Ever since we began to understand microorganisms, scientists and doctors have largely regarded microbial life as something to be feared and exterminated. Antibiotics were one of the greatest medical breakthroughs of the twentieth century – and to be fair, they did save a lot of lives. In fact, they were so successful that they are still regarded as one of the primary methods of disease control. To this day, antibiotics are often the first (and only) action taken when someone has a contagious illness. In many cases, the prescribing physician doesn’t know exactly which microorganisms are causing the problem. It could be bacteria, which will respond to antibiotics, or it could be viruses, which will not. Dirty work has always been feared as a possible source of illness, and a plethora of antibacterial products has evolved in our attempts to stay healthy. But is there a dark side to our war on microbes?
The Dark Side Of Our War On Microbes
The problem with antibiotics and antibacterial products is that they kill microbial life indiscriminately. In recent years, much new research has revealed the complex relationships we have with the invisible world of microbes. In fact, microbes are essential for our survival. They perform many functions for us that we cannot do for ourselves. And when we wipe them out indiscriminately, we are depriving ourselves of the benefits provided by the friendly ones in our attempts to control the harmful ones.
It is essential that our microbiomes are able to interact with the environment around us. We need exposure to microbes from outside ourselves in order to keep our resident populations healthy. When this doesn’t happen, our microbiomes dwindle in health and diversity.
Have you ever wondered why sometimes the people who are the most fastidious about household cleanliness seem to be the ones who get sick a lot? Well, there could be a reason for that. Recent research suggests that dirty work and outside play are not only good for us but essential to our long-term health.
The Web Of Life
One of the more recent developments in the field of microbial research has been greater collaboration between unrelated science disciplines. Microbiologists, immunologists, geneticists, botanists, ecologists and agronomists have all been reaching similar conclusions: we are not an isolated species in a sea of other isolated species. Far from it. The web of life that supports us is an integral part of who we are as human beings. We are completely unable to separate ourselves and still survive. This is leading to a shift in the way we have traditionally seen many fields, from agriculture to medicine. The typical twentieth-century approach has been that humans can and should dominate, manipulate, and control every environment. Humans must subdue nature, from the miniature world of microbes to vast landscapes.
In recent times, however, the leading thinkers and researchers in an array of fields are coming to similar conclusions: to treat the web of life around us gently. Open minds have questioned conventional wisdom and found vast new fields of study opening to view. The results of this paradigm shift (which is still in its infancy) are that the way we are to treat the world around us is radically different from our methods of the past. Our health and survival depend on so many external factors, most beyond our direct control. We can no longer afford the arrogant assumption that humans will prevail over nature at all costs.
Dirty Work: Health Begins With Dirt
European researchers discovered that children who grow up on farms are healthier, enjoying fewer allergies and less asthma. But not just any farms: the healthiest children live on farms that care for the ecosystem as a whole. Cultures of the bacteria found in their homes revealed a diverse mix of microbes, most of them found in soil.
Scientists believe that anyone who is exposed to the vast array of microbial diversity found on a farm is more likely to be healthy. Microbes found in soil, manure, animals, and plants add extra diversity to the human microbiome, giving greater protection against diseases. Microbiome diversity fights disease in two ways: some microorganisms produce substances that directly attack disease-causing pathogens. Others consume resources and occupy habitat that would otherwise be utilized by pathogens. With little to eat and nowhere to go, pathogen populations are limited in number.
Why The Soil Microbiome Matters
Dirty work matters. At least, the way we do it does. The soil microbiome is much like the human microbiome: it consists of unique communities of microorganisms with complex relationships. These microorganisms have varied functions, but as a whole, they greatly affect the health of our food plants. Microbes growing in the soil directly around plant roots have the ability to enhance or hinder the plant’s uptake of nutrients from the soil. These are the same nutrients we will receive when we eat the plant. Thus, without knowing, we are consuming food that is either nutritionally dense or nutritionally lacking. It all comes down to the health of the soil.
Conventional farming methods don’t do much to protect the soil microbiome. Awareness of the importance of soil health is growing, but quantifiable, convincing research in the field is still sparse. Many farmers wonder why it would be worth the time and expense to change their farming practices. Science is yet to produce a repeatable pattern with reliable results that will convince farmers that it is worth their while. Having said that, there are already farmers thinking outside the box and working towards the goal of caring for the whole ecosystem of the farm, not just what’s visible above ground.
Healthy Farm, Healthy Food, Healthy You
So intertwined is the relationship between farm and food, that it’s fair to say the health of the farm that grows your food will directly impact on your own health in the long term. So what can you do to ensure that you are eating the best food for your health? Measuring nutritional density is not an everyday option, and even organically grown food does not guarantee soil health.
Daphne Miller, MD, and author of Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing suggests eating organic as much as possible. In addition, she recommends getting to know the farmers who produce the food you buy. She recommends that you buy from farmers’ markets or other local sources. She asks: do the farmers live on their farms? Resident farmers are more likely to care for their farm as well as they care for their families. Get to know them, talk to them about their soil management practices, and how they view their farms.
Daphne Miller’s other suggestion is to grow your own food. It doesn’t have to be absolutely everything you consume – that would be impractical and overwhelming for many people. But she says that even a small amount of homegrown food is good for you. It means that you have control over the entire process from start to finish, and you are able to influence the health of the soil you are using.
Dirty Work: Friend Not Foe
Dirty work matters. Dirt is important. And once we begin to see it as a friend instead of a foe, we will be able to incorporate care for the world around us into everything we do. The choices we make today will have an impact tomorrow and beyond. We will enjoy better health and wellbeing when we practice mindful living and care for the web of life that we are part of.
References:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/how-to-eat-like-our-lives-depend-on-it/how-dirt-heals-us
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/12/23/soil-quality.aspx