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Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

rachel.fast.ai

21–30 of 202 posts

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#21

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…

I became allergic to Yellow 6 randomly. I would get extreme abdominal pain, even went to the ER a couple times and got a CT scan once due to the severity of the pain. I broke out in hives, tongue would swell, etc. I eventually figured it out after having a reaction to Cheese Doritos but not Cool Ranch (the only ingredient difference was Yellow 6). I tested it on some other foods with Yellow 6 and confirmed it. So I s…

I have a hypothesis based on my own experiences that this can happen from accumulating something in the body faster than it can be cleared. Could you have been continuously ingesting yellow 6 for a while, to the point that it crossed some threshold?

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#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.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#23

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…

Sad to say, the fecal-oral cycle of infection remains common in the USA, with the most common areas of spread being restaurants although hospitals were sadly guilty of this until recently. And for any gastrointestinal illness in the USA, the single most common cause is Helicobacter pylori. Back in the 1980s and 1990s researchers mostly associated Helicobacter pylori with ulcers, but since then the research has expand…

Unfortunately, antibiotics can fuck up your gut in other ways.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#24
post #8

>We can see that not all obstacles make you stronger. Destroy the cartilage in your knee, and it may never fully recover, since cartilage doesn’t grow back. // I'm not a medic but I recall this being disproven or shown to be at least partially a myth a few years ago - https://physicians.dukehealth.org/articles/humans-have-salam... from 2020, for example. Researchers showed that ankle cartilage is younger than knee- a…

Also runners have great knee cartilage compared to sedentary people, despite the myth.

>Using motion capture and sophisticated computer modeling, the study confirms that running pummels knees more than walking does. But in the process, the authors conclude, running likely also fortifies and bulks up the cartilage, the rubbery tissue that cushions the ends of bones.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/well/move/why-running-won...

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#25
post #3

Interesting that in one of the cited studies the authors are not afraid to claim that viral infections may cause autoimmune diseases, despite the fact that the potential mechanisms they list could also apply to vaccines. "Current research suggests that several mechanisms, such as molecular mimicry, epitope spreading, and bystander activation, can cause viral-induced autoimmunity."

When a virus replicates inside your cells, it sets off alarms that as a result of sensing of viral nucleic acid signatures in your cells (i.e. MAVS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_antiviral-signal...). A vaccine, unless it is a live attenuated vaccine (these are rare) does not set off the same alarms since you don't actually get viral nucleic acids in your cells.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#26
This is an excellent article. Too many people believe that kids getting colds will help their immune system get stronger. In reality, getting sick is almost never beneficial.

The information about the hygiene hypothesis and how it is really more about "old friends" is also very important and not widely understood. Many don't know about the hygiene hypothesis at all and those who do usually interpret it incorrectly.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#27
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad to say, the fecal-oral cycle of infection remains common in the USA, with the most common areas of spread being restaurants although hospitals were sadly guilty of this until recently. And for any gastrointestinal illness in the USA, the single most common cause is Helicobacter pylori. Back in the 1980s and 1990s researchers mostly associated Helicobacter pylori with ulcers, but since then the research has expand…

Unfortunately, antibiotics can fuck up your gut in other ways.

Most people can take 14 days of an oral antibiotic without significant long-term adverse consequences.

As of 15 years ago, according to my doctor, while on the antibiotic, sacchromyces boulardi is the best probiotic to take to try to minimize the risk of adverse consequences.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I became allergic to Yellow 6 randomly. I would get extreme abdominal pain, even went to the ER a couple times and got a CT scan once due to the severity of the pain. I broke out in hives, tongue would swell, etc. I eventually figured it out after having a reaction to Cheese Doritos but not Cool Ranch (the only ingredient difference was Yellow 6). I tested it on some other foods with Yellow 6 and confirmed it. So I s…

I have a hypothesis based on my own experiences that this can happen from accumulating something in the body faster than it can be cleared. Could you have been continuously ingesting yellow 6 for a while, to the point that it crossed some threshold?

Allergies seem to come and go. My partner developed allergies against many local fruits in her early twenties, to the point where she could barely eat any fresh fruits without her lips and throat swelling up; but most of them subsided in her 30ies and she can now eat almost all fruits again with only minor irritations for some.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#29
post #20

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 GMOs are safe, with the possible exception of those that produce their own insecticide, and overspraying of herbicides on crops GMO'd to be more herbicide-resistant.

I don't trust any of the GMO vendors.

Re: Your Immune System Is Not a Muscle

#30
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.

Probably an accurate prediction. Kind of like how large populations in the American south were once infected with hookworm.
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