[HN Gopher] Correlation between the advent of refrigeration and ...
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Correlation between the advent of refrigeration and the rise of
Crohn's disease
Author : fnord77
Score : 30 points
Date : 2021-12-05 22:04 UTC (55 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (academic.oup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (academic.oup.com)
| DantesKite wrote:
| It wouldn't surprise me if refrigeration contributes to the
| development of Crohn's disease.
|
| The causes can be multi-variate and anecdotally, from my own
| research, microbes (yeast, bacteria, fungi) all seem to play a
| key role. Anything that disturbs the balance in pathogenic ways
| can lead to dysfunction, especially antibiotics, but also a lack
| of plant cell walls in our diets.
|
| Everybody is slightly different, not just genetically, but in
| terms of the diversity of bacteria.
|
| There have been a few people who have managed to put Crohn's
| disease into remissions with raw kefir produced at home (the ones
| at store are not comparable) as well as with Visbiome, a
| probiotic produced in the lab with many studies behind it. And
| I've also heard the carnivore diet for short durations may help.
|
| There doesn't seem to be a consistent way to treat Crohn's
| disease and obviously, medicine to control flares is a must if
| the situation demands it.
|
| It does seem like a great many gut and autoimmune issues are
| somehow related to the diversity of microbes though and I look
| forward to more clinical research like this.
|
| We need all the help we can get.
| bladegash wrote:
| Likewise on the welcoming of any bit of research! I ended up in
| the hospital about a year ago and found out it was the result
| of Crohn's (34 years old).
|
| Another hospitalization, countless diet attempts, medications,
| and biologics, finally found something that worked, other than
| prednisone.
|
| If there is one thing I realized, it is that the effectiveness
| of treatments really is dependent on each individual's biology.
| Possible foods that trigger me were completely fine for others
| I had spoken with, and vice versa.
|
| It's encouraging to see as much research as there is and makes
| me hopeful not just for myself, but for others with the same
| condition (many who have it far worse than me).
| jcrben wrote:
| I got Crohn's about the same age (34).
|
| A couple years later at 36 I'm now on better health than I've
| ever been. I responded well to a biologic (vedolizumab aka
| Entyvio). But I also did exclusive enteral nutrition for
| months to help push me the edge. These days I eat a lot of
| sweet potatoes and chicken, with relatively little processed
| food.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Before some "wise guy" comes to parrot about how "correlation
| does not imply causation" [1], please, take some time to read the
| article as it has some valuable information.
|
| [1]: We've all heard that already, it doesn't impress anyone
| anymore.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| uniqueuid wrote:
| And it's not even in the article title.
|
| In fact, the text says " Figure 1A compares the annual
| incidence of the disease and the household equipment rate in
| several countries. There is a temporal correlation between
| these variables."
|
| A temporal correlation is something entirely different to a
| cross-sectional correlation (arrow of time etc.)
| DantesKite wrote:
| I tried researching what a temporal correlation is. Do you
| have short explanation for it?
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Temporal correlations are a family of things, since there
| are many degrees of freedom to choose what to compare with
| what.
|
| A very simple test is the "Granger Causality", which tests
| whether one timeline significantly predicts another one.
| You can formulate more complex models such as time series a
| predicting b with a certain lag.
|
| Ultimately, the idea is most often to remove unrelated
| factors (such as control variables, seasonality, self-
| influence i.e. autoregression) and then measure how well
| one series at t(0) predicts another one at t(1), while
| optionally doing some sort of hyperparameter optimization
| for the lag (i.e. determine which lag works best).
| emmelaich wrote:
| Good paper. If true I wonder how it could be combatted
| effectively. It's hard to do without refrigeration. Perhaps its
| related mainly to fast food, where the consistent refrigeration
| is less sure.
|
| CD has also been associated with Mycobacterium paratuberculosis,
| because that is implicated in the similar Jahne's disease in
| cattle and sheep:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4894645/
|
| Lastly, I also wonder if refrigeration has a role to play in
| Multiple Sclerosis. It also has strong relations with modern
| lifestyle and latitude (temperature). The suspect virus in the MS
| case seems to be
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein%E2%80%93Barr_virus aka
| mononucleosis / glandular fever.
| teeray wrote:
| I wonder if anyone has tried a treatment with a non-refrigerated
| diet
|
| EDIT: I read some more and found "Nutritional treatment of CD was
| first proposed by Voitk in 1973. The treatment consists of
| administering a specific liquid formula..."
|
| It doesn't say if that formula is refrigerated or not. My
| assumption is that it isn't because it's cited here, but that is
| an assumption.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Essentially they found that tube fed diets do help, and they
| are effectively refrigeration free.
|
| > "Furthermore, no specific foodstuff has been incriminated in
| CD, and combining enteral nutrition with a highly controlled
| oral diet was recently shown to be effective" ... "It should be
| noted, however, that enteral nutrition effectively excludes
| refrigerated foods."
|
| They go on to say that enteral nutrition differ from regular
| diets so that the mechanism that make them work may not to the
| fact that they are refrigerated.
|
| A refrigeration free diet would not be impossible today, but
| hard. Given he prevalence of this bacteria today, non-electric
| cold stores would probably also need to be removed from the
| supply chain, making even a pre-industrial Western diet
| problematic.
|
| A sufficiently cooked vegan diet, minus everything that causes
| problems with people that suffer from Crohn's Disease, maybe
| would work? Ideally with vegetables that have not been
| refrigerated. Winter would be pretty bleak.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| If tube fed diets are the trick, why not just go with
| Soylent? It's about as bacteria-free as food can reasonably
| get.
| bladegash wrote:
| For many with Crohn's, this is more or less the treatment.
| Many times it is less because it's most effective, and more
| because surgeries removing portions of the large/small
| intestines has made them incapable of digesting other forms
| of food. I guess my question would be - would you want to
| live on Soylent the rest of your life, if it could be
| avoided? I think most would answer no.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Right, this is what the authors demand:
|
| "as no single experiment can definitively confirm the theory,
| we must continue to test it with additional works. Among them
| [and even if insufficient to definitively validate the
| hypothesis], a randomised clinical trial comparing patients
| with low versus high exposure to Yersinia would be an important
| step."
| tomrod wrote:
| This is a bad title. Other trends since 1910 (the last 110 years)
|
| - Electromagnetic wave use increase via radio, television, cell
| and internet, and microwaves
|
| - Maximum altitude humans have reached
|
| - Number of bodies on Everest
|
| - Increase in pounds of enriched uranium and available thorium
|
| - Increase in the number of people who have read work by Ursula
| K. Le Guin and Isaac Asimov
|
| None of these have causal implications. But the article does
| connect a qualitative theory and show correlation -- suggesting
| the hypothesis could be a thread to chase down.
|
| This is the key thesis:
|
| > According to the cold chain hypothesis, the development of
| industrial and domestic refrigeration has led to frequent
| exposure of human populations to bacteria capable of growing in
| the cold. These bacteria, at low levels of exposure, particularly
| those of the genus Yersinia, are believed to be capable of
| inducing exacerbated inflammation of the intestine in genetically
| predisposed subjects.
|
| EDIT:
|
| Title: Crohn's Disease: Is the Cold Chain Hypothesis Still Hot?
|
| Abstract:
|
| > Crohn's disease [CD] is an inflammatory bowel disease of
| unknown aetiology. During recent decades, significant
| technological advances led to development of -omic datasets
| allowing a detailed description of the disease. Unfortunately
| these have not, to date, resolved the question of the aetiology
| of CD. Thus, it may be necessary to [re]consider hypothesis-
| driven approaches to resolve the aetiology of CD. According to
| the cold chain hypothesis, the development of industrial and
| domestic refrigeration has led to frequent exposure of human
| populations to bacteria capable of growing in the cold. These
| bacteria, at low levels of exposure, particularly those of the
| genus Yersinia, are believed to be capable of inducing
| exacerbated inflammation of the intestine in genetically
| predisposed subjects. We discuss the consistency of this working
| hypothesis in light of recent data from epidemiological,
| clinical, pathological, microbiological, and molecular studies.
| [deleted]
| jessriedel wrote:
| Your first point is misaimed. They don't just note the
| historical worldwide rise in refrigeration goes along side a
| worldwide rise in Chrohn's. They compare the timing for
| Chrohn's and refrigeration for different demographic groups in
| different countries and even, if I am reading this correctly,
| at the level of individuals. The other things you list will not
| vary in the same way at that level of detail, although one must
| of course be wary of multiple hypothesis testing, forking
| paths, etc.
| tomrod wrote:
| > although one must of course be wary of multiple hypothesis
| testing, forking paths, etc.
|
| Precisely. My point was in agreement with another on the
| article: correlation may not be causation, but it can be
| highly suggestive of it as one drills down. Necessary, but
| not sufficient, conditions.
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