I, Superorganism: Learning To Love Your Inner Ecosystem

Every human body carries a secret: a huge population of microorganisms living in the mouth, on the skin, in the gut. They help digest our food, make essential vitamins, and break down toxins and metabolise drugs. They exert an invisible influence on our hormones, immune systems, and perhaps even our brains.

This is the human microbiome—a living, shifting system of previously unimagined importance and complexity.

In this first book-length account of this new realm of human biology, award-winning science writer Jon Turney explores the microbiome in detail, charting its birth and development, investigating how it works, and assessing its many implications for our health, including its potential to shed light on conditions such as bowel diseases, cancer, allergies, and asthma. He considers the impacts of modern disinfectant and antibiotic use, and ponders a future of designer microbiomes and mood-altering probiotics.

This book will make you think again about your relationship with your body, your habits—and your sense of who and what you are—as it reveals what it means to be a 21st-century superorganism.