Invisible Microbes with David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé - The Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast

That's our colon, also called our large intestine. And the colon is very interesting for two reasons, I think. First of all, the lion's share of our microbiome. So that's all of the indigenous microbial communities that are in and on our body. The lion's share lives in our colon. So what we've got down there, you know, that's our Amazon, that's our Pacific Northwest rainforest. That is the creme de la creme of the biodiversity that is our bodies down there in the colon. So to me, as a biologist, that's like, oh, okay, this is a place I'm going to go learn more about. I want to know what's happening down there. And the other interesting thing is that our immune system. So this is, you know, our immune system and immune cells. This is what takes care of us. This is. In plants, they call it a defense system and us call it our immune system. This is our T cells and our B cells and our macrophages. And these are all these cool cells that travel around our body, keeping an eye out for any. Anything that's gotten in that shouldn't be there. And about 80% of our immune system is wrapped around our digestive tract. And of that 80%, the lion's share, again, is around our colons. So you just sort of put those two things together, and all of a sudden you've got a really interesting ecosystem happening down in the colon. And in some respects, it makes some sense. Everything that we pull into our bodies from the outside environment, I mean, it comes in, say, through our, you know, through breathing air and so on. But really, most of what we bring into our bodies from the outside environment comes through our digestive tract. So from that standpoint. Yeah, that's where you want the overlap. Got it. Yeah. So you talk a little bit in the book about this concept.