The average human body is comprised of around 37.2 trillion cells.That’s a bunch. There are blood cells, skin cells, bone cells, cells that line your stomach and intestines, cells that make up your brain and cells that comprise all of your organs and other tissues. Everything about you is built from cells. You are a walking, talking, breathing pile of cells of all kinds. And, they’re all yours.

No–they’re not.

As it turns out, you are toting around an additional thirty trillion plus cells that don’t belong to you at all. “Well then,” you might say, lifting your eyebrows with incredulity, “whose are they?”

Glad you asked.

Most of them are single-celled entities living both inside your body and on the surface. This teeming beehive of activity is collectively referred to as the microbiome. You probably have heard that there are bacteria living in your intestines. The people who make and sell yogurt are very fond of reminding us that we have to keep those critters thriving if we want a happy tummy. So yes, intestinal bacteria are well represented in the microbiome community. That’s not all though. They’ve got lots of company.

Any given human individual is host to literally thousands of different types of bacteria. Different areas of the body attract different types of settlers, but you are pretty much covered both inside and out with creepy crawlies. Wash all you want. Douse yourself with that alcohol-laden Purell gel. You won’t get rid of them all–and you don’t want to. Some of them have important jobs to do like keeping other nasties, such as yeasts, at bay.

So yeah, there’s a bunch of yeast and other fungi (not fun guys) floating around inside of you as well. Some of them lounge on your skin where they feast on the oils secreted to the surface. All of them interact with the microbiome at large in some way or another. Fungi are weird. Scientists are still scratching their collective craniums to try to figure out why so many of them call the human body home.

There are also viruses. Yep. You don’t always get sick from having viruses swirling around all over the place. They have roles to play as well. They even have their own community name, the “virome”. Supremely weird and staggeringly numerous among the viruses are the bacteriophage viruses, sometimes referred to simply as phages. Under a microscope, phages look a lot like spider-esque robots. (See photo at the top of this article.) They have a large head-like structure that houses their DNA. The head is mounted on a stalk footed by six articulating legs. Phages are bacteria’s worst nightmare. They attack and kill bacteria with ruthless abandon. You soak up about 30 billion of them every day in your intestines. Scientists believe they play a key role in our immune system by regulating bacteria populations. Doctors have even employed them as an alternative to traditional antibiotics for certain types of infections.

Now let’s get really creepy.

It’s not just single-celled organisms that call your body home, your skin and hair provide a nice, cozy domicile for incredibly tiny bugs called demodex folliculorum. They are mites. You don’t notice them because they are so small. Generally, unless their population gets out of control, they are harmless and go about their daily business of munching on oily secretions from your sebaceous glands. Yummy.

The mites are specifically suited to live in and around human hair follicles, hence their surname. They mate at the top of a follicle, near the skin’s surface. Tiny eggs are laid inside the follicle where they incubate and hatch into cute little six-legged larvae. Just kidding. They aren’t really cute. They get less cute as adults when they acquire another pair of legs and end up as little worm-like creatures with short appendages that allow them to dive head-first into your follicles. Each follicle might have half a dozen or so mites plugging into the buffet. Their whole life cycle from birth to death is only about two weeks. Everyone (except newborn babies) has a huge number of these bugs on board. Don’t worry. They don’t eat much and rarely do any real harm.

Face it. You are the entire universe for a whole host of tiny organisms. It’s almost an honor. You are Galactic Overlord for a huge number of tiny creatures, although you can’t really see them or interact with them. No matter. You are all they need. Some help you. Some just make you their home without helping or harming. They wage wars among themselves. They forge alliances. They live, They reproduce. They die. It’s a whole “circle of life” thing–until you die.

The microbiome collapses with the death of its host human. Once that happens, the clean-up crew, dubbed the necrobiome, arrives on the scene to begin the complex process of decomposition. I won’t disturb you any further by talking about that unpleasant business, but it’s all part of the cyclical nature of our world.

Are you itching yet?

This article was written by Tilmer Wright, Jr. Tilmer is an IT professional with over thirty years of experience wrestling with technology and a proud member of the Authors Guild of Tennessee. In his spare time, he writes books. His second novel, The Bit Dance is a cautionary tale about what can happen when technology runs away from its creators. You can find links to Tilmer’s books at the following location:

https://www.amazon.com/Tilmer-Wright/e/B00DVKGG4K%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_s…

His author information web site is here: http://www.tilmerwrightjr.com/