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A comment on Combined overconsumption of fat and sugar leads to hypothalamic inflammation. Parent comment

Re:Combined overconsumption of fat and sugar leads to hypoth... by throw132890123 on Tuesday September 05, 2017 @06:30PM (#15179624)
Not really, you're now linking the 'inflammation' described in this article to heart attacks. Surely that'd be a bigger story?

From the 'article' you linked to:

> Obesity and its constant companion, type 2 diabetes, are at epidemic proportions in this country. One thing that connects them is inflammation.

How is this not a most blatant case of 'correlation vs causation'? We know the causes of obesity AND type 2 diabetes. Surely inflammation, a cellular immune thing ... is just a correlating factor?

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Re:Combined overconsumption of fat and sugar leads to hypoth... by subcosmos on Tuesday September 05, 2017 @08:16PM (#15180150)
There's compelling evidence that inflammation can cause insulin resistance and fat accumulation, and that insulin resistance and fat accumulation can further cause inflammation. We've found signaling pathways in the body that connect in both directions.

So yeah, the causality is actually circular, which in the context of human health implies that a snowball effect is in fact occurring. Escaping this feedback loop is the hard part that we are still working on in the lab.

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Re:Combined overconsumption of fat and sugar leads to hypoth... by dtawfik1 on Tuesday September 05, 2017 @06:40PM (#15179679)
https://www.uaf.edu/files/olli/OLLI_15_chol_4_red.pdf Checkout slides 7 and 8. My simple understanding is that the sugar creates a particle that provokes an immune response. Cytokines attack the sugar-lipid particle that has been oxidized.
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Re:Combined overconsumption of fat and sugar leads to hypoth... by subcosmos on Tuesday September 05, 2017 @07:01PM (#15179803)
Glucose, in high concentration, reacts with proteins at arbitrary locations, effectively gluing them together. This is bad, so the immune system detects this (with a receptor called RAGE) and sends in reinforcements to eat the mess up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAGE_(receptor)

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