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A Catastrophic Biodiversity Loss in the Environment Is Being Replicated on the Skin Microbiome: Is This a Major Contributor to the Chronic Disease Epidemic?
There has been a catastrophic loss of biodiversity in ecosystems across the world. A similar crisis has been observed in the human gut microbiome, which has been linked to “all human diseases affecting westernized countries”. This is of great importance because chronic diseases are the leading cause...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10672968/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38004795 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms11112784 |
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author | Wallen-Russell, Christopher Pearlman, Nancy Wallen-Russell, Samuel Cretoiu, Dragos Thompson, Dana Claudia Voinea, Silviu Cristian |
author_facet | Wallen-Russell, Christopher Pearlman, Nancy Wallen-Russell, Samuel Cretoiu, Dragos Thompson, Dana Claudia Voinea, Silviu Cristian |
author_sort | Wallen-Russell, Christopher |
collection | PubMed |
description | There has been a catastrophic loss of biodiversity in ecosystems across the world. A similar crisis has been observed in the human gut microbiome, which has been linked to “all human diseases affecting westernized countries”. This is of great importance because chronic diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide and make up 90% of America’s healthcare costs. Disease development is complex and multifactorial, but there is one part of the body’s interlinked ecosystem that is often overlooked in discussions about whole-body health, and that is the skin microbiome. This is despite it being a crucial part of the immune, endocrine, and nervous systems and being continuously exposed to environmental stressors. Here we show that a parallel biodiversity loss of 30–84% has occurred on the skin of people in the developed world compared to our ancestors. Research has shown that dysbiosis of the skin microbiome has been linked to many common skin diseases and, more recently, that it could even play an active role in the development of a growing number of whole-body health problems, such as food allergies, asthma, cardiovascular diseases, and Parkinson’s, traditionally thought unrelated to the skin. Damaged skin is now known to induce systemic inflammation, which is involved in many chronic diseases. We highlight that biodiversity loss is not only a common finding in dysbiotic ecosystems but also a type of dysbiosis. As a result, we make the case that biodiversity loss in the skin microbiome is a major contributor to the chronic disease epidemic. The link between biodiversity loss and dysbiosis forms the basis of this paper’s focus on the subject. The key to understanding why biodiversity loss creates an unhealthy system could be highlighted by complex physics. We introduce entropy to help understand why biodiversity has been linked with ecosystem health and stability. Meanwhile, we also introduce ecosystems as being governed by “non-linear physics” principles—including chaos theory—which suggests that every individual part of any system is intrinsically linked and implies any disruption to a small part of the system (skin) could have a significant and unknown effect on overall system health (whole-body health). Recognizing the link between ecosystem health and human health allows us to understand how crucial it could be to maintain biodiversity across systems everywhere, from the macro-environment we inhabit right down to our body’s microbiome. Further, in-depth research is needed so we can aid in the treatment of chronic diseases and potentially change how we think about our health. With millions of people currently suffering, research to help mitigate the crisis is of vital importance. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10672968 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-106729682023-11-16 A Catastrophic Biodiversity Loss in the Environment Is Being Replicated on the Skin Microbiome: Is This a Major Contributor to the Chronic Disease Epidemic? Wallen-Russell, Christopher Pearlman, Nancy Wallen-Russell, Samuel Cretoiu, Dragos Thompson, Dana Claudia Voinea, Silviu Cristian Microorganisms Hypothesis There has been a catastrophic loss of biodiversity in ecosystems across the world. A similar crisis has been observed in the human gut microbiome, which has been linked to “all human diseases affecting westernized countries”. This is of great importance because chronic diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide and make up 90% of America’s healthcare costs. Disease development is complex and multifactorial, but there is one part of the body’s interlinked ecosystem that is often overlooked in discussions about whole-body health, and that is the skin microbiome. This is despite it being a crucial part of the immune, endocrine, and nervous systems and being continuously exposed to environmental stressors. Here we show that a parallel biodiversity loss of 30–84% has occurred on the skin of people in the developed world compared to our ancestors. Research has shown that dysbiosis of the skin microbiome has been linked to many common skin diseases and, more recently, that it could even play an active role in the development of a growing number of whole-body health problems, such as food allergies, asthma, cardiovascular diseases, and Parkinson’s, traditionally thought unrelated to the skin. Damaged skin is now known to induce systemic inflammation, which is involved in many chronic diseases. We highlight that biodiversity loss is not only a common finding in dysbiotic ecosystems but also a type of dysbiosis. As a result, we make the case that biodiversity loss in the skin microbiome is a major contributor to the chronic disease epidemic. The link between biodiversity loss and dysbiosis forms the basis of this paper’s focus on the subject. The key to understanding why biodiversity loss creates an unhealthy system could be highlighted by complex physics. We introduce entropy to help understand why biodiversity has been linked with ecosystem health and stability. Meanwhile, we also introduce ecosystems as being governed by “non-linear physics” principles—including chaos theory—which suggests that every individual part of any system is intrinsically linked and implies any disruption to a small part of the system (skin) could have a significant and unknown effect on overall system health (whole-body health). Recognizing the link between ecosystem health and human health allows us to understand how crucial it could be to maintain biodiversity across systems everywhere, from the macro-environment we inhabit right down to our body’s microbiome. Further, in-depth research is needed so we can aid in the treatment of chronic diseases and potentially change how we think about our health. With millions of people currently suffering, research to help mitigate the crisis is of vital importance. MDPI 2023-11-16 /pmc/articles/PMC10672968/ /pubmed/38004795 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms11112784 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Hypothesis Wallen-Russell, Christopher Pearlman, Nancy Wallen-Russell, Samuel Cretoiu, Dragos Thompson, Dana Claudia Voinea, Silviu Cristian A Catastrophic Biodiversity Loss in the Environment Is Being Replicated on the Skin Microbiome: Is This a Major Contributor to the Chronic Disease Epidemic? |
title | A Catastrophic Biodiversity Loss in the Environment Is Being Replicated on the Skin Microbiome: Is This a Major Contributor to the Chronic Disease Epidemic? |
title_full | A Catastrophic Biodiversity Loss in the Environment Is Being Replicated on the Skin Microbiome: Is This a Major Contributor to the Chronic Disease Epidemic? |
title_fullStr | A Catastrophic Biodiversity Loss in the Environment Is Being Replicated on the Skin Microbiome: Is This a Major Contributor to the Chronic Disease Epidemic? |
title_full_unstemmed | A Catastrophic Biodiversity Loss in the Environment Is Being Replicated on the Skin Microbiome: Is This a Major Contributor to the Chronic Disease Epidemic? |
title_short | A Catastrophic Biodiversity Loss in the Environment Is Being Replicated on the Skin Microbiome: Is This a Major Contributor to the Chronic Disease Epidemic? |
title_sort | catastrophic biodiversity loss in the environment is being replicated on the skin microbiome: is this a major contributor to the chronic disease epidemic? |
topic | Hypothesis |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10672968/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38004795 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms11112784 |
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