The Human Superorganism: How the
Microbiome Is Revolutionizing the Pursuit of a Healthy Life. By Rodney
Dietert, Ph.D. Dutton. $28.
It has recently become
fashionable to regard the human body not as an integrated organism but as a
colony of trillions of microorganisms. On that basis, some 90% of human cells
are microbial. This is reductio ad
minimum if not ad absurdum, but
it is not as peculiar or scientifically or philosophically abstruse as it may
at first seem to be. The fact that our bodies are populated by trillions of
bacteria is not news, nor is it revelatory to state that an appropriate balance
of “good” bacteria helps protect us against periodic invasions by “bad”
bacteria – and that, indeed, maintaining such a balance is a key to overall
health.
A key, not the key. The
distinction matters, because stating that microbial balance is the key to health opens the door to any
number of scammers, “nutraceutical” peddlers, “probiotics” pushers and others
who are only too eager to jump on the latest bandwagon and use it to make all
the profits possible before the next big thing comes along.
Rodney Dietert, thankfully,
is no peddler or pusher, even if he is a trifle too intense in his advocacy of
microbiome balance as the key to
living well. Dieter starts from the inarguable premise that despite many
decades of advancement in medical technology, nearly two-thirds of deaths today
are caused by illness – and particularly by non-communicable diseases (NCDs)
such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Furthermore, says Dietert, a professor
of immunotoxicology at Cornell University, there is an epidemic of non-fatal
but nevertheless serious diseases that can also be tied to microbiome
disturbance, including celiac disease, psoriasis, asthma, osteoarthritis,
autism, depression and many more. All these diseases share an improperly
regulated immune system, Dietert argues, and because that is what they have in common, appropriate alteration of
our microbiome can return our biological superorganism to health through a
rebalancing act that involves treatments such as prebiotics and probiotics.
The problem, Dietert asserts,
is that we as a species have spent so much time in recent decades deregulating
rather than balancing our microbiome. Here he cites the usual suspects,
including antibiotic overuse and insufficient nutritional diversity. We have
pushed our bodies into a state of chronic inflammation, says Dietert, and that
in turn makes us susceptible to an ever-increasing number of chronic illnesses.
Little of this is really
new, although Dietert is to be commended for backing up his assertions with so
many citations of responsible research, much of it cutting-edge. The notion
that we live symbiotically with helpful bacteria that, for their part, protect
us against a host of diseases caused by lack of homeostasis, allows us to
imagine a fairly simple rebalancing act that will end the inflammatory response
and present us with a holistically healthy future. But of course things are not
as simple as that. Pretty much every
aspect of modern life needs to be rethought in order to restore microbiome
balance, Dietert suggests, ranging from altered birth practices (no more
elective C-sections, no excuses for failing to breastfeed) to new approaches to
geriatrics. The basic problem, Dietert says, is that in waging war against
harmful microorganisms, we have been causing collateral damage to the helpful
ones that are crucial to our health – in effect, fighting ourselves and
defeating the very elements of our biological makeup that keep us healthy. We
have suffered “the loss of a higher order of self-integrity involving our
microbiome,” and medical treatments make matters worse insofar as they ignore
the preeminent importance of microbiome management.
Dietert veers perilously
close to fanaticism as he brings up instance after instance in which a problem,
pretty much any problem, is caused by mismanagement of the microbiome. His
strong scientific background and research-based arguments prevent his book from
sounding entirely like a jeremiad, but there is a certain hectoring tone about
his insistence that whatever may be the matter, he, Dietert, knows what the
problem is, and what can be done about it. Of course, what can be done differs
for every individual, so there is, after all, no easy solution in The Human Superorganism. In fact,
Dietert’s insistence on the importance of personalized medicine is right in
line with the increasing realization among clinicians that one-size-fits-all
treatments really fit almost no one: individual people respond differently to an
identical dose of the same medicine given for the same condition, for example. Unfortunately,
Dietert’s statement that everyone can benefit from a microbiome makeover
(“rebiosis,” he calls it) runs head-on into his statement that “what works
wonderfully for one person might not work as well for someone else,” which
rather begs the question of how to implement the program that Dietert
recommends.
“The bottom line is that
even with some uncertainties, more information to come out, and risks greater
than zero, there is little reason simply to live with NCDs and treat the end-process
with heavy-duty pharmaceuticals while never addressing the root of the
problem,” Dietert opines. That certainly makes sense – as does Dietert’s
emphasis on exercise and improved nutrition, the latter meaning that “you need
to consume a diet that allows the microbes you are installing in your gut to
thrive, to have an ecological advantage in you, and to function fully.” Even
non-holistic medical practitioners would surely agree with the notion of
improving diet and increasing physical activity, although they might not accept
the specific terms in which Dietert presents his ideas. In the absence of
specificity, however, Dietert’s well-meaning recommendations to reset one’s
microbiome in a way that one discovers for oneself after substantial research
and experimentation turn into just another of the many “here are the start and
finish on a map so you can find your own road” healthcare self-help tomes. Some
of what Dietert discusses is exceptionally interesting, especially his
research-based assertions and his comments on ways in which he personally has
applied his “rebiosis” approach. However, readers looking for the how of microbiome reorientation rather
than the why of it will likely be
disappointed to learn that the best Dietert can tell them is to figure out what
to do on their own.
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