2024-01-19 15:39:10
Long before Boaz and Noah, everyone knew that good sleep is a guarantee of good health. Now we know that lack of sleep increases CRP levels and that this marker of inflammation is very bad for your health.
Long before Methuselah, old age had been extensively verified. Then it might be followed using the Gregorian calendar, and today, we can confirm it by the shortening of telomeres.
Long before William Harvey explained in detail the circulation of blood, everyone knew the age of their arteries. Then we discovered that atherosclerotic plaques are more frequent with age, then that lipoprotein A promotes the necrosis of these plaques and therefore vascular accidents. We can now watch the arteries age. We have even discovered that all biological markers of cardiovascular risk increase when we eat too much, especially too much sugar.
Hippocrates was not the first to understand the dangers of obesity, but he placed heavy emphasis on nutritional excesses. Today, being overweight has become a question of ghrelin, leptin, fatty acids and resistin; this last molecule also makes it possible to reveal links between obesity and atherosclerosis. Discovery allowing us to affirm that obese people also age.
Dementia was an infamy of the age before a staining technique allowed Mr. Alzheimer’s to discover fibrils in old neurons. Today, tau and beta-amyloid proteins are being discovered in the brains of dementia. It is therefore no longer a calamity of age, but a molecular calamity.
Any attentive reader will have suspected my taunts. Some might even accuse me of denigrating science and molecular medicine. This is not true. However, common sense and an immoderate respect for empiricism give me the modesty of a layman.
Jenner and Pasteur knew nothing regarding immunology. Variolization was already practiced in ancient China and it worked quite well without us knowing how or why someone had such a brilliant and crazy idea.
Medicine’s molecular obsession will never know whether depression is a problem of serotonin, norepinephrine, or dopamine until we first define the disease precisely. But this obsession sometimes leads to miracles such as favorable treatments for children suffering from cystic fibrosis, myopathies or other rare diseases.
I therefore have no right to mock our molecular discoveries, if only for their potential for fascination and utopia. And if, by continually confirming that it is really beneficial to sleep well, eat little and move a lot, they end up convincing us of it, then they will have been neither illusory nor in vain.
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#Molecular #illusory #health #reasons
