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How Soil Microbes and Intercellular Communication Affects Human Health
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By Dr. Mercola
4-9-2017
Your health is in large part determined by the health of the soil in which your food is grown. In this
interview, Dr. Zach Bush delves into the many reasons why this is so. Bush, who is triple boardcertified in internal medicine, endocrinology and metabolism, and hospice and palliative care has
done some fascinating and innovative research in this area and is one of the brightest physicians I
have ever met. He began his career as a conventional cancer researcher funded by the National
Institutes of Health (NIH). When his funding dried up following the 2008-2010 recession, Bush
transitioned into nutrition, eventually coming to understand how chronic inflammation and loss of
intercellular communication is at the core of all disease, and why so many of our foods have lost their
medicinal value. His science team's work has contributed to the new science of micro-RNA, the result
of all that "junk" DNA in your body (accounting for more than 90 percent of the DNA sequences in
your genome).
As it turns out, this "junk" DNA and the resulting micro-RNA play an absolutely crucial role in
regulating the 25,000 genes that actually make the proteins that build your body. The micro-RNA
function as "on/off" switches for the genes. Depending on the micro-RNA input, a single gene can
code for any of more than 200 protein products. What's more, 30 percent of the micro-RNA switches
that regulate genes' production of proteins do not have a human source — they're from the bacteria
and fungi obtained from your food and environment. Truly, this interview is one you will not want to
miss! So, sit back, have a listen and prepare to be blown away.
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During his endocrinology and metabolism fellowship, Bush was managing diabetes, autoimmune
disorders, metabolic disorders and infertility in his clinic; in his research role at the University of
Virginia, he focused on cellular biology research, looking at novel mechanisms by which cancer cells
can kill themselves. It's a commonly held view that cancer involves a battle between your immune
system and the cancer cells; however, Bush's research demonstrated the critical role of cancer-cell
suicide in the body's management of cancer. The redox (reduction and oxidation) communication
molecules are the foundation of this important response system.
As long as there's sufficient cell-to-cell communication, the cancer cells should recognize that
they're damaged beyond the point of repair and commit suicide, a process called apoptosis, or
programmed cell death. So why does that process fail in so many people? And beyond cancer, why
are so many people struggling with so many chronic illnesses? "We were seeing this explosion of
type 2 diabetes, obesity, metabolic collapse, cardiovascular disease and, of course, cancer … It
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The Road from Cancer Research to Nutrition
ended up being patients that [changed] my 17 years of intense academic training in cellular biology. I
started thinking … there's got to be a better mechanism by which to [treat] this …
[In] clinic … I was using more and more pharmaceutical drugs to tackle [diabetes]. [But] it doesn't take
long to realize there are huge downsides to the pharmaceutical approach. There are huge limitations
to efficacy. There's enormous toxicity … Patients were looking great on paper — blood sugars
would come down — but they were getting worse clinically. More edema, more weight gain, more
fatigue, more depression. Every ounce of insulin I put them on was more disease. It was this Catch22 situation. It was my patients that started to help me out of that box that was … starting to get me
very depressed. It was really these root-cause questions my patients were asking that I felt incredibly
unequipped to answer … Ultimately, they had an intuitive knowledge that … food must have
something to do with it. I kept sending them to the diabetes educators who would teach them a lowcarb diet. It turns out that type 2 diabetes is not caused by carbohydrates."
Disease Is Loss of Cell-to-Cell Communication
Bush realized something was terribly wrong with the dietary recommendations his patients were
receiving when they kept getting worse despite being fully compliant with the diet. One of the first tipoffs that something was wrong with the patient education system was when he realized that hotdogs
were listed as an acceptable staple diabetic food in the nutrition material they were receiving from the
dieticians at the university. "I had these patients that were eating, [for] breakfast, lunch and dinner,
hotdogs with no buns," he says. "They thought they were now on a healthy diet because they were
eating no carbs. This was the first red flag … That hotdogs are even on anybody's list of nutritious
foods is somewhat dumbfounding.
That it could somehow be interpreted as the only food they should be eating was truly amazing.
Those were some of the foundational cracks. But I felt profoundly unprepared to start to enter into
that diet or nutrition conversation because I had no training in it …
Our [medical] education is so slanted away from lifestyle and … toward pharmaceutical management
of chronic disease. Then, really, the blinders came off."
In a nutshell, Bush discovered that the process occurring in necrotic tissue, such as that of a
diabetic ulcer, behaved almost identically to cancer cells viewed under a microscope. "I said, 'My
gosh. There's no such thing as diabetic ulcers. There's no such thing as cancer. There's no such
thing as disease. There's only a loss of cell-cell communication,'" he says. "There's only a loss and
isolation … that leads to this broken state … That was a huge transformational moment."
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The Chemoprotective Intelligence in Soil
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The truth Bush discovered can be likened to the analogy of light and dark — you cannot have both
in the same place. If you shine a light in the darkness, darkness disappears. Health is like the light,
and if you have health, you're just not going to be sick.
Bush left academia in 2010 to enter the world of nutrition. He opened a plant-based nutrition clinic
to reach out to one of the poorest counties in Virginia, figuring if he could make a difference here, the
same principles could be applied anywhere. "I was just pounding my patients with the best nutrients I
could find in the garden and helping them learn how to grow food. Frustratingly, there was a good 40,
50 percent of them that weren't responding in the right direction.
There was this amazing miracle happening to the 40 percent of them where conditions of decades
were just melting away under the force of nutrition. But then there was this huge percentage that no
matter how much nutrition we tried to bring to the plate, they were getting worse, not better."
He began questioning the science on nutrients' impact on mitochondrial metabolism. Then, a
colleague named William Vitalis brought in a 90-page white paper on soil science, which led to
another breakthrough in thinking. "Around page 40, there's this big picture of a molecule sitting there
that stopped me in my tracks … The blinders came down for a moment and I said, 'That looks a lot
like the chemotherapy I used to be making. What is that doing in soil?' That was the moment we
started turning our attention to the possibility that there was intelligence in the soil," Bush says.
One factor contributing to our rising cancer burden is the fact we've been using industrial farming
practices for close to a century — practices that decimate the soil by disturbing and killing the
microbes therein. We've essentially undermined public health from the roots up. If you don't have
healthy soil, you can't grow healthy foods because the necessary micronutrients aren't there. As a
result, even if you think you're eating some of the healthiest foods available, you're going to be
deficient in micronutrients.
As noted by Bush, plant health correlates to and parallels human health. One of the very first
things that happens when a plant is lacking in nutrients is that it will be attacked by pests. The same
phenomenon occurs in your body. Conventional farming addresses this problem with chemical
pesticides. In humans, we address it with antibiotics. However, both lead to resistance, and the more
drug-resistant these microbes get, the worse the disease gets.
How Glyphosate Has Decimated the Medicinal Value of Food
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If you take away tryptophan from the plant chain or the plant kingdom by killing this pathway in
bacteria and plants, the plant cannot make these essential signaling molecules … It wipes out about
four to six of the essential amino acids, which are the building blocks for all proteins in your body …
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In 1976, glyphosate was introduced. This is the active ingredient in a vast majority of weed killers
on the market today, including Roundup®. However, this chemical does not selectively kill weeds.
Any plant sprayed with this chemical will die — which is why Monsanto and other pesticide producers
came up with the idea of creating herbicide-resistant plants through genetic engineering. "It's
worthwhile noting why it kills plants," Bush says. "Glyphosate blocks an enzyme pathway … called
the shikimate pathway. These enzymes are responsible for making some of the most important
compounds in food [including] ringed carbon structures, such as tryptophan, that are the backbone of
hormones.
There are only 26 amino acids. You take away four to six of those [and] you just lost a huge
percentage of biology.
But that's just the beginning of the problem that we're talking about in nutrition. This is, I really
believe, the answer to why we were feeding all these healthy foods to our patients [yet] not seeing
health benefits: There's a family of compounds called alkaloids … [When you] remove the alkaloids
from food, what you see is the disease burst we have going on across so many organ systems in our
bodies.
There's a family of [alkaloids] that are anti-parasitic … [others] are antidiabetic … anticancer …
antihypertensive … anti-mood disorder … antiasthma, anti-eczema type of compounds. You go
through the list of alkaloids and [realize that if you add a] chemical to our food chain that wipes out
the production of [alkaloids] …
We [lose] the medicinal quality of food that has existed for thousands of years. By using glyphosate we robbed the soil and the plant of the ability to make these essential medicinal compounds."
According to Monsanto, glyphosate cannot affect human health because humans do not have the
shikimate pathway. However, human gut bacteria do, as do soil bacteria and plants. Moreover, the
human body cannot make its own alkaloids and essential amino acids. You must get these
compounds from plant foods that feed off bacteria in the soil.
Glyphosate Is a Major Health Threat
Glyphosate also disrupts intercellular communication, which is at the heart of virtually all disease.
To understand this, you first need to understand that bacteria, fungi and other microbes work in
concert — there are relationships at play where certain ones help keep others in check.
Unfortunately, since the discovery of penicillin we've essentially waged war against bacteria, with
antibiotics often considered cure-alls by doctors and patients alike.
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In fact, that was part of the original glyphosate patent, stating its function to kill soil bacteria. So,
antibiotics are used in medicine, meat production and on plant crops. By using glyphosate on our
crops, neither the soil nor the plants can produce the medicinal alkaloids or any of the essential
amino acids your body requires, and this appears to be a major part of why more than half of
Americans are chronically ill. "Glyphosate … is an organophosphate. [It is] called glyphosate because
its backbone is glycine, which is one of the most essential amino acids that's extremely rich in your
extracellular matrix … Your extracellular matrix, your neurons and many tissues rely on glycine as an
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An estimated 7.7 million pounds of antibiotics are prescribed to Americans every year, equaling
over 800 prescriptions for every 1,000 individuals. Since the 1960s antibiotics have also been added
to animal feed to promote faster weight gain. An estimated 300 milligrams of antibiotics are used for
every kilogram of beef produced, totaling nearly 30 million pounds per year. In addition, farmers also
use 5 billion pounds of glyphosate per year, worldwide, making glyphosate weed killers the most
prevalent antibiotic on the planet.
amino acid building block. Glyphosate is glycine with a phosphate tagged on the end of it, and an
amine, which is a carbon oxygen compound, on the other …
Organophosphate molecules are a toxin that tragically is water soluble. For a biochemist, this is …
Dante's hell opening up … Because if you have a water-soluble toxin … it's now infiltrated every
sector of the water cycle … 75 percent of the rainfall [is] contaminated with glyphosate … As
consumers, we are waking up to reality … We're eating organic food … Yet, if it rained on [that] crop,
you've got glyphosate contamination. [The] whole ecosystem is contaminated with a chemical that is
an antibiotic."
Based on environmental levels, typical glyphosate exposure through diet is thought to be
anywhere from 1 part per million (ppm) up to 40 ppm , depending on the food or water source, with an
average intake per human in the 5-50 mg of glyphosate per day. Testing has revealed that women's
breast milk can contain 760 to 1,600 times the amount of glyphosate allowed in European water
systems, even if the mother is trying to avoid glyphosate contamination. This is a true testament to
how pernicious this chemical has become. When you combine glyphosate-contaminated breast milk
with the sterile C-section birth, which prevents the infant from being properly exposed to its mother's
microbiome, you have a perfect recipe for health disaster.
How Glyphosate Promotes Whole-Body Toxicity
Bush's team discovered bacterial communication molecules in soil in 2012. As they began to study
the effects of this communication network in the human gut environment, they realized glyphosate's
toxicity is closely linked to the lack of bacteria. This discovery brought many pieces of the puzzle
together. As explained by Bush, the toxic effects of glyphosate in the human environment are directly
tied to damage to specific protein structures in the gut and other membranes in the body. "This
protein is called tight junctions. It has multiple constituents, multiple little proteins that make up these
large Velcro-like proteins that hook together and attach one microscopic cell to the next cell. [Starting]
at your sinuses and [going] all the way to the rectum, you have a vast amount of cells that make up a
single cohesive carpet or membrane or shield from the outside world — ideally.
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Zonulin is the critical modulator of this permeability of the gut membrane. If zonulin starts to get
overproduced and you can't check its production, it … leads to damage in the gut epithelium … All the
gates open and everything it was supposed to keep out [in the intestines] is let in [to the
bloodstream]. It turns out that zonulin is triggered very potently by glyphosate. What a sad story.
Monsanto and other companies have been telling us, 'It's safe. You eat it and you'll pee it out at the
same rate.' [But] that's really bad news. Because [to eliminate glyphosate it has] to not cross just the
gut membrane, it has to cross the membrane of the hepatocyte, the liver cells; go from one
bloodstream to the other [and] all the blood vessels are tied together with tight junctions.
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That membrane … is your frontline of defense … It is a single-cell layer thick … The "Velcro" is
loosened appropriately by biology to allow big macromolecules to come in and then it tightens up right
behind. That is managed by a little protein we make in our body called zonulin. Zonulin is produced
appropriately by molecules that need to get through the membrane. It touches the membrane [and]
the gut epithelium makes zonulin. The zonulin opens up the tight junction …
Now you go to the blood-brain barrier — tied together with tight junctions. When that starts to leak,
your brain's exposed. Then you get to the kidney, the critical organ for detox … It starts leaking. You
can no longer build gradients to pull toxin out of the body … [Your] body just became a sponge for
toxins and you live in a toxic world. This is how we have [the] disease rates we do today."
To Reverse Disease Rates, We Must Eliminate Glyphosate
One of the diseases heavily influenced by this gut permeability is autism. If the current trajectory
continues, somewhere between 2030 and 2045 — a mere 13 to 28 years from now — autism is
projected to affect 1 in 3 children. At that point, it will be impossible to maintain human productivity in
any given sector. Society as we know it will collapse. "There is no time for us to wait for legislation,"
Bush says. "If we don't band together and hurry up to get this message out there — that we have to
stop spraying glyphosate right now — we're doomed." On the other end of the age spectrum we have
Alzheimer's disease claiming our seniors at ever-growing rates — and that's if they live long enough
to not die from cancer first.
"In my clinic, I see this almost on a monthly basis now … sarcomas in the bones or chronic bone
marrow cancers. All these things that used to happen in 70, 80 or 90-year-old people are now
happening in 5-year-old children, 3-year-old children. Not to mention the brain tumor epidemic that we
have going on in children," Bush says.
Today, 1 in 2 adults also struggle with mental health problems. In 1900, that ratio was 1 in 100. All
of these disease statistics and more correlate with dramatic changes to our food, specifically the loss
of nutrients and medicinal qualities of our foods. "Now, let's paint this all back to an amazing story of
communication," Bush says. "What we found in 2012 is a bacterial communication molecule. There's
a lot of complex biochemistry, but I want to boil this down to a nutshell. The word "redox" means
reduction and oxidation … [R]eduction is the donation of an electron to an environment. Oxidation is
the tearing away or removal of an electron. The most common oxidation you're used to seeing ... is
rust … It's starting to erode itself …
Osteoarthritis, that's the rusting of a joint. Cardiovascular disease [is] the rusting of the vascular tree
… What we discovered in 2012 was a redox molecule potential in soil made by bacteria. This was
earth-shattering because all my cancer research had been on mitochondria.
Mitochondria look a lot like bacteria, but they're about 1,000 times smaller. They live inside your
cells … Your neurons can have 3,000 mitochondria in a single nerve. The average across the whole
body is about 200 mitochondria per human cell …
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Fast-forward to 2012. What is that molecule in soil? Why is there redox potential in the soil? And
then of course, bacteria don't have mitochondria. Only multicellular organisms … have mitochondria
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When mitochondria digest your food, they make balanced signaling of redox molecules. It's those
redox molecules I was studying [when I said], 'Wow. We can use this communication network to
empower a cancer cell to induce apoptosis' … Mitochondria rule the cancer cell if they make enough
redox molecules. If they can get high enough oxidative stress in there, the cell will kill itself.
because we can't break down nutrients from the food by ourselves. We need the mitochondria to do
that … Bacteria don't have mitochondria; therefore, they don't have all that redox signaling.
How do they balance an ecosystem of 40,000 species if they can't talk? The blow-my-mind
moment of 2012 was, 'They are talking.' The bacteria are in communication. They know what balance
looks like. They know how to change the system. To our shock, amazement and joy — I'm so glad to
tell you this is all going to end on a good note, or at least an opportunity for us as humans to heal —
… our bacterial communication network … [is] the antidote to glyphosate …"
Introducing a New View of Biology Where 'Junk' DNA Hold the Key to Health
For the first time, Bush and his team were studying human biology in the context of a fluid, fluent,
robust bacterial communication system. They had never seen human cells in that environment under
a microscope before, and it changed everything they believed about apoptosis, protein synthesis,
genomics and more. As noted by Bush, "We never took into account the possibility that an ecosystem
of fungi and bacteria could be dictating human cellular behavior in health."
Scientists have already concluded that environment is king when it comes to genetic expression. A
single gene is now recognized to be able to make 200 different proteins depending on its
environment. This was a total paradigm shift and really bad news for those banking on personalized
medicine in the 90s, because this meant the genome is a warehouse of options waiting to respond to
the environment; the human genes themselves are not determining the outcome of the biology.
If you calculate the possibility of one gene creating 200 outcomes and multiply that by 25,000
genes that code for proteins, there are many millions of potential health outcomes for your body — all
based on the environment you provide. Now, the next generation of epigenetics is micro-RNA. "In a
classic move in science, we, as scientists, took a look at the genome and said, 'We only have 25,000
genes … that code for 200,000 proteins … We're only a little less than twice as complicated as the
fruit fly when it comes to genes … But the stunning reality is that 90 percent of the DNA doesn't code
for a gene that's going to code for protein — over 90 percent!
We just called that junk DNA … Well, in the last five years, it's become obvious that the junk DNA
is doing something. Not surprisingly, it's the junk DNA that's actually regulating the 25,000 genes that
actually make protein[s]. How does it do that? Each little strip of junk DNA makes a micro-RNA that's
never going to code for protein. Instead, the micro-RNA functions as a switch. It now goes into the
bloodstream and into other cells to turn on and off gene behavior.
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What does this mean for us as humans? We have got to get back in touch with our ecosystem.
We have got to get a complicated ecosystem back. We have got to stop taking antibiotics, for sure.
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The stunning reality of your ecosystem and human health is that 15 percent of the on and off
switches in your bloodstream are not from you. They're from the bacteria in your gut and the bacteria
you breathe. Another 15 percent are from the fungi in your environment. Thirty percent of the on and
off switches that are determining what gene is going to code for what protein … [have] no human
source …
We need to stop eating and spraying antibiotics all over our food and soil. We have to stop
disrespecting this normal balance of ecosystem. We need to start getting back outside … We have to
make our workspaces look different. We have to really get people back out and inject ecosystem
back into their day-to-day lives."
More Information
Bush has authored a book titled "Gut Biome," which is expected to be published this summer. If
this interview has whet your appetite for more, do keep your eyes peeled for the release of that book.
What we covered here is a mere fraction of the information Bush and his team have uncovered. While
the scope of the problems we face are beyond what most of us can even imagine, with this new
understanding new solutions become apparent and, with that, new hope. "What we see in the clinic is
that as soon as you put this bacteria [in] communication, we're back into play," Bush says. "We
outsourced our food. We outsourced our nutrition … I think we are responsible, each of us in a small
way, for what Monsanto and the chemical companies became, because we stopped doing it
ourselves.
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We need to take back that control. How much power is that? We should be super empowered as
consumers to say, 'With a little bit of collaboration, with a little bit of discussion, we can change
everything.' That's what we'll do."