Chapter 3
Bacteria
|Chapter 3: What are bacteria and how can they affect you?|
Bacteria are single cell organisms (they are alive!) that take many shapes as in round, rod-like and spiral forms. They are found almost everywhere as they are the most abundant organism on the planet. In other words, there are more bacteria on Earth than any other organism! You can find them in the soil, water, plants, and animals. They survive by living off other organisms and mainly stick together in groups or colonies. Bacteria reproduce by splitting in half thus producing two bacteria from the single “parent” bacteria. Some bacteria can reproduce in just 20 minutes meaning that a few bacteria can become many bacteria in a short amount of time!
Let's take a look at how quickly bacteria can reproduce.
We often think of bacteria in a negative way as they can make us sick. But did you know that our bodies overflow with bacteria? Over 20 different types of bacteria might be enjoying the hospitable nature of your mouth right now! Bacteria really benefit from warm and moist places so the human body can be very welcoming to them. There are millions of bacteria buddies setting up their homes in your nose and right down into your stomach. But don’t worry, these bacteria do positive things for us. :)
So in other words, to stay healthy, we need some forms of bacteria living inside us. Before we get to how some bacteria can make us sick, let’s take a look at ways that bacteria help us stay healthy.
The lactobacilli bacteria is especially helpful in our stomachs and intestines. It works to help digest food and is also helpful in fighting other types of bacteria that could make us sick. There is a type of bacterium (a single type of bacteria) that makes vitamin K which is used by our bodies to make our blood clot when we bleed.
Bacteria helps in turning milk into yogurt, butter and cheese.
Bacteria also helps break down nutrients in soil which helps plants that we eat grow.
We fight the “bad” bacteria which makes us sick by taking antibiotics. Medical companies use bacteria to create antibiotics.
So how do bacteria make us sick? It all comes down to the bacteria entering our bodies and then spreading making us sick. One can catch the bad bacteria through the air, by person to person contact and from food. There are many diseases that we can get from bacterial infection. One big one for young and old is an infection in our noses and our chest especially during the flu season. Some other ways bacteria can make us sick are by food poisoning, infections of cuts, and pneumonia of the lungs.
So how do we stop bacteria from making us sick? We will really cover this in the staying healthy chapter but you probably already know how to keep bad bacteria from getting inside yourself. One way we fight bacterial infections is by taking antibiotics that are made from bacteria.
It is time now to watch a video that points out the positive and negative effects of bacteria.
How do germs as in bacteria spread and multiple?