9 ms·

New study gives clues on why exercise helps with inflammation

147 points by lxm 3y ago

brianmorris10 3y ago
Tldr: exercise changes the way cells breathe, which may affect immune response. more research is needed
- random3 3y ago
  best tldr
ck2 3y ago
Exercise helps with inflammation the same way low-dose naltrexone helps with inflammation. They modulate opioid receptors, increase endorphins and drive down interleukin cytokines. Unfortunately neither actually cure the source of the inflammation, disease etc. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=naltrexone+inflammation+cytokines+endorphins+opioid https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=naltrexone+inflammation... https://google.com/search?q=naltrexone+inflammation+cytokines+endorphins+opioid https://google.com/search?q=naltrexone+inflammation+cytokine...
- Jacky4Chan 3y ago
  First time I see someone talking about low-dose naltrexone on HN. There is a video on youtube about someone whose oral cancer was gone after taking it.
  - markdown 3y ago
    > There is a video on youtube about someone whose oral cancer was gone after taking it. I know a guy who says that drinking noni juice cures all sorts of cancers. With your Youtube wisdom and my friends noni expertise, I'm sure the world will soon be cancer free.
    - Jacky4Chan 3y ago
      You seem to have very low reading comprehension, nowhere did I say low-dose naltrexone cures cancer. There is a youtube video about someone whose cancer was cured using low-dose naltrexone.
      - _Algernon_ 3y ago
        Dismissing an unseen Youtube video given no other evidence than that it is sourced from YT seems reasonable, rational even. The prior probability of a randomly selected YT video being trustworthy is probably a lot closer to 0 than 1.
        Jacky4Chan 3y ago
        [flagged]
        _Algernon_ 3y ago
        At this point you've edited this comment twice. First it was "autist", then "lol", now "This place is a meme. Prior probablity hahaahaa...". Who knows what it will be in the future. None is appropriate as a response for hacker news. Please read the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - Felotooto 3y ago
        [flagged]
        hinkley 3y ago
        [flagged]
  - BaculumMeumEst 3y ago
    I know a number of people whose cancer was gone after drinking water. Maybe I’ll tell them to put their story on youtube too.
  - ck2 3y ago
    There are no serious claims or documentation of LDN curing cancer and that's not it's actual use. It's used to treat chronic, systemic inflammation and is one of the only "tools in the toolbox" for some very desperate people in long-term pain for years because you can't use things like corticosteroids which are destructive. There are some cases where it can reduce inflammation well enough and long enough in some people for the body to self-heal where it could not before as the damage was too severe and dysfunctional. This is a good site for layperson information or use google scholar for actual research https://ldnresearchtrust.org/what-is-low-dose-naltrexone-ldn https://ldnresearchtrust.org/what-is-low-dose-naltrexone-ldn
- zer8k 3y ago
  There are plenty of cases for exercise curing disease. Metabolic syndrome is basically cured exclusively through diet and exercise until it becomes too late to stop. Physical therapy is exercise and certainly that is curative. Exercise alone took my cholesterol panel from mildly elevated to absolutely normal, lowered my blood sugar, and improved many inflammatory markers. I cannot say the same for naltrexone. Bonus, my joints feel better, my lungs work better, and my CRP has never been lower. I dont even need to link studies. Literally go to the NIH, search title for "exercise" and whatever you want, and I bet you can find enough repeatable evidence to completely change your mind. I'd argue exercise, 4-6 times a week in some form or another, is arguably the simplest cure and preventative "medication" for the largest variety of common ailments in a post-scarcity society. The fact doctors don't actually "prescribe" exercise as a first line treatment for metabolic diseases is really a failing of our drug-happy medical system.
  - Broken_Hippo 3y ago
    ... in a post-scarcity society... So, a world that doesn't exist?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - zer8k 3y ago
      The west is post scarcity. Obesity is an epidemic, diabetes in children is at a record never before seen, and people spend more time sitting still than moving.
      - Broken_Hippo 3y ago
        That doesn't describe post-scarcity. People don't even always have clean water, enough healthy food, access to medical care, housing, and so on. And you realistically cannot have scarcity in the "non-west" and then pretend you are post-scarcity in "the west". It just doesn't work like that. That's just "post-scarcity for folks and countries not being exploited", if it were true at all.
winrid 3y ago
It also seems like eating carbs is terrible for inflammation. If I go slightly over normal carb intake my knee/foot will hurt. I have screws in there and I bet it's extra sensitive to inflammation.
- oarfish 3y ago
  Any source for relevant clinical outcomes? Sounds like medically unsubstantiated anectdote.
  - danielheath 3y ago
    I certainly wouldn’t extrapolate to the population at large, but I can definitively state that some carbohydrates trigger a major body-wide inflammatory response in me. There’s several plausible mechanisms by which they could trigger an immune response (past gut infection training an immune response or fodmap sensitivity being the most obvious)
    - uoaei 3y ago
      Same. Other substances too. A couple days ago I switched from white wine to red at dinnertime and my fresh mosquito bites immediately started itching when before that I didn't notice them as much. It's not hard to believe that immune responses (allergic reactions being one end of that spectrum) are affected by the body's response to ingested substances. Especially given how strongly the gut microbiota affect blood chemistry.
      - scns 3y ago
        A friend of mine is very sensitive to histamines. Can't drink red at all, only special low histamine white wine.
    - jonex 3y ago
      There's certainly a lot of ways food substances can interact with bodily systems. However it can be hard to discern the exact source as different substances are correlated. Like you mention, issues with FODMAP is common, and those are often correlated with carbs. So there's a significant risk that a real effect is misattributed. Ideally you'd test if by blinding the intake, but that's often impossible or at least infeasible, so in the end we tend to latch on to some hypothesis without too much evidence. It's also good to be aware of how strong the nocebo effect can be in this context. If you are convinced of the danger of something it can lead to significant issues. For an extreme example, severe airborne peanut allergy seems to be hard to be reproduce in controlled studies, yet there's people having significant symptoms from this, like lack of breathing etc. Basically, when it comes to food, a lot of skepticism, including to our own experience, is often required. The risk is that we otherwise end up with unnecessary restrictive eating. Personally I have a lot of things I "can't" eat, but even then, I try to challenge it now and then, sometimes I find something in a category I can actually eat and sometimes it turns out that I can eat it in low amounts or slowly learn to handle it.
Daril 3y ago
If you are interested in this topic (inflammation prevention and reduction), take a look at the Wim Hof method (the Iceman). In its simplest form, it consists of two simple techniques: cold exposure and deep breathing with hyper-oxygenation. Anyone can do it, whatever their age or physical condition.
- Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  In general, the best thing about this is that it is unlikely to hurt you. It is unlikely to help you, either, of course. At best, this is in the "studies suggest" but there also isn't anything robust to link it to, well, anything.
  - clumsysmurf 3y ago
    > unlikely to hurt you Cold causes vasoconstriction, leading to increase in arterial blood pressure. Might not be good for some people.
  - mandmandam 3y ago
    > It is unlikely to help you, either, of course I don't think that's true, or fair to say... > there also isn't anything robust to link it to, well, anything. That's not really fair either. Wim Hof has been working with scientists for decades, and there are entire chapters in textbooks about how he has helped develop our understanding of physiology [0]. Read the comments there! See https://www.wimhofmethod.com/science https://www.wimhofmethod.com/science for more links. There's a lot of interesting things being learned. I am biased, because after many years and many attempts to quit tobacco, I quit forever within a week of starting Wim Hof. It was so much less effort. I didn't even spend any money - just YouTube videos and a free app were enough. I've also gone from someone who hates the winter to someone who quite enjoys it - another huge quality of life bump. It's real easy to see how effective the method is--you just do it. Maybe it didn't work for you, but ignoring the testimony of thousands of people (and significant actual research) seems like a weird grudg. 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6jqaALpEFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6jqaALpEFM
    - 3y ago
DoreenMichele 3y ago
Exercise powers the lymphatic system which increases the rate at which wastes are removed from tissues. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25427090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25427090
- westurner 3y ago
  Exercise correlates with subsequent increased levels of endocannabinoids. "The anti-inflammatory effect of bacterial short chain fatty acids is partially mediated by endocannabinoids" (2021) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2021.1997559 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2021.1... https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/exercise-lowers-inflammation-with-the-help-of-gut-microbes-and-endocannabinoids https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/exercise-lowers-in... "The Endocannabinoid System and Physical Exercise" (2022) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9916354/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9916354/ What are the relations between exercise and diet (and [health] conscientiousness)? /? Omega 6:3 ratio (and inflammation): https://www.google.com/search?q=omega+6+3+ratio https://www.google.com/search?q=omega+6+3+ratio
darkclouds 3y ago
No mention of the adrenal glands which sit on top of the kidneys, passively diffusing 80+ hormones through the pumping of the kidneys and movement experienced from exercise into the blood stream, some of which that last a fraction of a second, where adrenaline helps to shut off part of the immune system. So is this study, observing the effects of the adrenal glands and subsequently released hormones or not?
bluenose69 3y ago
This article recapitulates a press release [1], except for one important thing: the latter holds a link to the actual paper [2]. Unfortunately (although not atypically), that paper is behind a paywall, and its abstract does not mention statistical results. 1. https://www.yorku.ca/news/2023/06/15/new-study-gives-clues-on-why-exercise-helps-with-inflammation/ https://www.yorku.ca/news/2023/06/15/new-study-gives-clues-o... 2. Murugathasan, Mayoorey, Ardavan Jafari, Amandeep Amandeep, Syed A Hassan, Matthew Chihata, and Ali A. Abdul-Sater. “Moderate Exercise Induces Trained Immunity in Macrophages.” American Journal of Physiology-Cell Physiology, June 12, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpcell.00130.2023 https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpcell.00130.2023.

147 points by lxm 3y ago

brianmorris10 3y ago

Tldr: exercise changes the way cells breathe, which may affect immune response. more research is needed

random3 3y ago
best tldr

ck2 3y ago

Exercise helps with inflammation the same way low-dose naltrexone helps with inflammation. They modulate opioid receptors, increase endorphins and drive down interleukin cytokines. Unfortunately neither actually cure the source of the inflammation, disease etc. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=naltrexone+inflammation+cytokines+endorphins+opioid https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=naltrexone+inflammation... https://google.com/search?q=naltrexone+inflammation+cytokines+endorphins+opioid https://google.com/search?q=naltrexone+inflammation+cytokine...

Jacky4Chan 3y ago
First time I see someone talking about low-dose naltrexone on HN. There is a video on youtube about someone whose oral cancer was gone after taking it.
- markdown 3y ago
  > There is a video on youtube about someone whose oral cancer was gone after taking it. I know a guy who says that drinking noni juice cures all sorts of cancers. With your Youtube wisdom and my friends noni expertise, I'm sure the world will soon be cancer free.
  - Jacky4Chan 3y ago
    You seem to have very low reading comprehension, nowhere did I say low-dose naltrexone cures cancer. There is a youtube video about someone whose cancer was cured using low-dose naltrexone.
    - _Algernon_ 3y ago
      Dismissing an unseen Youtube video given no other evidence than that it is sourced from YT seems reasonable, rational even. The prior probability of a randomly selected YT video being trustworthy is probably a lot closer to 0 than 1.
      - Jacky4Chan 3y ago
        [flagged]
        _Algernon_ 3y ago
        At this point you've edited this comment twice. First it was "autist", then "lol", now "This place is a meme. Prior probablity hahaahaa...". Who knows what it will be in the future. None is appropriate as a response for hacker news. Please read the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - Felotooto 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - hinkley 3y ago
        [flagged]
- BaculumMeumEst 3y ago
  I know a number of people whose cancer was gone after drinking water. Maybe I’ll tell them to put their story on youtube too.
- ck2 3y ago
  There are no serious claims or documentation of LDN curing cancer and that's not it's actual use. It's used to treat chronic, systemic inflammation and is one of the only "tools in the toolbox" for some very desperate people in long-term pain for years because you can't use things like corticosteroids which are destructive. There are some cases where it can reduce inflammation well enough and long enough in some people for the body to self-heal where it could not before as the damage was too severe and dysfunctional. This is a good site for layperson information or use google scholar for actual research https://ldnresearchtrust.org/what-is-low-dose-naltrexone-ldn https://ldnresearchtrust.org/what-is-low-dose-naltrexone-ldn
zer8k 3y ago
There are plenty of cases for exercise curing disease. Metabolic syndrome is basically cured exclusively through diet and exercise until it becomes too late to stop. Physical therapy is exercise and certainly that is curative. Exercise alone took my cholesterol panel from mildly elevated to absolutely normal, lowered my blood sugar, and improved many inflammatory markers. I cannot say the same for naltrexone. Bonus, my joints feel better, my lungs work better, and my CRP has never been lower. I dont even need to link studies. Literally go to the NIH, search title for "exercise" and whatever you want, and I bet you can find enough repeatable evidence to completely change your mind. I'd argue exercise, 4-6 times a week in some form or another, is arguably the simplest cure and preventative "medication" for the largest variety of common ailments in a post-scarcity society. The fact doctors don't actually "prescribe" exercise as a first line treatment for metabolic diseases is really a failing of our drug-happy medical system.
- Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  ... in a post-scarcity society... So, a world that doesn't exist?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - zer8k 3y ago
    The west is post scarcity. Obesity is an epidemic, diabetes in children is at a record never before seen, and people spend more time sitting still than moving.
    - Broken_Hippo 3y ago
      That doesn't describe post-scarcity. People don't even always have clean water, enough healthy food, access to medical care, housing, and so on. And you realistically cannot have scarcity in the "non-west" and then pretend you are post-scarcity in "the west". It just doesn't work like that. That's just "post-scarcity for folks and countries not being exploited", if it were true at all.

winrid 3y ago

It also seems like eating carbs is terrible for inflammation. If I go slightly over normal carb intake my knee/foot will hurt. I have screws in there and I bet it's extra sensitive to inflammation.

oarfish 3y ago
Any source for relevant clinical outcomes? Sounds like medically unsubstantiated anectdote.
- danielheath 3y ago
  I certainly wouldn’t extrapolate to the population at large, but I can definitively state that some carbohydrates trigger a major body-wide inflammatory response in me. There’s several plausible mechanisms by which they could trigger an immune response (past gut infection training an immune response or fodmap sensitivity being the most obvious)
  - uoaei 3y ago
    Same. Other substances too. A couple days ago I switched from white wine to red at dinnertime and my fresh mosquito bites immediately started itching when before that I didn't notice them as much. It's not hard to believe that immune responses (allergic reactions being one end of that spectrum) are affected by the body's response to ingested substances. Especially given how strongly the gut microbiota affect blood chemistry.
    - scns 3y ago
      A friend of mine is very sensitive to histamines. Can't drink red at all, only special low histamine white wine.
  - jonex 3y ago
    There's certainly a lot of ways food substances can interact with bodily systems. However it can be hard to discern the exact source as different substances are correlated. Like you mention, issues with FODMAP is common, and those are often correlated with carbs. So there's a significant risk that a real effect is misattributed. Ideally you'd test if by blinding the intake, but that's often impossible or at least infeasible, so in the end we tend to latch on to some hypothesis without too much evidence. It's also good to be aware of how strong the nocebo effect can be in this context. If you are convinced of the danger of something it can lead to significant issues. For an extreme example, severe airborne peanut allergy seems to be hard to be reproduce in controlled studies, yet there's people having significant symptoms from this, like lack of breathing etc. Basically, when it comes to food, a lot of skepticism, including to our own experience, is often required. The risk is that we otherwise end up with unnecessary restrictive eating. Personally I have a lot of things I "can't" eat, but even then, I try to challenge it now and then, sometimes I find something in a category I can actually eat and sometimes it turns out that I can eat it in low amounts or slowly learn to handle it.

Daril 3y ago

If you are interested in this topic (inflammation prevention and reduction), take a look at the Wim Hof method (the Iceman). In its simplest form, it consists of two simple techniques: cold exposure and deep breathing with hyper-oxygenation. Anyone can do it, whatever their age or physical condition.

Broken_Hippo 3y ago
In general, the best thing about this is that it is unlikely to hurt you. It is unlikely to help you, either, of course. At best, this is in the "studies suggest" but there also isn't anything robust to link it to, well, anything.
- clumsysmurf 3y ago
  > unlikely to hurt you Cold causes vasoconstriction, leading to increase in arterial blood pressure. Might not be good for some people.
- mandmandam 3y ago
  > It is unlikely to help you, either, of course I don't think that's true, or fair to say... > there also isn't anything robust to link it to, well, anything. That's not really fair either. Wim Hof has been working with scientists for decades, and there are entire chapters in textbooks about how he has helped develop our understanding of physiology [0]. Read the comments there! See https://www.wimhofmethod.com/science https://www.wimhofmethod.com/science for more links. There's a lot of interesting things being learned. I am biased, because after many years and many attempts to quit tobacco, I quit forever within a week of starting Wim Hof. It was so much less effort. I didn't even spend any money - just YouTube videos and a free app were enough. I've also gone from someone who hates the winter to someone who quite enjoys it - another huge quality of life bump. It's real easy to see how effective the method is--you just do it. Maybe it didn't work for you, but ignoring the testimony of thousands of people (and significant actual research) seems like a weird grudg. 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6jqaALpEFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6jqaALpEFM
  - 3y ago

DoreenMichele 3y ago

Exercise powers the lymphatic system which increases the rate at which wastes are removed from tissues. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25427090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25427090

westurner 3y ago
Exercise correlates with subsequent increased levels of endocannabinoids. "The anti-inflammatory effect of bacterial short chain fatty acids is partially mediated by endocannabinoids" (2021) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2021.1997559 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19490976.2021.1... https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/exercise-lowers-inflammation-with-the-help-of-gut-microbes-and-endocannabinoids https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/exercise-lowers-in... "The Endocannabinoid System and Physical Exercise" (2022) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9916354/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9916354/ What are the relations between exercise and diet (and [health] conscientiousness)? /? Omega 6:3 ratio (and inflammation): https://www.google.com/search?q=omega+6+3+ratio https://www.google.com/search?q=omega+6+3+ratio

darkclouds 3y ago

No mention of the adrenal glands which sit on top of the kidneys, passively diffusing 80+ hormones through the pumping of the kidneys and movement experienced from exercise into the blood stream, some of which that last a fraction of a second, where adrenaline helps to shut off part of the immune system. So is this study, observing the effects of the adrenal glands and subsequently released hormones or not?

bluenose69 3y ago

This article recapitulates a press release [1], except for one important thing: the latter holds a link to the actual paper [2]. Unfortunately (although not atypically), that paper is behind a paywall, and its abstract does not mention statistical results. 1. https://www.yorku.ca/news/2023/06/15/new-study-gives-clues-on-why-exercise-helps-with-inflammation/ https://www.yorku.ca/news/2023/06/15/new-study-gives-clues-o... 2. Murugathasan, Mayoorey, Ardavan Jafari, Amandeep Amandeep, Syed A Hassan, Matthew Chihata, and Ali A. Abdul-Sater. “Moderate Exercise Induces Trained Immunity in Macrophages.” American Journal of Physiology-Cell Physiology, June 12, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpcell.00130.2023 https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpcell.00130.2023.