Flatty
29th December 2009, 04:20 PM
The Ex's mother was a clean freak. When I say "clean freak", I mean I don't think there is a doctor alive who would hesitate to perform open-heart surgery on her kitchen table. Besides being as clean as a hospital theatre, everything was anti-bacterial this & anti-bacterial that.
This is all fine and dandy, as I am sure most of you would agree. I have always believed that our bodies develop natural immunities to the harmful bacteria they are exposed to, in some way or other. The point is, you need to be exposed to some level of bacteria otherwise your bodies won't develop these immunities.
My Ex's mother, and the occupants of her house, were always getting the latest rounds of flu, some or other tummy bug, and whatever else was doing the rounds. Not a passing dose that you brush off in 24 hours, the full Monty, whereas I hardly ever suffered from these afflictions.
Don't get me wrong, I had a full time maid & my house was clean 24/7 - just not to that crazy anti-bacterial level, must-be-spotless, obsession of the Ex's mother.
"To keep sickness at bay, many of us constantly wash hands and disinfect surfaces. But a new lab study shows one pesky bacterium eats cleansers for breakfast: When disinfectant was applied to lab cultures of the bacteria, they adapted to survive not only the disinfectant but also a common antibiotic.
The research team focused on Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium responsible for a range of infections in people with weakened immune systems. When the scientists added increasing amounts of disinfectant to P. aeruginosa cultures, the bacteria adapted to survive not only the disinfectant but also the antibiotic called ciprofloxacin.
Here's how: The bacteria were able to more efficiently pump out antimicrobial agents. The adapted bacteria also had a genetic mutation that allowed them to resist ciprofloxacin-type antibiotics specifically.
"In principle this means that residue from incorrectly diluted disinfectants left on hospital surfaces could promote the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria," said lead researcher Gerard Fleming of the National University of Ireland in Galway. "What is more worrying is that bacteria seem to be able to adapt to resist antibiotics without even being exposed to them."
The results, published in the January issue of the journal Microbiology, show just how savvy some bugs are, adding to research on superbugs - drug-resistant microbes that modern medicine struggles to combat."
More here: (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20091228/sc_livescience/disinfectantscausesomebacteriatoadaptthrive)
One of the biggest worries is that we are making our immune systems weaker by not exposing them to a certain amount of harmful bacteria. For all science's wonderful advances, it could be that we are headed for a pandemic that no medicines will cure, because we are slowly, but surely, running out of options. Just as every living creature adapts to survive, so do the bacteria that cause us illness.
This is all fine and dandy, as I am sure most of you would agree. I have always believed that our bodies develop natural immunities to the harmful bacteria they are exposed to, in some way or other. The point is, you need to be exposed to some level of bacteria otherwise your bodies won't develop these immunities.
My Ex's mother, and the occupants of her house, were always getting the latest rounds of flu, some or other tummy bug, and whatever else was doing the rounds. Not a passing dose that you brush off in 24 hours, the full Monty, whereas I hardly ever suffered from these afflictions.
Don't get me wrong, I had a full time maid & my house was clean 24/7 - just not to that crazy anti-bacterial level, must-be-spotless, obsession of the Ex's mother.
"To keep sickness at bay, many of us constantly wash hands and disinfect surfaces. But a new lab study shows one pesky bacterium eats cleansers for breakfast: When disinfectant was applied to lab cultures of the bacteria, they adapted to survive not only the disinfectant but also a common antibiotic.
The research team focused on Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium responsible for a range of infections in people with weakened immune systems. When the scientists added increasing amounts of disinfectant to P. aeruginosa cultures, the bacteria adapted to survive not only the disinfectant but also the antibiotic called ciprofloxacin.
Here's how: The bacteria were able to more efficiently pump out antimicrobial agents. The adapted bacteria also had a genetic mutation that allowed them to resist ciprofloxacin-type antibiotics specifically.
"In principle this means that residue from incorrectly diluted disinfectants left on hospital surfaces could promote the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria," said lead researcher Gerard Fleming of the National University of Ireland in Galway. "What is more worrying is that bacteria seem to be able to adapt to resist antibiotics without even being exposed to them."
The results, published in the January issue of the journal Microbiology, show just how savvy some bugs are, adding to research on superbugs - drug-resistant microbes that modern medicine struggles to combat."
More here: (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20091228/sc_livescience/disinfectantscausesomebacteriatoadaptthrive)
One of the biggest worries is that we are making our immune systems weaker by not exposing them to a certain amount of harmful bacteria. For all science's wonderful advances, it could be that we are headed for a pandemic that no medicines will cure, because we are slowly, but surely, running out of options. Just as every living creature adapts to survive, so do the bacteria that cause us illness.