Are you enriching their lives with good, healthy food choices and lifestyle habits or are you angering your trillions of guests, pushing them towards causing disease?
I wrote my thesis in medical school on stealth infections, where I concluded that health had much to do with how well we tended our microbial garden… I was greatly influenced by the little known, but ahead-of-its-time book A New Bacteriology by Sonea and Panesset. S&P hypothesized that bacteria evolved as a superorganism, a “unified global entity” engaged in rapid communication and genetic evolution across continents (appearing far more adaptive than us)!
Their superorganism abilities are essential to life….from cleansing our water and generating atmospheric gases to making vitamins, enzymes and keeping us well…if we treat them well. S&P’s conclusions were formed well before the advent of DNA analysis of microbes (they published in 1980). They foreshadowed our current understanding and truly deserve a front-and-center place in the microbial sun J
Author: Kara Fitzgerald, ND
https://www.drkarafitzgerald.com/ Kara Fitzgerald, ND, received her doctor of naturopathic medicine degree from the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon. She completed the first Counsel on Naturopathic Medicine-accredited post-doctorate position in nutritional biochemistry and laboratory science at Metametrix Clinical Laboratory under the direction of Richard Lord, PhD. Her residency was completed at Progressive Medical Center, a large, integrative medical practice in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. Fitzgerald is the lead author and editor of Case Studies in Integrative and Functional Medicine and is a contributing author to Laboratory Evaluations for Integrative and Functional Medicine and the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM)’s Textbook for Functional Medicine. With the Helfgott Research Institute, Dr. Fitzgerald is actively engaged in clinical research on the DNA methylome using a diet and lifestyle intervention developed in her practice. The first publication from the study focuses on reversal of biological aging and was published 04-12-2021 in the journal Aging. She has published a consumer book titled Younger You as well as a companion cookbook, Better Broths and Healing Tonics and has an application-based Younger You Program, based on the study.
Dr. Fitzgerald is on the faculty at IFM, is an IFM Certified Practitioner and lectures globally on functional medicine. She runs a Functional Nutrition Residency program, and maintains a podcast series, New Frontiers in Functional Medicine and an active blog on her website, www.drkarafitzgerald.com. Her clinical practice is in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
Additional publications