A friend recently brought her computer to the doctor only to find out it was infected with 7,700 viruses. I must admit I laughed loudly at this. 7,700 viruses! That's a lot.
Later, I thought about the human body, and it's capacity to be inflicted with viruses, and well, other stuff. Here's what I found. According to Wikipedia, the human body is estimated to contain 500 to 100,000 different species of bacteria. Of which, each species can have millions of occurrences. That's a lot too.
Many of these bacteria live in the intestines and can be referred to as gut flora. I kinda like that. Makes me think of little Dr. Seuss plants living inside me. And maybe even little Dr. Seuss people, like from Who-ville in "Horton Hears A Who!"
Yesterday, I took our inside bowl of compost to our outside bucket of compost, which I then emptied into our backyard compost bin. The buckets had turned liquid inside. Gut flora indeed! Those little bacteria buddies have been busy! Forget gut flora, let's talk about gut rot. I barely managed to get away from the stench before heaving my 100,000 bacteria species onto the lawn. Okay, so I didn't thrown up, but my insides were more than ready for the launch of lunch.
Moving rapidly away from bacteria, I have been having trouble figuring out just how many virus strains are evident in flu vaccines, and therefore, injected in humans every flu season. But I did read this morning (again, Wikipedia) that the flu vaccine is usually grown in fertilized chicken eggs. Gut flora, again, and a strong enough visual to make me not want to get eggs benny for brunch.
So appetite gone, I am going to go brush the 40,000 bacteria on my tongue, then sit down with the 100,000 species of bacteria in my body, to see how many thousand of viruses are on my computer.
3 comments:
Not only that, but scientist have now discovered that bacteria have the ability to communicate with each other. Even with different species.
I feel I should have something intelligent to add but I'm still laughing from the 7,700 virus situation - thanks again for a great evening!
Speaking of bacteria, I was listening to CBC a couple of days ago about a medical procedure called fecal transfer. This is a last resort method for people who don't have enough of the healthy bacteria in their colon to digest food (result of too many Antibiotics). This is when you ask your closest friend or family member to donate 5 days of their precious poop and have it pumped up your bum. Sorry - gross!
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