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Comment by BitwiseFool | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone else really weirded out by the fact that the 'scent' you are attracted to is actually from the bacteria on the other person?

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No more than thinking that as I look at someone's lovely skin, I'm looking directly at a body organ that sheds about 8 lbs a year and ends up as house dust.

Did the article actually conclude that though? I just read up until the point they were talking about strippers and lap dance tips being correlated with fertility and luteinizing hormone -- which doesn't seem to be about bacterial microbiomes.

Don't know which discussion on HN this was, but it was about the same book. Basically, each of us produces a varying amount of fat in our sweat and that leads to different bacterial biomes. The bacteria that metabolize the fat in the sweat are what actually produce the odors we recognize.

Well, your immune system, psychological state and general health is more determined your gut flora than anything you do otherwise (so eating the wrong things can also affect these).

You aren't just you. You are a system that includes bacteria on and in you.

We are just ecosystem hosts, they are the ones running the show.

"I've noticed you around. I find your microbiome very attractive. Would you... um..."

"My microbiome is signalling to me that it likes your microbiome."

Gut microbiota are increasingly being linked to immune system health.

Despite the old "disproportionally more bacterial cells than human cells" myth, we can still have twice as many bacterial cells in our bodies than human cells [1].

Humans are a commensal organism of many colonies of bacteria. Without them, we'd be in bad shape.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2016.19136

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