Global warming and health: understanding the connections to take action and protect your health
A blast of heat hits the scientific community: in addition to the numerous consequences for the environment, climate change could seriously affect our health, including our digestive health.
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A basic principle in biology is adaptation to the environment through natural selection. This is often illustrated by a small insect: the peppered moth. As they are mostly white, these moths were long unnoticed by predators as they rested on the immaculate trunks of birch trees. But the industrial revolution changed all that. The trunks turned black, the white moths were as plain as the nose on your face, the birds feasted, and the population of white moths plummeted. The only survivors were the now-invisible black moths, which then reproduced. And so the peppered moth became mostly black under environmental pressure.
Fungi adapted to our body heat 1
The same mechanism is at work with global warming. Faced with successive exceptional heat waves, flora and fauna evolve, with the most tolerant individuals being selected. Some fungi, for example, are increasingly able to cope with temperatures in excess of 30°C / 86°F over successive generations. The problem: our body temperature of 37°C / 98.6°F was one of our two weapons (along with the immune system) for resisting fungal attacks!
How will humans, and mammals in general, cope with more heat-resistant pathogens? Unfortunately, the question is no longer purely theoretical: heat-tolerant Candida auris appeared simultaneously and inexplicably on three continents in 2010.
Global warming has been linked to the simultaneous unexplained emergence of different C. auris clades in three continents circa 2010. 2
Global warming and health: humans adapt, pathogens adapt as well 2
The struggle will be all the harder because, at the same time, humankind, like all living organisms, is already suffering the consequences of global warming. And while we await future descendants that may be more resistant to the extreme temperatures of today and tomorrow, climate change is likely to have a major impact on our digestive, immune and even mental health (eco-anxiety). The totality of exposures to which an individual is subjected from conception to death is called the "
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Exposome
It was in 2005, in an article published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, that Dr. Christopher Wild first defined the exposome as "life-course environmental exposures (including lifestyle factors), from the prenatal period onwards. It is a complex and dynamic representation that integrates the chemical, microbiological, physical, recreational and medicinal environments, lifestyle, diet and infections."
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."
More than 50% of infectious diseases that humans have encountered have been exacerbated by climate change.
10% By 2030, a 10% rise in diarrhoeal illness is expected, affecting primarily young children.
Are urban green spaces good for our microbiota?
In terms of infections, the future is just as turbulent: over 50% of infectious diseases are expected to be exacerbated by climate change, and a 10% increase in diarrheal diseases (contamination of drinking water during floods, high temperatures favoring certain viruses, etc.) is expected by 2030.
In short, we would have to cope with a multiplicity of infections, with impaired health. And paradoxically, treating these pathologies would increase our carbon footprint...and thus also our eco-anxiety?
On a positive note, research is helping us understand the mechanisms by which certain micro-organisms adapt to temperature. The elucidation of these mechanisms could enable the development of new classes of antimicrobial drugs targeting temperature adaptation.
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