Want good gut health? Build a better biome. If you’re interested in gut health, you’ve probably heard the term “microbiome.” Your microbiome is just the microbes living inside your gut. Your gut biome is the entire habitat of your gut. While the makeup of your microbiome is hugely important, it’s just one element of having a healthy gut biome.

The prevailing thinking for decades was that the gut was an organ system like any other: important, but self-contained. It was well-known that disruptions in the gut microbiota — that highly personalized collection of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other creatures that call your gut home — could cause an array of issues affecting the gut, from simple indigestion to more serious conditions.