Why does “everyone” seem to have allergies, behavioral disorders, obesity, depression, asthma, diabetes, and a host of other health issues? Look at the statistics. look at the anecdotal evidence around us. Look at the decline in sperm count over the last 50 years. How many people do you know who suffer from infertility or cancer? Medical science has advanced so far over the last few hundred years that I’m surprised we are where we are. Our species seems to be less resilient as time marches on. Changing demographics in the US (baby boomers) skew some of the numbers but many conditions impact predominantly younger generations. This topic is a massive can of worms and I won’t pretend my little Substack is going to offer a complete explanation of why we increasingly struggle more with these conditions as a species. However, I’d like to offer a hypothesis that could point to where the answers will be found as soon as technology catches up to our choices. You might call it a gut feeling…
It’s interesting how I often experience little synchronicities or intersections of clarity in my life. I know I’m not alone in feeling that sensation. Please stay until the end so that you understand my hypothesis completely. Things are about to get a little crazy. Earlier this week my lovely wife watched a video about unique ways to make extra money. One of the craziest side hustles she saw was donating fecal matter for $500 per stool donation. Don’t believe me, read about it here
These stool samples are used in a treatment called fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT). Here is a quick rundown of FMT as described by Johns Hopkins who coincidentally is a business customer of mine, small world:
“Fecal transplantation is a procedure to collect feces, also called stool or poop, from a healthy donor and introduce them into a patient’s gastrointestinal tract. The procedure can control an infection called Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, by adding healthy bacteria into the recipient’s intestines. FMT can be performed in children and adults.”
“Research shows that fecal transplant can restore healthy bacteria in the lower intestine, which can help control C. diff and keep it from coming back. In some cases, FMT can be more effective than antibiotics for keeping C. diff in check.”
Clostridium difficile (C. diff) is a bad gut bacteria that can cause all sorts of issues such as fever, diarrhea, cramping, and even death if populations get out of balance in your digestive tract. C. diff is caused by antibiotics killing off competing bacteria. Remember I’ve written about the soil food web and how uncontrolled populations at any level of the SFW will contribute to imbalances in another soil population and that’s where the problems start. So it is in the soil so it is in our gut. If we have a pest problem in the garden it is because there is no predator for the pest or not enough of them. C. diff is the only approved use of FMT as far as I know but research shows we’re far from realizing the power of this treatment. Many people are using FMT for non-approved issues such as depression. Let’s get back to the $500 stool sample for a moment. How is that even possible? This is the main reason:
"Recent microbiome research discoveries have given hope of addressing these major problems. But in order to do so, we need the tiny 0.1% of people who are still healthy enough to qualify as a high quality stool donor to sign up and start donating their stool."
That $500 will go to a minuscule percentage of the donor pool? Wow! This indicates the extent of the health crisis humanity may be facing. I hypothesize that the gut microbiome of modern humanity is greatly compromised and degrading at a rate that is so far unknown. I believe that our resilience as a species is being degraded in proportion to the neglect of our gut microbiome.
The first synchronicity I experienced was learning about $500 stool samples and then discovering why they were $500. Microbes! I’ve already been studying and writing about microbes acting in the soil. Did you know we inoculate soil with biology by making compost tea? Its purpose is very much like FMT in human biology. When my wife stumbled upon the “poop” side hustle I had no idea it had anything to do with microbes. Regular readers will know that I've been studying quorum sensing in soil microbes. Quorum sensing in microbes happens when soil microbes become aware of one another through chemical signals called auto-inducers. This sensing doesn't happen unless the microbes reach a sufficient population size.
When there is enough of a given microbe population auto-inducers will change the genetic expression of the microbes themselves to get things done like work together to bring the plant nutrients or protect the plant from bad microbes. The plant provides food for the microbes so it is a symbiotic relationship. These microbes can also cause inter-species genetic expression in plants. It turns genes off and on in plants as well as other life forms. If you grow food in dead soil full genetic expression will be absent, less healthy food, diseased plants, inability to deal with drought, etc. We are what we eat. If the microbes aren't present in and around our food we lose.
Even our whole foods are grown in dead(ish) soil. The biology of typical farmland is bacteria-rich when it exists at all. When populations of microbes in the soil aren’t balanced it creates weak plants. The population balance in the entire soil food web is critical and that includes very small forms of life. We eat foods sprayed with all sorts of cides. When even the good food is bad food we're in trouble. Then we have the problem of chemical food additives/preservatives in packaged foods. Corporations have huge financial incentives to add these things to our food. Our bad food is worse than ever. Our taste buds have adapted to unnatural flavors. Real food is often expensive. Heck, even bad fast food is expensive! FMT might be one way to fix our guts but eating a very diverse diet of less contaminated whole foods is something we can all strive for right now.
The carrots I pull from my living garden bed are not going to be the same as a hundred-acre monoculture operation. What has been done to your carrots is as important as what hasn’t been done to your carrots. Not dumping chemicals on carrots is great but keeping the soil alive with a diversity of microbes around the carrots as they grow contributes to the nutritional value of the crop. Remember having quorum sensing in the soil switches genes on in the plants. It allows the vegetable to reach its nutritional potential. And no matter how much you wash that carrot it will contain soil microbes. You eat the life living on your vegetables too. What ramifications would eating a large diversity of the right foods grown in living soil have for our gut microbiome? This is well beyond organic food but it isn’t an impossible goal at all. Eating well is one way to improve gut health but we also need to understand the other factors that contribute to our gut problems. I recently read:
Our missing microbes: Short-term antibiotic courses have long-term consequences
Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine. 2018 December;85(12):928-930
Author: Martin J. Blaser, MD
Please visit the link for many study citations to back up what he’s saying. Here are a few notable sections that apply to this conversation:
"Recent years have seen dramatic increases in the prevalences of chronic diseases such as type 1 diabetes, gastroesophageal reflux disease, asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and, notably, obesity. I propose the hypothesis that much of this increase may be due to loss of diversity in the bacteria that make our guts their home. While multiple causes contribute, much of the blame may be attributed to the use—and overuse—of antibiotics."
After reading how much a good stool sample is worth I believe his hypothesis. It would appear that a good stool sample is really hard to find. Perhaps diet isn’t the only contributor to poor gut health. And now we come to the part where some people may get uncomfortable. Please read on:
"Before modern times, microbes were transferred from mother to child during vaginal birth, from the mother’s breast during nursing, through skin-to-skin contact, and from the mother’s mouth by kissing. Now, widespread cesarean delivery, bottle-feeding, extensive bathing (especially with antibacterial soaps), and especially the use of antibiotics have changed the human ecology and altered transmission and maintenance of ancestral microbes, which affects the composition of the microbiota. The microbes, both good and bad, that are usually acquired early in life are especially important, since they affect a developmentally critical stage."
Think of the implications of altering the transmission and maintenance of ancestral microbes in a developing baby. Isn’t anti-bacterial soap good? Since when are bacteria only bad? Who taught/sold us that? There are good and bad bacteria. Remember I wrote, “Our species seems to be less resilient as time marches on.” Your parents and grandparents impacted your microbiome as you will impact the microbiome of your offspring. Your parents (mothers and fathers) passed on more than genetics to you, they passed on their microbiome. Are young mothers encouraged to transfer microbes as our ancestors did or do our systems discourage passing microbes at every turn? I’m not blaming mothers here. I’m blame various societal conditioning mechanisms for turning their collective backs on healthy microbiome stewardship. I’m quite sure fathers pass gut positivity and negativity through their wives to their children as well as directly to their children but mothers are most likely the prime-gifters of microbiota to their children. Here is a jaw-dropping section:
"Loss of microbial diversity in the mother appears to be cumulative over succeeding generations. For example, in a study in Japanese families, Urita et al found a decline in the prevalence of Helicobacter pylori colonization from 68.7% in the first generation to 43.4% in the second generation and 14% in the third. Clemente et al studied the intestinal microbiota in a previously uncontacted group of Yanomami people in the Amazon jungle and found they had the highest diversity of bacteria ever reported in a human group. By comparison, the research team calculated that we in the United States have already lost 50% of our microbial diversity, and 2 other groups, the Guahibo (another Amerindian group) and rural Malawians, were in between. More recent studies are confirming these observations."
H. Pylori is a harmful bacteria but the Urita study shows that many good microbes can be lost in the same way. Just as in the soil, we need a huge variety of microbes to keep our gut health in balance. We need good microbes to keep the bad ones in check. C. diff shows what happens when your gut is so out of balance that only the bad can exist. We need good microbes. I’ll bet the Yanomami people don’t have anti-bacterial soap and I’ll bet breastfeeding is the only option used among their women. Why can’t science take the best old world health principles and add to them rather than substitute them? Could it be related to money?
“More than 73 billion antibiotic doses are prescribed worldwide yearly, or about 10 doses for every man, woman, and child on Earth, and the numbers are rising. In the United States 262 million courses were prescribed in 2011, or 842 per 1,000 population. Children receive a mean of 2.7 courses by age 2, and 10.9 by age 10. More than 50% of women receive antibiotics during pregnancy or perinatally. This is in addition to an unknown level of exposure from agricultural use of antibiotics.”
The section above is outrageous! Does anyone wonder why stool samples are worth $500 each? We’re making ourselves sick and who profits? Antibiotics definitely have their place but we’re clearly AB addicts or the prescribing doctors are using them as a crutch instead of telling Moms to breastfeed, be with their children instead of going right back to work, hug and kiss them a lot, give natural childbirth a try, and avoid treating their babies like sterile porcelain dolls, etc. Perhaps objective conversations like that are too hard to start. Alternatively, we can ignore how our bodies function and do whatever we want. Then we can just use antibiotics when our toddler has three ear infections in a year and deal with the post antibiotic consequences like autism, obesity, behavioral disorders, and asthma in a few years. Remember this is a hypothesis. Life is a series of trade-offs. I think my hypothesis has merit and I would encourage you to research more if you feel inspired. There are many “authoritative” sources that connect our gut microbiome to incidences of disease. The agricultural use of antibiotics… What? “The meat industry has exploited the weight effect for decades, adding subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics to animals’ feed to make them gain weight.” If it fattens cows and pigs what can it do to me?
“Repeated antibiotic exposure is common in early life, varies widely by country, and is often not medically justified. Observational data indicate that people who receive antibiotics have a higher risk of chronic diseases later in life, eg:
Type 2 diabetes (odds ratio 1.21, 95% confidence interval 1.19-1.23 with 2 to 4 courses, and odds ratio 1.53 (1.50-1.55) with 5 or more courses, up to 15 years after 25.
Obesity: US states with the highest prevalence of antibiotic use also have the highest prevalence of obesity.
Kidney stones: prior antibiotic exposure in a large UK study was associated with increased kidney stone risk, for exposures up to 5 years earlier.”
I think I’ve underestimated how damaging antibiotics can be to my system. Imagine dumping something in your soil that kills ALL or ALL fungi. Now the plant is on its own. If its roots can’t access food it dies. There’s no rhizosphere of bacteria protecting the roots from bad bacteria that move into unhealthy soil. There’s no quorum sensing to activate bacteria to bring nitrogen to the plant. The plant is completely reliant on dumping fertilizer around its roots. When we kill off our bacteria we are left with illnesses caused by microbes like C. diff and an inability to activate positive quorum sensing in our gut. Quorum sensing in our gut can change genetic expression in the microbes and us. If your body isn’t doing what it should perhaps it is related to a gut issue. Our genetic expression is everything!
My advice to everyone is to cut poisons out of your diet to the extent you can, diversify your diet as much as possible, pass on whatever ancestral microbiota you posses to your children through natural means, don’t do things that kill gut microbes if you can avoid it, dig for truth, and be open to what you find when you dig. If I’ve offended anyone with this story I apologize but it represents my true feelings and observations on these topics. I believe we are missing something huge in this modern world. I hope that through the spreading of knowledge we can be our best selves and help our offspring do the same. Speaking of our best self, look what finally popped up in my favorite bed...
This will be the first spear of asparagus I will get to eat since I started them from seed years ago. I’m so happy! May you always have a living root in your soil. See Gut-see part 2 here.
Adam
P.S. I thought this was an appropriate video to go along with my newsletter;)
Hues Corporation - Rock The Boat • TopPop
Interesting, I had heard about this.
There’s a book called Fiber Fueled by
Dr. Will Bulsiewicz on the gut microbiome and he is very passionate about healing the gut.
If you have time check him out. Lots of information for all of us