At one point in his career, Zach Bush, MD was so disillusioned with medicine, with his inability to understand the real causes of disease and to make his patients fundamentally healthier, that he decided to extend his training to hospice care. He felt he could really help people ease into the process of dying. Helping people through the death transition, he experienced death as not just an end. It seemed his patients went through a kind of a ‘rebirth’, an expansion into something bigger than life. The experience radically changed Dr. Bush’ perspective on health and the role of medicine.
Today, he is helping his patients to reconnect with nature and to find their place in the web of life that spans our planet and beyond. In his view, that is the only way to lasting health. “As long as humans will try to reign supreme over all other life forms, nature will keep responding with diseases, viruses and pandemics”, he says. Dr. Bush sees the Covid19 virus-crisis as a unique opportunity for human beings to rethink their place in nature. In his view, there can only be health and harmony in a world where not humans, but life—all life—is supreme; in a world of abundant biodiversity.
“Most people still hold on to a very old philosophy which teaches that human health is a story of combat against nature. With the same mindset, we have created empires, energy- and transportation systems. Almost everything that we have done as a civilization has put ourselves in conflict with the nature we live in and that we are part of”, says Dr. Bush.
He sees the same approach throughout modern medicine—from antibiotics and sanitization to ICUs and operating rooms: “All these systems are created from the belief that health only comes in severe isolation from the rest of nature. There is a constant battle by physicians and public health officials to push nature back to make more room for humanity.”
From this observation, Dr. Bush has a very different perspective on the Coronavirus pandemic. What most mainstream health experts see as the worst public health crisis in our lifetime, he sees as a symptom of a different, much bigger problem—a problem that requires urgent attention and a very different solution.
At the time of writing, Covid19 has claimed some 700,000 lives worldwide. That is less than 0.01 percent of the world population. Bush compares the figures with what he calls the “real public health crisis”. Every year worldwide a multitude of people die from chronic diseases that result from polluted and depleted soil, water, air and food systems. He notes that sperm counts in western countries have dropped more than 50 percent over the past 40 years: “Today, one in three males are infertile by sperm count. And one in four women are infertile as a result of menstrual disruption, obesity or chronic disease. We can map the extinction of our species through the collapse of fertility within the next 80 years.”
Nevertheless, the threat of our impending extinction and the millions of people who suffer—year after year—from chronic diseases have not accomplished what the coronavirus achieved in weeks: an almost complete lockdown of the global economy, and a willingness and preparedness at the highest levels to rethink fundamental structures and operations in society. The threat of a virus fits, according to Dr. Bush, the “warlike mentality of the human mind” and the “need to fight nature”. He adds: “We are losing lives because physicians think there is a virus attack. In fact, there is a toxic environment that is poisoning humanity.”
The poisoning of the planet has been going on for half a century. It started with America’s war in Vietnam. Chemists developed a chemical—‘agent orange’—that was sprayed heavily by aircrafts to turn jungles into moonscapes where the communist enemy could not hide. After the war, the chemical industry found a new market for their innovation in agriculture where many farmers were eager to industrialize their operations. The same ‘organophosphates’ chemicals that had been used to defoliate Asian jungles were used to develop an industrial food system—including genetically modified organisms—that controlled the forces of nature as much as possible.
“There is a lot of talk about the potential dangers of new vaccines and new drugs, but the biggest threat to human health today comes from one chemical that is everywhere: glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, the common pesticide produced by Monsanto”, he says. Glyphosate is in the air we breathe and in the rain that falls. In agricultural areas, 75 percent of the air and rain samples contain glyphosate. Dr. Bush: “I can give a three-hour lecture about the damage that Roundup does to our food and bodies. The number of layers it damages is unbelievable.”
Every year 4 billion pounds of glyphosate is sprayed, sterilizing soil, water, air and food all around the planet. Glyphosate works as an antibiotic in the human body. Given the widespread presence of the chemical in water, air and soil, this means that most of us—unknowingly—are taking antibiotics on an ongoing, daily basis. That exposure comes in addition to the fact that, over the past 20 years, consistently more than 800 prescriptions of antibiotics have been prescribed for every 1,000 people every year. All these ‘anti-life’ substances threaten the microbiome—the total mass of micro-organisms in our bodies on which our health depends.
Seventy percent of the microbiome is located in our gut. Healthy microbes help us digest food and they defend, heal and protect us. “We know that the microflora within us do more than 90 percent of the enzymatic work and 100 percent of the energy production of the body”, says Dr. Bush. The research is clear that a lack of intestinal flora—as a result of the disproportionate use of antibiotics, but also of excessive disinfection and sanitization—lies at the root of many degenerative diseases from cancer to heart disease and from Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s.
Yes, there are bad bugs—bacteria can be pathogens that carry disease. We can protect ourselves against these invaders as other species in nature use all kinds of systems to protect themselves—from the thorns of roses to the salamanders’ camouflage. However, ultimately, our health depends on a harmonious relationship with the millions of micro-organisms around us. As counterintuitive as that may sound, in many situations extreme disinfection and sanitization cause more harm than good as it destabilizes fragile equilibriums of micro-organisms.
Dr. Bush: “We need to stop believing that there is a human immune system. The concept of immunity comes, once again, from the warfare mentality of humans. The idea is that the human immune system is attacking bacteria and viruses that are attacking us. Wrong! Nature does not wage war against itself. It does not aim for immunity and separation. Nature upholds biodiversity and communication. Nature promotes balance and supports health and increasing intelligence of the total ecosystem.”
With the use of antibiotics in medicine, pesticides in agriculture, chlorine in drinking water and aggressive cleaning and sanitization supplies, humans are engineering the sixth mass extinction of life on the planet. “It is estimated that we lose, on average, one species every 20 minutes to extinction. We have already lost 50 percent of life on earth over the past 40 years”, he says.
Dr. Bush sees Covid19 as a “humble messenger” in this epic trend. As he writes, with co-author Deepak Chopra, M.D., in an op-ed article in San Francisco Chronicle: “The virus is not our enemy—if we let it in, it will be our greatest teacher.” Most people see viruses as tiny organisms that can be witnessed crawling under a microscope—just like bacteria. However, he says, “viruses are not living organisms. They are dead particles moving genetic information within or between species.” Nature uses viruses to steer the emergence of life on earth. Dr. Bush: “We know that 50 percent of the genes in our bodies were placed by viruses. In fact, since the beginning of life the most significant biologic adaptations have been achieved through the viral communication network.”
So, in the view of Dr. Bush, the emergence of the coronavirus is not a surprise but a predictable response by nature to the ongoing poisoning of the planet. As extinction spreads, the stress levels in the ecosystems are rapidly increasing and, consequently as Chopra and Bush write in their op-ed, “the speed of adaptation has to increase to find a solution [away from extinction] and survive”.
The authors continue: “When a survival advantage is discovered (such as antibiotic resistance in a strain of bacteria), that beneficial gene can be transferred in various ways across many species, but for maximum impact over great distances, viral transfer is the vehicle of choice. Thus, millions of species of microorganisms work toward one goal, which is not to harm us, but to maintain a stable biodiverse ecosystem everywhere on earth.”
Nevertheless, some of us get harmed—and even lose our lives—in the process. We know that people with compromised microbiomes—the people who have been most exposed to the pollution—are more likely go get ill and die. At the same time, many people experience no, or hardly any, symptoms of illness as a result of exposure to the virus. From the perspective of nature, it is about the adaptation of life: through the encounter, humans are made more resilient.
Ultimately, there is only one solution: harmony and balance in nature. Bush: “What is good for the planet, is good for us.” Any further human attempts to control nature—through more chemical poisoning but even through vaccines and drugs—can only have short term beneficial impacts and are ultimately destined to fail, facing—one more time in the words of Bush and Chopra—“the continued effort of the four-billion-year-old microbiome seeking to put things right”.
Past mass extinctions have shown that life always comes back more abundantly and more intelligently than before. Dinosaurs were succeeded by human beings. The next phase in the evolution could be with an even more intelligent species—and without humans. Or, humans can join the trend towards ever-increasing intelligence in nature. Dr. Bush: “We can change our behavior, realign with nature and become a co-creative member of the next explosion of life on the planet.”
The first step in Dr. Bush’s prescription: stop the poisoning. That means abolishing chemical pesticides in agriculture; discontinue indiscriminate use of antibiotics in health care and get the chlorine out of drinking water. Then: “We start with the soil. We reorient the global economy from oil production to soil production.”
Soil is the “most important technology” on the planet. Bush: “When we allow nature to do its work, the topsoil of the earth can hold about 2,500 gigatons of carbon. The soil does not just sequester the carbon, it moves it back into life, into fungal mycelial networks, into the plant organisms, and much more. That 2,500 gigaton capacity is massive compared to the total worldwide annual carbon emissions of 36 gigaton. Climate change is happening because we killed the lungs of the planet through chemical agriculture.”
He gets excited as he explains how quickly we can turn things around. Currently, on average, agricultural soil captures 1 percent carbon. “If we improved all the agricultural soil with 0.4 percent carbon intake per year, we would reverse global warming in a decade,” he says. But there is more. As the carbon levels in the soil increase, the capacity of plants to absorb nutrients increases. That means the quality of our food improves. An apple today contains only some five percent of the vitamin C of the apple that was grown 50 years ago. With the deluge of chemicals sprayed over decades, nutrients have been washed from the soil depriving humans of the healthy food to maintain their bodies. Better soil will lead to better food which will lead to better health and less degenerative diseases like obesity and diabetes. The chain reaction confirms the solution presented by Dr. Bush: what is good for the planet is good for us.
Rebuilding the soil—it seems an odd mission for a doctor. However, Dr. Bush is not an ordinary physician. As a young boy, he was a self-proclaimed ‘Lego maniac’. As a boy scout, his interest in construction was further stimulated and, at 14, he started his first business: renovating classic cars. He would have been an engineer if he had not decided to take a gap year after high school. His aunt, who was doing volunteer work in the Philippines, said she needed help birthing babies at her clinic. Bush jumped on the opportunity to travel for a new life adventure. Working with midwives as a young man, he learned to appreciate the fragility and preciousness of life. The experience set him on the path of medicine. Many years later, the vocations of the doctor and the engineer are merging as Bush spends as much time researching agriculture and experimenting with food systems as treating people in the M Clinic, his integrative health center in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Dr. Bush’s passion breaks through the limitations of our Zoom call as he speaks about the opportunity for humanity to grasp. Co-creating with nature, humans can stir regeneration on a massive scale: “We could see healthier children in the next 40 years than have ever lived because they would be getting more nutrient density out of the soil than ever before.”
He pauses a moment. Then: “I am confident that the human species is heading for a rebirth.” In his experience, it would be one of those miraculous hospice moments when a patient finds a radical new direction and instead of dying, gets discharged to begin a new chapter in their life. [JK]
More information: zachbushmd.com
