You Are Not You--Part 2

All this anti-bacterial frenzy ignores the truth that our bodies cannot live without our friends the bacteria. In just the last few decades has science begun to realize the beneficial role of many types of internal bacteria. We’d best learn to call a truce in our bacterial wars, or we’re gonna crash and become part of our own “collateral damage.”

But breeding new species of super bugs is not the only unfortunate fallout of our war on bacteria. Some recent research seems to be pointing the way toward the increasing incidence of autoimmune diseases and other chronic modern ailments. It’s still a mystery exactly why such diseases as Crohn’s disease, type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and others are escalating, but our blundering is probably involved. We are altering our environment and upsetting biological balances that were built over eons. It’s becoming clear that antibiotics are a significant cause of autoimmune disorders. How?

The driving force behind our immune system is not a self-contained mechanism run by us, but is created primarily by beneficial bacteria. Ever since we became a separate species (about 200,000 years ago), our immune system has been able to tread a delicate balance between being too lax (thus failing to detect and battle foreign pathogens) and too aggressive (and attacking our own cells). Beneficial bacteria have trained our immune system to achieve that crucial balance. It’s not our own DNA that does the job, but bacterial (non-human) DNA. But now we’re upsetting that balance. We’ve saturated our bodies with antibiotics to the point that our immune system is confused and sometimes attacks our own cells.

Another way we mess up our immune system is by not exposing babies to dirt. We’ve become so obsessed with protecting our newborns from nasty bugs that we raise them in as sterile an environment as we can. Meeting a paucity of microorganisms, their immune systems never get a chance to become robust and balanced. This is a particular problem today, as more women are receiving cesarean sections to deliver their babies. The womb is an incredible bug-shielding organ. As an embryo develops from two cells to a trillion, it can safely do so in the womb’s sterile environment—without being turned into some kind of monster by mom’s invading bugs. But to survive in this dirty world, a newborn must very quickly develop its immune system. That process begins as it descends the bacterial-laden birth canal, and continues, as the baby sucks bacterial-laden mother’s milk and inhales Uncle Charlie’s bacterial-laden breath.

But a baby born by C-section immediately pops from a sterile womb into a germ infested world, with no preparation in the birth canal. We aggravate the situation by spraying disinfectant on everything that baby touches. Result: an out-of-balance immune system that goes haywire and either allows otherwise harmless bacteria to beat it down or goes into overdrive and attacks itself.

So the next time your doctor starts to write you out a prescription for a course of antibiotics for some non-lethal infection, you might think about declining. The next time you talk with an expectant mother, you might caution her about the sterile danger of a C-section and encourage her to breastfeed. If neither of these opportunities arises, express a little gratitude for all the friendly foreign critters who make their abode inside you. Your life literally depends on them!

[Note: Some of the information that stimulated this posting is found in the

June 2012 issue of Scientific American.]

You Are Not You--Part 1

We are taught by our culture that we are each a unique, separate, and independent individual. We think we are in charge of our mind and body, that we alone determine how our being gets along. We see ourselves as an organism that is assembled from a trillion cells that all have our unique identity stamped on them; cells that make up organs and bone and nerves—every one of them containing our exclusive DNA.

Not so. You are not who you think you are. You are not the distinct “you” that you’ve believed all your life. Instead, you are a colony, a society of countless individuals, a complex ecosystem of creatures that work together to form a vast community. For every single one of your trillion cells that constitute your body, there are ten bacterial cells inside you. These bacteria greatly outnumber the total cellular composite that is you—and they are not just visitors passing through, they live in you! You permanently host a massive colony of beings. You are literally a superorganism. You are not you.

Most of our bodily functions are regulated by these bacteria. Another fable that we’ve accepted is that these bacteria are bad guys—they cause disease and infection. True, some do, but the vast majority are beneficial—in fact, they are essential to our health and welfare. Our digestive system could not do its job without countless kinds of bacteria. They provide nutrients and break down otherwise indigestible food. Our immune system would go haywire without bacteria to regulate it and maintain its exquisite balance. We would quickly expire without the help of all these microorganism critters. We need them, far more than they need us.

Only recently has science discovered the role of bacteria in our biome. (Biome: a large community of creatures occupying a significant habitat—usually thought of as a forest or extensive ecosystem.) We have been obsessed with the kinds of bacteria that cause disease. In centuries past, disease was a mysterious malady whose origins were beyond humans. Then, in the late 1800s, microscopes helped us to see these tiny critters and identify some of them as the source of many illnesses of the day. Shortly thereafter, penicillin and other antibiotics were discovered to have an ability to stop the deadly bacteria and bring about miraculous cures. We fell in love with the drugs that kill microorganisms.

We went to war—fighting many varieties of bacterial infections and rendering humanity far healthier than in the past… or so we believed. In our phobia with conquering bacterial infections, we went a little too far. Today our medical professionals prescribe far too many antibiotics—to the point that the rapidly-evolving “bad” bacteria are mutating into new strains of superbugs that can slough off our most sophisticated antibiotics. We’re literally breeding new kinds of super bugs! Our massive factory farms that crowd together staggering numbers of poultry, pigs, cattle, and fish are wonderful breeding grounds for bacteria, so we dose these critters with copious amounts of antibiotics, hoping that they don’t succumb to disease. When we eat these doped-up animals, we ingest their leftover antibiotics and help to keep the microorganism arms race going in our bodies.

More on microbugs next time…