Table of Contents
What’s a microbiome?
Watch the short video above to find out. It’s an entertaining way to become familiar with the concept of the microbiome.
The 100 trillion cells that live in or on you are collectively called your microbiome. That’s 10 times more than the total number of human cells in your whole body! So your microbiome makes up about 90% of the total number of cells in or on your body.
Where did these critters come from?
The implantation of microorganisms starts when you come down the birth canal. If you receive good guys from your mom during the birthing process, you get a good start for living with a healthy, comfortable, well-functioning gut (gastrointestinal tract). After settling into your family, all that loving and cuddling transfers more varieties of organisms to colonize your gut and other mucous membranes and skin.
The “good guys” in your microorganisms help:
- Digest your food
- Make vitamins for you
- Turn your food into the form that you can utilize well
- Control weight
- Protect the lining of your gut
- Crowd out the unfriendly organisms
- Provide a second genome (genetic material) involved in your immune system’s proper development from infancy
Also the gut contains the second brain which produces 90% of our serotonin, the feel good, fight depression neurotransmitter. Your brain and gut communicate directly via connecting nerves.
What can go wrong with your microbiome?
Understanding how we’ve disturbed and destroyed the balance in our microbiome is essential to restoring health in our bodies. So pay close attention to this information and consider whether you need to work on restoring your microbiome. Most of us do need at least some restoration of it.
Antibiotics
The proper balance of your gut bacteria may never be the same after that first round of antibiotics. They’re like pouring Agent Orange on your gut flora, devastating the good guys. Yep they wipe out the good guys along with the bad guys, leaving the lining of our guts looking like a war zone. Then the bad guys overgrow and it’s “Oh, my aching, gassy gut.” Repeated courses of antibiotics compound the loss of healthy gut organisms and can lead to poor digestion, an uncomfortable gut, inflammation and a downward spiral into more severe gut problems and immune system diseases.
Damaging the microbiome contributes to breaking down the tight junctions between gut cells lining the intestines causing leaky gut syndrome. Particles of food and other substances, that were never meant to get past an intact gut wall, enter the blood stream. The immune system now recognizes these larger molecules of food and other substances as invaders and sets up an attack against them resulting in food and other allergies and immune system disease.
Roundup weed killer with its active ingredient glyphosate
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weed killer Roundup, was originally developed as an antibiotic. Unless you eat only organic food, you are eating glyphosate, which is sprayed on food crops genetically modified to not be killed by Roundup. But the weeds are killed. And your healthy gut bacteria are killed by glyphosate.
To make matters worse glyphosate also causes leakage through the blood-brain barrier. Now toxins and other abnormal particles are leaking into your brain too. Think of what havoc that causes in the brain.
Disruption in the normal relationships with our intestinal organisms = difficult health problems.
When all functions optimally we have a symbiotic relationship with our microbiome. We provide a nice warm home for them; and they help us digest our food, make vitamins for us and keep the bad guys suppressed.
Our modern lifestyle disrupts that harmonious relationship, damages the gut wall and allows lots of particles to leak out of the gut into the blood stream. Wherever those particles lodge creates inflammation leading to all sorts of symptoms that eventually become diagnosed as inflammation, allergies or immune system diseases.
Here are just a few of the tough problems that yield to health by restoring the microbiome:
- Crohn’s disease
- Irritable Bowel Disease
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Lupus
- Psoriasis
And other problems:
- Acne
- Candidiasis
- Diabetes
- Heart disease
- Cancer
- Over weight
- Cranky gut
- Allergies
- And more
Are you ready for the good news? You can restore your microbiome. See Restoring the Microbiome for steps to a healthy gut.
