Deteriorating mitochondria linked to major depression in older adults | Hacker News Reader

Deteriorating mitochondria linked to major depression in older adults

today.uconn.edu

110 pointsvoisin63 comments

I feel there are way more complex systems that science haven't fully sorted out, not even close to it. Gut flora, mitrochondria, immune systems, etc. I hope at the end of the day we haven't harmed a generation of future humans with ultraprocessed food, introduction of forever-chemicals, microplastics, so on and so forth...

Agreed. My health improved when I switched to clarified butter (ghee) and left the “healthy” oils with their surprisingly lower burning temperature. The temperature was not the reason I switched

Vegetable oils require an industrial process of extraction - with high temperatures and hexane, and the output is novel to humans on evolutionary scale. Vegetable oils don't come from actual vegetables, they come from inedible waste which for millions of years has been discarded - seeds etc.

Edible oils are those that are not produced from something that was never food.

"Vegetable oils require an industrial process of extraction - with high temperatures and hexane"

You're talking about refined oils. This method of extraction has a higher yield and is therefore less expensive. It also increases the smoke point of the oil, making it more suitable for high-temperature frying and deep frying.

While I don't know what's available to consumers where you live, solvents and other chemical treatment are not required for vegetable oil production. Seeds can be cold extracted. The result is much more expensive though.

"the output is novel to humans on evolutionary scale"

This is true for all oils and all other highly processed foods.

"they come from inedible waste which for millions of years has been discarded - seeds etc"

Seeds are not waste. Do you think bread is made from waste?

The notion of using "waste" comes from the production of refined oils. The seeds are initially pressed, resulting in oil and meal as the byproduct. The meal still contains some oil which is extracted with solvents. After the solvent treatment, the meal is used as animal food.

There is a detailed four article series about this which was recently shared here on Hacker News. The first article is here: https://www.jeffnobbs.com/posts/what-causes-chronic-disease , but the second and third articles probably address this most directly.

>> "the output is novel to humans on evolutionary scale" > > This is true for all oils and all other highly processed foods.

That is not true. There is evidence that humans have sought out fats and oils for most of our history. Lard and other rendered fats are made from heating animal fats directly with modest heat being sufficient to liquify animal fats. Butter is made from churning milk. Olive oil and Coconut oil are made by squeezing fruits. All of that is quite different from modern vegetable oil processing which requires high temperatures which in turn convert a fraction of the oil into transfats. When oils refined in these ways are then used for cooking they become increasingly dangerous as they are heated.

And when food is deep fried, the oil is often being reused and reheated repeatedly until it is no longer fit for human consumption at all.

This has then lead to the popular misconception that fat inherently makes you fat.

Look no further than a basic hormone - leptin - to see how you can't give people more of it to lose weight while in fact leptin is the main mediator of obesity. Modern medicine hasn't produced a magic leptin pill to stop obesity because the biology is very complicated. You can't just inject leptin and lose weight (unless you don't produce leptin if you were severely damaged in an accident).

Ursolic Acid. Check it out!

Recent research suggests leptin doesn't really regulate body weight in both directions. It only really protects the body from weight loss, not weight gain.

Think of it like a thermostat with leptin being a temperature sensor hooked up to the heater, and the gravitostat is a temperature sensor hooked up the A/C. If you're trying to make the house cooler it doesn't matter how much you tell the heater not to turn on.

Why though? I’m a little out of date on this, but it seems leptin does strongly inhibit appetite when injected directly into the CSF, but mostly fails to do this in real life because of “leptin resistance.” For example, high triglycerides, block leptin transport across the blood brain barrier.

Which is not even to mention the brain!

Ultraprocessed food ... vs natural food. Look up "Moederkoorn" (Claviceps purpurea). It's a fungus, grows on natural wheat, and goes into bread, essentially impossible to avoid, almost worldwide spread. STILL totally untreatable. Results in slow painful near-certain death.

There's a reason we switched to ultraprocessed foods. And that reason largely isn't money, but too many people dying from lack of protection against natural adversaries.

Ergotism ? There are no cure indeed but it's easily preventable, people would be dropping around you if it wasn't

It has nothing to do with ultra processed food (unless you imagine people eating raw wheat straight from the plant), plenty of people live without that, just fine, if not better actually

Wheat is only popular because it has been a starvation food for the Europeans for thousands of years. If you are not starving, there is little reason to eat it. The wheat seed has evolved complex phytotoxins as defense to protect itself from being eaten. We try to get rid of a lot of it using yeast and bacterial fermentation and cooking, but residue is enough to poison people to varying degrees. There are grains which are less toxic.

Having said that, we may need to preserve a subculture to keep the practice if we ever need it (just for diversification purposes, in case we lose other grains to disease or change in climate).

Once you know enough to know we barely know anything it pushes you towards extreme nihilism of anyone who uses their credentials to definitively state they know anything.

Seeing a headline about cow farts burning the earth down, breathing [or insert flavor of the month random daily behavior] linked to depression, and throw in a dash of chemical imbalance causes [problem only treated by highly profitable medication] is all enough to make me ask, maybe no one has the answers?

The anti intellectuals are unfortunately partially right. The best scientists are full of doubts. What you mostly get in the loud and certain set are emotionally scarred children who sought out science as a life raft, a way to control their environment by “understanding it”. We don’t understand shit, and the people who need you to think we do are broken.

We mostly understand physical processes. The bits we do understand let’s us build trains, make them run on time, and stuff a supercomputer into your pocket that lets you argue with anyone in the world in real-time. That’s a lot. But it’s not comprehensive. Biology is just too complex to study by isolating a single variable. We are basically into linear algebra at this point to make any headway, are we not? Analyzing multivariate situations to isolate patterns.

It's the political enhancement of the intellectual class that is its downfall. Thats what compels them to force it on others 'we have the answers' for something they have a <10% understanding of.

It does select for a certain personality, but the ultimate cause is creating the situation for those kinds of broken souls to flourish to the detriment of everyone else.

Biology is really difficult to investigate when you get to the sophistication of humans. Thats before the perverse incentives brought on by funding sources.

I enjoy science for it’s own sake, and resent all of the careerists and scientismists(?). I often wish it were less lucrative and prestigious.

This. I am an academic, and I run a bioengineering lab, but am also into fitness and health. I get infuriated when I see any kind of health related practice called “woo,” because science just isn’t advanced enough yet to offer useful advice on most real world health issues. Almost everything that works, that has a long history of actually helping people is still a mystery, and therefore “woo.” Even most of modern medicine remains a mystery in terms of actual mechanisms.

People quick to call everything woo are almost never actually scientists themselves, and have made science into a sort of infallible religion, e.g. scientism.

I also don’t like it when people claim these things are backed by mechanistic understanding when they are not. I guess that is partly what gets them labeled as woo. It’s okay to say “this seems to work really good but we have no idea why.”

What happens though is people try to chuck the whole thing which also doesn’t work. You can’t make smart phones without eight hundred years of materials science. We know from science a whole lot of things one should definitely not do, we just don’t know the magic facts needed to do everything. Like make a 2100 era cellphone. Or cure cancer. Or predict the weather accurately.

Correct nobody has "the answers" but I don't really understand why this is new or cause for concern(not that your message totally indicated despair). It's not all-or-nothing, either-or. We don't have to have 100% confidence in an outcome to recommend action, there are gray areas. It's a false dichotomy to think we know either nothing or everything(Ignoring René Descartes for a moment).

Politicians claim they are 100% certain they know how a policy will affect the economy or social environment in the future. They are lying and they know it, but humans rely on confidence as a cue for information reliability, so politicians, click-baiters, and advertisers use confidence as a rhetorical tool. This creates an environment where the simple act of saying "I'm not sure" is equivalent to saying "I'm wrong."

Lack of infrared is what cause the damage. mitochondria need infrared to make melatonin(remove free radicals from combustion)

Without infrared (living inside) we are in constant inflammation, especially the mitochondria

Now, how many hours of time do the elderly go outside? Get close to zero fast. There is a care center close from home. They never go outside. Also true of most of the population.

The research is solid, but it’s mostly ignored. Search medcram infrared, this doctor is trying to spread the word, so many lives could be saved.

I healed my winter eczema in a short time with a simple infrared lamp after watching a few of his videos.

what would you say the minimum amount of time needed to be outside is

Citation needed.

Maybe just watching the videos healed your condition.

Pseudoscience.

Please explain:

- How does the indoor environment lack infrared vs outdoors, when illuminated by filament or halogen lighting.

- The relationship between inflammation (a tissue, organ or whole-organism level process) and mitochondria (a cellular organelle). In what circumstances can a mitochondrion be said to be inflamed?

I don't know that it's established. But there does appear to be some interest in the idea from a research perspective [0][1][etc.]. And for some reason physiotherapists have been using it for years for local inflammation, but I've never really bought into the idea myself, nor am I sure about the ramifications of this for systemic inflammation even if true.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31170016/ [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6131272/

cheers for doing research! here's more:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24246911/

1- It’s very easy to test: put mices in environment with and without infrared, measure inflammation markers, repeat with humans, correlate markers with diseases.

2- You can measure the level of infrared in environment vs outside. I don’t know what is the power difference. Without knowing all the details, the best way is to get in the sun.

3- How does it work: infrared penetrate deep in tissues, you can test with a red light through your hand or mouth, etc, infrared go deeper than red light.

The mitochondria use infrared to synthetized melatonin that remove free radicals. This happen even inside the brain, the infrared get there. The melatonin produced at night is merely the backup plan for our body when the sun isn’t there.

There is a strong tendency to assume that what we don’t know doesn’t exist (pseudoscience) but we should do the opposite, assume that everything from the natural environment is connected to our body.

I am sure that vit-d was considered impossible before, so was most of what we understand today about our body.

Look at medcram and infrared, you will find that there is credible research around this.

> How does the indoor environment lack infrared vs outdoors, when illuminated by filament or halogen lighting.

So you really get to be in a lot of rooms illuminated by either filament or halogen lighting? I miss incandescent bulbs :(.

> I healed my winter eczema in a short time with a simple infrared lamp

Low dose UV is used as a medically prescribed treatment for eczema, haven’t ever heard of infrared being an effective treatment. Any heat source radiates IR, so you could just use a heater.

That’s what I did, used an infrared heater and to my surprise it worked.

With inflammation heat is unusually not recommended.

Cancer cells have messed up mitochondria. Transplanting "cancerous" nuclues from one cell to healthy cell did NOT produce cancer.

But transplanting cancerous cytoplasm (fluid around the cell nucleus that contains mitochondria) DID cause cancer in the healthy cell.

Neurons in neurodegenerative diseases also have messed up mitochondria.

Do you have a source I could read on this?

From the study abstract: "Among depressed individuals, those with high GDF-15 had higher levels of comorbid physical illness, lower executive cognitive functioning, and higher likelihood of having late-onset depression."

Is it possible the physical comorbidities could be related to the depression? I'd imagine if my body was breaking down in new ways that made my impending mortality palpable, I'd be pretty depressed too.

Is there any way to prove that the arrow of causality is the other way? (i.e., depression causes damage to mitochondria).

This is the similar with vitamin d and COVID. They found out COVID depleted vitamin d.

or did the immune system response deplete vitamin d?

Or did you have low vitamin D, because your elderly and live in a home and don't get enough sunlight.

Or is sufficient vitamin D highly correlated with eating a balanced diet and engaging in exercise outside?

Most of vitamin D in your body is synthesized from cholesterol and the extra boost you get from sun exposure is by UVB breaking cholesterol into D3. This mechanism occurs naturally with or without sun’s help.

My tests and comments in a British national newspaper triggered this to occur. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09600...

I know a reasonable amount about vitamin D to say the least and I dont agree with all the experts. For example when discussing food cravings related to vitamin D, a PhD expert and studying vit d suggested it was folates due to the solar irradiance exposure.

UV destroys folates in the body.

I wasnt so sure then and I'm still not so sure this is the sole answer. I think what I told them was correct and I've since seen studies from the 1950's which would back up my assertion.

In fact when considering folates create formaldehyde which is cancerous, is the reduction in cancer seen with higher levels of Vit D due to obtaining Vit D from sunshine?

Okay, but then what causes depression? It seems more likely that a range of environmental, lifestyle, and genetic factors cause both depression and mitochondrial damage.

lack of infrared is what cause the damage.

mitochondria need infrared to make melatonin(remove free radicals from combustion)

Without infrared (living inside) we are in constant inflammation, especially the mitochondria

The research is solid, but it’s mostly ignored.

Filament and halogen lamps produce masses of infrared.

Narrowband and low-energy lights (fluorescent and LED), not so much.

I could see it. Depression, leading to unhealthy eating habits leading to mitochondrial stress and deterioration.

One might say it's the powerhouse of being well.

I’ve become interested in this since listening to Chris Palmer(author of “Brain Energy”) on Tim Ferris’s podcast. From my research, studies have found you can supplement with CoQ10 and Folic Acid which may cause a significant improvement of depression compared to placebo. If you have the MTHFR gene variant you may need L-methylfolate (OTC but also prescribed as Deplin). Chris Palmer recommends a ketogenic diet and had some astounding results in patients with schizophrenia where their hallucinations ceased completely. On the other hand, those with bipolar may have worsening symptoms of mania, so it’s definitely something to research first and consult with your doctor if you are interested in pursuing this type of treatment.

1. Correlation does not necessarily mean cause and effect. 2. 'In older adults' - this could mean only a subset of depression spectrum. It is premature to generalise this to depression in general.

If this is the case shouldn’t sparsely taken metformin help (like couple times a month or less)? Well tolerated at low dose.

If I just could remember what the mytochondria's job is...

Pretty sure it makes The Force work.

Engines of each cell. They burn food and oxygen to make atp.

atp the form of energy the cell use for almost everything.

Wasn't this the plot of A Wind in the Door?

I believe it was actually the opposite, with a character's physical health being linked to the emotional state of their mitochondria.

Ha, I suppose after 40 years one might forget that mitochondria (or was it some creature that lived inside mitochondria?) could be emotional.

Powerhouse of the cell for a reason.

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