Humans Carry More Bacterial Cells than Human Ones

We compulsively wash our hands, our spray tops and grimace when someone sneezes with us, in fact, what we can we do to avoid unnecessary encounters with the world germ prevention. But the truth is that we are practically walking petri dishes, full of bacterial colonies of our skin to the deepest recesses of our intestines. All bacteria that would fill a half-gallon jug, in you are 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells in your body, says Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho (UI), along with other estimates of scientific studies. (Despite their large numbers, bacteria do not take up that much space because bacteria are much smaller than human cells.) While that sounds pretty disgusting, it's actually a very good thing.

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The damage begins at birth: babies taking mouthfuls of bacteria during birth and much more pick-up from the skin of their mother and milk during lactation, the mammary glands are colonized with bacteria. "Our interaction with our mother is the biggest eruption of microbes that we get," says Gary Huff Nagle, a microbiologist and internist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And that's just the beginning: Our whole lives, we consume bacteria in our food and water, "and who knows where else," says Huff Nagle.  Starting in the mouth, nose or other openings, these microbes travel through the esophagus, stomach and / or intestines locations where most of them set up camp. Although it is estimated at more than 500 species simultaneously in an adult gut, the majority to two phyla, the Firmicutes (which Streptococcus, Clostridium and Staphylococcus included), and Bacteroidetes (Flavobacterium which contain).

For a long time, scientists believed that these bacteria, despite their number, nor us much harm nor much good. But in the past decade or so, researchers have changed their tune. For one thing, bacteria produce substances that help us harness energy and nutrients from our diet, Huffnagle explains. Germ-free rodents almost a third more calories than normal rodents consume to maintain their body weight, and when the same animals after a dose of bacteria were injected body fat, even if they do not eat more than they had.

Intestinal bacteria also appear to keep our immune system. Healthily Several studies suggest that regulate microbial population and concentration of intestinal immune cells to aid in the development of gut-associated lymphoid tissues that mediate various immune functions.

The bacteria appear also to influence the function of immune cells such as dendritic cells, T-cells and B-cells, but scientists do not know yet the precise mechanisms. And a chemical released by the bacterium Bacteroides fragilis may address how the developing immune system matures.

Furthermore, probiotic supplements with potentially beneficial microbes have been shown to immunity. Not only intestinal bacteria "help protect against other pathogenic bacteria that may come from your food and water," Huff Nagle says, "they really represent a different branch of the immune system."