Healing the Safety Microbiome
- By Robert Pater
- Sep 10, 2024
Leaders can glean and successfully apply knowledge from nature to improve well-being and safety. For example, here’s a sizzling-hot topic in medicine: Did you know each one of us hosts a universe of incredibly numerous organisms?
In fact, there’s a plethora of relatively recent research investigating such “microbiomes,” the relationship and influence of these trillions of organisms living both internally and on our skin. Astoundingly, Nundhini Thukkani, M.D., Chief of Gastroenterology, Kaiser Pacific Northwest, says, “You can randomly take one square inch of anybody’s colon, and you’ll see more bacteria than there are humans on the earth.”
These microorganisms can either be protective or pathogenic (disease-causing.) Beneficially, a microbiome protects us against harmful germs, breaks down food in order to release energy, and produces vitamins. On the downside, dysbiosis can result, according to the Cleveland Clinic: “Dysbiosis means that you have an imbalance in the different types of microscopic organisms living in your body. If there are too many of some types and not enough of others, they don’t work with you as they should, and they might work against you.
In current cutting-edge research, dysbiosis is considered strongly associated with or a major contributor to a host of illnesses: Diabetes (types 1 and 2), Parkinson’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, Psoriasis, Crohn’s Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, cancers, cardiovascular disease, and many others, including obesity, severe depression, mental illness. (According to “Influence of Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis on Brain Function,” a disruption in the “gut-brain axis” might have significant effects on the central nervous system, even making falls more likely!)
So what does this have to do with leadership? Alessio Fasano, M.D., in “The Invisible Organ Shaping Our Lives: A Survey of Over 300 Years of Microbiome Research”, contends that each one of us is actually an organization of varying degrees of health and effectiveness.
Any organization is comprised of many “strains” of people with different paradigms, agendas, etc. And dialed in, the same is true for each individual member. Just as an enhanced understanding of the nature of multiple internal contributors can help physicians promote better health, leaders can similarly become more effective motivators and proponents of safety and well-being by harnessing principles from the internal multiverse.
This article originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.