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)

[Maxmars]

Excellent topic!

It amazes me that most often our own human ecosystem is hardly ever recognized as a vital component to be understood and nurtured...

 

[Raptured]

You know those loaves of bread you buy at the grocery store that magically stay soft, mold-free and edible for weeks after purchase?

yeah...imagine what those chemicals do to your organs

[UltraBudgie]

You know those loaves of bread you buy at the grocery store that magically stay soft, mold-free and edible for weeks after purchase?

yeah...imagine what those chemicals do to your organs

Indeed. And it goes even further, to the chemicals used when growing the grain, and the strain of wheat itself. I would not recommend that anyone eat American wheat. It is still possible to find organically grown semolina, but very difficult. This is annoying, because it makes dining out at restaurants almost impossible, and pizza is right out too. If you doubt me, try eating European semolina and see the difference yourself. If you feel sleepy or bloated after eating bread, it's probably because you're eating American wheat or pasta. That is not a normal reaction, unless you have ridiculously stuffed yourself -- your gut is being poisoned.

[putnam6]

All I know is my gut was a wreck after I had my gallbladder removed, but probiotics and cloves, honey garlic, oregano
when taken regularly made a huge difference well that and I try to limit my wheat intake to an occasional bagel or cream wheat for breakfast as well as trying to eat healthy one meal per day.

herbs-that-can-kill-internal-parasites-naturally

[Maxmars]

Isn't it sad, what we're down to this...

Had my gall bladder yanked out with one of those surgical contraptions that are now banned... fortunately I wasn't hurt, but I discovered that if you were on any kind of routine daily doses of pharmaceuticals (as I once was) the lack of a gall bladder makes the liver work overtime processing the bile... and the liver affects medicinal uptake.  Complicates some things.

Which is to say that here we are, subjecting ourselves to industrialized food, and killing a vital component in human health at the same time.   Our internal ecosystem is 'part' of the functioning human... and we're killing it... every day.

If you buy your own food you have to trust your source.

Human physiology is miraculously complex... and apparently tolerant of chemical stresses... but sustained stress is another matter entirely... sustained stress kills.

[Byrd]

Physicians these days seem to be well aware of the problem with antibiotics, since the concerns about superbugs have been all over the medical literature since the 1990's and even before.

British scientists warned about the potential for superbugs in the 1960's, shortly after penicillin became widely available.  Even Flemming, the discoverer of penicillin mentioned it in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in the 1950's: https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/12/supe...ce-history 

At the time, the ability to cure disease and prolong life was fairly new and average people were suddenly living a LOT longer (https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectan...71%20years.)  If you look at the chart, the rise starts about the time that sanitation became common (the HUGE dip in the world life expectancy in the 1960's comes from the widespread famines in China -- thanks to Mao's very bad policies and droughts)

Here's where the tyranny of the marketplace overruns the concerns of science.

Superbugs and new diseases (and newly identified diseases) meant more opportunities for pharmaceutical companies, and they pushed their R&D departments to find more to be prepared for the Next Big Superbug.  While some of this was done out of humanitarian concern, policy from the top was also dictated by how happy the shareholders were with profits... and we all know how that turned out. 

Salesmen started telling doctors (who relied on what the companies told them about the medications and what was printed in the information pamphlets from those companies) that antibiotics can cure colds and many other diseases (and that would be a "nope."  Only works on bacteria, not viruses.)  The FDA (your government in action) created the "Bad Ad" program as part of a response to these lies: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/office-prescri...ad-program

(and that's a whole different discussion)

The dangers to the gut biome were well known (IF you majored in biology) when I was in college in the late 1960's.  My biology professor told us the story of a germophobe woman who drank Listerol to get rid of the "bugs in her gut" and the impact it had on her body.  The fact that I can still cite some of the details tells you how memorable that was.
  
But...profit overruled science.  That's why I knew about it so long ago, and some physicians and researchers did as well.

Finally, in 2016 (yes, sixty years AFTER Flemming warned about superbugs), scientists and activists made enough noise to get the attention of lawmakers and others and information started getting into the hands of the average citizen (and many doctors) https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/...cessarily/

And that's why you didn't know about it.

Now you can get probiotics for many things, including some fairly ineffective ones.  We need to have a talk with advertisers about that as well.

There are many things to worry about, but unless you have some unusual conditions, homo sapiens is one of the toughest species on the planet.  We can eat almost anything that doesn't eat us first.  We can drink water (tap water) that will kill fish within an hour.  We swim in swimming pools full of water that would kill a frog within thirty minutes or less (a rather agonizing death) and survive temperatures that would kill a lot of animals.  We're not constrained by biomes... we can live anywhere on the globe that we want to (and if it's not livable we can make a living space there with our technology.)
 
Our gut biome adjusts to whatever we feed it.  People who live together tend to have similar gut profiles, but it varies with country.  The best thing for your gut is to eat a lot of different foods and to enjoy life as best you can.

And be happy.  Stress is worse for your gut than most chemicals (because of the stress chemicals your body produces https://tristategastro.net/how-stress-af...e%20(IBD).

[putnam6]

Isn't it sad, what we're down to this...

Had my gall bladder yanked out with one of those surgical contraptions that are now banned... fortunately I wasn't hurt, but I discovered that if you were on any kind of routine daily doses of pharmaceuticals (as I once was) the lack of a gall bladder makes the liver work overtime processing the bile... and the liver affects medicinal uptake.  Complicates some things.

Which is to say that here we are, subjecting ourselves to industrialized food, and killing a vital component in human health at the same time.   Our internal ecosystem is 'part' of the functioning human... and we're killing it... every day.

If you buy your own food you have to trust your source.

Human physiology is miraculously complex... and apparently tolerant of chemical stresses... but sustained stress is another matter entirely... sustained stress kills.

Yes I regret having mine removed too, but I had 3 pretty bad gallbladder attacks and I couldn't afford to keep missing work

I firmly believe I should have modified my diet because it's taken me 4-5 years to dial in what I should eat and what I cannot eat. 

Considering how much I abused my body for 50 years it was time to change,

[Chiefsmom]

Funny how people come to the same place, on a different path.
I've been studying plant medicine.  And for all the variety of teas that you can make from all the different herbs, the one thing I've read over and over again, besides the main benefit for whatever ailment you are trying to cure, is that you should drink at least one glass of tea, with sediment from the leaves in the bottom.
Because that will help feed your "good" gut bacteria.   And how many ailments can be caused by a bad gut.

[Raptured]

I recently bought a small water-still to make distilled water.  The city water where I live tastes okay but often has a strong chlorine odor which is understandable during the hot summer months.   Recently I tried to grow a sourdough starter and it just wouldn't take.   I read that chlorine will inhibit growth so I switched to distilled and voila!    I now distill an average of 2 gallons of water a day to drink, cook and make coffee with.   The amount of brown "goo" leftover in the boittom of the tank is pretty shocking and indicates a plethora of "stuff" in our water supply.

Don't get me started on Fluoride

@Budgie - I used to homebrew and would ONLY buy grains from Germany/Europe.  They prohibit the use of glyphophosphate which if you do some research on, is one of the worst things you could expose your body to but unfortunately in the US, it's everywhere.

I recommend a documentary called "What's With Wheat" for some great background