Lots of time, effort, money, and knowledge go into studying the microbiome and making connections about how it shapes medicine today and more importantly how it will shape medicine in the future. It is not new knowledge that the human microbiome is what aids the process of human development and what keeps us healthy and safe against invading materials. Receiving our first microorganisms from our mothers when exiting the birth canal, the process began of growing and conforming to become strong and host ever stronger immune systems to get us to where we are today. Lots of people are studying this phenomenon, making it require in return lots of funds. These resources are being brought forth by the “Human Microbiome Project”. Lots of new findings have deemed this project as successful. For instance, we no longer maintain just the medicine view that the microorganisms we have and hold are solely for the purpose of infecting us, and causing disease, but that these organisms are apart of us and use the body as hosts for survival to make us a human body. We need them! More recently we have noted that it is possible to translate gut microbiota from one organism to another and in doing this you have increased your chance to 90% of being able to fight off or eliminate the Clostridium difficile infections that you host. With so many new findings and approaches being used and manipulated to give the population the results they are wanting and feening for, more funds are being brought in to sustain these studies. The progress is overwhelming to most, with an expected increase of $1.9 million dollars in funds to go towards these projects, the studies are at our fingertips.
However, we cant stop there. It is not correct to say that we know all, or no disputes remain, or even that what has been concluded so far constitutes as final fact, because none of these are true. Lots of points remain unsaid, lots of accusations remain unstudied, and most importantly lost of disputes between medical specialists and scientists are active. One of these disputes is deciding or educating on what classifies you as having a healthy microbiome versus what groups you with those who do not have a healthy microbiome but one that is unhealthy. What does an unhealthy microbiome show? What does it mean? These are some of the questions still being answered. To me this is very important, kind of concerning since this is a very general question that seems like it would be the first answered….. hmm… because how does one know how the microbiome affects health if they don’t know what constitutes a healthy biome versus what doesn’t, if they don’t know the line how do they know you are over it???? Interesting. (hyperlink for pic)
Due to their not being a clear-cut decision made yet regarding what constitutes a healthy microbiome, there are lots of discrepencies on how to approach the microbiome to make conclusions regarding not only clinical studies and those regarding medical interventions but also those directly linking health problems to the cause. The epidemiological side of this project to me is the most interesting and beneficial. If we can use the normal human microbiota and what we know about our microbiome to come to conclusions regarding why we have a certain disease and what caused it, we are superior. It is important to note that this will only come following the discovery of what makes each specific microbiota unique. What exactly is it about gut microbiota that make it different from oral microorganisms to allow it to be able to (recently discover) interact or tap into our psychological mentality and provide us with therapeutic remedies when facing difficult times. They are giving us nutrients that in return help us have energy and longevity that promote our psyche. We know that oral microbiota do not do this though, so what separates them? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop? The world may never know…. KIDDING.
Hopefully we will know soon but these are all important aspects to consider. Our lifestyle, the food we eat and the diet we maintain, the medicine we take, these are all components of what drive our microbiota to create the symbiotic relation we hold with them. It is even safe to say that scientists have concluded very recently that the microbiota can affect our brain which leads to, as we know, neurological disorders, mental disorders, cancers, and even neurodegenerative diseases which can be passed down through generations. This is a mind blowing discovery that should not go unnoticed.
Pathology studies are being conducted most recently to trace and analyze the path that microbiome modifications follow to become such powerful organisms but also to look at transplants, look at the microbiome in other organisms not human, use statistics, etc to become as well educated as possible in 2020. However, until a decision is made regarding what constitutes a healthy biome compared to the alternative, the information isn’t useless, but its …..useless.
MicroBio 