Re-Wilding: How to Optimize Microbiome Diversity & Resilience in Health

What we can learn from the modern hunter gatherers: the Hadza of Tanzania

Gut health. Microbiome. Gut bacteria. In the past 5-10 years these terms have become household names. The notion that the health/state of the trillions of foreign entities in our gut and other microbiome is directly correlated with our health is now a known fact. It seems like everyday on social media I see a new “gut detox” or gut health guru who is diving into the reasons why most folks gut health is in poor condition.

99% of the discussion around gut health is focused on diet. Makes sense right? The food we eat has a direct impact on the status of our microbiota. This is true, however just like holistic health in general…gut/microbiome health has to do with WAY more than diet. I am here to advocate that diet is NOT the most important thing to be worried about when it comes to gut health. Just like holistic health, I advocate the importance of many biological inputs.

CASE STUDY: The Hunter-Gatherer Hadza Tribe of Tanzania

If you have been in the health scene at all the past few years, you likely have heard of the Hadza. They are one of the few “real” hunter-gatherer tribes left on the planet. Liver King, Brian Sanders, Paul Saladino aka Carnivore MD, Anthony Gustin and many more health influencers have gone and visited the Hadza…typically to analyze their diet. The TLDR? The Hadza eat:

Raw honey, wild game/bush meat/birds, boabab fruit, wild berries, other tree fruit, tubers and a few other things

The likes of the health influencers pointed to the “meat-centric” diet, but also to the fact that they are consuming seasonal fruit + honey. This is why the carnivore movement has now turned into the “animal based” foods movement. This is great insight to what a modern, hunter gatherer tribe would eat. However, when it comes to microbiome diversity…I am here to tell you that DIET is not the biggest takeaway from the HADZA hunter gatherer tribe.

I recently came across the work of Jeff Leach, who has worked cross functionally with a greater team in one of the largest microbiome projects that has ever existed. Their experimental sample population? The Hadza.

In an article in Science, LINKED HERE, some of their work is highlighted. The paper reflects over 350 stool samples of the Hadza taken over the course of longer than a year. BIG emphasis on the timespan. Here is what they found:

• Hadza microbiome is seasonal and cyclical

• Hadza microbiome is FAR more diverse than industrialized populations

• Hadza microbiota has greater functional capacity to handle plant carbohydrates than “healthy Americans”

  

For me, the seasonality/cyclicality is HUGE. This validates the importance of a seasonal/local foods diet. It also blew away researchers when they discovered this, because it shows the DRAMATIC swing in microbiota diversity from dry season to wet season. In the wet season, more fruit and honey is available whilst in the dry season more calories are coming from hunted meat. Tubers and boabab are available nearly all year.

If you follow me on twitter or instagram, you know how I preach about seasonal and hyper local reason. THIS is why. We are meant to shift with the seasons. Even the Hadza who live at the equator and have SOME fruit all year round have a drastic shift in their microbiota. Now think of a what the microbiome of a population further away from the equator would look like. I know living in Wyoming that there is only fruit/honey available maybe 3-5 months out of the year. I 100% plan on abiding by that.

This also means that carnivore diets or plant based diets are not the end all be all because they don’t take seasonal context into consideration. The Hadza eat far more meat as a percentage of their calories during the dry season, reflected by their microbiota.

A more recent study from the same lead researcher (Sonnenburg et al. 2023) using the same set of Hadza microbiome data from the first study (collected in 2013-2014) compared the diversity of the Hadza gut microbiome to data for the average adult Californian, and foragers and farmers (agrarians) from Nepal. The results are truly remarkable when considering the magnitude of diversity the Hadza have.

“The analysis suggests that the average Hadza adult gut microbiome contains 730 species (standard error [SE] of 14.5 species), compared with 277 species (SE of 32 species) in the average adult Californian gut microbiome, 317 species (SE of 32 species) for the Nepali foragers, and 436 species (SE of 106 species) for the Nepali agrarians.”

This was some good insight, but there wasn’t much in conclusive takeaways from these published articles. Unfortunately, the world of microbiome research is still in its early phases and like any field does not want to jump to any premature conclusions about what that mean for our health. Boring, but that’s how it goes…It wasn’t until I watched Jeff Leach’s 2018 Vermont talk “Slipping from the Pond”, that the whole picture became much clearer. Remember how I started this by saying this is not all about diet. Jeff (who has spent multiple years living with the Hadza and has done some cavalier things like an in field fecal transplant), discussed some very important data points that his article in Science did not. For me, it made me realize how diet was NOT the main driving factor of microbiota diversity and health. Here is what he uncovered about the Hadza’s microbiome:

• Men, women AND children all had nearly IDENTICAL microbiota populations…despite the fact that the MEN (hunters) eat a far higher amount of meat compared to the women/young children, who get more calories from high-fiber tubers.

• If the Hadza consume antibiotics, their microbiome diversity rebounds within one day

• The outside and inside of the huts the Hadza live in had nearly identical bacterial populations (unlike industrialized western societies)

• Young Hadza girls who left for a more “modern” boarding school and had a completely different diet, water source, and lifestyle for 5 months still had a nearly IDENTICAL microbiome compared to the rest of the tribe’s samples

• The part of the Hadza who were more serious hunter-gatherers / less exposed to tourism, modern vices, processed foods, etc. had a nearly IDENTICAL microbiome to those that were exposed to these items.

Jeff highlights just how resilient the microbiome of the Hadza is, proven by the fact that they can take antibiotics and recover their diversity almost immediately. If a modern western human took a broad spectrum antibiotic, it could take them weeks, months, years or NEVER at all to recover the same bacterial diversity they had before the round of antibiotics. Why is this the case? Jeff highlights the Hadza have DIRECT access to their Regional Species Pool. This means that the Hadza are directly in contact with the VAST biodiversity in their immediate environment. The obtain such a diverse and resilient microbiome by:

• Having natural child births

• Not ever washing their hands / clothes / huts / etc

• Drinking “dirty” water from springs and streams that can contain a broad spectrum of animal feces

• Field butchering hundreds of different wild animals and occasionally eating the meat raw / on the spot

• Living in direct contact with the earth (no shoes / barely any clothes)

ZERO filters. The Hadza are fully embodying a wild and natural/ancestral way of living in modern times. This is why their microbiome is so diverse. This is why they have the most resilient guts on the planet. No anti-bacterial soaps, body washes, hand sanitizers, masks…no “clean” knives, eating utensils, beds, filtered water, NOTHING.

Risky? Yes, the average lifespan of the Hadza is mid to late 30s due to infant/child mortality (typically due to infections). However, they are commonly living into their 80s/90s according to researchers whilst still hunting/foraging daily. They have no chronic disease, they have no mental health issues. They are vital. They live simple lives, and do not give too much thought to things outside of survival. Do we need to live exactly like the Hadza to achieve optimal health? No, but we can learn a LOT from them.

The MAIN takeaway: bring yourself closer to your regional bacteria species pool.

STOP overcleaning things. Stop using toxic, anti-bacterial products on everything. Get your hands and feet in the dirt. Go swimming in a natural body of water. Eat a variety of plant and animal foods that are local and in season. For me, I have been slowly transitioning more and more away from being “clean”. I am trying to remove filters as much as I possibly can. I walk barefoot as much as possible, swim in my local Wyoming river every day, drink unfiltered mountain water every time I go hiking, refuse to use harsh cleaning products, only use natural soaps (tallow/goat milk based), field dressing wild game in hunting season. You do have to be careful if you are going to start drinking unfiltered water from a natural source, as you might have to slowly build up a tolerance. Rule of thumb: if it’s moving fast, through rocks, at high elevation, you are probably good to go.

Remember that microbiome is in your gut, on your skin, in your mouth, in your reproductive organs, etc. Everything that is in your environment will interact with your microbiome. Obviously filters are important if the source of your water is toxic, but there are better alternatives.

The Hadza can completely nuke their gut or eat a junk food diet and still have a 99.9 percentile bacterial diversity the next day. This is because they are so hyper-CONNECTED to their environment.

Although all natural bush births can be more susceptible to fatal outcomes, Hadza children come into this world under full spectrum sunlight with no clothes, no medicine, no interventions, no C-sections (notoriously terrible for a baby’s microbiota development), no vaccines, NOTHING aside from the love of its family and earth that surrounds it. Modern babies are brought into the western world in a blue lit + nnEMF latent room, from a mother so chock full of medications she can’t even feel what has just occurred, in a high stress environment with a laundry list of vaccines/medications/interventions awaiting it. No connection to the natural world we are biologically design to thrive in. The result?

Hadza children need only months to obtain a full and healthy microbiota comparable to adults…whilst western babies need years.

Environment is everything. Seasonality is everything. We are more disconnected than ever before in human history, hence the reason chronic disease rates have gone through the roof and mental health is in the gutter. You don’t need to be a scientist to figure out why the Hadza are healthier and happier than the rest of the world. It is because they live in the real world-the natural world. I didn’t touch upon it much in this newsletter, but do you know what dictates seasonality and our the vast majority of our biological functions..?

LIGHT.

Aromatic amino acids (tryptophan, tyrosine, phenylalanine) absorb heavily in the UV range, which are the precursors to your neurotransmitters. 50% of dopamine and 90% of serotonin is made in the GI tract, serotonin is a precursor to melatonin. What signals melatonin production? Light/Circadian biology. One could say that UV light is anti-microbial…which is true, but it is a bit more nuanced and complex than that. Research has only just begun on investigating the relationship between our microbiome and sunlight but one study found that UVB exposure increased biodiversity.

The Hadza live 100% outside. They are exposed to full spectrum sunlight ALL day, everyday. They are getting pre sunrise rich infrared/red light, UVA rise, UVB rise and the consequent cycles. They are getting ALL of the biological inputs signals. Our body is a symbiotic realm of biological processes, and the fact that the Hadza have the bacterial cyclicality that they do from season to season shows that they are getting all the right input signals from the ultimate life source: the sun. Also, they are devoid of nearly 100% of nnEMF signals (a couple Hadza have cell phones but almost never use them). What do EMFs have to do with light? Well…any form of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) is light. nnEMFs are just non-visible light. Here is a study showing Radio frequency (RF) EMFs disrupting the skin microbiota. Jeff Leach missed the importance of light, but it is a glaring and obvious reason when you understand the significance of light/gut/bacteria relationships. More on light-gut relationships to come.

CONCLUSION

If you want to have a more diverse microbiome, and thus be healthier & happier, live a bit more wild. Embrace nature, do not fear it. If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we know NOTHING about our immune system (at a societal level). The people who implemented the most severe interventions suffered the most dire consequences. Diet is important, but it is by no means the end all be all. It is just one facet of your environment and what goes into dictating the ebbs and flows of your biology.

Go outside more. Get bare feet on the ground. Eat a diverse, seasonal diet of nutrient dense foods. Drink water that is alive. Live with purpose. Minimize toxins. Maximize the quality of your relationships.

Nobody is making money if you follow this advice. You have the ability to remove yourself from the clutches of Centralized Healthcare if you prioritize taking personal responsibility of your health.

Stay Sovereign,

Tristan