Microbes rule your health — and further prove that kids should eat dirt

Humans don't rule the planet. Humans don't even rule their own bodies. During the past 20 years or so, it's become apparent that the guys in charge of everything are a nanometer across and run in packs, or perhaps more accurately, hang out in mobs. These gangs of microorganisms are together referred to as the microbiome, and we're just beginning to understand what these worlds within our world do to us and for us.

First, a little data, according to "Dirt Is Good," a recent book by Jack Gilbert, director of the University of Chicago Microbiome Center, and Rob Knight, director of the University of California Center for Microbiome Innovation, with science writer Sandra