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Sick of Getting Sick? Embrace Your Inner Bacteria!, NPR:
Right this minute, in the moist, warm grottos throughout your body, encounters with friendly bacteria are teaching your immune cells how to recognize dangerous invaders. The ability to distinguish friend from foe is crucial to keeping you healthy. And by acting as a thick ground cover, these benign bacteria crowd out truly noxious germs — salmonella, say, or dangerous versions of E. coli.
The title of NPR’s article is a bit misleading as the focus of the story is really on the potential harm from antibiotics. Bacterial Evolution in Yogurt provides some additional information on the benefits of bacteria. Here are more good bacteria articles:: Friendly bacteria ‘target ulcers’ - Over-sixties advised to boost daily diet with ‘good’ bacteria - USC researcher underscores the benefits bacteria can provide - Bacteria Added to Gum, Toothpaste and Deodorant - How ‘good’ bacteria could counter overuse of antibiotics
via: Take care of those microbes in your gut
Related: articles on the overuse of antibiotics - Antibiotic Resistance and You
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August 29th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
All yogurts are not created equAL, and some may have killed and not live bacteria. Similarly, not all commercial probiotic brands (capsules etc)are created equal. There is a wide diversity in the strains of bacteria and their concentration in different formulations thus affecting their benefit potential.
November 8th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Like explorers of old, scientists are venturing into the immense but little-known realm of the microscopic organisms that dominate our planet.
“It’s an entire world that most of us have no idea about,”…
April 27th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
“In sheer numbers, bacterial cells in the body outnumber our own by a factor of 10, with 50 trillion bacteria living in the digestive system alone, where they’ve remained largely unstudied until the last decade…”
June 25th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
I find this area and this study fascinating. I’m not exactly sure why this study and the incredibly significant positive bacteria for human life news doesn’t get more notice. Oh well I guess there are not cool pictures of robots or scary stories of potential threats…
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:10 pm
“there are estimated to be more than 500 species living at any one time in an adult intestine, the majority belong to two phyla, the Firmicutes (which include Streptococcus, Clostridium and Staphylococcus), and the Bacteroidetes (which include Flavobacterium)…”