The detailed dissection of the preprint is worthy of a scientific publication in and of itself. It's just painful that bad (scientific) actors need to be called out.
While I do not understand every detail of this newsletter (not a scientist), I understand the high points, and know enough about scientific method to be horrified that there are otherwise highly respected scientists (Akiko Iwasaki) making claims that lead to so much disinformation. (I’m not surprised by the disinformation folks. They have no scruples.)
I have actually wondered about just the opposite effect, which is the impact of a COVID infection upon the immune system. While this is purely anecdotal (which is worth nothing), I have noticed that people I know who have had fairly severe COVID infections - especially those who were infected before vaccines became available - seem to be sick frequently, whereas they had robust immune systems prior to the pandemic. Is anyone studying this, or is it just a wild assertion?
I peek in on a group of folks who share anti-vax information and they shared an articlein the group chat that was also a preprint. For a moment I thought you were talking about the same preprint, but it turns out the one they shared is listed as a reference in the preprint you share above. There is some overlap in the authors, though,.
Was this preprint used to source the sub group the 241 individuals
"Science is only as strong as the rigor behind it."
Do scientists actually know what sort of nutrient intake makes an immune system work properly? If they did, seems like there would be little need for vaccines.
The recent-decades increase in obesity and diabetes in the World can be explained in terms of increased arachidonic acid intake coupled with already excessive linoleic acid intake in developed countries. (2016) "We now know that major changes have taken place in the food supply over the last 100 years, when food technology and modern agriculture led to enormous production of vegetable oils high in ω-6 fatty acids, and changed animal feeds from grass to grains, thus increasing the amount of ω-6 fatty acids at the level of linoleic acid (LA) (from oils) and arachidonic acid (AA) (from meat, eggs, dairy).” (web search - The importance of a balanced ω-6 to ω-3 ratio)
In developing countries, "Fatty acid composition in the Western diet has shifted from saturated to polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), and specifically to linoleic acid (LA, 18:2), which has gradually increased in the diet over the past 50 y to become the most abundant dietary fatty acid in human adipose tissue." (web search - sEH-derived metabolites)
The abundance of linoleic acid in adipose tissue can make people vulnerable to COVID-19 complications. For example "Some COVID-19 patients go on to develop severe infection with organ failure, potentially leading to death, and one of the contributing factors appears to be toxicity from the release of stored unsaturated fatty acids (UFAs)...Separately, on analyzing global COVID-19 mortality data and comparing it with 12 risk factors for mortality, they found unsaturated fat intake to be associated with increased mortality. This was based on the dietary fat patterns of 61 countries in the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization database. Surprisingly, they found saturated fats to be protective." (web search - Vijay P. Singh COVID-19)
To summarize, whereas linoleic acid molecules can displace arachidonic acid molecules from their positions in cell membranes, saturated fat cannot. So, when linoleic acid is swapped for saturated fats, inflammatory cell signalling is dampened restoring insulin sensitivity. In addition, endocannabinoid system overproduction of AEA and 2AG is curtailed eliminating food noise. In my view, this explaiins why dietary saturated fats are not unhealthy. (web search - Glen Lawrence saturated fat 2024)
I don’t have the time to reply to this at the moment but for others seeing this, this is filled with misinformation, misconceptions, and broad misunderstandings of basic immunology concepts.
In what sense is my comment filled with misinformation? And when are you going to take time explain what you mean by "misconceptions" and broad misunderstandings?
I've been sending information and comments to several hundred researchers annually for more than a decade. Typically, when they respond, they either say they agree with my conclusions or they say it is more complicated than that. For others seeing my comments, do the web searches, read the articles, and make up you own mind as to the veracity of the information presented. This article, in particular, is well worth reading. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21247506/
The article begiins, "Eicosanoids are major players in the pathogenesis of several common diseases, with either overproduction or imbalance (e.g. between thromboxanes and prostacyclins) often leading to worsening of disease symptoms. Both the total rate of eicosanoid production and the balance between eicosanoids with opposite effects are strongly dependent on dietary factors, such as the daily intakes of various eicosanoid precursor fatty acids, and also on the intakes of several antioxidant nutrients including selenium and sulphur amino acids. Even though the underlying biochemical mechanisms have been thoroughly studied for more than 30 years, neither the agricultural sector nor medical practitioners have shown much interest in making practical use of the abundant high-quality research data now available."
Before reading the entire article, try these web searches:
Eicosanoid production immunity
Obesity immune response
Metabolic syndrome immune response
Type 2 diabetes immune response
Articles about immune response to excessive arachidonic acid intake
Keeping this simple and in reply to this comment, "Do scientists actually know what sort of nutrient intake makes an immune system work properly? If they did, seems like there would be little need for vaccines."
For most of us, our immune systems work just fine as long as we maintain proper nutrition to support our cellular functions. "Proper" is defined broadly as long as we aren't malnourished. If our immune systems did not function properly, on the underactive side we would succumb to every pathogen we are exposed to whether vaccinated or not (e.g., all the viruses that cause the common cold, bacteria that thrive on our skin and in our GI system, etc.) and we would be far more susceptible to cancer progression . On the overactive side, we all would have autoimmune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, colitis, etc.).
Our immune systems, when working properly, have a remarkable ability to remember past infections, and protect us from them (either prevent infection or attenuate the disease). Vaccines function by exposing us to pathogens (or parts of pathogens) without us having to get sick (or as sick as one would get from the disease) so our immune systems are prepared the next time they encounter the pathogen.
Our cellular/biochemical systems are very well balanced in general (blood coagulation is another good example). That they work as well as they do is miraculous.
The prostanoid systems that are mentioned are quite complex and I remember when the articles were published by Samuelsson (recently deceased), Vane and Bergstrom in the 1970s. Some of the most exciting biochemistry I have
read and I studied this as part of my graduate work. Their Nobel Prize was well deserved.
In 2011 Norwegian animal science researchers published an article entitled 'Animal products, diseases and drugs: a plea for better integration between agricultural sciences, human nutrition and human pharmacology'. The article begins, "Eicosanoids are major players in the pathogenesis of several common diseases, with either overproduction or imbalance (e.g. between thromboxanes and prostacyclins) often leading to worsening of disease symptoms. Both the total rate of eicosanoid production and the balance between eicosanoids with opposite effects are strongly dependent on dietary factors, such as the daily intakes of various eicosanoid precursor fatty acids, and also on the intakes of several antioxidant nutrients including selenium and sulphur amino acids. Even though the underlying biochemical mechanisms have been thoroughly studied for more than 30 years, neither the agricultural sector nor medical practitioners have shown much interest in making practical use of the abundant high-quality research data now available." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3031257/
Hi David - here is a direct reply to the above statement...
Your statement: Do scientists actually know what sort of nutrient intake makes an immune system work properly? If they did, seems like there would be little need for vaccines.
NO !
As a person with academic, bench and field experience with disease causing organisms, I am going to strongly disagree with this statement. In human terms, we can look at populations (e.g. indigenous Americans) confronted with new diseases – smallpox, malaria, and measles. Massive deaths, easily verified. In many cases, it is pretty clear that these people had better diets than the European and African settlers who survived. Of course, it is true that overall health is an important factor in whether a person or animal survives infection.
The topic of infection and outcomes have been studied for a long time. As Mark Bobrow has discussed, that statement is not correct, and there is A LOT of evidence against your deduction.
Re: The importance of a balanced ω-6 to ω-3 ratio. As to your remarks – as best I can see, you are correct in thinking this can be important for health. However, does this explain the increase in obesity and diabetes? I really have a hard time believing that this is the main cause. I don’t think it is easy to determine the main causes, since many things that could lead to these increases have occurred at the same time – examples:
-People get less exercise
-Consumption of soft drinks has gone up
-Meal sizes are larger
-More meals are eaten in restaurants, and the composition of these meals is often very different than home cooked meals
I looked at an article by Vijay P. Singh - “Mortality From Coronavirus Disease 2019 Increases With Unsaturated Fat and May Be Reduced by Early Calcium and Albumin Supplementation” by Bara El-Kurdi,1,* Biswajit Khatua,2,* Christopher Rood,3 Christine Snozek,4 Rodrigo Cartin-Ceba,2 and Vijay P. Singh,2 on behalf of the Lipotoxicity in COVID-19 Study.
If I understood this correctly, the authors looked at POPULATION LEVEL fat intake for entire countries. This is really meaningless. There are all kinds of things that are now known to relate to risk of dying from CoVID. (Affluence is a big one). If you don’t control for these other variables, the results are not meaningful. You need to look at individual health records which they did not do.
In summary, these are “large claims” with “small evidence”.
During the first half of the 20th Century, the newly-introduced seed oils caused people to develop clogged arteries but not obesity. Industrial pollution and leaded gas fume exposure resulted in excessive heavy metal exposure in developed countries. Consequently, in the U.S. and Europe, the heart attack rate increased dramatically because heavy metals exposure tends to make arterial plaques unstable. Excerpt: "... a high dietary LA/oleic acid intake ratio and high rates of superoxide anion radical production from endothelial NADPH oxidase as causes of more rapid LDL oxidation - with a high rate of LDL oxidation leading in turn to high rates of atheromatosis development. Against this background it is not unreasonable to speculate that excessive exposure to a number of toxic metals from a wide range of different sources may have been one of the main causes of the post-war epidemic of coronary heart disease both in North America and Western Europe. These include lead from car exhaust and from drinking water (especially in the British Isles), as well as mercury and silver from dental amalgam fillings and cadmium from acid rain, commercial fertilizers and tobacco smoke. All the above-mentioned toxic metals would be expected to bind strongly to the chelate-forming selenol and thiol groups in both thioredoxin reductase and selenoprotein P (and also, albeit not equally strongly, to chelate-forming thiol groups in thioredoxin). It is possible that their relative importance as causes of enhanced LDL oxidation and atheromatosis, both at the individual level and that of entire populations, may depend less strongly on differences in their relative binding strength to these enzymes than on differences in their abundance. If this hypothesis is correct, it means that lead, which is the most abundant of these toxic metals when considering both its average abundance in the Earth's continental crust and as an environmental pollutant, could have been more important than any other toxic metal as a contributory cause of LDL oxidation, atheromatosis and coronary heart disease. This hypothesis would appear to be in reasonably good agreement with what is known about the historical curves both for coronary heart disease mortality and for the use of lead as an additive in gasoline in Western Europe, compared to North America. The use of lead as an additive in gasoline started earlier and ended earlier in the United States than it did in the countries of Western Europe. And the epidemic of coronary heart disease has followed a similar time course with both its start and its culmination occurring earlier in the United States than in Western Europe. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3031257/
During the second half of the 20th Century, both seed oils and grain-fed animal products became increasingly available in developing countries with a concurrent increase in heart disease and obesity. Excerpt from a 2016 BMJ article: "We now know that major changes have taken place in the food supply over the last 100 years, when food technology and modern agriculture led to enormous production of vegetable oils high in ω-6 fatty acids, and changed animal feeds from grass to grains, thus increasing the amount of ω-6 fatty acids at the level of linoleic acid (LA) (from oils) and arachidonic acid (AA) (from meat, eggs, dairy).” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5093368/
Clearly, changes in environmental contaminants and the fatty acid profile of the food supply have transitioned the major cause of mortality from infectious diseases to the chronic inflammatory diseases. Note, however, that feeding oilseeds to livestock makes the animals vulnerable to life-threatening complications when a viral infection occurs.
This is summary of “cause of death” in the US for most of the 20th Century.
In agreement with your contention, we can see heart disease increasing in the early 20th Century in the US. Still a lot of infectious disease though, shooting up during the great influenza.
I’m tied up with some unexpected stuff, but will look more carefully at your discussion on this, hopefully on the week end coming up. I have read elsewhere about evidence that adding lead to gasoline had an important impact on mortality and illness.
I suspect vulnerability to infection as well as tooth decay were worse during the first two decades of the 20th Century prior to the adoption of enrichment and fortification. "In the United States, as in most parts of the world, fortification of food was initiated as a systematic approach to correct identified nutrient deficiencies in the population. In 1924 iodine was first added to salt on a voluntary basis in an attempt to address the prevalent health problem of goiter in the United States." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK208880/
>>I suspect vulnerability to infection as well as tooth decay were worse during the first two decades of the 20th Century prior to the adoption of enrichment and fortification. << I agree.
You may be correct that seed oils have caused more clogged arteries, and I suspect you are correct about the exposure to lead and other industrial pollutants being factors in the increase in heart disease. But, if people are not dying of infectious disease they will die (later) with something else…heart disease, cancer etc. (This I am quite certain of). Since heart disease has been a common cause of death in older people since accurate records were kept in the US, we can be sure that this simple demographic explanation is at least part of the story.
The two papers you cited above are “informed opinion pieces”, certainly better informed than I am on this. However, there are a couple of important things to consider here –
1. Life expectancies in the US and almost everywhere else in the world have gone up substantially and steadily in the last 120 years, and CoVID years excepted have tended to go up slowly still.
2. Examples - Life expectances in India and Mexico have gone up, and it is very striking to my partner and I, who have visited these places 40 years ago and then recently, that people are much fatter than before. As best we can tell (from looking at what is in stores), unsaturated fat consumption has gone way up in these countries.
I am in agreement with you that these changes to diets are “not good” for overall health. However, it is not clear how bad these changes are. Certainly Mexico and India have WAY LESS issues with infectious disease now than 40 years ago, and life expectancies are much longer.
I would suggest that this means that the changes to our diets are bad in many ways (I think we ARE in agreement on this), but I would argue that other changes to our life circumstances have been much more important in terms of overall health. I will assert that changes to our ability to prevent and treat infectious disease have been very important, and at this point more important than the problems caused by changes to diet. I will also assert that in the cases of very poor people, that increasing the calorie count in food is beneficial ALMOST without regard to what generates those calories.
Sorry for my very slow response. I'm semi retired so usually can respond thoughtfully gratefully quickly, but both my work and family need some attention from me, I am hoping to get some time to reply to you next week end.
Thank you for this analysis. My daughter is in the field and has been distraught over the harm a flawed study like this can do, coming from a reputable lab, and disseminated in erroneous soundbites that will live forever online.
Why would Akiko Iwasaki do this???
It is a very good question. Me and colleagues are working on reaching out to her to try to understand this…
Thank you.
I was wondering the same thing. Very odd. 🤔
The detailed dissection of the preprint is worthy of a scientific publication in and of itself. It's just painful that bad (scientific) actors need to be called out.
Oh, what a meaningful comment, thank you. I am very disheartened by this, myself.
While I do not understand every detail of this newsletter (not a scientist), I understand the high points, and know enough about scientific method to be horrified that there are otherwise highly respected scientists (Akiko Iwasaki) making claims that lead to so much disinformation. (I’m not surprised by the disinformation folks. They have no scruples.)
I have actually wondered about just the opposite effect, which is the impact of a COVID infection upon the immune system. While this is purely anecdotal (which is worth nothing), I have noticed that people I know who have had fairly severe COVID infections - especially those who were infected before vaccines became available - seem to be sick frequently, whereas they had robust immune systems prior to the pandemic. Is anyone studying this, or is it just a wild assertion?
I peek in on a group of folks who share anti-vax information and they shared an articlein the group chat that was also a preprint. For a moment I thought you were talking about the same preprint, but it turns out the one they shared is listed as a reference in the preprint you share above. There is some overlap in the authors, though,.
Was this preprint used to source the sub group the 241 individuals
in this preprint: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.09.23298266v1.full-text?
"Science is only as strong as the rigor behind it."
Do scientists actually know what sort of nutrient intake makes an immune system work properly? If they did, seems like there would be little need for vaccines.
The recent-decades increase in obesity and diabetes in the World can be explained in terms of increased arachidonic acid intake coupled with already excessive linoleic acid intake in developed countries. (2016) "We now know that major changes have taken place in the food supply over the last 100 years, when food technology and modern agriculture led to enormous production of vegetable oils high in ω-6 fatty acids, and changed animal feeds from grass to grains, thus increasing the amount of ω-6 fatty acids at the level of linoleic acid (LA) (from oils) and arachidonic acid (AA) (from meat, eggs, dairy).” (web search - The importance of a balanced ω-6 to ω-3 ratio)
In developing countries, "Fatty acid composition in the Western diet has shifted from saturated to polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), and specifically to linoleic acid (LA, 18:2), which has gradually increased in the diet over the past 50 y to become the most abundant dietary fatty acid in human adipose tissue." (web search - sEH-derived metabolites)
The abundance of linoleic acid in adipose tissue can make people vulnerable to COVID-19 complications. For example "Some COVID-19 patients go on to develop severe infection with organ failure, potentially leading to death, and one of the contributing factors appears to be toxicity from the release of stored unsaturated fatty acids (UFAs)...Separately, on analyzing global COVID-19 mortality data and comparing it with 12 risk factors for mortality, they found unsaturated fat intake to be associated with increased mortality. This was based on the dietary fat patterns of 61 countries in the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization database. Surprisingly, they found saturated fats to be protective." (web search - Vijay P. Singh COVID-19)
To summarize, whereas linoleic acid molecules can displace arachidonic acid molecules from their positions in cell membranes, saturated fat cannot. So, when linoleic acid is swapped for saturated fats, inflammatory cell signalling is dampened restoring insulin sensitivity. In addition, endocannabinoid system overproduction of AEA and 2AG is curtailed eliminating food noise. In my view, this explaiins why dietary saturated fats are not unhealthy. (web search - Glen Lawrence saturated fat 2024)
I don’t have the time to reply to this at the moment but for others seeing this, this is filled with misinformation, misconceptions, and broad misunderstandings of basic immunology concepts.
Many are familiar the phrase "paper chemistry" with the assumption that's what transpires in the body... fools errand!
I concur with your rebuttal & I turn the phrase what was being stated is "paper biochemistry"!
In what sense is my comment filled with misinformation? And when are you going to take time explain what you mean by "misconceptions" and broad misunderstandings?
I've been sending information and comments to several hundred researchers annually for more than a decade. Typically, when they respond, they either say they agree with my conclusions or they say it is more complicated than that. For others seeing my comments, do the web searches, read the articles, and make up you own mind as to the veracity of the information presented. This article, in particular, is well worth reading. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21247506/
The article begiins, "Eicosanoids are major players in the pathogenesis of several common diseases, with either overproduction or imbalance (e.g. between thromboxanes and prostacyclins) often leading to worsening of disease symptoms. Both the total rate of eicosanoid production and the balance between eicosanoids with opposite effects are strongly dependent on dietary factors, such as the daily intakes of various eicosanoid precursor fatty acids, and also on the intakes of several antioxidant nutrients including selenium and sulphur amino acids. Even though the underlying biochemical mechanisms have been thoroughly studied for more than 30 years, neither the agricultural sector nor medical practitioners have shown much interest in making practical use of the abundant high-quality research data now available."
Before reading the entire article, try these web searches:
Eicosanoid production immunity
Obesity immune response
Metabolic syndrome immune response
Type 2 diabetes immune response
Articles about immune response to excessive arachidonic acid intake
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33592322/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7721408/
Keeping this simple and in reply to this comment, "Do scientists actually know what sort of nutrient intake makes an immune system work properly? If they did, seems like there would be little need for vaccines."
For most of us, our immune systems work just fine as long as we maintain proper nutrition to support our cellular functions. "Proper" is defined broadly as long as we aren't malnourished. If our immune systems did not function properly, on the underactive side we would succumb to every pathogen we are exposed to whether vaccinated or not (e.g., all the viruses that cause the common cold, bacteria that thrive on our skin and in our GI system, etc.) and we would be far more susceptible to cancer progression . On the overactive side, we all would have autoimmune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, colitis, etc.).
Our immune systems, when working properly, have a remarkable ability to remember past infections, and protect us from them (either prevent infection or attenuate the disease). Vaccines function by exposing us to pathogens (or parts of pathogens) without us having to get sick (or as sick as one would get from the disease) so our immune systems are prepared the next time they encounter the pathogen.
Our cellular/biochemical systems are very well balanced in general (blood coagulation is another good example). That they work as well as they do is miraculous.
The prostanoid systems that are mentioned are quite complex and I remember when the articles were published by Samuelsson (recently deceased), Vane and Bergstrom in the 1970s. Some of the most exciting biochemistry I have
read and I studied this as part of my graduate work. Their Nobel Prize was well deserved.
In 2011 Norwegian animal science researchers published an article entitled 'Animal products, diseases and drugs: a plea for better integration between agricultural sciences, human nutrition and human pharmacology'. The article begins, "Eicosanoids are major players in the pathogenesis of several common diseases, with either overproduction or imbalance (e.g. between thromboxanes and prostacyclins) often leading to worsening of disease symptoms. Both the total rate of eicosanoid production and the balance between eicosanoids with opposite effects are strongly dependent on dietary factors, such as the daily intakes of various eicosanoid precursor fatty acids, and also on the intakes of several antioxidant nutrients including selenium and sulphur amino acids. Even though the underlying biochemical mechanisms have been thoroughly studied for more than 30 years, neither the agricultural sector nor medical practitioners have shown much interest in making practical use of the abundant high-quality research data now available." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3031257/
Hi David - here is a direct reply to the above statement...
Your statement: Do scientists actually know what sort of nutrient intake makes an immune system work properly? If they did, seems like there would be little need for vaccines.
NO !
As a person with academic, bench and field experience with disease causing organisms, I am going to strongly disagree with this statement. In human terms, we can look at populations (e.g. indigenous Americans) confronted with new diseases – smallpox, malaria, and measles. Massive deaths, easily verified. In many cases, it is pretty clear that these people had better diets than the European and African settlers who survived. Of course, it is true that overall health is an important factor in whether a person or animal survives infection.
The topic of infection and outcomes have been studied for a long time. As Mark Bobrow has discussed, that statement is not correct, and there is A LOT of evidence against your deduction.
Re: The importance of a balanced ω-6 to ω-3 ratio. As to your remarks – as best I can see, you are correct in thinking this can be important for health. However, does this explain the increase in obesity and diabetes? I really have a hard time believing that this is the main cause. I don’t think it is easy to determine the main causes, since many things that could lead to these increases have occurred at the same time – examples:
-People get less exercise
-Consumption of soft drinks has gone up
-Meal sizes are larger
-More meals are eaten in restaurants, and the composition of these meals is often very different than home cooked meals
I looked at an article by Vijay P. Singh - “Mortality From Coronavirus Disease 2019 Increases With Unsaturated Fat and May Be Reduced by Early Calcium and Albumin Supplementation” by Bara El-Kurdi,1,* Biswajit Khatua,2,* Christopher Rood,3 Christine Snozek,4 Rodrigo Cartin-Ceba,2 and Vijay P. Singh,2 on behalf of the Lipotoxicity in COVID-19 Study.
If I understood this correctly, the authors looked at POPULATION LEVEL fat intake for entire countries. This is really meaningless. There are all kinds of things that are now known to relate to risk of dying from CoVID. (Affluence is a big one). If you don’t control for these other variables, the results are not meaningful. You need to look at individual health records which they did not do.
In summary, these are “large claims” with “small evidence”.
Nonsense. Infectious disease killed hundreds of millions of people in the first half of the 20th century. Etc..
During the first half of the 20th Century, the newly-introduced seed oils caused people to develop clogged arteries but not obesity. Industrial pollution and leaded gas fume exposure resulted in excessive heavy metal exposure in developed countries. Consequently, in the U.S. and Europe, the heart attack rate increased dramatically because heavy metals exposure tends to make arterial plaques unstable. Excerpt: "... a high dietary LA/oleic acid intake ratio and high rates of superoxide anion radical production from endothelial NADPH oxidase as causes of more rapid LDL oxidation - with a high rate of LDL oxidation leading in turn to high rates of atheromatosis development. Against this background it is not unreasonable to speculate that excessive exposure to a number of toxic metals from a wide range of different sources may have been one of the main causes of the post-war epidemic of coronary heart disease both in North America and Western Europe. These include lead from car exhaust and from drinking water (especially in the British Isles), as well as mercury and silver from dental amalgam fillings and cadmium from acid rain, commercial fertilizers and tobacco smoke. All the above-mentioned toxic metals would be expected to bind strongly to the chelate-forming selenol and thiol groups in both thioredoxin reductase and selenoprotein P (and also, albeit not equally strongly, to chelate-forming thiol groups in thioredoxin). It is possible that their relative importance as causes of enhanced LDL oxidation and atheromatosis, both at the individual level and that of entire populations, may depend less strongly on differences in their relative binding strength to these enzymes than on differences in their abundance. If this hypothesis is correct, it means that lead, which is the most abundant of these toxic metals when considering both its average abundance in the Earth's continental crust and as an environmental pollutant, could have been more important than any other toxic metal as a contributory cause of LDL oxidation, atheromatosis and coronary heart disease. This hypothesis would appear to be in reasonably good agreement with what is known about the historical curves both for coronary heart disease mortality and for the use of lead as an additive in gasoline in Western Europe, compared to North America. The use of lead as an additive in gasoline started earlier and ended earlier in the United States than it did in the countries of Western Europe. And the epidemic of coronary heart disease has followed a similar time course with both its start and its culmination occurring earlier in the United States than in Western Europe. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3031257/
During the second half of the 20th Century, both seed oils and grain-fed animal products became increasingly available in developing countries with a concurrent increase in heart disease and obesity. Excerpt from a 2016 BMJ article: "We now know that major changes have taken place in the food supply over the last 100 years, when food technology and modern agriculture led to enormous production of vegetable oils high in ω-6 fatty acids, and changed animal feeds from grass to grains, thus increasing the amount of ω-6 fatty acids at the level of linoleic acid (LA) (from oils) and arachidonic acid (AA) (from meat, eggs, dairy).” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5093368/
Clearly, changes in environmental contaminants and the fatty acid profile of the food supply have transitioned the major cause of mortality from infectious diseases to the chronic inflammatory diseases. Note, however, that feeding oilseeds to livestock makes the animals vulnerable to life-threatening complications when a viral infection occurs.
Ah - interesting response…. I’m tied up with some stuff for the next few days. You might be interested in this:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/lead1900_98.pdf
This is summary of “cause of death” in the US for most of the 20th Century.
In agreement with your contention, we can see heart disease increasing in the early 20th Century in the US. Still a lot of infectious disease though, shooting up during the great influenza.
I’m tied up with some unexpected stuff, but will look more carefully at your discussion on this, hopefully on the week end coming up. I have read elsewhere about evidence that adding lead to gasoline had an important impact on mortality and illness.
I suspect vulnerability to infection as well as tooth decay were worse during the first two decades of the 20th Century prior to the adoption of enrichment and fortification. "In the United States, as in most parts of the world, fortification of food was initiated as a systematic approach to correct identified nutrient deficiencies in the population. In 1924 iodine was first added to salt on a voluntary basis in an attempt to address the prevalent health problem of goiter in the United States." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK208880/
>>I suspect vulnerability to infection as well as tooth decay were worse during the first two decades of the 20th Century prior to the adoption of enrichment and fortification. << I agree.
You may be correct that seed oils have caused more clogged arteries, and I suspect you are correct about the exposure to lead and other industrial pollutants being factors in the increase in heart disease. But, if people are not dying of infectious disease they will die (later) with something else…heart disease, cancer etc. (This I am quite certain of). Since heart disease has been a common cause of death in older people since accurate records were kept in the US, we can be sure that this simple demographic explanation is at least part of the story.
The two papers you cited above are “informed opinion pieces”, certainly better informed than I am on this. However, there are a couple of important things to consider here –
1. Life expectancies in the US and almost everywhere else in the world have gone up substantially and steadily in the last 120 years, and CoVID years excepted have tended to go up slowly still.
2. Examples - Life expectances in India and Mexico have gone up, and it is very striking to my partner and I, who have visited these places 40 years ago and then recently, that people are much fatter than before. As best we can tell (from looking at what is in stores), unsaturated fat consumption has gone way up in these countries.
I am in agreement with you that these changes to diets are “not good” for overall health. However, it is not clear how bad these changes are. Certainly Mexico and India have WAY LESS issues with infectious disease now than 40 years ago, and life expectancies are much longer.
I would suggest that this means that the changes to our diets are bad in many ways (I think we ARE in agreement on this), but I would argue that other changes to our life circumstances have been much more important in terms of overall health. I will assert that changes to our ability to prevent and treat infectious disease have been very important, and at this point more important than the problems caused by changes to diet. I will also assert that in the cases of very poor people, that increasing the calorie count in food is beneficial ALMOST without regard to what generates those calories.
I find this is an interesting topic.
Prior to the industrial revolution, in the era before seed oils, sanitation, and vaccines, people living under favorable circumstances were remarkably healthy. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/founding-fathers-longevity_b_889329
Sorry for my very slow response. I'm semi retired so usually can respond thoughtfully gratefully quickly, but both my work and family need some attention from me, I am hoping to get some time to reply to you next week end.
Thank you for this analysis. My daughter is in the field and has been distraught over the harm a flawed study like this can do, coming from a reputable lab, and disseminated in erroneous soundbites that will live forever online.