The important thing is not to reduce the human body to a two-dimensional cause-and-effect machine. The brain, the rest of the body, bacteria, and the elements in our food all interact with each other in four dimensions. Striving to understand all these axes is surely the best way to improve our knowledge. However, we can more easily tinker with bacteria than with our brain or our genes — and that is what makes microbes so fascinating. The nutrition we receive from our bacteria is not only important for fighting flab, it also affects the levels of fats such as cholesterol in our blood, for
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