This comes from mulling over a visit with a friend during which I noticed a virtual cornucopia of antibacterial products around the house. Obviously, a lot of us are afraid of “germs,” but we don’t really think about the symbiotic relationship we have with many of the critters that make our bodies their homes.
So: Hypothetically, if I were somehow sterilized of everything on my body that isn’t 100% “me” — the bacteria under my fingernails, all of my intestinal flora, the little mites that live in my eyelash follicles, and everything else — would I be at risk of illness or death? How serious? How quickly would symptoms manifest, and how long could I expect to live?
(Somewhat of a tangential question: If we define “100% me” as referring to my own DNA, and we include the mitochondria with their separate mtDNA in the list of things instantly and magically removed, how fast would I die?)
I did a search and didn’t find this question asked before. There is this previous thread that touches generally on the notion of overall cellular balance.
Well, if you wipe out all of your intestinal flora, you will definately not be a fun person to be around for awhile. Massive diarrhea is going to be the least of your problems. With that will come dehydration. Not fun. Onset of symptoms would be pretty immediate, but easily reversable. Other than that, I don’t think any of the other bacteria, etc. on/in your system has any essential effect on your systems.
For a taste of what no intestinal flora will do, you can duplicate it with a meal I once had that stunned the little suckers for a few hours: Garlic and basil fettucini with a garlic sauce, served with garlic bread. Whew!! Luckily it was a weekend, so nobody had to get near me until the effects wore off. Spent the weekend on the throne, moaning pitiously.
My SWAG is that if you remove your mitochondria, death would follow at once. Within minutes at the outside.
If you killed off your mitochondria, your cells would no longer be able to process glucose and oxygen and they would all die off. At once. I don’t think you’d be able to take a final breath, let alone hold out for a few minutes.
Wiping out your intestinal flora is a bad thing for the reasons silenus described: severe GI disturbances such as massive diarrhea. And a severe case of the runs can kill you, because you don’t absorb anything. Look at dysentery, still a problem in the torrid zones.
As for the rest, imagine all of the invading armies on Earth racing into a country with relatively good defenses. Even assuming your system isn’t otherwise compromised, you’d be massively ill from all of the new infections that, in normal people, keep each other in check. All immunologically healthy people are constantly host to a legion of foreign species of bacteria, virus, mite, and possibly flea, but the trick is that the immune system takes care of some of it and the bacteria themselves eat up the rest.
All of this focus on sterility and antibacterial chemicals and antibiotics is disturbing to me from a medical standpoint. We evolved in conditions that, while they weren’t filthy, were certainly teeming with relatively benign micro-organisms. That is, benign in proper balance. Killing off, or attempting to kill off, everything is misguided: There is evidence that our overuse of such products causes allergies and asthma (also here), both defects of the immune system, and it’s widely known that antibiotic misuse creates antibiotic-resistant virulent diseases any terrorist would be proud to call his own.
I wonder if we aren’t killing ourselves with cleanliness.
There’s another potential human and environmental health risk arising from today’s overuse household antibacterial soaps and cleaners. Triclosan, the active ingredient in these products, is now one of the most commonly detected organic chemical in treated wastewater effluent.
This means that after you wash your hands with your Softsoap Fruit Essentials, the triclosan gets into the sewage but the sewage treatment process does not break down triclosan, and we are now seeing higher levels of triclosan entering the aquatic environment, and possibly in some places, the drinking water supply.
What that means is that since triclosan is classified as an endocrine disrupting chemical, some environmental scientists are cautioning us about possible human health risks from drinking water that is contaminated with triclosan. I don’t have a cite handy, I’ll ask a co-worker for one if needed.
