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Comment by artemisyna | Hacker News Reader

I think what the other poster is saying that the bi-products of the inflammation response in themselves can also cause a problem. Yes, the obesity is probably the "cause" in the first place, but telling a person to go on a weight loss diet is going to be a bit late if that's not going to save them before the inflammation kills them.

If you've got 2 or 3 different things killing you at once, you're gonna have to deal with the "most killing" one the most, so to speak.

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AFAIK 40% of thin people also have health problems from the metabolic syndrome (e.g. CVD, diabetes), whereas 20% of the obese are healthy.

People focus too much on obesity, but obesity is more like a marker rather than a cause (even if it can make things worse by fat cells becoming inflammatory).

And I have to agree with the parent, we have an obsession with treating the symptoms instead of the cause. And there are cases in which treating those symptoms does not reduce the all cause mortality rate

The perfect example is statins. A high LDL-p might in fact be the body’s response to infection and by impairment of LDL particles production or by accelerating clearance, you can end up doing more harm than good, even if a high LDL-p is a good marker for CVD. And then you’ve got a ton of side effects that reduce quality of life, because such pills are a blunt tool with a lot of downstream effects, some of which are unforeseen.

And to put salt to injury there are studies showing that statins don’t reduce the all cause mortality in patients that haven’t suffered a stroke already. Or that even in patients that suffered a stroke, the life extension is measured on average in only a couple of months. Which actually makes a lot of sense if you really think about it.

While I don't disagree with the concept of prioritization, that's not the same as cause and effect.

Inflammation is an effect that _can_ cause other problems. But as far as I know, inflammation is a symptom of other problems, not a cause in and of itself.

Did you read the article?

The article claims that inflammation is both a symptom of other problems (when in reasonable ranges of signalling) and a causer of problems (when signalling too much).

I know the title of the article itself is a bit sensationalist, but I would assume that any tests aiming to determine if inflammation is the cause of a problem in specific would also check to make sure that the inflammation was in the "starting to cause harm" range rather than merely in the "signalling" range.

Of course a symptom can cause other problems, this has been addressed in multiple other comments. But suppressing a symptom (inflammation) does not remove the cause of the problem.

fyi:

>Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Your imunorespknse to a modern diet is one example of what triggers a cycle of inflammation. The diet isn’t necessarily good for you, but isn’t inherently bad. A 70,000 year old metabolism treats food the same way it did 70,000 years ago - turning much of the food into fat and surging you with insulin. This is what causes the inflammation. Your body isn’t in an era of scarcity - this response isn’t needed, nor is the subsequent inflammation

If the body's response to the current diet in the US (not necessarily in other countries) causes system wide inflammation, then the cause of the damage is diet/food, not inflammation. Inflammation is the symptom, regardless if there are cascading effects, they still start with the root cause.

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