80 » OpenRoad Driver
Bacteria are part of the planet’s garbage
disposal system that breaks down dead
plant and animal tissue, returning it to
soil in the form of humus so life can
begin again. Each gram of healthy soil has
600 million microorganisms containing
thousands of species of bacteria and fungi,
so healthy soil is fully alive. And the humus
that the bacteria make is the nutritious
food that plants require in order to grow
healthy and robust.
So, what happens when farmers spray
their fields with pesticides, herbicides
and fungicides? They kill the army of
microorganisms that support plant life,
rendering the soil dead.
Plants cannot grow in dead soil without
the aid of chemical fertilizers. Chemical
fertilizers do not make for healthy plants.
Unhealthy plants do not make for healthy
people. So our health rests on the health of
the bacteria in the soil.
In times before chemical agriculture, we
would consume live bacteria along with
the food we ate. In healthy people there are
thousands of species of bacteria that live in
our digestive tract from the mouth to anus,
that help us digest our food, synthesize
vitamins like folate, vitamin K and biotin,
and that are vital to the function of our
immune system.
Bacteria break down our food into a usable
form that can be absorbed through our
intestines and utilized by the body. Bacteria
clean the walls of the intestine and colon
so that waste can be excreted easily and
are therefore key to the body’s ability to
detoxify itself.
Our immune system can only become
strong by coming into contact with various
bacteria and viruses, so it can develop an
ability to fight them and build its antibody
army.
Overuse of antibacterial soaps and cleaners,
pasteurized foods and antibiotics has made
us sicker and more allergic, as the body has
not had the opportunity to build a strong
immune system. Much of the evidence
for this is epidemiological. For example,
researchers found that children that were
raised on farms had far less hay fever than
children that lived in cities. Kids fr om
small families that went into daycare before
age one were less likely to develop allergies
than those who began daycare later.
Furthermore, the rising numbers of
children that have life-threatening food
allergies is strongly related to the lack
of contact the immune system has with
bacteria due to sterile or dead food and an
overly clean environment.
Babies should get their first inoculation
of good bacteria as they make their way
through the vaginal tract during birth. If
mom has no bugs or bad bugs, the baby is
more likely to develop allergies, immunesystem problems or possibly autism. So, the
question becomes: do you have enough
bugs in your gut, and are they the right
kind? Were you ever on antibiotics? If so,
they killed all the bacteria in your gut, so if
you did not actively replace them, probably
not.
In today’s world of processed, denatured,
sugar- and chemical-laden food that came
from dead soil, most people have a bacteria
population in their gut that is 85% “bad”
bacteria and only 15% “good” bacteria, and
the ratio should be the other way around.
Good bacteria are killed off by the chlorine
and fluoride in the water we drink, caffeine,
birth control pills and other drugs, stress,
food additives, and too many bad bacteria
that compete in the gut for food and a
place to live.
Symptoms of poor-quality gut bacteria
include an inability to lose weight,
carbohydrate cravings, recurrent candida
or yeast problems, frequent constipation or
diarrhea, digestion or acid reflux problems,
joint pain and stiffness, frequent colds or
flu, and skin problems like acne or eczema,
for example.
So, what is the grand message in all of this?
We need to be clean, but not too clean. Just
like plants can’t be healthy in sterilized dirt,
we actually require some contact with the
germs, microbes and bacteria.
Life on earth is a system of balances. To be
healthy we must respect and not attempt to
destroy this purity because even the bugs
are critical to the survival of the whole.