Symbiosis Inside and Out, Smaller and Bigger

00:18 Hello, hello, hello. We are back with the health sovereign podcast and today I'll be going over points number five and six of the health sovereign creed. This should be a fun one because these two points are about symbiosis. Number five, pointing it down toward the micro scale and number six looking at a bigger macro scale. Point number five, I recognize that I am not just human, but a symbiont with my microbiome that includes bacteria, fungi, viruses, and even the animal kingdom. I will act as a shepherd to my body's ecology to the best of my ability and with this point I want to read a couple of quotes that I put in my book powered by nature. This is actually one of my favorite chapters in the book because it is such an important concept and although everyone these days that's even just a little bit into health, has heard about the microbiome is probably even taking probiotics or something along these lines because they know about the importance of, well, just the bacteria.

01:32 A few people are recognizing these other organisms that are involved. So this is a very fascinating field and important to understand, one that we know next to nothing about AI, and some of these quotes will clear that up. So I'm going to start with a quote from James Shapiro, who is one of the leading researchers on bacteria out there. He says, 40 years experience as a bacterial geneticist has taught me that bacteria possess many cognitive computational and evolutionary capabilities unimaginable in the first six decades of the 20th century analysis of cellular processes such as metabolism, regulation of protein synthesis and DNA repair. Establish that bacteria continually monitor their external and internal environments and compute functional outputs based on information provided by their sensory apparatus. Studies of genetic recombination, [inaudible] antibiotic resistance, and my own work on transposable elements revealed multiple widespread bacterial systems for mobilizing and engineering DNA molecules.

02:43 Examination of colony development and organization led me to appreciate how extensive multicellular collaboration is among the majority of bacterial species, contemporary research and many laboratories on cells, cell signaling, symbiosis and pathogenesis show that bacteria utilize sophisticated mechanisms for intracellular communication and even have the ability to commandeer the basic cell biology of higher plants and animals to meet their own needs. This remarkable series of observation requires us to revise basic ideas about biological information processing and recognize that even the smallest cells are sentient beings. He used some big words, some scientific words in there, but the gist of it is pretty amazing to recognize what he is saying. I'll try to distill this or just phrase it some different ways is bacteria are intelligent creatures. Let's start with that, and this is such a message of my book powered by nature. By the way, I'll just plug it right now.

03:51 Special deals still available over at powered by nature. book.com if you haven't picked up a copy, I spent a couple of years sinking into this. I would highly recommend you read it. It's really going to give you a foundation that goes along with everything we're talking about here in the health sovereign podcast, but on powered by nature. book.com you can pay for the book and you get $25 credit available at lost empire herbs, so it's actually like a better than free deal or the $30 credit plus we send some money to the Amazon rainforest. They'll protect that, so it's a all around winning deal, so definitely check that out if you have not already. Back to what James Shapiro is saying here, so the bacteria are intelligent creatures. They communicate, he talks about the colonies in there. They're building essentially cities or groups of bacteria and communicating with different ways and they're able to engineer their own DNA.

04:46 They're able to transfigure it, to change it. This is why antibiotic resistance is such a thing because when coming up against some sort of antibiotic, some bacteria will mutate, be able to change their DNA in a way to fight that off and then they can take this DNA and pass it on to their friends. This is why and how biotic resistance is a troubling thing and why some people are saying that we may be going into the post antibiotic era, which for all of western medicine's flaws and they're many, which we have talked about and we'll continue to. The creation of antibiotics is one of the best things that Western medicine has done. The problem is we have overused it. It's so great that we just continued to use it even in, well now we can say very stupid ways like feeding it to animals, livestock, animals, in order to fatten them up, not because they actually had some sort of disease, some sort of bacterial disease we needed to get rid of, but literally by feeding them this because it changes their microbiome, they would gain weight faster.

05:51 By the way. This seems to be true in humans too. So obesity epidemic. Anyone here's one of the reasons, of course, not the only one, but one of the reasons there, because we are getting some amount of these antibiotics in from animal products, meat, dairy, all that is gonna transfer through to some degree. And then of course we have it sprayed on all of our fruits and vegetables too. Glyphosate is a antibiotic, right? Lots of other pesticides are peculiar off things. So yeah, how this interacts with their microbiome. That's a thing. When we started doing this whole pesticide, everything, we did not understand any of this. So we looked at, it's like, oh, these don't affect human cells, but what about everything else that makes up us? Yeah, we didn't think to look there, but guess what it does. They changed their DNA. That's really important to recognize.

06:45 So this idea of DNA just being random mutation. Well, that has been proven wrong. Most people don't realize that the whole neo Darwinism is actually a falsity. Lots of other things happen. They're able to switch around DNA, not just epigenetics. There's the transposons different ways of tinkering with DNA that these small bacteria do in viruses do and various other things do that. Maybe yes, we humans can't, but we are symbions with them. So they are changing things, which means because they're part of us, we're being changed. And there's a whole theory that has a good amount of evidence that the mitochondria within every single one of ourselves, these are often called the the powerhouses of the cells. They produce the DP, they produce energy. These are a ancient bacteria that joined cells and became cells. Basically it was a symbiosis that happened or two different things actually joined together.

07:45 And this is what allowed multicellular life to come to pass. Same sort of thing happened with plants. With the chloroplast your analogy, I believe we're involved in that. So it's very important to look at this. So if we are doing something that if we take an antibiotic, it's killing bacteria in the beginning of bacteria, we did not even realize there was such a thing as non pathological bacteria. That's how far off the truth we missed. This did not recognize it. Add are, I forget where I saw this, but I was reading like a 1930s book talking about bacteria. Everything was pathological in there. So you'd take an antibiotic, wipes things out except the ones that are going to be resistant to that. That means all your friendly bacteria. That means this part of you, if you are napalming the area essentially, but how much does that affect your mitochondria?

08:38 Does it get inside your cells recognizing that those are bacteria in there? I am not aware of any research that has looked at that specifically and it would be interesting to find out. Let me read another quote. So that's the bacteria, right? And this is an area that most people have heard something about but recognize, okay, so these are Centene creatures and they can, Ooh, what was that one part of that quote? I want to reread that cause that is really important. Sophisticated mechanisms for intracellular communication even have the ability to commandeer the basic cell biology of higher plants and animals to meet their own needs. Understand that your gut is sending more information to the brain than vice versa. Or is that the heart getting those two mixed up anyway, information is passing through these different channels in a big way. Bacteria being a huge, huge part of your gut, more of your gut.

09:35 Then you yourself have human cells. Even so they are sending this information which then affects your thinking. You ever have a craving for anything, right? What are cravings coming from? It's not so much you. It is much more the bacteria, which is why if you change how you actually eat, you begin to crave different foods. I think most people think that cravings are, yeah, we do have thought patterns like get stuck in everything but change the bacteria, change the thinking. This is an important thing to realize and bacteria are not the only ones. Let me read another passage here. This is from a review about the microbiome, so everyone's heard of the micro biome, but the mycobiome, MYCO, that is specifically the Mycological, the fungi involved in us like the microbiome as a whole individual members of the microbiome may also play a beneficial or commensal role in the host.

10:36 Beneficial fungi have been found to be preventative and therapeutic agents. The limitation of today's immune therapies is that most target only a single fungal species. Ignoring the overall microbiome composition. Today, our knowledge of the microbiomes suggests that interactions among fung guy within an environment and between microbiomes found in different body sites may play an important role in pathogenesis. One thing I talk about in this book, and it is important to realize is so just like I was saying about the bacteria, we used to think they're all pathological. Can you tell me right now, just think about it, any of the microbiome that's beneficial or if you think of fungus in the body, what do you think of Candida athletes foot, a yeast infection. Can you think of anything else? Do we have any terms to talk about like beneficial mycology in the body? We don't.

11:33 It's something we've completely missed and something that even now like there's next to no research on, but what this is saying is that fungi live with us. Many of the, the word Commensal, you may have not heard that word before means it's basically kind of a neutral interaction. They just live here. It's not a problem to us and it's just not an issue. But then there's beneficial, which obviously means there's some sort of beneficial relationship between one or both of the organisms. So maybe we're providing something for the fun guy or they're providing something for us or both ways. So this is another area that is vastly underexplored. Besides those few cases of like specific acute infections, we really don't know much about the yeast and fungi in us yet. Think about this. I mean just based off of not knowing many things, how much could these be affecting different things?

12:32 I mean, one thing I like to take is the different medicinal mushrooms. Now these are not going to grow on you. You're not going to have Reishi growing inside your body. But the way I like to think of these is that they are helping to educate them immune system. And one of the reasons for this is that that's what they do in nature. There's a symbiotic relationship between the mycelium, their networks of mycelium that are often underground and that are working along with trees and plants, their root systems and they're providing things for them immune system of the plants. I think they can do much the same for us. All right. One more quote and this time about viruses. Herbert Virgin says virome interactions with the host cannot be encompassed by a monotheistic view of viruses as pathogens. Instead, the genetic and transcriptional identity of mammals is defined in part by our code evolved at virome concept with profound implications for understanding health and disease.

13:35 Same thing. They're thought of bacteria just as pathogens, not about fun gag just as pathogens, viruses before I said this right here, do you think of them as just as pathogens but they're not the virome being another word like microbiome or mycobiome virus meaning this network of viruses that lives in us. You think? We have a lot of bacteria in us. Viruses. There are, I forget if it's 10 or a hundred times or a thousand times as many. There's vastly more of them and they're not all bad. This is part of us and viruses swap DNA. Like what's a good analogy? Like kids swap baseball cards. It's something that just happens easily for them and this is actually how our DNA can get changed. This was one of the functions of it that's not just random that viruses which may happen with something like say a mosquito or other ways of passing genetic material can occur that this may be why there's what they used to call junk DNA.

14:38 Why so much of this DNA can transfer from even across species and how that may affect evolution. We really know next to nothing about this, so these are just a few quotes in. There's so much more in powered by nature. Once again, highly recommend you check out that book. I wanted to do this because I hope you feel its mind expanding. Like when I dove into this area I found it truly mind expanding. For me, an important part of this is also the hygiene hypothesis. So one of the reasons that's theorize that auto immunity allergy is all this kind of stuff is on the rise is because our immune system is not being challenged by the environment like it used to. Sanitation and hygiene is a very good thing and that's a large reason why disease went down disease and infection and death from all of that very good reason to be sanitary.

15:34 But we seem to have over done it to the point where with an overcorrection right, we went too far that there's a downside to that as often happens with nature. So we did that with antibiotics. The overuse of them has not only made it so there's antibiotic resistant strains out there, but it's caused lots of health issues and people not recognizing the beneficial bacteria in us. So same kind of thing. If we look at being overly sanitary, our body, our immune system is not challenged how it normally would be in nature. And this may cause the autoimmunity. Cause if that means just [inaudible] not getting that education, this is where things may go awry. This is why it's good to introduce wildness into yourself in different ways. So when I go out to nature, I'll just forge out, eat a little of this herb here or a this fruit over there.

16:29 I was just this past weekend walking around and there's plenty of man's Anita around and they have the Manzanita Berry, which is high vitamin C containing tastes pretty good. You gotta chew it up cause it's like powdery inside the flesh. Very small. But then rock hard seeds, they spit the seeds out. It takes some work to do it. But in addition to getting what's in the fruit, there's just wild yeast, wild bacteria, all kinds of things here. I'm not washing them before I consume them. And if you're able to get something in the wild or something, you grow yourself, this bacteria, this what's on here may be completely different than what you find inside a probiotic. One of the things with this, the viruses especially but also true with bacteria that we may not be able to even say that it's this genus and species because they're swapping DNA so much that how we look at in understand this world, this reduction is framed, doesn't necessarily work because it doesn't reduce in quite the way we see it happen with animals, plants our size.

17:33 So this is some of the important stuff to realize for our symbiotic relationship. And I think I say it here, I will act as a shepherd to my body's ecology to the best of my ability. Another word I like a lot is steward. So when you that you are not just you, then it may change how you think, how you feel, how you behave a bit, recognize that you are this symbiotic creature. Yeah, sure. Mostly human or partly human. Depends on if we're just counting size of different things or cells and number of cells and all that. I mean if we count just by like number of individual cells, then we're mostly viral. But recognize this and think of it. So when you are feeding yourself well, one, you're not just feeding yourself, are you eating the right foods in order to support the right microbiome in you, which then in turn supports you?

18:30 It's a system. It's a reinforcing feedback loop. You eat right foods and what right is. That's a whole other discussion, but let's take foods with the insoluble fibers, right, which is food for bacteria and they get eat these foods. Then those certain populations are going to expand. They're likely going to make it so you crave or desire those foods more. They'll change your taste buds. Even part of the reason taste change is likely that microbiome changes. I don't know if that's been studied, but I'm just going to come out and say that's partly at least how it works, so then it's going to reinforce itself, right? You have that craving because the bacteria wants food for itself. Once to expand. It's calling me. All this being said, of course there are times when there is pathogenic bacteria, pathogenic fungi, pathogenic viruses. We've got to recognize that.

19:23 I think we have a pretty good grasp on that. What we do not have a good grasp on our human species is this beneficial site and how it really all works. And here's the other thing about a lot of people look at genetics as the end all be all. Okay? And so we've mapped out all of human DNA, which ultimately hasn't led us to much of curing disease or anything like that. What about all bacteria, all viral DNA, and they're swapping around all the time. So to map it out, what does that even mean? How much would that help us? There's likely some insights there, but something else to think about, this stewardship component is important to think about because it does change once if you really grasp and that not just like a cognitive thought, but can believe this. It does begin to change your behavior to some degree.

20:13 So now I want to move on to point number six. I recognize that I am like a bacteria or insect in size to the greater ecology of Gaia planet earth, that I cannot exist without plant life nor many other species and kingdoms in the web of life. I will do my best to align what is good for me to what is good for the greater ecology. So on the previous point, kind of taking a microscope into the body and seeing that, oh, here's some bacteria, here's some virus, here's some fun guy. Oh, and we didn't even talk about parasites. Right? Are All parasites, parasites in the common use of the word? Are they all bad? Might we have some animal components within us that are commensal or beneficial? Again, an area that has not been discussed much. The truth is most people probably do have parasites.

21:07 Yeah, most I'd say that's likely true. And they can be in certain areas that are not just the gut. Interesting to look at isn't necessarily all bad. Not enough information on there to say adequately, I think to just think of that as gross and disgusting, which many people may be recoiling. Now thinking about how much of that is a cultural response versus recognizing these are and have been parts of us for a long time that aren't necessarily bad. So with this ecological thinking also goes the other way. We can look out to the bigger one. I'm saying you are like an insect or bacteria in size. I don't know the exact ratios, but think of the planet as a whole. So if you think of the planet as a body or living being, which is what the guy hypothesis is about though there are different forms of that.

21:56 Some people think it's, it's like a living being versus other ones will say is a living being useful to look at either way. I suppose. So we're just some bacteria or an insect on there. So what we do by ourselves, not necessarily so important, but a whole colony of us can change some effects, change the environment itself. Are we being parasitical commensal, beneficial. Just an interesting way of thinking you guys. Here's the thing. What is to differentiate between you and not you. So he saw that you are made up of viruses. Bacteria is whole microbiome. So you're not just you, but between you and the outside world. Most people just commonly think of at the end of your skin is the end of you. Right? But think about just your lungs breathing in air right now. As you listen to this, you're taking air into your body and expelling it.

22:50 Now we don't think about air much because we don't see it, but I mean at what point is this air in you versus out? Are you saying once you take the breath into your body or is it once it makes the transfer through the lungs into the blood that it becomes part of you and is it the same way on the way out? Once you exhale mostly carbon dioxide. It's out of you, not a part of you. Well, what about your skin that is picking up electromagnetic signal from the sun, which is converting, creating vitamin D, cholesterol sulfate, other compounds. Yeah, a lot more in vitamin D. That's not all there is about getting that sun contact. This is a body that is many, many millions of miles away. Yet the light from that is transforming us. Does that make that part of our environment? Well, let's just put this out there.

23:43 One of the sun disappeared. How long would you exist if you rid of all plant life on earth, how long would you exist? I guess if you had bottles of oxygen stored up, you could go for a little while, but then what else? And there's that whole thing about when the honeybees disappear, they're dying off and alarming rate. Sometimes see something say like, oh, and they're coming back or not. But if they do die off, how that affects this whole web of ecology. Will we survive? Well, humans survive. If honeybees go away, it's hard to say for sure because we don't quite see all the web of impact that would happen. Pollination for large part stops happening. Some other insects, even mosquitoes pollinate some flowers. There's an interesting thing about mosquitoes, so let's let Bill Gates kill them out all off with GMO mosquitoes, right? Yeah, I understand that is the biggest killer out there.

24:38 But fixes that fail. We don't look at the longterm consequences many times. Just the short term thinking. So where do you, and this is the one that points with like the endocrine disrupting chemicals. How I like to look at this on a couple of different levels. So you have plastic BPA in it. Let's say it's BPA free, but do you know if it's BPF bps, the other females, they often just replaced them in many things. Hard to find the details on whether they have that. Unfortunately these chemicals are just as bad, give or take of endocrine disrupting as BPA itself. So you have this plastic, he drank water out of it, you heat it up, eat off it, whatever. You're getting these chemicals and BPA, maybe just one of them into your body and it can have these endocrine disrupting effects. Not really good for anyone.

25:29 And then you throw away the bottle or you tried to recycle it, but it doesn't make it out there and it goes in the landfill or let's say you're a litter bug, he just cast it out your car and the plastic is breaking down in the environment. Photo degradation, the sun reflecting on it, that sun signal, once again starting to break it down and BPA is going into and the environment, it's getting into the trees, into the plants. A plant absorbs it maybe puts out this chemical in the fruit and then some animal comes along, eat that fruit. This is the web of ecology. This is understanding the stewardship, the shepherding of the ecology from yourself, all the organisms that make up you and all the organisms that make up you on the larger scale that are part and parcel of this. So this is one of the things that is useful to look at and why I talk about the idea of alignment.

26:22 Your health is aligned not just with your human cells, but your entire microbiome. Your health is aligned with not just the symbio that is you, but the larger environment. Because that plastic was just one example. We could find other ones. He popped some pharmaceutical drugs. These are made to be persistent chemicals so they can have action in your body. They do that and then what your body detox is, the process of mouth through the liver. And or kidneys. They go into the toilet and then what happens to you? You may think they just disappear off, but now they're going to a wastewater treatment plant. They're getting, well, hopefully filtered out of the water though. I think you may recognize that that does not happen 100% Oh, and then they're actually concentrated. The waste is concentrated and sold as fertilizer in some places. They're that smart, but let's just say it's run off and dumped in the ocean or dumped in some groundwater's seeps out.

27:21 Does nature does a tree of Redwood and oak, a Bush Manzanita? Do they want your Prozac? Do they want your chemotherapy drugs? No one thinks about this. Without this ecological frame of thinking, we are very shortsighted and thinking about our health and these things do have larger effects, and of course, you know one person does not matter, but it's a call. Any of us that does matter. If we have this alignment between our health and the health of Gaia, our health and the health of our symbionts, then we think ecologically. We think symbiotically we make very different decisions. So I'm going to close with a story about, well, I've talked about on a few things, my psychedelic use, it seems to work for me. Don't recommend it for everyone, but it has been one of my, I guess a path I've used that has helped me to grow in many different ways.

28:19 So one day a mountain, the forest on a combination of psilocybin mushrooms and Syrian room. So some fucking guy in some plant and fairly strong trip is thinking back on it. At one point during this I felt like I glimpsed into the mind of Gaia into the plant night. So here I delivered this idea of us being this size of a cell or bacteria insect to Gaia. I felt this during this journey. I felt what it was like see guy's perspective of me, how insignificant I was, and also that I could not truly grasp the mind of Gaia. That human mind is not meant to grasp that, but it was a hell of an experience. Even glimpsing it a little bit. Part of that was what helped me to come up with these ideas really because you know, coming from that experience of it, not just a cognitive idea, so I'm not saying you should necessarily strive for the same thing, but this is something even without the use of psychedelics, you can use meditation, whatnot.

29:23 Just reflect on these ideas. There's some deep ideas and I feel despite that experience, despite having looked at this for awhile, then I'm still just beginning to grasp them, but it's very important things. If we want a sustainable future, we have to think ecologically. We have to in alignment of different levels from the small to the sizeable, both below and above us. Very important to do. That's going to wrap it up for this episode. Once again, I would recommend powered by nature if you like this stuff. I do have a lot more inside powered by nature. The chapter on symbiosis is one of my favorites for these very reasons. I think you could tell I have fun talking about this and I think it is some important ideas, so check that out. Of course it's on Amazon, but you want that special deal that's at powered by nature. book.com I think paid 20 bucks for the book. You get $30 gift card to lost empire herbs. So even with the shipping and handling charge there, it is better than free. Yeah. Hard to beat that kind of deal. And we're saving some of the rainforest at the same time, looking at that bigger ecology poweredbynaturebook.com. Thank you for listening. Think ecologically. Think alignment, I'll talk to next week.