The antibiotic era brought about a pretty severe over-reaction to our microbial friends.

On the one hand, we learned that bacteria were often responsible for some of our deadliest diseases and that we could kill them with antibiotics!

Yay!

But we neglected to see the other side – the good side of bacteria – that they actually help train our immune systems so that we can live longer/healthier lives.

This little quiz addresses these issues and is pretty interesting…

https://www.patientcareonline.com/hepatitis-c/hygiene-and-health-8-pristine-questions

Go ahead, click on it and test yourself.

Did you?

Come on…. it’s only a few slides.

🙂

Ok, well, the info there almost seems to speak out of both sides of the mouth.

On one side, we’re going a bit overboard with our sterilizing everything and taking too many antibiotics.

This seems to be related to dramatically increased food and skin allergies in younger people.

On the other, there are a lot of nasty bugs on birthday cakes, lemons and restaurant menus.

So what do we do? Lick the lemons and menus? Have more birthday cakes?

As with most things, the answer probably lies in the middle.

We should be cautious about how we interact with the germs in our world. Hand washing. Cleaning dirty objects. Not sneezing or coughing on people or public surfaces.

But maybe it’s ok if little Johnny gets a cold or sickness here and there – especially as a child. And we shouldn’t automatically resort to the antibiotics.

BTW, did you hear the one about the squirrel and the grenade launcher?