14 ms·
Endemic pathogens are causing psychiatric illnesses and shortening lives
- junon 4y agoI refuse to read shock media as a rule. Anyone qualified care to comment on the quality of the article? Also worth mentioning this was lifted and edited off another blog that has since gone down.
- korroziya 4y agoIt's as bad as you think: pompous and reads like we're all idiots and the author is that one guy at the high school party who was fixated on being the "smartest guy" in the room. Edit: Dead blog link.
- indymike 4y agoMore on Epstein-Barr virus.
- nequo 4y agoIt mentions HSV-1 (and neurodegenerative diseases), EBV (and mono), Toxoplasma gondii (and excessive risk taking or anxiety), Trich (and infertility), cytomegalovirus and Heliobacter Pylori (and anxiety), the Borna virus (and apparent bipolar disorder), and Vitamin D (which supposedly reduces these effects). It links to published studies on each of these links.
- searchableguy 4y agoMany viruses have been linked to singular inflammatory diseases, making it hard to attribute any one virus to a specific disease. Coxsackievirus B4, Herpesvirus 6, Enteroviruses, and Cytomegalovirus have all been linked to type 1 diabetes and pancreatic failure. EBV, however, has been identified as a strong precursor for MS. Due to difficulty in conducting studies on viruses, research in this area has been limited, but recent interest in auto-immune disorders caused by COVID has led to renewed funding. mRNA-based vaccines are also being tested for auto-immune diseases thought to have viral causes.
- collyw 4y agoHSV 1 is neurodegnerative? First I heard of that, and considering that it affects the majority of the population whether they know it or not, I find this to be quite unlikely to be a serious problem.
- nequo 4y agoLook at the “Alzheimer’s disease” section of the Wikipedia article on HSV-1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_simplex_virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_simplex_virus
- jamal-kumar 4y agoYou have to understand that this virus lays dormant in your spine before re-emerging up to years later as another outbreak in the skin. It's the same with herpes zoster (chickenpox) re-emerging years later when your immune system has its guard down in middle to old age as shingles. Its most severe central neurological manifestation is herpes encephalitis.
- canadiantim 4y ago> Also worth mentioning this was lifted and edited off another blog that has since gone down. How do you know this article was lifted off another blog?
- haswell 4y agoBecause the article states that it is copied/edited from a blog at the bottom, and links to the blog it was taken from. That blog, in turn, generates a warning because it is presenting a ghost.io certificate.
- aritmo 4y agoThe author is Riva Tez (https://twitter.com/rivatez https://twitter.com/rivatez). She first posted this on her blog, hosted on ghost.io, but she abandoned that personal blog. She then contributed her article on this new website that collects such articles. The new website does not show the author's name when you read an article. You have to look into the article index to view the her name as the author of the article. The author name appears here https://return.life/category/views/page/5/ https://return.life/category/views/page/5/
- haswell 4y agoThe author’s name is shown at the top of the article as well.
- haswell 4y agoI didn’t find this to be “shock media”, and the culmination of the article isn’t “you’re all wrong”, but “we should start a foundation to examine this in more detail”. Basically: “here’s my idea that might sound crazy, but there might be some reasons to explore it in more depth”. The attitude that “it goes against the grain so I won’t even consider it” seems problematic though when the subject is one that we still know very little about.
- AmericanChopper 4y agoStep 1. Be afraid Step 2. Give me money A tale as old as time…
- haswell 4y agoAssuming for a moment that there’s something worth exploring here, how would you reframe the content? Apply this response to a group raising concerns about the safety of asbestos and seeking funding for research to validate or debunk those concerns. People fear disease because of its impact on wellbeing and life expectancy. Not all fear is warranted or healthy, but fear also drives action and is an evolutionary advantage. There’s a good reason to stop smoking, because one hopes to avoid a painful death via lung cancer. “Lock your doors, or risk invasion and bodily harm by local street gangs” is an appeal to fear, and sound advice depending on your neighborhood. Fear can obviously be weaponized/misused, but not all fear-based arguments are inherently so. With all of that said, I didn’t really see fear mongering in this article. Instead, potentially sobering thoughts.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago> I didn’t really see fear mongering in this article The article starts with: > Endemic Pathogens are Making You Crazy and Then Killing You. Nobody warned you about them, but they’re destroying your mind and they’re everywhere. Maybe we have significantly different perspectives on fear mongering, but that’s archetypal fear mongering in my book. The article then goes on to summarise a number of fringe scientific theories that are not substantially supported by evidence, including linking autism to vaccines. The article then concludes with a call to action to help philanthropically fund the industry in which the author works as a venture capitalist (and don’t see any disclosure about this conflict of interest in the article). If the article left you feeling soberly thoughtful, then perhaps you could make a donation to the author’s next funding round. But from my perspective “be afraid, give me money” seems like a perfectly reasonable summary.
- st-keller 4y agoNever heard of this term. What is „shock media“? I also fail to see what part of this blogpost qualifies as „fear mongering“. What am I missing? Is „You will die“ a shocking message, or does induce fear? I thought it is just true.
- Supermancho 4y ago> What is „shock media“ Sensationalizing fear by presenting existing niche knowledge as an elevated concern for day to day living. This is why it's sometimes referred to as fear-mongering. eg: Did you know how lethal drinking water can be? Simply drinking water has killed plenty of people in modern times. Click here to know more. Shock media, like most phrases, is an amalgamation of ideas. In this case, "Shock Jock" and Media. The implication is that it's not purely click-bait and the point of the media is not purely informational.
- tsol 4y agoDon't forget that often titles are chosen by editors that value shock over content-- but that doesn't reflect on the actual writing itself
- prego_xo 4y agoFear-mongering at it's best. The article's main intent is to scare into thinking that genetic problems are because of the cold that you had when you were little so that you might send money their way for "a new philanthropic foundation to focus on the intersection of neuroscience, psychiatry and immunology." 90% of the article is superstion warning you that infertility is because you've been sick for decades and just don't know it, and 10% is asking for money. The only inkling of anything helpful is at the very end, when they recommend vitamin D supplements. tl;dr: Give us money or die.
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- bilsbie 4y agoI think virus fear is all tapped out at this point.
- CrazyPyroLinux 4y agoYou'd be surprised. I had expected summer of 2020 - never underestimate.
- haswell 4y agoI'm always cautious about pieces like this, but still thought some of what they wrote to be interesting to think about, whether or not it's likely to be true. This is an area that we still know very little about. With that said, I find the author’s argument for epistemological anarchism overly simplistic. Yes, many big breakthroughs came from discarding mainstream schools of thought. But the era in which those discoveries occurred was an era where many of our ideas about the world were fundamentally wrong. As knowledge increases and our models of the world improve, such anarchism becomes harder and harder to distinguish from quackery. I suspect the author would point out that we might still be fundamentally wrong, but there is plenty of evidence to show that at least in some categories, we’re getting more things right than we used to. Whether the subject at hand is one of those areas is certainly debatable. The point I can concede is that we still know so little about mental health and the impact of biology on mental health, that this may still be a discipline that needs some of that anarchism. Recent studies linking gut bacteria to wellbeing at least hint at some potential legitimacy.
- carlmr 4y agoI think a huge issue we have is that we are now at a point where we know a lot. We even know there's some causation here between latent infections and plenty of neurodegenerative disorders. However, as the author pointed out, it's super hard to study. And with all the problems of the world, the ones that are almost impossible to study don't get studied. But the question is if we need these studies anyway. Maybe some of the latent infections don't cause as many issues as others, but we've gathered enough knowledge at this point that we should suspect all of them. A much better point is the one about vaccines. HPV is a prime example. It is already reducing cancer rates for boys and girls (one of the few cases where medicine ignored men - to much detriment, because a whole generation of boys could have been vaccinated already and they get cancer and spread it, too). We should put funding into getting rid of as many of these latent infections as possible. We desperately need Epstein-Barr, HSV-1, HSV-2, and Herpes Zoster vaccines. Making vaccines isn't anarchism to overthrow the medical establishment. Instead the problem is how funding gets allocated because the proof we have is less strong, but looking at all of the latent infections, the proof is plenty, we don't need those hard-to-do studies. Instead we need to start fighting these disease.
- BaculumMeumEst 4y agoi would pay for a service that reads in articles with low quality, clickbait headlines that are designed to elicit fear and anxiety, and only recommend ones to me that are likely to actually impact my life. as of now, i just assume most of these are not a big deal and written in bad faith and ignore then entirely, but i’d prefer not to miss important information if there’s an actionable change i should make in my life, and i would really prefer to be able to read interesting content without being bombarded by garbage.
- colechristensen 4y agoThere’s not really an actionable change, long term low grade disease after infection is just a thing which is getting increased attention from researchers.
- Firmwarrior 4y agoIf something makes it to the front of HackerNews it usually isn't worthless clickbait (unless it's about some esoteric niche programming tool)
- w10-1 4y ago"i would pay for a service that reads in articles with low quality, clickbait headlines [...], and only recommend ones [...] to actually impact my life" That would be... the NY Times? NEJM?
- BaculumMeumEst 4y agoi've paid for publications like NY times and wapo for a bit, they are not too my tastes. too many opinionated stories in the vein of "how you should feel about X topic", too many misrepresentations of reality. an example would be during covid wapo ran a front page story about young people filling up mount sinai with severe covid cases, where doctors saw clots forming right in front of their eyes, etc. nothing about relative risk in that story, it was just emotional horror, i'm not interested in that. NEJM is a lot more broad than what i would want to see, i'm not really interested in keeping tabs on the entire field of medicine. i just want to hear about what affects me- "a pandemic is sweeping the world" or "RSV cases that affect your child's age group are sharply on the rise" are examples. what i want is specific which is why i would be willing to pay for a service that accommodates it
- thenerdhead 4y ago> Educating people on these topics and getting more doctors to offer the necessary blood and stool tests to rule out pathogenic causes before commencing psychiatric treatment could potentially help millions of people. Are there even accurate tests for many of these? Take long Covid as a modern challenge. Most people already have antibodies of some kind and a fraction still struggle with mental challenges post infection that repurposed SSRIs can significantly help with. Just the other day there was even an article about people being overprescribed SSRIs. If I were to summarize the article in a few words it would be: Stress caused by pathogens can lead to chronic illness. You can say the same about most stresses in life too though and their similar correlations as made in this article.
- lamontcg 4y agoThe herpesviruses like EBV and CMV have been with the human race for at least as long as we've been humans and pretty much infect everyone, which begs the question of how much we've adapted to them. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be worse if we eliminated them all from everyone. Clearly if you're one of the people who wind up with MS though you'd prefer to have EBV gone from yourself.
- r2_pilot 4y agoAs I have had 3 occurrences of mononucleosis from EBV, the last of which had me feeling fine at noon on one day, feeling like flu 6 hours later out of the blue, and then literally bedridden, in significant pain, and unable to work for 27 days(around 20 days with high fever), count me also among those who would really prefer to not have EBV gone from myself.
- twobitshifter 4y agoThis and the evidence of gut-microbes influencing behavior tells me that we’ve likely been focusing too much on genetic causes of many diseases. We have guests in our bodies interacting with our digestion, immune, and central nervous systems. They have an effect.
- lazide 4y agoGenetic elements would play a part with how (or if) specific parts of what you are saying would have specific effects though. The issue is, the system is incredibly complex with a lot of non-linear interaction that are difficult to understand or even see happening.
- el_nahual 4y agoThere's more bacteria in your body than your own cells. That means that by cell count, you are more bacteria than human.
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- pazimzadeh 4y agountil you poop, then it evens out. but if you count mitochondria then yeah
- PaulKeeble 4y agoCovid has been found in the brains and organs of Long Covid sufferers at autopsy while not being found in their blood in PCR testing. Bhupesh Prusty recently found in an autopsy of 4 ME/CFS sufferers they had HHV-6 in their brain and spine and 3 of the 4 also had EBV too where 28 controls did not. The DOD just last year also linked Multiple Sclerosis to EBV. There is growing evidence that many viruses stick with us in cells, are not found in the blood and can lead to severe chronic illnesses later in life. A lot of microbiome research is leading to particular bacteria in or missing from the gut being correlated with various diseases like diabetes and obesity and almost all chronic diseases have a corresponding microbiome adjustment. We don't know yet know if there is a cause here or its just correlated but its a potential diagnostic that shows long before more serious symptoms and could potentially be used diagnostically one day. Or it might be these shifts are causal and we need to find a way to restore gut function that works well and reliably. The fundamental idea is becoming mainstream in research with significant labs working on this for Long Covid, ME/CFS as well as EDS across the globe. Its not a fringe idea in research looking at long neglected diseases and the more they look the more they find evidence for it. Its not something the vast majority of doctors would have any knowledge on today, most would consider it ridiculous despite thousands of papers on this topic with growing evidence for the fundamental idea of ongoing infections causing increasing problems.
- heywhatupboys 4y agothere are literally no peer reviewed scientific study demonstrating the pathology of "long covid". In fact, there aren't really any knowledge that there is such as thing as "long covid" in the way we traditionally define diseases
- colechristensen 4y agoGoogle long covid ncbi for a long list of papers. I don’t know what you mean with your no true Scotsman fallacy, there’s definitely something and quite a lot of research establishing what. Where did you get your information?
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- JamesLeonis 4y agoThere was an excellent meta-study about Schizophrenia triggered by a trifecta of genetics, pathogens, and stress-related immunosuppression posted on HN last month [0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34021789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34021789
- teucris 4y ago> Contemporary society champions neuro-diversity and makes it taboo to consider that our psychological issues could have a biological causation. Telling someone that their mental health issues could come from pathogen exposure demeans their experience in individualistic societies. This is quite a presumption! The advocates of neurodiversity that I’ve seen care less about where these things come from, and more about how they are thought of in society. So what if it’s caused by a pathogen?
- TurkishPoptart 4y ago>People who catch toxoplasmosis often have no symptoms. If they do, they may experience an acute infection of mild flu-like symptoms. Think about how many times you’ve had a cold or mild flu, perhaps one of those times it was actually from a pathogen such as Toxoplasma. After entering your system, the toxoplasmosis infection then enters a dormant phase, during which bradyzoites (slow, multiplying cell forms) create clusters within a cyst that become permanently lodged in your muscle and brain tissues. Toxoplasma gondii is occasionally also found expressed in conditions around the eyes, the lining of the lungs and also the heart. This is terrifying.
- freedude 4y agoDon't worry, it alone will make you sick and will not add a single day to your life. Instead, seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Matthew 6:25-33 While doing that go outside get fresh air, exercise and sunshine. Also, take some Vitamin D.
- avgcorrection 4y agoSo insidious that it becomes yet another thing to not worry about because what’s the point?
- fallingknife 4y agoWhen a virus has a pretty much universal presence in the body, isn't it part of the microbiome rather than just an infection? There are certainly negative effects on some people, but could there be a symbiosis here with positive benefits?
- jsonne 4y agoThis is fascinating and in particular this article called out EBV infection and the link to anxiety. I developed a rough EBV infection in college and a few years later I developed generalized anxiety disorder and panic attacks. At this point they're mostly under control with lifestyle changes however that they call out this link is really enlightening. I hope that more research looks into this sort of thing and makes these connections because it seems like it could be a huge benefit to folks. It feels like a lot of the interventions with mental health tend to be a bit of a sledge hammer generalist approach so looking at the root causes of the "why" I think could power a much more holistic view of things.
- w10-1 4y agoYes, some connections are there, but not enough to draw these conclusions. There's no need for funding a new foundation (run by neophytes?). The funding system for health and infectious diseases in particular is pretty good in terms of funneling money to researchers with actual prospects of advancing what we know. Here's the thing: once you're old, or your immune system is compromised (inactive or over-active), the bevy of mechanisms to Keep Things Going itself fails, and then it's mostly a matter of time. Because failures can happen for so many reasons and in so many ways, findings in this context will always be promising, rarely definitive, and almost never helpful. Take EBV and MS. Epidemiologically, EBV is highly prevalent - say 95+% of adults show antibodies, and the rest are likely just not producing enough to detect. So the recent VA study had to start from a base of millions to find a few hundred case/controls and a risk factor of ~37X, with only one patient who developed MS not having demonstrated EBV antibodies. Then analytically, e.g., folks at Stanford have found an EBV antibody that also binds to a protein at the foot of the myelin. Thus, we seem to have a perfect exemplar of auto-immune molecular mimickry. Case closed? Well, you're not going to get rid of EBV soon (a vaccine from ~2000 was abandoned, but Moderna is trialing another). Also, there are many lines of evidence that neurodegeneration starts before the myelin-attacking flares (and the myelin protein at issue is not normally exposed to antibodies). So while the auto-immunity may be excessive and amplify the problem, it's only responding to the neurodegeneration. But we already knew that because even the B-cell ablating therapies for MS only delay disability. So while there's more science behind this discussion than the typical anti-vaxxer's, it's one of the areas that has the highest ratios of valid, narrow findings to actionable medicine: auto-immunity, gut microbiomes, neuropathic pain, etc. Whenever the problems are systemic, you get some benefit from a system reset or dampening (colon cleanses, inflammation reduction), but that's a bit like rebooting the system as a cure for the blue screen.
- freedude 4y agoAfter reading the article... Worrying will never solve any of this. Worrying is futile and immobilizing at its extreme. Be happy, live life and get plenty of Vitamin D.
- jsonne 4y agoThis is generally very good advice. Eat well, get outside into nature, sleep well, try not to worry. Focus on what you can control not what you can't.
- niemal_dev 4y agoThank you for this very high quality article and initiative to finally take psychiatry seriously and address all the amount of harm and invalid coercion that fuels the unnecessary suffering of millions.
- onewheeltom 4y agoI thought we were discussing pathogens.