Our 28th Anniversary
Linda is playfully decked out in Mexican blouse and Navajo jewelry
and holding her bridal bouquet!
I returned from Borrego Springs Friday. When my good friend Joanne Ingwall
dumped me off at the Palm Springs airport the temperature was 76, the sun was hot, and there was no breeze.
Good T-shirt weather. When
I got off the plane in Bellingham the temperature was 48, there was a light drizzle, and the wind was blowing.
Sweater and raincoat weather.
This dramatizes the dilemma of the long distance north-south commuter;
there is no way to avoid being dressed incorrectly at one end or the other. But I shouldn’t complain; the weather
gives me an excuse to stay inside and clean up stuff I have been avoiding for
months.
Among the things I cleaned up this morning was a stack of
old magazines. Included among
these was the August 18th issue of the Economist. It had a weird version of Da Vinci’s
Man in a Circle painting on the cover, with the caption “Microbes Maketh
Man”. This rolled me back on my
heels because it sounded very like the New Yorker article I had just blogged
about: “Germs are Us”*. Sure
enough, it was: the two deal with precisely the same research. Of the two the Economist version is
longer, explores the topic much more thoroughly, and is nearly as amusing. You could do worse than to read it
yourself: online at www.economist.com/node/21560523. I excuse myself for missing it because
it came out at the precise time that I was fixated on my broken
ribs.
So, the Economist version of the story digs into the subject much deeper. It appears that the so-called “microbiome” (the sum total of our single-celled inhabitants) may in part be responsible for obesity, under-nourishment, heart
disease, diabetes, and even multiple sclerosis. But not cancer, darn it; manipulating our bugs won’t cure
cancer, although we all wish it would.
Some gee-whiz facts:
An
adult human is composed of about 10 trillion cells. In his/her gut alone live 100 trillion bacteria.
Together
the micro-organisms that call us home weigh more than 2 lbs.
We
inherit about 23,000 genes from our parents. If we include as “us” our microbial element we have more
than 5 million.
There is far too much stuff in this article for me to
summarize effectively; go read it yourself. And – although there is no mention of transplanted earwax –
fecal transplants are discussed at some length – although, being a British
publication, the word is "faecal".
As an aside, directed at New York Times readers and other
liberals: The Economist is safe to
read. Yes, it likes market forces,
limited government, moderate levels of taxation, and tends to be slightly
libertarian, but it is no Rush Limbaugh nor even the Wall Street Journal.
It endorsed Obama.
*Actually, in a Comment to "GRANDMA'S CURSE"
As if having to put up with a permanent infestation of microbes in our guts is not enough, it now appears that there may be some value in additionally harboring and nurturing colonies of worms. Thus implies an article in the Utne Reader, which you can read by clicking on
ReplyDeletehttp://www.utne.com/Science-Technology/Parasitic-Worms-Healthy-Human-Research-Parasites.aspx#ixzz2CfuyZGjI
(It took me 30 minutes to figure out how to cut ‘n paste this. I am not of this century.)
Anyway, the article offers very suggestive evidence to the effect that certain kinds of intestinal worms have a beneficial effect on autoimmune disorders: allergies, type I diabetes, maybe even Crohn’s disease and multiple sclerosis. (I don’t know whether these all are auto-immune disorders, but they all are suspected of being effected by the presence or absence of worms.) Of course, other types of worm are not good for us; from the article, I seem to gather that the good worms are those lumped under the category of helminthes. So, goes the narrative, it is possible that in promoting shoe-wearing (thus eliminating hook worms) and sanitation in general we are doing ourselves positive harm. But, of course, we also know that by cleaning up our act we have eliminated some deadly diseases – cholera, for one. So, what to do? They will figure it out.
Faith in flat worms has risen in some quarters to such a pitch that treating certain intestinal diseases with a worm-larva cocktail has been suggested. However, it should be noted that several large studies have found no benefit from the presence of worms in our guts. Obviously, before we start buying worms at our local drugstore some big clinical trials are needed.
The take-home message from this article seems to be that we evolved with worms in some kind of symbiotic union, and we should think twice about killing all the little buggers off. Try working that into your next cocktail-party conversation.
This comment is owning to the efforts of my Linda’s brother Richard, who sent me the link. Between Dick Joyce and Dick Ingwall I always have something or other to misinterpret.
Actually, the “Germs are Us” thing is from a comment to the blog “Grandma’s Curse”. There is an interesting add-on to this question in a recent issue of the New York Times. To refresh your memory: there are ten times as many single-celled organisms living inside of us as there are cells in our bodies. They perform many laudable services, and some that are not so laudable. Late research reported on here speculates (Can research speculate? Hell, yes) that this, our “microbiome”, actually exerts influence on our behavior, especially our eating habits. That is: maybe you crave chocolate because some sub-set of visceral bugs needs it for its life cycle. How they would exert control, and how the little buggers got smart enough to figure that out in the first place, is left unexplained; no doubt evolution will be envoked. Fascinating, though. Who would ever have guessed that the biology of life could be so complicated?
ReplyDeleteHere is the web address: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/science/our-microbiome-may-be-looking-out-for-itself.html?ref=science
Today’s NY Times had a story (buried amidst scary stuff about Ebola) about a new treatment for a bacterial infection called Costridium dificile. C dificile kills about 14,000 people per year, often people who work in a health-care environment. It is resistant to antibiotics. So, somehow our friend the fecal transplant has been found to help – give the patient the right kind of intestinal flora and fauna, I guess. Previously the fecal matter has been delivered via a tube down the nose,. Now it seems there is a pill that will do the trick. Will medical wonders never cease?
ReplyDeleteHere is the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/us/a-promising-pill-not-so-hard-to-swallow.html?ref=health
That should be Clostridium
DeleteMore on our essential bugs
ReplyDeletehttps://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/09/26/expanding-our-view-of-the-human-microbiome/
More on fecal transplants. This is going main-stream
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/fecal-transplants-restore-gut-microbes-after-antibiotics