[HN Gopher] Mice live longer when inflammation-boosting protein ...
___________________________________________________________________
Mice live longer when inflammation-boosting protein is blocked
Author : pseudolus
Score : 108 points
Date : 2024-07-17 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| michaelteter wrote:
| Inflammation seems to be a general enemy to health.
|
| What is the evolutionary value of inflammation? It must have a
| reason for being such a prominent part of life...
| MVissers wrote:
| I'd guess it helps short-term survival.
|
| Eg: Rest your twisted ankle through pain and inflammation
| instead of keeping to use it.
|
| Even though it increases recovery time, better be on the safe
| side of decreased usage to avoid further damage.
|
| Which is why in modern times RICE speeds up recovery (rest,
| ice, compression, elevation) in twisted ankles.
|
| But we have ratio- which mammels didn't have for millions of
| years.
| scns wrote:
| Ice can do more harm than good:
|
| https://drmirkin.com/fitness/why-ice-delays-recovery.html
| datameta wrote:
| My hunch feels validated. I think it highly depends on area
| affected because vasoconstriction decreases limphatic
| throughbout as well as bloodflow. Still highly case-by-case
| but I think lowering inflammation in load bearing or
| complex joints like knees or ankles is conducive to nominal
| operation and therefore healing. (100% rest not
| recommended, as repair byproducts accumulate and don't
| clear away, and decreases bloodflow rsults in lower
| delivery of nutrients, building blocks of tissue, etc.
| netcraft wrote:
| I just came to ask basically the same question. Why does
| inflammation exist, what is its purpose, how did it evolve, are
| there downsides to blocking it?
|
| We have entire classes of drugs including OTC ones whose entire
| job is just reducing inflammation, its indicated in tons of
| diseases and conditions, lots of health industry people (and
| snake oil salesmen) tell me that x and y and z cause it, but I
| dont really know what it is.
| calibas wrote:
| Inflammation actually speeds up healing, at least when things
| are working right.
|
| Edit: To add, much of our medicine treats symptoms, not
| causes.
| moh_maya wrote:
| Inflammation is typically experienced when the body is
| responding to an infection or injury. It is a normal, and as
| per current understanding, a necessary part of the body's
| immune response.
|
| The Cleveland clinic has a nice, informative page if you want
| more information [0]
|
| [edited to add]
|
| The response of the innate immune system to the infectious
| agent / injury is what causes inflammation - i.e., for
| instance, fever, swelling, etc. It is a very very complex
| multi-cascade process, but one of the first responses to an
| injury, for instance, is the release of signalling molecules
| that results in localised swelling, slightly elevated
| temperature (which makes the tissue a little more inhospitable
| to bacteria / viruses), etc. all of which serve as the front
| line defense. <This is a severe over-simplification> Wikipedia
| has a good explanation that goes into the roles and triggers of
| the inflammatory response. [1]
|
| Acute inflammation in response to infections and injuries is a
| good thing, and from everything we know, it is a necessary part
| of the immune response. The challenge is when the same
| inflammation response is mis-directed to target the body - for
| instance, in rheumatoid arthritis, and other inflammation
| related auto-immune disorders.
|
| [0]
| https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/21660-inflamm...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflammation?useskin=vector
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Chronic inflammation is bad. Is chronic inflammation always
| caused by auto-immune? Or is it also caused by things like
| pollutants, poor diet, or other "first world" problems?
|
| I ask because I used to be very concerned with particulate
| matter (I still am, but I used to too), and it seemed a big
| problem with that was it triggering inflammation.
| doe_eyes wrote:
| I don't think there's a pattern suggesting that. Many
| autoimmune diseases are more prevalent in less polluted
| parts of the world. The strongest links appear to be
| genetic, in that some diseases (e.g., Sjogren's syndrome)
| are clearly more common in people of certain geographic
| descents.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I'm not asking if autoimmune is caused by pollution or
| development. I'm asking if they both have similar
| effects.
| datameta wrote:
| There is no distinction regardless of cause, imo. Stress
| can epigenetically cause an autoimmune disease, and so
| can pollution (including smoking), excessive alcohol,
| processed food diet, sedentariness, etc. Often it is a
| number of factors that can lead to a chronically
| overactive immune response.
| datameta wrote:
| I forgot to add, some have higher genetic predisposition
| for an autoimmune disorder, and
| diet/environment/lifestyle can switch those gene sections
| on.
| andai wrote:
| It's been a while since I looked into this, but diet is a
| major factor with inflammation. Sugars, seed oils and
| grain-fed dairy. (Also if you eat the grains yourself!)
| Keto lowers it, caloric restriction lowers it (conversely
| excess calories coupled with sedentary lifestyle increase
| it), intermittent fasting lowers it.
|
| I forget about exercise, I think it's a case of temporarily
| increasing it (hours) and then lowering it long-term.
| datameta wrote:
| Speaking from personal experience diet plays as much a
| role as medication in decreasing inflammation. Sugars,
| gluten, and some* nuts and seeds are indeed pro-
| inflammatory (many seeds and nuts are anti-inflammatory)
| tempsy wrote:
| There is a huge difference between inflammation in response
| to injury and chronic inflammation caused by lifestyle
| choices like poor diet.
| Teever wrote:
| That's missing the point. If this technique can result in
| longer lives for people with both good diets and not, it is
| a genuinely novel innovation in human life span that can't
| be replaced with better diet alone.
| tempsy wrote:
| It's not missing the point. The point is that a lot of
| people live with chronic inflammation caused by poor
| lifestyle choices and that results in many diseases later
| in life, including Alzheimer's.
|
| The point is that chronic inflammation is bad. The
| comment I'm replying to isn't recognizing that it's just
| saying "oh inflammation is fine because it's a response
| to injury" which is very much missing the point.
| Teever wrote:
| How much of the consequences of a poor life style can be
| mitigated by simply reducing the chronic inflammation
| response by the body?
|
| I'd love it if cheap shitty food wasn't bad for me. At
| the end of the day a calorie is a calorie and many
| animals handle the stuff that shortens our life with no
| problem.
|
| Look at it another way, if dogs can't eat chocolate but
| humans can, is the problem with chocolate or with dogs?
| BostonFern wrote:
| A calorie is certainly not just a calorie. Different
| foods are metabolized differently and affect the body in
| different ways, regardless of otherwise equal caloric
| values. Take fructose, glucose, and ethanol as an
| example.
| Teever wrote:
| How is it that you're making my point in an attempt to
| refute my point, without seeing that you're making my
| point for me?
| andai wrote:
| The question was what are you giving up in exchange? Is
| this protein's function really just to reduce your
| quality of life and kill you faster?
| Someone wrote:
| It could well be that this protein is good for you when
| you're young but not that good for you when you are
| older.
|
| For example, young people might encounter more new
| infection sources, and thus need a faster/stronger
| responding immune system. This protein might be evolved
| for giving you that, with a side effect of having too
| strong an immune system at older age.
|
| Evolution may not yet have found a solution that turns
| down its production at later age, or it might have
| evolved it at some time, but found its benefits do not
| outweigh the cost of maintaining the necessary control
| mechanism.
|
| It's far from a given that having more humans live to old
| age has evolutionary benefits.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| What happens when you eliminate the "good inflammation"
| in those with bad diets? Then what? There's likely going
| to be unintended consequences, naturally. My point,
| eliminating one symptom usually means eventually creating
| another.
| andai wrote:
| The latest Kurzgesagd video on exercise seemed to imply that
| (excepting sudden changes in activity level) caloric burn
| rate is constant regardless of lifestyle, but if you are
| sedentary, the "excess" calories are burned "unproductively"
| (e.g. increased inflammation).
|
| So this seems to imply excess calories are a cause of chronic
| inflammation.
|
| Also, the ketogenic diet has been shown to significantly
| reduce inflammation, though I'm not sure if that's from
| reducing carbs, or reducing something else associated with
| high carb intake.
| qorrect wrote:
| This also lines up with something said in the book Lifespan
| about fasting reducing inflammation.
| biomcgary wrote:
| Glucose and fructose will react non-specifically with
| proteins in the body, particularly when present in excess.
| These non-specific reactions are recognized as foreign
| and/or defective, which triggers inflammation. The apply
| named RAGE protein is one mediator of this response
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAGE_(receptor)).
|
| HbA1C results from the non-enzymatic reaction between
| glucose and hemoglobin. It serves as a measure of your
| long-term glucose level and is elevated in diabetics.
|
| Low carb diets dramatically reduce this source of
| inflammation.
| Retric wrote:
| > caloric burn rate is constant regardless of lifestyle
|
| This is obviously false as stated, extreme athletes consume
| vastly more calories than sedentary people of their same
| weight. Phelps was rather famous for a 10,000+ calorie per
| day diet but even just manual labors need significantly
| more calories.
|
| I'm assuming there's some unspecified criteria such as
| while sleeping?
| jb1991 wrote:
| Asthma is another example of a terrible problem caused by
| chronic inflammation.
| kneel wrote:
| Your body attacks substances that appear foreign, whether
| they're actually foreign or not is another issue.
|
| Human bodies did not evolve for high macro diets, the high
| levels of sugar (among other molecules) in our diet glycosylate
| proteins they touch, warping their folding shape and causing
| inflammation as the body mistake itself for foreign invaders.
|
| Probably a reason why fasting has become so popular, people are
| walking around with high levels of damage from dense caloric
| food, a fast allows your body to go through a cycle of
| catabolism/autophagy. Clearing our the misfolded/damaged
| proteins lowers inflammation.
| farseer wrote:
| Probably has to do with our immune system and microbial
| threats. You can reduce inflammation using steroids for example
| but also reduce your immunity as a consequence.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Long-term steroid use has many many significant side effects
| as well, like ruining your bones.
| ortusdux wrote:
| 'If you don't have inflammation, then you'll die':
|
| https://www.livescience.com/health/immune-system/if-you-dont...
| bell-cot wrote:
| I'm not in biology/medicine, but my impression is inflammation
| is mostly about fighting off infectious diseases. Which,
| historically, have been a leading killer of mammals.
|
| If current conditions (whether for lab mice, or humans) have
| removed ~99% of the deadly diseases from the equation - then
| it's kinda like someone who's heterozygous for sickle cell
| being stuck in a malaria-free region.
| hooverd wrote:
| Having an immune system. Healing. Exercise causes acute
| inflammation which signals your body to repair itself. Chronic
| inflammation is the real problem. And dose, I guess.
| shawnz wrote:
| For this reason anti-inflammatory drugs make exercise less
| effective: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/1708
| 28125123.h...
| biomcgary wrote:
| Antibiotics and sanitation have dramatically changed the
| fitness landscape and humans haven't accumulated enough
| generations in the new landscape to adapt genetically.
|
| Natural selection is for reproductive fitness. Before
| antibiotics, dying after child bearing years didn't have enough
| effect on fitness to overcome the value of preventing death
| from infection at younger ages.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > It must have a reason for being such a prominent part of
| life...
|
| the answer is always "it doesn't kill or sterilize you before
| you reproduce"
|
| I don't understand the point of the retroactive why's. some
| mutant nutted in a bunch of folks, the end.
| sqeaky wrote:
| "Retroactive Why's" are useful because on evolutionary
| timescales, and it must be if it impacts mice and people,
| even a very tiny selective pressure causes harmful traits to
| be selected against.
|
| If as few as 1 in 10,000 reproductions were prevented by a
| trait then we should expect that trait to be gone in a
| million years. And our last common ancestor with mice was
| likely 65 of those past.
|
| Harmful traits can linger if they confer some other benefit.
| Other's have already worked through this and are rightfully
| asking, "If this is so harmful it should be have been
| selected against, what does it do to help us get to
| successful reproduction in the environment it evolved in?"
| yieldcrv wrote:
| okay so explain our short telomeres promoting cancer
|
| what are armchair archeologists going to say, "thats
| because it enabled strong community ties and the humans
| with long telomeres didn't value life as strongly" as
| opposed to being a total freak accident that had nothing to
| do with anything
| sqeaky wrote:
| > okay so explain our short telomeres promoting cancer
|
| They don't kill us before we procreate. Evolution checks
| out at childbirth so you get "genetic drift".
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > the answer is always "it doesn't kill or sterilize you
| before you reproduce"
|
| QED
| ravenstine wrote:
| Having no inflammation at all is a very bad thing. Too much
| inflammation is also a very bad thing. Hypothetically, there's
| an optimal level of inflammatory response. Evolution doesn't
| necessarily guarantee that, at least when it comes to a single
| mouse.
|
| An individual organism surviving for the longest amount of time
| is not necessarily optimal at the species level. It could be
| that mice (for instance) have a bit too high of an IL-11
| response, but there's either no evolutionary pressure against
| it or there's some species-level value to it.
|
| Above all, since only one interleukin was targeted in the
| research, we can't assume that all inflammation is bad and that
| no inflammation is ideal.
|
| On a related note, I wonder if there's anything commercially
| available that can suppress IL-11. Currently, I'm taking
| phycocyanin extracted from spirulina, which is supposed to
| suppress COX-2 and IL-17, but I don't see any research
| confirming whether it has an effect on IL-11. Would be cool if
| I've unwittingly begun extending my lifespan. :D
| goda90 wrote:
| > An individual organism surviving for the longest amount of
| time is not necessarily optimal at the species level.
|
| Though it can be argued that among social, intelligent
| creatures, living grandparents holds value for the species.
| Humans and orcas both seem to benefit from them in many ways.
| wubrr wrote:
| I would imagine that if humans were immortal, the
| centralization of wealth and power under a few families
| would be even more extreme. Which is probably not good for
| the vast majority of humans.
| olalonde wrote:
| Even if you were right, I'd still chose that society over
| death. I am not convinced though, wealth seems to
| dissipate over long periods (e.g. most billionaires today
| did not inherit their wealth).
| wubrr wrote:
| I mean, it's pretty hard to predict what such a society
| would look like, but it's plausible you'd just be a slave
| from birth until death (because poor slaves don't get the
| immortality pill).
|
| > I am not convinced though, wealth seems to dissipate
| over long periods (e.g. most billionaires today did not
| inherit their wealth).
|
| The single most reliable predictor of wealth BY FAR is
| being born into wealth. And arguably, it dissipates
| because it gets decentralized as it gets split up between
| heirs as it passed down to future generations which are
| typically less ambitious and focused on maintaining that
| power and wealth.
|
| Imagine if Ghengis Khan, Stalin, Mao, Rothschild,
| Rockerfeller, all of the kings/royals/despots/dictators
| were immortal and still running the world - I don't think
| most people would want to live in that world.
| olalonde wrote:
| > The single most reliable predictor of wealth BY FAR is
| being born into wealth.
|
| I highly doubt that. I would guess that income and age
| would be much better predictors for example.
|
| > I don't think most people would want to live in that
| world.
|
| I would, if the other option was death.
|
| Regardless, I doubt any of them would still rule the
| world had they not died of old age. Regimes survive
| despite the death of their rulers and fall while their
| rulers are still alive.
| wubrr wrote:
| > I highly doubt that. I would guess that income and age
| would be much better predictors for example.
|
| I'm talking about predictors of wealth for a new person.
| The age and income are both zero. If you have their
| income - you probably have their wealth already as well -
| nothing to predict.
|
| And for the record, coming from wealth is the strongest
| predictor of future wealth. [0][1]
|
| > I would, if the other option was death.
|
| But you have no choice/option in my hypothetical scenario
| - you're born a slave and you die...
|
| > Regardless, I doubt any of them would still rule the
| world had they not died of old age.
|
| Really.... ? Why? All of the people I mentioned,
| maintained and grew their wealth/power their entire life
| up until their death. Having power/wealth is just a huge
| advantage if you're trying to gain/maintain power/wealth.
|
| [0]
| https://www.ctpublic.org/education/2019-05-15/georgetown-
| stu... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/29/study-to-
| succeed-in-america-...
| olalonde wrote:
| > I'm talking about predictors of wealth for a new
| person.
|
| That's almost a tautology then. If you only know one
| thing about someone, that's also necessarily the best
| predictor for anything about them. However, it doesn't
| tell us much about whether wealth does concentrate over
| time.
|
| > Really.... ? Why?
|
| Because regimes change all the time despite rulers being
| alive. The death of a ruler by old age rarely triggers
| regime change, they just get succeeded by someone else.
| It's usually another event that triggers regime change
| (peaceful and violent revolutions, war, etc.). Immortal
| rulers wouldn't be immune to those events.
| superturkey650 wrote:
| The biggest cause of regime change seems to be the
| succession of power and the fears around change occurring
| during succession of power. A ruler dying through old age
| is a common source of regime change in history as people
| with varying interests start vying for that position and
| ensuring the new ruler holds their same interests.
| Retric wrote:
| > If you only know one thing about someone
|
| You can know a great deal about someone at birth, such as
| race, gender, country of origin, eye color etc. Yet you
| can accurately predict someone's wealth at age 60 by
| looking at their parent's wealth even though a babies
| income is generally 0.
|
| Further wait until someone's 10 and you can measure IQ,
| grades, etc and parents wealth is still #1. Wait even
| longer and high school GPA still isn't nearly as useful.
| DaoVeles wrote:
| Also the Chinese saying that goes "Wealth does not last
| beyond three generations". There are exceptions to this
| rule but it is fairly robust.
|
| Part of it is wealth becoming diluted with offspring and
| secondly being raised in wealth diminishes people value
| of money until it is too late.
| freen wrote:
| In the United States, the single most determinative
| factor for lifetime earnings and life expectancy is the
| zip code you were born in and grew up in, up to age 13 or
| so.
| lawlessone wrote:
| We'd certainly need to change our social system lot.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Though it can be argued that among social, intelligent
| creatures, living grandparents holds value for the species.
|
| This is taken to an extreme in Larry Niven's "known space"
| setting. There's a bunch of interesting stuff I won't
| mention because spoilers, but imagine a very-humanoid race
| where the adults are not intelligent, but later they lose
| the ability to reproduce and gain hyper-intelligence,
| strength, and a ruthless drive to protect and advance their
| descendants.
| ajuc wrote:
| If they released these mice to live in unsanitary wild
| environment it could turn up they lived shorter/less healthy
| lives on average because they were less adapted to fight all
| the pathogens.
| byteknight wrote:
| A super uneducated piece of input for thought:
|
| Perhaps it is not that it is evolutionarily beneficial, but
| rather a byproduct of other evolutionarily beneficial
| processes? Such as sending larger amounts of blood to an
| affected region.
| thijson wrote:
| I know that some parasites secrete substances that reduce our
| immune response, for example hook worms. People that have
| autoimmune diseases of the gut sometimes see a benefit to
| purposely infecting themselves. I think our current genetic
| make up was selected by evolution to handle a high parasite
| load.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Inflammation is needed so you don't die from infections and
| injuries.
| epgui wrote:
| Just off the top of my head (I am a biochemist), without
| inflammation you:
|
| - cannot heal when injured
|
| - cannot fight back against pathogens and die from random
| infections easily
|
| - develop cancer faster and more often
| DaoVeles wrote:
| Thanks for the additional context.
|
| Generally, the opposite of one bad idea is usually another
| bad idea. Too much is bad, too little is bad - the middle
| ground is ideal.
|
| For example - Too much water is drowning, doesn't mean we
| should advocate against water.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Inflammation is part of the immune response. It's generally a
| good thing if it happens when needed and if it stops when the
| stimulus is gone. If your immune system is stimulating
| inflammation for false positives or continuously that is when
| damage can occur.
|
| Next time you think about consuming a product that claims to
| boost your immune system, ask yourself if you really want to
| increase your chances of inflammation or not. they are two
| sides of the same system.
| purpleblue wrote:
| Do anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen offer the same protections?
| pnw wrote:
| Allegedly, yes. Unfortunately the side effects for some people
| are intolerable.
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141218141004.h...
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > Unfortunately the side effects for some people are
| intolerable.
|
| Doesn't it increase one's chances for a heart attack?
| ck2 wrote:
| Inflammation also burns up NAD+ in the body as shown by
| skyrocketing CRP levels (C-Reactive Protein)
|
| It's one of the reasons why B3 supplements like NMN and NR (and
| niacin) are all the rage for "anti-aging" right now to restore
| NAD+
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6146930/
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7908681/
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9138308/
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/hs-CRP-levels-in-differe...
| qorrect wrote:
| Are you taking any NAD+ supplements? I am as of a week ago,
| just curious if anyone else is.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| How are you tracking the efficacy? Did you measure an actual
| deficiency in your blood? What effects are you hoping for? If
| you don't get the desired effects, what will you do?
|
| I always feel a bit of FOMO whenever supplements are being
| discussed, then again if I bought all the supplements every
| time I'd have a whole apothecary...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| N == 1, but after I started taking NR, my slow descent
| towards presbyopia (I am 45 now) stopped and reversed
| itself.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I'm taking NMN.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Would a person with normal CRP (measured incidentally a couple
| times a year) want to take NAD+?
| ck2 wrote:
| There is virtually no benefit and only downsides to healthy
| people under 40 supplementing NAD+ via any pathway.
|
| The supplement people will still happily market/sell it to
| you though, old-school niacin is only 10 cents a day but
| fancy new NMN/NR is easily $1 a day, they are making a
| fortune.
| voisin wrote:
| Doesn't niacin lead to prettt severe hot flashes / flushing
| of the face and extremities? I know someone who was told to
| take it for cholesterol (I think) and it sounded painful!
| simpsond wrote:
| Yes, too much niacin can make your entire body flush with
| a burning sensation.
| ck2 wrote:
| Niacin mega-doses have been used for decades to reduce
| lipids, triglycerides, etc. and yes when you take 1 gram
| it will causes a painful flushing.
|
| However to simply raise NAD+ levels you can take as
| little as 100mg
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Inflammation serves a purpose, blocking it out right gonna have
| some unknown consequences like when you are supposed to have
| inflammation but it doesn't.
| tedunangst wrote:
| What happens if we feed these mice purple tomatoes?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40886385
| olalonde wrote:
| Excerpt from a book I just read, The Renaissance Diet 2.0:
|
| > What about all those cancer studies [about artificial
| sweeteners] in rats? The first study that initiated this scare
| was done in the 1970s, and saccharin at high doses was found to
| cause bladder cancer in rats. Pretty scary, except that in the
| early 2000s, it was shown that this reaction to saccharin was
| unique to rats and mechanistically impossible in humans. To
| illustrate the point, it has also been shown that vitamin C
| increases tumor growth in rats and mice, but does not seem to
| have tumor growth effects in humans.
|
| Just sharing as a reminder that studies on animals do not
| necessarily translate to humans.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The saccharin research was on both mice and rats, and to this
| day the jury is still out on manufactured sweeteners and their
| health impact.
|
| Of course animal models "don't necessarily" translate; a first
| year med student knows that. Mice are still an excellent model
| as a step moving closer toward human trials because mice are
| incredibly similar to us physiologically and genetically, and
| we have a great deal of understanding about those similarities
| and differences.
|
| Half the article discusses the challenges involved in trying to
| move beyond the mouse model to study the phenomenon more.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| One can just look at the average American and the drink in
| their hands and pretty easily draw conclusions.
| olalonde wrote:
| Do you have a credible source on that? According to the same
| book:
|
| > The safety of aspartame (a commonly vilified sweetener) is
| asserted by the independent medical governing bodies of more
| than 90 countries. It has almost unanimous approval for
| safety by the top medical and drug safety councils in the
| world. The FDA has pronounced that aspartame is "one of the
| most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency
| has ever approved." The story is much the same for all other
| major artificial sweeteners, including sucralose, acesulfame
| potassium, and saccharin. A large amount of calorie-free
| sweetener can be consumed before an even mild health risk.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| The process for such approvals is time and resource
| intensive. And yet, we have a new & improved artificial
| sweeteners every few years. Yes, I know the argument... the
| newest one tastes better. They said the same thing about
| new Coke.
|
| Seems somewhat odd that something as simple as a sweeter
| needs to be re-engineered so often.
| olalonde wrote:
| What's odd about it? I'm not sure I understand what you
| are implying.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| We don't get a new salt every X years. And that doesn't
| need to be tested and approved.
|
| * Just a loose example, you can come up with your own
| additive or whatever.
|
| p.s. For context, I have bad reactions to Aspartame. It
| took me a couple exposures to figure it out, with the
| last one nearly landing me in hospital. I certainly
| understand that nothing engineered is 100% safe.
| Nonetheless, I have personal experience with one of the
| "safe" sweeteners.
| DaoVeles wrote:
| They are probably re-engineered by different companies so
| they have a monopoly on that product for the lifetime of
| the patent. Could also have a different chemical profile
| in terms of application and taste.
|
| I guess it is like car tires. One variety could service
| most and it could be made by a single company but every
| tire manufacture has their own angle.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| How is it simple? It's the most obvious taste in most
| foods or drinks it's in, so any minor change is very
| obvious
| Terr_ wrote:
| > To illustrate the point, it has also been shown that vitamin
| C increases tumor growth in rats and mice, but does not seem to
| have tumor growth effects in humans.
|
| Worth noting that regular (non-GMO) mice can synthesize their
| own vitamin-C without needing it "pre-made" in their diet,
| unlike [clarification-edit: some but not all] primates (i.e.
| humans) and sporadic clusters of animals.
|
| In other words, there are already some pretty important
| differences between how the two species process normal amounts
| of that nutrient.
| blacksqr wrote:
| Humans are the only primates that can't make their own
| vitamin c.
|
| Inability to make vitamin c is a rarity among mammals.
| wcoenen wrote:
| Humans aren't the only primates with this trait. It's all
| the Haplorhini.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| The translation rate is surprisingly bad.
|
| > Analysis of animal-to-human translation shows that only 5% of
| animal-tested therapeutic interventions obtain regulatory
| approval for human applications
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The "badness" of that number depends on the base rate. The
| base is getting to regulatory approval by doing exploratory
| studies on humans tissue (you can't ethically do exploratory
| studies on human subjects).
|
| If the base rate is 0.5%, then 5% is an order of magnitude
| improvement and pretty good. If the base rate is 4%, then 5%
| is pretty bad.
|
| I would suspect that the base rate is far below 0.5%.
| amenhotep wrote:
| But we're not comparing our excitedness about reading
| results in rats to our excitedness about reading results in
| human tissue. We're just trying to decide how excited we
| should be about the rat headlines.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It's yet another thing this kind of lay audience doesn't
| understand about the scientific process. What should you take
| from studies like this? Nothing. They probably shouldn't even
| be getting shared to Hacker News. They're conducted because we
| can't experiment using novel compounds directly on humans until
| we've shown there is some reason to do so first. Finding an
| effect on mice is such a reason. This type of research is
| published for the sake of other researchers, who can now see if
| the effect is also seen in humans.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| > A traditional Mediterranean dietary pattern, which typically
| has a high ratio of monounsaturated (MUFA) to saturated (SFA)
| fats and o-3 to o-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFAs) and
| supplies an abundance of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and grains,
| has shown anti-inflammatory effects when compared with typical
| North American and Northern European dietary patterns in most
| observational and interventional studies and may become the diet
| of choice for diminishing chronic inflammation in clinical
| practice.
|
| [PDF] https://www.academia.edu/download/87525661/256634.pdf
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Has anyone tried breeding mice for extremely long lifespans?
| Seems like something that would be fairly simple to implement
| considering the generational turnaround time of the species.
| lawlessone wrote:
| I wonder has anyone tried combining all the disparate techniques
| we have found so far?
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02224-1 There is this
| other protein too.
|
| I always wonder would these combined with things like senolytics
| etc have a greater effect?
| wdwvt1 wrote:
| Inflammation is an extremely broad term which covers an extremely
| wide range of chemical responses in the body. You should be
| _extremely_ skeptical of anything that discusses "inflammation"
| as a single thing or even an easily understandable set of things.
| You should also be skeptical of people that link certain diets,
| nutrients, extracts, etc. to changes in "inflammation".
|
| When people think inflammation they think "inflammation up =
| oxidative damage". This is the tiniest part of the story.
| Instead, you should think about the following several things.
|
| 1. Every individual component of an inflammatory cascade
| (=different protein signalling molecules released by cells) has a
| huge number of different effects. Some component that 'increases
| inflammation' might cause a certain set of neutrophils to
| increase oxidative activity in a particular area. That same
| component, however, might signal to nearby cells to turn on
| repair genes that close a wound or repair oxidative damage. It
| might also change the lining of the blood vessels to allow
| passage of different repair cells or more nutrients to the
| affected tissue. The bottom line is that if you understand only
| the "inflammation = oxidative damage" part of this story, you
| miss the much larger effects this inflammatory cascade is having
| on the body. In this case, the molecule I am talking about is
| IL-6; it causes 'inflammation' but it also is the canonical
| regulator of wound repair in your lungs, skin, and liver. It's a
| good 'pro-inflammatory' molecule in the right context.
|
| 2. Inflammation is not a static measure, it's not a state
| function. Staying on IL-6 as our example, correct timing of
| release is critical to cause wound repair in epithelial tissues.
| If you just see "high IL-6" you can't tell whether that's good or
| bad. You need to know the local tissue history and where you are
| in the cycle of damage --> repair.
|
| 3. Good neighbors make good fences. You are surrounded (both
| within and without) by hungry microbes that would love to access
| the energy your body greedily guards. Your body has two
| predominant modes of resolving this problem; a) it keeps the
| microbes out of privileged body spaces (e.g. blood, organs,
| etc.), b) when they reach those areas it responds to kill them
| with somewhat indiscriminate oxidative damage. The tradeoff is
| not "inflammation down --> live in harmony" the tradeoff is
| "inflammation down --> microbes access privileged body spaces -->
| inflammation incredibly high to prevent sepsis/bone
| infection/liver infection/etc". You want certain "inflammatory
| markers" to be high in the body because they keep nice tight
| barriers at places where microbes like to leak in (the gut).
|
| 4. Studies linking particular nutrients or conditions to "high
| inflammation" are often very low quality. Even when they are not
| low quality, it's hard to understand if they are correct in any
| meaningful sense. Nutrition and chemical exposure are extremely
| hard to study because you can't do very high quality experiments,
| you have extremely complex and subtle confounders, and you are
| operating at spatial scales from individual proteins all the way
| to the organism level. The chemistry, biology, and physics
| covered is over such a range that it's really hard to get
| meaningful mechanistic conclusions. Couple this with the fact
| that there is a high reward for fad diet/environmental toxicant
| research (e.g. lots of press, lots of commercial opportunities)
| and you get a low quality literature.
|
| 5. Certain types of chronic inflammation is probably bad, but
| what is inflammation and what is chronic? You are on solid ground
| if you stay specific and say something like: "chronic release of
| canonical 'pro-inflammatory' cytokines IL-4/IL-13 causes atopic
| dermatitis; contributes to SLE, AK, etc. and blockade of those
| cytokines with antibodies is an incredibly effective therapy". If
| you say "sugar causes inflammation and that's bad" it's just much
| harder to even evaluate what the truth value of that statement
| is.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-07-17 23:07 UTC)