The Germ Vs. The Terrain, Part 2: Time for a Change of Model?

The Germ Vs. The Terrain, Part 2: Time for a Change of Model?

by | 9 Jul 2020 | Critical Thinking, Health, Michael Nicholas

In Part 1 of this article, we looked at the process of scientific revolution, and I described how the world came to accept what has now become the central pillar of Western medicine – “germ theory”. We looked at:

  • How difficult it can be for scientists, explorers, or leaders, to challenge the accepted understanding and recognise the implications of new data.

  • How germ theory – the idea that disease is caused by harmful, microscopic organisms – transformed the practice of medicine.

  • An alternative model to germ theory, known as “terrain” or the “cellular” theory of disease, which emerged at around the same time. This suggests that the internal environment within each person’s body mainly determines their susceptibility to disease.

I find it fascinating that Pasteur, one of the leading advocates of germ theory, who succeeded in changing scientific thinking once, was ignored when, on his deathbed, he declared that, “the microbe is nothing, the terrain is everything”. Should we have listened to him for a little longer?

Resistance to new thinking is often very strong, which is why revolutions – where new ideas are ridiculed and censored – have been so commonplace as scientific understanding has evolved. This is a critically important point, not only for scientists but also for all leaders, because over-reliance on “conventional wisdom” and best practice is becoming a greater and greater risk as the pace of change in the world increases.

Let’s think about some questions which might suggest that the body’s environment, not germs, holds the key to health:

  • It is estimated that we have 60 trillion bacteria in our bodies all of the time. On top of that, there are an estimated 380 trillion viruses. Many of these microbes have the potential to cause disease. So why is it that most of us, most of the time, seem unaffected?

  • Why, for example, does the same flu virus, in the same flu season, affect only a small percentage of the population?

  • Why is stress so strongly linked to the development of disease?

  • If disease is caused by germs, which result in the body breaking down, what difference could placebos possibly make (yet they have been proven to have a huge impact!)?

  • Why is it that small exposures to germs often make our bodies more resistant to disease?

  • Why have well over 99% of all of the people who have sadly died of Covid-19 been either old or suffering from at least one (usually around three) other illness? Why has this virus affected so few people below the age of 65?

Germ theory offers little explanation in response to any of these questions. Not so, terrain theory. Its core principle is that a diseased, toxic, or otherwise unhealthy body, when subjected to disease-causing germs, may struggle to defend itself, whereas a healthy body would be much more able to repel them or limit their impact. If this theory is valid, all of the observations highlighted by the questions above become easy to understand…

As science has evolved, many examples have been discovered to provide evidence in support of terrain theory. One is the power of vitamin D to transform our health, as covered in a previous article, where the study I referenced concluding that avoiding the sun increases risk of death as much as smoking. The reason for this powerful effect is that vitamin D regulates many functions in the body (the terrain), including hormone balance, metabolism, blood pressure, bone density, fighting cancer, and immune function, so low levels of it can be hugely detrimental. Another example is the link between gut health and the effectiveness of the immune system. As this has been recognised, it has enabled us to realise the great importance of maintaining our microbiome, if we want to be healthy.

Moving from an emphasis on germs, to thinking about terrain, shifts the focus for maintaining health away from reactively dealing with illness through the treatment of symptoms, to proactive management of the conditions in our body and the strength of our immune system. It places importance on creating a healthy body through detoxification, nutrition, and lifestyle, optimising our microbiome and internal environment to prevent disease and improve recovery.

Despite the lack of widespread acceptance of terrain theory, scientific research in the area is highly advanced. At the leading edge of this field study is a specialism called epigenetics, which looks at how environment can change genetic expression. I’ll delve into this area in another newsletter, soon.

For those interested in learning more about terrain theory, and how we might benefit from it, I’m offering two articles this time. The first presents a counterargument to germ theory, building the case for why Bechamp’s terrain theory should have won the day.

Read the Article: Louis Pasteur vs. Antoine Bechamp: Know the True Causes of Disease

This second article provides further evidence of the extensive benefits of ensuring that we maintain adequate vitamin D levels. Contrary to its name, vitamin D is actually not a vitamin, but a hormone, and it contributes to health in many ways. This article looks specifically at how vitamin D might aid the prevention and treatment of viral infections, including Covid-19. For example, this chart, taken from one of the studies referenced in the article, shows that almost everyone with vitamin D levels above 30 mg/ml gets only mild symptoms if they contract the disease.

Read the Article: Vitamin D in the Prevention of COVID-19

The Germ vs. The Terrain, Part 1: The Rise of Microbes

The Germ vs. The Terrain, Part 1: The Rise of Microbes

by | 10 Jun 2020 | Biases, Critical Thinking, Health, Psychology

For the health and wellbeing section this time, I want to cover a subject which also has great relevance to leadership in general, because it looks at core aspects of the advancement in knowledge of all kinds. Due to the amount of information involved, I’ve split the article into two parts, the second of which will be in the next newsletter.

Consider this quote:

“From inhaling the odour of beef, the butcher’s wife obtains her obesity.”

~ Professor H Booth, writing in the Builder, July 1844

Because our thinking has moved on, it sounds ridiculous today. It is obvious that the medical theory on which this idea was based, the Miasma Theory, which held that inhaling bad air was the cause of most, if not all, illness, is complete rubbish. However, that wasn’t always the case, so I’d like to start by looking at how acceptance of this theory impacted the adoption of later, more advanced, ideas.

Imagine, for a moment, if you could go back and walk the streets of London in the mid-1800s. It would have been commonplace to see people carrying a posy of flowers under their noses – at that time, it was considered very sensible to do so, as a means of protecting one’s health!

Imagine using your more advanced knowledge to persuade these people that their flowers were useless, assuring them that you had seen research proving the existence of invisible organisms which are the true cause of disease… It’s easy to envisage the likely reaction, because we’ve all experienced it many times when we challenge others’ deeply held beliefs.

In 1848, Ignatz Semmelweis began this journey. He was the first person to propose the “Germ Theory” of disease, having had an insight that deadly illnesses that were especially prevalent in hospitals might be caused by invisible, infectious agents or germs which were being spread on the hands of doctors and nurses. He gathered evidential proof of his ideas by getting medical staff in his wards to wash their hands in chlorinated lime, showing that this reduced death rates significantly. Nevertheless, his suggestion was widely criticised, ridiculed, or ignored by the “experts” of the day:

  • Even ten years later, the editor of the Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, the international scientific medical journal, wrote that it was time to stop the nonsense about the chlorine hand wash.
  • In 1961, his book on the subject was negatively received, and his ideas were again rejected.

Under the pressure of the scrutiny he was subjected to, Semmelweis suffered a breakdown in 1865 and was tricked by colleagues to visit a mental hospital where they locked him up. He died somewhat suspiciously 2 weeks later, supposedly from an infection.

Germ Theory finally became widely accepted over 40 years later, in the 1890s, as a result of the work of the French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur, the English surgeon Joseph Lister, and the German physician Robert Koch. They are now given much of the credit for development and acceptance of this theory, which still dominates today. It is sad to consider how many people died as a result of the refusal of the authorities at that time to take Semmelweis’ ideas seriously.

The commonplace nature of this kind of powerful resistance to new ideas was brilliantly exposed in a book written almost 60 years ago by Thomas Kuhn. Though few have heard of it, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has sold around 1.5 million copies (a huge number for a book of this nature) and is still considered a classic today. It changed scientific thinking, revealing that progress generally occurs through incremental developments in knowledge, where everyone uses a common framework, interspersed with periods of revolution, or crisis, where paradigms break down and new models of understanding are created. It was in this book that the concept of the “paradigm shift” was birthed.

I’m fascinated by these ideas because, from the perspective of mental development, there is an enormous difference between working within a model to advance it incrementally and having the open-minded creativity to leapfrog to a higher-level model which more accurately represents behaviours in the physical world. Working within the model can be valuable, however, being able to break the mold completely is where the potential for a transformation in results becomes possible.

Ironically, even before germ theory had reached general acceptance, it was already being challenged. The alternative idea, known as “Terrain Theory” (or the cellular theory), stated that the environment is more important than the germ, meaning that the quality of the internal environment mainly determines a person’s susceptibility to disease, not the germs they encounter. It suggests that when the terrain is healthy, the body can handle pathogenic microorganisms without succumbing to illness.

Terrain Theory was put forward by a French scientist, Claude Bernard, and later built upon by Antoine Béchamp. Like Semmelweis before him, Béchamp was branded a heretic, and Pasteur argued with him for years on the subject. However, Pasteur famously changed his mind on his deathbed, acknowledging that, “Le microbe n’est rien, le terrain est tout.” (The microbe is nothing, the terrain is everything).

While germ theory won the debate at the time, and has formed the core of Western medical thinking, the evidence is building powerfully to suggest that Pasteur’s deathbed utterance was correct. As a result, it could be that a paradigm shift towards the terrain theory might, finally, be approaching.

In the next newsletter, I’ll explore terrain theory in more detail, to see how this shift of mindset and belief systems holds the potential to transform our understanding of how to be healthy.

Should you wish to do so, you can read more on Kuhn, and the core principles in his book, in this article:

Thomas Kuhn: the man who changed the way the world looked at science

The Importance of Vitamin D

The Importance of Vitamin D

by | 27 May 2020 | Health, Michael Nicholas

When it comes to maximising health, I’m a great believer in taking supplements, particularly in the modern world where so much of the food supply is grown in depleted soil, which has resulted in our food having much lower concentrations of essential vitamins and minerals than it did decades ago. For example, a Kushi Institute analysis of nutrient data from 1975 to 1997 found that in 12 fresh vegetables, average levels calcium dropped 27%, 37% for iron, 21% for vitamin, and 30% for vitamin C. Another study concluded that today, we would have to eat eight oranges to gain the same amount of Vitamin A as our grandparents would have got from one.

In this newsletter, particularly given the challenges of the current pandemic, I’d like to look at the benefits of vitamin D. Multiple cross-sectional studies have associated lower levels of vitamin D with increased infection. Recently, a scientific review of 25 randomised controlled trials (British Medical Journal, 2017), involving 11,000 participants from a dozen countries, was reported in Time Magazine as follows: “People who took daily or weekly vitamin D supplements were less likely to report acute respiratory infections, like influenza or the common cold, than those who did not … For people with the most significant vitamin D deficiencies (blood levels below 10 [ng/mL]), taking a supplement cut their risk of respiratory infection in half.”

However, vitamin D’s benefits are much broader than that. In addition to supporting the immune system, it contributes to bone health, helps manage blood sugar levels and can prevent diabetes, facilitates hormone regulation and improves mood, and combats heart disease. In fact, it is so vital to our body that recent discoveries have challenged the decades-old advice on protecting ourselves from the sun. In an article published in the prestigious Journal of Internal Medicine, researchers reported that if you AVOID the sun, it increases your risk of death to the same degree as smoking!

The reason for this finding is that the best way to achieve adequate vitamin D levels is by being out in the sun. Could it be, therefore, that those people who are currently avoiding going outside are actually increasing their chances of becoming ill?

Read the Article: New Study Shows Avoiding Sun Exposure is as Dangerous as Smoking