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Roman soldiers defending Hadrian's Wall were infected by parasites, study finds (phys.org)

submitted 3 weeks ago by cm0002@no.lastname.nz to c/history@mander.xyz

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[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

Recently, it’s been suggested that autoimmune disorders are the result of our bodies overreacting as an adaptation to parasites that produced immunosuppressants. Achieve a high enough parasitic load and you’re effectively immunocompromised and soon dead, unless your immune system started out turned up to 11 and dipped down to a natural level with a heavy dose of immunosuppressants via contemporaneously common parasites. That’s the gist, here’s the wiki link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Soooo... Go get yourself infected with some of the less-deadly parasites and then eat all the bread? Just be sure to avoid brain worms.

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 weeks ago

Not exactly an ideal situation either way, but that’s it. Fundamentally, figuring out a way to regulate overzealous immune systems is the ends. This is one means, based in our evolutionary history, maybe. That’s about as far as we’ve come on this thread

[–] jaennaet@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 weeks ago

As someone who has an autoimmune disorder, I'd take the parasites any day; it's hard to overstate how much this fucking sucks.

I'd even take the brain worms.

Especially the brain worms.

[–] stephen@lazysoci.al 5 points 3 weeks ago

Thank you for this. I’m going to be checking this out more. Although one of the other responses to you is suggesting benefit from infecting themselves with less harmful parasites - that’s a thing.

I mentioned to another response having listened to an episode of Radiolab (and forgot) that covers this very thing.

https://radiolab.org/podcast/91691-sculptors-of-monumental-narrative