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Comment by alfor | Hacker News Reader

A friend of mine was dying from it at the hospital. Strong medication, followed by stronger one and then experimental ones that cost thousand a pill.

At some point he said ’fuck it, if I going to die it’s going to be in the sun’ (he lived in cold Canada.)

He went to Mexico and completely recover without any drugs, eating anything he wanted. I later found there is a strong connection with vitamin D deficiency and autoimmune diseases.

Look into functional medicine if you haven’t, basically the idea of giving what a normal body need to function properly ( good food, sleep, friends, family, sun, etc, probiotics) and mostly get out of the way.

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I could definitely see how low Vitamin D could be bad for you (well we already know it's bad for you actually).

What I'd like to know - even though it's an anecdotal data point from one guy only - what does anything he wants actually mean?

I.e. did he somehow eat his regular Canadian diet in Mexico or did he eat more local?

Asking because IBS is a bowel disease and gut micro biome I would gather can play a large role as well.

Maybe your gut microbiome doesn't depend on just which foods you eat but also on the environment it is prepared and other environmental factors. I mean, perhaps in Mexico there were different microorganisms in the same foodstuff

Definitely possible though I would assume the two go hand in hand.

Take cabbage. Eating cabbage will allow certain microbes in your gut to thrive. But only if they are there in the first place.

Different experiment: Let cabbage sit in salt in an anaerobic environment for some time. Then eat it. Now the cabbage brings the beneficial microbes to the gut and helps them thrive there.

Cabbage with salt in an anaerobic environment makes Sauerkraut. Salt let's certain microbes survive but not others. The final lactobacillus that do survive themselves produce an acidic environment that further results in many non beneficial microbes dying.

Many cultures have similar food preparation techniques that turn out to be beneficial. Kimchi being similar - and part of the health craze nowadays.

I asked because I would associate lots of beans and such with foods in Mexico and beans make for a very different gut micro biome than the regular western diet. That's why someone on a western diet will pass a lot of gas when eating beans from time to time, as the bacterial makeup changes while eating lots of beans will have the opposite effect when eating a western carb diet from time to time. Been there. Done both :)

That's very interesting, thanks!

And, it makes sense that beans makes people pass more gas only if they are not used to eat it regularly.

There certainly a correlation with food but I don’t know anything about that.

I found in research paper the link with vitamin D and ibs and most autoimmune diseases.

From what I remember he ate a lot of local fresh fruits and other local food.

Damn, so I really need to follow up on my plans on moving to e.g. Thailand (and getting happy by following my dreams in terms of work/endeavors).

I don't have IBS but more like a colitis and I was really good for months but it came back strong after one of my dogs passed away and I got terribly sad.

What I'm getting at is that more than a vitamin D, I suspect a strong link to happiness and life satisfaction.

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