Aging-related inflammation is not universal across human populations | Hacker News Reader

Aging-related inflammation is not universal across human populations

publichealth.columbia.edu

128 pointsXzetaU861 comments

If anyone wants an interesting read on inflammation / stress for lay audiences, I'd recommend 'Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers' by Sapolsky.

Thanks. Does it provide workable solutions? :)

surprisingly, yes :)

Are they "be a zebra"?

Sometimes the world is really just black and white.

He's also given many talks which are on youtube on the topic, one of which is his talk of the same name at the Beckman institute [1]. It's a little under 90 minutes and is enormously entertaining as well as being informative.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9H9qTdserM

I'd be cautious with Sapolsky claims. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/06/30/its-sapols...

the confusing things for a layman is the different kinds of messages we receive from those pop-science outlets.

on one hand they claim chronic or recurring inflammation is THE big health problem, and if we could it under control everything we'd be much healthier.

on the other hand there are messages like inflammation is good for your body because it keeps it working and e.g. the reason vegetables are so healthy is because they are basically indigestible and therefore cause mild inflammation, ergo good.

so what is it now? or are there different kinds of inflammation?

The dose makes the poison, but also…

> are there different kinds of inflammation?

Yes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflammation#Types

> they claim chronic or recurring inflammation is THE big health problem

> on the other hand there are messages like inflammation is good for your body because it keeps it working

There's no contradiction here. The first one is chronic, it's long term.

The second one is acute, it's short term, to heal or to deal with invaders.

Also, as the comment below mine points out, even this split is a massive simplification. There's many different types of inflammation, some good, some required for survival, and some which can do damage over time if they never get shut off.

maybe we're using the word "imflammation" to describe too much stuff?

I mean, we name viruses & bacterias by their category/shape/etc, so shouldn't we do something similar to inflammation? eg. blue, vege-inflammation, red inflammation, pink-diamond-shaped inflammation inflammation-from-burn, etc?

The article about this study does exactly that?

> The study used a panel of 19 cytokines—small immune-signaling proteins—to assess inflammation patterns. While these markers aligned with aging in the Italian and Singaporean datasets, they did not replicate among the Tsimane and Orang Asli, whose immune systems were shaped by persistent infections and distinct environmental exposures.

[...]

> The authors call for a reevaluation of how aging and inflammation are measured across populations and emphasize the need for standardized, context-aware tools. "Factors like environment, lifestyle—such as high physical activity or a very low-fat diet—and infection may all influence how the immune system ages," said Cohen. "Understanding how these elements interact could help develop more effective global health strategies."

Not sure how you think your fictitious categories would help or present any new ideas. The study already does what you call for, but using science instead of imagination.

sorry I didn't read the article - just the parent comment

I often make the same mistake, my comment was not meant to be harsh

We do. But you can’t expect social media health influencers/grifters to use them, yet they’re the backbone of American health and nutrition education.

As an analogy: drinking water is important. Drowning in water is deadly.

Breaking down muscle is good, not letting the muscle recover is bad

Same kind of thing

It is my understanding that we have tried anti inflammatory interventions and they didn’t help. So the conclusion that inflammation per se is not the problem seems to check out.

Are you sure the side effects of the interventions were not the problem?

I dimmly remember Japanese research about how fasting induced autophagy could help.

There’s dozens of pro-inflammatory signaling proteins. Our anti-inflammatories really only target a small subset of them.

Ideally you need to stop inflammatory signals at the source, but we understand very few of those.

It's also frustrating how, for the targeted anti-inflammatories we do have, there's no real way to know which one will be the most effective for someone other than trying several until you find one that does. More options are always better, but many common autoimmune conditions have approved drugs that target TNF, JAK, and four or five different interleukins... it'd be nice if there was a predictive blood test that showed whether you had abnormally high levels of any of those targets so you didn't have to guess wildly. (And even then, there are at least a few overlapping drugs for each of those targets, but at least "try an IL-17 inhibitor" gives you a smaller pool :P)

Studies have shown GLP-1's in addition to weight loss have a significant system wide anti-inflammation effect.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10230051/#:~:text=G...

but is it the weight loss driving all those anti-inflammation benefits

from what I have read, it appears that while the weight loss plays a role that the anti-inflammatory effects exist independently of that as well.

I am cheating as I don't want to do a lot of writing to summarize so I just had chatGPT summarize for me:

Mechanisms Beyond Weight Loss Direct Action on Immune Cells:

GLP-1 receptors are found on several immune cells (like macrophages, T cells, and dendritic cells).

Activation of these receptors can suppress pro-inflammatory cytokines (like TNF-α, IL-6) and enhance anti-inflammatory ones (like IL-10).

Reduction in Systemic Inflammation:

Studies show reduced levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukins in patients taking GLP-1s, even when controlling for weight loss.

In diabetic patients, GLP-1s can reduce oxidative stress and endothelial inflammation, improving cardiovascular outcomes.

Improved Gut Barrier Function:

GLP-1s may reduce gut permeability ("leaky gut"), which helps prevent the translocation of inflammatory endotoxins (like LPS) into circulation.

Neuroinflammation:

In animal models, GLP-1s cross the blood-brain barrier and have shown protective effects against neuroinflammation, relevant in diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

This is like saying "it appears machines rust more near the sea than the desert". Well yeah...

That sounds like something that would be important to notice, and that understanding why it happens would lead to an explanation of the causes of rust, hopefully followed by methods to help prevent things rusting.

i.e. I don't understand what you're saying.

So a bored immune system will find targets that really shouldn’t be aimed at. Something about that old adage of idle hands and mischief but immune systems and aging related chronic illness

We do not really know what causes misdirection of the immune system in the old age. "Boredom" (= underutilization) is just one of many hypotheses. Differences between lives of jungle dwellers and urban people are just too big to pinpoint one root cause (such as parasitic infestations). Various chemicals may also play a role, as may artificial light, differences in food composition etc.

Let's say you're eating some wheat. You have no issues with it.

One day, you eat wheat that was contaminated with something, call it thing X. It causes a reaction. Yet the reaction now targets wheat and thing X, and so wheat is now troublesome.

Unsure on the validity of this.

Gluten is like glue. It's possible that your digestive system is simply no longer able process glue, cause it's kinda hard to do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com