“At least 50% of your cells are nonhuman. These cells have an evolutionary ‘clock’ that is explosively rapid, which is to say that vast populations of organisms (far more than there are humans on earth) within your body ‘adapt’ immediately to every environmental change. This means at once that we are more sensitive that we imagine, and that we are incredibly ‘changeable’; within 7 days we can have an entirely new constellation of dominant microbiota. What we do with food and sleep, light and water, changes what sort of animal we are and can become, quickly. And everything we take and do not take stages, solidifies, and transforms this. Fast, too.”

— an a i