From: hounddog23x@gmail.com   
      
   THE BLOG    
      
   From Germ Theory to the Microbiome: Why Microbes Still Rule Our Lives    
      
      
    6 days ago | Updated 6 days ago    
      
      
      
   Alanna Collen Evolutionary biologist, science writer and host to 100 trillion   
   microbes.    
        
   Scimat Scimat via Getty Images    
   I have an autoimmune disease. My husband is allergic to cats. My mum has   
   hypothyroidism. My brother has a serious nut allergy. Two of my cousins have   
   IBS. My best friend has Type 1 diabetes. My sister-in-law has celiac disease.   
   My boss has rheumatoid    
   arthritis. My friend from university has ulcerative colitis. My neighbor is   
   obese. My friend's 5-year-old daughter has autism. My nephew has allergic   
   asthma. And my aunt has depression.    
   Okay, those statements were lies. But the truth is, someone close to me does   
   suffer from each of these conditions -- I've just changed the relationships to   
   protect their privacy. In fact, I barely know anyone who doesn't have   
   allergies, an autoimmune    
   disease, a mental health condition, a digestive disorder, or a weight problem.    
   It might seem like these illnesses are just part of being human, but that's   
   not the case. One hundred years ago, each of these conditions was rare in the   
   developed world. They remain relatively uncommon in developing countries,   
   though rates of each of    
   them are on the rise as the industrialized, Western way of life pushes out the   
   past. It's easy to assume that increased awareness has simply revealed more   
   sufferers, but although better diagnosis has surely made its contribution to   
   the case load, the    
   experts agree that the upsurge in illness is a genuine one.    
   Advertisement    
      
   As it stands, two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese, 1 in 68 children   
   has autism, around 15-20 percent of people have IBS, and something like one in   
   10 people have an autoimmune condition. If these disorders are not part of the   
   human condition,    
   then what's causing them?    
   It has been fashionable to blame genetics, as more and more genes linked to   
   ill health are uncovered. But the pace of change is quicker than evolution   
   would allow, and anyway, variants of genes that result in disease rarely gain   
   the favor of natural    
   selection and become more common. Genetics may predispose particular people to   
   illness, but it's not the sole cause of these conditions.    
   Related Articles    
    Good News: You Can Learn To Be More Resilient    
        
    Overmedicating Children in Foster Care    
        
    The Web Has Opened Up Opportunities For Freelancers, But It's Still As Hard A   
   Life As Ever    
        
    It's Outrageous: Jails and Prisons Are No Place to Treat Mental Illness; Just   
   Ask Paton Blough    
    If it's not altered genetics behind the rise in these modern chronic health   
   problems, it has to be a change in the environment. Our modern, medicated,   
   antiseptic lives, though nearly free of deadly infections, come with a   
   downside. We are neglecting 90    
   percent of our cells. They are not human cells, but microbes -- and we are   
   only just beginning to realize how much they matter to us.    
   Humans and microbes have evolved together from the start -- they coat our   
   surfaces, both inside and out. The vast majority of them live within our guts,   
   alongside masses of immune tissue. Together, our immune systems and our   
   microbes collaborate to    
   protect us from harmful invaders, such as viruses, and to learn to tolerate   
   harmless bystanders, including pollen and food molecules.    
   But if we disrupt our community of beneficial microbes, the immune system goes   
   into overdrive, attacking harmless particles and causing inflammation in our   
   human cells. It's this inflammation that's at the root of our modern, Western   
   illnesses. It's easy,   
    then, to see how it can result in allergies and autoimmune diseases, which   
   are the result of a dysfunctional immune system, but how can obesity be linked   
   to microbes?    
   Take this example: Transferring the gut microbes from twin sisters -- one   
   obese and the other lean -- into "germ-free" mice that were raised in an   
   isolation bubble makes those mice given the obese twin's microbes rapidly gain   
   weight, while those which    
   receive the lean twin's microbes remain a healthy weight. The mice are   
   genetically identical and eat the same amount and type of food. The only   
   difference is their microbes, which change the way the mice regulate energy   
   storage.    
   So what's causing our conflict with our bodies' microbes? Compared with people   
   living in parts of the world unaffected by modern lifestyles and modern   
   disease, we in the West have a much lower diversity of bacterial species   
   living in our guts. Four main    
   aspects of our lives are harming our microbial communities:    
   (1) Our use of antibiotics. While these are important, life-saving drugs, we   
   need to balance their benefits with the emerging risks of using them, and   
   compensate for the collateral damage they cause using probiotics.    
   (2) Our low-fiber, animal-based diets. Our ancestors ate far more plant-based   
   foods -- grains, vegetables, nuts and seeds, for example -- than we do now,   
   which contain higher levels of fibre and encourage beneficial microbes in our   
   guts.    
   (3) Our shift away from long-duration, exclusive breastfeeding. Breast milk   
   nurtures a different set of microbes in babies than formula milks, as well as   
   protecting against harmful infections. For some women, breastfeeding isn't an   
   option, but many    
   others are not getting the support they need.    
   (4) Our high rate of Caesarean sections. C-sections are a crucial alternative   
   to natural birth for some women and babies, but birth by C-section seeds   
   babies' guts with skin and hospital bacteria, rather than the milk-loving,   
   protective bacteria they    
   would encounter on their way through the birth canal.    
   Some 160 years ago, we had no idea what caused the diseases that ravaged our   
   society. Infectious diseases -- smallpox, cholera, tuberculosis, and so on --   
   killed the majority of people back then. But along came germ theory --   
   Pasteur, Koch and others    
   showed that harmful microbes were causing these fatal diseases -- and   
   everything changed. Now, we live twice as long, thanks to medications that   
   sprang from this revolution in our understanding of health and disease.    
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)