3 ms·
I'd like to preemptively draw a line between two different kinds of hypothesis when it comes to hygiene: 1. The immune system is not being exposed enough to wi
by Terr_ 5mo ago
I'd like to preemptively draw a line between two different kinds of hypothesis when it comes to hygiene:
1. The immune system is not being exposed enough to wild or even infectious content, and it needs more threats to fight off.
2. ("Old Friends") The immune system is not being exposed enough to commensal or even symbiotic organisms that we co-evolved with, throwing off its calibration and tuning.
I instinctively prefer the second, the first seems a little too simple, like some some scaled-down version of
"tough love" and "spare the rod[-bacteria], spoil the child."
- timschmidt 5mo agoAn excellent distinction to make. Life however often says "Why not both? And 11 more you'd have never thought of. And one that seems impossible just for fun." If it's possible, and it can force a function up a gradient, life is almost certainly doing it somewhere.
- zahlman 5mo agoYou might even say it finds a way.
- Tade0 5mo agoRegarding the second point: ...or parasitic. There's a hypothesis that says the incidence of allergies correlates inversely with the incidence of certain common parasites, like the tapeworm or the pinworm. Additionally, nowadays pregnant women are advised to avoid getting infected with toxoplasmosis due to the birth defects it causes, but it wasn't until the 70s when the last route of transmission was found and explained. What if the body is just looking for parasites where there are none? EDIT: I also lean on the second, as the first doesn't explain why allergies can come and go seemingly without reason. Personally currently I'm allergic to some unindentified plant and it's a different one than back when I was a child. Meanwhile my child is right now experiencing "my" childhood allergy season - with similar severity at that.
- IAmBroom 5mo agoWhat if the human body's response to external influences (including parasites) is nuanced and complex? What if the very idea of "parasite" is overly redactive: maybe there are both advantages and disadvantages of having another organism in your internal biome, in varying amounts?
- timschmidt 5mo agoVery Holobiont of you.
- dv_dt 5mo agoIIRC there has been scientists looking at what substances and pathways the parasites, particularly the helminths family, might affect because the parasites have a evolutionary "motivation" to suppress immune responses, at least to some degree in the host.
- cryzinger 5mo agoIgE antibodies, which play a huge role in allergic responses, are "supposed" to target parasites and other non-germ invaders. There are treatments that directly deactivate these antibodies... or you can give yourself a parasite on purpose to give those IgE antibodies something constructive to do: https://radiolab.org/podcast/91951-an-update-on-hookworms https://radiolab.org/podcast/91951-an-update-on-hookworms