Step 1: I think this has been an interesting course and I have found some of the topics to be super interesting. The topic that I found more fascinating was antibiotics and how they contribute to disease states and microbiome depletion. I also thought the topic on cancer and how microbes contribute to cancer are interesting and makes me wonder how they contribute more to cancer and how it works. I think that the microbiome is important to many different disease states and seeing how they contribute is interesting because of how complex the microbiome is and how it works in conjunction with the body. In addition learning more about the microbiome and how it relates to IBS/IBD was also interesting as there are complex systems at play in disease and health. The section on the health of the babies and how it is influenced by its environment and pregnancy was also fascinating.
Step 3: Antibiotics are known to help take care of bacterial infections but how they affect not only the targeted bacteria but the good bacteria as well. Antibiotics can be controversial due to the fact that they are said to advance antibacterial resistance in bacteria. In the use of antibiotics it is possible that you are not able to kill off the bacteria that are causing the problems but the ones that are good for you as well. I think antibiotics are interesting because they are trying to help people with bacterial diseases but also can cause more harm because they are hurting the microbiome population in the body. I wonder if the use of antibiotics can increase the disease state after bacterial infection from one infection to the next. I would think that it could contribute as well to an increase in infections due to antibiotic resistance and the diminishing of the microbiome population. antibiotic usage has also been implicated in other populations as well which could contribute to human health as well.
Step 4: In looking at my free writes I think that I had a few problems in remembering what was talked about and/or what might constitute being controversial. I think I will look into different controversies relating to antibiotic usage and its affect on human health. I want to look into more controversial topics though as I found the cancer and microbiome effects section to be interesting as well. I want to look more into antibiotic usage and the controversies surrounding them as well though to see if there is something there to write about. I may look into topics that relate to antibiotic resistance and see what the medical and scientific community has to say on antibiotic resistance and how it affects population health currently. I also want to research different things we talked about in this class to see if there are certain topics that have more research linked to certain topics relating to microbes and human health. Although I am still having trouble thinking of a topic that is both controversial and has enough research to write a paper about. I want to also look into infant health and factors that affect the microbiome of the infant due to their environment and surroundings.
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