The War On The Tiny And Innocent

[UltraBudgie]

... our gut biome, that is.  Our own individual colonies of tiny friends, working tireless within us, and how do we reward them?  With poison and derision.

I was reading this book article from the Washington Post (speaking of intestinal parasites):



https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/t...r-AA1ss7pP

There is something about all this enteric disorder that seems peculiarly contemporary. Bookstore shelves are packed with subtitles like “An Empowering Guide to Your Gut and Its Microbes,” and many of my friends spend hours perched on the toilet in a state of disarray. As Natasha Boyd ruminates in a wonderful essay in the Drift, “Americans of all stripes seem to be experiencing a crisis of digestion” — a crisis that seems obscurely related to our intensifying angst.
 
“[Rumbles]” could not come at a more apt or more dyspeptic moment. Its author, Elsa Richardson, is a historian, and she provides not a medical but a cultural account of the “confederacy of different organs” that jointly achieve “the assimilation of material from the outside world into the substance of the body.” Richardson is interested in the gut’s workings, but she is also interested in its symbolism — in how it “came to be understood as an organ under threat from the forces of the present.” In other words, she is interested in why we are all sick to our stomachs and what exactly the epidemic of digestive disquiet portends.

The gut biome is really a second-class citizen.  Heck, it's treated worse than that.  Doctors regularly prescribe full-spectrum antibiotics that wipe out billions of helpful symbiont as a "side effect", razing the ground for more insidious infections to move in.  Preservatives and endocrine disruptors in our foods lay waste to the delicate balance within us.  But these are considered "side-effects", since they're not "human" cells.  And yet they are essential for our good health.

The symbology of it is telling, too.  We are, each of us, a huge and wonderful complex of millions, billions, of living creatures, over whom we are given stewardship.  An ecology all to ourselves.  How do our institutions of health treat the colonies of our bodies?  Indifferently, or as expendable resources.  How do our institutions of governance treat the colonies of our empire?  Indifferently, or as expendable resources.  You opinion may vary, depending on your politics or HMO.

So, personally I avoid foods and medicines that may harm my happy little friends.  They reward me throughout the day with toots of contentment.  How do others here guard their gut health?


(Also I am not sure why the Health forum is considered "off-topic", as there is much Ignorance to Deny here)