ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a landscape in which integrative medicine can utilize the microbiome, the microbial part of humans, for more effective disease prevention, treatment, and care of patients. It argues that species purity is unhealthy, and that it is not possible to have a truly healthy patient unless the microbiome is also well diversified and healthy. The chapter includes infectious and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). The symptoms of these diseases and conditions are medically managed. In some cases, this can last for a lifetime resulting in decades of ever-increasing needs for prescriptions drugs. The ongoing NCD epidemic is this century's health crisis and approaches most often manage disease symptoms rather than provide cures. Individual variation based on age, genetic background, sex, and existing diseases and conditions can influence efficacy and safety. New adaptive tests to examine data sets for microbiome composition and physiological as well as health outcomes have provided new insights into the ecology of the human microbiome.
