The Sizeable Health Benefits of Nature’s Tiny World A Microbial Exploration with Dr. Rodney Dietert

Rodney Dietert, Ph.D. is an internationally known author, lecturer, scientist, media personality, and educator with peer-reviewed papers published in more than seventy scientific journals ranging from environmental health and pediatric medicine publications to nutrition, metabolism, immune, neurological, and reproductive journals.

Currently Professor Emeritus in the Cornell University Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Rodney has more than three-hundred publications including two-hundred

By Ainsley Schoppel Excerpts from Interview by Sasha Frate

papers and book chapters, with most addressing environmental risk factors, developmental immunotoxicity, and programming of later-life noncommunicable diseases.

With a specifically focused career in the microbial sciences, Dietert is perhaps one of the foremost experts in the world on the microscopic world around—and inside—us, and the myriad ways that we can adjust our lives to let it serve us better.

In fact, we’ve heard time and again that whether we live in an urban or rural area, spending time “in nature” is beneficial to our health. However, not all green spaces are created equal. When it comes to parks and green spaces in cities, it pays to know about the dirt beneath your feet. “You may not be aware,” informs Dietert, “but to meet EPA standards on heavy metals like lead, [planners] will mix very, very low heavy-metal contaminated soil with highly contaminated soil.” In doing so, planners and builders offload their contaminated fill and will test just below the acceptable threshold for heavy metal safety. In turn, this soil is spread on athletic fields and in community parks. And so, while you think you may be having a healthy outing with your family, you’ve been exposed to significant levels of waste management heavy metals. So, does this mean we avoid all parks and athletic fields? Of course not. “You really need to pick and choose what you consider [to be] nature,” Dietert explains. “Be a little bit more particular about it because simply [strolling] in your local urban area park may not [offer] the benefits you think it [does].”

True nature offers a bounty of benefits to humans, including those associated with growing your own fruits and vegetables. “You don’t have to be a large-scale grower to do a few things that are useful for yourself and for your children,” Dietert reminds us. “Just keep in mind that you want to have your time with the microbial sources that will support your body.” Whether it’s a planter box of beans and tomatoes, potted herbs, or an in-ground plot of cucumbers and squash, all gardening time is valuable, thanks to important bacteria and microbes. Do you feel more relaxed and peaceful during and after a session in your garden? That’s not your imagination. Mycobacterium vaccae, found in soil, boosts serotonin production in the brain! Serotonin is colloquially known as the “feel good” chemical, and when it is at a normal level within your body, you feel more focused, emotionally stable, happier, and calmer. Low serotonin levels are associated with depressive feelings. “If you’re not gardening and you’re not getting your hands and feet in soil, you’re more anxious and your serotonin production is not where it should be,” explains Dietert. “Maybe your available fresh foods and other things are restricted. All of this goes into damaging the microbiome and restricting it. That is a prescription for increased disease down the road—and not necessarily way down the road! That’s not a good public management plan by any stretch of the imagination.”

Doyoufeelmorerelaxedandpeacefulduring andafterasessioninyourgarden? That’s not your imagination. Mycobacterium vaccae, found in soil, boosts serotonin production in the brain!

Serotonin is colloquially known as the “feel good” chemical, and when it is at a normal level within your body, you feel more focused, emotionally stable, happier, and calmer. Low serotonin levels are associated with depressive feelings.

It’s important to remember that the microbes in our bodies, homes, and gardens are only a small piece of the microbial picture. “Microbes are the network—they’re the actual global internet. Microbes in our gut have ‘kissing cousins’ that are in the most extreme conditions on Earth,” Dietert explains. “They are in high elevations, they’re growing on the International Space Station, they’re at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, they’re in the Dead Sea, they’re under Antarctic glaciers eating away at rocks—they’re extremophile bacteria that live in our gut and every place on Earth.” Connecting with the natural microbes in our own backyard connects us to a vast and ancient network and is critical to our physical and mental health.

But what happens when our society adopts an obsession with purity, and we intentionally kill off good bacteria and microbes on a daily basis? While it’s true that killing harmful viruses and pathogens is helpful in maintaining good health, being over-protective and preventing exposure to everything is not. With an abundance of hand sanitizers and chemical sprays now readily available in almost every pharmacy, grocery, and home goods store, we need to evaluate our obsession with purity. Has it been effective and beneficial to our health? Not all the time. “MRSA is an antibiotic resistant Staphylococcus,” says Dietert. “I’m all about maintaining a balanced immune system and optimizing colonization resistance.” One way to strengthen an immune system is to expose it to day-to-day bacteria and microbes. Our bodies will then be more capable of adapting and evolving as we face future pathogens. Knowing that this is part of life, Dietert’s concerns lie in society’s unwillingness to increase overall health and wellness to create a strong immune system. “There are [always] other pathogens, so why wouldn’t you do things to help people’s overall health? I’m not seeing that.”

Taking a closer look at the elements required to maintain a healthy body, it is a well-documented fact that excessive sugar, especially processed sugar, is very damaging to our systems. “Sugar is really not helpful,” Dietert notes. “It’s a big red flag in so many ways. We’ve been conditioned so that our taste buds are requiring it. And some of the artificial [replacement] sugars are not that safe.” Increased sugar intake skews the body’s metabolic profile and can even shift hormonal levels. The microbes within the gut become biased to sugar digestion and become less efficient at digesting other foods. In turn, this generates inflammation.

Inflammation can be painful, and in extreme cases, debilitating. And when we are in chronic or severe pain, it is natural to turn to painrelieving medications to help us function during the day and sleep well at night. NSAIDs (Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug) play an important role in terms of over-thecounter pain management and fever reduction. However, when they are over-used, they can end up doing more harm than good. “If NSAIDs are taken on a chronic basis, it’s going to damage your microbiome,” Dietert explains. “Microbiologists can tell what NSAID you are taking if you take it on a regular basis, because of the damage profile [it exhibits].” While this might sound dire, this isn’t the green-light to panic and purge your medicine cabinet! The occasional NSAID will not be a problem for your body. However, what we do need to be especially cautious of is the use of NSAIDs with other medications and food additives. “If you pair food emulsifiers with NSAIDS and antacids, you’re going to have a challenge in keeping a healthy microbiome,” notes Dietert. “No new drugs should be produced unless they’re safe for the microbiome.” So, what’s the solution to balancing pain management and a healthy microbiome? A more holistic approach says Dietert. “We’ve got a lot of herbs, plant derivatives, tinctures, extracts, and the like, that can do a lot of good in terms of physiology without wiping out parts of the microbiome.”

Continuing with holistic microbiomehealthy options, it’s obviously important to evaluate our diet. “Diet is the garden of microbes that you grow in your gut, and they can control your neurochemistry and brain function,” observes Dietert. “If I ate a diet of pizza every day in every way, and then I [decide] to eat a lot of kale, that’s not going to go well because I have grown microbes that use pizza as an energy source. They are the predominant population, and they can affect my neurochemistry.” When a drastic dietary shift like this is attempted, the results can be painful. In fact, Dietert even argues that our collective gut issues should be seen as a food-product driven drug addiction. “It’s not that different, really. Sugar-using microbes will make it painful if we try to get off sugar. A lot of people that have trouble changing their diet need to do so in concert with probiotics; they have to get rid of the bully microbes that are forcing them to eat an unhealthy diet and making it painful for them to change.” In other words, the right microbes added into our gut can help the already existing ones to function in a healthier way. In fact, Dietert has first-had experience with probiotic benefits: “I put out my fire with the probiotics that work for me. It actually helped to avoid complications that I used to experience for about thirty years, when I discovered some useful microbial solutions.” And, unlike other medications with heavy side effects, probiotics are an excellent microbial alternative to add to your diet through yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, pickles, kombucha, miso, kimchi, tempeh, sourdough bread, and even some cheeses. Other anti-inflammatory seasonings like turmeric can be a healing dietary addition, as well. “The thing is, try them,” Dietert urges. “People need to try them and see if they really are beneficial. It’s not necessarily one size fits all, but there is a menu that can be tried.”

Quite encouragingly, we are seeing science lead the way with the power of microbes and their various applications through healthcare, as well. “There are some heroic things that can be done,” says Dietert. “There’s fecal microbiota transplantation, for instance. You have to have the right donor and metagenomic formulas. [The doctors] decide what metabolic profile they want in a certain area of the gut and then they select the bacteria that will provide that.” And since over eleven percent of the population of the U.S. has diabetes, it’s very exciting to see microbes become part of a possible solution—even if it hasn’t hit human-stage testing yet. “You can actually reverse insulin resistance sensitivity by using a type of immune cell called macrophages that are part of the inflammatory problem,” notes Dietert. He explains that alternative maturation states of these particular cells are grown in culture and then generated to a new phase that does not promote inflammation and does not contribute to insulin resistance. The body is then flooded with these new cells and reverse-engineered back through the microbiome. “Macrophages can alter the entire metabolism from an immune change. It may not be easily practical in humans, but it shows you that it’s a systemic biology issue. You don’t really separate the gut barrier, the microbes, and the immune system— they’re flowing information back and forth and we need to be managing across the whole system,” Dietert concludes.

Unlike other medications with heavy side effects, probiotics are an excellent microbial alternative to add to your diet through yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, pickles, kombucha, miso, kimchi, tempeh, sourdough bread, and even some cheeses. Other anti-inflammatory seasonings like turmeric can be a healing dietary addition, as well.

Looking at the system beginning at birth, Dietert thinks that a higher priority needs to be placed on the “seed and feed” of infants. “If mom has to have a Cesarean, even last minute, then [a stock can be taken of the bacteria] the baby would be seeded with [had it been born vaginally], and then it can be installed. It’s not quite a hundred percent the same, but it’s real close—it’s close enough to be beneficial to the baby,” Dietert explains. This practice can help to ensure that the microbiome develops, and the immune system matures along a healthy trajectory. There is also evidence that every round of antibiotics a baby is prescribed during the first year of life statistically increases the risk of allergic diseases and asthma by age seven. “It’s not just one round that will do it, but the second round has an incremental increase in risk. The microbiome has been depleted at a critical stage of immune development,” comments Dietert. “The baby is already biased for allergic diseases if you don’t have the microbiome in place and maturing. There is a cost to that.” It’s not to say that antibiotics shouldn’t ever be used, however, as Dietert argues for a more comprehensive intervention that allows for the baby to develop appropriately.

Another interesting scientific endeavor is the acquisition of microbes from Indigenous populations. It has been discovered that these microbes, primarily on the skin and in the gut, are extinct in Western countries. Evaluations of the epidemiology of these populations have revealed clues as to how we lost those microbes and have arrived at disease states common to Westerners.

Ultimately, Dietert wants to spread the message that small lifestyle changes can do great things in terms of the microbes around us. “You can do so much in terms of health! [We can all] benefit by doing a few simple things in terms of lifestyle practices that will ensure your kids get a real chance in terms of immune balance,” he encourages. But should we be focusing on perfection? Probably not. “It’s an ecological management system,” Dietert explains. “It’s like building a healthy coral reef. If you’re one step away from killing a coral reef, it won’t take much to get there. But, if you’ve got a remarkably robust system, then a boat passing overhead with a little oil spill will probably not destroy it. The reef will have some resiliency, and we need to operate the same way.” And even if we’re faced with health challenges, Dietert advises evaluating quality of life and doing whatever we can to make healthy choices that can increase our enjoyment. “It’s about what happened during the decades of your life,” comments Dietert. “It can be so much different; it can be so much better.”

And while it’s not necessarily difficult to get outside, experience soil exposure, find some animals to socialize with, and increase the amount of exercise in our lives, Dietert recommends doing so in small steps. “Don’t do a marathon when you have never done one before,” he states. “You can’t avoid all stressors, but you can become more resilient, and that’s what we want to do. We want to help people construct their future life-course in a way that they enjoy it more, they feel like they are contributing, their societal and nature interactions are rich, and they benefit from the microbial networks supporting them.”

Rodney’s advice to his students rings true as a general reminder for a life well-lived: “Whatever you do, do what brings you joy. Do what helps you thrive and then all your work and everything else will flow from that. Just recognize how you get there.” And with some education, lifestyle changes, and a return to nature’s bountiful offerings, it’s the microbial world that is helping to get us there. y