Writing Exercise #9

Human behaviors that contribute to decreased microbe exposure:

  • Having less children
    • With only one or two children playing in the backyard, visiting friends on play-dates, spending time at school or on the playground, etc., the chance of microbes being carried home to be shared is far less.
  • Having no pets
    • On a similar note to the prior point, pets would introduce many microbes due to their constant proximity to the ground, time spent outside (in areas humans would not normally be sniffing around/checking out), contrasting hygiene habits, dander, etc.
  • Homeschooling children
    • Removing the normal, early exposure to microbes that takes place during a child’s primary education years would eliminate countless immune system-developing, microbial encounters.
  • Avoidance of hospitals/clinical settings
    • As the purpose of these facilities is to treat the sick, they are the perfect place to pick up some new (probably pathogenic) microbes.
  • Choices regarding food consumption
    • Having a diet comprised of mostly meat or veggies, for example, creates opportunities for the introduction of different microbes, as these types of foods are cultivated, packaged, stored, and prepared in different ways. Cutting out a certain type of food will decrease the likelihood of potentially consuming the associated microbes.
    • Preparing own food at home, as opposed to allowing strangers to prepare it in restaurant/fast food settings that cannot be monitored by you and are naturally heavily trafficked.
  • Lack of traveling
    • Staying in one part of the globe means most likely never being exposed to microbes that are commonly found in another area.
  •  Choices regarding living environment
    • Living in urban versus suburban areas will differentially expose you to certain amounts of people, certain amounts/types of animals, lack or existence of smog/pollution, etc.

Writing Exercise #7

The assigned material this week has enlightened me on numerous variables that can influence the development of microbial communities in newborn infants.

To begin with, an obvious one would seem to be the nutritional (or not so nutritional) intake by the mother. As the food chosen by the mother is the food received by the fetus, the mother can strongly impact the composition of her fetus’s microflora based on her introduction of healthy or unhealthy sustenance.

On a similar note, where the mother chooses to acquire her food could have direct impact as well. There are a multitude of facilities offering fast and easy food, and while this is a totally normal occurrence in every day life, the introduction of pathogenic microbes via unsanitary conditions would be more significant for a fetus, compared to someone who has established their gut composition and the commensals there.

Something made aware to me just this week is that the mode of birth could potentially shape the fetus’s microbial composition. In a seemingly simple choice between vaginal birth or cesarean section, the newborn’s early stage health could be determined.

The environment around us holds innumerable chances for exposure to a range of microbes and the environment that the parent chooses to raise the newborn in would have understandably large impact on their species diversity and which taxa would be most dominant.

Nutrition continues to be an important factor after birth for both mother and newborn. Nutritional intake on the mother’s part is directly incorporated into the breast milk received by the newborn. With full vulnerability in a brand new world, nutritional values may be even more important to the newborns in this stage more than ever.

Writing Exercise #6

I can only recall being prescribed antibiotics a few times in my life, due to my family’s tendency to feel like hospitals/clinics were reserved for dire circumstances. Usually choosing to “sweat it out” over a hospital bill and prescription medication, I didn’t know much about antibiotics in general prior to coming to college and becoming a pharmacy technician. I’m much more familiar with them now, in terms of how they are prescribed, the various kinds, the side effects, etc., due to my exposure to them in the pharmacy.

I am still fairly set in my ways when it comes to pursuing professional medical opinions on my health, typically assuming I can handle things on my own. Overall, I’ve developed the mindset that in most cases it isn’t necessary to rush to antibiotics to treat something that your own body could overcome and potentially strengthen your immune system from. There certainly are more serious circumstances where I would accept antibiotics as a course of treatment, but I think there are more important factors to take into consideration when battling something that while inconvenient, can soon be fought off by your body’s own natural defense system.

Since learning about the recent increase in concern over bacterial acquisition of antibiotic resistance, I’m even more wary of potentially overusing our first line of defense. I wouldn’t want to contribute to this widespread problem by giving any pathogenic bacteria the chance to familiarize, mutate, and adapt to antibiotics when the infection could be resolved with time or by other means.

One aspect of antibiotic use that still surprises me is in the minimal education given to the patients. I can’t recall having doctors ever stress to me in the past the importance of finishing the treatment regimen. In fact, I was sorting through a tub of old medications not too long ago and found an vial for antibiotics, prescribed to me my first year of college, with two tablets still inside—a full day’s worth of the seven day course. It’s only been a few years since then and I was shocked that I didn’t even know that long ago what the consequences of stopping early could be.

Doctor’s aren’t the only culprits of failing to stress the importance of a completed regimen, though. I am constantly listening to the pharmacists counsel on ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, cephalexin, clarithromycin, amoxicillin, penicillin, sulfa antibiotics, etc., all day long at my job. While finishing the course is almost always mentioned, I don’t feel like the patients are made fully aware of the significance of this suggestion. Other than the simple direction to finish it, customers aren’t educated on the reasons why and the possible consequences. If the doctors are not educating the patients, and our pharmacists aren’t, patients will never learn and the bacterial resistance predicament will continue to worsen.

Writing Exercise #5

When first reading this prompt, a choice that I make almost every week immediately popped into my head—to fast food or not to fast food? The most obvious point of discussion would be the lack of nutritional value in our popular drive-thru/delivery choices. Failing to provide much nutritional benefit to the one consuming it, I would not expect it give much nourishment to our commensal gut bacteria either, which would only hamper their ability to survive and thrive.

However, something that I have been considering as I become more microbially aware, is what invisible pathogenic microbes could be hitching a ride from an unsanitary food facility to a comfortable new home in my metabolic organ, via my burrito. Accidental consumption of an undesirable bacterial strain could certainly disrupt the balanced microbiome (dysbiosis) and displace the commensal microorganisms dwelling there. Though the outcome is unintentional, our inability to trust how our food is being prepared and handled before it reaches us could yield potentially fatal consequences and any lapse in judgement made by the food handler could contribute to their likelihood.

A popular topic these days, choosing to receive treatment by antibiotics could have the desired result with unintended fallout. At the very least, the antibiotics will eradicate the infection, but at the expense of preexisting microflora that were either beneficial or not harmful. With so much real estate becoming available, the door is left open for unfamiliar and potentially pathogenic microorganisms to fill in those vacancies, leaving the host at risk for even more health problems.

On the other hand, the introduction of antibiotics could lead to a far worse outcome that has become a rather large concern recently: bacterial acquisition of antibiotic immunity. If the patient chose to discontinue treatment, or if the treatment were to fail altogether, the invasive bacteria have the chance to increase their tolerance against our first line of defense. Furthermore, this advancement isn’t a personal hurdle presented to each bacterium—once earned, bacteria can spread their resistance to others via horizontal gene transfer or binary fission and selection (“vertical”). Once resistant, the offending bacteria will be able to dominate the microbiome and the host much more easily.