I attend a "Men's Prayer" meeting at our church every Friday morning when I'm in town. For the past year and a half or more the group has usually consisted of just three of us. Yesterday the three of us met and the other two guys asked how my time in Indianapolis had gone. Had I learned anything?
Eventually, I got around to talking about my foray into sauerkraut-making. After I finished describing how I had made my sauerkraut, one of the men--somewhere in his 70s--said, "That's exactly how my mother made sauerkraut!"
"Your mother made sauerkraut?"
"All the time!"
"My mother, too!" said the other guy--about 60 years old and a guy who grew up on the farm.
I thought: "How strange! Sauerkraut-making sounds as if it were relatively common knowledge not that long ago. But our generation grew up never knowing. And the next generation. And, now, a third generation. No knowledge. All I/we have ever known (until very recently) is the synthetically-produced/'dead' kind of food that lacks any of the beneficial microorganisms in it by the time we eat it."
Mike Adams of Natural Health News often makes side quips about the modern scientific and commercial food establishment's anti-bacterial fixation. The general viewpoint promoted by our society seems to me to match what Adams complains about: that the only good bacteria is a dead one. As he put it in his last article about S510, Top ten lies about Senate Bill 510:
Lie #8 - The FDA just wants to make food "safer"
Actually, the FDA wants to make the food more DEAD. Both the FDA and the USDA are vocal opponents of live food. They think that the only safe food is sterilized food, which is why they've supported the fumigation, pasteurization and irradiation efforts that have been pushed over the last few years.
Sounds about right to me (as far as the mentality of the FDA and USDA). But, I was reminded recently, the mentality is totally wrong from the perspective of the latest scientific discoveries.
My reference to Bonnie Bassler in my Microbes and Soil post was picked up by Keith Johnson on the Permaculturelist blog. And that yielded a comment by Doug Weatherbee that focused on the central point of Bassler's TED talk--something I didn't mention in my post--the significance of what Bassler calls Quorum Sensing:
Over the past 15 years Dr. Bassler and her MIT team discovered that all bacteria species "speak" in 2 chemical languages: one language is a private language only understood within the specific bacteria species and the other language is the Esperanto common language understood by all bacteria species. Until Dr. Bassler's work, microbiologists couldn't understand how some bacterial mixtures which contained pathogens like E. Coli would not show E. Coli virulence and other bacterial mixtures which contained E. Coli the E. Coli would be very active and engaging in a virulent attack. Dr. Bassler figured out that the E. Coli were communicating to other E. Coli using the private E. Coli chemical language AND communicating to ALL of the other bacterial species using the common bacterial language. Only when the E. Coli number of individual bacterium RELATIVE to the total of all bacteria species numbers was high enough in E. Coli to give the E. Coli a fighting chance of winning would the E. Coli "switch" on and become virulent. From an evolutionary standpoint this makes sense. Why would a pathogenic organism species make an attempt to create dis-ease (which entails a use of valuable energy) when it is completely outnumbered by other microbial species who may be potential predators who function as a check and balance against the disease.
This has profound implications for farming and ranching.
--And, I might say, to how we should approach a lot of medicine.
Whether our biocides are synthetic "chemical" pesticides or "organic" home-made pesticides, the thinking behind their use is the same: if the pathogen is present (even in a neighbour's field) we lay down a biocide attacking the pathogen. Our biocides, whether a commercial Syngenta pesticide or a homemade permaculture recipe for powdery mildew sulphur containing "organic" biocide, kills BOTH the bad-guy pathogen microbes and the good-guys.
Problem here is that the bad-guys usually (not always but usually) reproduce more quickly and come back before the good-guy microbes. Quorum Sensing points to a fundamentally new way of thinking about this in our farms. We need to increase the ratio of good-guy microbes in the soil and on the plant surfaces in relation to the "bad-guy" pathogen microbes. Research on plant pathogen suppression with composts backs this up. It's the amount of a plant pathogen species #s in a compost relative to the total pile of microbes that determines whether the plants will develop the disease. (Emphasis mine--JAH)
Well, the same relation exists in our bodies as well. As Barbara Minton notes in an article published on Mike Adams' Natural News site: "[T]aking probiotics is probably one of the best interventions you can do to stay healthy or regain your health. That's because those four pounds of little critters in your gut are to a very large degree your immune system. They hold the keys to your very existence."
I'm afraid Minton may be using an "old" and inaccurate metaphor for what occurs in our guts. For her, the "good" bacteria go to war against the "bad" bacteria:
Probiotics are friendly bacteria similar to those found in people's guts, especially in the guts of breastfed infants who have been provided this natural protection against many diseases by their mothers. Most friendly bacteria come from the Lactobacillus or Bididobacterium groups. There are several different species of bacteria in each group. Some probiotics are also friendly yeasts.
Taking probiotics is a way to keep your friendly bacteria population up to full strength so it is always at the ready to defend you. It is a way to replenish the bacteria that are killed off by the pesticides and chlorine. If you have taken antibiotics, taking probiotics is even more important because you probably have unfriendly microorganisms living in your gut that your reduced levels of friendly bacteria are having difficulty handling.
But I wonder if Bassler's view may be more accurate.
Perhaps what's happening is not so martial as the "old" probiotic model implies. Maybe the "good" bacteria never have to go to war at all. Rather, it's their fearsome countenance (sorry; I know I'm engaging in some anthropomorphism, here, myself; . . . --Maybe it's their overwhelming numbers, a bacterial form of what human militaries call deterrence) that, as Bassler's model suggests, "simply" dilute the more destructive bacteria's numbers enough that they never produce the "quorum" necessary to decide, "Let's go! It's time to attack!"
As I began digging into Lynn Margulis' Kingdoms & Domains, I was struck by the diversity of microbial life she describes. And I was struck by the thought that microbes are not only invisible to the naked eye, but they are, as it were, largely invisible to our minds. We don't think about them.
Not only do we not think about bacteria and protozoa; we tend to ignore fungi, algae, worms and beetles, too.
As E. O. Wilson says in the Foreword to Margulis' book:
About 1.8 million species [of living organisms] . . . have been discovered and described [as of 2009]. that includes perhaps three-fourths of the extant hundred thousand or so vertebrates, and, at a guess, ninety percent of the quarter million species of flowering plants thought to exist. But the sixty thousand known fungi are fewer than five percent of the estimated total, and the fewer than twenty thousand named nematode worms, the most abundant animals on Earth, are probably an even smaller fraction of the whole. Moreover, all this ignorance shrinks in the dismaying presence of the "dark matter" of the eukaryotic universe--or if you prefer, the Subkingdoms (Domains) of Archaea and Eubacteria. The exploration of what could turn out to be tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of well-differentiated strains of these subvisible organisms has scarcely begun.
--Kingdoms & Domains, p. lxi
What Wilson says is one way to look at or think about the diversity of life of which we are unaware.
I would like to suggest a few other ways, too . . . for your thoughtful consideration.
Dr. Bonnie Bassler of Princeton University describes an amazing bacterial "social life." Yes, they actually communicate . . . in rather intricate ways. --That's the primary thrust of the following video. But she says something else, about a minute into the video, that ought to catch your attention, I think. Paraphrased: The human body has about a trillion cells in it. And those trillion cells host--either in you or on you--about 10 trillion bacteria. You have about 30,000 genes in you; the bacteria you host have about 100 times the amount of genetic material or information. "So," says Bassler, "when I look at you, I think of you as 1 or 10 percent human and either 90 or 99 percent bacterial."
Based on a study of the bacteria on 51 different people's hands, researchers found that the average person had more than 150 different species of bacteria living on his or her hands. But get this. The researchers summarize their findings in this way: "[W]e identified a total of 4,742 unique phylotypes [species of bacteria] across all of the hands examined. Although there was a core set of bacterial taxa commonly found on the palm surface, we observed pronounced intra- and interpersonal variation in bacterial community composition: hands from the same individual [i.e., the left and right hands--JAH] shared only 17% of their phylotypes, with different individuals sharing only 13%." [Emphasis added.]
"Good soil is absolutely teeming with life. . . . A mere teaspoon of good garden soil, as measured by microbial geneticists, contains a billion invisible bacteria, several yards of equally invisible fungal hyphae, several thousand protozoa, and a few dozen nematodes."
"Remember that teaspoon of good garden soil? Perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 different species make up its billion bacteria--a healthy population in numbers and diversity."
--Ibid., p. 24.
"[A]n acre of good garden soil teems with life, containing several pounds (about 1 kilogram) of small mammals; 133 pounds of protozoa; 900 pounds each of earthworms, arthropods, and algae; 2000 pounds of bacteria; and 2400 pounds of fungi."
I think this is pretty common knowledge: Animals are unable to convert solar energy into forms useful for metabolism. Therefore, in order to survive, they (we!) depend upon plants and algae to convert the energy from sunlight into organic matter--carbohydrates, fats, proteins and innumerable vitamins and phytonutrients--that we are then able to ingest and metabolize for our life needs.
However, Savory pushes this energy pyramid idea forward several more steps . . . in ways I had never imagined . . . primarily due to my blindness to the world of microbes and soil:
The energy pyramid also extends below ground where the energy flow greatly affects . . . a biologically active soil community that [also] requires solar energy to be conveyed underground mainly by plant roots or surface-feeding worms, termites, dung beetles, and others.
--Holistic Management, pp. 151-152.
From here, things get really strange.
I first heard about what I am about to share in a series of lectures from Acres USA. But now I am reading all about these things, in detail, in Lowenfels and Lewis's truly wonderful Teaming with Microbes.
In the same way we humans have domesticated and now farm plants and animals for our benefit, so (say leading soils researchers) plants have established interdependent, symbiotic relationships with most of the protozoa, earthworms, arthropods, algae, bacteria, and fungi that surround their roots. The plants send food (about half of all the carbohydrates and other nutrients they produce) down to their roots . . . and then, through their roots, they exude these nutrients (in a liquid called exudate), into the soil. This exudate, in turn, feeds the bacteria and other organisms that live in the rhizosphere (the area of the roots).
Meanwhile--hang onto your hat!--the microbes in the soil protect the plants' roots. Literally. And, in many ways, they also feed the plant.
As Lowenfels and Lewis explain things: "In return for exudates, [mycorrhizal] fungi provide water, phosphorus, and other necessary plant nutrients" (p. 25). Similarly, some plants prefer nitrogen in the form of ammonium (NH4) while others prefer it in the form of nitrate (NO3). Well guess what? The types of nitrogenous compounds available to plants are largely controlled by the microbes in the soil: "In fungally dominated soils, much of the nitrogen remains in ammonium form." In bacterially dominated soils, certain bacteria will convert the ammonium into nitrate. . . .
******
I'm going to quit here.
. . . Oh!
No I'm not.
I wanted to show you two photographs. So let me do that and then I'll quit.
These two photos are from Teaming with Microbes, pp. 12 and 13.
I said above, "[T]he microbes in the soil protect the plants' roots. Literally."
Lowenfels and Lewis discuss many ways they do this besides what I am about to show you. But these two photos did for me what the authors say they did for them. They woke them up--and they snapped me to attention--and they caused me to think: What is going on that I am unaware of down there under the soil?
The authors explain: "[O]ne autumn, . . . a gardening friend e-mailed two stunning electron microscope pictures. The first showed in exquisite detail a nematode trapped by a single looped fungal strand, or hypha. . . ."
Continuing with the story as the authors tell it:
Wow! This was quite a picture--a fungus taking out a nematode! We had never heard of, much less seen such a thing, and it started us wondering: how did the fungus kill its prey? What attracted the blind nematode to the rings of the fungus in the first place? How did the rings work?
The second image showed what appeared to be a similar nematode, only this one was unimpeded by fungal hyphae and had entered the tomato root. . . .
The authors ask about this photo: "Why wasn't this nematode attacked, and where were the fungal hyphae that killed off the first nematode?"
This is one of those posts I have been tied up in knots over because I have simply not had enough time to study it out to the final degree I want to. But I think I have gone far enough to share it with you so, if you are intrigued, you can study it far enough to feel comfortable yourself either to affirm or deny its veracity.
If you think I may be following a primrose path to error, please feel free to correct me!
******
I had always been led to believe that Louis Pasteur was a great person, worthy of great honors. After all, it is he who developed the germ theory that led to most of the tremendous advances in late 19th and early 20th century medicine and, of course, to the process that bears his name: pasteurization, "a process of gently heating foodstuffs like milks to kill these organisms without changing the flavor or nutritional value." I have even found him held out by many conservative Christians as a model of religious rectitude.
This is what I have been taught.
Except now I am finding that nearly everything I was taught about Pasteur's science and discoveries, not to mention the value of pasteurization, may be wrong.
More specifically, I'm learning, there is quite a number of historians who claim,
Pasteur didn't "discover" what is credited to his name. All of those "discoveries" were known before he came along. --It appears the case for this is quite strong. (See Chapter 1 of The Dream and Lie of Louis Pasteur for one source.)
Question, however: Could it be said that Pasteur "discovered" the germ theory in the same way that it can be said legitimately that Columbus "discovered" America (even though we have definitive evidence Columbus was not the first European to make it to the Americas and back)? No, Columbus was not first in the sense of absolutely no one having done it before. But, yes, he was first in the sense that it was only after Columbus went and returned that "America" came to be generally recognized for what it was. I.e., he was first in somewhat the same sense that George Washington was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." . . .
My point: Is it possible that, while, as R. B. Pearson notes, it was proposed by many people even centuries before Pasteur that diseases are transferred by microscopic "seminaria contagionum" (Geronimo Fracastorio (1483-1553)) or "animalcula" (described in 1683 by Antonius van Leeuwenhoek) or "germs" (proposed in 1762 by M. A. Plenciz), the world really needed a Pasteur to popularize the concept and make it stick?
I lack the capacity to judge one way or another on this matter, but several credible sources suggest that bacteria are not so much the causes of disease as they are the consequences. Microorganisms are, as it were, the "cleanup crew." When a macroorganism is weak, the microorganisms will come in to put it out of its misery and/or digest (and, thus, remove) the diseased parts. They say that the germ theory of disease--the theory that germs cause disease--is ill-conceived.
It was/is this latter point, really, that has put much of my blog writing on hold over the last few weeks. I have had this post semi-written (up to the words "ill-conceived") for the last month. But/and I have not been able to get far enough into the underlying literature to feel satisfied about the truth or error of the claim.
So let me share some of the sources I have perused:
The Dream and Lie of Louis Pasteur. --That, actually, was my first introduction to this set of weird ideas. It focuses primarily upon Bechamp and Pasteur. I received the link from a friend who has bought into the theory that "the [physical] terrain [of the host body] is everything; the germ is nothing."
. . . I would like to develop this more, but I think the development will come in subsequent posts. (Be glad! 1--I'm getting this stuff published. And, 2--maybe my posts will be shorter than they used to be when I would get into this kind of stuff!)
For those who think I have jumped off the deep end, that I would even "listen" to this kind of stuff, let me acknowledge that I am finding myself extremely skeptical about the claims. But I am intrigued that, even if (as I expect), the authors of these articles--and the books and articles that they reference--are mistaken in some fundamental ways, they are probably more right than conventional medical advocates are willing to acknowledge. Put another way: Conventional medicine has some insights (but claims far more knowledge and competency than it has a right to claim), and these possible "quacks" are onto some keen insights that most of us ought to know about and utilize to our benefit. At the same time, I expect, they also claim far too much for their theories than they have a right to claim. --Just for example, "The terrain is everything," I imagine, is way overblown. So, too, I'm sure, is "the germ is nothing." But it would be extremely valuable to notice the terrain, and pay attention to the terrain, and to work on the terrain--something that conventional medicine, by and large, refuses to do; and something that the U.S. government, through its subsidies, actively undermines (a subject we will return to in subsequent posts).
So. Onward!
I hope you'll join me as we see where this leads. . . .
