A Chilling Pronouncement
“This is the worst I have ever felt in my life.”
- If a healthy 25 year old says these words, I am sympathetic.
- If a middle-aged patient makes this statement, it is concerning.
- But when Valerie, a 74 year old veteran of chronic illness, utters this, it sends a shiver through me.
Over my years of practice I have learned that this pronouncement can herald an elderly patient’s final decline. On one occasion, these were the last words a human being spoke to me.
So I take Valerie’s assertion very seriously. Even though her diarrhea slackened after the latest antibiotic treatment, still her head hangs weakly as she sits in a wheelchair. Her eyes are sunken and dull. Her legs are swollen from malnutrition. It seems clear that we are only delaying the inevitable recurrence of the C diff infection. We are losing the battle.
If you cannot cure an infection with antibiotics, how can you? And how can these wonder drugs, which have saved so many, actually trigger the ailment that has dogged Valerie for months and is now hounding her to death. Is there a different remedy?
The answer to these questions lies in the microbiome. Whether you have heard of it or not, up until COVID-19 it was probably the hottest topic in medicine.
Embracing Your Inner You
We like to think of ourselves as higher organisms. But living alongside us – in fact, within us – is a veritable universe of tiny lives, referred to collectively as the “microbiome.” Trillions of bacteria inhabit our noses, mouths, and especially our intestinal tracts. These hordes of microbes comprise an internal ecosystem, and for sheer number, they exceed our own cells.
It is only due to the much smaller size of bacterial cells (compared to human cells) that we don’t resemble walking Petri dishes. Even so, the total weight of these fellow travelers in your body may amount to several pounds.
Your first impulse upon learning this may be to bathe in alcohol gel, gulp down a boatload of antibiotics, and administer several colonic cleanses.
Resist the temptation. Embrace your inner world!
Of Microbes and Men
To be healthy, you need the vast colonies of stowaways that comprise your microbiome. Though tiny, they play an outsized role in your health. Complex interactions between your body and your microbiome affect many aspects of health, including:
- Immune function
- Cancer risk
- Digestion (e.g. irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s)
- Weight gain
Almost every day a new medical problem or health benefit is linked to the microbiome.
It turns out not all bacteria are bad. Though some may be bitter enemies of humankind, others are necessary for our health. Beneficial bacteria keep the microscopic troublemakers in check. A balanced microbiome promotes good health. The opposite is true, as well. That is Valerie’s problem.
Nature Abhors a Vacuum
When broad-spectrum antibiotics are administered to target specific germs (for example, strep throat), this can unintentionally wipe out whole populations of good bacteria, as well. But in a depleted microbiome, some resistant bacteria live on. In fact, they thrive like cockroaches after a proverbial nuclear holocaust.
Nature abhors a vacuum, but C diff absolutely loves one. Although the infection can often be cured with antibiotics directed specifically at the bug, at other times, when the makeup of the microbiome has been too disrupted, the pathogen proliferates, stubbornly occupying the empty niche left behind by helpful microbes, all the while releasing toxins that poison the colon.
Repeated courses of antibiotics may drive it underground briefly, but ultimately it grows stronger, while the patient gets weaker and weaker.
The Mind and the Microscope
I have noticed that I have a spiritual problem not unlike this. Sinful thoughts, attitudes, and actions seem to recur in my life. I try to suppress them. Sometimes by God’s grace there is a great victory over sin. Until…a relapse. A negative thought, bad attitude, or unkind remark stubbornly reemerges.
Through God’s power I truly forgave someone I felt had wronged me. It was wonderfully freeing! Then, when the affront occurred again, I found myself resentfully dredging up a whole list of wrongs. Things I had released were somehow still lurking inside my heart, like a festering plague, ready to fill with bitterness any opening I allowed.
Apparently I am not alone in this struggle. Listen to the Apostle Paul in Romans 7:21-23.
[W]hen I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Jesus describes a spiritual dynamic which is like a C diff infection of the soul.
Matthew 12:43-45
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.
Apparently, like C diff, which loves a vacant microbiome, demons love an empty soul. Sin is obstinate. It fills barren spaces in our minds and thrives in voids of the heart.
How can we fill them with the truth, light, and holiness of God?
Resistant Disease, Radical Treatment
Surely I can learn a lesson on fighting sin from poor Valerie. But in her case I want to learn through success, not failure. I need to cure her. Her C diff infection laughed at the repeated antibiotic salvos. It sneered at my attempts to replenish her bacterial flora with yogurt, kefir, and probiotic supplements. I cannot kill it. But it is killing her. She is slowly slipping away.
It is time to try something more radical, a treatment that may seem more medieval than medical. You may find it a bit shocking.