This seems to go hand in hand with the idea, suggested by Jason Fung and others, that one should fast when sick.
If we stop eating, then there's less nutrients available for invaders, who have a large need to grow and replicate so they can spread to the next host. The human body doesn't need to rapidly grow though, so it can go without much food for a few days.
And the body can focus on fighting the disease and not digestion, which is work, too. I am currently sick and I just don't want to eat (much), so I won't. That's why we have fat reserves.
Anecdotally, several people have told that they lost a few pounds of fat while suffering from mild COVID-19 symptoms despite still eating during the course of the disease. And this was real fat loss, not just dehydration. Fighting the infection seems to burn a lot of calories.
The presumed point is to have fewer nutrients. Reduced appetite accomplishes this, as do less efficient digestive processes. Both together should compliment each other.
Yes, but it stresses metabolism even more. When your immune system is using energy, stressing it with food if you are not suffering from malnutrition may not help.
Instead of eating, try resting and laying still. Don't even watch movies. Maybe listen only music or listen podcasts if you must.
This is just anecdotal and personal, but if I just have patience to stay still and lay down, I usually get better faster.
I tried finding the articles I learned this from originally, but he appears to have migrated to a new blog and I can no longer find the sources, but IIRC Fung claims that this is the bodies way of solving precisely the "no-nutrients-for-the-invader" problem. Just dial down hunger as low as possible, to avoid eating.
See also "anaemia of chronic disease" -- people with chronic infections or inflammation often end up suffering from what is effectively iron-deficiency anaemia, because their bodies sequester iron to keep it away from pathogens.
That's my running theory why my IBS, especially after eating gluten-rich foods for multiple days, gives me terrible restless legs syndrome that keeps me up at night: malabsorption and systemic inflammation causes iron deficiency, which in my case is resolved after a week of zero carb diet. A myriad of vegetables likewise give me IBS-like symptoms, whereas meat causes zero discomfort and has a ton of bioavailable minerals.
I've also found cod liver (such an underrated delicacy) and iron supplements sometimes give me a tremendous amount of energy a couple hours after ingestion, possibly due to chronic mineral deficiencies. I am not anaemic btw, and male, so I'm not losing iron every month. I should try and take iron pills more often, but one needs to be careful not to go overboard with metals.
Do you know if iron supplementation increase the risk of harmful gut infection in susceptible people, for instance those with diverticulosis? I've recently started supplementing iron myself (i'm mostly vegetarian and have had low iron levels on blood tests before) and have noticed some unpleasant intestinal changes, which could be related. I do have diverticula but not crohn's.
I can't answer your question, but I can say you really need to talk to a medical professional or nutritionist who knows your circumstances and not get the answer from the Internet.
It's well and good to generalize and I do that myself[1], but if you know you have some atypical condition please just talk to a pro who really understands your situation.
[1] For example I mentioned in another comment not too long ago that under normal circumstances dietary cholesterol isn't a big deal and it's not. But there are people with certain conditions for whom it is a very big deal.
Like many people, I have to figure stuff out for myself because the US medical industry is borderline useless. I've talked to plenty of primary care docs, gastroenterologists. They have no clue, they don't care. They just shrug off your questions and see you out the door after the allotted 6 minutes of office visit time for which I pay $75 a pop. All they want to do is procedures like colonoscopies, which I've had and which have showed nothing of note.
That really sucks, I'm sorry to hear that. I guess I've been lucky and have just had really good caregivers so far. In the circumstances you describe though it sounds like you need to do your best to read and evaluate the source material and make the best decisions you can. I wish you the best.
One thing that's worked out for me is nerding out with my doctors though. If they can't then I find a new one. So far for me this has just been with respect to lifting weights and the various consequences thereof, but I imagine the principle generalizes. I'm getting to the age where my body is going to start climbing the s-curve of decay so I hope I'm right. And I do have reason to hope.
Someone very important to me has a rare genetic disorder. It took over a decade, but that person found a doctor who actually cared and nerded out over it and followed the research. Those caregivers are out there, so don't give up looking for them. If you happen to be fortunate enough to live in California your odds of finding such a person within driving distance are quite good.
Cooking with cast iron, especially not being afraid to do longer-cooked mildly acidic foods like a braise or a lasagna, gives a pretty bio-available boost to your iron. It's mostly FE (II), but it doesn't have much time to oxidize before it's appropriately metabolized.
If you look the author is Derek Lowe. He is also the author of the hilarious series: Things I won’t Work With. (If you have not read that series you should definitely do so)
I am really impressed by and grateful for people who are deep subject matter experts and can also write in a very engaging style that regular people can follow along with and learn from.
The iron-plankton connection was used in attempt to boost salmon yields [0]. Iron was dumped off the side of a boat to cause a plankton bloom, with the goal of ultimately producing more salmon. It seems to have kind of worked?
I think scale matters. If done in big quantities, it surely would change the maritime ecology, but do you have any reason to believe there are hidden dangers?
Note that they were studying a mouse model of sepsis, which is a full-blown blood-borne bacterial infection that is certainly fatal in humans as often as not. Today this is treated by antibiotic injection and is rarely fatal if caught early, but likely this process is something like a last-ditch defense against the invading bacteria. Sequesting iron after blood cell lysis might inhibit bacterial growth but probably also means it's harder for the remaining blood cells to deliver oxygen to and pick up CO2 from important cells like those in the heart and brain, and it might mess up other basic metabolic processes. Hence this probably isn't something that gets triggered too easily, or which plays much of a role in mild illnesses. It might also be a counter-productive response in some viral illnesses.
Anyone who thinks they might be in the early stages of sepsis should seek immediate medical attention in an emergency room. This happened to me once, after foolishly swimming in the ocean after getting a deep cut on my leg - which swelled up to half again its normal size with long red streaks shooting up the whole length of the leg. Two big shots of rifampicin in each buttock and a week spent in bed with a course of some other oral antibiotics and I was fine, but in the pre-antibiotic era that might not have been the case!
> "Early sepsis is characterized by the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) - tachycardia, tachypnea, fever (over 100.4 F or 38oC) or hypothermia (below 96.8 F or 36oC), and leukopenia or leukocytosis."
We accumulate iron as we age, and the accumulation correlates with mortality.
Women's mortality starts to match men's as they progress on menopause. The theory on that is that their iron markers go up when they stop menstruation. This is also probably why blood donors have better health and longer lifespans, even when you account for the better starting health of the blood donor cohort.
One of my siblings has hereditary hemochromatosis, so their body retains far more iron than it should. This is not fun. Careful diet helps slow the buildup, but the only effective treatment is blood letting
Since you said one of your siblings has it, I assume you are half siblings? I have hereditary hemochromatosis, and since my sisters and I have different mothers, I am the only one in my family to have it. It takes two parents who carry the gene.
Anyway, yes, bloodletting (properly called phlebotomy) is really the only way to deal with it. The first 3 years after my diagnosis my hematologist and I tried out quite a few things to help control it, including diet modifications and different time intervals between phlebotomies. We ended up settling on phlebo every 6 weeks and eat whatever I want.
Regarding diet: a carnivore diet helps. This is counter intuitive because red meat is supposed to contain a lot of iron. I will leave it at that and I will let you research. Tip look at: Shawn Baker's videos
I'll just emphasize here that because the body has no biochemical mechanism to excrete iron, one should be careful not to overuse iron supplements.
As an aside, though we usually deride traditional bloodletting, I've recently learned of two conditions bloodletting / blood donation is a useful treatment for: high blood iron level, and high blood viscosity.
> Women's mortality starts to match men's as they progress on menopause.
Doctors used to prescribe women horse-derived estrogen (PREMARIN - made from PREgnant MARes' urIN) on the mistaken belief that women were deficient in estrogen after their cycles stopped. "Prescription horse piss" doesn't sell very well to people who don't necessarily trust their doctors, so the medical industry mostly switched to selling a synthetic bio-identical estrogen to treat women's supposed "estrogen deficiency".
But really it's the loss of a monthly Progesterone surge, from the post-ovulation luteal phase of the cycle, that's behind women's health advantages over men. When ovulation stops, women's death rates rapidly increases to match men's rates.
Supplemental progesterone can be taken transdermally or via injections. Most of the progesterone in a pill is lost to the first-pass metabolism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_pass_effect
Siderophores are some of the craziest things in biology, in my opinion. Short peptides (often <10 amino acids) with affinities to metal irons that are just incomprehensibly low with binding so tight you can actually deplete metals from water - 0 atoms per liter. An excellent technology for future e.g. heavy metal/nuclear contamination remediation
45 comments
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Instead of eating, try resting and laying still. Don't even watch movies. Maybe listen only music or listen podcasts if you must.
This is just anecdotal and personal, but if I just have patience to stay still and lay down, I usually get better faster.
But probably the best thing to do is: eat (but not too much) if you're hungry, don't if you're not (but probably don't go too many days without food).
I also wonder whether there is any impact on length of illness by taking things like iron and magnesium.
Aren’t zinc and magnesium a couple of the things they say to take during sickness?
It did seem like an obvious point of concern, since our bodies need iron.
I've also found cod liver (such an underrated delicacy) and iron supplements sometimes give me a tremendous amount of energy a couple hours after ingestion, possibly due to chronic mineral deficiencies. I am not anaemic btw, and male, so I'm not losing iron every month. I should try and take iron pills more often, but one needs to be careful not to go overboard with metals.
EDIT: well, apparently iron therapy for IBD is a thing. Somehow I had never heard of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_supplement#By_injection
As someone with Crohn's disease, I am interested in developing superior alternatives.
It's well and good to generalize and I do that myself[1], but if you know you have some atypical condition please just talk to a pro who really understands your situation.
[1] For example I mentioned in another comment not too long ago that under normal circumstances dietary cholesterol isn't a big deal and it's not. But there are people with certain conditions for whom it is a very big deal.
One thing that's worked out for me is nerding out with my doctors though. If they can't then I find a new one. So far for me this has just been with respect to lifting weights and the various consequences thereof, but I imagine the principle generalizes. I'm getting to the age where my body is going to start climbing the s-curve of decay so I hope I'm right. And I do have reason to hope.
Someone very important to me has a rare genetic disorder. It took over a decade, but that person found a doctor who actually cared and nerded out over it and followed the research. Those caregivers are out there, so don't give up looking for them. If you happen to be fortunate enough to live in California your odds of finding such a person within driving distance are quite good.
I am really impressed by and grateful for people who are deep subject matter experts and can also write in a very engaging style that regular people can follow along with and learn from.
Old joke: "Nice to see you. I recognize your name, but I'm damned if I can remember your face."
0: https://archive.nytimes.com/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/...
I think scale matters. If done in big quantities, it surely would change the maritime ecology, but do you have any reason to believe there are hidden dangers?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-022-00723-5
Note that they were studying a mouse model of sepsis, which is a full-blown blood-borne bacterial infection that is certainly fatal in humans as often as not. Today this is treated by antibiotic injection and is rarely fatal if caught early, but likely this process is something like a last-ditch defense against the invading bacteria. Sequesting iron after blood cell lysis might inhibit bacterial growth but probably also means it's harder for the remaining blood cells to deliver oxygen to and pick up CO2 from important cells like those in the heart and brain, and it might mess up other basic metabolic processes. Hence this probably isn't something that gets triggered too easily, or which plays much of a role in mild illnesses. It might also be a counter-productive response in some viral illnesses.
Anyone who thinks they might be in the early stages of sepsis should seek immediate medical attention in an emergency room. This happened to me once, after foolishly swimming in the ocean after getting a deep cut on my leg - which swelled up to half again its normal size with long red streaks shooting up the whole length of the leg. Two big shots of rifampicin in each buttock and a week spent in bed with a course of some other oral antibiotics and I was fine, but in the pre-antibiotic era that might not have been the case!
> "Early sepsis is characterized by the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) - tachycardia, tachypnea, fever (over 100.4 F or 38oC) or hypothermia (below 96.8 F or 36oC), and leukopenia or leukocytosis."
https://www.news-medical.net/health/Everything-You-Need-To-K...
Women's mortality starts to match men's as they progress on menopause. The theory on that is that their iron markers go up when they stop menstruation. This is also probably why blood donors have better health and longer lifespans, even when you account for the better starting health of the blood donor cohort.
Anyway, yes, bloodletting (properly called phlebotomy) is really the only way to deal with it. The first 3 years after my diagnosis my hematologist and I tried out quite a few things to help control it, including diet modifications and different time intervals between phlebotomies. We ended up settling on phlebo every 6 weeks and eat whatever I want.
As an aside, though we usually deride traditional bloodletting, I've recently learned of two conditions bloodletting / blood donation is a useful treatment for: high blood iron level, and high blood viscosity.
Doctors used to prescribe women horse-derived estrogen (PREMARIN - made from PREgnant MARes' urIN) on the mistaken belief that women were deficient in estrogen after their cycles stopped. "Prescription horse piss" doesn't sell very well to people who don't necessarily trust their doctors, so the medical industry mostly switched to selling a synthetic bio-identical estrogen to treat women's supposed "estrogen deficiency".
But really it's the loss of a monthly Progesterone surge, from the post-ovulation luteal phase of the cycle, that's behind women's health advantages over men. When ovulation stops, women's death rates rapidly increases to match men's rates.
Supplemental progesterone can be taken transdermally or via injections. Most of the progesterone in a pill is lost to the first-pass metabolism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_pass_effect
In The Pipeline
Derek Lowe’s commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/feed