Paul Ewald has suggested infectious causes for our main chronic diseases. So while we notice big acute…

Paul Ewald has suggested infectious causes for our main chronic diseases. So while we notice big acute disease events, like pandemics, we maybe miss the possible chronic disease these infections go on to cause. Here are 2 tables of hypotheses. /1 https://t.co/YW9PJFXmj8 https://t.co/cNQ6S3fvep

Multiple sclerosis has in the past year been strongly linked to EBV, to update this table. Another major chronic illness slots into this infectious disease hypothesis. Sexual pathogens can also sometimes be transmitted by other routes (footnote wouldn’t fit in image). /2 https://t.co/IPb0gLEzrV

This work resonates with the shift in emphasis towards the microbiome and its fundamental importance in the functioning of our bodies. Both physico-chemical and genetic causation theories of chronic disease have had little impact against most of the big chronic killers. /3

But when a clear infectious origin is identified, as with peptic ulcers and now MS, fast cures are immediately on the table. It’s very suggestive that this new germ theory is worth our attention, i think. As just one example, why did we succumb so easily to the idea, now…/4

…crumbling, that eating fat causes heart disease? Why doesn’t eating broccoli fill our arteries with broccoli? It ignores metabolism completely. And when research shows influenza vaccination has a powerful impact on heart disease, the infectious origin hypothesis seems…/5

…bang-on, again. From a public health point of view, the implications are just as profound. We’re incredibly casual about infection, going so far as to suggest it’s like a workout for our immune systems, a healthy challenge etc. /6 https://t.co/K7ILiGtyex

This view is entirely focused on the acute phase of infectious disease. That may be only the tip of the disease iceberg, with these infections then spending the next decades creating a range of terrible chronic impacts on health. /7

As I Tweeted yesterday, some researchers link the heart disease epidemic of the twentieth century, and possibly Parkinson’s Disease, to the Spanish Flu pandemic, playing out across that century in its post-acute chronic phase. I think these are powerful hypotheses. /end