The Great Question
The Great Question is:
What impact will this medicine or medical procedure have on my microbiome. And if it does have an impact, how will we monitor it and restore it to health?
The Great Question is a patient response to The Great Assumption.
No Great Answers
Considering all the hype in media about how important our microbiome is to good health, The Great Question sounds like a logical thing to ask your doctor...right?
Not exactly. It's a valid question but unfortunately it isn't a topic doctors are comfortable discussing. Our microbiome isn't a part of the human organism they work on.
This leaves microbiome aware patients in a quandary. They need to take a medicine but are interested in the risk to the microbiome caused by it so they know better how to patch it back to health. Unfortunately information like that is very hard to find if even available online. And worse many of the bugs that are potential casualties during a course of medicine aren't available outside of labs or the gut of healthy individuals.
Why Ask?
So why ask The Great Question?
- To promote awareness among patients of the lack of capability of conventional medicine to address problems caused by medicines to the microbiome.
- To communicate to medical professionals the interest their patients have in their microbiome.
Caveats
Asking The Great Question is likely to create an uncomfortable moment with your doctor because he knows it's a valid question but doesn't have an answer.
Beware, asking The Great Question may earn you what I call the Mark of Elaine.
- A Difficult Patient
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ2msARQsKU
Microbiome Bill of Rights
So what is a patient to do? It can be intimidating and unproductive to talk to your doctor about your microbiome. Patients need a Microbiome Bill Of Rights to guarantee the sharing of information regarding the impact of a medical treatment on our microbiome. It is necessary for the patient to be the steward of their own microbiome.