AdAgrA Conference 2025: Growing Better

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Ag and Your Health

Lee Wellard

Best Herbal Remedies for Common Ailments Part 1

Best Herbal Remedies for Common Ailments Part 2

Diana Fleming

Plants and Gut Microbiome – What’s the Connection? Part 1

Plants and Gut Microbiome – What’s the Connection? Part 2

Allen Lloyd

Soil and the Mind – Is There a Connection? Part 1

Soil and the Mind – Is There a Connection? Part 2

Okay, so plants in the gut microbiome, what's the connection, part 1.

So I have 3 objectives to both presentations.

Number 1 is to discuss the basics of gut microbiome science in the context of the word of God.

This is the 35, 000 foot view because as you get closer to the subject, it's complicated because our God is brilliant and the human body is a complicated, brilliant creation.

So this is the basics, but I will leave you with practical things that you can do.

So in Acts of Apostles, page 284, we're told, as in the natural world, so in the spiritual world.

So as I'm sharing this information, I would like you to think about what spiritual applications there are to what's going on in the gut microbiome.

And then at the end, I will share 1 of them.

I have several in my head, but I will share 1 of them.

And then we can take time for you to share from the audience spiritual connections to what is going on in this wonderful subject.

And then in Fundamentals to Christian Education, page 375, the same principles run through the spiritual and the natural world.

The same principles run through both worlds.

So think about what principles we can draw from this, take from this.

So the second objective is that I hope as we delve into this, it will increase your love for our wonderful creator God.

And as I have learned about this subject, I keep learning about it, it just increases my love for the Lord.

And then I hope this will inspire you with the importance of the work that you are doing, growing organic plant foods.

For those of you who are actually doing that, I'm not.

It is such an important work for yourself, for your families, for your loved ones, for the community, for the Lord.

And the purpose, before the purpose, microbes are just microorganisms, same word.

And these are tiny living organisms that are invisible to the naked eye that can only be observed with a microscope.

Bacteria are the most abundant microbes on the planet.

That's about 5 million trillion trillion.

I mean, that's just a number that's incomprehensible.

The purpose of these is to serve as the foundation for all the complex ecosystems that sustain life on our planet.

Did you know that you are also covered in microbes?

From the top of your head to the soles of your feet.

And they're even across the front of your eyeballs.

And I am very grateful to God that I can't see these things.

So they estimate there's about a trillion of them outside of you on your skin.

A trillion is 12 zeros, just to remind you of that.

And so they're more than just in the gastrointestinal tract, that's the digestive tract, but that's the main location.

So there are trillions of microbes in our GI tract, And the vast majority of them are bacteria, and that's about 90%.

There are also yeast, archaea, parasites, fungi, protozoa, and viruses.

Now viruses are not really alive, but they're usually, you know, included in all of these microbes.

So we have them in our nose, we have them in our mouth, we have them in our throat, and they estimate there's billions, right?

20 to 50 billion, I mean, who knows but the Lord, right?

And then, when they get to the stomach, we have hydrochloric acid, and that acid kills a lot of microbes.

And God knows all about this since he designed the body.

And so it's a good idea to keep those microbe populations down so by the time the contents of the stomach leave, there's not very many there.

There are some microbes that live in the acidity of the stomach, but there's not the billions that were there that are in our mouth.

And then when we get to the small intestine, the beginning of the small intestine, we have bile, we have digestive enzymes.

These are also acidic, So they help keep the population down, but then the further we get through the small intestine, the more the microbes are in number because the acidity goes up, the lack of acidity rather, increases.

And so God knew this, so it's really amazing to me that he placed these structures, this is a electron microscope view, these structures in the end of the small intestine, the small intestine's like 20 feet long, these are lymphoid structures.

Lymphoid structures are part of the immune system, they're called Peyer's patches, and they're all inside, all amongst the villi.

Those little finger projections are the villi that cover our whole small intestine that increase the absorption surface.

But these structures are there to monitor the contents of the small intestine for pathogens.

Those are the bad microbes and initiate immune response when a threat is detected.

So God has placed it in here so that we can help keep the bad guys down, right?

And then when we finish eating, there's peristaltic waves that push the rest of the contents into the colon.

And this is where all the microbes belong in our colon or large intestine.

So it is estimated there's about 38 trillion microbes in our colon.

But it has been said that our large intestine is the most densely populated collection of microbes on the planet.

So this is our sewage disposal plant, right?

Like this is where we are making our feces.

This is where we're putting together our waste that's going to be eliminated from the body.

So our feces are 75% water, but of the solid mass, 60% is living and dead bacteria.

So until recently, not a lot of attention was given to these invisible microbes.

People have known about this since the 1600s, but medical science and research was not focused on understanding these microbes.

And the first reason is, how could human waste have anything to do with human health?

I mean, you know, we're talking about poop, right?

We're talking about, you know, gross waste that we're getting rid of.

What in the world does that have to do with human health?

And the second reason is, scientists lack the technology to actually study the microbes.

You could put them in a Petri dish, or you know, you culture them in a Petri dish and you'd know if they were there or not, But there was not the technology to study that 1 cell, that living cell.

And I'm going to use the word bacteria, since most of them are bacteria.

And so, you know, how could you really know what these guys are doing?

The Lord allowed man to discover the technology to study the RNA, the DNA, to study what is going on inside these bacteria, what are they making.

And once that came on the scene, there was an explosion of research on the gut microbiome.

That means it's rapidly developing, it's rapidly evolving, people don't have all the answers yet, they're trying to understand what do these bacteria do, what does what they make do in the body, is it cause, Is it effect?

So there's every branch of medicine is involved in microbiome research in terms of how do these little critters affect this area of medicine.

And there's a relationship between that microbiome and every part of the body.

So the research publications have increased exponentially over the last 2 decades.

It's called the hot spot of medical research, And there's more than 25, 000 research articles published in the last 5 years.

Like no 1 person could keep up with all this.

So there's definitions of 4 important terms that I want to quickly go through before I proceed to tell you what's going on here, the gut, the word gut can refer to the entire digestive tract, but in this area of research, it refers to the large intestine.

So when we say gut microbiome, we're talking about the colon, we're talking about the large intestine.

Gut bacteria, Though there are different types of microbes that live in the gut, since 90% of them are bacteria, the term gut bacteria refers to all of them collectively, even though there are others.

And each 1 of those other microbes have a story too.

But we're gonna just take the big picture.

Microbiota is just another term for microbes.

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Series

Ag and Your Health

Plants and Gut Microbiome – What’s the Connection? Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Beat Diabetes, Prediabetes, & Overweight

Beat Diabetes, Prediabetes, & Overweight - Part 3

1h 15m

Irrefutable Evidence for the Superiority of the Plant-based Diet

50m

Misc

Strange Slips: The Parable of the Plant

58m

Principles of Health for Students

43m

The Cross Connection and the Laws of Health

34m

Of Bowels, Bacterium, & Brains…

48m

Food for Thought

46m

Track 3 Seminars

Living Free: Building a Better Brain, Body, and Habits—for Good!, Part 3

1h 13m

Slave Food: Countering Culture Through Holistic Healing

36m

Ag and Your Health

Plants and Gut Microbiome – What’s the Connection? Part 2

42m

The Health Message

The Health Message: The Air We Breathe

1h 3m

Sound Doctrine