Leading Researcher discovers how losing essential Gut Flora can devastate your health.
What’s Missing in Your Gut?
A Special Report on Missing Microbes
How Overuse of Antibiotics is Fueling Modern Plagues
Do You Know Anyone Who Has Any Of These Conditions?
Obesity, Childhood Diabetes, Asthma, Hay Fever, Food Allergies, Esophageal Reflux…Cancer, Celiac Disease, Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, Autism, Eczema?
Dr. Martin Blaser has studied the role of bacteria in our lives for more than thirty years.
(He is the director of the Human Microbiome Program at New York University, served as Chair of Medicine at NYU and is the President of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and has had major advisory roles at the National Institute of Health. He has had more than a hundred media appearances, CNN, BBC, NPR, The Today Show, Good Morning America to list a few.)
His 2014 book Missing Microbes sounds the alarm about the overuse of antibiotics.
Obesity Epidemic Caused by Missing Microbes in Our Bodies?
His research tells us that the modern plagues may be a direct result. This includes the obesity epidemic.
“In 1990, about 12 percent of Americans were obese. By 2010, the national average was about 30 percent…as of 2008, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1.5 billion adults were overweight; of these, over 200 million men and 300 million women qualified as obese. Many of these people live in developing countries that we associate more with famine than with overeating.”
Personally, I have noticed this. When I visited my home country of Finland in 1978 and 1982, there were few grossly overweight people. This has changed now. In my most recent trips over the last few years, I see many overweight and obese people on the street. One can’t help but notice the difference now.
Overeating Can’t Explain it All
“…high caloric intake, while definitely not helpful, is not sufficient to explain the distribution or course of the worldwide obesity epidemic.”
Until reading this book, I had named High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) as the culprit. It is in way too many foods and has a unique quality: it turns off the “satiety switch.” In other words, if you eat food with HFCS in it, you never feel satisfied and may continue to eat way more than is healthy.
I still think this is a factor, but Dr. Blaser has uncovered another far more insidious cause for “…this accumulation of body fat that has been accelerating not over the course of a few centuries, but in a mere two decades.”
Do You Know Anyone Who Has Any Of These “Modern Plagues?”
“…obesity, childhood diabetes, asthma, hay fever, food allergies, esophageal reflux…cancer, celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, autism, eczema.”?
Let’s explore some of these to get more of a handle on what’s going on all around us.
More Than Five Fold Increase in Diabetes
“In Finland, where record keeping is meticulous, the incidence (of type 1 diabetes) has risen 550 percent since 1950…the average age of diagnosis used to be about nine. Now it is around six, and some children are becoming diabetic when they are three.”
Asthma Cases Increasing
“One in twelve people…had asthma in 2009, compared with one in fourteen a decade earlier.”
Allergies Rampant
“Food allergies are everywhere…milk, eggs, soy, fish, fruits—you name it, someone is allergic to it. Celiac disease…is rampant. Ten percent of children suffer from hay fever…In industrialized nations, the number of kids with eczema has tripled in the past thirty years.
These disorders suggest that our children are experiencing immune dysfunction never seen before, as well as conditions such as autism…”
Adults Not Escaping
“Nor are adults escaping…The incidence of inflammatory bowel disease, including Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, is rising, wherever we look.”
“Could there be one underlying cause fueling all these parallel increases?”
Our “Friendly Bacteria” Are Under Attack
The degradation of our microbiomes (healthy community of beneficial bacteria in the body) may be responsible for the surging rates of these and many other chronic health problems.
Blaser says: “We’re really assaulting our microbiome… Right now, everyone is giving antibiotics, thinking they are ‘free.’ Once there is evidence that they have costs, the calculation begins to change.”
Real Cause of Ulcers? Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori)
Here is an example you may have heard of. An Australian doctor, Barry Marshall, discovered that ulcers were caused by Helicobacter pylori. It took years for his work to be accepted. Once it was, doctors around the world used antibiotics to rid the body of this supposedly nasty bacteria. Many sufferers were relieved of their ulcers. So far, so good. What’s the problem?
Pylori Helps Prevent Disease too.
This is a Problem, as we Have Been Destroying it!
As Dr. Blaser dug deeply into this bacteria with his experiments, he found that it also plays a beneficial function in our bodies.
To put it simply, he and others found that those without H. pylori bacteria in their gut were much more likely to suffer from acid reflux or GERD and from asthma!
Its absence may also explain why we have grown taller and fatter in recent decades.
We Are Now More Susceptible to Infections
Further…”…increased susceptibility to new infections is one of the hidden costs of antibiotic use.” In 1985, there was a massive outbreak of Salmonella in Chicago. 160,000 people became ill, several died. Authorities traced it to milk from one dairy.
Following the outbreak, the health department did a study of 50 people who had become ill and 50 who had not. They found that those who had taken antibiotics in the month before becoming ill were five and a half times more likely to become ill than people who drank the milk but had not taken antibiotics recently.
Coming Soon: “An Epidemic Against Which We Are Helpless”
“This is the greatest danger before us: pathogens causing an epidemic against which we are helpless. Ecological theory tells us that the people whose resident bacteria have been disrupted the most will be the most vulnerable. All things being equal, the asthmatic, the obese, and those with the modern epidemic diseases will be the ones at highest risk to succumb.”
Watch Dr. Martin Blaser here: http://martinblaser.com/
Wikipedia entry on Dr. Blaser: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_J._Blaser
Solutions
The challenge is that we probably know only a fraction of the different types of bacteria that inhabit a healthy and pristine person at birth.
A researcher helicoptered into a remote Amazon tribe who had not had any contact with the modern world. She was able to obtain stool samples and bring them back to her lab for analysis. What she discovered was an astounding array of bacteria, some in very small quantities. Bacteria that no longer exist in our guts in the modern world.
So, hoping to get back to that state is next to impossible for us.
What we CAN do, though, is to inhabit as wide a variety of “probiotics” in our guts as possible. I would not rely on bottled probiotics alone. Perhaps it would be wise to ingest as many different types of fermented foods as possible.
These would include:
Cultured Dairy Products: Kefir & Yogurt
Non-Dairy Alternatives: These products are a good option if you think you have a sensitivity to dairy products: Coconut kefir, Coconut yogurt
Fermented Beverages: Kombucha, Kvas, Rejuvelac
Fermented Vegetables: Sauerkraut (fermented cabbage), Fermented Carrots, Radishes
Natto (fermented soybeans)
Kimchi is a fermented dish that is an important part of a traditional Korean diet. Kimchi consists of a mix of a variety of vegetables and spices. Cabbage is typically a main ingredient, as is some fish.
Avoid Factory Meat and Dairy
“Today, an estimated 70-80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are used for the single purpose of fattening up farm animals: hundreds of millions of cattle, chicken, turkeys, pigs, sheep, geese, ducks, and goats. In 2011, animal producers bought nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics, the largest amount yet recorded, for their livestock.”
Watch Your Water Source
“Millions of us are exposed every day and not just from foods. Antibiotics are found in our water…Current water purification treatments…do not fully remove antibiotics. A 2009 study in several cities in Michigan and Ohio found antibiotic-resistant bacteria and genes in all source waters, drinking water from treatment plants, and tap water. The amounts were small, with the greatest levels in tap water. The point is it all adds up.”
Natural Antibiotics and Antivirals
Garlic, Echinacea, Colloidal Silver, Pau D’Arco, Manuka Honey.
Plus, I once used Goldenseal successfully for blood poisoning. (Please do your own research)
The 5 best natural antibiotics and anti-virals that destroy superbugs and just about everything else:
http://www.naturalnews.com/035516_natural_antibiotics_superbugs.html
Further Research:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/03/18/mcbride-and-barringer-interview.aspx
http://www.superfoods-for-superhealth.com/fermented-foods.html
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/fermented-foods-health/
Much good fortune to you and your gut
Love and Laughter and Smiles, all day long
Matti Anttila
The Single Most Important Habit to Acquire
http://joyenergyandhealth.com/mastery-newsletter-sign-up-page/
(Also no-cost Mastery Newsletter)
108 Tips for More Joy, Energy and Health, includes How to Feel Authentic Joy, Even When Unhappy (No-cost) http://joyenergyandhealth.com/
Matti Anttila, Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher. Zen of Joy Consultant and Author of: The Zen of Joy. How to Rewire Your Brain for Happiness & Success. http://zenofjoy.com (Free Zen of Joy Questionnaire)
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