Who we are and the Microbes.life mission

I created this site because I am pretty passionate about health and nutrition, and I want to share what I learn with others in the hope it may help them on their journey. I hope you find this to be a valuable resource that is useful to you. Where possible I have provided references and page numbers so you can go and read the research for yourself if you choose.

So my name is Paul, and growing up I had eczema and dermatitis, I grew up eating a standard western diet. In my early 20’s I used to eat lots of processed food and I really had no concept of trying to be healthy or understood what that meant. But my skin got a little worse so I started looking for answers and found an eczema book that outlined an eczema focused elimination diet, this helped to improve my skin quite a bit and is where I first learned that eczema was food related. But over the next few years I alternated between eating this way and trying to eat normal, regular food, but then issues would come back and I would have to eliminate things again. 

My eczema was manageable but I ultimately wanted to fix it and one day I found out about the carnivore diet. It sounded a bit crazy but I had gradually got more interested in health topics over the last few years so decided to try it. This ended up being a big mistake and when I came off it a few months later found that I reacted to so many more foods and could now only tolerate a few specific vegetables and meat so I was trapped in a very restricted diet.

I didn’t really understand why but knew something had changed because of the carnivore diet, about a year later after keeping a food diary and trying to add foods back in and not making much progress decided it was time to look into this further. I started working with a naturopath and microbiologist and ended up learning a bit about this thing called the microbiome. Overtime I became more and more curious about everything microbiome, health and nutrition related, when I stopped working with them I had made some good progress with my health but had so much further to go. I took it on myself to lookup research studies, listen to podcasts, research probiotics and foods in relation to bacteria, and did a short microbiome course. More recently I decided to pursue this growing interest in health and have started studying a Bachelor of Health Science (Nutrition), both out of interest, solving my own issues and one day I hope to be able to help others.

I hope to build this site into a useful resource compiling all this information in one place that people can access to learn more about autoimmune issues, the microbiome, and educate themselves to support their microbiome with those issues.

When I’m not studying nutrition, reading research and working on this website you’ll find me trying to surf, working on my swimming so I don’t drown while surfing 🙂 and trying to live a good life.