The Microbiome: A Foundation for Integrative Medicine.

Context: No organ system better integrates interconnectivity across specialties and disciplines than the microbiome. Scientific focus is shifting from microbes as harbingers of disease toward microbes as symbiotic, balanced, commensal ecologies. Objective: The study intended to discuss and examine the human microbiome, including its development in early life; its impact on various physiological processes that occur throughout the body; and its relationship to dysbiosis; and to investigate microbial mechanisms with clinical applicability across medical specialties. Setting: The study took place at Biocidin Botanicals in Watsonville CA, USA. Results: Accumulating research upholds the human microbiome as both a predictive biomarker for disease risk and a viable treatment option for modulating the course of illness. Prebiotic and probiotic interventions continue to demonstrate clinical utility, particularly for gastrointestinal, dermatological, inflammatory, metabolic, and mental-health disorders. Conclusions: Just as germ theory revolutionized infection control in the twentieth century, microbiome systems science stands to transform the conceptualization of health as the balanced coexistence of human and microbial cells in the twenty-first century.