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How the Human Microbiome Project Works · Stuff You Should Know

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