Aging-related inflammation is not universal across human populations

(publichealth.columbia.edu)

81 points | by XzetaU8 7 hours ago ago

40 comments

  • carterschonwald a minute ago

    So a bored immune system will find targets that really shouldn’t be aimed at. Something about that old adage of idle hands and mischief but immune systems and aging related chronic illness

  • 0xbadcafebee 23 minutes ago

    This is like saying "it appears machines rust more near the sea than the desert". Well yeah...

  • kpmcc 5 hours ago

    If anyone wants an interesting read on inflammation / stress for lay audiences, I'd recommend 'Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers' by Sapolsky.

    • dapperdrake 2 hours ago

      Sometimes the world is really just black and white.

    • amelius 4 hours ago

      Thanks. Does it provide workable solutions? :)

  • dinkblam 43 minutes ago

    the confusing things for a layman is the different kinds of messages we receive from those pop-science outlets.

    on one hand they claim chronic or recurring inflammation is THE big health problem, and if we could it under control everything we'd be much healthier.

    on the other hand there are messages like inflammation is good for your body because it keeps it working and e.g. the reason vegetables are so healthy is because they are basically indigestible and therefore cause mild inflammation, ergo good.

    so what is it now? or are there different kinds of inflammation?

    • esperent 32 minutes ago

      > they claim chronic or recurring inflammation is THE big health problem

      > on the other hand there are messages like inflammation is good for your body because it keeps it working

      There's no contradiction here. The first one is chronic, it's long term.

      The second one is acute, it's short term, to heal or to deal with invaders.

      Also, as the comment below mine points out, even this split is a massive simplification. There's many different types of inflammation, some good, some required for survival, and some which can do damage over time if they never get shut off.

    • flobosg 37 minutes ago

      The dose makes the poison, but also…

      > are there different kinds of inflammation?

      Yes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflammation#Types

  • adrianN 5 hours ago

    It is my understanding that we have tried anti inflammatory interventions and they didn’t help. So the conclusion that inflammation per se is not the problem seems to check out.

    • k__ 4 hours ago

      I dimmly remember Japanese research about how fasting induced autophagy could help.

    • elcritch 2 hours ago

      There’s dozens of pro-inflammatory signaling proteins. Our anti-inflammatories really only target a small subset of them.

      Ideally you need to stop inflammatory signals at the source, but we understand very few of those.

    • amelius 4 hours ago

      Are you sure the side effects of the interventions were not the problem?

  • AlgorithmicTime an hour ago

    [dead]

  • tomohawk 3 hours ago

    [dead]

  • malux85 6 hours ago

    [flagged]

    • reedf1 6 hours ago

      Then die from a yet unknown cancerous additive in nutritional yeast.

      We have made the food chain too complex.

    • jandrewrogers 6 hours ago

      Getting sufficient protein is a challenge, especially as people get older. For better or worse, animal protein is efficient for absorption but most people aren’t likely to limit themselves to whey.

      • giacomoforte 5 hours ago

        True but saturated animal fats quickly become an issue if you don't restrict yourself to fish and lean poultry and other lean meats such as rabbit.

      • 5 hours ago
        [deleted]
    • Jarmsy 6 hours ago

      Eat them while they're still alive?

    • senectus1 5 hours ago

      Gluten is only an issue for people sensitive to it. for everyone else its a perfectly fine source of protein.

      • thecupisblue 4 hours ago

        Not really, there are autoimmune conditions that can be triggered via external stimuli in which gluten causes mayhem to your body, even tho you are not sensitive to it per se.

    • lukebuehler 6 hours ago

      so, only eat vegetables?

      • Turskarama 6 hours ago

        Typically the vegetables are also dead when you eat them. "Don't eat dead things" is a moronic statement dreamed up as an attempt at shock value. It doesn't mean anything and can be safely ignored.

      • tonyedgecombe 6 hours ago

        Beans and nuts for protein?

        • guappa 6 hours ago

          You're aware of how many more grams of food you need with legumes to have the same proteins as a tiny slice of meat?

          • Majestic121 5 hours ago

            Protein per 100g of meat (let's say beef): ~26g

            Protein per 100g of soy beans: ~40g raw, ~30g cooked

            PDCAAS for beef (Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score): 0.92

            PDCAAS for soy: 0.91

            Approximately no additional grams, if you pick the right legumes.

            Sources:

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

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

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

            • jimlikeslimes 3 hours ago

              But in practice don't most people mean tofu when talking about soy beans for protein? That tends to come out at 10-13g per 100g. Same for cooked cans of soy/edamme beans and most other canned lentils/pulses? I've never seens 30g per 100g for cooked canned beans in reality.

              I eat a high protein, vegetarian diet optimised for lifting weights, and "Approximately no additional grams, if you pick the right legumes." doesn't really add up for me. For the main sources of protein I usually try to eat daily:

              Tofu 400g; eggs 3 large; cottage cheese (low-fat) 300g; greek yoghurt (0% fat) 250g; beans/lentils (mixed) 1-3 cans;

              and then also supplement with whey protein powder to get to my daily protein target (~150g). To get there with just legumes I'd need to consume 15 cans of cooked lentils (i.e. not achieveable in reality).

              • vram22 2 hours ago

                what weight of beans/lentils per can?

            • mslansn 5 hours ago

              Interesting. Beef is overall more nutritious and tastier anyway, albeit much more expensive.

    • Theodores 5 hours ago

      Did you read the article?

      You are imagining that the article said anything about gluten having anything to do with inflammation.

      The article did not say anything about going vegan.

      The Bolivian and the Malaysian tribes ate a whole food, plant based diet that was not exclusively plant based. They are on 2x the fibre of anyone in the West and they are not eating farmed animals that have been fed with commodity crops such as corn.

      What this means is that their diet is incredibly low fat, and your summary does not point to that.

      Regarding protein, animals get their protein from plants, and, if you eat enough plants, you will get enough protein unless it is processed. See Beri-beri and how that came about with American rice that lacked protein.

      In the West, where we wash our food, we need a souce of vitamin B12, which can either be supplemented or come from meat. Plants have no need for vitamin B12 so they don't have any, even though they have everything else we need. If you don't wash your food then there is an abundance of B12 from bacteria in dirt, so it is not a problem.

      Note that the tribes don't consume dairy, which is no surprise. Even the Romans thought it was a bit weird when they got to England to see grown men drinking milk from cows. In Rome the heat made that dangerous due to bacteria that get to the milk first, but the Celts had built a lifestyle around milk and they became lactose tolerant, to some degree.

      Few claim to be lactose tolerant in adulthood, but how lactose tolerant are they? Really it is not a physiological tolerance, but a mental one, an acceptance that odd rashes and a digestive tract that works less than perfectly is normal, when it isn't. Milk is for babies, and it is species specific.

      Anyone that tells you otherwise is just a victim of milk marketing and has not left milk out of their diet for long enough to realise that life without dairy is better.

      Sugar is not the root of all evil, it just rots your teeth and feeds yeast-like bacteria all the way down your digestive tract. It is the combination of excess fat and sugar that is to be avoided if you want to avoid diabetes and all of the other non-communicable chronic diseases.

      In summary, stay off the processed foods and stick to the government guidelines for nutrition.

      • modo_mario 5 hours ago

        >Few claim to be lactose tolerant in adulthood, but how lactose tolerant are they? Really it is not a physiological tolerance, but a mental one, an acceptance that odd rashes and a digestive tract that works less than perfectly is normal, when it isn't.

        This threw me off. I don't know anyone ethnically local to my area that is lactose intolerant except for one grandma and it indeed becomes more common with age. Nobody else has odd rashes or digestive tract issues linked to it. We know perfectly well how some populations have adjusted to being capable of properly digesting it so your claims seem wild. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase#Genetic_expression_and...

      • Etheryte 5 hours ago

        > Few claim to be lactose tolerant in adulthood, but how lactose tolerant are they?

        This is such an odd claim that I struggle to even find a good way to approach it. Have you seen, as an example, all of Northern Europe? I don't think I even know anyone who is lactose intolerant, dairy is a major food group for practically everyone here, regardless of age. I'm guessing you must come from a very different cultural and regional background.

      • meindnoch 4 hours ago

        >Few claim to be lactose tolerant in adulthood, but how lactose tolerant are they? Really it is not a physiological tolerance, but a mental one, an acceptance that odd rashes and a digestive tract that works less than perfectly is normal, when it isn't.

        That's highly dependent on your ancestry. Practically all of non-mediterranean Europe has no problem digesting milk.

      • forgotoldacc 5 hours ago

        > if you eat enough plants, you will get enough protein unless it is processed

        You'll get a lot of total proteins, but you'll have a very unbalanced amino acid intake unless you're going heavy on soy. Which most societies had no access to until recently.

        > In Rome the heat made that dangerous due to bacteria that get to the milk first, but the Celts had built a lifestyle around milk and they became lactose tolerant, to some degree.

        Interesting thing: in a lot of hot climates (Greece, India, Middle East as a whole) heat and bacteria worked together with milk to give us a pretty interesting food product: yogurt. And the bacteria in yogurt is often considered to be beneficial.

        > stay off the processed foods and stick to the government guidelines for nutrition.

        In the US at least, until recently, the government recommended 11 servings of grains a day. 3 servings of dairy as well.

        I think the only real conclusion to make here is: we don't know anything about what foods are healthy, and probably won't in our lifetimes. Everything is fad driven to some extent. Saturated fats were evil and sugar was good. Then sugar was evil and oils were healthy. Now cooking things with solid blocks of beef fat is being done to Make America Healthy Again(tm) because a single serving of seed oils will give you cancer. In a few years the idea of a Malaysian tribal diet will be mainstream and the true solution to becoming healthy again. Then we'll find out, like all diet studies before it, that there's some odd compounding factor and it turns out diet really had nothing to do with the difference.

        Open the news any given day and there's an article about red wine and coffee being great for your health. The next day there's an article saying a single sip is disastrous to your health. The day after that, 6 glasses of wine and 4 pots of coffee are the minimum daily intake necessary to stay healthy. The following day, having ever been near wine will ruin your health forever and you are doomed.

        Eat what doesn't make you feel or look like shit. We all have different bodies. If what you're eating makes you tired or you're getting unexpected weight gain, try something else. If you feel energized and comfortable in your body and you're at a healthy weight, you're probably okay.

      • louthy 4 hours ago

        > Few claim to be lactose tolerant in adulthood, but how lactose tolerant are they? Really it is not a physiological tolerance, but a mental one, an acceptance that odd rashes and a digestive tract that works less than perfectly is normal, when it isn't.

        I was nodding in agreement until this. I’m from the UK and although I don’t know my dna history, I’d say I’m likely of European heritage and possibly even a Celt, based on my family history.

        I don’t know a single lactose intolerant person and speaking from personal experience I do not suffer from rashes or digestive tract issues of any kind. The only possible inflammation related issue I have is relatively mild psoriasis, which doesn’t go away when cutting dairy out of the diet (I’ve tried for extended periods).

        Lactose is just another sugar, there’s no reason to believe that certain ethnic groups can’t build up a tolerance to it. Especially when you consider the timeframes. It has been ~10,000 years since humans started creating cheese, presumably we’ve been drinking animal milk for much, much longer.