The Medical Thread

True enough, though it might not necessarily need to be a root cause of aging itself to be and effective target for treating multiple aspects of aging/multiple age related diseases. Senescent cells specifically seem to be an extremely promising therapeutic target in the near term.


There's a bunch of them in the works in the biotechnology industry, and from what I've been able to glean from chats with some people at those companies* early studies seem to be exceeding expectations in terms of the sheer range of age related conditions and pathways that intersect in senescent cells.


The usual expectation based on past studies is that the benefits you get to health and longevity decrease the more long lived your subjects are, such that you can only expect minor benefits in humans for something that might extend a mouse's lifespan by say 130%, but I'm not sure that's correct, since all previous approaches to extending lifespans in model organisms have centered around calorie restriction and autophagy, and there's some evolutionary basis to think those pathways may be less significant in the aging of t long lived species vs a short lived one.


If we regard aging as damage centric (rather than programmatic, even if there are certainly programmatic elements to how the body responds to age related damage), which the most widely accepted models do, the fact that a human lives around 40 times as long as a mouse (and two to ten times as long as a similarly sized mammal) would seem to suggest that the mechanisms for mitigating and repairing primary age related degradation are considerably more robust in humans than they are in mice. If correct, that would mean many of the factors limiting mouse longevity are solved problems in humans, and while the ones that remain may be considerably harder to address than , the problems evolution already solved for us, the total number of targets that need to be considered in a human would be far smaller versus in a mouse.


One example of this is the numerous species of cross-links which occur in mice compared to nearly all collagen crosslinking in aged human tissue consisting of glucosepane. That's a much harder therapeutic target because its extremely stable, but having just one target means you could potentially see huge benefits once you solve it.


When it comes to senescent cells, the occurrence of SCs in aged human tissue is quite a bit higher than in aged murine tissue, and one possible interpretation of that is that senescent cell accumulation represents a more significant limiting factor on human longevity than they do in mice.

* it's all very hush hush since healthcare is such a huge industry and this is something that could make dozens of billionaires.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 21st 2019 at 1:10:01 PM

Facebook is (finally, almost every other social media platform of note already does this) cracking down on anti-vaccine sites. However, they won't be taking things down, just not recommending them to users, and I don't believe it stops users from flooding their feeds with garbage.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/25/health/facebook-anti-vaccine-content/index.html

Can poor sleeping habits cause problems for your mental state? How do you fix it?

Poor sleeping habits will fuck you up, physically and mentally. The only real solution is to get more sleep. If you can't do it naturally, ask a doctor for advice on sleeping aids.

A kind of remarkable antivax bit: When measles struck, investigators wanted answers. Instead, some parents lied. And that is a problem because it makes it more difficult to stop a spreading chain.

Anti-vaxxers are in large part why I believe being completely non-informed is better than being only slightly informed or worse, misinformed. It's easier to convince someone who knows nothing about vaccines that they should vaccinate their kids than it is to convince someone who bought into anti-vaxxer bullshit. Especially if the anti-vaxxer is otherwise a fairly intelligent and educated individual who is financially secure. There's a reason plenty of anti-vaxxers are upper-middle class suburbanites.

Edited by M84 on Mar 6th 2019 at 5:54:21 PM

I tend to disagree; the problem is a matter of ego and cognitive biases; many of these people are unusually knowledgeable in one area or another, and are falling into the classic trap of believing that that makes them equally knowledgeable about other domains of specialized knowledge.


We all do that to some extent (certainly I've started far too many arguments in the general US politics thread in that fashion); few of us are experts on law, business, or economics, but most of us have opinions about the inherently political aspects of those fields, and it's important to be aware of such cognitive biases and catch ourselves when we're falling into them.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Mar 11th 2019 at 11:51:54 AM

The two factors combine to make the problem worse. Exposure to a little misinformation + the arrogance that comes with being successful and an expert in other aspects of life = a parent who will raise hell to avoid vaccinating their kid.

By contrast, someone with no exposure to antivaxxer bullshit would likely be more inclined to listen to their doctor.

Edited by M84 on Mar 11th 2019 at 11:57:22 PM

I think having a small amount of information is generally a good thing as long as people understand the limits of their knowledge compared to subject matter experts. Exposure to misinformation is of course a bad thing, but as long as people are willing to accept that experts who disagree with them when they raise the issue likely know something that they don't, it's manageable.

But like I said, the combination of a little (or worse, flat out wrong) knowledge + the ego that comes with being an expert in unrelated fields = someone who thinks they know better than the actual expert.

And of course it's worse when it comes to vaccinating your kid. Because most parents tend to think that they know what's best for their kids. Having someone — anyone — tell them they are wrong? Telling them they are wrong about their kid? They become even less inclined to listen.

That's not even getting into people's tendency to distrust "The Man" or "Big <insert industry>". The whole "Big Pharma pay off doctors to shill vaccines" narrative for example.

Edited by M84 on Mar 12th 2019 at 12:46:43 AM

It's only a problem to the extent that you allow yourself to fall into that cognitive trap, which is why I call it an ego issue.

And my point is that they enable each other.

Ego or not, someone who knows nothing — has no exposure to knowledge about vaccines one way or another — would be more inclined to simply trust their physician on the matter.

Having only a little information or misinformation is more dangerous than just being uninformed.

Edited by M84 on Mar 12th 2019 at 12:48:48 AM

Anti-vaccine activists have doctors ‘terrorized into silence’ with online harassment. Imma say, that sounds quite jaw dropping...

Can we just label anti-vaxxers terrorists at this point? They are resorting to a very indirect method of biological warfare, after all.

There is actually a known principle with a little bit of knowledge being dangerous. It's referred to as the "Dunning Kruger Effect". A person given a little bit of knowledge about a topic will generally believe they know more than they actually do.

This sort of thing causes someone to become an 'armchair expert' who thinks they know as much as an actual professional.

So apparently anti-vaxxers are attacking mothers who said their children died of the flu. They claim that the women had actually murdered their children and were using the flu as a cover-up. Yeah, let's just have anti-vaxxers labeled as a terrorist/hate group already, please. Jail would be too good for these people.

Her son died. And then anti-vaxers attacked her

I see this page already has similar things related to anti-vaxers.

When it comes to defending one's own worldview and with it one's own idea of themselves as a good person, there isn't any low one won't sink to in order to defend it.

Saw this in the NYT and thought it was interesting.

That price tag though.

High-strength cannabis increases risk of mental health problems

Basically, the study indicates that using high-strength cannabis usage increases the risk of developing psychosis. Hallucinations, delusions, irrational behavior, possibly culminating in schizophrenia.

So I guess if one wants to use it, they should probably not use the strong stuff too often.

Edited by M84 on Mar 25th 2019 at 12:50:13 AM

The study had limitations because it relied on self-reported use of cannabis and only small numbers of participants were involved at each site. Also, THC and CBD content of the cannabis was not directly measured while the results might, at least in part, be down to those at greater risk of psychosis being more likely to use cannabis.

The last line especially is a common problem with this kind of research.

It does sort of indicate that maybe we need to do more studies about this. This isn't the only study that implied a connection between cannabis use and psychosis — it's just the most recent one.

Still probably better to be safe and sorry and avoid using too much of the strong stuff.

Edited by M84 on Mar 25th 2019 at 2:19:03 AM

Actually, if my understanding is correct there have been a lot more studies on cannabis<->mental health problems correlations. All of them tended to have the same "correlation or causation?" issue.

So what we need here is research with better methodologies.

https://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article222235805.html

Governor Matt Bevin (i.e. the other major asshole in KY's government) is removing 100K of people off Medicaid. Courts are challenging it because it's another move to Kill the Poor. My wife was kicked off of it due to, well, being married to me despite her many many insurance needs and conditions.

Bevin says that if he doesn't get his 100K kicked off then he'll remove all medicaid for 400K.

You know where he learned that move.