What's Bugging You?

You're not the man you think you are

What do you see when you look in the mirror in the morning? Chances are, you see nothing more than an ambitious young guy, a singular entity, a unique human being who just needs a shower and a shave and a big cup of coffee.

But what you think you see isn't reality. What you're really looking at is not a singular organism at all; that character in the mirror is more like the biological equivalent of the Star Wars bar scene. In fact, on a cellular level, you're barely "human" at all.

That 180 and some-odd pounds you're hauling around each day is a coral reef of microbes—bacteria, viruses, and the like—that outnumber the human cells in your frame by 10 to 1. Your first dose of bugs was handed down to you at birth (thanks, Mom!), and you picked up the rest over the course of your life—from the foods you ate, the places you lived, the people you met. Indeed, the notion that all men are created equal goes out the window the moment we pass through the birth canal.

Maybe you've already dropped your magazine or tablet and are now frantically racing around your apartment looking for the Purell. But before you kill your next germ, stop and think for a moment. In a way, microbes are like memories. Some of these bugs are bad, like the ones waiting to trigger your next cold or, potentially, your first bout with cancer. Some are good, like the ones that help you digest food. And some are both good and bad, like H. pylori, the stomach bacteria that may regulate appetite—but can cause ulcers if it gets out of hand.

So our bodies are much like our minds. A lot of good things happen, a lot of bad things happen, and mostly an enormous number of inconsequential things happen, day after day and year after year. All these experiences, interactions, and interior adventures become memories. Some never go away: I distinctly remember breaking a lamp in my mom's living room while horsing around with my brother when I was about 6. Why?

Some memories slip from our grasp: I wish I could recall every detail of every romantic encounter I've ever had, but they exist more like snapshots than high-def movies. And some disappear entirely, only to resurface when we least expect them—eerie deja vu moments that tap into some long-forgotten happenstance, triggered by a scent, a word, a flash of color.

Like the bugs in our gut, those memories and experiences influence our behavior in ways we may never understand. Some of us are handed the Mitt Romney gut—the clean, upstanding, tighty-whitie legacy. Others are born with Rick Santorum-style bellies, more hard-scrabble, absorbing whatever rides on the backs of the coal dust and the lip of the Communion cup. And like our memories, those bugs in our gut make us who we are.

So if on a physical level you're not the man you think you are, that's okay. As Jim Thornton explains in his investigation of the "microbial you," we need the good, the bad, and the ugly in order to be fully functioning creatures. Those of us who want to be "pure," who want to wipe out germs wherever they may lurk, are imagining what amounts to a biological lobotomy. Killing your bugs is like killing your memories—the very things that make you you.

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