The Gut - Earth Connection

We are all interconnected. In ways beyond our understanding. What we feed our body, feeds the Earth. We form a part of this wonderful cycle of life – feeding each other to create a world full of wonders.
Despite knowing how deeply we are connected to the Earth, we often find ourselves helpless when it comes to helping save the environment. Surrounded by pollution, plastic and wastage, we cannot find a light at the end of the tunnel.
But what if there was an easy path to preserving the Earth? What if we held the key to bringing back the earth to its prime within us?

 

Finding Our Role in Nature

To find this connection, we have to first look at how our body works. 

What we eat and digest eventually finds its way back to the earth. Our waste is food for the soil – for the microorganisms that live within the earth. 
The quality of this food we feed the soil matters. If the feed is poor, the harvest will be poor. The recent decline in nutrition in fresh vegetables is alarming. Mineral rich fresh vegetables and fruits have lost around 30-40% of essential nutrient content over the last few decades alone (1).

This is a clear sign that we are not being able to play our role. Something is off with our way of eating and feeding the soil.
Slowly but steadily, the importance of having a rich biodiversity in our soil is coming to the centre stage. Instead of industrial agriculture techniques filling up our soil with chemicals and pesticides that harm our future generations. A soil rich in biodiversity - microorganisms and minerals is the wholistic way of farming the world needs now.
We form an important link in this chain. We can think of ourselves as the machine that converts food into fodder.

Exploring the Biodiversity Within

Our body is an ecosystem in itself.

Just like the Amazon rainforest, we house a large biodiversity within us. A diversity that is the key to our survival and outshining. 

This biodiversity includes human cells but also bacteria, yeasts, fungi and so many more life forms! Microorganisms that line our insides, working day and night to help us digest and perform! 
Microbes are the little fellows present on our Gut lining, and we house about 39 trillion of them! In addition to the digesting such a wide variety of foods that we just could not handle without them, they clean up, repair and prevent diseases!
Inhabiting a healthy active microbial population in our gut, our food is well-decomposed that then enriches the soil. But more often than not, our gut microbes face a tough battle. Outnumbered, the good guys find it hard to extract the potential nutrition for us.

Main Deterrents in Our Gut’s Biodiversity

Preservatives and artificial chemicals are found in most of our foods today. Prolonging shelf life is one of the main criteria for most foods found in aisles. To prolong the life of a food, the common techniques involve killing off any active bacteria, any active microbes that can decompose the food. Bacteria free environments are created for the packed food – but this microbe-free mix finds its way into our guts and does the exact same thing – killing off the good bacteria.

A poor microbial population not only reduces our ability to digest the food, it also carries a poor population back to the soil. Bad microbes become stronger through preservatives, chemicals and artificial sugars. These microbes then enter the soil and wage ware on the good microbes in the Earth as well.

 

What can we do to Improve our Soil?

Keep ourselves healthy! Healthy physically, mentally and emotionally.

By focussing on keeping ourselves healthy, relaxed and strong we allow our gut to get the best out of what we consume.

More and more research is showing how our thoughts influence our microbiome. How our gut and brain are deeply connected. We discuss this further in previous blog posts.

We reduce the need for antibiotics, medicines and supplements that can harm our Gut's biodiversity. Preserving our own diversity we ensure the food we give out to the soil is full of nutrients and microorganisms that enrich the soil. 
Starting with well-balanced intake of fibre, minerals and vitamins - our gut is given the chance to clean up, get the most out of our food and keep us flexible enough to handle the good, the bad and the ugly. 

 

Key Action Points to take today

• Avoid packed foods that carry artificial sweetners, preservatives (Emulsifiers) that harm the balance of our microbiome (2)
• Add more fruits into our daily diet, and give a gap of at least 30 minutes before eating anything after the fruits
• Increase our gaps between meals - the gut gets to its repair work only when it is done with the digestive process
• Find easy breath-work exercises online to reduce stress - a relaxed mind feeds a happier microbiome
• Going on walks without the phone - Connecting with nature, grounding ourselves plays a key role in improving our gut health

 

Starting from us, the change can begin. The power of nature is such that just by playing our small little role in this, the rest of the environment will heal itself. We just have to be a little conscious of our intake. It all starts from us. 

Happy World Environment Day to all those who inhabit this planet. 

 

References

1.  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/

2. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16984