Soil microbiota play a crucial role in human health, influencing food supplies, water filtration, chemical and pathogen exposures, and overall health. They contribute to the human gut microbiome, which was essential in its evolution and is a major inoculant and provider of nutrients. The interaction between the environmental and human microbiome affects human health in more ways than most people realize.
Soil impacts human, animal, and plant health in multiple ways, including providing a habitat for beneficial microorganisms that deliver nutrients. Plant and human microbiomes are linked due to their similar bacteria phyla, and microbes from fruits, salads, and vegetables join the human. Soil and the human gut contain approximately the same number of active microorganisms, while human gut microbiome diversity is only 10 times that of soil.
Soil microbes help regulate our emotions and immune response and determine the nutrient content of our food. Results from animal studies suggest that contact with soil and its microbiome is beneficial for healthy gut microbiota. A soil microbiome provides plants with essential nutrients, protects them from disease and pathogens, and helps plants adapt to environmental changes. Although most organisms found in soil are not harmful to humans, soil does serve as a home for many pathogenic organisms.
Ingestion of soil-bound microorganisms supports immunological resilience, but there is a lack of intervention studies that support this. Soil microorganisms perform critical services for plant and human health, and researchers expect that eating crops from soil full of microbiomes will have a positive effect on human health.
📹 How can the microbes within you affect your health?
Over the past several years, increasing evidence has revealed the key role that microbes play in human health and disease.
How does soil erosion affect human health?
Soil erosion is causing significant economic and environmental damage, with the US losing 10 times faster than China and India, and the global damage estimated at $400 billion annually. Over the past 40 years, 30% of arable land has become unproductive, with 60% of washed-away soil ending up in rivers, streams, and lakes, making waterways more susceptible to flooding and contamination from fertilizers and pesticides. Soil erosion also reduces its ability to store water and support plant growth, affecting biodiversity.
It also promotes critical losses of water, nutrients, soil organic matter, and soil biota, harming forests, rangelands, and natural ecosystems. Additionally, erosion increases wind dust, which carries around 20 human infectious disease organisms, including anthrax and tuberculosis.
Is potting soil toxic to humans?
Potting mix, a mixture of inorganic and organic materials, can contain harmful bacteria and fungi that can cause infections in humans. There have been reports of deaths from diseases like Legionnaires’ disease due to these bacteria. Although the risk is very low, the risk is significant due to the fact that potting mix is often stored at a higher temperature than soil due to its ability to retain heat for longer. Bacteria and fungi thrive in moist and warm environments, making it a potential source of contamination.
How does bacteria affect human health?
Bacteria are small, single-celled living organisms that can be helpful in various ways, such as digestion, cell destruction, and vitamin production. They are also used in making healthy foods like yogurt and cheese. However, infectious bacteria can cause illness due to their rapid reproduction and release of toxins, such as Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, and E. coli. Antibiotics are commonly used as a treatment, but they should be taken carefully to avoid antibiotic resistance. This can lead to the spread of infections that antibiotics cannot cure. Therefore, it is essential to follow the instructions carefully when taking antibiotics to avoid potential complications.
Is soil bacteria harmful?
Soil-related bacterial and fungal pathogens cause serious human diseases, often presenting in primary care settings. These microorganisms are favored by soil characteristics and can involve complex life cycles, including amoebae or animal hosts. Infection can occur through direct inoculation, ingestion, contaminated food, or inhalation. Soil bacteria can cause gastrointestinal, wound, skin, and respiratory tract diseases, and systemic fungi are largely acquired via inhalation from contaminated soil and near-soil environments.
These fungal infections are particularly life-threatening in those with compromised immune systems. Questions regarding soil exposure should be included in the history of any patient with syndromes consistent with tetanus, botulism or anthrax, traumatic wounds, recalcitrant skin lesions, gastroenteritis, and nonresponsive, overwhelming, or chronic pneumonia.
Does soil affect human health?
Soils are essential for nutrient supply and water purification, but they can also contain harmful substances like heavy metals, chemicals, and pathogens that can negatively impact human health. Studies have shown that recycling biowaste can lead to health problems for humans and animals. Additionally, certain compounds contribute to elevated airborne exposure and health risks in the Western Balkans, highlighting the need for effective monitoring and management of soil contamination.
What are the health risks of soil?
The inhalation of soil dust produced during construction, demolition, mining, or poor landscaping can result in physical or chemical damage to humans. This may include the puncturing of the lungs due to the inhalation of asbestos fibers and the potential for brain damage from chemicals such as lead.
How is soil affected by humans?
The rocky desertification of karst landscapes is more severe in rural mountainous areas due to the fragility of the ecological environment, lack of soil resources, extensive soil loss, and disturbance caused by human activities. Factors such as road construction, excavation for homesteads, steep slope reclamation for agriculture, rural tourism development, and grazing activities accelerate soil loss and increase the extent of rocky desertification.
Human activities impact soil loss directly through physical disturbance and indirectly by changing the underlying properties of the soil, making it susceptible to loss with rainfall. The study highlights the importance of paying attention to underground subsurface fractures that were once stable, as they can be excavated and exposed, accelerating the entry of surface soil from the surrounding area to fill the gap. Human activity destroys surface vegetation, providing conditions for soil and water loss.
Additionally, underground holes and fissures induced by cut hillsides may increase underground erosion. The review presents the most thorough examination of anthropogenic soil loss in karst rural environments and raises people’s awareness of measures needed to protect soil resources in this region.
What kills bacteria inside the body?
Bacterial infections can be effectively treated with antibiotics, which either kill or inhibit the replication of bacteria, thereby enabling the body’s immune system to combat the infection. The selection of an antibiotic by the physician is dependent upon the specific bacteria that is the causative agent of the infection. Broad-spectrum antibiotics are the most efficacious.
What does soil do to a human body?
Soil materials can be exposed to humans through three common routes: ingestion, respiration, and skin absorption or penetration. Ingestion can occur deliberately or incidentally, particularly in children and pregnant women, and can potentially supply essential nutrients but also lead to exposure to heavy metals, organic chemicals, or pathogens. Respiration involves inhaling soil materials, which can cause serious problems such as coccidioidomycosis, acute inflammation of the bronchial passages, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, fibrotic changes, and mesothelioma from breathing in naturally occurring asbestos minerals from soil-derived dust.
Absorption or penetration of the skin can expose an individual to pathogens and soil chemicals, and it can also cause podoconiosis, a non-infectious disease found in subsistence farmers who frequently go barefoot. Prevention is as simple as wearing shoes, and the condition has ceased to occur in countries where it was once found, such as France, Ireland, and Scotland, once the use of shoes became commonplace.
Soil can adversely affect human health by being contaminated either naturally or through anthropogenic activities with chemical elements and substances that are in toxic amounts when ingested or inhaled. A supply of any element may result in human toxicity, even elements that are essential for life. The level of any essential element in humans can be deficient, adequate, or toxic depending upon the concentrations of these elements in the soil and the degree of exposure. Both deficiency and toxicity can result in morbidity and in some cases mortality.
Lead is the single largest soil contaminant worldwide, as it has been widely introduced into soil from anthropogenic sources such as leaded petrol, lead-based paint, lead mining and smelting, and other industrial activities. The effects of lead, especially on children and adolescents, are well documented and have led to multiple public health problems and concerns. Mass lead poisoning has been recently reported in Senegal and Nigeria, where villages participated in informal recycling of used lead-acid batteries and gold ore processing, resulting in lead contaminated soil, with dust from such soil being inhaled, ingested, or both, causing lead poisoning.
What are the ill effects of soil erosion?
Soil erosion, caused by water, wind, or tillage, involves three actions: soil detachment, movement, and deposition. Topsoil, high in organic matter and fertility, is relocated on-site, where it builds up over time, or carried off-site, filling drainage channels. This reduces cropland productivity and contributes to pollution of watercourses, wetlands, and lakes. Soil erosion can be slow or alarming, causing serious loss of topsoil.
Other serious soil degradation conditions, such as compaction, low organic matter, loss of soil structure, poor internal drainage, salinization, and soil acidity problems, can accelerate the process. Water erosion is the focus of soil conservation efforts in Ontario due to its widespread occurrence and severity.
What are 10 diseases caused by bacteria?
Infectious diseases are illnesses caused by harmful organisms (pathogens) that enter the body from the outside, such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, and rarely, prions. They can be acquired through contact with others, bug bites, and contaminated food, water, or soil. Noninfectious diseases, on the other hand, are not caused by outside organisms but by genetics, anatomical differences, age, and environmental factors.
Examples of infectious diseases include the flu, measles, HIV, strep throat, COVID-19, and salmonella, while noninfectious diseases include cancer, diabetes, congestive heart failure, and Alzheimer’s disease. Noninfectious diseases can be contracted through contact with other people, food, or environmental factors.
📹 Do Gut Microbes Control Your Personality? | Kathleen McAuliffe | TED
Biologist Kathleen McAuliffe dives into new research that suggests certain bacteria in your gut can influence major parts of who …
I’m now wondering if the majority of the people in the world are experiencing this kind of messed up gut leading to all the depression and anger and stupidity in the world especially here in the us where the American diet is the worst of the worst. Full of toxins and all kinds of crap in our processed food and water. Interesting don’t you think? We need more studies on this
0:23 🦠 The human body contains microbial tenants, collectively known as microbiota, which influence various aspects of our health, including digestion and even mood. 1:50 🐭 Bubble mice raised in sterile conditions without microbes display behavioral differences compared to normal mice, indicating the impact of microbiota on behavior and learning. 2:20 🤝 Gut bacteria can influence body weight and mental health; transferring bacteria from overweight or depressed individuals to mice can affect the animals’ weight and behavior. 3:31 🧠 Gut bacteria communicate with the brain through psychoactive compounds, neurotransmitters, and the vagus nerve, influencing mood and behavior. 4:45 ⚖ Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) therapy, approved for epilepsy and depression, may strengthen the gut barrier, preventing inflammatory responses that could affect the brain. 5:39 🩹 Microbiota-based treatments, targeting the gut bacteria composition or their chemical actions, show promise in addressing mental health conditions like ADHD, OCD, PTSD, and autism spectrum disorder. 7:09 🦠 Certain bacteria are linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS; researchers have identified bacteria that both accelerate and slow the progression of ALS in animal models. 7:58 🧬 The misfolding of the Parkinson’s protein, alpha-synuclein, may be linked to a strain of E. coli in the gut; understanding this connection opens new avenues for intervention in Parkinson’s disease.
I discovered this idea 3 years ago through the GAPS diet. I still follow most of its principles but have switched to more vegetables than meat. It has helped my autoimmune disease, eradicated all seasonal allergies and helped temper my mood swings without a single medication. I am so glad this is being discussed in the mainstream now. It really does not take long to make fermented vegetables, sourdough bread, meals from scratch if you plan ahead. Couple that with rarely eating out and altering your skin and beauty products, you will be on the road to health. Food IS medicine. One caveat: this is an expensive way to live but would you rather pay as you go and enjoy the benefits or pay the medical field to experiment on you and languish in a hospital?– to put it crudely.
A great talk. I make my own fermented vegetables (with over 60 varieties) and eat about 2 small cups a day in 2 sittings. I have not had or needed antibiotics in 4 years. My approach to eating is to feed the gut. I make sure every meal has something for my gut microbes. I do not remember being healthier in my life. I can confirm the impact on personality. I realise now that I used to be grumpy without knowing why. Now I seldom get upset and marvel at how relaxed I am compared to my old reactions. My next stage is to pay more attention to my microbiome signals.
You can stimulate your Vargas Nerve yourself at any time by closing your ears with your fingers, deeply inhale, and vocally hum “Ommmmmmmmm” going up and down in high and low pitch, experimenting and feeling the sound going up & down your Chakra energy system and Vargas Nerve until you run out of breath, even making vocal noises like Tibetan Monks do in your throat using your tongue, using your own tonal sounds. This has been done for thousands of years. Try it in sessions of 3-5 minutes at a time and see how your body, mind and spirit feel afterwards. Be your own scientist and healer. I appreciate this article, the scientific study, the sacrifices of mice for our learning, and scientists while adding there are additional approaches involving consciousness that conventional science can leave out of the puzzle. We’re not victims to genetics and outside forces unless we believe we are. We must go deeper and excavate to see what’s true for each of us based on belief. Thank you.
Wow 😳🤩! Kathleen McAuliffe`s lecture is an eye-opening experience for me and, perhaps, points the way to the right direction! I truly hope that the outcome of further/ future studies and researches will at long last the game changer so many affected people and all scientists around the world hope for, as solving the mysteries in links between all bacteria, microbes etc., living in the human body, may hopefully lead to a world at peace! Best of luck and success!
“Bubble” mice are an interesting concept. Could some of today’s kids be nearly “bubble” kids as regards naturally bacterias? Have limited diets and ultra-sanitized environments caused mental illnesses in young kids? Is lack of contact with soil something we should look into, to make sure kids literally “touch grass”? Lot of interesting extensions off of this topic.
I’ve heard there are ways to naturally stimulate the ‘Vegas nerve’ without the need for external devices… I’m not saying the device route’s bad/wrong, just that there are alternatives that are easy to do at home (including humming, breathing deeply, & other simple, relaxing techniques) :hand-purple-blue-peace:
I’m glad this is finally getting attention. I’ve known this instinctively since I was a kid. I never took antibiotics without a real need (i.e. death) and did my best to avoid toxic foods. Look at the rates of C-sections that deprive the newborn of the initial inoculation from the vaginal canal. Consider the volume of herbicides and pesticides dumped onto our farmland to kill life; the same life found in our gut. Look into the drastic changes in kids who receive unprocessed, real food for the fist time. Sterile food full of preservatives does nothing for you. If it wont go bad on the shelf, it will not feed your micro biome. Think of how much money the pharmaceutical companies have been making selling the poison they put on your food, selling farmers the seed that the poison is applied to, then selling you a pill to “fix” all the problems it has caused. Eat real food, not processed poison.
This is a really fascinating topic as it seems very un-intuitive to me. I wish there were links to some accessible review articles covering each of the mentioned findings. When I search for such things on my own I seem to find either vague popularizations written by people who don’t seem to understand the topic, or extremely specific, primary research articles with a minute focus, that speak in dense jargon and lack a big-picture view of the larger topic.
Our mind is just a pattern storage and recognition organ. It compares input patterns (sensory perception) to stored patterns (memory) and calculates likely outcome patterns (thought). This is the you that you think you are. The gut feeling (emotion) is just an older internal operating system closer to the one used by your organs. Think of your organs as separate organisms, they like and dislike things just like you. They actually have authoritative control (emotional irrational behaviour, fight or flight) Your mind was developed to protect and provide for the body of organisms (organs and their inhabitants) you are their interface with the outside world. you are their ruler but they can be unruly if you mistreat them.
Paleobacteria is of interest to me in Addiction disorders and Alcoholism. Nutrition based recovery from these diseases is possible and practical. The microbiome do for us what we can not do for ourselves. On a not so different topic, it is my belief that cancer and heart disease and depression and diabetes and obesity (to name but a few) are in-fact contagious.
My own story goes: I worked for a paleo restaurant for a few years and also dated a guy who was gluten free at the same time so I just naturally stopped consuming gluten and I had already stopped eating dairy bc I figured out I was (still) allergic to it. Once I stopped dating the gluten free guy I started dating a guy who had no restrictions so I started eating gluten again bc I thought it was fine for me but it absolutely was not. Not only did/do I get TERRIBLE gastro issues if I get even so much as a crumb of gluten (these days) but I also figured out that it literally gives me “mood swings” or at least makes me MUCH quicker to rage and at veritably anything. I felt like I wasn’t myself so I stopped eating it and never went back!
I have ADHD and discalculia and fibromyalgia and what I eat DIRECTLY affects how I feel and what my body does.. …if I don’t eat well I start not doing well ..lack of ability to stay on task and get aggressive swelling … . . .and I can’t think .. . what I eat and how much stress I put on my body….. ..and I’ve achieved a lot ..custom fabricator .qualified in all types of welding and engineering I even passed electrical engineering and I’m a mechanic and wof inspector ..if I don’t eat right I can’t use my smarts ….and sleep is less relevant than food itself…. .. . I see the exact same thing with my boss who has bad diabetes and a bad diet that he won’t change ….. .. Not many people realise but EVERY SINGLE HUMAN ALIVE is descended from those who survived the black plague and we all now have double mutated ammune system..this means as a human U will automatically get an auto immune disease at sum stage due to our DNA now from the double DNA adaption from both parents having a mutated ammune gene ..I GAURENTEE if they study this further is will almost end medical suffering
I believe the gut has a huge impact on mental health. I watched a close friend have bariatric surgery and turn into someone I did NOT want in my life. She became a garbage person and treated her friends and family like garbage after her surgery. It was appalling to watch someone who I thought was a good human being turn into a loser, but also an extremely easy break-up because–even though she blamed me for her behavior, there is no way I was at fault. Disclaimer: I know that there were other factors that contributed to her change in behavior. But I definitely believe that the drastic change to her gut was a contributing factor. Now she has no friends, no job, no prospects, no future–she is 40 and lives on her mom’s couch now. That was her choice; I hope she’s happy.
How about synthetic parasites? The thing so few people are taking notice of in lab studies, is the development of synthetic parasites to alter animals minds as these studies are being done in collaboration with militaries as this will be used to alter human minds for warfare and psychological geopolitical warfare techniques and that will lead to significant issues for human species around the world
Martin Luther is said to have had IBS or UC and that many of his visions and/or his ideas came to him while he was in the crapper… what the presenter is showing or describing is how we are actually a system of systems and how the ‘whole’ approach produces better results than the ‘symptom’ approach. I find it fascinating that decades and decades ago my mother was practicing what she is describing regarding my guts and what had to be in my diet.. the old super food stuff. Still get the shivers over Cod Liver Oil. I’ve somehow always known there was a connection between gut and mind and first developed ‘gut issues’ when dealing with genocide and mass graves in Bosnia. I have traveled the world and been to many ‘hot-spots’ and always found it fascinating how I would/could eat some food or another… ie.. some foods I found so unappetizing I could not eat them, even when not eating was seen as rude. I really love a comment someone else made about how this gives new meaning to the term ‘gut-feeling’… indeed. Could there be many, many ways of communicating that we, as of yet, still do not understand? After all, the root purpose of our design ‘systems of systems’ is survival. Not about this subject but Niel Stephenson’s books on ‘Systems of Systems’ and William Gibsons ‘Pattern Recognition’ might be good reads regarding all of the above and how we might want to think about things. Just my random thoughts from a random InterWeb guy- mjb.
Could certain microbes present in dogs cause behavioural changes in humans once they enter the human’s digestive tract? This would support my theory and explain why dog fanatics engage in high-risk/self destructive behaviours, such as venerating and glorifying the ownership of an unpredictable, remorseless, bloodthirsty predator (dog) which is responsible for over 28,000 reconstructive surgeries every year in the USA alone and 30-50 deaths per year in the USA alone, transmission of zoonotic diseases, destruction of property, creation of noise pollution, violence between neighbours, ruining of relationships, pollution of our water, etc. Someone please research this! The behaviour of dog worshippers is exactly like the irrational, self-destructive behaviour you see in animals infected with mind-controlling parasites.
Most of the youth – but not exclusively – consumes heavily processed food, which is bound to contain less (if any) beneficial bacteria, hence, one of the reasons for depression going rampant amongst that age group. If your system accepts it, try some kefir — you may not find it easily throughout the U.S, so alternatively there’s kimchi or nattō.
I hipe that in some broad, big-picture way of thinking humanity may truly come to appreciate how rats —the existence of rats—-have given their lives over (in often horrible ways/treatments) to advance our sciences, our knowledge about biology and the health of our bodies. The, er, gut reaction to rats is all too often “ugh!–they are horrible creatures” or “I can’t stand the sight of rats” etc, but in the grand scheme of things they have benefitted us in so many ways. Mice and rats, I will say for myself, I find likable little creatures….except, of course, in hoards. I appreciate the good they’ve provided us, in spite of the problems they have caused, notably in earlier history/in earlier primitive towns and cities.
As my old granny used to say, “You’ve got to eat a peck ‘o dirt before you die”. For those not au fait with older systems of mensuration, there are 4 pecks to the bushel. More and more people are beginning to think that the modern obsession with cleanliness is at least partially responsible for the epidemic of auto-immune problems in current western generations. IMO, much of the rest is due to the ubiquitous existence of unnatural industrial pollutants in our air, water and foods.
Come on! What a huge missed opportunity to talk abou the SOLUTION to the problem: Food! How can we control our gut bacteria? How to have good microbiome and not bad? Its obviously the food we eat. Maybe it’s not just food, but its mostly food.. we’re talking about intestines and feces, it’s 90% food there. We already know this for years. Cut out processed food and animal food = cut out bad bacteria. Increase plant-based, natural food intake = increase good bacteria. It’s that simple. And it should have been said in this article.
How sad knowing that some people aren’t smart enough to know how animals on every level save human lives everyday. If you question the research then question every single thing you wear, everything you eat and every medicine you take. Animals were sacrificed for just about everything we do. Think about that.
No mention of healthy diet, exercise and stress management for prevention. All medicine and pills research for after the fact. Interesting. I happen to know because I was overweight and depressed like 20 yrs ago and was diagnosed with depression, ADD and OCD. Prescribed by a psychiatrist Ritalin and Lexapro. One day I decided to throw medicine down the toilet and eat healthy and exercise instead. Never looking back. I guess there’s no money on that (of course there are cases when medicine is needed but normally, good gut bacteria grown on the three pillars of life: healthy food, move and mindfulness)
She chocked up a bit just before mentioning nictinamide and the cut in the recording tells me there’s sometging there “they” don’t want us to know. I know nictinamide supplementation orally does Not get to where the body needs it which is in the cell that makes the nutrient. The cells make it. How to make the cells healthy enough to function properly you ask?!… each clean whole food and mineral rich water. You’ll be amazed as I was at the abundance of health you’ll have Body Mind Spirit. Non GMO, Organic unproccessed food. Most Ever Human today has some unwanted organisms living in their body feeding on sometging the Human is eating.. Gods gift to Man (Speech and Mind) UseThem or Loose them. Humbly ☯️BlackSageTao☯️
I’m thoroughy disgusted how medications/drugs and other trials and “exciting developements” like these implants are presented for the mentally ill, like testing mice, without talking about diet. How is she talking about guts and not nutrition before drugs and implants? This is people looking for a pill to fix their problems.