My Microbiome

 

Sheep By The Outpaddock, Colonial Williamsburg

There was an article in the Sunday New York Times about the many, many allergies and related conditions affecting us today, and the connection with the fact that more and more we are an urban nation, tend to live more in cities, and fewer people are exposed to the environments of farming.

A Cure For The Allergy Epidemic?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/a-cure-for-the-allergy-epidemic.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

I have been thinking about it since then. I have some sort of low-level allergy all year long, and other seasonal ones which change how they present themselves as time goes by.

However, there was one year, 2011, during which I had an unprecedented freedom from sinus congestion and sniffling. I have been trying to discover why. I knew the freedom from allergy started after February and in the Spring before June 1. It ended just after Christmas.

Yesterday, my wife was looking at pictures of our trip to Virginia and Colonial Williamsburg, and I looked at them all. I had spent a good deal of time at one farm with small, rolling hillocks where a mother sheep and her four offspring were. I had about eight pictures of them, the meadow, the brick-walled outpaddock in the meadow where agricultural and herding implements seemed to be stored. (I have no idea what such an enclosure in the middle of the field would be called, so I called it an "outpaddock".)

The camera had a time/date stamp:  April 11, 2011.

That was it, I thought; it was my exposure to the sheep farm that gave me some freedom from allergies for a while.
How did it happen, though? I wondered if I needed to spend days doing some farm type work, or just sit in the fields and read a book. How would this innoculation work, and how did one go about it?

So this morning it dawned on me that since it was sinus congestion, the sinuses undoubtedly have their own microbiome. Therefore, the delivery system for the allergy antidote would merely be breathing!
Just go to the farm and breathe for a while, letting the microbes settle into the sinuses.

I shall run the experiment in Spring 2014. I think the weather now is too wintery.

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Microbiomes

I predict that within 7 years an analysis of each individual's microbiome population will become a standard part of our basic medical procedures, perhaps part of the yearly doctor's visit.
The bacteria and fungal populations of the skin and the gut will begin to be tested and stored for future reference. Soon after birth, babies' microbiomes will be censused and the information stored. Every few years, the process should be repeated.

The effects of the microbiome range from controlling diarrhea to:

Neuroscience News:
http://neurosciencenews.com/gut-bacteria-regulate-happiness-hippocampus-serotonin/

Gut Bacteria Regulate Happiness

Posted on June 12, 2012 By Neuroscience News Featured, Psychology

APC scientists have shown that brain levels of serotonin, the ‘happy hormone’ are regulated by the amount of bacteria in the gut during early life. Their research is being published today in the leading international psychiatry journal, Molecular Psychiatry.

Perhaps we shall be able to help or cure certain types of depression by eating various probiotic yogurts.

I have been fascinated by this subject ever since my dentist told me that dental plaque was a "biofilm". I studied biofilms, and that study lead immediately to the microbiome, and it lead me to simple medications for homely problems, such as using Pyrithione Zinc as a treatments for summer rash and dry spots on the elbows...
It is an inexpensive medicine, because it is the active ingredient in "Head and Shoulders" shampoo. I find most folks are befuddled at the notion of using a shampoo for anything except shampoo, but dandruff - the condition for which Heads and Shoulders is designed - is a skin condition of the scalp. A simple Google on "pyrithione zinc" returns all the info needed. (Although, such situations may not be a problem with the microbiome at all. It served to focus attention on realistic alternatives to expensive medications. And dry skin or eczema is being studied now as a microbiome problem.)

Even more interesting, recent research on teenage acne has found that all individuals tested, who had no or little acne, all had the same bacteria present in their microbiome, and those with more severe acne did not possess the bacterium.

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