Originally Posted Monday, August 18, 2014
Microbes are single-cell organisms so tiny that millions can fit into the eye of a needle.
They are the oldest form of life on earth. Microbe fossils date back more than 3.5 billion years to a time when the Earth was covered with oceans that regularly reached the boiling point, hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Without microbes, we couldn’t eat or breathe.
Without us, they’d probably be just fine.
Understanding microbes is vital to understanding the past and the future of ourselves and our planet.
Microbes
Microbes are in the air we breathe, the ground we walk on, the food we eat—they're even inside us!
We couldn't digest food without them—animals couldn't, either. Without microbes, plants couldn't grow, garbage wouldn't decay and there would be a lot less oxygen to breathe.
In fact, without these invisible companions, our planet wouldn't survive as we know it! (source)
Not all microbes are bacteria, but they all interact with them. Antibiotics work almost solely on bacteria. Around 50 million pounds of antibiotics are produced every year. Half of these are used to fight human infections. Much of the rest is used to treat farm animals though more and more antibiotics are being sprayed on crops to increase production. A growing source of antibiotic waste is coming from antibacterial products for the home. Recently antibacterial products have been introduced into everything from athletic socks to toothpaste. The result has been a growing presence of antibiotics in the environment.
Here's a shocker. Your body is made up of ten times more microorganisms than human cells. These microbes have evolved along with humans and are passed from mother to fetus generation after generation. There is a symbiotic relationship at work which benefits both humans and microbes. We may be changing that relationship, however. We may be threatening the safe environment which sustains the microbes that inhabit us.
Some scientists now feel that the overuse of antibiotics haver resulted in many of the health issues humans currently face today including childhood obesity, food allergies, ADDS, and forms of autism. There is growing evidence that giving infants antibiotics causes adult obesity which increases the chances of diabetes, heart attack, and cancer. The coming generation may be the first to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.
O.K. There's the lead-in. Here's the point--a new theory with which I am enthralled. I came across this article in the New York Times yesterday. The takeaway--"Perhapsour menagerie of germs is also influencing our behavior in order to advance its own evolutionary success. . . ."
Goodbye postmodern master narratives. Goodbye psychoanalysis. Goodbye to all of that. Whatever I did. . . whatever it was, I have only one thing to say.
Microbes made me do it! There are ten trillion of them in and on each of you. They have the will to survive. And you know. . . we can't beat them. They've been around much longer than we. They know how to survive.
I don't take anti-biotics. I majored in zoology as an undergraduate and learned enough to scare the shit out of me about such things. But when I got a life-threatening infection that oral antibiotics didn't cure, I had a three day stay in the hospital with an I.V. drip of the second strongest antibiotic known to humans. I didn't want it, but I was still fond of life at the time. After that, I put on a lot of weight. I can't say that it was cause and effect, but I give you all I have--anecdotal evidence. Industrial farmers use antibiotics to fatten up cows and pigs. Why wouldn't it work on me? I am no longer organic. I am no more than industrial grade meat now. But in truth, so are you. What have we done? I am not certain. But I am going to keep a weather eye out for developments of this new theory. It's a good one.
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O.K. Tomorrow I'll post one of my own images and a goofy, lyrical vignette, too. I don't want to become the Scientific American.
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