Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's me Josh And for this week's
Speaker 1: S Y s K Selects, I've chosen How the Human
Speaker 1: Microbiome Project Works, which we released back in May of
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen. And even after all these years, six
Speaker 1: years on, this information is still just totally mind blowing
Speaker 1: to me, and I love it. It's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite episodes of all time. I've kind of forgotten about
Speaker 1: it and discovered it again, so I hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: it as much as I did. Welcome to Stuff. You
Speaker 1: should know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. And Josh Clark, I almost
Speaker 1: just forgot what I was gonna say your name. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's Charles W Chuck Bryant piping in ye and there's
Speaker 1: the trio the Trifecta and it's terrible. Ikealy Uh do
Speaker 1: you think, well, we are getting a little heat off
Speaker 1: of it right now. It's just nice. Did you ever
Speaker 1: see that IKEA commercial about the lamp that was thrown
Speaker 1: out on the street. No, it was really good. Well
Speaker 1: what happened to it? Was it like the monkey at
Speaker 1: the I Kea? No, it was like a lamp gets
Speaker 1: thrown out with like someone's just redoing parts of their
Speaker 1: apartment and the lamp is uh kick to the curve,
Speaker 1: computer animated, So it's it's a human formed not human formed.
Speaker 1: What am I saying? Anthropogin anthropomorphized and like looks up
Speaker 1: at the apartment that he was just thrown out of
Speaker 1: it and stuff like that. Does he go back to Sweden?
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't remember how it ends. Just remember
Speaker 1: the lamp like turns at human. It was sad. It
Speaker 1: was like sad. I got teared up. Did you go
Speaker 1: buy one of those lamps? No, of course it didn't work. Um, so,
Speaker 1: I guess you're feeling pretty good since you're talking about
Speaker 1: lamps and everything. You know me and lamps I do.
Speaker 1: That means it's a good day. A clear signal checks
Speaker 1: in a good mood everybody. Uh, you know. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons why you're in a good mood because your
Speaker 1: guts are functioning properly. Yeah, yeah, ish, yeah, you know me,
Speaker 1: it's day to day yeah with my stomach. Well that's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Things change very quickly because of your stomach,
Speaker 1: and your stomach can't affect your mood. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, the vast majority of the serotonin, which is
Speaker 1: a mood stabilizing neurotransmitter, is produced in your gut. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the way that things like serotonin and other stuff
Speaker 1: uh is produced is thanks to our microbiome. Dude, Yeah,
Speaker 1: our microbiome. This is the most fascinating thing going on
Speaker 1: in medicine science right now. Yeah. I get the impression
Speaker 1: reading various articles. When scientists talk about it, they all
Speaker 1: seem really pumped up. It's like the breakthrough of the
Speaker 1: century and this thing like just started. It's two and
Speaker 1: like this could remain the breakthrough of the century. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I mean, if you think about the timeline up
Speaker 1: in till the twentieth century, you were like a plant
Speaker 1: or an animal, right, And then it was literally like
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and sixties that they started saying maybe
Speaker 1: we should break things down a little further, and they
Speaker 1: came up with the five kingdoms, and I think they
Speaker 1: are now even as a six kingdom. Well, there's three domains,
Speaker 1: now eight kingdoms. There's eight, there's eight and three two
Speaker 1: of the domains are account for two of the kingdoms
Speaker 1: as well. Bacteria and archia and archia used to be
Speaker 1: thought that they were the same as bacteria. Yes, then
Speaker 1: they started looking into them a little more and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: these guys are made up of different amino acids and
Speaker 1: they have different characteristics. And our chia, for example, are
Speaker 1: the kind of um microbial life that you'll only find
Speaker 1: around undersea, hot water, sulfur events. Yeah, like volcano crazy places.
Speaker 1: Not not in your vagina or in your mouth. Well, no,
Speaker 1: because they're extreme ophiles. And a vagina or a mouth
Speaker 1: isn't that extreme? Well it is because our kia lives there,
Speaker 1: that's right. So the fact that we figured out that
Speaker 1: our kia are different than bacteria, and not only that
Speaker 1: they don't just live in extreme environments, but also on
Speaker 1: the human body, that was something we can thank the
Speaker 1: Human Microbiome Project for. Yeah, and that wasn't I think
Speaker 1: they didn't even discover our key until the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: So this all this stuff is brand new, right and exciting.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the three domains are bacteria, archia,
Speaker 1: and eukaryotes. Are us, yes, or eukaryotes because we have
Speaker 1: nucleus as nuclei. Yeah, let's talk about this man we
Speaker 1: we have before. I'm sure you remember in the fecal
Speaker 1: transplant episode, yes, because it definitely factors into it. You
Speaker 1: can um hoop shakes. Yeah, you can cure Claustradium difficile,
Speaker 1: which is something where that it's a gut microbe. It's
Speaker 1: very harmful to humans that can colonize your guts after
Speaker 1: you take antibiotics, which is basically just like a slash
Speaker 1: and burn approach, which, again thanks to the Human Microbiome Project, UM,
Speaker 1: we're starting to understand we might want to use antibiotics
Speaker 1: because what we used to just think of is almost
Speaker 1: entirely bad are actually mostly beneficial, and even some of
Speaker 1: the bad bacteria a. Ka. Germs um are actually present
Speaker 1: in our microbiome and normally live in harmony. It just
Speaker 1: appears that when the microbiome gets out of whack, that's
Speaker 1: when disease happens. Yeah, Like you may have E. Coli
Speaker 1: in your body right now? Yeah, I probably do, but
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal. If you're always talking about
Speaker 1: stasis home, keeping things balanced in life is the key, yes,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's definitely the key with your own personal microbiome,
Speaker 1: which we have learned is very individualized, which we'll get
Speaker 1: to with the project. Right, So, if you take human
Speaker 1: body and you scanned all the genes in it, Well
Speaker 1: you would find is there are about a hundred times
Speaker 1: more microbial genes than human genes in a genetic scan
Speaker 1: of a human body. Yeah, are are Human cells only
Speaker 1: make up about ten of the cells in the body.
Speaker 1: And here's another great stat We actually the healthiest person
Speaker 1: on the planet has between two and five pounds of
Speaker 1: bacteria pounds. Yeah, of your body weight, about up to
Speaker 1: five pounds. Yes, what's crazy is is that that's even
Speaker 1: considering that microbial cells are anywhere from a tenth to
Speaker 1: a hundredth the size of an average human cell. Yes,
Speaker 1: you do. You know how many? How much five pounds
Speaker 1: would have to add quite a few. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, there's um an estimated hundred trillion microbes on
Speaker 1: an average human in person, just in on and a
Speaker 1: part of such a such a part of us and
Speaker 1: our our normal functioning that we're finding very quickly that
Speaker 1: they're they're pretty much interchangeable. There, they are one with
Speaker 1: us and um as their host. We are kind of
Speaker 1: one with them. Yeah, like you have fungus on your skin, Yeah,
Speaker 1: no big deal. Right, Well, that's another thing too, we
Speaker 1: should talk about when people say microbe. Um, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a catch all word for yeah, any tiny, typically
Speaker 1: unicellular life. And that's the case here too. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't just mean bacteria. The human microbiome is made up
Speaker 1: of lots of bacteria and lots and lots of different
Speaker 1: types of bacteria. Um. For example, the mouth may have
Speaker 1: up to five thousand different species of bacteria. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they're not just lazing around in your body, like they
Speaker 1: are responsible for keeping your body in chat or you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes responsible for it being out of whack. But they're
Speaker 1: all they're all doing something or laying there waiting to
Speaker 1: do something. You also have a what's called a virume.
Speaker 1: You have viruses in your microbiome, and they appear to
Speaker 1: be present to keep the bacteria populations from getting out
Speaker 1: of control. Like they're there to infect bacteria, to kill
Speaker 1: them off. And they it's kind of like, um, they're
Speaker 1: the lions to the gazelles of the microbiome. You take
Speaker 1: away the lions, you've got too many gazelles. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: all start to starve, they don't function correctly. They may
Speaker 1: even eat each other. You don't want to see a
Speaker 1: gazelle eat another gazelle. So you have lions there, and
Speaker 1: the lions these apex predators keep the gazelle population and
Speaker 1: check and ultimately healthy. Paradoxically, the same thing with the
Speaker 1: virume in your microbiome. Yeah, I mean they we know
Speaker 1: they aid like gut bacteria aids digestion, and we'll get
Speaker 1: the gut bacteria more. I mean, they're discovering just all
Speaker 1: kinds of things that affects uh, synthesized vitamins. Um. When
Speaker 1: you poop in the toilet and you look at your poop,
Speaker 1: which you should do by the way, like you know
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, Um, how much is it? Is
Speaker 1: it half? From a third to half? So a third
Speaker 1: to half of that is microbial biomass. It's not food, No,
Speaker 1: it's like dead and living bacteria that you're pooping out
Speaker 1: about half half. I saw something that was kind of
Speaker 1: mind blowing to um. It's it's really neat and accurate,
Speaker 1: especially on a microbial level. To imagine your alimentary system,
Speaker 1: your digestive system as the inside of that is technically
Speaker 1: outside of your body. You have a hole, a trail
Speaker 1: running through the middle of your body that's technically the outside.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I guess I see what you mean, it's
Speaker 1: just chew on it from an Yeah, like the the
Speaker 1: inside of your digestive system is technically the outside of
Speaker 1: your body. That's outside of your body. Yeah, it's confusing,
Speaker 1: it is, but once once your head wraps around it,
Speaker 1: it's like one hand clapping kind of thing and you're
Speaker 1: just like, whoa, that is neat. Uh all right, So
Speaker 1: that's I guess the briefest of overviews of microbes in bacteria,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about ad nauseum on the show in
Speaker 1: our Great Digestion podcast that was one of my favorite ones.
Speaker 1: And then we've already talked about the poop shakes. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the National Institutes of Health came up with a plan,
Speaker 1: got some money together and said, let's try and do
Speaker 1: what the Human Genome Project did. Let's try and map
Speaker 1: out the micro the human microbiome, which is a very
Speaker 1: tough task because everyone is different. Yeah. Well, yeah, everyone's
Speaker 1: microbiome is different. And I just saw today it was
Speaker 1: released from the University of Michigan. They've kind of already
Speaker 1: determined there is no such thing as a baseline healthy microbiome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the goals of this project.
Speaker 1: That was started in two thousand seven, was that UM
Speaker 1: to fight to establish a baseline micro biome like they
Speaker 1: didn't know what one looked like like. They knew that
Speaker 1: people had tons of bacteria and protozoa and viruses all
Speaker 1: over us and in us, But what is that's supposed
Speaker 1: to look like? And when you figure out what it's
Speaker 1: supposed to look like, then you can figure out what
Speaker 1: what an unhealthy one looks like and then possibly how
Speaker 1: to correct that by adjusting this this microbial ecosystem back
Speaker 1: to a baseline. But I'm not surprised that they found
Speaker 1: that there isn't a baseline that is two different And
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that they can't like learn a lot
Speaker 1: and help us out a lot. What they're basically saying
Speaker 1: is you take a dozen completely healthy people and their
Speaker 1: microbiomes are going to be completely different still, and there
Speaker 1: was UM. There is one huge revolution in UM in
Speaker 1: the study of bacterial or microbial life that that made
Speaker 1: this project possible, same with the human genome, but UM
Speaker 1: much more for this it's called metagenomics. And prior to
Speaker 1: the Evan and metagenomics, if you wanted to study bacteria,
Speaker 1: you had to find a bacteria that could be replicated, cloned, cultured, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the laboratory setting, and UM disaccounted for just a
Speaker 1: very very small fraction of the number of microbes out there.
Speaker 1: What's more so, not only did you not have a
Speaker 1: representative sample, but you also didn't have UM any kind
Speaker 1: of anything less than an artificial setting. So even if
Speaker 1: you did get these microbes, if you could replicate him
Speaker 1: in the lab, UM, they weren't gonna behave the way
Speaker 1: they would in their natural set, like on your body.
Speaker 1: So what metagenomics did UM was you can now take
Speaker 1: like a representative sample, say like a clump of soil
Speaker 1: or a swab of somebody's earfold, and get all of
Speaker 1: the microbe microbes in there, and then basically just do
Speaker 1: this rough scan of them, separate all the DNA out
Speaker 1: at these enzymes that go and clip coherent fragments of
Speaker 1: this DNA out, and then you take it and you
Speaker 1: put it into what's called a model organism, and that
Speaker 1: model organism starts to replicate as cells, and then each
Speaker 1: cell displays a certain characteristic associated with a different microbe.
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden you can start studying the
Speaker 1: different cells and say, oh, well, this has to do
Speaker 1: with this microbe, and this means that this protozoa is present,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth, and now you can
Speaker 1: get a truly representative sample of what's in a microbiome.
Speaker 1: And without metagenomics like this, none of this would be possible.
Speaker 1: But now we're starting to find all sorts of new
Speaker 1: uh not just information, but even new species of bacteria
Speaker 1: and protozoan. Fun guy, from the study of this stuff,
Speaker 1: which is a great thing. It is a great thing,
Speaker 1: and we'll explain why it's a great thing right after
Speaker 1: this break. Okay, so we're back. We're back, and uh.
Speaker 1: We were talking about the microbiome project, which is being
Speaker 1: rolled out in phases, the first of which obviously is
Speaker 1: to get as many of those samples via this new
Speaker 1: technology and basically just get a big reference set, throw
Speaker 1: them out on the table like a like a crawfish
Speaker 1: boil too, in the hopes of establishing that baseline, well
Speaker 1: not just a baseline, just basically cataloging everything with the
Speaker 1: ultimate goal of seeing what this means to our body
Speaker 1: and how these different things interact. So they put the
Speaker 1: word out on the street and I H said, Hey,
Speaker 1: we need some volunteers. Do you think you're a very
Speaker 1: healthy person. It's so come volunteer. And six people who
Speaker 1: consider themselves very healthy showed up and said, I'm a
Speaker 1: healthy person, and they were just made to learn that
Speaker 1: half of them weren't healthy. Yeah apparently, Um, like yeah,
Speaker 1: over half were rejected out right. And that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: they're like super unhealthy. It just means for the purposes
Speaker 1: of this they needed the healthiest of the healthy people.
Speaker 1: And I read that even even still of the ones
Speaker 1: that were accepted, the two and forty two that made
Speaker 1: the cut, Um, those people still had to have periodontal
Speaker 1: disease and cavities treated first, and then basically they had
Speaker 1: to be treated for that stuff and then they were
Speaker 1: deemed fully healthy. But like, that's that's how the level
Speaker 1: of health they needed for this study, or that they
Speaker 1: wanted for it. Yeah, And it surprised me they only
Speaker 1: got um subjects from two cities. I thought it would
Speaker 1: have been like spread out, but um, Houston, Texas and St. Louis,
Speaker 1: Missouri or where the final subjects came from, and they
Speaker 1: haven't been And they were all white too. They were
Speaker 1: white men and women aged eighteen two forty I believe,
Speaker 1: And um, they were in the they were the picture
Speaker 1: of perfect health. After the dentists got finished with them,
Speaker 1: people are wondering. I don't know, but um, it's not
Speaker 1: that this has been that the Human Microbiome Projects has
Speaker 1: been criticized for it. It's more just been like you,
Speaker 1: so you guys got a swab of just these just
Speaker 1: a small fragment of humanity. Yeah, maybe there's so much
Speaker 1: starting point right, Well, yes, because they can't include like
Speaker 1: every ethnic group in race when you're just starting out right, Okay,
Speaker 1: But I mean it is surprising that we just went
Speaker 1: with called Asian only. Uh. So they finally get these
Speaker 1: healthy people, Um, a couple of hundred scientists, eighty different institutions.
Speaker 1: It's a big group thing. It's not just like one
Speaker 1: university that's running the show. Uh. Budget of about a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy million bucks to start out with, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of uh cotton swabs, Yeah, lots of them,
Speaker 1: over eleven thousand cotton swabs, generic cotton swabs. Right. They
Speaker 1: they they swabbed each man in fifteen locations, women in
Speaker 1: eighteen locations. Three of the locations were in the vagina.
Speaker 1: Men don't have vaginas, they don't but men have ears
Speaker 1: and armpits and folds mouths. Uh. So there's up your
Speaker 1: nose stool stool samples they're they're getting, as you know,
Speaker 1: they're swabbing all the moist places, right uh and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right, and not just moist places. But I
Speaker 1: think that's where you're gonna find the gold. Sure you know. Yeah, well, no,
Speaker 1: it's true like your four arm actually uh is typically
Speaker 1: pretty dry. Um, but it has one of the most
Speaker 1: diverse array of bacterial species in your whole microbiome. Uh.
Speaker 1: You have about an average of forty three. Yeah. And people,
Speaker 1: when you hear this, don't think that didn't get the
Speaker 1: reaction now is expecting? Well, that seemed low to me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I'm used to hearing like thousands, thousands of bacteria,
Speaker 1: not necessarily species. It's um, although I think the mouth
Speaker 1: is going to top that. From what I remember, I
Speaker 1: said like that it's like up to five thousand species.
Speaker 1: I believe it. Yeah, um, But I think one of
Speaker 1: our goals here, and the goal of scientists, is to
Speaker 1: stop people from like changing the tide of how you
Speaker 1: even think about the stuff. So when you hear that
Speaker 1: all the bacteria in your mouth and under your armpit.
Speaker 1: Don't think gross, think awesome. Well yeah, for the most part, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know so. Um, the project, I guess is still
Speaker 1: very much in its nascent stages, Chuck. Basically they project itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did the initial leg work, and then they did
Speaker 1: the second phase, which is sequencing these things, which again,
Speaker 1: like I just painted the broadest picture of metagenomic sequencing.
Speaker 1: It is one of the most involved, insane complex processes
Speaker 1: I've ever like tried to understand. It's more complex than
Speaker 1: the breathalyzer. Remember that it used like kryptonite somehow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was very surprising. Yeah, if you don't know we're
Speaker 1: talking about, go listen to our Breathalyzers episode. It was
Speaker 1: really those are complicated missions. I thought there were fairies
Speaker 1: inside the little box that just pretty much smells like beer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: metagenomics is it's better to just kind of understand it,
Speaker 1: like little fairies performing magic than to really dive into it.
Speaker 1: But um, the point is this project. They have all
Speaker 1: this data. Now, now they have to sort through it.
Speaker 1: They have what the problem of big data, whether it's
Speaker 1: just an overwhelming amount of data, like truly some bytes
Speaker 1: of data three point five trillion bytes of data, which
Speaker 1: is about a thousand times more than the Human Genome project.
Speaker 1: And at first you're like, oh, wait, that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: We're talking about bacteria, and you go, oh, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: We have about a hundred two times the genes in
Speaker 1: our microbiome than we do in just the human genome.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's a lot of data. And now they're
Speaker 1: starting to figure out how to how to sort through it.
Speaker 1: All right, So I guess after this break we can
Speaker 1: talk about some of the things we have learned thus far. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back, all right, So now I guess we can
Speaker 1: talk about some of these great findings, some of the
Speaker 1: newest findings in the last what ars it? Well, they
Speaker 1: started two seven seven years old, and it seems like
Speaker 1: the first crop of like amazing stuff started in about
Speaker 1: two twelve. Yeah, so after they had categorized things and
Speaker 1: got like thrown all the crawfish out on the table
Speaker 1: right in the corn. Yeah, the little corn is good.
Speaker 1: Have you ever done that? I've had that before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good stuff. It's fun go to a big party.
Speaker 1: There's a place in um on Buford Highway called um
Speaker 1: the Crawfish Shack. I've heard of that, but I haven't been.
Speaker 1: Did they do it like that? Did they just dump
Speaker 1: it on the table and it's all picnic tables. No,
Speaker 1: it's in the bowls and stuff like that. But um,
Speaker 1: but it's all picnic tables inside and um, just huge
Speaker 1: rolls of paper towels and it's dude, that place is
Speaker 1: so good. Yeah, I guess you can't do that as
Speaker 1: a restaurant. But if you go to a true crawfish
Speaker 1: boil at someone's home, you have the picnic table covered
Speaker 1: with the plastic thing and you just dump it on
Speaker 1: the table and everyone just stands around like a bunch
Speaker 1: of animals, right, getting drunk and eating, like sucking the
Speaker 1: heads of crawfish. But my my family used to do
Speaker 1: something similar to that when I was a little in Toledo.
Speaker 1: We would eat um my dad called it garbage pail stew.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar? Is it like all the leftovers? No,
Speaker 1: it's like you use a trash can to make it. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it over like a flame, and
Speaker 1: obviously use a new trash can, like a brand new one.
Speaker 1: So I guess when dad got a new trash can,
Speaker 1: we would have garbage pails stew anyway, the metal trash can.
Speaker 1: It was, Yes, it was more like a the plastic
Speaker 1: just added just trying to like one of the old
Speaker 1: timing ones. What kind of flame you got in your house?
Speaker 1: And I don't remember what he cooked it on. Interesting,
Speaker 1: I don't like in my in my mind's eye, I
Speaker 1: can't look down. I can just see you just see
Speaker 1: the kind of the top of it. But anyway, it
Speaker 1: was like a Yankee northern Midwestern version of it. So
Speaker 1: there's like lots of cabbage in it and like kill
Speaker 1: Bossa and stuff like that. But it was essentially the
Speaker 1: same thing and you would eat it on like like newspaper.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to get emails from people who were like,
Speaker 1: we did that same thing. I've looked around, I'm never
Speaker 1: seen it since. I'm sure that, yeah, that sounds like
Speaker 1: a thing that although your dad is very unique person,
Speaker 1: insane is the way to put it, all right, So
Speaker 1: back to the project and the findings. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the things they've learned is that periodontist this is gum disease.
Speaker 1: Some bacteria are elevated if you have periodontists. So that's
Speaker 1: gonna give you a little insight to maybe how you
Speaker 1: can better take care of your mouth. What kind of
Speaker 1: bacteria you need in there? What kind of you don't? Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And like for example, strip to Caucus mutans is responsible
Speaker 1: for cavities, um, so you wanna take care of your
Speaker 1: strep to Caucus muticans mutans. The thing is, Chuck, that
Speaker 1: reading this made me wonder like, are we gonna go
Speaker 1: the other direction now? Where it's like, we understand that
Speaker 1: you can't just use antibiotics to get rid of everything,
Speaker 1: But if we identify bacteria that's like, oh, well that
Speaker 1: one gives you cavities, Let's get rid of all of
Speaker 1: that and find some sort of medicine that just gets
Speaker 1: rid of that. It could make things even worse than
Speaker 1: a whole other direction. Like one thing that I I
Speaker 1: figured out from this is that the the microbiome appears
Speaker 1: to exist in balance, like stuff that should make us
Speaker 1: sick E. Coli um, kinds of strepped staff, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, like it exists on a healthy person's microbiome
Speaker 1: and it's just hanging out there. So it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that they're inherently disease causing for us, or that they're
Speaker 1: they're inevitably disease causing um apparently if they exist in
Speaker 1: harmony with their neighbors. That's the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: And we can't just root out just ones that make
Speaker 1: a sick and get rid of those because I think
Speaker 1: it will have repercussions. But they might. We might have
Speaker 1: a future where instead of an antibiotic you take, you
Speaker 1: actually take a bacteria that will attack the other bacteria
Speaker 1: the bad stuff, right, or you can write exactly like
Speaker 1: that that as long as we're not intervening and going
Speaker 1: after a specific bacteria, if we can aid the bacteria
Speaker 1: like you say that will fight it naturally, like by
Speaker 1: eating some sort of sugary paste, you know, or probiotics,
Speaker 1: I mean that's what that is, right, Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's an issue that's being um examined
Speaker 1: in more detailed thanks to the microbiome. Like do probiotics work? Uh,
Speaker 1: And apparently the jury is still out in fury. They
Speaker 1: should work, but it depends on, you know, whether these
Speaker 1: things are actually colonizing your guts. And also I have
Speaker 1: the impression that it's like you don't really know what
Speaker 1: you're doing when you're adding like all these new people
Speaker 1: of the neighborhood. Yeah, and because everyone's microbiome is so
Speaker 1: different someone probiotics for one person might be great and
Speaker 1: for another person might not do anything or make things worse.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, which is another goal of the
Speaker 1: Human Microbiome Project that if we start to understand, you know,
Speaker 1: what a call any Maybe there's not a normal colony
Speaker 1: for everybody, but what an individual's normal colony looks like,
Speaker 1: then you can take blood or samples and make adjustments
Speaker 1: based specifically on what you need. Right there, it could
Speaker 1: be the end of pharmaceutical drugs conceivably. I know they're
Speaker 1: doing a lot of research into, um, how your gut
Speaker 1: bacteria affects ob cit and your weight. Um. They have
Speaker 1: found obese mice and transferred micro microbes from their gut
Speaker 1: into skinny mice, and the skinny mice gained weight. And Um,
Speaker 1: there's just type in gut bacteria and obesity, And there
Speaker 1: are a lot of studies going on now thinking that
Speaker 1: maybe correcting your gut bacteria could actually help you help
Speaker 1: your metabolism, you know, straighten out right, Like they think
Speaker 1: the bacteria itself directly informs how the body uses their
Speaker 1: stores energy. Yeah, yeah, Um, the one that blew me
Speaker 1: away was there's a type of um bacteria that helps
Speaker 1: that helps break down milk in humans and typically it's
Speaker 1: in the gut, but um as a woman advances in pregnancy, Uh,
Speaker 1: some of it moves down to the vagina. And they
Speaker 1: at first, the researchers who found this were like, what's
Speaker 1: the deal with that? And then they figured it out.
Speaker 1: They think when a baby is born um and it
Speaker 1: passes through the vagina, it basically it's becomes covered in
Speaker 1: this bacteria, ingests some of it, and that bacteria goes
Speaker 1: down and colonizes the baby's guts and prepares it almost
Speaker 1: immediately to start breaking down breast milk. Yeah, evidently brand
Speaker 1: new babies are just sponges. And like they're experimenting with
Speaker 1: cesarean sections to just swab Like after you have the
Speaker 1: cesarean section, you bring the baby out, swab it with
Speaker 1: with vaginal mucus and basically it just looks right into
Speaker 1: the skin and maybe have the same result, right, or
Speaker 1: swab their mouth or something like that. Yeah, um another way,
Speaker 1: And I guess that's kind of related to is um
Speaker 1: with the immune system. Apparently the microbiome acts as kind
Speaker 1: of like a teacher to the early immune system and
Speaker 1: says like, hey, these are the good ones, these are
Speaker 1: the bad ones. Um, why don't you go ahead and
Speaker 1: produce some T killer cells or killer T cells, but
Speaker 1: not too many, um, and uh, we'll just go ahead
Speaker 1: and keep the homeostasis going. And they basically like teach
Speaker 1: a young immune system how to operate at an optimal level.
Speaker 1: And they found that by engineering mice that are like
Speaker 1: totally germ free, their immune systems have a tendency to
Speaker 1: go crazy, like they'll become inflamed in the presence of
Speaker 1: what are say, um, non harmful fung gui. Um, They'll
Speaker 1: they'll become so inflamed that they'll damage the surrounding tissue
Speaker 1: or they'll have like irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease.
Speaker 1: They think also is a a flux state of the
Speaker 1: microbiome in the gut, so apparently it directly impacts the
Speaker 1: immune system as well, which my friend lends a lot
Speaker 1: of weight to the hygiene hypothesis. Yeah, that's that's basically
Speaker 1: the notion that, uh, here in the West and even
Speaker 1: in developing countries now children are seeing such a decrease
Speaker 1: in infection when they're when their kids that when they
Speaker 1: grow up they have an increased number of allergies and
Speaker 1: maybe autoimmune issues, and um, you kind of see it
Speaker 1: playing out, you know, like it it's a real thing.
Speaker 1: Like if you're slathering your child with pure l you're
Speaker 1: not doing the many favors right. So they may have
Speaker 1: asthma later on because of that exactly, And they are
Speaker 1: becoming they're coming to think that it's because of the
Speaker 1: the just a stunt to growth of the microbiome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think they've found now even they think they
Speaker 1: have a direct link between your gut bacteria and allergies.
Speaker 1: So if you're if you get hay fever, it may
Speaker 1: be because of your gut bacteria. And it makes just
Speaker 1: uttering complete sense too, Like your body has been exposed
Speaker 1: to these things early on, learned that they're not harmful
Speaker 1: and no longer produces antibodies as a result of their presence.
Speaker 1: Because that's all analogy is. It's a a m it's
Speaker 1: a case of mistaken identity. Your immune system thinks that
Speaker 1: pollen or something is a harmful for an invader and
Speaker 1: launches your your immune response. Pretty cool. Uh. Some of
Speaker 1: the other interesting things they found so far is that
Speaker 1: there wasn't a single microbe that everyone had in the study. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is pretty interesting. Um, And that microbes are most
Speaker 1: similar on the same site of different people. So like
Speaker 1: you and I have more similar microbes in our armpit
Speaker 1: than even there were different people. Right then, you You're
Speaker 1: microbes in your armpit has to do with your belly button.
Speaker 1: Ours are more similar than the ones in different places
Speaker 1: on your body. Yeah, that's pretty neat. And different microbes
Speaker 1: can do completely different things, like the way you digest
Speaker 1: food might use one microbe and I might use another,
Speaker 1: or that same microbe might have a completely different function
Speaker 1: in you than it doesn't mean right, so so personalized.
Speaker 1: It's like it feels like the beginning of like hyper
Speaker 1: personalized medicine. I think it is in the future. I
Speaker 1: definitely think it is. I think it's also the beginning
Speaker 1: of a kindler, kinder, gentler approach to treating disease at all.
Speaker 1: Disease Like it's entirely possible, especially if you take a
Speaker 1: brain based view of mental illness. It's possible that every
Speaker 1: bit of disease can be cured by by understanding the microbiome,
Speaker 1: even cancer. Apparently, they found from this that some types
Speaker 1: of cancer managed to cloak themselves by taking like um
Speaker 1: resin or residue from certain types of bacteria and basically
Speaker 1: sneaking past your your immune system and going and lodging
Speaker 1: itself into cells and hijacking them and creating tumors. But
Speaker 1: it cloaks itself by getting buddy buddy with certain kinds
Speaker 1: of bacteria. Cancer is a jerk. Yes, cancer is a
Speaker 1: big time jerk. You know, we've kind of covered it
Speaker 1: here and there, but uh, I could see more specific
Speaker 1: cancer podcasting out, you know what. So like, so far
Speaker 1: we've done too that specifically got into the microbiome, but
Speaker 1: we've never done like a microbiome one. So I think
Speaker 1: we should come back like a year from now and
Speaker 1: even more stuff is out and do like the microbiome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like they're they're making breakthroughs at a pretty
Speaker 1: rapid pace. So in a year they might everyone might
Speaker 1: be skinny. Yeah, because of the microbiome pill. Have you
Speaker 1: seen a picture of like an obese mouse next to
Speaker 1: like a skinny or normal eyes mouse. Yeah, it's pretty depressing.
Speaker 1: It is um sad mouse. Okay, So I will see
Speaker 1: you here at the end of next April. Uh, God
Speaker 1: willing for the microbiome? One deal, all right? If you
Speaker 1: want to learn more about the human microbiome, you can
Speaker 1: type that well those words into the search bar at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Uh And I said how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. So it's time for the listener mail, Josh.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this response from a creationist. Okay, we
Speaker 1: got a few of these. Hey, guys, listen to your
Speaker 1: podcast on natural selection and really enjoyed it. I'm a
Speaker 1: biologist who is a Christian and creationist. Natural selection is
Speaker 1: not what we disagree on. And when I say we,
Speaker 1: I mean most creationist, but of course with every group
Speaker 1: they are outliers. We agree with micro evolution, changes that
Speaker 1: occur within the species, not macro evolution. Species developed into
Speaker 1: a completely different species, which is what most people tend
Speaker 1: to associate with evolution. The only major differences between creationists
Speaker 1: an evolutionists is that we believe the Earth is between
Speaker 1: six and ten thousand years old um and again excluding
Speaker 1: the outliers, and that all organisms were created in their
Speaker 1: basic form by our God. For example, we believe that
Speaker 1: everyone came from Adam and Eve, who through methods of
Speaker 1: natural selection, evolved into the many nationalities we have today.
Speaker 1: Same thing with animals. We believe that a small number
Speaker 1: of species were created by our God, and all the
Speaker 1: forms we have today evolved through natural selection. So the
Speaker 1: only main difference that we have with evolutionists is the
Speaker 1: ultimate origin of species. The areas of evolution that we
Speaker 1: can see clearly occurring in front of our eyes we
Speaker 1: agree with. It's the areas the evolutionists theorized about that
Speaker 1: we don't agree with. So while there are differences between
Speaker 1: creationism and evolution, they're actually more similarities. And that is
Speaker 1: Eric from South Bend, Indiana. Thanks a lot, Eric, very
Speaker 1: salient points biologists. Yeah, I love it when like experts
Speaker 1: come out of the out of the would work, especially
Speaker 1: when they're experts with a twist. Yes, and we love
Speaker 1: being refuted and refuting and reading refutations and uh, we'll
Speaker 1: always read these things refutation life. That's right. If you
Speaker 1: want to refute something we've said, or agree with us
Speaker 1: or whatever. If you just want to get in touch
Speaker 1: about anything, you can tweet to us at s y
Speaker 1: s K Podcasts. You can join us on Facebook dot
Speaker 1: com slash Stuff you Should Know, or on Pinterest or
Speaker 1: on Instagram, and if you want to send an email
Speaker 1: to Chuck, Jerry, and Me, you can address it to
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