Helpful comment. I have an overactive immune system and I'm always on the lookout for ways to get it to relax.
I've done elimination diets and had blood tests to determine foods I react to. I've also met with nutritionists to create meal plans. But over the long term I tend to gravitate back to foods that my family and friends tend to eat which includes stuff that jacks up my immune system (kid didn't finish her mac and cheese? I'm on it!...visit my Italian mom? pasta time!)
So how do you keep to what you know you should do when other people in your life are doing things to the contrary?
I assume you're talking about celiac disease?
If you have already sought professional help I don't think there's anything new I can tell you besides the usual suspects like "grit your teeth and stick to the diet" or "find someone who can keep you on track like wife, siblings or friends".
That said, if I was in your position and if I couldn't tackle the problem in any of the standard ways, I'd take an NSAID like aspirin¹ on "cheat" days to temporarily suppress the immune system as an experiment and see how that works. I found a 1982 issue² of The Lancet where someone had the same idea and reports success with this strategy but I'm not even close to a medical professional and this is just one data point so YMMV, caveat emptor etc, etc.
---
¹But not ibuprofen or other NSAIDs, those seem to worsen the problem — https://www.thedailybeast.com/research-shows-link-between-ns.... Aspirin however has its own set of side-effects (bleeding risk, may interact with medication you are already taking etc) so strict diet is still the safest, long-term solution for now.
It might not be magical, but I wouldn't underestimate the complexity of replicating even simple cells. We haven't been able to replicate an amoeba let alone neurons let alone a brain.
+ have a lot of close friends. According to an 80 year Harvard study, the quality of close relationships was among the biggest factors in long term health.
“The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health,” said Robert Waldinger, director of the study, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation.”
I don't even know how I'd do that - even if I tried to book a flight that specifically didn't use a boeing plane in the US domestic airlines will swap out planes for different ones all the time due to maintenance requirements.
Choosing to use a competing product as an end consumer would require an immense sacrifice (like refusing to board your flight if it happened to be a Boeing, which you might get a rebate for?). Only if a significant amount of end consumers protested would the actual plane consumers (the airlines themselves) take notice - or if public opinion shifted to the point where there was a significant externality attached to purchasing a Boeing plane, but that certainly isn't the case now and I'd bet that Boeing has found some way to compensate airlines for the cost of having their planes grounded.
If airlines have to pay more in insurance premiums or they have to pay millions of US dollars a pop for each dead passenger, they'll demand a safer plane.
To my knowledge neither of these conditions have occurred in response to the 737 Max technical issues. Corporations listen to customer complaints that are backed up by losing revenue - as was shown with the issue where a passenger was beaten up on a United flight, people are extremely price sensitive when it comes to flying - there is math that can make the 737 unprofitable, but I think it's unlikely that the math will turn in that direction, it would take an extremely negative PR issue to start this.
I dont think people will all of a sudden start ditching cheap flights just to avoid the max or Boeing. Airline industry is extremely price sensitive from a consumer perspective, and for people to potentially sacrifice hundreds of dollars of savings would be a non sequitur.
For example, if airline A flies MAX and has a ticket for 200 and another airline B has the same route for 400 on A320, most people I know would still fly the MAX because they cant afford to be picky.
I think talking with your wallet works only when the price is relatively inelastic
If you purchase a plane ticket for a flight that appears to be carried by a bombardier model, would you refuse to board the plane at the gate if the bombardier plane ended up requiring maintenance and they swapped it out for a 737?
How many vacation days would you sacrifice out of your week in Cancun to stand by that belief?
The 737s are the most common airliner in the world, more than 10000 have been built, and more than 1000 are in the air right now. The pre-MAX 737s are just fine (though it had some issues with the rudder in the 90s, and, well, nearly 2% of all 737s built have been lost (184 hull losses) with nearly 5000 fatalities. Goes to show how much they fly.)
You have already, probably multiple times. The 737 model is proven over 50 years of service.
The Max has issues, for sure, and I will be weary of that as well as the upcoming 777X, but I wouldn't hesitate to get on any prior 737 or other Boeing model.
The assumption here is that the risk is equal. Given that prior to the grounding travel Sites were implementing "don't fly with Max" features, the perception is that the rusk is much higher.
I have other autoimmune disorders and I've looked into getting stem cell treatments outside the U.S because of limitations of what American doctors are willing to do. I found a center in Panama with American trained physicians where you pay out of pocket for treatment (~$25k+ for a week of treatment of umbilical cord stem cells). https://www.cellmedicine.com/ You can apply for treatment on their website and if the doctors believe they can help they will let you know.
When I talked about the tradeoffs of this treatment with traditional American physicians they said they are concerned about stem cells multiplying into the wrong thing. They claim they need more studies showing safety and effectiveness.
I'm undecided if I will go this route, mainly because of cost. In the meantime I'm focusing on dialing in my diet (Wahl's protocol has been mentioned here), meditating (hypnosis has been mentioned here), and intermittent fasting (which has been shown to help improve one's own stem cell generation).
Jordan Peterson, a popular professor, and his daughter are following a carnivore diet with self reported good results. Doctors generally do not recommend this diet but it seems to be reducing autoimmune issues for a small group of people. There is speculation that this diet could be working not only because of the elimination of the offending foods, but because of caloric restriction, which has been shown to have good effects on several health conditions.
It's not just that. The system has ballooned on top of itself: the arms race that is higher education is in no small part a result of government issued loans that seem great at the time but turn out to be a nightmare in practice. Students get caught up in the hype of needing to be a part of the arms race (go to a "good" school) and borrow exorbitantly from their future without understanding what they're actually getting into. Then many companies that pay the best only recruit at the "best" schools, which fortifies the entire system and leaves many students from lower tier programs with a degree, a mountain of debt, and no job.
"Decades of research substantiate the devastating effects of social isolation. Loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and increases the risk of death by 26-45%, which is on par with risk factors such as high blood pressure, obesity, and lack of exercise."
It would be interesting to know if men are more lonely than women as everything I've seen has shown that it's easier for women to join social circles and find dates whereas most men struggle with this. As a result, I wonder if this connects to the much high suicide rate for men.
Women attempt suicide at a rate 40 to 60% higher than men. Men on the other hand die at a greater rate because of the greater use of lethal means like guns etc. It still may be that loneliness is a greater factor in male depression but gender differences in suicide rates are misleading indicators.
I've always wondered just how reliable the suicide stat is because once someone commits suicide, they are no longer able to attempt it.
It's kinda like how one has to be careful measuring people interviewing for jobs, since someone who interviews poorly will spend many interviews before being hired but someone who interviews well will only do a few (on average). So measuring the average ability of the candidate in interviews will be worse than the average ability of people who have been interviewed.
Just from looking at Meetup.com, I see all kinds of social groups just for women in my metro area, but I never see such things for men. There's social groups for everyone, and social groups just for women, and also social groups just for particular little subgroups (LGBT, [religion], etc.). I think there's something to this.
Another thing I've noticed is how many urban women get their exercise from "classes": barre, yoga, pilates, "orange theory", etc. Go into one of these and you probably won't see a single male there.
There are box clubs, amateur soccer clubs, boardgames meetups, tech meetups etc. They are not male only, but mostly males go there. I have also seen craft classes with appeal to men or with 50-50 split among members. A community tends to form around it.
Yoga and pilates attracts mostly women, but they won't kick out males either (as in, I seen guys there, but like 1-2 for full class of women).
There is an episode of Hidden Brain which touches on this subject, though I don't remember if it mentions any sort of measured differences between men and women. Either way, it is a neat discussion on the topic.
I don’t have the study on me but there is evidence for that. The key I remember is that men bond over EXPERIENCES and doing things together, while for female-female (and male-female) interactions, just talking on the phone and catching up works. It changed how I approached some of my relationships (ex. Catch up with a male friend over a sport/activity vs over coffee)
The problem with activity based socialization strategy is that it starts failing when you have less time, get sick, weak or whatever else that prevents you or your friends to regularly do the choosen activity. As in, it is easier, you don't have to think hard about topics nor listen to boring parts, it helps smooth over personal differences at least to me and activity inviation makes things less weird (I even considered it superior). But it failed me in some life situations and left me having really hard time to find socialization.
When I thought about it afterwards, maybe the mistake is to treat your socialization strategy as something inflexible "I do it that way" instead it is set of skills, habits and decisions that can be learned and tested.
