[HN Gopher] Inflammation in the gut is encoded by neurons in the...
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       Inflammation in the gut is encoded by neurons in the brain
        
       Author : nabla9
       Score  : 101 points
       Date   : 2022-01-10 20:16 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
        
       | skim_milk wrote:
       | For me, the thing that sucks most about IBS is the medication.
       | The link between mind/body/pain/inflammation is pretty obvious
       | when you start taking strong anti-inflammatory drugs, at least
       | for me! Evidently, everyone in my family tree responds really
       | poorly to steroids and other anti-inflammatory drugs - a relative
       | of mine committed suicide after taking steroids for IBS with
       | absolutely no evident mental problems before treatment, leaving
       | behind his young family. Personally, I'd rather die early from my
       | gut diseases than go back on anti-inflammatory drugs, even the
       | modern biologic ones that supposedly have _no_ side-effects.
       | There 's just no way to target inflammation with drugs without
       | severely impacting the brain (at least with me and my family's
       | biology).
        
         | kerneltime wrote:
         | I recently came across a term "Functional Medicine"
         | https://www.ifm.org which looks at the body as a whole and
         | tries to root cause metabolic issues which can often result in
         | IBS cures.. most older medicinal practices always considered
         | the body as a unified system which make sense in terms of how
         | it is engineered but modern medicine tries to break things down
         | and often misses the cross specialization impacts. Best of
         | luck!
        
         | serverholic wrote:
         | I have autonomic-dysfunction, basically my nervous system
         | malfunctions in (luckily) mild ways. I've noticed that if I go
         | from an unhealthy lifestyle to suddenly living a healthy
         | lifestyle there's often a period where I feel sick, pale, and
         | faint.
         | 
         | Luckily this effect only lasts a few days for me but it's made
         | me wonder if our bodies find ways around malfunctioning and
         | then can't adjust quickly enough if the malfunction is reduced
         | or removed.
        
         | emerongi wrote:
         | Above all, for all readers: talk about these things with your
         | doctors. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence online and it's
         | just like negative reviews: the people with positive
         | experiences aren't really talking about it much.
         | 
         | As someone with a bowel disease, I can thank medicine for
         | giving my life back.
        
       | wombatmobile wrote:
       | I'm not sure how to discuss TFA because I can only read half a
       | paragraph of it due to the paywall.
       | 
       | Instead of commenting speculatively, I'm going to wait for
       | someone to post more of the article, or a link to the full
       | article.
        
       | csours wrote:
       | Is there a good intermediate/undergraduate level write up of this
       | inflammation link? There's a lot of quackery out there on this
       | subject, so I don't trust search results.
        
         | sooheon wrote:
         | Seems like a novel finding, so the paper in OP's link (and
         | references) would be the best place to start.
        
       | dekhn wrote:
       | a note: when Nature says "Inflammation in the gut is encoded by
       | neurons in the brain" it really means "some inflammation in the
       | gut is associated with neurons in the brain". Not "all", just
       | some. scientists and science journalists often write PR that
       | makes the work sound more general than it is. And "encoded" is a
       | really squishy term. Just because neurons "light up" when you
       | apply a condition, and can replicate that condition under some
       | circumstances, doesn't mean the data is "encoded".
        
       | bryan0 wrote:
       | non-paywalled summary?
        
       | panabee wrote:
       | Article on related research: https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-
       | science-shows-immune-memo...
       | 
       | Summary of article on related research: More than a century
       | later, in a paper published today in Cell, the neuroimmunologist
       | Asya Rolls has shown that a similar kind of conditioning extends
       | to immune responses. Using state-of-the-art genetic tools in
       | mice, her team at the Technion in Haifa, Israel, identified brain
       | neurons that became active during experimentally induced
       | inflammation in the abdomen. Later, the researchers showed that
       | restimulating those neurons could trigger the same types of
       | inflammation again.
        
       | andrewpkyap wrote:
       | I don't think that it's wise to start imagining how this finding
       | would implicate diseases, much less "other diseases".
        
       | echelon wrote:
       | It feels like we're on the precipice of linking a number of
       | neurodegenerative diseases [1], auto-immune diseases [2], and a
       | whole host of other ailments to immune and gut health.
       | 
       | Likewise finding incredible links for liver (potentially
       | Alzheimer's [3]) and pulmonary health (air quality, heart disease
       | [4]).
       | 
       | Who knew? But it seems obvious in retrospect. We're truly
       | dynamical, vastly interlinked systems.
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...
       | 
       | [2]
       | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190219080742.h...
       | 
       | [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29393937
       | 
       | [4] https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/linking-air-pollution-
       | and...
        
         | CoastalCoder wrote:
         | That's my hope as well.
         | 
         | But that's somewhat tempered by reports of reproducibility
         | crises in scientific / academic research.
         | 
         | I wish I had a better sense of the extent to which that matters
         | for stories like this.
        
       | Ozzie_osman wrote:
       | I wonder if this has implications for pain management as well. Ie
       | is the brain doing the same thing for things like chronic back
       | pain (the pain triggers some neural imprint, but the imprint can
       | then trigger the pain again even if the underlying physical
       | problem had gone away).
        
       | eli_gottlieb wrote:
       | >Writing in Cell, Koren et al.3 demonstrate that inflammation in
       | the abdominal cavity results in the stimulation of certain
       | neurons in a brain area called the insular cortex, or the insula.
       | Artificial reactivation of these 'immune-imprinted' neurons is
       | sufficient to generate organ-specific recall of inflammatory
       | responses that resemble the initial inflammatory episode.
       | 
       | Ok, so there are gut/vagal interoceptors for inflammation. Their
       | ascending fibers land in the insula, which is, of course, the
       | primary interoceptive cortex. What's new here?
        
         | ramraj07 wrote:
         | What's new is that the neurons can trigger back the same
         | inflammation that got imprinted on them.
        
           | 52-6F-62 wrote:
           | I don't have access to the article, and I'm probably not
           | versed enough to understand it fully anyway.
           | 
           | So, if I may ask you, or the larger thread--
           | 
           | this is implying the the inflammation will repeat if the
           | neurons are activated [in such a way]?
           | 
           | Could/would this impact one-time sufferers of SIRS and/or
           | acute pancreatitis (being an inflammatory disease)?
           | 
           | Would it match the original severity?
        
       | treeman79 wrote:
       | Having dealt with an autoimmune condition and been involved with
       | various forums I have seen a strong pattern.
       | 
       | First trying lots of medications. Sometimes this goes well.
       | Sometimes not.
       | 
       | Then supplements.
       | 
       | Then eventually people get serious about diet. Turns out there is
       | a diet built around autoimmune conditions. Autoimmune Protocol
       | Diet. Many people have great success with it. Not all.
       | 
       | Would love so see some studies on it.
        
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