It’s a topic that no one wants to discuss, but given the fact that there’d been a disturbance in that, er, function ever since I started the new medication, I could no longer keep it a secret from my doctor.
“We’ve got to do something about this,” she said. “No one wants to spend their life on a ten-foot tether from the toilet.”
Definitely not, I murmured.
“Various medicines can kill off the bacteria in the gut,” she said, then launched into a discussion of how the drugs that keep me sane (mostly sane) might have interacted to cause the, er, issue. Embarrassed (yes, even I blush), I concentrated on the prints hanging on her wall while she mulled out loud over the possibilities, all but tuning her out until I heard, “more non-human than human cells in the human body.”
Could you say that again?
She repeated it. “Some people are freaked out when they hear that there are more non-human cells in the body than there are human cells,” she repeated. “That doesn’t bother you, does it?
No, of course not I answered from the depths of my newest existential crisis.
“What we need to do is repopulate your gut,” she briskly said, and laid out the options for doing so, one of which included an over-the-counter supplement that promised to inject into my system twenty billion little critters with each dose.
Twenty…billion? I asked. Daily? Is that really necessary?
“It is,” she said. “It is if you want your digestive system back to normal.”
I have purchased the pills. I choke them down daily, aghast to be swallowing such a vast number of tiny beings, and trying not to wonder at what point I become responsible for their mental health as well as my own.
Haha, yeah those little guys are important to digesting your food, absorbing nutrients, and even preventing yeast infections. I take probiotics regularly (well, as regularly as I can remember to). I’ve heard that about 30% of the dry mass of the feces of a healthy human is dead bacteria.
probiotics!! love probiotics. those supplements take care of so many issues a person’s body might have, especially after going through a round of strong antibiotics that blasts away everything good and bad in there. love love love the stuff
Isn’t that why people eat yogurt?
Yogurt doesn’t generally contain enough for people with depleted gut flora, unless you eat like gallons of it.
Apparently you’d have to eat a tanker of yogurt to get the same number of beasties as in one pill.
“It kinda freaks me out that we’re colonies all the way down: not just in our intestines, but deep inside cells. How many distinct genomes do you have to sequence before you can bootstrap a working human from the source code? Not only are you not a beautiful and unique snowflake, you’re just an emergent moiré pattern that happens when a billion snowflakes rub together: a trick of the light that doesn’t really exist at all. Have a nice day!” (–one of my favorite cranky old net.geeks)
Ha-Ha, AAG’s gonna get some cooties to swallow.
I’ve been taking Align probiotics for a few months now with good results. And no, they aren’t paying me to say that. ;)
Wow! Now I have something new to think about during those long dark sleepless nights of the soul!
Umm. Thanks?
I know! It’s terrifying! :)
Why is it “terrifying” AAG? Bacteria are just part of the system that is “us”. Good bacteria on your skin don’t leave room for disease causing bacteria to thrive. Much of our digestion is the result of bacteria helping us break down what we consume.
Conversely, a friend of mine nearly died (in her 40s) last year, due to a c-diff infection brought on from antibiotics for a UTI depleting her gut flora.
Most bacteria isn’t just good, it’s necessary for survival and health, despite what TV commercials for cleaning products would have you believe.
Not “terrifying”, but “wonderful”.
PS: Now consider our entire universe might just be one bacterial cell in some larger organism… ;-)
PPS: Different parts of our skin feature different bacterial environments, interestingly our hands and forearms feature similar bacteria as our buttocks! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Skin_Microbiome20169-300.jpg
Hyperbole. Mostly. :)
More non-human cells… this is such a cool factlet. Doctor Memory I’m saving that quote. And the whole thing is like the Galaxy Song in reverse: Makes you feel all small and insignificant, doesn’t it?
Haha I loved this (though I’m sorry for your bowel trouble.) It appeals very much to the bio geek in me, thinking of the universe, and all these colonies within colonies within colonies all swirling in fractal patterns. Or something like that. Just cool!
You think you’re freaked out, but those tiny ilttle critters are probably like, way more scared than you. Your body is like INFINITELY big to them :)) So yeah, you should be worried bout their mental health indeed.
And I just imagine all these poor little critters swimming around, having religious discussions and murmuring rumours of the Great Exit and not knowing what lays beyond.
(Too far?)
((Sorry.))
Hee! Not too far at all. I’m the one who brought it up. :)
“You think you’re freaked out, but those tiny ilttle critters are probably like, way more scared than you.”
The thought of having all my millions of bacteria swimming around in fear of me is weirdly pleasing. Kinda like how Godzilla must feel when he sees the shores of Tokyo. ;)
As long as they can do what they are supposed to do in your “guts”,their mental health will be just fine. Forgetaboutem!
man, living life only where there’s ever a safe bathroom SUCKS. Going out with friends? nope. Eating at restaurants? nope. Long car drives? Count me out. UGH.
I’m glad you’re getting it fixed. :)
Your ending made me laugh. Thanks. I really needed to laugh today. We are all such caretakers.
Is it working?
You may want to ask your doctor about other cultures as well, although probiotics are usually quite safe. (I’m not a doctor! Just saying!)
As the amazon page you link says: “L. Acidophilus is one of the healthy bacteria that colonize in the intestines”. There are many others such as saccharomyces boulardii, lactobacillus rhamnosus and a few different types of bifidobacterium. Some of these are more ‘aggressive’ towards any ‘bad’ bacteria that may be taking up residence in your gut in the absence of good flora.
Members of my family take a probiotic daily for various reasons – dealing with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), immune health, and just ‘maintanence’. We usually purchase our vitamins and supplements through iherb – look them up. Great place.
Hope you feel better!
After repopulating my gut many times over due to food allergies, I can heartily recommend a few things. Good Belly is one. That’s a juice drink so no nasty pills to swallow. Those are what I take when I need a quick jump start on the digestive front. I also find that taking a variety of supplements helps, I think my body likes to have a variety of different beasties for optimal digestion. I also take Jarrodophilus on occasion, and a few others.
I don’t take these daily mind you, just as needed to make the gut happy.
(P.S. if you’re lactose intolerant or sensitive, check your pills for lactose; lactose is used as a filler in some pills and can cause digestive problems).
The situation is even more alarming that you’d be led to believe from the statement that there are “more non-human than human cells in the human body.”
In fact, by cell count you are only about 10% human. But if you count DNA base pairs, you’re only about 1% human!
I learned the latter fact in Bonnie Bassler’s awesome talk at TED. Lewis Thomas also talks about it in the equally awesome Lives of a Cell.
This is not helping my existential crisis. :)
By the by, if you find this topic a little freaky, you should never, ever read Greg Bear’s “Blood Music.”
(By which, of course, I mean: go out and buy Blood Music immediately.)
Oh boy. Is it going to give me nightmares?
Gosh, I’m not sure what this blog post has done to my self esteem..
Yogurt and probiotics really only get you halfway there. The fastest and most effective way to get the proper bacteria into your gut is a transplant from one well-populated gut to another. Yes, literally eating shit. (Or having it injected anally, which is how the medical profession does it.) Not common, because usually we can handle repopulation on our own, but sometimes necessary.
I really hope you’re joking.
Err I don’t know about ingestion, but I have heard that they do do (ahem. haha.) fecal transplants from healthy donors.
It’s always the “gross” posts that get the most comments eh?