GLOSSARY

Colonization is environmental establishment, distinct from every transient digestive passage or detection.

For sports use, do not jump from a mechanism to a definite performance effect; evaluate food, training, tolerance and actual goal-related change together rather than ending assessment at one marker.

Colonization is establishment in an environment; adhesion is one possible contributor, and transient detection is not permanent establishment. Resident communities can resist pathogens through substrate and space competition or products. Biofilms are organized growth in a matrix, not always infection. These concepts do not alone justify biofilm-breaking products or adding more organisms for athletes. Evaluate site, organism and clinical relevance rather than treating every adherent community as something to remove.

Microbes interact with substrates, chemistry, the host and one another, rather than forming a simple good-versus-bad list. Cooperation, competition and use of another organism's products coexist. A species' effect depends on strain, location and context. In sports nutrition, a varied tolerable dietary pattern is more useful than maximizing one bacterial name without human evidence. Ecological relationships cannot be inferred from a single abundance measurement alone.

Benefit and pathogenicity depend on strain, location and host condition; a genus may contain members with different roles. A usual commensal can cause problems elsewhere, while opportunism does not mean active disease in every carrier. Probiotic selection requires precise identity and evidence for the intended use. Recognizing a supposedly helpful name or detecting it in stool is not enough to establish a need or choose treatment.