Your Complex Body and its Ecosystem
There are too many people living life without really knowing how it feels to truly live. To live, you must be a perfectly functioning, stable and well nourished ecosystem, for the micro-organisms and cells that inhabit your amazing body! Without this complex environment working in harmony, well you would not be you, and you would find it very close to impossible to complete simple tasks. So I say to you now, today is a perfect time for you to start treating your body as a temple, as it truly is the only thing in life that your worries need to linger on. For your health is the true essence of wealth, and your health and well functioning ecosystem (body) will carry you to your dreams and beyond. If only you focus on your health will you so easily accomplish greatness. A ecosystem is a community of living and non-living things. A Forest is an example of an ecosystem, it has both living and non-living things, such as plants and animals for the living and air, sunlight and water for the non-living. No forest is identical to another, in fact every forest is unique and so this principle applies to ecosystems aswell. The human body is a ecosystem because of the trillions of living organisms living in and on it. These microbes include fungi, bacteria and viruses. These microbes form communities and these communities are part of the ecosystem created by the human body. They are known as Human Microbiome and no two human microbiomes are the same. Just like you, they too are diversely unique. Just like the plants and animals in a forest, the different kinds of microbes in and on your body interact with each other. They need these interactions in order to eat, grow, and reproduce. One way they interact is by competing. They compete with each other for space and resources, and some of this competition is helpful to us. For example, bacteria on our skin compete with the fungus that causes athlete’s foot and keeps the fungus from infecting us. Microbes also keep other organisms from entering the human microbiome. Scientists are still learning about the balance among different bacterial communities as they study how microbes work in our bodies. One way they have learned about bacteria is by studying fungi. Fungi have been competing with bacteria for millions of years. During that time, fungi evolved the ability to produce chemicals that kill bacteria. By studying fungi, scientists learned how to make these antibacterial chemicals themselves and turn them into antibiotic drugs. These drugs have saved millions of lives by killing harmful bacteria. However, these antibacterial creams and pills kill helpful bacteria aswell. Products like antibacterial hand sanitizers have a similar effect on a patch of skin. They kill both the good and bad bacteria there. Studies suggest that the increasing use of antibiotics in the United States has made our microbiomes less diverse. There seem to be fewer kinds of bacteria living in them than there used to be. Scientists now understand that a diverse and balanced microbiome is important to a person’s health. We need that diversity and balance for a strong immune system. Some scientists think that babies who do not have much contact with microbes get more allergies, asthma, eczema, and other health problems. Studies also suggest that the microbiome plays a role in obesity and depression. In fact, the microbiome is so important that it is like another organ. It is a part of the body that serves necessary functions, just as the skin and kidneys do. Remember, the human body is an ecosystem. We need to preserve ecosystems in nature, and that includes our own. We need to preserve the human microbiome.
