Tend to Your Inner Garden: The Biome

Organisms are an amazing gathering together of many coordinated systems and parts and sub-parts and cells and yes, other symbiotic organisms. As medical and biological sciences forge ahead we are finding an entirely new way to look at ourselves—as a personal ecosystem. When the ecosystem is healthy, things are in balance and all sorts of benefits flow to the larger organism in the form of better digestion, stronger immune system, better sleep and clear thinking and even staving off dementia.

When I was young I was interested in human anatomy. My dad was a doctor and I enjoyed looking at his medical books even though they were also sort of scary and gross. I tended to see the body as sort of like a car with distinct parts that performed their functions. You know—bones, muscles, nerves, organs, glands, etc. —the things that were easily named and seen. I didn’t really think about HOW it all ACTUALLY worked, how parts were fueled or communicated with other parts and certainly not about the hidden microbial activities. I simply didn’t think about things that weren’t listed as “parts” that might be in my body. Indeed, such things were either food, water, air—various things the body was using and then getting rid of the waste by various excretions. Little did I know how much more was going on and until relatively recently, neither did anyone else.