I wonder. Does the natural gut flora include any species of worm?
Natural flora? Most definitely not. Worms are parasites, invaders.
All worms attempt to steal resources and contribute nothing to the overall body in return - the natural gut flora do a variety of wonderful things for us in their goal of staying alive in our body - they provide certain enzymes that they use to gain energy from various food we eat, and in turn, we also get plenty of products from food that simply didn't get digested, or more importantly, food we cannot digest on our own.
Various polysaccharides, like starches, our body struggles to digest, if our body can even touch the chemical. In fact, for a large portion of carbohydrates in our diet, our body isn't the one doing the work... it's all on the buddies in our gut to give us something good from them.
They also help fight off pathogens in the gut, at least... they try really, really hard.
One by-product we get that is most noticeable is the fermentation of certain carbohydrates turns into methane gas in the gut.
I could try to keep listing various things, but there are far too many things for which we owe thanks to the gut flora.
Wiki has got to have a good article, in case you are interesting.
Yep, a really good article actually.
In short, the various worms that can set up home in our body, are nothing but freeloaders. We basically have a symbiotic relationship with our gut-flora; we both get goodies as a reward for playing nice together.
Most worms in the gut won't be lethal - as long as you get enough nutrients for the two of you. But they just take take take, bunch of inconsiderate pricks.
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