Rodney Dietert, PhD is a prominent researcher in the field of immunotoxicology--how toxins affect the immune system and author of The Human Superorganism.

After decades of studying how toxins affect health, he realized toxicology models didn’t tell the whole story about disease risk—there was something missing, he thought.

While lying awake one night he realized that gut microbes, too,  affect how toxins impact the immune system and our health.

“The microbes are the first ones to come in contact with these environmental toxins,” he says.   So he’s been urging medical professionals and toxicologist to rethink their models to include the microbiome.

He shares more details about toxins and microbes in summary of his life’s work, a new book called The Human Superorganism.

Here are a few key timestamps:

04:48 Microbiome and Drugs 08:43 Mother Child Microbial Transfer 15:56 Family Size and Microbiome Diversity 19:41 Rebiosis Strategies 25:14 The Importance of Bacterial DNA 30:23 The Two ‘Keystone’ Bacterial Species 37:54 Baby’s Immune System Control