Why is inflammation a dangerous necessity?
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
It probably used to be a good abstraction - because we had so many things that obviously harmed us so we tended to remove them from our lives and that was improvement. But now in the developed countries we live in an environment that is mostly cleaned from these obviously harmful things - what is left is all the exceptions.
I don't agree, sugar is still as popular as ever and age old marketing scams like fruit smoothies being healthy still dominate the health narrative.
People continue binging pizza and burgers and wash it down with soda even though they know it's obviously bad for them. Obesity is a big problem in the west
[0] - https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/understanding-geneti... [1] - we believe it is a large factor due to the fact migrants adopt the same cancer rate when they join the native population
I think the ultimate goal of medicine is to understand how each change in state, at the cell or organ level, changes state at the organism level. With that knowledge we can "tune" health in the right direction.
Well into my 30s I was in perfect health: long endurance races, excellent eyesight, all vital KPIs on target and uninterrupted sleep. To me it felt like the only desirable state to be in and doctors agreed.
Also, a world in which nobody was willing to be first to try new tech seems like it would probably be worse for everybody.
Spend a few months on any of the support forms and you’ll see a pattern where people take years to be diagnosed. Most have a mystery illness for several years before it’s diagnosed.
Then they go through years of various medication options with mixed results. Eventually many end up going to diet as a solution.
Many of the various low sugar tend to be fairly close. So a lot of people dealing with autoimmune via diet without realizing it.
I won't go into the details or talk about any specific condition because it's a complex topic, but you're better off combining a mediterranean / Indian / varied diet (the American diet is notoriously bad) with proper medication as prescribed by your treating physician.
If you have an auto-immune disease, do not try to replace drugs with diet changes.
(I'm a biochemist)
I have Multiple Sclerosis, and there are slews of sham diets out there. None, of course, have been actually proven effective even though one specific person definitely claims to have cured their MS through diet.
It isn't even that I mind folks trying diets out - but the only thing (so far) that tends to lessen the disease over time are medicines. These medicines are expensive and tend to have side effects. There is no good reason health care systems (private or taxpayer funded) would cover the drugs if they could just pay for someone's diet and get results instead.
Note: Not saying diet will never be part of treatment, mind you, but we aren't there yet.
I’ve tried a variation of her diet and can report feeling significantly better, but long term compliance is difficult because of everything that gets cut out.
Diet & exercise is most definitely a part of many medical treatments, eg reducing saturated fat intake for heart conditions, but because compliance is incredibly difficult for the masses, it’s never the main focus, it’s just highly recommended.
My doc friends lament that patients want a pill when they clearly also need lifestyle changes. (eg obesity)
That isn't the case for MS. So far, a diet does nothing to decrease disease activity. The risk for doing something not proven (at this point) is increased disability.
And honestly, there is really no reason that state-run medicine programs (like in Norway, where I currently live) would pay for expensive medication when they could simply provide food for folks. The area I live in has a central kitchen that cooks and provides foods for the area nursing homes and other similar places: Providing a special diet wouldn't exactly be a huge cost and definitely cheaper than the medication. Heck, I could feed and cook myself for the price of medication.
Similarly, there is really no real reason insurances in the US would pay the monthly cost for the medicines if they could control it with a diet plan.
I'm not saying that diet and exercise does nothing: It is easier to overcome things if you have the ability to stay generally healthy and I do what I can. That said, I'm not willing to risk independence for an unproven diet. Especially if the person selling it claims miracles.
Practical info - please do your own research, don't take my word and speak with your doctor first. I'm just here to make you/anyone else with MS aware of it's existence.
None of my doctors had heard of it before, so refused to try it. Then found out I could just order online from a doctor.
So far very happy with it. Pain levels drastically lower. Energy levels in morning notably higher. Dreams are a bit intense. Supposed to even get better as time goes by.
The risk of doing something that won't work is too great, honestly. I don't have many day to day symptoms and pretty well do as I please. Disease activity means that I could have a much, much worse daily life. I'd like to keep walking and using my limbs and keep control of my bladder, thank you very much.
If the doctor recommends it as part of treatment, I'll do whatever they say. I'm not going to personally worry about it, though. I'd much rather just take a daily pill and go on with life, thank you.
Has the fewest side effects. Do an elimination diet. If it doesn’t help. Well you ate boring food for a month. That sucks.
If your symptoms ease up. Well then yea!
Realistically, many forms of MS have symptoms that happen (suddenly), then heal up quite a bit, generally leaving differing amounts of nerve damage. In other words, if you do nothing, it will get better. Until it stops doing that, and if you aren't on medicine, your outlook isn't so wonderful. Unless you are lucky, that is.
I'm fairly lucky. I have few day to day symptoms. I was half blind once, though, and I've had fingers so numb that I had to inspect my hands after washing them to see if I did it correctly. Currently, if I bend my head down, I get an electric shock in my legs. It isn't really bothersome though.
If I go on a diet, I might not know anything changes. Well, until next year when I get my next MRI. I expect it to have no changes even if I don't diet, though, because modern medications are pretty wonderful.
These are people that should 100% work on diet as a solution until they can get proper diagnosis and start treatment.
Instead I see the reverse. People scarfing on crap American diet. Trying drug after drug with mixed results. Some it’s enough. Others not. These are people that need to change their diet regardless of medication or not.
Then there are people like my sister who clearly has the same condition as everyone in family. Refuses to seek treatment. But got an early start on healthy eating and does better then anyone else. She really needs some tests, and probably does need some medication. But is mostly fine.
Something like cancer. Screw everything I just said and take the pills.
What have people done to you? What country do you live in?
It took over six months and five visits to two different doctors to get a referral to an orthopedicist. Turned out my cubital tunnel had collapsed on my ulnar nerve, crushing it. The surgeon said that I shouldn't have waited so long to see him, because the damage was so severe. Yeah, well, I tried. Insurance doesn't cover specialists without a referral from a generalist, and I am at their mercy.
It's been over five years now since that surgery, and I still deal with nerve pain and weakness in that arm. Nobody cares. Oh well.
In short: Real life shouldn't have to be a ball-pit surrounded by rubber tiles. We're all adults here.
It’s a common Japanese food and he just said give it a go.
Most folks don't become an evangelist! The rest, though - yeah, it happens. People get sold sham cures and diets all the time and dismiss proven treatments. Even when folks do not dismiss modern medicine and are doing things that aren't actively harmful, alternatives tend to delay proven treatments.
Additionally, if you cannot afford medical treatment and you are presented with some "cure" that seems be a small fraction of the cost, it gets easier to justify whatever sham cure the person is trying to push.
'just try it out' comes with responsibility when you are talking medicine as it can snowball into something else.
If the last two years should have taught us anything, it's that even otherwise intelligent people will interpret perfectly reasonable, specific and precise health advice in the worst possible way.
There are so many symptoms that could either be something harmless (that can be fixed with a diverse non specific diet) or be cancer. If you spend too much time on medical websites trying to self diagnose you are at some point going to convince yourself that you have the worst disease of all the potential options.
At one point I was in ER (second time) gasping for air coughing up blood. Totally chill from all the anxiety meds while Doctor was explaining how it was just muscle strain. He went white when x/ray came back.
Since then I've gone on and off of strict carnivore, but anytime I reintroduce vegetables and/or some other carb sources, I'll start to see new patches of psoriasis pop back up within a 2 or 3 weeks usually. So I usually balance on that line now, returning to carnivore if my symptoms start to bother me too much.
I’ve tried all meat before and I get crazy weak. If I recall my pain level dropped a lot though. Maybe because not eating enough meat.
My wife gets crazy energetic, all her pain goes away and she’s way happier.
The entire "made ridiculously simple" series is fantastic, it's run by a retired MD professor who basically drew cartoons to help learn on his way through med school and throughout his career as a professor.
However it also releases endocannabinoids, which are anti-inflammatory, and causes a host of metabolic changes which are also anti-inflammatory.
The overall effect of exercise is to increase inflammation acutely, and to decrease it chronically. Regular physical exercise is overall more modulatory than inflammatory.