[New post] Medicine: More Complex than You Imagined
Vic Crain posted: " A new article in Medical News Today discusses how apparently unrelated issues in the body can work together to cause problems. Sometimes the body actually works this way The three issues are: Sleep apneaGut bacteriaHigh blood pressure The th"
A new article in Medical News Today discusses how apparently unrelated issues in the body can work together to cause problems.
Sometimes the body actually works this way
The three issues are:
Sleep apnea
Gut bacteria
High blood pressure
The theory presented in the MNT article is that periodic low oxygen content in the blood (hypoxia) impacts the composition of bacteria in the gut, favoring those that can cope in low oxygen environments. This change promotes bacteria that contribute to the buildup of mass on the lining of arteries. This is what used to be called "hardening of the arteries" some 40 or 50 years ago, and in turn contributes to an increase in blood pressure as the heart works harder to push blood through these more rigid and constricted passageways.
Obstructive sleep apnea is thought to affect roughly 1 in every 5 adults in the US. It's been associated with a host of illnesses over the years, including Type 2 Diabetes, Parkinson's, and dementia. However, until now, we didn't have a model of how the relationship might work. Now we do.
Researchers are taught to use Occam's Razor, which is basically the principle that simpler explanations are usually more likely to be correct. However, as this discussion shows, every principle has an exception. And even this may not be an exception. Given there is no "direct" link between sleep apnea and these diseases -- direct in the sense of a fall causing a broken leg -- this is moving up one step to incorporate an intermediary (gut bacteria) into the model. It's the "next simplest" model and it provides a plausible explanation that incorporates the data available at this moment.
That's called good science. The model will change and become more specific is researchers focus on anaerobic bacteria in the gut.
Jumping instead to extremely complex theories with no evidential basis is modern extremist politics, not science.
Amusingly, the development of religion follows Occam as well. The Hebrews saw people who ate pork get sick. Not knowing about trichinosis, they attributed the illness to the will of the deity, and decreed that no one eat pork. Similarly, they attributed the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to the deity, while we now think that a meteor exploded over the area, heating surface temperatures to more than 8000 degrees (F), cooking everything living and melting stone.(2) The writers of the time went to the simplest explanation they could find for what they lacked the data to understand. The scientists of today see silica turned to glass and ask, "how the heck did it get that hot?" The different question enables us to see evidence that was previously ignored and come to different conclusions about what happened.
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