Diabetes in mice cured rapidly using human stem cell strategy • Hacker News Board

Re: Diabetes in mice cured rapidly using human stem cell strategy

#21

Post by pengaru » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

flexblue wrote: post #14

jfritsch1984 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthy food is typically less expensive than junk food. The problem is education and motivation. I think diabetes is more a disease of affluence. When you can buy twinkies and pork chops you're not actually poor. When you are really poor you eat rice and beans and some vegetables you grow for yourself. And then you don't have diabetes typically. Disclaimer: Not every T2D is purely from a bad diet. But many are.

> Healthy food is typically less expensive than junk food. This isn't true, at least in the US. Or maybe we have a very different idea about what "healthy" food is. Rice, beans and starchy vegetables are problematic for various (different) reasons and non-starchy vegetables generally aren't very nutritious from a macro perspective, which makes them relatively expensive.

It is true, the produce department has some of the cheapest food in the store. How much is a bundle of bananas? That's a week's breakfast.

Unless you only buy organic, then you might go broke while hungry.

Re: Diabetes in mice cured rapidly using human stem cell strategy

#22

Post by flexblue » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 10:57 PM UTC

pengaru wrote: post #21

flexblue wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Healthy food is typically less expensive than junk food. This isn't true, at least in the US. Or maybe we have a very different idea about what "healthy" food is. Rice, beans and starchy vegetables are problematic for various (different) reasons and non-starchy vegetables generally aren't very nutritious from a macro perspective, which makes them relatively expensive.

It is true, the produce department has some of the cheapest food in the store. How much is a bundle of bananas? That's a week's breakfast. Unless you only buy organic, then you might go broke while hungry.

Bananas by themselves are not healthy food, they're very high in sugar and have little else to offer.

Produce may look cheap, but if you add up the macros (and also some of the micros), it doesn't look cheap at all.

Re: Diabetes in mice cured rapidly using human stem cell strategy

#23

Post by bsanr2 » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 11:05 PM UTC

laanako08 wrote: post #9

Amygaz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped counting how many times we cured any forms of diabetes in various mouse models. Then there is this thing that bugs me: amount of money spent on finding a treatment vs. preventing type 2 diabetes in the first place. Because 95% of type 2 cases are caused by life style decisions. And as climate change, healthcare costs, covid-19, and other self-inflicted societal crises we prefer to wait until it chronically…

It's worth noting that "lifestyle" decisions, are mostly not decisions. They're based on the systemic implications of a person's class, wealth, and status. If a person has more time, and money, and is of a high-enough class, they will be better educated on self-care and health, will have the time to devote to continually ensuring good health, and will have the money to afford high-quality food and activities. Diabete…

There's a type of "virtue masturbation" that seems to follow discussion of diet-related illness. Thank you for pointing out that "diet," much as The Devil Wears Prada explained in regard to fashion, is something that all participate in, but that is ultimately chosen for you.

There is also a large hereditary component to T2D. My father was a naval officer who was subject to annual physicals, who grew up in a middle class household, and who was on the way to holding multiple advanced degrees when he was diagnosed with T2D in his late 30s. Lifestyle barely factored in. If I had to guess, silent sleep issues might have been the most major factor.

Re: Diabetes in mice cured rapidly using human stem cell strategy

#24

Post by pengaru » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

flexblue wrote: post #22

pengaru wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true, the produce department has some of the cheapest food in the store. How much is a bundle of bananas? That's a week's breakfast. Unless you only buy organic, then you might go broke while hungry.

Bananas by themselves are not healthy food, they're very high in sugar and have little else to offer. Produce may look cheap, but if you add up the macros (and also some of the micros), it doesn't look cheap at all.

> Bananas by themselves are not healthy food, they're very high in sugar and have little else to offer.

That depends on ripeness [0], I eat a mostly green banana every morning and it doesn't have much sugar at all while keeping my bowels very regular.

It's been my breakfast for decades, I'm quite healthy, and eat a diet almost entirely composed of raw produce. The rest is nuts/seeds/legumes and canned fish. I rarely ever cook, and if I didn't go for organic produce this would be a very cheap diet except for the nuts.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistant_starch#Nutritional_i...

Re: Diabetes in mice cured rapidly using human stem cell strategy

#25

Post by flexblue » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 11:08 PM UTC

jfritsch1984 wrote: post #17

Arubis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you’re sufficiently poor and live in a society that insists that you work to qualify for benefits, you absolutely do not have time to cook healthy meals. Prepared, junky food is a staple.

If you are well informed you could just cook once a week and eat that. I do that on the weekend with my family of five and it's quite a nice ritual. We cook rice and potatoes, put beans and sauce on top. And then put it in 20 containers for the week. I can prepare these meals within 2 minutes with a microwave. Breakfast is basically the same every day: Oat meal with some fruits. In the evening we eat bread with sprea…

Without any further context, this is most likely not a healthy diet. You're certainly missing out on B vitamins and heme iron due to lack of meat and likely have a poor Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio due to the use of plant oils over other fats. Just a guess.

You also probably get way too much sugar from sugary fruits which you overindulge in because your diet otherwise is so "healthy". Instead of soft drinks you have fruit juices, which have effectively the same amount of sugar. Again, just a guess.

You probably got your nutrition advice from ideologically based publications, or you're just "winging it" based on what makes sense to you, in which case you're likely going to be wrong as well.

Re: Diabetes in mice cured rapidly using human stem cell strategy

#26

Post by lolc » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 11:15 PM UTC

> A common problem when you’re trying to transform a human stem cell into an insulin-producing beta cell — or a neuron or a heart cell —is that you also produce other cells that you don’t want

In my world this is called cancer. So yeah interesting how they're actually able to tell cells how to grow. But you don't want liver cells mixed into your pancreas, do you?

> But if a quarter of the cells you make are actually liver cells or other pancreas cells, instead of needing a billion cells, you’ll need 1.25 billion cells. It makes curing the disease 25% more difficult.

I'd assume the reason they try to get clean cultures is that otherwise they'd be implanting tumors. Optimizing by 25% sounds like something they'd do after having proven it on the human model.

Re: Diabetes in mice cured rapidly using human stem cell strategy

#27

Post by whb07 » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 11:18 PM UTC

chx wrote: post #8

whb07 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't type 2 somewhat reversible by cleaning up diet and a prolonged fast?

Not sure about a prolonged fast but I had my HbA1c levels at 6.8 (very much diabetic) once and by dropping sugar, white flour, white rice and potatoes and generally eating less (fasting is bad as far as I understand) every check I had since has been 5.3 (very much non-diabetic).

I mean like a 5 day fast to clear out the crap in your pancreas and what not. I remember reading some article on Scientfic American over 5 years ago something akin to this.

Re: Diabetes in mice cured rapidly using human stem cell strategy

#28

Post by lolc » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 11:23 PM UTC

Kwastie wrote: post #2

Am I assuming correctly that this only applies for type 1 diabetes? With type 2 diabetes the body is in general less sensitive to insulin, more insulin producing cells won't fix the underlying insensitivity issue, right?

There is already a therapy that transfers beta cells from healthy people to T1 patients. The trouble is that the patients have to take immunosuppressants ever after to prevent the immune system from killing the cells off again. And I don't think that cells grown from stem cells would fare better, because it was the patients immune system that killed the beta cells in the first place.

Your typical T1 will prefer insulin therapy over immunosuppressants.

Re: Diabetes in mice cured rapidly using human stem cell strategy

#29

Post by SubiculumCode » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC

lolc wrote: post #26

> A common problem when you’re trying to transform a human stem cell into an insulin-producing beta cell — or a neuron or a heart cell —is that you also produce other cells that you don’t want In my world this is called cancer. So yeah interesting how they're actually able to tell cells how to grow. But you don't want liver cells mixed into your pancreas, do you? > But if a quarter of the cells you make are actually…

I'm not sure that having a liver cell living in the pancreas equals cancer, unless it starts replicating uncontrollably into more liver cells, and ignores normular cellular signaling.

Re: Diabetes in mice cured rapidly using human stem cell strategy

#30

Post by flexblue » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC

pengaru wrote: post #24

flexblue wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bananas by themselves are not healthy food, they're very high in sugar and have little else to offer. Produce may look cheap, but if you add up the macros (and also some of the micros), it doesn't look cheap at all.

> Bananas by themselves are not healthy food, they're very high in sugar and have little else to offer. That depends on ripeness [0], I eat a mostly green banana every morning and it doesn't have much sugar at all while keeping my bowels very regular. It's been my breakfast for decades, I'm quite healthy, and eat a diet almost entirely composed of raw produce. The rest is nuts/seeds/legumes and canned fish. I rarely…

> It's been my breakfast for decades, I'm quite healthy, and eat a diet almost entirely composed of raw produce. The rest is nuts/seeds/legumes and canned fish.

You get virtually all of your macronutrients from the nuts, seeds, legumes and the fish - not the produce.

> I rarely ever cook, and if I didn't go for organic produce this would be a very cheap diet except for the nuts.

So it would be cheap if it was something else, but it's not.

In any event, I consider any diet high in grains/legumes a science experient which may or may not work out. I don't consider it a healthy diet.