Why are we doing this study?
Longer answer: We know that many factors in our lives can affect our microbiota – things like what we eat and drink, what new microbes we're exposed to, what diseases we get, and what medical treatment we receive – and in turn, our microbiota can affect our health. However, we don’t yet know much about how the complex communities of our microbiota change over time – either during normal, everyday life, or when something unusual happens to disturb the microbiota. We’d like to understand how stable (or unstable) the gut microbiota is in healthy people, and what affects the stability of the gut microbiota, so that we can better maintain it in a healthy state, and shift it back towards health when it's in an unhealthy state.
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