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Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

harvardmagazine.com

171–180 of 240 posts

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#171

My prediction: 1) reducing chronic inflammation by, for example, exercise or eating better food, is proven to have good health effects 2) pharmaceutical companies try to make that into a pill 3) dang, the benefits of the pill are not nearly as big as if you exercise and eat better food, and not nearly as big as our early trials of the drug indicated they would be 4) we must need a different kind of pill

What is your reaction when social conservatives say that there's no need for contraception or STD vaccines, because you can just not have sex unless you're prepared to accept the responsibilities of pregnancy and raising a child?

Sorry about the downvotes you're getting, I think it's a legitimate question.

Well, if I thought that having sex for purposes other than procreation was illegitimate, I might buy that. I have the impression that some social conservatives believe that. However, I don't think that.

Also, we don't see as much industry effort to push contraception, as we do from the big pharmaceutical industries. Also, we don't see a problem of contraception not actually working; it can fail to work, of course, but most people who use contraception actually get the intended results. I believe it is far more common when Big Pharma tries to put into pill form something that could be obtained from good food or good exercise, that it does not work nearly as well.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#172
post #19

At the same time, anti-inflammatories slow wound healing. Here are a couple of random studies I found. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17319622 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22381097

Something I experienced about 20 years ago - I threw my back out (just was sitting, and turned my torso - and that was it), major sciatica pain. Went to the doctor. I was prescribed a certain stretching exercise, plus also 800mg ibuprofen, bed rest, etc. I was popping the ibuprofen "on schedule" - 3x a day. At first, it helped some, and so did the exercise. But then, the pain came back, and nothing was cutting it. No…

I had something similar, woke up one morning and had this crazy pain in my upper spine which went into my right arm.

The pain was so insane nothing helped (didn't try oxy though). I went to a million different doctors of all types and nothing really helped.

It wasn't until a met a chiropractor who told me that it was some upper disc fracture which resulted in some liquid pushing on my nerve and that the only thing I could do was to make some neck exercise to pump blood through the area which would make it heal.

That helped within 3 weeks.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#174
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except major performance decrease. Some people cannot afford that.

Anecdotally I found my performance to - both in the gym and in the office - increase not decrease. From athletes and academics I follow on social media, they also say the same. I've read a few hypothesis as to why this may happen. In an evolutionary sense, when in a fasting state we would require more energy to go out and hunt/gather food to take us back out of that state. IIRC, metabolism increases while fasting. It…

Very interesting. I remember reading that traffic accident rates go up significantly in Muslim majority countries during the first few days of Ramadan (daylight fasting), so there appears to be an adaptation period with decreased performance before the benefits kick in.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#175
Eating a whole foods planet based diet can reverse diabetes and significantly reduce inflammation.

I didn't believe this until I had a dear friend pass away from a heart attack at 33. This forced me into getting my blood work done. I was astonished how bad my numbers looked across the board even though I was skinny.

By eating a planet based diet all my numbers have normalized. I eat and sleep better. My energy has increased. I take 0 drugs. It's been a really eye opening experience. I'm 38.

The standard american diet needs to be fixed. It should look more like this

https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/foods-that-fi...

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eat-more-plants-fewer-an...

Book recommendation - How not to die - Michael Gregor

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” ― Hippocrates

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#176
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Critics might suggest that inflammation is just a symptom in these diseases, rather than a cause. But Hotamisligil says, unequivocally, “Chronic inflammation is uniformly damaging and is absolutely causal to the process, because if you interfere with it, you can reverse the pathology.” And this ability to control such diseases simply by reversing inflammation is a biological response, dating far back to the time of…

So what are the "right tools" to reverse diabetes in humans? These are probably different for the different types. (When young, non-obese kids get it, I doubt it's because of energy surplus)

Weight loss has worked for many if I'm not mistaken...

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#177
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Critics might suggest that inflammation is just a symptom in these diseases, rather than a cause. But Hotamisligil says, unequivocally, “Chronic inflammation is uniformly damaging and is absolutely causal to the process, because if you interfere with it, you can reverse the pathology.” And this ability to control such diseases simply by reversing inflammation is a biological response, dating far back to the time of…

Getting off-topic, but how do biologists define the "highness" of an organism?

Based on how many grams of weed it has smoked.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#178

This is interesting! Bit of an anecdotal story, but I struggled with weight issues until about 8 years ago & I've often spoken to friends saying that it really felt like I ALSO suffered from some type of body inflammation. Even on "binge-y" days now, the morning after my sinuses go nuts! Super interesting read.

Can you share what you did do to improve your condition?

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#179
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im pretty sure this is for type 2 diabetes. To reverse, you have to loose significant weight which is at least -20%, sleep well, exercise regularly, and eliminate stress

> you have to loose significant weight which is at least -20% I think that's an oversimplification. Roughly a third of people with T2D have a normal BMI, and most obese people don't have T2D. I mean, sure, lose the weight if you can afford it, but that's attacking an exacerbating factor rather than the root causes (which are not really understood yet).

Huh? Losing weight requires less resources (money) than maintaining it, you just simply stop eating and fast. Proper nutrition and hormone regulation to maintain your lower body weight is a different question, but even that should be cheaper or the same amount of money given that you're reducing your overall caloric intake, even though the food you purchase may be slightly more expensive.

Also, the root causes are fairly well understood at this point. Yes, genetics play a role (sometimes a large on), but if an individual eats a balanced mostly plant based diet, exercises, and gets enough sleep (minimum 8 hours), then the likelihood of getting T2D reduces significantly. If someone has T2D, they are almost assuredly lacking in one of those three areas.

Re: Inflammation might be the root of preventable disease

#180
post #124

My prediction: 1) reducing chronic inflammation by, for example, exercise or eating better food, is proven to have good health effects 2) pharmaceutical companies try to make that into a pill 3) dang, the benefits of the pill are not nearly as big as if you exercise and eat better food, and not nearly as big as our early trials of the drug indicated they would be 4) we must need a different kind of pill

Bottom line: pharma sells pills to make money; they don't make money off of healthy people who don't take their pills. So long as we link the health industry to making profit, we are prioritizing profits over health.

> pharma sells pills to make money; they don't make money off of healthy people who don't take their pills

But insurance companies do.

American healthcare is a complex system of highly-incentivized agents. Zooming in on a single component as a synecdoche is like trying to reason how a car works by extrapolating from a fuel injector.

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