Every day I see more information coming out about the amazing variety of ways in which beneficial microbes assist the human body in healing, absorbing nutrients, functioning, interacting, and much more. Our relationship with these tiny organisms is so intricately twined that we still have a long way to go in teasing it apart. In the meantime, we are better off approaching the whole system with honor and respect as suggested by Michael Schmidt and many others. The quality of the soil is what will effect the quality of the plants growing on it as well as the animals then raised on the plants. If the whole cycle is understood and worked with we have a world of wonders, but if we think we can kill and sanitize everything we will find we have killed and poisoned ourselves as well. We are just big bags of micro-organisms in the end.

Microbes may play crucial role in human health, researchers discovering

“Gut bacteria have figured out a way to network with our immune system so it doesn’t attack them,” said Sarkis K. Mazmanian of the California Institute of Technology.

The microbiota apparently sends signals that dampen the “inflammatory response,” a crucial defense also thought to play a role in a variety of diseases, including many forms of cancer, the “metabolic syndrome” caused by obesity, diabetes and heart disease.