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Comment by ohyoutravel | Hacker News Reader

I read a book about all this recently called I Contain Multitudes. The thesis was that the gut biome controlled a lot, and given the evidence presented I thought it was compelling (as a layman) though not actionable. Based on that one piece of information I am not surprised by the OP.

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I started I Contain Multitudes and ended up reading 10% Human instead. It’s more human-centric. Fascinating either way. I suspect we are starting to see the first glimmers of a vast space of microbiome interactions.

It’s really interesting, and for me personally unfortunate that it seems to be a “crunchy” topic that’s regularly the domain of crystal healers and anti vaxxers and people who blame their maladies on “toxins in the body” because the science behind a microbiome growing from the food we eat and how we evolved seems pretty sound.

I share this sentiment. It seems that anything which has not yet been formally proven by academia is “not real” in the public eye and therefore all believers are cranks. We still have major gaps in our understanding of our bodies and our medicine, so to me it is ironic that the institutional science scoffs at things like the microbiome that we do not yet fully understand.

> major gaps in our understanding of our bodies

True. But it doesn't cancel the fact that most preachers of detoxication and such are cranks.

Good book! Ed Yong is a great author. It really made me question our modern medicine approach to use antibiotics which is essentially scorched earth tactics on our gut biome. I hope some cool medical science comes out of it. Like having medicines tailored to your gut biome makeup and balance.

The section in the book about fecal matter transplants (FMTs) and how they work blew my mind.

(Edit typo)

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