Jeffrey Bland connects human immunity to plant immunity and planetary biogeochemical cycles, arguing that stress on Earth's carbon, water, nitrogen, and phosphorus systems weakens plant and human health alike. Regenerative agriculture and sustainability can strengthen resilience across all three scales.
Immunity plus nature. Now, what does that conjure up when I say those things together? Immunity and nature. Well, you had enough time now to think about it. Let me give you my impression. My impression is that we need to understand that immunity exists on many levels. Immunity exists in our bodies, obviously, immunity exists in plants, and immunity exists in the planet at large. Because what is the immune system? The immune system is that system that defends against environmental change. It's that which controls the factors of the unknown that may cause the system injury. So think of the immune system of the planet. What is it? It's the carbon cycle, the hydrological cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the phosphorus cycle. It's these mega cycles, this mega immune system of the planet which has resilience to change. But like any system, its resilience is limited, it's not infinite. And so the immune system of the planet is connected then to the immune system of the plant. If we have global climactic change and there is a stress on the planetary immune system, the plant's immune system are then influenced by that. And those who eat the plants, and those could be the animals that we eat or the plants that we eat directly, then influence the human immune system. It's one macrocyclic system. And in big, bold health, one of the things that we really want to bring to the attention as we're focusing on improving our individual health is how our individual health really interconnects with planetary health and how planetary health interconnects with individual health. It is a network of biology that interconnects all of us, everything together. And you can't do one in the absence of the other. Unintended consequences of one may have consequences for another. So this construct is a very important part of how we view things like nutrition programs within the bigwell health paradigm. We look at regenerative agriculture, we look at sustainability. We look at those things that regenerate the plants and regenerate the soil. We look at things that give back oxygen to the atmosphere and taste out carbon dioxide. We look at things that regenerate nitrogen as an important nutrient that can be limiting in plant growth. That's by crop rotation and regeneration. We look at how all of those things influence our stewardship of the planet and how they influence our body. And this kind of interconnection between planetary health, social responsibility, social justice, and how that forms then a union, immune systems to relate to resilience and resistance, that will be a constant theme that's woven together as how we individually seek out our own health in concert with making a contribution back to the system itself through its regeneration of its own immune system. So that's our co immunity. Be part of the big bowl health community.
