Your Personal Microbes

As I mentioned in one of the previous blogs our (I mean humans) body harbors more bacteria than our (human) own cells. You might be wondering why am I specifying humans every time I refer to ‘our body’.  Here are some information: It is estimated that an adult human body is made up of around 10 trillion cells, but we have around 100 trillion bacteria in our body. Now who do you think the owner of 'our' body is.

It will not surprise you now, when you know that these microbes contribute significantly to our health by helping us with the daily business of life. There is a surprising finding recently that the bacteria in/on our body populate the neighborhoods we frequent. Scientists did a study on the household bacteria and found that if we stay in a house, the microbiome (total bacteria in that area) of that household will be mostly from our body. It will stay there for few days (~3 days) if we leave that place. It is same if we check-in to a hotel room too. Our bacteria will colonize that room with in few hours we start our stay there. These are findings from an interesting series of studies going on about microbiome in and around you called 'Home Microbiome Study'

What is the big deal? Well, now your microbiome is your footprint. Just like your fingerprint your microbiome is unique to you. So if you are a murder suspect, investigators can sample the room or things they believe you touched and sequence the ‘stuff’ they got there and cross verify with your microbiome. If they match then you may have to do some explaining. Also, as I have discussed in some of the previous blogs, there is huge, but not yet clear, connection between the microbiome in our body and various healthy and diseases states of body and mind.  So if I stay close to someone can I indirectly affect there physical and metal states, and vice versa? Can we get an analysis of our current health status by examining our microbiome in/on our body?  Can we modulate health and behavior and treat diseases of individuals by manipulating the microbiome? Is there a hierarchy in the microbiome when many individual stays together or are they all equal? Some are interesting questions some are plain stupid. Whatever the case may be it is a good probiotic for thought.