[objetovoador]

IIRC inflammation is linked to endotoxins produced by bacteria in the gut. Apparently curcumin has a good reputation for helping people with inflammatory conditions like that. And it's been proposed that it yields positive benefits by modulating the gut rather than being bioactive (curcumin is famously not bioactive).

[hammock]

You’re being downvoted because it sounds like woo but the people downvoting aren’t up to speed on the latest science.

Nightshades are tolerated by people with healthy guts and there is a smaller set of people with a gut dysfunction that means the solanine (alkaloids) in nightshades causes leaky gut syndrome leading to the inflammation you are talking about.

Curcumin (turmeric) does alleviate this inflammation pretty powerfully, at least on a temporary basis

[atombender]

Note that "leaky gut syndrome" is pseudoscience; there's no such thing recognized by the medical community. What is real is leaky gut, or intestinal permeability.

We absolutely know for a fact that some people can have dysfunction of the tight junctions which make up the lining of the intestines. We don't know too much about it, but the idea that bacteria and endotoxins can pass through the gut wall and into the bloodstream is established fact at this point. "Endotoxin" has the sound of a pseudoscientific word, but it simply refers to the lipopolysaccharides that bacteria use to build their outer membranes.

People with some autoimmune diseases have been found to have circulating endotoxins and other bacterial byproducts in their peripheral blood, though the process (bacterial translocation) and the mechanism by which these affect the body are both poorly understood. There's been very little research into what processes can cause intestinal permeability and gut dysbiosis in autoimmune patients. For example, it's unclear if it's the cause of the autoimmunity (permeability leading to SIBO-like bacterial overload leading to an aberrant immune response), or if the autoimmune disease causes it (systemic inflammation leading to permeability).

I've not seen any peer reviewed evidence about nightshades or glycoalkaloids. There's some research on curcumin and quercetin that's interesting.

[objetovoador]

> Note that "leaky gut syndrome" is pseudoscience; there's no such thing recognized by the medical community. What is real is leaky gut, or intestinal permeability.

This seems like oversubtle reasoning that cruelly dismisses legitimate suffering from an actual disease process.

You seem to admit there's a convincing scientific basis.

Leaky gut syndrome is pseudoscience but intestinal permeability is real? Ok. It seems like medical science isn't advanced enough to sort out most gut disease, it manifests in somewhat strange and seemingly mysterious ways, and people suffering are left to discuss amongst themselves online in order to find some relief after being shrugged away by doctors (or worse hurt by inappropriate medical procedures/medicines like antibiotics, etc.).

So instead of just condescendingly labelling them anti-science whackos ("pseudoscience"), perhaps we should be compassionate and recognize the condition?

[atombender]

There's a clear distinction. While leaky gut is a real medical term, it has been misused by people who believe it to be the cause of a multitude of ailments (for which the same community of course offers "detox" advice), with no scientific evidence. You can read more here: https://badgut.org/information-centre/a-z-digestive-topics/l....

[objetovoador]

Well I've got confirmed dysbiosis (GBT) from overprescribed antibiotics and from my experience, and reading up in those communities you're so contemptuous about, I get the sense that gut dysfunction manifests in seemingly random ways, a whole constellation of weird symptoms. You just feel horrible, sometimes there's no clear cause and effect, it seems random.

I agree there is a lot of just blatant nonsense and maybe they do misuse leaky gut but I think the medical community has a habit of vilifying people who are suffering real problems. I can't tell you how many times I've had a real medical issue (be it a bacterial infection, virus, or most recently, gut dysbiosis) and my doctor blames it on anxiety and offers me lexapro.

[beebmam]

He's being downvoted because "inflammation" is caused by an enormous amount of things. It's not "linked to endotoxins". I tore my MCL and I had inflammation quite shortly afterwards, which likely protected my knee from further injury. Endotoxins had nothing to do with the inflammation I experienced.

[objetovoador]

I mean it in the context of people who have joint pain that’s not from injury. And yes endotoxins are linked to joint pain:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31653850/

[voisin]

Can you share any of the science you’ve come across that you find compelling based on sample size, effect side, etc? I’d love to know dosages.

[hammock]

It’s more of a meta analysis in my mind of all the different studies and anecdotes I’ve osmoted over the years. As someone else said earlier, there aren’t great and clear individual studies because there isn’t any money in it.

For dosing curcumin, you can try juicing a quarter inch of turmeric root a day and starting there, I have seen that knock out a lot of things within a short number of days

[michaelmrose]

That isn't what a meta analysis is. I'm not trying to be cruel but people know all sorts of things that aren't true based on insufficient evidence and weak correlation. I did this thing and got that result is extremely powerful for an individual but without controlling for other factors its hard to know if they are assigning credit to an irrelevant factor or one that was more specific to their situation and not generalizable.

[objetovoador]

> That isn't what a meta analysis is. I'm not trying to be cruel[...]

That's why he didn't call it a meta-analysis but instead said "It’s more of a meta analysis in my mind of all the different studies and anecdotes I’ve osmoted over the years"

It'd be one thing if he said all those things as some sort of scientific fact, but he very clearly qualified his statements as hypothetical conclusions informed by surveying literature, reading developments and other things.

By saying "I'm not trying to be cruel" you seem to be at least aware that you're being pretty censorious. It seems misplaced to me.

[michaelmrose]

You want me to call a spade a spade. Meta analysis is an actual term of art in the sciences. People sharing folk wisdom about diet is mostly malarkey of between zero and dubious value spoken in a confident tone it doesn't deserve.

[gardenfelder]

Best to use ground black pepper when you use turmeric: that increases the bioavailability of the curcumin

[ajb]

I read (I think in a hn comment a while back, that the reason black pepper increases the bio availability of Turmeric is that it broadly increases the bioavailability of everything in your gut at the time. Which is probably not what you want.

(Will now go and look for the comment and edit here if I find it)