11 ms·

Nutrient found in beef and dairy improves immune response to cancer in mice

289 points by elorant 3y ago

iteratethis 3y ago
Cut sugar, sauce and highly processed food. I know they have a fatal attraction, quite literally. But if you manage to get rid of all that junk, you can pretty much eat what you want from the selection of real foods like whole wheat bread, fruits and vegetables, eggs, meats. Mix and match a reasonable balance between those, and you strike a good balance. But to start with: sugar is your enemy.
- wtcactus 3y ago
  I would say that's more cultural that you state. I absolutely have no attraction for processed food or sauce (well, except for olive oil, which can be considered a sauce I guess). Sugar, well, I do enjoy some home made cakes, but little more. My father is the same, I'm quite sure he never ate an hamburger in his life. He does love the sweets though. Anecdotally, he is 73 and has absolutely no health issues, doesn't take any medicine at all. Also, we do eat a lot of fish and meat here. Every single meal has either one of those as the main food.
whoiscroberts 3y ago
I stopped eating most processed foods and now mostly consume beef in the form of steaks, chicken and vegetables. Never felt better. I also stopped eating mass amounts of sugar and carbs.
progne 3y ago
Immune function analysis displayed significantly lower phagocytosis of monocytes and granulocytes in an older vegetarian population (vs. older nonvegetarians (P < 0.05, P < 0.001). Similar effect of diet was observed as decreased phagocytic activity of granulocytes in younger vegetarians. Regardless of age, respiratory burst of phagocytic cells was also significantly decreased in women vegetarians versus nonvegetarians (P < 0.05, P < 0.001). Older vegetarians revealed significantly suppressed proliferative response of T-lymphocytes to mitogens (P < 0.001). In conclusion, our data indicate that a vegetarian diet might have a possible impact on human immune response. https://journals.lww.com/epidem/fulltext/2007/09001/The_Effect_of_Vegetarian_Diet_on_Immune_Response.649.aspx https://journals.lww.com/epidem/fulltext/2007/09001/The_Effe...
- ryuhhnn 3y ago
  There might be an impact, but it’s not clear what the impact is. I’m no biologist, but I’d wager your volume of immune cells changes quite a bit over your lifetime. I’d be more interested in seeing the long-term health outcomes of vegetarians vs. non-vegetarians.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  The opposite was also discovered (dairy increases cancer risk): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34788365/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34788365/
  - piyushpr134 3y ago
    I find these studies to be deeply flawed. It is a multivariate situation and we cannot control/observe more than one variable mostly and still end up mistaking these correlations to be causation. It could well be that it is not diary or meat but the amount of glucose/fructose one eats which really affects this. We must go back to molecular level proofs rather than these kind of statistical studies where you cannot control everything (apart from mouse models which most people reject for being a mouse model)
    - merry_flame 3y ago
      Some but not all. In the case of meat, it so happens that a homogenous population of non-smokers in the US, the Seventh-Day Adventists, have a very high proportion of vegetarians…
    - cf100clunk 3y ago
      From TFA: “There are many studies trying to decipher the link between diet and human health, and it’s very difficult to understand the underlying mechanisms because of the wide variety of foods people eat. But if we focus on just the nutrients and metabolites derived from food, we begin to see how they influence physiology and pathology,” said Jing Chen, PhD, the Janet Davison Rowley Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine at UChicago and one of the senior authors of the new study.
_ink_ 3y ago
“There is early data showing that other fatty acids from plants signal through a similar receptor, so we believe there is a high possibility that nutrients from plants can do the same thing by activating the CREB pathway as well,” he said.
- herunan 3y ago
  So eating food improves immune response to cancer. Next.
  - szundi 3y ago
    Why the downvote? Correct observation
    - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      Because this identified a specific nutrient, and a specific pathway for its action. The "eating food improves immune response" is an absurd characterization.
      - beebeepka 3y ago
        I think it was just a short version of "eating both kinds of food"
    - Buttons840 3y ago
      Because the "next" meme is the antithesis of what HN strives to be. For example, fasting might help fight cancer, so there's obviously more nuance than just "eating fights cancer, next!".
      - jader201 3y ago
        I still think the point of the “next” comment is that we didn’t really learn anything — except that there’s more to learn. To your point, way too much nuance here, and it sounds like the title — and maybe article — is clickbait.
helsinkiandrew 3y ago
Interestingly also in Sea Buckthorn: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccenic_acid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccenic_acid
- tuukkah 3y ago
  > Its stereoisomer, cis-vaccenic acid, is found in Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) oil. An isomer (different configuration of atoms) can have totally different biochemical effects though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoisomerism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoisomerism
jwmoz 3y ago
What's sad is I don't believe any of these research papers anymore. Both ways can be found good or bad. It's impossible to deal with.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- willsmith72 3y ago
  to me that's encouraging. science has never been black and white. the mixed results can be a sign that we don't understand something properly. there's nuance and depth adding noise to the results it will only get better with more peer-reviewed studies and analysis
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    Mixed results can also be evidence that everything is fraudulent and nobody is even pretending to try and replicate things. And as a layperson, even honest noise isn't useful.
  - szundi 3y ago
    100 more years and we know more. Under we I mean someone else.
  - wyager 3y ago
    There's a difference between "not black and white" and "replication crisis". Nutrition studies suffer from a replication crisis.
    - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
      Quite a bit of nutrition research is simply useless. They ask a bunch of people what they ate and then try to correlate that with health outcomes. You will never learn anything that way, though it might give you areas for further research. The next step up is a randomized controlled trial, but instead of choosing health outcomes they choose measurements of lab tests as their endpoints. Someone’s cholesterol went up or down by some small number. What did we learn? Nothing. Unfortunately good research is outrageously expensive, so it doesn’t get done.
karol 3y ago
<picture of steak>
speedylight 3y ago
My body must have exceptional anti cancer properties considering the sheer quantity of cheese I consume daily.
- cies 3y ago
  From the article: > There is a growing body of evidence about the detrimental health effects of consuming too much red meat and dairy, so this study shouldn’t be taken as an excuse to eat more cheeseburgers and pizza; rather, it indicates that nutrient supplements such as TVA could be used to promote T cell activity.
  - tremon 3y ago
    >> "Considering the sheer quantity of cheese I consume daily, I should have gotten cancer many times over now. Therefore, my body must have exceptional anti-cancer properties."
hombre_fatal 3y ago
They isolated trans-vaccenic acid and gave it to mice with tumors. If this informs your dietary preferences but our best metaanalyses on human health outcomes do not, you need to check your epistemic standards.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
CobaltFire 3y ago
So I suffer from multiple autoimmune conditions and moving to a pescatarian diet (vegan + fish) has had a large moderating effect on my symptoms. I’m trying it based on some research for Neu5gc (that I first saw referenced here on HN) because… well it seemed harmless to try. This makes me wonder if this fatty acid may also/instead be a/the casual factor. Human bodies have so many confounding factors tracing these things is very difficult. Very happy to see more research.
- mentos 3y ago
  For what it’s worth I started developing auto immune symptoms after my exposure to Covid (nerve pain in my face, legs, feet, inner ear was burning and had a lack of balance, fatigue, trembling) only thing that resolved it was exercise (moderate to heavy weight lifting) and a strict carnivore diet over 3 months. I’d probably put more stock into the exercise but my working theory was low testosterone and poor diet was preventing me from recovering. 3 years later and if I go a few months without exercise the nerve pain starts to come back in my face heh
- zackmorris 3y ago
  A I've gotten older, I've found that my overall health mostly starts in the gut. I got hit with a form of chronic fatigue syndrome from leaky gut in 2019 that was so bad that I burned out and lost the ability to work for about 6 months. A variation of the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) diet is what worked for me: * Avoid wheat and most grains (rice and corn are fine) * Avoid milk and young cheese (cheddar is fine but YMMV) * Avoid FODMAPs like beans, other legumes and nightshades * Get back to macro nutrients like bacon & eggs for breakfast, meat & rice, etc * Get back to micro nutrients like spinach for iron and a thyroid supplement for iodine * Seek holistic approaches like ashwagandha to restore hormone balance * Build gut health with probiotics and get treated for parasites if necessary * Look into supplements like glutamine and colostrum which rebuild the gut * Decrease caffeine and stress which lower the activation threshold for nerves in the gut to purge its contents * Drink a gallon of water per day, from one large container if necessary, to accommodate ADHD/autism symptoms * Exercise by alternating weightlifting and walking each day, about 60 minutes ideally Each food damages the villi in the small intestine at a different rate, but the gut only regenerates twice per week. Gluten causes some of the worst damage, which remains hidden until middle age when the ability to regenerate starts to decrease. Now I believe that GMOs and processed foods are so damaging not due to stuff like preservatives, but because low cost means a higher percentage of fillers like gluten. It took 3-5 years but I'm able to eat FODMAPs again, tolerate milk every day and even eat wheat a couple of times per week. I consider myself to be in remission but must be mindful of what I eat. I'm also hopeful that long COVID studies will reveal some of the disease mechanisms at work in these types of undiagnosable conditions. Gaslighting (not believing patients as they describe symptoms) is still a huge problem in western medicine.
krunck 3y ago
(Nutrient in beef) ≠ beef
- Phiwise_ 3y ago
  The cynic in me says that this is more correct as a statement about the author's patent possesion than it is about the items themselves.
TheRealPomax 3y ago
Like almost all of these publications, for HN purposes this title really needs "in mice" explicitly added to the end, because there is no reason for a Nature publication to put it in, but a lot of folks will never read the paper.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
idlewords 3y ago
*In mice
- dang 3y ago
  Grr, another one. We've inmiced the title above. Thanks!
  - idlewords 3y ago
    I'm sure someone here would be willing to whip up an automated inmicer script. It might be a fun little project.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
rambojohnson 3y ago
Red meat has been demonstrated to have carcinogenic properties for quite some time. It's uncertain whether the discovery of this obscure "nutrient" justifies the associated risks...
- chainwax 3y ago
  This has been called into question recently. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36216940/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36216940/ https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/library/health-effects-associated-consumption-unprocessed-red-meat-burden-proof https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/library/health-...
- brigadier132 3y ago
  Those studies that link red meat to cancer are all epidemiological and causal relationships can't be drawn from them. For example, one possible confounder could be that population of people that eat red meat also eat higher amounts of fast food or they might have higher bmi than those that don't. Also, always note how the studies never say "red meat causes cancer", they say "red meat is linked to cancer". Linked being the key word.
  - Moldoteck 3y ago
    Don't those studies accout for such types of influence?
    - brigadier132 3y ago
      They try isolate confounders using statistical methods but these are not intervention studies and they rely on self reported data. There are obvious limitations with such approaches. You could imagine that people who are careful enough with their diet to completely avoid red meat also probably do physical activity of some sort. How many people that avoid red meat in their diet also eat at mcdonalds? They aren't locking people up in a resort and strictly monitoring and controlling what they ingest.
fithisux 3y ago
If it works, we will see it eventually used.
odyssey7 3y ago
A key excerpt, in my opinion. “There is a growing body of evidence about the detrimental health effects of consuming too much red meat and dairy, so this study shouldn’t be taken as an excuse to eat more cheeseburgers and pizza; rather, it indicates that nutrient supplements such as TVA could be used to promote T cell activity.” I’m also curious about this being a trans fat. I’ve heard public health campaigning that trans fats are unhealthy, but this research highlights one as a potential cancer therapy. It is apparently another case of un-nuanced popular ideas about health and nutrition not being the whole truth.
- RandomWorker 3y ago
  Really the problem is with the headline, which is probably all most people will see and read. The title should probably say TVA improves cancer fighting immune system. Is dairy and beef the only source ? My sense is no. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/trans-Vaccenic-acid https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/trans-Vaccenic-aci... Reviewing pubmed it seems to be a product from ecoli.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Are all trans fats equal? We are more and more learning that broad categories are not useful as some subsets are better/worse than others.
  - some_furry 3y ago
    It could also be a category error: Vegetable seed oils seem to correlate strongly with bad health outcomes. Meanwhile, other oils (e.g. olive oil) with similar levels of the same types of fatty acids have better outcomes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGnfXXIKZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGnfXXIKZM Is it the type of fat, or the process through which it's extracted, that's most important? I don't know if the answer is as clear as we'd like it to be. Going back to the article: Isn't it possible that the trans fat in question is actually toxic like other trans fats, but in a way that's narrowly beneficial in this circumstance?
    - 3y ago
codingdave 3y ago
With all the information available and research about nutrition really impacts our lives... I find myself wondering if there really is a benefit for a layman like myself to keeping up, or if the overall best advice still sits at: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
anonu 3y ago
Tomorrow we'll see an article that says: "beef consumption tied to higher rates of cancer". Sorry to be cynical. I'll never forget - back when Google News was more about an amalgamation of all articles from around the web - there were 2 articles in the "coffee" category: "Coffee consumption linked to cancer" and then "Coffee consumption linked to lower cancer". The answer is really moderation. Michael Pollan puts it well: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants".
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Well sometimes the solution to cancer is more cancer. Larger animals like elephants and whales don't die from cancer because their cancer gets cancer before it manages to spread. These hypertumors then compete with and deprive the original cancer of blood flow, so they all end up starving. When you think about it we mostly cure cancer with ionizing radiation, which is ironically notorious for causing it in the first place.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
moose44 3y ago
This comment section is a perfect example of how little we know about health.
- grecy 3y ago
  "Eat food, mostly plants, not too much."
  - jononomo 3y ago
    I have the opposite view. Eat food, entirely beef, as much as you'd like.
    - grecy 3y ago
      > entirely beef, as much as you'd like. That is a very good way to eat thousands of calories per day in excess of base metabolic need, which for nearly everyone will result in significant weight gain.
      - jononomo 3y ago
        Spoken like someone who thinks theoretically but without any practical experience with the diet! What actually happens is that you get satiated a LOT faster because beef is so nutrient dense, so you end up eating fewer calories and most people only eat two meals a day because they just stay satiated for so long. You also never experience the drowsiness that normally comes after eating. This is a zero carb diet which is high in protein, so you'll find yourself effortlessly putting on muscle and losing belly fat. When I say "entirely beef", that means "you can't put anything in your mouth that is not literally part of a cow" -- so that means no junk food, no sugar, no alcohol, not calories through drinking anything. It is the ultimate elimination diet because it is nutritionally complete yet ridiculously simple. People call it "the lion diet" and if you actually try it you'll end up in phenomenal shape and you'll feel like you're running on jet fuel.
        moose44 3y ago
metabagel 3y ago
I suspect that the way the body processes food is modified significantly by exercise. So, it's not the food you are eating, but rather it's the food you are eating combined with how active or sedentary your lifestyle is. I think that exercise has a marked effect on the gut's microbiome.
jononomo 3y ago
I only eat beef and eggs.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  The Vince Gironda diet.
  - jononomo 3y ago
    exactly
EGreg 3y ago
Don’t vegetarians live far longer and meat cooking brings carcinogens? Also meat of older animals ages you more quickly
- sundarurfriend 3y ago
  I'd love to hear what sources these claims are from. I'm vegetarian, and every time I've come across these "vegetarians live longer" claims it's from dubious sources that cite random tiny studies in isolation. I could believe modern factory farming, preservation, and mass-preparation techniques make meat much less healthy (than it used to be in our ancestral days), but a general "meat cooking brings carcinogens [to a level that matters, beyond plant cooking does]" sounds pretty unlikely too.
  - shinryuu 3y ago
    The most famous study is the seventh adventist study. The study in question is not tiny. About 70k people participated. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191896/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191896/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916523048815 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...
    - HNDen21 3y ago
      They also don't smoke or drink.. I am sure that chops off a few years
    - hanniabu 3y ago
      Need to control for healthy habits also associated with healthier diets, such as exercising, not smoking, etc. It should also eliminate any participants with clearly unhealthy habits like poor diets consisting of fast food and living extremely sedentary lifestyles (different from just not exercising).
  - hilux 3y ago
    There is no large long-term double-blind controlled study comparing a vegetarian/vegan diet to some omnivore diet - and there never will be. The only diet studies are observational, and they are unreliable in all kinds of ways. The famous Blue Zones book has about the validity of Rich Dad Poor Dad or The Millionaire Next Door. But the book continues to sell, and at a macro level, its advice is not terrible, but it's also not "the only way." Surprisingly (to me), there is some evidence that some people are genetically better disposed to eating a vegetarian diet than others.
roschdal 3y ago
Milk cures cancer.
teslabox 3y ago
The current top comment [0] on this submission said he was "curious about this being a trans fat". This would be a result of biohydrogenation, where the bacteria in the ruminants stomachs will add hydrogen to the unsaturated oils. First link for biohydrogenation: https://www.megalac.com/resources-advice/fats-advice/71-biohydrogenation https://www.megalac.com/resources-advice/fats-advice/71-bioh... Biohydrogenation is a totally different process from the hydrogenation used to make margarine from seed oils. Ruminal microbe of biohydrogenation of trans-vaccenic acid to stearic acid in vitro - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3305423/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3305423/ [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38434521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38434521
jnellis 3y ago
Reports like this always remind me of that scene in Sleeper. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=485Em2JF34M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=485Em2JF34M
atlgator 3y ago
It's shocking how little we know about what is "good" and what is "bad" for the body. There are too many confounding factors around meat, such as using processed meats and meats cooked with seed oils. For me, eating as clean as possible is the best approach. Find meat that isn't loaded up with hormones, antibiotics, or mold toxins. Find non-GMO vegetables that aren't loaded with pesticides. Limit carbs and dairy as much as possible. No stimulants, barbiturates, or other drugs.
- shuntress 3y ago
  "It's shocking how little we know about how food affects the body. That's why I follow this trendy diet based on assumptions about how food affects the body."
  - atlgator 3y ago
    In the last 70 years, the human diet has become polluted with chemicals and shifted to refined carbs, concurrent with the rise of heart disease and diabetes. And I'm the one following the "trend" by eliminating those things? Not sure you know what that word means.
  - sethammons 3y ago
    how is that a trendy diet? It looks like what we assume people have mostly eaten for the last 100k years.
    - shuntress 3y ago
      It's the blanket disapproval of anything arbitrarily deemed "impure". Genetically modified crops are as safe as any other food. Balancing intake & output (of calories) is the only practical reason to avoid carbs and dairy (obviously it should go without saying but I'll say it anyways: unless you have lactose intolerance or celiac or some other condition). Hormones, antibiotics, and "mold toxins" are not what's bad about industrial-scale livestock farming.
      - 3y ago
capitainenemo 3y ago
Huh. From reading the article it doesn't seem like a nutrient and more a signaling thing (activates a receptor on the cell's surface). Could this be a hormesis effect? For example, the body reacts to things like exercise or UV by amping up repair and immune system. Perhaps the body is amping up its immune system in response to consuming meat/milk due to carcinogen or disease risks?

289 points by elorant 3y ago

Cut sugar, sauce and highly processed food. I know they have a fatal attraction, quite literally. But if you manage to get rid of all that junk, you can pretty much eat what you want from the selection of real foods like whole wheat bread, fruits and vegetables, eggs, meats. Mix and match a reasonable balance between those, and you strike a good balance. But to start with: sugar is your enemy.

wtcactus 3y ago
I would say that's more cultural that you state. I absolutely have no attraction for processed food or sauce (well, except for olive oil, which can be considered a sauce I guess). Sugar, well, I do enjoy some home made cakes, but little more. My father is the same, I'm quite sure he never ate an hamburger in his life. He does love the sweets though. Anecdotally, he is 73 and has absolutely no health issues, doesn't take any medicine at all. Also, we do eat a lot of fish and meat here. Every single meal has either one of those as the main food.

whoiscroberts 3y ago

I stopped eating most processed foods and now mostly consume beef in the form of steaks, chicken and vegetables. Never felt better. I also stopped eating mass amounts of sugar and carbs.

progne 3y ago

Immune function analysis displayed significantly lower phagocytosis of monocytes and granulocytes in an older vegetarian population (vs. older nonvegetarians (P < 0.05, P < 0.001). Similar effect of diet was observed as decreased phagocytic activity of granulocytes in younger vegetarians. Regardless of age, respiratory burst of phagocytic cells was also significantly decreased in women vegetarians versus nonvegetarians (P < 0.05, P < 0.001). Older vegetarians revealed significantly suppressed proliferative response of T-lymphocytes to mitogens (P < 0.001). In conclusion, our data indicate that a vegetarian diet might have a possible impact on human immune response. https://journals.lww.com/epidem/fulltext/2007/09001/The_Effect_of_Vegetarian_Diet_on_Immune_Response.649.aspx https://journals.lww.com/epidem/fulltext/2007/09001/The_Effe...

ryuhhnn 3y ago
There might be an impact, but it’s not clear what the impact is. I’m no biologist, but I’d wager your volume of immune cells changes quite a bit over your lifetime. I’d be more interested in seeing the long-term health outcomes of vegetarians vs. non-vegetarians.
candiddevmike 3y ago
The opposite was also discovered (dairy increases cancer risk): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34788365/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34788365/
- piyushpr134 3y ago
  I find these studies to be deeply flawed. It is a multivariate situation and we cannot control/observe more than one variable mostly and still end up mistaking these correlations to be causation. It could well be that it is not diary or meat but the amount of glucose/fructose one eats which really affects this. We must go back to molecular level proofs rather than these kind of statistical studies where you cannot control everything (apart from mouse models which most people reject for being a mouse model)
  - merry_flame 3y ago
    Some but not all. In the case of meat, it so happens that a homogenous population of non-smokers in the US, the Seventh-Day Adventists, have a very high proportion of vegetarians…
  - cf100clunk 3y ago
    From TFA: “There are many studies trying to decipher the link between diet and human health, and it’s very difficult to understand the underlying mechanisms because of the wide variety of foods people eat. But if we focus on just the nutrients and metabolites derived from food, we begin to see how they influence physiology and pathology,” said Jing Chen, PhD, the Janet Davison Rowley Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine at UChicago and one of the senior authors of the new study.

_ink_ 3y ago

“There is early data showing that other fatty acids from plants signal through a similar receptor, so we believe there is a high possibility that nutrients from plants can do the same thing by activating the CREB pathway as well,” he said.

herunan 3y ago
So eating food improves immune response to cancer. Next.
- szundi 3y ago
  Why the downvote? Correct observation
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    Because this identified a specific nutrient, and a specific pathway for its action. The "eating food improves immune response" is an absurd characterization.
    - beebeepka 3y ago
      I think it was just a short version of "eating both kinds of food"
  - Buttons840 3y ago
    Because the "next" meme is the antithesis of what HN strives to be. For example, fasting might help fight cancer, so there's obviously more nuance than just "eating fights cancer, next!".
    - jader201 3y ago
      I still think the point of the “next” comment is that we didn’t really learn anything — except that there’s more to learn. To your point, way too much nuance here, and it sounds like the title — and maybe article — is clickbait.

helsinkiandrew 3y ago

Interestingly also in Sea Buckthorn: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccenic_acid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccenic_acid

tuukkah 3y ago
> Its stereoisomer, cis-vaccenic acid, is found in Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) oil. An isomer (different configuration of atoms) can have totally different biochemical effects though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoisomerism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoisomerism

jwmoz 3y ago

What's sad is I don't believe any of these research papers anymore. Both ways can be found good or bad. It's impossible to deal with.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
willsmith72 3y ago
to me that's encouraging. science has never been black and white. the mixed results can be a sign that we don't understand something properly. there's nuance and depth adding noise to the results it will only get better with more peer-reviewed studies and analysis
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Mixed results can also be evidence that everything is fraudulent and nobody is even pretending to try and replicate things. And as a layperson, even honest noise isn't useful.
- szundi 3y ago
  100 more years and we know more. Under we I mean someone else.
- wyager 3y ago
  There's a difference between "not black and white" and "replication crisis". Nutrition studies suffer from a replication crisis.
  - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
    Quite a bit of nutrition research is simply useless. They ask a bunch of people what they ate and then try to correlate that with health outcomes. You will never learn anything that way, though it might give you areas for further research. The next step up is a randomized controlled trial, but instead of choosing health outcomes they choose measurements of lab tests as their endpoints. Someone’s cholesterol went up or down by some small number. What did we learn? Nothing. Unfortunately good research is outrageously expensive, so it doesn’t get done.

karol 3y ago

speedylight 3y ago

My body must have exceptional anti cancer properties considering the sheer quantity of cheese I consume daily.

cies 3y ago
From the article: > There is a growing body of evidence about the detrimental health effects of consuming too much red meat and dairy, so this study shouldn’t be taken as an excuse to eat more cheeseburgers and pizza; rather, it indicates that nutrient supplements such as TVA could be used to promote T cell activity.
- tremon 3y ago
  >> "Considering the sheer quantity of cheese I consume daily, I should have gotten cancer many times over now. Therefore, my body must have exceptional anti-cancer properties."

hombre_fatal 3y ago

They isolated trans-vaccenic acid and gave it to mice with tumors. If this informs your dietary preferences but our best metaanalyses on human health outcomes do not, you need to check your epistemic standards.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

CobaltFire 3y ago

So I suffer from multiple autoimmune conditions and moving to a pescatarian diet (vegan + fish) has had a large moderating effect on my symptoms. I’m trying it based on some research for Neu5gc (that I first saw referenced here on HN) because… well it seemed harmless to try. This makes me wonder if this fatty acid may also/instead be a/the casual factor. Human bodies have so many confounding factors tracing these things is very difficult. Very happy to see more research.

mentos 3y ago
For what it’s worth I started developing auto immune symptoms after my exposure to Covid (nerve pain in my face, legs, feet, inner ear was burning and had a lack of balance, fatigue, trembling) only thing that resolved it was exercise (moderate to heavy weight lifting) and a strict carnivore diet over 3 months. I’d probably put more stock into the exercise but my working theory was low testosterone and poor diet was preventing me from recovering. 3 years later and if I go a few months without exercise the nerve pain starts to come back in my face heh
zackmorris 3y ago
A I've gotten older, I've found that my overall health mostly starts in the gut. I got hit with a form of chronic fatigue syndrome from leaky gut in 2019 that was so bad that I burned out and lost the ability to work for about 6 months. A variation of the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) diet is what worked for me: * Avoid wheat and most grains (rice and corn are fine) * Avoid milk and young cheese (cheddar is fine but YMMV) * Avoid FODMAPs like beans, other legumes and nightshades * Get back to macro nutrients like bacon & eggs for breakfast, meat & rice, etc * Get back to micro nutrients like spinach for iron and a thyroid supplement for iodine * Seek holistic approaches like ashwagandha to restore hormone balance * Build gut health with probiotics and get treated for parasites if necessary * Look into supplements like glutamine and colostrum which rebuild the gut * Decrease caffeine and stress which lower the activation threshold for nerves in the gut to purge its contents * Drink a gallon of water per day, from one large container if necessary, to accommodate ADHD/autism symptoms * Exercise by alternating weightlifting and walking each day, about 60 minutes ideally Each food damages the villi in the small intestine at a different rate, but the gut only regenerates twice per week. Gluten causes some of the worst damage, which remains hidden until middle age when the ability to regenerate starts to decrease. Now I believe that GMOs and processed foods are so damaging not due to stuff like preservatives, but because low cost means a higher percentage of fillers like gluten. It took 3-5 years but I'm able to eat FODMAPs again, tolerate milk every day and even eat wheat a couple of times per week. I consider myself to be in remission but must be mindful of what I eat. I'm also hopeful that long COVID studies will reveal some of the disease mechanisms at work in these types of undiagnosable conditions. Gaslighting (not believing patients as they describe symptoms) is still a huge problem in western medicine.

krunck 3y ago

(Nutrient in beef) ≠ beef

Phiwise_ 3y ago
The cynic in me says that this is more correct as a statement about the author's patent possesion than it is about the items themselves.

TheRealPomax 3y ago

Like almost all of these publications, for HN purposes this title really needs "in mice" explicitly added to the end, because there is no reason for a Nature publication to put it in, but a lot of folks will never read the paper.

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idlewords 3y ago

*In mice

dang 3y ago
Grr, another one. We've inmiced the title above. Thanks!
- idlewords 3y ago
  I'm sure someone here would be willing to whip up an automated inmicer script. It might be a fun little project.
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rambojohnson 3y ago

Red meat has been demonstrated to have carcinogenic properties for quite some time. It's uncertain whether the discovery of this obscure "nutrient" justifies the associated risks...

chainwax 3y ago
This has been called into question recently. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36216940/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36216940/ https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/library/health-effects-associated-consumption-unprocessed-red-meat-burden-proof https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/library/health-...
brigadier132 3y ago
Those studies that link red meat to cancer are all epidemiological and causal relationships can't be drawn from them. For example, one possible confounder could be that population of people that eat red meat also eat higher amounts of fast food or they might have higher bmi than those that don't. Also, always note how the studies never say "red meat causes cancer", they say "red meat is linked to cancer". Linked being the key word.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  Don't those studies accout for such types of influence?
  - brigadier132 3y ago
    They try isolate confounders using statistical methods but these are not intervention studies and they rely on self reported data. There are obvious limitations with such approaches. You could imagine that people who are careful enough with their diet to completely avoid red meat also probably do physical activity of some sort. How many people that avoid red meat in their diet also eat at mcdonalds? They aren't locking people up in a resort and strictly monitoring and controlling what they ingest.

fithisux 3y ago

If it works, we will see it eventually used.

odyssey7 3y ago

A key excerpt, in my opinion. “There is a growing body of evidence about the detrimental health effects of consuming too much red meat and dairy, so this study shouldn’t be taken as an excuse to eat more cheeseburgers and pizza; rather, it indicates that nutrient supplements such as TVA could be used to promote T cell activity.” I’m also curious about this being a trans fat. I’ve heard public health campaigning that trans fats are unhealthy, but this research highlights one as a potential cancer therapy. It is apparently another case of un-nuanced popular ideas about health and nutrition not being the whole truth.

RandomWorker 3y ago
Really the problem is with the headline, which is probably all most people will see and read. The title should probably say TVA improves cancer fighting immune system. Is dairy and beef the only source ? My sense is no. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/trans-Vaccenic-acid https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/trans-Vaccenic-aci... Reviewing pubmed it seems to be a product from ecoli.
bluGill 3y ago
Are all trans fats equal? We are more and more learning that broad categories are not useful as some subsets are better/worse than others.
- some_furry 3y ago
  It could also be a category error: Vegetable seed oils seem to correlate strongly with bad health outcomes. Meanwhile, other oils (e.g. olive oil) with similar levels of the same types of fatty acids have better outcomes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGnfXXIKZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kGnfXXIKZM Is it the type of fat, or the process through which it's extracted, that's most important? I don't know if the answer is as clear as we'd like it to be. Going back to the article: Isn't it possible that the trans fat in question is actually toxic like other trans fats, but in a way that's narrowly beneficial in this circumstance?
  - 3y ago

codingdave 3y ago

With all the information available and research about nutrition really impacts our lives... I find myself wondering if there really is a benefit for a layman like myself to keeping up, or if the overall best advice still sits at: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

anonu 3y ago

Tomorrow we'll see an article that says: "beef consumption tied to higher rates of cancer". Sorry to be cynical. I'll never forget - back when Google News was more about an amalgamation of all articles from around the web - there were 2 articles in the "coffee" category: "Coffee consumption linked to cancer" and then "Coffee consumption linked to lower cancer". The answer is really moderation. Michael Pollan puts it well: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants".

moffkalast 3y ago
Well sometimes the solution to cancer is more cancer. Larger animals like elephants and whales don't die from cancer because their cancer gets cancer before it manages to spread. These hypertumors then compete with and deprive the original cancer of blood flow, so they all end up starving. When you think about it we mostly cure cancer with ionizing radiation, which is ironically notorious for causing it in the first place.
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moose44 3y ago

This comment section is a perfect example of how little we know about health.

grecy 3y ago
"Eat food, mostly plants, not too much."
- jononomo 3y ago
  I have the opposite view. Eat food, entirely beef, as much as you'd like.
  - grecy 3y ago
    > entirely beef, as much as you'd like. That is a very good way to eat thousands of calories per day in excess of base metabolic need, which for nearly everyone will result in significant weight gain.
    - jononomo 3y ago
      Spoken like someone who thinks theoretically but without any practical experience with the diet! What actually happens is that you get satiated a LOT faster because beef is so nutrient dense, so you end up eating fewer calories and most people only eat two meals a day because they just stay satiated for so long. You also never experience the drowsiness that normally comes after eating. This is a zero carb diet which is high in protein, so you'll find yourself effortlessly putting on muscle and losing belly fat. When I say "entirely beef", that means "you can't put anything in your mouth that is not literally part of a cow" -- so that means no junk food, no sugar, no alcohol, not calories through drinking anything. It is the ultimate elimination diet because it is nutritionally complete yet ridiculously simple. People call it "the lion diet" and if you actually try it you'll end up in phenomenal shape and you'll feel like you're running on jet fuel.
      - moose44 3y ago

metabagel 3y ago

I suspect that the way the body processes food is modified significantly by exercise. So, it's not the food you are eating, but rather it's the food you are eating combined with how active or sedentary your lifestyle is. I think that exercise has a marked effect on the gut's microbiome.

jononomo 3y ago

I only eat beef and eggs.

mcpackieh 3y ago
The Vince Gironda diet.
- jononomo 3y ago
  exactly

EGreg 3y ago

Don’t vegetarians live far longer and meat cooking brings carcinogens? Also meat of older animals ages you more quickly

sundarurfriend 3y ago
I'd love to hear what sources these claims are from. I'm vegetarian, and every time I've come across these "vegetarians live longer" claims it's from dubious sources that cite random tiny studies in isolation. I could believe modern factory farming, preservation, and mass-preparation techniques make meat much less healthy (than it used to be in our ancestral days), but a general "meat cooking brings carcinogens [to a level that matters, beyond plant cooking does]" sounds pretty unlikely too.
- shinryuu 3y ago
  The most famous study is the seventh adventist study. The study in question is not tiny. About 70k people participated. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191896/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4191896/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916523048815 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...
  - HNDen21 3y ago
    They also don't smoke or drink.. I am sure that chops off a few years
  - hanniabu 3y ago
    Need to control for healthy habits also associated with healthier diets, such as exercising, not smoking, etc. It should also eliminate any participants with clearly unhealthy habits like poor diets consisting of fast food and living extremely sedentary lifestyles (different from just not exercising).
- hilux 3y ago
  There is no large long-term double-blind controlled study comparing a vegetarian/vegan diet to some omnivore diet - and there never will be. The only diet studies are observational, and they are unreliable in all kinds of ways. The famous Blue Zones book has about the validity of Rich Dad Poor Dad or The Millionaire Next Door. But the book continues to sell, and at a macro level, its advice is not terrible, but it's also not "the only way." Surprisingly (to me), there is some evidence that some people are genetically better disposed to eating a vegetarian diet than others.

roschdal 3y ago

Milk cures cancer.

teslabox 3y ago

The current top comment [0] on this submission said he was "curious about this being a trans fat". This would be a result of biohydrogenation, where the bacteria in the ruminants stomachs will add hydrogen to the unsaturated oils. First link for biohydrogenation: https://www.megalac.com/resources-advice/fats-advice/71-biohydrogenation https://www.megalac.com/resources-advice/fats-advice/71-bioh... Biohydrogenation is a totally different process from the hydrogenation used to make margarine from seed oils. Ruminal microbe of biohydrogenation of trans-vaccenic acid to stearic acid in vitro - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3305423/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3305423/ [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38434521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38434521

jnellis 3y ago

Reports like this always remind me of that scene in Sleeper. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=485Em2JF34M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=485Em2JF34M

atlgator 3y ago

It's shocking how little we know about what is "good" and what is "bad" for the body. There are too many confounding factors around meat, such as using processed meats and meats cooked with seed oils. For me, eating as clean as possible is the best approach. Find meat that isn't loaded up with hormones, antibiotics, or mold toxins. Find non-GMO vegetables that aren't loaded with pesticides. Limit carbs and dairy as much as possible. No stimulants, barbiturates, or other drugs.

shuntress 3y ago
"It's shocking how little we know about how food affects the body. That's why I follow this trendy diet based on assumptions about how food affects the body."
- atlgator 3y ago
  In the last 70 years, the human diet has become polluted with chemicals and shifted to refined carbs, concurrent with the rise of heart disease and diabetes. And I'm the one following the "trend" by eliminating those things? Not sure you know what that word means.
- sethammons 3y ago
  how is that a trendy diet? It looks like what we assume people have mostly eaten for the last 100k years.
  - shuntress 3y ago
    It's the blanket disapproval of anything arbitrarily deemed "impure". Genetically modified crops are as safe as any other food. Balancing intake & output (of calories) is the only practical reason to avoid carbs and dairy (obviously it should go without saying but I'll say it anyways: unless you have lactose intolerance or celiac or some other condition). Hormones, antibiotics, and "mold toxins" are not what's bad about industrial-scale livestock farming.
    - 3y ago

capitainenemo 3y ago

Huh. From reading the article it doesn't seem like a nutrient and more a signaling thing (activates a receptor on the cell's surface). Could this be a hormesis effect? For example, the body reacts to things like exercise or UV by amping up repair and immune system. Perhaps the body is amping up its immune system in response to consuming meat/milk due to carcinogen or disease risks?