Training immune cells to remove ‘trash’ helps resolve lung inflammation | Hacker News Reader

Training immune cells to remove ‘trash’ helps resolve lung inflammation

today.uic.edu

109 pointsclouddrover32 comments

Lung inflammation is a terrible thing and not to be dismissed. My Dad had scarring of his lung tissue cause unknown it's called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Some thing or inflammation damaged his lungs I don't think and I hope it wasn't genetic but there familial part to it.

I could tell by the sound of his breathing ten years before he was officially diagnosed that something was wrong I thought his heart due to family history but hindsight is 20/20. I'm the same age now as when he first started sounding bad when he was breathing. His father my grandfather died of emphysema not sure if related since my grandfather was a smoker.

My Dad's doctor said cancer would be easier to treat. Dad made it another ten years past a diagnosis of three years he was given to live but he lived in dread all that time. What really got him in the end was anxiety not so much the disease.

As an aside: when modern medicine puts 'idiopathic' in front of any condition it means that the doctors don't know what's going on (yet).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiopathic_disease

Yeah, I knew someone with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Came out of nowhere and in a couple short years they needed a lung transplant. No explanation, no cure, in an otherwise healthy person.

My mom died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis resulting from "interstitial lung disease," which is a nasty progressive feedback loop of inflammation, scarring, and reduced lung volume. She'd cough, which would make small tears, which would scar, which would mean there was less working lung around later.

Her lifestyle was a contributing factor. She didn't smoke but her house was full of pet dander and she used a wood stove.

I do have the exercise-induced reactive airway thing to which she attributed her frailty early on, so maybe I'll go the same way.

It is an interesting study in mice but so oddly specific that I wonder why it's on HN?

But saving lungs is important because alveolar regeneration is currently an impossible technological fantasy and most lung transplant patients die after a few years from organ rejection.

All those transplant stories you heard in 2020 from the alpha/beta forms of covid destroying lungs are either gone now or on their way (or looking at another transplant)

There's still no cure for ARDS/COPD which is a slow death sentence but during my post-covid research when I thought I had permanent severe lung damage I found this one Professor "Robert Stockley" at University Hospital Birmingham who has been testing various things since the 1990s like Vitamin A derivatives (Retinoids) to reverse lung damage. He's found things that work in animals but not humans.

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/birmingham-in-action/news/donor...

adding:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9188766/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9188766/table/t...

At a very high level, I am very interested in the general concept that sometimes, the same thing that causes you a problem can be the solution to the problem.

Examples I have come up with so far:

1. radiation: causes cancer, but preferentially kills cancer cells

2. glue: sticks, but can be used to dissolve old glue to separate stuck things

3. violence: threat of mutually assured destruction can lead to peace, theoretical

4. infection: stimulates your immune system against further infection

5. ???

5. Muscular injuries. In my experience the vast majority of the time the answer to a muscle injury has been to exercise that muscle at lower intensity. This applies to delayed onset muscle soreness, pulled muscles, and everything that’s not an overuse injury (which takes experience to identify).

This does NOT apply to joint and connective tissue injuries.

Even an overuse injury in some cases. For some reason I'm prone to tendonitis with repetitive loading - think digging, or sets when lifting. The solution is to increase blood flow by doing the same movement that gave me tendonitis, but at a MUCH lower intensity.

Fight fire with fire.

(ancient concept, when there was a big fire approaching, small fires were started to burn into the direction of the big fire, so in the end the big fire had nothing more to consume)

I believe that the concept is called Hormesis.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis

Kind of, but not precisely?

Hormesis is that idea that the same compound can have opposite effect at different doses.

But a dose difference is not strictly necessary for what I am talking about

Sill not what you're looking for, but another term to throw in the bag: "Iatrogenic"

A disease or problem which is a side-effects of medical investigation or treatment.

The term for the parent comment's concept is anti-fragile

A big one is giving children microdoses of peanuts to reverse peanut allergies. [1]

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/oral-im...

Giving peanut oral immunotherapy—daily doses of peanut flour—to children ages 1 to 3 with peanut allergies desensitized most and induced remission of the allergy in 21%.

one of our kid’s friend had a peanut allergy and at twice had to travel by helicopter to a suitable hospital. Always had an epipen at birthday parties. Very diligent family leaving the kid home alone with a friend for the first time and as part of the spread the mother inexplicably purchased choco-tacos.

The kid ate them thought they were good and asked the mom to get them again.

The mom realized that they had peanuts and through new tests it turns out he is no longer allergic.

The first thought was choco tacos contain no peanuts. They contain peanuts.

This applies to everything: a gun, water or money. There is no concept out there.

Employment: You can't fire me! I quit!

Homeopathy is an alternative medicine based on the theory of treating ‘like with like’.

https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtrea...

For the record, I am not a practitioner of homeopathy. I just know from talking to people that this is the idea behind it.

It's not a terrible idea. Like how fever was used to fight malaria a while back

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrotherapy

That's not what your link says. It says malaria was induced to cause fever as a means to combat syphilis until they discovered penicillin.

You're right

It's not treating like with like, it's attempting to treat with something that has contain the substance but no longer contains it. They add something to water or alcohol then dilute repeatedly until it's just water.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilutions#Diluti...

If you believe it works then you should drink a bit of water from the ocean everyday, because so many sewage are poured there that every virus and bacteria of every human illness has been there, and the oceans are so vast that it's been diluted properly!

And that escalated quickly because that theory is completely bonkers and any results of that if anything placebo.. so then we can just say everything here.

Does going for a long distance run also remove trash?

Absolutely.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25427090

I imagine that would depend on air quality/pollution. I believe there have been studies on running vs exposure to better and worse environments.

Not unless you’ve got a garbage bag. Running is good though but don’t think that heavy breathing is expelling any particulates faster than you inhale them. It can definitely create inflammation which can stimulate growth. Just as micro tears of muscle tissue during exercise increases muscle density and strength.

Run. Just don’t think to yourself you’re undoing anything. Think of it as extending. I wish I had the endurance to join you.

Probably induces small amounts of tissue damage that stimulates repair pathways, yeah

Generally speaking, this is how the immune system works. We get exposed to a thing the first time, our body doesn't know what to do about it, figures it out and future infections with the same thing are typically handled more effectively.

It's the principle behind vaccines.

It's another "in mice only so far" one.

IN MICE

Since we've evolved with famine, rather than excess, over millions of years, calorie restriction (not malnutrition) probably couldn't hurt.

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