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Comment by bdamm | Hacker News Reader

It's a bit of creative writing, mostly. Fungi evolve, that's what they do. And they evolve very rapidly. They also have great staying power, with spores that have covered every square millimeter of the earth pretty much for the entire history of life on earth. You're breathing some in right now.

Animals evolved warm-bloodedness partly to improve resistance to environmental fungi. Meanwhile, insects (bees, ants, others) actually farm fungi as part of their food and for defense. This all points to a really profound and fundamental fact: We have been co-existing with fungi every second of every person's entire lives.

If fungi are killing more people, it's because people have changed, not the fungi.

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>Animals evolved warm-bloodedness partly to improve resistance to environmental fungi

I was listening to a podcast recently that discussed how human average body temperature has been declining in recent years while heat tolerance of fungi has been rising (thanks to the climate). The result is that our bodies are less capable of preventing fungal infections through heat and fungi can be pretty deadly if unchecked.

That's pretty interesting. Are there any guesses as to why body temperature is declining?

Here is my hypothesis. Our body temperature is expensive and evolutionary not 'stable'. In the past, it would make sense that in environments with lower bacterial threats, the group would select for lower body temperature in order to preserve energy.

In order to do that, individuals with too low a body temperature would be removed from the group due to infections. This would create a balanced system between body temperature (energy expenditure) and bacterial immunity.

With the development of antibiotics, this changed. The previous bottom of the group is not culled anymore, removing the barrier of the imbalance. Therefore, the group is 'safely' selecting for lower body temperatures.

And so a new pathogen is emerging to fulfill the void once dominated by bacterial infections. Makes sense..

My money is on the same endocrine disupters that are lowering testosterone levels, lowering sperm counts, and likely increasing obesity issues.

> My money is on the same endocrine disupters that are lowering testosterone levels, lowering sperm counts

The studies that found this also found that 1. sperm counts stopped and went back up again 2. men with lower testosterone have more children.

It was a Radio Lab (Fungus Amungus): https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/fungu...

The theory is that in wealthy countries with good public health, there's less need to maintain a high body temperature to fend off threats. The show said that human body temperature "has been steadily declining for decades at a rate of, like, .05 degrees Fahrenheit per decade." (though not in less developed countries)...average is said to be more like 97.5 degrees.

Interestingly in Ayurveda this is called kapha dominant body and it occurs when eats a food heavy in kapha heavy foods like sweets, dairy, cheese

So it's possible this reduction reflects a change in our diets

Why are sweets and cheese in the same category? Cheese is closer to meat nutritionally.

We are all being slowly hibernated?

You probably want to link the podcast: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/fungu...

> human average body temperature has been declining in recent years

What? More details and citations are needed.

Why not Google it yourself? The first few results:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201028171432.h....

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/01/human-body-te...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-human-body-te...

Because I'm not the one who claimed body temperatures were decreasing.

If I claimed that it was raining in San Francisco right now, do I need to provide a weather report, or would you be able to find it yourself?

I wouldn't even have replied to your post had you claimed that.

Was with you up to:

> If fungi are killing more people, it's because people have changed, not the fungi.

That's an overreach. It could be either or both. Obviously fungi are evolving rapidly as you yourself point out.

Right; but they've been evolving rapidly the entire time. So they're still doing what they've always done. If the environment is changing, and people are changing, and that's causing us to be vulnerable to conditions we weren't previously vulnerable to, then that's a problem caused by people changing. These stories look for a villain, and seem to end up villainizing the fungus, which is good for sensationalism but not very useful for understanding what is actually happening.

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