I have often said that we tend to demonize the wrong things and try to fix the problems by killing the solutions. Today is an extension of that. Today I want to talk about the little creature in our body that are often killed off in the name of health, but are really being destroyed for a person's detriment. Let's talk about the human microbiome.

We are full of tiny organisms which contribute to what and who we are. We have all heard about having been made of cells and of bacteria being in our gut and on our skin, but the depth at which is typically explored is laughable. In fact, people's idea of how the body's ecosystem functions, is so poor that they often kill off those microscopic bugs thinking that they are doing themselves some kind of service. On the contrary, just like with how people want to interrupt their body's healing mechanism, they also want to kill the symbiotic relationships within their own body... Poor choices...

Killing Our Allies And Welcoming The Intruders

Let's start at the very basics. Your body is absolutely littered with an assortment of little living things that are responsible for, and allow you to have your human experience. As a matter of fact, you debate-ably are actually an extension from them rather than yourself when you consider that they out number you be several trillion times. We hardly think of it this way though because we are often too involved living as, and understand ourselves as being a single being. It's a bias that I'm sure people don't really consider as being that unusual, but it does lower our conscious effort on trying to maintain the balance of these smaller ecologies if we are only considered with the obvious whole. Let's explore a common example...

Choking Out The Strep Throat

Antibiotics, antibacterial soaps, antibacterial wipes; we invest so much time, money, and effort into tying to kill the things that would have just stayed on and not negatively impacted our ancestors years back. I know that everybody would like to scoff off the old cave people as living short lives and marvel at how our vaccines and antibiotics have revolutionized our world by significantly increasing our lifespans, but anyone who knows how statistics and the expected life average works, knows that it's nonsense. The truth is that we have started a war on bugs and use our friends antibiotics and other harmful bug killers to mutilate our entire system. In today example, we'll talk about strep throat.

So, picture this; you start getting a soar throat and you tonsils start to ache and inflame. After a several day coughing fit, you decide to call your doctor to see what's the matter. He tells you to open your mouth and say "ahhhhhh," and after giving you a judgmental look, following him taking a peak in your mouth with his tongue depressor, he tells you that you have strep throat "My goodness," you think after considering how serious the situation is. What ever will you do? Luckily for you the doctor has already pulled out his pen and paper and is about to send you home with a prescription for amoxicillin ( a common antibiotic.) After all, if we need to get rid of the problem, we need to kill all of those infectious bugs, right? Well, no....not even close.

I hate to say this, but I wasn't able to find a good article to send you home with today, because of how mis-informed the general public and the medical field is, but I'll give you some things to consider, nonetheless. First off, were you aware that streptococcal bacteria is a normal part of your flora in your throat already? That means that it is always present from when you are born until the day you die. Isn't it an interesting idea how a part of your natural flora just decides to attack you out of the blue when you and it have such beautiful a symbiotic relationship? This is what the claim is and the reason that an antibiotic is prescribed in the first place. They want to kill off the bacteria in your throat to get rid of the problem. What the hell, might as well kill all the other bacteria off while they're at it, since an antibiotic is non-discriminatory.

Going back to the ideas of homo-toxicology, your body tends to make sense in a way that we don't give credit to. Unfortunately, we often allow the arrogant part of our egos to do the rationalizations behind our actions. Instead of thinking about why there is more bacteria in our throat, we are worried about how to get rid of it. When you look at it through a different lens, though, it makes sense. First off, everything needs to eat to survive, right? On every level, you need a source of nutrients to sustain an organism. So, while on that train of thought, why do you suppose the streptococcus like hanging around the throat so much and why do you suppose they populate quicker while the host is experiencing soreness and inflammation? If the individual was less concerned trying to find ways to get rid of the bacteria, they might have realized that the soreness is due to the inflammation, which is due to a pathogen, which is unrelated to the bacteria, but does provide a more bountiful food source for them.

As in any ecosystem, when there is a higher number of resources, there is a higher number of organisms that can thrive within that environment. When those resources decrease, so does the population. This is ecology 101, nothing ground-breaking. The streptococcus which lives in your throat, eat toxins that excrete from your throat as a service that any good symbiotic relationship would have. They live there simply because there is something there for them and it benefit you to have them there. Of course, when the body is trying to remove a pathogen, the inflammation draws out more of that food source allowing the ecology of the bacteria to grow. Now, I explained that so a baby could understand it, but surprisingly, that's a thought process that a doctor could earn a lot from. By the way, this isn't my opinion, I just was lucky enough to tumble over these details while studying health.

Bugs Throughout Our Body

The above example shows how easy it is to jump the gun about who is or isn't the culprit. One other quick example is acid reflex. Without getting into detail, you end up getting that terrible feeling your throat, not because you have too much acid, but because you actually have too little. The reason it happens is because you body goes into overdrive to re-fill suffering supplies of acid by pumping more into the system. If you take an antacid you will feel better, but you'll shut down the production of acid that you need. If you just drank a little apple cider vinegar though, you could help your ph balance itself without disrupting the solution. Of course, that's not what the doctor will tell you because it's not immediate like the drug would be.

Looking into our stomachs, we will quickly see that there is a huge ecology of various micro-organisms trying to survive and conquer to be the king of the gut. Welcome to the human microbiome; the place where all problems start and where they can most effectively be corrected.

Just like with the strep throat example, when there is a food source, there is bound to be something there eating away at it. Unlike the throat, however, this ecology is far from simple. In fact, there is so many types and amounts of bacteria in your stomach, that it would be impossible to keep track of or calculate the number. It's constantly changing and constantly evolving. What's interesting though, is that depending on what you eat determines who lives there. Scarily enough, what you tend to eat might be directly correlate to whats already in your gut.

Mind Control From The Second Mind

The body is said to not only have one brain, but a total of three. I'm not going to get into detail about this today, but it is essentially due to the fact that they all work independent from one another when they are disconnected. There is the brain you know, the heart, and the stomach. Can you guess which one we are about to talk about?

When you go home after work and have the craving for a bunch of garbage, this isn't arbitrary. The bacteria in your gut right now speaks a lot about you. You can practically dissect an individual's poop and determine whether they are skinny, fat, diabetic, or troubled in any way. How can I say this? Well, aside from it just being plain truth, all of these different kinds of people have different kinds of bacteria in their microbiome. What's more is that those ecosystems of biology are the culprit for what that person eats...or at least craves...

Without being technical (as for I imagine I would lose more people's interest the more complex this is,) bacteria wants to survive against the other kinds competing against it. So, one sure-fire way to get an edge would be to persuade the host to feed them what they need to survive. If, after all, you could convince the one feeding you that you need food more than the other, more beneficial bacterial, than you could kill two birds with one stone. How is it possible? Simple, chemical bi-products and metabolic wastes. Why thank you Mr. Citrobacter. and MRS. Enterobacter.

You may think that some of this is out of left consider the results from one particular study involving transporting one strain of bacteria from one mouse to another. Dr. Kaplan shows in one of his studies that but repopulating the gut bacteria in one mouse from another, it is possible to cause a direct weight change depending on which bacteria is being transported. Some bacteria that is a part of an overweight person's ecology transported into one that is healthier showed a decline in the health in that person while the opposite was true in the opposite scenario.

Good bacteria loves fiber and veggies while bad bacteria loves sugar. This is oversimplified, but is pretty much the gist of it. The cool thing about this fact though, is that those sugar cravings will go away as the negative bacteria decreases in size and a healthy balance is achieved. Now, I want you to step back and consider what happens to the gut ecology when you take an antibiotic... I won't draw it out, but I will ask you to reconsider when your doctor suggests it as a possible solution to your ailment.

Ok, well that time has come for today. I hope you have learned a thing or two and perhaps will reconsider the flaws in the medical education of today. For the previous discussion on health, click HERE. Other than that, hang tight and I'll chat more at ya about health.

Take Care and Keep Steeming!