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    Summary & Study Guide - 10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness
    Summary & Study Guide - 10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness
    Summary & Study Guide - 10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    Summary & Study Guide - 10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness

    By Lee Tang

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    About this ebook

    You're just 10% human.

    This book is a summary of “10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness,” by Alanna Collen.

    There are over 100 trillion microbes living in your body. They live on your skin, in your mouth, nose, ears, esophagus, stomach, and your gut. These microbes are not a random mix of species. They own special genes that carry out many metabolic and protective functions for your body, extending the functions of human genes. Scientists call this dynamic community of microbes the microbiota and the totality of their genes the microbiome.

    In 10% Human, biologist Alanna Collen shows how this community of microbes influences our weight, our immune system, and our mental health. Many modern diseases—obesity, autism, mental illness, digestive disorders, allergies, autoimmune diseases—arise because we have an unhealthy microbiota. The good news is, unlike human genes, we can change our microbiome for the better.

    Read this revelatory and indispensable guide to the human microbiome.

    This guide includes:
    * Book Summary—helps you understand the key concepts.
    * Online Videos—cover the concepts in more depth.
    Value-added from this guide:
    * Save time
    * Understand key concepts
    * Expand your knowledge
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLMT Press
    Release dateMay 21, 2020
    ISBN9781988970196
    Summary & Study Guide - 10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness
    Author

    Lee Tang

    Lee Tang is a retired executive of a major global insurance company. Prior to his retirement, he has worked as an actuary, a risk officer and a chief financial officer for several major insurance organizations in the United States, Canada, and Taiwan. To learn more about Lee and his work, visit his website and blog at https://lmtpress.wordpress.com. You can reach him by email at leetang888@gmail.com.

    Read more from Lee Tang

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      Book preview

      Summary & Study Guide - 10% Human - Lee Tang

      You're just 10% human.

      This book is a summary of 10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness, by Alanna Collen.

      There are over 100 trillion microbes living in your body. They live on your skin, in your mouth, nose, ears, esophagus, stomach, and your gut. These microbes are not a random mix of species. They own special genes that carry out many metabolic and protective functions for your body, extending the functions of human genes. Scientists call this dynamic community of microbes the microbiota and the totality of their genes the microbiome.

      In 10% Human, biologist Alanna Collen shows how this community of microbes influences our weight, our immune system, and our mental health. Many modern diseases—obesity, autism, mental illness, digestive disorders, allergies, autoimmune diseases—arise because we have an unhealthy microbiota. The good news is, unlike human genes, we can change our microbiome for the better.

      Read this revelatory and indispensable guide to the human microbiome.

      This guide includes:

      Book Summary—helps you understand the key concepts.

      Online Videos—cover the concepts in more depth.

      Value-added from this guide:

      Save time

      Understand key concepts

      Expand your knowledge

      Important Note About This Guide

      This guide is a summary and not a critique/review of the book. The summary may not be organized chapter-wise but summarizes the book’s main ideas, viewpoints, and arguments. It is NOT meant to be a replacement, but a supplement to help you understand the book’s key ideas and recommendations.

      Title: Summary & Study Guide - 10% Human

      Subtitle: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness

      Author: Lee Tang

      Publisher: LMT Press (lmtpress.wordpress.com)

      Copyright © 2019 by Lee Tang

      All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      First Edition: March 2019

      Issued in print and electronic formats.

      ISBN 9781988970196 (ebook)

      ISBN 9781798192849 (paperback)

      ISBN 9781987063936 (paperback

      Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and author make no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy or completeness of these contents and disclaim all warranties such as warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. The website addresses in the book were correct at the time going to print. However, the publisher and author are not responsible for the content of third-party websites, which are subject to change.

      To my wife, Lillian, who is the source of energy and love for everything I do, and to Andrew and Amanda: watching you grow up has been a privilege.

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Introduction: The Other 90%

      1. 21st-Century Sickness

      2. All Diseases Begin in the Gut

      3. Mind Control

      4. The Selfish Microbe

      5. Germ Warfare

      6. You Are What They Eat

      7. From the Very First Breath

      8. Microbial Restoration

      Coda: 21st-Century Health

      Index

      About the Author

      Introduction

      The Other 90%

      There are over 100 trillion microbes living in your body. They live on your skin, in your mouth, nose, ears, esophagus, stomach, and gut. These microbes are not a random mix of species. They have special genes that carry out many metabolic and protective functions for your body, extending the functions of human genes. Scientists call this dynamic community of microbes the microbiota and the totality of their genes the microbiome.

      Your genes make you what you are. They influence what you look like on the outside and how your body works on the inside. They contain the information to make proteins that form the structure of our body and keep us alive.

      The genome of an organism is the complete set of DNA, including all its genes. The size of the genome and the number of genes it contains differ from species to species. Viruses have a few thousand letters of DNA and a few genes. The human genome comprises 3.2 billion letters of DNA, with around 21,000 genes. It is the same size as the mouse genome, but ten times smaller than the salamander genome.

      The human microbiome contains genes that perform many functions the human genes cannot. It is an energy-efficient extension of the human genome. Each gene within the human genome comes at an energetic cost because every time a cell subdivides, it must replicate the entire genome (21,000 genes) within the cell.

      Every organism has coevolved with its own microbiota. Hawaiian bobtail squid has a species of bioluminescent bacterium living in its underbelly where the bacteria converts food into light. So when viewed from below, the squid glows. It obscures its silhouette against the moonlit ocean surface, camouflaging it from predators approaching from beneath.

      Cows eat grass, yet using their own genes they can extract little nutrition from this diet. They need special enzymes to break down the tough molecular walls of the grass. Evolving the genes that make these enzymes could take millennia as it relies on random DNA mutations that can only happen with each passing generation. A quicker way to get the nutrients from grass is to outsource the task to microbes. The four chambers of the cow's stomach house populations of microbes that produce enzymes to break down these grass cell walls. Gaining the genes to do this is quick and easy for microbes as their generation times are often a few hours.

      The appendix is a thin tube, about four inches (10 cm) long, sitting at the junction of the small intestine and large intestine in the lower right abdomen. It is protected from the flow of digested food passing its entrance. For many years, people believed the appendix performed no functions. We now know that it is a safe house for our gut microbes. The microbes lurking there can repopulate the gut with its normal inhabitants after a gastrointestinal infection.

      It has been difficult to study microbes living inside our body on Petri dishes because most of them die when exposed to oxygen. After the Human Genome Project, scientists can now sequence massive quantities of DNA quickly. They can even identify dead microbes in stools because their DNA remains intact.

      In addition to DNA sequencing, scientists now use germ-free mice to study what microbes do in our bodies. The first generation of these germ-free mice was born by C-section and kept in isolation chambers. From then on, most

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