Yes that is one of my oft times answers but something my wife was reading this morning summed it up.
Apparently only about 43% of us are human with the rest being an assortment of microbes living in and on us. Scientists are discovering that these guests are actually far more important than we are for our health and can affect everything from our hearts to our brains (if you can find them) . Kill off any of the colonies such as with antibiotics and the whole balance changes.
So we know how important our vagus nerve is and how that can affect our hearts so what is affecting our vagus nerve? Our gut? Our Lungs? Our Skin?
I know that some members already understand this and especially regarding gut health work to improve. Maybe western science has it all wrong .
And if you think that is all a bit deep for me sorry you are right. It won't happen again. So to end on a (nearly appropriate) joke....
An explorer was in the Amazon basin when he was overtaken by Montezuma's revenge which laid he very low. A local shamen came to him and produced a small vial of liquid into which he dipped a strip or leather telling him to chew on this and if he was not better next day to go back and see him.
Next day he was still bad so went. On explaining this the shamen looked at him sadly and said ---wait for it--- Oh you mean the thong is ended but the malady lingers on.
I'm going now.
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BobD
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Ah...er..... uhm.... I wish I were intelligent enough to understand as I love a good joke. However, it is quite possible that perhaps I am 80% microbe.
That was a good belly laugh Bob - I’m probably partly Border Collie - LOL.
This research ties in with the idea of children playing in dirt and acquiring immunity to disease. Making mud pies, scraping knees and elbows falling out of trees and playing in the wild, free nature are unknown activities to many kids now.
Your memories brought back lovely childhood ones for me Finvola. Eating blackberries picked straight off the hedge, if it had a maggot on it you just flicked it off. We got stung by nettles, fell off our bikes and just carried on playing. I remember coming off my bike and a small bit of bone showing in my knee, a doctor never saw it, mind you it took ages to heal. I have faint scars on my knees now, they are memories of a happy childhood. The cat slept under the covers in my bed and the dips in our kitchen (wooden) draining board were full of gunge. We drank raw milk that had come from the cows that day. Huh no wonder I have a strong stomach and feel I would surely be mostly microbes.
Fin and Jean - my childhood to a tee - I really was a tom boy - never without a cut, scrape or bruise, always a bottle of TCP and iodine in the lst aid box. Always collecting grass snakes, slow worms etc would put them back in the field at the end of the day, even picked up an adder once, did not know it was an adder) had the sense to put it in a shoe box, showed my dad when he got home, who turned rather a pale colour, but explained what it was and showed the markings for future avoidence. I got quite badly stung recently by nettles in the woods, not a dock leaf in sight (used to be in abundance near nettles, have these become rare now!!!!!!!) I do despair some times when I see some friends with grandchildren and everything must be pristine clean, work tops, floors everything. I also think I would have been mostly microbes.
Absolutely. I recall reading a study about forty years ago about Leukemia figures in New York. Highly prevalent in high class areas but virtually unkown in poor black areas. I'm sure our septic tank is unhappy with all the bleach my wife uses. Still fifty years of eating sandwiches with oily hands whilst working on cars must have helped me.
I come in from the garden with grubby hands and eat a handful of nuts without washing them on purpose, but hypocritically nag my husband to wash the oil off his hands after tinkering with the bike!
Brought a smile to my face as I sit here freezing! Got plasterers and decorators in,using chemicals to sort damp stains,dust everywhere,windows and doors opne,me on dog guard duty so he doesnt wander off(elderly rather bewildered Golden Retriever)
Seemed a good idea at the time....then second son arrived back home unexpectedly to stay for a few weeks,ah...his bedroom was where we were going to store lots of stuff!
Damn!
Oh well,Ill go and adjust my thong and put the kettle on....again!!!!
"Royal visit" from family this weekend so house cleaned to within an inch of its life and AGA on overtime with cooking meals for ten. Happily swap you!
Your joke was funny Bob, but what really made me laugh was your saying that only 43% of us are human. So what are the other 57% of us? I wonder if I'm one of the lucky 43% 😂
Excuse my weird sense of humour ... I knew what you meant of course 😊 x
Thanks Bob, good subject. Totally agree with where our focus should be re gut health from what I have read; also Finvola, Jean and Cassie's comments. I was brought up on a Yorkshire Farm and I realise more now than then what a privilege it was, we had our own Jersey cow with oodles of raw milk, cream and butter no allergies or anything else and we still have raw dairy today; arteries completely clear! I hope I am wrong but I fear the scandal over cheap, titillated and just plain bad food will emerge over the next 10 years. Being cynical I expect that is why the Food Industry has been semi compliant with labelling ingredients etc as this should be a defence against future law suits.
Keep up the good work, you raise the bar for all of us, making everyone's contribution more valuable.
I was a snotty nosed kid and a tomboy. I was allowed to roam around our small town, playing anywhere and with anyone. I was never mollycoddled. My husband, an only child, always had to play at home, wasn’t allowed to get dirty or mix with children who might have germs (like me). Now he gets every cold going and it’s really rare for me to have a cold or virus. Love my microbes.
The thing about only being part human reminds me of an idea put forward by Flann O'Brien in The Third Policeman, that in the town in question the bicycles were so hard and the streets so rocky and bumpy that, over a lifetime, a man became half man and half bicycle as a consequence of the mixing of the atoms of the two. Also, the story of the man who went to court over a debt, and argued that given that our cells keep dying and being regenerated, he was no longer the same man who borrowed the money...
We could be optimistic and use a similar argument - that the cells in our dodgy hearts have been replaced by healthy ones, and the af that we used to have no longer exists. If only...
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