6 ms·

I don't know what it looks like from the perspective of someone in the field, but just as someone who is interested in this sort of stuff, it seems more and mor

by vjk800 2y ago

I don't know what it looks like from the perspective of someone in the field, but just as someone who is interested in this sort of stuff, it seems more and more plausible that quite many of diseases that have grown more prevalent in the last century, especially autoimmune diseases, are cause by viruses. It makes sense: the viral pressure has increase by a lot due to both increase in population density and increased travel across the world. At the same time there has been an increase in many autoimmune diseases, many types of cancer, Alzheimer's disease, etc. Also, from some proven cases, we know that viruses can trigger serious diseases (MS disease, type 1 diabetes).

bloqs 2y ago
Immunocompromisation due to chronic inflammation from dietary issues and stress in addition to the above as well
- theoreticalmal 2y ago
  Have you read Dr. Casey Means’ book on this?
  - idiotsecant 2y ago
    Literally every time in the history of the universe when someone has structured a sentence like this, in this context, whoever they're talking about ends up being a giant crackpot. I'm not saying this person is a crackpot, just that the pattern recognition systems are throwing off some alarms.
    - rubyfan 2y ago
      First sentence from wikipedia says: Casey Means is an American functional medicine/holistic medicine physician, entrepreneur and author. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Means https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Means
      - gcanyon 2y ago
        I'm more influenced by this passage: Means withdrew from her medical residency at age 30. She has attributed this decision to the lack of training she received about nutrition and the underlying causes of chronic disease. Means dedicated her practice to functional medicine, which focuses on the root causes of disease.
        kwertyoowiyop 2y ago
        As one comedian said: “Do you know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine!”
        serf 2y ago
        that's cute but how much alternative medicine eventually finds a way into real medicine? in other words : someone telling someone to practice yoga to relax and reduce their heart rate 200 years ago was a quack right up until the point that modern doctors decided to include it in their repertoire? it's a cute joke but it skips over the fact that there seems to be an 'alternative medicine -> real medicine' pipeline, even if a lot of it turns out badly.
        gcanyon 2y ago
        The actual quote (from memory, but I just listened to the monologue a minute ago): "Do you know what they call alternative medicine that's been scientifically proven to work? Medicine!" In other words, the quote is exactly referring to your "pipeline." Tim Minchin's "Storm" monologue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtYkyB35zkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtYkyB35zkk
        cyberax 2y ago
        Medicine as a science didn't exist 200 years ago. Breath exercises, and physical therapy for relaxation were mainstream in 1960-s. > it's a cute joke but it skips over the fact that there seems to be an 'alternative medicine -> real medicine' pipeline Not really. Most of the non-medicine (I refuse to call it "alternative") stays non-medicine: acupuncture, homeopathy, all the "energy meridians" nonsense, ayurveda, alkaline foods, etc. And even with activities like yoga, it's not more effective than other types of similar physical activity. There is some very weak evidence that yoga _with_ physiotherapy might be more effective than just increased levels of physiotherapy.
    - basisword 2y ago
      If you end up dealing with a chronic disease that medical doctors completely fail in dealing with, you naturally get driven to look at “alternatives”. There’s a lot of nonsense out there - but some of it works. As a former skeptic I’m now much less dismissive of these things due to my own circumstances. Particularly when I can see that poor medical treatment over the years actually exacerbated my condition and being less skeptical could have improved my quality of life significantly sooner.
    - theoreticalmal 2y ago
      Now that you mention that pattern, I can’t say I disagree with your comment. However, the information I can find about Means seems to be fairly…non-controversial. Or at least I don’t understand the controversy (which is very likely).
- anovikov 2y ago
  The frequently cited "stress" thing of modern lives is just eyebrows-raising. Do anyone actually believe that lives of people 100 or 200 years ago have been less stressful?
  - giantg2 2y ago
    It's possible they had better support systems due to larger families, church being more prominent, etc.
    - MrMcCall 2y ago
      Any form of positive community is helpful, religous or not. Just having caring neighbors is a boon to well-being.
  - theoreticalmal 2y ago
    I think the idea is that the cells are stressed due to inflammation due to diet, rather than psychological feelings of stress
    - anovikov 2y ago
      Average "healthy" body temperature is down more than half degree exactly because of reduction in inflammation. People used to have very unsanitary lives and were fighting infections nonstop. 37.0C was the "normal" body temperature when the "norm" was first discovered in the early XIX century, now it's considered to be a sickness already.
      - xeromal 2y ago
        I'm not an expert but maybe keeping the immuno-army busy with constant infections keeps it from going bored and attacking itself
        serf 2y ago
        also not-an-expert opinion, but an average higher body temperature would reduce immune system workload by virtue of killing a lot of stuff dead via inhospitable environment before an immune reaction could ever muster..
giantg2 2y ago
Has viral pressure really increased? It seems stuff spread globally a few generations ago with things like the flu in the early 1900s. Even in the middle ages you had stuff like the plague. What has changed is the sterility of our environment. Better bathing, more hand washing, food safety rules, etc. There have been theories that autoimmune diseases might be increasing because we aren't exposed to enough "normal" pathogens. I'm highly suspicious that higher viral pressures are the cause of increasing dementia rates, as it seems we're exposed to less today.
- Nux 2y ago
  Agreed. We've had this immune system battling stuff non-stop throughout evolution and now we're living in these clinical environments and it's going haywire. Not to mention we're poisoning ourselves with all sorts of novel stuff, especially poor hi-carb nutrition, ultra processed food and pollution from various sources that act as endocrine disruptors and God knows what else.
- vjk800 2y ago
  Bacterial, fungal and parasitic load has lessened, for sure, due to sterility of the environment, because many of those come from exposure to animals and plants. But viral load from viruses that spread from human-to-human and live exclusively in humans has increased because there are more humans and they spread the diseases around the world more effectively than before. Yes, we probably get way less pathogens overall than we used to, but at the same time we get more pathogens that live exclusively on humans (such as respiratory viruses).
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    > But viral load from viruses that spread from human-to-human and live exclusively in humans has increased because there are more humans and they spread the diseases around the world more effectively than before. This seems like pure conjecture to me, and without any actual evidence to support it, I'm disinclined to believe it. My guess is that the number of people any one individual interacts with has gone down considerably since the beginning of the century, and earlier. Before the advent of the car, shared forms of travel were much more common. People do much less forms of basic shopping than they used to given the rise of the Internet. Air travel, while much faster, is much less crowded that the ship travel of earlier generations.
strawpoll-foe 2y ago
I have both T1D and MS. For MS, one leading idea is that getting exposed to Mono later in life can trigger the disease. There’s solid evidence for this. For T1D, it’s similar - there’s a notion that you’re genetically predisposed to it and certain types of infections during adolescence can cause it to manifest. I’ve had discussions with researchers in the space and apparently certain autoimmune diseases happen less often in “grubbier” parts of the world (their words, not mine) even when the population density is high, and an inference here is that >early exposure< to certain infections might not trigger some of these problematic autoimmune reactions. Side note: these diseases aren’t fun, especially when working in tech. I’m appreciative of those dedicating their lives to researching autoimmune disease.
- delusional 2y ago
  > I’ve had discussions with researchers in the space and apparently certain autoimmune diseases happen less often in “grubbier” parts of the world Is that corrected for mortality? It seems like an analysis like that would be quite prone to survivor bias.
- sigmoid10 2y ago
  For MS in particular there's several EBV mRNA vaccines in clinical trials - not just to prevent mono itself, but also to prevent long term complications (theoretically including MS) for people who already had it.
pretzellogician 2y ago
And obesity.. there are several adenoviruses associated with it. Example: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-021-00805-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-021-00805-6 (Although the article takes pains to say that obesity is multifactorial, conflicting evidence in humans, etc.)
kwertyoowiyop 2y ago
Can we take it as proven that the rate of these diseases has increased? I wonder if in the past some conditions we now classify as particular diseases were considered a normal part of aging, perhaps at most getting a blanket classification of “senility”.
Melatonic 2y ago
Bacterial infections can also trigger autoimmune diseases - it's not just viruses. Realistically immune systems are extremely complex and I suspect there are probably lots of environmental triggers beyond viruses and bacteria as well
Mo3 2y ago
My girlfriend has Crohn's disease that can be directly correlated to food poisoning while on vacation. Now years later I can't even count the times I've read and heard exactly the same story from other people with Crohn's disease. A simple search for "Crohn's food poisoning" turns up hundreds of results. I can't believe this is not being investigated with higher priority
- emeril 2y ago
  most of those with crohn's would likely have developed it at some point - 99% of those with food poisoning won't develop crohn's
- spondylosaurus 2y ago
  Another comment in this post mentions reactive arthritis and HLA-B27; there's some evidence suggesting "permanent" autoimmune conditions in HLA-B27+ people also might come from viral triggers.

by vjk800 2y ago

bloqs 2y ago

Immunocompromisation due to chronic inflammation from dietary issues and stress in addition to the above as well

theoreticalmal 2y ago
Have you read Dr. Casey Means’ book on this?
- idiotsecant 2y ago
  Literally every time in the history of the universe when someone has structured a sentence like this, in this context, whoever they're talking about ends up being a giant crackpot. I'm not saying this person is a crackpot, just that the pattern recognition systems are throwing off some alarms.
  - rubyfan 2y ago
    First sentence from wikipedia says: Casey Means is an American functional medicine/holistic medicine physician, entrepreneur and author. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Means https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Means
    - gcanyon 2y ago
      I'm more influenced by this passage: Means withdrew from her medical residency at age 30. She has attributed this decision to the lack of training she received about nutrition and the underlying causes of chronic disease. Means dedicated her practice to functional medicine, which focuses on the root causes of disease.
      - kwertyoowiyop 2y ago
        As one comedian said: “Do you know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine!”
        serf 2y ago
        that's cute but how much alternative medicine eventually finds a way into real medicine? in other words : someone telling someone to practice yoga to relax and reduce their heart rate 200 years ago was a quack right up until the point that modern doctors decided to include it in their repertoire? it's a cute joke but it skips over the fact that there seems to be an 'alternative medicine -> real medicine' pipeline, even if a lot of it turns out badly.
        gcanyon 2y ago
        The actual quote (from memory, but I just listened to the monologue a minute ago): "Do you know what they call alternative medicine that's been scientifically proven to work? Medicine!" In other words, the quote is exactly referring to your "pipeline." Tim Minchin's "Storm" monologue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtYkyB35zkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtYkyB35zkk
        cyberax 2y ago
        Medicine as a science didn't exist 200 years ago. Breath exercises, and physical therapy for relaxation were mainstream in 1960-s. > it's a cute joke but it skips over the fact that there seems to be an 'alternative medicine -> real medicine' pipeline Not really. Most of the non-medicine (I refuse to call it "alternative") stays non-medicine: acupuncture, homeopathy, all the "energy meridians" nonsense, ayurveda, alkaline foods, etc. And even with activities like yoga, it's not more effective than other types of similar physical activity. There is some very weak evidence that yoga _with_ physiotherapy might be more effective than just increased levels of physiotherapy.
  - basisword 2y ago
    If you end up dealing with a chronic disease that medical doctors completely fail in dealing with, you naturally get driven to look at “alternatives”. There’s a lot of nonsense out there - but some of it works. As a former skeptic I’m now much less dismissive of these things due to my own circumstances. Particularly when I can see that poor medical treatment over the years actually exacerbated my condition and being less skeptical could have improved my quality of life significantly sooner.
  - theoreticalmal 2y ago
    Now that you mention that pattern, I can’t say I disagree with your comment. However, the information I can find about Means seems to be fairly…non-controversial. Or at least I don’t understand the controversy (which is very likely).
anovikov 2y ago
The frequently cited "stress" thing of modern lives is just eyebrows-raising. Do anyone actually believe that lives of people 100 or 200 years ago have been less stressful?
- giantg2 2y ago
  It's possible they had better support systems due to larger families, church being more prominent, etc.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    Any form of positive community is helpful, religous or not. Just having caring neighbors is a boon to well-being.
- theoreticalmal 2y ago
  I think the idea is that the cells are stressed due to inflammation due to diet, rather than psychological feelings of stress
  - anovikov 2y ago
    Average "healthy" body temperature is down more than half degree exactly because of reduction in inflammation. People used to have very unsanitary lives and were fighting infections nonstop. 37.0C was the "normal" body temperature when the "norm" was first discovered in the early XIX century, now it's considered to be a sickness already.
    - xeromal 2y ago
      I'm not an expert but maybe keeping the immuno-army busy with constant infections keeps it from going bored and attacking itself
      - serf 2y ago
        also not-an-expert opinion, but an average higher body temperature would reduce immune system workload by virtue of killing a lot of stuff dead via inhospitable environment before an immune reaction could ever muster..

giantg2 2y ago

Has viral pressure really increased? It seems stuff spread globally a few generations ago with things like the flu in the early 1900s. Even in the middle ages you had stuff like the plague. What has changed is the sterility of our environment. Better bathing, more hand washing, food safety rules, etc. There have been theories that autoimmune diseases might be increasing because we aren't exposed to enough "normal" pathogens. I'm highly suspicious that higher viral pressures are the cause of increasing dementia rates, as it seems we're exposed to less today.

Nux 2y ago
Agreed. We've had this immune system battling stuff non-stop throughout evolution and now we're living in these clinical environments and it's going haywire. Not to mention we're poisoning ourselves with all sorts of novel stuff, especially poor hi-carb nutrition, ultra processed food and pollution from various sources that act as endocrine disruptors and God knows what else.
vjk800 2y ago
Bacterial, fungal and parasitic load has lessened, for sure, due to sterility of the environment, because many of those come from exposure to animals and plants. But viral load from viruses that spread from human-to-human and live exclusively in humans has increased because there are more humans and they spread the diseases around the world more effectively than before. Yes, we probably get way less pathogens overall than we used to, but at the same time we get more pathogens that live exclusively on humans (such as respiratory viruses).
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  > But viral load from viruses that spread from human-to-human and live exclusively in humans has increased because there are more humans and they spread the diseases around the world more effectively than before. This seems like pure conjecture to me, and without any actual evidence to support it, I'm disinclined to believe it. My guess is that the number of people any one individual interacts with has gone down considerably since the beginning of the century, and earlier. Before the advent of the car, shared forms of travel were much more common. People do much less forms of basic shopping than they used to given the rise of the Internet. Air travel, while much faster, is much less crowded that the ship travel of earlier generations.

strawpoll-foe 2y ago

I have both T1D and MS. For MS, one leading idea is that getting exposed to Mono later in life can trigger the disease. There’s solid evidence for this. For T1D, it’s similar - there’s a notion that you’re genetically predisposed to it and certain types of infections during adolescence can cause it to manifest. I’ve had discussions with researchers in the space and apparently certain autoimmune diseases happen less often in “grubbier” parts of the world (their words, not mine) even when the population density is high, and an inference here is that >early exposure< to certain infections might not trigger some of these problematic autoimmune reactions. Side note: these diseases aren’t fun, especially when working in tech. I’m appreciative of those dedicating their lives to researching autoimmune disease.

delusional 2y ago
> I’ve had discussions with researchers in the space and apparently certain autoimmune diseases happen less often in “grubbier” parts of the world Is that corrected for mortality? It seems like an analysis like that would be quite prone to survivor bias.
sigmoid10 2y ago
For MS in particular there's several EBV mRNA vaccines in clinical trials - not just to prevent mono itself, but also to prevent long term complications (theoretically including MS) for people who already had it.

pretzellogician 2y ago

And obesity.. there are several adenoviruses associated with it. Example: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-021-00805-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41366-021-00805-6 (Although the article takes pains to say that obesity is multifactorial, conflicting evidence in humans, etc.)

kwertyoowiyop 2y ago

Can we take it as proven that the rate of these diseases has increased? I wonder if in the past some conditions we now classify as particular diseases were considered a normal part of aging, perhaps at most getting a blanket classification of “senility”.

Melatonic 2y ago

Bacterial infections can also trigger autoimmune diseases - it's not just viruses. Realistically immune systems are extremely complex and I suspect there are probably lots of environmental triggers beyond viruses and bacteria as well

Mo3 2y ago

My girlfriend has Crohn's disease that can be directly correlated to food poisoning while on vacation. Now years later I can't even count the times I've read and heard exactly the same story from other people with Crohn's disease. A simple search for "Crohn's food poisoning" turns up hundreds of results. I can't believe this is not being investigated with higher priority

emeril 2y ago
most of those with crohn's would likely have developed it at some point - 99% of those with food poisoning won't develop crohn's
spondylosaurus 2y ago
Another comment in this post mentions reactive arthritis and HLA-B27; there's some evidence suggesting "permanent" autoimmune conditions in HLA-B27+ people also might come from viral triggers.