"The human gut is home to trillions of individual microbes representing thousands of species of bacteria and non-bacterial organisms called archaea. The exact membership of this highly complex ecosystem, known as the microbiome, varies from person to person." "The global rise of chronic health conditions, ranging from obesity and diabetes to bowel disease and cancer, is increasingly being linked with perturbations in gut flora...TCM's reliance on complex mixtures of compounds, and its philosophy of treating the human body as a whole, complete system that needs to be balanced, matches up well with the synergistic properties of the gut microbiome."