Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 318 posts

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#291

Post by majormajor »

watwut wrote: post #264
majormajor wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities were historically unhealthy, etc, etc, as well. Yet people kept moving to them. So "most people can't afford to [leave civiliation]" is far from new. Perhaps the life everyone has been fleeing to get to cities was never what you think it is for most.

People moved to cities for economic opportunities.

"People moved to cities for economic opportunities" and "people can't financially afford to leave the cities" seem like just the glass half full / glass half empty versions of the same thing.

Put it one way it's bad, put it one way its good. It's a choice with tradeoffs - I'm just pointing out that those tradeoffs aren't some uniquely new "collapse of our society" thing.

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#292

Post by mulmen »

majormajor wrote: post #291
watwut wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People moved to cities for economic opportunities.

"People moved to cities for economic opportunities" and "people can't financially afford to leave the cities" seem like just the glass half full / glass half empty versions of the same thing. Put it one way it's bad, put it one way its good. It's a choice with tradeoffs - I'm just pointing out that those tradeoffs aren't some uniquely new "collapse of our society" thing.

This is an interesting revelation. Thanks for framing it this way.

Riffing:

I think there’s a middle phrasing similar to “cities are the most efficient allocation of resources we have yet invented.”

Similar to the “democracy is the least bad system of government yet invented.”

There’s some corollary to survivorship bias at play here as well. Cities are an apparently natural consequence of human civilization so we know a lot about their flaws. But civilizations that didn’t migrate toward cities either failed or records of their existence was lost.

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#293

Post by colordrops »

asdff wrote: post #289
colordrops wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fermented foods are important. Milk-based foods, not so much. There's a reason most people are lactose intolerant - milk is to grow baby cows into large animals, and not suitable for consumption by adult humans.

There's also a reason why some people can digest milk: its a resource with nutrients and being able to intake a new source of nutrients offers a selective advantage to your offspring relative to offspring that cannot make use of these nutrients present in the environment. To say its not suitable for consumption by humans is a falsehood considering many adult humans can and do consume milk and make use of its nutrient…

You are speaking theoretically. That milk was necessary for survival by a small population of humans may have been true aeons ago during some ancient famine. This is not the case right now.

To say that humans can take nutrition from a substance is an argument that there is no criticism of the substance is a bad argument. Humans take energy from pure sugar, or taco bell. Yet to claim they are beyond criticism because they can keep people alive is absurd.

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#294

Post by corsac »

colordrops wrote: post #287
corsac wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> milk is to grow baby cows into large animals Whence this transcendent purpose that limits suitability? Likewise, quinoa grains are to grow into full-sized plants, and not for consumption by humans, etc. etc. Most people may be "lactose intolerant", but some of them find ways to survive and thrive on milk-based foods; meanwhile, some populations have developed tolerance to lactose, presumably because milk-based food…

There is no need for transcendant purpose. Quinoa intolerance is pretty uncommon, whereas milk intolerance is the norm. Even without a lactose intolerance, there are several health issues with milk consumption, unlike quinoa consumption. That is because we've evolved for a orders of magnitude longer to eat plant material. Yes, some northern European peoples have evolved to be more tolerant of milk. And some tibetans…

> several health issues with milk consumption, unlike quinoa consumption.

Are you claiming that most people who consume milk as a major part of their diet suffer health problems from it? Or that grain-based diets do not cause health issues?

> That is because we've evolved for a orders of magnitude longer to eat plant material.

Evolution has no telos. Evolutionary leaps into new niches are the norm, and hunting had formative impacts on the evolution of modern humans. We've also evolved for orders of magnitude longer walking on all fours (and walking erect causes health issues, such as stressing the back), but that has no bearing on what is healthy or suitable.

> It's not a good argument to take a small exceptional population and apply that reasoning to the general case.

I don't believe I did so. Northern European-origin populations are not small or insignificant, but I agree that for lactose-intolerant populations who have no tradition of using milk-based foods they are generally nutritionally unnecessary.

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#295

Post by colordrops »

corsac wrote: post #294
colordrops wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no need for transcendant purpose. Quinoa intolerance is pretty uncommon, whereas milk intolerance is the norm. Even without a lactose intolerance, there are several health issues with milk consumption, unlike quinoa consumption. That is because we've evolved for a orders of magnitude longer to eat plant material. Yes, some northern European peoples have evolved to be more tolerant of milk. And some tibetans…

> several health issues with milk consumption, unlike quinoa consumption. Are you claiming that most people who consume milk as a major part of their diet suffer health problems from it? Or that grain-based diets do not cause health issues? > That is because we've evolved for a orders of magnitude longer to eat plant material. Evolution has no telos. Evolutionary leaps into new niches are the norm, and hunting had fo…

Dairy isn't nutritionally necessary for anyone. Perhaps it was in the past, but not now. You won't find evidence for that.

Not sure what you mean about telos. Evolution informs us about why we eat what we eat and how we might be affected by various foods, but it does not control us. We can choose what we want to eat.

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#296

Post by insamniac »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #125
antiterra wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the most effective treatment I know of to change gut biome is bacteriotherapy via a method many people find off-putting and violating. I think, for the time being, people are much more likely to accept a probiotic.

I take it you mean fecal transplants, aka inserting somebody else's feces up your rectum?

transpoosion

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#297

Post by NoPicklez »

dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #285
NoPicklez wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's necessarily the case. There is much more that we know than just "Vegetables are good" and we know why they're good. Nutrient dense, packed with fiber to slow digestion, includes necessarily vitamins and minerals to not only absorb the nutrients of your food but to also provide you with the micronutrients you need. That's of course just one example you made. But the problem is where people go to f…

> don't think that's necessarily the case. >There is much more that we know than just "Vegetables are good" and we know why they're good. Nutrient dense, packed with fiber to slow digestion, includes necessarily vitamins and minerals to not only absorb the nutrients of your food but to also provide you with the micronutrients you need. A lot to unpack here. Did deeper, do we really need those micronutrients which mak…

Micronutrients as vitamins and minerals from fruits and veg? Yes absolutely, they’re essential.

The difference here is that we don’t need a lot of them, not like macronutrients so the majority of us are likely getting our vitamin and mineral intake okay. However deficiencies in certain vitamins can cause problems down the line, it just depends on how deficient you are. Some people also struggle to absorb particular vitamins and minerals and they only realise through symptoms which you might not expect to be because of a deficiency.

The reason vegetables are so good is because they’re usually dense in these nutrients and due to the fibre they possess complement the other foods you eat in terms of nutrient absorption and digestion.

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#298

Post by mlsu »

wizofaus wrote: post #223
K0SM0S wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gut biome being one of the most promising area of research, whose earth-shattering potential is about on par with the sheer complexity of the problem. If you thought ML was difficult, try modeling a human being's digestive tube from mouth to anus down to the cell: welcome to a category of problems where climate and gravity are the "simple" ones. On the other side of that space though, potentially the promise to incre…

I'm willing to go out on a limb and suggest that the workings of the human brain are still far more complex than that of our digestive system. If the amount of effort that has been put into trying to emulate the former with software had been put instead into trying to emulate the latter, I reckon we'd pretty much have it cracked by now (as in, you could feed some tool info corresponding to all the inputs into our dig…

The brain and digestive system are very closely linked.

I think to make an "AI" on par with simulating the brain, you would need to simulate the gut first. And probably vice versa!

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#299

Post by ekianjo »

eru wrote: post #224
ekianjo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lifespan has also increased with decreased gut biome diversity. Life expectancy increase is mostly a factor of decreased death at birth or in early years. You dont see an exponential increase of 100 years old. People die at about the same age as before, give or take.

Maximum ages haven't really increased much, yes; but life expectancy at eg age 10 has increased a lot, too, throughout history to modern times.

Any source for this?

Re: Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

#300

Post by ekianjo »

watwut wrote: post #263
ekianjo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lifespan has also increased with decreased gut biome diversity. Life expectancy increase is mostly a factor of decreased death at birth or in early years. You dont see an exponential increase of 100 years old. People die at about the same age as before, give or take.

This is not true. An average adult lives longer still just not by that much. Whole bunch of deadly diseases or injuries are not deadly anymore. The work got safer and injuries happen significantly less often. What did not changed is maximum longevity people have assuming they don't get sick or injured.

> The work got safer and injuries happen significantly less often.

For this kind of statement about lifespan i assume that we remove all accidental deaths since they are just causing noise versus the actual lifespan

Post reply on HN