The text is a narrative about the human microbiome, the trillions of microorganisms that live in and on our bodies
1. Microbes are omnipresent in our environment, including our phones, water bottles, and bodies.
2. We have a symbiotic relationship with microbes, providing them with shelter and food in exchange for their services.
3. Humans start out sterile inside our mother's womb and are covered with our mother's bacteria upon birth.
4. This essential part of human health is disrupted in children born via C-section, leading to a higher rate of asthma, immune diseases, and even leukemia.
5. Over millions of years, we co-evolved with microbes to make the best of our relationship.
6. Mother's milk contains special sugars meant to feed and support certain groups of microbes.
7. It takes up to two years for a healthy microbe community to form in a human body.
8. Every human has a unique microbiome made up of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other organisms.
9. Our bodies have three categories of microbes: quiet passengers, harmful guests we've learned to live with, and friendly fellows our bodies want to have around.
10. The gut microorganisms help us digest food and pull additional calories from things we can't digest ourselves.
11. Our gut is guarded by an aggressive army, our immune system.
12. Our microbiome co-evolved with us to be able to communicate with our body.
13. The most important part of that communication is to ask the immune system not to kill them.
14. Our microbiome also has a real motivation to keep our gut healthy, producing messenger substances that help educate the immune system and stimulate gut cells to regenerate faster.
15. Over the last few years, evidence has emerged that the influence of our gut microbiome goes much further, it might even talk directly to our brain.
16. Nine percent of our body's serotonin, an important messenger substance for nerve cells, is produced in the gut.
17. Some scientists think the microbiome does this to communicate with the vagus nerve, the information highway of our nervous system.
18. Our microbiome also influences our behavior. For example, healthy rats fed microbes from the guts of depressed people began showing anxiety-like behavior and symptoms that look like depression.
19. Our microbiome is also linked to other serious diseases like autism, schizophrenia, and cancer.
20. One of the earliest symptoms of Parkinson's is actually gut problems.
21. If your body is overrun with bacteria that harm you, there is often only one solution: you bring in an army of good guys.
22. This method is already used to cure diarrhea caused when C. difficile bacteria take over a gut microbiome.
23. We need to do a lot more science to really understand how our microbes make us healthy or sick.