Human Behaviors contributing to decreased microbes’ exposure:
- Food- consuming food that is clean, uncontaminated, unpolluted, properly cooked and stored
- Masks & Hand sanitizer- can decrease the number of microbes that you ingest by preventing them from entering (stopping breathing in of microbes or killing them at skin surface); decrease microbes inside and outside the body
- Cleanliness/Sanitation- exposure is created by the ability for microbes to live; the cleaner a place is the less there will be microbes. Cleanliness and sanitation can affect major systems like sewage, water, and trash systems.
- Use of probiotics/antibiotics- can help with growing and destroying microbes in the gut microbiome; the microbiome can alter states of eubiosis or dybiosis in the body.
- Immunizations- vaccines can prevent the exposure our bodies have to certain organisms since it increases immunity.
- Impact on the environment- where we live, and the surrounding natural environment can prevent exposure
- Family size– small children will have less exposure to different individual’s microorganisms
- C-section and decline in breastfeeding- less exposure to mother’s microbes that would have otherwise been introduced early on
