Negotiating a truce with our own germs
http://health.heraldtribune.com/2012/06/19/negotiating-a-truce-with-our-own-germs/
While the idea of getting a poop inoculation is quite gross, there is nearing overwhelming evidence that our ‘microbiome’ is dramatically influential to our health and welfare. One can easily analogize antibiotics with the use of Roundup on a field. Unless one immediately plants the seed of something specific, the cleared field will quickly sprout weeds from seeds blown in and it is extremely unlikely that you will wind up with a field that is desirable, let alone beneficial. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone were to take a long hard look at antibiotics and find that they closely track the incidence of so many chronic diseases our society has been inflicted with.
I have no doubt that in the next 10-15 years we will be able to get an inoculation to get a more ideal microbiome, particularly when we have to take antibiotics. Indeed, I can foresee a careful tailoring of the microbiome to achieve specific outcomes and it won’t shock me at all to find in the next 20 years that athletes are ‘doping’ with altered microbiomes.
