The microbiome miracle: Good bacteria don't just live in your gut, but all over your body - and can help ward off deadly illnesses from cancers to infections. Here, doctors reveal how to nurture yours in our ultimate guide By Cara Lee Published: 20:52 EDT, 23 September 2024 | Updated: 20:57 EDT, 23 September 2024 e-mail View comments Scientists are increasingly discovering new ways that our microbiome – the community of bacteria and viruses that live inside us – is key to our health. It could even be the source of new antibiotics.
Using gut microbiome samples from 1,800 people, researchers in the US have recently identified dozens of microbes that worked against disease-causing bacteria in the lab. When one of these microbes was then tested on mice infected with a common bacteria, it was as effective as the current last-resort treatment, reported the journal Nature. Using gut microbiome samples from 1,800 people, researchers in the US have recently identified dozens of microbes that worked against disease-causing bacteria in the lab But while most of us now know something about the gut microbiome, there are other microbiomes pretty much everywhere – in our lungs, mouths and even in our joints, explains Professor Luigi Nibali, head of the Centre for Host-Microbiome Interactions at King's College London .
'Although we look human, because there are so many microbes living in our body, 99 per cent of the DNA material inside us is, in fact, the microbes' DNA. 'A lot of o.