It has been a hectic yet busy week for me. Taking a short break here to write some stuff about germs, continuation from last post. Hopefully, I would be able to write couple more posts this week, we'll see how it goes.
In this post, let's discuss a bit about hygiene hypothesis. A scan of medical history reveals a similar pattern of increase for the three categories of inflammatory disorders that have become so prominent in the 21st century. They include allergies and asthma, autoimmune diseases such as Diabetes Type 1, multiple sclerosis and lupus, as well as inflammatory bowel conditions such as Crohn's and and ulcerative colitis. All were rare to nonexistent in the ancient medical literature. Heard of Hippocrates? He was hailed as the 'Father of Western Medicine'. Hippocrates describes rare individuals who have bad reactions to certain foods such as milk, but the symptoms, upset stomach gas, sounds more like digestive intolerance than allergy.
By the beginning of the 20th century, respiratory allergies had become so common place across western Europe and North America that many cities had 'hay fever societies'. The hygiene hypothesis that emerged at the end of the twentieth century looked quite different from that first proposed in the 1980's. According to the hypothesis in its later form, what protected against immune dysregulation was not sickness but early and continual exposure to microbes, especially the kind of bacteria that children regularly inhale and swallow when they are around other children, animals and unsanitized water. Or more accurately perhaps, the lack of this exposure appeared to promote immune disorders in people with an underlying predisposition. The idea that exposure to bacteria could provoke anything but a disease fighting inflammation had yet to make into textbooks and remained somewhat controversial, despite a growing literature of published research.
I have a question to all mothers or soon to be mums. Does any of you knows that babies born by cesarean section have double the rate of food allergies as vaginally delivered infants? Research suggests that the mother's vaginal and anal bacteria deliver benefits that are missed during surgical birth.
Now, let's talk about about farms, bugs and drugs. Over the last 30 years, scores of studies have confirmed that this steady diet of antibiotic breeds highly resistant microflora in an animal's digestive tract and on its skin, as well as in the air, soil and groundwater in and around livestock operations. Analysis of supermarket meat and eggs show that at least some of this drug-resistant microflora also ends up shrink-wrapped with the meat we buy and trapped inside eggs before shells form. From there, even the most meticulous cook will spread a few invisible contaminants around the kitchen and occasionally a few more to reach the dinner table in a less than thoroughly cooked burger, chop or omelet.
Each year, salmonella and campylobacter, the most common causes of bacterial food poisoning, send an estimated of 3 to 4 millions Americans to the doctor or hospital for treatment, though many more suffer a miserable day or two in the toilet before recovering on their own. In the most serious cases, when the bacteria spread beyond the intestines, effective antibiotics can spell the difference between full recovery and serious organ damage or even death. But over the last 2 decades, increasingly multidrug-resistant strains of salmonella and campylobacter have emerged, first in animals and then in people.
Salmonella is bad news. This drug resistant salmonella is really bad news. Mysteriously and dangerously, these superbugs tend to cause more invasive infections, organ damage and fatalities, even when doctors deploy effective antibiotics.
There are larger concerns on the suspicions that the tonnage of antibiotics fed to livestock is fueling a pipeline of resistance genes from their microflora to ours. For every salmonella and campylobacter that sickens someone, we have to assume that hundreds to millions of normally harmless bacteria are continually moving farm to fork. Bare in mind that they don't have to make us sick in order to swap genes with other bacteria in our intestinal tract.
Now, to explore the problems created by our war on germs is to risk suggesting that humanity was better off in the centuries before public sanitation and antibiotics disrupted our 'natural' relationships with microbes. Same goes to today's antivaccine movement that implies as much as its argument that by depriving children once common infections such as measles, chicken pox and mumps, we are leaving these kids to more prone to disease then their 'heartier' ancestors.
Even medical experts have questioned whether in keeping people alive longer, modern medicine has substituted quantity for quality of live. giving us not the 'Golden Years' but sadly the debilitated ones. Sounds familiar to some of you? I'm sure some of you who are reading this right now, are on multiple prescription drugs due to certain medical condition, am i right?
This may be my last post for GERMS discussion. I really don't know what else to add in, I might just squeeze another final post next week. I have a big day coming real soon, have to prepare my stuff, getting ready and we'll see how it goes. I'm just happy to hear that one of my clients lost 6kg and inches off his waist. Till then, stay tuned.
By the beginning of the 20th century, respiratory allergies had become so common place across western Europe and North America that many cities had 'hay fever societies'. The hygiene hypothesis that emerged at the end of the twentieth century looked quite different from that first proposed in the 1980's. According to the hypothesis in its later form, what protected against immune dysregulation was not sickness but early and continual exposure to microbes, especially the kind of bacteria that children regularly inhale and swallow when they are around other children, animals and unsanitized water. Or more accurately perhaps, the lack of this exposure appeared to promote immune disorders in people with an underlying predisposition. The idea that exposure to bacteria could provoke anything but a disease fighting inflammation had yet to make into textbooks and remained somewhat controversial, despite a growing literature of published research.
I have a question to all mothers or soon to be mums. Does any of you knows that babies born by cesarean section have double the rate of food allergies as vaginally delivered infants? Research suggests that the mother's vaginal and anal bacteria deliver benefits that are missed during surgical birth.
Now, let's talk about about farms, bugs and drugs. Over the last 30 years, scores of studies have confirmed that this steady diet of antibiotic breeds highly resistant microflora in an animal's digestive tract and on its skin, as well as in the air, soil and groundwater in and around livestock operations. Analysis of supermarket meat and eggs show that at least some of this drug-resistant microflora also ends up shrink-wrapped with the meat we buy and trapped inside eggs before shells form. From there, even the most meticulous cook will spread a few invisible contaminants around the kitchen and occasionally a few more to reach the dinner table in a less than thoroughly cooked burger, chop or omelet.
Each year, salmonella and campylobacter, the most common causes of bacterial food poisoning, send an estimated of 3 to 4 millions Americans to the doctor or hospital for treatment, though many more suffer a miserable day or two in the toilet before recovering on their own. In the most serious cases, when the bacteria spread beyond the intestines, effective antibiotics can spell the difference between full recovery and serious organ damage or even death. But over the last 2 decades, increasingly multidrug-resistant strains of salmonella and campylobacter have emerged, first in animals and then in people.
Salmonella is bad news. This drug resistant salmonella is really bad news. Mysteriously and dangerously, these superbugs tend to cause more invasive infections, organ damage and fatalities, even when doctors deploy effective antibiotics.
There are larger concerns on the suspicions that the tonnage of antibiotics fed to livestock is fueling a pipeline of resistance genes from their microflora to ours. For every salmonella and campylobacter that sickens someone, we have to assume that hundreds to millions of normally harmless bacteria are continually moving farm to fork. Bare in mind that they don't have to make us sick in order to swap genes with other bacteria in our intestinal tract.
Now, to explore the problems created by our war on germs is to risk suggesting that humanity was better off in the centuries before public sanitation and antibiotics disrupted our 'natural' relationships with microbes. Same goes to today's antivaccine movement that implies as much as its argument that by depriving children once common infections such as measles, chicken pox and mumps, we are leaving these kids to more prone to disease then their 'heartier' ancestors.
Even medical experts have questioned whether in keeping people alive longer, modern medicine has substituted quantity for quality of live. giving us not the 'Golden Years' but sadly the debilitated ones. Sounds familiar to some of you? I'm sure some of you who are reading this right now, are on multiple prescription drugs due to certain medical condition, am i right?
This may be my last post for GERMS discussion. I really don't know what else to add in, I might just squeeze another final post next week. I have a big day coming real soon, have to prepare my stuff, getting ready and we'll see how it goes. I'm just happy to hear that one of my clients lost 6kg and inches off his waist. Till then, stay tuned.
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