Microbiome - the buzz word of the last few years. These days, functional practitioners use the term “terrain” to describe the entire landscape of one’s natural environment that includes the microbiome.
Does anyone else think of the 1996 movie Bio-Dome when they hear the term “microbiome” or “terrain”?? I unfortunately watched this movie an embarrassing number of times, but it fits, right?
Bear with me.
In the movie, 5 scientists enter into a controlled environment - the bio-dome, which mimics the perfect homeostasis for life, for a year-long experiment. Their perfect system is flipped upside down when two braindead, grungy dudes, Bud and Doyle, barge in on inauguration day needing to use the bathroom. To everyone’s dismay, the 5 scientists and 2 morons get locked inside the facility starting the 12-month clock. Needless to say, Bud and Doyle create nothing short of chaos.
While many of you may be wondering why you’ve never heard of this blockbuster (sense my sarcasm) and the other half of you wondering why you ever wasted your time watching that ridiculous movie, we at Apogee Wellness find it’s the perfect analogy for what we find in our athletes day in and day out.
Your body strives to maintain a homeostasis - a perfect bio-dome. Every system runs perfectly in this state of being. I can hear the beautiful music now. It’s magical. Every living organism, every natural function, works in harmony with each other to peacefully coexist and efficiently run your body.
Now enter, Bud and Doyle - the toxins… (cue heavy metal, bad ‘90’s music made from the mouths of Pauly Shore and Stephen Bawldin) Bud and Doyle represent a plethora of toxins that disrupt the calm ecosystem living within your perfect bodily terrain.
In reality, our terrain’s Bud and Doyles are in the form of food consumed, environmental toxins, microbial stress, mental and physical stress - including, intense athletic training.
When the toxins enter your body or are created within your body, it’s like sending crazy train-era Ozzy Osborne in to facilitate a yoga retreat. It's disruptive, energetically mis-matched, an attention-hog, and a bit, well, crazy. While Helen tries to do her sun salutations with the other 20 yogis, Ozzy is snorting a line of ants. Pure chaos.
Maybe I digress a bit, but truly, am I that far off? Your interior terrain works like a biodome. Its environment adjusts, adapts and thrives to ensure survival of said dome - aka, you. However, the toxic disruptions that take the stasis too far from its perfect environment threatens the optimal terrain equilibrium and the efficiency of your system.
The question remains, how resilient are the yogis when Ozzy attempts to take over the retreat?
Are the yogis locking arms ready to play a brutal battle of schoolyard Red Rover against Ozzy? Or, have they traded in their lululemon tights for black leather, buttless chaps and adopted an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality?
The truth is that the good bacteria you rely on to help maintain the perfect homeostasis in your body can turn on you when influenced by toxins. In fact, when the terrain experiences a shift, microorganisms may completely change in a process known as pleomorphism. Meaning, microorganisms contain the ability to completely change their functions for the good or bad depending on the environmental influences.
It’s like the terms “you are who you hang around” and “like attracts like.”
Before you know it, your cute, little, innocent friends are raiding the supplies, breaking into structures, and sacrificing the young.
Pleomorphism frequently occurs with chronic stress. Stress comes in many, many forms such as a stressful work environment or frequently consuming food allergens.
Dysbiosis, a disproportionate population of good versus bad microorganisms in the body, particularly in the gut, increases the susceptibility of food intolerances. When the body starts to react poorly to certain foods such as gluten as a result of the underlying dysbiosis, the body lights up the bat signal. Your adrenals start reacting to this fight or flight response, energy gets dispensed to your limbs and muscles leaving little energy in your organs vital to detox, rest, and recovery.
This same event happens with endurance athletes. Endurance athletes push their bodies hard physically, which puts their bodies in stress mode more frequently than the average human. On top of that, we live in a world with an exponential amount of toxic exposures due to our contaminated air, water, and food supply, EMF exposure, just to name a few.
Not only are endurance athletes physically stressing their bodies during training, creating metabolic waste, secreting stress hormones, and robbing vital organs of energy, but they too must deal with the microbial, environmental, and food toxins that barge into their terrain.
To those of you poor souls that were sucked into the Bio-Dome movie, remember when Bud and Doyle relieve themselves in the river - the water supply for all living matter within the bio-dome? Well, guess what, people?!? Those dirty toxins in your terrain do THE SAME THING! They produce waste that in turn is toxic to your system (insert mind-blown emoji)!
Wait… What???
Yep. I’ve got 2 words for you: Vicious Cycle
Exposures such as heavy metals weaken our helpful bacteria, which allows invaders such as parasites to take up space within our terrain. While this may sound terrifying, parasites do serve a purpose in this toxic environment. Parasites and other microbes feed off the heavy metals, which helps stave off the effects of heavy metal toxicity, but again, the parasites multiply and generate waste that secretes into our bloodstream, making its way to our heart, brain, joints, tissues, and other organs. Again, vicious cycle.
Before you curl up in a ball sucking your thumb and crying out for your mommy, remember, your terrain adapts to bad as well as good.
So, you’re telling me there’s a chance!
Yes, yes, I am!
The first step you need to take is to stop adding to the toxic load as much as possible. Play a game of Start, Stop, Keep. What can you start doing? What can you stop doing? What should you keep doing to promote a healthy terrain?
Secondly, work your way up the detox funnel. The bottom of the detox funnel involves the colon and the top involves the cells.
You can’t just throw in the tear gas and send in the SWAT team to drive out the bad guys without a little prep work. Scope out the terrain, divy up the weapons to the proper troops, and make sure all the doors and windows are unlocked to be able to get in and more importantly, get out.
This same theory applies to your system. First off, your bowels must work properly. The backdoor cannot be blocked or locked. This crucial step ensures a safe and effective detox and return of your perfect terrain. A blocked colon locks the toxins in your system, which then permeate through the intestinal walls, end up back in the bloodstream, leading to the heart, brain, and other organs.
Once your back door is unlocked and open for business, you must ensure your liver and bile ducts work properly and can handle the task. We will go into greater detail on the detox funnel in a future post.
The question remains; how do you know what your body needs? Your terrain is as unique as your fingerprint. What one body needs to establish and maintain its ideal terrain looks very different from the person next to them. You contain a unique toxic cocktail - don’t you feel special? Not really, right?
Enter frequency medicine.
Frequency medicine determines the what, when, and how to detox your body from the disruptive Buds, Doyles, and Ozzys by observing the frequencies resonating from your body. Every cell, every living organism, and even every emotion vibrates at a certain frequency. By observing the morse code of your body, we at Apogee Wellness more efficiently and effectively get energy and resources to the good guys while eliminating the bad.
With the right herbs, supplements, adjustments, and nutrition unique to your body, you will return to that beautiful, peaceful, and more resilient state of being. Allowing you to run further, train harder, and break records! Not only that, but you will have quality in your years!
Now, if the only thing you learned from this post is that the1996 Bio-Dome movie was in fact educational, I’ve done my job.