The World Within You
Illustration © D. Yael Bernhard
“I’m in the milk and the milk’s in me;
God bless milk and God bless me!”
Thus sings Mickey, the main character of Maurice Sendack’s classic children’s book In the Night Kitchen. Sendack’s childish expression of our interrelationship with food was more prescient than he realized. To say “you are what you eat” is an understatement, for your body is not only composed of the nutrients you consume, but is actually occupied and controlled by the internal microorganisms that outnumber your own cells by a factor of ten.1 Among other functions, a healthy gut microbiome produces neurotransmitters; metabolizes and excretes cholesterol2; plays a key role in modulating immunity; and has a direct effect on the brain.3
There’s a revolution smoldering in the field of psychiatry in response to these findings. One third of the nervous system, known as the enteric nervous system, is rooted in the gut. Through this “gut-brain axis,” our gut bacteria actually control our neural networks. Scientists are discovering that bad gut bacteria underlie numerous mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, autism, OCD, and even schizophrenia. These microorganisms can persist in the gut for decades. Eliminating them by judicious use of herbal or non-absorbing pharmaceutical antibiotics, and then replacing them with healthy populations by way of probiotics or fecal transplants may alleviate these problems more effectively than prevailing treatments such as drugs and therapy. Considering the widespread overuse of antibiotics and the epidemic of depression, anxiety, autism, and OCD in this country, the implications of this growing body of knowledge are profound. Just go to Google Scholar or PubMed and do a search for “gut bacteria” and any one of these mental health conditions. The studies that come up are far too numerous to cite here.
In creating this illustration half a year ago, I originally showed yogurt, sauerkraut, and little probiotic bacteria within the figure’s belly. Over the months, my research and thinking have led me to redo the painting three times. With each new version, the symbolic interaction has become simpler and more dynamic, suggesting two-way movement rather than ingested substance, until the interchange became transparent, spiraling energy. When it comes to the microbiome, there’s so much more going on than just consuming probiotics. The effects of gut bacteria extend way beyond the belly to our entire body, and beyond. We are a physical expression of the world we live in, emerging from the forests, soils, and watersheds that sustain us. The quality of that environment creates the living nutrients in our food, and determines the quality of our health. Wild plants are hardier than cultivated ones, and gift us with richer complexity. Produce picked unripe and shipped long distances loses its vitality, while processed foods are completely devoid of life. Mushrooms packed in plastic will suffocate, as like us, they need to breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide (always store mushrooms in paper bags or open containers). Factory-farmed meat, fish, and dairy have a completely different nutritional profile than their pasture-raised counterparts. All of this speaks to our inescapable, intrinsic interdependence with nature. Bacteria are so intermeshed with our biology, they even play a role in our gene expression.4 Up to 10,000 species may colonize one person. In addition to genetic traits, shared bacteria may run in families for generations.
The fruits and vegetables we eat are invested with the microorganisms and nutrients that are present – or absent – in the soil in which they grow. Cacao plants that absorb so-called “naturally occurring” heavy metals do so only when the soil is depleted of healthy minerals and mycelia, which normally compete for uptake by the plant. The animals that give us meat and dairy create essential fatty acids directly from the green plants and insects they graze on. The same is true of fish. What if they consume nothing but grains? Even farm-raised fish are fed dried corn and soy – an aberration of nature almost too bizarre to contemplate. Even if the feed is organic, these animals cannot establish a healthy gut microbiome from a grain-fed diet. This affects the quality of their meat and milk. Cows, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens need to graze on plants and insects in order to create DHA and EPA, the essential components of omega-3 essential fatty acids. Fish need algae. And every cell membrane in our human brain needs those essential fatty acids in order to be healthy. This interdependence seems to be nature’s plan. As omnivores, we are meant to interact with the entire food web.
Similarly, the bacteria that ferments sauerkraut and kimchi come directly from the air. If you make your own (which is easy to do), you’re culturing the environment of your own household, which includes dust made of your own skin cells. The world we live in is truly within us. We are holobionts – symbiotic ecosystems comprised of a host (our bodies) and the millions of living microbes that complete us.
This concept of interconnectedness first originated with Aristotle in the 4th century BCE, but receded with the Age of Enlightenment. Other theories such as endosymbiosis hold that the organelles inside our individual cells are descended from formerly separate microscopic organisms that merged into larger, more complex life forms. Within and without, the biological boundaries long thought to be fixed have proven to be fluid, porous, and evolving.
You’re not just feeding yourself when you eat – you’re feeding the trillions of microorganisms that populate your digestive tract. It’s a well-known fact that fiber is an essential part of a well-rounded diet, one of the macronutrients needed to sustain human health. Much of the prebiotic fiber we eat is insoluble, meaning we cannot digest it – but the probiotic microorganisms in our gut can. Feeding these friendly germs is crucial to your health, as they then produce post-biotics that are good for you: bile acids; short-chain fatty acids such as butyrate that play a key role in preventing colon cancer5; metabolites such as essential amino acids; neurotransmitters such as GABA, serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine (which plays a role in memory and learning6); and more. A healthy gut is a gold mine of benefits for human health.
Not all prebiotics are fibrous. Green tea, olive leaf extract, and the oligosaccharides in breast milk are all prebiotics that feed beneficial bacteria. The latter is necessary to establish an infant’s newborn microbiome – and the bacteria with which to seed baby’s gut, Bifidobacterium infantis, is picked up in the mother’s birth canal. Thus, babies born by C-section must receive this critical probiotic as a supplement in order to prevent colic, develop a normal immune system, and lay the groundwork for a lifetime of good health.7
We do not yet know exactly which probiotics are needed for specific conditions. Common sense tells us that live fermented foods such as kombucha, kimchi, full fat yogurt, kefir, miso, and natto are superior to freeze-dried probiotic pills. There are exceptions: Saccharomyces boulardii, a beneficial yeast-based probiotic, survives the use of antibiotics, and can be invaluable in out-competing an infection of its infamous rival, Candida albicans. S. boulardii thrives on whole milk dairy products. Akkermansia muciniphila is a mucous-loving bacteria, as its name suggests, that restores the delicate mucosal lining that is often damaged or destroyed by antibiotics, gluten, high fructose corn syrup, colonoscopies, and/or assorted chemical additives in processed food – a condition known as “leaky gut.” A. muciniphila especially loves the prebiotic fiber in pomegranates. I took the supplement (only available from this reputable source) and ate the fruit for a month after my last round of antibiotics. Other examples of prebiotic fiber include dandelion greens, Jerusalem artichokes, asparagus, burdock root, chicory, leeks, and onions.
Your microbiome also extends to your mouth, throat, sinuses, eyes, ear canals, fingernails, toenails, and skin. Antiseptic mouthwashes, toothpastes, and gargles may do more to undermine your oral microbiome than to protect it. By wiping out beneficial bacteria, they allow the overgrowth of precisely those bugs that cause tooth decay and gum disease. It’s better to support the good germs than to kill the bad ones. Oral probiotics are becoming increasingly popular, for good reason.
Spiraling in and out of your body are also a myriad of biochemical signals that constantly connect you to the world and bring it within you. We have co-evolved along with the plants we eat, and have special receptors, for example, for cruciferous veggies.8 Your skin, nervous system, and endocrine system are continually sensing and responding to atmospheric pressure, humidity, light, airborne fungal spores, and even electromagnetic energy in the earth beneath your feet. Walking barefoot outside is therapeutic. Breathing the negative ions (paradoxically, the good ones) in the air near a mountain stream produces a notably calming effect.9
Human health seems to be largely about knitting oneself to nature. As the introduction to one study on the microbiome puts it: “Symbiotic relationships . . . are ubiquitous in nature. Some of the best known symbioses are between a microorganism and a multicellular host; in these inter-kingdom relationships, the fitness of the microbe-host system (the holobiont) often relies on a diverse set of molecular interactions between the symbiotic partners.”10
Every second of our lives, these interactions are taking place by the billions, unknown to our conscious minds. Little Mickey was right, for whatever set this intricate system in motion is a mystery – and may certainly be considered a blessing.
“Then we touch our interbeing nature,
and know we are part of the whole cosmos.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
To your good health –
Yael Bernhard
Certified Integrative Health & Nutrition Coach
Yael Bernhard is a writer, illustrator, book designer and fine art painter with a lifelong passion for nutrition and herbal medicine. She was certified by Duke University as an Integrative Health Coach in 2021 and by Cornell University in Nutrition & Healthy Living in 2022. For information about private health coaching or nutrition programs for schools, please respond directly to this newsletter, or email dyaelbernhard@protonmail.com. Her art newsletter, “Image of the Week,” may be found here. Visit her online gallery of illustration, fine art, and children’s books here.
Information in this newsletter is provided for educational – and inspirational – purposes only.
http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/thoc/GermsRus.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8468837/
http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/thoc/GermsRus.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070119/
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/24568-acetylcholine-ach
The Doctor’s Farmacy Podcast: Baby’s Gut Instinct: Why Having A Healthy Gut Is Critical To Infant Health
Why else would we born with special receptors for the cruciferous vegetables?
https://holisticlakewood.com/when-a-negative-is-positive/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4641445/