What makes us, us?

“Our health is the result of the quality of communication between trillions of non-human cells in the the human body”.

My summary of Module One: ‘Be’ from The Journey of Intrinsic Health

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Our body is made up of a complex ecosystem that exists within the context of our local and planetary ecosystems.

In other words, who we are is the expression of the world within and around us. 

Contrary to what we used to believe, we now know that our genes are not set. Our environment influences everything (this is known as epigenetics). 

And so this means that we are fully capable of regenerating and building a new body by altering our physical, emotional and energetic environments. 

The foundation of all of this starts in our gut. 

Our gut microbiome is a staggeringly large and complex ecosystem that has more than 10 times the number of cells than the rest of the human body. 

It is home to roughly 100 trillion(!) microbes representing as many as 5,000 different species.

The lining around our gut, which is only half the width of a human hair, is what separates this diverse ecosystem (aka our microbiome) from our body.

This gut membrane is made up of billions of cells that pull nutrients from inside the gut to feed each individual cell throughout the rest of the body.

Connecting each of the cells within that gut membrane are tight junctions - a system of connected fibre optic-like cables that are essentially the gate keepers (or the boundary event) of our guts. There is one in our brain and kidneys too, as well as our vascular system. 

We fully depend on this boundary event for our health. Or, in other words, our health is the result of this function. 

Disease occurs in the body when these tight junctions begin to breakdown, and toxins start to seep through and overwhelm the immune system. 

The vulnerability and breakdown of our tight junctions is occurring because of the rapid increase of toxins in our environment - especially in our food and water - and largely thanks to Glyphosate, the most ubiquitous and arguably destructive chemical on the planet (it’s pretty much in everything now, often even the air we breathe). 

We began widespread use of this chemical in the 90’s and its prevalence has exponentially increased since then. Interestingly, this almost perfectly mirrors the rapid acceleration of chronic diseases in our population over that same time period.

This chemical (among others) is highly destructive to these tight junctions, weakening them and allowing things to pass through that shouldn’t, which is ultimately leading to much of today’s Western population’s inflammation, discomfort and disease. 

The good news is that we can regenerate our gut microbiome and the tight junctions in our gut membranes, and as we do, we also often start to form healthier boundaries in our lives in terms of the physical, emotional and energetics we allow in. The result of this is that we begin to form a clearer self identity of who we really are, and what we really want. 

So for me, the big learning from Module 1 is that we, like everything else on the planet, are an ecosystem, and in order to function at our best we must first (re)establish healthy boundaries that enable coherent, flowing communication between individuals - be they humans or cells. 

As Plato said, “as above, so below”.