Rethinking of disease
Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 3:22 am
Rethinking of “germ” or disease theory.
This is very simplistic, and a rough outline. I’m not providing cites, etc. This may be more of a small book/phD, to properly explain.
Essentially, germ theory is, conventionally, viewed as “We have found a vile beastie, we must kill it with Broadband Killer X, toxic to almost all of a wide category.”
So, as it turns out, the human body is better modeled as a ecosystem, than a machine – some of this change is an inevitable result of technological change, but it does seem to be more accurate. (Our organs are more of a diverse array of connected and interdependent ecosystems, than machines.)
We have more bacterial cells, than we have our own cells, on our body, and we are vitally dependent on the balance of yeast, bacteria, bacteriophage (viruses which infect bacteria), and I would suspect, viruses which prey on the yeast.
This is more of a complex predator prey model, which is both dependent on the ecosystem, and which supports it - which is true of macro ecosystems as well.
Now, the term I have heard used is "microecology," but no one's formally named it, yet, TMK.
Antibiotics act as an intense fire, in an environment which isn’t centered on fire. Lots of species are lost, and the ratios seem to skew drastically. (It is currently thought that an indigenous human has about 8,000 species of bacteria in their digestive tract alone, someone in the first world has 250.)
We have long known of a link between food preservatives and cancer – and food preservatives act by mutating the DNA in bacteria (its one of their uses in a laboratory), so this is not a surprise – however, a lifetime of consuming chemicals which are directly toxic to what is a vital part of our body, will most likely prove to be a very significant issue.
We have also found that bacteria which we thought were purely pathogenic, are in fact very widespread in the populace. (There are invasive pathogens, these would be things like whatever hellish fever pops out of some place with horrible sanitation – think of them like kudzu, zebra mussels, etc.)
In a very simple way, say we envision this ecosystem as a lush Bermuda grass lawn. Very healthy, and vibrant, lots of nutrients, and good soil. Due to some damage/other defect, some dollar weed gets established.
Now, the correct solution (as I’ve been told, not a lawn expert), is to closely mow the lawn, as the desired species can very easily outcompete the invader, if kept mown.
Or, we could burn the lawn, and then let whatver willl regrow, sprout up, and continue to burn it, as long as we keep seeing dollar weed.
So, rather than burn the lawn, we need to start looking at A) what went wrong which let the weed get established, and B) what can be done to allow the ecosystem to rebalance, and most importantly C) how can we establish a healthy ecosystem in the first place, when its been lost in so much of the developed world.
This is very simplistic, and a rough outline. I’m not providing cites, etc. This may be more of a small book/phD, to properly explain.
Essentially, germ theory is, conventionally, viewed as “We have found a vile beastie, we must kill it with Broadband Killer X, toxic to almost all of a wide category.”
So, as it turns out, the human body is better modeled as a ecosystem, than a machine – some of this change is an inevitable result of technological change, but it does seem to be more accurate. (Our organs are more of a diverse array of connected and interdependent ecosystems, than machines.)
We have more bacterial cells, than we have our own cells, on our body, and we are vitally dependent on the balance of yeast, bacteria, bacteriophage (viruses which infect bacteria), and I would suspect, viruses which prey on the yeast.
This is more of a complex predator prey model, which is both dependent on the ecosystem, and which supports it - which is true of macro ecosystems as well.
Now, the term I have heard used is "microecology," but no one's formally named it, yet, TMK.
Antibiotics act as an intense fire, in an environment which isn’t centered on fire. Lots of species are lost, and the ratios seem to skew drastically. (It is currently thought that an indigenous human has about 8,000 species of bacteria in their digestive tract alone, someone in the first world has 250.)
We have long known of a link between food preservatives and cancer – and food preservatives act by mutating the DNA in bacteria (its one of their uses in a laboratory), so this is not a surprise – however, a lifetime of consuming chemicals which are directly toxic to what is a vital part of our body, will most likely prove to be a very significant issue.
We have also found that bacteria which we thought were purely pathogenic, are in fact very widespread in the populace. (There are invasive pathogens, these would be things like whatever hellish fever pops out of some place with horrible sanitation – think of them like kudzu, zebra mussels, etc.)
In a very simple way, say we envision this ecosystem as a lush Bermuda grass lawn. Very healthy, and vibrant, lots of nutrients, and good soil. Due to some damage/other defect, some dollar weed gets established.
Now, the correct solution (as I’ve been told, not a lawn expert), is to closely mow the lawn, as the desired species can very easily outcompete the invader, if kept mown.
Or, we could burn the lawn, and then let whatver willl regrow, sprout up, and continue to burn it, as long as we keep seeing dollar weed.
So, rather than burn the lawn, we need to start looking at A) what went wrong which let the weed get established, and B) what can be done to allow the ecosystem to rebalance, and most importantly C) how can we establish a healthy ecosystem in the first place, when its been lost in so much of the developed world.