We are taking an adventure, sort of like the movie Journey to the Centre of the Earth (an oldie but a goodie), except we are trekking into the unbelievable diversity and magnificence of the human microbiome!....ready?
Hi everyone, I'm so passionate about this that I'm just going to start today and see where we end up, it may be a 3 part series or a 20 part series. Lets get started... I laughed out loud one night a few months ago, when an advertisement came on the TV from a company selling bacterial hand wash, more specific it was targeted to the mother of the home, this in itself is a subconscious psychological bashing about what it means to 'be a good mother'...but that's an entirely different thing, and Ill get to that another day. They were trying to crack the ultimate market...people of the bush!, Ambitious I thought to myself, because I know that a vast majority of 'born of the land' and indigenous people, already innately know that we need BuGs (aka germs). Their ability to be able to interact with us and work for the benefit for us, is so vital to our health (physical, psychological and emotional) that in so many cases we are contributing to our own ill health and in some cases, early death process by trying to distance ourselves from the very microbes that we need.
We have a resident 100 trillion mutualist microbes! (friends with benefits) making up approx 10,000 different species, in contrast there are only about 50-100 yucky (scientific name for 'not so good') bacterial strains. So while the focus in medicine and BodyTalk in past years has been largely focused on the 'yucky ones' - its time to consider the mutualists and the treatment strategies afforded by this new ear of cooperation. This is where BodyTalk works exceptionally well. As we talk about this, keep your animals in mind. They are no different to us in this respect. The human microbiome is enormous, the past few years has seen a massive increase in the public profile, getting to know the human microbiome from the way that it constructed itself and worked generations ago, to the way that it now is massively struggling and straining under pressure in majority of people. Why? Lets cover the basics first.
Microbiome 101 Basics
* The human microbiome is the existence of more than 100 trillion microorganism friends, that call your skin, gut, respiratory system, eyes, mouth and many other areas HomE. You are a superorganism, a complex ecosystem of human cells living in a symbiotic relationship with 100 trillion bacteria and other microorganisms, collectively called the human microbiome.
* A microorganism is a small living single or multi celled organism, and boy do they have personality!
* The types of organisms we are looking at and we address at a BodyTalk level are: viruses, bacteria (and archaea), fungi and parasites.
* These friends live in microbial communities and have enormous beneficial functions in supporting health and your life! (think like towns, with roads and super highways connecting all these communities to one another, outside and inside of your body)
Key point to remember from now on...BUGS are NOT the bad GUYS!
"Bacteria have been able to survive without us, but we would never be able to survive without them" - Bailey, R.
Do you ever remember watching a movie, and the whole time your rooting for this one guy who is the 'hero' only to get to the last 10 minutes of the movie and find out he was in fact the bad guy the whole time? What the!?! It was a shock right...and the Bad Guy was actually the HeRo....Gosh. That's what the past few years have been like to medicine and science, a major shift has occurred in everyone's understanding of the role of microbes in your health.
Mutualists
Within your external and internal communities you have what is known as either commensals (meaning "sharing the table"), these organisms co-exist with you, with no ill effects.
The other guys are Mutualists, they live with us in a mutually beneficial relationship. You will find them in your GI tract, oral cavity, respiratory system, urogenital system, skin, blood and eyes.
Did you know that only 10% of the cells found in your body are actually human cells? the rest...90% are microbes, we so need these guys, and need them to be in great numbers, knowing what their jobs are and doing it effectively. So what do these 'friends with benefits' do? They have key roles in:
1) Digestion: We get 10-30% more energy from our diet because they make enzymes, improve the absorption of vital dietary nutrients, balance the acidity of the stomach to your optimum level and also determine a personas tendency towards obesity.
2) Brain function: Research indicates that the health and nature of the gut microbiome heavily influences not only communication in the brain, but your moods as well!
3) Kidney function: Microbes can impact a persons tendancy of kidney stones.
4) Immune Function: Microbes train your immune system to stay healthy and alert to any potential threats whilst also teaching it to not over react in the absence of any threats. Our friends are also part of the immune system, they help fight off 'yucky' strains protecting us from infection.
5) Vitamin production: Essentially microbes provide much needed vitamins that your body does not have the capacity to be able to make itself.
6) Healthy skin function: The skin is a massive organ, so its important that its balanced right. Microbes on the skin work hand in hand with the immune system to maintain health skin and keep out pathogenic strains of microbes.
"Without bacteria present, the immune system remains half asleep".
- M. Velasquez-Manaff
So with the basics covered, we are starting to get an understanding of the human microbiome, the wonderful microbes that we pretty much depend on for our health and survival, and we have covered some 101 aspects of what role they play. Next week we are going to continue our exploration into the microbiome of the gut...its a biggie, most of you have some sort of major imbalances in this aspect. The good thing is that we can do practical things to help, and we can address them using BodyTalk. I look forward to chatting then, and if of course you have any questions, let me know. All my very best Jacquie x