We have become so far removed from our animal selves. We have lost touch with the rhythms of nature. We see ourselves as separate entities from our environments, our relationships, nature, and the world, but in fact we are very much connected.
Learning about biology, and in particular the field of epigenetics, it’s apparent we are very much a product of our environment; our DNA is not the whole story. When hill climbing or walking through forests I’m acutely aware that my skin, my lungs, my central nervous system via the eyes, ears and nose, are receiving subtle messages from my beautiful surroundings – how can we not be connected? It’s hubris and arrogance to believe we are not impacted by our modern surroundings these days when there is a plethora of studies that support this theory. We definitely do not live within an encapsulated envelope, otherwise known as our skin barrier! In fact, “barrier” seems inappropriate when there is a bi-directional communication with the external and internal environment. Our skin interacts with our environment all the time, sending messages to our brain and then on to our gut, and vice versa. The skin-gut axis is a widely accepted hypothesis, but the exact mechanisms are not yet known.
I fear these past 2 years we have been thrown into a world where our environments have shrunk enormously*. We are no longer interacting and therefore our microbiomes are weaker for it too. Most of our immune system resides in the gut and if our microbial environment weakens in the face of little to no external interaction we become more susceptible to infections. It’s akin to allowing an army to become sedentary and unskilled; it becomes weak. This is certainly a theory circulating the functional medicine field and it has been a worry of mine since March 2020. The “hygiene hypothesis” has been around for years as one of the possible explanations for the rising numbers of autoimmune disease diagnoses and with the incessant sterilisations of our homes and workplaces we could be compounding the issue. I believe it’s vitally important we get out of our houses as much and as safely as possible and get out in the fresh air. We need it, not only for our immune system, but also our sanity.
*I wrote this post about a year ago when our way of life and our environments had seen an incredible diminishment of diversity, be it local community contact and even dramatic reduction in long distance travel. Almost two years on, the landscape has not changed much, but the landscape of our microbiomes has no doubt been radically altered with potentially negative effects.
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