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Microbes That Keep Us Healthy Starting To Die Off
Dr_Ken writes with a quote from Scientific American:
"The human body has some 10 trillion human cells—but 10 times that number of microbial cells. So what happens when such an important part of our bodies goes missing? With rapid changes in sanitation, medicine and lifestyle in the past century, some of these indigenous species are facing decline, displacement and possibly even extinction. In many of the world's larger ecosystems, scientists can predict what might happen when one of the central species is lost, but in the human microbial environment—which is still largely uncharacterized—most of these rapid changes are not yet understood. 'This is the next frontier and has real significance for human health, public health and medicine,' says Betsy Foxman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor. Meanwhile, each new generation in developed countries comes into the world with fewer of these native populations. 'They're actually missing some component of their microbiota that they've evolved to have,' Foxman says."
am saddened by the death of our microbial overlords (or underlords as the case may be).
I think its more that we are using more external means to stay healthy than just not needing these at all.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
I was thinking the same thing.
There may be a downside to all this though, from what I understand of digestion and our immune system, it seems to me that when you lose X amount of microbes then you will end up with more of a different microbe that may breed much faster due to lack of competition.
The logic doesn't follow entirely. Just because something's been there or done a certain way in the past doesn't make it necessary for the future. Clearly you don't want to be born with everything your parents have. That's why we put antibiotics in the eyes of every newborn in developed countries. The antibiotics prevent chlamydial/gonorrheal blindness in newborns. That being said, it's something to think about and evaluate scientifically - so far it's very early to make any decisions about this stuff given the real lack of data.
Unless I feel like I'm at death's door, I do not go to the doctor. I'll bet most of the people who are missing these microbes have been exposed to a lot of antibiotics. This may also explain why staph infections are turning deadly, and I know it's why Western kids have lots of strange allergies.
The Hadza are the last hunter gatherers in the world, probably. They seem to be doing alright. (Not saying I'd give up my lifestyle, but there are lessons to be learned.)
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/hadza/finkel-text
Whether or not we "need" them can only be judged retrospectively, and not after a fairly sudden (in evolutionary terms) change in environment before the consequences have worked out - us having evolved to have them would probably indicate that they give some sort of advantage to not having them.
Maybe there is a middle road? Reasonable sanitation (ya know, soap up the groin, armpits and feet when showering and all that) but cut out the obsessive stuff. At work we have little things that you can use to spray your hands with antibacterial solution at the exit from stairwells. People take antibiotics "just in case", and so forth.
Maybe less really is more sometimes. I.e. there probably is such a thing as being too clean. No need to swing to the other extreme.
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
this is why we need to let our children interact with other people and go out and play in the dirt. I did and let me tell you, I do still get sick but not as much as some of my friends who had lived sheltered lives with there parents who thought that every little cold they got they would need to go to the doctors to be treated for it. we now live in a world with Sissies who can't take life's discomforts like there parents.
Just dismiss any investigation of it as backwards or some form of vapid tree-hugging, don't study it, and ignore any problems until peoples' expected lifespan returns to 35!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The presence of neutral microbes offers resource competition against random microbes taking up residence, especially harmful ones.
Since there is competition, new Microbes of any sort, are less likely to flourish unchecked, than if there was no competition.
Think of how many computer users would be using MacOS or Linux KDE, if Windows didn't exist, or if Microsoft were to suddenly drop dead and stop making new versions of Windows that were successful at competing for placement on people's computers.
The loss/extinction of some of these neutral, or even beneficials microbes could be quite bad, if it makes humans more vulnerable to spontaneous intrusion by others and digestive system issues.
The less diversity in the neutral microbes... the more likely that a malicious microbe releases one toxin that happens to kill them all.
That supposed total of 110 trillion cells overall weigh about 150 pounds. Are the microbial cells really something like 1% the weight on average of a human cell? 100 trillion microbial cells seems hard to believe.
--
make install -not war
Consuming a few "sliders" will re-populate lots of gastro-intestinal things.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Basically. If you somehow lost them all in the same proportion, this might not happen. The general problem is that you take, for example, an antibiotic like clindamycin that selectively kills anaerobes of the gut but not Clostridium Difficile. Now all of a sudden you have created a selective pressure that favors the growth of C.diff, and you develop an infection with pseudomembranous colitis.
Maybe less really is more sometimes. I.e. there probably is such a thing as being too clean. No need to swing to the other extreme.
I tend to agree. I am more on the age of thinking, "If i'm not dying(sick in bed), I don't need medicine."
My mother also raised me this way when I was a crawling around on the ground/toddler. Out of my friends I always seem to be the one that doesn't get sick hardly ever. I don't know if that is a trend means I am special. Perhaps I was exposed to more bacteria on a regular basis when I was young, and therefore my immune system grew stronger. Either way, it is an interesting trend.
Just go back to nature, eschew all this horrible modern sanitation and antibiotics, they are all poisoning you. Of course you expected lifespan will be changed from ~80 to about 35, but at least you won't be destroying our precious internal ecosystem.
What a profoundly stupid thing to say. Unless they are used to treat a specific life-threatening infection, antibiotics don't prolong your lifespan. And nobody is saying you shouldn't treat your Bubonic plague to protect your E. coli.
So yes, you can stop sterilizing your entire environment and taking antibiotics "just in case", and still enjoy the benefits of modern advances in sanitation, medicine and nutrition.
sic transit gloria mundi
Parent is correct in pointing out this basic failure to recognize the problem with averages in statistics.
In addition, abortions can also be counted as early deaths.
We already save many that would naturally die which has skewed the average even further. If the technology froze, one would expect the average to go down as the genetic defects live long enough to reproduce and increase the defect rates possibly leading to complications medicine can not fully counter.
Just think about it -- a dominant defective trait allowed to continue leads a large demographic of people (or all humans) who have some sort of defect that requires advanced technology to continue the species... The makings of an interesting science fiction story?
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Some of us didn't have any say in the matter.
NOT MY MIDI-CHLORIANS!!
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I hate to play pedant, but that's a poor analogy. Cattle have been bred to mature quickly; meanwhile the never-fully domesticated Elephants of Africa and India rival humans for their long maturation and gestation periods.
/IANA Micro-biologist
Microbes, on the other hand, are easy to breed in quantity once you have established their optimal developmental environment. Once we work out what we have inside and around us and what we need, we could conceivably tailor our anti-biotic intake based on our inherited and environmental differences.
'Intelligently planned' biotic yoghurt supplements may be the next big thing in preventative health care.
The Hygiene hypothesis postulates that the seeming rise in food and other allergies and auto-immune diseases like Crohn's coincides with the rise in hygiene in the developed world.
The immune system evolved in an environment with many more challenges from both symbiotic and parasitic organisms. Excessive hygiene shifts the equilibrium towards the immune system attacking itself.
If fact, Helminthic therapy has shown promise in Crohn's. Infecting patients with parasites or the killed eggs of parasites give the immune system something to chew on other than your own mucosa.
This is a good a reason to breed your own microbes contained within Home brewed Beer and Wine, Sauerkraut, Kim-chi, Sourdough, and Kombucha. http://www.wildfermentation.com/ And set the stage for microbal growth in your local farm soil ecosystems, by participating in and supporting organic agriculture.
Yes, for all of the hopelessly stupid people out there. If you feel like you are sick and you don't have a cold, go to a doctor to find out what it is. If your lymph nodes stay swollen for some reason, go to the doctor. If you have unexplainable pain, go to the doctor. When you get to a certain age, turn and cough. However, if you come down with the sniffles, suck it up and don't run to get Tamiflu and antibiotics shoved up your ass just because.
Christ almighty. I hope they never take the warning labels off small electronics. Otherwise you'll probably end up trying to use your Bagelator in the bathtub.
But the average longevity is only going up because of fewer early adult deaths. Longevity only considers those that reach adulthood.
Basically you are flat out wrong. The maximum expected age hasn't moved much. The rates of death for all younger years has been going down for many centuries.
The 99th percentile may have always lived about the same length of time. The 50th percentile are living much longer now.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
We do not need them... We ARE them!
They say that wars, hate and greed will kill humanity.
But I believe, that it’s the human arrogance will kill us.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Seems that most products advertised today pull on the "santize everything you touch" FUD that's out there. I work at a large technology company, and they recently installed automated hand sanitizers by every external door. I read an article recently that claimed that EMC was having cleaning crews sanitize every doorknob in their campus once a week.
This isn't just a corporate activity, I've got a friend with a 5yr old son in that the son has been conditioned to ask mom for Purel every 5-10 minutes. I also find it funny that kids are being taught to eat a McDonald's burger by holding the wrapper. The funny part is that the people making the burgers aren't wearing gloves...
Reminds me of the old joke: A Harvard and MIT student, both just finished using the urinal and the MIT student walks towards the door. The Harvard student says, "Hey, at Harvard they teach us to wash our hands after using the urinal!" The MIT student fires back, "At MIT they teach us not to pee on our hands!"
Industrializing elephants wouldn't work out so well for the creatures we know as elephants today. 10 of the 12 Bovini are either entirely domesticated or highly endangered, and the Bos taurus of which we have a billion are not viable outside of highly controlled artificial conditions which optimize for milk and steak. For related reasons, the species of chicken and swine which we have in abundance wouldn't be worthwhile to preserve if our primary concern is ecological health or diversity.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
Wet mass of an E. Coli cell is about 1 pg (pico-gram), or 10^-12 g. So, 110 trillion cells is about 100g of bacteria (1/5th of a pound); most of those are in your gut, the rest on your skin and mucous membranes. (The insides of your body are sterile for the most part.)
The problem is that the consequences will never "work out" - change is happening fast and will not slow down, so there will always be new data and new issues to worry about.
The vast majority of bacteria are either harmless or beneficial to their human host. Only a very small number of bacteria are pathogenic, and most of the time your body does a great job keeping those out. Here's a great book for bacteria spotters, amateur and pro, which tells you how to find bacteria without a microscope.
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=3864
http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Bacteria-Comstock-Book/dp/0801488540
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R.I.P. funnyman.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That’s the thing: There is a “too much”. Like with “sanitation“/antibiotics.
You essentially need that massive amount microbes in your digestive system, to digest your food. They are as much a part of you, as your heart or your brain.
If you kill them, you kill yourself!
If you ever had a wrecked digestive system, you know what you are talking about. Not only dose life become really shitty. It even changes your character. And not only as secondary effects. But because your digestive system got just as much neurons as your brain, and the messed up digestion messes with those neurons too.
Just as you got a protective film on your tongue, and on your whole skin.
If you kill them off, you basically lose the firewall and part of your PSU. Good luck withstanding the DDOS and botnet shitstorm and the hurricane outside then...
Sure you can try to recreate protection in form of chemicals and bubble boy bubbles. But what’s the point, if you already got a extremely effective system that’s been in use and improvement since millions, if not billions of years.
Those who do not understand nature are doomed to recreate it. Badly. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Well lets see... allergies in the western world are on the rise, and people here tend to rely on medicine to solve sicknesses rather than their immune systems.
I recall hearing that the appendix was a safe haven for some good bacteria. After a purge from antibiotics, it replenishes your gut with the good stuff. Complete speculation, but this decline might leave us with more restricted diets and weaker immune systems in a couple generations.
us having evolved to have them would probably indicate that they give some sort of advantage to not having them.
Or that it is not worth the cost of getting rid of them.
In any case, this is one of the most innuendo-laced collections of speculative bullshit /. has linked in a long time, and that's saying something. Everything in the article is prefaced with "may be" and "could be" and "possibly". Well, the Earth may be in danger because it is possible it could be hit by a low-albedo asteroid tomorrow. Doesn't that scare you and make you want to pay attention to me? If not, why are you paying attention to article?
The scare-mongering /. headline is a nice example of the evolution of lies: researches say, "This is an interesting topic", Scientific American says, "This may be happening and it may be scary!" and /. says, "Things that definitely keep us healthy are definitely dieing off!"
"Nerds" used to refer to overly pedantic people who cared about the truth. I guess /. isn't news for those people any more.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Just go back to nature, eschew all this horrible modern sanitation and antibiotics, they are all poisoning you. Of course you expected lifespan will be changed from ~80 to about 35, but at least you won't be destroying our precious internal ecosystem. Come on, take one for the team!
Brett
So many things wrong with this...
First of all, a large reason our average lifespan is going up is not because everyone is living to 100+. It's because we're eliminating a large amount of infant mortality.
You're also taking an all-or-nothing kind of approach that's simply idiotic. Nobody is suggesting we do away with modern sanitation and antibiotics... But maybe we don't need antibacterial chemicals built into every single object we touch. Maybe we don't need hand sanitizer stationed every 10 feet. Maybe we don't need to be pumped full of antibiotics every time we get the sniffles.
And they way you're calling it "our precious internal ecosystem"... You do know what they're talking about, right? This isn't some kind of tree-hugging PETA nonsense... This is about the insides of our bodies. It's about beneficial microbes that we need in order to function properly. Have you ever been on a heavy round of antibiotics that killed off a large amount of your intestinal fauna? It's potentially life-threatening, which is why they'll also have you on some heavy pro-biotics at the same time.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
more fun than eating dirt: mud wrestling with members of the opposite sex (or same sex, if that's the way you roll)
Or you could just use a little less Lysol, stop taking antibiotics every time you get the sniffles, and not be overly compulsive about washing your hands every time something is touched. Modern sanitation and medicine is good, but there can be too much of a good thing.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
...now has scientific backing. Go ahead, pick up that chip that fell on the floor and eat it. When someone gives you a look, just tell them you are maintaining a healthy microbial diversity.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
There was recently a story about how people with a high-fat, high-sugar diet have different microbes in their stomach that allow them to absorb a higher % of calories from those fat/sugar than a more moderate diet. And that it could change as fast as 16 hours - so if you decide to go for yogurt and vegetables one entire day, and then eat a high fat carbohydrate laden meal the next, your body wouldn't absorb nearly as many calaries as it would have if you ate the previous day. Which may hold the key for some weight loss.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1938023,00.html
God forbid we stop prescribing medicines all willy-nilly when they're not necessary just to quite down parents and belly-achers.
I go to the Doctor when it's serious: i.e., it's not getting better, it's getting worse, it's life-threatening or infected. I do not go to the doctor every time my throat hurts. That's just silly.
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"Qua!?"
if by expire you mean explode, then you've just come up with the coolest idea ever.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
No problem :)
As for your question, infection implies pathological invasion of the host. Otherwise you are merely colonized with the organism. For example, many people have MRSA present inside their nose, but that doesn't mean they are infected. And yes, you do have a symbiotic relationship with your bacteria, especially the skin and gut. Just have a look at wikipedia for lots of fun facts.
I ran the numbers on the growth rate of a puppy. In 100 years it will be too large for the solar system and will destroy it.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.