I did one of my rare shopping trips to the grocery store recently. I guess I haven’t been to a store for a while. Either that, or it’s the first time I noticed that there was a container of sanitary wipes by the shopping carts. Well, not sanitary wipes, but the ones that are designed to kill all those nasty bacteria that others supposedly left behind on the grip of the cart.
This always has amused me. It amuses me even more now because I was watching a microbiologist speak over the weekend about bacteria. Our bodies are made up of about 50 trillion cells. It’s hard to even get your arms around that number, it’s so big.
But did you know that you carry 10 times that number of bacteria around on your body? Now, for comparison sakes, the entire earth holds more nearly 7 billion people. Not trillion, but billion. As you can see, your body is basically one big earth with lots of residents.
Some of these residents are the legal kind; your body needs them. Others, however, are illegal aliens. They are simply riding around on your body, trying to get more of their evil-doing friends to join them so that they can wreak havoc on your ecosystem.
As you well know though, bacteria can make their own friends. So if one illegal alien jumps aboard, he can just divide and well, conquer.
On your skin alone, there are 182 different species of bacteria, and that’s just on your forearm. You read right. Some scientists believe you could have as many as 500 different species of bacteria on the surface of your skin, if you factor in the entire body, not just the space between your elbow and wrist.
If this has your skin crawling, don’t be too hard on yourself. But as you can see, those little sanitary wipes won’t do much damage, largely because you may kill a few brethren off that are the bad guys carried by someone else, but you have far more bad guys on your body already.
This is why the billion-dollar market out there of all these bacteria killing products is so inane. First, these things don’t really kill a lot of the immigrants. Second, they can’t tell the difference between a legal and illegal one, they just kill at random.
There are lots of bacteria that are very important to your body, such as those that help you digest your food. For the most part, all these critters live in complete harmony with all the others, good and bad. In fact, researchers have even found out that they can communicate with one another, so each species knows exactly how many of their homies are hanging out on your body at any particular time.
Of course, my mind wanders and wonders all at the same time. So I started to think about these bacteria and what they thought of that whole living off us thing.
First, I can only imagine the traffic jam that exists on my skin. Billions of these guys are all trying to get somewhere else to do their little microbe jobs. Now, I don’t know if they have specific shifts they work, but I think there must be some huge backups now and then as these bacteria try to get from one place to the other. I would love to listen to their morning traffic reports – “There’s a backup on Robb’s index finger this morning – the result of an accident when a 2009 Staph failed to yield to a busload of E. Coli returning to the SI (small intestine). Use alternate routes if possible.”
Which leads me to the next problem. What do all these little guys think about our own habits? While wiping your hands with an anti-bacterial wipe in a store may kill off a few thousand bacteria, I suppose that just sets off a land grab. Now vacant, thousands more now flood the area, anxious to enjoy the wide open spaces of your hand, if only for a little while. It must be like Miami Beach on Spring Break. One moment the beach is empty, the next, you can’t get up off your blanket without tripping over a neighboring sunbather.
Speaking of bathing, what do these folks think about that? Obviously, when you shower, your bacteria probably just make do with a little rain storm. If you live in Seattle, you know how these bacteria feel; they just bitch about the weather and move on with their business, knowing that eventually, no matter how long it takes, it will stop raining.
But what about a bath? Or worse, a hot tub? I would think that would really throw the community into a frenzy. I suppose it would be akin to a flash flood. I’ve never been in one, but, and I’m going out on a limb here, I would expect they come out of nowhere unexpectedly.
So there’s everyone, going about their business. Suddenly, WHAM!! – the waters cascade in all around them. Bacteria are heading for the high ground. Babyteria are crying for their mommies and daddies. Seniors, unable to fight the torrent, are swept away. Then the ground begins to shake violently. An all out cataclysm, as you innocently turn on the jets of the tub.
Afterwards, they count the missing and the dead. The community at large reels from the disaster. They curse their heavenly host and vow revenge.
A couple days later, you don’t feel very good. You don’t know why. Unknown to you, the busload of vacationers finally made it to the intestinal tract. They’re pretty pissed, not only because they were in an accident, but had to endure a bunch of natural disasters of bacto-biblical proportions. In fact, they’re pretty sick about the whole thing. And you’re about to be.
Out on the Treasure Coast with a terrible itch, but unwilling to selfishly wipe out thousands of innocent bystanders to satiate it,
– Robb