A new alarmist post appeared in my Facebook feed this morning saying “many doctors” were reporting patients with “unexplained infections” that were antibiotic resistant, and it turns out it’s from not removing the sealing ring on the Yeti cup lid and cleaning underneath it!!!
The only reference I could find to this phenomenon was this article, which trips my BS meter because A) it’s a chiropractor making the claim and B) the article does not explain how we get from “upper neck and back pain” to “internal infection,” much less an infection caused by a moldy Yeti cup lid.
So my question is…is it possible to get an antibiotic-resistant infection from drinking from a vessel contaminated with mold? I have probably ingested a fair amount of mold lurking in water bottle straws and the like, and I’m still standing.
I believe the technical answer to your question is “yes”. If someone who had a cold sneezed on your moldy cup and you drank from it, you could catch that cold. A cold is a viral infection, and antibiotics don’t work on viruses. So yes, a cup could give “an antibiotic-resistant infection”.
Or if someone else already has an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection and uses the cup, then you could catch that from them.
But I can’t see anything about a cup rim that would be particularly conducive to breeding antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Those come from over-use of antibiotics.
B isn’t that far-fetched, though. Meningitis and Lyme disease both cause neck pain in many sufferers, and they’re bacterial infections (or can be bacterial in Meningitis’ case). The rest… ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I’m not sure what the existence of genuine infectious causes for neck pain has to do with non-evidence based theorizing about Yeti cup lids.
This chiro, Beau Pierce is a real lulu (unfortunately, not unusual in his trade). Pierce’s Facebook page shows a patient who has a crisscross of tape stuck onto his skin, which Pierce thinks “helps the raise the skin and increase the exchange of lymph, blood and nutrients which help to heal the injured body part.” Uh, right.
He’s also an antivaxer (not a shocker either, as many chiros promote antivaccine nonsense).
Calling 100% bullshit on this. The description of “battling an internal infection for four months and had been prescribed five different types of antibiotics. He was quite ill and just couldn’t shake it.” caused by a yeti cup lid and then “After the patient went home and gave his Yeti cup a deep scrubbing, all of his infections disappeared.” does not match any kind of infection I know of (as a fully qualified non medical professional of any kind who used to watch a lot of Quincy)
It is not 100% impossible that you could get a serious GI infection from a moldy yeti cup led (or any other surface you come into contact with, moldy or otherwise). But the result would be you get a very unpleasant sickness (that can cause neck pain, but at that point if your chiropractor does anything except send you to the ER right away, he deserves to get sued out business), then most likely you get better (or don’t, once the infection has spread to the tissue around your brain and spinal cord, and cause neck pain, then death is a serious possibility).
The idea that continuing to come into contact with the same microbes repeatedly from your yeti cup would cause a long term debilitating illness sounds bullshit to me (not that long term debilitating illnesses can’t be caused by an infection isn’t, but they aren’t cause by continually being exposed to the same microbes from your yeti cup lid). Likewise the idea that stopping that exposure would instantly cure you.
But as I point out any chiropractor who has a patient who turns up with neck pain that could be caused bacterial meningitis, and proceeds to “treat” them with a neck massage, versus putting them in ambulance to ER straightaway deserves to get struck off and sued out of existence.
