In academia, germ theory is taught as the de facto perspective from which to interpret infectious disease. But, how well does germ theory account for real-world observations?
I stumbled across this in my Substack peregrinations, and have some questions. I'm an ID specialist, generally (but not exclusively) with opinions within the "mainstream" - so I suppose in some quarters I will be perceived as "the enemy" or a "germ theory apologist". But I also try to keep an open mind, and enjoy a good discussion with pretty much anyone. Hopefully someone will engage with me here - I'm genuinely curious. As an aside, the way I form my own opinions is generally by sparring and clashing: so any pushback is not being unwilling to listen, it's poking holes until I'm convinced (or not).
Anyways, I've read this post and the part of the second post above the paywall, and the honest truth is that... this doesn't seem that revolutionary to me. Either this is true but trivial... or maybe the part of the second post behind the paywall lays out some implications that are more "revolutionary".
If I'm understanding this right, it seems like what you're saying is that: "exposure to or carriage of many pathogens is not sufficient in and of itself to cause clinical disease. Instead, weakened hosts get infections, so we need to explain why *this* host became ill while everyone else did not". But that seems... uncontroversial. It's well known that infectious diseases are often diseases of poverty, and this is the case because (amongst other things) poorer people are often undernourished/weaked/vulnerable in some way. For instance, malnourished children develop clinical Tuberculosis disease more than healthy ones, even if both harbour latent TB bacilli. This is presumably because their immune system is depleted due to malnutrition. Or, to take another example, asymptomatic carriage of C.difficile is well documented (especially in infants), and is *not* an indication for treatment. Or people with chronic leg wounds or weakened skin barriers will be more likely to get cellulitis. Examples abound, but I think you get my point: host and (potential) pathogen interact in clinical disease. It takes two to tango.
When it comes to treatment, again, I'm not sure what big change in perspective is being called for here. When a normally non-pathogenic organism is detected, we shouldn't treat in the absence of symptoms (such as in asymptomatic bacteruria). But when the normally non-pathogenic bacteria gets access to an environmental niche where it can replicate unopposed (see examples above), then it replicates and either causes tissue damage on its own, or via uncontrolled inflammatory response from the body (ie sepsis). This is when we treat using antibiotics. So, in this example, what you're calling "terrain theory" is true - ie the clinical infection occurs because of some kind of host dysregulation - but once the organism begins to replicate out of control, you then have an infection requiring treatment with antibiotics. Optimizing host status would surely help with prevention, though. What is controversial or novel here?
The only thing I'll point out is that *not all* micro-organisms are non-pathogenic at baseline (to humans at least). Some organisms are NOT native to the human host, and when they come into contact with the human host (in a sufficient infectious dose to overcome immune defences), they do cause clinical disease. Examples: Syphilis, HIV, Gonorrhea, Tuberculosis. Does "terrain theory" have some kind of argument with this?
Maybe the controversy comes from the implications of this for vaccines? Or the microbiome? By "germ theory" do you mean "the status of the host has no effect on disease development, and exposure to a pathogen is both necessary *and sufficient* to develop an infectious disease"? If so, you're not describing a paradigm that I recognize as "germ theory". But maybe I'm misunderstanding? Someone clarify this for me - please give me something to disagree with!
I think you are spot on with most of your interpretation here.
There is little that I am saying which is "revolutionary" especially since Terrain and its predecessor Miasma theory are centuries if not millenia old.
WTS, what I (And I'm sure you) have observed is that most people/doctors do not approach disease from this perspective, nor do they harbor these thoughts about germs or antibiotics.
That is, in most peoples minds, germs harbor the majority of the fault and almost the entirety of the treatment plans.
For instance, if you have a symptomatic UTI...antibiotics are still not necessary, depending on the patient. If you are some frail diabetic that has no metabolic reserve capacity to deal with it, and will be overwhelmed, then fine...a well-chosen antibiotic to target the local biogram is reasonable.
But, if you are otherwise healthy or in good metabolic shape...I don't see a reason to put antibiotics into the patient. The body will take care of it, so long as you take care of the body.
Moreover, if you want to truly take a root-cause approach to illness...stopping at "germs + antibiotics" does not actually get to the root cause.
The terrain framework invites people to consider "why did this person get an overgrowth of bacteria or fungi?" - which is a question that leads people to consider the true root cause. In this sense, antibiotics can be considered a 'band-aid' or a symptom-targeting measure, instead of addressing the underlying cause. Especially since, as you said, if you have an asymptomatic UTI, we shouldn't give antibiotics. And thus, this categorically makes antibiotics symptom addressing, rather than root-cause addressing.
Anyway, it's a bit of a nuanced topic, and I've been wrestling with this framework for a few years now to see what else I can glean. Well worth the effort, imo.
We seem to see things differently, at least with regards to how "mainstream medicine" approaches this. I'm not sure that much of what I said above would meet with much objection from... well, anyone I have worked with or currently work with. I still don't see how this is a refutation of "germ theory", since I've never understood that term to mean that microbes, in a vacuum, are responsible for human disease. Of course the health and susceptibility of the host is important! This seems to me to be standard, middle-of-the-road, "mainstream medicine". Heck, Mandell's, the "Bible" of ID has a few chapters right at the beginning about different types of microbes (commensals, primary pathogens, opportunistic pathogens, etc), how they cause disease vs colonization, as well as the microbiome and the emerging science surrounding it. Given that ID doctors spend just as much of our time stopping inappropriate antibiotics, or narrowing spectrum when we can, I don't think the field of ID approaches infection management in a cavalier "antibiotics first, ask questions later" way. Of course, much of what we do is in an acute setting, where patients are already too sick for preventative considerations.
I suspect where we start to diverge, from looking through some of the rest of your content, are the answers to the question "why did this person get an overgrowth of bacteria or fungi?", and therefore, what we do about it. We may even diverge pretty radically. But that doesn't mean "germ theory" is false and it seems unnecessarily provocative to say so. Why not just say "the health of the host affects his or her susceptibility to infections?".
I make the argument that germ theory is a special case of terrain theory.
Wrt how disease is understood and managed, IMO, it is the false framework to use.
E.g. it is more accurate to say the health of the host impacts the differential proliferation of some microbiota over others
Infection, as the word implies, means something has invaded a space it has no business being in. However, in most cases of infection'" normal flora are proliferating beyond a homeostatic proportion as a result of changes in the terrain.
Thus, the fault is not with the bug, its proliferation is merely a symptom. The problem was not the "infection"
Just like high LDL isn't the cause of athero, it is high inflammatory stress and upregulated remodelling. This is why it is foolish to think you can prevent cardiovascular disease by simply targeting serum lipid levels.
"The bronchial tree for instance contains a mean of 2000 bacterial genomes per cm2 surface. The harmful or potentially harmful bacteria are also detected routinely in respiratory specimens. The most significant are Moraxella catarrhalis, Haemophilus influenzae, and Streptococcus pneumoniae. They are known to cause respiratory disorders under particular conditions namely if the human immune system is impaired."
Yep.
And yet the wizards decided to vaccinate kids against two of these common bacteria. Lo and behold, unbeknownst to practically all pediatricians, kids still carry H flu in their noses. And they just carry non-vaccine strains of Strep pneumonia. And I just read that since development of the infant vaccine for Strep pneumonia, the incidence of pneumonia from Strep pneumonia in adults has increased. Kinda the way adults began getting more shingles once kids stopped getting natural chickenpox.
Never ever did I hear anyone ever ask or discuss why normal flora suddenly cause disease in otherwise healthy kids.
Can you link to info you read about step vax and adult pneumonia? I’ve been very curious about why I’ve seen an enormous explosion of pneumonia around me this year… thinking this might have a clue. Thank you!
The childhood strep vax has been out for more than two decades.
As for the explosion this year, I am hypothesizing: the immune suppressive effects of the covid jabs, the adverse effects of the new "high potency" (aka, more inflammatory and thus more toxic) flu shots for older folks, adverse effects on immune system from the cumulative effects of the various adult jabs now recommended.
Also, my functional med dr explained that with the genetic and immune modification of the human hosts courtesy of the covid shots, the typical bugs are all themselves responding by modifying themselves. Meaning all of us, jabbed or not, are now seeing "new" forms of old bugs and having to mount new immune responses to fight them off. So, more folks getting sick and possibly more sick than previously.
One of the things that bugged me about covid was the ignoring of Koch's postulates by the folks who'd supposedly learned them in medical school. The germ was supposed to be isolated in sick people. Not a piece of the germ, not some bit of genetic material amplified in a lab and deemed responsible for disease. But the germ. Cultured and reproduced.
It never was. Nobody (that I heard of) was running viral cultures to confirm (or disconfirm) that this allegedly new germ was indeed causing all the mayhem they claimed.
Show up at ED with appendicitis. Test positive for covid. Ah, covid causes appendicitis too! What 🐂💩.
It seems to me that the most accurate explanation is germ and terrain are interactive. I don't know why humans need to be so black and white about stuff. (I mean i do have the suspicion that it's fear and stupidity).
It's the same with environment vs. genetics. It drives me nuts when people say autism is genetic, like that's the end of an argument. It's always interactive. If say 70 percent of identical twins both have autism to the same amount then what about the 30 percent that don't? If obesity is genetic and say 70 percent of people are obese now, when it used to be 20 percent, how'd that happen? Even in cases of mutation where a person with the mutated gene is 100 percent likely to express the disease, was the mutation random or did something environmental cause it in the embryo? And further even the symptomatic severity of a disease of mutation like downs syndrome can be altered by environment.
Everything genetic is within the current environmental milieu. If 95 percent of people are exposed to an environment like electricity or vaccines or seed oils the heterogeneity of disease expression that could be caused by the environmental component is going to disappear and only the genetic heterogeneity will be apparent.
Anyway, I feel germ-terrain is always interactive and not black and white in the same way. If you have a terrain weakness, you may not sicken until the right exposure comes along to take advantage. For example if you have a microbiome imbalance and you then have sex that introduces some e coli into your urethra it may get out of hand. A little held in check you might not notice. A lot you start to get discomfort.
Then often once germs get a foothold they have a mind of their own that tends to perpetuate their own survival. They can change the pH to make the organism stressed to perpetuate the terrain the prefer.
That's why it can work sometimes to just kill them outright, in the same manner they could be killed in a petri dish. You give your immune system that foothold to rebalance the terrain. But it won't work if the terrain is further disrupted from the "cure" and doesn't recover itself. It's often imperative to ask why this happened so it doesn't come back. What was my suspectibility? Open wound? Was i emotionally stressed? Is my microbiome imbalanced, if so why? Am i nutrient deficient, if so why?
Gardening shows clearly that environmentally caused weakness invites disease. The plants that get pests are often not getting enough sun, water, drainage, nutrition, or the right heat/cold. Right now my cilantro has aphids on it and they didn't come about until the cilantro started to be frozen and cells damaged by cold. Now that they are there with an established population, they are there even on warm days. now, no matter how much I were to coddle the cilantro with more nutrients and microbiome sprays, it might not be it as effective as simply removing the aphids. Maybe both are most effective because who is to say I can't improve my plants cellular resilience to freezing temperatures and aphids.
I believe in germs. I believe in contagion. Like one person can get pinkeye from another person through physical transfer but NOT ALWAYS, never always. Because the terrain is extremely important to these germs being able to flourish. I don't see why this is a difficult theory to comprehend. It seems to be the simplest explanation. The forces of the immune system must be a) strong b) compared to the amount. A huge dose of salmonella will be harder to fight off than a small dose even with the strongest system c) previous familiarity helps. Thus new pathogens cause more problems such as in foreign countries.
Life is always a dance of the life force energies of different organisms. The pathogens are not necessarily evil or friendly. If you have a lot of toxins in you, having pathogens feeding on those toxins doesn't mean they are helping you. They are merely taking an opportunity. They could be making you sicker. Like of you have rotting pumpkins in your garage and rats feeding on them and shitting and pissing everywhere you need to get rid of the rats and the rotting pumpkins. And the rats will accelerate the rot of the pumpkins by chewing more holes in them. And the rats will accelerate the rot of the garage by chewing and rotting it. So when it comes to your body, you want neither out of control terrain (rotting pumpkins), out of control (rats) germs. Or you (the garage) will collapse.
I had not previously heard the term “Terrain Theory”. Also until reading this and checking out Wikipedia I didn’t know anyone was seriously pretending it was at all controversial.
There is a nearly endless list of pathogenic “germs” that are ubiquitous in healthy people and only cause disease when the host body is in a certain state.
I’m a dentist — if germ theory were complete and terrain theory complete false then nobody would need to brush and floss. The terrain wouldn’t matter. Just pop some antibiotics if you are already infected with strep mutans and problem solved. Of course nobody would do that, including I’m sure those Wikipedia editors.
Witnessing most or all family members developing similar or the same symptoms of respiratory illness within a short period of time, or most or all patients in the same hospital room or even the same hospital ward, or many elderly at nursing homes dying from respiratory illness, at least intuitively tells you terrain theory is incomplete or even dead wrong. How would you even test terrain theory by the scientific method?
"germ theory is an extreme case of terrain theory."
YESSSS!!!
I've been saying (effectively) this for many years. Are there pathogenic microbes? Of course. But the ones we are most aware of are the ones that cause the most damage... even in the most robust of us. The other 100,000 that roam our bodies remain invisible to us. Reconceptualized as exposures that impact all of us on a scale from "not at all" to "death" forces you to refocus on the health of the host, and not on the pathogenicity of the microbe.
As the mother of a vaxx-injured/PANS son, I am *acutely* aware of the host conditions that lead to even the most mundane microbe wreaking neuroinflammatory hell. Trying to explain this simple concept to people who are entrenched in the germ theory view of the world can be a challenge... but once they get it, they see everything differently.
In related news... I just finished Ethel Hume's "Bechamp or Pasteur? A Lost Chapter in the History of Biology". Even edited for modern writing style, it was a tough read. But yet again, I was reminded that so much of what we believe is historically true is actually more a result of politics and subterfuge. I guess in that respect, nothing has changed...
Very clear explaination. There is also the thorny issue that chronic stress/fear or PTSD makes one more susceptible to "infectious" disease. So "chronic stress theory" would be as much as an explanation as "germ theory"... like you say, the bad germs only get out of hand when the body is in a state to allow this. https://substack.com/profile/32671565-gary-sharpe/note/c-16011532 ps Subscribed!
Timely piece. Focusing on 'germs' is too lucrative. I prefer 'toxin theory' - eliminate the toxic western diet of fast and processed foods, refined sugars, pesticides, pharmaceutical drugs, chemical laden products for home and body, environmental pollutants and see what happens.
Now all produce including organic is going to be coated with APEEL. It can't be washed off. Gates has his hand in it. Where are the protests?
There is no such theory as "Germ Theory. " It is a straw man. Germ is an antiquated term. This piece ignores huge, huge masses of functional science, and belongs in the past.
I stumbled across this in my Substack peregrinations, and have some questions. I'm an ID specialist, generally (but not exclusively) with opinions within the "mainstream" - so I suppose in some quarters I will be perceived as "the enemy" or a "germ theory apologist". But I also try to keep an open mind, and enjoy a good discussion with pretty much anyone. Hopefully someone will engage with me here - I'm genuinely curious. As an aside, the way I form my own opinions is generally by sparring and clashing: so any pushback is not being unwilling to listen, it's poking holes until I'm convinced (or not).
Anyways, I've read this post and the part of the second post above the paywall, and the honest truth is that... this doesn't seem that revolutionary to me. Either this is true but trivial... or maybe the part of the second post behind the paywall lays out some implications that are more "revolutionary".
If I'm understanding this right, it seems like what you're saying is that: "exposure to or carriage of many pathogens is not sufficient in and of itself to cause clinical disease. Instead, weakened hosts get infections, so we need to explain why *this* host became ill while everyone else did not". But that seems... uncontroversial. It's well known that infectious diseases are often diseases of poverty, and this is the case because (amongst other things) poorer people are often undernourished/weaked/vulnerable in some way. For instance, malnourished children develop clinical Tuberculosis disease more than healthy ones, even if both harbour latent TB bacilli. This is presumably because their immune system is depleted due to malnutrition. Or, to take another example, asymptomatic carriage of C.difficile is well documented (especially in infants), and is *not* an indication for treatment. Or people with chronic leg wounds or weakened skin barriers will be more likely to get cellulitis. Examples abound, but I think you get my point: host and (potential) pathogen interact in clinical disease. It takes two to tango.
When it comes to treatment, again, I'm not sure what big change in perspective is being called for here. When a normally non-pathogenic organism is detected, we shouldn't treat in the absence of symptoms (such as in asymptomatic bacteruria). But when the normally non-pathogenic bacteria gets access to an environmental niche where it can replicate unopposed (see examples above), then it replicates and either causes tissue damage on its own, or via uncontrolled inflammatory response from the body (ie sepsis). This is when we treat using antibiotics. So, in this example, what you're calling "terrain theory" is true - ie the clinical infection occurs because of some kind of host dysregulation - but once the organism begins to replicate out of control, you then have an infection requiring treatment with antibiotics. Optimizing host status would surely help with prevention, though. What is controversial or novel here?
The only thing I'll point out is that *not all* micro-organisms are non-pathogenic at baseline (to humans at least). Some organisms are NOT native to the human host, and when they come into contact with the human host (in a sufficient infectious dose to overcome immune defences), they do cause clinical disease. Examples: Syphilis, HIV, Gonorrhea, Tuberculosis. Does "terrain theory" have some kind of argument with this?
Maybe the controversy comes from the implications of this for vaccines? Or the microbiome? By "germ theory" do you mean "the status of the host has no effect on disease development, and exposure to a pathogen is both necessary *and sufficient* to develop an infectious disease"? If so, you're not describing a paradigm that I recognize as "germ theory". But maybe I'm misunderstanding? Someone clarify this for me - please give me something to disagree with!
I think you are spot on with most of your interpretation here.
There is little that I am saying which is "revolutionary" especially since Terrain and its predecessor Miasma theory are centuries if not millenia old.
WTS, what I (And I'm sure you) have observed is that most people/doctors do not approach disease from this perspective, nor do they harbor these thoughts about germs or antibiotics.
That is, in most peoples minds, germs harbor the majority of the fault and almost the entirety of the treatment plans.
For instance, if you have a symptomatic UTI...antibiotics are still not necessary, depending on the patient. If you are some frail diabetic that has no metabolic reserve capacity to deal with it, and will be overwhelmed, then fine...a well-chosen antibiotic to target the local biogram is reasonable.
But, if you are otherwise healthy or in good metabolic shape...I don't see a reason to put antibiotics into the patient. The body will take care of it, so long as you take care of the body.
Moreover, if you want to truly take a root-cause approach to illness...stopping at "germs + antibiotics" does not actually get to the root cause.
The terrain framework invites people to consider "why did this person get an overgrowth of bacteria or fungi?" - which is a question that leads people to consider the true root cause. In this sense, antibiotics can be considered a 'band-aid' or a symptom-targeting measure, instead of addressing the underlying cause. Especially since, as you said, if you have an asymptomatic UTI, we shouldn't give antibiotics. And thus, this categorically makes antibiotics symptom addressing, rather than root-cause addressing.
Anyway, it's a bit of a nuanced topic, and I've been wrestling with this framework for a few years now to see what else I can glean. Well worth the effort, imo.
Hm.
We seem to see things differently, at least with regards to how "mainstream medicine" approaches this. I'm not sure that much of what I said above would meet with much objection from... well, anyone I have worked with or currently work with. I still don't see how this is a refutation of "germ theory", since I've never understood that term to mean that microbes, in a vacuum, are responsible for human disease. Of course the health and susceptibility of the host is important! This seems to me to be standard, middle-of-the-road, "mainstream medicine". Heck, Mandell's, the "Bible" of ID has a few chapters right at the beginning about different types of microbes (commensals, primary pathogens, opportunistic pathogens, etc), how they cause disease vs colonization, as well as the microbiome and the emerging science surrounding it. Given that ID doctors spend just as much of our time stopping inappropriate antibiotics, or narrowing spectrum when we can, I don't think the field of ID approaches infection management in a cavalier "antibiotics first, ask questions later" way. Of course, much of what we do is in an acute setting, where patients are already too sick for preventative considerations.
I suspect where we start to diverge, from looking through some of the rest of your content, are the answers to the question "why did this person get an overgrowth of bacteria or fungi?", and therefore, what we do about it. We may even diverge pretty radically. But that doesn't mean "germ theory" is false and it seems unnecessarily provocative to say so. Why not just say "the health of the host affects his or her susceptibility to infections?".
I make the argument that germ theory is a special case of terrain theory.
Wrt how disease is understood and managed, IMO, it is the false framework to use.
E.g. it is more accurate to say the health of the host impacts the differential proliferation of some microbiota over others
Infection, as the word implies, means something has invaded a space it has no business being in. However, in most cases of infection'" normal flora are proliferating beyond a homeostatic proportion as a result of changes in the terrain.
Thus, the fault is not with the bug, its proliferation is merely a symptom. The problem was not the "infection"
Just like high LDL isn't the cause of athero, it is high inflammatory stress and upregulated remodelling. This is why it is foolish to think you can prevent cardiovascular disease by simply targeting serum lipid levels.
"The bronchial tree for instance contains a mean of 2000 bacterial genomes per cm2 surface. The harmful or potentially harmful bacteria are also detected routinely in respiratory specimens. The most significant are Moraxella catarrhalis, Haemophilus influenzae, and Streptococcus pneumoniae. They are known to cause respiratory disorders under particular conditions namely if the human immune system is impaired."
Yep.
And yet the wizards decided to vaccinate kids against two of these common bacteria. Lo and behold, unbeknownst to practically all pediatricians, kids still carry H flu in their noses. And they just carry non-vaccine strains of Strep pneumonia. And I just read that since development of the infant vaccine for Strep pneumonia, the incidence of pneumonia from Strep pneumonia in adults has increased. Kinda the way adults began getting more shingles once kids stopped getting natural chickenpox.
Never ever did I hear anyone ever ask or discuss why normal flora suddenly cause disease in otherwise healthy kids.
Can you link to info you read about step vax and adult pneumonia? I’ve been very curious about why I’ve seen an enormous explosion of pneumonia around me this year… thinking this might have a clue. Thank you!
The childhood strep vax has been out for more than two decades.
As for the explosion this year, I am hypothesizing: the immune suppressive effects of the covid jabs, the adverse effects of the new "high potency" (aka, more inflammatory and thus more toxic) flu shots for older folks, adverse effects on immune system from the cumulative effects of the various adult jabs now recommended.
Also, my functional med dr explained that with the genetic and immune modification of the human hosts courtesy of the covid shots, the typical bugs are all themselves responding by modifying themselves. Meaning all of us, jabbed or not, are now seeing "new" forms of old bugs and having to mount new immune responses to fight them off. So, more folks getting sick and possibly more sick than previously.
One of the things that bugged me about covid was the ignoring of Koch's postulates by the folks who'd supposedly learned them in medical school. The germ was supposed to be isolated in sick people. Not a piece of the germ, not some bit of genetic material amplified in a lab and deemed responsible for disease. But the germ. Cultured and reproduced.
It never was. Nobody (that I heard of) was running viral cultures to confirm (or disconfirm) that this allegedly new germ was indeed causing all the mayhem they claimed.
Show up at ED with appendicitis. Test positive for covid. Ah, covid causes appendicitis too! What 🐂💩.
It seems to me that the most accurate explanation is germ and terrain are interactive. I don't know why humans need to be so black and white about stuff. (I mean i do have the suspicion that it's fear and stupidity).
It's the same with environment vs. genetics. It drives me nuts when people say autism is genetic, like that's the end of an argument. It's always interactive. If say 70 percent of identical twins both have autism to the same amount then what about the 30 percent that don't? If obesity is genetic and say 70 percent of people are obese now, when it used to be 20 percent, how'd that happen? Even in cases of mutation where a person with the mutated gene is 100 percent likely to express the disease, was the mutation random or did something environmental cause it in the embryo? And further even the symptomatic severity of a disease of mutation like downs syndrome can be altered by environment.
Everything genetic is within the current environmental milieu. If 95 percent of people are exposed to an environment like electricity or vaccines or seed oils the heterogeneity of disease expression that could be caused by the environmental component is going to disappear and only the genetic heterogeneity will be apparent.
Anyway, I feel germ-terrain is always interactive and not black and white in the same way. If you have a terrain weakness, you may not sicken until the right exposure comes along to take advantage. For example if you have a microbiome imbalance and you then have sex that introduces some e coli into your urethra it may get out of hand. A little held in check you might not notice. A lot you start to get discomfort.
Then often once germs get a foothold they have a mind of their own that tends to perpetuate their own survival. They can change the pH to make the organism stressed to perpetuate the terrain the prefer.
That's why it can work sometimes to just kill them outright, in the same manner they could be killed in a petri dish. You give your immune system that foothold to rebalance the terrain. But it won't work if the terrain is further disrupted from the "cure" and doesn't recover itself. It's often imperative to ask why this happened so it doesn't come back. What was my suspectibility? Open wound? Was i emotionally stressed? Is my microbiome imbalanced, if so why? Am i nutrient deficient, if so why?
Gardening shows clearly that environmentally caused weakness invites disease. The plants that get pests are often not getting enough sun, water, drainage, nutrition, or the right heat/cold. Right now my cilantro has aphids on it and they didn't come about until the cilantro started to be frozen and cells damaged by cold. Now that they are there with an established population, they are there even on warm days. now, no matter how much I were to coddle the cilantro with more nutrients and microbiome sprays, it might not be it as effective as simply removing the aphids. Maybe both are most effective because who is to say I can't improve my plants cellular resilience to freezing temperatures and aphids.
I believe in germs. I believe in contagion. Like one person can get pinkeye from another person through physical transfer but NOT ALWAYS, never always. Because the terrain is extremely important to these germs being able to flourish. I don't see why this is a difficult theory to comprehend. It seems to be the simplest explanation. The forces of the immune system must be a) strong b) compared to the amount. A huge dose of salmonella will be harder to fight off than a small dose even with the strongest system c) previous familiarity helps. Thus new pathogens cause more problems such as in foreign countries.
Life is always a dance of the life force energies of different organisms. The pathogens are not necessarily evil or friendly. If you have a lot of toxins in you, having pathogens feeding on those toxins doesn't mean they are helping you. They are merely taking an opportunity. They could be making you sicker. Like of you have rotting pumpkins in your garage and rats feeding on them and shitting and pissing everywhere you need to get rid of the rats and the rotting pumpkins. And the rats will accelerate the rot of the pumpkins by chewing more holes in them. And the rats will accelerate the rot of the garage by chewing and rotting it. So when it comes to your body, you want neither out of control terrain (rotting pumpkins), out of control (rats) germs. Or you (the garage) will collapse.
So, MAC (lung disease) is the result of a compromised terrain? The host didn't have the ability to kill off the bacteria.
I had not previously heard the term “Terrain Theory”. Also until reading this and checking out Wikipedia I didn’t know anyone was seriously pretending it was at all controversial.
There is a nearly endless list of pathogenic “germs” that are ubiquitous in healthy people and only cause disease when the host body is in a certain state.
I’m a dentist — if germ theory were complete and terrain theory complete false then nobody would need to brush and floss. The terrain wouldn’t matter. Just pop some antibiotics if you are already infected with strep mutans and problem solved. Of course nobody would do that, including I’m sure those Wikipedia editors.
Witnessing most or all family members developing similar or the same symptoms of respiratory illness within a short period of time, or most or all patients in the same hospital room or even the same hospital ward, or many elderly at nursing homes dying from respiratory illness, at least intuitively tells you terrain theory is incomplete or even dead wrong. How would you even test terrain theory by the scientific method?
Excellent Summary!
Terrain Theory sometimes attracts people running around going "viruses do not exist"..
When I suggest they can easily prove this and volunteer to be injected by any of the Ebola Viruses they vanish...
I must also recommend the excellent book(2 books in 1)
Bechamp or Pasteur? -A lost History of Biology by Ethel Douglas Hume
Prefaced by
Pasteur, Plagarist, Imposter-The Germ Theory Exploded.
"germ theory is an extreme case of terrain theory."
YESSSS!!!
I've been saying (effectively) this for many years. Are there pathogenic microbes? Of course. But the ones we are most aware of are the ones that cause the most damage... even in the most robust of us. The other 100,000 that roam our bodies remain invisible to us. Reconceptualized as exposures that impact all of us on a scale from "not at all" to "death" forces you to refocus on the health of the host, and not on the pathogenicity of the microbe.
As the mother of a vaxx-injured/PANS son, I am *acutely* aware of the host conditions that lead to even the most mundane microbe wreaking neuroinflammatory hell. Trying to explain this simple concept to people who are entrenched in the germ theory view of the world can be a challenge... but once they get it, they see everything differently.
In related news... I just finished Ethel Hume's "Bechamp or Pasteur? A Lost Chapter in the History of Biology". Even edited for modern writing style, it was a tough read. But yet again, I was reminded that so much of what we believe is historically true is actually more a result of politics and subterfuge. I guess in that respect, nothing has changed...
Very clear explaination. There is also the thorny issue that chronic stress/fear or PTSD makes one more susceptible to "infectious" disease. So "chronic stress theory" would be as much as an explanation as "germ theory"... like you say, the bad germs only get out of hand when the body is in a state to allow this. https://substack.com/profile/32671565-gary-sharpe/note/c-16011532 ps Subscribed!
chronic stress is certainly an element of the environment.
In the upcoming piece, I'll be focusing on terrain theory/miasma theory.
Subsequently, I will reconcile germ and terrain theory.
stay tuned!
Timely piece. Focusing on 'germs' is too lucrative. I prefer 'toxin theory' - eliminate the toxic western diet of fast and processed foods, refined sugars, pesticides, pharmaceutical drugs, chemical laden products for home and body, environmental pollutants and see what happens.
Now all produce including organic is going to be coated with APEEL. It can't be washed off. Gates has his hand in it. Where are the protests?
There is no such theory as "Germ Theory. " It is a straw man. Germ is an antiquated term. This piece ignores huge, huge masses of functional science, and belongs in the past.
Yea, that's why it is called part 1. It takes time to unpack the mess that modern medicine has gotten itself into.
This is the best explanation of terrain theory I have read.
You are too kind.