Talk:Bacteria in the human body

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Biology Portal Bacteria in the human body is part of WikiProject Microbiology, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Microbiology and microbiology-related topics. Please work to improve this article, or visit our project page to find other ways of helping.
Stub	This article has been rated as stub-Class on the assessment scale.
Mid	This article is on a subject of mid-importance within microbiology.
Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology.

what is another name for a commensal.

Contents 1 Small change 2 good/ bad 3 Most? 4 Question on immune system and normal flora 5 Numbers wrong?

[edit] Small change

I changed the location to where the link "lowered immunity" was pointing. Before it was an non-excisting article and I changed it to "Immune System". If you feel that the change was for the worst please feel free to change it back.

[edit] good/ bad

there is good and bad bacteria! what happens when you dont have the good bacteria and what should you do about it and what are or if any symptoms?

You can survive, but you may not digest food as well or get as much nutrition out of your food. "Bad" bacteria may take the opportunity to grow too much in your intestines. You may get diarrhea and feel sick. See a doctor if you think this is happening to you. There are supplements called probiotics that can replace the "good" bacteria in your gut. See the page on gut flora that has a lot more info on this. delldot | talk 20:10, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Most?

The first line of the article says that most of the bacteria in/on the body perform "tasks that are useful or even essential to human survival". Can anyone verify this or cite a source? I wonder if I should maybe tag it with ^{[citation needed]}? Thanks, delldot | talk 20:10, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Question on immune system and normal flora

I was curious why the body's immune system doesn't attack the normal flora and came here to try to find that. Could someone explain (and add to the article?) why this is the case? Thanks.

Well, none of those bugs are invasive. They don't destroy the gut wall and are therefore not tagged as "harmful" by the immune system. I'm not sure if this is the right page to discuss this phenomenon - it's a list. JFW | T@lk 20:56, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Numbers wrong?

This article and the article on Gut Flora disagree on the (1) the number of human cells in the body and (2) the number of bacteria. This kind of disagreemtn is what frightens me about the Wikipedia. Can someone with the knowledge please correct. Goaty 02:46, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

This article was most likely wrong as it contradicts its source. I wonder what AxelBoldt was thinking by making the change without even explaining the edit. Put 10¹³ for the amount of cells and 10¹⁴ for the amount of bacteria back where they supposedly belong. 202.162.85.116 00:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

There should definitely be some sort of citation for those numbers of scale comparison (bacterial cell numbers vs. somatic cell numbers). I have read estimates of 10 trillion body cells in the average adult. 10,000,000,000,000 (10¹³) --Frenkmelk 01:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)