All living creatures on this planet have a unique and individual microbiome: spiders and mosquitos, squirrels and chipmunks, trout and turtles. Humans likewise have a microbiome unique to our species but that differs for each individual. But the practices of modern life—shopping in a grocery store and eating food served from a drive-through window rather than killing or foraging your next meal; bathing in a hot shower in place of a dip in a lake or river; taking a course of antibiotics for a sinus infection instead of toughing it out—add up to wreak cataclysmic alterations in the composition
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