Your Inner Econsystem. Scientific American June 2012

You have to pay to read it on the internet but it is a fantastic article about the changes in gut microbia and the likelihood that this is damaging human health. It mentions the unbelievable fact that your resident bacteria cells outnumber your own cells in your body by 10-1. Our gut bacteria has changed significantly in the last couple generations and antibiotic use and hygiene seems to be a major culprit. It about the work of Sarkis K. Mazmanianwww.sciencemag.org/content/330/6012/1768.abstract

I don't remember worms being mentioned. The big thing for me in the article is that a bunch of bacteria in the colon that were formally thought of as just disease causing are now seen as highly beneficial. They can be pathogenic but are held in check by other bacteria which also often cause disease if unchecked. We get a load of bacteria from mom and then continuously build on that during our lives. The dominate species of these of these bacteria has changed recently which might explain autoimmune disease. It gets into T-cells, gene swapping and other stuff I am too stupid to understand but the bacteria appear to help regulate inflammatory T-cells. Formally scientists thought that the immune system was regulated entirely by itself. Changing diet, antibiotics and general hygiene could all contribute to inflammation gone wild because they destroy our delicate microbial system.

How would it to relate to the fact that IBD has been around for so long (100 hundred yrs)....I'm sure the gut flora in past IBDers from decades ago still have a connection to them getting IBD. Their diet and lifestyle was completely different and yet IBD managed to affect people many moons ago.