{"id":6895,"date":"2014-12-23T22:24:26","date_gmt":"2014-12-23T14:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/?p=6895"},"modified":"2014-12-23T22:24:26","modified_gmt":"2014-12-23T14:24:26","slug":"of-bacteria-and-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/?p=6895","title":{"rendered":"Of Bacteria and Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

My recent Tree of Life<\/a> post described how all living creatures share a common ancestor. Both Homo Sapiens and the E. Coli bacterium in his bowels belong to the same “extended” family!<\/p>\n

\"Leonardo-da-Vinci-Vitruvian-Man\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"2_jpg35416396-ead4-4bc6-9cb4-3632839dad1cLarger\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In that post I promised to write another blog\u00a0about bacteria and the human body. Here it is..:-)<\/p>\n

We humans are multi-cellular organisms consisting of roughly 10 trillion<\/span> cells. For those not familiar with the naming of big numbers, one trillion\u00a0=\u00a01000 billion = 1000000 million. And for comparison, the global human population is at the moment ~ 7.3 billion<\/a>, so there are ~ 1500 times more cells in your body than there are people living on our planet.<\/p>\n

Bacteria are single-cell organisms. How many bacteria do we have in and on our body? A staggering 100 trillion<\/span>, 10 times as many as we have body cells! They can be found on our skin, on our teeth, basically everywhere, but most of them live in our bowels, the so-called gut flora<\/a>\u00a0.\u00a0The size of these bacteria is roughly 10\u00a0times smaller than an average human body cell, \u00a0their total mass is estimated to be 1-2 % of our body mass. Mind you, that is still a lot, about 1 kg of your body mass\u00a0is bacterial!.<\/span><\/p>\n

Probably you will have been\u00a0taught that bacteria are bad and dangerous<\/span>. Wash your hands, keep everything clean, etc. And of course there are bacteria that can harm you, even kill you. But most of the bacteria in\/on your body are harmless and many are even needed for your survival. You would die without your gut flora!<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are a few \u00a0things your gut flora will do for you:<\/p>\n