The Human Microbiome Paradigm Shift

Dear Friends,

There is a profound movement, a shift of knowledge that is occuring all over the world. Even as the citizens of the world are experiencing the worst of illnesses, even as governments, corporations and foundations pour billions into a competitive rush for patented medications, an evolution of awareness is growing.

A wonderful phenomenon is taking place right in front of us—a critical sea change is occuring—a new (yet at the same time thousands of years old) perspective, a new way of looking at the practice of medicine, of conceptualizing our human body’s relationship to the world, in health and in disease, is emerging. The Human Microbiome Project Roadmap, that I will outline in this email, serves as an example of the new paradigm’s emergence. Interestingly enough, the public response to the swine flu vaccination, that I will end this email with, in the Green Facts Section, serves as a second example.

The Human Microbiome Project Roadmap:

The first component of the HMP Roadmap is the sequencing of 1000 microbes to serve as a reference genome (we described this in last week’s email) to facilitate the second component of the Roadmap— the phylogenetic and functional analysis of the metagenomic sequences produced from human body sites of approximately 250 individuals.

As mentioned last week, four institutions have been selected for the genomic sequencing—The Broad Institute (of MIT and Harvard), Washington University, Baylor College of Medicine-Human Genome Sequencing Center (BCM-HGSC), and the J. Craig Venter Institute. Of these, Baylor and Washington University have been selected to accomplish the metagenomic analysis of the 250 individuals.

Approximately 250 males and females (18 to 40 years of age, in good health status) from two geographic locations in the US will be selected for a core sampling. The collection of clinical specimens will be from multiple body sites to serve as sources of measurement of the core microbiomes associated with the oral cavity, skin, nasal cavity, gastrointestinal tract and vagina.

Let’s read together the form which illuminates the HMP’s worldview—the Consent Form given to prospective participants entitled, The Human Microbiome Project (HMP): Core Microbiome Sampling Protocol A.

You are invited to take part in a research study. Please read this information and feel free to ask any questions before you agree to take part.

Our bodies carry around trillions of microbes—bacteria, viruses, and other tiny living things. These microbes live in many places on and inside our bodies, such as the skin, mouth, nose, gut, and (in women) vagina. While we still don’t know how they do it, many of these microbes help keep us healthy, while others contribute to disease. Similarly, changes in our health can affect our microbes. So can things like where we live or work, our age, ancestry, health status, and diet—and probably many other things we don’t know about yet.

People and microbes both have nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), the material that contains genetic instructions. The microbes genetic material affects how they live with each other and how they act in our bodies. Our own genetic material also affects how we react to our microbes. All of the different kinds of microbes that live on us and in us, taken together, are called the human microbiome.

The document goes on to describe how, if they qualify as a healthy individual, that in the first part of the HMP they will collect samples from their different body microbiome sites in order to study the genetic material of their microbes. They will also take a blood sample to determine their own human genotype. That way the HMP will be able to study the genetic material of both their human cells and their microbes. This information will become the HMP’s core resource. Let’s continue to read:

This core resource will form the foundation for the second part of the HMP, in which new samples from different people—some who are healthy and some who have certain diseases—will be collected and studied. By comparing the microbes in these two sets of samples with the microbes in the core resource, and by doing experiments to see how the microbes interact with each and with their human hosts, researchers will begin to understand more about the complicated relationships between microbes and many diseases. Many researchers in universities, hospitals, non-profit groups, companies, and government laboratories around the world will use the resource we develop.

So how does the foregoing represent a budding paradigm shift that is occuring in the world of medicine?

The very consideration, and yes, acknowledgement, that our metabolic health is governed in part by the contingent of microbial genomes that reside on us and in us as we walk through life—our microbiome—is a paradigm shift in how we’ve perceived our body’s ultimate functioning, and opens the door not only to new therapies and journeys towards maintaining health, but also welcomes us into a new relationship with the life that resides outside our human cells.

The second part of the sea change that is washing over us has not so much to do with what we research but how we research. It represents a new spirit of openness, of gathering data and making it available for all who are interested. This is the very MO of the Human Genome Project, as they make even the individual subjects of their research aware that the data will not only be public but that this is the very means by which the project goals will be achieved—by allowing all to participate in advancing the research. Worldwide collaboration is the key word here and a key value we all need to embrace.

Sincerely yours,

Seann Bardell

BioImmersion.com

Clinical Note:

In this week’s Clinical Note we will go over the three products on the left in the picture below. On the far left, by itself there is the freeze dried organic garlic and to its right are two of our patented products—Chromium with Beet and Fructo Borate Complex.

Fructo Borate Complex is the result of our collaboration with Eastern European scientists and American manufacturers. You might ask how does a synthesized calcium fructoborate qualify as a therapeutic food—good question? In the food chain boron is always found bound to carbohydrate. Whether it is in pears or prunes boron is tightly bound to a fruit sugar. Our supplemental boron is the first such boron to be available and through its Eastern European studies shows great potential as a powerful therapeutic nutrient. Click on its name to see its benefits. Also at the bottome of the bullets on benefits page is a link to a great monograph on this product, including references.

How to use and remember: Supports bone, joint and hormone health. We have seen its support in improving bone density, reducing arthritic pain and swelling, and increase steroid hormone levels in the blood—including Vitamin D levels. We have also had practitioners express its usefullness in opening up the breathing. Boron has been called the master mineral because it participates in so many governing metabolic functions.

Chromium with Beet is an organically bonded trivalent chromium with the nucleotides from brewers yeast as its ligands. The bonded chromium molecule is a very small allowing it to be water soluble and extremely bioavailable, which accounts for its effectiveness in lowering blood sugar levels. The red beet root add a healing touch to the liver, supporting phase II liver detox capacity. Take one BID.

How to use and remember: This product has been bench trialed against chromium picolinates and chromium polynicotinates and has been shown to be approximately three times more effective in lowering blood sugar levels.

Organic Freeze Dried Garlic is a wonderful broad spectrum antimicrobial against bacteria such as Salmonella, Staph, and Borrelia; against virus such as Herpes, against protozoa such as Crypto and Giardia and against yeast such as Candida. Yet it doesn’t harm lactic acid probiotic organisms.

How to use and remember: Many people suffer from co-infections that leave their bodies vulnerable to the pandemics of our time, such as Lyme Disease and Swine Flu. Additionally, it has been pointed out by infectious disease experts that individual with a high co-infection load are at greater risk of complications from receiving immunizations. Garlic reduced the co-fection load.

The Last Quiz Answer: Conservation biologists based in four countries gather for an emergency meeting in Vientiane, Lao PDR to address the peril of extinction facing one of the world’s most enigmatic mammals— the Saola. IT WAS DICOVERED TO WORLD SCIENCE ONLY IN 1992, can you believe that? Plus, it is not a little animal—about the size of a desert antelope. They have rarely been seen or photgraphed and have proved difficult to keep alive in captivity.

We have reached the tipping point, and the swine flu response clearly shows that a paradigm shift is occurring in the US citizenry, because of the fact that 50% of the population is choosing not to have the vaccination for H1N1, even in the face of the massive media campaign to do so. This clip of Joe Mercola’s interview with Barbara Loe Fisher, Founder of the National Vaccine Information Center, is a must view.