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SYSK Selects: How The Human Microbiome Project Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's me Josh And for this week's
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Speaker 1: S Y s K Selects, I've chosen How the Human
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Speaker 1: Microbiome Project Works, which we released back in May of
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Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen. And even after all these years, six
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Speaker 1: years on, this information is still just totally mind blowing
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Speaker 1: to me, and I love it. It's one of my
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Speaker 1: favorite episodes of all time. I've kind of forgotten about
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Speaker 1: it and discovered it again, so I hope you enjoy
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Speaker 1: it as much as I did. Welcome to Stuff. You
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Speaker 1: should know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
0:41
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. And Josh Clark, I almost
0:44
Speaker 1: just forgot what I was gonna say your name. Yeah. Uh,
0:48
Speaker 1: there's Charles W Chuck Bryant piping in ye and there's
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Speaker 1: the trio the Trifecta and it's terrible. Ikealy Uh do
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Speaker 1: you think, well, we are getting a little heat off
1:02
Speaker 1: of it right now. It's just nice. Did you ever
1:04
Speaker 1: see that IKEA commercial about the lamp that was thrown
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Speaker 1: out on the street. No, it was really good. Well
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Speaker 1: what happened to it? Was it like the monkey at
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Speaker 1: the I Kea? No, it was like a lamp gets
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Speaker 1: thrown out with like someone's just redoing parts of their
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Speaker 1: apartment and the lamp is uh kick to the curve,
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Speaker 1: computer animated, So it's it's a human formed not human formed.
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Speaker 1: What am I saying? Anthropogin anthropomorphized and like looks up
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Speaker 1: at the apartment that he was just thrown out of
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Speaker 1: it and stuff like that. Does he go back to Sweden?
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Speaker 1: I don't. I don't remember how it ends. Just remember
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Speaker 1: the lamp like turns at human. It was sad. It
1:38
Speaker 1: was like sad. I got teared up. Did you go
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Speaker 1: buy one of those lamps? No, of course it didn't work. Um, so,
1:47
Speaker 1: I guess you're feeling pretty good since you're talking about
1:49
Speaker 1: lamps and everything. You know me and lamps I do.
1:52
Speaker 1: That means it's a good day. A clear signal checks
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Speaker 1: in a good mood everybody. Uh, you know. One of
1:57
Speaker 1: the reasons why you're in a good mood because your
2:01
Speaker 1: guts are functioning properly. Yeah, yeah, ish, yeah, you know me,
2:08
Speaker 1: it's day to day yeah with my stomach. Well that's
2:11
Speaker 1: exactly right. Things change very quickly because of your stomach,
2:16
Speaker 1: and your stomach can't affect your mood. As a matter
2:18
Speaker 1: of fact, the vast majority of the serotonin, which is
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Speaker 1: a mood stabilizing neurotransmitter, is produced in your gut. Yeah.
2:26
Speaker 1: And the way that things like serotonin and other stuff
2:29
Speaker 1: uh is produced is thanks to our microbiome. Dude, Yeah,
2:35
Speaker 1: our microbiome. This is the most fascinating thing going on
2:39
Speaker 1: in medicine science right now. Yeah. I get the impression
2:42
Speaker 1: reading various articles. When scientists talk about it, they all
2:46
Speaker 1: seem really pumped up. It's like the breakthrough of the
2:50
Speaker 1: century and this thing like just started. It's two and
2:53
Speaker 1: like this could remain the breakthrough of the century. Yeah.
2:57
Speaker 1: And I mean, if you think about the timeline up
2:59
Speaker 1: in till the twentieth century, you were like a plant
3:02
Speaker 1: or an animal, right, And then it was literally like
3:05
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and sixties that they started saying maybe
3:09
Speaker 1: we should break things down a little further, and they
3:12
Speaker 1: came up with the five kingdoms, and I think they
3:14
Speaker 1: are now even as a six kingdom. Well, there's three domains,
3:17
Speaker 1: now eight kingdoms. There's eight, there's eight and three two
3:22
Speaker 1: of the domains are account for two of the kingdoms
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Speaker 1: as well. Bacteria and archia and archia used to be
3:29
Speaker 1: thought that they were the same as bacteria. Yes, then
3:33
Speaker 1: they started looking into them a little more and they're like, oh,
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Speaker 1: these guys are made up of different amino acids and
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Speaker 1: they have different characteristics. And our chia, for example, are
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Speaker 1: the kind of um microbial life that you'll only find
3:45
Speaker 1: around undersea, hot water, sulfur events. Yeah, like volcano crazy places.
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Speaker 1: Not not in your vagina or in your mouth. Well, no,
3:57
Speaker 1: because they're extreme ophiles. And a vagina or a mouth
4:00
Speaker 1: isn't that extreme? Well it is because our kia lives there,
4:03
Speaker 1: that's right. So the fact that we figured out that
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Speaker 1: our kia are different than bacteria, and not only that
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Speaker 1: they don't just live in extreme environments, but also on
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Speaker 1: the human body, that was something we can thank the
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Speaker 1: Human Microbiome Project for. Yeah, and that wasn't I think
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Speaker 1: they didn't even discover our key until the nineteen seventies.
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Speaker 1: So this all this stuff is brand new, right and exciting.
4:28
Speaker 1: And by the way, the three domains are bacteria, archia,
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Speaker 1: and eukaryotes. Are us, yes, or eukaryotes because we have
4:35
Speaker 1: nucleus as nuclei. Yeah, let's talk about this man we
4:41
Speaker 1: we have before. I'm sure you remember in the fecal
4:43
Speaker 1: transplant episode, yes, because it definitely factors into it. You
4:47
Speaker 1: can um hoop shakes. Yeah, you can cure Claustradium difficile,
4:52
Speaker 1: which is something where that it's a gut microbe. It's
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Speaker 1: very harmful to humans that can colonize your guts after
5:01
Speaker 1: you take antibiotics, which is basically just like a slash
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Speaker 1: and burn approach, which, again thanks to the Human Microbiome Project, UM,
5:11
Speaker 1: we're starting to understand we might want to use antibiotics
5:14
Speaker 1: because what we used to just think of is almost
5:17
Speaker 1: entirely bad are actually mostly beneficial, and even some of
5:22
Speaker 1: the bad bacteria a. Ka. Germs um are actually present
5:27
Speaker 1: in our microbiome and normally live in harmony. It just
5:30
Speaker 1: appears that when the microbiome gets out of whack, that's
5:33
Speaker 1: when disease happens. Yeah, Like you may have E. Coli
5:36
Speaker 1: in your body right now? Yeah, I probably do, but
5:39
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal. If you're always talking about
5:42
Speaker 1: stasis home, keeping things balanced in life is the key, yes,
5:48
Speaker 1: and uh, it's definitely the key with your own personal microbiome,
5:52
Speaker 1: which we have learned is very individualized, which we'll get
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Speaker 1: to with the project. Right, So, if you take human
6:00
Speaker 1: body and you scanned all the genes in it, Well
6:04
Speaker 1: you would find is there are about a hundred times
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Speaker 1: more microbial genes than human genes in a genetic scan
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Speaker 1: of a human body. Yeah, are are Human cells only
6:19
Speaker 1: make up about ten of the cells in the body.
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Speaker 1: And here's another great stat We actually the healthiest person
6:27
Speaker 1: on the planet has between two and five pounds of
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Speaker 1: bacteria pounds. Yeah, of your body weight, about up to
6:35
Speaker 1: five pounds. Yes, what's crazy is is that that's even
6:40
Speaker 1: considering that microbial cells are anywhere from a tenth to
6:46
Speaker 1: a hundredth the size of an average human cell. Yes,
6:49
Speaker 1: you do. You know how many? How much five pounds
6:51
Speaker 1: would have to add quite a few. As a matter
6:54
Speaker 1: of fact, there's um an estimated hundred trillion microbes on
6:59
Speaker 1: an average human in person, just in on and a
7:04
Speaker 1: part of such a such a part of us and
7:08
Speaker 1: our our normal functioning that we're finding very quickly that
7:12
Speaker 1: they're they're pretty much interchangeable. There, they are one with
7:16
Speaker 1: us and um as their host. We are kind of
7:19
Speaker 1: one with them. Yeah, like you have fungus on your skin, Yeah,
7:23
Speaker 1: no big deal. Right, Well, that's another thing too, we
7:25
Speaker 1: should talk about when people say microbe. Um, it's kind
7:28
Speaker 1: of a catch all word for yeah, any tiny, typically
7:33
Speaker 1: unicellular life. And that's the case here too. But it
7:37
Speaker 1: doesn't just mean bacteria. The human microbiome is made up
7:41
Speaker 1: of lots of bacteria and lots and lots of different
7:44
Speaker 1: types of bacteria. Um. For example, the mouth may have
7:48
Speaker 1: up to five thousand different species of bacteria. Yeah, and
7:53
Speaker 1: they're not just lazing around in your body, like they
7:56
Speaker 1: are responsible for keeping your body in chat or you know,
8:01
Speaker 1: sometimes responsible for it being out of whack. But they're
8:04
Speaker 1: all they're all doing something or laying there waiting to
8:07
Speaker 1: do something. You also have a what's called a virume.
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Speaker 1: You have viruses in your microbiome, and they appear to
8:16
Speaker 1: be present to keep the bacteria populations from getting out
8:21
Speaker 1: of control. Like they're there to infect bacteria, to kill
8:24
Speaker 1: them off. And they it's kind of like, um, they're
8:27
Speaker 1: the lions to the gazelles of the microbiome. You take
8:33
Speaker 1: away the lions, you've got too many gazelles. Yeah, they
8:36
Speaker 1: all start to starve, they don't function correctly. They may
8:38
Speaker 1: even eat each other. You don't want to see a
8:40
Speaker 1: gazelle eat another gazelle. So you have lions there, and
8:44
Speaker 1: the lions these apex predators keep the gazelle population and
8:48
Speaker 1: check and ultimately healthy. Paradoxically, the same thing with the
8:52
Speaker 1: virume in your microbiome. Yeah, I mean they we know
8:55
Speaker 1: they aid like gut bacteria aids digestion, and we'll get
8:58
Speaker 1: the gut bacteria more. I mean, they're discovering just all
9:01
Speaker 1: kinds of things that affects uh, synthesized vitamins. Um. When
9:06
Speaker 1: you poop in the toilet and you look at your poop,
9:09
Speaker 1: which you should do by the way, like you know
9:12
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, Um, how much is it? Is
9:16
Speaker 1: it half? From a third to half? So a third
9:19
Speaker 1: to half of that is microbial biomass. It's not food, No,
9:23
Speaker 1: it's like dead and living bacteria that you're pooping out
9:27
Speaker 1: about half half. I saw something that was kind of
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Speaker 1: mind blowing to um. It's it's really neat and accurate,
9:36
Speaker 1: especially on a microbial level. To imagine your alimentary system,
9:40
Speaker 1: your digestive system as the inside of that is technically
9:44
Speaker 1: outside of your body. You have a hole, a trail
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Speaker 1: running through the middle of your body that's technically the outside.
9:55
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I guess I see what you mean, it's
9:58
Speaker 1: just chew on it from an Yeah, like the the
10:01
Speaker 1: inside of your digestive system is technically the outside of
10:04
Speaker 1: your body. That's outside of your body. Yeah, it's confusing,
10:11
Speaker 1: it is, but once once your head wraps around it,
10:14
Speaker 1: it's like one hand clapping kind of thing and you're
10:17
Speaker 1: just like, whoa, that is neat. Uh all right, So
10:21
Speaker 1: that's I guess the briefest of overviews of microbes in bacteria,
10:25
Speaker 1: which we've talked about ad nauseum on the show in
10:28
Speaker 1: our Great Digestion podcast that was one of my favorite ones.
10:33
Speaker 1: And then we've already talked about the poop shakes. Uh.
10:36
Speaker 1: So the National Institutes of Health came up with a plan,
10:40
Speaker 1: got some money together and said, let's try and do
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Speaker 1: what the Human Genome Project did. Let's try and map
10:46
Speaker 1: out the micro the human microbiome, which is a very
10:51
Speaker 1: tough task because everyone is different. Yeah. Well, yeah, everyone's
10:57
Speaker 1: microbiome is different. And I just saw today it was
11:00
Speaker 1: released from the University of Michigan. They've kind of already
11:03
Speaker 1: determined there is no such thing as a baseline healthy microbiome. Yeah,
11:09
Speaker 1: and that was one of the goals of this project.
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Speaker 1: That was started in two thousand seven, was that UM
11:14
Speaker 1: to fight to establish a baseline micro biome like they
11:20
Speaker 1: didn't know what one looked like like. They knew that
11:22
Speaker 1: people had tons of bacteria and protozoa and viruses all
11:26
Speaker 1: over us and in us, But what is that's supposed
11:29
Speaker 1: to look like? And when you figure out what it's
11:31
Speaker 1: supposed to look like, then you can figure out what
11:35
Speaker 1: what an unhealthy one looks like and then possibly how
11:38
Speaker 1: to correct that by adjusting this this microbial ecosystem back
11:42
Speaker 1: to a baseline. But I'm not surprised that they found
11:45
Speaker 1: that there isn't a baseline that is two different And
11:48
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that they can't like learn a lot
11:50
Speaker 1: and help us out a lot. What they're basically saying
11:53
Speaker 1: is you take a dozen completely healthy people and their
11:56
Speaker 1: microbiomes are going to be completely different still, and there
12:00
Speaker 1: was UM. There is one huge revolution in UM in
12:06
Speaker 1: the study of bacterial or microbial life that that made
12:11
Speaker 1: this project possible, same with the human genome, but UM
12:15
Speaker 1: much more for this it's called metagenomics. And prior to
12:20
Speaker 1: the Evan and metagenomics, if you wanted to study bacteria,
12:24
Speaker 1: you had to find a bacteria that could be replicated, cloned, cultured, Yeah,
12:30
Speaker 1: in the laboratory setting, and UM disaccounted for just a
12:35
Speaker 1: very very small fraction of the number of microbes out there.
12:39
Speaker 1: What's more so, not only did you not have a
12:42
Speaker 1: representative sample, but you also didn't have UM any kind
12:48
Speaker 1: of anything less than an artificial setting. So even if
12:52
Speaker 1: you did get these microbes, if you could replicate him
12:55
Speaker 1: in the lab, UM, they weren't gonna behave the way
12:58
Speaker 1: they would in their natural set, like on your body.
13:01
Speaker 1: So what metagenomics did UM was you can now take
13:05
Speaker 1: like a representative sample, say like a clump of soil
13:09
Speaker 1: or a swab of somebody's earfold, and get all of
13:13
Speaker 1: the microbe microbes in there, and then basically just do
13:17
Speaker 1: this rough scan of them, separate all the DNA out
13:21
Speaker 1: at these enzymes that go and clip coherent fragments of
13:26
Speaker 1: this DNA out, and then you take it and you
13:28
Speaker 1: put it into what's called a model organism, and that
13:31
Speaker 1: model organism starts to replicate as cells, and then each
13:35
Speaker 1: cell displays a certain characteristic associated with a different microbe.
13:40
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden you can start studying the
13:42
Speaker 1: different cells and say, oh, well, this has to do
13:45
Speaker 1: with this microbe, and this means that this protozoa is present,
13:49
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth, and now you can
13:52
Speaker 1: get a truly representative sample of what's in a microbiome.
13:57
Speaker 1: And without metagenomics like this, none of this would be possible.
14:00
Speaker 1: But now we're starting to find all sorts of new
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Speaker 1: uh not just information, but even new species of bacteria
14:07
Speaker 1: and protozoan. Fun guy, from the study of this stuff,
14:11
Speaker 1: which is a great thing. It is a great thing,
14:13
Speaker 1: and we'll explain why it's a great thing right after
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Speaker 1: this break. Okay, so we're back. We're back, and uh.
14:35
Speaker 1: We were talking about the microbiome project, which is being
14:39
Speaker 1: rolled out in phases, the first of which obviously is
14:42
Speaker 1: to get as many of those samples via this new
14:45
Speaker 1: technology and basically just get a big reference set, throw
14:51
Speaker 1: them out on the table like a like a crawfish
14:54
Speaker 1: boil too, in the hopes of establishing that baseline, well
14:58
Speaker 1: not just a baseline, just basically cataloging everything with the
15:02
Speaker 1: ultimate goal of seeing what this means to our body
15:06
Speaker 1: and how these different things interact. So they put the
15:08
Speaker 1: word out on the street and I H said, Hey,
15:11
Speaker 1: we need some volunteers. Do you think you're a very
15:14
Speaker 1: healthy person. It's so come volunteer. And six people who
15:19
Speaker 1: consider themselves very healthy showed up and said, I'm a
15:22
Speaker 1: healthy person, and they were just made to learn that
15:25
Speaker 1: half of them weren't healthy. Yeah apparently, Um, like yeah,
15:29
Speaker 1: over half were rejected out right. And that doesn't mean
15:32
Speaker 1: they're like super unhealthy. It just means for the purposes
15:36
Speaker 1: of this they needed the healthiest of the healthy people.
15:39
Speaker 1: And I read that even even still of the ones
15:42
Speaker 1: that were accepted, the two and forty two that made
15:46
Speaker 1: the cut, Um, those people still had to have periodontal
15:52
Speaker 1: disease and cavities treated first, and then basically they had
15:58
Speaker 1: to be treated for that stuff and then they were
16:00
Speaker 1: deemed fully healthy. But like, that's that's how the level
16:04
Speaker 1: of health they needed for this study, or that they
16:06
Speaker 1: wanted for it. Yeah, And it surprised me they only
16:08
Speaker 1: got um subjects from two cities. I thought it would
16:12
Speaker 1: have been like spread out, but um, Houston, Texas and St. Louis,
16:15
Speaker 1: Missouri or where the final subjects came from, and they
16:19
Speaker 1: haven't been And they were all white too. They were
16:22
Speaker 1: white men and women aged eighteen two forty I believe,
16:26
Speaker 1: And um, they were in the they were the picture
16:29
Speaker 1: of perfect health. After the dentists got finished with them,
16:32
Speaker 1: people are wondering. I don't know, but um, it's not
16:35
Speaker 1: that this has been that the Human Microbiome Projects has
16:39
Speaker 1: been criticized for it. It's more just been like you,
16:42
Speaker 1: so you guys got a swab of just these just
16:46
Speaker 1: a small fragment of humanity. Yeah, maybe there's so much
16:50
Speaker 1: starting point right, Well, yes, because they can't include like
16:53
Speaker 1: every ethnic group in race when you're just starting out right, Okay,
16:57
Speaker 1: But I mean it is surprising that we just went
16:59
Speaker 1: with called Asian only. Uh. So they finally get these
17:03
Speaker 1: healthy people, Um, a couple of hundred scientists, eighty different institutions.
17:07
Speaker 1: It's a big group thing. It's not just like one
17:09
Speaker 1: university that's running the show. Uh. Budget of about a
17:13
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy million bucks to start out with, and
17:16
Speaker 1: a bunch of uh cotton swabs, Yeah, lots of them,
17:21
Speaker 1: over eleven thousand cotton swabs, generic cotton swabs. Right. They
17:27
Speaker 1: they they swabbed each man in fifteen locations, women in
17:33
Speaker 1: eighteen locations. Three of the locations were in the vagina.
17:36
Speaker 1: Men don't have vaginas, they don't but men have ears
17:39
Speaker 1: and armpits and folds mouths. Uh. So there's up your
17:44
Speaker 1: nose stool stool samples they're they're getting, as you know,
17:48
Speaker 1: they're swabbing all the moist places, right uh and yeah,
17:53
Speaker 1: that's exactly right, and not just moist places. But I
17:56
Speaker 1: think that's where you're gonna find the gold. Sure you know. Yeah, well, no,
18:00
Speaker 1: it's true like your four arm actually uh is typically
18:03
Speaker 1: pretty dry. Um, but it has one of the most
18:06
Speaker 1: diverse array of bacterial species in your whole microbiome. Uh.
18:11
Speaker 1: You have about an average of forty three. Yeah. And people,
18:14
Speaker 1: when you hear this, don't think that didn't get the
18:16
Speaker 1: reaction now is expecting? Well, that seemed low to me, Yeah,
18:20
Speaker 1: because I'm used to hearing like thousands, thousands of bacteria,
18:25
Speaker 1: not necessarily species. It's um, although I think the mouth
18:29
Speaker 1: is going to top that. From what I remember, I
18:32
Speaker 1: said like that it's like up to five thousand species.
18:34
Speaker 1: I believe it. Yeah, um, But I think one of
18:37
Speaker 1: our goals here, and the goal of scientists, is to
18:39
Speaker 1: stop people from like changing the tide of how you
18:41
Speaker 1: even think about the stuff. So when you hear that
18:44
Speaker 1: all the bacteria in your mouth and under your armpit.
18:46
Speaker 1: Don't think gross, think awesome. Well yeah, for the most part, Yeah,
18:51
Speaker 1: you know so. Um, the project, I guess is still
18:55
Speaker 1: very much in its nascent stages, Chuck. Basically they project itself. Yeah,
19:00
Speaker 1: they did the initial leg work, and then they did
19:02
Speaker 1: the second phase, which is sequencing these things, which again,
19:06
Speaker 1: like I just painted the broadest picture of metagenomic sequencing.
19:11
Speaker 1: It is one of the most involved, insane complex processes
19:17
Speaker 1: I've ever like tried to understand. It's more complex than
19:21
Speaker 1: the breathalyzer. Remember that it used like kryptonite somehow. Yeah,
19:27
Speaker 1: that was very surprising. Yeah, if you don't know we're
19:29
Speaker 1: talking about, go listen to our Breathalyzers episode. It was
19:32
Speaker 1: really those are complicated missions. I thought there were fairies
19:35
Speaker 1: inside the little box that just pretty much smells like beer. Yeah,
19:39
Speaker 1: metagenomics is it's better to just kind of understand it,
19:43
Speaker 1: like little fairies performing magic than to really dive into it.
19:47
Speaker 1: But um, the point is this project. They have all
19:52
Speaker 1: this data. Now, now they have to sort through it.
19:55
Speaker 1: They have what the problem of big data, whether it's
19:58
Speaker 1: just an overwhelming amount of data, like truly some bytes
20:00
Speaker 1: of data three point five trillion bytes of data, which
20:03
Speaker 1: is about a thousand times more than the Human Genome project.
20:07
Speaker 1: And at first you're like, oh, wait, that doesn't make sense.
20:09
Speaker 1: We're talking about bacteria, and you go, oh, yeah, that's right.
20:12
Speaker 1: We have about a hundred two times the genes in
20:16
Speaker 1: our microbiome than we do in just the human genome.
20:19
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's a lot of data. And now they're
20:22
Speaker 1: starting to figure out how to how to sort through it.
20:25
Speaker 1: All right, So I guess after this break we can
20:27
Speaker 1: talk about some of the things we have learned thus far. Okay,
20:47
Speaker 1: we're back, all right, So now I guess we can
20:49
Speaker 1: talk about some of these great findings, some of the
20:52
Speaker 1: newest findings in the last what ars it? Well, they
20:56
Speaker 1: started two seven seven years old, and it seems like
20:59
Speaker 1: the first crop of like amazing stuff started in about
21:02
Speaker 1: two twelve. Yeah, so after they had categorized things and
21:06
Speaker 1: got like thrown all the crawfish out on the table
21:08
Speaker 1: right in the corn. Yeah, the little corn is good.
21:11
Speaker 1: Have you ever done that? I've had that before. Yeah,
21:15
Speaker 1: it's good stuff. It's fun go to a big party.
21:18
Speaker 1: There's a place in um on Buford Highway called um
21:23
Speaker 1: the Crawfish Shack. I've heard of that, but I haven't been.
21:26
Speaker 1: Did they do it like that? Did they just dump
21:28
Speaker 1: it on the table and it's all picnic tables. No,
21:30
Speaker 1: it's in the bowls and stuff like that. But um,
21:32
Speaker 1: but it's all picnic tables inside and um, just huge
21:36
Speaker 1: rolls of paper towels and it's dude, that place is
21:39
Speaker 1: so good. Yeah, I guess you can't do that as
21:41
Speaker 1: a restaurant. But if you go to a true crawfish
21:43
Speaker 1: boil at someone's home, you have the picnic table covered
21:46
Speaker 1: with the plastic thing and you just dump it on
21:48
Speaker 1: the table and everyone just stands around like a bunch
21:51
Speaker 1: of animals, right, getting drunk and eating, like sucking the
21:56
Speaker 1: heads of crawfish. But my my family used to do
21:58
Speaker 1: something similar to that when I was a little in Toledo.
22:01
Speaker 1: We would eat um my dad called it garbage pail stew.
22:05
Speaker 1: Are you familiar? Is it like all the leftovers? No,
22:07
Speaker 1: it's like you use a trash can to make it. Oh,
22:11
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it over like a flame, and
22:14
Speaker 1: obviously use a new trash can, like a brand new one.
22:17
Speaker 1: So I guess when dad got a new trash can,
22:19
Speaker 1: we would have garbage pails stew anyway, the metal trash can.
22:23
Speaker 1: It was, Yes, it was more like a the plastic
22:26
Speaker 1: just added just trying to like one of the old
22:31
Speaker 1: timing ones. What kind of flame you got in your house?
22:33
Speaker 1: And I don't remember what he cooked it on. Interesting,
22:36
Speaker 1: I don't like in my in my mind's eye, I
22:38
Speaker 1: can't look down. I can just see you just see
22:41
Speaker 1: the kind of the top of it. But anyway, it
22:43
Speaker 1: was like a Yankee northern Midwestern version of it. So
22:46
Speaker 1: there's like lots of cabbage in it and like kill
22:49
Speaker 1: Bossa and stuff like that. But it was essentially the
22:52
Speaker 1: same thing and you would eat it on like like newspaper.
22:55
Speaker 1: I can't wait to get emails from people who were like,
22:57
Speaker 1: we did that same thing. I've looked around, I'm never
23:00
Speaker 1: seen it since. I'm sure that, yeah, that sounds like
23:02
Speaker 1: a thing that although your dad is very unique person,
23:05
Speaker 1: insane is the way to put it, all right, So
23:08
Speaker 1: back to the project and the findings. Um. One of
23:13
Speaker 1: the things they've learned is that periodontist this is gum disease.
23:19
Speaker 1: Some bacteria are elevated if you have periodontists. So that's
23:23
Speaker 1: gonna give you a little insight to maybe how you
23:26
Speaker 1: can better take care of your mouth. What kind of
23:28
Speaker 1: bacteria you need in there? What kind of you don't? Yeah, exactly,
23:31
Speaker 1: And like for example, strip to Caucus mutans is responsible
23:35
Speaker 1: for cavities, um, so you wanna take care of your
23:39
Speaker 1: strep to Caucus muticans mutans. The thing is, Chuck, that
23:43
Speaker 1: reading this made me wonder like, are we gonna go
23:46
Speaker 1: the other direction now? Where it's like, we understand that
23:49
Speaker 1: you can't just use antibiotics to get rid of everything,
23:52
Speaker 1: But if we identify bacteria that's like, oh, well that
23:57
Speaker 1: one gives you cavities, Let's get rid of all of
23:58
Speaker 1: that and find some sort of medicine that just gets
24:01
Speaker 1: rid of that. It could make things even worse than
24:04
Speaker 1: a whole other direction. Like one thing that I I
24:07
Speaker 1: figured out from this is that the the microbiome appears
24:11
Speaker 1: to exist in balance, like stuff that should make us
24:14
Speaker 1: sick E. Coli um, kinds of strepped staff, that kind
24:19
Speaker 1: of thing, like it exists on a healthy person's microbiome
24:23
Speaker 1: and it's just hanging out there. So it doesn't mean
24:25
Speaker 1: that they're inherently disease causing for us, or that they're
24:30
Speaker 1: they're inevitably disease causing um apparently if they exist in
24:34
Speaker 1: harmony with their neighbors. That's the way it's supposed to be.
24:37
Speaker 1: And we can't just root out just ones that make
24:40
Speaker 1: a sick and get rid of those because I think
24:41
Speaker 1: it will have repercussions. But they might. We might have
24:44
Speaker 1: a future where instead of an antibiotic you take, you
24:47
Speaker 1: actually take a bacteria that will attack the other bacteria
24:52
Speaker 1: the bad stuff, right, or you can write exactly like
24:56
Speaker 1: that that as long as we're not intervening and going
25:00
Speaker 1: after a specific bacteria, if we can aid the bacteria
25:04
Speaker 1: like you say that will fight it naturally, like by
25:07
Speaker 1: eating some sort of sugary paste, you know, or probiotics,
25:13
Speaker 1: I mean that's what that is, right, Yeah, and that
25:15
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's an issue that's being um examined
25:19
Speaker 1: in more detailed thanks to the microbiome. Like do probiotics work? Uh,
25:24
Speaker 1: And apparently the jury is still out in fury. They
25:27
Speaker 1: should work, but it depends on, you know, whether these
25:30
Speaker 1: things are actually colonizing your guts. And also I have
25:34
Speaker 1: the impression that it's like you don't really know what
25:38
Speaker 1: you're doing when you're adding like all these new people
25:40
Speaker 1: of the neighborhood. Yeah, and because everyone's microbiome is so
25:44
Speaker 1: different someone probiotics for one person might be great and
25:48
Speaker 1: for another person might not do anything or make things worse.
25:51
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, which is another goal of the
25:53
Speaker 1: Human Microbiome Project that if we start to understand, you know,
25:58
Speaker 1: what a call any Maybe there's not a normal colony
26:02
Speaker 1: for everybody, but what an individual's normal colony looks like,
26:06
Speaker 1: then you can take blood or samples and make adjustments
26:10
Speaker 1: based specifically on what you need. Right there, it could
26:13
Speaker 1: be the end of pharmaceutical drugs conceivably. I know they're
26:17
Speaker 1: doing a lot of research into, um, how your gut
26:21
Speaker 1: bacteria affects ob cit and your weight. Um. They have
26:25
Speaker 1: found obese mice and transferred micro microbes from their gut
26:31
Speaker 1: into skinny mice, and the skinny mice gained weight. And Um,
26:36
Speaker 1: there's just type in gut bacteria and obesity, And there
26:40
Speaker 1: are a lot of studies going on now thinking that
26:43
Speaker 1: maybe correcting your gut bacteria could actually help you help
26:46
Speaker 1: your metabolism, you know, straighten out right, Like they think
26:49
Speaker 1: the bacteria itself directly informs how the body uses their
26:55
Speaker 1: stores energy. Yeah, yeah, Um, the one that blew me
27:00
Speaker 1: away was there's a type of um bacteria that helps
27:06
Speaker 1: that helps break down milk in humans and typically it's
27:09
Speaker 1: in the gut, but um as a woman advances in pregnancy, Uh,
27:14
Speaker 1: some of it moves down to the vagina. And they
27:18
Speaker 1: at first, the researchers who found this were like, what's
27:21
Speaker 1: the deal with that? And then they figured it out.
27:23
Speaker 1: They think when a baby is born um and it
27:27
Speaker 1: passes through the vagina, it basically it's becomes covered in
27:32
Speaker 1: this bacteria, ingests some of it, and that bacteria goes
27:36
Speaker 1: down and colonizes the baby's guts and prepares it almost
27:39
Speaker 1: immediately to start breaking down breast milk. Yeah, evidently brand
27:43
Speaker 1: new babies are just sponges. And like they're experimenting with
27:48
Speaker 1: cesarean sections to just swab Like after you have the
27:52
Speaker 1: cesarean section, you bring the baby out, swab it with
27:56
Speaker 1: with vaginal mucus and basically it just looks right into
28:00
Speaker 1: the skin and maybe have the same result, right, or
28:02
Speaker 1: swab their mouth or something like that. Yeah, um another way,
28:06
Speaker 1: And I guess that's kind of related to is um
28:10
Speaker 1: with the immune system. Apparently the microbiome acts as kind
28:14
Speaker 1: of like a teacher to the early immune system and
28:18
Speaker 1: says like, hey, these are the good ones, these are
28:21
Speaker 1: the bad ones. Um, why don't you go ahead and
28:23
Speaker 1: produce some T killer cells or killer T cells, but
28:27
Speaker 1: not too many, um, and uh, we'll just go ahead
28:31
Speaker 1: and keep the homeostasis going. And they basically like teach
28:34
Speaker 1: a young immune system how to operate at an optimal level.
28:39
Speaker 1: And they found that by engineering mice that are like
28:43
Speaker 1: totally germ free, their immune systems have a tendency to
28:46
Speaker 1: go crazy, like they'll become inflamed in the presence of
28:51
Speaker 1: what are say, um, non harmful fung gui. Um, They'll
28:58
Speaker 1: they'll become so inflamed that they'll damage the surrounding tissue
29:01
Speaker 1: or they'll have like irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease.
29:05
Speaker 1: They think also is a a flux state of the
29:09
Speaker 1: microbiome in the gut, so apparently it directly impacts the
29:13
Speaker 1: immune system as well, which my friend lends a lot
29:17
Speaker 1: of weight to the hygiene hypothesis. Yeah, that's that's basically
29:21
Speaker 1: the notion that, uh, here in the West and even
29:25
Speaker 1: in developing countries now children are seeing such a decrease
29:30
Speaker 1: in infection when they're when their kids that when they
29:34
Speaker 1: grow up they have an increased number of allergies and
29:38
Speaker 1: maybe autoimmune issues, and um, you kind of see it
29:43
Speaker 1: playing out, you know, like it it's a real thing.
29:46
Speaker 1: Like if you're slathering your child with pure l you're
29:49
Speaker 1: not doing the many favors right. So they may have
29:52
Speaker 1: asthma later on because of that exactly, And they are
29:55
Speaker 1: becoming they're coming to think that it's because of the
29:58
Speaker 1: the just a stunt to growth of the microbiome. Yeah,
30:02
Speaker 1: and I think they've found now even they think they
30:04
Speaker 1: have a direct link between your gut bacteria and allergies.
30:09
Speaker 1: So if you're if you get hay fever, it may
30:12
Speaker 1: be because of your gut bacteria. And it makes just
30:15
Speaker 1: uttering complete sense too, Like your body has been exposed
30:19
Speaker 1: to these things early on, learned that they're not harmful
30:22
Speaker 1: and no longer produces antibodies as a result of their presence.
30:27
Speaker 1: Because that's all analogy is. It's a a m it's
30:30
Speaker 1: a case of mistaken identity. Your immune system thinks that
30:33
Speaker 1: pollen or something is a harmful for an invader and
30:37
Speaker 1: launches your your immune response. Pretty cool. Uh. Some of
30:41
Speaker 1: the other interesting things they found so far is that
30:45
Speaker 1: there wasn't a single microbe that everyone had in the study. Yeah,
30:48
Speaker 1: which is pretty interesting. Um, And that microbes are most
30:54
Speaker 1: similar on the same site of different people. So like
30:56
Speaker 1: you and I have more similar microbes in our armpit
31:01
Speaker 1: than even there were different people. Right then, you You're
31:04
Speaker 1: microbes in your armpit has to do with your belly button.
31:07
Speaker 1: Ours are more similar than the ones in different places
31:10
Speaker 1: on your body. Yeah, that's pretty neat. And different microbes
31:13
Speaker 1: can do completely different things, like the way you digest
31:17
Speaker 1: food might use one microbe and I might use another,
31:22
Speaker 1: or that same microbe might have a completely different function
31:24
Speaker 1: in you than it doesn't mean right, so so personalized.
31:27
Speaker 1: It's like it feels like the beginning of like hyper
31:31
Speaker 1: personalized medicine. I think it is in the future. I
31:35
Speaker 1: definitely think it is. I think it's also the beginning
31:38
Speaker 1: of a kindler, kinder, gentler approach to treating disease at all.
31:43
Speaker 1: Disease Like it's entirely possible, especially if you take a
31:46
Speaker 1: brain based view of mental illness. It's possible that every
31:50
Speaker 1: bit of disease can be cured by by understanding the microbiome,
31:55
Speaker 1: even cancer. Apparently, they found from this that some types
31:59
Speaker 1: of cancer managed to cloak themselves by taking like um
32:04
Speaker 1: resin or residue from certain types of bacteria and basically
32:08
Speaker 1: sneaking past your your immune system and going and lodging
32:14
Speaker 1: itself into cells and hijacking them and creating tumors. But
32:17
Speaker 1: it cloaks itself by getting buddy buddy with certain kinds
32:21
Speaker 1: of bacteria. Cancer is a jerk. Yes, cancer is a
32:24
Speaker 1: big time jerk. You know, we've kind of covered it
32:26
Speaker 1: here and there, but uh, I could see more specific
32:28
Speaker 1: cancer podcasting out, you know what. So like, so far
32:33
Speaker 1: we've done too that specifically got into the microbiome, but
32:36
Speaker 1: we've never done like a microbiome one. So I think
32:40
Speaker 1: we should come back like a year from now and
32:42
Speaker 1: even more stuff is out and do like the microbiome. Yeah,
32:45
Speaker 1: it seems like they're they're making breakthroughs at a pretty
32:48
Speaker 1: rapid pace. So in a year they might everyone might
32:52
Speaker 1: be skinny. Yeah, because of the microbiome pill. Have you
32:56
Speaker 1: seen a picture of like an obese mouse next to
32:58
Speaker 1: like a skinny or normal eyes mouse. Yeah, it's pretty depressing.
33:01
Speaker 1: It is um sad mouse. Okay, So I will see
33:05
Speaker 1: you here at the end of next April. Uh, God
33:08
Speaker 1: willing for the microbiome? One deal, all right? If you
33:12
Speaker 1: want to learn more about the human microbiome, you can
33:14
Speaker 1: type that well those words into the search bar at
33:17
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Uh And I said how
33:20
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. So it's time for the listener mail, Josh.
33:24
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this response from a creationist. Okay, we
33:29
Speaker 1: got a few of these. Hey, guys, listen to your
33:32
Speaker 1: podcast on natural selection and really enjoyed it. I'm a
33:34
Speaker 1: biologist who is a Christian and creationist. Natural selection is
33:38
Speaker 1: not what we disagree on. And when I say we,
33:41
Speaker 1: I mean most creationist, but of course with every group
33:44
Speaker 1: they are outliers. We agree with micro evolution, changes that
33:48
Speaker 1: occur within the species, not macro evolution. Species developed into
33:53
Speaker 1: a completely different species, which is what most people tend
33:56
Speaker 1: to associate with evolution. The only major differences between creationists
34:00
Speaker 1: an evolutionists is that we believe the Earth is between
34:03
Speaker 1: six and ten thousand years old um and again excluding
34:08
Speaker 1: the outliers, and that all organisms were created in their
34:11
Speaker 1: basic form by our God. For example, we believe that
34:14
Speaker 1: everyone came from Adam and Eve, who through methods of
34:17
Speaker 1: natural selection, evolved into the many nationalities we have today.
34:21
Speaker 1: Same thing with animals. We believe that a small number
34:23
Speaker 1: of species were created by our God, and all the
34:27
Speaker 1: forms we have today evolved through natural selection. So the
34:30
Speaker 1: only main difference that we have with evolutionists is the
34:33
Speaker 1: ultimate origin of species. The areas of evolution that we
34:36
Speaker 1: can see clearly occurring in front of our eyes we
34:39
Speaker 1: agree with. It's the areas the evolutionists theorized about that
34:42
Speaker 1: we don't agree with. So while there are differences between
34:45
Speaker 1: creationism and evolution, they're actually more similarities. And that is
34:49
Speaker 1: Eric from South Bend, Indiana. Thanks a lot, Eric, very
34:54
Speaker 1: salient points biologists. Yeah, I love it when like experts
34:58
Speaker 1: come out of the out of the would work, especially
35:01
Speaker 1: when they're experts with a twist. Yes, and we love
35:06
Speaker 1: being refuted and refuting and reading refutations and uh, we'll
35:10
Speaker 1: always read these things refutation life. That's right. If you
35:14
Speaker 1: want to refute something we've said, or agree with us
35:16
Speaker 1: or whatever. If you just want to get in touch
35:19
Speaker 1: about anything, you can tweet to us at s y
35:21
Speaker 1: s K Podcasts. You can join us on Facebook dot
35:23
Speaker 1: com slash Stuff you Should Know, or on Pinterest or
35:25
Speaker 1: on Instagram, and if you want to send an email
35:28
Speaker 1: to Chuck, Jerry, and Me, you can address it to
35:31
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. Stuff you
35:37
Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff
35:40
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