10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness

Now in paperback, evolutionary biologist and science writer Alanna Collen's stunning alarm call concerning the widely-ignored role our gut microbes play in our health and well-being.

"Fascinating.... Everything you wanted to know about microbes but were afraid to ask."-- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

You are just 10% human. For every one of the cells that make up the vessel that you call your body, there are nine impostor cells hitching a ride. You are not just flesh and blood, muscle and bone, brain and skin, but also bacteria and fungi. Over your lifetime, you will carry the equivalent weight of five African elephants in microbes. You are not an individual but a colony.

Until recently, we had thought our microbes hardly mattered, but science is revealing a different story, one in which microbes run our bodies and becoming a healthy human is impossible without them.

In this riveting, shocking, and beautifully written book, biologist Alanna Collen draws on the latest scientific research to show how our personal colony of microbes influences our weight, our immune system, our mental health, and even our choice of partner. She argues that so many of our modern diseases--obesity, autism, mental illness, digestive disorders, allergies, autoimmunity afflictions, and even cancer--have their root in our failure to cherish our most fundamental and enduring relationship: that with our personal colony of microbes.

The good news is that unlike our human cells, we can change our microbes for the better. Collen's book is a revelatory and indispensable guide. Life--and your body--will never seem the same again.

Alanna Collen is a science writer with a master's degree in biology from Imperial College London and a PhD in evolutionary biology from University College London and the Zoological Society of London. She is a well-travelled zoologist, an expert in bat echolocation, and an accidental collector of tropical diseases. During her scientific career, Collen has written for the Sunday Times Magazine, as well as about wildlife for ARKive.org. She has appeared on both radio and television, including BBC Radio 4's The Tribes of Science and Saturday Live, and BBC One's adventure-wildlife show Lost Land of the Volcano. She lives in Bedfordshire, England, with her husband.