That's just scratching the surface - in fact they have a massive effect on all aspects of our health. In fact a new medical paradigm is emerging which sees our bodies less as isolated machines like a car or a bike but more as complex organic networks constantly interacting with the wider biosphere both within us and all around us and inextricably depend upon them for our health and wellbeing. I know folk who ain't heard of this **** are gonna be used to thinking of bacteria as the 'enemy', but the reality is they're an essential part of us inside us and all around us. Understand they ain't just pathogens or parasites or passengers along for the ride, they are essential to our health and wellbeing and even our thoughts and mood.
I got put onto this **** about 6 years ago or so and I gotta admit I was kinda sceptical at first, Ms Koba's got a number of ideas which are pretty far out there, but this one at least had some evidence based reearch supporting it so I went along... However that was 6 years ago or so and in the time since the body of research has grown massively and it's essentially moving into mainstream medical theory although there's still a way to go before practice fully catches up.
In short your diet is everything and not only that but you can use other tricks and tactics to manage and cultivate your internal biome - avoiding antibiotics except where absolutely essential is a good place to start, it's the equivalent of carpet bombing a city to flush out a few insurgents, probiotics are a good one too encouraging the useful bacteria to proliferate in your guts... I been making my own kefir for the last 5 years or so, but you can buy it from the shops or whatever and there's numerous other pro-biotics you can either make yourself if you got time or buy in. It's not one that sits easy with me, but at the more extreme end there's fecal implants... people with really badly compromised gut biomes have apparently had exceptional results through actually having shit from healthy guts put in em...Ewww... and yeah, I thought wtf? too when I first heard it, but the medical science is right, ahem.. behind it.
It's just part of a broader understanding that's growing that we're not isolated individual systems but a part of a living, breathing ecosystem made up of every other living thing on the Earth all involved in a complex network of interactions from the micro to the macro... if you'll forgive the hippie shit, part of the reason we got to learn to look after our damn planet, cos it's not seperate from us, just a lump of rock and greenery which we happen to live on top of, but actually one with us and essential to our very survival. In looking after our living world we're actually looking after ourselves... and not just in some vague hippie dippy way but a very real observable one with demonstrable pathways of causation and effect.
Citizen Koba
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