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Hippiekinkster -> RE: How are you staying cold free? bug free? (1/21/2011 4:43:07 PM)
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ORIGINAL: RapierFugue
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ORIGINAL: DesFIP
Actually, I'd put it down to keeping the windows open. Much simpler explanation. Cold kills bugs.
And where it doesn't it slows their rate of regeneration and multiplication but yes, seriously, it's a very good point.
I think central heating (lovely as it is in the recent cold weather) is partially to blame - we heat all or most of our houses, whether we're going to be in that room for hours or not. Bugs love that. I live in a lovely old Victorian building which despite being lovely to look at is a proper pig to heat, and I don't have CH, so I heat one main room, then others as I transfer to them. I know older folk need the heat more but I honestly can't sit in my mum's place for long - I have to stand in the garden for a bit - it's like a bloody orchid house!
The reduced humididity also mitigates against microbial reproduction.
"In the USA, an estimated 23 × 106 kg of antibiotics are currently used annually; about half are provided to people and the rest are manufactured for agriculture.8 In hospitals, they are generally administered parenterally, while in the community they are delivered mostly as oral preparations. About 7 × 106 kg of antibiotics, chiefly penicillins and tetracyclines, are used as growth promotants for food animals. Some 45 × 103 kg of antibiotics, namely tetracyclines and streptomycin, are provided as pesticides for agriculture; these are sprayed on to fruit trees in the southern and western USA. While this last amount seems small compared with overall antibiotic use, the geographical spread can be considerable. Some strains of Erwinia amylovora, the bacterial target of these drugs, have become resistant to antibiotics. While the emergence of resistant bacteria in agriculture is a small part of the overall global microbial resistance pool, it is an example of widespread antibiotic use in which the environment of microorganisms is besieged with growth-inhibitory agents. The result is the survival of those organisms that bear transposons and other mechanisms for self-preservation, leaving an environment of microorganisms that are largely resistant."
http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/content/49/1/25.full
Farther down the article discusses reduced resistance due to another person using antimicrobials in the same household. Second-hand resistance, if you will.
The same article also discusses antibiotic resistance passing from agriculture into the human population. That's why we should not eat factory-farmed protein. Eat vegetable proteins instead, and use high-quality range-fed zero-chemical meats as an occasional treat.
Staph aureus is becoming resistant to vancomycin. This resistant strain was created in India, and medical tourists are spreading it to Europe, the UK and North America. I either had a resistant strain, or my body metabolizes televancin (a vancomycin derivative) too rapidly, as my bloodwork showed lower than therapeutic levels after 24 hours. I was switched to Cubicin for the gram negatives and Invanz dor the gram positives. I've finished the therapy, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed. But the vancomycin, which is what we first tried, was not working, according to the CRP and Sed-rate tests.
That's a scary article, and resistance is some scary shit. But I'm alive, and I still have my foot.
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