The curious phenomenon of bacterial translocation that is key to so many health conditions

I’ve spent some time reflecting back on all my years practicing in hospitals, often not sleeping for extended periods, sometimes days, covering hospitals floors and ICUs, resuscitating people who experienced cardiac arrests, taking them to the cath lab to open arteries, but also witnessing people with all sorts of other health conditions: cancers, wound infections, sepsis, delirium, the various stages of dementia, and hundreds of other debilitating disease. 

I now recognize that, looking back, so many health conditions can be better understood in light of the contribution of the microbiome, i.e., the trillions of microbes occupying the gastrointestinal tract from mouth to anus, the nasal sinuses, the airways, the brain, the prostate, the vagina and uterus, the skin—virtually every part of the human body. We all know about acute bacterial infections. But I’m talking about something different. While microbes exert effects via a number of different routes—think the gut-brain axis, the gut-skin axis, the gut-muscle axis, effects exerted via hormones, inflammatory mediating proteins, and bacterial breakdown products. But beyond this, there is a curious phenomenon in which bacteria and fungi themselves, by a number of means, travel through the body to take up residence and cause trouble. But the “trouble” is not an infection in the conventional sense, but something different, less acute, less urgent, less dramatic, but nonetheless playing a big role in your health. This is the fascinating and scary phenomenon called “translocation,” the topic for this episode of the Defiant Health podcast. 

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Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight and Find Your Path Back to Health; revised & expanded ed