jack gilbert, whose own path of restoring the healing power of microbial diversity has been full of twists and turns. one very important reason jack is motivated to pursue this research is his own son. - i have a child with autism. as soon as i found out that my son might be slightly different to other people, i always wanted to figure out a way that i could help him. i don't think autism is a disease that we need to fix, but i did want to be able to help him to realize his full potential as any parent would. - [julia] about two percent of children in the u.s. are diagnosed with autism. recent studies show that individuals with autism have abnormal gut microbes. so jack has been working on rebalancing the microbial diversity of those with autism, including his son. - we actually developed a dietary supplement to improve his health, so he eats a lot of fib now and he takes butyrate supplements and omega three supplements that help him to regulate his behavior and his health. - [julia] t jack has found that the most effective way to boost microbial diversity is to boost humanity's interactio

jack gilbert, the other co-founder of the american gut project. his team is using this research to tease out the body's specific relationship between our microbiome and the development disease. - [jack] what have you brought us? - well, this is a litt bit mortifying. i brought you some samples from a small experiment that i decided to conduct on myself. - okay, yeah. - i want to see if the health of my microbiome improved in the short term. do you think that change could be seen in three days? - it's a little short. (both laugh) - the limitation of time. - precisely. - it's short. - but it's enough to see some changes starting to occur. - [julia] while the samples are processed, jack walks me through the complex relationship between our microbes, food, and disease. - what we found was if you had a stable microbiome that was say promoting obesity, i.e. a micriome that made you fat by producing chemicals which changed your relationship to food, it would take almost a year on a new diet to eradicate those microbes. - wow. - and change it to one that d