Understanding Bacteria

It can all seem a bit far fetched as we cannot see with the naked eye what is really going on and many people think of bacteria as being a bad; we often hear more about the bad bacteria that cause infections and not about the good, so bacteria has a bit of a bad reputation!

Bacteria are single celled micro-organisms that carry out many jobs on our planet. They help recycle natural waste (decay of organic material)  and they protect us by colonising surfaces to keep out pathogens.  

Bacteria from Birth

Right from when we are born we encounter bacteria from our mother as we come through the birth canal. This protects us from an early age. It can protect against eczema and other skin infections and continues to protect us against allergies and autoimmune disorders as adults (1).

In Our Gut

There can be up to 500 different types of bacteria living in our gut,  (our microbiome) and they do an important job of helping digest food. They also affect our mood, general well being and our immunity. What we eat can affect our microbiome and eating processed foods with artificial sugars, excess starches and vegetable oil can negatively affect our gut bacteria. Scientists believe this to be true also of harsh, chemical cleaning products as well as increased stress levels and a lack of exercise. A poor microbiome can make us more susceptible to infection and poor health. In recent years there has been a steep increase in gut problems like Crohn’s Disease and Celiac Disease. Studies carried out on microbiota have shown that it can be better to replace ‘bad’ microbes with ‘good’ rather than simply removing all bacteria.

Chemical Cleaners

Traditional chemical cleaners often boast they can kill 99.9% of germs, but they don’t differentiate, they kill both the good as well as harmful bacteria. Surfaces that are cleaned to remove all bacteria are quickly re-contaminated. As the bad bacteria are more opportunistic, (they grow back at a faster rate than the good bacteria)  this creates an imbalance.

“Rapid bacterial re-contamination of treated surfaces (occurs after 30 minutes)” (Elisabetta Casell, 2017);

The use of Probiotic cleaning in health care institutions

Studies have been carried out since 2000 to compare cleaning methods in healthcare settings.  The result of the studies found that Probiotic cleaning practices reduced the occurrence of infections, with a reduction in the amount of pathogens by 50 to 89%. Read more about this research summary

How do Probiotics create a stable and healthy bacterial environment?

Based on the principle of competitive exclusion (Gause’s Law) (Hibbing ME, 2010), probiotics are able to anchor and colonize cleaned surfaces to counteract the proliferation of other bacterial species. This means they occupy the area and consume all available food sources without allowing pathogenic bacteria to grow (Gatesoupe FJ, 1999), La Fauci 2015).

Bad bacteria can start to grow back very quickly  after cleaning and so can raplidly colonise a clean space. A single bacterium can multiply to 500,000 or more within just eight hours in the right conditions. Escherichia coli can double every 20 minutes.

Sources of research

1 https://nyulangone.org/news/can-bacteria-birth-canal-boost-health-babies-born-cesarean

https://www.scienceabc.com/humans/good-bad-gut-bacteria-human-body-probiotics-healthy.html

https://www.mdmag.com/medical-news/probioticbased-sanitation-reduces-hospital-infections-better-than-chlorine

https://probiosanus.com/en/probiotics-are-a-sustainable-green-alternative-to-the-chemical-disinfectants/

https://www.britannica.com/science/bacteria/Growth-of-bacterial-populations