The relationship between humans and microbes is being redefined and the human microbiome may be on the cutting edge of the future of modern medical science.
What is the human microbiome, you ask? Quite simply, it is the panoply of microbial organisms that feed, interact and generally live on the the internal and external surfaces of our bodies.
It has been said that for every single human cell there are 10 microbial cells present on the human body. That amounts to nearly 100 trillion microbes coexisting with each and every one of us – accounting for nearly three pounds of our total body mass.
Not until recently was it understood truly how important our interaction is with these microbes. In 2013, the National Institutes of Health is concluding a five-year landmark study known as the Human Microbiome Project, designed to better understand the delicate interplay between humans and the many microbes that call us home.
The ultimate question facing investigators is how the human microbiome affects human health and disease. Some of the results have been fascinating.
Imagine your body as its own ecology – a unique environment designed for the health and well-being of trillions of viruses, bacteria and fungi. Imagine, too, the developing reality that we and our microbes are dependent upon one another. This interdependence is becoming ever more clear through modern medical research.
Humans are experts at the concept of foreign as enemy. Since the discovery of microbes as the agents of pestilence and disease and the early 20th-century discovery of antibiotics (the current paradigm of Western medicine), we have undertaken an all-out war on these microscopic creatures.
Science is now teaching us that our unmitigated war on microbes may threaten our own well-being.
Take the example of the modest mitochondrion. This “powerhouse of the cell” coexists with us and is likely the remnant of an ancient symbiotic relationship between animal and microbe that is mutually beneficial. Without this little cellular partner, our use of energy would be crippled.
The Human Microbiome Project has taught us that microbes not only have the power to cause disease but, more commonly, benefit us by enhancing our nutrition, stimulating and strengthening our immune system and protecting us from other microbial invaders.
Why should we care? you might ask.
We should care because the result of an all-out assault on microbial life on and in our bodies through the unchecked use of antibiotics threatens our health.
Antibiotics are the miracle drugs of modern medicine under circumstances of infectious illness. Yet, we are learning that they are also the agents of other diseases, both infectious and otherwise, when used without caution. The trillions of microbes that share our earthbound existence depend as much on us as we on them.
I assure you in the decades to follow, we will learn as much to respect the health benefits of our microbial partners as we have learned to fear them in the decades that have passed.
Dr. Matthew A. Clark is a board-certified physician in internal medicine and pediatrics practicing at the Ute Mountain Ute Health Center in Towaoc.
