Did you know your body is host to 100 trillion organisms? These organisms are made up of bacteria, yeasts, and fungi, and sometimes there are parasitic organisms as well. These organisms live all over our skin and in all of our orifices with an amazing 95% of them living in our guts. Collectively they weigh about 4 pounds.
If you compare the number of cells in your body to the number of organisms living in your body, those critters living in you would outnumber your cells by 10:1. Dig a little deeper, and compare your DNA to that of your organisms, and their DNA outnumbers yours by 100:1.
Think about that for a minute. More organisms than human cells! Vastly more microbial DNA than human DNA!!
So, how human are you? You are just as human as you’ve always been, but our perspective on what makes us human has evolved in recent years. The reality is that we can’t exist alone. We have a co-dependent relationship with the organisms that inhabit us. They need us to live, and we need them to live. They influence every single metabolic process that occurs in our bodies.
Collectively these organisms are called the microbiome. Keep your eyes open because the human microbiome is a hot topic these days, and research is helping us to understand exactly how it affects our health.
What’s really exciting is that what we eat and how we live our lives has a profound impact on the health of our microbiome. A healthy microbiome in turn means a healthy body.
So next time you sit down to eat it’s worth contemplating if that mouthful of food is meant for the human in you or for the little critters living in your gut.
Want to learn how to eat to feed YOUR microbiome? Contact me!