Inside Out

Inside Out

Originally published in Apartamento magazine issue #33

 

With all the holes in you already, there’s no reason to define the outside environment as alien.

—Jenny Holzer, Survival Series, 1983

 

In Flatland, 19th-century theologian Edwin Abbot Abbot penned a thought experiment-cum-satirical novella where all sorts of problems arise from a world without a Z-axis, from navigating a household to identifying the face of a loved one. Worst of all, without depth, it becomes very hard to eat. Any form of digestive tract would bisect a Flatlander in two. It appears Pac-Man’s a bit of a fraudster. All this might lead you to think you just can’t be whole with holes. But can you?

The average adult human has approximately five million pores on their body: lacrimal glands, ear canals, nostrils, a trachea, and so much more. Many of these are blind holes, not through holes, entrances with no exits and insufficient for most interlopers to sneak past. But to the microscopic bacteria, fungi, mites, ticks, and protists that surround us in their trillions, even a dead-end alleyway can feel like a five-star resort.

While your skin, the largest single organ on your body, covers an area of about two square metres, your gastrointestinal tract is about the size of a tennis court (some 200–300 square metres). Counterintuitively, your inside is the biggest threshold to the world around you. Let me ask you this: When you were a child, did your mother ever call you her ‘whole world’? If so, she was unknowingly sharing you with roughly 40 trillion other microbes who could say the same without meaning it metaphorically.

Apartamento Magazine - Inside Out
WITH ALL THE HOLES IN YOU ALREADY THERE’S NO REASON TO DEFINE

THE OUTSIDE ENVIRONMENT AS ALIEN Survival Series, 1983, by Jenny Holzer.

Humans have evolved to be quite hospitable to hundreds of species of bacteria, yeasts, and mites too small to see. We actively care for them, too. Every crevice of your small intestine is laminated with a layer of slimy mucus produced by your cells, which helps to form a protective coating mediating the ‘outside’ and ‘inside’. It was long thought that this coating was the extent of our physiological defence, but we’ve learnt over the past decade that this layer is covered by whole populations of mucophilic bacteria (many from the phylum Firmicutes) which actually eat that layer. You might be wondering, ‘How on earth could we possibly benefit from that?!’ After all, houses don’t benefit from termites consuming them from the inside out. Then again, houses aren’t alive. When healthy, the rate at which our intestinal cells produce this protective layer is synced with the rate at which it is consumed by the bacteria living within—meaning our genes encode for the precisely mediated nourishment and care of microbial lifeforms separated from us on the tree of life by some 3.5 billion years of evolution. In this exchange, the bacteria get three hots and a cot, while we get a full house; billions of these friendly microbes crowd our bodies’ most sensitive ports of trade. It’s called colony resistance. Being surrounded by friends, we’re protected from enemies.

In the ‘old friends’ hypothesis, biologists posit that as humans evolved alongside commensal bacteria and other microbes over the course of our development as a species, our immune systems became calibrated to their presence. In turn, they produced molecules that signalled to us, ‘No sweat! Just us here!’, tempering the prospect of an overactive immune system and the chronic inflammation it can wreak. In the absence of those voices in our antibacterial age of hypervigilance, our immune systems have started to turn on our own bodies, resulting in ever-increasing rates of autoimmune disease and allergies. Doctors are now bearing witness to a worrying uptick in autoimmune diseases ranging from allergies to Crohn’s.

Despite what Unilever and its subsidiaries would have you believe, most of the bacteria, fungi, and microbes you encounter on the daily aren’t interested in your untimely demise. They’re commensals, content to catch a ride or snack on your leftovers, helping you to get the most out of your food in the process. Not that you’d know it from watching the news, but species of Strep, Staph, and even E. coli are all normal members of the national park of you. (Germs need a serious PR glow up.)

We can’t prevent life from living on and in us if we tried. The more we investigate what’s going on within, the more we’re coming to realise that diet seems to have the most outsized effect on the life inside of us. And this makes a lot of sense. Studies in the science of probiotics consistently find species after species of beneficial bacteria living both within us and the fermented foods that have long made up large portions of our ancestors’ diets. Many of them have even become superstars with leading roles on grocery store shelves. From the acidophilous advertised in your yoghurt to the rhamnosus in your energy drink, our microbes eat what we eat, whether it’s takeout or dining in.

You aren’t just a 24-hour diner open to the public at all hours; you’re both a host and a home, and you don’t have a say in the matter. Question is, do you want to make the most of it? In my work in microbiology, the strains grown in isolation tend to be the weakest—and as someone who still remembers high school detention vividly, solitary confinement is one of the cruellest forms of punishment for the exact same reason. I switched from chef work in hospitality where I’d been cooking and caring for guests since I left high school to food science in 2020. When I think with my scientist cap on, I realise that I’ve been in hospitality since the day I was born and will continue to be well after I retire, until I really, truly, retire. The lesson in all this? We aren’t closed-off, discrete beings simply situated in the world; we’re open to it, we’re made of it, and in constant conversation with its beating, buzzing, humming heart(s).

 

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Apartamento launched in 2008 with its namesake magazine, widely recognised as today’s most influential, inspiring, and honest interiors publication. Its publishing branch began in 2015 as a natural extension of the stories and ideas that have grown out of the magazine. In addition to its monographs and photo books, its catalogue also includes thematic cookbooks, architecture series, colouring books, and even a graphic novel.

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