4 ms·
The doctor who gave himself an ulcer and solved a medical mystery (2010)
- camtarn 2y agoThe mystery being 'what causes ulcers', and the answer being Helicobacter pylori instead of stress.
- thomasfedb 2y agoThe previous dogma being that no bacteria could survive in the acidic conditions (pH ~2) of the stomach.
- throw83489448 2y agoNice, but most people have some helicobacter without much problems. Some ulcers are not even caused by helicobacter.
- Retric 2y agoHe discovered an effective treatment for many ulcers, but the older one also tended to work. Stress harms the immune system so many people who dramatically reduced stress showed meaningful improvement. One of those it’s better than a placebo treatments where the method of action was poorly understood.
- H_Pylori 2y ago[dead]
- manmal 2y agoH Pylori builds biofilm, and can even hide in fungal vacuoles to avoid immune system action: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8101746/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8101746/ It’s one of those cases where some bodies might just not be able to finish it off even in ideal conditions.
- Retric 2y agoIt was less effective, but treatments that work on say 1/2 the population aren’t useless. It’s a tricky thing in medicine. In then 90’s people discovered Leptin a hormone released by fat which when given to people dieting significantly reduced cravings and increased energy expenditure enabling long term weight loss. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2430504/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2430504/ “rodents and humans that become obese on a high-fat (Western) diet do not respond to leptin” Unlike GLP-1 antagonists it did almost nothing to start the process of weight loss, but having a drug to give to people who lost 20+lb which would then help them keep it off could have helped a lot of people.
- manmal 2y agoI remember cheat days in low carb diets were touted as leptin reset days.
- Retric 2y agoSadly it was BS the underlying mechanisms aren’t so easy to fool. However the information was being transmitted from individual fat cells to the rest of the body through chemical pathways we can fool via drugs.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thomasfedb 2y agoStudied at the home University of this Nobel prize winner. Was a good bet you’d get a question on it in the exam every year.
- dbetteridge 2y agoUWA? I was gonna say I remember always seeing posters around the Uni talking about this guy and his 'gutsy' bet.
- refurb 2y ago[flagged]
- Dalewyn 2y agoScience is predicated on healthy skepticism, especially if something has fervent support. Anyone who argues that science is "settled" or that it should be "trusted" is a priest trying to evangelize, not a scientist. That healthy skepticism likely won't cause any paradigm shifts in most cases, of course, but the point here is that is no reason to surrender the skepticism.
- jmcgough 2y agoI agree that it's good to be critical of science, but it is also good to be critical our own existing beliefs when they conflict with 95% of the scientific community. For every story like this one, there's a hundred thousand people who are convinced that the world is flat based on YouTube videos that feed their confirmation bias, or poorly designed studies that they lack the academic background to know are poorly designed.
- bell-cot 2y agoTo paraphrase Feynman: "Settled science" is nothing resembling a homogeneous body of certainty. It's a huge, chaotic mish-mash - of everything from actual rock-solid results, to "it sound reasonable at some point...then human nature took over" baloney. Everybody <cough/>knew<cough/> the latter, so nobody ever carefully checked. And the worst part? Even long-tenured experts, specializing in the specific scientific niche, seldom know how certain their various facts actually are.
- M95D 2y agoYes, but science can't "blink" into existence with all proofs already provided. We need to do the work. We created the scientific method and now we're basing more and more knowledge on demonstrated facts/truths. Some of the knowledge will be invalidated and removed. In non-science that doesn't happen. In non-science (religion, flat earth, or whatever domain you want), facts/truths only change when a figure of authority orders the change, but even that is problematic and many practitioners will refuse. We'll never reach a state where all scientific knowledge is demonstrated. Some parts are currently impossible to demonstrate. And even if we could immediately validate everything we know, some new knowlegde can still invalidate old demonstrated knowledge. See newton mechanics vs. relativity. We use the best science that we have.
- fiftyacorn 2y agoIt's great practical science but the basis of the research was a photo showing the bacteria in the stomach lining, which was against the accepted belief at the time. So the experiment confirmed what they already knew, at least that's how I remember them explaining it in a documentary
- adrian_b 2y agoThe experiment proved that it was causation, not correlation.
- fiftyacorn 2y agobut they could have equally proved it by giving antibiotics to people with ulcers it would be interesting if there was a body of evidence of people being cured of ulcers following antibiotics around the same time
- dang 2y ago[stub for offtopicness]
- jiehong 2y agoHad a fun time parsing the title as unrelated to The Doctor at first I am grateful for doctors like them, and for the results they bring, even if the methods can be discussed.
- ben30 2y agoYeah I thought it was about a Matt Smith, 11th doctor recap, the word broth sounds vaguely mystical.
- chgs 2y agoDid not include David Tennant Why are all those words capitalised?
- latexr 2y ago> Why are all those words capitalised? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case
- shellac 2y agoNot noted there, but I think use in headlines is restricted to the US (?). This does illustrate the problem with over use.
- ghaff 2y agoIt's fairly common in presentations for the heading an a page, maybe in particular. But I do tend to avoid it personally.
- Diti 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Sentence_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Sentence_case
- dang 2y agoRelated. Others? Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41137694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41137694 - Aug 2024 (100 comments)