Rethinking of disease

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BDK
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Rethinking of disease

Post by BDK »

Rethinking of “germ” or disease theory.

This is very simplistic, and a rough outline. I’m not providing cites, etc. This may be more of a small book/phD, to properly explain.

Essentially, germ theory is, conventionally, viewed as “We have found a vile beastie, we must kill it with Broadband Killer X, toxic to almost all of a wide category.”

So, as it turns out, the human body is better modeled as a ecosystem, than a machine – some of this change is an inevitable result of technological change, but it does seem to be more accurate. (Our organs are more of a diverse array of connected and interdependent ecosystems, than machines.)

We have more bacterial cells, than we have our own cells, on our body, and we are vitally dependent on the balance of yeast, bacteria, bacteriophage (viruses which infect bacteria), and I would suspect, viruses which prey on the yeast.

This is more of a complex predator prey model, which is both dependent on the ecosystem, and which supports it - which is true of macro ecosystems as well.

Now, the term I have heard used is "microecology," but no one's formally named it, yet, TMK.

Antibiotics act as an intense fire, in an environment which isn’t centered on fire. Lots of species are lost, and the ratios seem to skew drastically. (It is currently thought that an indigenous human has about 8,000 species of bacteria in their digestive tract alone, someone in the first world has 250.)

We have long known of a link between food preservatives and cancer – and food preservatives act by mutating the DNA in bacteria (its one of their uses in a laboratory), so this is not a surprise – however, a lifetime of consuming chemicals which are directly toxic to what is a vital part of our body, will most likely prove to be a very significant issue.

We have also found that bacteria which we thought were purely pathogenic, are in fact very widespread in the populace. (There are invasive pathogens, these would be things like whatever hellish fever pops out of some place with horrible sanitation – think of them like kudzu, zebra mussels, etc.)

In a very simple way, say we envision this ecosystem as a lush Bermuda grass lawn. Very healthy, and vibrant, lots of nutrients, and good soil. Due to some damage/other defect, some dollar weed gets established.

Now, the correct solution (as I’ve been told, not a lawn expert), is to closely mow the lawn, as the desired species can very easily outcompete the invader, if kept mown.

Or, we could burn the lawn, and then let whatver willl regrow, sprout up, and continue to burn it, as long as we keep seeing dollar weed.

So, rather than burn the lawn, we need to start looking at A) what went wrong which let the weed get established, and B) what can be done to allow the ecosystem to rebalance, and most importantly C) how can we establish a healthy ecosystem in the first place, when its been lost in so much of the developed world.
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blackeagle603
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by blackeagle603 »

Would seem to relate to the suggestion that a ketogenic diet is beneficial in that (among other things) it starves sugar hungry beasties like cancers.

...and feeding the beneficial gut beasties with prebiotics.
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BDK
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by BDK »

Yes, though ideally there would be a more specific process to re-seed missing elements/provide environmental conditions to more specifically address any inadequacies.

Essentially exactly how you would address a weed-filled pasture which you want to re-establish a healthy natural forest or pasture
BDK
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by BDK »

This works great on MRSA - but the FDA provides some structural hurdles in actually marketing it.
AggieWalt
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by AggieWalt »

So in essence you are getting on to some critical points that we are just coming to understanding. One thing that that you need to understand that in areas (especially the gut) the human body through production of general antimicrobial molecules and specific immune responses act in concert with the constituents of the normal commesal microbiome to restrict the effects of certain pathogens and opportunistic pathogens while acting in a nutrient breakdown chain to support one another. It is important to note that microbomes and what is normal varies due to exposures and immunological tolerance. There are a lot of niches in the gut and the skin and other sites that can be filled by multiple species and which one occupies that niche is largely due to what the host recognizes as normal and will allow to grow. Short term alterations (days to weeks) in the composition of the microbiome are actually pretty typical and there is a degree of flux that is normal and tolerated usually do to diet, stress, disease, antibiotics etc. but over longer periods the microbiome is stable due to the immune system of the host and the the relative abundance of nutrients and other members of the microbiome that rely upon one another. However there are cases where this is not true. Sometimes certain pathogens can subvert the population dynamics after external disturbances or have developed ways of disturbing the dynamics themselves. A classic example of this is C. difficile after antibiotic treatment, this nasty bug stays around and is pathogenic after broad spectrum antibiotics due to subversion of the dynamics (being more fit int he new environment) and we are finding out that is has multiple ways of shutting down our immune system which really are cool is a terrifying way. Another example off the other end is IBD where your immune system goes haywire and then there is a change in the microbiome because the host is no longer pruning the microbial garden and this change perpetuates inflammation that is already happening. One final example then I will leave it off is the case of hyperphagia and over nutrition, this chronic change in the nutrient load causes low level inflammation and changes the population of the microbiome during these event the host learns that the new population is the correct and there is little to no long term response to the population change that become semi-permanent due to environmental (nutrient load) changes.
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AggieWalt
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by AggieWalt »

BDK wrote:Yes, though ideally there would be a more specific process to re-seed missing elements/provide environmental conditions to more specifically address any inadequacies.

Essentially exactly how you would address a weed-filled pasture which you want to re-establish a healthy natural forest or pasture

Look up re-poopulate

It's a real product.
Apathy rules with an iron fist so we must strike back with steel resolve.
BDK
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by BDK »

Walt, are you at A&M? If so, and you like this stuff, there are a couple prof's working on this, coming from bacteriophage - it would probably really tie in w your work you have mentioned on water sources
BDK
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by BDK »

The issue w repopulating is that we cannot culture the vast majority of species.

Hell, I don't think anyone was even really looking at flora seriously until fairly recently - which is odd, as I remember being taught the importance of the genital and skin biomes in undergrad
BDK
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by BDK »

The folks I know we're looking more at it from how bacteriophage based therapies should work.

But that is probably simplistic - it's not that Beastie X has over-populated, it's that it has had the opportunity to do so - and I strongly suspect that will tie into diet/stress/exercise the macro level

I've been trying to think of how to elegantly and simply express it, but, essentially, our overall health, micro biotic health and living conditions are all interlocked - which I find a bit fascinated by it, as it makes pop gen important, which we all hated.

And... I think pop gen models may be able to be adapted to economic models as well
AggieWalt
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by AggieWalt »

BDK wrote:Walt, are you at A&M? If so, and you like this stuff, there are a couple prof's working on this, coming from bacteriophage - it would probably really tie in w your work you have mentioned on water sources
Yep and I am working closely with Robert Alaniz who is setting us up a gnotobiotic core and microbiomics core.
Apathy rules with an iron fist so we must strike back with steel resolve.
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