Unearthing Health: The Soil-Medicine Connection

How To Activate Nature’s Healing Potential | This episode is brought to you by Joovv and ButcherBox

The microbiome has now come to be seen as the foundation for our overall health. The gut microbiome contributes to our digestive, immune, and emotional health, so it plays a vital role in overall well-being.

Soil, like our gut, has its own microbiome, which supports the health of the plants growing in it. And just as our consumption of highly processed foods and overuse of antibiotics have destroyed key microbes in the human gut, we have also carelessly damaged the soil microbiome through overuse of chemical herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers and fungicides, heavy plowing and tillage, and the failure to add organic matter back into the soil.

On this episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy, I was happy to sit down and talk with Dr. Zach Bush about why the health of our soil microbiome is the single most potent factor determining how healthy—or unhealthy—we are. We discuss why we need to acknowledge soil as a major influence on the food system and our health, and most importantly what we can do to change soil composition for the better.

Dr. Zach is a physician specializing in internal medicine, endocrinology, and hospice care. He is an internationally recognized educator and thought leader on the microbiome as it relates to health, disease, and food systems. Dr. Zach founded Seraphic Group and the non-profit Farmer’s Footprint to develop root-cause solutions for human and ecological health. His passion for education reaches across many disciplines, including topics such as the role of soil and water ecosystems in human genomics, immunity, and gut-brain health. His education has highlighted the need for a radical departure from chemical farming and pharmacy, and his ongoing efforts are providing a path for consumers, farmers, and mega-industries to work together for a healthy future for people and the planet.

This episode is brought to you by Joovv and ButcherBox.

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Here are more of the details from our interview (video / audio): 

• The pivotal moment in which Zach came to understand that we need to work with nature to create health (6:10)

• Zach’s post-academia journey to connect the dots between the microbiome, nutrition, and soil (10:50)

• How Zach’s chemotherapy research led to his understanding of how nutrition, the microbiome, and soil are interconnected (15:59)

• Uncovering soil’s medicinal qualities (19:38)

• What research on the gut lining, and the rise of glyphosate (Round-Up) use, illustrated about the link between soil science and human health (28:44)

• The depletion of 97% of our soil and its impact on human health (35:54)

• Regulatory resistance to looking at the scientific demonstration of the harmful effects of glyphosate (Round-Up) (42:22)

• Engineering the future that we want by catalyzing exponential rates of transformation (47:16)

• Surrendering to nature’s healing principles (52:36)

• Zach’s work with the nonprofit coalition, Farmer’s Footprint (54:16)

Learn more about Zach Bush at zackbushmd.com and follow him on Facebook @ZachBushMD, on Instagram @ZachBushMD, and on Twitter @drzachbush.

Learn more about Farmer’s Footprint at https://farmersfootprint.us/ and watch the film at https://farmersfootprint.us/watch/.

Find information about at ION*Biome at  https://ionbiome.com/.