It is a striking idea that one of the keys to good health may turn out to involve managing our internal fermentation. Having recently learned to manage several external fermentations \u201d\u201d of bread and kimchi and beer \u201d\u201d I know a little about the vagaries of that process. You depend on the microbes, and you do your best to align their interests with yours, mainly by feeding them the kinds of things they like to eat \u201d\u201d good \u201csubstrate.\u201d\u009d But absolute control of the process is too much to hope for. It\u2019s a lot more like gardening than governing.<\/p>\n
The successful gardener has always known you don\u2019t need to master the science of the soil, which is yet another hotbed of microbial fermentation, in order to nourish and nurture it. You just need to know what it likes to eat \u201d\u201d basically, organic matter \u201d\u201d and how, in a general way, to align your interests with the interests of the microbes and the plants. The gardener also discovers that, when pathogens or pests appear, chemical interventions \u201cwork,\u201d\u009d that is, solve the immediate problem, but at a cost to the long-term health of the soil and the whole garden. The drive for absolute control leads to unanticipated forms of disorder.<\/p>\n
This, it seems to me, is pretty much where we stand today with respect to our microbiomes \u201d\u201d our teeming, quasi-wilderness. We don\u2019t know a lot, but we probably know enough to begin taking better care of it. We have a pretty good idea of what it likes to eat, and what strong chemicals do to it. We know all we need to know, in other words, to begin, with modesty, to tend the unruly garden within.<\/p>\n