Gut feeling

I had never really given much thought to microbes except maybe when at home we said what was passed down from my mother’s grandmother, ” you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die” and “germs build up your stamina”. So the theory going round in the family was that this contact with germs had surely contributed to our general good health and made us immune to colds.

So when I came across Rob Knight’s TED Talk about to what extent our health and our microbiome map are related I was in awe to discover that none of this had been thoroughly studied up until now.

This led me to the Human food project a study in food anthropology studying  the diets of communities that haven’t been submitted to changes as excessive hygiene, antibiotics, and cesaria procedures. This few groups of people are much more in contact with the microbiome in their surroundings and can help us map the loss of microbiome variety in the body in relation to our ancestors and the effect this has in causing diseases that are not found in these communities. More interestingly it opens a door to how we could eventually restore our gut balance. Jeff Leach explains his work with the Hadza in Tanzania:

We can contribute to build up data that will help in the findings by sending in gut samples. Hopefully minority communities will also be included in these studies. For now about 95% of genome research in the world is only done on western population.

Another interesting holistic approach to our ancestors’ health is Christina Warinner’s research through fossilized teeth. In dental calculus you find all kind of bacteria including the one that would be in the individual’s gut. By applying this technology she can reconstruct a detailed picture of the dynamic interplay between diet, infection and immunity and see long-term evolutionary patterns on our health and how pathogens evolve. See her TED talk here.

About what lifestyle and relation with nature and food specifically looks like you can watch this Matthieu Pailey’s seriesand furthermore how our gut microbiome is affecting our feelings by Giulia Enders. La vida en nosotros is an interesting tv documentary.  Also, Gut Check:Exploring your microbiome is a free course by Robert Knight and the University of Colorado at Coursera.org. And last but not least I recommend the film Dirt!

Header image by Robyn Jay under CC license