Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle • Hacker News Board

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#171

Post by photon_lines » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 5:58 PM UTC

consteval wrote: post #163

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…

> 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 make…

I 100% agree - I just wanted to add that processed food also plays a huge role. Our ancestors didn't eat canned fish dipped in high calorie oils or snacks / junk food with no fiber. White bread is used commonly throughout many households but whole-grains are a lot healthier. Eating food which has a high degree of high fructose corn-syrup or sugar with no added fiber has a detrimental effect on health and is not something that our bodies are used to. The high-glycemic index spikes our bodies go through when you combine these factors does a ton of damage to our health and yes - I believe it does have a role in triggering auto-immune reactions. Type 1 diabetics as an example are diabetic due to their own immune systems falsely labelling the pancreas beta-cells as enemies and triggering an auto-immune response -- the reason I believe this happens is due to the high-inflammatory reaction our pancreas go through when we eat extremely highly processed foods (i.e. high sugar / glycemic index items with high insulin spikes & lacking fiber). I don't have a lot of data to prove any of this - so this is my hypothesis but I can confirm that ever since I started staying away from processed foods, I've been in amazing health and I feel much better than when I was slightly over-weight and consuming processed junk.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#172

Post by bjoli » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 6:16 PM UTC

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...

I am pretty sure it is the opposite. I used antigen tests which are less reliable.

I did not mean to confirm the parent, but give a version that is similar but probably just chance.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#173

Post by jasonvorhe » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 6:21 PM UTC

Root_Denied wrote: post #61

jasonvorhe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people aren't actually interested in knowing what's going on. But one can find out. Even if one isn't conspiracy minded, it's quite obvious that oligarchs, their multinational companies and governments couldn't give a single fuck about normal people. PFAS and microplastics everywhere, rises in autoimmune diseases as well as allergies and Alzheimer's. Addictive amounts of sugar in a lot of food. GMOs everywhere u…

> Most people aren't actually interested in knowing what's going on. I don't necessarily think this is the case, at least the US. It's time consuming and expensive to get testing done without an actual diagnosis, even with healthcare. Taking the time off or spending the money on allergy testing just isn't going to take command of the budget over necessities or more serious healthcare needs. You're right about the res…

I didn't mean individual diagnosis but research about the broad spectrum of literally poisonous shit being packaged and sold as if it was nothing.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#174

Post by jasonvorhe » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 6:22 PM UTC

paretoer wrote: post #145

jasonvorhe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people aren't actually interested in knowing what's going on. But one can find out. Even if one isn't conspiracy minded, it's quite obvious that oligarchs, their multinational companies and governments couldn't give a single fuck about normal people. PFAS and microplastics everywhere, rises in autoimmune diseases as well as allergies and Alzheimer's. Addictive amounts of sugar in a lot of food. GMOs everywhere u…

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 don't understand the reply, tbh. I didn't imply that people in the West tend to eat too much.

I'm actually baffled that anything I mentioned would be considered "completely meaningless".

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#175

Post by jasonvorhe » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 6:26 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #38

jasonvorhe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't trust any of the GMO vendors.

So you grow your own food from identity preserved seeds sourced from a vendor that has no association with GMOs? If you buy commercial products, the non-GMO seeds are unquestionably being sourced from the very same GMO vendors, and thus can't be trusted either.

I grow some of my own food (salads, zucchini, Hokkaido, potatoes, etc) in my garden but it's nowhere near self-sufficiency. All of my seeds as well as my garden are completely GMO free. I've been growing the last few seasons by solely relying on my own seeds though.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#176

Post by nradov » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 7:03 PM UTC

ragingroosevelt wrote: post #137

nradov wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids getting colds allows them to develop immunity to some of the hundreds of endemic upper respiratory viruses that constantly circulate throughout the human population. They're going to get infected with many of them sooner or later, so better to get it over with sooner. This protects them later in life when their immune systems are less effective.

[citation needed] You say the article isn't fully truthful. Where are your sources to back up your claims? What are your credentials? Or are you just pulling it out of thin air?

Sure, here's a citation.

https://shop.elsevier.com/books/basic-immunology/abbas/978-0...

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#177

Post by bjoli » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 7:18 PM UTC

schwartzworld wrote: post #142

bjoli wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is one of the reasons I agreed to get pets. Kids growing up in households with pets have fewer allergies. I wasn't prepared for how much I'd fall in love with him though. Some of my fondest memories are of my son playing with our dog. At night my dog would sleep by the feet of my son, and if he woke up he would simply turn around and use my dog as a pillow. I found them sleeping like that or spooning a couple of t…

Short haired dogs don’t have this problem. My greyhound is pretty much self-cleaning.

But then you get those short little hairs everywhere, not to mention having to dress your dog every time it goes below freezing :)

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#178

Post by cjbgkagh » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 7:25 PM UTC

lav42 wrote: post #146

cjbgkagh wrote: post #50

Very much disagree with the implication that helminths will help very much for these conditions. While not a commonly known treatment in the 'medical sphere' it's is very commonly known in the 'patient community spheres' and from the patient run studies it does not appear to have a particularly strong effect. It does appear to help some people so it's hard to rule it out but that could easily be noise. Those who did…

What is it you're suffering from? Do you have references / communities / guides? I have Ulcerative Colitis which I got around 2018 and it seems well managed. Since my first COVID infection, I ended up with repetitive thoughts, short term memory problems, difficulty focusing, light sensitivity, fatigue ... It got better but it seems that seasonal allergies re-trigger some kind of cascading inflammation and I've been u…

Mine is ME/CFS from hEDS made worse by the covid vaccine. Patient led 'research' I'm talking about is done off the books in private chat groups / discords / telegram - so nothing is published. That's a double edged sword - but given the slow pace of normal medical research we just couldn't wait. Given that it's grey / black market these groups, the ones that survive, are extremely private.

Those listed conditions are a set of overlapping clusters that have a lot in common. Some of the listed conditions do have distinguishing comorbidities. The things you listed does appear squarely in the shared comorbidities and not in any of the distinguishing comorbidities - so it could be any number of things. The Ulcerative Colitis does increases the likelihood that it's hEDS which is already the highest likely predisposition @ ~2% of general population and higher for the HN population and even higher again for physics people (not the published figures of 1/50K, 1/15K, or the 1/500 which I consider to be incorrect due to the incorrect assumptions for disease state thresholds in the diagnostic tests).

Probably the best lens to look at it would be through the lens of dysautonomia which is a balance of a not well understood by the vast majority of doctors yet reasonably well understood by a few doctors - enough to be able to find decent information in medical research. My preferred meds for treatment of dysautonomia are modafinil and amitriptyline and these meds also act as immunomodulators - the same thing the helminths are supposed to help with. Modafinil can exacerbate gastro issues so in my view people who have those issues should focus on amitriptyline first (at the sleep aid doses not the depression doses). And googling it now it does appear that amitriptyline is indeed a known treatment for Ulcerative Colitis.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#179

Post by inglor_cz » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 7:45 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #169

inglor_cz wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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.

"access to clean, probably distilled, water supply"

A good antibacterial filter + boiling that filtered water just to be sure goes a long way. That equipment is nontrivial, but for someone in a developed economy, usually affordable. Probably cheaper than being sick often, because even European welfare states often won't give you anything for first days of sickness.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#180

Post by inglor_cz » Wed, Aug 28, 2024, 7:47 PM UTC

consteval wrote: post #163

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…

> 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 make…

The interesting thing is that Vietnamese food is really tasty (I love it at least), but Viet Nam is something like 2 per cent fat. And they don't suffer from shortages of food.

Vietnamese people in Czechia are also usually thin, even though they make more than average money, being either business owners or skilled professionals. The contrast with Czechs is visible.