Tag Archives: human health

Flu Education – Another Anniversary?

2018 – Another Anniversary?

Anniversaries. To celebrate or just to observe?

2018 is the fortieth anniversary of the incorporation of Brevis. Yeah!

2018 is the anniversary of the end of World War One.

Great Influenza Pandemic

But 2018 is also the one-hundredth anniversary of the Great Influenza Pandemic. And a dramatic start of a hundred years war that has no end in sight. World-wide this pandemic claimed somewhere between 20 and 100 million victims in 1918-1919. Pick your source to pick your number.

In previous essays we have shown how the flu predisposed us to World War II by disabling Woodrow Wilson during the writing of the Treaty of Versailles. We have also talked about the search by intrepid scientists for the original virus which took them to frozen corpses in Brevig Mission, Alaska. The virus may have been identified but that does not explain how the original epidemic starting in Fort Funston, Kansas was quite mild and then became much more virulent in subsequent outbreaks. One thing is clear: Army forts were crowded with new recruits who were destined for Europe. Crowding was ideal for spread of this virus.

The highly mutable virus appears to have a natural host in ducks and ducks seem happy to share with chickens and pigs. Of which multitudes reside in China. So we go to China to discover each year which strains are on the current hit parade so that we can develop effective flu vaccines. Maybe this is how China is demonstrating the importance of their trade with the US. Or is it just a free gift as a way of saying Thank You for all the other goodies we import from them?

Wash Your Hands

Regardless of all the ins and outs of influenza – and all other infectious diseases – the best we can come up with for prevention are proper hand hygiene and vaccination. As the decades roll by replete with outbreaks of new often more virulent strains of nasties the most effective strategy remains the same. Wash your hands. Wash them often. Wash them well.

Happy Anniversaries!

Gordon Short, MD
Brevis Corporation
13 November 2018


New Flu Posters

 

Are you a man or a microbe?

We may think of ourselves as just human, but we’re really a mass of microorganisms housed in a human shell.

The human body contains about 100 trillion cells, but only about one in ten of those cells is actually…well…human. The rest are bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms that populate every nook and cranny of our human body. In fact, for every human gene in our bodies there are 360 microbial genes. Together, they are referred to as our microbiome, and they play such a crucial role in our lives that scientists like Michael Blaser of New York University (Director of the Human Microbiome Project) have begun to reconsider what it means to be human.

The microbiome is the human equivalent of an environmental ecosystem. Although the bacteria together weigh a mere three pounds, their composition determines a lot about how the body functions—and sometimes malfunctions. And just like ecosystems the world over, the human microbiome is losing its diversity, to the potential detriment of the health of those it inhabits. Namely, us.

Lita Proctor of the National Institutes of Health, who is also leading the Human Microbiome Project, says, “The human we see in the mirror is made up of more microbes than human. They belong in and on our bodies; they help support our health; they help digest our food and provide many kinds of protective mechanisms for human health.”

So these microbes aren’t just along for the ride, they’re there for a reason. We have a symbiotic relationship with them—we give them a place to live and they keep us alive.

In his new book, “Missing Microbes,” Dr. Blaser links the declining variety within the microbiome to our increased susceptibility to serious, often chronic conditions, from allergies and celiac disease to Type 1 diabetes and obesity. He and others primarily blame antibiotics for the connection. “We inherit every one of our genes, but we leave the womb without a single microbe,” says Blaser. “As we pass through our mother’s birth canal, we begin to attract entire colonies of bacteria. By the time a child can crawl, an enormous, unseen cloud of microorganisms—a hundred trillion or more, has blanketed him. They are bacteria, mostly, but also viruses and fungi (including a variety of yeasts), and they come at us from all directions: other people, food, furniture, clothing, cars, buildings, trees, pets, even the air we breathe.”

It seems taking too many antibiotics—not to mention our obsession with cleanliness—may disrupt the normal microbiome. The average American child is given nearly three courses of antibiotics in the first two years of life, and eight more during the next eight years. Even a short course of antibiotics like the widely prescribed Z-pack (azithromycin, taken for five days), can result in long-term shifts in the body’s microbial environment. It’s overkill—literally. Imprudent antibiotic use has resulted in widespread resistance among microbes and doctors now operate in a state of near panic as common infections demand increasingly powerful drugs for control.

Our bodies are made of trillions of microorganisms and they’re there for a reason. It seems we’re killing germs at our own peril. What’s your take?

Giant Microbe Products