This talk opened my eyes to a completely different way of looking at my body, my health, and the world around me. 

I learned that we live in harmony with our microbiome, even though until then we had been taught to “fight bacteria.”

I learned about the gut-brain axis, that the gut microbiome “speaks” to the brain via the vagus nerve in a bidirectional manner. This explained why giving a presentation, where my brain told me to be nervous, caused me to have butterflies in my stomach. 

It wasn’t until I found out that I have Stage IV Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) that I truly appreciated what the microbiome could do for my health. I had to take an antibiotic for a minor infection and when I saw my nephrologist several months later, he asked what I had done because I had moved from Stage IV to Stage V kidney disease. It was then that I realized that taking the antibiotic and killing all of my microbes, not just the ones that had caused my infection, was affecting the harmony between my body and my microbiome.

I have to take an aside here and tell you a little bit about myself. I have always liked to know the “right” answer. I thought that I had found the right answer to improve my CKD, just make my microbiome happy. There are many ways to do this: food, movement, sleep, and stress reduction. I did everything in all areas. What I found was that there is no “right” answer. I had to listen to my body daily.

I hope that you will share the experiences you have with your microbiome so that we can learn together some great answers because, for better or worse, there are not right answers.