New research is transforming our understanding of the relationships between micro-organisms, epigenetics, the human gut, and allergies. An excerpt from a new article on the website of the scientific journal Nature sums up the crux of this dynamic:
“These [micro-organisms] are flipping switches,” says Sarkis Mazmanian, a microbiologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. If these beneficial microbes fail to colonize our guts early in life, or if they succumb to a course of antibiotics, then switches don’t get flipped and the immune system can become hypersensitive, attacking harmless microbes and other substances such as pollen, pet dander or shellfish.
The greatest frontier in science is biological. We must proceed with enthusiasm and with ethics. A great article by my friend Cassandra Willyard. Nice work. Read it below.