If you come across someone that does not know about it, how do you explain the Michael biome to them questioning The first thing I say is that they have more in the body than they do human cells and then I explained that microbes is the bacteria depending on [ Indiscernible ]. Basically a lot of organisms that live inside of her body and the vast majority learn that they are beneficial. They outnumber us by so much that otherwise would be in a lot of trouble. What do we know for sure is determined by the microbes? We know for sure that the health of microbes is involved in a lot of diseases. Then when you are looking for [ Indiscernible ] so what you see is you see association studies in humans and microbes is linked to something and that you see studies in animals . Requires clinical trials and that will take more time. So there's a lot of things that are very suggestive and likely to be true, but if you are thinking about making a change in your lifestyle you might really want to wait for a clinical trial. Your book is not like a standard medical text.'s made up of real questions like is it okay for my child to eat dirt and how often should I base my child. Before we get to those specific answers, I want to ask you why did you write this book about kids. Is her attorney to determine in our childhood? Yes, it is things that happened early in our child test childhood. That is true in animals also. We write this book about kids for several reasons. Jack and I are parents ourselves. And then we get a lot of questions about microbiome and more focused on and children. At the same time there is solid evidence out there. It's really hard to tell which is accurate. So we wanted to summarize for any interest in the parents who had a question about it and make it very accessible because you don't have a lot of time so being able to get straight to the question that you are looking for and looking up directly you can see what's really helpful. Is okay for your child to enter question It is okay for your child to eat dirt. Numbers of study show that it may have benefits as long as that it is healthy and safe. So if you just saw a sick animal so up maybe you don't want your child to eat doctor but if it is not contaminated, it's good to let them play in clean dirt. This one section on diet and I know this is really important to a lot of people. What role does the microbes play in food allergies? This is really excited -- exciting evidence that you can reverse allergies with the right probiotic. So he was able to show that a probiotic was able to reverse the peanut allergies. Even several years later half of them are still eating [ NULL ] everyday. So there's a term in his ability to change food allergies. Something that's interesting is food allergies seem to be linked to having a diverse 19 and wide range of exposures to different kinds of healthy food and healthy animals and so on. So if you have a more diverse microbes you are less likely to have food allergies or other kinds of allergies. So a lot of that comes from the combination of having good microbes that you can get from that channel deliveries versus C-sections and breast-feeding versus bottle feeding and avoiding antibiotics. So it's really the combination of antibiotics and bottlefeeding and C-section delivery that has a particular high rate of leading to those allergies later on. You can reduce them by avoiding those three factors. You work with American got project and cofounder of it. Can you tell us what the latest is and what you been able to discover in examining the American got. The American got project is a largest project that exists. At this point I have 10,000 people that have sent in examples and we've analyzed them and compared them to other people and in other countries and then people around the world who live very traditional lifestyles. Some of the latest things are really exciting so a lot of people think that whether you are vegetarian or on certain diets is going to have a huge effect on your microbes. We did not see a lot of them in the categories and if you think about it for a moment it makes sense because you can be a vegan and mostly kale or vegan and eat cookies and which will have a massive effect? So something that's really surprising is it seems to matter how many plans you eat. Rather whether you are reaching the diverse range of species. I've been speaking with Rob Knight . Thank you very much. Thank you.
Is it OK for my child to eat dirt? Should I get a dog? What causes colic? Are microbes to blame?
Those are just a few of the questions Rob Knight, a co-founder of the American Gut project and a professor in the department of pediatrics at UC San Diego, has been asked over the years by new parents and parents-to-be concerned about how to keep their children safe and healthy.
Knight and his American Gut project partner, Jack Gilbert, a professor of surgery at the University of Chicago, have spent years studying the human microbiome, the ecosystem of microbes including bacteria and other single-celled organisms that live in our bodies, and its connection to human health.
Now Knight and Gilbert have turned their research into a book, "Dirt Is Good, The Advantage of Germs for Your Child's Developing Immune System."
"Things that happen early in our childhood affect our health in terms of our microbiome throughout the rest of our lives," said Knight.
Knight said the book aims to answer questions he and Gilbert had about their own children in addition to questions people have asked them over the years after giving talks on the microbiome.
"I think it's a topic where there's a tremendous amount of interest and at the same time where there's very little solid evidence out there. Like if you go on the internet you just get this incredibly confusing set of web pages where some of them are accurate, some of them are not accurate and it's really hard to tell which are which," said Knight.
Knight discusses his book Wednesday on Midday Edition.
