“This is a reminder of the importance of parasite surveys and basic natural history,” says Schall.
“It underlines the fact that many human health concerns are connected to wider ecological systems—and that understanding the biology of other species is a foundation to both conservation and public health management.”
“A critical example is a developing model of infectious disease that shows that most epidemics — AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS, Lyme disease and hundreds more that have occurred over the last several decades — don’t just happen. They are a result of things people do to nature.
Disease, it turns out, is largely an environmental issue.”
Me, myself, us: looking at human beings as ecosystems that contain many collaborating and competing species could change the practice of medicine.
“What we’re only now beginning to realize is that there’s very close interaction between the bacteria within GI tract and human health and disease,” says Ilseung Cho, a gastroenterologist at NYU School of Medicine.
Beneficial bacteria do a lot for us, says Cho. They help with digestion, help our bodies make vitamins, and also likely help support a strong immune system.
Where and how a baby is born might affect its chances of getting allergies and asthma growing up, suggests a new study.
Researchers found that babies were more likely to harbor a certain kind of bacteria in their intestines if they were born in the hospital, and especially by cesarean section – and those gut bugs were tied to a kid’s chances of later getting allergies or asthma.
Autoimmune disease affects an estimated 50 million people at an annual cost of more than $100 billion. And the suffering and monetary costs are sure to grow. Maybe it’s time we talk more about human ecology when we speak of the broader environmental and ecological concerns of the day. The destruction of our inner ecosystem surely deserves more attention as global populations run gut-first into the buzz saw of globalization and its microbial scrubbing diet.
A new study suggests that people who regularly practice Buddhist meditation make decisions in a more rational way.
“But the meditators’ brains reacted quite differently, activating brain areas associated with interoception — the representation of the body’s internal state. In fact, the researchers found very little overlap in the two groups’ neural responses.”
