by Zara Kirk, consultant nutritionist for Microbz
In all the 28 years I have been working with nutrition as a basis for wellbeing, there has not been a revolution in the field like the current one with the âdiscoveryâ of our microbiome. This is one of the most exciting revelations that connects every aspect of human life on this planet. Now there is mainstream recognition that there is more to our gut than we thought and that our inner and outer environments affect our wellbeing as much as the food we eat.
My journey with nutrition began when I moved to Italy in my late teens and discovered a way of life where it was normal to live organically off the land, be guided by the seasons and moon cycles for harvesting, and recycle waste plastic! This experience awakened the seeds of awareness for me around the connection between land and human wellbeing, and since then I have been studying nutrition.
When I discovered the world of the human gut eco-system 10 years ago now it was one of those moments when everything came together as a whole and made sense.
Since then my understanding of human health and nutrition has vastly expanded. My first teacher, in the 80s, was the late Dr Paul Yanick in the USA, who was one of the first pioneers to study the microbiome as we now understand it. Mainstream science is now catching up, although I do urge caution as big pharma jumps on the band wagon; there is a lot of subtle incredible intelligence in this microbial world that patenting and monetizing could well brush aside.
But mainstream science is willing to admit that this inner eco-system can nourish us in ways that science and medicine has never understood before. It is discovering that this vast complex of microbial cells produces a goldmine of hundreds of thousands of symbiotic nutrients as well as anti-toxin, anti-infective, anti-inflammatory, and anti-cancer compounds and this is really exciting.
I was particularly excited to discover Jeff and Sueâs creation of Microbz soon after it started. I was drawn to this live synergistic blend because it respects the subtle advanced wisdom of the microbial world and here at Microbz they are constantly open to learning more about them and from them. The best part is that Microbz offers the possibility of enhancing the beneficial microbial world all around us, in every aspect of living. Before I was mainly focused on gut health, but now we can really connect up all the dots between land and home and body. It is definitely a field where I know the more we learn about it, the more we will understand about ourselves, and that it is limitless.
In the West, we have been losing connection and understanding of the balance of the Earth, and our relationship to it, since the industrial revolution. Generally, we have forgotten that we are physical ecosystems and instead of nurturing and nourishing this, the focus has been to fight against living organisms.
But now we know we have to change our ways; we know we have to take more care of the earth, its soil, its water and its air. We know now that we too are designed to have our very own inner microbiome. To help us end the destruction and regain our health and wellbeing, we have to nurture and restore the Earth. The two go hand in hand: we are a mirror for each other. I find this really inspiring.
A healthy inner ecosystem is essential for maintaining cell communication and cell polarity, which is how our body repairs and restores itself and how it interacts with the world around it. Our sustainability is our capacity to endure stress in a polluted world and then turn that pollution around.
The microbiome requires food that possesses living âbattery-like polaritiesâ with the positive and negative charges equally dispersed. Anything man-made or processed carries a positive ionic charge and can create an imbalance in polarity within our cells and take us out of alignment with nature. This imbalance makes us crave things like sugars, processed foods, sex, alcohol, caffeine and mindless distractions.
We are slowly realizing that the health of our own inner ecosystem also affects how we think and feel and our relationships to each other and our environment. This is the exciting revolution that I am passionate to be part of and work with.
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