Good Question! It is in fact about the Earth. About the Earth, us humans that call the Earth home and the health of both humans and the Earth. “Biome” comes from the word “Microbiome” and “Bee” ... from the little winged insect that pollinates plants and produces honey!
Biome and the Bee has been created to share knowledge and challenge people to consider their consumption habits in order to optimise health and happiness. This, I believe, is best achieved when humans acknowledge and accept their role as “custodians of the planet” and live lives that are respectful of the fact that we were designed to live in symbiosis with our Planet Earth. When we live within and respect the environmental limits of the Earth, we stand the best chance of being the healthiest and happiest humans that we can be.
We are living in a generation where humans have consumed their way into a health crisis and an environmental crisis. Over consuming everything from food and drink, to artificial light, to air, to fuel ... the list goes on! This over consumption has been a driving force in the current health crisis that faces the modern world. The “food-like substances” (usually made in some factory somewhere on the other side of the world) that we fill our fridges and bellies with, cause inflammation in our digestive tracts and in turn can lead to an array of adverse health conditions[1]. The fast paced lives we live require us to fuel ourselves with caffeine to kickstart us and sugar to keep us going, to be permanently glued to heat- and light- emitting screens while we organise our work calendars, meetings, kids activities, social lives and to do lists, we then seem to need to consume a bit more (alcohol? sleeping pills? Calming teas?) to calm down our over-stimulated nervous systems at the end of the day to try and get ourselves to unwind and fall asleep at night. With our bodies being pushed to the limit and bombarded with many sub-optimal substances, we don’t create an environment within for our bodies to rest and heal effectively ... we wake up, rinse and repeat .... and in time we pay the costly price with our own health.
While we’re consuming all these resources constantly that are causing inflammation and damage to our bodies, we are also causing inflammation (or warming up) and damage to the earth with all the resources that are being required to produce those things that we are consuming ... into manufacturing our “food”, packaging our food, transporting our food, marketing our food, throwing a third of our food in the bin[2] to create greenhouse gases in
landfill, recycling (or not) the packaging from our food, generating the electricity to charge and fuel our devices, keeping our lights burning until way too late at night, fueling our cars for our rushing around ... fellow humans - it’s time to change! We have collectively created this mess and it’s time we take action for the benefit of our own health and happiness, that of the generations to come AND that of our Planet.
“Biome and the Bee” was born of the understanding that humans and the earth need to live in symbiosis with each other in order to optimise health and happiness for both. There is an emerging field of research in the area of the human “gut microbiome” [3] and it evidence is showing that the human gut microbiome is critical to our health [4] ... as is the little bee critical to the health of the planet. And upon plenty of reading and digging and research to try and restore my own digestive health from the damage that I had caused it, it became clear to me that there’s a critical link and relationship of mutual benefit - when we live lives that are good for our gut (microbiome) health ... those lives are also good for the bees (and environment)!
I’d love you to follow my blog as I strive to bring consciousness back into human consumption habits, and together we can restore health and happiness to ourselves, those around us and to this beautiful world that we call home!
References:
[3] The human “Microbiome” consists of trillions of microorganisms (including bacteria, fungi, parasites and viruses) of thousands of different species. A large portion of the human Microbiome resides in the digestive tract in the small and large intestine (referred to as the ”gut microbiome”). The outer lining of the intestine in the human body is only one cell thick. This means, that there is only a barrier of one cell between the inside of our bodies and whatever we choose to consume. Any damage to that one layer of cells in our intestinal lining and we could be allowing all sorts of substances into our bodies that could have damaging effects on our health. For further information on the Microbiome and human health refer to link in reference [4] below