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Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

rachel.fast.ai

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Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#161

Post by consteval »

ransom1538 wrote: post #9
Xcelerate wrote: post #4

I don’t know enough to comment on the Hygiene / Old Friends hypothesis, but anecdotally it seems like almost everyone I know now has an allergy or autoimmune disorder of some sort. After giving birth, my sister suddenly developed something similar to celiac disease (but not quite the same; I don’t think doctors ever figured out exactly what it is) to where she can’t eat grains and a few other types of food as well. I…

IHMO An old myth, I believe: Your immune system needs something to fight, otherwise, it starts finding problems that aren't.

What you're referring to is inflammation and is real but kind of misunderstood.

If you want to reduce inflammation you should exercise regularly. This seems obvious but, to me, people will come up with conspiracy after conspiracy to explain this. But the basics - moving a bunch - work really well. The American Lifestyle is progressively more and more sedentary, and we're blaming our woes on sunscreen or something.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#162

Post by taeric »

kens wrote: post #22

My "unpopular opinion" is that in 100 years, people will consider it very strange that most of the population was permanently infected with a bunch of viruses like EBV/HSV/CMV/HPV and nobody cared or did anything about it.

This is only "unpopular" because you are giving no actionable thing for people to do. People do care. But there is virtually nothing that can be done about a lot of these. We can take efforts to stop the spread, and indeed we do. But at large, it is there and there is little you can do.

So it isn't strange. In the same way that we don't consider it strange that 100 years ago, virtually every human had parasites. It is only the last 40 or so years that most of the meat you can buy at a grocery store doesn't. And if you are still buying "wild caught" fish, it is almost certainly with parasites.

What is strange is thinking that people didn't care about parasites. People care. But there is shockingly little most can do to change it.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#163

Post by consteval »

inglor_cz wrote: post #152
paretoer wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lost 30lbs so far in 2024, you are highly under estimating the devastation of our gluttonous foodie culture. All the factors you mention I suspect are completely meaningless in comparison to consuming excess calories and I am pretty sure research would back this up. I was starting to have various health problems a year ago this time that have all gone away literally like magic. I think what you are talking abo…

"I am pretty sure research would back this up" Don't be so sure. We don't really know what messed up with our satiety/hunger signals. "our gluttonous foodie culture." Our which one? Obesity is a global problem, not a specifically American one. You will meet a lot of obese people in Brasilian favelas or rural Serbia, not exactly places that have "foodie culture". "Having lost 30lbs so far in 2024" I am not trying to d…

> We don't really know what messed up with our satiety/hunger signals

Opinion: nothing. Our hunger/satiety signals are normal and evolutionarily advantageous. What changed was the access, and composition, of food.

Food is tasty. Like really tasty these days. High fat, sugar, salt. And it's super duper easy to get. This stuff is designed to perfect target your brain and make you say "mmm".

You wanting to eat more makes sense because these foods are highly, or over, nutritious. Cavemen didn't have fried chicken, they barely had chicken - they had nuts. This wanting to eat more and more is evolutionarily advantageous. Because you don't know when your next meal is. You should be greedy, eat as much as you can and as often as you can. I mean, look at dogs. Give them infinite access to foods and they will eat themselves to death. Sure we're smarter but much of this stuff is at a level below the brain.

For all of human history I'm sure this functionality was a very good thing. Now that we have food surplus... not anymore. And to top it off, for the first time ever, we don't need to move to live. People are sedentary. So we don't even offset this effect with movement.

It seems to me the human brain/body is incompatible with modern human life. We're broken. We're exploitable by addiction at every turn. The solution might be to change our brains. Ozempic seems to help a lot - less drinking and smoking too.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#164

Post by consteval »

arde wrote: post #155
inglor_cz wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am pretty sure research would back this up" Don't be so sure. We don't really know what messed up with our satiety/hunger signals. "our gluttonous foodie culture." Our which one? Obesity is a global problem, not a specifically American one. You will meet a lot of obese people in Brasilian favelas or rural Serbia, not exactly places that have "foodie culture". "Having lost 30lbs so far in 2024" I am not trying to d…

It's probably the carbs.

Probably not, since carbs have always been the easiest food to get and they didn't have this problem. Protein, and especially meat, was always rare and a minority of diet. But greens, fruits, nuts (ish, they have fat) are plentiful.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#165

Post by mlyle »

Xcelerate wrote: post #144
istultus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, anecdotes, with a healthy portion of the Availability and Confirmation Heuristics. We already know that women are more susceptible to auto-immune responses and that pregnancy is one of the reasons for that disparity between the sexes (carrying a foreign invader for 9 months plays with the expression of immunity genes in a manner that occasionally - rarely, at a population level - backfires.) And we know that…

> average age that skews older than, say, 30 - to which you unfortunately seem to belong Haha, unfortunately you would be correct. > in response to this post there are multiple posts each suggesting their own conspiracy. I wonder if this actually points to something, or it too is a just random noise. After I posted my original comment full of personal anecdotes, I thought “It’s always my useless posts that get the mo…

> it seems like even simple techniques could extract a lot of signal from the noise, which is just too difficult with the tiny number of low sample, high variance RCT studies we currently use.

On the other hand, RCTs gather relatively well-conditioned data. And we have enough study power across them that we end up with a lot of statistically significant, real findings.... that still have effect sizes that aren't clinically meaningful.

We even know about things with large effect sizes that are controlled by a few variables, that are rare enough that it's hard to find the patients that they apply to.

And, of course, correlation ain't causation: if we used your system and found a bunch of things, we'd still need to figure out how to reduce them down enough to be something we could test before advising practitioners to do things a certain way.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#166

Post by twoWhlsGud »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #101
renegade-otter wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people walk into a restaurant - fast food, slow food - especially before COVID, do you see people go to the bathroom to wash their hands before the meal? That never happens.

I've never seen it happen either - and I live in Poland, though I haven't seen it in my various visits to China, Germany and the UK either. Who actually does go into the restaurant bathroom specifically to wash their hands before the meal?

Three simple habits that have (anecdotally) cut down on colds for me:

* wear a mask in crowded environments where showing my face doesn't buy me anything (I don't wear one at work, but do at the grocery store or airport)

* wash hands before eating (or at least use hand sanitizer)

* grip the exit handle of the bathroom with a paper towel and dispose of it on exit

Not exactly double blind demonstrated but low cost and this year has been much better than last (which may also be due to my immune system having caught back up, too, so YMMV)

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#167

Post by inglor_cz »

taeric wrote: post #162
kens wrote: post #22

My "unpopular opinion" is that in 100 years, people will consider it very strange that most of the population was permanently infected with a bunch of viruses like EBV/HSV/CMV/HPV and nobody cared or did anything about it.

This is only "unpopular" because you are giving no actionable thing for people to do. People do care. But there is virtually nothing that can be done about a lot of these. We can take efforts to stop the spread, and indeed we do. But at large, it is there and there is little you can do. So it isn't strange. In the same way that we don't consider it strange that 100 years ago, virtually every human had parasites. It i…

" you are giving no actionable thing for people to do"

As far as an actionable thing goes, my N == 1 experience says that regular nasal rinsing reduces both frequency and severity of various common colds a lot.

I used to be down with sore throat, running nose and light to moderate cough some 5-6 times a year, since I was a kid until my early 40s. Once I started with the flushing, it all went away. Nowadays, about twice a year I "catch" something, which means a single night of chills and sweating, and in the morning I am fine again. The mucous membranes seem to be no longer susceptible. No sore throat ever etc.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#168

Post by tsycho »

Xcelerate wrote: post #4

I don’t know enough to comment on the Hygiene / Old Friends hypothesis, but anecdotally it seems like almost everyone I know now has an allergy or autoimmune disorder of some sort. After giving birth, my sister suddenly developed something similar to celiac disease (but not quite the same; I don’t think doctors ever figured out exactly what it is) to where she can’t eat grains and a few other types of food as well. I…

My friend also developed almost continuous eczema for the past couple of years, and tried cutting out a large variety of foods from her diet to see what might be causing it.

Everything failed. And then, one day her normal brand of shampoo (which she had been using for 5+ years, and is advertised for sensitive skins) ran out, and she didn't get a chance to buy it for a couple of weeks. To her surprise, no eczema during those weeks! She changed her shampoo brand, and her eczema problems are gone, at least for now.

My point is, if you are trying to selectively eliminate things from your diet/lifestyle to figure out the trigger of your eczema, don't ignore things that you have been using for years before your eczema started.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#169

Post by taeric »

inglor_cz wrote: post #167
taeric wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only "unpopular" because you are giving no actionable thing for people to do. People do care. But there is virtually nothing that can be done about a lot of these. We can take efforts to stop the spread, and indeed we do. But at large, it is there and there is little you can do. So it isn't strange. In the same way that we don't consider it strange that 100 years ago, virtually every human had parasites. It i…

" you are giving no actionable thing for people to do" As far as an actionable thing goes, my N == 1 experience says that regular nasal rinsing reduces both frequency and severity of various common colds a lot. I used to be down with sore throat, running nose and light to moderate cough some 5-6 times a year, since I was a kid until my early 40s. Once I started with the flushing, it all went away. Nowadays, about twi…

I'm not clear that that is in the same vein as what the parent post meant?

That said, this is an interesting suggestion to follow my post. It literally only works if you have access to clean, probably distilled, water supply. If you don't, you are also introducing a path for some serious problems into your sinuses in the form of parasites.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#170

Post by croes »

EricE wrote: post #158
bjoli wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, another anecdote: I have COVID right now. I have had a bunch of self tests at home, and have tested myself every single time I have had any kind of cold or fever. Despite me getting on a crammed bus every morning and afternoon to go working in the same room as about 80 other people 4 days a week I didn't get COVID (that I know of) until now. Sometimes we are just lucky. Maybe the vaccine worked better-than-averag…

PCR tests also love to give false positives...

Rarely, false negatives are way more likely than false positives.
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