phineas wrote: 


So.....that's why we only hear about "nature's broom"? 

 romeotuma wrote: 
Clostridium difficile has become a real problem in hospitals these days.
It is an opportunistic bacteria that infects people that have been on many antibiotics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_Difficile
We see a lot of it.

 romeotuma wrote: 
My niece has had a terrible problem with this. She has been on all kinds of special diets and can't shake it.

 lily34 wrote: 
I'm slowwwwww! 

 onlylynne wrote: 

Also, good bacteria actually prevent candidiasis— commonly called yeast infection or thrush— from developing in our own bodies— the bacteria prevent the candidiasis from forming...

 onlylynne wrote: 
Yep. "Nature abhors a vacuum."  Which I guess explains all the shots to the head She's made me take...

 onlylynne wrote: 
I hadn't thought about that, but it is true.  I wash my hands a lot - product of working in a care home and going on tooo many hygine courses!  Might look at less icky soap...

 onlylynne wrote: 
ok, thank you for answering me. :)

 phineas wrote: 
i love bkliban

 lily34 wrote: 
We don't want to kill all the bacteria around us. Few few types make you sick. Many bacteria are a beneficial part of our normal flora and our environment.
So if you kill all the good bugs, seems to me that you make it easier for the harmful bacteria to take over.

 onlylynne wrote: 
lynne, can you weigh in on why i should avoid antibacterial soap?

 romeotuma wrote: 
And of course:

 phineas wrote: 
    You so bad!

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It's hard to find any liquid soap that's not antibacterial. I have to be persistent.

 lily34 wrote: 
I'm not sure.  It really depends on the mechanisms of anti-bac soaps and how likely it is that bacteria (and others) will evolve past them.  For instance, its pretty hard for anything to survive in concetrated bleach, but there are things that do.  However these aren't really the sorts of things that are likely to do you much harm, so it doesn't matter.  So if the things that have a reasonable hope of getting through anti-bac and building a resistance are pathogens (ie will make you ill) then we should be aiming to go easy.  At the same time we really don't want to try and kill them once they have infected you, because thats even harder!

 romeotuma wrote: 
I have been trying (not hard enough) to move away from those kinds of foods, but Whole Foods meats are very expensive. I haven't yet been able to convince myself to become a vegetarian.

 onlylynne wrote: 
Its very true.  And once they evolve past standard anti-biotics we have very little that will do the trick.  Anti-biotic soap is less likely to be out-evolved so quickly, but its pretty hard to use against salmonella (I once saw a letter in a paper asking why it was so hard to kill MRSA if you could use soap to get it off your hands...).  But most of our anti-biotics are just souped up penicilling (or so I understand) so theres not much more that we can do until we invent a new anti-biotic, or start developing 'active' drugs that are essentially white blood cells or an equivallent...

 onlylynne wrote: 
i just heard about MRSA for the first time a couple months ago. never knew of it. amazing.

so is it true - we should stay away from antibacterial soaps, too??

 onlylynne wrote: 
The reason I said she was young was because 1) you would think that your body could fight off this kind of thing when you are in your 20s and 2) maybe because of her young age, (and her father being a dentist), maybe she got a lot of antibiotics over her lifetime and is already unable to fight off this kind of bacteria.

 onlylynne wrote: 
Will they still accept something that is so long overdue?

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We've tried to stay away from the antibacterial soaps. Seems, sometimes, that most of them on the store shelves are AB...

 hippiechick wrote: 
How awful.
This is only going to get worse. We are seeing many different resistant bugs these days.
MRSA is not the only thing to worry about. It's just gotten the most press so far.