And that’s just a sliver of the full potential of microbiome medicine. Imagine we’re ten, twenty, maybe thirty years into the future. You see a doctor. You’ve been feeling anxious, so she prescribes a bacterium that’s been shown to affect the nervous system and repress anxiety. Your cholesterol is a little high, so she adds another microbe that makes and secretes a cholesterol-lowering chemical. The levels of secondary bile acids in your gut are unusually low, leaving you vulnerable to a C-diff infection – best to include a strain that produces these acids. Your urine contains molecules that
...more
