Rethinking of disease

Discussion of all things technological and/or gadgety
BDK
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by BDK »

Cool. Ryland Young and Carlos Espinoza were the two prof's who talked to me about it - along with the issue that many profs aren't aware of what other prof's are researching.
AggieWalt
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by AggieWalt »

BDK wrote: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
True, we knew it but until the really neat deep seq methods were well developed and cheap (the most important part) we couldn't do much about it. But re-poopulate is literally freeze-dried poop in a capsule. We no longer have to take a bite of the shit sandwich, it comes in pill form now :lol:
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AggieWalt
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by AggieWalt »

BDK wrote:Cool. Ryland Young and Carlos Espinoza were the two prof's who talked to me about it - along with the issue that many profs aren't aware of what other prof's are researching.

What college are they in at A&M? I'm in the HSC so we are pretty cloistered.
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AggieWalt
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by AggieWalt »

BDK wrote: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
Are you a modeler?
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BDK
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by BDK »

No, I'm an ice cream maker/lawyer.

They are in the Biochem department, over in the bio-bio building. Technically we were Ag students in undergrad.
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Jered
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by Jered »

I think that part of the thing that the medical profession (AKA doctors) get wrong, at least as far as disease is concerned is that they look, essentially, at the disease through a microscope, and they don't see the whole picture of the big person.

If you look at the history of medicine, it's only in about the past, probably sixty years or so, that we've really fundamentally been able to start to grasp how the human body functions at the microscopic level.
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BDK
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by BDK »

60 years ago or so we didn't even know what DNA was.

We still don't have a clue at the micro level

For the most part doctors do a pretty good job with the large scale stuff. "Eat lots of veggies, get exercise and rest and don't stress too much."

I think we are handling pathogens really poorly.
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Jered
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by Jered »

For pathogens and disease, the two most effective things that we've done, ever, are probably our clean tap water and indoor flush toilets.
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Cobar
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by Cobar »

Reminds me of the story I heard about some leper colony where some nun made sure everyone washed their hands and they found the leprosy didn't spread. Rome did pretty well overall, possibly due to their rather obsessive cleanliness.

I wonder sometimes if we aren't tipping the scales the other way with all of our anti-microbial stuff. Maybe it is just alarmist hippie anti-chemical stuff, but aren't we supposed to have a whole colony of benign stuff living on our skin?
BDK
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Re: Rethinking of disease

Post by BDK »

Yes, the biome on the skin is one of the things AggieWalt mentioned.

We know now, that keeping that biome is vital.

I suspect where we are heading, both in trying to keep environments sanitary and in overall disease, is more biome focused, if we can get the testing methods correct.

It's much easier to keep fermented sausage save than a sterile nutrient broth, as the fermented sausage is loaded full of bacteria which outcompete the pathogens.

Just like a rich, fertile field - if it has native sod over it, just keep it burned every few years.

It is laying bare and exposed, you'll go nuts trying to keep the weeds out.

Given all the oral antibiotics, food preservatives, and, probably, sanitary foods instead of preserved and fresh foods we eat, our organs resemble something like those bare fields.
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