Living closely with Nature gave us opportunity to observe, experience and recognize many Qualities of ourselves – Qualities that correspond with the growth processes and actions of plants and animals.
We Knew that Nature was simply humanity turned inside out – and humanity was Nature turned outside in…
Steve Gagné, Energetics of Food, p. 8. The two paragraphs are quoted in reverse order.
Have you ever wondered why it is the more we live in an artificial world, the more susceptible we are to those organisms whose job it is to recycle biological material? Why is it that we seem more vulnerable to illnesses when we try to live in an antiseptic environment?
Take a look at the human body. There are at least two aspects that correspond with the quote from Steve Gagné above.
First, we have two sides that are open to the world: our exterior and our gastro-intestinal tract. Early on in our development, we turn outside in to form a hollow tube surrounded by our body. Our G.I. tract is nothing more that captured and controlled exterior. This is a trick used by many single-celled organisms to engulf their food. Whereas they repeatedly perform phagocytosis, we do it once and use the resulting hollow tube to digest our food and eliminate our waste.
The second characteristic of humans corroborating Steve’s statement is our dependence upon bacteria for the foundation of everything our body does. The G.I. tract depends upon about eight pounds of beneficial bacteria to control that environment and to ensure proper digestion of our food, proper absorption of what our cells need from that food, and proper elimination of waste. Without those eight pounds of beneficial guests, our gut would soon be over run with disease causing organisms which would soon breach the intestinal wall and enter the body.
Further, each of your cells could not function if it did not carry its own bacteria-like symbiont. The mitochondria of each cell is not part of you nor controlled by your heredity. It has its own DNA. Without mitochondria, your cells would have no energy. You would cease to exist. You would never have begun to exist.
So inside out or outside in, it is time to recognize our connection to the rest of nature. We are a participant in nature, not the god of nature. That which nourishes and sustains us must come from nature, just as our Bacterial foundation of healthy living comes from nature.
Ellis Hein
Tags: bacterial foundation of healthy living, beneficial bacteria, Foundation of healthy living, mitochondria