YOU can’t run away from germs nor can you get completely get rid of them. Germs are around us and within us, and it is okay to expose your immune system to a reasonable amount of unhygienic hazards that lead to a healthy functioning immune system. So some germs are actually good for us, and like we have good and bad people in the world, there are good and bad germs too!

Many people use the terms bacteria and germs to refer to the same things, however, germs are harmful microorganism and can be classified as bad viruses, bad microbes, bad bacteria and bad fungi. On the other hand, bacteria comprise a broad classification of microorganism that can be bad as well as good.

Bad buddies

BACTERIA are one-celled and make their own food from sunlight, just like plants. They absorb food from the material they live on or in. Those microbes which live in your gut absorb nutrients from the digested food you’ve eaten. They produce toxins — which are powerful chemicals that damage cells and cause infections such as sore throat, ear infections, cavities and pneumonia.

Good buddies!

NOT all kinds of bacteria are harmful. In fact, less than one per cent cause diseases. Good bacteria not only coexist with us but also help in keeping the balance in our bodies. Some bacteria live in our intestines and help us have nutrients from the food we eat.

Our gut is home to approximately 100,000,000,000,000 (100 trillion) micro-organisms.

That is it contains 10 times more bacteria than all the cells in the entire body, with over 400 known diverse bacterial species! In fact, you could say that we’re more bacterial than we are human.

One such example is that of lactobacillus acidophilus — a harmless bacterium that resides in our intestines — help us digest food, destroys some disease-causing organisms and provides nutrients to our body.

However, it is always good to keep your surroundings clean and be aware of the germs breeding grounds that can be a major cause of illness.

Some odd facts you didn’t know

CAN you believe it? Our toilet seat is cleaner than we can imagine because it is regularly washed and cleaned unless you don’t wash it (well that’s another case).

It’s pretty simple really, we actually clean the toilet well. And because we generally think of the toilet as being dirty, we clean it with all sorts of chemicals.

In 2002, a study by the University of Arizona showed a public toilet seat has an average of 49 bacteria per square inch. However, there are more bacteria lurking on the flushing handle, the door latch or in the air once the toilet is flushed.

So which place is the dirtiest in our house?

THE answer might shock you —our kitchen!

There are often more than 500,000 bacteria in the kitchen sink — about 1,000 times more than the average a toilet has.

“In the kitchen sink, food particles from plates left to soak or rinsed from dishes on their way to the dishwasher can serve as a breeding ground for illness-causing bacteria, including E. coli and salmonella. They can get on your hands or spread to foods,” says Eileen Abruzzo, director of infection control at Long Island College Hospital of Brooklyn, New York.

Office desk

AN office desk has 400 times more bacteria than a toilet seat. Because a desk is capable of supporting 10 million bacteria and the average office contains 20,961 germs per square inch, according to a research.

Toothbrush

WHEN you flush your toilet the germs can travel up to six feet and linger for up to two hours. A lot of them end up on toothbrushes. Discovery channel’s MythBusters’ Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage confirm that flushing open toilets causes faecal matter to fly into the air. So make sure that your toothbrush is out of range or it is covered.

The five-second rule simply doesn’t exist

YOU bought your favourite chocolate bar or delicious garlic mayo fries and you drop it accidentally, what would you do?

Look around if someone is not watching you to pick and gobble it up instantly?

Well kids, you are not alone in thinking like that, almost everyone has dropped some food on the floor and still wanted to eat it. And usually, people think it is okay to eat if the food is taken in five second from the ground. But according to an experiment conducted by Jillian Clarke, a high-school intern at the University of Illinois, in which she contaminated ceramic tiles with E. coli, placing gummy bears and cookies on the tiles for the statutory five seconds, and then analysed the foods. Surprisingly, the food had become contaminated with bacteria.

So remember it doesn’t matter if the item was on the floor for two, five or 50 seconds. The damage is done in the millisecond an item hits the ground. The bacteria attach itself to your food even if you pick it up super-fast.

And if you still not satisfied, according to a study published by Clemson University researchers in The Journal of Applied Microbiology, 99 per cent of bacteria is transferred immediately when food hits the floor. Some floors might be more dangerous than others, as dry, hard surfaces have a much harder time harbouring bacteria than wet or carpeted areas.

So just leave the chocolate bar (or anything) once it hits the ground!

Your fingernails

YOUR fingers are still dirty even if you wash your hand quite frequently, because fingers come into direct contact with germs. But your fingernails are twice as dirty as your fingers. Because they are not easily cleaned, they are the breeding ground of all manner of germs and bacteria. When you wash your hands you usually forget about nails… they are a main cause for spreading many diseases like vomiting and diarrhoea in children as well as adults.

Think about the icky stuff you touched all day long with your hands such as socks, the drool dripping pacifier (if you have a baby sibling), nose picking, scratched your back, head or ear… without realising you often eat with those same hands… eww!

No more biting nails!

SORRY friends, I don’t mean to offend any of my readers, but did you know biting your nails will expose you to a greater number of germs than eating something you dropped?

Use common sense

I KNOW these facts have completely freaked you out, but don’t panic. It is good if you take care of your hygiene but it doesn’t mean that you avoid shaking hands, touching things, and/or obsessively cleaning your kitchen all day, every day. Use your common sense here and don’t become an obsessive cleanliness freak.

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Fast facts

• In favourable environments bacteria can divide within 15 to 20 minutes.

• Most people don’t wash their hands after being in a public area, so whenever you shake someone’s hand, you are actually saying “hi” to more than one million different microorganism as well.

• If you use someone else’s computer and then put your hand in your mouth without realising it — you’re effectively eating dead skin, because human skin cells shed about one million dead cells a day.

• Germs transmitted from a sneeze or cough can travel up to three feet. When they land on surfaces such as keyboards and telephones, they infect for up to three days.

• According to the BBC, telephones harbour up to 25,127 germs per square inch, keyboards 3,295 and computer mice 1,676.

• Bacteria have been found that can live in temperatures above the boiling point and in cold that would freeze your blood. They ‘eat’ everything from sugar and starch to sunlight, sulphur and iron. There’s even a species of bacteria — deinococcus radiodurans — that can withstand blasts of radiation 1,000 times greater than one that would kill a human being.

• Banknotes can have up to 200,000 bacteria. It’s a good idea to wash your hands after directly handling cash. The Health Commissioner for New York found 135,000 bacteria from washing one bill and 126,000 from another. Make sure to thoroughly wash your hands any time you handle money directly.

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