Microbes That Keep Us Healthy Starting To Die Off 260
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."
Easy solution (Score:1, Informative)
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
Re:Another easy solution! (Score:5, Informative)
peoples' expected lifespan returns to 35!
When exactly was our lifespan 35?
Or are you just demonstrating that you suck at math?
Here's a mental exercise for you:
Say you have 1000 people. 499 of them die before they turn one year old. 499 of them die at the age of 70. Two of them die at the age of 35.
What is the average lifespan? At what age did most of them die?
Our "average lifespan" has been increasing because we're eliminating infant mortality, not because most people only lived to some ridiculously low age.
Re:100 Trillion Microbial Cells? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, they are. See Procaryote [wikipedia.org] vs Eukaryote [wikipedia.org].
Re:Eat at White Castle (Score:3, Informative)
Great idea, with one minor issue - projectile diarrhea kills more people each year than AIDs.
Re:No antibiotics for me (Score:5, Informative)
Unless I feel like I'm at death's door, I do not go to the doctor.
I hope you never get cancer. If you finally go to the doctor when you fell like you on death's door, it will be too late. If caught early enough, most cancers are easily treatable.
Re:100 Trillion Microbial Cells? (Score:5, Informative)
Think back to high school, doc. Remember the parts of a human cell?
One of 'em, the mitochondria, is essentially a specially-evovled bacteria used to help your cell produce energy. It's easily less than 1/10th the size of the whole cell. Maybe 1/20th, or even 1/100th, for very big cells.
And not all cells are the same size. You have some cells in your body that stretch for the better part of a yard, and if you're a woman you produce one certain cell every four weeks or so that's almost big enough to be seen with the naked eye.
Re:If we evolved to have them... (Score:2, Informative)
Some of us didn't have any say in the matter.
Re:My BS meter is going off. (Score:2, Informative)
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.)
Re:If we evolved to have them... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:mother nature (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Exactly.
People are too clean these days. It sounds stupid, but it's true. Folks need to go outside and play with some animals, socialize, fall in the dirt, scrape their knees, and get on with life. It's good for you! It helps build up your immune system.
Got to your local supermarket or WalMart or whatever... Take a look through their kitchen goods - absolutely everything has some kind of anti-microbial agent built-in. I'm not suggesting we all go lick some raw chicken... But a few germs are actually good for us. And sterilizing everything is not.
Look through the bath section... All the soaps are antimicrobial as well. All of them. Just getting yourself clean isn't enough... You have to nuke whatever critters might be around.
And, not only are we nuking anything and everything that we might be exposed to - thereby robbing ourselves of a chance to build up an immunity... But we're also flooding the environment with these antibiotic/antimicrobial substances - giving those very critters plenty of opportunities to develop their own immunities.
cemetaries (Score:1, Informative)
Go visit older cemeteries that are pre 20th century. Much higher infant mortality rate and so on, but still a lot of old people who lived comparable ages to old folks now. That higher infant mortality rate plus more women dying in childbirth ran down the raw numbers. Another major cause of skewed statistics are wars, where dis-proportionally younger stronger males still succumbed, possibly really altering what would have been the real numbers due to health concerns.
Not to say modern medicine hasn't helped, sure it has, just the issue is more complex than just old days-die younger, modern days-die later.
Re:Another easy solution! (Score:3, Informative)
Any citations? I agree with your argument, but I've only heard it from second hand accounts. Data would be helpful.
You can find some data for the US broken down by age, sex, and (partially) race here. [infoplease.com]
Re:If we evolved to have them... (Score:4, Informative)
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 [time.com]
Re:Another easy solution! (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, an expected value is an average.... an expected value is the first moment of a probability distribution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value [wikipedia.org]
Re:Soap vs Santizers (Score:3, Informative)
And the Air Force guy says "They didn't need to teach us that. We learned that around age 3"
Re:Soap vs Santizers (Score:1, Informative)
That joke is hilarious, but it isn't the pee you should be washing off (being sterile and all) it is the bacteria that live in your crotch area. It is not like it will kill you (cunnilingus, fellatio, etc) , but you might have some stomach discomfort if you get some of those bacteria in your food.