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Planet You

By On · Add Comment · In diet, ecosystem, environment, food, gut flora, intestinal flora, microorganisms, viruses

You are what you eat has never rung more true.  No, you will not turn into a Twinkie…but the microorganisms in your gut respond and change according to what you eat.  So says a recent study out of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine that showed changes in diet can affect the virus populations that live in your gut.

“Our bodies are like coral reefs, inhabited by many diverse creatures interacting with each other and with us,” senior author Frederic Bushman.

The researchers looked at gut virus populations of six volunteers assigned to eat either a high-fat/low-fiber diet, a low-fat/high-fiber diet or an ad-lib diet.  The researchers analyzed DNA from viruses in the stool of the participants over eight days and found that the largest variation in virus diversity occurred between individuals. However, virus populations among participants who ate the same diet became more similar over time.

“The study provides a new window on the vast viral populations that live in the human gut, demonstrates that they vary radically between individuals, and shows that dietary changes can affect not just bacterial populations but also viral populations,” Bushman said.

This is an interesting study, because we know how important diet is to the overall health.  What we eat affects our physiology in action, and in environment.  In fact, if we think of our body as an ecosystem as much as an individual organism (not unlike the earth, or a galaxy for that matter!), we can see the impact our food choices make on the environment and the organisms within us.

It is tempting to think of all viruses and bacteria as bad or undesirable, but we live in symbiosis with these microorganisms–they are as important to us as digesters (among other things) as we are to them as food and lodgings.  By controlling the substances you put into your body, you are essentially controlling pollution in your internal atmosphere.  If you regularly pollute your inner environment–and not just with what you eat, mind you, but with what you breathe, snort, inject, whatever–you not only affect the intestinal flora, but every cell in your body.

Listen, natural health advocates have been saying this  for years: Watch what you put into your body.  Give it wholesome foods, natural juices and fresh, clean drinking water, and your body will respond by remaining an oasis–lush, fertile, and full of life.  Pollute it with garbage and that’s what it will become–a cesspool.  It will become that to such a degree that it will change you, as it will every cell in your body…and it will also change the life forms residing within your body, because you are an ecosystem, a planet if you will.  Treat your planet as if it’s your body, and vice versa–and you and your viruses should live in mutual satisfaction for millions of microbe generations.

Welcome to the Future

By On · Add Comment · In drug resistance, evolution, extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) TB, immune system, microorganisms, superbugs, tuberculosis (TB)

As they say, the future is here. Experts have warned for years the coming of superbugs (I, myself, have warned extensively about drug-resistant microorganisms in my book, The Six Keys to Optimal Health, and here in this blog)–their looming invasion and the consequences we’d have to face in a world where microorganisms develop resistance to the only weapons we have to fight them–drugs!

Well that world has arrived: Recent reports disclose two new frightening superbugs that could have global health officials scrambling for years to come. The first (I’ll touch on the second in an upcoming post) is a case of highly drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) found in a Peruvian national studying English in the U.S. (West Palm Beach, FL area). Doctors say this extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) TB has never been seen before in the U.S. and is, in fact, so rare that only a handful of other people in the world are thought to have had it.

According to Dr. David Ashkin, one of the nation’s leading experts on tuberculosis, “[This infected student] is really the future. This is the new class that people are not really talking too much about. These are the ones we really fear because I’m not sure how we treat them.”

The XXDR TB-strain of TB is contagious, aggressive, and especially drug-resistant, doctors say. TB germs can float in the air for hours, especially in tight places with little sunlight or fresh air. So every time an infected person coughs, sneezes, laughs or talks, he or she could spread the deadly germs to others. Tuberculosis is the top single infectious killer of adults worldwide, and it lies dormant in one in three people, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Of those, 10 percent will develop active TB, and about 2 million people a year will die from it.

Simple TB is easy to treat–a $10 course of medication for six to nine months. But if treatment is stopped short, the bacteria fight back and mutate into a tougher strain. It can cost $100,000 a year or more to cure drug-resistant TB, which is described as multi-drug-resistant (MDR), extensively drug-resistant (XDR) and XXDR. There are now about 500,000 cases of MDR tuberculosis a year worldwide. XDR tuberculosis killed 52 of the first 53 people diagnosed with it in South Africa three years ago.

Although this all seems scary and futile, I do not take that stance. It’s true that antibiotics and other microorganism-fighting drugs have been over- and misused. And it’s also true that we have few to no external weapons to fight superbugs. But we still have one mighty tool in our arsenal, one that evolves along with the ever-changing environment in the same way mutating microorganisms do: our immune system.

The human immune system is the only weapon I’m putting my money on. A healthy human body expressing a healthy immune system is rather formidable–our ability to thrive over the course of history proves it. We encounter plagues that take out the weakest (with a few random exceptions) of our ranks, but ultimately, we adapt…and the dance goes on.

No doubt, our own endeavors have created new and enigmatic challenges–like extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) TB–but we will persist, for now. I don’t see drug-resistant tuberculosis as the dawn of the new Roman Empire, but we will have to be smart about it. Without a doubt, our most talented minds in chemistry and biotechnology will find new drugs to combat these dangerous superbugs, but ultimately, we’ll have to maintain strong, healthy bodies. We’ll have to make sure that all our functional systems are operating at their highest levels. This includes the immune system, the nervous system, the cardiovascular system and all other systems of the body.

Practicing the health-enhancing behaviors I outline in my book and here in this blog are the only things that will ensure your own strength and survival. Some healthy people will get sick and probably die from drug-resistant microorganisms. But if I have to bet on which people will have the greatest chance of survival from a superbug onslaught–I’ll put my money on healthy, optimally functioning people every time.

Hail My Symptoms

By On · Add Comment · In body aches, cough, fever, immune system, Innate Inteligence, medicine, microorganisms, sneezing, swine flu, symptoms

Well, I’m feeling under the weather today. Swine flu, I think. Again. Third time this year. I’m feverish, body aches, severe runny nose, sneezing, not sneezing but feeling like I have to (hate that), and slight chills.

But it just reminds me that my symptoms are welcome. Yes, welcome–thank god for symptoms–because they are my body’s way of protecting me from dangerous microorganisms.

The fever increases my body temperature to a level not safe for many microbes. The runny nose, sneezing, and cough expel any unwanted germ from my mucous membranes, where they like to attach before invading. The chills and body aches are the environment’s response to the ongoing war between my immune system and the invaders it’s fighting. Think of it as the beating any battlefield takes during wartime–Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, a Sumo dohyō, you get it.

I’m not generally a drug-taking guy. Saying that, I will take a med if it’s useful to me at the time. So, you all remember when I cracked my tooth a year ago? Motrin’d it. Didn’t mess around–I was hurtin’ big time. Then there was the time I had appendicitis. Morphine’d it. Thank goodness for narcotics–they’re useful, no doubt. But I don’t run to antibiotics, or cold medicine, or anything like that when I’m sick because I’m really of the belief that the body knows what to do and when to do it–it has an incredible innate inteligence directing it. And I’m confident in my body’s Innate Intelligence to handle most things that come its way.

So I’m celebrating my innate ability to heal by embracing my body’s symptoms. I’m at work today and everybody coming in knows my status. If they are freaked out about it, they are not required to stay. I wash my hand one thousand times a day, anyway…but I double that when I’m symptomatic.

Anyway, I kind of value the times when I feel under the weather, because, frankly, it allows me to get some much needed rest, so I ain’t complaining. Five more hours and I’ll get to become more intimate with my bed.

Hack-Thoo Spit

By On · Add Comment · In China, microorganisms, phlegm, respiratory diseases, respiratory infections, spit, spitting
Riggidy-raow, ziggidy gadzuks, here I go…

Want to seriously gross out? Hocking up loogies is common practice in China. Eeeew!

That’s right, walk down any street in Beijing and you’ll enjoy the sights and sounds of people hacking up their lungs. Many people in China believe that spitting is actually good for your health. “It’s good to spit, it’s good for your health,” says a 40-year-old man unapologetically as he rubs his shoe over the foul puddle he has just created.

Spitting in China is culturally acceptable, however, the government is trying to stop it; mainly because it’s “uncivilized” (and the Olympics are coming, so better to be on civilized behavior), but spitting can also spread disease. Phlegm can carry microorganisms like bacteria or viruses, some of the health ills the Chinese have been plagued with. According to Li Yan, a respiratory disease expert at Beijing’s Xuanwu Hospital, air-borne respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis, pneumonia and influenza can be spread by the phlegm of a disease carrier. She said widespread respiratory infections, partly due to China’s polluted environment, and the population’s lack of hygiene awareness contribute to the spitting habit.

Well, apparently the Chinese government will have their hands full trying to curb an age-old habit. And it’s not just the spreading of disease; according to experts, expelled, phlegmy saliva freezes during the winter and becomes slippery like an oil slick, posing a danger to pedestrians and cyclists alike, who often slip and fall from a frozen piece of funk. Oh well, if you plan on going to the Olympics next year, just watch for the Hu Flung Fu.

Thoughts on Evolution

By On · Add Comment · In chimpanzees, gene, gorillas, HIV, immune system, immunity, infection, infectious agents, microorganisms, monkeys, PtERV1, retrovirus, TRIM5a, virus

Scientist have reported that our human ancestors won a significant battle against an ancient retrovirus millions of years ago, one

that may have ultimately left us susceptible to HIV.
According to experts, human beings have a gene, called TRIM5a, which was successful in fighting the ancient PtERV1 retrovirus. This retrovirus infected chimpanzees, gorillas and old world monkeys about 4 million years ago but not humans. Scientists believe that the presence of the TRIM5a gene in humans neutralized the retrovirus and therefore prevented infection.
Monkeys were not so lucky. Without a copy of the virus fighting gene, apes’ were susceptible to the retrovirus lodging itself into their genome, thus causing disease. In monkeys that did not die, the retrovirus mutated, and was passed on to offspring. These mutations led to future immunity to the HIV virus, something humans did not get.
Sounds right to me; from my understanding of evolution, this is one mechanism in which an organism can develop immunity. As I say in my upcoming book, The Six Keys To Optimal Health, we actually need to be exposed to infectious agents – it’s the only way for our immune system to evolve. The virus and other microorganisms we encounter today, may protect us from new diseases tomorrow. Microorganisms evolve just like we do, as does our immune system. Think of it in the same way you would a computer virus-scan program – gotta do the updates, otherwise you’re susceptible.
So, in my opinion, it’s futile to eradicate microorganisms. We need them to further our own evolution. What’s more important is keeping the body healthy, so that we can effectively stave off infection, illness and disease on our own – just as chiropractors have been preaching for over a century. Do the right things – eat well, sleep well, get regular chiropractic adjustments – and appreciate those bugs for what they are: accomplices in the evolution of life on planet earth.
Copyright © 2013 Dr. Nick Campos - All Rights Reserved.