December 15, 2014
by Jennifer Tow, BFA
(GreenMedInfo) There’s a topic I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about. To the point that I think I may be obsessed. To put it into perspective, I live in Paris. Just wandering through the streets of the city in the Spring-time is a visceral experience worthy of song, poetry and, of course, blog posts. The other day, I was with my 12 year old son walking the dog, thinking about the way the gut and brain ARE. Not the way they communicate, but the way they are. The way we are.
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I caught myself as I hurried to catch up to Leo. I slipped my arm into his and set a pace to match him, as I finally took in the sun, the breeze and perfect beauty of the day. I pushed the other thought away. For awhile. Clearly, it has returned. It always returns because mommas, babies and families are not as well as we could be. Not by a long shot.
As a lactation consultant I used to think about breastfeeding. I thought about my own babies, my clients and their babies, about what I read and observed and learned. I loved nursing my babies and I love helping mommas nurse their babies. So, I am still a lactation consultant, but now I pretty much think about the gut. And all that is associated with the gut — like the brain, hormones, the nervous system, structure, personality, emotions and general well-being. Because I think about the gut and the brain, I also think a lot about bacteria and inflammation. Not because bacteria cause inflammation, but because more often than not, lack of bacteria does.
In essence, bacteria are the way we are. Today, I took my son to the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. The building is ancient, of course, but so are the displays. The cursive handwriting on the jars intrigued me as much as the specimens. There were thousands of skeletons, fossils and organs of species long extinct and of those still here. Including homo sapiens. Leo asked me what was here before any of them. “Microbes,” I said.
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