\u201cYour microbiome is not just yours as an isolated entity, it is partly a reflection of the people you live with, and theirs is partly a reflection of you,\u201d lead author Vitor Heidrich told The Post. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis also means that the health benefits and disease risks linked to specific microbiome members may themselves be transferable between people, which is something we are only beginning to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
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One reason households may have such similar microbiomes is that they might often eat together. Drazen \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n
Microbes are a diverse range of bacteria and other microscopic organisms, both beneficial and harmful, that are too small to be seen without a microscope. Generally, the more diverse these microbes are, the better suited<\/a> the environment (the microbiome) will be to disturbances, and better for your health.<\/p>\n Eating the same foods and lifestyle habits, like being physically active, have important effects on the microbiome in the gut and mouth. But in terms of specific shared microbes, these factors aren\u2019t actually as significant compared to living together, Heidrich said.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless my strains physically travel from me to you, the same diet alone will not necessarily make us share more of our strains,\u201d said Heidrich, a researcher at the University of Trento, Italy. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s more that if I pass one of my strains to you and we eat the same diet, that strain will find a similar nutritional environment in your gut to the one it was thriving in before, making it more likely to successfully colonize your gut.\u201d<\/p>\n How far microbes can go \u2014\u00a0and the oral-gut microbiome axis<\/p>\n If you\u2019re passing microbes between others that live with you, what about others in your community? The answer is yes \u2014 that too.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople living in different households but from the same community, like the same town, do share more strains than people from completely different populations,\u201d Heidrich said. <\/p>\n \u201cThis suggests that microbiome transmission extends beyond the household, likely through untraced social interactions, shared public spaces, or strains circulating in the local community. However, the effect is much weaker than what we see within households.\u201d<\/p>\n Within the individual body, researchers also saw similarities between the microbiome of the the mouth and gut, the body\u2019s two largest microbial ecosystems<\/a>.<\/p>\n Most of this can be explained by the simple fact that we swallow saliva all the time, transferring microbes in the saliva to our gut, Heidrich explains.<\/p>\n \u201cThis speaks to the fact that most of our microbes are kind of everywhere, and the microbial exchange is very high,\u201d said Nicola Segata, another author from the University of Trento, in a release for the study.<\/p>\n Researchers call the connection between the two systems the oral-gut microbiome axis. Experts believe that knowing more about the interplay between the oral and gut biomes can help us better understand and treat<\/a> gastrointestinal diseases and cancer.<\/p>\n The future of treating disease?<\/p>\n Authors of this paper also hope their research can help treat disease.<\/p>\n By identifying the microbes that were most transmissible between people, they can identify the traits that made them able to survive the journey.<\/p>\n \u201cThe same traits \u2026 may also allow them to thrive in the inflammatory conditions associated with disease,\u201d Heidrich said.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/asian-little-girl-mom-brushing-130593883.jpg\")
Better oral hygiene is associated with more diverse oral microbiomes. \u00bf\u00bf\u00bf\u00bf\u00bf\u00bf \u00bf\u00bf\u00bf\u00bf\u00bf\u00bf\u00bf\u00bf\u00bf \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n