Your Body Has 100 Trillion Microbes
They are collectively known as the microbiome.
For a century, doctors have waged war against bacteria, using antibiotics as their weapons. No one wants to abandon antibiotics outright. But by nurturing the invisible ecosystem in and on our bodies, doctors may be able to find other ways to fight infectious diseases, and with less harmful side effects. Tending the microbiome may also help in the treatment of disorders that may not seem to have anything to do with bacteria, including obesity and diabetes. This new approach to health is known as medical ecology. Rather than conducting indiscriminate slaughter, Dr. Segre and like-minded scientists want to be microbial wildlife managers.
See full Carl Zimmer article in the New York Times.
This is a fascinating field of study, and I look forward to reading more about it in the future.
I prosecute my own personal war on these pesky microbes every single day. I wage chemical warfare with petrochemical adjuvants and hydrogen/oxygen-based solvents. In other words, I use a bar of soap to dislodge an entrenched enemy and water to flush them down the drain. I douse the enemy with ethanol-based chemicals in mouthwash and mine strategic (underarm) territories with aluminum chlorohydrate antiperspirants to prevent reoccupation. I’m not one of those “Live and let live” type of people.
I’ve read about research into changing the flora and fauna of the intestine — has more microbes than any other part of the body. Fecal transplants have been used to alter the microbial makeup (it’s basically what it sounds like). Probiotic supplements and even antibiotics that treat travelers’ diarrhea are sometimes used to change the types of intestinal bacteria in patients being treated for irritable bowel syndrome.
Well as a race we need to move beyond traditional antibiotics. Their lifespan is not infinite in their present form. Thanks for sharing.
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The only bacteria that doctors have “waged war” against are the microbes that kill or damage people.
How nice that they “may” be able to find other ways. For now, one hopes they continue to wage war against things like staph.
And the claim about obesity and diabetes sure is a stretch.
Studebaker, it sounds like you are on the brink of committing Microbocide.
Going by visuals, these women shluod be grateful that someone impregnated them firstly, I for one would not have been as generous with my sperm as these men where. And now we need to listen to your whining about being a parent, goes to show you never where or will be parental material, and now we pass the blame game, if you can blame the father, than the public can blame you both for being a burden on society, which you are, always will be, and your kids. We know single mothers breed inept kids