When you need your bank, Capital One is right in the palm of your hand so you can check your balance deposit checks, pay bills and transfer money from your phone with a top rated app, and when you're done banking, put it back in your pocket. A banking experience built around you in your life. This is banking reimagined. Get started online any time. What's in your wallet? Capital One in a member FDIC.

You know, folks finding a new home that fits your family's needs can be pretty tricky. Luckily, when you need a mortgage that fits your family's needs, a great place to look is Rockit Mortgage. They provide the tools and expertise you need to understand all your options and find out exactly what works for you. And if you have questions now or along the way, their online Home Buyers Guide has tons of great info to help you move forward confidently. Visit Rockit mortgage dot com slash stuff because when you need a mortgage that fits your life, Rocket can call for cost information and conditions.

Equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states in MLS Consumer Access Dog number three zero three zero. Hey everybody, it's me, Josh.

And for this week's White Case Selex, I've chosen how the Human Microbiome Project works, which we released back in May of 2014.

And even after all these years, six years on, this information is still just totally mind blowing to me. And I love it. It's one of my favorite episodes of all time. I kind of forgotten about it and discovered it again. So I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. A production of art radios, HowStuffWorks. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark. I almost just forgot what I was going to say. Your name? Yeah. Wow. Uh, there's Charles Chuck Bright typing in. Yep. And you get the trifecta and it's terrible. Like, really, uh, you think, well, we are getting a little heat off of it right now, which is nice.

Did you ever see that IKEA commercial about the lamp that was thrown out on the street? No, it was really good. Well, what happened to it? Was it like the monkey at the IKEA now?

It was like a lamp gets thrown out with like someone's just redoing parts of their apartment and the lamp is kicked to the curb.

Is a computer animated? So it's it's a human formed in a human form of missing. Anthropogenic.

Yeah.

Anthropomorphize and like looks up at the apartment that he was just thrown out of and stuff like that. You go back to Sweden. Uh, I don't remember how it ends. I just remember the lamp light turns up human. It was sad.

It was like I said, okay, I got teared up.

Did you go by one of those lamps? No, of course. That didn't work. No. Um, so I guess you're feeling pretty good since you're talking about lamps and everything.

You know, me and lamps. I do. I mean, it's a good day.

It's a clear signal. Chuck's in a good mood. Everybody, uh, you know, one of the reasons why you're in a good mood. Mm.

Because your guts are functioning properly. Yeah. Yeah. Ish. Yeah.

You know me. It's day to day.

Yeah. With my stomach. Well that's exactly right. Things change very quickly. Yeah. Because of your stomach and your stomach can affect your mood. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of the serotonin, which is a mood stabilizing neurotransmitter, is produced in your gut. Yeah. And the way that things like serotonin and other stuff, uh, is produced is thanks to our microbiome, dude. Yeah.

Our microbiome. This is the most fascinating thing going on in medicine science right now.

Yeah. I get the impression reading various articles, when scientists talk about it, they all seem really pumped up.

It's like the breakthrough of the 21st century in this thing, like just started. It's 2014. Yeah. And like this could remain the breakthrough of the century.

Yeah. And I mean, if you think about the timeline, up until the twentieth century, you were like a plant or an animal.

Right. And then it was literally like the 1950s and 60s that they started saying maybe we should break things down a little further. They came up with the five kingdoms. Right? I think they're now even as a sixth kingdom.

Well, there's three domains now. Yeah, eight kingdoms. Oh, there's eight. There's eight and three. Two of the domains are account for two of the kingdoms as well. Bacteria and archaea. Yeah. And archaea used to be thought that they were the same as bacteria.

Yes. Then they started looking into them a little more and they're like, oh these guys are made up of different amino acids and they have different characteristics. And archaea, for example, are the kind of microbial life that you'll only find around undersea hot water. Sulphur vents. Yeah, like volcano crazy places.

Not not in your vagina or in your mouth.

Well, no, because they're extremophiles in a vagina or a mouth. Isn't that extreme?

Well, it is because archaea lives there.

That's right. So the fact that we figured out that archaea are different than bacteria and not only that, they don't just live in extreme environments, but also on the human body. Yeah, that was something we can thank the Human Microbiome Project for.

Yeah. And that wasn't I think they didn't even discover archaea till the 1970s. So this all the stuff is brand new.

Right. And exciting. And by the way, the three domains are bacteria. Archaea and eukaryotes are us. Yes, we're eukaryotes because we have nucleases nuclei.

Yeah. Let's talk about this man. We have before I'm sure you remember in the fecal transplant episode.

Yes. Because it's definitely factors into it. You can cupcake's. Yeah. You can cure Clostridium difficile, which is something where it's a gut microbe. It's very harmful to humans that can colonize your guts after you take antibiotics. Yeah. Which is basically just like a slash and burn approach, which again, thanks to the Human Microbiome Project, we're starting to understand the I want to use antibiotics because.

Yeah, well, we used to just think of as almost entirely bad are actually mostly beneficial. Sure. And even some of the bad bacteria, a.k.a. germs, are actually present in our microbiome and normally live in harmony. Yeah, it just appears that when the microbiome gets out of whack, that's when disease happens.

Yeah. Like you may have E. coli in your body right now.

Yeah, I probably do, but. It's not a big deal if you're where we just talk about status, homeostasis, yeah, keeping things balanced in life is the key. Yes. And it's definitely the key with your own personal microbiome, which we have learned is very individualized, which we'll get to with the project.

Right.

So if you take a human body and you scanned the all the genes in it, what you would find is there are about 100 times more microbial genes than human genes in a genetic scan of a human body. Yeah. Are human cells only make up about 10 percent of the cells in the body. And here's another great stat. We actually the healthiest person on the planet has between two and five pounds of bacteria. Pounds. Yeah. Of your body weight, about up to five pounds is a.

Yes.

What's crazy is, is that that's even considering that microbial cells are anywhere from a tenth to one hundredth the size of an average human cell. Yes.

You do know how many how much five pounds would have to. And that's quite a few.

Yeah. As a matter of fact, there's an estimated 100 trillion microbes on an average human person just in. Yeah.

On and a part of such a such a part of us and our our normal functioning that we're finding very quickly that they're they're pretty much interchangeable.

They are one with us and as their host we are kind of one with them.

Yeah. Like you have fungus on your skin. Yeah. No big deal. Right.

Well that's another thing too we should talk about. When people say microbe, it's kind of a catchall word for tiny. Yeah. Any tiny typically unicellular life. And that's the case here too. But it doesn't just mean bacteria.

The human microbiome is made up of lots of bacteria and lots and lots of different types of bacteria. For example, the mouth may have up to 5000 different species of bacteria.

Yeah. And they're not just lazing around in your body like they are responsible for keeping your body in check or, you know, sometimes responsible for it being out of whack. Right. But they're all they're all doing something or laying there waiting to do something.

You also have a what's called Aviram. You have viruses in your microbiome and they appear to be present to keep the bacteria populations from getting out of control like they're there to infect bacteria, to kill them off.

And they it's kind of like they're the lions to the gazelles of the microbiome. OK, you take away the lions. You've got too many gazelles. Yeah. They all start to starve. They don't function correctly. They may even eat each other. You don't want to see a gazelle eat another gazelle. So you have lions there in the lions. These apex predators. Yeah. Keep the gazelle population in check and ultimately healthy, paradoxically.

Yeah. It's the same thing with the virus in your microbiome. Yeah.

I mean they, we know they like gut bacteria, AIDS digestion and we'll get the gut bacteria more. I mean they're discovering just all kinds of things.

It affects, uh, synthesize vitamins. When you poop in the toilet and you look at your poop, which you should do, by the way, like, you know, on a regular basis, um, how much is it?

Half of that was from a third to half. So a third to half of that is microbial biomass. It's not food. No.

It's like deaden the living bacteria that you're pooping out.

Yeah, about half. Half. I saw something that was kind of mind blowing to, um, it's it's really neat and accurate, especially on a microbial level. All right. To imagine your alimentary system, your digestive system.

Yeah. As the inside of that is technically outside of your body, you have a whole trail running through the middle of your body.

Yeah. That is attached to the outside world. That's technically the outside.

Uh, yeah. I guess I see what you mean. It just chew on it for a minute. Yeah. Like the, the inside of your digestive system is technically the outside of your body.

I aihara that's outside of your body. Yeah, it's confusing, it is, but once once your head wraps around it, it's like one hand clapping kind of thing, right. And you're just like, whoa, that is neat. All right.

So that's, I guess, the briefest of overviews of microbes and bacteria, which we've talked about ad nauseum on the show. Yeah. And our great digestion podcast, that was one of my favorite ones. And then we've already talked about the poop shakes.

So the National Institutes of Health came up with a plan, got some money together and said, let's try and do what the Human Genome Project did. Let's try and map out the microbe, the human microbiome, which is a very tough task because everyone is different. Well, yeah, everyone's microbiome is different. And I just saw today it was released from University of Michigan. They've kind of already determined there is no such thing as a baseline healthy microbiome.

Yeah, and that was one of the goals of this project that was started in 2007, was that to to establish a baseline microbiome like they they they didn't know what one looked like. Like they knew that people had tons of bacteria and protozoa and viruses all over us and in us. But what is that supposed to look like?

And when you figure out what it's supposed to look like, then you can figure out what what an unhealthy one looks like and then possibly how to correct that by adjusting this this microbial ecosystem back to a baseline. But I'm not surprised that they found that there isn't a baseline that is too different, and that doesn't mean that they can't, like, learn a lot and help us out a lot.

What they're basically saying is you take a dozen completely healthy people and their microbiomes are going to be completely different still.

Yeah, and there was there is one huge revolution in in the study of bacterial or microbial life. Yeah. That that made this project possible. Same with the human genome, but much more for this is called metagenomics. And prior to the advent of metagenomics, if you wanted to study bacteria, you had to find a bacteria that could be replicated, cloned, cultured. Yeah. In a laboratory setting. And this accounted for just a very, very small fraction of the number of microbes out there.

What's more, so not only did you not have a representative sample, but you also didn't have any kind of anything less than an artificial setting. So even if you did get these microbes, if you could replicate them in the lab, they weren't going to behave the way they would in their natural setting, like on your body. So what Metagenomics did was you can now take like a representative sample, say, like a clump of soil. Yeah.

Or a swab of somebody's earphone and get all of the microbial microbes in there and then basically just do this rough scan of them, separate all the DNA out of these enzymes that go and clip coherent fragments of this DNA. And then you take it and you put it into what's called a model organism. And that model organism starts to replicate as cells. And then each cell displays a certain characteristic associated with a different microbe. So all of a sudden you can start studying the different cells and say, oh, well, this has to do with this microbe.

And this means that this protozoa is present and so on and so forth. And now you can get a truly representative sample of what's in the microbiome.

And without metagenomics like this, none of this would be possible. Yeah, but now we're starting to find all sorts of new, not just information, but even new species of bacteria and protozoa and fungi from the study of this stuff, which is a great thing.

It is a great thing.

And we'll explain why. It's a great thing right after this break. Did you know the Home Depot has everything for every room from statement, furniture, pieces and decorative decor to kitchenware, imbedding and bath linens, you can browse thousands of options for every space at Home Depot. Dotcom save up to 10 percent when you use our code, should know 10 at checkout and get free delivery on select items, 45 dollars or more. For more information, visit Home Depot dotcom slash decor section.

You know, friends in life, it's easy to get away with good enough when it comes to some things, but with identity theft protection, good enough probably isn't enough, right? Absolutely not, Chuck.

The reason why is because breaches seem to be happening more and more these days. And with your breached information, criminals can commit identity theft.

Plus, if you're only monitoring your credit, you could miss certain threats, like someone taking out a payday loan in your name or your info being sold on the dark web.

That's why LifeLock sees a wide range of identity threats. And if you end up with an identity theft issue and identity restoration specialist dedicated to your case will work to fix it from start to finish. No one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But shouldn't you have identity theft protection? That's better than good enough.

Help protect your personal information with LifeLock. Identity theft protection. Just go to LifeLock dotcom stuff to save up to 25 percent off your first year. That's LifeLock dotcom slash stuff for 25 percent off site.

OK, so we're back, we are back and we were talking about the microbiome project, which is being rolled out in phases, the first of which obviously is to get as many of those samples via this new technology and basically just get a big reference set, like throw them out on the table like a like a crawfish boil to in the hopes of establishing that baseline.

Well, not just a baseline, just basically Cadart cataloguing everything. Right. With the ultimate goal of seeing what this means to our body and how these different things interact. So they put the word out on the street. The NIH said, hey, we need some volunteers. Do you think you're a very healthy person? If so, can volunteer? And 600 people who consider themselves very healthy showed up and said, I'm a healthy person.

And they were dismayed to learn that half of them weren't healthy. Yeah, apparently.

Like, yeah, over half were rejected outright. Yeah.

And that doesn't mean they're like super unhealthy.

It just means for the purposes of this, they needed the healthiest, the healthy people.

And I read that even even still of the ones that were accepted, the 242 that made the cut, 85 percent of those people still had to have periodontal disease and cavities treated first.

Yeah. And then basically they had to be treated for that stuff and then they were deemed fully healthy.

But like, that's that's how the level of health they needed for this study or that they wanted for it.

Yeah. And it surprised me. They only got subjects from two cities. I thought it would have been like spread out, but Houston, Texas and St. Louis, Missouri, or where the final subjects came from and they haven't been and they were all white, too.

Oh really? They were white men and women aged 18 to 40, I believe. And they were they were the picture of perfect health after the dentists got finished with them.

Well, white people, I wonder. I don't know. But it's not that this has been the Human Microbiome Project has been criticized for it. It's more just been like.

So you guys got a swab of just these just a small fragment of humanity. Yeah. Maybe there's so much starting point, right?

Well, yes, because they can't include, like, every ethnic group and race yet when you're just starting out. Right.

OK, but I mean, it is surprising that this went with Caucasian only.

So they finally get these healthy people, a couple of hundred scientists, 80 different institutions. It's a big group thing.

It's not just like one university is running the show, a budget of about one hundred and seventy million bucks to start out with and a bunch of, uh. Cotton swabs, yeah, lots of them, over 11000 cotton swabs, generic cotton swabs. Yeah, right.

They, um, they they swabbed each man in 15 locations, women in 18 locations. Three of the locations were in the vagina. Men don't have vaginas.

They don't. But men have ears and armpits and elbow folds.

Yeah. Mouths. Yeah. Uh so there's up your nose stool stool samples. Yeah. They're getting as you know they're swabbing all the moist places. Right.

And yeah, that's exactly right.

And not just moist places, but I think that's where you're going to find the gold.

Sure. You know. Yeah well no it's true. Like your forearm actually is typically pretty dry. Yeah.

But it has one of the most diverse array of bacterial species in your whole microbiome. Yeah. You have about an average of 43.

Yeah, and people, when you hear this, don't think they didn't get the reaction I was expecting. Well, that seems to me yeah, because I'm used to hearing like thousands, thousands of bacteria, not necessarily species. Yeah, that's true. Although I think the mouth is going to top that.

From what I remember, I said up to five thousand species. I believe it.

Yeah. But I think one of our goals here in the goal of scientists is to stop people from, like, changing the tide of how we even think about this stuff. So when you hear that all the bacteria in your mouth and under your armpit don't think gross, think awesome.

Well, yeah, for the most part.

Yeah. You know, so the project, I guess, is still very much in its nascent stages. Chuck, basically the project itself. Yeah. Did the initial legwork and then they did the second phase, which is sequencing these things, which again, like I just painted the broadest picture of metagenomics sequencing. Yeah. It is one of the most involved, insane, complex processes I've ever like.

Tried to understand it's more complex than the breathalyzer.

I remember that it used like kryptonite somehow.

Yeah, that was very surprising. Yeah. If you don't know we're talking about go listen to our breathalysers episode is really. Those are complicated.

Yeah. I thought there were fairies inside the little box that just pretty much smells like beer. Yeah.

Metagenomics is, is, it's better to just kind of understand it like little fairies performing magic than to really dive into it.

But the point is, this project, they have all this data now. Now they have to sort through it.

They have the problem of big data is just an overwhelming amount of data, like trillions of bytes of data, three point five trillion bytes of data, which is about a thousand times more than the Human Genome Project.

And at first you're like, oh, wait, that doesn't make sense. We're talking about bacteria. And you go, Oh, yeah, that's right. We have about 100 to 200 times the genes in our microbiome than we do in just the human genome. So, yeah, that's a lot of data. And now they're starting to figure out how to how to sort through it. All right.

So I guess after this break, we can talk about some of the things we have learned thus far.

Hey, friends, if you enjoy enjoying things, then Heineken zero zero is a perfect alcohol free beer for having the great taste of beer whenever you want.

The brewers at Heineken have found a way to gently remove alcohol, Chuck, without sacrificing flavor and get this without adding more than 69 calories. It's pretty impressive.

So that means now you can add Heineken zero zero to your routine and never miss a beat.

That's right. So pick up the pack and enjoy where the day takes you. Heineken zero zero. Now you can. You bet you can.

Heineken zero zero. Enjoy the refreshing taste of a beer without the alcohol. Pick up a pack or have it delivered. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing. Heineken zero zero.

Now you can say. Hey, friends, I want to talk to you about a podcast called Behind the Scenes, the show that pulls back the curtain on your favorite Netflix series. We're talking Stranger Things, The Witcher and now the second season of the Umbrella Academy.

That's right. The Webby Award winning podcast is back with an all new season featuring the Netflix shows you love, specifically Umbrella Academy. And if you want to be charmed, well, you could do a lot worse than listening to journalist TV host A.J. Brandon Jenkins, who pulls back the curtains on how the Umbrella Academy season two got made from a graphic novel to script to screen. That's right.

And here's the deal. This podcast contains spoilers. So what you want to do is make sure you watch the whole series, the Umbrella Academy, season two on Netflix before pressing play on this wonderful podcast. So check it out.

Behind the scenes, the umbrella academy. It's out now and ready for you to subscribe on Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

By the way. OK, we're back. All right, so now I guess we can talk about some of these great findings, some of the newest findings in the last three years.

Well, they started in 2007, seven years old. And it seems like the first crop of, like, amazing stuff started in about 2012. Yeah.

So after they had categorized things and got, like, thrown all the crawfish out on the table. Right in the corn. Yeah. Little corn is good. Have you ever done that. Uh, I've had that before. Yeah. Yeah. It's good stuff. Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. I go to a big party. There's a place in, uh Buford Highway called, um, the Crawfish Shack.

I've heard of that, but I haven't been. Do they do it like that.

Do they just dump it on the table and it's all picnic tables, notes and bowls and stuff like that. But um. But it's all picnic tables inside. Yeah. And um just huge rolls of paper towels and it's dude that place is so good.

Yeah. I guess you can't do that as a restaurant, but if you go to a true crawfish boil at someone's home, you have the picnic table covered with the plastic. Yeah. And you just dump it on the table and everyone stands around like a bunch of animals.

All right.

Getting drunk and eating like sucking the heads of crawfish.

My my family used to do something similar to that. When I was little in Toledo, we would eat my dad, collect garbage pail stew. Yeah.

Are you familiar? Is it like all the leftovers?

No, it's like using trash can to make it. Oh, all right. Never heard of it over like a flame.

And obviously you use a new trash can. Like a brand new one. So I guess when I got a new trash can, we would have garbage pails to anyway, the metal trash can. It was yes.

It was more like a you know, the plastic just added.

No, I'm just trying to like a well, like the old Arjun's, right. Yeah. One of the old timey ones.

What kind of flame you got in your house? I don't remember what he cooked it on interest.

I don't like in my in my mind's eye. I can't look down.

I can just see I can just see the kind of the top of it. But anyway, it was like a Yankee northern Midwestern version of it. So there's like lots of cabbage in it. No, sure. Kielbasa and stuff like that. But it was essentially the same thing.

Yeah. And you would eat it like like newspaper.

I can't wait to get emails from people are like we did that same thing.

I've looked around, I've never seen it since. I'm sure that yeah. That sounds like a thing that although your dad is a very unique person, insane is the way to put it.

All right. So back to the project and the findings. Um. One of the things they've learned is that periodontist is gum disease, some bacteria are elevated if you have periodontist. So that's going to give you a little insight to maybe how you can better take care of your mouth, what kind of bacteria you need in there, what can you don't.

Yeah, exactly. And like, for example, streptococcus mutans is responsible for cavities. So you want to take care of your streptococcus mutans. Mutantes The thing is, Chuck, that reading this made me wonder, like, are we going to go the other direction now where it's like we understand that you can't just use antibiotics to get rid of everything? Yeah, but if we identify bacteria, that's like, oh well, that one gives you cavities. Let's get rid of all of that and find some sort of medicine that just gets rid of that.

Right. It it could make things even worse in a whole other direction.

Yeah. Like one thing that I figured out from this is that the the microbiome appears to exist in balance. Yeah. Like stuff that should make us sick. E. coli. Right. Kinds of strep staff, that kind of thing, like it exists on a healthy person's microbiome and it's just hanging out there.

Yeah. So it doesn't mean that they're inherently disease causing for us or that they're inevitably disease causing apparently if they exist in harmony with their neighbors, that's the way it's supposed to be. And we can't just root out just ones that make us sick and get rid of those because I think it'll have repercussions. But they may we might have a future where instead of an antibiotic you take you actually take a bacteria that will attack the other bacteria, the bad stuff.

Right. Or you can. Right, exactly. Like that, that as long as we're not intervening and going after a specific bacteria, we can aid the bacteria, like you say. Yeah, that will fight it naturally, like by eating some sort of sugary paste, you know, or probiotics.

I mean, that's what that is, right? Yeah. And they're all the rage.

I mean, that's that's an issue that's being examined in more detail thanks to the microbiome. Like, do probiotics work. Yeah. And apparently the jury's still out. Yeah, well, in theory they should work, but it depends on, you know, whether these things are actually colonizing your guts. And also I have the impression that it's like you don't really know what you're doing when you're adding, like, all these new people, the neighborhood. Yeah.

And because everyone's microbiome is so different, some one probiotic for one person might be great for another person, might not do anything or may make things worse. I don't know. Yeah.

Which is another goal of the Human Microbiome Project that if we start to understand, you know, what a colony maybe there's not a normal colony for everybody, but what an individual's normal colony looks like. Right. Then you can take blood or samples and make adjustments based specifically on what you need right there. Yeah, that'll be the end of your mystical drugs. Yeah.

Conceivably another doing a lot of research into how your gut bacteria affects obesity in your weight. They have found obese mice and transferred micro microbes from their gut into skinny mice and the skinny mice gained weight. And there's just type in gut bacteria and obesity. And there are a lot of studies going on now thinking that maybe correcting your gut bacteria could actually help you help your metabolism, you know, straighten out. Right.

Like they think the bacteria itself directly informs how the body uses their stores energy.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, the one that blew me away was there's a type of bacteria that helps that helps break down milk in humans. Oh, yeah. And typically it's in the gut. But as a woman advances in pregnancy, some of it moves down to the vagina. Yeah.

And the first the researchers who found this were like, what's the deal with that? And then they figured it out. They think, yeah, when a baby is born and it passes through the vagina, it basically becomes covered in this bacteria. Yeah. In just some of it. And that bacteria goes down and colonizes the baby's guts and prepares it almost immediately to start breaking down breast milk. Yeah, evidentally brand new babies are just sponges and like they're experimenting with caesarean sections to just swab.

Like after you had the cesarean section, you bring the baby out, swab it with, uh, with vaginal mucus.

And basically it just sucks right into the skin and maybe have the same result.

Right. Or swab their mouth or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, another way and I guess that's kind of related to is um with the immune system parent. Lee, the microbiome acts as kind of like a teacher to the early immune system and says like, hey, these are the good ones, these are the bad ones. Why don't you go ahead and produce some killer cells or killer T cells? Yeah, but not too many.

Um, and we'll just go ahead and keep the homeostasis going. And they basically like teach a young immune system how to operate at an optimal level. And they found that by engineering mice that are like totally germ free. Yeah. Their immune systems have a tendency to go crazy, like they'll become inflamed in the presence of water, say, um, non harmful fungi. Yeah.

They'll they'll become so inflamed that they'll damage the surrounding tissue or they'll have like irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease, they think also is a a flux state of the microbiome in the gut. So apparently it directly impacts the immune system as well, which my friend lends a lot of weight to the hygiene hypothesis.

Yeah, that's that's basically the notion that here in the West and even in developing countries now, children are seeing such a decrease in infection when they're when they're kids that when they grow up they have an increased number of allergies and maybe autoimmune issues. Yeah.

And you kind of see it playing out, you know. Right.

Like it's a real thing. Like if you're slathering your child with Purell, you're not doing them any favors. Right. So they may have asthma later on because of that. Exactly. They are becoming they're coming to think that it's because of the the just a stunted growth of the microbiome.

Yeah. And I think they've found now even they think they have a direct link between your gut bacteria and allergies.

So if you're if you get hay fever, it may be because of your gut bacteria, right. And it makes a just utter and complete sense to. Yeah, like your body has been exposed to these things early on, learned that they're not harmful and no longer produces antibodies as a result of their presence. Yeah, because that's all the analogy is. It's a it's a case of mistaken identity. Your immune system thinks that pollen or something is a harmful foreign invader.

And in launches, your your immune response is pretty cool.

Uh, some of the other interesting things they found so far is that there wasn't a single microbe that everyone had in the study. Yeah. Which is pretty interesting. And that microbes are most similar on the same site of different people. So like you and I have more similar microbes in our armpit than even though we're different people.

Right. Than you your microbes in your armpit has to do with your bellybutton. Yeah, ours are more similar than the ones in different places on your body.

Yeah, that's pretty neat. And different microbes can do completely different things, like the way you digest food might use one microbe and I might use another or that same microbe might have a completely different function in you than it does in me.

Right. To so personalized. It's like it feels like the beginning of like hyper personalized medicine. I think it is in the future. I definitely think it is.

I think it's also the beginning of a kindler, kinder, gentler approach to treating disease. Yeah.

All disease like it's entirely possible, especially if you take a brain based view of mental illness.

It's possible that every bit of disease can be cured.

Yeah, by by understanding the microbiome, even cancer. Apparently they found from this that some types of cancer managed to cloak themselves by taking like resin or residue from certain types of bacteria and basically sneaking past your your immune system and going and lodging itself into cells and hijacking them and creating tumors. But it cloaks itself by getting buddy buddy with certain kinds of bacteria.

Cancer is a jerk. Yes, cancer is a big time. Gerke, you know, we've kind of covered it here and there, but I could see more specific cancer podcasts in our future. Sure. You know what?

Yeah. So like so far we've done to that specifically got into the microbiome, but we've never done like a microbiome one. Yeah, it's I think we should come back like a year from now and even more stuff is out and do like the microbiome. Yeah.

It seems like they're they're making breakthroughs at a pretty rapid pace. Yes. So in a year they might everyone might be skinny. Yeah. Because of the microbiome pill.

Have you seen a picture of like an obese mouse next to like a skinny normal sized mouse. Yeah, it's pretty depressing. It is sad mouse. OK, so I will see you here at the end of next April, God willing, for the microbiome deal. All right. If you want to learn more about the human microbiome, you can type that well, those words into the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com and I said HowStuffWorks dot com. So it's time for the listener mail.

Josh, I'm going to call this response from a creationist. Oh, OK. We've got a few of these. Yeah. Hey, guys, listen to your podcast on natural selection and really enjoyed it. I'm a biologist who is a Christian and creationist. Natural selection is not what we disagree on.

And when I say we, I mean most creationist. But of course, with every group, there are outliers. We agree with microevolution, changes that occur within the species, not macroevolution. Species developed into a completely different species, which is what most people tend to associate with evolution. The only major differences between creationists and evolutionists is that we believe the earth is between six and ten thousand years old and again, excluding the outliers and that all organisms were created in their basic form by our God.

For example, we believe that everyone came from Adam and Eve through methods of natural selection, evolved into the many nationalities we have today. Same thing with animals. We believe that a small number of species were created by our God and all the forms we have. The day evolved through natural selection. So the only main difference that we have with evolutionists is the ultimate origin of species. The areas of evolution that we can see clearly occurring in front of our eyes we agree with.

It's the areas that evolutionists theorize about that we don't agree with. So while there are differences between creationism and evolution, there are actually more similarities. And that is Eric from South Bend, Indiana.

Thanks a lot, Eric. Very salient point biologist.

Yeah, I love it when, like, experts come out of the out of the woodwork, especially when they're experts with a twist. Yes. And we love being refuted and refuting and reading repu.

Stations, and we'll always read these things, refutation, life. That's right, if you want to refute something we've said or agree with us or whatever, if you want to get in touch about anything, you can tweet to us. That's why I a podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash. We should know where on Pinterest or on Instagram. And if you want to send an email to Chuck, Jerry and me, you can address it to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.

Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart radio, because the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Would you like a simple way to lower your blood pressure and stress, ease your headaches and improve your immune system on the Gratitude Diaries podcast? I'm spending a full week exploring how gratitude can make you healthier and even get you exercising more. It sounds like a magic drug, but don't worry, you'll hear the impressive research behind the findings, like the study of college students who slept better after just two weeks of keeping a gratitude journal.

By changing your perspective, gratitude can make you happier and healthier. Plus, it's free, easy and has only good side effects. You don't want to miss these practical down to earth tips for feeling better no matter what's going on in the world. So check out The Gratitude Diaries podcast with me, Janice Kaplan. Every weekday you'll get a quick idea, new insight or inspiration to make your life better and healthier. Listen now on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Walter Thompson Hernandez, host of the new podcast California Love, a show about how the city we love so much more than meets the eye. Once you find the hidden secret, it's like, oh, this is here. Oh, you have an oasis. I hear these birds man in the morning and they're so loud. All I can say is graffiti did that. Listen to California love I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your pocket.