Human Microbiome

Deep inside your body, way down in your gut, there is a secret world. If you could swallow a microscope and dial it up to a high magnification, you would see an alien environment of live bacterial cells. At this scale, you could see the bacteria at work, their unicellular structures busily breaking down foods and building vitamins. The closer you looked, the more bacteria you would find. This is your microbiome.

For a long time, doctors and scientists were sure about one thing: bacteria make us sick, and so bacteria are bad. When people got bacterial infections, their doctors concentrated on fighting and killing all the bacteria in their bodies.

But as scientists studied bacteria more deeply, they learned that bacteria also help our bodies stay healthy. Microorganisms like bacteria live in many places in a healthy body, including our mouths, our skin, and our guts. Our bodies use these bacteria for important and necessary tasks. In fact, bacteria make up an essential part of our bodies: the microbiome.

A microbiome is a body’s ecosystem of different kinds of bacteria. Your body’s microbiome is made up of trillions of bacteria that live all over and do all kinds of things, and no one else’s microbiome is exactly like yours. Your healthy microbiome could be very different from your friend’s healthy microbiome.

Like in all kinds of ecosystems, keeping your body’s bacteria in balance is the key to a healthy environment. When your microbiome is out of balance, you get sick, and scientists are studying the role of bacteria, good and bad, in human health. It’s clear that the diversity and stability of your microbiome plays a role in your health, and it could even relate to serious diseases like asthma and cancer. The secret world of bacteria inside you is still being discovered and you can dive in to take a look.