Is your refrigerator handle making you sick?
Really interesting article on how the medical community is beginning to use its new ability to rapidly and cheaply sequence viral and bacterial DNA:
There are far more bacterial genes than human genes in the body, he notes. One study that looked at stool samples from 124 healthy Europeans found an average of 536,122 unique genes in each sample, and 99.1 percent were from bacteria.
Bacterial genes help with digestion, sometimes in unexpected ways. One recent study found that bacteria in the guts of many Japanese people — but not in the North Americans tested as control — have a gene for an enzyme to break down a type of seaweed that wraps sushi. The gut bacteria apparently picked up the gene from marine bacteria that live on this red algae seaweed in the ocean.
I hate taking antibiotics because I don’t want to kill off all the healthy bacteria that digest my food and protect me against harmful bacteria. Early studies are proving my concerns valid:
[A body’s bacteria] did return [after antibiotics], but… the microbial community was not exactly as it was before antibiotics disturbed it. And if a person takes the same antibiotic a second time, as late as six months after the first dose, the microbes take longer to come back and the community is deranged even more.
Here’s the most useful info:
the company analyzed the genomes of microbes on surfaces, like desks and computers and handles on toilets. As the flu season began, the surfaces began containing more and more of the predominant flu strain until, at the height of the flu season, every surface had the flu viruses. The most contaminated surface? The control switches for projectors in the conference rooms. “Everybody touches them and they never get cleaned,” Dr. Schadt said.
He also swabbed his own house and discovered, to his dismay, that his refrigerator handle was always contaminated with microbes that live on poultry and pork. The reason, he realized, is that people take meats out of the refrigerator, make sandwiches, and then open the refrigerator door to return the meat without washing their hands.
“I’ve been washing my hands a lot more now,” Dr. Schadt said.
I’m going to wipe our refrigerator handle right now!
Posted by James on Wednesday, August 31, 2011