producers were unable to actually uncover conclusive evidence that fried hog bung was being used as imitation calamari rings, but they did find in a blind taste test that you probably wouldn't notice if it were. So I wouldn't say it's the best part of a hog, but it certainly wouldn't be as awful as you might think. When prepared appropriately, of course. Nobody wants to eat raw swine manure as a condiment.

Re: The Gut Microbes of African Hunter-Gatherers

#32

Post by coopermor »

tokenadult wrote: post #21
shanev wrote: post #13

This is not surprising to me at all. Pathogenic bacteria linked to diseases such as Crohn's and IBS are only pathogenic if we get them later in life. When we get these bacteria in childhood, before the age of 7, they grow symbiotically with us and help ward off disease. Check out the book An Epidemic of Absence by Moises Valesquez-Manoff [1] if you guys want to learn more about this stuff. It's a fascinating account…

I would ask my friends here on Hacker News to be cautious about taking the statements in that book at face value without a lot of careful follow-up.[1] And I write that, with chagrin, as a participant here who previously submitted an opinion piece by the author to Hacker News, where it reached the front page and sparked a lot of discussion. The claims in the book are very far from settled science, and many of the ane…

There's a small public biotech company Coronado Biosciences that just announced a trial to study their drug (pig whipworms) in autism http://ir.coronadobiosciences.com/Cache/1001185864.PDF.

They have other studies in a couple different autoimmune diseases in various stages http://www.coronadobiosciences.com/research-development/pipe...

So we'll have some more data regarding this soon.

Re: The Gut Microbes of African Hunter-Gatherers

#33

Post by davidw »

Here's how to make a startup out of it: you could sell exclusive trips to Hollywood types to Africa to get a hunter-gatherer biome "transfusion", proclaiming the various health benefits - "slimming! rejuvinating! all natural!".

I think I'm joking, but who knows :-)

Re: The Gut Microbes of African Hunter-Gatherers

#34

Post by [deleted] »

Mz wrote: post #12
tokenadult wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll upvote your set of questions and reply here rather than make my own top-level comment in this interesting thread. 1) The way to test a causal hypothesis is always, at bottom, to do a controlled experiment.[1] So we will tease out the effects of diet on different people by finding experimental volunteers, after institutional review boards approve the experiments, and subjecting the volunteers to controlled diets.…

Thank you. You said: Lots of different things cause lots of different diseases. Due to my genetic disorder, I am supposed to be overrun with disease and simply accept dying from it. I have been steadily getting well for the last thirteen years, which is very frequently met with incredibly dismissive feedback. (My favorite being: Thirteen years of steady forward progress is not evidence I know anything, it is mere wil…

[deleted]

Re: The Gut Microbes of African Hunter-Gatherers

#35

Post by tim333 »

davidw wrote: post #33

Here's how to make a startup out of it: you could sell exclusive trips to Hollywood types to Africa to get a hunter-gatherer biome "transfusion", proclaiming the various health benefits - "slimming! rejuvinating! all natural!". I think I'm joking, but who knows :-)

Stranger schemes have worked. Travelling to those sorts of places and eating with the locals often leads to effective and rapid weight loss thorough slightly unpleasant mechanisms. On a more serious note my sister had IBS for a couple of years and it went away completely and permanently after visiting Indonesia - presumably some gut flora transfer thing.

Re: The Gut Microbes of African Hunter-Gatherers

#36

Post by tim333 »

logfromblammo wrote: post #2

I am now curious to see what happens when you switch some of the Hazda group to an Italian diet, and some of the Italians to a Hazdan diet.

Really you'd want to send a few Hazda to live in Rome for a couple of months and send a few Italians the other way. It would be a good experiment - I'd watch the reality TV show.

Re: The Gut Microbes of African Hunter-Gatherers

#38

Post by Steuard »

Mz wrote: post #25
Steuard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair to say that "modern diets are the problem ". The availability of modern diets is, after all, largely responsible for modern civilization (which was enabled by agriculture). But I think it's fair to say that the many benefits of modern diets are accompanied by some serious negative side effects, and that the human microbiome has not yet had enough time to evolve into an optimal state for coping…

"I don't think it's fair to say that "modern diets are the problem "." Yeah, see, I didn't say that. You edited that to mean something completely different from what I said/meant. My sentence started with "perhaps", had no italics and I went on to ask how that could be tested. So I think this is a not great comment. It feels almost slanderous to me. But I think it's fair to say that the many benefits of modern diets…

First and foremost: I apologize for making a comment that came across as hostile.

Perhaps my intent would have been clearer if I had said, "I don't think it WOULD BE fair to say...". I did not mean to suggest that you personally believed this to be true. That said, you were clearly suggesting that it is a possibility should be taken seriously, perhaps more seriously than biomedical experts have done to date.

And my addition of italics was entirely to emphasize which part of that suggestion I was responding to. In retrospect, a more careful post of mine ought to have said "[emphasis added]", though that still feels a bit like overkill to me. I think in the context of a threaded discussion I unthinkingly assumed that readers would have your original words and context freshly in mind when they saw my response.

It's disappointing to me that, given our evident agreement on much of the more substantive part of my comment, you took my initial words to be a hostile and deceptive attack.

Re: The Gut Microbes of African Hunter-Gatherers

#39

Post by Mz »

Steuard wrote: post #38
Mz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't think it's fair to say that "modern diets are the problem "." Yeah, see, I didn't say that. You edited that to mean something completely different from what I said/meant. My sentence started with "perhaps", had no italics and I went on to ask how that could be tested. So I think this is a not great comment. It feels almost slanderous to me. But I think it's fair to say that the many benefits of modern diets…

First and foremost: I apologize for making a comment that came across as hostile. Perhaps my intent would have been clearer if I had said, "I don't think it WOULD BE fair to say...". I did not mean to suggest that you personally believed this to be true. That said, you were clearly suggesting that it is a possibility should be taken seriously, perhaps more seriously than biomedical experts have done to date. And my a…

Thank you for your response.

I have been quite open about the fact that both on HN and elsewhere, I have had the shit kicked out of me for talking about my medical issues and what I have done to get healthier. What with being human, it's a little hard for me to not be "overly sensitive" about the topic. I do try to be as even-handed as possible but repeated vicious attacks do take their toll, no matter how much the victim wants to rise above it.

Have a great day.

Re: The Gut Microbes of African Hunter-Gatherers

#40

Post by mtew »

tokenadult wrote: post #21
shanev wrote: post #13

This is not surprising to me at all. Pathogenic bacteria linked to diseases such as Crohn's and IBS are only pathogenic if we get them later in life. When we get these bacteria in childhood, before the age of 7, they grow symbiotically with us and help ward off disease. Check out the book An Epidemic of Absence by Moises Valesquez-Manoff [1] if you guys want to learn more about this stuff. It's a fascinating account…

I would ask my friends here on Hacker News to be cautious about taking the statements in that book at face value without a lot of careful follow-up.[1] And I write that, with chagrin, as a participant here who previously submitted an opinion piece by the author to Hacker News, where it reached the front page and sparked a lot of discussion. The claims in the book are very far from settled science, and many of the ane…

I found the book straightforward about how unproven the science is, and thought it did a good job of being clear about how speculative the theories are. Were there areas where you thought the book's claims were stronger than what is warranted?
Post reply on HN