In a recent finding by a global wellness institute, the wellness sector encompassing nutrition, fitness, precision & alternative medicine accounted for 5.3% of the world’s economic output in the year 2017. As such health & fitness have been used interchangeably. However it is important to note here that fitness or workout is a part of overall holistic health. Out of point of discussion is not differentiating between health & fitness though.
In Spite of such a revolution in the wellness sector, the rate of sickness & chronic illness is far away from declining. When it comes to chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, allergies, cancer & gastrointestinal disorders, proportion of global adult population suffering from these diseases are increasing exponentially every year. In fact, we are now witnessing increasing rate at which people across the world are attracting neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s & Autism to name a new.
For example, the rate of obesity in the US has increased from 13% in 1972 to whopping 42.4% in the year 2020. At global level, 9% of total adult population suffer from diabetes & 17.9 million deaths are attributed to cardiovascular diseases.
This is just the tip of the iceberg! While these geographies & conditions may not seem to be related to be each other, there are research & empirical evidence supporting a common link between these conditions- invisible friends living in our gut- gut microbes (bacteria).
But not the kind you are probably thinking of.
Our complex relationship with bacteria & other microorganisms living inside our body goes back to million of years. By cell count, they comprise more than half of the human body. Our body has 57% foreign cells & 43% human cells. Epigenetically, we are only 1% humans. There are 40 trillion microorganisms, mostly bacteria, living in our gut. For most of our history, we have misunderstood them- done so at our disaster, the main reason why a large proportion of people are suffering from chronic diseases & conditions.
The matter of fact is that we did not catch hold of microbes living in our gut until 1674, when a Dutch lens maker named Antonie van Leeuwenhoek described the very first microorganisms, which he called ‘animalcules. It would be another 100 years before we clearly understand the role of microbes in maintaining & improving human health.
Work of some scientists including Antonie van Leeuwenhoek laid foundation for germ theory of disease which states that many diseases are caused by microorganisms. These assumptions were the starting point of the disastrous state of health that we are experiencing today.
Germ theory paved the way for great inventions such as antibiotics but it also had a terrible side effect. It made us believe that bacteria living in our body are our enemies. This followed a process of purification, sterilization & eradication. We developed weapons to eradicate microbes( which were actually our friends & brothers) such as antibiotics, antibacterial soaps & bleach.
The bad news: These solutions just managed our current health conditions but did not cure & reverse them. In Fact in our effort to fight against bacteria, we inadvertently started war against ourselves & started depleting tissues & cells in our body which were essential for functional & sustenance of our body.
In 1989, a British professor named David Strachan became the first to indicate that we have done it wrong. He believed that the rapid 20th century rise of allergic conditions like hay fever, asthma, and eczema was linked to our increasing obsession with hygiene. In his view, allergies could be avoided by exposing children to infectious microbes while they were young—kind of like a vaccine.
Strachan concluded that the escalating use of antibiotics, bleach, and other indiscriminate antimicrobial products was keeping children’s immune systems from developing properly. As a result, chronic diseases were creeping in. This idea would become known as the Hygiene Hypothesis.
In 1990 when metagenomics was introduced, it seemed to fill the gaps in Strachan’s puzzle. Now we have access to tools that can sequence the genome of over bacteria- bacteria, yeast, virus, algae including those living inside our gut. This was considered to be a great technological revolution. Since then our evaluation & understanding of microbes has improved dramatically. We now know that 99% of microbes are beneficial for our health & are our best pals provided we feed them properly so that they can feed our body with beneficial nutrients. We now know that many of them have evolved to live in & on us & perform critical functions in our bodies. Now it is clear that diversity & abundance of bacteria inside our gut & on us are essential for our overall health & obsession with hygiene (use of antibiotics, antibacterial soaps etc.) has impacted & reduced our diversity.
It’s time to update & replace Strachan’s theory. The problem is not that we are eradicating too many bad microbes, although that’s fueling its own crisis—antibiotic resistance. It’s that we’re eradicating too many good microbes as well. It turns out that microbes living inside & on our body plays a huge role in regulating metabolism, training our immune system, improving our digestion process, communicating with the brain & providing our body essential nutrients.
Training of the immune system is part of the process of receiving our first microbes at the time of birth commonly referred to as seeding. Disruption in microbiome during that time such as taking antibiotics wipes our good bacteria from the gut & can compromise development of the immune system. This theory goes beyond fever or asthma. As such, disruption in microbiome has been linked various chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, heart ailments, food allergies, autoimmune diseases & even neurodegenerative diseases. Parallelly, we are now also trying to figure out how to prevent these disruptions & reverse occurrence/cure such chronic diseases.
Now we can learn which microbes live in our gut, which are active & what functions they perform to make sure that we are feeding the right kind of microbes. The more we feed our friends, the more they will dominate pathogens & more likely we will be away from chronic diseases.
The fact is microbes in our gut communicate directly with our immune cells to prevent immune response to harmless bacteria. We have identified bacteria that can make switch food allergies & tolerances on & off, thereby building a sustainable solution & dietary intervention that can harness development of such bacteria/species/strains.
There are unique solution for every individual based on the composition of microbes & providing personalized dietary recommendations that feeds the beneficial bacteria & prevents inflammation is the way forward to combat world’s biggest health problems.
You are just one step away from decoding your gut microbial community & unmasking the root cause of chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, gastrointestinal disorders & neurodegenerative disorders. Sign up for our free assessment & discovery call here to learn more.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonie_van_Leeuwenhoek
