AdminBacteria come in 3 main shapes: rod-shape, spherical or round-shape, and spiral. The normal terminology for the rods is bacilli (singular bacillus eg Bacillus subtilis, a “good” bacterium sometimes used in prebiotics as in the yoghurt you buy and drink), spherical is cocci (singular coccus eg Escherichia coli, found everywhere and is part of you. Even when you wash your hands, it is still there! It is harmless, however a few of them can cause food poisoning), and spiral is spirilla (singular spirillum eg Campylobacter jejuni commonly found in animals especially in poultry and can cause diarrhoea).
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Apologies for the long, torturing Microbiology introduction. The point I am trying to convey here is that your body contains about 30 – 40 trillion bacterial cells. This number is equivalent to the number of cells in your body. Cells are the basic building blocks of life without which there will be no life in you. In essence, for every cell unit in your body there is an equivalent number of bacterial cells. Bear in mind that we have not factored in the fungi (moulds) in your body!
Not to worry, majority of the bacteria in your body are beneficial and help protect you from the nasties. Some help you to digest the food that you eat especially the complex carbohydrates (found in your normal cassava, potatoes, beans, and rice), and dietary fibres (found in your normal vegetables, fruits, nuts, and legumes). Your body cannot digest these complex carbohydrates and fibres without the help of bacteria, which produce enzymes to break them down to simpler forms that are beneficial to your body. However, there are a few nasties out there, which you can help to avoid by adopting a simple habit of washing your hands after toileting and before you eat anything.
If you like shaking hands, wash your hands afterwards before you touch any food. Remember how you read newspapers? You sneeze and wipe your hand on the page and then turn the next page. You can never go to the toilet without having a newspaper to read while pushing out the little monsters (ie faeces). The same newspaper is used to wrap the food you purchase from food vendors! It is about time you stopped eating anything wrapped in newspapers.
For those of you who like eating at functions (weddings, funerals, parties, etc.), a bit of caution. Imagine the food heaped on a table and the dancers have just finished entertaining you while the dust from the ground and the sneezing and coughing from the crowd swirled around the food. Then it is time to eat, and you are given a plate of food, which you did justice to with gusto. But wait a minute, how many bacteria have immigrated to the food you just ate alongside the indigenous ones from the cooks? So, my friend, caution before you stuff yourself with free food in public.
Not to spoil your appetite for mama-put or restaurant and hotel foods, but do you know how the foods are prepared? Or how many people have eaten with the same spoon, fork, and plate, or drank from the same cup the vendor or waiter so casually gives you? How clean is the browny water used in washing those dishes? That cola you just bought from a vendor and munched away without as much as washing it, do you know how many nasties are basking on it?
Do not panic, your body also comes with many soldiers defending it against diseases. Your body has antibodies like the white blood cells (leukocytes) and macrophages munching away at diseases. Some bacteria are also part of the army defending you against diseases. They fight other nastiest for your benefit while some even boost the efficacy of cancer drugs so that the drugs are more able to target the cancers in your body.
But you must give your soldiers a little helping hand. Stop eating junk and eat smart! If a food smells funny, do not do a “Hail Mary pass” by praying over it and tucking in thinking that your prayer has miraculously sterilised the food and killed all the nasties. It is akin to saying a prayer and believing you can fly. Can you really fly?
The bottom line is that you should not eat anything that looks or smells funny, faith in God or not. It smells funny for a reason- there are billions, if not trillions of nasties holding a conference in that food! Maintain a modicum of hygiene by simply washing your hands before you eat anything! Remember that a poorly trained and ill-equipped army is a useless army that runs away at the first sight of the enemy or at the first sound of a shot fired in anger! So, would your immune system desert you at your hour of needs if you do not maintain your body properly.
All is not lost. You can always fallback on the age-old remedy – say a quick grace and eat away. But do germs have ears?
Oh, I gotta go. My tummy is rumbling from the food I ate last night at a party!
