Concept of human bowel flora as a living organ
	Concept of human bowel flora as a healthy or sick organ
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Concept of human bowel flora as a
living organ

It is useful to compare the human faecal flora to a living organ because its major component is a complex mass of living cells. Furthermore, it interacts with the human body and the human body interacts with it. Given that the human body is made up of approximately 10¹⁴ cells - while 1 x 10¹³ are body cells, about 9 x 10¹³ cells are bacteria contained within the bowel. Hence, purely on cell count we are 10% human and 90% stool! ¹

The body is large in size because it contains much connective tissue, whereas the human flora exists as a small, tightly packed mass of bacterial cells. If we conceptualise human bowel flora as an organ it helps us understand how it can function as a normal, healthy organ or as an organ that can undergo various illness states. Such a concept is not far removed from the standard medical concepts of healthy or diseased organs such as liver (hepatitis, alcohol-induced disease etc), lung (pneumonia, asthma, emphysema etc), heart (coronary artery disease, rheumatic fever etc). Generally, each organ develops disorders peculiar to the structure and function of that organ.