Sealed with a kiss: Er, 80 MILLION BACTERIA Boffins have estimated that a sexy snog could transfer as many as 80 million bacteria every time a couple locks lips. A short smooch generally feels exciting for the humans taking part, but it's even more thrilling for the tiny bugs who take the chance to embark upon an exodus into another person's body. Some 700 types of …
Several actually. There's been studies into this area in STD prevention and various other subjects in medicine and life sciences in general.
Given that the microflora that uses us as a playground is a major barrier to all kinds of other nasties that are...less civilised.. about cohabitation, it's a rather serious field of research.
Shortly after somehow managing to obtain my first girlfriend, I was struck down with what my Doctor described as the worst case of glandular fever he'd ever seen (I suspect the docs say that kind of thing to many of their patients just to make them feel special).
It put me off snogging for quite some time!
Oh, and the cow dumped me just as I was recovering but I was still feeling quite wiped out, which didn't help either :)
You need them. You NEED dirt to strengthen your immune system.
NOWHERE in your home do you need antibacterial sprays.
This annoys me no end.
Antibacterial home cleaning products were yet another solution for which there was never a problem, but somehow managed to suck in the 95% of gullible, panicked idiots out there.
absolute agreement on that front, here.
Strong suspicion that the raging outbreak of "allergic to the world" is a result of same. No, correlation is not causation, but then, no one has done any real studies on the issue since it might cost the "home sterilization" industry its existence. Wouldn't want that now would we?
@ Alistair:
You're on the right track, but wrong agent. Try intestinal worms - see Helminthic therapy as a start (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy). Any search on intestinal worms/parasites and allergies will yield numerous hits.
It is actually a fascinating (albeit slightly gross, if you are of a delicate disposition) subject. But, I fear, with hordes of lawyers lurking in the shadows, it may never become a viable therapy. Not to mention that Big Pharma are furiously looking for something to synthesize that can be administered in a more socially acceptable form - obviously with the promise of enormous profits acting as an incentive to bad-mouth a natural (and vastly less profitable) remedy.
--------------> No worm/parasite icon, so this will have to suffice (and it is in keeping with the topic, no?).
In the future kissing may be the equivalent of filesharing, with bacteria acting as data backup storage space?
I did read somewhere that they had stored something like 100Kbytes of data in a plasmid or similar and these are then passed on when the bacteria reproduce so it is entirely feasible that the cybernetic implants could transcode data into bacterial cells as a form of biological redundancy?
Gives a whole new meaning to "downloading" .. ha ha ha.
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