This is fascinating to me. An anecdote as a frequent traveler: I often notice that when I travel to different cities around the world, it takes my gut a few weeks to fully adjust. When people don't travel often, they tend to blame "travelers diarrhea", etc on unsanitary conditions in the place they are visiting. But from my perspective, it seems that it has very little to do with how sanitary a place is, and much more to do with how different the local microbiome is from what you're used to.<p>I'd also be curious to have my own microbiome sequenced and analyzed, since I've been very nomadic for a decade, and my usual approach (apart from covid) is to dive right in and expose myself to local microbiomes by drinking tap water, eating street food, etc.<p>I suspect that humanity has a lot left to learn about how microbes interact with human life.
For people interested in the consequences of this diversity, look into lambic/geuze and other spontaneously Fermented beer using coolshipping as part of their inoculation. There is still ongoing and healthy skepticism on the actual source of yeast for these beers, yet they still rely on some sort of expression of the local microflora for their flavors and that is awesome in the literal sense.<p>Lambic itself is an amazing culture of fermentation and companionship via blending from your own and other brewers stock, I recommend Belgium and the senne Valley to anyone that is adventurous when it comes to beer/wine/cheese<p><a href="https://www.goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2019/2/15/a-recipe-for-disaster-how-lambic-continues-to-redefine-the-beer-world" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2019/2/15/a-recipe-for-...</a><p><a href="https://newschoolbeer.com/home/2020/11/de-garde-brewing-coolship-boat" rel="nofollow">https://newschoolbeer.com/home/2020/11/de-garde-brewing-cool...</a><p><a href="https://www.goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2017/10/18/dont-call-it-a-sour-funk-factory-geuzeria-in-madison-wi-the-maturation-of-funk-and-the-push-for-american-lambic-blended-to-perfection" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2017/10/18/dont-call-it...</a>
Families and households, too. If your home includes pets, they stretch the overlap out into the surroundings a bit more, kids mingle with other families pools of life, etc.<p>There's another layer of mites, molds, and so on that's multicellular and participates in our health but isn't counted here. The things that we don't see or think about, the things that fleas count as annoying little bugs.<p>Vicious jungles, full of life, red in tooth and claw, all the way down.
I've always believed that when you go to a new place, you meet what I call 'foreign germs'. And when people from other places come to visit you, they bring their 'foreign germs' with them.<p>That's why you always seem to pick up some form of infection when you travel, or when people travel to see you.
It's not unusual for health regions or big hospitals to publish their own charts of antibiotic resistances to bacteria, because what's circulating around can vary from city to city. And that impacts choice of therapy (usually you want to start before your resistance results come back).<p>Here's a Canadian lab providers': <a href="https://www.lifelabs.com/healthcare-providers/reports/antibiograms/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lifelabs.com/healthcare-providers/reports/antibi...</a>
I'm amazed at how much uniqueness they found. It makes sense there were region-specific microbes, given how alcohol and cheeses taste different depending on where they were made. But I thought, with global travel, "universal" microbes would make up more much more than 0.2% (31 of the 16,000+, if I understood the article). Either I underestimated how fragile microbes are in new environments, or how quickly they mutate.
I've been making "Half Moon Bay" sourdough bread for a couple years. Unfortunately it's not as sour as I would like, or expect from "San Francisco" sour dough which isn't too far away. My assumption is it's due to the microbes in my kitchen, but maybe professional bakers use additives that I don't know about?