The Great Assumption

The Great Assumption is:

The assumption by prescribers that a medicine or medical procedure will have zero to minimal impact on the patient's microbiome and if it does have an impact it will heal on its own.

Medical Cornerstone

The Great Assumption is an unspoken cornerstone of modern medicine.

The Problem

The Great Assumption was a valid placeholder during medical treatment in the early days, 50+ years ago, of modern medicine but lots of research the last 20+ years shows The Great Assumption is false and detrimental to our health. But no changes have been made in the exam room where patients meet their doctors. The Great Assumption is still part of the FDA playbook in the exam room.

Complicating this problem is the affinity doctors have with Big Pharma. Drugs are what they do and any microbiome dysbiosis that occurs as the result of medical treatment is unavoidable and the jurisdiction of the patient and their responsibility to repair.

Despite all the scientific research going on right now to unlock the secrets of our collective microbiome and its impact on our health it will probably be years to decades before patients see tangible results. And even then patients won't get treatments that restore the damaged ecosystem the microbiome is. Instead I see the pharmaceutical industry moving towards patented microbes and new drugs that do the things a healthy microbiome would be doing if it hadn't been degraded during medical treatment.

My Complaint: Access

In the absence of better support from the medical community patients do not have the tools they need to monitor and maintain a healthy microbiome. You can't get all the species of microbes that get eradicated by different drugs and medical treatments by eating a cup of yogurt or taking an over the counter probiotic.

Patients need access to:

• Information about the impact different drugs have on the microbiome. It should not be a guess.

• Information about the state of their own microbiome through DNA analysis.

• A broader array of probiotics to replace microbes that become depleted or eradicated while taking medication. The current list of GRAS probiotics is just a slice of the thousands of microbes that inhabit the human microbiome.

• Funding to cover the costs of microbiome monitoring and restoration. This should come from the pharmaceutical industry and insurance providers.

Post medication microbiome restoration should not be the financial responsibility of the patient.

The Great Assumption = Global Warming Denial

Microbiome dysbiosis = global warming.

The mentality that got us in the global warming crisis is the same mentality that gives us The Great Assumption: an unfounded belief in the capacity of the human organism to absorb and recover from the microbiome dysbiosis medicine can cause.

But at least the scientists were sounding the alarm decades ago. That is not true with The Great Assumption. The medical community would be lost without it.

In 2022 I think our collective microbiome looks like the Cuyahoga River in the 1960s.

If Left Unchecked

What can we expect if The Great Assumption goes unchecked?

• Patented microbes that we have to buy to replace the bugs medication eliminated.
• New drugs that do what the microbes in our microbiome would be doing if they were there.
• Genetically modified probiotics.
• More unnecessary medicines to fix downstream problems rooted in microbiome dysbiosis.

Not Just Medicine Alters Our Microbiome But...

According to this article on the Frontiers in Pharmacology website dated August 2020:

"Medication has recently emerged as one of the most influential determinants of the gut microbiota composition and activity"

www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2020.01153/full

Has anyone's doctor has mentioned this? Ask The Great Question!!!

Flip The Great Assumption!

I am not talking about not using medicine.

• I am talking about including the microbiome as part of the whole human organism.
• I am talking about monitoring and restoring our microbiome if its health degrades for whatever reason.
• I am talking about not ignoring the obvious impact our microbiome has on our health.
• I am talking about not ignoring the obvious impact medicine has on our microbiome.

Unfortunately I don't see modern medicine moving in that direction. Today modern medicine is synonymous with Big Pharma and Big Pharma is interested in developing new drugs. Having to pay attention to microbiome dysbiosis caused by a medicine would cause significant disruption to drug development and distribution and likely cause huge financial costs to implement and operate.

So The Great Assumption remains in place in conventional medicine. That is why patients need to ask The Great Question to be vigilant and proactive to protect this valuable health resource.