6 ms·

Could this explain trends like increasing food allergies in countries where more and more people are becoming urban dwellers?

by db1234 4y ago

epgui 4y ago
It's not impossible, and it might even be plausible... But it's a really, really difficult question. People outside of science: don't make the mistake of thinking that scientists haven't thought about this before! haha
- bejelentkezni 4y ago
  What is that supposed to mean?
  - monocasa 4y ago
    That it's certainly a valid thought with the information we have, and is being thought about, but requires further investigation to make an affirmative statement.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - epgui 4y ago
      ^ This is the best explanation of what I meant.
  - timfsu 4y ago
    Guessing that this means there are a lot of confounding variables other than gut biome (environment, diet, genetics, etc) that are very difficult to isolate to prove causation, as opposed to correlation.
    - K0SM0S 4y ago
      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 increase by orders of magnitude our mastery of human condition both biologically and experientially.
      - moistly 4y ago
        We are a symbiote.
        deepstack 4y ago
        Bingo, we are just bunch of bacteria walking around. Some organism become symbiotic over time like mitochondria, so it go incorporated into our cells to make energy. The whole concept that we as human-being is one organism needs to be revisited.
        epgui 4y ago
        This is already understood, it's not like scientists aren't aware. The simplified concept of humans being one organism will continue to be taught nonetheless, because it's extremely useful, and not even wrong in most contexts in which it's applied. There's nothing special about this, you can say the same thing about any simple model in biology: that the brain is an organ inside the head is a simplification, any diagram of a homeostatic system or metabolic pathway that fits on a single page is a simplification, the "central dogma" of DNA -> RNA -> protein is a simplification... All of these things are well-known. They continue to be used as models, because, well... they're useful models. And there's nothing wrong with that!
        K0SM0S 4y ago
        Even more generally, reductionism works but with known limitations which warrant a more holistic approach, and we can't work our way out of most real-world problems without this multi-layered approach. Welcome to empiricism in complex systems.
prometheus76 4y ago
There's a guy (Jasper Lawrence, who had a horrible allergy problem) had heard of a study where they were testing to see if allergies was related to parasites. He was rejected from the study, so, long story short, he ended up flying to northern Africa and walking around barefoot to get hookworm. He now monitors and manages his hookworm infection with low doses of anti-parasite medication, and he sells soil infected with hookworms so that you, too, can get infected by hookworm and reduce/eliminate your allergies. Oh, and his allergies are gone. I read about it here: https://www.ksl.com/article/20838871/man-infects-self-with-hookworms-to-treat-severe-allergies https://www.ksl.com/article/20838871/man-infects-self-with-h... But there are lots of stories and some studies on the subject as well. The original hypothesis was proposed in 1989 by David P Strachan. According to the theory, many modern diseases have gotten out of hand and are rapidly growing in industrialized western countries because of chlorinated drinking water, vaccines, antibiotics and the sterile environment of early childhood. Moreover, it is theorized that since we have become so good at preventing infections, we have upset the internal balance and ecology in our bodies. One missing element of hyper-clean and sterile environments is that our inflammatory responses do not function as they should. Parasites and bacteria play a symbiotic role in preserving our health.
- seraphsf 4y ago
  I know a person who contracted a transient parasite infection, possibly hookworm, while doing research in Africa and walking around barefoot. In the decade+ since, they’ve suffered terribly from debilitating and incurable auto-immune diseases brought on by the initial parasite infection. So, YMMV.
  - prometheus76 4y ago
    I agree that caution is in order. The question above just reminded me of the story so I thought I'd pass it along because it was from 2012.
- noodles_nomore 4y ago
  He originally posted his story on kuro5hin[1]. It's an interesting read. He was interested in the worm because, for its survival, it has evolved a mechanism to disable the host's immune system in a particular way that eliminates allergies. At the time he wrote that nobody knows how the worm does it. Now that we can do similar things with monoclonal antibodies, I wonder if the mechanism is similar. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20151205143301/http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/30/91945/8971 http://web.archive.org/web/20151205143301/http://www.kuro5hi...
wheelerof4te 4y ago
- lnxg33k1 4y ago
  Well of course it’s obvious that we’re not carnivorous our ancestors didn’t eat meat and always used to go to the pharmacy to get their iron and B vitamin supplements
  - wheelerof4te 4y ago
    Plenty of both iron and vitamin B in plant-based food. You really believe we hunted big game so much? With what? Sticks and stones? How did we catch them with our weak legs? How the hell did we skin them or eat their raw flesh? Cooking wasn't a thing for a long time. And why don't we eat the animal meat raw? Don't you love it when you see the dead, rotting carcas all open and blody? I sure don't. And neither would you, unless you were starving in the middle of winter.
    - lnxg33k1 4y ago
      I don’t know I meet a lot of people that say that there is a lot of iron and B in plants but all the vegan I met working were always taking supplements, maybe if you tell me what are the plants with B12 and iron I can pass over the info next time I see one of them
      - wheelerof4te 4y ago
        There is abundance of iron in spinach, nettle and other similar plants. For the b12 needs, eat some algae or even dirt. Yes, dirt. Plenty of dirt on a plant's root, which ancient humans ate like no tomorrow.
        lnxg33k1 4y ago
        Eating dirt seems much more natural than eating animals, I guess they discovered the fire to cook the dirt then, i guess tonight I found the reason why vegans are full of shit :D Ps just searched for ‘dirt b12’ on ddg and the first website is an ad for b12 supplements

Could this explain trends like increasing food allergies in countries where more and more people are becoming urban dwellers?

by db1234 4y ago

Could this explain trends like increasing food allergies in countries where more and more people are becoming urban dwellers?

epgui 4y ago

It's not impossible, and it might even be plausible... But it's a really, really difficult question. People outside of science: don't make the mistake of thinking that scientists haven't thought about this before! haha

bejelentkezni 4y ago
What is that supposed to mean?
- monocasa 4y ago
  That it's certainly a valid thought with the information we have, and is being thought about, but requires further investigation to make an affirmative statement.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - epgui 4y ago
    ^ This is the best explanation of what I meant.
- timfsu 4y ago
  Guessing that this means there are a lot of confounding variables other than gut biome (environment, diet, genetics, etc) that are very difficult to isolate to prove causation, as opposed to correlation.
  - K0SM0S 4y ago
    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 increase by orders of magnitude our mastery of human condition both biologically and experientially.
    - moistly 4y ago
      We are a symbiote.
      - deepstack 4y ago
        Bingo, we are just bunch of bacteria walking around. Some organism become symbiotic over time like mitochondria, so it go incorporated into our cells to make energy. The whole concept that we as human-being is one organism needs to be revisited.
        epgui 4y ago
        This is already understood, it's not like scientists aren't aware. The simplified concept of humans being one organism will continue to be taught nonetheless, because it's extremely useful, and not even wrong in most contexts in which it's applied. There's nothing special about this, you can say the same thing about any simple model in biology: that the brain is an organ inside the head is a simplification, any diagram of a homeostatic system or metabolic pathway that fits on a single page is a simplification, the "central dogma" of DNA -> RNA -> protein is a simplification... All of these things are well-known. They continue to be used as models, because, well... they're useful models. And there's nothing wrong with that!
        K0SM0S 4y ago
        Even more generally, reductionism works but with known limitations which warrant a more holistic approach, and we can't work our way out of most real-world problems without this multi-layered approach. Welcome to empiricism in complex systems.

prometheus76 4y ago

There's a guy (Jasper Lawrence, who had a horrible allergy problem) had heard of a study where they were testing to see if allergies was related to parasites. He was rejected from the study, so, long story short, he ended up flying to northern Africa and walking around barefoot to get hookworm. He now monitors and manages his hookworm infection with low doses of anti-parasite medication, and he sells soil infected with hookworms so that you, too, can get infected by hookworm and reduce/eliminate your allergies. Oh, and his allergies are gone. I read about it here: https://www.ksl.com/article/20838871/man-infects-self-with-hookworms-to-treat-severe-allergies https://www.ksl.com/article/20838871/man-infects-self-with-h... But there are lots of stories and some studies on the subject as well. The original hypothesis was proposed in 1989 by David P Strachan. According to the theory, many modern diseases have gotten out of hand and are rapidly growing in industrialized western countries because of chlorinated drinking water, vaccines, antibiotics and the sterile environment of early childhood. Moreover, it is theorized that since we have become so good at preventing infections, we have upset the internal balance and ecology in our bodies. One missing element of hyper-clean and sterile environments is that our inflammatory responses do not function as they should. Parasites and bacteria play a symbiotic role in preserving our health.

seraphsf 4y ago
I know a person who contracted a transient parasite infection, possibly hookworm, while doing research in Africa and walking around barefoot. In the decade+ since, they’ve suffered terribly from debilitating and incurable auto-immune diseases brought on by the initial parasite infection. So, YMMV.
- prometheus76 4y ago
  I agree that caution is in order. The question above just reminded me of the story so I thought I'd pass it along because it was from 2012.
noodles_nomore 4y ago
He originally posted his story on kuro5hin[1]. It's an interesting read. He was interested in the worm because, for its survival, it has evolved a mechanism to disable the host's immune system in a particular way that eliminates allergies. At the time he wrote that nobody knows how the worm does it. Now that we can do similar things with monoclonal antibodies, I wonder if the mechanism is similar. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20151205143301/http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/30/91945/8971 http://web.archive.org/web/20151205143301/http://www.kuro5hi...

wheelerof4te 4y ago

lnxg33k1 4y ago
Well of course it’s obvious that we’re not carnivorous our ancestors didn’t eat meat and always used to go to the pharmacy to get their iron and B vitamin supplements
- wheelerof4te 4y ago
  Plenty of both iron and vitamin B in plant-based food. You really believe we hunted big game so much? With what? Sticks and stones? How did we catch them with our weak legs? How the hell did we skin them or eat their raw flesh? Cooking wasn't a thing for a long time. And why don't we eat the animal meat raw? Don't you love it when you see the dead, rotting carcas all open and blody? I sure don't. And neither would you, unless you were starving in the middle of winter.
  - lnxg33k1 4y ago
    I don’t know I meet a lot of people that say that there is a lot of iron and B in plants but all the vegan I met working were always taking supplements, maybe if you tell me what are the plants with B12 and iron I can pass over the info next time I see one of them
    - wheelerof4te 4y ago
      There is abundance of iron in spinach, nettle and other similar plants. For the b12 needs, eat some algae or even dirt. Yes, dirt. Plenty of dirt on a plant's root, which ancient humans ate like no tomorrow.
      - lnxg33k1 4y ago
        Eating dirt seems much more natural than eating animals, I guess they discovered the fire to cook the dirt then, i guess tonight I found the reason why vegans are full of shit :D Ps just searched for ‘dirt b12’ on ddg and the first website is an ad for b12 supplements