What percentage of the microbiome does the speaker say is set at birth?

Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

Your Gut Microbiome_ Set at Birth, Changed by Lifestyle | Is Gut Microbiome Testing Helpful

29 May 2025 · 0 min

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Aaron Hartman, MD explains that 60-70% of your gut microbiome is determined at birth. Diet and lifestyle can shift it, but changes fade if you stop. Microbiome testing often shows only modest, temporary improvements.

Questions this video answers

About 60–70% (speaker claim).

About 60, 70% of your microbiome is set at birth. You can change it through diet, lifestyle interventions, a bunch of things. But if you do those for a short period of time and then go back to life as usual, what's gonna happen is your gut's gonna go back to normal. And I've seen this over and over again where we do the testing. It kind of looks. It's a little better, but looks kind of the same because they don't sustain their gains, they don't sustain the diet changes.