Can one’s own e. coli hurt oneself? For example, a baby from its diaper.
Not to the extent that the newsworthy type can. When you hear about an *E. coli *scare at Jack in the Crack or wherever, that’s Bovine *E. coli *from the beef slaughtering process, not Human E. coli.
Obviously, you shouldn’t play in your own shit, but just washing carefully with soap will pretty much cover it; you don’t need to call in the guys in the hazmat suits or anything.
More specifically, the really nasty version of E. Coli is E. Coli O157:H7
Your own E. coli can be a problem if it gets into a body space that it normally does not inhabit.
In your example, E. coli from a baby’s diaper can cause a urinary tract infection if it spreads to the urethra.
In addition, a tear in the large intestines, that allows E. coli to spread to the abdominal cavity, can cause problems as well!
What if one takes a larger-than-usual poop which causes one to bleed a little? That would suggest an open wound right where fecal matter is passing through. Could that cause gangrene/other problems?
The Master has addressed this.
ETA: Well, maybe not the “your own” part.
Usually that kind of bleeding is very superficial (like a capillary bursting). However, if it was a larger blood vessel, then there could be a small risk of infection.
Gas gangrene is actually caused by a member of the Clostridium genus.
One of the medical mysteries that still baffles us doctor types is how infrequently the rectal area actually gets infected, given all the anal fissures, leaky hemorrhoids, etc that do get exposed to fecal matter so regularly.
I’ve always wondered how babies don’t get more UTIs being as they’re literally sitting in their own shit. Or yeast infections for the female babies.
It’s felt that pre-adolescent urethral and vagina tissues aren’t such ready conduits to the bladder or likely hosts to infection
They get yeast infections quite a bit, actually, and we call them “diaper rash”. Not every diaper rash is caused by yeast, but a lot of them are. And most of the time, these infections are limited to the skin of the butt, the inner thigh crease and the labia majora. Baby girls have rather large poofy labia majora - they seal off the labia minora, vagina and urethra from most casual contact with diaper contents. Boy babies get yeast infections on the skin, as well, mostly on the buttocks, scrotum and that inner thigh crease.
Most of the diapers on the market are super-absorbent, with crystals (like those in ultrathin maxipads, crystal cat litter, or those little gel packets in electronic equipment) which pull moisture away from the surface. A soaked soggy diaper is dry to the touch - all the liquid is inside it. So it’s generally only the poopy diapers which keeps things moist and provide a good growing area, but most of us don’t like to leave stinkbombs on for long, especially any parent who’s dealt with a poopsplosion leaking feces all over the couch!
Cloth diapers are a different story; if they’re not changed frequently, they do provide a nice warm moist environment for breeding yeast and bacteria. But most cloth diaperers change them frequently enough that it’s not a health problem.
Superficial bleeding, I’ve never heard of that. Is that like a flesh wound*
*A flesh wound, your arm’s off.
“What are you going to do? Bleed on me?”
'I’m invincible!"
“You’re an asshole”
Oh, if only it were just the couch. My daughter is nearly 2 now, and I’m just now starting to accept that my best days of fecal cleanup are still to come.
We’ll call it a draw.
Heh. My 3.5 year old was just discovered to be gluten intolerant. You don’t want to know how we know if she’s sneaking crackers. :smack: