It is hard to believe that the number of bacterial organisms living on your skin right now is greater than the number of human organisms living on this planet. How can more than 6 billion individual organisms live on the surface of your skin? The answer is that bacterial cells are extremely small—so small that we tend not to think of them. Because most people cringe at the thought of ?germs,? a stroll through just about any aisle of your local grocery store will reveal a slew of products that claim to be antibacterial. Advertisers tend to make us think that all bacteria are harmful. But only a handful of bacterial species are actually dangerous to humans, while the overwhelming majority are beneficial. The billions of bacteria that live on your skin right now are termed normal flora (or resident bacteria), and they essentially occupy all the available space on your skin surface. Should a detrimental bacterium come along, it will literally have no room to settle and multiply. Because the normal flora protect you in this way, we certainly don't want to do away with them.
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