Healthier with germs

Proven content

In the darkness of human history, but also in the not-so-distant past, lurk the nightmares of epidemics capable of decimating entire countries. Plague, cholera, typhus, leprosy – they were the terror of man. Even today, the media from time to time announce the outbreak of one or another epidemic, such as influenza or cholera.

However, the microbes responsible for mass infection and the death of millions of people are no longer as dangerous today, and some diseases, such as plague and leprosy, have been dumped into small areas in several places around the world. Meanwhile, the number of cases of allergic diseases is increasing, mainly in highly industrialized countries, where the level of hygiene is high.

Discovery of contact infection by Semmelweis

To what do we owe this retreat of “germs” that once caused such fear and respect? Pushing infectious diseases into the corner is associated primarily with the discovery of the so-called contact infection, i.e. the transmission of pathogenic microorganisms from one person to another. In 1847, Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, a doctor at a maternity clinic, observed the high mortality of patients in the ward and associated it with the work of doctors in the mortuary performing autopsies, then examining patients who died en masse of infections. It should be remembered that in those days the level of hygiene in hospitals was virtually none, so the doctors dissecting the corpse did not know protective gloves, did not wash their hands and did not change gowns, only went straight after the autopsy to the ward to the patients. Thanks to Semmelweis’ observations, a breakthrough was made – albeit not without reluctance – and asepsis and antiseptics entered hospitals, i.e. preventing infections by preventing the entry of bacteria and disinfecting hands and medical instruments.

Change in hygiene habits

Twenty years later, Louis Pasteur discovers that microbes called bacteria are responsible for the infection. This paved the way for the development of disinfection and sterilization methods, the development of the first vaccines, and the invention of antibiotics. All this resulted in the fact that the destructive power of killing was taken from the pathogenic microorganisms and they stopped sowing death on a mass scale. The discoveries of Semmelweis and Pasteur gave rise to broadly understood hygiene with a solid scientific justification. Previously, mankind did not know the world of microbes, and saw the causes of infectious diseases in many factors, but not in the lack of, for example, basic hygienic activities such as bathing or the need to discharge sewage – usually evil powers, charms or God’s punishment were to blame. Yes, sometimes people would take a bath or even wash their clothes, but only because the smell of a dirty body just increased. Those who could afford it poured huge amounts of perfume onto themselves. When the existence of microorganisms and their connection to the cause of many diseases that plague mankind was finally recognized, a process of change in human mentality began.

First, hygiene entered hospitals, mainly operating rooms, where disinfection and sterilization spread, which, apart from the previously discovered anesthesia, enabled patients to be operated on and gave them a chance for subsequent recovery, greatly reducing the risk of developing an infection from the operating wound. Then hygiene begins to be promoted among the population, where it is adopted with varying degrees of success, but nevertheless its level grows. The spread of preventive vaccinations and antibiotics only intensifies the retreat of pathogenic microorganisms – the golden age of medicine begins, when the end of infectious diseases was repeatedly announced. Indeed, people are living longer, deaths from infections are rare, the world seems to be a better place. The consumption of disinfectants is growing, which reign not only in hospitals and operating theaters, but also reach all public institutions, and also appear in private homes.

Everything is disinfected, from the bathroom, through the floor, table tops, dishes, cutlery to the body, washed with antibacterial soap. At the same time, mass-prescribed antibiotics sterilize our bodies. In maternity wards, where death once ruled because of the lack of basic hygiene, now babies are born in sterile conditions, and medical staff greet them with facial masks. We are born, live and die in almost sterile conditions, so different from those in which our ancestors must have operated before the Pasteur era. It would seem that everything should be fine – in the end we managed to throw the “germs” into the darkness of history forever, and we are healthier because of it. Are you sure?

Microbial resistance to antibiotics

Nature, of which man is a part, functions according to the principle of maintaining balance. If it is disturbed, a cascade of changes is usually triggered, which adversely affects all its components, including humans. The presence of pathogenic microbes has been a fact from the beginning of life on Earth. Man, as well as other organisms, has always been in contact with them and has struggled in which he either won and lived, or lost and died. The introduction of antiseptics, antibiotics and vaccinations into medicine shifted the balance in favor of humans – it turned out that infectious diseases can be prevented and treated – and that’s good.

Everything would probably be fine if we used common sense and did not try to eliminate microorganisms not only from the organisms attacked by them, but also from the entire environment in which we live. Just as we used to live in permanent filth, allowing “germs” to spread without hindrance, now we have fallen into the other extreme, trying at all costs to eliminate them from our environment, living under the mistaken belief that this will save us from problems. Microorganisms quickly adapt to adverse changes in their living environment. The massive use of disinfectants and antibiotics – which are stuffed not only with patients suffering from banal infections, but also with farm animals in order to improve their fleshiness – causes bacteria to try to escape their action. They succeed because evolution has endowed these organisms with a number of possibilities that make them develop resistance (not to be confused with resistance) to antibiotics or the disinfectants used.

Uncontrolled and excessive sterilization of the environment from microorganisms causes the most sensitive ones to die and the resistant ones to survive. In this way, we breed for ourselves new armies of enemies, which are already becoming a huge medical problem. Every now and then you can hear or read in the media about a new strain of bacteria or virus that resists the successfully used therapies. Today, patients who have been infected with, for example, golden staphylococcus or the bacterium causing tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) are starting to die again, because until recently effective antibiotics have stopped working. Paradoxically, the most dangerous are hospital wards, where antibiotic-resistant microbial strains have been unconsciously selected for years, because this is where people most often receive antibiotic therapy, often consisting of successive antibacterial drugs. Unfortunately, this phenomenon will increase, and how fast it depends only on us.

The immune system of the newborn

The human body is equipped with a defense system, called the immune system, whose task is to protect against pathogenic microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi). This system works as soon as the baby is born. To function properly, however, it must learn to distinguish between enemy and friend, in other words, it must create an “intelligence mechanism” that will identify the invaders and distinguish them from, for example, their own cells that make up the human body. The immune system begins learning from birth, when it comes into contact with the world outside the mother’s womb and is exposed to pathogenic organisms. The immune system is obviously defenseless at first, but within a few weeks it learns to react to pathogenic microorganisms, and during that time it is protected by the maternal antibodies that the baby gets in breast milk. In the era of hygienization, newborn babies are often isolated from the “outside world” in almost sterile isolation cells, where they have no chance of coming into contact with pathogenic microorganisms outside the hospital environment. Increasingly, children are not born by force of nature, but by caesarean section, even if there are no medical indications for it.

It is important to know that when a baby is born naturally, while passing through the birth canal, it comes into contact with microorganisms that are normally present in the vagina of every woman. This is how the baby’s body comes into contact with bacteria for the first time, many of which will be ingested by the baby and reach his digestive tract. The immune system will have a chance to learn how it should react to the presence of microorganisms and at the same time tolerate some of their species, such as those that will colonize the intestines in the future and will constitute the natural bacterial flora of the gastrointestinal tract. The natural way of nourishing newborn babies and infants is human milk, but often too often mothers give up breastfeeding, believing that it is unnecessary nowadays.

Meanwhile, in human milk, apart from its optimal nutritional composition, there are bacteria of the genus Bifidobacterium, which should form the basis of the intestinal bacterial flora of every child. In addition, milk contains antibodies that support the child’s still immature immune system in the early stages of life. The combination of a caesarean section with being unable to eat breast milk can be disastrous for a baby. His immune system will not be properly stimulated by contact with microorganisms and the little person’s body may be exposed to the effects of very pathogenic microorganisms that may lurk in the hospital environment. The unprepared immune system will not cope with the invasion of pathogenic bacteria, which may additionally be resistant to many antibiotics, thus preventing effective treatment.

Increase in allergies

In the XNUMXs, it was observed for the first time that the number of cases of allergic diseases, mainly atopy (an abnormal immune response to small doses of harmless antigens) was increasing. Moreover, this observation has been correlated with the fact that among children the number of allergy cases is inversely proportional to the frequency of infections with pathogenic microorganisms. It is known that the higher the level of socioeconomic development of a country, the cleaner, and thus the number of cases of infectious diseases, decreases. It was decided to check the situation in countries with a high degree of development and those with a lower status. The research was conducted in Finland and Estonia (former Soviet Republic). It was rightly assumed that the standard of living in a western country like Finland was higher than in Estonia, which only then emerged from behind the Iron Curtain. Studies have shown that in Finland, the number of cases of allergies in children is significantly higher than in Estonia.

Continuation of the research in Estonia showed that as the country matched the standard of living of the “highly civilized” Western countries, the number of children suffering from allergies also increased. On this basis, the so-called The “hygienic hypothesis”, according to which the prevalence of allergic diseases is caused by the limited contact of the immune system, especially at the beginning of a child’s life, with pathogenic microorganisms. The immune system cannot properly develop defense systems, because the child is isolated from microbiological factors by doctors and then parents, who raise them under a lampshade, carefully disinfecting the environment, food or even clothes. In this way, the immune system, unable to properly identify the enemy (because it has never actually known him), becomes hostile to other factors, such as allergens, reacting to them with a wide range of symptoms, such as rash, hay fever or even asthma. Sometimes it reacts aggressively to its own body and develops an autoimmune disease such as ulcerative colitis and many others that could possibly be avoided if children were allowed to come into contact with “dirt”.

The world is not black and white. It cannot be said that bacteria are bad because they cause disease, so they must be eradicated and we will be healthier. On the other hand, pathogenic microbes must not be allowed to roam freely and wreak havoc, as before the era of microbiology. As usual in life, a compromise and common sense are necessary to allow us people to protect and heal those suffering from infectious diseases, while not wreaking pointless havoc on the candles of microorganisms. This holocaust, which we have been boiling with bacteria for decades, is slowly starting to turn against ourselves – antibiotics stop working, “super bacteria” appear which are resistant to treatment and are already spreading death, and the number of allergic diseases is increasing. What else awaits us? Or maybe with “germs” healthier than without them?

Text: Tomasz Gosiewski, MD, PhD