| | |
 | "Microbe City" |  |
| As it is in the ocean, so it is on the land and in the air around us. Like the drop of water, each drop of our blood reveals itself as a niche for colonies of microbes. We are surrounded and inhabited by microbes without number. From a microscopic viewpoint we can be likened to a coral reef or a forest. Not only are we the habitat of a multitude of other life, but our borders are just as permeable. We may see our skin as being as impenetrable as a sheet of plastic, punctured by the nine main orifices, but it is far from correct. On the microscopic level it can be likened to the edges of a forest. It is only our immune system, unceasingly guarding the portals, that prevent us from being over-run from without. Our skins are the outermost walls of Microbe City. Within, it has its own police force, repair crews, medical teams, army, teachers, observers, sewage disposal units and courier service. All take their instructions from an intelligence within us of which we are totally unaware as we go about our daily lives. In our stomachs, Escherichia Coli are the bacterium that take our food, extract what we require for survival, then arrange to pass on the waste products for disposal. The entrances and exits of our bodies are patrolled by other members of our system barring admittance to opportunist invaders. They are the front line troops in the battle against the Candida fungi that seeks to colonise the warm, moist places that are their chosen niche. They are far more subtle and discrete than our conscious interventions. Pan-spectrum, anti-biotic drugs can be likened to using a flame-thrower to get rid of ants in the flower beds. Sure does the job, but plays hob with the surrounding landscape. They are a scorched earth policy. Not only do these drugs destroy the invaders, but, being non-specific they also wipe out the defenders at a time when their efforts are urgently needed. |
| In no way am I suggesting that allopathic medicine is unnatural, and therefore 'bad'. There is a commonly accepted idea that all that occurs in nature is good; whereas all that is unnatural, is bad. Yet smallpox, tetanus, cholera, typhoid, etc., are natural, while preventative vaccines are not. I am saying that it is a good idea to do all that we can to aid our immune system. It is known that we can do this by a combination of life-style and by positive thinking. Modern medicine can provide our immune systems with weaponry but the 'side-effects' can prove to be a case of the cure being worse than the cause. One species of immune cell, the monocyte, acts in one of its functions as a guardian on point duty. It patrols the body in search of alien invaders. When an 'outsider' is discovered by the monocyte it produces a killer cell, the macrophage, whose job it is to attack and destroy. This it does by engulfing the invader, pulling it to pieces, then absorbing it. The remnants are carried away by the blood stream for disposal. One means of getting rid of the debris is to pass it along to the skin's pores where it is flushed away in perspiration. It is the decaying corpses of bacteria that give stale sweat its sour odour. Spraying or rolling deodorants onto our skins serves to block the pores, pretty much in the order of rewarding our loyal immune systems with another dose of chemical warfare. |
| It must be an unrewarding task for our bodies to maintain the good work when we spend so much effort in trying to defeat it. The food that we put into our mouths is of no use to us in its primary state. As we chew it, enzymes contained in our saliva are mixed in with it to commence the breaking down process. When we gulp our food, this initial process is circumvented, and unprepared lumps are delivered to our stomachs in the raw condition. The E. Coli are then obliged to break down those lumps, within a set time period, while only being able to work from the outside of them. This is not the only way in which we work against ourselves. Our friendly bacterium have to break down the food to extract its useful components; yet we constantly supply it with food that is saturated in preservatives that frustrate the process. In 'civilised' countries such as America, colonic irrigation has been found necessary to dislodge as much as fifteen pounds of dried faecal matter that has lodged in folds of the colonic system. It brings a whole new meaning to extended shelf life. Other components of the immune system act as our friendly, neighbourhood repairmen. Effects such as the bombardment by cosmic rays, chemical abuse, and the ageing process, all cause damage to the body's structure. The repairers are engaged in eternal maintenance. Coming across damaged cells they snip out the section, inaugurate regrowth, and call upon the disposal squads to clean up after them. They carry an internal set of templates that identify to them that which is right, in the sense of belonging. Anything that is seen as different, 'not right', is grist for the mill. Difference can include something that might be OK in another place, but wrong in the context in which it is found. The inner walls of our body are no more solid surfaces than is our skin. Oxygen is passed through the walls from our lungs into the blood stream, and chemicals are permitted to pass through the blood-brain barrier. |
| There is also a certain amount of leakage. Minute fragments of food escape through the stomach walls to drift into areas forbidden to them. Along comes our maintenance crew to compare the fragment with its recognition code. No pass has been issued for this, destroy! Unfortunately, the repairers are not immune from damage. In time the templates become blurred, identification becomes uncertain. It is believed that this is a cause of the high incident of bowel cancer among those nations that eat a lot of meat. Because we share our DNA with all other life on the planet, there is no great difference between ourselves and a trespassing fragment of rare-cooked steak. A blurred photo of steak, identifying it as that which must be destroyed, can lead a confused maintenance crew into attacking our own cells. These days our immune systems are under attack as never before. Not only from the plethora of new, drug resistant viruses produced by the misuse of incompleted courses of drug treatment, but also due to the short-sighted use of hundreds of man-made chemicals. The deadly effect of asbestos was known of for forty years before legislation outlawed it. DDT has been banned for over a decade in most western countries, yet it is present in the bodies of penguins at the South Pole. Gulf War Syndrome has brought to recent public attention the effects of chemicals upon a previously fit group of men and women; yet for several years researchers in Persistent Viral Diseases have been seeking answers to combat the results of over-whelmed immune systems. |