Ara Katz, author of A Kids Book About Your Microbiome, talks about microbes, what they are, and how they help our bodies stay healthy and function well throughout our lives.
Ara Katz, author of A Kids Book About Your Microbiome, talks about microbes, what they are, and how they help our bodies stay healthy and function well throughout our lives.
A Kids Book About Your Microbiome (view book)
Full Book Description:
For centuries, most people believed that microbes were harmful, especially bacteria. But now we know most are actually good and very important for our health. Your microbiome is the community of trillions of microbes (too small to see!) that live in, on, and all around you. This book teaches kids what the microbiome is, what it does, how we can help it thrive, and why we can’t live without it.
About the Author:
Ara Katz wants you to meet the trillions of microbes that live in and on your body—your microbiome! She co-founded Seed to pioneer the application of microbes for human and planetary health. Alongside extraordinary scientists, they develop probiotics for living organisms everywhere! She loves inspiring humans to learn about the incredible, invisible world of the microbiome.
A Kids Book About: The Podcast
S1 EP32, Ara Talks About Your Microbiome
[INTRODUCTION]
Matthew: What is your microbiome?
Nathan: My microbiome is my body and all the things living inside of it, outside of it, and on it.
Ara: Your microbiome is the collection of microbes, which are little microorganisms way too small to see with the human eye that exist in a specific ecosystem. That's the collection of that and not just microbes themselves, but also their genes. There are structural elements, the things they produce, which we call metabolites, and also their surroundings. And all of that forms this unique ecosystem.
Now that could be in on a coral reef and it could also be in as we'll talk more about today in your stomach and your mouth to be in a rainforest. It could be in the desert.
And so each ecosystem, and even on your own body, ecosystems are really different. And so your microbiome, when you talk about the human body is referred to your kind of as all of the microbes and all those parts combined, but actually even within your microbiome of your body, there are smaller ecosystems that have their own microbiome, which is really exciting.
Matthew: Welcome to A Kids Book About: The Podcast! I’m Matthew. I’m a teacher, a librarian, and I’m your host. The voices you heard at the top of our show were from Nathan and Ara.
Each week we talk about the big things going on in your world with a different author from our A Kids Book About series.
Ara: My name is Ara Katz. I am a mom to, as I am reminded every day, an almost close-to-being six year old, Pax. I am the co-founder and co CEO of Seed Health, where I work in the invisible world of microbes we're going to talk about today. And I live in Venice, California. Although I grew up in New York and I am very excited to be here.
I am also the author of A Kids Book About Your Microbiome.
[TOPIC FOUNDATION]
Matthew: Listeners, we are exploring a wondrous world on today’s show! And it’s all observable in you! Well, you need a microscope, of course, but still.
In fact, if you’ve got a grownup nearby who has access to the internet, have them google “gut bacteria microscope”. The results can give you a sense of the amazing stuff we’re exploring today. Picture fuzzy, tube-like shapes of varying lengths with rounded edges and sometimes the kind of look flowery and other times they look like tiny sausages or jelly beans or maybe almost like fingerprints?
Yeah. You know what? Even though scientists and researchers have colored the images in order to help our eyes to better distinguish what we’re looking at, your microbiome still looks like a completely different planet!
And are they part of your body?
Ara: They're technically separate. They're not human, they're microbes just to qualify the term so everyone can understand, like, what a microbe is. Is that, you know, they're single celled organisms that most like in our bodies, like primarily bacteria, but also viruses, protozoa, phage, um, and other, uh, other microbes make up your microbiome.
So a lot of people think it's just bacteria, but actually there's other types of microbes, but they are not human. However, they have co-evolved with us over many, many, many, many tens of thousands of years. And so we are seeded them at birth.
And then in science, there's a lot of controversy over how early our microbiome even begins, because some people think that we'll miss there'll. Some people think embryo has exposure to certain microbes or things that shape your microbiome even before birth. But what we do know is that the, the, the motherload of your, of your microbiome is seeded at birth. Whether you're, whether you're you… no matter how you're born. Um, And so that is where you're kind of seeding process and your microbiome develops, but that came from your mom. That comes from the mother.
And so. We have co-evolved with them, even though they are not human. However many of our human functions cannot be done without them.
Matthew: “Your microbiome is seeded at birth.” The company Ara co-founded is called Seed? This must be a connection!
Ara: Yes, we… Our name came from… the biological term is seeding and it characterizes the first exposure that we have to microbes, which through, uh, through a traditional birth, would come from the mother's vagina, poop and skin. And that obviously the baby's kind of like washed in it. I go some and then, uh. And then breast milk and breastfeeding feeds actually a third of the carbohydrates in breast milk are not digestible by the human parts of a baby, but are only food for the seeds that were, that are planted and that, and I'll even go even crazier. The bacteria that's found on your mom's nipple evolved to be there to help infants digest and break down some of the components of breast milk and our bacteria also that are ingested by the baby.
Matthew: So when Ara mentioned before that these microbes have evolved with us over this time, this is exactly what she’s talking about. They are made for human-to-new-human transference! That means they are transferred, or passed on, from one generation of humans to the next.
Ara: And they work in symbiosis with our body. I think a lot of kids in school learn about like clownfish and anemones. You know, specific, fish that eat plankton or skin off of like a large, like a whale, for example.
These are examples of symbiosis in nature, but actually like symbiosis, it happens between our microbes and our human body.
And there's many things too. I mean, they do incredible things in our body and they're a huge part of your immune system, knowing part of that, or those early years of seeding, is part of them training your immune system of is this good for me? Is, is that for me? Should I have an allergic response? Should I get sick? Is what's coming in good?
And so there is such a big part of your body knowing, like, is this helpful or is this harmful to me.
Matthew: Our microbiome is so incredible!
But now that we know how all of those microbes get started in our bodies, back when we are in the womb or just being born, I wonder how they keep going? Like, what’s their main goal?
Ara: The way I might think about it is that what microbes want to do is that they want to persist and they want to replicate.
Matthew: Oh! So they want to keep going! They want to survive. And they want to make more of themselves.
Ara: And if you're the host that they depend on for a nice place to live and a steady nutrient supply, then they are interested in keeping you, their host, healthy. If you can think about it that way.
Matthew: We will be back in a minute with more from Ara Katz. Right after this quick break.
[BREAK]
Matthew: Welcome back to A Kids Book About: The Podcast. On today’s episode we’re talking about your microbiome with A Kids Book About author Ara Katz.
Did you ever imagine that all of that amazingness is going on inside your body and that it’s not your body? That these microbes are all working together with your body! I mean, come on!
How do you feel about your microbiome?
Nathan: It makes me feel like a bit grossed out, but it also feels kinda cool. I mean, as long as the things inside of my body aren’t hurting me, I guess it’s okay.
Ara: I feel very grateful. Um, well, As a mom and I who runs a startup, who has to multitask and do a lot of things, I'm just happy I can outsource certain things I don't have to think about.
Matthew: I’m kind right in the middle here. It’s wild to think that so many things are happening in me that I don’t directly see or feel. But it also feels really amazing to be a superorganism and to feel this wonder about my microbiome.
Ara: I will say that when you understand the microbiome, when you understand this, like non-human part of you, which by the way, just to put it in also some numbers and some sense for people.
About 50% of your body by cell count is not human.
And they express more genes than your human genes too, which is really, which is really interesting. There's about 38 trillion, estimated about 38 trillion bacteria. And therefore, if you added in the viruses and the phage at the, some of the other microbes, you're at multiple tens of trillions of microbes, which is incredible.
So when you ask me how I feel, I really do feel grateful. And I also feel grateful for the perspective of understanding this part of my body that does this important work because it then factors into the decisions I make every day and how I consider and make choices both for myself or my son.
Matthew: About half of the stuff in your cells is not human, but, rather, part of your microbiome? That is wild!
Which I think is the perfect set-up for this question, sent in by Nathan.
Nathan: Does having too much of those good things make a difference? Does it hurt me? Or does it help me more?
Ara: Nathan? That's an amazing question that I've never gotten because most people, most adults, ask, “Do I have enough?” So, and actually the, the reason they ask that question, well, because adults are silly, too. Sometimes they, they don't think with as much of a glass, half full as you did Nathan.
But what's interesting is the reason that they asked that question that way is that things like antibiotics... all specific kinds of diets that are really low in fiber or low in plants, for example, There's all kinds of medications and, like alcohol. And there's so many things that probably maybe more adults have done more in their lifetime than kids that can really impact the microbiome and actually make it very, not diverse and also deplete it.
Like antibiotics, because antibiotics basically go in and kind of like bomb your microbiome. Cause that's what their job is., right? Cause they're trying to get rid of a negative, a bad microbe, but they're not like heat-seeking missiles that only find the bad microbes. They kind of clear everything.
And so. A lot of adults are very sensitive to that because there's a lot of conditions that adults suffer from that have to do with having microbiomes that actually have either had too many antibiotics or have what they are, what they call dysbiotic, which means that they're kind of like out of whack, out of balance, or low diversity.
Um, so in terms of the question of too many, I, I, the truth is, I don't know, because our problem in modern life. It is the opposite. And so, so much of the research is actually looking at cultures where there was so much greater richness with like, um, abundance of microbes and diversity.
So I imagine that there's probably a tipping point, but I don't know what that is because you can't really introduce microbes and have them like stick around. It's not how might, how, like, if you take, what's called a probiotic for.
A lot of people think you take a probiotic or you eat a lot of things that have microbes in them, like fermented foods or kimchi or kombucha.
And somehow the microbes like stick around, but actually microbes are kind of transient, which means that they, they do what they're going to do in your body, but they do it on the road on their way out. On their way through and then out. And so, I don't know, because I wouldn't know how you would actually implant and put a ton of microbes in somebody.
But I would say Nathan, the best way to think about it is that right now, one of the most important things is that people do think about how you, if you think about other ecosystems, you want your microbiome to look more like a rainforest than a desert. And I think the problem today is that not the people who have too much, but actually trying to figure out how we get back to a place where we have more rainforest than desert, because a rainforest is so much more resilient than a desert, which, um, is not going to be able to do all the important work that a lush rainforest or a dense rainforest could do.
Matthew: Each of our titles in the A Kids Book About series has a unique origin. In the case of Seed and A Kids Book About Your Microbiome, it’s sort of half because of business things and half because of parenting things. You remember that Ara has a son named Pax, right?
Ara: Honestly it was through our fundraising, but during COVID I had, as a parent, been aware. The reason that I saw that on the website and then of course was excited was because I knew about you guys from your, from your books of course, uh, as more, just as a parent, as a human that reads to my son.
But then when I saw that, I was like, oh, they're the perfect people to partner with. And literally that was on May 27th.
Matthew: And just over 4 months later, we have a book together! Very cool!
Actually, the things going on at Seed Health are pretty incredible. Microbes can be found everywhere throughout the entire planet, not just in and on humans, but on almost all other living things, and even in the most extreme places on earth, like in hydrothermal vents and in ultra acidic pools and in extreme depths of the ocean and even in the coldest parts of the arctic.
And so if microbes are everywhere, it makes sense that Seed would look beyond our bodies in their work as well.
Ara: So we work only in the invisible world. We are not invisible ourselves, just to clear up that misunderstanding. And we don't have super powers to make ourselves invisible, but we do try and unlock the superpowers of the invisible world to figure out how we can use microbes.
Primarily the ones that you do find in the human body or native to specific ecosystems like in honeybees or in coral reefs and how you can use those microbes to make an impact in health. And so I'll give you a great example. We have a probiotic that we created for honeybees and honeybees have their own gut microbiome and honeybees are incredibly important to our food system, to our environment and honeybees are dying.
And what we've found out is that pest specific forms of pesticides hurt the honeybee microbiome. And remember I said that so much of your immune system is in your gut micro. So honeybees don't have the immune resistance, their immune systems aren't super strong against the effects of these pesticides.
And so they get things called colony collapse disorder, or even worse. The larva gets something called American full bird disease. So if you give honey bees in the hive, a probiotic, you can help their gut microbiome and their immune system have more resilience against the pesticides and they can survive.
And so now the real intervention would be, let's not use pesticides, but knowing that, that we're not going to change, that we are trying to figure out, well, how could you help the honeybee microbiome to be stronger and more resilient so that these aren't dying as quickly? Um, so that's a great example for humans.
We use probiotics and microbes to do things like in the, in your gut microbiome, just to stay on that ecosystem. How could you take a microbe? For example, we have a kid's probiotic coming out, and the question is, so how could you take a microbe and help that microbe for a lot of kids, for example, that have trouble pooping as an example, how could you, a lot of microbes are involved in diet digestion in your gut, and they're a big part of triggering these muscles that help with these neuro-transmitters that trigger something called motility.
Is what helps your poop move along. And so you can take specific microbes that help signal to the specific neurotransmitters, that signal to help poop move along. And so that's what we do is we're always looking at like, how could you take a specific strain of bacteria? We work mostly in bacteria and, and understand what it could do in the host.
And again, that could be a human, or it could be a honeybee, or it could be a correlation. Or it could be a child. Um, and, and how do you use that to impact the health of the host?
Matthew: I can’t believe we waited all the way until this point in the episode to talk about poop! Oh my goodness!
You know what? Why don’t we close our time together talking about poop because, really, what better place is there than at the end of this episode? The end? Get it?
Okay. Alright. Here’s Ara.
Ara: A lot of people don't know that a lot of your poop is made up by microbes and that even though a lot of you guys may think poop is gross and disgusting. It is actually like a really important part of knowing what's going on inside. And I know this is going to sound gross. Cause most people don't like to look in the toilet bowl, but what shape your poop is, what color it is.
If it comes out in one piece and lots of pieces, uh, depending if it's hard to get out, is it easy to get out? Like all of those things are what they call mark. That tell us a lot about what's going on inside and also about what you're eating and your health. And so the next time you look at proof, just, yes, it may not like smell great, but it is something that's really important that if from when you're little, you start to see it as also like a pretty important thing to know like how things are doing inside.
Um, maybe you can grow up and not think it's as gross and or think it's as gross and also know that it's kind of important that you understand what it, what it says. And, um, and that, it's a great way to know if things are not okay, you need to maybe tell a grownup.
[CLOSING]
Matthew: Thank you to Ara Katz, cofounder of Seed Health and author of A Kids Book About Your Microbiome, for joining us today. You can learn more about this book and others like it by visiting akidsco.com. And thank you to Nathan for adding your voice to the show.
Nathan: My name is Nathan. I’m 11 years old, and I live in Maryland. My favorite thing is spending time with my friends and family.
Matthew: If you want to be on a future episode of A Kids Book About: The Podcast or if you have a question you’d like us to consider, have a grownup email us at listen@akidspodcastabout.com and we’ll send you the details.
A Kids Book About: the Podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Matthew Winner, with help from Chad Michael Snavely and the team at Sound On Studios. Our executive producer is Jelani Memory. And this show was brought to you by A Kids Podcast About.
Follow the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever podcasts are found and check out other podcasts made for kids just like you by visiting akidsco.com.