Stop pooping! You’re killing sentient beings! [Pharyngula]

In a recent quack conference, Deepak Chopra did his usual thing: taking new science that he understands poorly and stuffing it full of magic bogosity.

According to Chopra, that pesky inflamed microbiome is sentient. The genome, microbiome and epigenome, which the author collectively calls the “super gene,” are referenced throughout the interview. His book, Super Genes: The Key to Health and Well-Being, was published last year.

Oh, no! Every time I use the bathroom, I am slaughtering billions of sentient beings? I’m going to have to stop pooping.

…frequent criticism doesn’t seem to deter Chopra from spouting microbiome misinformation. While discussing yoga during his interview with Chopra, Mark Hyman gushed, I love yoga, and I do it, and I always feel transformed, and it’s amazing that not only your genes are listening to your thoughts, but your microbiome, the bacteria are listening to your thoughts. Yoga can be a great form of exercise, but this is a bit of a stretch.

But Chopra agreed with Hyman: Yeah, the bacterial genes are listening to your thoughts.

It’s bad enough that we have a satanic cat that prowls around our bedroom listening to our private conversations, but now you’re telling me that E. coli is reading my mind? I changed my mind. Dumping those devious little spies into the toilet sounds like its only fair.

At the quack conference, there was apparently a lot of talk about “leaky guts”, the new invisible ailment that the con artists are selling pills to prevent. Leaky guts are the new cause of autism, cancer, mental illness, impotence, and any affliction you can think of that needs a cure.

And you know they have a cure. It’s all right here in a little pill. The answer is…molecular hydrogen!

Don’t worry, though. It’s not the kind of hydrogen gas that explodes in zeppelins. It’s a very tiny form of hydrogen that gets injected into your cells and turns the bad free radicals (but not the good ones! No! It can tell!) into water, so it helps with hydration, too. It’s been around for millions of years, so it must be safe. If you know anything about chemistry, you’ll listen to that talk and think, “wait, I can see where that weird idea came from, but it’s wrong”, and you’ll cringe a lot.

The cure is a little pill that you drop into water, and it fizzes, releasing hydrogen gas. The pill just contains hydrogen and magnesium…

Hey. Is she selling tablets of magnesium hydride? Seriously? For ingestion?

It would be bubbling out H₂, plain old hydrogen gas or molecular hydrogen, and it is highly flammable. Zen Honeycutt ought to try it: after she’s put the pill in her bottle of water, wait a little bit, and then light a match. Fwoooosh! Just like the Hindenburg!

The websites selling this stuff claim it contains “pure magnesium” plus a few other compounds. This would imply that the reaction is combining Mg and H₂O to produce magnesium hydroxide and hydrogen gas. Nope, I wouldn’t eat that, either. I still want to see her light up the mouth of that bottle.

Although…if I really wanted to get those sneaky bacteria in my gut, I could just pop a couple of those pills directly, and then light a fart.