Ayurveda was created in India around 3,000 years ago and focuses on the connection between our body, mind, spirit, and environment. Some people might dismiss this ancient concept because they think it’s outdated, but I absolutely think that there is a connection between our body, mind, spirit, and our environment. Our environment (current events, relationships with other organisms and humans, stress, chemicals, location) can have an impact on the cells in our body and impact our physical, spiritual, and mental health. How we choose to react to external events will shape our environment and our body’s well-being. The way that we treat our own body (exercise, diet, setting healthy boundaries, healthy relationships, pursuing interests and passions) will have an impact on our physical health, emotional well-being, mental health, and spirit. The environment that we live in and the choices that we make as we react to the world around us will impact our body’s health. I often think about the saying “what goes around comes around.” What you put into the world will ultimately have an impact on you. What you put into your body will have an impact on your cells. Your cells will respond to the environment that they are in and that can have an impact on how you physically and emotionally feel. It’s a continuous cycle that involves factors that can be in our control or out of our control.
When something is disrupted in a cell’s environment, our body’s well being could be jeopardized and become diseased. For example, if we experience a lot of chronic stress from school and work, it could cause our body and mind to become unbalanced and unhealthy. We might be getting less sleep and eating poorly. We aren’t getting enough exercise and taking time to recharge and rest. Our immune system could become compromised and we might be more likely to get sick. We could develop high blood pressure and potentially experience long term cardiovascular health consequences. Our mental health could deteriorate and we might feel depressed or anxious. We begin to neglect things that are important to us like our relationships or our spirituality. Disease doesn’t just affect our body; it affects our mind and spirit too.
I would argue that Ayurveda ties into the field of epigenetics. Epigenetics focuses on how our environment and behavior influences what genes in our cells are expressed or “turned on.” If a “bad” gene is turned on in our cells because of a factor in our environment, then this can lead to disease. While Ayurveda is an ancient and holistic idea and epigenetics is a scientific field of study, I think that they intertwine and both concepts explore the connection between body and environment. I have decided to explore this topic for my capstone thesis.
One topic that interested me in this module is the link between Type II diabetes, our intestinal microbiome, and our overall health. I took time to read a handful of published academic articles that explore the link between a western diet, T2DM, and our gut microbiota.
One group of researchers (Rodrigues et al. 2021) found that different species of bacteria that live in our intestines can have a major impact on our physical health by potentially increasing our risks of developing obesity and diabetes. There are good and bad bacteria species that live in our gut. Lactobacillus bacteria species such as L. johnsonii and L. gasseri are considered good bacteria because there is evidence that they improve our body’s glucose metabolism. Romboustia bacteria species such as R. ilaelis and R. gnavus are thought to be harmful and worsen our body’s glucose metabolism. Additionally, R. gnavus is thought to help cause obesity and R. ilaelis has been linked to a decreased function in pancreatic beta cells. If pancreatic beta cells aren’t functioning, that can increase our risk of developing Type II Diabetes Mellitus. The “Western Diet” is high in refined sugars and fats. Individuals who frequently eat foods that are associated with the western diet, especially in first world countries such as the United States, may be at a higher risk of disrupting and changing their microbiome. People may have an increased chance of having fewer good gut bacteria and an increase in bad gut bacteria. This change in the gut microbiome, called dysbiosis, could be contributing to why many folks have obesity and glucose intolerance in the United States and ultimately end up developing Type 2 diabetes.
I read another published article (Chen et al. 2021) that found that people with T2DM have gut microbiota that have more microbiome species diversity than people without T2DM. Additionally, they found 12 groups of gut bacteria that were associated with T2DM (including the Romboustia bacteria species). Our gut microbiome changes based on what we eat. A lifetime of eating foods that are dense in calories and highly processed could have detrimental effects on the microbes living inside of us.
I also found one last article (Adeshirlarijaney & Gewirtz, 2020) that discusses how to fix gut dysbiosis in T2DM patients. One treatment option is fecal microbiota transplants (FMT), which can help replace an unhealthy gut microbiome with a new one that is balanced. If a diabetes patient receives a FMT from a healthy individual, they might be able to lose weight and gain back glucose intolerance. Their T2DM could become more manageable with this treatment. Some other treatments mentioned in this article include probiotics that contain several Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus bacteria species. Introducing these probiotics to the gut could also help to increase “good” bacteria concentrations. This article also mentions other treatments such as prescribed medications, herbal agents, and dietary fiber intake.
It’s amazing to think that our cell’s ability (or inability) to remove excess glucose from our bloodstream could be linked to little indivisible microorganisms that live in our intestines. This really ties into the idea of Ayurveda. The connection between our body and our gut bacteria has the potential to keep us healthy or increase our risk of obesity and diabetes. The bacteria respond to the environment that we provide for them in our gut; how we choose to eat and live our lives could negatively or positively impact these microorganisms. In return, those microorganisms can have an impact on our bodies. It’s a two way connection. What you put into your body positively or negatively affects what happens to you and the bacteria living in your gut.
It is great that you addressed and dismissed the fallacy that old theories equal wrong information. That is not always true. In fact, there is a lot of evidence that Ayurveda can and does work. I also think that taking care of our gut microbiology is important in the whole process.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading about these topics from your point of view. I agree that there are things to gain from many lifestyles, even ancient practices like Ayurveda. I like how you did some extended research into the relationship between type 2 diabetes and our gut microbiome. It think it would be interesting to do more research on this topic. Maybe some more studies on the relationship between the two and whether an unhealthy gut microbiome is more a symptom of the diabetes or a causing factor.
ReplyDeleteI love that you chose to include different examples of how the way we treat our body, as well as the environments we put our body in affect the way our immune system reacts--particularly with the example of diabetes and the gut microbiome. I think it is very easy for people to dismiss types of medicine based on the time period they came from simply because the science and the evidence behind medicine has grown so much in the past century, but when people are willing to broaden their view on disease outside of just the internal workings of the body, it is significantly easier to put more stock into such practices. The more I researched Ayurveda and saw specific examples following the step by step process from mind, body, spirit, and environment all the way down to the ways that it affects our bodily functions and cells, it was much easier to see why Ayurveda is such an important concept. I love the inclusion of the paragraph on how even mental health can affect physical health. If people could see the step by step breakdown of how it affects our body, then I think more people would be willing to accept Ayurveda as a viable practice, even if it is in conjunction with modern medicine. I thoroughly enjoyed your article and the way you tied in each of the elements from the last few modules we have completed--it flowed nicely together and was very harmonious with one another, each idea further supporting the last. I would like to see what research you could do to see how the physical environment affects our body; based on the other papers you found, I think you could find some really interesting things on the physical environment and the affects it can have on the body. I did think the epigenetic portion was interesting, and definitely moving more in that direction, but I would've loved to see you expand more on that into specific examples or even a few studies that were done on it. Overall, a really wonderful paper that was incredibly fascinating and expanded upon the ideas we have discussed throughout the modules whilst also bringing in more ideas that further support what we have learned so far.
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