Scientists Discover a Bone-Deep Risk for Heart Disease | Hacker News Reader

Scientists Discover a Bone-Deep Risk for Heart Disease

nytimes.com

45 pointsmontrose8 comments

I wonder if regular prolonged fasting could reduce the risk of this, or make it worse. Prolonged fasting causes significant changes to the stem cells the article discusses: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4102383/ (previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8831739 )

If CHIP is as serious and common a risk factor as claimed, and there is no known prevention or treatment, then testing anything that could interact with it is very important.

I’m not a scientist. But from my surface research, fasting helps to clean up bad and old cells. So if there’s a mechanism to detect these stem cells, then they may be vacuumed out too.

Anecdotal evidence. I’ve had a weird, small bump on my arm. Like a large pimple, but not gross. Got it checked. Dr said it was fine, not a toumor. Just a knot or something like that. Said it’s conmon for men over 35. One day I fasted on a bet for 2 days straight. Zero calories. Only water and coffee. The bump went away by 80%. Only a slight dark mark left.

This evidence was enough to convince me that fasting is good. Now intermittent fast every day. I get better focus. I have my first meal around 1-3pm.

> if there’s a mechanism to detect these stem cells, then they may be vacuumed out too

From the article:

"But others, especially those linked to leukemia, seem to give stem cells a new ability to accumulate in the marrow. The result is a sort of survival of the fittest, or fastest growing, stem cells in the marrow."

One could make reasonable hypotheses that fasting has no effect, or a deleterious effect, on the prevalence of these mutated stem cells.

Exactly. Maybe the mutation that helps the stem cells accumulate also helps them survive fasting. But fasting is a cheap and relatively safe way to perturb the cells and see what happens.

I think a good first step would be to track down people who regularly practice prolonged fasting, and then find people who match them as closely as possible on all other biometrics. We could then take blood samples and compare the prevalence of the CHIP mutation in their white blood cells. If there's a significant difference then it would be worth further investigation.

There is an interesting additional link between cardiovascular disease and bones: calcification (calcium deposits in arteries) also seem to have some link with heart attacks and strokes.

To me this reminds me of SENS and is an indication that even though most scientists are not trying to cure aging, their efforts to target specific age-related diseases are gradually aiming towards more fundamental issues. At least to me it seems plausible that some technique found to be successful in addressing mutations in these specific cells may be applicable or at least lead to techniques for other cells.

If you haven't seen the site yet, check it out: http://www.sens.org

"Perhaps the most extreme example of how this can play out was reported in 2014, when researchers described a 115-year-old woman. Nearly her entire supply of white blood cells was generated by mutated stem cells in her bone marrow."

Erm... Getting to 115 sort of negates the argument doesn't it? She managed to get through decades of 50% heart attack risk. A single counter example isn't evidence, but given with all the given issues this does seem to be anomalous.

Another paper about CHIP and cardiovascular diseases https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28636844

same team apparently

Reply on news.ycombinator.com